12th Sunday Year B 2021

 

 

Twelfth Sunday of Year (B)

(Job 38: 1, 8-11; Second Corinthians 5:14-17; Saint Mark 4:35-41)

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Our first reading spoke dramatically of God’s almighty power, and our Blessed Lord Jesus in the Gospel reading exercised that power in a dramatic way: rebuking the raging wind and waves of Lake Galilee.

The great calm that ensued was not, however, matched by calmness in the hearts of His disciples, for Jesus seems to have rebuked them for still trembling with fear at the memory of the storm’s threat:

            Why are you terrified?  Do you not yet have faith?

Experiencing fear on being caught in a small boat on one of Galilee’s occasional storms was understandable even for native fishermen who, of course, knew of the Lake’s propensity to storm winds coursing down suddenly from the surrounding heights; but such fear after Jesus had calmed the waters is hardly understandable in such professional fishermen: they lived by, from, their daily fishing of the fruit of those waters of Galilee.

We would have expected Jesus to say, ‘Why were you terrified’.   Jesus must therefore have had a special reason for using a word that – to us – seems strange; and such a reason must – knowing Jesus – involve TEACHING.

‘Why are you terrified?’ ... would seem to have meant for Jesus what it can mean for us today:

            “Why do you allow yourselves to be terrified?”;

and such an understanding makes Jesus subsequent words not only perfectly understandable but also pregnant with most important teaching:

‘Why do you who should have faith – whom I have called to faith -- allow yourselves to be so overcome by fear?

Jesus is saying:

Supernatural faith is a means, a weapon, to fight against and even to destroy incipient natural fear.  Why are you so slow to learn?

People of God, this is most important teaching:  Faith is not merely knowledge, an awareness that Jesus is God our Saviour; it is ordained to become a power in our lives: a power to form us ever more and more in obedience to and in the likeness of Jesus, by the power of His Most Holy Spirit bestowed on us originally in Confirmation and renewed in our reception of the ‘daily’ Holy Eucharist. 

Catholics who only know their faith are beginners only; that faith has to gradually come to rule in our lives through prayer, through our own deliberate and willing, hoping and beseeching, application of it to our problems and questions, our desires and our aspirations.

 And this applies above all to Jesus’ supreme desire -- in life and death --to reveal and make known to us His Father:

            This is how you are to pray:

            Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Thy name,

            Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven ....

Dear People of God, that word ‘Father’ – meaning the God Who made us and Who sent His Son to become flesh of the Virgin for our salvation – should be, should become, by our deliberate prayer, thinking, consideration, longing and beseeching, sublimely meaningful and supremely precious to us.  Jesus even advised us as He was nearing His Passion and Death (Matthew 23:9):

Call no one on earth your father; you (My disciples) have but one Father, (and He is) in heaven.

Did Mary tell Jesus as He was growing up about the manner of His conception and birth?  Surely not!!  She would just have used the normal word ‘Father’ for Joseph’s relationship to Jesus: ‘Your Father and I have sought you ...’

Jesus, however, learned, knew – even better than Mary herself -- by His prayer WHO really was His true Father, WHO was really and truly responsible for His very Being, not just responsible for His upbringing as son of Mary of Nazareth, and for His training as a carpenter.

Our baptism as Catholics, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, has – as St. Paul most insistently tells us – made us a new creation, we are not just flesh and blood, human and mortal; we are children of God, living in the womb of Mother Church an incipiently divine life, to be fed and nourished by the Food of God.

THAT is our only real life, our incipiently eternal, heavenly, and glorious LIFE; and That is why Jesus again uses apparently strange words, because they are both pregnant with divine truth and most significant for our establishment of our own character, the persons we want to be and the persons Jesus promises we can become in Him by His Spirit: children of God not merely children of men.

“Do you not yet have faith?”  Jesus said ‘not yet’ because the disciples had already seen many striking miracles of healing performed by Himself, heard Him both discomfit the scribes and Pharisees with His authoritative understanding of the Law and His Lordship over the Sabbath, and had also themselves  been charmed with His ability to satisfy large and pressing crowds of simple, unlearned, country people with beautiful parables redolent of a wisdom that was both human and divine.

The disciples knew so much about Jesus, they believed what He told them, but such knowledge and belief was not enough .... the disciples had to introduce, draw, that knowledge, that belief, into their hearts, so that that knowledge might be transformed from mere ideas and notions, to become motives powerful enough to transform their intentions, aspirations, and indeed their whole lives.

Dear People of God, that is also our life purpose and meaning: we are not called to be just believers, we have also to become ‘practitioners’ of our faith in our lives, in all those nooks and crannies we can so easily or fearfully overlook.

May God bless you all in that most holy and life-fulfilling, pursuit.

