31st Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Hebrews 7:21-28; St. Mark 12:28-34) 

This is the commandment that the Lord your God commanded me to teach you:  that you fear the Lord your God, you and your son and your son’s son.

Having elaborated on that stark commandment, Moses then went on to say:

Hear O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one.  You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.  And these words I command you today shall be on your heart.

And there, dear People of God, we have an essential aspect of our religion: it is truth founded on the unshakeable rock of reality.  The Almighty, the Unutterable, the Awesome and Majestic, the sustaining Creator of all that is, is -- by His very nature – Fearsome for, and to be feared by, His creation.   However, He is also – for His chosen creation, His Chosen People – One who is to be loved:  with all your heart and with all your soul, and with all your might.

Dear friends in Jesus, never forget that Catholic saving, truth, is based on reality; that is why God sent His only-begotten Son, His Word of Truth, to come among us, to become one of us through Mary of Nazareth and the Holy Spirit of life and love.  Beautiful imaginations are not saving, truth … they can, for a time and in favourable circumstances, be emotionally inspiring; but never, never, can they pretend to be  ‘life-stakingly’ reliable words,  words bringing peace, for salvation.

Let us consider more closely, more intently, more lovingly, our blessed Lord and Saviour.

I have just said that He was sent among us by His Father; that is how Jesus Himself always preferred to express ‘why, how’ He came among us to be our Saviour.  He came, as One sent by His Father; that is, at His Father’s command.  That does not mean that He Himself had been unwilling to come among us; on the contrary He had wanted to come as our Saviour, but out of love above all for His Father, Who had originally, and most lovingly, created each of us -- as free persons -- in His own image and likeness.  Jesus had wanted His Incarnation to be a work of truth founded on the unshakeable rock of reality, that is, a work founded on the irrefragable truth of His love for His Father and the rock-solid creative love of His Father for His human creation.   The devil’s deceit, had brought about -- through Eve’s disobedience, and Adam’s weakness -- a hurt for the Lord and God of all creation; because, by creating man-and-woman in His own image and likeness,  He had humbly left Himself liable to hurt in this one aspect.  And His beloved, only-begotten Son, willed – with the unutterable majesty and intensity of His divine love for His Father – to right that wrong, restore that hurt, by coming among men as One of them, One Sent -- under obedience -- to form a new, obedient, People of God through faith in Himself; a people willing to be guided and sustained by His most Holy Spirit, the divine expression of the love eternally bonding  the Father and His Son.

Our second reading tells us that Jesus is a priest forever:

Consequently He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

He always lives to make intercession for us in heaven, where He entered as perfect God (triumphant after His resurrection and ascension) and perfect Man (thanks to the human flesh and blood He received from the immaculate Mary of Nazareth).  He thereby opened the gates of heaven for those ‘sheep of His flock’ willing to walk, in the power of His most Holy Spirit, along the way He Himself -- as Jesus of Nazareth -- had already traced out for them.  The way of Gospel truth was written by His chosen Apostles under the inspiring guidance of Jesus’ most Holy Spirit, Who recalled to those Apostolic authors all that Jesus had said and done, all that He intended to be  proclaimed – in His name, by the Church of His choosing and formation -- to the whole of mankind, for their salvation as potential children (in Him, the only-begotten Son) of God the Father.

Let us finally hear Jesus’ words from today’s Gospel reading, which confirm, and give their final consecration to, those words of Moses we heard earlier:

The most important commandment is, ‘Hear O Israel: The Lord  our God, the Lord is one.  And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’  The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’  There is no other commandment greater than these.’  

Jesus, the Son of God, had been sent, had come among us as our Neighbour, bringing salvation for all who would believe in Him and allow themselves to be re-formed by His Spirit in the likeness of Himself, as children, adopted of God. Thus, was attained the Son’s ultimate intention of finally restoring the hurt that He, as most-beloved and only-begotten Son, could not bear to see affecting His Almighty, Majestic, and – for all who would come to know Him by sharing in the divine ecstasy of love which is eternal life – most Humble, Father of us all. 

30th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 5:1-6; Mark 10:46-52) 

God’s Chosen People had originally been banished from their homeland because they had – over many generations -- become gradually more and more alienated from God by their sinful behaviour; ultimately, they lost  the Promised Land He had given them.

Now, in our first reading today from the prophet Jeremiah, God is showing that divine mercy to His People for which many prophets, holy men and women, had long been praying: He is bringing them back to their Promised Land, restoring His gift, and thereby inviting them to return to Him with their whole heart and mind.  This physical returning home was to be an opportunity for them to become once again worthy to be known as God’s Chosen People (Luke 1:74-5):

That we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days.

