33rd Sunday Year B 2018

 33^rd. Sunday of Year (B)

(Daniel 1:1-3; Hebrews 10:11-14; St. Mark 13:24-32)

For us Catholics and Christians there is a mysterious cohesion between ourselves and creation around us: all given life or brought into being by the One true God, with what is material and temporal serving and supporting all spiritual degrees, and with our own supreme spirit polarized towards God and eternal life.  As a result of this, things of earth and temporal events can stir our spiritual awareness, they can help us understand and appreciate something more of God’s mysterious presence for us in the world and our experience of it, and thus live ever more conaturally and delightfully with Him and for Him.

This year of 2018 is coming to its end and that fact leads  Mother Church to call upon her children to think appropriately about the end of this world, the ‘great and final end’ which we prepare for individually by the way we face up to all the little ‘ends’ we experience throughout life , and for which God’s People have been gradually prepared over many centuries by His grace at decisive junctures of their history.  Nevertheless, the readings Mother Church has given us for today sound very strange to our ears and we find it difficult to understand much of them, although they do make a deep impression on us with awesome words concerning events great and even cataclysmic; and yet, for all that, full of hope for all who believe in and love the Lord Jesus.

Those words of Jesus:

In those days, after that tribulation the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken;

had been used earlier in the Old Testament times predicting the ruin of nations hostile to Israel, as we find in the prophecy of Isaiah (13:10) foretelling the ruin of Babylon:

For the stars of heaven and their constellations will not flash forth their light; the sun will be dark when it rises, and the moon will not shed its light;

and again, when the same prophet speaks of the downfall of Edom.

After Isaiah, another great prophet Ezekiel spoke in similar tones of the forthcoming destruction of Egypt:

‘When I extinguish you, I will cover the heavens and darken their stars; I will cover the sun with a cloud, and the moon shall not give its light.  All the shining lights in the heavens I will darken over you and will set darkness on your land’ says the Lord. (32:7-8)

The prophet Joel (2:28-33) used like words to proclaim the ‘Day of the Lord‘ when the Holy Spirit would be poured out on believers in Jesus before the wrath of God ultimately destroyed sin and sinners:

And it will come about after this that I will pour out My Spirit on all mankind; and your sons and daughters will prophesy … The sun will be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes.  And whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be delivered; for on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there will be those who escape as the Lord has said, survivors whom the Lord calls. 

And now, we find Jesus using that same type of language to foreshadow God’s final purifying of His People when evil will be purged away and God’s true servants revealed:

And they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory; and then He will send out the angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven.

From the beginning of His public ministry Jesus had used the title ‘Son of Man’ when speaking of Himself and now, in the words just quoted, He identified Himself for the first time as the ‘One seen in a vision’ by another late and great prophet, Daniel (7:13-14):

As the visions during the night continued, I saw One like a son of man coming, on the clouds of heaven; when He reached the Ancient One and was presented before Him He received dominion, glory, and kingship; nations and peoples of every language serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not be taken away, His kingship shall not be destroyed.

In Daniel, the Son of Man heads the Kingdom of the Saints which is to supersede the heathen empires of the four beasts (Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome). Jesus now, therefore, showing Himself to be the Son of Man in Daniel’s prophecy, enables us to appreciate the fact that, in Him, humankind finds its supreme glory and God’s People its sublime Head, while God’s Kingdom knows the irresistible beginning of its definitive establishment:

And then He will send out the angels and gather His elect from the four winds, from the farthest end of the earth to the farthest end of heaven.

This process is now going on before our very eyes, so to speak; for the Church is being purged of evil-doers whose secret sins are now being both made manifest and publicly rejected; while former hangers-on, members not by virtue of their love of and faith in Jesus but for reasons of social acceptability and personal advantage, are now freely abandoning her for those very same reasons.  Indeed, even at this moment, we ourselves gathered here are all part of it, for God the Father has called us here today as the Body of Christ, to celebrate and acclaim the glorified Lord as our Head.  He brings us together from all corners of the globe as the Church of Christ, called by the Spirit, to become ever more truly the fruitful Spouse of Christ for the glory of the Father and the salvation of souls.

