32nd Sunday Year C 2016

32^nd. Sunday Year (C)

(2 Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2 Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; Luke 20: 27-38)

In the first reading from the second book of Maccabees you heard the words:

It is my choice to die at the hands of men with the hope God gives of being raised up by Him; but for you there will be no resurrection to life.

Today, people who do not frequent Church might have thought on hearing those words that they were from some Muslim source, for on TV and in news bulletins we so often see and hear of predominantly fanatical Muslims shouting out defiance to the West and boasting of their willingness to die for what they say is the cause of Islam in the hope that in the process they might slaughter as many enemies as possible and subsequently, as patriots or perhaps martyrs, win themselves a life of anticipated delights in heaven.

Here, we cannot avoid the fact that we are dealing with people whose religious belief is very strongly orientated towards a better life to come after death on earth, and in that they challenge us to appreciate more and to practice better what commitment our faith in Jesus Christ risen from the dead for our eternal salvation requires of us.

This is most salutary for us because, in Western society, we are surrounded today by people so sated with possessions, so occupied in the business of life and with the multitude of diverse pleasures available, that they have but the faintest desire for a heavenly life to come, since its appearance on their horizon would necessarily herald the end of the earthly occupations and satisfactions in which they are so engrossed.  Even apparently devout religious people who openly profess their belief in a heavenly life to come seem, in comparison with the afore-mentioned zealots, to be spiritual wimps in so far as they show themselves so hesitant, wavering, and fearful in their response to any call of Jesus that would lead them to prepare seriously for their heavenly fulfilment, even though, as I say, they acknowledge Him readily enough in words to be the Conqueror of Death and Lord of Life for all who believe in Him.

There is also very prominent, of course, that pseudo-belief in heavenly life regularly and somewhat sickeningly manifested by non-Church-goers when a loved one (of whatever character) dies and the mourners are so openly sure he or she is ‘in heaven; looking down from heaven now’.

The fact is that Christian doctrine is intimately attuned to our humanity; and those who have suffered child loss most acutely appreciate that the Catholic and Christian hope arising from Jesus’ own Resurrection and His promise to us of life eternal, is so beautifully responsive to our human experience (loved ones departed but not lost; loved ones still able to be touched and helped by our prayers) that without it human life can potentially become so bitter that the godless escape-hatch of suicide is never far away.

However, we cannot ignore the fact that the zeal of many self-sacrificing militants seems to be closely identified with fanaticism, springing from religious ignorance, political manipulation, long-kindled memories of humiliations and deprivations of various sorts in past history currently being stoked up into religious intolerance and a burning desire for racial and personal revenge.  Such fires of hatred now burn so hot in these zealots, that their minds are no longer able to clearly appreciate, nor can their hearts calmly meditate, the faith they claim to promote; and whilst proclaiming ultimate reverence for the message of the Prophet, it is the present preaching of radical fire-brands and the satisfaction of their personal feelings of racial hatred that actually rule their lives and claim their allegiance.

Now all this is a warning for us Catholics and Christians: for we have to be strong with a strength that comes from the unquenchable hope arising from our commitment and obedience to Christ and His teaching in Mother Church, to His Personal presence and the sure, intimate, guidance of His most Holy Spirit in the details of our lives, not from blind human passions or political motivations.

If then, bearing in mind the prominence given to martyrdom in our current political situation, we consider carefully today's Gospel reading, we can hopefully learn something more about the true nature of our Christian hope and confident expectation of resurrection after death and eternal life to come in heaven.

The ignorance of many Catholics leaves them with thoughts (and fears) of a faint and fragile heavenly experience totally at variance with, and for some opposed to, anything we know of life as experienced and loved here on earth.  And so, whereas we  have gun-toting zealots eager about a heavenly future they fondly imagine to be sensual and sexual in such a way and to such a degree as to perpetuate some of the worst aspects of human society and life here on earth; conversely, many Catholics and Christians have little or no enthusiasm or longing for what they conceive to be a heaven, long in extent but short in content, so to speak; a heaven that can hardly even begin to be imagined and is therefore quite unable to afford any appreciable comfort in, or fulfilment of, their present human life experience.  In this situation it is obvious that we should learn something more about the true nature our Christian hope for resurrection and life to come.

Let us therefore turn to Jesus speaking to us in today’s Gospel reading:

The children of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage.  They can no longer die, for they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the Resurrection.

