6th Sunday of the Year (1) 2014

 6^th. Sunday of Year (1)

(Sirach 15:15-20; 1^st. Corinthians 2:6-10; Matthew 5: 17-37)

As we look around the world today we see some amazing things not only happening as current expressions of perennial human weakness and wickedness, but, much more disconcertingly, we find such things becoming increasingly accepted as part of tolerable, if not normal, behaviour in our modern society.  We hear of plans to clone babies, and of couples waiting for the opportunity to have a child in such a way; of babies being fostered by gay or lesbian couples, a baby girl with two men or vice-versa; or again of babies being bought and sold on the internet.  We read of people living long in our earthly nirvana and yet finding themselves, or being found by their relatives, as a burden too great to endure, and so they make arrangements, or relatives are led to think of plans, for their assisted exit from this life.  Again, in our society there are numbers of people who so love animals that they will threaten to bomb -- perhaps killing or maiming -- human beings who do not subscribe to their radical, not to say fanatical, way of thinking; and it is a very ordinary, world-wide practice, for subversive organizations to bomb, maim, and kill, innocent people in order to draw attention to their particular causes without any sense of guilt or trace of compassion. Even our own, we think to be relatively decent, young people, can sometimes show little or no compunction about kicking someone near to death, if they become involved somewhere in random, unplanned and unanticipated, violence.  Yob gangs, however, of cities, towns, or even at times rural localities, will not scruple to mug, beat, and kill individual men both young and old, to abuse and rape women, girls, and even children, to satisfy their rampant pride and unbridled passions of all sorts.

Sorrowfully recalling these things, and many others like them, to mind, we wonder at times what is happening to our world.  How can people come to behave so badly and think in such strange ways?  How can a sheep, cut in half and preserved in a glass tank, be regarded as art?  How is it that apparently formless groups of bricks or concrete blocks can be piled up in some unrecognisable manner and then put forward and even sponsored for the admiration of the more or less normally gifted and balanced public?

How difficult it is for parents to bring up young people in such a society!  And how very difficult it must be for young people themselves, growing up in such a society and open to the world-wide reach and menacing threat of the internet!!   Who, what, can protect, guide and sustain them in right ways?  With such a question in mind we can appreciate the words and the thought of the psalmist who said (Ps. 119:105):

          Your word, Lord, is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path. 

Moses, having led Israel across the lonely desert where she had been guided, protected and nourished, by God alone, towards the Promised Land where he knew she would inevitably be surrounded by pagan powers and pagan practices, most earnestly wanted to forewarn and protect his people as we would dearly love to do for ours.  It was a concern to which he gave expression shortly before his death:

Therefore, I teach you the statutes and decrees as the LORD, my God, has commanded me, that you may observe them in the land you are entering to occupy. Observe them carefully, for thus will you give evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who will hear of all these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent people.’ (Deuteronomy 4:5–6)

Then he added words that most certainly should impress and concern each and every parent and committed Catholic present here today, words which might even strike some of us to the heart both piercingly and painfully:

However, take care and be earnestly on your guard not to forget the things which your own eyes have seen, nor let them slip from your memory as long as you live, but teach them to your children and to your children’s children. (Deuteronomy 4:9)

Jesus, our leader through the desert of this sinful world, Jesus the all-holy Son of God made man, has yet stronger advice and warning for us, as you heard in the Gospel reading where He authoritatively declared:

Whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments and teaches others to do so will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven.  But whoever obeys and teaches these commandments will be called greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

In later Judaism that valediction of Moses came to be regarded above all as a harbinger of danger by the Pharisees and Scribes, with the promise and challenge they offered being, in comparison, overlooked.  That is why Jesus, for His part, went on to tell us:

I tell you, unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.

People of God, we Catholics are in a fluctuating, transitional, and dangerous situation today.  We have experienced times when it was widespread among Catholics to imitate the Scribes and Pharisees by looking upon God’s commandments as more of a warning, even a hidden threat, rather than as an opportunity, a challenge indeed, but also a wondrous promise.  The Pharisees, with great effort and industry, built up a hedge, as they called it, a hedge of human prescriptions and practices which they thought would -- if observed and maintained -- preserve the children of Israel from any danger of failing in their observance of the Law to the fullness of its literal acceptance.  Jesus, however, spoke with feeling about such methods of teaching, saying (Matthew 23:4):

They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.

There he was sympathizing with those thus burdened; but at another time He openly attacked the Pharisees for concocting such loads for others (Mark 7:6-8):

Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written: "These people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me.  They worship Me in vain; their teachings are but rules taught by men.”  You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.

