32nd Sunday Year C 2022

 

32^nd Sunday of Year (C)

(2^nd Maccabees 7:1-2, 9-14; 2^nd.Thessalonians 2:16 – 3:5; Luke 20:27-38)

 

Our readings this Sunday are very topical and timely because we hear much about ‘family’ these days, not so much as the basic Christian institution consisting of father, mother -- husband and wife -- and their rightly born or adopted children, but about modern, floating, ‘family-type’ relationships, concerning only one acknowledged parent, or two: complementary in their sexuality, or both of the same sex. And then there is another modern consideration, a ‘woke’ secular society and government, trying to loudly promote itself, by whittling down parental rights, authority and responsibility, in order to help -- so they say -- children of whatever parentage and in whatever need; all of which brings about the danger that even some simple Christian people may begin to think that marriage and parentage of itself is a merely natural matter.

We who are Christians and Catholics, however, whilst we are grateful for any real help given to strengthen the Christian institution of married life, confess and profess that marriage is a God-gifted institution, established by Him for a spiritual and heavenly purpose, and bringing personal and social benefits essential for human progress in true peace and right prosperity (Matthew 19:4–5):

Jesus said, “Have you not read that from the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female’ and, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’?  

God’s purpose for marriage calls for life-long, mutual and exclusive love, leading to personal -- not merely sexual -- fulfilment for the spouses; and stability, confidence, and growth for the family and indeed society as a whole; while ultimately preparing for the eternal happiness and heavenly blessedness of all who dedicated their married lives to Christ, and tried to live them in the power and promise of His Spirit.

The Second Vatican Council taught us that God Himself is the author of marriage when it declared:  The intimate community of life and love which constitutes the married state has been established by the Creator and endowed by Him with its own proper laws.

Our Faith also tells us that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God Whose Love is the ultimate, absolute, and unfailing power which finds mankind good, very good, in all its powers and possibilities, as the intention of His Creator’s thought;  and that this divine love is intended to be recognized and embraced by mankind, thus enabling them, in turn, to bear fruit and find fulfilment in the work of presiding over creation:

            Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it.

Man and woman themselves were originally created for one another, they are divinely complementary; and Jesus showed that Christian marriage -- requiring a sacred, and lovingly-unbreakable union of husband and wife -- eminently manifests this divine intention, when He authoritatively recalled that in the beginning the Creator’s plan had been:

            That they are no longer two, but one flesh.

Sin however, entered into the world; and now, especially in our modern times of Western betrayal, everyone experiences evil all around, openly portrayed and promoted by the media; and also from within his or her own life-experience.  But nevertheless, the order of creation persists, even though men and women now know life as seriously disturbed and disturbing.  To heal the wounds of sin, man and woman need anew, and so very urgently, the help of grace that God in His infinite mercy will never refuse them.  However, it is a grace originally won and supremely exemplified by Jesus Christ Who was willing to suffer Personally in order that His love might triumph in our sinful world, and without a like willingness to embrace suffering that His love might triumph in us and through us in our experience of life and living-together, men and women cannot fully achieve that union of their lives for which God created them in the beginning.

Jesus had a great respect for the institution of marriage as we see from the fact that, on the threshold of His public ministry He performed His first miracle – at His mother’s request – during, and for the success of, a wedding feast.  In the course of that ministry, Jesus taught unequivocally the original meaning of the union of man and woman as the Creator willed it from the beginning: the matrimonial union is indissoluble: God Himself has determined it:

            What God has joined together, let no man put asunder.

No matter what the trendy press may print, no matter what public figures may do, no matter how much off-course human rights activists may agitate against it, marriage is a Christian institution for man and woman only and exclusively, and it cannot be terminated or broken by any civil authority.  From these two principles we should begin to see something of the seriousness of marriage and the dignity both of the marriage bond itself and of the man and woman who together enter into that bond.

Let us now, in the light of Jesus’ teaching in the Church, have a short glance at today’s readings.  Let us begin with the Gospel reading.  You can see how the stiff-necked people whose hearts were hard, and who had forced Moses to wrongly allow them to divorce, came to regard matrimony; for the attitude of the Sadducees with their story of the seven brothers who died and the one wife who survived them all, shows neither reverence for what is holy, nor awareness of what is spiritual.  For them marriage was carnal and functional, nothing more.

However, Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees gives us guidance with regard to another and more modern error.  Marriage is not an end in itself nor is it eternal.  Marriage is, however, a pre-eminent means God has established and uses for the sanctification of people here on earth; and those who live their married life aright are thereby helped to become worthy, as Jesus said: of a place in the other world as children of the resurrection and sons of God.

However, an overly sentimental and predominantly emotional view of married love can very easily lead the partners to expect too much from it and demand too much from each other; and, quite tragically, become unforgiving in their attitude to each other.

Finally, let us have a short look at the first reading, for here is an example and a teaching which is certainly much needed today.   What a wonderful woman was shown us in that reading!  She did indeed live the role marriage had brought her: she taught her sons, she disciplined her sons, by the very love she had for them.  Let me just recall for you how she disciplined, by love, her youngest son:

In derision of the cruel tyrant, she leaned over close to her son and said in their native language: “Son, have pity on me, who carried you in my womb for nine months, nursed you for three years, brought you up, educated and supported you to your present age. I beg you, child, to look at the heavens and the earth and see all that is in them; then you will know that God did not make them out of existing things; and in the same way the human race came into existence.   Do not be afraid of this executioner, but be worthy of your brothers and accept death, so that in the time of mercy I may receive you again with them.” 

You who are mothers should recognize that YOU have, from God, the key to your children’s hearts, and that you and your husband have also God-given authority over and for your children.  Use those gifts with humility, prayer, and confidence.  Do not let your children do whatever they may want, but guide them, comfort, and, when necessary, discipline them, with love.  Realize that your children are gifts to you from God and bring them up as children of His whom He has entrusted to you; do not leave them to guide themselves or follow the example of those who have neither faith nor morals.

Parents and children are meant to thank God eternally for each other:

mothers, teach your children to respect their father;

fathers, teach your children to love their mother.

Parents both, don’t fail in your responsibility before God, because you are meant to be the first and surest teachers and exemplars about God for your children ... don’t lose that heavenly glory which will most surely be yours by loving and respecting each other, and together, serving, calmly loving and trusting God, in all the joys and vicissitudes of life.            

31st. Sunday Year C 2022

 

 

 Thirty-First Sunday (Year C)

(Wisdom 11:22 – 12:2;  2 Thessalonians 1:11 – 2:2;  Gospel of St. Luke 19:1-10)

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Dear People of God, some scholars (e.g. J.D.M. Derrett) tell us that according to the Law, Jews were not allowed to even handle money belonging -- if one can rightly use that word! -- to a publican, because it was considered to be money extorted by fraud or force, ultimately at the behest of the occupying power of Rome.   Since Zacchaeus (= ‘the Righteous’) was a chief tax(toll?)-gatherer, it was therefore presumed by his Jewish compatriots, that he himself used force and threats to exact money from sub-collectors under his control; and that those sub-collectors, in their turn, applied pressure on the poor – a fact well-known from common experience – to get the money required first of all by the Roman occupying authorities, plus what they had to pay ‘in commission’ to Zacchaeus and his ‘ilk’, and then, finally, to make whatever profit they might want or could get for themselves.  Wicked?  Yes, most wicked; but that is the way things were done in Palestine at the time of Our Lord’s public ministry, and that is why the tax-, toll-, MONEY collectors were hated in Israel.

Not only the strict and zealous observers of the Law of Moses, but also the great majority of  Israelites, in those days shared that attitude of strong hostility towards publicans: avoiding contact with them -- ostracizing them -- as best they could.  Hence Zacchaeus in today’s Gospel, being unable to get through the large and unaccommodating crowd standing along the roadside where Jesus would pass by, could not -- because of them and as a result of his own short stature -- see Him making His way through the town.  A tree, however, offered Zacchaeus a way out of his difficulty, although it would not be without the dilemma of having to clamber up it and risk exposing himself to the mockery of those observing his attempt to do so.

 Zacchaeus, though heartily despised as a publican ‘quisling’, was yet able to be in the vicinity of, even though not actually among, the crowd awaiting Jesus’ passing by.   It would appear that despite the fact of his being despised,  he was not in any direct personal danger; perhaps, because he was a chief  tax-collector who did not personally ‘grab’ the money demanded by the hated Roman occupying forces.   Soon he would be able to say to Jesus, ‘Lord, if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over’; as a top official, that is, although he could not guarantee his subordinate’s behaviour, nevertheless, he himself had not practiced extortion so far as he could remember.  He would therefore seem to have been a man of some personal integrity and consequently allowed a greater measure of tolerance by his fellow citizens of Jericho.

