22nd Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Deut. 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27; Mark: 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

Our readings today are centred upon what one might call the art of loving God in Mother Church. 

We were told of the good things God promised and did for Israel, that you may live and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and, bequeathing such gifts to Israel, Moses urged those Israelites to:

 Listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you.

However, the subsequent history of Israel – even at its very best -- can be characterized by the words of Fr. Faber, ‘We make His love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own” -- was perfectly exemplified by the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Jesus’ days.  The Pharisees were relatively new-comers to religious life in Jerusalem and Israel as a whole; they were popular with the people and, indeed, they had become the self-appointed religious leaders of the common people. The traditional Sadducees  were the priestly authorities in charge of the world-famous Temple in Jerusalem and men of power in Jewish society.   The Pharisees knew the Law very well but they were most enthusiastic about their own traditions and they were seriously jealous of their own assumed authority as teachers of the people.   The Sadducees on the other hand dealt with the occupying Roman power as authorised rulers of the Temple with multitudes of gift-bearing worshippers coming from abroad every year to join their Palestinian brethren for the great religious feasts.  

The first and second readings should also serve to remind us of the great blessings God has bestowed on us in our Catholic Faith and Mother Church:

Keep (what you have been taught) for this will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 

Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. … Therefore, receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.  But, be doers of the word and not hearers only.

Moses told the Israelites how they should treasure God’s gifts:

You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you;

And in these modern ‘synodal’ times  such words are of supreme importance for us Catholics, because  the Faith  we have received is to be kept in its unstained integrity because it is not of human origin, as Jesus made abundantly clear when He said, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel reading:

            The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63-64)

It was blessed Peter -- first and greatest Pope -- who was inspired by the Father to give the only true response to Jesus’ words, not only on behalf of all his fellow Apostles, but in the name of all subsequent Catholics and true Christians:

Lord, You have the words of eternal life.  Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (John 6:68-70)

And it is that same spirit to which you heard St. James give expression in our second reading:

Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls, (and) be doers of that word.

But what about the Scribes and Pharisees, self-appointed, and ‘God-exclusive’ spiritual leaders in Israel proclaiming their own traditions:

Jesus said to them: ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy  of you hypocrites, as it is written: “This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.” (Mk. 7:6)

In order face up to the modern versions of such malign influences  we must, above all else, learn to truly appreciate and love the Faith which God has so graciously bestowed upon us, and cherish it in a personal relationship of love with God, mirroring Jesus’ love of His Father, and the Holy Spirit’s bonding power.  For the Faith has been given us in order to change us from what – from who -- we are, into what – who -- God wants us to become ; it has been given us to re-form us, not in accordance with the maxims and examples of the world around us, nor for the fulfilment of our own personal preferences and ambitions, but after the pattern, and according to the will, of Him Who is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, preparing a place for us to live there with Him for all eternity.

The traditions of the elders to which the Pharisees and Scribes were so devoted were originally practiced -- and subsequently handed down -- as a means of helping and protecting true devotion among the people of Israel.  And there were undoubtedly some in Israel who had profited and would continue to profit from their observance.  The trouble was, however, that the zeal of the Pharisees and Scribes for such traditions led them, at times, to disregard or even reject God’s Personal commands and His broader spiritual teaching given through the Prophets of Israel.

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. (Mk. 7:8)

Moreover, this excessive and misplaced zeal of the Pharisees and Scribes pushed them further, even, indeed, to assert that everyone in Israel should be bound by their traditions.  This amounted, Jesus said as He quoted the prophet Isaiah, to them:

Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

And Mother church still has modern Pharisees at work within her, preaching doctrines of their own by adding their modern and more popular interpretation to her pristine doctrines, like certain ‘synodal decisions’ of the German hierarchy, some of whose members have also shown clear signs of the Pharisaic ‘love of money’ (Luke 14:15)   And as for present-day Scribes we can sometimes come across  clerics who  are firmly Catholic  both doctrinally and morally, unlike the German Pharisees,  but who, nevertheless, are more functionaries of the Church establishment than serving disciples of Jesus.   And as for the laity in Mother Church, how many have found Jesus’ words ‘hard’ and have left Him and her … millions in our Western world.  And that leaves us who seek and strive to love and live in, work and pray for, Mother Church to learn as much and as best we can from today’s Eucharistic celebration

In Mother Church there are those in positions of authority that entitle or at times require them to give advice and authoritative guidance to the People of God who are members of their flock.  Occasionally, that guidance – because the authority behind it stems from learning, experience, and above all, from the acknowledged and invoked guidance of God’s promised grace --  requires obedience, even strict obedience, at times, and it always merits sincere respect and thoughtful attention.  No one can totally ignore or disregard such guidance.

