14th Sunday Year C 2019

14^th. Sunday (C)

(Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians: 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20)

In the Gospel reading for last week, the 13^th. Sunday, St. Luke told us that: 

Jesus, resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem, and sent messengers ahead of Him.  On the way they entered a Samaritan village to prepare for His reception there, but they would not welcome Him, because the destination of His journey was Jerusalem.

Today we learn that, subsequently:

The Lord appointed seventy-two others whom He sent ahead of Him in pairs to every town and place He intended to visit.

We can appreciate that Jesus had originally sent a single pair of messengers (the sons of Thunder, James and John!!) to the Samaritan village appearing before Him on His way to Jerusalem; but what a difference now: He sends 72 others ahead of Him, two by two!!  Why such a striking difference, why such a specific number? 

The first disciples had been sent to a village on the way to prepare an overnight resting place for Jesus and His disciples, but they had not been welcomed by the villagers concerned. Today’s mission would seem to have been sent symbolically to the whole world, in preparation for Jesus’ coming to the whole of mankind in the persons of the twelve Apostles and His universal Church; for there were 70 ancients of Israel, plus Moses and Aaron, to ratify the Covenant of Sinai; there were also 70 leaders in Israel, plus Eldad and Medad who were given a share in Moses’ prophetic spirit when he found it too hard to lead Israel alone; there were also 70 nations on earth we are told in Genesis (10).

These are the clans of the sons of Noah, in their nations, and from these the nations spread abroad on the earth after the flood. (Genesis 10:32)

In sending out the 72 messengers to foreshadow – for Jesus Himself and for the 72 participants -- the proclamation of God’s saving word by the Apostles and Mother Church to mankind in need, Jesus was recalling both the Old Covenant ... now to be replaced by the New Covenant in Jesus’ blood, and the old prophetic message of Moses … now to be replaced by the Good News of Jesus.  On the return of the 72 – rejoicing -- we are told, Jesus revealed the momentous, indeed the apocalyptic, import of their symbolic work of evangelization:

I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.  Behold, I have given you the power to tread upon serpents and scorpions and upon the full force of the enemy and nothing will harm you.

You will remember the following incident from the Acts of the Apostles when the Gospel message of Paul and Barnabas (one of the 72) was rejected by the Jews at Antioch:

When the Jews saw the crowds, they were filled with jealousy and talked abusively against what Paul say saying.  Then Paul and Barnabas answered them boldly: ‘We had to speak the Word of God to you first.  Since you reject it and do not consider yourselves worthy of eternal life, we now turn to the Gentiles.  For this is what the Lord has commanded us: “I have made you a light for the Gentiles, that you may bring salvation to the ends of the earth.”’  (Acts 13:45-47)

Paul, a supreme disciple of Jesus, may well have known of Jesus’ rejection by the Samaritans (regarded, in those days, as bastard Jews) and of course -- thanks to his missionary companion Barnabas -- of His symbolic ‘world’ mission of 72 followers of which Luke alone gives us information.   However that may be, the fact is that Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey in the name of the Church of Christ, followed Jesus’ command and, in the power of His Spirit, took the word of God – after its rejection by the Jews of Antioch -- to the nations, thereby initiating the demise of Satan’s power so dramatically seen in anticipation by Jesus.

Oh, for a mind and heart able to see and appreciate something of the wonder of God’s wisdom and beauty to be found in the Scriptures of Mother Church:  Jesus sending out the 72 not only recalls the beginnings of mankind and of God’s direct dealings with His Chosen People but also foresees,  from their endeavours in His name, the ultimate downfall of Satan, and the heavens opened to welcome back those washed clean in the blood of the Lamb!!

Let us now look at another aspect of today’s Gospel reading:

Whatever town you enter and they do not receive you, go out into the streets and say, ‘The dust of your town that clings to our feet, even that we shake off against you.  Yet know this: the Kingdom of God is at hand.’  I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom on that day than for that town.

And we have verse 16 omitted in our reading today:

He who listens to you listens to Me; he who rejects you rejects Me; but he who rejects Me rejects Him Who sent Me.

Notice; those who reject – indeed, even those who do not welcome, will not listen to -- the Word, will be rejected.  How can that be?  It can only be because mankind, being made in the image and likeness of God, is made for the Word of God, as Jesus said at the very beginning of His Messianic struggle with Satan;

Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.  (Matthew 4:4)

How Mother Church suffers today from those who are constantly seeking to adapt that Word to the world’s expectations, desires, and even demands!