People of God, recognize where we find ourselves at this juncture in time: the process for the purification of God’s People and the establishment of His Kingdom has begun, since Jesus has risen from the dead; He is to be seen and heard, known and received by those who love Him in His Church; and all this is leading to a final denouement in which Jesus will be seen by all mankind whether they love Him or not.  He will appear, not humbly as Bread and Wine totally given over to our need and service, but in all His glory as the Son of God, Redeemer and Judge of all mankind.  At present the words of today’s second reading are being fulfilled:

He offered one sacrifice for sins, and took His seat forever at the right hand of God; now He waits until His enemies are made His footstool;          

and we all, in the bosom of Mother Church, are being ‘led to justice’ as the first reading put it, being instructed in virtue and wisdom as we learn to lead our lives in conformity with Jesus’ teaching and come to know truly – in fact and in experience -- something of the infinite beauty and boundless goodness of God our Father.

It is a fact that today we see all around us the wicked proving themselves wicked; we find that wisdom and understanding, far from being valued and sought after, are derided and disregarded, while the most abominable practices are openly flaunted and accepted; indeed, they can even be found covering themselves over with a cloak of pseudo-respectability, to such an extent that some simple Christians and even some Catholics are troubled, as Jesus foretold:

False Messiahs and false prophets will arise and will perform signs and wonders in order to mislead, if that were possible, the elect.

In our Gospel reading Jesus again mentioned ‘His elect’ as you heard:

Then they will see the Son of Man coming in the clouds with great power and glory, and then He will send out the angels, and gather His elect from the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of the sky.

Who are these ‘elect’?  Daniel told us in those words (12:10): many shall be purified, cleansed, and refined, because the elect are those faithful disciples who are being formed into a likeness of their Lord through their experience of and response to life under God’s Providence by the sacraments of Mother Church and the gifts of the Holy Spirit, whereby they are encouraged and enabled to walk perseveringly and faithfully along the way of Jesus.  A notable part of the purging and purifying of the faithful elect is accomplished by the sufferings they have to endure and embrace in order to remain true to Jesus despite the allurements and trials of life; and today mockery is one of the great trials Catholics and Christians have to endure for Jesus, especially mockery of Jesus’ teaching about a future judgement.

Now Jesus speaks of the coming judgement when He says:

After that tribulation (the appearance of false messiahs performing their signs and wonders) the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.

We can imagine something of the calamitous nature of such pre-judgement events because today we are not unaware of the primeval powers at work in our own sun and Milky Way, and in astounding galaxies above and beyond us: galaxies that defy counting and involve powers and occupy space beyond human imagining.  In fact, we have learnt and are still in the process of learning so much from the heavens that some scientists imagine the heavens as the source of the knowledge of all times, past and future.

For the Psalmists of old, however, the heavens spoke resoundingly of the glory of God.  In those days, though there were few facts available other than what our human senses could immediately discern, the Psalmists -- being filled with God’s spiritual gifts of humility and wisdom -- were able to understand and interpret aright what basic facts were known to them.  Today, on the other hand, for many moderns the facts are so multitudinous and often so tenuous that their minds are overwhelmed as they seek to co-relate and then co-ordinate them into a comprehensible whole; and where faith has been lost or rejected, and pride acknowledged as a reliable guide, many falsely interpret what they have correctly but only partially observed, with the result that their reading of the heavens proclaims not the Glory and the Goodness of God, but rather power for no purpose, majesty with no significance, and beauty alien in its cold irrelevance.

Therefore, dear People of God, do not let yourselves be troubled by scoffers who ignore the teaching of truth, who walk, indeed run merrily, along the ways that lead ever further from God.  Let Mother Church guide you, let the Spirit of Jesus lead you to righteousness and insight; for then you will come to know, even here on earth, something of the plenitude of peace and fulness of joy promised by Our Lord, before ultimately sharing in His transcendent glory and sublime joy:

When all things are subjected to Him (and) the Son Himself (is) subject to Him Who put all things in subjection under Him, that God may be All in all.  (! Corinthians 15:8)

32nd Sunday Year B 2018

32^nd. Sunday, Year B

(1 Kings 17:10-16; Hebrews 9:24-28; Saint Mark 12:38-44)

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Dear People of God, brothers and sisters in Christ, in our world today too much attention is given to appearances as distinct from reality: ‘ikons’ are loudly proclaimed simply on the basis of popularity and crowd excitement whereas that ‘iconic’ person is necessarily clothed in flesh and blood and uses a human heart and mind, all essentials of real human life, and all of which are totally ignored by popular excitement … the suicidal, the drugged-up, reality is not part of popularity’s worship of the ‘ikon’.   That type of approach to music and entertainment, is real and therefore perhaps inevitable, but it should have no right of admittance to social and political, let alone religious life.  Nevertheless, because popularity calls emotive crowds onto the streets far more quickly than reason can penetrate minds and convert hearts, governments feel the need to present their policies with an appearance that might evoke popularity, which is so important these days that even what is wrong -- when clothed in popularity’s bed-companion ‘notoriety’ -- can win immediate and emotional approval from many.  That state of affairs seems to be the necessary concommitant of what we like to call ‘democracy’, an ideal social system for a relatively small group of thinking people, but far from ideal in a society like ours where numbers and popular excitement threaten to call the changes, not rational appraisal or moral rectitude.

