Fifthteenth Sunday of the Year (A)  

  

(Isaiah 55:10-11; Romans 8:18-23); Matthew 13:1-23)

Jesus had just told a surrounding crowd of people His parable of a Sower; His disciples were somewhat puzzled by this and so they asked Him, in private:

"Why do You speak to them in parables?"  He answered and said to them,    "Because it has been given to you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given.”

Jesus knew full well that, as He said on another occasion (John 6:44):

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him.

As man on earth, He was truly humble before and reliant on, His Father in Heaven; He always registered, noticed, and tried to appreciate what His Father was doing and saying at any given time and in any particular set of circumstances; and that is why He made use of parables when speaking to the crowds because, as He said:

To know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven has not been given to them.

Whereas many so-called disciples of Jesus in today’s politically-correct society, not knowing the Father, would consider themselves obliged to echo the cry of ‘injustice’ at such apparently preferential differentiation in God’s treatment of people, Jesus Himself never experienced any need whatsoever to justify His Father before men.  Jesus was too humble to have anything but the utmost reverence for His Father’s actions and decisions, and also too truthful to entertain ‘politically correct’ appreciations of the people He had come to save: He might well have recognized that many, perhaps, the majority, of those crowding round Him were there not because they wanted to learn from His teaching, but rather out of idle curiosity …  since Jesus was probably the most renowned and controversial figure they would encounter throughout the whole of their lives … and that their attention likewise was mainly being directed to the simple story put before them in the parable, rather than to listening and hoping for spiritual guidance.

Therefore, because they were behaving just as Isaiah had foretold:

hearing you will hear and shall not understand, and seeing you will see and not perceive,

Jesus, therefore, spoke to them in parables so that, for the time being, they might at least retain the story that interested them and the words Jesus had used; later on, in His Father’s Providence, those words might still be able to bear fruit when their minds and hearts had grown both more humble and more mature.

In that practice of Jesus we can glimpse something of the humility of God, Who accommodates Himself to human weakness by using the softer speech and lowly words of parables to communicate heavenly truth with sublime wisdom.  In like manner, His Holy Spirit, given to us and working in us and with us, constantly adapts His divine holiness and power to our weakness, worldliness, and wilfulness.  Nevertheless, when and where Jesus is able to speak more directly, it gives Him such joy that He was able to say to His apostles:

Blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear; for assuredly, I say to you that many prophets and righteous men desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it.

When we use or hear the expression ‘the Word of God’, it brings to our mind, first of all, the second Person of the most Holy Trinity, begotten of the Father from all eternity, and before all time; and then it denotes, Jesus, the Word of God made flesh for us, the divine yet human Person Who walked this earth with the Apostles and Who will introduce us all into the presence of His Father at the end of time.  Finally, it speaks to us of God’s saving message, spoken in time, through the prophets, and ultimately culminating in the Gospel message of Jesus Himself, enshrined in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments and expounded in the living proclamation of holy Mother Church.  Now, it is to this latter ‘word of God’, the Word of Scripture – proclaimed these days by the living, authoritative, witness of Mother Church, that Isaiah made reference in our first reading:

As the rain comes down, and the snow from heaven, and do not return there, but water the earth, and make it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; it shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

It is one and the same word, whether heard with attention or indifference, whether received joyfully or reluctantly, whether remembered or forgotten; Ultimately, the only difference is due, not indeed to divine partiality but simply to the vagaries of human fruitfulness:

Behold, a sower went out to sow.  As he sowed, some seed fell by the wayside; some fell on stony places, and some fell among thorns; but others fell on good ground and yielded a crop: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.  He who has ears to hear, let him hear!

However, there is yet another more pervasive and simple way in which the Word of God can reach us and speak to us, and it comes from both the world around us and from the universe below and above us, all created out of nothingness by the same Word of God:

God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters." Thus God made the firmament.

