5th Sunday of Lent Year C 2019

          5^th. Sunday of Lent (C)

                                              (Isaiah. 43:16-21; Phil. 3:8-14; John 8:1-11)

Today’s gospel passage is famous, exemplifying, as it does, what is certainly the most popular, and perhaps the best-loved, aspect of Jesus: His compassionate understanding of our human weakness.   Let us therefore take a closer look at it.

First of all notice that the scribes and Pharisees brought the woman -- quite possibly surreptitiously trapped in the act of adultery – to Jesus and set her standing in full view of the assembled crowd; they wanted everyone to be able to see her clearly, but even more than that, they wanted the crowd to have their attention fixed on Jesus whom they confidently hoped to trap in His words.  However, it would seem that, in their eagerness to entrap Jesus, they had not fully averted to the significance of their actions; for, in the book of Numbers the Law prescribes that, in the case of a woman guilty of adultery:

The man shall bring his (adulterous) wife to the priest, and the priest shall first have the woman come forward and stand before the LORD.  (5:15-16)

The Scribes and Pharisees, having taken charge of the adulteress handed over to them, and being completely absorbed in their planned ambush of Jesus, actually set her before Him quite unaware of the significance of their action before the Law!

After having thus ostentatiously proclaimed the charge against her, they then asked Jesus to tell them the best way of dealing with her.  In response, Jesus, we are told,

bent down and began to write on the ground with His finger.

Notice that in His compassion Jesus did not look the woman straight in the eye; He was not seeking to cause her further embarrassment.  He would look her in the eye later when offering her His saving grace and giving her a final warning.

At this moment, the scribes and Pharisees were seeking to make use of this woman’s adultery in order to call for Jesus’ opinion on the proper procedure they should follow in such a matter, so that those of them who were experts of the Law might be able to ensnare Him in legal technicalities.   Jesus, in other words, was their principal target, and that is why:

            When they continued asking Him, (Jesus) raised Himself up.

Yes, when they persisted in questioning Him, Jesus straightened up to face them directly.  The woman was publicly humiliated; the Scribes and Pharisees, on the other hand, were publicly proud and secretly malicious: Jesus most certainly did want to face up to them, He wanted to both knock down their pride and thwart their malice, and so, standing up and facing them, He said:

            He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.

Those baying and eager accusers melted quietly away one by one until Jesus was finally left alone with the still-standing woman, to whom He said:

            Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.

Many sinners – and would-be’s -- remember that famous ending to the story and both misunderstand and abuse it.  What so easily and so forcefully strikes them is the vague, general, impression of Jesus rescuing an adulteress from the Scribes and Pharisees, self-appointed upholders of the Law.  They rightly consider that it shows how Jesus -- knowing our sinfulness and compassionating our weakness -- is always prepared to forgive rather than to punish.  However, they then show their own perversity by imagining that the gravity of sin is thereby seen to be easily excusable and their own personal sinfulness less condemnable, easily condonable.  Of course, they cannot deny that Jesus did say “sin no more”, but, for them such words are what we today might call ‘politically correct’ words, necessary in such circumstances: satisfying Pharisaic proprieties but having no real significance or meaning.

Now, what for us is the real meaning and significance of Jesus’ actions here?  Recall what the prophet Isaiah said in our first reading:

See, I am doing something new! Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.  Wild beasts honour Me, jackals and ostriches; for I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland for My chosen people to drink, the people whom I formed for Myself, that they might announce My praise.

Water, then, as now, was precious in Israel: it meant life for a people who could see in the desert wastelands so close at hand the ever-present threat of death: for them, the greatest miracle imaginable was to make water flow in the desert and streams run in the wastelands.  Moreover, this new thing would lead even the wild animals to praise and honour God, before finally achieving its ultimate purpose of forming a new people to sing worthily the praises of their God:

This people I have formed for Myself that they might announce My praise.

What would this NEW THING be?  How was God going to bring it about?

The Scribes and Pharisees had recognized aright that the woman taken in adultery was a sinner.  What they did not understand, however, was that this woman’s bad living was a symptom of the whole world’s sinfulness, a sinfulness from which they themselves were not exempt, learned and devout-according-to-the-Law though they were.  She and they, yes, and all mankind, were still slaves, not, indeed, to Egypt any longer, but most certainly to sin.  The Scribes and Pharisees could not understand what the prophet Isaiah had foreseen: he had spoken of a new thing, a new act of God, that would make all who heard of it forget even the miracle at the Red Sea which the authorities in Israel revered as the supreme act of God that could only be repeated, never transcended.  God, they thought, could and would repeat what He had done at the Red Sea: as He had slaughtered the Egyptians there long ago, so the time would come when He would lead Israel to triumph over the Romans, slaughtering them and all her worldly enemies; then would the prescriptions of the Law be perfectly fulfilled and God would be King.

