2nd Sunday of Year B 2018

 Sermon 62a: 2^nd. Sunday of Year (B)

(1 Sam 3:3-10, 19; 1 Corinthians 6:13-15, 17-20; John 1:35-42)

As an infant, Samuel had been dedicated by his mother to service in the Temple of the Lord, the God of Israel, at Shilo under the high priest Eli.  How long he had been thus living and working in the Temple we do not know, but he must have still been little more than a boy or very young man when the event we are about to consider took place; and although he had been working for a few years in the Temple, he did not as yet know the Lord P/personally.  However, because Samuel was destined to become a great prophet in Israel he had to come to such P/personal knowledge of the Lord, and, as you heard, Eli was able to help him make his initial authentic experience of, and give his very first appropriate and personal response to, the Lord God of Israel.

The prophet Jeremiah (31:33-34) had foretold:

“This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, I will put My law within them and on their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.   They will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them," declares the LORD, "for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more."

That all the people would know the Lord was to be the sign of a time yet to come, it would be the outstanding characteristic of the future Kingdom of God and the time of salvation.  Therefore, since Samuel was to be a prophet of that coming Kingdom, he himself had to come to know the Lord P/personally, and in that he would be foreshadowing what was to be most sublimely fulfilled in and with Jesus.

The gospel reading told us of two disciples of John the Baptist, of whom we know the name of only one, Andrew.  They did not, as yet, know the Lord Jesus, but, being drawn by God towards the Kingdom which Jesus was soon to proclaim and reveal, they felt compelled to seek to know Him better after hearing their master, John, speak of Him so reverentially as being ‘the Lamb of God’:

           

The two disciples heard (John) speak, and they followed Jesus.   And Jesus turned and saw them following, and said to them, "What do you seek?" They said to Him, "Rabbi (which translated means Teacher), where are You staying?"   He said to them, "Come, and you will see." So they came and saw where He was staying; and they stayed with Him that day.

People of God, the reason why Jesus established Mother Church is so that in her, and through her, all who seek Jesus might -- as the prophet Jeremiah had foretold -- learn to know the Lord, each and every one of them, personally.   Jesus has endowed Mother Church with the fullness of His Holy Spirit so that she can, beginning at our baptism and continuing throughout our sacramental lives, gradually bestow upon us something more of that same Spirit Who is given to form us in the likeness of Christ, and to enable us -- in that likeness -- to follow Him until He leads us into the presence of the Father of All Glory, where, knowing the holiness and beauty, goodness and truth, of the infinite and All-Holy God to the utmost of  our personal  being will be our consuming delight for all eternity.

The devils whom Jesus cast out of sufferers during His time on earth frequently cried out claiming to know Him, as St. Mark tells us (1:24; 3:11):

What business do we have with each other, Jesus of Nazareth? Have You come to destroy us? I know who You are -- the Holy One of God!

Whenever the unclean spirits saw Him, they would fall down before Him and shout, "You are the Son of God!"

There we have a clear picture of the Devil, who, on recognizing the Person and holy power of Jesus, could only react with detestation and fear, and whom Jesus would later describe as a liar, the supreme Liar:

You (Jews) are of your father the devil, and you willingly do the desires of your father. …  Whenever he speaks a lie, he speaks from his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