Then God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seed is in itself, on the earth"; and it was so.  (Genesis 1:6-7, 11)

Still today the voice of creation sounds around us and can find deep resonance within us:

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament shows His handiwork.  Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world. (Ps 19:1-4)

The Spirit bequeathed to us in Mother Church as the Holy Spirit of both Jesus and the Father, and Who ever seeks to guide us along the way of Jesus back to the Father, that same Spirit was present in the beginning we are told:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. (Genesis 1:1-4)

Now, that same Spirit still hovers over creation, and – be it inanimate, voiceless, or simply inarticulate -- He is able with supreme artistry to touch the strings of creation in such a way as to enable it to bring forth music of divine provenance and beauty for us whom He is ever seeking to lead along the way of Jesus, in order that -- taking up and joining in that great chorus -- our lives  might bear supremely explicit witness to, and speak profoundly articulate love and gratitude for, the beauty, goodness, and truth of the eternal Father.

That music of creation, both harmonious and beautiful thanks to the artistry of the Spirit, expresses not only creation’s very being but it also evokes our own deepest selves as St. Paul goes on to explain:

For we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.

And for that reason creation looks to and waits for us, as St. Paul declared:

The earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

People of God, our readings and our celebration today, are meant to renew in us an awareness of the majesty of our calling: both the wonders of the mystery already being opened up for us in Mother Church and the promised glory awaiting us in the heavenly Kingdom of which we find some transcendent impression in words of the book of Revelation (21:1-5):

I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away. Also there was no more sea.  Then I, John, saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.  And I heard a loud voice from heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God.  And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away."  Then He who sat on the throne said, "Behold, I make all things new."

That glorious new heaven and new earth will be centred on Christ for He will be its light and splendour; and because He is both Lord and Saviour of mankind His true disciples be there with Him, held in high honour and knowing eternal peace and joy:

The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light.  And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honour into it.  Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there).  And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it.  But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. (Rev 21:23-27)

Into that glorious city the waters of life flow from the throne of God and of the Lamb, and those waters we are privileged to foretaste here on earth if we can but recognize and appreciate something of the beauty and the power of the Spirit-led song of creation around us, and if we will but hear with our ears, understand with our minds, and treasure in our hearts the Word of God preached and present, in Mother Church:

All things are yours: the world, life, or death, things present or to come: all are yours; and you are Christ's, and Christ is God's. (1 Cor. 3:21s.)

Fourteenth Sunday of Year (A)

(Zechariah 9:9-10; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30)

My dear People of God, in the Gospel reading you have just heard Jesus was addressing His Father in the first two verses:

I thank You, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that You have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes.   Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Your sight.

In the next verse Jesus was speaking about His Father:

All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

And finally He was speaking directly to us when He said:

Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.   Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   For My yoke is easy and My burden is light."

In those words He promises rest to the weary and burdened, but notice, He speaks not of the rest commonly experienced, He speaks of a “rest for your souls”, a rest transcending all the terror and turmoil of this world.

How are the weary and burdened to find this new, special sort of rest?

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart.

Jesus’ teaching, People of God, can be summarized as follows: all who are wearied and overwhelmed by troubles -- deserved or underserved -- should turn to Jesus for true rest.  The rest He promises is neither bodily nor even mental rest; no, He promises rest for the soul: a rest not to be overwhelmed by physical burdens or mental stress, nor compromised or embittered by them.  This most wonderful rest -- even in the midst of trials and tribulations of all sorts -- is only for those who will take Jesus’ yoke upon themselves; that is, it is for those who, by putting their faith and trust in Him and striving to live according to His word, allow themselves to be gradually formed in the likeness of their Lord Who is gentle and humble in heart.

There are many people today who, far from wanting that gift of peace from Jesus, desire, above all, to feel thrills of pleasure and excitement in whatever moments of pride and glory, power and prominence, satisfaction and sensuality may come their way; and, as a result, they never cease to weary and burden themselves further with troubles, trials, and sins, new and old, constantly being stirred up or exacerbated by such earthly striving for personal and sensible satisfactions.  Moreover, as those sought-for moments of excitement, pleasure, and exultation inevitably become less frequent and less satisfying, they find themselves more and more prone to experience a gnawing fear of that inevitable time when -- either through age or suffering, or even through the dreadful curse of boredom -- weariness will cloud over their search for worldly fulfilment and they will find themselves empty, embittered, and alone, being forced to recognize that what they once had considered best and most desirable has finally shown itself to be empty and unfulfilling.

