29th Sunday Year A, 2023

(Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1^st. Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21)

In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah we learned that Israel’s God is the only Lord and Ruler of all that is, and that He even inspires certain decisively important events in the course of human history:

For Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel My elect, I the Lord have named Cyrus, though you have not known Me; I will gird you, though you have not known Me.

St. Paul in our second reading took up that appreciation of God’s authority when he wrote:

Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, as you know what kind of persons we were among you for your sake.

Dear People of God, how Mother Church today needs such ‘persons’ whose faith is for them a source of holy power and firm conviction for the service of Jesus Who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever, and of His Church commissioned to offer salvation to all mankind!

A disturbing aspect of modern Church life, however, is the growing number of ordinary ‘little’ Catholics who are afraid to humbly confess Jesus in their daily way of life or witness openly to Him  when necessary.  They fail Jesus because His teaching is openly mocked by popular figures whose pleasures and pursuits exemplify Jesus’ words – ‘an evil and adulterous generation’ -- and mockery from their peers is indeed something that all school-children fear, perhaps most of all.

Many ‘more prominent’ figures in Mother Church herself today – acting not from fear but from arrogance and self-seeking -- betray Jesus by looking  closely at the largely pagan society around, observe what is happening there -- especially in matters of sexual morality and social responsibility -- and then try to make the Jesus we know -- the traditional Jesus of countless martyrs and saints, men, women and children, the Jesus proclaimed and fought for by St. Paul and all the Apostles in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, the Jesus of the Gospels -- and then, I say,they try to make that Jesus ‘popular’ ….  somehow able to be fitted in seamlessly with pagan society’s popular practices and ‘beliefs’!

Nowhere, dear People of God, did Jesus ever say that His disciples, His Church, would be popular, with ‘bums on all seats in their Churches’.  He did indeed say that His Gospel was to be preached to all, but not that it would be accepted by all, or even by the majority.  In fact, He did give voice to one of His most solemn and considered warnings:

            When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? (Luke 18:8)

Certain passages of our New Testament are now regularly omitted in liturgical readings; how many more will have to be omitted in future to accommodate yet more modern ‘popular  sensitivities’, to allow those whose public words or open life-style contradict the Gospel, still pretend to be acceptable to or at home with Mother Church?

There are other passages in today’s Gospel reading relevant to our times in which political violence and racial terrorism seek to cover themselves with a cloak of so-called moral sensitivity or religious devotion, for there we are clearly shown the Pharisees and the Herodians trying -- as consummate hypocrites -- to lull Jesus into a sense of false security:

Teacher, we know that You are true and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men.

They were using such flattery to soften up Jesus before the putting to Him the punch question that was ready on their lips:

Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"

The idea was, of course, to get Jesus into most serious trouble.  If He were to have said it was right to pay taxes, then those patriotic Jews and the Zealot agitators would have decried Him as some sort of traitor or quisling.  On the other hand, had Jesus said it was wrong to pay the taxes, then the Romans would have been informed immediately and they would have deemed it necessary to seek Jesus out as one potentially troublesome and deal with Him accordingly; which, of course, was just what the Pharisees and the Temple hierarchy wanted. 

Jesus was not going to fall into the trap.  He answered them:

Show Me the tax money."  So they brought Him a denarius.  And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?"  They said to Him, "Caesar's."  And He said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Oh! dear People of God, who can fail to recognize the beauty of God’s wisdom in those wonderful words spoken in such a situation?  That beauty -- both simple and sublime -- is something for us to admire and contemplate most gratefully before God!!  But now, at this moment, gathered here as disciples of Jesus wanting to learn from Him how to worship and serve the Father, let us consider something of the implications of those words and perhaps understand Jesus’ attitude of mind and heart a little better.

Those words of flattery spoken by the Pharisees and Herodians were meant to ensnare Jesus, and the attitudes they sought to promote are a perennial temptation and conceit for Christians of all ages; and today we should -- like our Blessed Lord -- be quick to recognise their poison and strong to reject their subtle infiltration into our lives.

