30th Sunday Year B 2021

 

30th. Sunday (Year B)

(Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52)

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Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Jesus only used those words:

                Your faith has saved you

on four occasions: with Bartimaeus in today’s Gospel; with the woman suffering from a 12 years-long haemorrhage (Mt.9:22; Mk. 5:34), with ‘Mary’ the sinful woman cured in the Pharisee’s house at a meal being held in Jesus’ honour, and with the grateful Samaritan healed of his leprosy (Lk. 7:50, 17:19). 

However, in our Gospel reading it was not the miracle performed for Bartimaeus that is of central importance for us today but Jesus Himself Who – despite the noise of the surrounding crowd and those who were shouting down the beggar’s cries -- heard that cry for mercy and recognized the faith behind it.

God’s mercy and goodness is also the focal point of the prophet’s celebration of Israel’s deliverance from exile in Babylon of which we heard in the first reading; a temporal deliverance as it turned out due to Israel’s recurring and abiding sin, but, nevertheless, one both foreshadowing and preparing for Jesus’ definitive salvation:

Behold, I will bring them back as an immense throng from the ends of the world, with the blind and the lame in their midst, the mothers and those with child.  They departed in tears, but I will console them and guide them.  I will lead them to brooks of water, on a level road, so that none shall stumble; for I am a father to Israel, Ephraim is my first-born.

Jesus’ compassionate understanding is likewise emphasized in the second reading where we were told that, as our High Priest:

Taken from among men (being born a human being of the Virgin) He is a priest forever, able to deal patiently with the ignorant and erring.  

Now that is the key for our understanding and appreciation of today’s readings, and we can learn much from a short study of Bartimaeus’ attitude and actions.

Jesus heard Bartimaeus’ cry because Bartimaeus was centred totally on the Person of Jesus: deaf to words of abuse from the crowd, he was ‘locked onto’ the Person of Jesus; and if we recall the other members of the quartet who were addressed by Jesus with the words ‘Your faith has saved you’, we will recognize that all of them were -- each in their own way – likewise, locked onto Jesus: the woman with the incurable haemorrhage working her way through the surrounding throng, the Samaritan grateful beyond measure, going back into possible danger in order to thank Jesus before going home; and Mary oblivious to the disdain, scorn, and indeed contempt being shown her, as she wept for her sins before her Lord.

The obvious ‘next step’ would be for me to say, ‘that is how we should pray … locked onto Jesus, wholeheartedly and personally’, which would be undeniably true; but I am not sure how helpful it would be to state the obvious so bluntly.  For Bartimaeus – as indeed all the other three persons mentioned – had most compelling motives and/or pressing situations spurring them on to meet with Jesus; we, on the other hand, often start our prayer ‘from cold’ so to speak, having just set aside our previous business, trying to forget recent distractions, feeling tired and weary towards the end of the day.  How can we motivate ourselves à la Bartimaeus?

The clearest guidance he offers us is a most important consideration for all seeking Jesus: the need to be independent of public -- ‘peoples’ -- opinion.  It is, indeed, a ‘dogma’ of classical spiritual teaching that dependence on a crowd is inimical to the moral well-being of whoever would be a serious disciple of Jesus.   This is contained in those remarkable words of Jesus to His Father:

I gave them Your word and the world hated them, because they do not belong to the world any more than I belong to the world.  Consecrate them in the truth.  Your word is truth.  (John 17:14, 17)

Jesus’ disciples can have perhaps any number of relationships, connections, with the world but they cannot belong to the world any more than Jesus did, and even Bartimaeus, a beggar who depended largely on the ‘world’ for his daily food, stopped begging from passers-by in order to cry out loudly for Jesus’ attention, despite  criticism from those he would normally have hoped to please, and even from certain of Jesus’ disciples whom he might have hoped would support him: Bartimaeus had no concern for any sort of ‘public opinion’, either for him or against him, in his relationship with Jesus, and in that he is a splendid example for all aspiringly-true disciples of Jesus.

