6th. Sunday of Year (B)

Sixth Sunday of Year (B)

(Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; 1^st. Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45)

In the first reading we heard that, in Jewish society of Gospel times, anyone with a skin disease whom the priest had pronounced to be unclean was obliged to separate himself or herself from society and live apart; alone, that is, or with other similarly diseased people:

As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean, since he is in fact unclean.  He shall dwell apart; making his abode outside the camp.

Moreover, in order to prevent contact with ordinary members of society:

The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, 'Unclean, unclean!'

As a result, a leprous person was – according to rabbinic teaching and in the popular estimation -- as good as dead so far as normal society and normal human contacts were concerned.   Moreover, leprosy made the victim liturgically unclean according to the requirements of the Law and unfit to participate in the worship of Temple or synagogue … and this was interpreted so severely that were such a person so much as to enter a house all vessels therein would be immediately rendered unclean for Jewish use.  Worst of all, however, for the stricken one, leprosy was considered as a direct punishment from God by rabbis and lawyers (who had drawn up a list of four possible crimes he might have committed), which meant the sufferer was considered and proclaimed to be one cursed and rejected by God Himself.  Consequently, the rabbis considered the cleansing of one suffering from leprosy to be as impossible as raising the dead, and a story we are told concerning Naaman the Syrian shows how clearly Israel and the ancient world recognized that none but divine power could cure it:

Naaman brought (a) letter (from the king of Syria) to the king of Israel, which said, Now be advised, when this letter comes to you, that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of his leprosy.  And it happened, when the king of Israel read the letter, that he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to kill and make alive, that this man sends a man to me to heal him of his leprosy? Therefore please consider, and see how he seeks a quarrel with me."  (2 Kings 5:6-7)

Now, we are told by St. Mark that:

A leper came to Jesus, and kneeling down begged Him and said, "If You wish, You can make me clean." 

There we can recognise the hope (perhaps nearly worn out) still managing to spur on the leper, and the faith (just beginning to blossom) sustaining him, while Jesus in heart-warming spontaneity:

Moved with pity, stretched out His hand (and) touched him.

In this momentous encounter of human suffering and dereliction with divine goodness and mercy, comes to mind some words from a hymn by Fr. Faber:

The love of God is broader than the measure of our mind: we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.

For, in response to the leper’s courage and faith, Jesus -- powerful in word and deed – had reached out and touched (some would translate ‘embraced’) the man before having actually cleansed him -- thus totally destroying any possible thought of the leper being one cursed or rejected by God.  Only then did He solemnly add:

I do will it.  Be made clean.

 Here Jesus helps us appreciate what we read in the letter to the Hebrews (11:3)

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.

This creative Word is expressive of the very essence of God, and therefore, in the Church, we have sacraments, bequeathed to us by the Word made flesh, consisting of words together with specific actions -- symbolic of divine grace and human agency -- just as Jesus healed the leper by His divine word of power and human touch (or, embrace).

If we would look a little closer at Jesus and try to understand and learn from His very attitude, it could be of much help and might save us from many errors.

Warning him sternly, Jesus dismissed him at once, and said to him: See that you tell no one anything; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.

In accordance with the Torah He directed the man to a priest that he might be authoritatively recognized as one completely cleansed of his leprosy, and so be pronounced able, once more, to live among men and serve and worship the God of Israel.  Jesus told the man that such an action would “be proof for them”; that is, it would testify to the priests that Jesus had both respect for the Law and for them. And, of far greater significance, it would bring to their attention the fact that here was Someone Who could, by His very word of authority, cure leprosy which had always been acknowledged as notoriously incurable for mere man.

Notice how Jesus adheres to the Law set down in the Torah even after previously having most decisively rejected the excessive interpretation given it by the Scribes and Pharisees.  Now this law of exclusion embodies a divine principle, both Jewish and Christian, whereby the good of the whole transcends that of the individual, and the individual good should be conducive to the good of the whole.  This was one of the guiding lights for St. Paul throughout his many missionary labours, as you heard in the second reading:

I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit, but that of the many, that they may be saved.

