Easter Sunday (A)

(Acts 10:34, 37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9)

On this Easter morning we are gathered to rejoice in the Lord for the glory and beauty of His triumph over sin and death and for the wondrous salvation He has thereby won for us.

If we look back to our origins we can learn there something of the true significance of what, at first glance, would appear to have been the utter degradation and revolting ugliness of Our Lord sufferings and death on Calvary.

God had been wonderfully good to us at our creation: making, forming, us in His own image and likeness, to rule over all that He had made in a way that would give glory to His holy Name and provide for all our needs.   There was, therefore, a close bond of friendship between God and our forebears, Adam and Eve, and God used to walk in the Garden He had prepared for Adam and Eve and hold converse with them:

The Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day called out to the man …

There had been only one restriction to Adam’s total freedom in the garden, and that had been established when God had told him:

You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.

Notice, People of God, that prohibition was made by God because such fruit would be harmful to Adam … eat of it and you shall surely die … and Adam recognized God’s goodness without difficulty for we learn how God subsequently, having lovingly taken notice of Adam’s situation, decided:

It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him … and the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man He made into a woman and brought her to the man.   Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman.”

Thus there was indeed joy and closeness between Adam and Eve and God before the Serpent poisoned Eve’s mind by insinuating that God’s command not to eat of the tree of knowledge had been made not out of love for them but out of His own oppressive wilfulness.

Ultimately the true nature of the bond between Adam and God was determined by the issue of obedience, for Adam chose to follow Eve into disobedience to God’s command… and that, People of God, is why Jesus declared so very frequently that He had come among men not to do His own will but the will of Him Who had sent Him:

            My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me. (Jn. 4:34)

             I do not seek My own will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.

I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. (5:30; 6:38)

Jesus made many more such assertions so that we might surely recognize the root of our human sinfulness.

From the very beginning, there has been no true love for God in man where there was no obedience.  On the other hand, the obedience we show to God should never be cold or automatic, for that would be a betrayal of its true nature … it is essentially a supremely authentic expression of human love for God.

Now, bearing in mind what we have learnt about our origins, let us look for the glory and the beauty of Our Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection brought about on Jerusalem’s mount of ignominy, which was called Calvary.

We were told in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles that:

            They put Him to death by hanging Him on a tree.

How wonderfully beautiful!!   The beautiful fruit of God’s good tree in Eden which -- with the Serpent’s deception of sensuous Eve and Adam’s subsequent weak compliance -- had become a stone of stumbling, was totally transformed by Jesus’ obedient self-sacrifice into the death-destroying, life-enhancing, fruit of divine bounty which is offered to us in the Eucharist.

What delight in His Father, what love for us, enabled Jesus to hold His head high throughout those atrocious torments on the Cross?  Of that we are told  in the Psalter from the very beginning:

Blessed is the man (whose) delight is in the law (the command) of the Lord … He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither. (Ps. 1:2-3)

·        Later (Ps. 110:5,7) we read:

The Lord is at your right hand (yes, Father, for Jesus is doing what pleases You, suffering for Your glory and our forgiveness) ….…. He will drink from the brook (whose waters signify Your Holy Spirit) by the way; therefore (like the tree planted by streams of water) He shall lift up His head.   

How wonderful!!

            They put such a man to death by hanging Him upon a tree ..

where He was destined – by His Father’s gift -- to become the fruit of salvation, the fruit of Calvary to be received with faith and humble gratitude, not grasped with pride like that of Eden :

Take this, all of you, and eat it, this is My Body which will be given up for you.

           

When the serpent deceived Eve he had promised her that:

When you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

And, because he had already secretly poisoned her with pride Eve did not realize that only the goodness of God could sustain the challenge and overcome the threat of evil … and thus being deceived in her folly she became a fitting tool to implicate complacent Adam in her fall.

Our blessed Lord and Saviour, on the other hand, opens our eyes to the full truth of our situation when He offers us the strength of His grace with the call to repent and the warning that only those who humbly believe in Him and in His Father’s goodness are able to receive with profit the full fruit of His sacrifice which is His Holy Spirit.

People of God, today we should rejoice!   Rejoice in God’s infinitely beautiful wisdom that extends throughout all ages and shapes all our destinies; rejoice in His omnipotent and universal might that manifests itself in a love willing to suffer in order to conquer; rejoice in the goodness of Him Who knows no evil and suffers no evil, and Who, in His only begotten Son Jesus Christ, our Lord, our Love, and our Saviour and by His Most Holy Spirit, our Light and Life, our Joy and Peace, is so uniquely able to transform all our evils to His greater glory and our eternal salvation.