We, as disciples of Jesus, are called to lead good lives, that is, lives of integrity before God not conformity with society’s – be it lay society or Church society -- prevailing modern standards and judgements; we have to try to live up to the role set before us in Jesus’ Scriptures and called for in the traditional teaching of Mother Church.  However, knowing full well that our sins are many and our weaknesses manifest to the eyes of God, we must seek to assimilate this awareness of faith more and more fully and deeply into our personal self-consciousness, so that our Christian integrity may ever be ‘instinctively’ accompanied and embellished by a corresponding degree of humility, truly vigilant lest we ever begin to slide into an easy acceptance of the demands or wishes of men, as ever, willing and wanting to give immediate rewards of praise for compliance with their views.

Jesus Himself was not in any way swayed by such flatteries: His personal integrity would always and only be used to glorify His Father and promote the true well-being of all those who heard and listened to His words; and so, His resolute independence of men and their opinions would be -- always and only -- the other face of His constant care to be free to serve them, for Jesus was always the Servant, never a braggart.  Nevertheless, His requirement of independence made it necessary for Him to be fearless, and so, here, He separated State and Religion for the first time.  Until Jesus came the state had been in total charge of religion: Emperors were worshipped as gods in the all-powerful Roman state.  And therefore, those famous and most beautiful words of Jesus:

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,   

are not only wonderfully wise words, they were also brave words for those times.

People of God, only the power of the Holy Spirit and the assured commitment to Jesus which our faith affords us can enable us to be independent and free in our proclamation of and witness to our Catholic and Christian faith before the society in which we find ourselves today.  However, we must never allow such aspirations to become insidiously perverted so as to serve our own personal pride or profit.  We are, above all, disciples and servants of Jesus, and, at all times and in all situations, we must seek -- in Him and by His Spirit -- to glorify God our Father.  Therefore, we must never forget that we are, individually, members of His People, of His family, of His Body, and consequently we can never think of ourselves as independent of our brothers and sisters in Christ: our own personal integrity and independence must be consonant with and embrace the authentic Christian good of all those for whom Christ died.   Just as true glory can only be given to God the Father in and through the whole Body of Christ, Head and members, so also, praise and profit can only come to us as living members of the whole Body of those who, in accordance with the Father's will and the working of His Holy Spirit, are being led to share in the fullness of salvation won for them by Jesus.

28th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy rich food and pure choice wines.  On that day it will be said: “Behold our God, to Whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for Whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that He has saved us!”

This passage, indeed the whole of the first reading, is wonderfully suited to portray the blessings of Christianity, and by that, I mean above all, the blessings of the Catholic faith when lived with humble and sincere gratitude.

For all non-believers or nominal Christians who – as serious and sensitive human beings -- have felt the anguish of ‘not-knowing-what-to-do’ when oppressed by a vague sense of ‘wrong-ness’ in a particular situation or in their own life; who have felt the insufficiency of all merely human ideals to enable them to withstand the trials and temptations of life, which occasion that suffering captured in those words of St. Paul: “I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:19); who have suffered or still suffer from divisions within themselves, within family, society; for all those who have experienced, and want to learn from, such occasions of suffering and sorrow, the Catholic faith offers a most wonderful reconciliation with God, with one’s own self, and with the world: a reconciliation that brings us peace of mind and freedom of heart as it restores meaning and hope to our life, and delights us with a beauty that can inspire and thrill but never enslave.  However, the hard skin of a previous worldly, selfish and/or sensual, experience of life, can make it difficult for these wonderful blessings to penetrate through to the warm, sensitive, core of human beings as individuals intended by God.

Human beings are formed by, and live most fully in, their personal relationships; and it is in the deliberate and free gift and acceptance of personal love -- not the impulsive, driving, passion of sexual encounters -- that a human being first opens up him- or her-self for maturity.  When a man or woman gives or receives such love for the first time they are changed thereby, and life is no longer the same as it was before that encounter, which is the initial warrant and seal of one’s worth as a personal being.

It is the Eucharist which brings that glow of personal, loving, encounter, fully into prominence in the spiritual life of a Catholic; for the Eucharist is indeed a feast, a banquet, of rich food and pure, choice, wines.  For the truly stupendous fact and unfathomable meaning of the Eucharist is that Jesus, the very Son of God, made Man-for-us, there presents and renews (not repeats!) the original and eternally-enduring gift of Himself made on Calvary in His self-sacrifice-of-love to His Father for us all, and in His offer of Personal love to each and every one of us who wills to call on Him in faith and receive Him fittingly.