Nevertheless, we must always realize that we have been set free by Jesus Christ to serve God in Spirit and in Truth as living members of the Body of Christ, in response to the guidance of His Holy Spirit living and working within us; and that no human guides can ever be allowed to cut us off from that personal response to God so long as we remain in Jesus by keeping His known commands, and following His general teaching mediated to our conscience through the Gospel proclamation of Mother Church.  St. Paul makes this absolutely clear in his first letter to the Corinthians (3:21-23):

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come -- all are yours.  And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

As we go through life, striving to listen ever more carefully to God and follow Him ever more closely, we are always advancing to what is -- for us – new and unknown territory so to speak.  Therefore, it is indeed good and necessary that we should have the help of guidance from Mother Church, for on her alone did Jesus bestow the fullness of His Spirit, and to her alone does the Spirit recall all that Jesus taught and did.  Nevertheless, after personal prayer to God, after listening to His Spirit whispering in our conscience and abiding in Mother Church, after acknowledging our own inclination to sin and God’s wonderful goodness to us,  it is still up to each of us, personally, to decide finally which way to go, because such responsible commitment is the hall-mark of a personal relationship with God intimately known and loved in our heart and life, it is the glory of a Christian which we should not yield, and certainly never abandon, to another.  Jesus once declared to His disciples:

When they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak, for it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you. (Matthew 10:19-21)

Jesus might have said, ‘the Spirit of My Father will guide you’, but no, He actually said, ‘the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you’ will help you.   As it were obliterating Himself, Jesus shows us how closely He wants His disciples to be united to, one with, His Father, and it is for that end He gives us His Spirit at baptism and renews His Spirit within us every time we rightly receive Holy Communion. Oneness with the Father, in Jesus, by the Spirit, that is the culmination, crowning and fulfilment, of all Christian life and holiness.

At no stage in our life can we presume that we have heard, understood, and responded aright, without regularly checking -- as we proceed further -- that we are, indeed, not only within the parameters of the Faith, but also walking in the direction of, and in a comforting conformity with, the life-thrust of her who is both the unique Bride of Christ and also our own Mother.  And this constant longing for, and looking to, God; this unceasing watchfulness for the motions of His Spirit within us; this abiding awareness of personal weakness and ignorance together with an ever growing awareness of and reliance upon God’s goodness to us, … all these endeavours and experiences gradually build up in us an ever deeper confidence and abiding joy in Mother Church, together with an ever more humbling and grateful experience and awareness of the presence, power, and goodness of God in our individual lives.

The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God: the things which God has prepared for those who love Him; things which God has revealed to us through His Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:9-10)  

21st Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18; Ephesians 5:21-32; John 6:60-69)

In our readings today, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are reminded of the fact that, in the course of our life decisions -- difficult and even decisive -- have inevitably to be made:

If it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD,  choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.    But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Many of (Jesus’) disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.  So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?"

God the Father made such a decision when He allowed His only-begotten Son to take human flesh in order to free us from the tyranny of sin and death; and therefore, would-be-Christians -- appreciating that ‘unimaginable token’  of God’s love for us -- must be prepared to make a reciprocal decision when embracing His offer of salvation.

With God, His decision is perfectly final and decisive; we, however, are weak beings hindered by our sinfulness and ignorance, with the result that any seriously binding decision of ours has to be repeatedly re-affirmed and renewed if we are to live it out to fulfilment; and therefore, any such decision can be made only on the basis of sincere Love motivating the choice, and persevering Commitment enabling us to sustain and ultimately fulfil our original decision.