So too in the Church at particular epochs the commandments of men have been brought in to shore-up, so to speak, the commandments of God and of His Church: practices of devotion were thought up and urged upon others which were, indeed, meant to protect the commandments, but which ended up, in practice, by stifling the people.  The result has been that some, especially the young, rebelled against such burdens, while others initially embraced them but in the end gave them up in disillusionment or despair.  That situation then provoked a reaction from certain well-meaning clerics and teachers of various sorts who tried to help the lapsed or lapsing return to the practice of the Faith by watering-down ‘requirements’.  Unfortunately, at times they tried not only to make lighter the load of human recommendations, but also went on to water down the very commandments of God: and so today, as a result, some people find themselves in a state of flux not really knowing when to be firm and steadfast, or how to adapt and develop.

There are two great commandments in our practice of the Christian and Catholic way of life.  The one was much cited in past centuries, and was first given us in the Scriptures, where Samuel said, in the name of the Lord, to the errant king Saul (1 Samuel 15:22):

Does the LORD delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the LORD? To obey is better than sacrifice.

And today, that command still remains as valid as ever for Pope, priests and people, for our children and their offspring.

The other great commandment was afforded us by the sublime example of our Blessed Lord Jesus Himself and expressed most memorably by the beautiful words of St. Paul when he wrote in his first letter to the Corinthians (13:11-13):

At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.  So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

The legitimate developments of modern theology too help us towards the fulfilment of this commandment of love by strongly reminding us that we, being made in the image of God, are free; indeed we are essentially made for freedom.  In this, modern theology is only restating words from our Lord Himself Who said to some Jews aspiring to follow Him as His disciples (John 8:31-32, and 36):

If you remain in My word, you will truly be My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free; (and) if the Son frees you, then you will truly be free.

This teaching of Jesus was reiterated with emphasis by St. Paul in his letters to the Corinthians and to the Galatians:

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (2 Corinthians 3:17)

For freedom Christ set us free; so stand firm, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery. (Galatians 5:1)

However, we must be aware, dear People of God, that the word “freedom” is both much misunderstood and widely abused today, and therefore we must be careful to understand aright the Christian appreciation of freedom: its whole purpose and meaning is to enable us -- both truly and fully, both humanly and divinely -- to love and serve God in and above all things, and our neighbour as ourselves; and in so doing, to enable each of us to become our own authentic self as individually planned, willed, loved and saved, by God for His greater glory.

That is the supreme challenge and most glorious promise for us in our life here on earth, to learn -- despite the morass and chaos brought about by our own and humanities’ sins past and present -- under the guidance and power of the Spirit of Jesus, how to love God the Father, and become His true children in Jesus.  And in order to fulfil that glorious privilege and calling we have to hold firm both to God’s commandments and to our divine endowment of freedom.  We cannot become children of God by disobeying His commandments, commands Jesus explicitly said He did not come to abolish but to fulfil; we cannot walk in the ways of Jesus by ignoring His teaching in the Scriptures opened up to us in and by His Holy Church, for we are only brought to life in Jesus by the Spirit as members of His Body, the Church.   We must therefore, hold firm to God’s commandments in His Church.  We must also hold firm to our freedom with regard to the customs and commandments, the popular practices and persuasions, of men: for we have been made free for God: we can choose among and between human prescriptions as we will, but always and only with this supreme aim and aspiration in mind: to learn to love God with our whole mind, heart, soul, and strength in Jesus. 

Notice that I say learn to love God, because none of us -- of ourselves -- knows how to love Him aright.  That is why Mother Church has been given to us and we to her: we have to learn how to love God as He wills to be loved, and we can only learn that with our brethren in the Church, which is the Body of Christ and our Mother, and which, as such, is alone fully endowed with the Holy Spirit of Love.  For the Spirit alone, the Holy Spirit of Love, given us by Jesus and working in and through Mother Church in the life of each one of us, can make us holy.  Human practices can help but they may also hinder, and in any case they can never make us holy.  Holiness is loving God in self-forgetfulness; true holiness is delighting in God above all and in all.  It is a gift, a grace, from the One Who is, Personally, the Gift of God.  That is the only way in which our righteousness can, and will, surpass that of the Scribes and Pharisees as Jesus demanded.  Their righteousness was admirable in many respects but it was a legal, human, and ultimately, a self-contrived and self-exalting righteousness.  Our righteousness, on the other hand, to be authentic, can only be received as a gift from the Father, bestowed by the Spirit, upon those whose supreme desire is to be found in heaven as His true children in Jesus, His only-begotten and uniquely beloved, Son; and on earth, as true members and defenders of Mother Church, Jesus’ ultimate bequest to all His disciples:

When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold, your son.’  Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold, your mother.’   (John 19:26s.)

