4th Sunday of Easter Year A 2020

4^th. Sunday of Eastertide (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:36-41; 1^st. Letter of St. Peter 2:20b-25; John’s Gospel 10:1-10)

In today’s Gospel passage, dear People of God, there is mention of shepherds and their approach to, relationship with, their sheep; and this is of practical interest for us today since parents, teachers, political leaders, and indeed many others, can be regarded to a greater or lesser extent as included in that word ‘shepherds’.

Jesus tells us that He Himself:

            Came so that they (the sheep of His flock) might have life.

There were many who had put themselves forward as shepherds to God’s people in the long course of Israel’s history and more especially in quite recent times; but they had all shown themselves, or had been shown, to be not shepherds for life and salvation but bringers of death and destruction as Jesus goes on to say:

            All who came before Me,

pretending to be saviours and guides, offering victory, life and fulfilment –were in fact:

            Thieves and robbers.

Come only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.

He calls them ‘thieves and robbers’ – very strong language for Jesus – because:

Jesus said, ‘I am the gate for the sheep.’

Whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.

They (did not and) do not enter the sheepfold through the gate but climb over elsewhere.

Now, the background of our Gospel reading is to be found in the thirty-fourth chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel.  There the first part is – as in today’s Gospel reading from St. John – about worthless, ruthless, shepherds who feed themselves not the sheep; who, pursuing their own purposes, let the flock be scattered over the face of the earth and become prey to wild beasts.

Then the prophet (vv. 11-16) continues:

Thus says the Lord God: Behold I, I Myself will search for My sheep and will seek them out.  I will seek the lost, bring back the strayed, bind up the crippled, strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will watch over; I will feed them in justice. 

Therefore, when Jesus -- in fulfilment of that prophecy -- said ‘I am the gate’, He was speaking divine truth, as He went on to explain saying:

I am the good shepherd ... and I know mine as mine know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I will lay down My life for the sheep.  I have come in the name of My Father.

Those pseudo-leaders, those false shepherds whom the Jews had followed before Him had in no way entered through Him, the only true gate; that is, they had not prepared the way for Him (the only-begotten Son of the Lord God of Israel), they had in no way spoken of, invoked, or witnessed to, Him.  They had done all for their own glory, in their own names:

You do not accept Me (Who have come in My Father’s name); yet, if another comes in his own name, you will accept him.   (John 5:43)

Nevertheless, Jesus, was indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the gate through which the God of Israel was coming to shepherd His flock.  In and through the very Person of Jesus -- Son of God and Son of man -- the Father Himself would feed the flock, as the prophecy of Ezekiel (vv. 25ss.) foretold:

Thus says the Lord God: My flock shall know that I am the Lord; they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them and that they are My people, the sheep of My pasture. 

Therefore, although God’s Chosen People of the New Covenant will still have shepherds to lead them in Jesus’ Church, nevertheless, they also will – as living members of the Body of Christ -- be able to recognize God’s Truth in the depths of their own hearts: 

(Jesus said:) My teaching is not My own but is from the One who sent Me.  Whoever chooses to do His will shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on My own.  Whoever speaks on his own seeks his own glory, but whoever seeks the glory of the One Who sent Him is truthful and there is no wrong in Him.  (John 7: 16-19)

Notice then, dear People of God, the great freedom of God’s flock in Christ: ‘I am the gate.  Anyone who enters through Me’ -- that is, whosoever enters God’s sheepfold through faith in and love for, Christ – ‘will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture.’   The flock do indeed see, hear, and confidently follow God-given shepherds going before them to a future, as yet unseen, divine fulfilment.

Though still on the way they can, however, in times of need or deep personal prayer, be strengthened, even thrilled and delighted, by an awareness of the mysterious presence of God Himself -- the most merciful and bountiful Cause, the great Hope and supreme Aspiration, of all that is beautiful and harmonious in their lives – in the dedicatedly secret shrine of their own loving and obedient mind and heart.