Jesus is speaking there, with total realism and complete absence of sentimentality, of the root condition of humanity on earth, which is that human beings inevitably die and therefore, according to God’s plan, marry in order that through new birth -- the fruit of married love and commitment – the death of individuals might not bring about the depredation or even extinction of mankind as a whole. 

Now, those counted worthy to attain the resurrection and the age to come will not marry because human life will no longer be imperilled by death, Jesus said.  Does that mean, therefore, that an ice-cold, totally sanitized, picture of heaven is confirmed?  Far from it, for the direct implication of Jesus’ words is, on the contrary, that those who attain to life in the eternal Kingdom of God will no longer be ordinary human beings capable of nothing better or greater than merely ordinary human joys and disappointments, fulfilments and losses, but rather that they will be as Jesus literally said:

            Equal to the angels and sons (in Jesus) of God.

Their life will be not merely enriched but transfigured; having been born again, not of flesh and blood, but of God, as St. John tells us in his Gospel:

As many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12-13)

Resurrection in Jesus, therefore, will mean a transfiguring re-birth for human beings who, thereby, will become children of God and members of the family of God: no longer subject to the earthly limitations of human frailty, the daily incursions of sin, and death’s relentlessly advancing depredations, but finally able to appreciate and respond wholly and unreservedly to heaven’s offer of personal fulfilment, transcendent joy, and eternal blessedness, together with like-minded brothers and sisters all as one praising the glory and goodness, the beauty and truth, of their heavenly Father.

That fulfilment, those joys, that blessedness, of heaven will not be alien to our human mind and heart, because they filled the mind and heart of Jesus Our Lord and Saviour, Who, in His sacred and perfect humanity on earth delighted entirely in God the Father:

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father's commandments and abide in His love.  (John 15:10-11)

And Jesus assures His disciples and us what ‘abiding in His love’ will mean:

I have told you this so that My joy may be in you, and your joy may be complete.

Just consider: that death-embracing-and-surmounting, heaven-ascending and home-going joy that filled Jesus’ own human heart as He rose from the dead and returned to His Father’s side will, He promises, abide in us and will -- as we open ourselves up to it -- gradually bring our joy to the supreme fullness of our own personal capacity for receiving and giving love, so that eternity for each of us will be the timelessly abiding instant of an ecstatic sharing in the sublime love which is the Holy Spirit eternally embracing and holding the Father and His only-begotten Son in the oneness of divine Trinity.

How can we continually open ourselves up to such a treasure?

By thinking on it more deliberately and appreciatively in our mind (for example, do you recall any of the many occasions of Our Lady coming down from heaven and being seen by thousands and heard here on earth? do you read any of the numerous saints who have learned from visions of the living Jesus?) and treasuring it more lovingly in our heart by devout aspirations and grateful acts of thanksgiving to God, acts of joyous commitment to His will and the service of our neighbour.  And above all by making your own the words of Jesus telling of His Personal longing to be once again with His Father in heaven; and telling us of the family and home, feast and fulfilment, awaiting us in God’s Kingdom as His adopted children.

It has been rightly said by Dr. Johnson that, for the most part, Christian people do not so much need to be told what they have never heard, as to be reminded of what they have already heard but have now, in fact, largely forgotten.  That means that too many do not try sufficiently to appreciate what Jesus has won for us and what the Father offers us through the Spirit.  Listen therefore to a passage from our Scriptures, written in the early years of the growth of Mother Church, when some Christians – like the seed sown on rocky ground in Jesus’ parable -- living in the world and too much for the world, had become half-hearted in their faith:

I know your works, that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish you were cold or hot.  So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spit you out of My mouth. 

What was the trouble?  It was the same trouble that so many of us Westerners suffer from today:

Because you say, 'I am rich, have become wealthy, and have need of nothing'--and do not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind, and naked.  (Revelation 3:15-17)

People of God, our readings today, heard in the context of modern events, have something to say to us which these very events we are experiencing might hopefully encourage us to take notice of:

            (God) is not the God of the dead but of the living.

The Father is God for those who are striving to live in Jesus by the Spirit, wanting, praying, to be led ever forward by the Spirit; the lukewarm prefer to remain where they presently find themselves comfortable and with easy, earthly, options to hand, and yet they are in very grave danger of suffocating their faith and incurring personal rejection by God.

There is another such passage from today's second reading, where Paul prays for his Thessalonian converts saying:

May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance (patience) of Christ.   

