The Epiphany of Our Lord Year A 2023

 

The Epiphany of Our Lord

(Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

 

 This great solemnity of the Epiphany evokes the majesty, glory, and power, of the Promised One Who comes: a majesty testified to by the Father Himself speaking from heaven at Jesus’ baptism in the Jordan; a glory manifested and confirmed again by the voice of the Father at His Transfiguration of Jesus on the mount; a super-abundant power and loving compassion displayed at the wedding feast of Cana where Jesus changed water into rich and copious new wine.  These signs give us unshakeable confidence that what Jesus has promised, He can and will fulfil in and for His Church, in and for you and me. 

As you heard in the Gospel reading, this humble Lord of majesty, glory, and power, is the One to Whom the heavens themselves -- nature’s primeval powers -- gave obedient witness by means of the guiding star; the One Whom the inspired prophets and the ancient scriptures had foretold would come, even disclosing the very place of His birth, Bethlehem in the land of Judah; the One recognized and worshipped by the Magi -- the first-fruits of the Gentiles -- as supreme King, Prophet, and Priest.  Yes indeed, we worshipping People of God are in tune with creation itself, and are united with our ancient fathers and with all who, throughout the ages, have humbly searched for God to the best of their abilities; and, being endowed with such a privilege, we have very, very good reason to rejoice on this most holy day.

Our Blessed Lord and Saviour does not reserve this His glory to Himself, as a right understanding of our first reading shows:

Rise up in splendour, Jerusalem (Mother Church)! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you.   See, darkness covers the earth, and thick clouds cover the peoples; but upon you the Lord shines, and over you appears His glory. Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance.

In these days of scandals, contradiction and rejection, we must never forget the truth of Isaiah’s prophecy, for Mother Church is -- even -- today supremely privileged as the spouse of Christ: for her proclamation of Jesus’ Gospel still enables whole peoples surrounded by the darkness of this world to walk safely and surely by the Holy Spirit along the way of Jesus’ teaching.

Let us consider those prophetic words a little more closely:

Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance.

Mother Church can, and does, enrich the world with her proclamation of the truth of Jesus; nevertheless, besides the light of Mother Church’s teaching, the shining radiance of her people’s lives is required that the nations may be brought to walk with confidence and joy in the footsteps of the Lord.   That means, that all of us, each and every ordinary member of the Church. has a necessary role to play in enabling her to fulfil the commission given her by the Lord Jesus to continue in our world of today the work of salvation that He started by His own life, death, and resurrection.  How are we to rise to such a calling?

Jesus once told a Samaritan woman asking Him for the water of life:

Salvation is from the Jews.

And, in that respect, St. Paul teaches (cf. Romans 2:28s):

One is not a Jew outwardly. True circumcision is not outward, in the flesh.   Rather, one is a Jew inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, not the letter.

Jesus went on to tell us how we can show forth the shining radiance of Mother Church:

The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed, the Father seeks such people to worship Him.

And St. Paul again (Philippians 3:3) took up Jesus’ teaching most faithfully:

We are the true circumcision, we who worship through the Spirit of God, who boast in Christ Jesus, and do not put our confidence in flesh.

That is the only, worthy programme we can set before ourselves as disciples of Jesus in the world of today: to worship the Father in Spirit and Truth, that is, to worship the Father, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and according to the Truth of Jesus’ Good News.

The Word of God, the Good News of Jesus’ proclamation made during His time on earth and continuing in His Church through all ages and all lands, is a Word that does not return empty to God (Isaiah 55:11):

The word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end for which I sent it.

That means, that if we hear and embrace the truth of Jesus’ Good News in sincerity -- trying to understand, wanting to love and serve Him, and thus come to knowledge of the Father Who sent Him -- that is, if we sincerely seek Jesus, then that Word, that Truth, will achieve the end for which It has been passed down for our hearing, thanks to the Spirit of Jesus at work in us: the Spirit of prayer Who supplies for our inability to pray at times, the Spirit of power Who enables us to do what is beyond our merely natural powers. 