Rest, however, my dear people, is not the greatest gift of Jesus, not the supreme secret He has to teach us.  You will remember that for the greater part of our Gospel reading Jesus was speaking to or about His Father.  To the weary and overburdened He offers rest first of all, indeed; but for those who, having become His disciples and, through faithful perseverance, have also begun to experience something of His rest, He puts before them the prospect of a far greater blessing yet to come.  For it is His desire, not simply to give them a mere foretaste of heavenly rest here on earth, but to bring them to the glory and splendour of their heavenly and eternal fulfilment in His Father’s presence:

All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

People of God, “no one knows the Father except the Son”, that we can understand; but what follows is the supreme manifestation of the infinite love of God, namely, the fact that the Son  chooses  to reveal the Father to His faithful and persevering disciples.  In fact, He makes knowledge of the Father, that is, a personal appreciation of, and responsiveness to, the Father, a sign or token of authentic discipleship: true disciples of Jesus should know the Father in such a way because Jesus has taught us that, in order to pray as His disciples, we must be able to use the word ‘Father’ as he would have us, in the prayer He gave us as the norm and model for all our prayers.

We can glimpse further along this road of true discipleship if we consider the words of the apostle Philip who once said to Jesus:

Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us. (John 14:8)

Philip was indeed orientated in the right direction, because he did long to see the Father; but Jesus was most disappointed at the little progress Philip seemed to be making, and His disappointment was such that He suggested that Philip hardly  knew Him at all:

Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? (John 14:9-10)

Jesus obviously considered that His whole life’s mission was to make the Father known and loved; and therefore He found it so disappointing and frustrating that Philip who -- as a chosen apostle -- had both shared His presence and experienced His teaching so intimately and for so long still seemed unable to recognize the Father in Jesus Himself.

People of God, this awareness of and love for the Father is what Jesus longs to see in us above all else; but it is a shared knowledge, shared by Jesus with us: it can never be our own possession, it is ours only in, with, and through Jesus.  Therefore, if we have no longing for the Father, no desire to see Him, no awareness of His beauty, wisdom, goodness and power, then we have not yet come to know Jesus.  Jesus’ gift of rest for the weary and the burdened is as nothing compared to that which His very being cries out to bestow: that is, knowledge of and love for the Father.

Jesus knew full well that it was His Father Who sent His disciples to Him:

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him (John 6:44);

and Jesus the Son longed to reciprocate.  He desired above all else to bring those the Father had given into His care to recognize the One whose call had led them unknowingly thus far, and in coming to recognize Him as Father, to love, praise and serve Him as true sons with and in Jesus by His Spirit:

Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

Philip, however, Jesus feared, apparently knowing so little of the Father, could not, as yet, have come to know Jesus Himself truly, despite such close proximity and intimate communion with Him.

People of God, how long have you been receiving the Eucharist?  Have you come to really know Jesus: not with mere book knowledge, not with a knowledge of ritual and prescriptions, but with a living, loving, personal knowledge?  If you want to know the answer, it is not hard to find.  Do you love, long to see, to know more of, the Father?  If not, then no matter what facts or opinions you may know about Jesus, no matter how long you may have been attending Mass and receiving Communion or practicing devotions and doing good works, you still have not come to know Him anywhere near well enough.

Dear people, ask Jesus to help you come to know the Father.  There can be nothing more fulfilling and glorious than such knowledge of the all holy, all wise, totally beautiful and infinitely good God, because such knowledge is, actually, the unshackled presence of the Spirit, the bond of mutual love and appreciation between Father and Son, dwelling within us.  That is the beginning, even here on earth, of heavenly life and beatitude. 

Seek, as St. Paul advised (1 Corinthians 12:31), for the higher blessings:

Earnestly desire the best gifts. And I show you yet a more excellent way.

What is that way?  You will remember how Paul went on to describe it:

Now abide faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity. (1 Corinthians 13:13)

“Charity” is the word for that heavenly love for the Father of which Jesus has been speaking to us in the Gospel today.  Follow Paul’s advice: seek the Father in Jesus and Jesus in the Father, for that is not just rest in toil, People of God, that is life  Itself, eternal and  glorious.

  

Trinity Sunday (A),

(Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18)

The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the ultimate and defining mystery of the Christian faith, but has sometimes been liturgically constructed, expressed and appreciated as something not only beyond our understanding but also far from plucking our heart strings with repeated variations of one in three and three in one, unity in trinity and trinity in unity, and even ‘una Unitas’, one Unity (!), with the overall result sounding something like a mathematical extravaganza or a collection of cold, abstract, concepts.

