29th Sunday Year C 2019

29^th. Sunday of Year (C)

(Exodus 17:8-13; 2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:2; Luke 18:1-8)

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Our readings today speak to us about both prayer and warfare, and that can seem to us incongruous or even contradictory. Traditionally, however, Christians have always understood life here on earth as a time of spiritual combat under the banner of Jesus: a battle against the devil and our own ignorance and weakness.

The first reading spoke most clearly about prayer as a weapon in that combat; and since most weapons need ammunition, we then heard St. Paul, in the second reading, speaking of Holy Scripture as our arsenal; while, in the Gospel reading, it was Jesus Himself Who finally and fully assured us of the ultimate superiority of our weaponry.

It should be noticed, however, that Jesus spoke about prayer in a surprisingly ambiguous manner, setting -- perhaps intentionally – a somewhat ludicrous scenario for today’s parable.

Try and picture it for yourself: on the one hand there is an unscrupulous judge, an officially-licensed criminal we might say today.  Then, on the other hand there is this widow, a woman of whom we know nothing else, except that she could nag!  The pseudo-judge had his finger in many pies no doubt and he was not interested in little matters concerning unimportant people, he wanted money or, if money was not all that plentiful in his catchment area, so to speak, he wanted the things that are associated with money, that is, gifts, influence, and prestige.  Most assuredly, he had no time for small fry.

However, wherever this legal thug/thief went, he found himself being followed by this woman whom he regarded, no doubt, as a troublesome hag, whose voice was constantly ringing in his ears as she cried out again and again:

            Render a just decision for me against my adversary!

Can you imagine what a good comedy director could make of such a story?  A criminal justiciar, an unscrupulous magistrate, beginning to tear his hair out because of the fact that wherever he went he heard that same shrill voice repeating that same cry-cum-demand, ‘Give justice for me against my adversary!’

Why did Jesus use a parable which could easily been regarded as a parody?  Could it, indeed, be the case that He wanted His disciples to smile a little at the thought of anyone being able to seriously conceive a doubt about God’s unfailing attentiveness to our prayers or question His willingness and power to answer them?  Jesus had just previously been talking most seriously to His disciples about His Second Coming, foreshadowed, as He said, by the dire memory of Noah’s destroying flood and the fire and brimstone at Lot’s departure from Sodom.   Here, however, in this immediately subsequent parable He can be understood to be saying, “Give serious matters serious attention by all means; but, as for doubts about the usefulness of prayer to God, treat such imaginations as they deserve: they are laughable for anyone who knows God, as, indeed, you should know Him by now.”

However, Jesus did add a more serious and more consoling final observation:

He (God) will see to it that justice is done speedily for His chosen ones who call out to Him day and night. 

In those words, Jesus spoke as One who knew God, indeed, as the One who knew His Father and reverenced Him totally: “He does hear and will answer your prayers speedily.  As soon as your true prayer begins He will be answering; and though that answer may take years to come to fulfilment, it will always, and throughout, be found to have been as complete as the circumstances in which you found yourself or had placed yourself would allow.    However -- and this is why I speak this parable to you at this moment -- the ultimate question will not be one about God, but about mankind; for:

            When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?

There Jesus hinted at the large numbers of nominal Christians and Catholics who allow doubts about God – ‘does He hear my prayers?’ – not only to surface in their heart but also to then hang around in the nooks and crannies of their mind, unaware that it is they themselves who are thereby beginning to lose hold of their end of the bond of faith with God, by taking their worldly fears, their pseudo-spiritual anxieties, too seriously.

And so, People of God, be in no doubt that the life of a Christian on earth is a time for combat, spiritual combat.   As St. Paul told Timothy in our second reading, perseverance is essential:

Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed because you know from whom you learned it.

