Corpus Christi, Year A

(Deuteronomy 8:2-3, 14-16; 1 Corinthians 10: 16-17; John 6:51-58)

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Dear People of God, today we learn what lengths Jesus went to in order to make people think about, pay attention to, what He was saying; He did not aim to be popular, but He did, most passionately, want to be understood.

In the gospel reading He declared:

I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is My flesh for the life of the world.

As you might well imagine, the Jews were outraged at such words and murmured among themselves:

            How can this man give us his flesh to eat?

What did Jesus do?  He went on to say something yet more difficult for pious Jews even to hear let alone accept:

Most assuredly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in you.

For a Jew, that last statement was absolutely outrageous because it seemed quite contrary to the command God had given Noah and his sons in the beginning:

God blessed Noah and his sons, and said to them: "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth.  Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. I have given you all things, even as the green herbs; but you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.”   (Genesis 9:1-4)

This same command was, moreover, given its crowning confirmation in the Law itself given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Leviticus 7:26-27):

You shall not eat any blood in any of your dwellings, whether of bird or beast.  Whoever eats any blood, that person shall be cut off from his people.

What then is the significance of the blood?  Let us learn more from the Old Testament books of Leviticus (17:11) and Deuteronomy (12:23, 27):

The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; it is the blood that makes atonement for the soul. 

Be sure that you do not eat the blood, for the blood is the life; you may not eat the life with the meat.  The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God, and you shall eat the meat.

Our faith teaches us that God is Life, and when we hear from the Old Testament prophets that the life of the flesh is in the blood, indeed the blood is the life, therefore we can understand why the Law said that blood of what lives belongs to God and cannot by drunk by man but must be poured out on the altar of the Lord your God. 

Why, therefore, did Jesus speak so provocatively to the Jews by first of all saying, “eat My flesh” and then following it up by the even more provocatively objectionable words, “drink My blood”?   What was He trying to express that was so important, so sublimely important, that He felt the need to go to such lengths in order to make His hearers give close attention to, and think deeply about, what He was saying?

First of all, He wanted to show the sacrificial character of His forthcoming death:

The blood of your sacrifices shall be poured out on the altar of the LORD your God.

However, and above all my dear brothers and sisters in Christ, here we are given a startlingly clear picture of the uniquely Christian awareness of the mystery of God’s love for us, as also of the divine humility of Jesus.  For, although Jesus’ blood -- the Blood of the God’s only begotten Son -- was most sinfully poured out by us, nevertheless, as St. Paul (Ephesians 2:4) assures us:

God, Who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us;

turned that supreme evil into a supreme blessing:

Even when we were dead in trespasses, (God) made us alive together with Christ.

In the light of the Christian revelation and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we learn that, by being allowed to eat the Body and drink the Blood of Jesus we are thereby able to imbibe life – divine life, eternal life -- and ultimately attain to a share in the Sonship of Christ Himself!!  

How great is the Father’s love for us, People of God!   The blood of all creatures pertains to Him Who is the Lord of Life; how dear beyond all measure, therefore, how unutterably precious, is the Blood of His only-begotten Son-made-flesh? The humiliation which Jesus so lovingly embraced out of obedience to His Father and out of compassion for us is beyond our comprehension: pouring out His Most Precious Blood, as it were, for our use, our profit, for our blessing, and ultimately, for our salvation!!

How sublimely, then, is that text of Leviticus fulfilled:

For the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given It (the Blood of the Immaculate Lamb of God) to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the Blood that makes atonement for the soul (and this blood is the most Precious Blood of the Risen and eternally living Son of God, made Man). 

People of God, we live in evil times, we live in a society which condones, and indeed admires, all sorts of excesses: a society which, too often, teaches its children to get, not give; to seek for pleasure rather than practice discipline; to seek advantage and success rather than strive for honour and integrity.  We Catholics however, in response to God’s wondrous love, we -- as disciples of Jesus – must remember the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs (9:6) where we read:

Forsake foolishness that you may live; advance in the way of understanding.

And here we can advance markedly by appreciating another, essential, aspect of Jesus’ insistence that we eat His flesh and drink His blood.