And yet, as our readings today illustrate, the Holy Trinity, though most certainly the supreme mystery of Christian faith, is not far from our human make-up and personal heart.

God created all things by His Word St. John tells us in his Gospel:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.   He was in the beginning with God.   All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.  (1:1-3)

“In the beginning was the Word”; what is a word?

Commonly, it is understood to be an expression of intelligence using breath: when we communicate with a word we express our thought by using the breath of our mouth, and in the Psalms we are told:

By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. (33: 6)

This led St. Irenaus, when writing his famous work "Against Heresies" around the year A.D. 180, to say: "God has created the world with His two hands, the Son and the Spirit" ... His Word, and the Breath of His mouth.  And when it comes to the creation of human kind there is a vibrancy which is far, far removed from dry mathematics and abstract conceptions, for there the Son -- the Word -- gives form and structure to God's creation, while the Spirit -- the Breath of God -- gives life and vitality:

God said, "Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness."  And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living being.  (Genesis 1:26; 2:7)

And that background impression of personal and loving involvement on the part of the mysterious God of Israel creating by the breath of His mouth, with His two hands, so to speak, is now maintained and indeed intensified in His loving commitment to saving Israel according to an ancient tradition concerning the Prophet Moses as recounted in our first reading:

The LORD descended in the cloud and stood with him (Moses) there, and proclaimed the name of the LORD.   And the LORD passed before him (Moses) and proclaimed, "The LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth.   (Exodus 34:5-6)

In the New Testament St. John never tires of telling us that God is love, and He demonstrates His love for us most sublimely through the gift of His Son as we have just heard in the Gospel reading:

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

While St. Paul, the Doctor of us Gentiles, proclaims that same truth to our Western world when comforting his converts at Corinth, as your heard the second reading, by reminding them of the fellowship of the Holy Spirit:     

Brethren, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.

Dear Brother and Sisters in Christ, the Holy Trinity is not some abstract concept but a Personal Reality mirrored at the very centre of our being, a Reality that is capable of fulfilling us and, indeed, transfiguring us by drawing us into sharing the glory of Its plenitude of Personal Love and mutual Commitment.

Let us now, therefore, give our minds and hearts to a short appreciative overview, so to speak, of this sublime mystery of God which can only be adequately expressed in terms of love, as manifested and experienced throughout our human history. 

The devil deceived Eve, and Adam had followed Eve into sin, and the world -- created for the glory of God and the joyful well-being of mankind and creation as a whole – became deformed, with humankind – creation’s crown and glory -- being subjected to suffering and death, ignorance and selfishness.  

God the Father, out of love, sent His Son to become a sinless man in a world where suffering, sin, and death, held sway throughout its structures and in all practices in order to save mankind, so dear to God: and taking human flesh from the pure and sinless Virgin Mary, the eternal Son of God became Jesus, the Son of man.  He spent His sinless life proclaiming saving Truth and witnessing to divine Love: setting at nought the devil's snares, thwarting his power, exposing his deceits and lies, until the contest reached its ultimate and inevitable climax in the suffering and death of the Pure and Holy One on Calvary, in the fulfilment of which divine love definitively triumphed over Satan’s power and the world’s sin, when Jesus the Son of man rose from death into heavenly glory. 

Then there began a re-creation of mankind in the Son by the Spirit of Holiness, the two hands of God the Father, moulding us anew as in the beginning, though this time not without our consent and co-operation: His Love would heal and renew each and every one of us if we would embrace His Good News of salvation.  God the Father would thus make, in the Son and by the Spirit, a new creation: a saved humanity, which, in its turn, would itself learn to triumph over the devil who once had brought it low.

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. 

The new creation would, as I said, be formed in Jesus; formed from those who would believe in the name of God's only Son and, committing themselves to Him through faith and baptism, would, in loving obedience, follow the lead of His Holy Spirit bestowed at Pentecost to guide His Body, the Church, to follow where her Head had already ascended.