However, that physical return had been hard, very hard indeed, leading over desert and stony ways; food and drink being necessarily in short supply since, after having had to pay the prices asked for them, they were then obliged to carry those supplies on their own backs as well as on the backs of the few animals they possessed.  Moreover, backs for carrying were not plentiful since they were returning with some treasured possessions, above all, they were carrying their infants; and there were many who could not carry anything at all because they were either blind, lame, sick, too old, or else heavily pregnant.  For all these reasons food and drink had been strictly limited for a journey that was long, over territory that was difficult, and under conditions of great heat during the day and penetrating cold at night.

Those difficulties, however, had not been the only, nor perhaps the greatest, encountered by the returning exiles; for that trek had been completed in a period of months, whereas there had been other difficulties of rebuilding and restoration which  took years to resolve.  And, above all, having made their return, the very greatest challenge facing them had been that of their own wayward hearts and minds which still had to return to the Lord their God in spirit and in truth.  The physical return home was their great opportunity, but a truly successful return would not to be accomplished without much soul-searching, prayer, and endeavour (Jeremiah 31:9):

With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back.    

That is the experience, even today, of many who, for whatever reason, left Mother Church, and then are led, by the great mercy of God, to return to the fold: their absence has changed them, and, during that absence, Mother Church herself has changed, inevitably, since she is a living Church relating to a world in constant flux.  And even though such changes might, perhaps, only have been slight, nevertheless, they are not imperceptible; with the result that some aspects of Church life may now seem to those returning less familiar, less homely, than before, whilst other changes might even seem to strike a disturbing, somewhat alien, chord.

Changes in ones’ self, changes in the Church, however, are not the only cause of difficulties for exiles returning home: their return can be made difficult and trying by one thing that does not change, human nature: the people they find on returning may not appear to be, and some of them may not truly be, understanding, sympathetic or helpful:

As Jesus was leaving Jericho with His disciples and a great crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, the son of Timaeus, was sitting by the roadside.  And when he  heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”  And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.

The words of the prophet are, indeed, still very true:

With weeping they shall come, and with pleas for mercy I will lead them back.

Now, it is undeniably the case that all of us -- even those who have never been separated from Mother Church -- are exiles returning to our Father, because all of us can experience something of that alienation from God which sin and worldliness incessantly threaten to bring about in us.  In addition to that, we all have set before us a totally new and unimaginable promise and prospect, for we are now called not to prepare ourselves for something we know, but rather, to allow ourselves to be groomed for the supernatural condition of children of the heavenly Father by the Spirit, Who forms us in the likeness of Jesus by our faith in Him, as the only-begotten Son of God made flesh for our salvation.  

We can only undertake such a pilgrimage thanks to Jesus Christ, our great High Priest.   We were told in the second reading:

Every high priest chosen from among men is appointed to act on behalf  men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sins.   No one takes this honour upon himself but only when called by God.

Jesus offered His gifts and His unique sacrifice to the Father for us, and He envisaged not only our redemption from sin but even our being with Him in heaven as He had been with us on earth.  The price for the attainment of such an unimaginable purpose, however, could only be itself unimaginable, unimaginable love -- the love that caused Jesus to offer His life to His Father, from the Cross on Calvary, for our salvation (John 10:17-18):

For this reason the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again.  No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own  accord.  I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.  This charge I have received from My Father

If Jesus was to give supremely human expression to that infinite fulness of divine love enjoined on Him by His Father, it had to be in and through His human body, and inevitably, by His bursting the limitations of that body: totally embracing divinely filial obedience for His Father’s supreme glory and showing unimaginably compassionate love for our human waywardness, both aspects to be glimpsed in and through His crucified Body and His pierced Heart.

In such a way Jesus won for all of us exiles, that first gift of the Spirit: that original inspiration, to start us out on the way back to our Father.

Thanks to the supreme prayer of Jesus and His sacrifice of self on Calvary -- the sacrifice made available and effective for all ages in Mother Church’s continuous offering of Holy Mass -- we too can gain a hearing when we pray, as His disciples, ‘Lord have mercy on us.’

Having, in the name of Jesus, gained a hearing, and having begun our return in Him and with Him to the Father, we have to persevere throughout a long, and at times difficult, journey, overcoming -- as did those returning exiles in the first reading -- trials from both without and within ourselves.  Thanks be to God, in Mother Church at Holy Mass, all of us who are, to whatever degree, alienated from the Father by our sinfulness, can draw near and call out to Jesus -- as did Bartimeus on hearing the noise of the crowd -- because Jesus at Holy Mass is close at hand to hear our cries and answer us, as He did so long ago:

Jesus said to him, "What do you want Me to do for you?" And the blind man said to Him, "Rabbi, let me recover my sight!"         

