Corpus Christi (Year B) (2012)

 

THE MOST HOLY BODY & BLOOD OF CHRIST (B)

(Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26)

It was noticeable that the first reading taken from the book of Exodus, and also the second one from the letter to the Hebrews, mentioned only blood: the blood sprinkled on the Israelites by Moses in the desert, or that poured out by Christ on Calvary to cleanse His people from their sins.  At the Last Supper, however, as St. Mark’s Gospel told us, we heard how Jesus blessed and offered -- first of all --bread, saying “This is my Body”, and only afterwards, some wine, saying, “This is my Blood”.  Now, why did Jesus not simply offer His Blood?  Why did He bless bread and offer His Body also?

Our Lord’s divine wisdom is beyond any merely human explanation or scrutiny; and that is why Mother Church offers us several readings at Holy Mass, so that we might gain some understanding and appreciation of Jesus’ actions in the Gospel by viewing them in the light of other bible texts, both of which, in this case, as I said, speak only of blood, thereby inviting and provoking me, and I hope you also, to wonder why Jesus took both bread and wine, offered both His Body and His Blood.

In our reading from the book of Exodus, Moses had led the people of Israel out of Egypt and they had arrived at their first destination, Sinai, where Moses had encountered God on the mountain top and been given the Law; then we are told:

Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all answered with one voice and said, "We will do everything that the LORD has told us."   Moses then wrote down all the words of the LORD.

Our reading from the letter to the Hebrews spoke of Jesus ascending, not simply to the top of a mountain, but to heaven itself with His blood:

Christ came as High Priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, He entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with His own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

Both readings emphasize the blood, used by Moses and given by Jesus, and both tell us what the blood was for:

Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of his."

If the blood of bulls and goats and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God?

The blood was, therefore, for a sacrificial cleansing leading to a commitment to God by observing His laws, following His teaching, and loving His Word.

By those two readings we are encouraged, almost forced, to think, on hearing the Gospel passage: why did Jesus add the bread, His Body?   This question becomes all the more important when we realize that blood alone evokes easily and clearly that cleansing from sin and commitment to God; but when bread is also used we begin to think of both bread and wine as one, with an implication of food and drink, with the result that the Body and the Blood offered seem likewise to take on a suggestion of nourishment, refreshment.

The People of Israel, the original Chosen People, as you heard, pledged themselves to keep the Law given to them through Moses by the Lord:

All the people answered with one voice and said, "We will do everything that the LORD has told us."  

However, both early on in their desert wanderings, and ultimately, and most comprehensively, over the span of many centuries leading to the Messianic times, they failed, repeatedly and most seriously, to keep their part of the covenant they had originally entered into with God at Sinai.

They failed because they tried to do the impossible: not that God had required what was impossible of them, but because they failed to recognize and appreciate the divine aspect of their calling, and this, because the basic sin of devilish pride was once again reasserting itself in mankind’s relationship with God.  Instead of invoking God’s help in their weakness and His grace for their ignorance, they tried to keep the Law not so much by aspiring towards, longing and praying for, its spiritual fulfilment, as by reducing its scope to the level of their own natural understanding and its requirements to the limits of their own natural capacity for meticulous observance.  In that way their fulfilment of the requirements of the Law became a testimonial to their own undeniable strength of character and to a uniquely spurious holiness, rather than a means for their education into a truly spiritual understanding of God’s choice of Israel for His People and mankind’s Servant, and a spur to their whole-hearted acceptance of and response to the inconceivable wisdom and immeasurable love behind that choice and such a plan.

The offering of sacrificial blood alone came to remind the Israelites above all of obligations, requirements, to be met, as they had promised, in a vain attempt to legally fulfil their side of a bilateral agreement made at Sinai.   For the old covenant entered into by Moses at Sinai had been one of the type made between a sovereign Lord and his vassals, a type of treaty common in the Near East of those early days, a treaty in which a Great King would offer a binding covenant to His subjects, whereby He would protect them, and they, in return, would fulfil certain specific obligations of praise, honour, and service as His servants.  However, such treaties were not commonly considered -- by the subject nations around – to bind the minds and hearts of those obliged to obey.   

Humankind has always striven, since stretching out a grabbing hand for forbidden fruit in the original temptation of Eden, to become like to God without in any way becoming godly:

            For God knows that in the day you eat of (the apple) your eyes will be        opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (Gen 3:5)

Indeed, such is the extent of the human version of devilish pride, that some human beings will even seek to make themselves superior to God; trying to force Him, for example by magical practices and incantations, to do their will.

