28th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Wisdom 7:7-11; Hebrews 4:12-13; Mark 10:17-30) 

My dear People of God, we heard in the second reading:

The word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart;

and that passage, taken from the Letter to the Hebrews -- one of the very earliest of the Epistles, and written by ‘only God knows’ who, according to the great scholar Origen - - gives us a remarkable insight into the teaching and witness of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, the Word of God, speaking uniquely the Word of God.  Dear fellow disciples of Jesus,  let us all, for this short time together, listen to and learn from Him.

The rich young man in our Gospel reading had, lived a devout life according to the Law of Moses; but he now learned that his appreciation of the word ‘good’ was somewhat superficial and perhaps even somewhat blasphemous, when Jesus said to him:

            Why do you call Me good?  No one is good except God alone.

This young man had given his life thus far to fulfil his Jewish desire to be holy in accordance with God’s Law given to Moses for the children of Israel, and therefore Jesus  took him seriously, immediately; and Jesus’ words are serious, potentially determinative for our spiritual better-being.

As the new People of God, we are called, by those words of Jesus, to recognize that we do not learn from ordinary life what is spiritually important for us.  We can be called by God in the course of our ordinary life, but we don’t learn from popular films, from pagan do-gooders in social media, much less from the faith-less majority around us.  At the very best, we can only occasionally pick up, from ordinary life, some nugget that might be of spiritual help, if our spiritual awareness appreciates and begins to chew over what we have just picked up, just come across.  Whatever is truly good and determinative for our personal relationship with God; whatever will help us to experience a life of authentic human fruitfulness, peace, and joy; and embrace our death; all that is from God’s grace and His P/personal calling (“No one can come to me unless My Father …” ) and all that will – if lovingly followed – lead us  to our ultimate share in the divine fulfilment of eternal life in the family of God.  

Now, the young man in today’s Gospel, considered himself to be “good” but Jesus’ words were meant to disabuse him of that idea:

            Why do you call Me good?  No one is good except God alone.

We are now studying Jesus’ teaching about God, and there is, perhaps, among some of Jesus’ Catholic disciples today, a serious mis-understanding about the ‘Trinitarian Love’ uniting  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the One Godhead we worship.  That love is a reciprocal love between those three divine Persons, a Love for each One, calling forth a like love in return from each one.   Our ultimate human destiny is not just our being present at a heavenly feast where God loves all present there. God’s love for all those human beings brought by the Spirit ‘through Jesus’ to the banquet of heaven is the Father’s reciprocal love demanding an appropriate reciprocal love.  There are no mere human beings at the feast in heaven, there are only human persons, loving with a divinely reciprocative love, the God and Father Who has invited them as His guests to  be present there.  The reciprocal love of God is the beatific life of heaven in the Godhead Itself; and also – in its right degree – among the human guests and all invited to that feast.

Our time on earth, dear friends in Christ Jesus Our Lord, is given us to learn how to begin loving that way … that is why Jesus was sent among us, why Jesus became one of us, and why He left us His Most Holy Spirit, and this most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass when He Himself returned home.   And Jesus had that process of learning for heaven in mind, when He said to the young man in our Gospel reading:

You lack one thing:  go, sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.

Those words pierced the young man so deeply that, we are told that:

 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

He went away because he had just been brought to realise how much he loved his earthly possessions: they were real, his heavenly aspirations were, in comparison, imaginary. As yet, the exercise of those earthly possessions meant more to him than his heavenly rituals and aspirations.  And so, he went away sorrowful because he knew that he was thereby turning away from the best option, for the call of Jesus to personal discipleship was, he realized, though not a command, certainly a wonderful offer, a supreme opportunity.  Nevertheless, he could not turn his back on his money and all the good things of life on earth that it afforded him: above all, perhaps, that prominence which brought him the esteem and subservience of others.

Recall now, dear friends, how we began Mass.  You will remember that we said, “Lord, you were sent to heal the contrite”, “You came to call sinners”; for Jesus is continually calling all -- be they contrite or sinners -- to open their hearts and minds ever more and more to the healing power of His word and His love.