Isaiah, however, had spoken of a new act of God that would totally transcend the former physical deliverance, because this new act that He would perform through Jesus would save not simply Israel but also the whole of mankind from a captivity far worse than Israel’s former slavery in Egypt, that is, from the spiritual and potentially eternal thraldom to sin.  God’s new spiritual act would prepare, as you heard Isaiah foretell, a people able and worthy to sing God’s praises.  Neither slaves nor sinners could do that.  Yes, God’s new act would bring about a new creation, a new People of God able to sing a new song, expressing both the beauty and goodness of divine glory and human beatitude.  How was Jesus going to do this?  

Do you remember the Gospel reading just a fortnight ago?  There, Jesus told a parable about a landowner wanting to cut down an unfruitful tree whilst the gardener pleaded:

Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future.  If not, you can cut it down.

Jesus knew it would be Himself Who, in real life, would fertilize the failing tree of God’s own planting with His own most Precious Blood; and that orchard tree of the parable figured the whole root and stock of sinful Adam, represented today by the adulterous woman, by the self-righteous Scribes and Pharisees her accusers, and by the surrounding crowd of curious but faithless observers. 

We are now in a position to understand the whole picture.  How could Jesus condemn this woman for whom He was soon to give His life on the Cross?  In fact, it would be easier to save her because she had just been made aware of and, we trust, ashamed of her sinfulness.  Jesus was going to give all sinners, like her, one last chance, such was the very purpose of His life, death, and Resurrection: He would loose the bonds of sin by pouring out His own Most Precious Blood in sacrifice on Calvary.  His final words on both these occasions have the same significance:

It may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.

Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more.

The Scribes and Pharisees, on the other hand, refusing to recognize and unwilling to admit their own sinfulness, thereby made it much more difficult for Jesus to set them free.  And why were they so blind to their own sins and failings?  Because they saw the Law as a list of commandments to be obeyed and prescriptions to be carried out, not as a heavenly gift inviting them to total love of God and service of their neighbour.   As a result, they were centred on and satisfied with what they regarded as their own achievements: they gave tithes of everything they earned, they prayed at prescribed times and observed the requirements of liturgical purity, and in this respect their achievements – thanks to the grace God had bestowed on His chosen people -- were indeed more than those of all others.  But in all this they had only learnt to love themselves, not God; they trusted in their own punctilious performance, not in God’s goodness to them and mercy for all; and instead of serving their neighbours, they could only criticise and condemn them along with the adulterous woman.  Therefore, for their own sakes, Jesus had to try to make them realize and admit the truth about themselves:

Let the one among you who is without sin, be the first to throw a stone at her.

Now, dear People of God, let us look at our own sinful selves and at our excessively sinful times.  Jesus in no way condones sin.  When He dealt so kindly with that adulterous woman, He was in fact giving her a last chance.  However, those firm last words of Jesus, ‘go and sin no more’ have, for many, become enveloped in a protective cloth of supposed human rights and an overly sentimental understanding of Jesus’ saving purpose.  Many sinners today neither have nor want true knowledge or clear understanding of Jesus; they are stuffed up with pride at their supposed human right to live as they see fit and delight in their ignorance both of God and the reality of sin.

But we, Catholics and Christians, most grateful disciples of Jesus, must never forget that our God is a God of both Truth and Beauty, and that, as physical beauty is built upon the sure basis of a good bone structure, so spiritual beauty calls for a firm foundation of obedience to God’s will and Christian truth.  The Goodness and Holiness of God are likewise co-ordinated, for His goodness toward us is only fully realized by calling us upwards, out of our earthly condition, towards Himself and a share in His holiness.  He is indeed compassionate, He knows our sinfulness and our weakness, our ignorance and our blindness, that is why He sent His own Son to die for us, and why He sustains and guides Mother Church, so that through her His Son might be present to us and with us by His Spirit throughout the ages.   However, His Son in no way intends to allow His disciples to live for an earthly destiny: He was sent and He still intends to lead His own with Himself heavenwards.   Remember what the prophet Isaiah in our first reading said:

I have formed My chosen people for Myself that they might announce My praise.