Our Blessed Lord gives us an insight into God’s awareness and appreciation of the difference between appearance and reality which is of supreme importance for us in the spiritual life:

Jesus sat down opposite the treasury and observed how the crowd put money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums.   A poor widow also came and put in two small coins worth a few cents.  Calling his disciples to himself, he said to them, “Amen, I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the other contributors to the treasury.   For they have all contributed from their surplus wealth, but she, from her poverty, has contributed all she had, her whole livelihood.”

Who was the poor widow?  We do not know of course … we know nothing other than that she was very poor and very devout.  In order to make her a more real subject for our consideration I would like to compare her with those of today’s Catholic people who feel that they have so very little, indeed nothing, to give to mankind, to offer God.  These people are oppressed secretly by what they think of themselves.  They see themselves  as incapable of doing anything of note or worth, without any social graces: they do not speak well, they cannot express or share emotions sympathetically with others, they have no physical ‘presence’ or bearing, let alone any personal confidence.  They have faults, even sins, which though they would love to be rid of, nevertheless they seem unable to throw them off.  Again, past and confessed sins may still trouble them with feelings of guilt or keep on cropping up again and again as unwanted memories, or as the same old temptations which, though they do their best to resist them, nevertheless keep coming back again and again.   Thus, they find themselves always more or less anxious and worried, spiritually listless, ever hearing in the background of their daily living a voice whispering that the years are passing and they seem to be getting nowhere, whispering ever so slightly but ever so insistently, ‘what is the good of you trying – pretending -- to be a faithful Catholic and good Christian.

Let us now turn our attention to our Blessed Lord and Saviour.

You will remember, People of God, that at the very beginning of His Public Life and Ministry, He was led by the Spirit into the desert where He was tempted by Satan.  The Evangelists give varying descriptions of this time of trial, but the fundamental issue seems to have been that Jesus should show Himself as a political Messiah, a military leader who would lead the oppressed Jewish people in revolt against their Roman masters and set up the standard of the Kingdom of God by political and, if necessary, forceful means.  Jesus, however, was not deceived, and Satan left Him, according to St. Luke’s enigmatic expression, until an opportune time.  Later on, near the end of His successful ministry in Galilee the enthusiastic inhabitants of that area wanted to seize Jesus after His miraculous feeding of the 5,000 in order to set Him at their head as the Messianic King, to lead their army.  Jesus simply escaped their clutches.

Thus, at the beginning of His ministry, at His moment of success in mid-course, and so again, almost at the end of His life’s work, Jesus encountered the same temptation: for less than a week before His death, a thronging crowd in a paroxysm of excitement could be heard proclaiming as He entered Jerusalem:

Hosanna, blessed is He Who comes in the name of the LORD!  The King of Israel!  (John 12:13),

as they waved palm branches and strewed their clothes in His pathway, proclaiming Him as leader and Messiah indeed, but only as such for their political and national aspirations, not for the fulfilment of their role as People of God for the salvation of all mankind.

People of God, we should reject despondency even though it may be that, after many years, we find old temptations and trials raising their heads at times and trying to re-assert themselves.  For Jesus, our Lord and Saviour, though there was no trace of sin whatsoever in Him, nevertheless, we see how the same trial, the same wearisome temptation of the Devil, kept rearing its head through the entire course of His public ministry.  And, on the other hand, we can, in our turn, offer the widow’s mite to the glory of God, if and when -- despite our feelings of wretchedness, despite all temptations to despair – we continue to give our own ALL by never saying ‘yes’ to such temptations …. As St. Gregory the Great taught, ‘the Devil can put all sorts of thoughts into our head, all sorts of feelings into our body, but he cannot make us say ‘Yes’ to any such things.

Our ‘all’, little though it may seem to us – just as the widow’s mite no doubt appeared to her in comparison with the much, much larger offerings of rich donors – our maybe miniscule ‘all’ is, nevertheless, inviolate, purest gold for God’s glory, thanks to our abiding oneness with and in Jesus, and thanks to our enduring obedience to Spirit of Jesus living and ruling within us – never giving a consenting, accepting, ‘Yes’ to the Devil’s solicitations.