The Word of God proclaimed at Mass to the contrite, is:

living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart;

and, as such, it is meant to pierce each and every one of us.  And, having penetrated the manifold layers of human sinfulness, self-satisfaction, and personal ignorance, to thereby enable each and every one of us to see our own sinfulness more clearly, just as it did with the rich young man.  That young man had to be shown the depth of his attachment to money in order that he might appreciate and be able to respond to a higher vocation in life here on earth, namely, with Jesus, to learn to love the Father above all else, and in Jesus to attain to eternal life and glory before the Father in heaven:

 Sell all that you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.

Now, Jesus does not say the same words to every person who turns to Him for salvation. The Word of God, which Mother Church proclaims here at Mass and throughout her liturgy and public ministry, can be of special significance to any and every one of us who hear it aright: it can, at any stage in our life, open us up to ourselves anew, showing us how much His healing is still needed in our lives, and enabling us to respond to a further call and closer embrace from Jesus.

Remember, Jesus does not look bleakly at us with a cold eye and critical appreciation, for we have already been lovingly called and guided to Him by the Father:

No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. (John 6:44)

Therefore, Jesus loves us, just as He loved the rich young man, as we heard:

Jesus looking at him, loved him.

Jesus loved him because He saw what He could make of that young man if he were to become a disciple and learn how to love aright and give glory to the Father.  The Word of God had penetrated to the core of his being for his greater blessing; if only he could have accepted that Word, and the revelation of his present self generated by it.

People of God, never turn away from God’s Word heard or read in the Scriptures and in the teaching of the Church because it makes you feel uncomfortable; because Jesus does not seek or plan our ultimate discomfiture.  He loves us and wants only to help us love and glorify the Father with Him; He wants to lead us to the fullest realization of our divine potential, and to that end we must never forget what we heard in the second reading:

No creature is  hidden from His sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of Him to Whom we must give account.

Like foolish children, we simply do not know either the truth about ourselves, or what is truly good for us.  All things are “naked and open to the eyes of God”, and His holy Word comes to us, at times, to cut us to the quick and thereby help us first to realize, and then hopefully to embrace, what is best for us, for:

The Word of God is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow;

it is, however, only piercingly sharp at those times when God wants, by that Word, to help us, as Scripture says: to discern the thoughts and intentions of (our own) heart;

And this He does to  fulfil the words of the prophet Malachi (4:2)  who declared in the name of the Lord:

For you who fear My name, the Sun of Righteousness shall rise with healing in its wings.

People of God, if -- as yet -- you don’t truly appreciate the dignity of your calling as a Catholic disciple of Jesus, then allow the Word of God to be active in you, do not reject its occasional piercing, penetrating, and yet healing, smart.  Remember the advice given us in the first reading from the book of Wisdom:

The Spirit of wisdom came to me;  I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.

27th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Genesis 2:18-24; Hebrews 2:9-11; Mark 10:2-12) 

Moses gave permission for a man to divorce his wife; however, Jesus declared:

           Because of the hardness of your heart (Moses) wrote you this commandment.

The Law had been given through Moses to prepare the People of Israel both to receive and  to embrace the Lord and Saviour of mankind when He should come, and this they did, supremely through the Virgin Mary of Nazareth.  However, the Israelite leaders, because of their wilful hardness of heart, refused to acknowledge the Saviour sent by God, and consequently, the vast majority of the people were not able to embrace or even recognize the Lord when He came.

Jesus, the Son-of-God-made-flesh was sent by His Father to live among God’s Chosen People with the immediate aim of leading back to His Father those who were wandering from the God they acknowledged but did not truly obey, because of the dominion that Satan held over their lives. Jesus’ ultimate purpose, however, was to call the whole of sinful mankind to the God they did not yet know -- though He was the One God Who created them -- as to their loving Father, by His (Jesus’)’re-making’ of them, through His Spirit, into fully adopted children of God.