The Son of God, out of His great love for His Father and compassion for our suffering and subjection, came as One among us offering both His Body and His Blood, in order to convince His People of their constant need for both cleansing and strength: the Gift of the Eucharistic Food, Bread and Wine, Body and Blood, is meant to help us become a humble and grateful People, constantly aware of our need for the purification and power of that heavenly nourishment whereby we  can walk – in the power of the Spirit -- safely and successfully along the way of Jesus through the desert of this world towards the promised fulfilment of our heavenly Father’s home. 

But there is yet more, for by bringing in the aspect of food and nourishment whereby we constantly look to God for help and strength to follow His guidance and do His will, we are also made aware of our calling to an eternal banquet in heaven, whereat we will find ourselves being given a place at the divine table that we, most certainly, could never have stolen for ourselves: a position of honour and – in Jesus, by the Spirit -- of a certain equality with God, as His adopted children in the Kingdom and Family of their eternal Father.  The New Covenant is no longer a mighty-Lord-and-vassal covenant but a living bond of mutual love, by the Spirit, in Jesus, wherein we share in the very relationship that exists between Jesus and His Father, as children of the Father, adopted indeed, but most truly His children, because the Spirit uniting Jesus and the Father is our very life, the spiritual blood coursing through our veins and in our heart, the breath of life that fills our lungs.

Today, therefore, thanks to the readings Mother Church has chosen to give us along with Saint Mark’s Gospel account of the institution of the Eucharist, we have recognized something of what Jesus’ offering of bread and wine can mean for us: it both humbles and exalts us.  By directly humbling us it can save us from the folly of human pride; while the exaltation it promises us is above anything we could ever have imagined, and thereby, indeed, humbles us yet more, spiritually this time, in a gratitude that knows not what to acclaim loudest, “Thank you Lord for such unimaginable blessings”, or “Lord, I am not worthy.”  And since neither acclamation can ring pure and true without the other, let us, therefore, most whole-heartedly embrace both, and, leaving aside our own cogitations, calmly trust the Spirit both to guide us in our choice and form us by their use.

                                

           

Trinity Sunday 2012 (Year B)

  Trinity Sunday   (Year B 2012)                

 (Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20)

Dear People of God, our readings today spread out for us a most wonderful panoply of Trinitarian glory and goodness, for our deep peace, supreme hope, and undying gratitude.  It all begins with Israel as recorded in our first reading:

Ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?   Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation … with strong hand and outstretched arm which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

One hears of scholars today who, confident in their own great wisdom and with much approval from other like-minded, politically-correct, potential world reformers, want to deny the fact, and deny Israel the glory, of God originally choosing one people to be His own Chosen People.   Uniqueness would seem, for such scholars, necessarily to mean exclusivity, superiority, nationalism and racism, and, as such, to be condemned as the cause of much, far too much, of mankind’s struggles and strife throughout history.

However, we know that God chooses only those destined by Him to be servants of His own good plans and purposes, as of mankind’s better-being and ultimate salvation.  Israel was indeed chosen by God and remained uniquely honoured as His Chosen People for thousands of years until bringing forth glorious fruit for the establishment of Jesus’ Church as the new and ultimate People of God by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  God does make choices – sometimes, indeed, with an outstretched arm -- and that means for us, as believers and disciples of Jesus as Lord and Saviour, that we too have, each of us individually, been chosen, deliberately, by God (“no one can come to Me unless My Father draws him”) for His glory, our salvation, and the salvation of mankind.  Moreover, our world, our universe is not, as so many would like to believe, the result of chance -- untraceable and infinitesimal -- coalescing out of the chaos of unimaginable powers and countless conflicting processes over many millions of years before ultimately heading for inevitable self-destruction into the void of oblivion … No! Our world has been deliberately chosen, willed, and created by the God Who shows His hand by willing to choose and then by speaking with love – originally from the midst of the fire, then by His continuing words of the Law and the Prophets given to Israel for her formation and guidance; until now, ultimately and definitively, in and through Jesus His Word made flesh and proclaimed in His Church – because He loves His creation, and His will to share His love with those He has made in His own image and likeness for an eternity of blessed fulfilment is abiding and true in His beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour.