This has most important consequences for us.

First of all, the People of God – ‘those who choose to do His will’ -- can never, as a whole with the Pope, be led astray by false teachers; for Jesus Himself promised most clearly (John 7:17):

They shall know whether My teaching is from God;

That is, they will be able to recognize the divine truth of Christian teaching causing peace and hope to rise up within their own God-seeking hearts; for Jesus, Head of the Church which is His Body, and the Spirit, the Father-given and Jesus-sent ‘Helper’, are inseparably with the Church in all her trials.

As individuals however, we all have, for our part, the obligation so to live our Christian and Catholic lives that that God-given ability to respond to divine truth is never obscured, tainted, let alone poisoned, in what should to be the spontaneous appreciation of our hearts; for sinful living, pride, indulgence, worldly cares and preoccupations can turn disciples aside from their Christian commitment and ideals, and gradually lead them to mistake error for truth and to follow false prophets and hirelings instead of true shepherds and even Christ Himself.  Therefore, it behoves us, St. Peter writes, to:

Be sober and vigilant for your opponent the devil is prowling round like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.  (1 Peter 5:8)

Above all, however, let us confidently adopt positive endeavours let us ‘put on Christ’ by sincerely following the teaching of God proclaimed by Mother Church in its fullness, and by our own personal prayer and patience, that thus we can be gradually led to humbly recognize and joyfully experience a clear echo and loving response to God’s truth in our souls.  That response will come to mean more and more to us because God has indeed most truly given us an inner divine life which, when fully developed, pulsates in rhyme and rhythm with, positively thrills in response to, His Fatherly call and teaching.

If, on the other hand, the truths of faith, the life and promises of Jesus in the Scriptures, and the Christian practice of your vocation of loving obedience to God and service of your neighbour, seem cold, impersonal, and fruitless to you, then it might perhaps be a fact that God is testing you for your greater good, as He has done with many great saints and even with Jesus Himself.  However,  such dryness or distaste may also –and much more probably – prove to be a fault in your way of living the Christian life: perhaps you have been only existing, not really living in Christ, neither loving His Person sincerely nor committing yourselves trustingly to His divine Providence and His guiding Spirit of Truth and Love.  But, whatever be the cause of any such personal lassitude, divine trial or personal fault, we do know most certainly that Jesus came, as He said, for one supreme purpose: that we might have life in all its fullness:

            I came so that (you) might have life and have it to the full.

Therefore, as we proceed in our celebration of this Mass, the great sacrament of Jesus’ life and death for us, let us beg Him for a deeper -- oh so much deeper! -- share in His Spirit of life and love so that we may be enabled thereby to respond with all the love and devotion of which we are capable to His divine truth and beauty in all the myriad forms in which we can encounter it here below.  For such is the whole purpose and aim of our new and heavenly life: that we come to recognize and appreciate the original meaning of God’s self-revelation in His beautiful creation, and that we learn to whole-heartedly vibrate in harmony with the heavenly music of His saving purpose, our redemption through Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son-made-flesh ever witnessing here on earth to His Father by His Spirit bestowed on Mother Church for the salvation of all men and women of good-will throughout time.

3rd Sunday of Easter Year A 2020

3^rd. Sunday of Eastertide (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:14, 22-33; 1^st. Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35)

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My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Jesus appeared Personally and in human form to the Apostles and to some women who had served Him in His public ministry because of the close relationship He had formed with them during His days on earth.  Today, however, we have heard of His choosing two other disciples -- one Cleopas and the other unknown to us -- who were walking to Emmaus, which archaeologists have recently discovered and literally un-earthed, and which seems to have been a wealthy village in close, Sabbath-proximity, that is, to Jerusalem.  Though Jesus appeared to Cleopas and his companion in human form, He only became Personally known to them in the same way that He wills to reveal Himself to us and all His disciples throughout the ages, that is in and through the Scriptures and the celebration of the Eucharist. 

Jesus appeared and said to them, "What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?"