That is indeed our ultimate calling in Jesus: to sing the praises of God in heaven for all eternity in total joy, peace, and fulfilment.  Thinking of that, St. Paul told us in the second reading:

I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord … not having any righteousness of my own based on the Law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know Him and the power of His resurrection ….

That we might attain to the Resurrection from the dead and to praise God for all eternity, Paul advises us:

Forgetting what lies behind but straining forward to what lies ahead, I continue my pursuit toward the goal, the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

Let us then, aspiring to maturity in Christ, adopt this attitude with him.

4th Sunday of Lent Year C 2019

4^th Sunday of Lent (C)

(Joshua 5:9-12; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32)

It is indeed degrading for a human being to be held in slavery; and, just as someone who has long been under the influence of drugs cannot endure being deprived of their addiction, likewise, those who have been slaves for a long period of time can become so degraded that they are no longer able to conceive of anything more desirable than their daily quota of food and rest.  When freedom has been long denied, victims can find its very idea meaningless and its prospect unattractive and even frightening.

It had been like that with Israel in Egypt.  During many, many years of exhausting labour under the ever-present threat of beatings, the short nights at home with the daily quota of Egyptian food had been the sole and most deeply consoling opportunity to experience human peace and bodily rest: that partial satisfaction of their hunger together with a few snatched hours of sleep and family communion was the only joy they could imagine and to which they could aspire.  Long slavery meant that they found the thought of freedom decidedly un-attractive when the struggle to attain it might involve unknown dangers and loss of regular food; and during the trials of their desert journey they were, at times, much tempted to return to captivity once again for its regular provision of basic necessities.  Only after years of guiding, supporting, strengthening, teaching, and blessing by God on their way through the desert, did the Israelites learn to appreciate their new found freedom and recognize their own human dignity once more; and only at the end of that long journey to the Promised Land, was the Lord able to say to Joshua, the leader of Israel:

Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you.

A similar situation is to be found in our modern society when life lived in this world and for this world’s pleasures and comforts is compared with the life offered us in Christ, which is lived indeed in this world but for the kingdom of heaven.  As St. Paul told us:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come.  And all this is from God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Being reconciled to God means that we have become, in Jesus, children of God, called to heavenly life, eternal life.  However, just as the Israelites, after long years of slavery in Egypt, found the prospect of freedom somewhat alien and unattractive, so too, those who today live in the world for the world’s rewards and pleasures cannot readily imagine the freedom of the children of God which Christ is offering: the joy, hope, and peace of those called to become, as Paul said, the goodness of God, seems totally unreal.

There are also others who started as Christians and Catholics in some measure, and then went on to imitate the younger son in the Gospel parable and left their paternal home, the faith of their fathers, in order to taste the forbidden fruit of independence and self- sufficiency before succumbing, all too often, to the pride and abandonment, to the pleasures and passions, of the world around.  Unappreciative of the blessings that had been their inheritance, they had set out to break what they felt were chains of conformity and to challenge what they regarded as unsubstantial taboos; and imagining indulgence to be without weariness or revulsion, they dreamt of total self-satisfaction without any qualms of conscience: and setting off to a distant country they squandered their inheritance on a life of dissipation.   When, having freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, they found themselves in dire need; and, indeed, once having aspired to ‘free love’, they came to realize that tatty relationships of convenience were all they were able to either give or receive.

However, our main interest is centred today, ‘Laetare Sunday’ (literally, ‘Rejoice Sunday’), not so much on the younger as on the elder son, the one who remained faithful to his father.  St. Paul in our second reading told us that:

God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting their trespasses against them and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.  So, we are ambassadors for Christ, as if God were appealing through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God.

The elder son in the parable had a somewhat similar office of reconciliation to fulfil with regard to his younger brother, and he seems to have failed in his duty; therefore, perhaps we can learn something from his mistakes that will be of help to us, and through us, also of help to those who -- lapsed or lapsing from the faith -- are on the way to becoming slaves, captivated by the promises, pleasures, and exigencies of this world.

According to Middle East culture and Jewish traditional values, the elder son should hold the position of mediator in a family crisis.  When the younger son asked for his inheritance, the responsibility and obligation of the elder one was clear to the first-century listener: the old father should have been asked to leave the matter in the hands of his elder son, because the younger boy did not really mean what he had said; the elder should then have demanded that his younger brother apologize to their father.  Instead of that, this elder brother of our Gospel parable seems to have been content to let the younger one go off with his inheritance.