There is something else that can be helpful for us as regards Bartimaeus’ healing.  To human eyes, he just happened to be humbly positioned by the roadside with his begging bowl as Jesus was passing by:

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, sat by the roadside begging.  On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out.

Now, when we want to pray, it is most helpful and – out of reverence – essential, to put oneself, deliberately as best we can, in the way of Jesus, so to speak.  Bartimaeus was indeed just sitting there; but he had, perhaps unwittingly, put himself in the right place, where he was able to hear Jesus Who, passing through the town, was not directly looking for Bartimaeus, but just happened to be in his vicinity.   Such patient, humble, hanging around, in a ‘place’ where Jesus might come near – perhaps even stumble over us, so to speak -- is essential for prayer. Our Lord does not follow a book of appointments, nor is His attention restricted to approved times and favourable opportunities; He hears, infallibly and whenever, anyone and everyone who -- like Bartimaeus -- wholeheartedly cries out to Him in acknowledged need, with confident faith, humble persistence, and sincere reverence.

There is yet another aspect of Bartimaeus’ nascent relationship with Jesus that we should note: he recognized and committed himself to Jesus as someone quite wonderful, most exceptional, despite the fact that it was common knowledge that Jesus was regarded by His own townspeople as nothing very special, was openly mocked and contradicted by the official holy ones of Israel, the Pharisees, and actually hated by the authoritative ones, the Sadducees and the Temple authorities.   The fact is that a truly Christian faith was dawning in Bartimaeus, a faith which now -- having being cherished for almost 2000 years in the bosom of Mother Church -- we ourselves are most wonderfully privileged to embrace in full, and through which we believe that the Nazarene invoked by Bartimaeus was and is the very Son of God, sent by His Father as Saviour among men.  Though now, He has apparently left us Personally and is seated in glory at the right hand of His Father in heaven, that divine transcendency  enables Jesus the Nazarine to be abidingly and uniquely present with us as Lord and Saviour in Mother Church and in her Eucharist: that Church which Saul (later to become Paul) persecuted causing the voice of the risen Lord to say to him: ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute ME?’; that Eucharist which Jesus Himself commanded us to receive saying: ‘He who eats ME, shall live because of Me.’

Both the Church and the Eucharist are called Jesus’ Body in the Scriptures; and we should ever more clearly realize that we are worshipping here today because we believe that Mother Church -- despite whatever individual scandals may momentarily disfigure and betray her – is the mystical Body of Christ  and that we are only truly and fully Catholics and Christians in so far as we are living members of that mystical Body; and that the Holy Eucharist -- the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ -- is the unique, ultimately sublime, Personal presence of Jesus  our God, Lord and Saviour, here on earth, for our salvation. 

Dear People of God, never be complacent or careless with regard to such truths and treasures; seek to know and appreciate the Faith ever more, and try to deepen your love and reverence for Our Lord in the Eucharist as the Holy Spirit inspires you.

We human beings are made for lasting and loving relationships, but above all for the  one lasting, loving, and personally unique relationship that authenticates who we are ... and that one, unique, relationship is, for our part, only ours in Jesus, by the Spirit, with the Father.  For God’s part, He alone, our Creator, is supremely alive and loving, beautiful and truthful, good, Holy and humble enough, so to speak, to have Personally unique relationships with all those who, guided by the Spirit, come to Him in Jesus.

And there a Sunday sermon must end where more explicit spirituality waits to take over.

 

 

29th Sunday Year B 2021

 

 29^th. Sunday (Year B)

 (Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45)

 

 

St. Matthew tells us (6:33) that Jesus once said:

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides; 

and in today’s Gospel reading we are told of two brothers apparently exemplifying that attitude, James and John, members of Jesus’ most intimate circle of disciples, ask for a place, a really special place, in the Kingdom:

They said to Jesus, "Grant that in Your glory that we may sit, one at Your right hand and the other at Your left."