 Our modern Western society is so ostentatiously committed to human individual rights that the good of the whole is easily overlooked. And yet, individual rights are only valid when, and indeed can only exist if, they are conducive to the well-being of the whole of society; and the validity of this principle is being vindicated in our day by the fact that now, at last, the evil of abortion is becoming manifest to all as the European birth rate is increasingly unable to support the continuing viability of its member nations: several of which are dying out; dying on their feet, so to speak.   For many of our contemporaries, however, this principle is neither clearly understandable nor readily acceptable; consequently, although as a divine principle it is, indeed, for the common good, nevertheless, today, none but the Church and some other religious bodies have sufficient conviction to resist prevalent western hedonistic tendencies and doctrines, such as abortion above all, but also homosexuality when accepted and presented as an alternative life style to that of heterosexual love and marriage.  For, heterosexual love in marriage is the bedrock of human society, fulfilling the spouses and serving the whole human race through the children they raise as a wholesome family.  Homosexuality, on the other hand, when practised, and presented as an optional life style -- distinct that is, from a more noble and perfectly blameless psychological tendency that might be termed homo-empathy (witness David’s love for Jonathan) – can satisfy only the individuals concerned, at the expense of society which is thereby debilitated, as, once again, our modern experience of diminishing home populations in this country and on the mainland of Europe shows.

Again, lack of discipline in our schools -- due in no small degree to the slavish adhesion to what are thought to be human rights -- is leading to an educational and social crisis, because an education that is not able to teach children self-control and personal responsibility by the exercise of discipline can neither produce balanced adults truly at ease with their personal make-up, nor, a fortiori, dependable members of society.  Indeed, such faulty education is increasingly liable to turn out young adults who are a potential danger to their neighbour and to society, because their un-recognized and un-appreciated emotions are not subject to their own control, and can be wildly at variance with the rights of other individuals or of the social body as a whole. 

And so it was in our Gospel reading, where human emotions apparently served to confer a right:

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

Jesus had come to cure Israel, and ultimately the whole of mankind, from the supreme uncleanness of sin, but the cleansed-leper was only able to think of his own case.  Jesus had cured him!  That was all that mattered. He must go and talk of what had happened to himself!

Of course, today some might think, because the man was presumably so grateful to Jesus and so happy in his new-found health, that therefore he is not to be blamed.  But in fact, because of that man’s (understandable) ignorance of Jesus’ overall purpose, and because he (culpably) ignored Jesus’ express command, in other words, because of his self-centeredness (blameworthy, no matter how understandable we might like to consider it), Jesus could no longer enter a town to preach His message of salvation, and perhaps other sufferers were denied the opportunity for a healing such as he himself had received.  The Healer, the Master, had said ‘keep quiet’ and the former leper -- carried off by the flood of his own emotions, and perhaps his own ‘human rights’(!) -- ignored his Saviour’s strict warning.

People of God, Jesus came to take away the sins of the world; and our personal needs and desires are but tiny components, however important to us, of God’s overarching purpose, and they must, therefore, be subject to its requirements.  It is so easy for us to be totally unaware of, and more or less indifferent to, the needs of mankind as a whole when our own personal needs are pressing upon us; and yet none of us can find fulfilment and happiness apart from our integration into the well-being of the whole body of society.  So often in the lives of each and every one of us, we would like -- we would love -- as disciples of Jesus, to make some great gesture, give some generous and remarkable response, adopt some striking initiative, and, consequently we can find it both frustrating and depressing when quiet obedience to God seems to be required of us most frequently and above all else.  Whereas we might want to find things happening, to make things happen, have other people see things happening, in our lives as Christians, all too often we can feel ourselves to be mere nobodies of whom nothing more than simple obedience, sincere prayers and a modicum of sacrifice is requested or required ….  and that, human self-love can find extremely hard. 