People of God, let us here recognize the true nature of love; for God’s love does not just do things for us, it leads Him primarily to make something of us.  It is true that He does for us what we could not do for ourselves: He saves us from sin.  Then, however, He goes on to make something of us and do something with us: in true love He dignifies and even glorifies us!   For, once baptized into Jesus and washed clean of sin, we are then to be glorified as temples of His Holy Spirit and sublimely dignified as adoptive children of God, able -- in Jesus and by the Spirit -- to call upon God as ‘Our Father’.  Moreover, while we are still here on earth, all these our blessings are to be crowned by our being enabled to become instruments of the Holy Spirit and co-workers with Jesus our Saviour for the glory of the Father, as Jesus Himself said (John 14:12):

Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in Me, the works that I do, he will do also; and greater works than these he will do; because I go to the Father.

That work, to which we and all Christian peoples are privileged to contribute under the power and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, is spoken of by the Psalmist who reveals  that:

The LORD said to my Lord: "Sit at My right hand, till I make Your enemies Your footstool". (Psalm 110:1)

The ultimate fulfilment -- when Jesus returns in glory as Judge, when our work will be finally seen to be fruitful, and when God’s plan is ultimately revealed in all its wisdom, goodness and glory -- will come, St. Paul tells us, when:

All things (having been made) subject to Him, then the Son Himself (the whole Christ, Head and Body), will also be subject to Him who put all things under Him, that God may be all in all.  (1 Corinthians 15:28)

People of God, the mystery of the Holy Trinity is a mystery because it is infinitely beyond the comprehension of our minds; but it is not a mystery in the sense that it is something foreign to us: for Divine Love, which is the essence of the Trinity, is able to penetrate and transform our lives, and indeed become the motivation and fulfilment of our very being, and in that way the most Holy Trinity becomes present to us, living in us, forming us, even working through us:

Jesus said, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.

The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:23, 26)

On this day, People of God, let us therefore take to ourselves, with pride and gratitude, the words first addressed by the prophet Moses to Israel of old; words which only now, thanks to Jesus and the Holy Spirit, begin to reveal something of their full beauty and significance:

What great nation is there that has God so near to it, as the LORD our God is to us, for whatever reason we may call upon Him?  (Deuteronomy 4:7)

Pentecost (A)

(Acts 2:1-11; First Corinthians 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23)

In our Gospel reading, St. John told us that Jesus first of all gave the Holy Spirit to the disciples gathered together in the upper room:

Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you."   And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

There, He was preparing His Apostles, whom He was about to send out in His Name, to forgive sins and bestow new and potentially eternal life by giving them the gift, presence, and power of the Holy Spirit for their personal lives and public ministry. 

After thus receiving the Holy Spirit from Jesus, however, the disciples did not, in fact, start preaching anywhere; actually, they went back to Galilee and to their fishing, where Jesus appeared to them once more. Now that is strange; but it is also very instructive, as we shall see shortly.

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we were told of another, subsequent, bestowal of the Spirit, and this time a public bestowal, where the Spirit descended upon the Church as a whole:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Let me bring out clearly for you the difference between these two occasions.

On that the first occasion, mentioned by St. John in his Gospel, there was only a small group involved -- fearfully assembling in secret -- where not even all the future apostles were present, Thomas being absent, as we were expressly told:

The same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, "Peace be with you."

On the other occasion, however, of which you heard in our first reading:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  

That was indeed a gathering of the whole Church, as is made clear by the emphatic words: all with one accord in one place; and it was after this public bestowal of the Spirit upon the whole Church gathered together as one that the disciples spontaneously began to praise God:

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance … speaking the wonderful works of God.

Now, it was only after this giving of the Spirit to the whole Church that the Apostles -- in the person of Peter -- began to carry out their commission to proclaim and to offer salvation, through faith in the Gospel (Acts 2:14-18, 36):

Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words.  For these are not drunk -- as you suppose -- since it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh.’ Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ."

The Spirit, therefore, is primarily bestowed upon the Church as the Body of Christ -- the whole Body -- not just to one part of the Body, even though that part be the college of Apostles.  Once the Spirit had been poured out upon the whole Church, the special grace and blessing which the Apostles had already received became active within them, but not before.  This is what the Apostle Paul taught us in our reading from his letter to the Corinthians:

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.