The authentic Good News of Jesus in all its integrity is the natural food for those whom God has made in His own likeness.  Just as a child finds its natural food at its mother’s breast, so too mankind is made in such a fashion as to find supernatural nourishment and indeed spiritual delight from the Word of God and the Sacrament of His Church:

For thus says the Lord: Lo, I will spread prosperity over Jerusalem like a river, and the wealth of the nations like an overflowing torrent.  As nurslings you shall be carried in her arms, and fondled in her lap; as a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; in Jerusalem you shall find your comfort.  When you see this your hearts shall rejoice and your bodies flourish like the grass; the Lord’s power shall be known to His servants.

We are made for God; and if, ultimately, we cannot rejoice over, will not welcome, do not trust, His Word of Truth and His Spirit of Love, then we will die. And there can be no excuse for we would have destroyed our very selves.

People of God, today the Western world is, in so many ways, literally falling over itself to separate itself from any acceptance of the wisdom of an authoritative and loving God: when ‘husband’ is not to refer, necessarily, to a man, nor ‘wife’ to a woman, when, in fact, ‘husband’ can be a woman, ‘wife’ can be a man;  when children are no longer God’s gift to human nature, but can be of individual procurement: proclaimed as loving and caring, of course, but against the very nature of the ‘procured, loved’ child, born of the union of  man and woman to receive the fulness of humanity:

He said in reply, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’.   (Matthew 19:4)

In these modern times of moral darkness when passing ideas and current fancies, mistaken ideals, and febrile, fruitless, hopes are picked up and proclaimed by so many seeking to be their own masters in all things, and attempting so proudly to masterfully guide their society and the world around from their own pitifully and appallingly limited awareness and understanding, we can profitably notice and learn from St. Paul’s words in our second reading:

Peace and mercy to all who follow the rule of Christ; for through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, the world is being crucified to us, and we ourselves to the world.  Let nothing make trouble for you, for you are part of a new creation.  The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Saints Peter And Paul 2019

         SS. Peter & Paul                       (Acts 12:1-11; 2^nd. Timothy 4:6-8, 17-18; Matthew 16:13-19)

My dear People of God, we are invited today to give thanks to God for the gift of the Faith with which we have been blessed; to thank Our Blessed Lord for establishing His Church on the abiding foundation Rock of His Good News proclaimed by Peter and Paul and the Apostolic College; and finally to express our gratitude for the personal witness given by both Peter and Paul in Rome.

In the infant Church there were certain people who claimed to have knowledge of some teachings of Jesus hidden from the general body of disciples, teachings which only those could learn who had been specially initiated by rituals of a secret nature.   For such people, the faith of the simple Christian was only the beginning; the first step indeed, but not, of itself, enough for a deeper understanding of and closer union with God. 

All those who fought the very idea of such secret doctrines did so stating that:

The authentic Christian teaching is for all Christians and is to be found by all in the Holy Scriptures;

The faith taught publicly by Mother Church is guaranteed by the fact that it is the traditional Church teaching originating with the Apostles and handed on through the unbroken line of their successors.  

In that way it was made clear that the fullness of the authentic teaching of Jesus is open and available to all in His Christian and Catholic Church.

You must remember that in the early centuries of the Church there were no printed books; what books there were had to be copied by hand and were very expensive to buy.  Moreover, there were few roads, and the best of them could only facilitate transport by horse and wheeled carriage; transport by sea was very slow due to ships having to wait for favourable winds and tides; and, of course, such modes of transport were open to attack by robbers or pirates.   All this meant that the church in each city or town generally preached what it had received at the beginning of its establishment from the wandering teachers who first came and proclaimed Christ to them and baptised them in His name.   Those itinerant teachers were accepted as disciples of Jesus; but those with the greatest authority were, of course, the twelve Apostles.   Churches founded personally by an Apostle, or those where an Apostle had been active, were specially respected;  above all, however, those whose Apostle had not only worked among them but was buried in their midst, perhaps in a tomb open to veneration, such churches were shown the greatest respect, and their tradition of faith was recognized as being most sure.  Examples of these could be found, for example, at Antioch in Syria, at Philippi, Ephesus, Corinth, Thessalonica.