Because we are chronically self-centred, therefore, we need to constantly remind ourselves that none can cure the malady of mankind but Jesus Who is ceaselessly, and  ultimately infallibly, at work by His Spirit in and through His Church; and if we want to be His co-workers, to become faithful instruments serving His purposes, we have to resist all yearnings to carve out for ourselves some niche of acclaim, and aspire to seek, first and foremost, His supreme glory, await patiently His most holy will, and proclaim always His great and unfailing goodness.

And so for us, the good of the individual, though valid in itself and truly necessary for the good of the whole, must subordinate itself, or be subordinated, to that good of the whole, and such subordination is not necessarily recognized nor always proclaimed by society.  Nevertheless, it is that balanced good, the true and ultimate good prescribed by God the Father and proclaimed by Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we should make our joy and privilege to seek, work and pray for, in the power of God’s Gift, the Spirit. 

I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit, but that of the many, that they may be saved.

5th Sunday Year (B)

Fifth Sunday Year (B)  

   (Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1^st. Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39)

Simon and his companions searched for Jesus and, finding Him, they said to Him:

“Everyone is looking for you.”  He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For that is what I came out to do.”

We can gather from that passage of the Gospel that Jesus considered His preaching to be supremely important.  This fact led that great imitator and apostle of Jesus, St. Paul, to declare in his first letter to the Corinthians (1:17):

            Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

Therefore, we should not be surprised to find that, throughout His public ministry, Jesus’ preaching provoked astonishment as well as opposition and confrontation among those who heard Him; and they reacted in this way first of all because of the content of His preaching -- many, for example, would say after hearing Him:

             Where did this man get this wisdom? (Mt. 13:54)

There were others astounded by the manner in which He spoke, as you heard in last week’s Gospel passage:

The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.

Now, this was not just the reaction of simple people perhaps too prone to religious excitement, it was also the response of soldiers notoriously untouched by any such sensitivities, as St. John tells us in his Gospel (7:46):

            The officers answered, "Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.”

And, indeed, the religious authorities themselves -- those highly intelligent and extremely dangerous enemies of Jesus -- had a like appreciation of His preaching and Person:

The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.   (Mark 11:18)

Now, when the scribes -- learned in the Law and the Jewish oral tradition -- taught the people, they frequently did little more than string together a series of quotations centring on some brief passage of the Torah -- taking them from earlier authorities or currently well-known and influential teachers – without making personal statements that might involve or commit themselves.   With Jesus, however, it was quite different: He would, indeed, quote on occasion, but only from the Scriptures; then, also, He would frequently refer to the natural world around, and recall everyday events and situations of human life, before finally -- by the fullness of the Spirit that was in Him -- bringing forth a supremely authentic revelation of God’s presence and purpose in the Scriptures, and in the history -- past and present -- of Israel.  In this way His teaching was able to reveal the divine meaning and eternal purpose, as well as show something of the present beauty and hidden significance, of everyone’s ordinary experience of life and their vocation to worship in Israel.

His was, indeed, a unique authority, being based upon a unique awareness of divine realities:

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. (John 3:11-13)

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.  (Matthew 11:27)

St. Paul, again, appreciated this aspect of Jesus’ teaching, as we can tell from the advice he gave to Titus, an early convert of his whom he later established as head of the church in Crete:

These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. (Titus 2:15)

As Paul bears witness, this authority, so striking in Jesus’ own Person and preaching, was essential for the founding of the Church, and consequently, is still essential today for the well-being of the Church.  It is not, however, something that can be directly imitated by ordinary human beings: to attempt anything of that sort would smack of the heretical illusion of those who believe themselves to be divinely inspired or the satanic pride of those who want to impose their own personality and ideas on others in order to seize hold of, and enjoy the experience of, some measure of power.