Zacchaeus -- a Hebrew name -- was obviously at odds with the contemporary religious authorities in Israel since he had chosen to make his career as a prominent publican.  Nevertheless, he was not dead to the traditional faith of his people, because the reputation of Jesus was such that, news of His coming to Jericho -- even if only passing through on His way to Jerusalem -- was of great interest and possible importance to Zacchaeus: for, although Jesus proclaimed the faith of the fathers, nevertheless He was not part of the current Sadducee, Scribes and Pharisees, religious ‘set up’.  Indeed, Jesus was known to be coming with a call to repentance for all believers, religiously prominent or not, obedient to God’s Law and Israel’s covenant or not; a renewal which offered the possibility for those willing to accept His teaching to become part of, enter into, what He called the ‘Kingdom of God’.   Zacchaeus realized that -- at whatever cost – he had  to see such a man!

 To do that, however, he realized that he would have to throw away his dignity and dress -- his only title to some measure of respect in Jericho -- by scrambling up that dusty, dirty tree in order to catch a glimpse of Jesus walking along the road under his somewhat perilous perch!  

Remember St. Paul’s words:

I consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ.  (Philippians 3:8)

 

In Zacchaeus’ case those words could be, ‘I consider myself, my dignity and my bearing, as so much rubbish, that I may catch a glimpse of this Jesus of Whom I hear so much.’

Therefore, as Jesus was walking silently along the street, He recognized His Father’s grace at work in a man awkwardly straddled up a tree a few yards ahead of Him.   Looking up quite deliberately at the man, and taking calm and loving notice of him, Jesus changed His mind about passing straight through the town, and called out:

             Zacchaeus, come down quickly, for today I must stay at your house.

 Zacchaeus having thus – eventually -- not only caught sight of Jesus, but even, and most amazingly of all, caught His attention, had now been publicly called to receive Him as a guest in his own house!

 However, Zacchaeus was, all of a sudden, deeply troubled at that call: for this Jesus was – Zacchaeus knew it immediately – a truly holy and mysteriously powerful man; and Zacchaeus also knew -- now most surely -- that he himself was not holy.  Oh! how honoured he felt himself to be by Jesus’ wish to stay at his house; but he did not want this wonderful Man to be ill-spoken of because of himself: he did not want Jesus to be tarred with his own, Zacchaeus’, brush! 

Therefore, as a surprisingly humble and sensitive person as well as a truly intelligent man, Zacchaeus resolved to protect Jesus by speaking out -- making full and accurate use of his own intimate knowledge of both Jewish Law and Roman practices – in such a way that Jesus’ coming into the house of a publican might not cause any disrespect for His Person or bring about any diminution of His reputation in Israel.

 And so there followed a wonderfully delicate display of mutual respect, awareness, and appreciation, which served to bring about the healing embrace of two apparently diametrically opposed people and attitudes that day:

             Zacchaeus received with joy, Him -- of Whom it was said -- ‘He has gone to stay             at the house of a sinner.’

Jesus, recognizing Zacchaeus as one sent to Him by His Father, patiently followed the publican whose heart was open to Him, though his house was as yet still closed; and Zacchaeus, for his part, even before Jesus could enter his house:

 

Stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Behold, half of my possessions, Lord, I shall give to the poor, and if I have extorted anything from anyone, I shall repay it four times over.’

  

Those words were loudly spoken, not because Zacchaeus was boasting before the Lord or whoever of the crowd might have followed them, but because he wanted it clearly understand by all, that Jesus would not be incurring any legal fault whatsoever by entering his house.   Jesus, likewise, wanted to use this His-Father-sent-opportunity to help all around, and indeed the whole people of Israel, understand the true nature of His salvific coming by addressing words of divine wisdom, goodness, and clarity to them:

Today, salvation has come to this house, because this man too is a descendant of Abraham.  For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save what was lost.

 

Love and respect (remember St. Paul speaking of the relationship between Jesus and the Church, between husband and wife?), love and respect had met!  Divine Love and deep human respect (comprising sincere humility and reverential awe) had overcome any and all division.  Jesus could – even according to the Law – accept Zacchaeus' joyful hospitality and give His own gifts to His host in return.