(Easter 2011)

Fifth Sunday of Lent (A)

(Ezekiel 37:12-14; St. Paul to the Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45)

In our Gospel reading we heard that, although Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, had sent Jesus a note telling Him of their brother's serious illness, nevertheless, Jesus had remained where He was for two days, with the result that He only arrived at their home some four days after Lazarus’ body had already been put in the tomb and was then expected to be smelling of corruption.  Jesus had, therefore, very deliberately kept away until there could be no possible doubt that Lazarus was dead.  Why?  Obviously He had some reason, and, equally obviously, that reason had to be an extremely important one, able to balance, so to speak,  both the loss of Lazarus and the grief of Martha and Mary.  Let us therefore try to understand something of the issues Jesus had to face and resolve.

The Jewish people had been prepared over two thousand years to hope, long, and pray, for the coming of their Messiah, and Jesus – the Eternal Word of God born of the Virgin Mary in answer to, and fulfilment of, those prayers -- was having to prepare His disciples for His own forthcoming death. He needed to deepen their hope so that, though He were to die and be physically removed from their presence, nevertheless, they would still be aware of His spiritual closeness to them, able to appreciate His enduring oneness with them from beyond the grave in the glory of His heavenly Father.  It was absolutely essential that they should have such hope in Him beyond death, because, just as Israel of old had hoped and prayed for His first coming as Messiah, so the Church, the new People of God, might be uniquely empowered and enabled, in this sinful world, to hope and pray for His ever-present help in the building up of God’s Kingdom among men in preparation for His ultimate and glorious return as Lord of all creation and Judge of mankind. If their faith in Jesus were to flower into divine charity, it had to be sustained and nourished by such an imperishable hope preparing them to fittingly receive and embrace the coming of the Holy Spirit; and for that end Jesus behaved as we have heard, in order to instil and root this hope-over-and-beyond-death into the hearts and minds of His disciples.  This work of Jesus -- His apparently gross neglect of dear friends – was, therefore, an essential part of His preparation of His disciples, and indeed Lazarus, Martha, and Mary themselves, for their future proclamation of the Good News of Jesus to the Jewish people and to the whole world.

Jesus said to (Martha), "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live, and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die.  Do you believe this?" 

Notice that Jesus does not simply say that He has power over life and death as the miracle of bringing Lazarus back to life would show.  That power, as I have just said, needed to be shared with and implanted in His future apostles, and therefore He declared:

I am (that is, eternally) the resurrection and the life.

The fact that Jesus deliberately allowed Lazarus to die and his sisters to suffer without comfort from Himself, even though it was His intention to bring Lazarus back to life again when the time was right, must surely tell us something about the question that inevitably troubles many Christians: why is suffering – apparently, at times, both meaningless and purposeless – still so prominent in the lives of good Christian people?

Jesus’ own death was close at hand; had He not prepared His disciples to hope beyond death, they could not have understood His subsequent Resurrection; His Holy Spirit could not, therefore, have been sent into such closed hearts and uncomprehending minds; nor would His Gospel ever have been proclaimed as the Good News for all mankind. 

In fact, though, because of the indisputable death and the manifestly public raising of Lazarus from the tomb, an appreciation of the ultimate purpose, meaning, and significance of Jesus’ own life, death, and resurrection, was being prepared: here Jesus’ disciples could begin to appreciate Him as the Lord of LIFE in its fullest meaning: life that begins with the cradle, endures through death, and blossoms into eternity:

I am the resurrection and the life.

Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.  (Matt 28:20)

The suffering of Martha and Mary was their share in the forthcoming Passion and Death of Jesus, a sharing that would help His supreme purpose of giving glory to His Father and winning salvation for mankind.  The phrase, ‘offer it up with Jesus’, used to be commonplace and at times almost trite, but its sublime meaning and significance can be learnt from the sufferings which Jesus willed for Lazarus and his sisters.

            I am the resurrection and the life.

Jesus said this because, henceforth, those who would believe in Him, those in whom His Spirit could thereby make His home, as St. Paul said, would never die the death of fallen mankind, because Jesus, dwelling in them through His Spirit, is eternally, both in Himself and for them, the resurrection and the life.  Therefore He went on to say to Martha:

            Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die;

because His eternal, resurrection, life would always be open and responsive to their prayers.