What would you have asked for in such a situation, People of God?  What do you, in fact, ask of Jesus today at Holy Mass?  Each of us is making his or her own journey to the Father, and each and every one of us has his or her own difficulties to deal with  and overcome; but whatever our needs and whatever the request we might ask of Jesus, let us remember and learn from what we are told about Bartimeus, for Scripture says that:

Many rebuked him, telling him to be silent; but he cried out all the more, "Son of David, have mercy on me!"

Is anyone telling you to shut up?   Perhaps it is you yourself, your worldly self, suggesting that you are tired of praying … it never seems to be heard; telling you that you are weary of making efforts which don’t bring any visible results.  Such psychological ‘voices’ may not, however, be all that tends to discourage you, People of God; for in our present situation here in multi-cultural Britain under a positively secular-minded and anti-religious government there is much opposition and ridicule both public and in private, for those who would serve God and conscience first and foremost.  We are now surrounded by people who profess themselves satisfied by what they think they know about life in today’s world, people who think themselves able to do all things necessary to sufficiently advance their own purpose and achieve their own goal; people who acknowledge no realms beyond what their own eyes and mankind’s technical abilities tell them,  no truths beyond their ken.   Consequently, they cannot understand and indeed tend to dismiss or despise those of us who, as Christians, look to Jesus to give us, by His Spirit, sight to recognize what is ultimately true, and strength to walk along His way towards its attainment and enjoyment in His Father’s Kingdom.

Whatever opposition you may encounter, whatever the trials and disappointments you may experience, keep your hopes fixed on Jesus, dear  People of God, like Bartimeus, and pray that despite all, through all, you might be enabled to see well enough to follow Jesus  faithfully along the road that leads ultimately into the presence of the Father; for that drawing closer to Jesus – by endeavour and intention – is, indeed, the grace of salvation.

This process of becoming one with Jesus in love for the Father and in the service of our fellows, is never-ending while we are still on earth, and it is one that can only be accomplished in us by the Holy Spirit guiding, strengthening, and crowning, our co-operation. We are always able to win -- with the Spirit of Jesus -- that fulfilment which the heavenly Father has long planned and prepared for us: our becoming His true, heavenly  children, adopted in Jesus, by the Spirit.  

29th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45) 

Dear People of God, the essential teaching contained in this Sunday’s  Gospel passage from Saint Mark, is ‘muddied’ somewhat by a question of translation which needs to be considered first of all, because it does quickly lead to a serious issue concerning Catholic spirituality which translators are not necessarily sufficiently aware of.

There are two current translations of today’s Gospel focus:

whoever would be first among you MUST/WILL be slave of all. Whoever would be great among you MUST/WILL be your servant; 

Literally speaking, “must”,  repeated twice, should be translated, more correctly, by the word, “will”.

Let us therefore consider the two different appreciations of what our Evangelist, St. Mark, quotes Jesus as having taught in his Gospel:

Whoever would be great among you will be your servant; and whoever would be first among you will be slave of all.

Notice first of all that Jesus was speaking privately to His chosen disciples, each of whom He knew intimately, both with regard to their own individual character and to their personal love for, and commitment to, Himself.  They were men He, Jesus, was in the very process of training to become His Apostles and the founders of His future Church:

            Whoever would be great among you will be... 

Some translators say that here Jesus means ‘must make yourself to be…’ a servant of the others, because His words,  ‘whoever would be great’, imply that to attain  their desire, to show, prove themselves be great, the disciple must DO something that distinguishes and shows him to be that ‘special’!  And surely, we can understand such a trend of thought.

Yes, we can understand that because it is a normal, worldly, way of thinking.  But, precisely, here we are not considering the thought patterns of every-day human beings firmly ensconced in an ordinary worldly situation: we are thinking about men chosen by God first of all to love and follow Jesus; men then being further singled out by Jesus Himself for membership in a unique group known as The Twelve; and finally, they were men who heard carefully chosen words addressed to them alone by Jesus, the ‘Word’ of God and the ‘Wisdom’ of God made flesh.
 
The translation ‘Whoever would be great among you must be your servant’ demands – first of all -- that anyone of them with such a desire must do something to make, to  prove, himself, and thus it presumes a measure of self-seeking and of self-esteem that is most certainly not what Jesus wanted in His Apostles.
Of course, ‘must be your servant’ can mean ‘must become, must be made’, by God, your servant.’ But that is most certainly not the first implication of that translation.
 