The  proclamation of the Word of God, by public preaching and personal witness, is, indeed, essential for the Christian Church; for us, however, the authority recognizable in the priest’s manner of preaching and the people’s witness of Christian living can only come from faith: a faith gratefully received, wholeheartedly believed, and deeply loved.  This confidence in the Church’s proclamation and assurance in her Christian living cannot come from some stirred-up, emotionally contrived, personal ambition which ultimately only seeks to promote self.  It must come from an absolute and total commitment to what transcends our own being and what, nevertheless, becomes essentially part of, and the very key to, our deepest self; a total commitment to the God proclaimed by our faith, evoked when we come to truly and fully realize that our supreme duty as Christians is to know God:

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  (Habakkuk 2:14)

This knowledge, however, is not just the awareness of some facts about God, or about the Scriptures or the Church; it has to be a personal appreciation of, love for, and commitment to, God Himself, as manifested to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, and witnessed to by His revelation of the Father and His Gift of the Holy Spirit in and through Holy Mother Church.  This is a knowledge that can only be received by those who consistently and perseveringly seek to do what Jesus did, that is, commune with God in prayer:

Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.  

It is the lack of such loving knowledge and appreciation of, communion with and whole-hearted response to, the Personal God abiding with and in Mother Church and all the faithful children born of her that bedevils the proclamation and the witness of too many Christians and Catholics today; and just how deeply such ignorance afflicts us and, of course, the whole of our world today, can surely be imagined from the following few words of the prophet Hosea and then of Our Lord Himself:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have   rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. (Hosea 4:6)

I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (6:6)

Our Blessed Lord, for His part, can be said to have quite literally bequeathed to us  the following most inspiring prayer of praise and intercession revealing the bond of mutual knowledge and love between Himself and His Father with which He would endow and enrich us :

O righteous Father!  The world has not known You, but I have known You and these have known that You sent Me.  And I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them.  (John 17:25-26)

The world’s religiosity today is above all a proclamation of self-sufficiency and mutual approbation: we can be holy of ourselves without any God.  Because God is rejected as not-necessary, there is no authority able to command respect and give peace, strength, direction and coherence, to our modern experience of life: the institutions and laws that would govern the nations are subject to cynical self-interest, widespread hypocrisy, and frequent barbarism; the law that seeks to govern our society is at times quite derisory in its pandering to popularity, and for an ever growing number of its citizens there appears to be no right law nurturing our society, nothing other than the compulsive pressures of the markets’ search for profit, the corrosive passions of individuals lusting for pleasures of every sort, and the merely political aspirations of parties and candidates hankering after prominence, power, and renown.  This recalls those ancient words of Job we heard in our first reading:

Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?  Troubled nights have been allotted to me.  If in bed I say ’When shall I arise?’, then the night drags on and I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.  My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle; they come to an end without hope.  Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.

And yet, People of God, those words of Job are no final assessment, not an end in themselves but a help and provocation for us to appreciate what Jesus and His salvation has brought into our lives; a salvation the prophets Isaiah and Hosea had glimpsed already dawning centuries before Jesus:

He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him; so let us know, let us press on to know, the LORD. (Hosea 6:2-3)

They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Therefore, let us pray that not only the Lord may give authority to both the preaching of Mother Church and the witness of all her devoted children, but that even our own personal lives may themselves be penetrated through and through by the faith we have most gratefully received, in which we whole-heartedly rejoice, and to which we most sincerely hope and humbly aspire to give witness and expression in all its compelling truth and beauty by both our life and our death in Christ Jesus our Lord.                                         

3rd. Sunday, Year (B)

Third Sunday, Year (B)

(Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1^st. Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20)

            Repent and believe the Good News

That is what many believe to be the first -- and perhaps original -- Gospel’s summary of Jesus’ teaching, and the quintessential core, marrow, and backbone of Christian preaching:

            Repent and believe the Good News of Jesus.