The devil is, by his very nature, first and foremost, a liar: not a murderer, a fornicator, a paedophile or whatever else, no, he is first and foremost, a LIAR and the FATHER OF LIES; and he generates, encourages, and delights in, all forms of sin because he is the Liar.  Therefore, when we find the devil promoting lying imitations of Christian virtues or attitudes -- showing himself for what he really is -- we can be sure that he is at his most dangerous and deadly.  For example, he loves to imitate Christian charity, and in doing so spawns on the one hand, sexual lust calling it ‘love’, and, on the one hand, that ‘laissez faire’, ‘let things be’ attitude, characteristic of irresponsible parents who so “love” their children that they can never teach, correct, or discipline them.  The devil also delights to imitate the Christian virtue of knowing the Lord and he does this by encouraging many Catholics to be quite content with knowing about the Lord but not knowing Him P/personally; and accordingly, they are by no means solicitous about doing His will: they hear the gospels but never take them to heart; they attend Mass, at the Lord’s command, but are always looking forward to the time to leave Church; in fact, they know the Lord’s love for them so well that they like to think that receiving Holy Communion is all that matters.  In all these corruptions we find a people never seriously seeking to personally know the Person of the Lord: they are content with their own fullness, with the result that they never experience any need to open themselves up to Him, in longing for Him.  If you were to question them they would say that they have already found Him, they are in His Church and they keep His main commandments as far as they reasonably can; than that, they cannot see what else might be needed of them.   Being thus deceived by the devil who is the consummate liar, they are content with that stagnant situation, being, apparently, quite unaware of the words of the Lord:

Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth. (Revelation 3:16)

People of God, how different was the attitude of those two disciples of John the Baptist who heard him say on seeing Jesus pass by:

Behold the Lamb of God!

Those two disciples, already no longer disciples of John but disciples-in-desire of Jesus the Lamb of God, were now ardently, almost painfully, aware of their own emptiness, need, hope and longing.   And to those disciples seeking to know Him as Teacher (Rabbi), Jesus simply said:  Come and you will see.

They did just that.  They followed Jesus to His dwelling not to curiously look round it, to know about Him, but to know Him P/personally, to hear, be near to, to admire and learn from, Him; quite possibly they would also have taken the opportunity to open up their souls to Him, before darkness came requiring them to leave and go back to their own dwelling.

People of God, what does Jesus say to you coming out of the crowd perhaps to receive Him in Holy Communion?   His very first words to Andrew and his companion had been:

            What are you looking for, what do you seek?

Could you, queuing in Church to receive Him in Holy Communion, answer such a question?  Could you tell Him what emptiness might be forcing you to Him; what you might be longing for that He alone could give you?

People of God, we must realize that He, the Lord Himself, is in Mother Church, with her, in order to be contacted, found, there, by us, in a one to one relationship of loving appreciation and obedience, in which we will gradually learn from Him to worship the Father as His true children in Jesus.   Mother Church is our atmosphere, she is indeed the only environment in which we can fully prosper, but she is not our end, she is not our goal, she is not our supreme love and longing.

It is quite legitimate, and profoundly true, to take those words of St. Paul which we heard in our second reading today, words spoken directly against all forms of sexual immorality:

           

            You have been bought with a price: therefore, glorify God in your body,

in a further perfectly relevant, profitable, and fruitful sense, relating them to our membership of the Body of Christ. You who belong to Mother Church are all members of the Body of Christ, and therefore, the Body of Christ is, in that sense, your body.  Do, then, as St. Paul tells us:

            Glorify God in your Body.

You members of the Body of Christ, you members of His Church on earth, should never allow yourselves to settle down as an anonymous Catholic; it is not enough just to be in Mother Church, to be merely present at Mass as members of the Body of Christ: you should seek above all to personally know and glorify God there, either in your own hearts filled with His praise and love, or among His people, your brethren, whom you seek to serve and exhort as His disciples, for His glory.   Each of you, personally, has been bought at a price, that is your supreme dignity: nobody else, absolutely no one, can thank God, thank Jesus, for you, on your behalf; that is exclusively your own, personal, calling and privilege.  And only if you respond to that individual calling, only if you are personally aware and appreciative of that unique privilege, will you come to know what God still wants to make of you, individually; for without that response you are, and will ever remain, imperfect, and what is more, unfulfilled.      