Such is the beginning of a series of blessings ever more wonderful and unimaginably beautiful.   Let us move on to our second reading from St. Paul. 

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

In those words St. Paul refers to a transcendent blessing won for us by Jesus Our Lord and Saviour: for, by dying in our flesh He destroyed our death, and by rising  glorified in the Spirit, He restored our Life.  That is, by His transformation of His human horror of dying on the Cross into an act of sublime obedience and supreme love for His Father and His plans for us, He shattered the tyrannical hold of death over our human experience of life.  Having risen from the dead glorified in His human flesh, He bestows, in fulfilment of the Father’s promise, His Spirit upon His Church to drive out our sin and set us free; and thereby He gives us the hope of sharing – in Him, as living members of His Body, in His victory over sin and, with Him, as adopted children of God -- in the divine life of eternal beatitude which is His, with the Spirit, before the face of His heavenly Father.

Such forgiveness of sins is a most wonderful blessing indeed.  After all, what good is money, power, or pleasure, if, in all that you hope or do, you are weighed down by the awareness of your sins and of the inexorably approaching time when you will have to give an account of your life and pay for the wrong you have done.  Poverty, suffering, even loneliness, can be borne by one who has peace of soul; on the other hand, no matter how far and wide, however diligently, we may search, there is no refuge to be found that can still the nagging qualms and soothe the haunting anxieties of a guilty conscience:

What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?  For, the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.  (Matthew 16:26f.)

Of course there are some who like to think that they can distract themselves from the awareness of right and wrong characteristic of humanity, and learn to forget God and, in Him, all traces of any sensitivity to sin or awareness of personal responsibility.  Of them the psalmist says:

Sin lurks deep in the hearts of the wicked, forever urging them on to evil deeds. They have no fear of God to hold them back.  Instead, in their conceit, they think they can hide their evil deeds and not get caught.  Everything they say is crooked and deceitful; they are no longer wise and good.  They lie awake at night to hatch their evil plots instead of planning how to keep away from wrong. (TLB.  Psalm 36:1-4)

However, though they may, to some extent, hide their sins from themselves, and though their eyes may refuse to recognize and their minds to admit the truth about themselves, nevertheless, God is the One Who sees all and knows all, and He hates wickedness; above all, He hates the wickedness of those who claim to be innocent of wrong-doing, holy – that is, divine -- without Him:

With You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.  Oh, continue Your loving-kindness to those who know You, and Your righteousness to the upright in heart.     The workers of iniquity have fallen; they have been cast down and are not able to rise. (Psalm 36:9-10,12)

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)

For all who, on the other hand, live humbly in Jesus by the Spirit for the Father, the gift of forgiveness of sins and freedom from their enslavement brings into our lives a truly sublime experience of peace and hope.

The next blessing Jesus offers us is inconceivable because St. Paul tells us that:

We are children of God and, if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him so that we may be glorified with Him.

St. Paul is therefore able to speak of the “glory of the children of God”.  For the present time, indeed, the fullness of that consuming glory is, as I said, something we cannot possibly conceive, for it is heavenly and transcends all earthly categories or human imagining.  However, we can begin the experience of something of that heavenly glory here on earth, because it is given us – even here and now -- to enter into communion with the Father, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the explicit prayer of Jesus (John 17:5, 24):

Father, I desire that they also, whom You gave Me, may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me. 

That means that we are able to have a share in the Son’s loving relationship with His Father by the Holy Spirit: in Jesus, we too can commune with the Father, speak personally with Him as His children and experience His Fatherly love and care for us, as the Spirit of Jesus -- gently working in our spirit and guiding us along His ways – forms us ever more and more in Jesus’ likeness.  In that way, in Jesus and with Him, we can come to know that we are not left to ourselves and that, whatever our weakness, whatever our need, we will never be left alone:

Indeed the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered, each to his own, and will leave Me alone.  And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. (John 16:32)

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14:23)

(Father) I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:26)

And so, dear People of God, there is every right reason for our whole-hearted celebration of the Most Holy Trinity today: for, thanks to Jesus, we know by faith, and can appreciate in our spiritual experience, something of the love of the Father: that love from all ages, which upholds our world and embraces us; that intimate and abiding love which is ever at hand to comfort, guide, and protect us; that inviting love, to which we can give whole-hearted response in the wisdom of Jesus’ word and the power of Jesus’ Spirit.