Fifth Sunday of the Year (A)

FIFTH SUNDAY (Year A)

(Isaiah 58:7-10; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16)

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               You are the salt of the earth.

  

With those words, Jesus wanted to impress upon His disciples an awareness of their dignity and responsibility.

You, He says – not the official representatives of the Jewish Synagogue – You who are following and hearing Me, You who are perhaps beginning to order your lives according to My words and not according the traditions of the Pharisees and their Scribes,

            You are the salt of the earth.

Salt was, in those days, obtained from evaporated pools by the shore of the Dead Sea, or from small lakes on the edge of the Syrian Desert which dry up in the summer.  This salt crust, dug from the soil, contained various impurities which, when the salt was dissolved and removed, remained as useless refuse.

Could that be the possibly double meaning of those mysterious following words of Jesus:

But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned? It is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot; 

a reference perhaps, on the one hand, to the obvious fact that once the original clod of salty earth had lost its salt content nothing but useless refuse remained; while, on the other hand, hinting at possibly disastrous consequences if disciples were to lose their purified saltiness.

However that may be, notice that Jesus’ words do not have the same connotation as our modern expression ‘salt of the earth’.  Jesus’ words are based on literal fact: it was earthy salt, salty soil, which could, indeed, yield life protecting and health preserving salt, but which, for such a purpose, needed to be purified first of all.  Those disciples whom Jesus was addressing as ‘salt of the earth’ were actually following Him around and gladly listening to His words; and they, Jesus was saying, could be purified from their earthy contagions and become pure salt for His  and for God’s purposes, if, that is, their following Him were to become obedience to Him, and if their hearing of His words were to develop into appreciation and understanding of them, and ultimately, to faith in Himself.

Disciples who are true followers, true lovers, of Christ, can never be artificial, hot-house, characters -- the anaemic products of human wit and conniving, pride and presumption – no, they are of the earth, gotten from the  humanity created by God, and found originally ‘good’ in His sight; as such they can be cleansed of supervening sin and become fully and most truly human, indeed, salt of the earth in the way we commonly mean the expression, if and when their sinful impurities are cleansed away by the washing of Jesus’ original Word of God which, even now in our days, is still to be heard in Mother Church, and can be accepted and embraced in the power of His Spirit still bestowed through her sacraments.

            Now, you are clean by reason of the word I have spoken to you. (Jn. 15:3)

Jesus then went on to tell them:

You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden.

 

The picture of a city on a hill- or mountain-top, stems from the message of the Old Testament prophets (cp. Isaiah 2:2–3) concerning the future rule of God:

In days to come, the mountain of the LORD’S house shall be established as the highest mountain and raised above the hills.  All nations shall stream toward it; many peoples shall come and say: “Come, let us climb the LORD’S mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, that He may instruct us in His ways, and we may walk in His paths.”  For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. 

From the heavenly Jerusalem -- the city of God set on top of the highest mountain and sheltering the house of God -- the new Law will come; and such a prospect causes the prophet to burst out joyfully (60:1-3):

Rise up in splendour! Your light has come, the glory of the Lord shines upon you and over you appears His glory.  Nations shall walk by your light, and kings by your shining radiance. 

And in today’s Gospel passage we hear Jesus saying to His disciples:  

You are the light of the world. A city set on a mountain cannot be hidden   Just so, your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your heavenly Father. 

The light of this city, the city of God, shining, as the prophets foretold, in the darkness of the world, cannot be hidden; that is quite simply impossible, for it is illuminated by the glory of the Lord.  Jesus’ true disciples are authentic denizens of that city and so they too cannot fail to shine out -- or in more modern terms, stand out -- from today’s masses who worship the world and, through their eager embracing of its ethos and compliance with its rules, hope to taste all that it seems to offer them.

Notice however, that the disciples of Jesus do not have to make strenuous efforts to be seen by men; indeed, Our Blessed Lord Himself has warned them:

Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them; otherwise, you will have no recompense from your heavenly Father. (Matthew 6:1)

For our purposes, however, a more literal translation from the Greek and the Latin Vulgate, puts it most pertinently:

Take care not to perform your righteous deeds to be seen (you yourself and your righteous deeds) by them.