Nevertheless, even among these “super” churches with “surer” faith because of the founding and/or originating apostolic presence and witness, even among these, there was one which stood head and shoulders above all others, and that was the Church at Rome, where both Peter -- the Rock on which Jesus had said He would build His Church -- and Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles P/personally chosen by the glorified Jesus, had both worked and, indeed, suffered martyrdom for their unflinching witness to the truth of Jesus.   If any Church could remain free from heresy, if any Church could preserve the teaching of Jesus in its purest integrity, it had to be the Church at Rome.  Moreover, all wanting to know the fulness of Jesus’ authentic teaching would find it proclaimed more fully and surely in the apostolic churches, and above all, again, in the Church of Rome, the treasurer and custodian of the unique legacies of both Peter and Paul.  That true faith in Jesus and His teaching was known as the Christian faith, and that faith was intended by Jesus to be proclaimed to all peoples and churches throughout the known world, beginning with Paul the ‘Doctor of the Nations’.

That is why the ‘Christian Faith’ also came to be called the ‘Catholic – which means ‘universal’ – Faith’, because all churches were called and aspired to teach the doctrine of the apostolic churches, above all the doctrine proclaimed by Peter and Paul – Christian and Catholic -- at Rome.  The Catholic Church, one and potentially universal, was present in churches to be found in cities, towns, and village communities, throughout the known world; proclaiming one Christian and Catholic faith received from Paul and his fellow apostolic Evangelists, sealed and confirmed by the witness and authority of Peter’s original proclamation of faith in Jesus, the  Son of the living God.

Let me just give you the words of some of the earliest fathers and writers in the universal Church concerning the church at Rome.  First of all, the words of St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in France who was writing about the year 185 and whose memory we celebrated just a few days ago:

We do put to confusion all those who, in whatever manner, whether by an evil self-pleasing, by vainglory, or by blindness and perverse opinion, assemble in unauthorized meetings; [we do this, I say,] by indicating that tradition derived from the apostles, of the very great, the very ancient, and universally known Church founded and organized at Rome by the two most glorious apostles, Peter and Paul; as also [by pointing out] the faith preached to men, which comes down to our time by means of the successions of the bishops. For it is a matter of necessity that every Church should agree with this Church, on account of its pre-eminent authority, that is, the faithful everywhere, inasmuch as the apostolic tradition has been preserved continuously by those [faithful men] who exist everywhere.   (Adv. Haereses III, 3,2.)

There are so very many witnesses to the unique position of Rome in the early Church!  Were there disputes about the Faith?  Rome was asked to decide.  Was anyone being persecuted for upholding Catholic truth?  Such a person would go to Rome seeking sanctuary and support.  Were innovators seducing the faithful?  The example of Rome was invoked and her help sought, because she was known never to have been deceived by innovations detrimental to the traditions she had received from Peter and Paul.

Peter and Paul: Christian and Catholic!!  Mother Church was established by Jesus on the Rock of Peter’s proclamation of faith in Jesus the Son of God; and Paul was chosen and commissioned by the Risen Jesus to proclaim that ‘Rock-truth’ throughout the world and to all peoples!   Mother Church: Christian and Catholic for all peoples from the very beginning … none excluded and none excused!!

‘None excused’ … I say that because of a most modern misuse of Jesus’ truth in our world today.  For many former Catholics and Christians now rejoicing in a secular society and rejecting  those titles of glory and hope … claim to be in the business (so to speak) of creating a better and more fulfilling world experience for people generally, and they seek to do this by borrowing from the French Revolution ‘Liberty, Equality and Fraternity’ luminaries … proclaiming a likeness to what a modern biographer of Robespierre has termed  his ‘Fatal Purity’, uniquely able to separate and destroy even the closest of former friends and associates.   That ‘fatal purity’ of modern ‘doctrines of life’ and their effect on humanity and its social nature is being manifested again in our days.  Modern lapsed Catholics and Christians and others rejecting Christianity out of hand nevertheless borrow heavily from Jesus’ teaching and aims… brotherly love, man and woman’s mutual relationship, the nature and purpose of sexuality … … in all these essential aspects of Christian and human life they try to adopt and adapt to their own agenda Jesus’ teaching, and as a result we have ever-increasing abortions, suicides, and mercy-killings, all of which are examples arising from modern ideas about and practice of, LOVE!!  Our modern evangelists -- politicians and activists to the core -- strive to sound, appear, and show themselves as good and compassionate people, and their use of words well known from Jesus’ teaching helps them to sell the essential aspect of their doctrine that now no one is excluded from the ‘good things’ they offer, but the closeness of their teaching with that of Jesus is a sham because they themselves want exclusions to be available from the fulness of that teaching because they  are absolutely against any God, even so lovable a God-man as Jesus, having any authority over them in their own very personal and private lives.