For such incomparable blessings we are undyingly grateful to Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour, because it is He alone Who both reveals the Father and bequeaths to us His Most Holy Spirit:

Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through Me.” (John 14:6)

The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:26)

And Jesus does all this for us through His faithful Spouse, Mother Church, which continues to do as He originally commanded her:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.  Amen.

Therefore, dear People of God, our gratitude to the Father, to His Son -- our Lord and Saviour -- and to the Holy Spirit, necessarily holds also Mother Church in its embrace.  And although Mother Church is not yet become the ‘spotless Bride of Christ’ of which we hear in the letter to the Ephesians (5:25-27):

a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish;

nevertheless, gleaming through the stains of our weakness and wilfulness, her love for Her Lord and Spouse is unfailing; and, being blessed by His Father as the chosen instrument of our salvation and channel of His grace, we recognize her as our Mother and see in her the likeness of Mary, the Mother of Jesus to whose tender care and prayers Jesus committed us by His dying wish and command.

When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!”  Then, to His disciple, “Behold, your mother!”  (John 19:26-27)

Pentecost Sunday (Year B)

PENTECOST SUNDAY (B)

 (Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27; 16:12-15)

Jesus promised His Apostles:

When the Advocate comes, whom I shall send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father, He will testify to Me.

How would the Spirit testify, bear witness, to Jesus with regard to the Apostles?

He, the Spirit of truth, will guide you to all truth; He will declare to you the things that are coming.  He will glorify Me, because He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you.  Everything that the Father has is Mine.

Here we should notice that the Spirit will not speak of Himself, as Jesus explicitly declares:

He will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears.

And so we gather that the Spirit will speak to the Apostles about the things Jesus taught and did, as revealed by the Father.  Notice also, People of God, how careful Jesus is to confirm the oneness of divine witness by explicitly declaring:

The Spirit will not speak on His own, but He will speak what He hears. He will take from what is Mine and declare it to you.  Everything that the Father has is Mine.

Thus there will be no opportunity for individuals in later years to claim private revelations from the Spirit in imitation of pagan oracles and practices in Greek and Roman times: the Spirit leading Mother Church would inspire the Apostles to recall and proclaim, exclusively, all that Jesus had taught in word and deed as  revealed by the Father:

He will testify to Me; and you also testify (He will testify so that you also may testify) because you have been with Me from the beginning.

In the Church of Christ, since the Holy Spirit of Truth Himself does not speak on His own authority, most certainly, private individuals cannot do so: the authentic teaching of the Church on faith and morals is divine, both in its authority and, ultimately, in its origin, being the truth about God’s intimate nature, and His Personal will for human life on earth and for mankind’s eternal destiny.

How does the Spirit move the faithful in the Church?  Since He guides the Apostles into all truth, correspondingly He guides the faithful in Mother Church to appreciate all truth, clearly recognizing it and lovingly responding to it.  And this He does by informing our lives in such a way that we gradually develop an affinity with divine truth and beauty, love and strength.  It was of such guidance of the Church by the Spirit that St. Paul spoke in the second reading:

I say then: Live by the Spirit, and you will certainly not gratify the desire of the flesh.   If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Those words do indeed make living by the Spirit sound most attractive for many modern men and women who do not want to be obliged by any law that might interfere with or intrude upon their personal choice of life style.

On the other hand however, further on in our second reading St. Paul reveals what many consider to be the true, and most objectionable, aspect of his character when he says:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh with its passions and desires.

Now such crucifying of the flesh does not sound quite so attractive to modern sensitivities!  What therefore are we to think of living (walking) by the Spirit which seems first of all to promise freedom from oppressive and constraining law but yet involves us in crucifying the flesh?

I suppose many, perhaps most, nominal Christians in our modern society have shown, by the fact of declining church attendances and the lowering of public morals, that they have, in fact, decided to ignore what they consider a somewhat vague and uncertain promise of spiritual freedom in order to avoid an uncompromisingly physical prospect of moral discipline and observance.

Such a decision is not made easier or more comfortable, however, when those words of Jesus are called to mind:

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.  (Matt 11:29-12:1)

And again, St. John tells us in the name of Jesus:

            This is the love of God: that we keep His commandments; and His    commandments are not burdensome.   (1 John 5:3)

It would appear then that either there is some confusion in the Gospel or else many people today are wrong in their understanding of St. Paul whom they regard as being both harsh and unfeeling, indeed even exclusive, as exemplified by what they consider to be his teaching in our second reading today: ‘no one can belong to Christ Jesus unless he crucifies all self-indulgent passions and desires’ … a teaching which many say leads them to reject Christianity.