Commitment and Love are the two qualities St. Paul had in mind when giving his converts guidance with regard to the Christian institution of marriage; guidance which envisages eternal fulfilment, not simply earthly happiness:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church … so wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Jesus seriously required commitment in His disciples – their submission to His teaching  -- as you heard in the Gospel reading:

It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is of no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and who it was who would betray Him.   After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”

Jesus would have none of those disciples who would like to re-negotiate, so to speak, their allegiance to Him after each and every difficulty that might arise for them in His teaching; their commitment had to be total:

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.   We have believed and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”  

Jesus, for His part, as St. John tells us (John 13:1) embodied such commitment:

Before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father,  having loved His own who were  in the world, He loved them to the end.

Commitment and love are what St. Paul had in mind when he told his converts who were entering marriage:

  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

In that context of ‘out of reverence for Christ’ such submission is, of course, called for  in the important, not each and every trivial, decisions of family life … and also to be given in the framework of mutual love and respect between the spouses.

The future is not, for us Christians, something totally dark, hidden, and unknowable: we believe in God, a God Who is good and has created us for a ‘purpose’ … He indeed has a purpose for each of us … a purpose that will serve for His glory,  our individual salvation, and the ‘social’ fulfilment of mankind as a whole.   Human beings, made, as we Christians believe, in the image and likeness of God, are called to guide their lives towards a goal being offered them by God, revealed and promised to all believers by Jesus, and being realized in them individually -- if they co-operate – by the Holy Spirit. 

In other words, we Christians and Catholics believe that the future is essentially knowable, desirable, and attainable for all who believe in Jesus, and are willing to commit themselves to His promises, and to the Holy Spirit of Truth and Love He has bequeathed us.  This attitude of self-commitment is so essential to Christianity that we believers have been given, as our mother, she of who it was said:

Blessed is she who believed, for there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.  (Luke 1:45)

In our Gospel reading we heard that many of His disciples found  Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist a ‘hard saying’ and, like the Jews earlier, they too grumbled among themselves.  Jesus then, as if to confirm His teaching, went on to say:

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?

You are My disciples because you like My parables, you admire the wonders I do, you even have your own ambitions  -- King of Israel – for Me; but when I give more serious teaching  about what is above your line of vision and beyond your earthly imagination, you find it ‘hard to accept’.

             What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?

Jesus has come down from heaven, and His words, consequently, are no ordinary words but spiritual words, and therefore He added most seriously:

It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is of no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.   

People of God, in the first reading Joshua put clearly before the Israelites a choice they had to make.  We are in a like situation today, for, in our society, Christianity is largely derided and the Catholic Church is, not infrequently, hated. 

Our Christian faith in Mother Church calls us to a life -- empowered by the Spirit -- of self-commitment, willing subjection of self, to something greater than self: a subjection, a commitment, a devotion, to God, to His purpose-for-us, to the fulfilment He has planned for mankind in His heavenly Kingdom.

 Our Christian faith and Mother Church urge us to a commitment, to a selflessness, which, by a process of spiritual osmosis, will inevitably show itself in the ordinary things of our everyday lives: in marital love and life-long commitment, sincere and lasting friendship, unfeigned neighbourliness, and penetrating down even to our most mundane social obligations, such as doing an honest day’s work and living as a good and responsible citizens.

 In making life’s choices, we must never forget the truth expressed in the words of Joshua:

If it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD,  choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.    But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Whatever we choose, we will always be servants, because that is our nature.  If, however, we make the right choice, we will be serving a Lord Who is so good that He intends -- after our faithful service here on earth -- to give us share with Him in His heavenly glory.   His word is true, His promise is sure, and His Way is straight; indeed, His beloved Son chose to walk it before us, and the Spirit of His Son will be with us in all our endeavours to keep up-with and close-to Him on our way towards that home where the Father now awaits us, and will embrace and reward us as His own adopted, and specially privileged (Our Lady is Queen of heaven), children in His heavenly Kingdom.