As the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ: by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body -- whether Jews or Greeks whether slaves or free -- and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.   For in fact the body is not one member but many. (1 Cor. 12: 7, 12-14)

A false emphasis on unity has often, in the past, been used to impose a strait jacket on Catholics: we are one publicly visible Body, under one publicly visible head – the local bishop or the universal Pope – walking in conformity along one publicly approved pathway.  But that is not the whole of Paul’s teaching, because he tells us that “the Body is not one member, but many”; for spiritual diversity – as bestowed and blessed by the One Spirit in charge of all -- is absolutely necessary if our unity in Christ is to bear full witness to the inscrutable depths and infinite variety of God’s manifestations of His sublime wisdom and beauty, goodness and power.

Today, however, whereas our political set-up seems to ape the old-church conformity through its promotion of political correctness; in the Church, on the other hand, the necessary unity under one head -- with the Pope as visible and temporal head of the Body whose supreme, invisible, and eternal Head is Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord -- is much enfeebled by individuals claiming the right to pick and choose what to believe and how to behave whilst still, paradoxically, asserting themselves to be true members of the one, universal, Body.

On this day of Pentecost, dear People of God, in our rejoicing, let us rejoice in the Truth: Variety and Unity are both essential in the Church.  She is not what the Corinthians wanted to imagine, that is, a gathering where each and every one could strive to display and develop themselves and their personal egos:

You are still carnal: for where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men? (1 Cor. 3:3)

On the other hand, neither is Mother Church like some marble obelisk that abides untouched by the passage of time; it is essential for her to grow and develop because the Spirit has been given to lead her into the fullness of truth and guide her into an ever more truly fitting response to that truth.

If there were only liberal-lefties in the Church, she would be like that herd of Gadarine swine that went off in a wild and unrestrained rush and drowned in the waters of Galilee.  Were there none but died-in-the-wool traditionalists, more conservative than Rome and more papal than the Pope, she would be like a stranded hulk held fast and immovable by its own inertia, impervious to the gentle breathing of the Spirit of Life ever seeking to guide her to fulfilment.

And so, People of God, today we – both as a body and individually – are being offered God’s best Gift: the Spirit of Love, Truth, and Life.   To fruitfully receive what is being offered we must want to use this Gift for God's purposes, and in God's way; therefore, in all our endeavours for God, His Church, and for our world, we should bear in mind that the supreme and over-riding purpose for this  bestowal of God’s Gift is for the common good, the good of the Church as a whole, and for the salvation of souls. (1 Cor. 12:7, 18-21):

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.

God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as He chose.   If all were a single member, where would the body be?  As it is, there are many members, yet one body.  The eye cannot say to the hand, "I have no need of you"; nor again the head to the feet, "I have no need of you.”

On that first Pentecost, as you heard:

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance, speaking of the wonderful works of God.

Today the same Holy Spirit still wills to come to us for a purpose: not frequently “to speak with other tongues” in our modern times; again, perhaps but rarely to enrapture our hearers with convincing eloquence and moving passion; but certainly to lead us to “speak of the wonderful works of God” as we have experienced them in our own lives,  giving glory to God by speaking – as best we can under the impulse of the moment -- of the influence which the truth and the grace of Jesus has had on our lives: the beauty our minds have been enabled to recognise and our hearts to appreciate, and the joy and peace which hope in Jesus’s promises has afforded us when faced with the bewildering difficulties and downright wrongs of daily living. We would fail God if we were afraid to thus occasionally ‘stick our necks out’ at home, at work, or in general conversation, by giving sincere and truthful witness to Him and to the Faith; for our first duty, as the angels proclaimed is to give:

            Glory to God in the highest.

However, because we are all members of the one Body of Christ, besides individual sincerity and truth there must be humility and charity in our mutual relations, because, our lives -- with all their gifts and talents and despite all their trials and troubles – can, under the providence and grace of God, serve the common good of the whole Body, as the angels went on to declare:

            Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His People on earth.