However, despite their eagerness in seeking the kingdom of God, the two brothers can in no way be said to have exemplified the fulness of Jesus’ teaching since He recommended that the search for the kingdom of God should go hand in hand with a search for the righteousness of God:

Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. 

James and John wanted prestigious seats in the glory of God’s Kingdom on the basis of favouritism or special privilege, and Jesus said that such positions were not His to give in such a way: they could only be bestowed on the basis of the righteous judgement of the all-holy God.  The brothers had asked for places of privilege in the Kingdom of the heavenly Father, without seeking equally to share in His righteousness; and though their mother might well have been the motivating power behind that request as St. Matthew tells us, their somewhat glib response to the awesome question Jesus subsequently put to them suggests that they had not themselves truly ‘thought through’ the implications of their request:

Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?

Immediately answering that they could indeed drink His cup and be baptized with His baptism, they were behaving in much the same way as the notoriously self-confident and dynamic Peter would do later on when saying:

Though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be. Even though I should have to die with You, I will not deny You! Lord, I am prepared to go both to prison and to die with You."  (Mark 14:29; Matthew 26:35; Luke 22:33.)

That, however, was how Peter would speak on hearing that Jesus was being threatened with death: those words were a heartfelt and beautiful protestation of concern and love, before being also an ill-considered promise of personal fidelity far beyond him.  Peter can be excused to a large extent in that over-appreciation and over-statement of his own powers because he was being impelled by his anxiety for Jesus under threat of violent death;  James and John, however, had no such laudable motivation for their over-zealous and over- confident words, springing mainly – at the moment -- from their ill-considered desire to be greatest, which, Mark tells us, had already shown itself shortly before:

Jesus asked the disciples, "What were you arguing about on the way?" But they remained silent. They had been discussing among themselves on the way who was the greatest. (Mark 9:33-35)

Despite Jesus’ explicit teaching on that occasion – ‘if anyone desires to be first of all he shall be last of all and servant of all’ – and their own subsequent embarrassment, James and John still hankered after the position of the ‘greatest’.  As yet, they knew very little about seeking the righteousness of the Father, and Jesus would have to teach them about it to the very end, as we find at the Last Supper in His sacerdotal prayer before the whole gathering:

Righteous Father, the world does not know You, but I know You; and these know that You have sent Me; I made known to them Your name, and I will make it known. (John 17:25-26)

Jesus, when speaking of His Father or about the mission for which He had been sent, consistently attributed nothing to Himself, openly saying:

No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him on the last day. (John 6:44)

Everything that the Father gives Me will come to Me, I will not reject anyone who comes to Me, because I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the One who sent Me. (John 6:37-38)

Clearly, Jesus did not consider that, whether by His preaching, His miracles, or by His Personality, He would effectively and decisively draw disciples to Himself; no, only those sent by the Father would come to Him.

That was His example of seeking the righteousness of the Father; an example that needed to be closely observed, secretly pondered, and ultimately imitated, by those impetuous brothers James and John; as indeed by all the disciples who had shared in that animated discussion among them about who was the greatest.

Jesus supreme attitude and teaching in this respect was manifest above all in His death.  We were told in the prophecy of Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant, the future Messiah … concerning Jesus:

            It was the Lord’s will to crush Him with pain.

Though Son and Saviour, Jesus ... in His embraced weakness as perfect Man ... did not take upon Himself suffering and grief; His invincible strength lay in the fact that it was the path traced out for Him by His Father.  As man, He had indeed long prepared for it but He did not seek it out for Himself; all He wanted to do was His Father’s will.  He would, however, and He could, most lovingly accept it as His Father’s gift!

And so, the prophet went on:

By making His life as a reparation offering, He shall see His offspring, shall lengthen His days.

All would then happen, the prophet tells us, in such a way that:

The Lord’s will shall be accomplished through Him.