That gift of total love by Jesus is unique and absolutely inimitable. We human beings can only offer ourselves partially to another, and only receive another’s gift partially, though our intention be both sincere and dedicated. In the Eucharist, however, Jesus is total gift and commitment, to be initially discovered and embraced by us through the inspiration of His most Holy Spirit, a gift to be treasured life-long, by being gradually and most carefully nourished in us who receive Him by our following the teaching and guidance of Mother Church, and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit Himself.  As foreshadowed on the human level, so here most sublimely, this union of love, CHARITY, is indeed the ultimate fulfilment of one’s human being, it is the total vindication of one’s worth as an individual now become a child of God the Father, in Jesus.  For Christ comes to us that He might give us a share – chosen for us by the Father – in His Own eternal Life of Truth and Love before the Father.

All these blessings, which reach to and transfigure the core of our human being can be ours, but only through our faith in Jesus, and we have to pray that we might grow in faith precisely in order that we may ever-more deeply love, esteem, value, and respond to those blessings to which our Father invites us.

Now. that is not always easy for us since we -- like children who seek all that glitters -- are very subject to the impressions of our external senses and our inner emotions, and these can easily drive us to over-involvement in worldly concerns.  It is not wrong to be fully involved in what we undertake -- indeed St. Paul warns us against half-heartedness – but over-involvement so easily leads us to over-esteem worldly activities and under-value spiritual blessings, which we can only perceive through faith, and to which our instinctive emotions do not immediately respond.  And it is here that we must turn to our Gospel reading.

The ‘invited guests’ in Our Lord’s parable were first of all, God’s original ‘Chosen People’ established as such by their observation of the Law of Moses, and the OT covenant with God was the first invitation given them.  The King’s feast ‘prepared for the wedding of his son’ figured the Messianic feast, long foretold, and now prepared and ready.  The excuses came back thick and fast from all sides, with varying degrees of politeness: but they all had the same fundamental meaning, ‘We have more important things to do just now than come to your feast.’   And, in fact, that is the situation still today, the former ‘Chosen People’ did not accept Jesus – the incarnate Word, Son, of God – as their Messiah sent by God; they did not ‘come to the feast’ of God’s Messiah, the Eucharistic Sacrifice which we are now celebrating.  

That parable of Jesus highlights the great danger for many people today, who can come to regard earthly obligations, to value emotionally stirring activities, as supremely important, if they allow ourselves to become too wrapped-up in them; for example,  by wanting to start off too high up on the tree of life, and thus over-burdening themselves with obligations and costs that can come to stifle all other aspirations: ‘the cares of life’ as Jesus called them.

In today’s parable Jesus teaches us on the one hand that no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven by his own efforts without an invitation from God – and all of us, willingly here, have received that P/personal invitation.   And, on the other hand, Jesus tells us that no one is condemned to remain outside the Kingdom except as a result of their own willful disdain or deliberate rejection of God’s offer of love.

Go out, therefore, into the main roads and invite to the feast whomever you find.’  The servants went out into the streets and gathered all they found, bad and good alike, and the hall was filled with guests.

People of God, a choice has to be made by all of us, a choice involving life or death; that is, a choice for life in Jesus, Who alone rose from the dead (three days in the tomb) and rose from there to eternal life, in his Ascension.  It is a choice to be made not just once but one to be re-affirmed by ourselves many, many, times over the years of our life because, as I said earlier, we ordinary human beings cannot give ourselves wholly or receive another’s gift wholly immediately.  How much more is that the case, therefore, when our love is with Jesus. Our Lord and Saviour, God the Father’s only-begotten and most beloved Son!

Let me quote some tragically beautiful, and yet so sadly mixed-up, thoughts of a modern philosopher of renown, Bertrand Russell:

“The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious, wild pain – a searching for something transfigured and infinite.  The beatific vision—God, I do not find it.  I do not think it is to be found – but the love of it is my life.”