That song, once sung by the Angels at the birth of Christ, has now to become a sublime and eternal chorus in which heaven and earth unite, because Jesus, having finished His mission on earth and being risen from the dead, has now ascended to heaven where He is seated at the Right Hand of Power.  And, as the Psalmist prophesied, God the Father has embraced His victorious and glorious Son with the words:

Sit at My right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool. (110:1)

People of God, today, Mother Church is urging and encouraging us to join ever  more wholeheartedly in that paean of praise; for the Spirit is being offered us in and through her liturgy and sacraments that we might work to make the enemies of Jesus a footstool for His feet as the Father wills: that is my vocation, it is also yours, indeed it is the vocation of all God’s priestly people held together as one in the embrace of Mother Church.  What a privilege we have: let us get on with it, with grateful praise on our lips and trustful confidence in our hearts!

5th. Sunday of Easter (A)

(Acts 6:1-7; 1st. Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12)

People of God, let me draw your attention to the first reading, in the course of which you heard the Apostles speaking to the early Christians in Jerusalem:

The twelve summoned the multitude of the disciples and said, "It is not desirable that we should leave the word of God and serve tables. Therefore, brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business; but we will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

You will, I trust, appreciate from that passage the importance the Apostles attached to their 'ministry of the word', which included what we might call today the office of preaching. In this they were being totally faithful to the Lord's command, for we are told that after His Resurrection:

Jesus appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He said to them, "Go into the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned." (Mark 16:14-16)

With that in mind perhaps someone might think: ‘But what about the Mass?’

The Apostles regarded the celebration of the Eucharistic Sacrifice to be of supreme importance, indeed absolutely necessary, for the Church, as St. Paul writes in his letter to his Christian community at Corinth:

I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, "Take, eat; this is My body which is (broken) for you; do this in remembrance of Me." (1 Cor. 11:23-24)

For the Apostles, there could be no conflict of precedence between ministry of the Word and celebration of the Eucharist, since prayer and proclamation are two co-related aspects of one reality: as St. Peter said in our first reading:

We will give ourselves continually to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

The Eucharist is supreme prayer, the prayer of the Church -- the Body of Christ -- with that of her Head, Christ Himself. Proclamation of the Word is a commission received by the apostles from Jesus, Whose Spirit will relentlessly guide and drive them on to proclaim His Name and continue His work of redemption for men and women of all times.

Consequently, a priest’s calling -- as a sharer in the Bishops' Apostolic mission in Mother Church today -- is to follow the Apostles' example by his ministry of the Word and offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, both of which he does pre-eminently in his celebration and proclamation of Christ at Holy Mass.

Nothing is more necessary and beneficial for our world today than the offering of Jesus' Eucharistic sacrifice, as Mother Church teaches us when she says: 'As often as the sacrifice of the Cross is celebrated on the altar, the work of our redemption is carried out' (Lumen Gentium 3). Nor is there any other place or time better suited for the proclamation of God's Word than when the Church community is assembled together in the house of God for her memorial of the Lord’s Resurrection through her celebration of the Eucharist bequeathed to her.

Here, People of God, we should notice that the ministry of the Word is not, primarily, a matter of being able to talk well: for example, a course to develop communication skills (to use modern jargon) cannot of itself enable or qualify anyone to proclaim God’s holy Word. God's grace and the Church’s commission -- together with personal prayer and appropriate study -- are the sole and absolutely necessary prerequisites for preaching the Word. For true preaching is not done by men alone, it is primarily the work of the Holy Spirit in and through chosen instruments opening themselves up to Him in personal obedience. Moreover, the purpose of such preaching is not to make Jesus popular, but to proclaim His truth and Mother Church’s teaching, whereby He might lead us all, in the power of His Spirit, to love, worship, and glorify the Father in spirit and in truth.

Do not think therefore that those who proclaim the Gospel in the name of the Church, that is the Holy Father, the Bishops, and the priests and deacons of Mother Church, speak, to quote Jesus, 'on their own initiative'. They can only rightly proclaim the Gospel under the impulse and inspiration of the Holy Spirit; and since Mother Church alone has been given the fullness of the Spirit, all receive through her the Spirit entrusted to them for their particular purpose and function. We were shown this clearly in the first reading where Peter, speaking on behalf of all the Apostles, said:

Brethren, seek out from among you seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.

And we were subsequently told that:

They set (the seven men) before the apostles, and when they had prayed, they laid hands on them.

Why did the Apostles need to lay their hands on them since, as we heard, these seven men were chosen because they were full of the Spirit and of wisdom?