Having entered the world through human sinfulness, death could neither claim nor hold Jesus the Holy One of God.  Jesus chose to die on our behalf, for our sins, in order that when death was unable to hold Him -- the resurrection and the life -- His rising to life again would mean the destruction of death’s power and the opportunity for all who would henceforth live by faith in Jesus, to receive His Spirit and thereby be prepared to share in His victory over death and share in His blessedness in heaven.

I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live; and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?

We belong to Jesus through faith, therefore the only question for those who turn to Him is “do I believe in Jesus' words firmly enough to hope in Him through and beyond death?” 

Don't imagine that such a hope is impossible or foolish.   Listen to St. Paul again:

Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh.

Pleasure, pride and power, seem to offer something new, something fresh, something untried, to those who are young enough, foolish enough, or evil enough, to become hooked on them; and those who have grown old in such addictions  can frequently be found still cherishing their addiction despite the fact that -- with death coming ever closer -- it can afford them neither comfort nor security, still petulantly trying to cling to a power and authority they are far too frail to exercise any longer.   Likewise, those who delight in the flesh never give up hoping for further pleasure no matter how old and ugly they may have become: they still cling to pleasures even though the memory of such things is being gradually smothered by the ever-increasing pains of an approaching, sinful, and culpable death.

Such radical and ultimate frustration, however, was no part of God’s original plan for human kind, and therefore there are other people, many other people who, as St. Paul tells us, are continually being made more authentic and more fulfilled as human beings by their faith in Jesus:

Live according to the Spirit (and) set (your) minds on the things of the Spirit.

Yes, People of God, we servants of the Lord, are called to learn from today’s Gospel to root our lives in Christian hope, hope in Him Whose promises are unfailing and eternal.  No matter what the situation may be, hope in the Lord, for He is able and willing to help and to save no matter what our difficulties might be; and if Jesus does will some of His servants to suffer, it is always an invitation to share more closely with Him in His work of salvation.  Even though He seems to delay, as indeed was the case for Martha and Mary on the death of their brother Lazarus, even His apparent absence is for our greater good: He is forming us more and more in His own likeness, so that we  too might -- in Him and with Him – overcome, not only the world and its blandishments, but also Satan together with all His principalities and powers who vaunt themselves over fallen mankind with the threat of death; and so that we too might be able to rejoice ever more fully in His heavenly glory.  For, the death of a true believer in Jesus in whom the Spirit of God has made His home, is not like the anxious, painful, parting, death of the sinner; rather it is filled with hope and joyous expectation which Jesus Himself expressed on hearing of Lazarus' passing away:

            This sleep is not to end in death, but (will be) for the glory of God.

Jesus shared our death, and by His dying He destroyed the dark shroud of suffering and sorrow which enveloped it.  In His rising He offers us the glorious hope of sharing, with Him, in the life and blessedness of heaven: a sharing which will fulfil beyond all measure our deepest longings and aspirations, a sharing whereby heaven will be our dearest home, and God's presence, the embrace of the One Who is our truest Father. 

People of God what makes you a true disciple of Jesus is not so much whether you keep the rules but whether you have the Spirit, as St. Paul said:

            Unless you possess the Spirit of Christ you do not belong to Him.

And we can only possess the Spirit if we allow Him to possess us, by allowing Him to make His home in us and direct our ways.  Therefore, when Jesus, Who is the resurrection and the life, says to us, as He did to Martha:

He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe these things? …

then, we must let the Spirit within us give answer, and, setting our minds on the things of the Spirit, reply wholeheartedly with Martha:                            

Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God.

Faith, hope, and charity, are, as you well know, the three theological virtues, and -- as St. Paul tells us -- the greatest of these is charity because charity persists and flowers in heaven.  But here on earth we cannot practice charity without confessing faith and cherishing hope, because it is faith that determines Who we love, and it is hope that enables us to persevere and grow in loving with Charity.

            I am the resurrection and the life:

by faith we confess the divinity of Jesus contained in those two words, “I am”; by hope we embrace the promise He offers us when He speaks of “the resurrection and the life”; and by the grace of the Holy Spirit we grow in the supreme virtue of charity as we try to live our life on earth in response to and accordance with the light of that enduring confession and the confidence of that unshakeable hope.

First Sunday of Lent (A)

(Genesis 2:7-9; 3:1-7; Romans 5:12, 17-19; Matthew 4:1-11)

In our first reading, the Serpent, speaking to the woman in the Garden of Eden, directly contradicted God’s warning against eating fruit from the forbidden tree:

You will not die.  For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.

However, when speaking with Jesus in our Gospel passage, Satan considered it wiser not to openly contradict the words spoken by the Father at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan (Matthew 3:17ss.):

 This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.