The only-begotten, most beloved, Son of the heavenly Father came as our Lord Jesus to save those ‘original likenesses’ of God still loved by His Father but cut off from the benefits of that love by life-preferences and practices adopted through ignorance and weakness.  Our Lord died and rose from death to save such spoiled ‘likenesses’; and ascending back to His Father in heaven He offers them the Gift of His Most Holy Spirit to enlighten their ignorance and support their weakness, and lead them, as living members of the Body of Christ on earth, Mother Church, to the fulness of earthly life and heavenly glory as ‘other Christs’ in the beatific vision divinely revealed to us in Mother Church, and so vaguely wanted and yet doubted by Russell.

27th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Isaiah 5:1-7; Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21:33-43)

In our first reading the prophet Isaiah described Israel as a vineyard planted by the Lord which, despite the care He had taken of it, failed to bring forth good fruit.  And for that, the prophet went on to warn Israel:

Now, I will let you know what I mean to do to my vineyard: take away its hedge, give it to grazing, break through its wall, let it be trampled!  Yes, I will make it a ruin: it shall not be pruned or hoed, but overgrown with thorns and briers; I will command the clouds not to rain upon it.  The vineyard of the LORD of hosts is the house of Israel, the people of Judah, his cherished plant; He waited for judgment, but see, bloodshed! for justice, but hark, the outcry (hark, a cry for help!) (hark, a cry of distress!)!  

In fulfilment of this prophecy the kingdom of Israel first of all, and subsequently the kingdom of Judah, were politically destroyed: no longer kingdoms or independent political powers of any sort, both became mere tracts of territory ruled by foreign lords, inhabited by vassals.

When therefore, Jesus -- taking up again that prophecy of Isaiah -- Himself told a parable of a landowner who planted, prepared and protected a vineyard, and was then unable to get the fruit of the vineyard, His hearers --- the religious authorities in Israel and Judah at that time --- realized that His words would be of great significance for them.

And so they were, for Jesus made some most important changes to the picture originally painted by Isaiah:

The vineyard itself was fruitful (you will remember Jesus’ earlier words):

The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few.  Therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest.  (Mt. 9:37s.)

However, those in charge of the vineyard, the tenants, were the unfruitful ones who would not hand over any produce or profit to the landowner even though, eventually, the owner’s very son came to claim it in theme of his father.

The Jewish leaders were not, however, at that moment paying attention to details about the son: they were only intent on what they feared would be the final outcome for themselves: their power, their position of authority, might be taken away from them.

Isaiah had foretold the destruction of the political kingdoms of Israel and Judah and that prophecy had indeed been realized; kings and rulers had always resisted the messages of God’s prophets in order to maintain their own political power (haven’t kings and potentates done that since the beginning of time?).    But now, in Jesus’ time, something much more sinister was taking place: Israel’s religious leaders -- in particular the Pharisees and their Scribes --- were gainsaying Jesus in order to have control over God’s spiritual kingdom on earth for themselves, claiming a unique teaching authority for the understanding of the Mosaic Law and for the spiritual formation of God’s Chosen People.

Therefore, Jesus now speaks of the end of the cultic authority of Temple with its priests and Levites, and of the rejection of the spiritual authority of the Scribes and Pharisees as authentic exponents of the Torah; and ultimately, He foretells the end of Israel’s spiritual exaltation as the God’s Chosen People.

All these privileges -- and the provisional type of divine worship they represented -- would now have to make way for the future Church of Jesus Christ, the new and authentic People of God, comprising not only Israelites, but also all men and women of good-will who would hear Jesus’ Personal message with faith, and obey in sincerity of heart the Good News of God’s own Son authentically proclaimed to all mankind:

Jesus said to them, “Did you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; by the Lord has this been done, and it is wonderful in our eyes’?   Therefore, I say to you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.

You can understand why Jesus was both feared and hated by the proud religious authorities of what had once been the kingdom of David: kings and people had sinned -- ignoring God’s will and the words of many great prophets – and now that former kingdom was to comprise nothing more than two small and very insignificant Roman provinces of Judea and Samaria, along with mis-trusted Galilee in the north.