Having found Jesus and worshipped Him in Spirit and in Truth, the Magi did not find it hard to leave without meeting Herod again.  There was, indeed, much splendour in Herod’s palace, there were many gifts awaiting  them on his tables and flattery a-plenty from his own lips and those of his courtiers, but what was that in comparison with the peace and joy they had just experienced in the cave at Bethlehem?  Could those who there had been so privileged to hear, or hear of, the angels’ chorus, ever want to hear, let alone be seduced by, the siren music of Herod’s dancers and the lascivious pleasures of scents and cushions, voluptuousness and wine?

But, as you all well know dear People of God, not all presumed members of Mother Church are like the Magi; far too many priests in our times have allowed themselves to be seduced by pleasures of the flesh, and what is yet worse, there are far too many seeking to justify such scandals by pseudo-Christian talk of love and fellowship, freedom, and joy in the Lord!

And then, delighting in such betrayal from within the Church, the world’s information media try to make sure that all young people from their earliest years hear all about such lasciviousness: hypocritically, most loudly and profusely, decried by the treacherous, and most joyfully lapped-up by the lecherous.

However, for all who have made the Magi’s trip to Bethlehem and have begun to worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth, the following words of St. Paul (Philippians 3:13s.) express all that is necessary and desirable:

Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

However, today, it is essential for us in Mother Church to realize just what we are meant to be fighting against … what programme of Jesus we are called to give our lives (and deaths!) to furthering.

The stark challenge of Jesus to the world of today is the same as that which He made abundantly clear to the leaders and people of the Jewish theocracy at the beginning of His public ministry: He had come to destroy sin in God’s Chosen People’s practice of their divinely-covenanted faith, and to eradicate sin from the hearts and minds of His authentic disciples by His own Good News, by the Gift of His own most Holy Spirit, and by the solemn promise of eternal life as truly adopted, and well-loved, Children of God, fit to have a place at His festive table in His heavenly Kingdom.

That challenge of Jesus is Mother Church’s commission, her work in and for the world of today.  She must seek to destroy sin in the religious, social, political, and economic world man has created, and to do that she must, first of all, seek to destroy sin in individual men, and above all in each and every one of us who profess ourselves proud to have received our Catholic inheritance.

Mother Church’s task today is not to re-convert peoples who have tasted and rejected Christianity, by making things easier, cosier, more natural (not so super-natural!), for their practice.  Her task now is to propose to all men and women of good will the glory of Jesus proclaimed by the Apostles and maintained throughout the ages by her dogmatic (rock of ages!) Tradition and her grateful and disciplined obedience. Thus may she help men and women of today to look humbly at Jesus and -- glimpsing something of His Personal goodness, beauty, and truth -- to recognize the fact of their own sinfulness by joyfully embracing the Christian hope for the peace and joy of eternal life in the Father’s heavenly home, purified by the Blood of the Lamb and renewed by the Gift of the Spirit.

As we too seek in all sincerity to keep fresh in our hearts, and hear ever-anew in our minds, Mother Church’s proclamation of the Word of God, may that leading-light draw us to worship Jesus whole-heartedly as the Father expects of each of us personally; and may we gradually discover  our true selves by being gradually trans-formed into a unique likeness of the Son, by the Holy Spirit, as a personal gift for the Father of us all.

 

  

 

Mary, Mother of God 2022

 

Mary, Mother of God (2022)

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Who appreciates Mary of Nazareth, the mother of Jesus the Son-of-God-made-flesh, today?  Very few, indeed, because so many in today’s world love, seek, and delight in pleasure, sex, and even promiscuity in so far as it makes absolutely clear their own individuality, their law-less individuality and independence, their freedom to be what they want to be!   And that, of course, implies doing what they want to do in so far as the society they choose to dwell in can stomach it.

But, notice dear People of God for whom and to whom I am now writing, those last few words: ‘to be what they want, and to do what they want’, can be seen as pre-eminently characteristic of Mary, Mother of God and our mother in God!!

And yet, how different the results of those characteristics in the worldlings I first mentioned, who will end up sick in themselves, sick of themselves, and ‘spewed out of the land’ (cf. Leviticus 18:28) and kingdom of God; whereas in Mary, we find a beautifully human luminary, second only to her beloved Son, in God’s heavenly constellation of beauty, goodness, and truth.

How has our world come to so misunderstand the wonder that was and is Mary, the mother of Jesus?