                                   

Epiphany 2018

The Epiphany of Our Lord (2018)

(Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

This great solemnity of the Epiphany evokes the majesty, glory, and power, of the Promised One Who comes: a majesty testified to by the Father Himself speaking from heaven at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan; a glory manifested and confirmed again by the voice of the Father at His Transfiguration of Jesus on the mount; a super-abundant power and saving compassion displayed at the wedding feast of Cana where Jesus inconspicuously changed water into rich and copious new wine.  These signs, not only of Jesus’ majesty, glory and power, buy also of His sympathy and compassion, give us unshakeable confidence that what Jesus has promised, He can and will fulfil in and for His Church, in and for you and me gathered here today to praise His most Holy Name. 

As you heard in the Gospel reading, this humble Lord of majesty, glory, and power, is the One to Whom the heavens themselves -- nature’s primeval powers -- gave obedient witness by means of the guiding star; the One Whom the inspired prophets and the ancient scriptures had foretold would come, even disclosing the very place of His birth, Bethlehem in the land of Judah; the One recognized and worshiped by the Magi -- the first-fruits of the Gentiles -- as supreme King, Prophet, and Priest.  Yes indeed, we worshiping People of God are in tune with creation itself, and are united with our ancient fathers and all who, throughout the ages, have humbly searched for God to the best of their abilities; and, being endowed with such a privilege, we have very, very good reason to rejoice on this most holy day.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour does not reserve this His glory to Himself, as a right understanding of our first reading shows:

Rise up in splendour, Jerusalem (Mother Church)! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you.   See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the LORD shines, and over you appears His glory. Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance.

In these days of scandals, contradiction and rejection, we must never forget the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy, for Mother Church is -- even today -- supremely privileged as the spouse of Christ: for her proclamation of Jesus’ Gospel still enables whole peoples surrounded by the darkness of this world to walk safely and surely by the Holy Spirit along the way of Jesus’ teaching; and the shining radiance of her saints is further inspiration for those called by God to themselves triumph by the Spirit and reign with Jesus over the sin of the world.

Let us consider those prophetic words a little more closely:

          Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance.

Mother Church can, and does, enrich the world with her proclamation of the truth of Jesus; nevertheless, besides the light of Mother Church’s teaching, the shining radiance of her people’s lives is required that the nations may be brought to walk with confidence and joy in the footsteps of the Lord.   That means, that all of us, each and every ordinary member of the Church. has a necessary role to play in enabling her to fulfil the commission given her by the Lord Jesus to continue in our world today the work of salvation that He started by His own life, death, and resurrection.  How are we to rise to such a calling?

Jesus once told the Samaritan woman asking Him for the water of life:

You people worship what you do not understand; we worship what we understand, because salvation is from the Jews.  But the hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed, the Father seeks such people to worship Him. (John 4:22s.)

The world around us does indeed worship what it does not understand … money and power, pleasure and plenty, self-satisfaction and popular esteem, all so harmful to the well-being of modern, sin-weakened men … while rejecting and mocking that true salvation coming from those ‘Jews’ who believe in Jesus and live by His Spirit, as St. Paul teaches (Romans 2:28s., Philippians 3:3):

One is not a Jew outwardly. True circumcision is not outward, in the flesh.   Rather, one is a Jew inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter.

We are the (true) circumcision, we who worship through the Spirit of God, who boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put our confidence in flesh.

However, let us not truncate Jesus’ words for, having denied the world’s gospel and exposed its false gods, He went on to tell us how we can show forth the shining radiance of Mother Church:

The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed, the Father seeks such people to worship Him.

That is the only, worthy, programme we can set before ourselves as disciples of Jesus in the world of today, to worship the Father in Spirit and Truth, that is, to worship the Father in the Spirit and according to the Truth of Jesus’ Good News.