Of course, the fact that we are told that he was not pleased when his younger brother returned home is understandable; I suppose very few brothers would have been pleased to see such a wastrel back home again.   Now, the elder brother could only accept his brother’s return out of love and/or reverence for his father … and he seems to have had difficulty in accepting his father’s extreme joy at his younger son’s return home.   Again, that is understandable, for this father’s joy was the expression of a unique love, that of a true, indeed exemplary father for his lost-and-returning child. 

Nevertheless, although the elder brother could not appreciate -- and we should not expect him to have appreciated -- such love, he ought to have recognized it and have made himself accept it with reverence, because of the almost inexpressible joy it gave his father. 

Now something of that sort can happen among us.  Far too often we, as Catholics and Christians, do not speak, as we should, about the beauty, the worth, the blessings, and, above all, of the joy of the Faith, as we have both learnt and experienced it in Mother Church and as disciples of Jesus in our daily lives.  For, we are all called, each in his or her degree, to live, like Paul, as ambassadors of Christ, ambassadors through whom God makes His appeal to those who do not yet know or appreciate Him.  St. Peter, writing to confirm recent converts in their new-found faith said (1 Peter 2:11-12):

Beloved, I beg you as sojourners and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts which war against the soul, having your conduct honourable among the Gentiles, that they may, by your good works which they observe, glorify God in the day of visitation.

The elder brother in Jesus’ parable seems, indeed, to have given good example to his younger brother in so far as he was always obedient and respectful to their father, as he himself reminded his father:

These many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time.

But that sort of example had not been enough to influence his younger, weaker, brother despite their years together at home, nor it did it prove enough to help the older son himself rise to the occasion and give positive help when his brother began thinking of leaving home with his patrimony; for ultimately the elder son, like his younger sibling, regarded his father impersonally, not indeed so coarsely as his brother, for whom his father was primarily the one in charge of the money; but nevertheless, as we learn from his own words, for the first-born son the father was little more than a distant and authoritative figurehead.   We see this yet more clearly in the father’s somewhat pathetic attempt to promote a special bond of mutual concern with his elder son:

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.  But now we (that is, you and I together) must celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life again.

Notice here that the father does not attempt to draw the first-born into his own most deeply felt emotions at the return of the ‘prodigal’, as would have been the case had he said ‘my son’ rather than, your brother’: We must celebrate and rejoice because my son was dead and has come to life again.

No, he simply requests the elder son to show some gladness at the return of his brother … the words are delicately chosen but, the level of rejoicing having already been set to manifest the father’s delight at the return of the ‘prodigal’, it wanted what the first-born son could not give.   Ultimately, the elder son had originally shown little personal appreciation of his father, and too little awareness of his own responsibilities towards both his father and his brother; as a result he was unable to influence his brother’s youthful and lustful selfishness; and he was, consequently, also quite unable to appreciate and respond to his father’s one, self-revealing, word of appeal:

we (you and I, both of us together), must celebrate, because your brother has come to life again.    

In this, the elder brother is like many Catholics today who will obey the commandments of God and Mother Church consistently enough, but who can never stir up enough zeal to give open and personal witness to Jesus and the heavenly Father, by their joy and delight, their peace and their hope in the Faith; and thereby they fail Jesus, themselves, and their neighbour.

Many -- especially young -- people find such passionless obedience given, they think, more out of fear than zeal, unattractive, because they themselves are unable to understand the difference between servile fear and reverential, filial, fear of God.  Had they greater wisdom -- which is a gift of God’s goodness, not born of human forthrightness and fury -- they might admit that, though faulty, such obedience is both reasonable and wise. However, finding it unattractive, they compound their lack of wisdom by completely ignoring it.   Nevertheless, there are others who do long, deep down, to know the strength and peace, to experience the joy and freedom, of a consuming commitment to the transcendent love of God; and when a Christian gives witness to Jesus and the Faith in such a way, then they – though young -- can be both impressed and inspired.

Failure to delight in the Lord is usually a fault in the believer.  Such a failure is not simply due to being undemonstrative by nature, but also to an insufficiently committed, perhaps lazy, spiritual attitude.  For delighting in the Lord is not a matter of blind emotion or natural excitability; rather true delighting in Jesus flows from a habit of faithfully remembering, deeply appreciating, and gratefully acknowledging one’s blessings.