The reason is because Mary is and always has been, regarded in Mother Church’s teaching as the touchstone for our right understanding of Jesus Himself: and so many today do not appreciate Mary aright because they have not understood Mother Church’s teaching about Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, Who is, she tells us, both Perfect God and Perfect Man.

‘Perfect Man’ means that Mary’s Son was an infant, a little boy, before He became a youth and ultimately attained manhood.  Joseph would have guided the youngster into manhood, but the formative years of infancy and childhood were Mary’s domain to whom the Child had been given from conception: Mary taught Jesus the fundamentals of human life and living!  She had been chosen to teach Him as man for His heavenly Father.

Mary was sublimely wise in her understanding of the Hebrew Scriptures, which are now our Old Testament, writings inspired by God to teach the children of Israel how to become children of God.   But Mary was specially endowed by the Spirit of God to become the mother of the Father’s Word and thus give Him flesh and blood to become perfect Man; consequently, Mary understood the Spiritual truths of Israel’s Scriptures as no other before or after her Son Himself, and she gradually taught her Son in His early years precisely what God had wanted Israel to learn … and even more, because words, even the words of Scripture, can never convey the fullness and beauty of God’s intent, and Mary listened for and to God better than any prophet or priest.

Even in full manhood Jesus could still be taught … about the perfection of  human sympathy and understanding befitting God’s perfect Man … by His human mother inspired by the Spirit of His heavenly Father as we learn from the marriage feast at Cana. 

Jesus had just started out on His public mission after having been baptized by John in the Jordan, and then tempted in the Judean desert by Satan.  He had come to the wedding with several chosen disciples when His mother told Him of their hosts’ dilemma … and her words were not just information, they contained a request, however hidden.   But Jesus, thus recently endowed and proclaimed by His Father for His divine vocation, was initially inclined to act instinctively as a young man most zealous to fulfil the mission entrusted to Him by His Father.  He was not going to be told how or when to use His divine power for simply human purposes! 

Mary however, guided by the Spirit within her and backed-up, so to speak, by the heavenly Father, completed her request in such a way as to give Jesus the opportunity to embrace what was ultimately His Father’s will: that Jesus at the very beginning of His ministry, be fully manifested as the One called to bring ultimate joy and fulfilment for all who would love God and each other.   That ‘initial manifestation’ of a fulness both divine and human that was to come only after His death and Resurrection was, by the Father’s good pleasure, Mary’s maternal blessing for her Son’s future career as our Saviour, our Glory, and our great Joy.

Jesus would always treasure and protect His Father’s wishes for Him above all; friends and relatives might interrupt ‘Your mother and your brothers are wanting to see you’ but Jesus’ answer was henceforth always as fully-grown Man, ‘these who do God’s will and are now listening to My words are my mother and my brothers’.   And Mary would never again put herself forward.  But men and women of today’s truly adulterous generation (Jesus’ words!) must never forget Jesus’ ultimate commendation of His mother to all His true disciples:

                 BEHOLD, YOUR MOTHER!

Respect, love, and treasure her if you would be My true disciple!

 

 

 

 

Christmas: Mass during the day, 2022

 

CHRISTMAS: MASS DURING THE DAY, 2022

(Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18)

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 Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today is special, even in this country which no longer believes the Christian faith.  Why is Christmas so very special for us who do believe, who are believing and practicing Catholics and Christians? 

Of course, the supreme reason why Christmas is so special to us is that at Christmas we celebrate the birth -- as man born of the Virgin Mary of Nazareth – of God’s heavenly, only-begotten, Son: born, not of man, but by the power and grace of God’s most Holy Spirit, so that His mother, Mary of Nazareth, at His conception, in His birth was, and subsequently, throughout her life, remained, always a true virgin: the mother of a beautiful Child Who was the most sublime Gift of God.

This absolutely unique Child was perfect God and perfect man, and yet there was for Him, in His human being, a problem: one not recognized early on, but there, nevertheless, at the very centre of His being and gradually-developing consciousness, a question for Himself to solve: who is My father??