Their hearts and minds were filled with memories of Jesus and thoughts of His crucifixion: they had been lovingly and painfully talking together on what had happened to Him, and what sort of future there might be in store for them without Him, since, with the death of Jesus, the very bottom had been knocked out of their world as we would say:

We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.

By His choice of these two men on the way to Emmaus Jesus shows us that He wills to reveal Himself only to those who love and obey Him, as He Himself said:

If you love Me, you will keep My commandments (John 14:15)

and these two men had enough love and obedience to be truly suffering for loss of Him.

It is both gladsome and exciting to hear how their hearts thrilled and their attention became spellbound as Jesus -- walking beside them along the road -- gradually made them aware of His presence in the Scriptures:

They said to one another, "Did not our heart burn within us while He talked with us on the road, and while He opened the Scriptures to us?"

As I have said, these men had been bound to Jesus by love and obedience, and they showed their enduring love for Him by their appreciation of and concern for this man whom they still did not know, when, as:

They drew near to the village where they were going, and He indicated that He would have gone farther, they constrained Him, saying, "Abide with us, for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent." And He went in to stay with them.

Despite the fact that there was nowhere to go further along the road:

            Jesus indicated that He would have gone farther;

and had their charity not obliged Him He would, perhaps, just have walked on into the darkness and disappeared from their lives.  As it was, however, He accepted their invitation and turned aside to stay the night with them.

As they had walked together along the road Jesus had rewarded their belief in Him by interpreting the Scriptures for them; now, at their shared meal, He rewards their love, their fraternal charity, with His Eucharistic self-revelation as you heard:

He took bread, blessed and broke It, and gave It to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they knew Him; and He vanished from their sight.

Leaving Jerusalem, they were disciples wanting to hope in the Lord, and Jesus’ revelation of His presence in the Scriptures gave them inspiration to hope.  They now needed strength to face up to the difficulties looming on the horizon: and His Eucharistic Presence and blessing endowed them with the strength of mind and heart required to trust and serve Him no matter what those trials might turn out to be.  Now, indeed, they were very close to understanding that the Lord would always be with them, in the Scriptures and in the Eucharist.

For the moment, however, they were not quite there, for though they had truly heard and seen, loved and revered, the Lord, suddenly He had gone from their sight again.   Whatever might have been the original purpose of their journey to Emmaus it was forgotten now, since we are told that:

They rose up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem, and found the Eleven and those who were with them gathered together,

Being true disciples of Jesus, they were -- unknown to themselves -- already under the inspiration and guidance of the Holy Spirit, for after that encounter with the Risen Lord they immediately relinquished their previous intentions for something far more important in Jerusalem with the Church.  There, they learnt that Jesus’ encounter with them was but one of several such apparitions, all of which were -- it would seem -- not just isolated events but for the comforting and for the strengthening in faith of the whole Church, and most especially was that the case with His appearing to Peter. 

Together, the whole Church -- including Mary the Mother of Jesus -- prayed over what had happened and Peter came to understand something of the meaning of these appearances and was able to proclaim in the name of the Church, as we have heard:

Men of Israel, Jesus of Nazareth, Whom you have taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death, God has raised up, of which we are all witnesses, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that He should be held by it. Therefore, being exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He poured out this which you now see and hear.  

Once again, the two Emmaus disciples found themselves being shown how to understand the Scriptures about Jesus: and now, they were able to realize that Jesus was not just, somehow, living again but that He was indeed living for and in the Church: that He was speaking to them once again, through the voice of the Church.  Moreover, they would experience in the Church that which they had seen the Lord do -- bless, break and offer the Eucharist -- for the Lord had commissioned the Apostles to do that in memory of Himself.  In that way, they would come to realize that their meeting with the Risen Lord on the way to Emmaus was not irrevocably past, for, in the Church, they would always be able to thrill to an ever deeper understanding of the Scriptures, to share with ever more grateful and appreciative love in the celebration of the Eucharist, and to constantly find cause for rejoicing in the enduring presence of Lord to His Church in His Word, His Body and His Blood!   