Such an attitude is normal enough and indeed almost instinctive: for example, the rich man is perennially pictured as counting his coins, admiring his jewels, adding to his collections; we have had popular songs telling us to ‘Count your blessings one by one’.  In fact, it can be truthfully said that, no good, least of all a great good, can be suitably appreciated apart from the human instinctive practice of recalling, reviewing, and rejoicing over what has been gained or granted.  And the Psalmist applies this human, psychological, fact to religion when he tells us (Ps. 105:3-5):

Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord!   Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!   Remember His marvellous works which He has done. 

People of God, I suggest to you, on this ‘Laetare Sunday’, dedicated to spiritual rejoicing, that you would do much to avoid repeating the elder son’s failure, if you learned to truly rejoice in your, our, faith.  By that I mean that you should try, first of all, to look honestly at yourselves and learn to recognize the many blessings you have received over the years; and then also begin to look forward to the promises given us concerning our future in Jesus; after all, can it be that ill-educated, grossly miss-led young ISIS fanatics, are the only ones who can commit themselves totally to a heavenly future they believe, or think they believe, in?

Finally, having, in that way, become prepared, ready, and willing, to speak more freely and sincerely of the sure delight we have in the faith, of the comfort and strength it affords us in the present life, and of the joyful and confident hope it inspires in us for the life to come, we all will -- in accordance with St. Paul’s words -- be graced to transfigure our old, private and hidden, obedience into public confession and praise, since:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come!                        

                                                

3rd Sunday of Lent Year C 2019

 3^rd. Sunday of Lent, (C)

(Exodus 3:1-8, 13-15; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; St. Luke 13:2-9)

                    

Our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel reading need careful consideration:

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?   By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!  Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them —do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?  By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

The attitude of Jesus’ contemporaries to the tragic deaths of those Galileans – probably nationalist activists such as Zealots or Sicarii -- whose blood Pilate had mingled with that of the sacrifices they were offering, or those killed by chance at the collapse of the Siloam tower, was symptomatic of the Jewish people’s understanding of their calling as People of God.  They had come to think that being God’s specially Chosen People involved spiritual precedence over Gentiles and pagans and at least a certain measure of material advantage in their regard whereby, if they observed God’s Law as closely and exactly as possible, they could expect God to protect and bless them as a nation in their relations with the surrounding nations, and as law-observant individuals in all the circumstances of their personal and social lives.  Such ideas made the recent tragedies very difficult to understand for the generality of people, for surely, those involved must have sinned against God!  After all, some of the Chosen People had even come to think that they could, if necessary, remind God of His duty towards them, while a small few others even thought they could try -- through radicals such as the Zealots or Sicarii -- to force God’s hand, and oblige Him to come to their aid against their enemies and glorify His name before them.  Having begun to overlook, then, qúite forget, they ultimately came to reject the very idea that they had been specially chosen by God to serve as His instruments for the spiritual GOOD of the Gentiles, who might thus become one with Israel in the universal and ultimately eternal, family of God’s adopted children.

We may learn how very serious this travesty of God’s intentions was in Jesus’ eyes by the fact that He doubled on their original tragedy of the Galileans by Himself recalling those killed at Siloam, and then repeating emphatically His own words – which were most certainly not pleasant for His hearers – I TELL YOU, IF YOU DO NOT REPENT, YOU WILL ALL PERISH AS THEY DID. 

Those words of Jesus are of perennial significance for the spiritual awareness of the corporate body of Christians and the individual souls of all believers:

Do you think because those Galileans who suffered, or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them — do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?  By no means! But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!”

We Catholics and Christians know that those who perished as pedestrians at Siloam or as worshippers in the Temple precincts, were not greater sinners than other Jews or Galileans in Jerusalem at that time, for Jesus is not merely saying, opining, that they were not shown to be greater sinners by their unfortunate end, He is saying quite categorically – on His own authority -- that they were by no means greater sinners than all around them.  And on that basis Jesus then went on to warn His hearers:

            I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!

PERISH AS THEY DID: dear People of God, notice that Jesus is not saying that His hearers are likely to suffer from Pilate’s soldiers as did the Galileans, or be killed by another tower of the city falling down suddenly upon them.  No!  But He is saying that for those of His hearers who remain unrepentant, death will come upon them just as unexpectedly and disastrously-for-them as it had fallen on those now ‘famous’ unfortunates.