Jesus could only guide to such sublime perfection disciples who were eager to learn: and that is why He was secretly pleased with the ardent desire of Peter, James, and John, and indeed of all His closest disciples, to be great in the Kingdom of God.  Initially,  such desires appeared to be nothing better than merely human ambition seeking superiority and precedence; Jesus, however, knew that deep down, they were the expression – as yet, tarnished indeed -- of the disciples overwhelming desire to share with Him, to be united, as closely as possible, with Him, on earth as in heaven; and such desires could -- like diamonds -- be skillfully cut and purified before finally being polished to perfection by the divine artificer.

Today, however, dear People of God, very, very few want to be great in the kingdom of God, for so very, very few have faith in, and love for, Jesus deep enough to make them long, desire, and will -- above all -- to cling to Him through His earthly sufferings and thus share with Him in His heavenly glory.  Such a desire is fundamental, and the lack of it cannot be compensated for easily or quickly, just as an athlete cannot train without first having a good bone and healthy muscular structure to begin working with.

At times this apparent lack of love for, commitment to, Jesus may result from a relatively innocent and understandable fear of standing out from friends for fear of losing their companionship as can still happen easily enough with young people today.  Again, there are others ... good, Christian and Catholic people … who tend, in their spiritual naivety and ill-conceived humility, to think along lines such as: “Who am I to think that I can become anything special?” They are right to a certain degree, of course; but they are also wrong, and much more seriously wrong, since God is the supreme potter able to turn His clay into choice vessels as He wills.

There are yet others, who, amazingly, seem to think that to aspire and try to aim higher in their spiritual life would somehow be disloyalty to themselves: “This is my character, if I tried to be otherwise it would not be the real me”!

Whereas the young persons’ fear of standing out alone, is, as I said, understandable, bearing in mind the weakness of our human nature and their lack of years, confidence, and experience; with the other two examples, however, we find the Devil more insidiously at work, doing what he usually tries to do: pass himself -- his suggestions and his impulses -- off as virtuous, even holy.

People of God, all of us, like James and John, have faith in Jesus, and all of us, on the basis of that faith, should want, indeed aspire, to be true disciples of Jesus, longing to be as close to Him as possible here on earth and for all eternity, because our supreme destiny is to be found, in Him, as true children of our Father in heaven.  Such a desire for greatness is no disloyalty to our fellows, neither is it a forgetting of our true situation, or false representation of our real selves; rather, it is the only true recognition of and response to the fact that we are created in the image and likeness of God, and that we have been redeemed by the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Our Lord for the glory of His Father and the fulfilment of that, our God-given being and likeness.

As you heard in the second reading:

Since we have a great high priest Who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.

Yes, let us -- out of love -- strive to follow where He has gone before us.   Do not let the Devil -- with weasel words of mock humility or serpentine suggestions of twisted fidelity -- try to persuade you to idly and comfortably go through life like everybody else; or, under the devilish pretext of remaining true to yourself, lead you to neglect the God-given opportunity to discover and realise your only true self.  God has, indeed, made you in His own image and likeness, you are individuals, not like anyone else; Jesus has died for you personally, He alone commands your supreme loyalty.  He has risen and gone to heaven to prepare your place in heaven: do not betray Him for the sake of what would be, ultimately, a contemptible fear of standing out from others or a ludicrously tragic self-deception trade-marked by Lucifer himself.  Only when you strive to follow Jesus with your whole heart will you find your true self, divinely commissioned before time began; only when you commit yourself, with Jesus, to the Father, will you become a member of the heavenly family with the hosts of saints and angels for your true companions and enduring friends.

This living of the Christian life, this contentment with Jesus above all, for the Father, might indeed bring the cross into our lives as you have heard from today’s readings, but it will be a sharing in the Cross of Jesus, our passport to real life (Romans 8:16-18):

The Spirit Itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.  I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us.