It was in Mother Church that we were first taught about the importance and the efficacy of prayer to God, and it is Mother Church who gives us, and helps us to understand, the arsenal of the Scriptures, as St. Paul again said:

From infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.  All Scripture is inspired by God, and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Joy in the Lord is a supremely important part of the armour of a Christian; and so, let us all learn from Jesus and never allow any foolish doubts about God hearing our prayers to linger on and hang around at the back of our mind.   Most certainly, with such thoughts still troubling your imagination, your prayer may not be the best of which you are capable; but, despite all that, prayer that is sincerely made will, unquestionably, be acceptable to God, and will, most certainly, be heard and answered by your Father in heaven.  So, let us all once more hear and resolve to follow the teaching of St. Paul, that most faithful through-thick-and-thin disciple of Jesus, who tells us from his own life experience as the Apostle of the Gentiles:

I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  (Romans 8:38-9:1)

But, more even than all that, we have the supreme example of Our Blessed Lord Himself praying during His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane.  He implored His Father, He wept, and prayed to exhaustion, and yet not one of the evangelists or other apostolic writers tells us that Jesus heard anything from His Father in answer to His prayer: so far as we know from Scripture, He received no audible – so desirable, humanly speaking -- reply.  Why?   Jesus had evidently willed that the Apostles should hear His Own prayer, why not His Father’s answer??

Jesus Himself tells us what His Father’s will and silence meant to Him (John 12: 50):

            I know that His command is eternal life.

Jesus, on earth, loved His Father above all, and as an essential aspect of His earthly mission and human saving-experience, He sacrificed His own will, His own Self, to do His Father’s will for mankind’s salvation: as He Himself said, He came on earth not to do His own will but the will of His Father Who sent Him.  He knew -- with His whole mind, heart, and existential being -- that His Father’s deliberate will was, is, and ever will be, a supreme expression of His merciful love towards weak and sinful human beings aspiring to heavenly fulfilment in Jesus by the Spirit.   Jesus was sent as Saviour for mankind: He saved us by His suffering as One of us, He redeemed us by His obedience as the only-begotten Son of His heavenly Father.

           

           

28th Sunday Year C 2019

28th. Sunday, Year (C)

(2 Kings 5:14-17; 2^nd. Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, today’s Gospel reading gives us important guidance concerning our spiritual life.   All true disciples of Jesus want to become fervent ones who sincerely love the Lord, and who, indeed, might become worthy of an intimate, personal, relationship with Him; and recently, in our Sunday Gospel readings, we have heard advice from Jesus on how we can achieve that desire.  Just last week we were told by the Lord that we must not look for quick, earthly, rewards since here on earth we are servants whose job it is to work for the Lord, not to look for personal comforts and satisfactions; earlier, we were encouraged to treasure our faith and to have confidence in its power to raise us up with Christ; and yet earlier we might still remember being told to persevere in knocking, seeking, and asking.

Today, we have another piece of essential advice for our spiritual growth … and by that, I mean our growth as children of God before our Father in heaven, not before human beings, whomsoever they may be, here on earth.

As Jesus continued His journey to Jerusalem He travelled through Samaria and Galilee.  As He was entering a certain village ten lepers met Him; they stood at a distance from Him and raised their voices saying, “Jesus, Master!  Have pity on us!”

When He saw them Jesus said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And so it was that, as they were on their way to the priests, they were cleansed.   One of them -- when he saw that he was healed – returned, glorifying God with a loud voice, and fell down at the feet of Jesus giving Him thanks. He was a Samaritan.  So, Jesus said:

Ten were cleansed were they not? Where are the other nine?  Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?

Try to imagine that instant when those erstwhile lepers first realized, almost incredulously, what had happened to them!!  That horrible, flesh-devouring, corrupting, process, that cursed plague which had shut them off from all familiar contact with family, loved ones, friends, indeed, from all healthy human society, THAT … IT … was obliterated; it had simply disappeared and they found themselves well again, no longer ugly and repulsive; now they were normal like everyone else, and they would soon be able to meet with others in homely and familiar surroundings, doing ordinary, every-day, things, so lovingly remembered and so deeply missed!

It is hard, indeed, perhaps impossible, to imagine that moment of utter and stupendous joy and relief …. But, what else, do you think they might well have felt?  Surely, at the centre of that volcanic upsurge of joy and relief, they would have felt burning gratitude too?  We know for a fact that at least one of them did: for he had to return to Jesus without any delay to thank Him.  The others were, perhaps, so excited at their recovery of health that they simply forgot all else; or else it might be that some were so desirous of getting the priests to witness their new-found cleanliness -- which was necessary before they could officially be allowed to join ordinary people once again -- that they did not feel that gratitude until after they had been certified clean by the priests; yet others may have felt they had first of all to visit family and begin picking up the threads of their previous lives once again.   Nevertheless, in all those ‘other’ cases, not responding immediately to whatever grace of God did move them cost them the opportunity to express their gratitude to Jesus, for He had gone on, dismayed somewhat by their failure to return to Him.