On the other hand, our translation ‘Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant’, declares that any one of them with – anyone to whom God has indeed given -- aspirations, hopes, prayers for such greatness, will be brought by God the Father to serve his brethren; either in actual physical service, or in self-sacrificing spiritual humility and fraternal commitment.  Now that is the way Jesus Himself lived in our regard: not choosing for Himself, but being led by His Father, just as our first reading, taken from the book of Isaiah, made so abundantly clear:
 
                It was the will of the Lord to crush Him; He has put him to grief.
 
                The will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
 
And this attitude is incontrovertibly shown by Our Blessed Lord at His agony in the Garden when He said:
 
Abba, Father, all things are possible for You.  Remove this cup from Me; before adding, yet not what I will but what You will. (Mark 14:36)
 
Let us therefore look back at the preposterous request made (according to Mark’s Gospel which vividly records Peter’s preaching) by James and John, sons of Zebedee:
 
                Teacher, we want You to do for us whatever we ask of You!!
 
Matthew tries to make it more acceptable by saying the request was made by the mother of those two disciples … but the original indignation of their fellow apostles is surely most clearly witnessed to, and justified by, Mark’s account as remembered by Peter.

Therefore, assuming Mark is accurate,  and that James and John did themselves make such an outrageous request of Jesus, the question arises, ‘Why did Jesus treat their request so seriously?’  And surely the answer must be, ‘Because He had something supremely important to teach all twelve of His future apostles from the faux pas of James and John;  He is about to show them something essential for their future Apostolic understanding of themselves and of the ways of their God, His Father.
 
James and John had tried to express, in badly chosen words -- but also quite simply and humbly before Jesus -- what His Father was trying to inspire in them: an divine aspiration, which --  in no circumstances whatsoever -- was to be mistaken as a merely human ambition.

Yes, you will be great because My Father is trying to draw you along, guide you on, His way for you; but His will alone will be done in you, not your will for your own personal renown, not even your will for His renown.  His will, will be done, in you, and it will be done in His way.

Jesus took their preposterous but childishly innocent request seriously, because they were indeed intended to become Apostles for the establishment of His Church and the Kingdom of God, and this folly, this misunderstanding of His Father’s intentions in their regard, needed to be corrected.  Indeed, in a certain measure it was being corrected at that very moment, by the well-deserved embarrassment James and John had to endure when they dropped back -- Jesus usually walked in front of His Apostles -- to rejoin their indignant fellow Apostles, whom they had earlier, so symbolically, left behind in order to go ahead and talk privately with Jesus. 

Jesus however, although once again walking alone, ahead of His Apostles, noticed what was going on behind Him and we are told:

He summoned them, and said to them…. WHOEVER WISHES TO BE GREAT AMONG YOU WILL BE YOUR SERVANT; WHOEVER WISHES TO BE FIRST AMONG YOU WILL BE THE SLAVE OF ALL.

They would all have learnt so much about themselves and about God’s will for them from those words of Jesus!

Dear People of God, as we consider the history of Mother Church past and present, we can surely appreciate the superhuman task that faced and still faces the Twelve Apostles and their subsequent episcopal successors: the establishment of a cohesive Catholic Church: one in faith, morals, and obedience, throughout history and for all mankind.  They would indeed have the Holy Spirit, ‘Gifted’ them by Jesus, abiding with them as a Body, and forming them individually to become each a true member of that Body of Christ, for the glory of God the Father and the salvation of all men and women of good will.  But what immense difficulties would subsequently arise through those who -- like James and John, though not so innocently as they -- would mistake  their own ambitions for God’s inspiration, for God’s inviting and guiding grace?  How many souls would, do, and will, suffer from the overweening pride of individuals in powerful positions: be they bombastic, arrogant, and ambitious prelates or scheming, harsh and unbending, mother superiors!

Undoubtedly, however, the single most important task for Mother Church today is the defence, purification and exaltation of Christian family life; and the supreme need in Catholic spirituality is for all Catholic parents to assume family responsibility and exercise shared and loving parental authority; and -- forgetting themselves --  to draw ever closer to Jesus, humbly and patiently centred on doing the will of God the Father: becoming ever more able to discern and distinguish His will from their own, and His glory from their own reputation, regardless of the blame or acclamation of men.
 
Dear People of God, let us aspire with all our heart to love Jesus for the Father and to serve Jesus by His Spirit, in the Church called to Jesus by His Father for the salvation of men and women of good will.  Let us not seek a self-called Church of human choice, strong in numbers and bolstered by popularity, but barren of fruit born of God’s grace and bereft of His uniquely saving presence.