In our world money is supreme, and most of it -- and consequently most of the world’s advantages and benefits -- goes to those who are top-dogs or already rich, the important ones, the famous and the popular; while the underdogs, the poor, the insignificant and the unpopular, have to be satisfied with what remains over.  Jesus saw it all and warned His disciples:

You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. (Matthew 20:25)

Jesus knew that such a situation was the expression of sin’s presence in the world, and having become Man in order to conquer sin and bring redemption for mankind, He therefore went on to say:

It shall not be so among you.

To that end, therefore, Jesus insisted repeatedly that no one could be saved by their own native genius or power of whatever sort: personal salvation cannot be won or acquired by personal endeavour, advantage, or success, using natural talents, it can only be received as a gift subsequent on a personal encounter with, and loving response to, Jesus.

Jesus speaks of His own Body and Blood:

Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you do not have life in you.  Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life;

to make it absolutely clear that the supreme blessing of salvation and eternal life can, ultimately, only come to men from without ourselves; that is, as Jesus’, God’s, gift.

In Jesus’ Church, in preparation for the coming Kingdom of God, all thus start, once again, on an equal footing  (1 Corinthians 10:16-17):

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the Blood of Christ?  The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the Body of Christ?  For we, though many, are one bread and one body; for we all partake of that one Bread.   

That ‘one bread and one cup’ are the source of all grace and every blessing for us, and on receiving them we encounter Christ, the Risen Lord, Himself; and, in that encounter we are in the presence of, and alone with, Him: there is no one else listening to our conversation; we are free to say, ask for, what we want, totally free to be ourselves with Him Who knows, and what is much more, appreciates, not only who we are but also what we want to be.  St. Paul (Galatians 4:9) puts it this way:

Now you have known God, or rather are known by God.

My dear People, whatever natural gifts each of us may have are not given us solely to further our own personal advancement and salvation, they are bestowed upon us also for the benefit of the society in which we live and, indeed, of the whole world.  Eternal salvation will only be ours as a result of our personal encounter of faith, and relationship of love, with and in response to Jesus, present among us as Christ and Saviour above all in the Eucharist; an encounter and relationship to be sustained, developed, and deepened by our correspondence with the inspirational guidance of His own Most Holy Spirit in our daily living and final dying as St. Paul (Ephesians 5:15–20) advised his converts:

Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.  Therefore, do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord;  giving thanks always and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God the Father.

Indeed, giving thanks above all for the wondrous beauty and goodness, the infinite mercy and compassion, of God our Father made manifest to us in and through the Life, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus His Son and our Redeemer.

We must realize, therefore, that although we are obliged to struggle at times in order to resist and overcome earthly inclinations which would lead us, through sin and self-indulgence, to death beyond the grave; nevertheless, as disciples of Jesus, our life as a whole should rather be experienced as, and characterized by, an ever deepening and developing awareness of the love and beauty both surrounding and awaiting us, as we learn, in Jesus, so to love our heavenly Father, that we ultimately receive -- as children of God -- a share in the heavenly inheritance of His beloved Son, thanks to the saving grace won for us by Jesus and bestowed upon us throughout our earthly pilgrimage by His Most Holy Spirit.   To the One God, therefore, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all glory, praise, and honour, for ever and ever.    Amen.

Trinity Sunday, Year A

(Exodus 34:4-6, 8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18)

 

God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.  But whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 

 

Dear Catholic and Christian People, Jesus came among us -- was ‘sent by His Father’ as He loved to say -- as perfect God and perfect man, and believers in Him were and are able to receive everlasting life because, as Word-of-God-made-flesh, Jesus was and is life itself.

 

Our Lord and Saviour, Jesus of Nazareth, does not merely represent God’s love for us but presents, offers, it to us in a way most supremely ‘accessible’ for our human minds and hearts, by the Gift of His most Holy Spirit and His own Eucharistic Presence.   That is why whoever does not believe has already been condemned -- not by God however, but by him or her-self – because whoever will not accept God’s love, obviously cannot be embraced by the eternal God and must therefore perish, for God is life.

 

That, dear People of God, is a fact of the spiritual life.

 

Just as whoever will not eat food, drink water, or breath air, will thereby die; so whoever wills not, chooses not, to believe in God’s only-begotten Son among us, will, thereby and therefore, die spiritually and eternally.   And that is in no way cruel, dear People of God, for there is nothing cruel in a fact of life as St. Paul insists (Romans 9:20):

Will what is made, say to its maker, ‘Why have you created me so?’    