It may well be, dear People of God, that as we leave Church today, some go out with deep consolation and deep gratitude for blessings received and acknowledged; but it may also be that others go out, clinging to God, but knowing only thing: that fellowship with Him -- the privilege of knowing Him, His infinite goodness, His incomparable beauty and truth – is all they want, no matter how they have to fight for it.  And it may well be that Our Blessed Lord Himself will say as He sees all of us go our separate ways as His disciples to work for the coming of God’s Kingdom:

Amen I say to you, that poor person has done more for God’s glory and honour than all who have generously contributed so much; for they gave something of their surplus plenty, whereas that individual gave his or her very all.

Dear People of God, the greatest calling anyone can have is to give their all for God and to help others do likewise, and in order to do that we need to have a very clear awareness and appreciation of the world around us, a world concerned above all with appearances, concerned with superficiality which evokes immediate reaction.  On that basis, our modern world is moribund: more and more horrific murders, not so much by groups for an agreed purpose but by individuals seeking to express self; and while lascivious sexual relationships are unregulated and Christian marriage is attacked openly or insidiously, countries here and all around can no longer see children coming along to maintain their national identity and particular character and their schools no longer teach any authoritative life-style to students or maintain acceptable discipline that helps teachers do their work.

If you remember, dear friends in Christ, it was Judas the traitor, who foreshadowed our modern irreligious world because it was he who presumed to teach Our Lord and the Eleven about Christian Charity (John 12: 4-6): 

Then Judas the Iscariot, one (of) His disciples, and the one who would betray Him, said, “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred days’ wages and given to the poor?” He said this not because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to steal the contributions. 


The same is happening all over the world today, the Devil having taken charge then tries to prove himself holy; so be aware, dear friends, do not allow yourselves to be impressed by appearances ‘plugged’ by pagans, however cultured they may be, look to Christ Who knows and loves you through and through, hope and trust obediently in His Spirit Who will guide you surely to where Christ is, and thank the Father Who gave His Son for us and gives His Spirit to us that we can become His own true children in Jesus.

           

31st Sunday Year B 2018

                        31^st. Sunday Year B

(Deuteronomy 6:2-6; Hebrews 7: 23-28; Mark 12: 28-34)

Catholics and Christians generally today are not wholly at ease with the words of Our Lord:

The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment.

Many religious-minded people today who, while not declaring themselves to be Christians, nevertheless like to think of themselves as ‘morally acceptable’ people, are not truly at ease with those words I say, because those words of Our Blessed Lord are far too God-centred for them.  The Jesus they vaguely remember and the Christians they like to think of are known for doing ‘good’ to people, speaking ‘nicely’ to them, supporting social efforts for popular charities, all positive ways of ‘doing good’ … and all of which they approve because the ‘good’ they show forth is a popular good; the kindness, the niceness they manifest is always pleasing and somewhat emotional.  Oh, how a weeping woman or beaming child are sought after to ensure that such deeds can be appreciated and praised by all!

Our Blessed Lord’s words however speak of One Who is above us and this world … He is not to be found in it, not that is, unless you are a very religious person: perhaps one of those Catholics who go to Mass on Sundays and can even be found, at times, holding beads and whispering something to themselves  That God has to be worshipped and prayed to, even though time spent in prayer is generally regarded by ‘normal, not very religious people’ as time wasted, a time in which opportunities for ‘proper’ work for others is squandered.  Indeed, some even seem to entertain the suspicion that such prayer is basically selfish, a reprehensible exercise in spiritual self-seeking.

In our second reading we heard mention of the words ‘High Priest’ with regard to Jesus; and how alien those words seem to those moderately-minded people who have only vague memories of Jesus and Christianity being centred on doing ‘good’ and being ‘nice’!

Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our confession, Christ Jesus, Who was faithful to Him Who appointed Him. (Hebrews 3:1-2)

The office of High Priest was supremely important for God’s original Chosen People because, as we are told in the letter to the Hebrews (5:1):

Every high priest taken from among men is appointed for men in things pertaining to God, that he may offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins.

The High Priest represented the Chosen People before God, and that is why it was the supremely important post, because Israel had only become God’s Chosen People and an independent nation by the gift and grace of God; and Israel’s continued existence as a nation and as the Chosen People, depended upon her being in a right relationship with the God Who had made her His own.