Was He indeed God’s Son?   Satan was hesitant, certainly not out of respect for this possible Son of God, but out of a desire to proceed correctly and prove successful.  Therefore, instead, of directly contradicting what the Father had said, as he had done when speaking with that foolish woman Eve in the beginning, he tried subterfuge and cunning; he endeavoured to communicate something of his own doubt, to insinuate some little seed of distrust, into the mind of this quite ordinary-looking man:

            If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.

Jesus’ period of testing in the desert had gone on for a full forty days and nights, and the devil apparently thought that a few carefully chosen words of his at the end of it, when Jesus was human-enough to be showing exhaustion, might cause Him to wonder whether His visionary experience at His baptism by John in the Jordan had been as real as He had first thought.  Satan hoped that Jesus -- having been very much alone for forty days and nights and now feeling very weak from starvation -- might be unable, at this moment, to deal with a nagging suspicion at the back of His mind   It would have, let us say, amused, pleased, Satan hugely if Jesus were to try to secretly satisfy His own slight doubt – a fatal fruit of Satan’s sowing – while at the same time proclaiming Satan to be totally wrong in having himself imagined and expressed such doubt! 

            If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread.

However, Jesus had no gnawing suspicion of His Father to assuage, nothing to prove to Himself, and He – most certainly -- had no intention whatsoever of giving Satan the satisfaction of receiving an answer to his question: throughout His ministry He would refuse to allow evil spirits to testify concerning Him, and He had no inclination to prove His personal identity to their master now.  And if Satan thought that an opportunity to secretly satisfy His natural hunger might influence Him, Jesus made it supremely clear where He found His true nourishment:

He answered and said, "It is written, 'Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.' "

Jesus, the Son of God, sent, as Messiah, to save God's People from their servitude to sin, was being tempted as the early Israelites had been when they were crossing the desert towards the Promised Land under the guidance of Yahweh their God and the leadership of Moses their prophet.   On that journey, Israel of old -- sinful children of their sinful mother Eve -- had behaved as she did: feeling the pangs of hunger, they would not trust God and complained bitterly to Moses  that God was planning to kill them in the desert, openly expressing a longing to return to the slavery of Egypt for the food that was plentiful there.  Later on Moses reminded them of their behaviour saying:

Remember that the LORD your God led you all the way these forty years in the wilderness, to humble you and test you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not.  So He humbled you, allowed you to hunger.   (Deuteronomy 8:2-3)

Remember! Do not forget how you provoked the LORD your God to wrath in the wilderness. (Deuteronomy 9:7)

Jesus had shown Himself to be in no way subject to that over-riding solicitude for self which is characteristic of fallen humanity: suffering and trial could not induce Him either to suspect His Father or abuse His gifts.

Therefore, Satan turned his attention from Jesus’ human make-up to His supposedly divine mission, homing in, so speak, on Jesus’ desire to be recognized and accepted as Israel’s Redeemer and Saviour.

Satan had noted Jesus’ reference to the Scriptures and so, continuing his attempt to find out just Who Jesus might be, he took Him to the Holy City, Jerusalem, set Him on a pinnacle of the Temple, and said: ‘Here, on this pinnacle of the world-famous Jewish temple is just the spot to prove yourself and win your people.   Here, you can do something that would resound throughout Israel and be fully in accordance with the Scriptures you quote so lovingly; it would be something whereby the whole Jewish nation could easily recognize that the Lord has chosen and appointed you, therefore:

If You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down. For it is written: 'He shall give His angels charge over you,' and, 'In their hands they shall bear you up, Lest you dash your foot against a stone.'

Jesus, again unmoved, replied:

            It is written again, 'You shall not tempt the LORD your God.'

Thwarted for a second time, Satan showed persistence for he was beginning not only to despise, but also to fear and, indeed, to truly hate this Jesus of Nazareth.  Who was He?  What the hell (a suitable word for Satan!) was He up to?

Today, we, who have as St. Paul says ‘the mind of Christ’, know that Jesus had not come for His own human aggrandisement or satisfaction, nor had He entered upon His divine mission for the well-being of Israel alone: He had been sent by His Father, to save the whole of mankind.  Although Satan knew neither Jesus nor His mission fully, nevertheless, his temptations were diabolically cunning shots in the dark: he seems to have disdainfully thought that any human-being could be tempted successfully, provided that the stakes were high enough.  Therefore he made one further and final attempt to derail Jesus’ mission:

Again, the devil took Him up on an exceedingly high mountain, and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory.  And he said to Him, "All these things I will give You if You will fall down and worship me.