Yes, they hated what had befallen their once spiritually prestigious nation; and now, this  Jesus -- coming indeed from Nazareth in Galilee-of-the-Gentiles of all places! -- was proclaiming Himself as the Son – yes, the very Son of God -- come to harvest the fruit due from the vineyard of the Law and the Prophets!! He came promising no Messianic restoration of political power, rather He came proclaiming that Israel’s hitherto unique privilege would be offered to all the presently disdained Gentiles including the despicable and most hated Romans now ruling their country, all of them pagans who had previously known nothing of the one, true, God.

However -- some might now be thinking -- all this is past history; how is it relevant for us today?  We understand that God punishes sin – He always has -- and we recall that, as punishment for the sins of His Chosen People, He once destroyed their temple at Shilo which the early Israelites had thought inviolable; and that He likewise brought the Temple of Solomon down to the ground; before finally -- as Jesus foretold -- humbling the supremely impressive and most prestigious Temple of Herod.  But, again, what does all this mean for us?  Let us, therefore, look again at those who brought about the downfall of the Chosen People.

Those responsible for the twice-repeated exiling of Israel were priests and political figures: kings, with their courtiers and sycophants, their emulators and opponents.   They did great harm to God’s People and were punished accordingly. However, they impeded  the growth of God’s Kingdom in Israel for predominantly worldly reasons.

There were others, however, the Pharisees and their Scribes, who resisted, and tried to thwart the coming and flourishing of God’s Kingdom in Israel, by deliberately attempting to take control of God’s proclamation itself; and by thus poisoning the waters of salvation offered to Israel, they became close to becoming  the subject of  these subsequent words of Jesus:

Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an everlasting sin,”   (Mark 3:29)

Rejected by God as leaders of His people, their  hope of salvation lay in the saving death and resurrection of Him whom they had refused to acknowledge as Messiah sent to teach, and failed to recognize as beloved Son sent to save.

People of God, today, liberal governments and all those ‘woken’ ones who proclaim their version of a new world, realm, or whatever, are now as one, shouting loud and in unison, ‘Liberty, Fraternity, Equality’ --- for the deafening of all spiritual and moral teaching of divine origin.  And for the punishment of such world-wide hatred for all that is truly spiritual, the Bible encourages us -- along with all worshippers of the one God -- to expect, God’s saving punishment for the maintenance of mankind’s eternal calling.

God’s People today are not always -- and certainly not necessarily -- satisfied by any assumed awareness of their leaders’ oneness with God’s desires and wishes for His  Church and people.  They aspire and try to follow their leaders’ teachings in the name of Jesus faithfully and whole-heartedly, and conversely, they can and do expect from those leaders some  appreciable measure of sure spiritual guidance, which appears to be hardly satisfied by, indeed to be strangely lacking in, Synodal questioning for answers from all and sundry, as if our moral problems were not matters of Mother Church’s teaching authority, but rather a sort of search for the latest Covid (=sin) variant.

My brother and sisters in Christ, we should be supremely careful of, solicitous for, the purity of our faith.   Today there are many who set themselves up as teachers, as guides, to worldly success and to temporal happiness, including the ‘trained’ government officials sent now to ‘comfort’ the bereaved, the lonely, the worried, the puzzled, the despairing …. with what?  Top echelon teachers and guides even claim to ‘know’ that God does not exist, and that nothing lies beyond death ... although such assertions are no longer backed up by that scientific knowledge which is modernity’s real pride and joy:  knowledge which they can so readily present, prove, and even demonstrate by practical experiment and sensible observation.

However, Christian spirituality -- the only authentic food for the divine fulfilment of the human soul --  is way above, and totally beyond, even the very best of such intellectual endeavours.

Today, many Catholics and Christians allow – or suffer -- themselves to be persuaded, overwhelmed, by such ‘worldly wisdom’ and its messengers.  Even more sadly, however, too many Catholics today are willing to ignore or even distort Jesus’ Good News of life eternal -- which should be treasured by faith in their own mind and heart -- for a few years of social advantage and worldly comfort, in a world that offers no future hope, no promise of peaceful inheritance.

There is, dear friends in Christ, only one true way of progress and profit for salvation, and that is given us by St. Paul, in our second reading:

Brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. Keep on doing what you have learned and received and heard in (Mother Church). Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.  Then the peace of God that surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. 

Let us rejoice in, give whole-hearted thanks for, such beauty and such truth.