However, as you know, that right relationship did not endure; Israel sinned against her God and was ultimately punished, indeed ultimately destroyed as an independent nation and superseded as God’s Chosen People.   This fatal fragility of Israel in her relationship with God was mirrored or manifested in the very person of the High Priest, for again, the letter to the Hebrews, as you heard in our second reading, tells us that:

The law appoints as high priests men who have weakness.

Nevertheless, the author then immediately goes on to add that that situation would eventually be remedied by the appointment of a new High Priest for the new People of God:

The word of the oath, which came after the law, appoints the Son Who has been perfected forever. 

God’s oath appointed His Son as High Priest, the Son made perfect forever: perfect, because He was, by His very nature as Son, most sublimely united, indeed consubstantial, with God the Father; and as man, He was made perfect forever through His Passion and Death on the Cross followed by His glorious Resurrection and Ascension into heaven.  He now lives in His-and-our human flesh at the right hand of the Father, continually interceding for us through all ages.  He is the perfect High Priest because He loves the Father supremely as the only-begotten Son, and because He was made perfect as our High Priest by the love with which He bore, on our behalf, His Personally unmerited and humanly immeasurable sufferings.

It was fitting for Him, for Whom are all things and by Whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. (Hebrews 2:10)

The ritual High Priest in Jerusalem, even though he offered bloody animal sacrifices before God on limited ceremonial occasions in the Temple, was, for the most part, occupied by Sanhedrin religious in-fighting, and by political dealings with -- and even at times on behalf of -- the Roman occupying force. 

The supreme key to the perfection of Jesus as High Priest, however, was His love for and obedience to God His Father: the whole of His life as man on earth was one of continuous union of love in mind, heart, and will, with His heavenly Father as He manifested and proclaimed the Gospel of Peace to all those of good will who would hear and learn from Him. He offered but one sacrifice to the Father: that of Himself on Calvary; and His subsequent, eternal, ‘negotiating’ on our behalf is by means of prayer to, with and before, His heavenly Father.

In that way the supreme importance of prayer to God was established for all ages among the new People of God.  And since, as St. Peter tells us, the new People of God are a priestly people, being members of the Body of Him Who is the High Priest of our confession, we are above all, called to and consecrated for prayerful union with the Father expressed in the words of Our Lord we began with:

The first of all the commandments is: 'Hear, O Israel, the LORD our God, the LORD is one.  And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.' This is the first commandment.

As a man with a mission, Jesus sacrificed countless opportunities to do good works during His time on earth: people were looking for Him and He moved on; He avoided the crowds; He imposed silence on many He had cured; and, generally speaking, He did not seek out sick persons to heal, rather He had to be sought out by those who wanted healing, and He had to be persuaded by their faith.  Meanwhile, Jesus was at all times and in all circumstances communing with His Father, and He emphasised this personal and private relationship by often seeking solitude in order to give Himself more intensely to this prayer relationship of Son with His heavenly Father.

We can, therefore, surely recognize how wrong it is to think that Christianity is, first and foremost, concerned with doing worldly, physical, visible, good to people; wrong, because our aim has, above all, to be one with Jesus in giving:

Glory to God in the highest and peace toward men of goodwill.

Glory to God, that is, oneness with God in loving obedience and communion that leads to eternal life: the salvation that God the Father wants to bestow on all mankind in response to the intercession of Jesus, our heavenly High Priest, together with that of His priestly people here below.

Influenced by the world around them, many people today as we have seen, want tangible success if they are to practice religion: they want to be seen, or at least to see themselves, achieving something; and, often enough, they find prayer, which produces no immediate or tangible results, difficult and unrewarding, and this lack of “success” brings about a distaste for what is regarded as the “nothingness”, the “dryness”, the “uselessness” of prayer.  This reaction is, of course, the result and the sign of a deep-rooted selfishness common to us all in one form or another, for prayer is first of all God-centred, it is homage to, appreciation and praise of, God; it is not something entered into for our own immediate satisfaction and pleasure.   However, since Jesus both died and rose again to glory, where that native selfishness is done to death by a sincere and persevering approach and response to God in prayer, that prayer is indeed able to develop into a supreme delighting in God. 