For this end, Jesus did not base His teaching on the Law of Moses; for -- although He did not deny the validity of the Law for those to whom it had been given through Moses -- He nevertheless, deliberately chose to by-pass the Mosaic Law by invoking the Father’s original law of creation for His, Jesus’, disciples -- the new Children of God and His future Church -- the law eternally enshrined in their original make-up, by recalling that:

From the beginning of creation. ‘God made them male and female’. Therefore, a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh'.  So they are no longer two but one flesh.

He then answered in perfect fulness the Pharisees’ initial question about the current standing of Moses permission for divorce contained in the Law:

What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

 

We can see clearly that Jesus had only one purpose in mind: to awaken and to save true Children-of-God for His Father, and in fulfilment of this He showed Himself adamant, admitting no compromises, even though Moses had set a precedent.  Jesus’ Gospel was not to be in any way preparatory for something that might come later: His Gospel was and is definitive, and its sole function was and is to form true children-of-God, those whom the Holy Spirit would lead to believe in Jesus  and then go on to guide them to love their heavenly Father, as members of the mystical Body of Jesus; that is, as adopted children nourished by the teaching, and by the very Body and Blood, of the Father’s only-begotten Son-made-flesh.  Jesus could not envisage spurious children-of-God: only those given to Himself by the Father and formed according to His Gospel teaching by His gift of the Holy Spirit, would be able and fit to follow Jesus into the kingdom of heaven and, indeed, into the very presence of His and their heavenly Father

This attitude and purpose of Jesus was made devastatingly clear by His subsequent words which removed any possibility of misunderstanding or prevarication concerning the supremacy of divine truth with regard to political, social, or personal, expediency:

Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her, and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.

Those words were spoken to His disciples in private: they were the ones who would teach Jesus’ future disciples after He had gone, and there had to be no hesitancy or uncertainty over a matter of such importance, a matter that so clearly brings mankind’s weakness into possible confrontation with the exigencies of fellowship with God, as members of the Body of Christ, Who is Himself bonded as One in union with the Father, by the truth and love of their most Holy Spirit.

Moses had allowed the Jews a certain relaxation because they had been subject to a Law which was meant to help them become aware of their own sinfulness and frailties and acknowledge their need of a Saviour; and in fulfilling such a function the Law allowed a degree of licence while  bestowing a measure of holiness.  The Gospel, however, is concerned with the ultimate degrees of holiness, because it was and is meant to bring believers into union with Jesus, and into the family of the heavenly Father as His truly-adopted-children-in-Jesus, by the gift of God’s Holy Spirit.  Likewise, the fullness of the Holy Spirit could only be given to God’s Church in order to protect and promote the fullness of truth in all its purity: for only such fullness and purity of truth could lead human beings to an appreciation of, and gradual sharing in, the fullness of heavenly glory which is divine charity.  Previously, under the Mosaic dispensation, certain compromises could be made for human weakness and ignorance, since the Law was still preparatory, what would be definitive was yet to come.  The Gospel dispensation, however, is to be the final and immediate preparation for fellowship with God.  Under the Gospel law, never would believers in Jesus work alone, for they would always be endowed with, empowered and enlightened by, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of Holiness, and thus enabled to walk the ways of holiness leading into the presence of Him Whom Jesus addressed in prayer as ‘Holy Father’.  It is for such reasons that Jesus commanded:

You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matthew 5:48)

People of God, today we are given an opportunity to appreciate something of the divide that many are continually attempting to set up between our modern Church and the intention and will of Jesus.  Today, emphasis is placed, so often, on numbers and ‘compassion’.  Teaching, it is claimed, has to be adapted in order to bring more people into our churches; it should be relaxed, not only in unessential details of traditional Church law and discipline, but even in matters of doctrine, so that the Church doctrine might be more easily understood, and more accessible and welcoming to modern attitudes and mores.