 

 

11th Sunday of Year B 2021

 

 11^th. Sunday of Year B

(Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2 Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

 

In our reading from the prophet Ezekiel – copying perhaps the Assyrian emperors so keen to boast of their military prowess -- there was a beautiful metaphor of one climbing right to the very crest of a choice cedar and finally stretching with his fingers to separate out and pluck a most delicate and promising growth:

 

I will take from the crest of the cedar, from its topmost branches crop off, a tender shoot.

 

Thus, the prophet pictured God’s sublime millennia-long nourishment and formation of Israel, the cedar of His planting, with the Blessed Virgin Mary of Nazareth as its crest – the summit of Israel’s response to such divine nurturing – finally taking to Himself and making His very Own that unique Shoot which only she could bear.

 

Concerning that Shoot of the Virgin, Ezekiel goes on to say:

 

The tender shoot shall put forth branches and bear fruit and become a magnificent cedar.  Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it in the shade of its boughs.

And our Blessed Lord’s own parable confirms those prophetic words, speaking this time of the Kingdom of God which He inaugurated in His very own Self, and using the same imagery of fruitful maturity, unobservable to human scrutiny, yet ultimately giving shelter and succour to those in need:

 

 

It is like a mustard seed that, when it is sown in the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on the earth. But once it is sown, it springs up and becomes the largest of plants and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the sky can dwell in its shade.

 

And so, dear People of God, after a series of feasts and solemnities, each emphasizing a distinct and striking aspect of the beauty of Catholic doctrine, it is most ‘homely’ and satisfying to celebrate an ‘ordinary’ Sunday which puts before us, with items chosen from her Scriptures ‘old and new’, something of the wholesome unity of Mother Church, and something of the calm strength and beauty of  ‘ordinary’ Catholicism: a Catholicism to quietly savour and admire as one appreciates a daily companion, cherishes a constant hope, and finds strength and peaceful joy in what is normal, everyday, and fundamental.

 

Today, people are not sufficiently aware, I believe, that a very large proportion of mankind’s troubles, be they criminal or personal, arise from sinful humanity’s unwillingness to appreciate and accept, let alone find peaceful fulfillment in, the ‘ordinary’.  The young hate boredom and crave the excitement of ‘highs’.  Those of middle-age need distractions, interests of any sort, conversations with all and sundry – even broad and wide over the media -- to occupy their minds and prevent self-introspection, lest the time on their hands brings back memories of past sins, trials and missed opportunities, stirs embers of regret or traces of old antipathies and dislikes, or, allows apparently long-forgotten memories -- silenced for some time but not healed -- come close to the surface once again: memories of friends, or responsibilities, failed due to our fault.  Too many of those who are old, however, just worry: about the past, the present, and the future; or else while-away the time still allotted them in passing interests of no moment, in reveries about days of old no longer available to them.

 

People of God, there is no real, true, happiness or fulfilment without an appreciation of and gratitude for, the ordinary in life: especially for us Catholics and Christians who proclaim the enduring, daily, goodness of God in all that He ordains for our gradual development into children of His; children destined to partake of the wedding feast He is preparing for all those His beloved Self-sacrificing Son brings with Him.

 

And what could be more ordinary and homely concerning the spiritual life of all devout Catholics than those words of St. Paul in our second reading:

 

            Therefore, we aspire to please Him, whether we are at home or away?

 

We aspire to please Him, that is, even though we are not yet at home with the Lord in heaven, even though we walk by faith, not by sight.

 

We aspire to please Him: how simple that sounds!  Just right for an ‘ordinary’ Sunday reading and homily … no burdensome thinking required, no great obligations to be accepted, we are encouraged to simply try to please Him, Jesus our Lord and Saviour, or as Jesus Himself would insist, we try to please Him Who is our loving Father, Who wants to be our beloved Father.  Such simplicity does not in any way threaten the richness of your Sunday spiritual food; because in order to ‘please Him’ we need to know Him, know what He wills, or even what He prefers for our good …. Just as you take pride in knowing the likings and possible preferences of your family and the guests who may be gathered around your Sunday table.

 

We walk by faith, not by sight:  how clear that sounds also, not frightening in any way!   And yet by walking in that way we are dying to ourselves for love of Him! There is no greater spirituality than that!!

 

People of God, thank you for listening to, reading, following, me carefully.  Please, try to enjoy your Sunday, and ask God to help you appreciate His daily, ordinary, gifts … not forgetting His gift of everyday time … for they all ultimately express the same undying love for you that led Him to give up His Son – to death alone on the Cross for you -- so as to be able to lift up with Him all who walk by faith in Him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

7th Sunday of the Year (B) 2021

 

7^th. Sunday of Year (B)

(Acts of the Apostles 1:15-17, 20-26; 1 John 4:11-16; St. John’s Gospel 17:11-19)

 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, I want to help you – as best I can – to appreciate the role the Word of God has in our lives as Catholic Christians, and to show you why we should not only reverence but really treasure it and, indeed, come to whole-heartedly delight in it.