Jesus intercedes before His Father as the only-begotten, beloved, Son, as we heard in the second reading:

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

Here, you will I trust, notice, that the second commandment mentioned by Our Lord has not been forgotten:

You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

The fact is, People of God, that it is impossible to love the Father in spirit and in truth and then to fail to love one’s neighbour.  Modern Christians and Catholics need to learn anew how to appreciate the supreme importance and value of prayer before God; for the angels’ proclamation at the birth of Jesus was, as I have recalled:

Glory to God in the highest and peace (salvation) to His people on earth,

and every act of true prayer, because it is indeed for the glory of God, is also, and supremely, for the salvation of all mankind.

Those who side-step the difficulties of prayer and concentrate on doing good works, are not only trying to put the cart before the horse, but also can easily harm themselves by slipping into the trap of vainglory by seeking either the sensible reward of human appreciation of their labours, or else by sliding into the trap of self-approbation, imagining that they themselves are doing the works on which they set such store.

True prayer, however, is often the painful awareness of our own emptiness and need of God, only occasionally being sweetened by a passing experience God’s great goodness.  Works done to avoid the difficulty of prayer can, at times, become an outward display covering an increasing awareness of spiritual emptiness before God.  For the perseveringly faithful disciple of Jesus, on the other hand, aridity and difficulty in time devoted to prayer -- especially in prayer of praise and thanksgiving -- can result in a joy and inspiration, a peace and strength, that show themselves, secretly indeed, but yet convincingly, as though the One Who would not endanger our prayer with His favours, does not hesitate to make us mysteriously aware of His presence in the ordinary circumstances of years and seasons, days and nights, and in the special moments of perseverance in and through suffering and striving.

30th Sunday (Year B) 2018

30^th. Sunday (Year B)

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

God’s Chosen People had originally been banished from their homeland because there they had – over many generations -- become alienated from God by their sinful behaviour: the Promised Land had been God’s gift to them, and, of course, when they turned away from God, dishonouring rather than glorifying His holy Name, they lost His favour and finally lost the gift He had given them.  Now, in our first reading today from the prophet Jeremiah, God is showing that mercy to His People for which many prophets and 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 -- back in God’s land -- to become once again worthy to be known as God’s Chosen People (Luke 1:74-5):

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

Nevertheless, this physical return was 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 to be 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, were not the only nor perhaps the greatest ones encountered by the returning exiles; for, although the physical trials of that long trek back to Israel were great, nevertheless, that trek was completed in a period of months, whereas there would be other difficulties involved in rebuilding and restoration which would take years to resolve.  Above all, having made their return, the very greatest challenge facing them would be from their own wayward hearts and minds which still had to return to the Lord their God in spirit and in truth.  This 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):

They shall come with weeping, and with supplications I will lead them.    

That is the experience, even today, of many who, for whatever reason, leave 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 sizable crowd, Bartimaeus, a blind man, the son of Timaeus, sat by the roadside begging.  On hearing that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, “Jesus, son of David, have pity on me.”  And many rebuked him, telling him to be silent.

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

They shall come with weeping, and with supplications (that is, with pleas for forgiveness, blessing, strength, and guidance) I will lead them.

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, forming us in the likeness of Jesus by our faith in Him as the only-begotten Son of God made flesh for our salvation.   We have to make a journey not simply across territory over which we had once wandered and then lost, but a pilgrimage into unknown territory, un-natural because it is supernatural and heavenly, which our imagination finds impossible to foreshadow and familiarise.

We can only undertake such a pilgrimage thanks to Jesus.  We were told in the second reading:

Every high priest is taken from among men and made their representative before 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 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):

Therefore My 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 Myself.  I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.  This command I have received from My Father

If Jesus was to give supreme 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 in reply, "What do you want Me to do for you?" The blind man replied to Him, "Master, I want to see!"         

What would you have asked for in such a situation, People of God?  What do you, in fact, ask of Jesus 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 kept calling out all the more, "Son of David, have pity 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 contrary, 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.

Nevertheless, whatever opposition you may encounter, whatever the difficulties and disappointments you may experience, keep your hopes firmly fixed on Jesus, dear  People of God, and like Bartimeus, pray that despite all, through all, you might be enabled to see well enough to follow Jesus ever more closely along the road that leads ultimately into the presence of the Father.  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, for us, and through us, thanks to the Holy Spirit -- the Personal bond of love between the Father and the Son -- bequeathed to us in Mother  Church by Jesus; the Spirit whereby the love and the truth of Jesus are actively and effectively overcoming the sin of the world for all those of Good Will; the Spirit, without Whom, as Jesus said, we can do nothing but prove ourselves futile and ultimately fruitless.                     