Our Lord, therefore, said that, on the one hand, our light must shine in the sight of men, but He also told us to be careful not to make a show of our religion, our religiosity, before men … in other words, our works must shine out but we ourselves must not seek to seen and esteemed by men, nor cantankerously ‘stand out’ against them. The light of the city of God shines out by itself, and in the same way, the light of its inhabitants – the true disciples of, and witnesses to, Christ – will not fail to shine and be seen, because they are a light set burning by God Himself, and Our Lord solemnly assures us:

No one lights a lamp and then puts it under a bushel basket; it is set on a lampstand, where it gives light to all in the house. 

God lights the lamp of Christ’s disciples in order that it may give light to all the children in His house, and our endeavour should be that in everything we may be true to the soil from which we are dug – God’s original creation and the unity of Christian fellowship – and true to the purifying word of Christ, so that we:

(may) be found in Him, not having any righteousness of (our) own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith. (Philippians 3:9)

What a sad comment on our times it is to think that those words of St. Paul can be interpreted today in a way he would not recognize because the ‘law’ of which he spoke was originally the law of God.  Today, however, in our Western, God-declining and self-worshipping, democratic societies, people acknowledge and children are taught only a ‘law’ emanating from governmental authority and supported by popular acceptance; societies in which people increasingly dare no longer publicly acknowledge, or perhaps no longer even appreciate, a moral difference between right and wrong, only acknowledging what is legal and permitted, as distinct from what is unlawful and unapproved, unsafe and unpopular.

Let us look a little more closely at those who were addressed as ‘You’ in Jesus’ words?  Crowds had come to Him and we are told that:

When He saw the crowds, He went up the mountain, and after He had sat down, His disciples came to Him. 

Then He pronounced what we call ‘The Beatitudes’ speaking in general of ‘those who mourn’, ‘the meek’, even ‘those who are persecuted’ but He only became directly personal in His words when He said:

Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of Me.

That is the ‘You’ to whom He then went on to say, ‘You are the salt of the earth.’  And so, even those suffering persecution for the name of Jesus (alas, how many of them there are in our days!) are called upon to keep their ‘saltiness’, that is, their native human one-ness with and love for their fellows, including even their persecutors, and also, and indeed above all, keep and strive ever more devoutly to deepen and strengthen their fidelity to the purifying word of Christ, as they witness to Him thanks to God’s abiding Gift of the Spirit of Jesus, ever with us and for us in the proclamation and sacraments  of Mother Church.

That was the model Paul himself gave, as we heard in the second reading:

When I came to you, brothers, proclaiming the mystery of God, I did not come with sublimity of words or of wisdom.  For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ, and Him crucified.  I came to you in weakness and fear and much trembling, and my message and my proclamation were not with persuasive (words of) wisdom, but with a demonstration of spirit and power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God. 

There we can understand why Jesus told His disciples, ‘Take care not to perform your righteous deeds to be seen by them’, because our witness – limited though it be – must be the work of, and should promote:

Not human wisdom but the power of God

active in us, and through us in the world and in the hearts of people around us.

And the very best way to fulfil that our vocation begins, every week, here at Mass in the house of the Lord, where we bring our human minds and hearts before Him, to be enlightened by His teaching, inflamed with His very presence, and endowed and empowered by the abiding Gift of His Most Holy Spirit.

   

The Presentation of the Lord 2014 Year A

        The Presentation of the Lord   

                          2014 Year A

When the days were completed for their purification according to the law of Moses, they took him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, just as it is written in the law of the Lord, “Every male that opens the womb shall be consecrated to the Lord,” and to offer the sacrifice of “a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons,” in accordance with the dictate in the law of the Lord.   

Mary did not just have to fulfil that dictate of the Lord as did every other mother of a new-born son in Israel; she was not even merely called to make most special thanksgiving for such a miraculous Gift as her virgin-born Son; she was, in fact, being called upon to thank God in the name of the whole human race for sending His very own Son as one of us: come to free us from the original sin of Adam and Eve with its ensuing bondage to Satan -- that is, from sin and death -- and to open up heaven’s portals once again for us with the prospect of eternal beatitude as sons in the Son called to the marriage feast of the Lamb in the Kingdom of the Father.

However, such a bare statement of the immense responsibility resting upon the young virgin from Nazareth is not adequate for you to understand sufficiently the supernatural significance and spiritual beauty of what was taking place.  