 And how did this most beautiful scenario of divine compassion and deep human joy, of most sensitively accommodating holiness and humble self-surrender, arise?  Because Jesus, passing through Jericho, had suddenly become aware of His Father drawing His attention to one being sent to Him: one making something of a fool of himself at that very moment, being well dressed and yet perched most uncomfortably up a tree, and suffering the mockery and probably coarse jibes of the unfriendly crowd beneath.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ there is much said about Zacchaeus among scholars who are not sure who he was!!  For us, however, he is undoubtedly a source of inspiration in our relations with Jesus, and perhaps he now actually rejoices in himself being one being so greatly privileged as to bring to our notice something of the hidden beauty of Jesus our Lord and Saviour.   Let us now, therefore, allow Zacchaeus – for love of Jesus – to help us in our service of and love for the Lord, for the lessons he can teach us are of supreme importance.

Having shown total disregard for his own personal standing,  and having made himself to look like a ‘nutter up a tree’ in order to catch just a glimpse of Jesus, does Zacchaeus not shame many Catholics who cling so tenaciously to their own self-love and obsessive solicitude for their own reputation in the eyes of others, fears perhaps greatly harming their own peace before God or even leading them to hide behind silence when the words of Jesus and the teaching of Mother Church are subject to opposition or ridicule?  Surely, Zacchaeus’ great, indeed overriding, concern for the good name of Jesus confounds the half-hearted devotion and spineless commitment of many soft-centered Catholics today.

Oh, dear People of God, you have ‘seen’ Zacchaeus yielding himself totally to the heavenly beauty of Jesus among men, and the wonder of Jesus’ own treasuring of His Father’s gift by so patiently understanding and sympathetically encouraging Zacchaeus.  Remember, all who are true disciples of Jesus are likewise gifts to Him from the Father, gifts being treasured now -- if we allow Him -- and to be treasured by Him throughout our lives for the Father.

I can do no better now than to close this address and leave you with your own memories of a most beautiful Gospel episode, and the grace of God it enshrines for all who love and will learn from it.            

 

 

30th Sunday Year C 2022

 

                30^th. Sunday, Year (C)

(Ecclesiasticus 35:12-14, 16-19; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14)

 

 

Jesus spoke this parable, Saint Luke tells us, to some who were:

Convinced of their own righteousness and despised everyone else.

However, He spoke this parable not so much to attack anyone but rather to offer healing to all; and to that end He portrayed two characters, both of them caricatures: a Pharisee praying as if he thought ALL MEN (even his fellow Pharisees!) were greedy, dishonest and adulterous … an opinion to which no one could give credence; and, on the other hand, an Israelite tax-collector working for the hated Romans who expected him to get the standard of living he desired from making surcharges which the Romans themselves did not demand, and yet apparently praying with the utmost devotion and obvious sincerity in the Temple soon to be destroyed by those Romans.

Two caricatures because Jesus wanted to make perfectly clear a teaching which He needed to impress upon them because of its absolutely essential importance for any man’s relationship with God: a teaching that offered hope to those near despair and demanded humility from those whose apparent sincerity and devotion, though highly regarded by many was actually being eaten away by a voracious pride in their party’s much over-valued human traditions.   For such healing to be effective it was necessary for the wrong to be recognized and for the medication to be rightly applied.

Jesus would seem to have addressed the parable to Pharisees who were, indeed, wanting to be righteous before God, because the whole point of the parable is show that they are not actually achieving what they wanted:

I tell you this man (the tax collector) went down to his house justified (that is accepted by, acceptable to, God) rather than the other.

Jesus, Who was recognized as a Rabbi, that is, a teacher, was saying, in other words, if you want to be acceptable to, righteous before, God, you are going about it the wrong way; have a good look at look at the tax-collector here with you in the Temple, and learn this from Me:

Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

So, what was the great fault – according to Jesus’ parable – that the Pharisee’s were committing?  Jesus made it ludicrously clear: 

God, I thank You that I am not like other men -- greedy, dishonest, adulterers.

No doubt some of the Pharisee’s contemporaries were well-known money lovers, unjust (pseudo-religious) people, and some, maybe, adulterers; others may, at times in the past, have been guilty of such behaviour; nevertheless, he could in no way claim that ALL his contemporaries, especially his fellow pharisees, were like that.  If he had simply said ‘that I am not like some other men’, or even perhaps ‘many other men’, he might have been speaking truly.  But Jesus’ whole purpose was underline as much as possible – and mockery was a most effective weapon with which to deflate those so proud of their religious practices and public esteem – and so His caricature has the Pharisee praying those ludicrous words:

            My God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity.   