At this point, we should make special note that Jesus revealed Himself to those two disciples in the course of the celebration of the Eucharist.  There is no mention -- although we need not doubt it -- that the disciples actually received the Bread Jesus had blessed and broken; but the point is that it was in the Eucharistic Sacrifice, in the blessing, the breaking, and offering of the bread that the disciples recognized Him

As He sat at the table with them, that He took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them: then their eyes were opened and they knew Him.

Or, as a more narrative form of translation strikingly puts it:

He asked God's blessing on the food and then took a small loaf of bread and broke it and was passing it over to them, when suddenly -- it was as though their eyes were opened -- they recognized him! (TLB)

This is particularly important today, People of God, because some --- because of present necessities – may come to think that a televised or ‘streamed’ Eucharistic service is pretty much as good as participating in one’s parish Mass especially where, in certain parishes, Mass even in normal times was being omitted during the week in favour of one or two Eucharistic services.  However, such substitutes for the parish celebration – as a people convened-and-gathered-together In the name of Jesus, and manifesting their present-day obedience and love for the Lord -- are not good enough, except in grave necessity.  The Church is called to continue and bring to fulfilment the mission of Christ: that is, to give glory to the Father and make available God’s offer of salvation to the world.  Only full celebration of Mass as Sacrifice and Sacrament -- liturgy of the Word and liturgy of the Eucharist -- can give supreme glory to God and build up the Church as the Body of Christ living to the full by the Spirit of Christ.    It is too easy today, at times, for simple and insufficiently educated Catholics to pick up the idea that Mass is really only necessary for the Sunday collection, for the pomp and circumstance of days of obligation, only necessary occasionally for stocking up Hosts for the coming week. After all, they would say, the only thing that really matters is that we are aware of Jesus' love for us and try to live good lives in return.  That is quite wrong.  At Holy Mass, the whole Jesus – glorified Lord with His Mystical Body – is called to give supreme glory to the Father in fulfilment of the original purpose of Creation, and all men and women of good will are– by a right celebration and understanding of the actions and words of Scripture and reception of the Holy Eucharistic --  to be offered salvation by faith in the name Jesus and the power of His most Holy Spirit guiding and directing our lives along Jesus’ ways.     

We should be careful never to allow ourselves to slip into thinking merely of our own self and our own relationship with Jesus.  We must, on the contrary, be constantly aware of Jesus’ abiding presence in and with Mother Church, pouring out His Holy Spirit on us through her sacraments, above all the Eucharist, so that He, the Spirit, might form us, as individuals and as members of the Church, in the likeness of Christ, so that the Risen and Glorious Lord might ultimately be able to lead us all into the presence of the Father, veritable sons and daughters in the beloved, only-begotten Son, for the eternal praise and glory of the Father.

Our spiritual pilgrimage and deepest joy on earth consists in recognizing and appreciating more and more Jesus’ presence-for-us in, with, and through, the Church, and, the same Peter who, in the name of the Church, proclaimed the significance of Jesus' Resurrection and Ascension and the Gift of the Holy Spirit, also taught us, in our second reading, the sort of response we should give to Him Who does such great deeds and offers such glorious promises to those who are true disciples of His Son:

If you call on the Father Who, without partiality, judges according to each one's work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here (on earth) in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ.

So, People of God, rejoice in the Lord always, honour Mother Church and receive her sacraments with reverent love and heartfelt gratitude; pray the Holy Spirit to come and rule in your mind and heart; and in all situations try to share with Jesus and Mother Church in giving constant worship and praise to God the Father Who is All in all.

                              

2nd Sunday of Easter Year A 2020

 2^nd. Sunday of Easter (A)

(Acts of the Apostles 2:42-47; 1^st. Peter 1:3-9; St. John’s Gospel 20:19-31

Peace be with you!