Now ‘repent’ is not the same as ‘regret’ in the Christian proclamation.  It does not mean look back fixedly, ever reviewing your past life and lamenting, wishing it had been otherwise; but rather:

look up, look forward, to God, Whose goodness and truth is now -- in and through Jesus -- ready to begin the ultimate transformation of mankind and the whole world;

look at God in Jesus, and change your old attitudes of selfishness and pride, acknowledging with  Peter, ‘Lord, you have the words of eternal life’;

 look around, for God, and with mind, heart, soul and strength, indeed, with your whole being, seek to promote His glory and serve His purposes in all life’s circumstances and apparently chance happenings; for:

            The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe the Good News.

In Jesus’ Good News, and Mother Church’s proclamation, God is Love and He is Life; to listen to Him is to hear Truth and to obey Him is to practice Wisdom; to look at Him is to see Beauty, to trust in Him is to have Strength; while to experience His hidden presence is to find peace and taste beatitude.  ‘Repent’ means: turn to God and prepare yourselves to receive these gifts from Him; stop seeking to promote your own interests of prestige, power, or pleasure; stop turning to and trusting in men who, like yourself, are fragile creatures of flesh and blood, by nature inconstant.   As Our Lord Himself puts it:

Do not labour for food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.

Surely then, ‘repent’ is a joyous word, something like ‘renew yourself’, ‘be refreshed, restored’, indeed and in all truth, ‘be revitalized’.  Such Christian repentance makes our religious practice authentically human, for a human being, no matter how well placed in life, always aspires to yet more of what is (or at least seems to be) good.  Christian repentance means that a new horizon has dawned, a new destiny is opening up; and how essential that is to a truly human life!  What is the tragedy of unemployment today?  It is not (in our society at least) so much that those without work are starving, barely able to exist, but rather that they have no future to look forward to; for a human being can endure, can triumph over, almost any odds so long as he or she has an ideal, a future, to aim at, to hope for, aspire towards.   Christian repentance opens us up to that new hope, that new future, which promises not merely earthly well-being, but divine, eternal blessedness; it continually urges us to leave behind the past and to look forward, aiming ever higher; for being a response to the proximity of the Kingdom of God, it is always coupled with divine power.

It is not enough, however, to just repent on hearing Jesus’ call; for true repentance, it is also necessary to ‘believe’ the Good News which Jesus reveals about the goodness and mercy of God, about the lovableness of His truth and beauty:

            Repent and believe the Good News.

Obviously, hearing alone can never lead us to repentance if we do not believe what we have heard, and so, we cannot repent without believing; nor, on the other hand, can we believe without repenting … the devils know, but without believing what they know, they cannot repent:

Go into all the world and preach the Gospel …. He who does not believe will be condemned.  (Mark 16:16)

To believe in God and the Gospel’s Good News is to see truly something of God’s holiness and majesty, His goodness and mercy, His wisdom and beauty, and it is impossible to thus realize, and in some slight measure appreciate, such infinite Beauty without at the same time – though painfully and fearfully recognizing one’s own disfigurement, alienation and ignorance -- being nevertheless drawn to it.  And there, precisely, is the root of repentance: for despite the conviction of one’s own nothingness, lovelessness, and culpability, before God’s all-holy Goodness and Beauty, the fact of being so irresistibly drawn by yearning admiration and longing desire towards that Goodness and Beauty urges and gently compels us to a new calm and deep-rooted, fresh-water so to speak, re-appraisal of our life, past, present, and future, together with whole-hearted trust in, and trembling response to, Jesus’ Gospel call.

People of God, we should never allow ourselves to be satisfied with past progress or present well-being.  Christian repentance and Catholic belief should grow in us daily so that, when the call comes for us to embrace death, we might be found forgetful of self and filled with humble joy, hope, and trust in the Lord Who first called us by His Gospel message of Good News, has long guided and sustained us by His Spirit of Truth and Love, and is now preparing  for us a room in His Father’s house.