Dear Catholics and Christians, in our present world of change and uncertainty, where the Faith is often denied and Tradition derided, we should be both grateful for, and proud of, the blessings we have received: the supreme blessing and gift being that of the one, true, Faith guaranteed by Peter and proclaimed by Paul; the inviolate Faith, Christian and Catholic, preserved and revealed in  the one Church of Christ through the power of the Spirit of Holiness and Truth bequeathed to her by her Lord and Saviour.  And for so great a blessing each and every one of us should, on this feast above all, give heartfelt thanks to God our loving Father and offer most sincere prayers for Mother Church that she might continue to further the fulfilment of the work Jesus originally committed into her charge.  The world may criticize and even persecute Mother Church, but we, her children, must remember that Jesus is always with her as He promised; and that, just as He committed His mother Mary to John the Apostle's care, so also, today, He commits Mother Church to our confident care and loving solicitude:

Jesus said to His disciples, "All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.  Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.  And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.  The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Therefore, beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest." (Matt 9: 18-20.,37-10:1)          

                            

                                      

Corpus Christi Year C 2019

 

 Corpus Christi (C)

(Genesis 14:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11: 23-26; Luke 9:11-17)

In our first reading from the book of Genesis we heard of Melchizedek, a priest-king of Jerusalem, who, later on in Israel's history, would be described (Ps.110) as the eternal priest of Yahweh.  This great figure, King of Righteousness (as his name declares), priest of Yahweh God Most High, meets Abram and his men as they are returning victorious from battle with Chedorlaomer, the former overlord of the land.  Abram and his 300 strong force of warriors are exhausted after the battle, and Melchizedek comes with bread and wine to refresh them.

Let us just stop here and wonder at the wisdom of our God!  This picture of Melchizedek -- based on ancient traditions going back hundreds of years if not a thousand and more, and then taken up again in Psalm 110 about 400 years before Jesus -- presents us with a King of Righteousness, a priest of God Most High, who comes with bread and wine to meet the battle weary Abraham and his men.  Since Abraham is our father in faith, as St. Paul tells us and as we say in the canon of the Mass, who cannot see that here Melchizedek foreshadows Jesus?  Jesus it is Who comes to meet us, children of Abraham, wearied and wounded in our battle not only with flesh and blood but, much more importantly, with the baleful power of sin in the world; Jesus it is Who comes offering bread and wine which has become His own Body and Blood, the only food fit for the spiritual refreshment and eternal nourishment of all, who, like Abraham, our father in faith, are following God's call to a new and heavenly homeland.

People of God, here we can glimpse something of God’s astounding wisdom and beauty, enough surely to encourage us to whole-heartedly trust Him and joyfully praise His most holy Name!

Next, we are told that:

Melchizedek blessed Abram, with these words: "Blessed be Abram by God Most High, Creator of heaven and earth.  And blessed be God Most High, Who delivered your enemies into your hand".

With those words we have some indication of the nature and purpose of our Eucharist; and we are helped in such appreciation by taking note of the difference between Jesus’ fulfilment of what Melchizedek had only been able to foreshadow.  Melchizedek was, we are told, a priest of God most High; a very mysterious figure indeed, but one who could not fail to do what all priests of ancient times were appointed and expected to do: bring God’s blessing down upon mankind in need.  Such priests were also meant to be channels for gifts of praise and sacrifice from men to ascend to and be acceptable to God.

When the time of fulfilment came, none could have imagined that the ultimate Priest of God most High would be His very own Son-made-man, with the result that whereas Melchizedek was a merely functional link between God and man, Jesus, on the other hand, is a sublimely Personal link uniting God and man in Himself; and the reciprocal love between Jesus and His Father will always, and in everything, be the originating source and definitive model and fulfilment for every other blessing. 

God’s blessing mediated through Melchizedek:

Blessed be God Most High Who delivered your foes into your hand, 

was a singular blessing for the overthrow of one man’s earthly foes; it would, however, become a universal paeon of praise when mediated through Jesus for the overcoming of Satan’s baleful power of sin and death over all mankind:

            Glory to God in the Highest and peace to His people on earth.

Such is, People of God, Jesus' ultimate purpose present in the Holy Eucharist He has bequeathed us: first, to give glory to His Father and then, to bestow a blessing: peace with God and -- through His Spirit – salvation for His true disciples and all those of good will.

Let us now look more lovingly at the intimate details of Jesus’ giving glory to God His Father and peace to His faithful on earth.