 

28th Sunday Year B 2021

 

 

28^th. SUNDAY of Year (B)

(Wisdom 7:7-11; Letter to the Hebrews 4:12-13; Gospel of St. Mark 10:17-30)

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As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up, knelt down before Him, and asked Him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  Jesus answered him, “Why do you call Me good?  No one is good but God alone.”

As you just heard, Jesus ignored the question ‘What must I do ...’ and seized upon the manner in which the young man had addressed Him:

            Why do you call Me good?  No one is good but God alone.

Why did He do this?

Jesus not only heard the young man’s words, He read his heart also, and was advising him not to be so prolific in his use of the word ‘good’ whether in his speech or, even more to the point, in his thinking.  For the young man evidently thought himself to be ‘good’:

Teacher, all of these (commandments cited by Jesus) I have observed from my youth.

And Jesus, looking at him, loved him because he was good; however, that goodness did not go deep enough.  And that was the reason why Jesus, rather than directly answering the young man sought, first of all, to help him understand the implications of his question,

            What must I do to inherit eternal life?

Jesus realized that the young man did not understand the true nature of eternal life:  a GOD-GIVEN-GIFT, not something to be humanly earned by the observance of prescribed rules, nor something to be strenuously achieved by one more religiously ambitious. Neither did the young man truly understand what his own conscience was persistently telling him, that all was not right despite all that he had hitherto done.

The fact is that personal pride was secretly warping both that young man’s understanding of the Law and his awareness of his own conscience: he wanted to do something so uniquely his, that he could regard access to heavenly life as part of his own patrimony, even his own personal birthright.

Yes, dear People of God, Jesus loved that young man for what his past religious observance had made him; but he was now at a decisive moment in his life, he could feel it; and Jesus -- Who was never one to give merely objective information -- was probing the young man’s soul in order that He might give him spiritual guidance, life-changing guidance, to be received as His disciple, living and walking with Him, and learning from Him.

Why do you call Me good? 

And then He went on to adumbrate the answer, the essential answer, to the young man’s question:

            God alone is good; you know His commandments.

The young man was not thinking aright and so Jesus began inciting him to do better: ‘No one is good, save God alone; OK!  Why then do you ask Me about your eternal life, about your eternal relationship with the God Who made you?  God made you, made you unique and for Himself; you know all that from the Scriptures, why then do you seek My help?  Who do you think I am?’

Thus Jesus, while emphasizing His own humanity, provoked the young man to do some closer thinking.  It was, however, a very gentle process of correction for, as the Gospel says:

Jesus, looking at him, loved him.

He loved him because he had kept the commandments of the Law from his earliest years, and Jesus could see clearly the results of such, Israelite, obedience in him.  As a reward for that faithfulness in little things, Jesus sought to lead this young man to greater ones, that is, to a more explicit, direct, and personal love of the supremely Personal God He Himself knew as His own Father.  He answered him, though, in such a way that, while not revealing His own divine Personality, He did nevertheless, respond to and acknowledge – and this time more favourably -- the young man’s opening remark, ‘Good Master’.

‘Because you chose to call Me “good”, let Me, therefore, give you some ‘good’ advice:

“You are lacking in one thing.  Go sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven”.’

‘And because you chose to call Me ‘Master’, you would seem to be calling yourself, in some measure, a disciple. Do you want to be My disciple?  If so, then:

            “Come, follow Me.”’

Today Jesus still gives His Catholic disciples such advice, such an invitation, in the Faith of His Church – her proclamation of faith in the divinity of His Person and the truth of His teaching – which is a framework broad enough to embrace a multitude of believers, all called by God the Father to become disciples of Jesus.  The essence of that wonderfully mysterious walking with, learning from, Jesus, we call the spiritual life; and the purpose of all spiritual direction is to help those called, to find out how -- in the framework of that One, True, Faith, and under the guidance the Holy Spirit of Wisdom and Truth -- God’s perennial call of individual persons to Jesus, wills to form and guide them as living members of His Mystical Body, to be ultimately embraced by His Father as His own beloved, adopted, children in the Kingdom of Heaven.