That was the ordinary Hebrew greeting, ‘Shalom’; a word to which we have become accustomed through our modern hymns.  But in today’s Gospel passage it has no merely conventional meaning: it is repeated twice, and in both cases is the first word in the clause; two details which tell us that the word ‘peace’ is being strongly emphasized.

At the Last Supper Jesus had promised His disciples (John 14:27):

Peace I leave you, My peace I give you; not as the world gives do I give you.  

To be able to give peace was generally considered a royal prerogative: that is what kings were for, to win, protect, and confirm peace and prosperity for the people.  But, in Jewish society chosen, taught, and formed by God over thousands of years, it was above all the divine prerogative to give peace.  Jesus as the promised Messiah --- the ‘Prince of Peace’ foretold by Isaiah --- gives His own special gift of peace as the Messianic King; moreover, He does not give it as would worldly kings, for they give a peace won through victory in war and maintained by coercion and struggle.  Here in England, when the Romans invaded so many centuries ago, they waged a bitter war against the native inhabitants, and thereby provoked a British chief to remark, ‘Where they make a desert they call it peace!’

Such was never Jesus’ way.  Quite the contrary, He – the Messianic Prince of Peace – won peace for us by sacrificing Himself; and now having risen from the dead, He gives His peace – the fruit of His self-sacrifice – to His disciples, showing them, at the same time, the wounds whereby He had won that peace.

The disciples were filled with joy,

we read, just as Jesus foretold at the Last Supper when He had said:

You are sad now, but I shall see you again, and your hearts will rejoice with a joy that no one can take from you.  (John 16:21s.)

For Jewish aspirations in those days, peace and joy were distinguishing features of the final glorious time when God would rule as King, giving harmony to human life and to the whole world.  That time was now dawning:

Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you’ and showed them His hands and His side.

Mankind finds peace before God because Jesus – Son of God and Son of Man – died sinless in His human flesh by fidelity to, and love for, God His Father; and then -- by rising from the dead -- He destroyed death along with its ‘sting’, which is sin.  In Jesus and by His Spirit all men and women of good-will can now overcome sin for love of God. 

 Peace be with you!

Notice, however, that this Paschal gift of peace belongs not to individuals as such, but to the whole Christian Community, as a whole.  It was first given to the community of disciples gathered together for common prayer in the face of a common threat; it was given, that is, to the Church both militant and witnessing.  Jesus does not make His presence manifest as some prophetic prodigy for the amazement of the world, but to the assembled brethren, as divine Head of His mystical Body, His Church, and only here, at this sacred encounter, does He say, ‘Peace be with you.’  And that, incidentally, is why, when we sin and lose our peace with God we have to confess our sins to a priest; because peace is the gift of the Risen Christ to His Church, and in order to regain our individual peace -- if and when lost, broken, through our sin(s) -- we have first to be received back into full communion with the Church and come to share again in her prerogative: peace with God and man, in Jesus the Risen Christ.  

Jesus then declared:

            As the Father sent Me, so am I sending you.

Once again these words of the Risen Lord Jesus pick up a thread in His discourse at the Last Supper.  There Jesus had prayed for His own who were to remain behind in the world, saying:

Consecrate them in the truth.  Your word is truth.  As You sent Me into the world, so I sent them into the world, and I consecrate Myself for them, so that they also may be consecrated in truth.  (John 17:17-19)

That is, before the disciples could definitively go out on mission in the name of Jesus for His Church in the world, they had to be themselves renewed and re-sourced through the truth (John 17:25s.):

Righteous Father, the world does not know You, but I know You; and these know that You have sent Me.  I made Your name known to them and will make it known 

by the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, Who I will give to sanctify My disciples, forming them in My likeness through obedience and love, and holy as He -- My Spirit -- is holy, so that thus consecrated in Truth I can say to them:

“As the Father sent Me, so I send you.”

And when He had said this, He breathed upon them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

In the book of Genesis we read (2:7):

The Lord God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living being.

The word ‘breathed’ occurs again in the book of Wisdom (15:11):

            The One Who fashioned him … breathed into him a living spirit.