This emphasis on numbers, this desire for popularity -- which is the true project modern ’compassion’ pleaders have in mind -- is far different from Jesus’ attitude with regard to those who thought His doctrine unacceptable:

Therefore, many of His disciples, when they heard this, said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?"         (John 6:60)

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?"  Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:66-68)

The Gospel message of salvation is, indeed, for the whole of mankind, but the mystery of human freedom is still relevant.  In Jesus’ own time and among Jesus’ own native people only a relatively small number accepted Him, and so no one knows, nor can anyone ever know, how many will ultimately respond positively to God’s offer of salvation.  Therefore, the attention of the Church should, must, always be turned to authentic doctrine, rightly understood: Jesus’ teaching, as Jesus meant it then, and as Jesus wills it to be heard and understood by mankind today.  Teaching can never be undermined by thoughts and fears about numbers nor must it ever be subjected to the prevalent preconceptions, prejudices and passions, of modern society.  Gospel truth has always to be the pure air we breathe not mere words to be argued about; it is not a commodity put at our disposal, to be watered down, topped up, coloured or flavoured, as we think best suited to current times and requirements.  Mother Church deals – so to speak – in God’s teaching, she dispenses God’s grace; no mere men, no individuals however authoritative, can ‘fiddle’ with what is not theirs, and what is for all men of all times.

There is only one Who can guide us into the fullness of Gospel truth: the Holy Spirit bequeathed to His Church and to be poured out on His Body, by Jesus.  The Good News of Jesus was first proclaimed by His own voice and understood by His own divinely-human mind; no merely human mind is either able to adequately understand its fullness or profundity, or to appreciate its wisdom and beauty; and that is why He gave His Holy Spirit to guide His Church into all truth:

When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own authority, but whatever He hears He will speak; and He will declare to you the things that are to come.  He will glorify Me, for He will take what is Mine and declare it to you.  All that the Father has is Mine; therefore I said that He will take of Mine and declare it to you. (John 16:13-15)

Therefore, the Gospel message can only be rightly understood and proclaimed by those imbued and endowed by the Holy Spirit: is not to be grasped like some apple from a tree by intellectual prowess. Gospel Wisdom can only be experienced, gradually known, and most humbly loved; and, this can best come about in the life of the Church which we are called to serve: above all, by serving the Lord Jesus Himself, in and through her, by faithful obedience and humble perseverance, in love. There are, alas, far too many in positions of prominence whose primary concern seems to be that they should be able to make their own mark, with the result that they are always seeking to adapt what has been handed down over centuries in order to demonstrate their own gifts by attempts to popularize and debase the straight and narrow, the light of life, and the gift of the Spirit.  They would have the Body and Blood available like French fries and Coca Cola; heaven would be easily accessible to all, indeed, it would be unavoidable, since for them, hell would no longer exist, being totally out of consideration in their system.  God, however, might prove a problem for them, since He twice left the Jewish Temple because of the human sinfulness of faithless guides and pastors.

People of God, the Church of Christ, our Mother Church, can never be diverted from her purpose, because she is protected by the promise of Jesus and His gift of the Spirit.  But the work of the Church can be thwarted for a time, and that is why the Spirit -- Who leads men and women of good will towards Jesus’ heavenly promise -- also needs men and women of good will to defend and extend the Church.  Let us, therefore, pray for Mother Church, let us love the beauty of her God-gifted truth and the splendour of His grace at work in her.  Let us disdain the tawdry presentations of those who offer us what is cheap and worldly; for that heavenly promise made to us by Jesus is beautiful beyond human measure, and was won for us at the cost of His most Precious Blood.

26th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Numbers 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48)

By their very make-up, infant human beings are totally selfish, being moved immediately by self-interest, which is – necessarily -- their law-of-life; and they have to be seriously taught and trained by loving parents in order to gradually set-aside such native selfishness.   Those infants who are not taught to grow up into sociable adults can become individuals selfish – or fearful -- beyond measure; individuals who can ultimately turn to violence both to grab what is wanted or to promote or protect, self; and such violence can cause death.

John, a working son in his own loving family, was still a ‘bit of a kid’ among Jesus’ Apostles, and, in today’s Gospel incident, he apparently thought that if anyone was performing miracles in the name of Jesus in their (the Apostles’) proximity, it should have been an Apostle, perhaps even John himself!  And so the, as yet imprudent, younger brother of the two ‘sons of thunder’, said to Jesus:

Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in Your name, and we tried to stop him because he was not following us.