That is, Paul prays that Christ's love of the Father, that Christ's continuance in that love through thick and thin, might characterise his converts.  He wants none to be spiritually idle, lukewarm, and dying; he wishes rather, that they live ever more fully, as Jesus said: steadfastly waiting upon God and trusting in His Spirit, resolutely loving Jesus with their whole mind, heart, soul, and strength, in and through all the ups and downs of life.

People of God, the teaching of the Scriptures before us today, and the baleful examples of both fanatical excess and supine indifference in our modern multi-cultural but increasingly humanly-uncultured society, should give us a salutary spiritual jolt to wake up and strive afresh to live as true Catholics and Christians.  

                         

31st Sunday Year C 2016

Thirty-First Sunday (Year C)

(Wisdom 11:22 – 12:2;  2^nd. Thessalonians 1:11 – 2:2;  Gospel of St. Luke 19:1-10)

==================================================================

Dear People of God, some scholars (e.g. J.D.M. Derrett) tell us that according to the Law, Jews were not allowed to even handle money belonging -- if one can rightly use that word! -- to a publican, because it was considered to be money extorted by fraud or force, ultimately at the behest of the occupying power of Rome.   Since Zacchaeus (= ‘the Righteous’) was a chief tax(toll?)-gatherer it was therefore presumed by his Jewish compatriots that he himself used force and threats to exact money from sub-collectors under his control; and that those sub-collectors, in their turn, applied pressure on the poor – a fact well-known from common experience – to get the money required first of all by the Roman occupying authorities, plus what they had to pay ‘in commission’ to Zacchaeus, and then, finally, make whatever profit they might want or could get for themselves.  Wicked?  Yes, most wicked; but that is the way things were done in Palestine at the time of Our Lord’s public ministry, and that is why the Jews in Israel hated all tax-, toll-, MONEY collectors, especially the bigger-fry such as Zacchaeus.

Not only the strict and zealous observers of the Law of Moses, however, but also the great majority of those not bothering themselves overmuch about what the Law prescribed or proscribed, shared that attitude of strong hostility towards publicans: avoiding contact with them -- ostracizing them -- as best they could.  Hence Zacchaeus in today’s Gospel, being unable to get through the large and unaccommodating crowd standing along the roadside where Jesus would pass by, could not, because of them and his own short stature, see Him making his way through the town.  A tree, however, offered him a way out of his difficulty, although it would not be without the dilemma of having to clamber up it and risk exposing himself to the mockery of those observing his attempt to do so.

Zacchaeus, though heartily despised as one of the publican ‘quislings’, was yet able, it would seem, to be in the vicinity of, even though not actually among, the crowd awaiting Jesus’ passing by; therefore, it would appear that despite the fact of his being despised he was not in any direct personal danger.  Could that be because he was generally recognized as being at least better than others of his ‘ilk’?    For he would soon say to Jesus, ‘Lord, if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over’; as a top official, that is, although he could not guarantee his subordinate’s behaviour, nevertheless, he had not himself practiced extortion as far as he could remember.  He would therefore seem to have been a man of some personal dignity and one consequently allowed a certain measure of tolerance by the Jews of Jericho.

Now, how would Zacchaeus normally express that personal dignity before the townspeople who, for the most part, despised and hated all publicans?  Obviously, since he was rich and used to dealing with the upper echelons of officialdom and business, he would give notice of his standing and dignity by his dress and personal bearing.

Zacchaeus -- a Jewish/Hebrew name -- was obviously at odds with the contemporary Jewish authorities since he had chosen to become a prominent publican.  Nevertheless he was not dead to the traditional faith of his people, because the reputation of Jesus was such that news of His coming to Jericho, even if only passing through on His way to Jerusalem, was of great interest and even greater importance to him.  Jesus proclaimed the faith of the fathers but was not part of the current Jewish religious ‘set up’, indeed, He was coming with a call to individual, social, and religious repentance and renewal, offering the possibility of becoming part of, entering into, what He called the ‘Kingdom of God’.   Zacchaeus had (at the very least and at whatever cost) to see such a man!

To do that, however, he realized that he would have to throw away his dignity and dress -- his only title to some measure of public respect among the Jews of Jericho -- by scrambling up that dusty, dirty tree in order to catch a glimpse of Jesus walking along the road under his perch!   Remember St. Paul’s words:

I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ.  (Philippians 3:8)

In Zacchaeus’ case those words could be, ‘I consider myself, my dignity and my bearing, as so much rubbish, that I may catch a glimpse of Jesus.’