The Word of God, the Good News of Jesus’ proclamation made during His time on earth and continuing in His Church through all ages and all lands, is a word that does not return empty to God:

The word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end for which I sent it. (Isaiah 55:11)

That means, that if we hear and embrace the truth of Jesus’ Good News in sincerity, seeking to understand, love, and serve Him, and thus come to knowledge of the One Who sent Him; that is, if we sincerely seek Jesus and not ourselves, then that Word, that Truth, will achieve the end for which it has been passed down for our hearing and will set the Spirit at work in us: the Spirit of prayer Who supplies for our inability to pray at times, the Spirit of power Who enables us to do what is beyond our natural powers. 

Having found Jesus and worshiped Him in Spirit and in Truth, the Magi did not find it hard to leave without meeting Herod again.  There was much splendour awaiting them in Herod’s palace, there were many gifts on his tables and flattery a-plenty from his own lips and those of his courtiers, but what was that in comparison with the peace and joy they had just experienced in the cave at Bethlehem?  Could those who there had been so privileged to hear or hear of the angels’ chorus, ever want to hear, let alone be seduced by, the siren music of Herod’s dancers and the lascivious pleasures of scents and cushions, voluptuousness and wine?

For all who have made the Magi’s trip to Bethlehem and have begun to worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, the following words of St. Paul (Philippians 3:13s.) express all that is necessary and desirable:

Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

However, it is essential for us in the present troubled times for Mother Church to realize just what we are meant to be fighting against … what programme of Jesus we are called to give our lives (and deaths!) to furthering.

The stark challenge of Jesus to the world of today is the same as that which He made abundantly clear to the leaders and people of the Jewish theocracy at the beginning of His public ministry: He had come to destroy sin in the Chosen People’s practice of their divinely-covenanted faith, and – for love of His own Person, and through faith in His spoken words and in the Father Who had sent Him to speak those words – to eradicate sin from the hearts and minds of His authentic disciples by the Gift of His own most Holy Spirit and the solemn promise of eternal life as children of God.

That challenge of Jesus is Mother Church’s commission, her work in and for the world of today.  She must seek to destroy sin in the religious, social, political, and economic world man has created, and to do that she must seek to destroy sin in individual men, and above all in each and every one of us who profess ourselves proud to have received our Catholic inheritance.

Mother Church’s task today is not to re-convert peoples who have tasted and rejected Christianity, by making things easier, cosier, more natural (not so super-natural!), for their practice.  Her task now is to propose to all men and women of good will the glory of Jesus   proclaimed by the Apostles and maintained throughout the ages by her dogmatic Tradition and her enduring response of disciplined obedience; to help men and women of today look humbly at Jesus and -- glimpsing something of His Personal goodness, beauty, and truth -- to gladly and gratefully recognize their own suffering from sin, yes, their own sinfulness, and to joyfully accept the privilege of being able to hope for the purity of  eternal life in Jesus, by the Spirit, as prospectively glorious members of God the Father’s heavenly family.

As you therefore seek in all sincerity to keep fresh in your hearts and hear ever-anew in Mother Church the Word of God, the star that God’s unfailing Word will most certainly cause to rise for you and within you -- usually without you noticing it – will guide you if you try to follow it as did the Magi of old. 

People of God -- you chosen of the Father -- let that leading light draw you to worship Jesus whole-heartedly as the Father expects of each of you personally.  In that way your meeting with Jesus will be one of incomparable joy for you; and, as you give your gifts to Him you will begin to find your true selves, each of you being gradually trans-formed into a unique likeness of the Son, by the Holy Spirit, and as a personal gift for the Father, one to be endowed with a family place of honour at His eternal banquet of divine love.

         

         

Mary, Mother of God 2018

Mary, Mother of God.

I will introduce my subject with a story taken from John Moschus, who was born in the middle of the 6^th. Century and who, early in his life, became a monk in Palestine where he lived for ten years.  Then he set out on his great voyages, undertaken with the aim of visiting many monasteries in order to gather together the traditions of monasticism and also the memories of the holy monks who had lived there.  Here is one of the stories he tells.