As regards the tax collector, he was indeed reckoned among the worst of extortioners: exacting often-excessive taxes on behalf of the hated occupying Roman power; he was also unjust beyond-the-pale, so to speak, knowing and caring nothing of the Law of Moses, the great pride of Israel and deeply respected though not always obeyed by most Jews of those days, especially in face of the Romans.  How could a practicing tax-collector behave in such way: he was openly and, most humbly, praying in the manner of a pious Jew, in the Temple: in that regard, although his dress bespoke a tax-collector, his actions were those of a deeply religious man.  Our Pharisee, of course, saw nothing other than the clothes of one he despised above all.

That would seem to have been the characteristic trait of the Pharisees in general at that time against which Jesus was wanting to warn them and offer healing: regarding all others with potential disdain, especially tax-collectors, extortioners, adulterers, and all those unjust before the Law!

It is really quite amazing to think that serious and sincerely religious men could have such a blanket attitude!  What was at the back of it all?  Well, Jesus would seem to be emphasizing, highlighting, in order to bring into the open, an attitude that was, to a large extent, endemic in the Pharisaic observance of the Law:

I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.

This pharisaic (sic!) tendency presents a perennial danger, People of God, for committed individuals of all persuasions; and in early Christianity, we find Paul seeking to root it out when it began to show its head in the Corinthian church he had founded (1 Cor. 4:7):

Who sees anything different in you? What do you have that you did not receive?  If then you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive it?

God’s gifts are given, generally speaking, to be used to further God’s purposes in the world around.  They are also given to draw the recipient closer to God: gratitude felt should be expressed to God, Personally; and, in that way, should lead to closer personal relationship with God, to a deeper appreciation of, and responsiveness to, Him.

When, however, religious practice becomes merely the external observance of certain precepts and ordinances rather than a personal commitment and response to God known and loved, then, gifts received can be personally appropriated and used to exalt the recipient’s pride and imagined superiority over others, instead of establishing his humility and bolstering his gratitude to God.  Moreover, when religion thus becomes cold and impersonal, even good deeds, being done not out of love for the all Holy One, but as claims to personal holiness, become quite worthless before God, nothing but further additions to a sum total of personal achievement and pride.

That was the state of the Pharisee in Our Lord’s parable: and nothing could better recall him to true religion than the sight of a repentant tax-collector dead to all but God in the Temple.

There is only one sure proof of holiness: love for Jesus, and in Him, for the Father, by the Spirit.  Holiness is not, in its essence, proven by miracles performed, nor by good deeds done, prayers said, pilgrimages made, money given, or indulgences gained; and of course, worldly reputation, the approval of authorities, or popularity among peers, have no true relevance here.  All of these can indeed, under the right conditions, be indications of some measure of holiness; but love alone is the authentic and certain criterion of that God-given holiness which is charity.

This teaching is sublimely expressed by St. Paul, again writing to his church community in Corinth: 

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing. (1 Cor. 13:1-4):

Let us now listen to Our Lord answering the question once put to Him in the Gospel by a Scribe of pharisaic persuasion (Mark 12: 28-33):

        “Which is the first commandment of all?"  Jesus answered him, "The first of all the                          commandments is:  Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love           the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all              your strength.'  This is the first commandment.  And the second, like it, is this: 'You shall                  love your neighbour as yourself.'  There is no other commandment greater than these.” 

And let us turn back to our readings for today and see how St. Paul himself manifested that very spirit so badly distorted by the Pharisee in the Gospel parable:

I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.  Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness.

At that point one might think that Paul was dangerously close to being like the Pharisee counting up personal items of merit.  But notice how he continues, for Paul was not one to think his righteousness to be his own, personal, achievement; nor that he was alone among men in his endeavours and in his success:

There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have longed for His appearance.

Finally, hear and admire his total humility and childlike trust before God when, fully aware of his imminent execution, he refers to his life’s achievements as having been done, in him and through him, by God (2 Tim. 4:17-18):                                                               

The Lord stood by me and lent me strength, so that I might be His instrument in making the full proclamation of the gospel for the whole pagan world to hear; and thus, I was rescued from the lion’s jaws.  The Lord will rescue me from every attempt to do me harm, and bring me safely into His heavenly kingdom.  Glory to Him for ever and ever!  Amen.