Therefore, as Jesus was walking silently along the road He suddenly became aware His Father’s grace, obviously (to Jesus) at work in a man before Him; and looking up quite deliberately at the man, taking calm and loving notice of him, He changed His mind about passing straight through the town, and called out:

            Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.

Zacchaeus, however, having thus eventually caught sight of Jesus and, most amazingly of all, having been publicly called to receive Him as a guest in his own house, was now deeply troubled: for this Jesus was a truly holy and mysteriously powerful man, and Zacchaeus knew that he himself was not holy.  Oh how honoured he felt himself to be by Jesus’ wish to stay at his house!, but he did not want this wonderful man to be ill-spoken of because  of himself, he did not want Jesus to be tarred with his own (Zacchaeus’) brush!  Therefore, as a surprisingly humble and sensitive person as well as a truly intelligent man, Zacchaeus resolved to protect Jesus by speaking out -- making full and accurate use of his own intimate knowledge of both Jewish Law and Roman practices – in such a way that Jesus’ coming into the house of a publican might not cause any disrespect for His Person or bring about any diminution of His reputation in Israel.

And so there follows a wonderfully delicate display of mutual respect, awareness, and appreciation, serving to bring about a reconciliation of two opposing attitudes evident that day:

            Zacchaeus received Him with joy; ‘He has gone to stay at the house of a sinner.’

Jesus, welcoming one sent to Him by His Father, drew close and patiently followed the publican whose heart was already open to Him though his house was as yet still closed; and Zacchaeus, for his part, even before Jesus could enter his house:

Stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone I shall repay it four times over.’

  

Those words were loudly spoken not because Zacchaeus was boasting before the Lord or whoever of the crowd might have followed them, but because he wanted everyone to clearly understand that Jesus would be incurring no legal fault whatsoever by entering his house.   Jesus, likewise, wanted to use this His-Father-sent-opportunity to help all around, and indeed the whole people of Israel, understand the true nature of His salvific coming by addressing words of divine wisdom, goodness, and clarity to them:

Today, salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.  For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.

Love and respect (cf. St. Paul: Jesus and the Church, husband and wife) had met!  Divine Love and deep human respect (comprising sincere humility and reverential awe) had overcome any and all opposition.  Jesus could – even according to the Law – accept Zacchaeus' joyful hospitality and give His own gifts in return.

And how did this most beautiful scenario of divine compassion and deep human joy, of most sensitively accommodating holiness and humbly sacrificial fellow-feeling arise?   Because Jesus, passing through Jericho, had suddenly become aware of His Father drawing His attention to one being sent to Him: one making something of a fool of himself at that very moment, being well dressed and yet perched most uncomfortably up a tree and suffering the mockery and coarse jibes of the unfriendly crowd beneath.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ there is much said about Zacchaeus among scholars who are not sure who he was!!  For us, however, he is undoubtedly a source of inspiration in our relations with Jesus and perhaps he now actually rejoices in himself being someone largely unknown and yet one who has been so greatly privileged as to bring to our notice something of the hidden beauty of Jesus our Lord and Saviour.   Let us now, therefore, allow Zacchaeus – for love of Jesus – to help us in our service of and love for the Lord, for the lessons he can teach us are of supreme importance.

Having shown total disregard for his own personal standing and become a ‘nutter up a tree’ in order to catch just a glimpse of Jesus, does Zacchaeus not shame many Catholics who cling so tenaciously to their own self-love and obsessive solicitude for their own reputation in the eyes of others, fears perhaps greatly harming their own peace before God or even leading them to hide behind silence when the words of Jesus and the teaching of Mother Church are subject to opposition or ridicule?  Surely, Zacchaeus’ great, indeed overriding, concern for the good name of Jesus confounds the half-hearted devotion and spineless commitment of many soft-centered Catholics today.

Oh, dear People of God, you have ‘seen’ Zacchaeus yielding himself totally to the heavenly beauty of Jesus among men, and the wonder of Jesus’ own treasuring of His Father’s gift by so patiently understanding and sympathetically guiding Zacchaeus.  Remember, all of us disciples of Jesus are such gifts to Him from the Father, being treasured now (if we allow Him) and to be treasured by Him throughout our lives for the Father.

I can do no better now than to close this address and leave you with your own memories of a most beautiful Gospel episode and the grace of God it enshrines.