One of the monks told us that the priest Theodore of Aeila told him that a certain monk, a true ascetic, lived as a recluse on the Mount of Olives.  The demon of lust was troubling him.  One day when he was being terribly tormented, the monk’s patience began to wear somewhat thin and he said to the demon, ‘How long will you thus go on destroying my peace?    I have grown old in your company, depart from me.’  The demon then appeared before his very eyes and said to him, ‘Swear to me that you will tell no-one what I am going to say to you, and I will no longer make war against you.’  The monk swore, ‘By Him Who dwells in heaven, I will tell no-one of what you are about to say to me.’  The demon continued, ‘You stop venerating this icon, and I will cease to torment you.’  Now the icon represented Our Lady, the holy Mother of God, carrying our infant Lord, Jesus Christ.  The recluse said to the demon, ‘Let me reflect on the matter.’  Then, the following day, he went to the priest Theodore of Aeila – the same who told us all this – and explained to him all that had transpired.  The priest said to the recluse, ‘In truth, you made a mistake in swearing such an oath; but you have done right in telling me about it.  For it is better for you to visit every singly house of prostitution in the town rather than give up honouring our Lord Jesus Christ with His Mother.’

Do the old priest’s words puzzle you ... scandalize you?  Let me try to explain his meaning so far as I can discern it.

There are many men swept away by their passions, falling time after time, being driven from one excess to another, and yet they honour and reverence the thought of the Mother of God.  They are too weak to resist their clamouring desires, but too good to gainsay the hold which Our Lady has over them; because, in the depths of their hearts, they love that which they think they cannot imitate ... the purity, the humility, the simplicity, the modesty, the boundless goodness ... which they see personified in her.  Hardly knowing why, they reverence her because the central core of their heart is warm and sensitive to what is beautiful and true.

There are other men whose behaviour is much more composed, but they do not honour Our Lady because they do not love the virtues of which she is the personification.  Though they be lowly and lead orderly lives, yet they have no love for the grandeur of humility, cannot gaze in wonder at the beauty of purity, nor be struck with awe at the dignity of Our Lady’s simplicity.  The centre of the heart of these men is cold and hard.

Now you can see what the old priest meant when he advised the recluse never to give up honouring his ikon of Our Lady: far better to have a turbulent yet sensitive, loving heart, than a calm but cold one.  And speaking thus he did but state the same truth as Pope Paul VI in Sardinia, where he said, ‘If we wish to be followers of Christ, we must be followers of Mary’.  For if the spirit of Christ be in a man, that man will not fail to show filial devotion to Our Lady, for Christ is eternally the Lord and Saviour, yet also eternally the Son of Mary.

But what about the many non-Catholic Christians who for so long have had little devotion to Our Lady?

The spirit of Christ cannot develop to full perfection in souls cut off from the plenitude of Christian truth.  So close are the bonds that unite Mary and the Church that our love for one is an integral part of our love for the other.  Without a love for, an appreciation of, the Church and her function, one cannot venerate Mary fully, for she is the perfect manifestation and ultimate realization of the mystery of the Church, which, in the virginal purity of her faith and by the overshadowing power of the indwelling Holy Spirit, ever brings Christ to life in the souls of men, ever builds up the Mystical Body of Christ, nourishing and teaching her offspring with her sacraments and her doctrine, just as Mary cherished and taught her divine Son.  Therefore, we read in the book of Sirach (24:11s.), as used in the liturgy, that Mary is the peculiar possession of the Church, that it is our particular privilege as Catholics to be able to love and honour her fully in the spirit of Christ:

IN THE BELOVED CITY (Jerusalem, Mother Church) LIKEWISE HE GAVE ME A RESTING PLACE, AND IN JERUSALEM WAS MY DOMINION.  SO I TOOK ROOT IN AN HONOURED PEOPLE, IN THE PORTION OF THE LORD WHO IS THEIR INHERITANCE.