 

Originally, God did not create us in His own likeness so that we might be free to run wild like the animals, free to just grow in beauty and stature like the plants.  After the devil had deceived Adam and Eve, He sent His only-begotten Son to become one of us, One with us, that He might re-create us according to His Father’s plan because of His unfailing obedience-human-flesh to His Father’s commands, about which Jesus said:

 

The Father Himself Who sent Me has given Me a commandment (and) I know that His commandment is eternal life. (John 12: 49-50)

 

By such loving obedience in our flesh to the very end of His life on earth, Jesus, rose again, taking our flesh to eternal life, so that each one of us -- by the help of His most Holy Spirit -- might ourselves become redeemed flesh as members of His mystical Body -- able to thrive before God, and thus fulfil God’s original plan that His human creation might find fulfilment of being – mind, heart, body and soul – by giving thanks, praise and glory to God the Father of all in the beatitude of heaven.

 

Jesus of Nazareth is, for us, the Way (in His Body), the Truth (in His teaching and example), and the Life (by the power and inspiration of His saving Death and Resurrection, now offered to us by the Gift of His Most Holy Spirit).

 

After His bar-mitzva youthful experience of God His Father mediated to Him by the Liturgy of the Temple in Jerusalem (‘My Father’s house’), Jesus spent eighteen years in Nazareth working with Joseph and waiting for His heavenly Father’s call.  He eventually learned  of John the Baptist’s ministry and, it would seem, in order to admire His Father’s work through John, and to draw as physically close as possible to that manifest Presence, He left His mother and home at Nazareth and went to witness John’s baptizing in the Jordan where -- to His Father’s great joy – He, the Son of God – humbly joined Himself to those confessing pilgrims and humble penitents; showing Himself thereby to be indeed, even instinctively, truly also a Son of Man.

 

That inspiration to leave Nazareth and search for His Father was a direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, not just a deeply spiritual aspiration born of the Temple liturgy as before years before.  And so, this decisive act of Jesus was authenticated most manifestly by the Father embracing His Son and bestowing the Holy Spirit upon Him before John the Baptist’s very eyes, so that He -- the unknown from Nazareth -- was now publicly endowed to inaugurate His public mission of salvation and redemption for mankind, and seal the ultimate destruction of Satan and his strangle-hold over men.

 

Likewise, when Jesus later took Peter, James, and John with Him to the mountain top where He was transfigured before them, surely it was, at that most decisive moment, the Spirit’s direct inspiration and the Father’s will that brought Jesus where the Father wanted to glorify Him before His specially chosen disciples, and where, with the witness and testimony of Moses and Elijah representing all those prophets and martyrs who, at God’s behest, had throughout OT times spoken of and worked for the Messiah’s advent to Israel, He willed to strengthen, enlighten, and embolden His beloved Son before the trials so ominously awaiting  and threatening Him.  

 

Let us therefore, dear People of God, try live out our spiritual life in a ‘Trinitarian’ way, so to speak, ever seeking with Jesus, following His teaching and His example, for the Father in all things, under the power and spiritual guidance guidance of His most Holy Spirit, bestowed on us through His sacraments, above all the most holy Eucharist, and in our own patient obedience and personal loving prayer.

 

Before my Catholic days, as an aspiring lieder and concert hall singer, I was for several years at the Royal Academy of Music in London and I sought to take advantage of what that great city offered by hearing as much music of the highest quality as I could.  My aim was not so much to continually and critically assess with my mind what I heard but to imbibe into my very being what was beautiful and true musically … and even today nearly 70 years I still delight to hear ‘my’ local blackbirds giving me wonderful lessons on tonal quality and voice production!

 

Now that is not unlike my present aspiration to living the spiritual life in a ‘Trinitarian’ way.   Try to live with Jesus as much as possible, dear People of God!

 

Just as a blackbird can still always speak to, teach, me about singing; let Catechism doctrine, may holy reading, Catholic devotions, and the lessons of life itself -- such as gratitude for blessings of both happiness and suffering that have deepened your understanding and beautified your appreciation of life – give access and opportunity for the Holy Spirit to speak to you about Jesus, and about the Father’s amazing love for you.