Now, that is something of the utmost importance in the spiritual life, People of God.  We are blessed if we feel in our heart gratitude to God for whatever it may be: experiencing moments of clear awareness of the beauty of God’s creation, being awe-struck at manifestations of His power, suddenly appreciating His goodness to us personally, being astounded at His wisdom in the Scriptures and at His supreme goodness and love in the gift of His beloved, only-begotten, Son for our salvation ….. there are countless ways in which God and His grace can touch our heart at any given time, and every one of them is a priceless blessing if indeed we respond immediately, if that touch actually moves our heart, and leads us to give thanks to God, admiring Him as we are moved.

One of them, realizing he had been healed, returned, glorifying God in a loud voice; and he fell the feet of Jesus and thanked Him.   He was a Samaritan.

You notice that only one, a Samaritan, responded immediately and came back gratefully to thank Jesus, and he was not considered to be a religious man as were the other nine Israelites, according to Jewish appreciation of those times.  But of course, for some people, religion was then -- as it still is today for very many -- all about performing duties and obligations in order to save themselves, rather than being the most sublime expression of their mind’s communion with, and fulfilment of their heart’s longing for, the God Who loves them and is calling them.

It is a noble ambition, an admirable desire, to be a true Christian.  It is, indeed the calling of all Christians and one which has touched the heart of many disciples of Jesus at some time or other; but sadly, those who respond whole-heartedly to such a calling and perseveringly seek to fulfil its demands are no more numerous than the one out of ten cleansed lepers:

Jesus said in reply, “Ten were cleansed were they not? Where are the other nine?  Has none but this foreigner returned to give thanks to God?”

One of the great causes of would-be-disciples thus losing their way is pointed out to us by the Lord today: count it a blessing to experience the mysterious working of the Spirit of God in your heart, but you must try to respond immediately, for that is a supremely  important step on the way to intimacy with the Lord.

There is further instruction for us on this matter in our first reading today where, as you will recall, Naaman, the Syrian army commander, having bathed in the Jordan at Elisha’s command found himself miraculously cured of his disease. His heart was not just touched by the grace of God, it was truly moved, and being humbled with consuming gratitude, he forgot all about his own dignity as a royal representative with imperious royal duties and immediately:

Returned with his whole retinue to the man of God.

On his arrival Naaman stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel.  Please accept a gift from your servant.”  “As the LORD lives Whom I serve I will not take it” Elisha replied; and despite Naaman’s urging, he still refused.

Why did Elisha so bluntly, even so vehemently, refuse Naaman’s grateful gift?    Let us turn back the pages of our Bible and read Genesis 14:23:

Abram replied to the King of Sodom, “I have sworn to the LORD, God most High, the Creator of heaven and earth,  that I would not take so much as a thread or a sandal strap from anything that is yours, lest you should say, ‘I have made Abram rich.’ 

Elisha, under God’s guidance and in imitation of Abraham, refused to accept Naaman’s gift – a gift offered in sincerity of heart – lest Naaman should then have thought that he had settled his debt with Elisha’s God, indeed, settled it with generosity.  God was choosing Naaman for purposes unknown to him, with the result that being unable to pay his debt to the man of God as he would have liked, Naaman’s sense of honour would not allow him to forget what had been done for him in the land of Israel by a prophet of Israel’s God. Therefore, he requested of Elisha earth from Israel in order to pray acceptably, as he thought, to the God Who had restored his flesh through the prophet’s intercession and by his own washing in the Jordan.  

Personal prayer of worship and thanksgiving to the God of Israel Who, through His prophet, had cleansed him ...where would that lead Naaman?  What were God’s plans for him??

            Go in peace – Elisha said – ‘such faith will save you’, we might well add!