  29th. Sunday of Year (B)

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

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This Sunday we have a matter of translation to consider first of all, but it does quickly lead to a serious issue concerning Catholic spirituality which translators are not necessarily aware of:


Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.

That is our New American Bible Revised Version’s translation and it is a literal translation of the Church’s official Latin Vulgate text, as also of the original Greek Gospel.

However, certain other modern translations change the word ‘will’, future tense, to ‘must’, imperative.  Why?   Obviously, it would seem, because that is what the scholars involved consider Jesus’ intention must (!) have been.  But does that then mean that -- in their view -- the evangelist himself, or perhaps even Peter the originating source of Mark’s Gospel, did not understand Jesus accurately enough?  Or rather, might it in fact be the case, that those translators -- professional and learned scholars who without doubt do great work for the Gospel – have, as scholars sensitive to their international standing, to bear in mind such a multitude of technical facts and human opinions that they simply do not have the time – or the ability – to be able to appreciate and answer spiritual questions with a like excellence manifested in their professional capacity?   It is a question worth asking and considering, because professional exegetes today produce volumes of New Testament studies of such burdensome size, quoting the opinions of seemingly innumerable scholars often writing in their own language, that it is hardly possible for them to have read and understood deeply as required all that they quote or refer to, let alone to have carefully weighed and pondered consequences and further issues of a more exclusively spiritual nature that might be involved.

Let us therefore consider what the Evangelist, St. Mark, says in his Gospel as we have it today:

Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.

Notice first of all that Jesus is speaking privately to His chosen disciples, whom He knew intimately as regards both their individual characters and their personal love for and devotion to Himself; men who, indeed, He is in the very process of training as His future Apostles:

Whoever wishes to be great among you will be... 

Many translators think that here Jesus means ‘must make yourself to be…’ a servant of the others; because to attain their object, their desire, their ambition, to be great they must do something that distinguishes and shows them to be ‘special’!  And surely, we can understand that 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 for their love of Jesus, and then being further singled out by Jesus Himself with regard not only to their individual characters and human  capabilities but also and more particularly for their special endowments of spiritual sensitivity and commitment for membership of a unique group known as The Twelve; moreover, we are hearing carefully chosen words being addressed to them alone by Jesus, the ‘Word’ of God and the ‘Wisdom’ of God made flesh.

The translation ‘Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant’ demands that anyone of them harbouring such ambitions must do something to make, prove, himself  to be a servant worthy of such prominence; and in that way it demands a measure of self-interest, self-seeking and, of self-appreciation.   Now that is most certainly not what Jesus wanted in His Apostles.

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:

                The Lord was pleased to crush Him in infirmity;

                The will of the Lord shall be accomplished through Him.

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 to You.  Take this cup away from Me; before adding, but 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 James and John did 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 important to teach them from it.’  He is about to show them something essential for their future understanding of themselves and of the ways of their God, His Father.

They were at that moment trying to express, in badly chosen words -- but also quite simply and humbly before Jesus -- what His Father was trying to inspire in them: an aspiration, in no circumstances whatsoever to be mistaken as an ambition.

Whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all.

Yes, you will be servants and slaves 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 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 they had to put up with when they dropped back -- Jesus usually walked in front of His Apostles -- to join their indignant fellow Apostles whom they had earlier, so symbolically, left behind in order to go ahead and talk privately with Jesus. 

Jesus however, 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 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 in them personally and with them as a Body, forming them as the very 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, 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 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 and the blame or acclamation of men.

Such parents are not helped at times by prelates or priests, who, in their proclamation of the Gospel and traditional Catholic understanding of Christian marriage, think it necessary for them to apologize for not themselves being ordinary, poor and unknown, Catholics and Christians, to apologize even for not themselves being women, when needing to clarify and confirm traditional Catholic teaching on the family.  As prelates (and priests) they have been specially anointed as CHRISTS for our times, specially chosen to hand down what they have themselves received: the teaching of Christ and the historically declared will of God for mankind’s salvation!!  They have been placed in the full beam of the world’s, and of the Church’s, attention and scrutiny not for their own peaceful and popular passage when in office, nor for what the world might call the ‘well-being and good pleasure’ of all concerned by their decisions, but -- in the Church of Christ and by the authority  of that Church -- to proclaim the One Lord and Saviour of mankind, Jesus Christ, as Jesus Himself encouraged them:

Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever receives the one I send receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives the One Who sent Me.  (John 13:20)

Let them live up to such encouragement, to such a glorious promise, and stop fearing for self and hedging for popularity!

            Your friends, O Lord, make known the glorious splendour of Your reign!