 

It is a matter of patiently wanting and longing; not trying to think, imagine, work out, for there is so much of self in such endeavours.  Infinitely better, consider what the Psalmist (51:8) says of God:

 

            Behold You desire true sincerity, and secretly You teach me wisdom.

           

It is by constantly wanting, hoping, watching, waiting, and longing for Him and ever-asking Him to teach you about God, the Father, Who is, as Jesus Himself said,

 

            My God and your God, My Father and your Father.

 

Here we should most profitably recall Our Blessed Lady, Mother Church’s supreme model and example, in her love for Jesus, who, Scripture tells us, ‘treasured all these things in her heart’.    Dear People of God, let Mary help you, may the Holy Spirit lead and ‘inspire’ you, to know and ever more appreciate the wondrous beauty and purity of Mother Church’s doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and to celebrate it both humbly and whole-heartedly in your own personal liturgy of love and admiration, prayer and thanksgiving, and life-long endeavour.

(2023)

Pentecost, Year A

 

(Acts 2:1-11; First Corinthians 12:3-7, 12-13; John 20:19-23) 

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the reading from the Gospel of John should have seemed a little strange to you because Jesus first of all gave the Holy Spirit to the Apostles gathered in the upper room:

Jesus said to them again, "Peace to you! As the Father has sent Me, I also send you."   And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said to them, "Receive the Holy Spirit.  If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."

Jesus was preparing His Apostles, whom He was soon to send out in His Name to forgive sins and transmit a new and potentially eternal life, by giving them the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit in their personal lives and public ministry.  You might ask, then, what was strange about that?

This is what was strange: after thus receiving the Holy Spirit from Jesus, the disciples did not, in fact, start preaching everywhere; actually, they went back to Galilee and to their fishing, where Jesus appeared to them once more.  Now that is strange; but it is also very instructive.

In our first reading from the Acts of the Apostles we were told of another, subsequent, bestowal of the Spirit, and this time a public bestowal, where the Spirit descended upon the Church as a whole:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.  Then there appeared to them divided tongues, as of fire, and one sat upon each of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.

Let me bring out clearly for you the difference between these two occasions:

Then, the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled, for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, and said to them, "Peace be with you."

On that first occasion, mentioned by St. John in his Gospel, there was only a small group gathered -- gathered in fear -- a group where not even all the future apostles were present, because we are expressly told:

Thomas, called the Twin, one of the Twelve, was not with them when Jesus came.

Now let us reconsider the second occasion actually heard in today’s reading from the Acts of the Apostles:

When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place.  

That was indeed a gathering of the whole Church, as is made clear by the emphatic words: all with one accord in one place; and it was after this public bestowal of the Spirit upon the whole Church gathered together as one, that the disciples spontaneously began to praise God:

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance … speaking the wonderful works of God.

And it was only after this giving of the Spirit to the whole Church that the Apostles -- in the person of Peter -- began to carry out their individual commission(s) to proclaim and to offer salvation, through faith in the Gospel, to all their hearers:

Peter, standing up with the eleven, raised his voice and said to them, "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and heed my words.  For these are not drunk -- as you suppose -- since it is only the third hour of the day; but this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: 'And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God, that I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh.’ Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ." (Acts 2:14-18, 36).  

The Spirit, therefore, is primarily bestowed upon the Church as the Body of Christ -- the whole Body -- not just to one part of the Body, even though that part be the college of Apostles.  Once the Spirit had been poured out upon the whole Church, the special grace and blessing the Apostles had already received became active within them, but not before.  This is what the Apostle Paul taught us in our reading from his letter to the Corinthians:

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.

As the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ: by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body--whether Jews or Greeks whether slaves or free -- and have all been made to drink into one Spirit.   For in fact the body is not one member but many. (1 Corinthians 12: 7, 12-14)

A false emphasis on unity has sought, in the past, to impose a strait jacket on Catholics: we are one Body, under one head, the Pope on earth, walking in conformity along the publicly approved road.  But that is not the whole of Paul’s teaching, because he tells us that “the Body is not one member, but many”; for diversity, as in natural so also in supernatural life, is best able to bear adequate witness to the inscrutable depths of the wisdom and beauty, goodness and power of God.