Once more we are being taught about gratitude before God; and the example of Naaman is of the deepest significance, for Naaman did not only say ‘Thank you’ to Elisha immediately, he also took serious measures to make sure that he would henceforth remember and be able to offer acceptable signs of gratitude to the God of Elisha, the God of Israel, even when he had returned to pagan Syria to continue his work in the service of Syria’s ruler. 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, God is divine and so good that He wills to share His divine blessedness with us; we, however, are human and indeed sinful, and consequently must open up to Him something of the very best our human capacities for our renewal and refashioning in Jesus by the Spirit: and that must, most surely, include an attentive and humble mind able to recognize one’s needs before God, and a heart and will committed to gratefully cherishing the remembrance of God’s resultant great goodness to us personally and to all of good will.

                                

27th Sunday Year C 2019

 27th. Sunday Year (C)

(Habakkuk 1:2-3; 2:2-4.  2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14.  Luke 17:5-10)

Why did the Apostles say to Jesus: Increase our faith?  Were they imagining some lack of, insufficient ‘quantity’ of, faith given them, for some difficulty or failure on their part?

Luke does not give us any information about what had occasioned this request by the apostles, but, whatever the reason, their request highlighted their ignorance of the true nature of the gift of faith; and Jesus' answer seems intended to nip-in-the-bud any possibility of their doubting God’s providence as His disciples and ministers of the Gospel, by helping them  better appreciate the wondrous power of authentic faith:

If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

Notice that Jesus did not call their faith into question; He didn’t say, ‘If you had faith’, but, ‘If you have faith as a mustard seed’.  In the Christian life it is not that God’s gifts are insufficient for our real needs, but rather that we, so very, very often, fail to appreciate the wonder of what has already been given us, as St. Paul himself said in the second reading:

            Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you.

Let me now give you a short description of the mulberry tree (Barnes' notes) and you will have a clearer idea of the significance of Jesus' parable.

Look, now, at this tree: its ample girth, its wide-spread arms branching off from the parent trunk only a few feet from the ground.  Next, examine its enormous roots: as thick, as numerous, and as wide-spread into the deep soil below as the branches extend into the air above.  What power on earth can pluck up such a tree? Heaven's thunderbolt may strike it down, the wild tornado may tear it to fragments, but, surely, nothing short of miraculous power could pluck it up by the roots."

At that time the apostles still had Jesus with them as the centre of their minds' attention, their hearts’ affections and expectations, and perhaps for that reason they were not, as yet, able to appreciate the power of that supernatural gift of grace which had made them  into disciples and, most especially, Apostles of His.  And so, Jesus now goes on to hint that at a time close to hand He will no longer be with them at their side.  He pictures a time when He Himself will be "resting", and they will be expected to continue working, apparently alone, but, in reality, working on His behalf under the guidance and in the power of, His most Holy Spirit:

Which of you, having a servant ploughing or tending sheep, will say to him when he has come in from the field, 'Come at once and sit down to eat'?  But will he not rather say to him, 'Prepare something for my supper, and gird yourself and serve me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink'?

Speaking in this way Jesus opens up a further aspect of the apostles' incomprehension:  God does not bestow His spiritual gifts on his servants for them to possess as do children who cling to, and at times boast of, presents they have received.  God gives us, and most especially His Apostles, His chosen blessings in order that thereby they might live in ever closer communion with Himself, empowered to co-operate in the spread, and promote the understanding, of the  Gospel Good News among all peoples and throughout all times.  Jesus, in short, wanted to counter any possessiveness on the part of the apostles, to protect them from that innate tendency to selfishness and pride that would shortly incite them to argue amongst themselves about which of them was the greatest.   He needed to ward off the perennial threat to all those who are specially gifted, by warning His apostles and their successors, against the pride and arrogance so commonly seen in the  widespread, then and now, abuse of worldly and even spiritual power.

He spoke only a few words because the apostles were not yet ready for more, but the words He chose covered all that needed to be said; and, being simply expressed, certain aspects could be readily understood by the apostles, while the more hidden depths would subsequently be revealed by the Spirit to Mother Church -- who treasures all such words of Jesus in her heart – through all the ages of her mission here on earth:

So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, 'We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.'

Which, relating to the request they had made so shortly before, meant: ‘bearing in mind that what has been given you, the endowment already bestowed on you by God, is immeasurably superior to whatever may be asked of you as Apostles, you should be saying with heart-felt gratitude and sorrow: We are unprofitable servants; we have only done our duty, we have only done what was well within our power to do.