Dear People of God, let us aspire with all our heart to love Jesus for the Father, to serve Jesus by His Spirit, in the Church given to Jesus by His Father for the salvation of men and women of good will.  Let us not seek a 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.

28th Sunday Year B 2018

28^th. Sunday (Year B)  

 (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, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart;

and In our passage from the Gospel we learned something of what those words meant in real life for Jesus.

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

            Why do you call Me good?  No one is good but One, God.

Such a statement can seem, for many, to be obvious but purposeless; that however is far from the truth with Jesus: His words are fundamental for our very life and total well-being:

            No one is good but One, God.      No one is good but God.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, we as the People of God, are called by those easily overlooked words of Jesus, to recognize that we do not learn from popular films, from pagan social media, from the faith-less majority around us, what is truly good for us and for our children, what will help us and them to experience  a life of authentic human peace and joy leading ultimately to the divine fulfilment of eternal life in the family of God.  

Today, most people around us adapt, model, and justify their personal and family behaviour in accordance with those popular presentations portrayed by American films and social media: good parents like to buy for their children whatever they – the children that is -- think they need or whatever they say others at school have;  again, other good parents under the similar pressures, accede to their children’s  assessment of their trials and difficulties: not daring to teach them, they pretend to fully understand those difficulties as their children experience them, to such an extent that they would never require their children to learn personal discipline or practice obedience, for that might cause upset and disturb peace in the family; and ‘peace’, of course, is another  Gospel word for heavenly reality.  In like manner, the ‘joy’ imagined by screen and video presentations of personal and family love always adds to the fullness of our experience of life and the development of our personality, how then could Christian joy ever be said to result from self-forgetfulness, let alone from self-denial?

People of God, there are also others not themselves faithless but who, aiming to achieve Gospel ends by human measures, seek to make Christ and the Gospel popular; they present the Christian life as something almost second nature to us, and the salvation offered us they portray as a reward to be almost automatically acquired after a life of even minimal devotion.  Moreover, their use of Gospel words such as ‘good’, ‘peace’ and ‘joy’, all derivatives of ‘LOVE’, is usually so coloured with predominantly human overtones that there would appear to be no possibility of conflict between those heavenly realities and our human experiences here below, except, of course, for their heavenly abundance and eternal permanence.

And yet, once again, for Jesus Himself things are much different:

Jesus, looking at (the young man), loved him, and said, "You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow Me."   At that statement his face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

Thereupon Jesus addressed His disciples concerning the difficulty of reconciling personal wealth with a Christian appreciation of, and desire to enter, the Kingdom of God.

(The disciples) were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves, “Then who can be saved?"   Jesus looked at them and said, "For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.  All things are possible for God."

Thus, popular presentations of Gospel Christianity and human happiness are usually found to be emasculated and inauthentic versions of Catholic Christianity when, thanks to Mother Church’s use of her Scriptures in the liturgy, we listen again to Jesus’ own proclamation of the Gospel of salvation:

For human beings (salvation) is impossible, but not for God.  All things are possible for God. 

The young man believed he had always loved God, but Jesus told him:

You are lacking in one thing.  Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow Me.

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

At that statement his face fell and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.

He went away because he had just been brought to realise how much he loved his earthly possessions: indeed, the exercise of those earthly possessions meant more to him than any heavenly aspirations.  And so, he went away sorrowful because he knew that he was 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.

If you now recall how we began Mass you will remember that we said, “Lord, you were sent to heal the contrite”, “You came to call sinners”.  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 love.  The Word of God proclaimed at Mass to the contrite, --

is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and able to discern reflections and thoughts of the heart;

and, as such, it is meant to pierce all mankind and, having penetrated through 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 what you have, and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then 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 and yet more wonderful call from Jesus.

Jesus, remember, does not look bleakly at us with a cold eye and critical appreciation, for we have already been 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 to 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 glorify the Father with Him, 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:

There is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open 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:

(It) is living and effective, sharper than any two-edged sword, penetrating even between soul and spirit, joints and 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) reflections and thoughts and intents of (our own) heart.

And this He does because, to all those who will lovingly accept His Word and humbly acknowledge what they have been led to recognize about themselves, the words of the prophet Malachi will apply, who declared in the name of the Lord:

To you who fear My name the Sun of Righteousness shall arise with healing in His wings. (Malachi 4:2)

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; (and) all good things came to me along with her: in her hands uncounted wealth. I chose to have her rather than light, because her radiance never ceases.