Their fullness of the Spirit and of wisdom at that time was such as to have enabled them to live as good disciples of Jesus gaining a good reputation in the Christian community:

Seek out from among you seven men of good reputation.

However, in order to fulfil in the name of the infant Church the special function of looking after those who were most needy, they had to be given the Spirit anew:

The apostles, when they had prayed, laid their hands on them.

No special work in and for the Church can be done without a special gift of the Spirit for that purpose. The Spirit guides, preserves, strengthens and inspires for the good of the Church; He will never allow the gates of Hell to prevail against the Church, and so He specially protects the whole People of God by blessing and prospering the sincere efforts of individuals called to serve in designated ministries as they seek to respond to their calling. Although He does not eliminate human sins and failings, nevertheless, the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of holiness freely given to all who, at whatever level and in whatever degree, humbly and sincerely work for the furtherance of Gospel truth and divine charity in the Church, the family, and society as a whole.

That is why Jesus said to His Apostles, and to His Church today (Jn. 16:13s.):

When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; He will glorify Me, for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

And that is why the apostle John could write in his first letter:

We are of God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 Jn. 4:6)

Most of the present difficulties and trials of Mother Church stem from an ignorance of the working of the Holy Spirit and an overdose of human pride. The Holy Spirit is always and only given to build up Mother Church for the glory of God, never to back up human pride or human passions; and yet there are numerous Catholics who think their secular learning or intelligence enables them, while others imagine that the vehemence of their personal feelings compels them, to intervene in even the most sacred matters of Church’s teaching and practice. These wrong attitudes have bedevilled Mother Church from the beginning, as St. John shows when speaking in the book of Revelation (3:1-4) to those having a false opinion of themselves or possessing a false reputation with others:

I know your works, that you have a name that you are alive, but you are dead. Be watchful, and strengthen the things which remain, that are ready to die, for I have not found your works perfect before God. Remember therefore how you have received and heard; hold fast and repent.

People of God, St. Peter told us that Jesus:

The stone which the builders rejected, has become the chief cornerstone;

and that we, His disciples:

As living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

That spiritual house is Mother Church where the Holy Spirit dwells and is ever at work to form us all in the likeness of Jesus as members of His Body and sharers in His holy priesthood, called to 'offer up (in His name) spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God'. All our individual and personal spiritual sacrifices, however, are only acceptable to God because of the real sacrifice of Jesus, which alone gives worthy praise and glory to the Father; and also because some members of the Church have been chosen and ordained to be instruments of Jesus in the continued offering, even today, of His one, real, and perennial sacrifice to the Father.

As a priest, I am a sharer in the ministerial priesthood of Jesus; but I am also, as an individual -- along with you -- a sharer in that other priesthood, the priesthood of the whole Body of Christ, in which each of us is called to join, here at Mass, our individual spiritual sacrifices with the bodily sacrifice of Jesus for the supreme glory of God, the heavenly Father.

People of God, our hope and our future is bound up with Jesus and in Him we have a sublime vocation which each and every one of us should try to build up more and more through our personal relationship with Him: for we do not have an impersonal calling, we still can and still have to work at it, and we cannot fulfil it without the grace and strength of His most Holy Spirit.

God is All in all for us, and He wants us to give Him our all in return. In Mother Church we are called and enabled to do just that by the abiding presence of Jesus in the Church and the constant working of His Spirit in the Church and in our lives.

Jesus Himself required His disciples to look beyond the physicality of His own presence and Person:

Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority: believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father in Me.

I go to My Father. And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:12-13)

In like manner He wants us to look beyond mere flesh and blood, beyond personalities we may like or dislike, and, as St. Paul puts it:

Through love serve one another (Galatians 5:13).

That means ‘work together as a team’ ‘ as living members of My Body’:

That the Father may be glorified in the Son.

We should all try to look beyond personalities and ignore our own pride, each trying to do our best for Jesus, present in His Church, in response to the gracious calling and power of His Holy Spirit Who works in and through all of us, each

according to the degree allotted him by God. As St Paul said, all of us must aspire to have the mind of Christ, becoming one with Him and in Him; for Jesus is indeed the truth, the life, and the only way to the Father, and only in Him and through Him can we give:

Glory to God in the highest and (bring) peace to His people on earth.