For someone really seeking God, those words – offering the opportunity to accompany, live with, and learn from Jesus – should have brought intense joy to that young man.  In fact, however, we read:

At that statement his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Dear People of God, that is the great danger of possessions: they afford people immediately enjoyable consolations and satisfactions in this, earthly, life, and once having enticed people to take a few steps along that seemingly most ‘attractive’ highway, they can so easily poison any appreciation of what seems, looking back, to have been the bleak and tasteless by-way of Jesus’ Good News.  Indeed, such embraced satisfactions and consolations do make many lovers of this world unwilling ever to entertain the very thought of staking ALL, let alone embrace the possibility of giving ALL for the fulfilments which God offers.

The rich young man’s wealth could not lead him to clear wrong-doing, nor could it prevent him doing some good, but it did make it impossible for him to truly love God, and it did prevent him from tasting the joy of living in Jesus’ company.  With such a captive mind and heart, he seems to have thought Jesus would perhaps tell him something extra, esoteric, some secret, very, very special knowledge, which he could make his own, take delight in, and put to diligent use, thereby assuring himself of the holiness required for eternal life without ever having to risk his earthly comforts and securities.

Holiness, however, is not an object we can acquire, it is not a technique we can master; it is God’s loving and total offer of Himself – and the chosen soul, in order to receive, and above all to respond to, such a gift – can only do so by opening up its very own ‘self’ in return, as a like gift, to the God Who chooses thus to relate Personally with His chosen ones.

Dear People of God, give yourselves exuberantly to pleasures and consolations and you will ultimately, and inevitably, taste bitterness and pain; trust too much in riches and you will most certainly experience personal poverty when least able to do anything about it.

Only God is definitively good; anything, anyone else, promising salvation is a lie and a liar, and would only enslave us so that -- because we hadn’t dared risk what we loved wrongly and too much – we eventually find ourselves turning aside from our true and most sublime destiny, namely, God’s offer of Personal love, abiding fulfilment, and peace beyond all telling.

We can say that the whole purpose of Christian teaching, the Church’s doctrine and dogma, is to give us the Truth; and the whole function of Christian asceticism -- of the Church’s sacraments and exercises of spiritual devotion -- is to make us free and able to embrace such Truth.  And the great truth of the Christian faith is:

For human beings salvation is impossible, but not for God.  All things are possible for God with those who believe in the One He has sent, Jesus Christ.

Only when we calmly realize and gratefully appreciate that God is our true joy and  our sure hope can we then truly commit ourselves to Jesus, putting Him first in all the details and aspirations of our lives:

If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.  (Luke 14:26)

Whole-hearted love for God doesn’t rule out love for others; indeed, it can help us love them better, because the greatest danger in human love is that we soon start seeking personal gratification instead of expressing love with and for the other.  When, however, having become aware of our own emptiness, selfishness, and folly, we hunger and thirst for the coming of God’s Kingdom in our lives and His love in our hearts, then we find ourselves free to love without -- some way or other – always seeking to get something back for ourselves in return.

People of God, pray to understand how graciously God offers us fulfilment in Jesus and the companionship of His most Holy Spirit!  Pray, indeed, for grace to appreciate with deep gratitude the good things of this life, but also beware of the satisfactions and pseudo-consolations, yes, especially the self-satisfaction, they can so easily inject into our psyche.   We are here on earth to learn that God alone is Good and Holy ... don’t sink to being satisfied with His earthly goods; rather, knowing that the heavenly Giver is infinitely better, beyond, and above all such earthly anticipations try, by the Spirit, to recognize the voice of Jesus as echoing that of His heavenly Father, when He says:

            Come, beloved of My Father, follow Me.