Jesus was most understanding and simply told them these most wonderful words:

 He who is not against us, is on our side.

Let us now try to discover something of what Jesus’ words involved, something the Apostles would themselves later come to appreciate, namely, that the calling, the vocation, of an apostle does not, in the final assessment, require the performance of miracles, he is to be judged by the singular criterion of his one-ness with Jesus:

He who is not against US is on OUR side.  

Ultimately, the perfect Apostle is, most fully and most gratefully, satisfied with that one supreme blessing of being wholly one-with-and-for-Jesus alone.

The miracle-man had received a gift from God, a great gift indeed and one that gave glory to Jesus in Whose Name the miracle was performed.  However, the gift of being, and becoming ever more and more, one with Jesus is an incomparably greater blessing.  ‘That man is not against us’, Jesus said, ‘he is on our side’;  but as ‘that man’, even though he be ‘the miracle-man’, he is not included in those two other words, ‘us’ and ‘our’, and that makes all the difference.

The key to apostleship, -- one-ness with and for Jesus -- was, at that time, not sufficiently appreciated by the apostles; they – most especially Peter -- lived it but, not yet fully recognizing it, they could not live it to the full.  Later they would, and thereby they could  and did become models, guides, and protectors for Mother Church throughout the world and for all ages.

One-ness-with-and-for-Jesus is a reciprocal relationship in which divine love calls for, demands, our love in return; it is a relationship in which God’s love is given with the supreme object of calling forth, provoking, indeed, inflaming and sustaining a return of child-like love.  The gift of miracle-working is much more one-sided, and nothing that is not the spontaneous flowering of supreme love for Jesus Himself will be of enduring worth.  Love for Jesus, oneness-with-and-for-Him alone has no need for anything other to justify it, being itself the pearl of great price, the treasure hidden in the field of Christian life and doctrine which is the Church called to become the beautiful Spouse of Christ: It is the supreme adornment and fulfilment of human possibilities,

And there, People of God, we come to the kernel of our considerations this Sunday.  In our Gospel reading, John and all the other apostles were in their student days so to speak, still very solicitous about their own image before men: Who is the greatest? Who is best able to fulfil people’s expectations? However, they were not like that when they were with Jesus; in Jesus’ presence; for they were perfectly well aware that He knew them better than they knew themselves and, in His presence, they could only be perfectly natural, no pretence, no ‘braggadocio’ being possible: and such simplicity is the only way we ourselves can learn from Jesus’ gift of His most Holy Spirit.

Disciplined oneness with Jesus in our searching mind and yearning heart; and simplicity of soul in our humble, attentive waiting on, and response to, the Holy Spirit -- as He fulfils His divine project of reminding us of, and forming us in the likeness of, Jesus, Perfect God and Perfect Man -- such is the purpose and summit of the Christian life and Catholic spirituality.

And this very human desire not only to protect but also to promote self, seems to have remained with the apostles almost to the very end, for even after the Last Supper we read in Luke’s Gospel (22:21-26):

Jesus said: Behold, the hand of him who betrays Me is with Me on the table. For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!"  And they began to question one another, which of them it could be who was going to do this.  A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest

Indeed, for those two ‘Sons of Thunder. James and John,  this desire for precedence and greatness seems to have been given them along with their mother’s milk, for St. Matthew tells us that:

The mother of the sons Zebedee came up to Him with her sons, and kneeling before Him she asked Him for something.  And He said to her, "What do you want?" She said to Him, "Say that these two sons of mine are to sit, one on Your right hand and one at  the left, in Your kingdom." (Matthew 20:20-22)

The Christian situation in today’s Western world calls for ‘apostolic’ disciples, and therefore we need to know what we are aspiring to and how best to attain our quest.  May today’s considerations on the Gospel help promote Christian love and truth among all who want to walk by the light that has the end of God’s life-line for mankind in clear focus.