Today, however, whereas our political set-up seems to ape the old-church conformity through its promotion of political correctness; in the Church, on the other hand, the necessary unity under one head -- with the Pope as visible and temporal head of the Body whose supreme, invisible, and eternal Head is Jesus the Risen Lord -- is much enfeebled by individuals claiming the right to pick and choose what to believe and how to behave whilst still, paradoxically, asserting themselves to be true members of the one, universal, Body.

On this day of Pentecost, dear People of God, in our rejoicing, let us rejoice in the Truth: Variety and Unity are both essential in the Church.  She is not what the Corinthians wanted to imagine, that is, a gathering where each and every one could strive to display and develop themselves and their personal egos:

You are still carnal: for where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?   (1 Corinthians 3:3)

On the other hand, neither is Mother Church like some marble obelisk that abides untouched by the passage of time; it is essential for her to grow and develop because the Spirit has been given to provoke change by gradually leading her into the fullness of truth.

If there were only liberal-lefties in the Church, she would be like that herd of Gadarene swine that went off in a wild and unrestrained rush and drowned in the waters of Galilee.  Were there none but died-in-the-wool traditionalists -- more conservative than Rome and more papal than the Pope -- she would be like a lifeless bulk held fast and immovable by its own inertia, impervious to the gentle breathing of the Spirit of Life ever seeking to prepare her gradually for what will be her heavenly fulfilment.

And so, People of God, today we – both as a body and individually – are being offered God’s best Gift: the Spirit of Love, Truth, and Life.   To fruitfully receive what is being offered we must want, we must strive, to use God's Gift for God's purposes, and in God's way; therefore, we should always bear in mind the supreme purpose of God’s Gift offered to us this day: it is for the Glory of God, the good of Mother Church as a whole, that is, for the saving of souls.

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all.

We must also realize that each and every one of us is able to do fruitful work for Jesus, because we are members of that Body which has Christ as its head: sincere prayers though unheard by others are specially loved by the Father  (1 Corinthians 12:18-19):

God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased.   And if they were all one member, where would the body be?  But now indeed there are many members, yet one body.  And the eye cannot say "I am not needed"; nor again the feet, "There is no need of us”. (1 Corinthians 12:18-21)

On that first Pentecost, as you heard,

They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit was giving them utterance, speaking of the wonderful works of God.

Today the same Holy Spirit wills to come to us for a purpose: not frequently “to speak with other tongues” in our modern times, but certainly to lead us to “speak of the wonderful works of God” in creation, in Jesus, in Mother Church, and in our own lives.  Each and every one of us should be prepared to give humble glory to God by speaking, in his or her own way according to gifts received, of the effect which the truth and the grace of Jesus has had on our lives: the beauty our minds have been enabled to recognise and appreciate, and the joy and hope which have come to abide and hold peaceful sway in our hearts. We would fail God if we were afraid to be our humble, individual, selves in thus joyfully giving sincere and truthful witness to Him and to the Faith; for our first duty, as the angels proclaimed is to give:

            Glory to God in the highest.

However, because we are all members of the one Body of Christ, besides individual sincerity and truth there must be humility and charity in our mutual relations, because, our lives, with all their gifts and talents, are meant to serve the common dignity and common good of the whole Body, as the angels went on to declare:

            Glory to God in the highest, and peace to His People on earth.

The song once sung by the Angels at the birth of Christ has now to become a sublime and eternal chorus in which heaven and earth unite, because Jesus, having finished His mission on earth and being risen from the dead, has now ascended to heaven where He is seated at the Right Hand of Power.  And, as the Psalmist (110:1) prophesied, God the Father has embraced His victorious and glorious Son with the words:

Sit at My right hand till I make Your enemies Your footstool.

People of God, today, Mother Church is urging and encouraging us to join ever more wholeheartedly in that paean of praise; for the Spirit is being offered us in and through her that we might work to make the enemies of Jesus a footstool for His feet as the Father wills: that is my vocation, it is also yours, indeed it is the vocation of us all together in Mother Church.  What a privilege we have: let us get on with it, with grateful praise on our lips and trustful confidence in our hearts!

                                          (Not given anywhere in this revised 2023 version.)