First of all, we must recognize that Jesus alone can glorify His Father; we His disciples can only give glory to God in union with Jesus: by our offering – through the priest celebrating Mass – Jesus Himself in the Eucharist to His Father, and ourselves united with Jesus by our most sincere devotion of mind and heart.  At the priest’s elevation of the Sacred Host he holds up to the Father the Son Who – knowing the Father as He Himself was known and loved by His Father – sacrificed Himself for the  sheep: total sacrifice of Self for love of the Father Whose will He, the Son, knew and willed whole-heartedly to do in all things:

         

I am the good shepherd; just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I will lay down My life for the sheep.   (John 10:14-15)

Peace to His people on earth: this again Jesus alone can give, in the sense that He alone destroyed Satan’s power of sin and death by His own dying sinless on the Cross and rising bodily from the tomb.  When the priest elevates the Sacred Blood, he offers first of all to the Father in propitiation for our sins:  Jesus’ love and adoration, Jesus’ praise and thanksgiving, Jesus’ faithfulness, trust, and obedience.   And then we, so to speak, come into it for, since Jesus wills to bestow peace on earth though He Personally  is in heaven at the right hand of His Father, therefore He wills to use us -- His professed disciples and members of His Body – as His very Own members on earth to bring about the fulness of His gift of peace to all of good will.  

And that, dear People of God, we do, above all, by living out the one prayer He gave us, that is by humility, ‘forgive us our sins’ and fraternal charity, ‘as we forgive others’, the only conditional petition in Jesus’ prayer!!

Think of the dreadful mess in our world today, and see how much evil is done for revenge, retaliation, satisfaction … Jesus does not pray for the forgiveness of such people; He acknowledges His Father’s truth and righteousness as well as His goodness and mercy, He proclaims His absolute HOLINESS, Glory, and Beauty:

            Father, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Therefore, as disciples of Jesus, our first duty on receiving Communion is to give praise to God the Father Who, through the death and resurrection of His beloved and only-begotten Son, has freed us from the power of sin and death and bestowed upon us His Gift of the Holy Spirit.

And, to help us achieve Jesus' second purpose for our reception of Holy Communion, let us bear in mind the teaching of St. Paul who tells us:

(God) redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (Galatians 3:14)

Notice that teaching of St. Paul, People of God: our reception of the Eucharist only bears fruit on the basis of our faith, Jesus' purpose on earth can only come to its fulfilment, through our faith in Him. 

In His feeding of the Five Thousand Jesus insisted that the Apostles share with Himself in the provision of food for so many:

            ‘Give them some food yourselves’, He said.

He still provides food for His People, and His demand for our contribution still remains in force, and the contribution each of us has to bring to the Eucharistic Table is dependent on our faith in Jesus, a faith not to be simply presumed but one to be repeatedly called to mind, renewed, and deepened in humility and love.

Bearing this teaching in mind, we are now able to see the full pattern of our response to Jesus and our rejoicing in the Eucharist today:

God has redeemed us through Christ Jesus; from Whom, by faith and the Eucharist, we receive His promise of the Spirit Who will guide Mother Church into all truth and form all of us, her children, into a true likeness of Jesus for the glory of His Father and the salvation of men.

First of all, therefore, dear People of God, be always prepared and ready to give thanks, glory, praise and honour, to our heavenly Father.  Then, renew your faith in His goodness, power and promise to us in Jesus.  Finally, welcome the Spirit Whom Jesus bestows; for Jesus' own Eucharistic Presence with us passes quickly.  He comes, however, to bestow the Spirit Who wills to abide with us in all the circumstances of life: welcome Both, therefore, open your heart to both Jesus and His Gift, and pray that the Spirit may abide in you and rule in your life so that you may be formed in the likeness of Jesus for the glory of the Father in heaven.

Finally, never forget Mother Church.    As we heard in the Gospel reading:

(Jesus) gave (what He had blessed) to the disciples to set before the people. They all ate and were satisfied.

It is still the same today: we are satisfied with heavenly food at the table set up by Mother Church.  The food is, indeed, from Jesus, but It is given and presented to us, as Jesus willed and established, through the priests of the Church.  Jesus has promised that He will never forget His Church; and so, although children here on earth do easily and all too frequently forget to give thanks to those who are nearest and should be dearest to them, we who, as children of Mother Church are disciples of Jesus, we who aspire to become true children of God, must never fail to thank God for Mother Church, and to ask His continued blessing on her whenever we receive God’s food from her table at her Eucharistic sacrifice.