His mother always referred to St. Joseph as His father, and St. Joseph always behaved as such: loving, protecting, guiding and teaching the young Jesus through His teens and early manhood.  Jesus saw, He knew, that Mary and Joseph were one for Him, and He loved them both with all His heart, but while Mary was undoubtedly His mother, just as He was her child, the boy Jesus could not quite say that Joseph was His father; because He had an awareness, deep in His being, that God --- the God to Whom He Himself, together with Mary and Joseph, and all Israel, prayed, the God Who had made the whole of beautiful creation where, in which, He lived and played, with which worked as ‘the carpenter’s son’ --- yes, indeed, God Himself, sometimes seemed to say something to Him; something that touched Him so very, very, deeply, something that led Him to think that GOD was the  only One Whom He could fully, most humbly and gratefully, call Father.  

It all came to a surprising head when Joseph, Mary, and Jesus went on their annual pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem.  Jesus was about 12 years old and He was so very impressed by the Temple worship He witnessed and took part in, by the words about God and the Scriptures that He heard from the priests, scribes, and holy people He met there, that He entirely forgot to turn up for the caravan preparing to leave for home, the caravan which, consequently, left without Him: Mary and Joseph having thought that He, Jesus, was with other young people excitedly running hither and thither, helping here and there, as they slowly moved off.

Jesus was, as I said, engrossed with what He witnessed and heard in the Temple and its precincts; but He was even more aware of and engrossed by a far deeper awareness of the One speaking in His inmost being: speaking so secretly, so meaningfully, and so very purposefully, that three days passed by before Mary and Joseph eventually found Him in the Temple precincts still listening, questioning and, occasionally, speaking about God.

As you will remember, Mary reproved her Son with the words:

Son, why have You treated us this way?  Behold, Your father and I have been anxiously looking for You!

Those words of Mary were suddenly determinative for Jesus, Who quite deliberately, calmly, and yet so very decisively said:

Why is it that you were looking for Me?  Did you not know that I must be in MY FATHER’S house?     (Luke 2: 48-49)

Mary and Joseph did not understand of course, but they all left together,  with the young Son now being led by that mysterious inner voice as well as – for the present – by the voices of His mother and presumed father, whom He obediently lived with, worked with, and loved in their home at Nazareth.

Mary treasured all these things in her heart for things were never quite the same again: her Son was manifestly growing in wisdom before and, more and more, with God; and also in His standing among local people gradually becoming aware of Jesus’ secret ‘something’.

The decisive moment came when Jesus was near 30 years old.  Still living in Nazareth and working as the son of the carpenter, He heard about His cousin John the Baptist’s work and pondered in His mind and heart on how God seemed to be working with John in that work.  Jesus’ pondering was, however, more listening than thinking; and His listening for that inner voice was always accompanied by His Own prayerful response to, and longing for, Him Whom Jesus now recognized exclusively as ‘My Father’, (cfr. Mt: 23:9):

Call no one on earth your father; you have but one Father in heaven.

After years of reading and learning as He searched the Scriptures for whatever they could tell Him of His Father in heaven; after years of humbly obeying and fitting-in-with the events of His ordinary life and duties in Nazareth; after years of prayerful longing for communion with His hidden Father; Jesus was in no doubt whatsoever when His Father, the Voice in the depths of His own Being, ultimately spoke to Him!

Jesus immediately left Nazareth and went to where John was baptizing in the Jordan in Judea!  Jesus went to meet, hear, respond to His Father now guiding Him to John the Baptist!!

And there, following His guiding voice, Jesus humbly joined the penitents asking for John’s baptism, and finally, coming up from the waters of the Jordan, He heard His Father’s voice from a cloud, and saw the Holy Spirit like a dove come down upon Him (Luke 3:21–22):

After all the people had been baptized and Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, heaven was opened and the holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are My beloved Son; with You I am well pleased.”

And there, dear People of God, we have the fulness of meaning for Jesus’ birth as the God-given Child of Mary, the Virgin of Nazareth: He comes to be our Saviour, our Redeemer from sin, and to be our Inspiration, showing us the best way to live the new life He has won for us as children of God, seeking to know, love, and serve their heavenly Father to the utmost:

You shall seek the LORD, your God; and you shall indeed find Him when you search after Him with your whole heart and your whole soul.   (Deuteronomy 4:29)

Were those the very words Jesus Himself first took to heart when He began searching and praying to answer that basic question of His Being in human flesh:

          Who is My Father?