20th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Proverbs 9:1-6; Ephesians 5:15-20; John 6:51-58)

Today we learn to what lengths Jesus went to in order to make people think about, pay attention to, what He was saying.  Jesus never sought popularity with the majority of people; but He did, most passionately, want those few -- initially drawn to Him by His Father -- to hear with a measure of understanding the simple words with which He addressed them, that thus they might begin to gradually appreciate His teaching, and hopefully even to modify their lives and purify their aspirations in accordance with it.  

In the gospel reading He declared:

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

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 those pious Jews even to hear, let alone accept:

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no 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. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything.  But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.” (Genesis 9:1-4)

This same command, moreover, was most emphatically confirmed in the Law given to Moses on Mount Sinai (Leviticus 7:26-27):

You shall eat  no blood whatever in any of your dwellings, whether of fowl or of animal.  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 and Deuteronomy (Leviticus 17:11;  Deuteronomy 12:23, 27)):

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

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

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 provocative and 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?

The reason is that here we are given a startlingly clear picture of the Christian awareness of the extent and the nature 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, St. Paul (Ephesians 2:4) assures us:

God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which He loved us,

willed to turn that supreme evil into a supreme blessing.  Since Jesus poured out His blood so willingly for us God allowed us to use that blood for our spiritual benefit!  In the light of the Christian revelation and by the grace of the Holy Spirit, we learn that, being allowed to drink the Blood of Jesus we are thereby enabled to imbibe life -- ETERNAL LIFE -- and a share, ultimately, in the sonship of Christ Himself!   St. Paul continues (Ephesians 2:5):

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

How great is the Father’s love for us, People of God!   The blood of all creatures pertains to Him alone; how dear beyond all measure, therefore, is the blood of His only-begotten Son-made-flesh?  How unimaginable is the humiliation which Jesus so willingly and so lovingly embraced out of obedience to His Father and compassion for us: pouring out His own Most Precious Blood willingly, for our use, our benefit, our profit … and our Salvation.

How sublimely, then, has that text of Leviticus been fulfilled:

The life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it (the Blood of the Immaculate Lamb of God) for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls; for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life (because it is the 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 admires, all sorts of excesses and contradictions; a society which, too often, teaches its children to get, not give; to look for pleasure rather than practice discipline; to use others, not to serve them; to seek advantage and success rather than to strive for honour and integrity.

We however -- as disciples of Jesus, and in response to God’s wondrous love -- must, as our first reading said:

Leave (our) simple ways, and live and walk in the way of insight.

And it is here that we can appreciate 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: the already rich, the important ones, the famous and the popular; 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 their great ones exercise authority over them. (Matthew 20:25)

Jesus knew that such a situation was an 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 by personal endeavour using natural cunning or charm; it cannot be bought, it can only be received as a gift subsequent on a personal encounter with, and spiritual response to, Jesus:

            If you do not eat My flesh and drink My blood you do not have life in you.

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

The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ?  The bread that we break, is it not a participation in body of Christ? Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body; for we all partake of the one bread.          

That one bread and the one cup are the source of all grace and 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 what we are but also what we want to be.  St. Paul puts it this way:

Now you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God. (Galatians 4:9)

My dear People, the natural gifts each of us may have, have not been given to directly further our personal salvation, rather they have been bestowed upon us for our earthly benefit and the benefit of the society in which we live, and indeed, in exceptional cases, of the whole world.  Eternal salvation, however,  does come to us as the result of our correspondence with the guidance and calling of God’s own Most Holy Spirit over the years and with our personal faith-awareness of, and loving response to, Christ in our daily lives as witnessing Catholics and Christians; above all, however, salvation comes to us as a result of our personal encounter with Our Saviour Himself in our reception of the Holy Eucharist.   Therefore, as we heard in the second reading:

Look carefully how you walk, not as unwise but as wise, making the best of time, because the days are evil.  Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is, giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

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 -- rather be experienced as an ever deepening and developing awareness of the love and beauty surrounding and awaiting us.

Seeking to live in and with Jesus, we should seek above all to learn from His most Holy Spirit how to grow in love for our heavenly Father, that we ultimately receive -- as adopted children of God -- a share in the ineffable, heavenly,  joy of our Saviour Himself.

To the One God, therefore, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, be all glory, praise, and honour, for ever and ever. Amen.