Jesus was preparing His Apostles for the time when they would soon be without His comforting presence, alone, yet commissioned to proclaim the Good News of their Lord and Saviour to a largely alien world where they must never dream of calling God into question, where they must never ever, allow themselves to indulge in such self-pity.

The prophet Habakkuk had also spoken, as did Jesus, about the time for labour in this world, when rest is longed for but -- though its promise be sure -- its fulfilment is, and has to be, delayed:

Write the vision and make it plain on tablets; (it) is yet for an appointed time, at the end it will speak and will not lie.  Though it tarries, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.

Lovers of this world, the proud, the sinful, cannot abide such delay, for, as you heard, “the rash one has no integrity”,  his soul is not upright in him; he cannot reconcile himself to waiting in trust, neither can he humble himself in the service of a cause where success is not in some way readily apparent or tangible.  Such selfless devotion is only for those whom God has specially blessed, as the prophet's words make abundantly clear:

The just shall live by his faith.

St. Paul told us how God the Father has blessed all who are in Christ Jesus:

Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in the faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.  

We have been given two gifts in Jesus St. Paul tells us there: the gift of faith to hold fast to ‘the pattern of sound words’ contained in his teaching and that of Mother Church, and the gift of love to seek and serve Jesus P/personally in our daily living of that teaching.  Now, with two such gifts, our call to selflessness does not mean a life of sheer endurance as we journey through a desert of aridity in the face of storms constantly exposing our weakness and anxiety; rather is it a life which, being gradually emptied of self-love, is thereby made ever more capable of receiving the gifts of the Spirit, of being filled to overflowing with the peace, joy, and love which are to be found in Christ Jesus alone.

As Jesus told His disciples, the gifts already given us are sufficient for all our needs:

If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, 'Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,' and it would obey you.

And not only are God's gifts sufficient for all our needs, they are more than enough for all our desires!  For faith is a treasure, and love of Jesus is not only the fruit, beauty, and glory of that treasure, but also the tool whereby we can come to appreciate what He has given us ever more and more:

Hold fast the pattern of sound words which you have heard from me, in faith and love which are in Christ Jesus.  That good thing which was committed to you, keep by the Holy Spirit Who dwells in us.

The Apostles had to learn, as we too must learn, that a disciple of Jesus has to work not only outside, in the mission-field of daily life and witness in the world, but also on the inside, in the secret depths of his own being.  The one, true, Faith is not merely a public form of words and practices to be believed and fulfilled, it is also a personal treasure to be quarried and appreciated ever more deeply in one’s mind and heart.  When worked on in that way the treasure which is our Faith yields up great beauty for our inspiration whilst it bestows a godly power, immeasurable indeed, but not one for boasting and self-aggrandisement as the early apostles were tempted to imagine, but one, on the contrary, that empowers us to respond with humble, quiet and consoling, sympathy and ‘adequacy’ to what is now almost ‘within our reach’, as we stretch out with holy obedience for correspondence to the beauty of God's truth, and  with faith-enflamed delight to share more and more in the wonder of His love, thereby inspiring us to become ever more selfless and wholly other, to the extent that, as St. Paul puts it:

It is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me. (Galatians 2:20)

Christ, by the power of His Spirit in us, leads, guides, encourages and empowers us to work ever more at and with our treasure trove of our Catholic and Christian Faith:

Therefore, I remind you to stir up the gift of God which is in you through the      laying on of my hands.  For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.  Therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God.

We are not to repeat the failure of those in the time of the prophet Habakkuk who, echoing the horrors of abidingly-sinful humanity, cried out:

Why do You make me see iniquity and cause me to look on wickedness? Yes, destruction and violence are before me; strife exists and contention arises, yet You do not save.

The time of rest, the time for rejoicing over the ultimate conquest of evil is not yet.  Jesus Himself is in heavenly glory, but we, His disciples, have work still to do for Him on earth:

Prepare something for My supper, and gird yourself and serve Me till I have eaten and drunk, and afterward you will eat and drink.

For that purpose, we have been gifted with "the faith and love that is in Christ Jesus"; let us then aspire, with sure confidence and firm hope, to the fulfilment of His promise:

Blessed are those servants whom the Master, when He comes, will find watching. Assuredly, I say to you that He will gird Himself and have them sit down to eat, and will come and serve them.  (Luke 12:37-38)