From these texts we understand that this moment when Jesus breathes His own Spirit into His disciples, is the moment of a new creation, endowing them with the Spirit of supernatural holiness and life, for themselves and for those they serve in the name of Jesus.

For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven;

not just ‘forgotten’ by God, but forgiven, by the restored gift of holiness and life by the Spirit, whereby the sinner is also restored to peace of mind and heart.

For those whose sins you retain however, they are retained;

There is no peace, no gift of the Holy Spirit, apart from the Body of Christ.  God does not deal with ‘loners’, He has only One beloved, His only-begotten Son, Whom He sent as Jesus, a Man-among-men, for their appreciation and love, and as Christ for their salvation; One Whom He recognizes as Head of the Body which is His One Church, the gathering together in conscious and willed community of all those who believe in Him as the only-beloved One sent by His heavenly Father for their salvation and their adoption as children of God.

Here we see the essence of the Holy Spirit’s work amongst men on earth: to make manifest, give judgment against, and abolish, sin; because He is the Spirit of holiness, the Spirit of the all-holy and all-loving God and Father of us all.

Of course, it is undeniably true that He is the Spirit Who worked wonders of all kinds in and through chosen individuals throughout Old Testament history; but His greatest wonder is shown here in the gradual obliteration of sin in the world and the ultimate re-making of sinful men and women into a holy, consecrated, family of God.

Yes, in the Old Testament the Spirit won salvation for Israel on many occasions; but here under the new covenant, salvation cannot be brought about through any occasional triumph in battle, but only through the destruction of sin and the forgiveness of sinners.

Yes, in the old dispensation the Spirit foretold future events, but here in the New Testament His greatest pronouncement is the word of God which consecrates in truth.

Jesus Himself, here on earth, once sent out some of His disciples on a mission to go before Him to the towns and villages where He Himself was to visit, and we are told:

He gave them authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out and to heal every disease and every infirmity. (Matthew 10:1)

That sending had been only a trial run, so to speak.  Here, in today’s Gospel we have the real sending, the real mission, of the disciples; and here too we have the real ‘gift’, the real ‘power’ bestowed upon them by Jesus to enable them to fulfil their mission: victory over sin in themselves and authority over sin in others by virtue of themselves having been sanctified in the truth.

And yet the Apostle Thomas himself refused to accept and be sanctified by the truth proclaimed by the infant Church!  As you are aware, Our Lord, knowing Thomas through and through, had pity of his weakness and his ignorance, and allowed him the sight he wanted; but He gave him a very strong rebuke, the words of which abide for an eternal lesson to mankind:

Have you come to believe because you have seen Me?  Blessed are those who have not seen and have believed!

The beloved disciple John who tells us of this was well aware of the privilege he himself had been granted by God which enabled him to enter into the tomb and to believe; but here he tells us about the Apostle Thomas in order to show us where the greatest privilege of all is to be gained: by believing without seeing, believing, that is, on the testimony of the Church.

People of God, if we wish to be part of God’s new creation, if we long for such a purification that we might be able to enter upon a supernatural life of eternal fulfilment in awareness and appreciation of divine beauty and truth, goodness and love, we should pray that we might ourselves be sanctified in truth by the Spirit of truth; that we might know and appreciate through faith God’s message of salvation -- still proclaimed by Jesus in and through His Church -- ever more fully, and love it ever more deeply.  The only proof that we have indeed received the Holy Spirit into our hearts and are allowing Him to rule there, is the objective fact that we sincerely seek to overcome our sinfulness by the Christian discipline of letting the one, true, faith determine and form our way of life.   As Saint John says:

            This is eternal life, the keeping of God’s commandments.

And those commandments are not difficult because God’s Holy Spirit has been given to us.  Therefore, let us open wide our hearts to receive anew the Holy Spirit of Easter peace, and then go from this blessed assembly to bear joyful, personal, witness to Jesus by lives of loving, Catholic, obedience.