At that moment Satan -- in the fullness of his maniacal pride and ambition --overreached himself, and Jesus, no longer tolerating his presence, responded by a manifestation of His own authority:

Away with you, Satan!

before adding the words of Scripture:

For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your God, and Him only you shall serve.'

‘Away with you, Satan!’   Words cannot express the loathing, revulsion, and holy anger of Jesus’ reply … but we can recall that years later, at the very end of His mission (Matt 16:23), He relived once again, and once again rejected with startling vehemence, this desert experience, on the occasion when Peter tried to persuade Him to follow an easier path than that of the Cross:

He turned and said to Peter, "Get behind Me, Satan! You are an offence to Me, for you are not mindful of the things of God, but the things of men."            

In these temptations of Jesus in the desert we recall, as I have mentioned, Israel’s trials in the desert of Sinai on the way to the Promised Land, in particular the occasion when Moses told the Israelites:

When the LORD your God brings you into the land of which He swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then beware, lest you forget the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.  You shall fear the LORD your God and serve Him. (Deut. 6:10-14)

Now Jesus sums up, and fulfils, in Himself the history and calling of Israel, the Chosen People; but He also prepares for the future world-wide People of God, the Church that would be His Body and Bride, the Church whose Head and Saviour He would be, and therefore these temptations of Jesus in the desert are for both our instruction and our confirmation as His disciples.

In the first two of these temptations of Jesus Satan starts off with the words, ‘I you are the Son of God’ endeavouring to stir up suspicion of God’s love and providence.  How many Christians, today, succumb to this temptation!  They fall away from God because they begin to doubt that He is with them, they are not sure He is hearing them, they are unaware of His helping, guiding, hand in their lives.  “I don’t feel anything; He makes no sign.  If only I could be conscious of His presence, if He would only answer I would be satisfied.”  In some such way they begin to demand a sign from God to convince themselves of His Providence over them: some turn away from the true Faith and seek refuge in religious sects which provide them with all sorts of pseudo-divine signs; others try to stir up signs for themselves by rashly setting aside faith and reasonable behaviour and pushing themselves to become neurotically excited and disturbed.  You will see some of these in popular churches doing all sorts of strange antics or excessive practices.  Many more, however, complaining that God is silent in their lives, fall away from the Faith, and, as it were returning to Egypt’s slavery, turn aside to enjoy the pagan life-style of the surrounding peoples, trying to forget their worries and cares, and even their conscience, in a maelstrom of worldly endeavours, comforts, and distractions.  Let us learn from Jesus, People of God, starving after 40 days and nights in the desert: He would in no way make demands of God, nor would He divert His divine calling or abuse His divine gifts in order to get earthly satisfactions for Himself; above all He would never love Himself so much as to entertain suspicion of His Father:

The Father has not left Me alone, for I always do those things that please Him.  (John 8:29)

Finally, in the third temptation, notice that Satan does not begin with the words, ‘If you are the Son of God’ because this time at issue is the supreme sin of human, devilish, pride.  Here we have the situation of those who do indeed set out to do the work of God but allow themselves to be tempted to accept just a little help (that is, initially, just a little help) from the devil: they carry on, apparently seeking to do God's purposes indeed, but for reasons other than God alone.  Often enough they allow themselves to become discouraged under difficulties or fearful in the face of opposition; then they resort to making just a few slight compromises and  some minimal accommodations acceptable to popular tastes, all done with the aim of recording success where previously there had only been apparent failure.  Thenceforth, all the high aims and loving purposes avowedly pursued are increasingly subject to their desire for results, good results, successful results, above all, acceptable results.  The ultimate end for such victims of the devil's deceits is that, far from serving God’s plans and the true good of their fellows they serve, they end up promoting, first and foremost, their own hypocrisy; and, far from worshipping God as they started out, they end up worshipping the devil in his very best clothes!  They worship him who will give them humanly appreciable and acceptable success in the work they do apparently for God; they worship him who will enable them to taste the general approval and personal self-satisfaction that comes from wearing easily recognizable tokens of pseudo-holiness!   They both despise and fear the humility, the waiting, the trusting, the hoping, the praying, involved in worshipping God alone. 

The variety of humanity’s life experience and the vagaries of its response to such experience are multiform; and though sometimes, and indeed far too often, they show all too clearly its fallen condition, nevertheless our evangelist would have us never forget that the basic, God-given and God-orientated, aspirations and  possibilities of our human nature are sublime, for when Jesus had successfully overcome His trial on our behalf:

            The devil left Him, and behold, angels came and ministered to Him.