In His priestly prayer to the Father Jesus, as you heard, said:

I have given them Your word, and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world any more than I am of the world; 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.

And there, straightway, we have a very hard saying for too many in the Church today who are afraid of those words:

I have given them Your word and the world has hated them.

People of God, too many of prominence in Mother Church today cosy-up to the world, so to speak, by trying to soften, adapt, or even expunge from the Gospel -- by forgetting or omitting -- what is feared, because it might cause offence to modern ears.  And yet, Jesus’ own proclamation of the Gospel was always challenging because He never ‘tailored’ His teaching to please human expectations:

I did not speak on My own, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me what to say and speak, and I know that His commandment is eternal life. So, what I say, I say as the Father told Me.” (John 12:49–50)

That is why He always looked for faith in His own Person and obedience to His words of salvation before bestowing any gifts or offering any promises.  As even His most ardent enemies acknowledged:

Teacher, we know that You speak and teach correctly, and You are not partial to any, but teach the way of God in truth.   (Luke 20:21)

Yes, dear Friends in Christ, let us wholeheartedly proclaim today what even Jesus’ own Personal enemies, the scribes and chief priest, did not dare to deny:

            You teach the way of God in truth;    

            I HAVE GIVEN THEM YOUR WORD.

Now, that Word is to be found not only in the Holy Scriptures, but supremely in Jesus Himself, for He is Personally the Word-of-God-made-flesh for us; the Word Who -- in order to ‘give them Your word’ in the fulness of divine charity -- also gave Himself up to death on the Cross because He recognized and embraced His Father’s love for us:

Father, the hour has come. Give glory to Your Son, so that Your Son may glorify You, just as You gave Him authority over all people, that He may give eternal life to all You gave Him.  Now this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and the One whom You sent, Jesus Christ.  I have glorified You on earth by accomplishing the work that You gave me to do. Now glorify Me, Father, with You, with the glory that I had with You before the world began.

I am the Good Shepherd and know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father and lay down My life for the sheep.  I have other sheep also that are not of this fold; I must bring them also.  For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. (John 17:1–5; 10: 14-17))

The Word of God in the Scriptures is one with the Word of God Whose life we share in the Eucharist and through the Sacraments.  They cannot be separated, because:

            What God has joined together, let not man separate. (Matthew 19:6)

Let me recall those words of Jesus I quoted earlier:

I have given them Your word and the world has hated them because they are not of the world even as I am not of the world.

Jesus has given us His Father’s word to be our battle standard and our protecting shield  against the surrounding miasma of the world’s  pride – ‘there is no God’ – and hypocrisy – ‘we do so much good’ --; and therefore the world hates all who believe that Word which, in its fulness, is God’s TRUTH.  For those who love that truth, however, Jesus ‘sanctifies, consecrates, Himself’ so that they may be sanctified in Truth.

Jesus sanctified Himself, consecrated Himself to God, by dying in the Cross of Calvary for love the Father of all Truth, and that is why He is able to sanctify all who are willing to consecrate themselves with Him for the glory of God by a life of obedience to and love for His Truth, by giving us a share in His own fulness of the Spirit of Holiness and Truth, the eternal bond of love between Father and Son.

Mother Church has been given the deposit of faith and treasury of grace, and Jesus is still making the Father known to us under the guidance and protection of the Spirit of Jesus given to her that He should abide with her throughout time for mankind’s salvation:

I tell you the truth.  It is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I depart, I will send Him to you.   And when He comes, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment.  I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; however, when He, the Spirit of Truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.  (cfr. John 16:7-13)

What joy the Spirit of Truth brings to those who let Him guide them into all truth!!

That all is meant, first of all, for Mother Church who is to complete and fulfil Jesus’ Personal mission on earth for the whole of mankind.  But that all can also mean for us as individual members of Mother Church and disciples of Jesus, that He, the-Spirit- dwelling-in-our-mind-and-heart by the sacraments of Mother Church,  can guide us into all truth necessary for our own personal salvation and also into a full and appropriate understanding of that truth for our own personal relationship of love for the Father, in the Son our Saviour, by the Holy Spirit of Love and Truth bonding all together in the beatitude of God’s family and heavenly Kingdom.

Dear People of God, what wisdom it is that leads anyone to listen lovingly to, and hear humbly and obediently, that voice of God!  What commitment and courage it takes to take the necessary measures to cut out the world’s noise from the Spirit’s temple in the secret depths of one’s own dedicated mind and heart!!