It is life in the Catholic Church that brings forth devotion to Mary, as perhaps converts will most easily recognize, for in and through the Catholic Church, Mary becomes most fully our mother and we her sons and daughters (John 19:26s.):

WHEN JESUS SAW HIS MOTHER, AND THE DISCIPLE WHOM HE LOVED STANDING NEAR, HE SAID TO HIS MOTHER, ‘WOMAN, BEHOLD, YOUR SON!  THEN HE SAID TO THE DISCIPLE, ‘BEHOLD, YOUR MOTHER!’

Thus, devotion to Mary is to be considered as necessary not as if the merits of Christ were not alone the sufficient cause of supernatural life in His disciples, but rather as a spontaneous consequence of that Christ-life in a Catholic soul.  And yet, devotion to Our Lady is not merely a spontaneous manifestation of a life already possessed, it is also a means to the attainment of what is still hoped for and aspired to.  For Mary is the most Christ-like of all the members of the Church, and her example and intercession are meant to lead us all most efficaciously to Our Lord.

And being thus inspired by her example we are impelled to invoke her intercession ... and how rightly, as we see from the Old Testament.

As you know, the Kings of Israel were meant to be in some measure figures of the Messiah, and amongst the chiefs of these kings was Solomon, endowed with God-given wisdom, and whose rule brought peace.  The mother of the king also held a very special place in Israel’s thought; indeed, she appears to have had a regular official status, which in part accounts for the frequency with which the name of the mother of the king is recorded, and the importance attached to some of her actions, cf. 1 Kings 15:13 (2 Chron. 15:16); Jer. 13:18, 29:2; 2 Kings 11:3 (2 Chron. 22:12).  The semi-royal state of Bathsheba, Solomon’s mother, is shown in 1 Kings 2:19 where we are told that Solomon sat on is throne and set a throne for ‘the king’s mother’ at his right hand.

Now,  Adonijah -- Solomon’s elder brother -- had naturally expected that the kingdom would be his on the death of his father David.   Indeed, he even had his followers proclaim him king before David was yet dead.  You will all remember how it was only through the intercession of Bathsheba on her son’s behalf with the aged David, and that of Nathan the prophet, that the throne actually came to Solomon.  But Adonijah knew the authority and influence of the Queen Mother, and so he ... who had almost seized the throne before her son, came to Bathsheba to ask her to obtain a favour for him from Solomon: a costly favour, the hand of Abishag the Shunamite, David’s concubine.  What a generous, understanding, person was Bathsheba, she was certainly no listener to courtly gossip or watcher of events taking place there!  She saw nothing wrong with the request of Adonijah (!!) and so in all simplicity -- you might say, purity of heart and mind -- she approached the King, her son, on behalf of his elder, thwarted, half-brother.  The King rose to meet, and bowed down, to his mother and said:

Make your request, my mother, for I will not refuse you. (1 Kings 2:19)

But on hearing the request, refuse her he did ... either because his hold on the throne was too insecure, or else because he had not the forgiving heart of his mother.  But the point of the story for us is the confidence that Adonijah, of all people, the son of another wife of David and the supreme rival to Solomon for the kingship, had in the intercession of the mother of the King.  His estimation of her generous character was not misplaced.

     

Now, all these things were, as St. Paul says, but a figure of the things to come in this Christian era.  We can, indeed we most certainly should, approach Mary the Queen of Heaven with absolute confidence, for she is incomparably good;  moreover, she is not only mother of the King but also our mother at the King’s behest.  We need never fear that she will suffer such a refusal as Bathsheba at the hands of Our Lord and King; for the sceptre of His rule is eternally secure, none may rise against Him, and His heart is not less generous than that of His mother.

Therefore, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, let us rejoice in our Catholic privilege of being brought up to honour Our Lady fully; for to be Christian we must also be Marian, as Pope Paul VI said.   Let us advance in our vocation by the light of her sublime example, and ever invoke her aid till the likeness of Christ her Son be fully formed in us, for His glory, her honour, and our salvation.   Amen.