The Lord of all creation -- the magnitude of which, being revealed to us daily ever more and more by the Hubble Space Telescope and Voyager Spacecraft, defies our comprehension -- the All-Mighty One, and God of Israel’s ancient fathers, the All-Holy One enthroned in the highest heavens and worshipped by all the angelic hosts … He Himself had risen in divine majesty, wisdom and love, to help and to save mankind, because He had originally made and formed it in His very own image and likeness.  He had come to rescue it from the degradation, stain and stink of sin, from the hubris of Lucifer’s personal pride mirrored in the Eve’s deliberate choice of the delightful and seductive fruit, and Adam’s pathetic compliance with his wife to the forgetfulness of His God.  

If God had come with pomp and power to destroy Satan and his hoards, that would at least have manifested to angels and to men something of His incomparable glory, and the irresistible power of His holiness.  But He did not do that.  He took our plight and the hubris of Satan so seriously that, in order to totally condemn Lucifer and most lovingly reclaim what was His alone, He divested Himself of all that divine glory, power, and majesty so coveted by Lucifer: He  came in humility (no pride!), in weakness (no power!), and dependency (no authority!). 

How Lucifer despised such dispositions and whole-heartedly loathed the One thus coming against him -- as David had done with his sling and stone against Goliath – wearing such contemptible apparel; He was coming uniquely as Father, Sublime and Supreme, in the Person of His beloved and only-begotten Son, to lift up those called to become His true, adopted, children:

I bent down to them and fed them, for I am God the Holy One in your midst, I will not come in wrath.  (Hosea 4:9)

There is a famous sermon by Saint Bernard celebrating Our Lady’s ‘Fiat’ in response to the angel Gabriel’s message at the Annunciation, in which he pictures angels and mankind imploring the Virgin to say but that one word and  thereby save so many from such great distress; he has individuals coming one after another to the forefront with ever more urgent words of heart-felt concern for those who she alone is in a position to help… say, pronounce, whisper, declare just that one word, o holy maiden, please, let it but come from your lips and God will be glorified and mankind saved.

Mary’s ‘fiat’ at the Annunciation was, indeed, of ‘stellar’ significance and importance, but Mary’s situation today, presenting her Son to God in the Temple at Jerusalem is of like consequence; for who can thank God for His great goodness to us other than Mary, the Immaculate Virgin and Mother of God’s true Son?   She was only young, very young we would think, and what she knew rationally we cannot know; but -- of God’s great goodness -- she was totally pure and humble before the Lord, incomparable in her faith and responsiveness to God’s leading, while her human heart was aflame with love for the Child God had given her, and her mind and sensitivity totally attuned to His every need and intention.

Jesus’ ultimate death on the Cross on Calvary was the total commitment of His humanity to paying the price for our redemption and to giving human glory to His beloved Father; and Mother Church has, since then, searched endlessly to understand, appreciate, and praise Him for the sufferings He thus endured to win us salvation. She has searched and will continue, unrelentingly, to search yet deeper, that she might ever more appropriately proclaim and respond to His love stretched out on the Cross for our sake.

But the Divine Condescension involved in the Incarnation, whereby, wherein, God, in Jesus, was humbled, humbled Himself, to a humanly inconceivable degree, to a sacrifice of self, so to speak, both awesome and alarming in its totality … who could praise God for that?  Only Mary’s sinless humility, only her boundless gratitude to God, only her completely unreserved awareness and confession of her own nothingness and indebtedness, only her boundless love for and commitment to Jesus, her Son and God’s Son, could give appropriate – that is, no mere human could possibly give more -- thanks for that divine self-emptying decided and entered upon in order to triumph over angelic and human pride and win love through incomparable love!!

             Sing praise to the LORD, you faithful; give thanks to God’s holy name.  

With my whole being I sing endless praise to you.   O LORD, my God, forever will I give you thanks.  (Psalm 30:5,13)

So, in our celebration of this feast of the Presentation of the Lord, let us with Mary look much deeper than the charm (surely irresistible!!) of this Baby, let us look and, perhaps, tremble with awesome awareness and deepest gratitude before our God of such unimaginable goodness and love.  Let us also be aware that Jesus’ living-out of His divine Sonship in human flesh will, inevitably, lead Him, for love of His Father and for us, to His embracing the crucifixion of His human flesh on Calvary; but ultimately and most gloriously it will lead Him to the, so to speak, combined and complete self-emptying, when, Risen and in glorified, heavenly Flesh, He ultimately and most sublimely gives Himself with His Most Holy Spirit to us and for us under the appearances of simple bread and ordinary wine.  Oh, the Goodness of God!!!