Perhaps, however, in many cases, that reason is more truly an excuse, proffered by those attempting to justify their rejection -- not of what is impossible, but -- of something they would consider to be unattractive, restrictive or difficult.  For St. Paul does not use those exclusive words ‘you cannot belong to Christ Jesus’ and no modern bible attributes such words to Him; in fact he actually says:

Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

And he follows that up immediately with the words:

            If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.

We should, therefore, understand Paul in this way:

Those who are Christ’s, who live by the Spirit and follow the Spirit, have crucified the flesh.

There all of us are afforded hope, because it is by our living and walking in the Spirit, Paul says, that the Spirit will be able to crucify in us and for us ‘the flesh with its passions and desires’; whereby the ultimate aim and purpose of the Christian revelation and life may be attained, which is the supreme glory of God and the salvation of mankind, together with our individual, personal, fulfilment in knowledge of, commitment to, and love for the One God revealed in Himself by Jesus as a Trinity of Persons Father, Son and Holy Spirit, while in us and for us as  my Father and yours; the Brother, Lord, and Saviour of each and every one of us; mankind’s Advocate and our individual Comforter and Help.   Of course we have to co-operate with the Spirit by following His lead, but that is a far different prospect from having to set about, ‘off our own bat’ or ‘under our own steam’ so to speak, crucifying the flesh.  The fact is that we cannot, of ourselves, crucify our flesh in any saving way, for St. Paul himself tells us:

Things done according to the commandments and doctrines of men indeed have (at times) an appearance of wisdom in self-imposed religion, false humility, and neglect of the body, but (such practices) are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh. (Col 2:22-23)

The great fault of lapsing, faint-hearted, Christians today, the great mistake of the critics of Mother Church’s moral teaching today, is the fact that they neglect or ignore the presence -- the active presence and power -- of the Holy Spirit in our lives.  We, of ourselves, can do nothing that leads to salvation, and God does not in any way command that we should, of ourselves, try to do anything of that nature.  Jesus, the risen and ascended Lord, sends the Spirit promised by the Father to enable us to do what He, Jesus, commands in order that we might be raised up, in Him, ultimately to take our place -- in Him and with Him -- at the right  hand of the Father. 

The Apostles had received a commission and a command from the risen Lord to proclaim the Good News to the whole world, but they first went back to their fishing, awaiting Jesus’ promise of ‘power from on high’, and only began their task of evangelisation after they had received that Gift of God, the Spirit of Jesus, the Spirit of holiness and power, on His very first outpouring upon the Church, as we heard in the first reading.  The Apostles could do nothing until He came into their lives to enable them to live in the power and holiness of the Risen Lord.

People of God, we should, on this wonderful day of celebration and hope, beg the Holy Spirit to come upon us, beseech Jesus to send His Spirit into our lives, ever more and more, for He is, indeed, our strength, our joy, and above all -- being the Bond of Love between Father and Son -- our ‘new-life love’ as St. Paul tells us:

God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us. (Romans 5:5)

Now, all activities of whatever sort in the Christian life are to be related to His loving, Personal purpose.  And so, first of all we must learn from the Spirit to love Jesus; for, by loving Him we will be enabled, in the Spirit, both to obey His commands with a measure of sweetness and to walk in His ways with due reverence and perseverance.  In that way, we will gradually find Him more and more lovable, because of our growing likeness to Him; and thus appreciating Him more we will be able to hear His Spirit speaking ever more intimately in our hearts and guiding us along ways that are increasingly personal to our relationship with Jesus.  We will never, of course, desert or set aside the common way of His commandments for all; but experiencing the great delight of finding ourselves growing in intimacy with the Lord and in responsiveness to His Spirit, we will, indeed, gradually become aware of the Person of the Father Himself in our lives.  For Jesus did promise that supreme delight and joy as St. John tells us in his Gospel:

Jesus said, "If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (14:23)

People of God, this day is the birthday of the Church, it is the day which commemorates and renews the birth of hope in our hearts, purpose and power in our lives: for the Spirit offers us a common goal and an eternal destiny of glory and joy as children of God in the Body of Christ, and such a destiny also promises us an unutterably beautiful personal fulfilment, in Jesus, by the Spirit, with the Father.