That, of course, is of the utmost importance for modern attitudes among unrepentant Catholics and Christians of our times because many so very easily spring to the defence of their own flagging, failing, and lapsing Christian witness or Catholic observance by words such as, ‘I live as good a life as other people’, ‘I am no worse than many others and a lot better than some of them.’ Or more recently, ‘Look at all the scandals going on in the Church, I am much better than that!’

After Jesus’ words today that is no justification, defence, or excuse whatsoever, in such words, which can all be summed up by the old banality: ‘There would be no Catholics left if my failings were considered so very bad’.  Perhaps there might even seem to be a measure of truth in such an attitude for some people but, most certainly, it had provided no excuse whatsoever for the Jewish audience Jesus was addressing with those words, IF YOU DO NOT REPENT, YOU WILL ALL PERISH, for they did, in fact, largely perish! Jerusalem was flattened, millions died in the Jewish war with Rome, and the nation was scattered far and wide among the Gentiles.

How many of those lackadaisical, unrepentant Jerusalemites had convinced themselves with thoughts such as, ‘I am as good as …’ and ‘there would be no Israelites left if …’ 

And what does that word ‘repent’ mean in this context? 

Our first reading was all about Moses himself having to learn about the sublime HOLINESS of God before speaking in His name to the enslaved Israelites; our second reading from St. Paul to the Corinthians was a warning against spiritual self-satisfaction, attending only to the formalities of Christian worship while ignoring the duties of Christian morality and witness in their daily living.  As for Jesus in our Gospel passage, you have heard how He warned explicitly about lack of repentance before God and of the dangers of fruitlessness in a Christian life:

             

He told them this parable: “There once was a person who had a fig tree planted in his orchard, and when he came in search of fruit on it but found none, he said to the gardener, ‘For three years now I have come in search of fruit on this fig tree but have found none. (So) cut it down. Why should it exhaust the soil?’  He said to him in reply, ‘Sir, leave it for this year also, and I shall cultivate the ground around it and fertilize it; it may bear fruit in the future. If not, you can cut it down.’”

Bearing all these aspects in mind, we can say that ‘repent’ means ‘change your mind, your attitude, turn from your evil ways, turn to serving, looking for and answering to, the God of all holiness and goodness, the Father of all believers in Jesus’; it can be regarded as a condensation of those other (again very difficult to modern ears) words of Jesus:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword.

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.  (Matthew 10, 34-39)

‘Repent’ can be accurately understood as the effort a disciple needs to make in order understand, appreciate, and appropriately adopt into his own style of life, those and other words of Jesus where He demands first place and supreme love for God and for Himself as Son sent by the Father, and where He calls for love of neighbour and death to selfishness.

We are all called to Our Lord, to Holy Mass each Sunday, as was Moses called in the first reading, Moses! Moses!  Moses answered, Here I am Lord as he walked towards the burning bush:

God said, ‘Come no nearer!  Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.’

Moses had been drawing close to God from curiosity:

I must go over to look at this remarkable sight and see why the bush is not burned.

God so urgently required ‘repentance’ that:

            Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

We too should be present at Sunday Mass with a sincerely repentant attitude, wanting simply and solely to worship God: to learn of His glory and goodness, wisdom and beauty; to join in declaring or (as best we can, and if the sopranos, God bless ‘em, will allow!) in singing His praises in the psalms and canticles; to seek His will, His way forward for us, as we hear the Scriptures read and the homily delivered; and, above all,  we should be most intent and committed in offering Jesus’ sacrifice with Jesus Himself through the ministry of the priest, most humbly and sincerely joining our own sacrifice of self with that of Jesus to His Father, for the praise and glory of His most holy Name.

Now it is most desirable for us to leave Holy Mass not only with a repentant and grateful heart but also with a certain awareness of how we can make progress in our efforts both to please and draw ever closer to the God and Father Who so loves us.  Saint Paul gave us such advice adapted to our every-day living:

Do not desire evil things; do not grumble; and, whoever thinks he is standing secure, take care not to fall.

Do you fear that all these warnings might make life burdensome and tiring for you?  Look at the Western world around you!  Warnings are not against you, they are to protect and help you:

            Cultivate and fertilize (your souls) that (they) may bear fruit for the future;

they are like the precious Blood of Jesus poured out to:

To rescue us and lead us into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey,

a land, our homeland, where the Father is waiting to embrace us as did the all-forgiving father in Jesus’ parable:

 So, he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’   But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.  Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ (Luke 15:20–24)

The ‘boy’ become the ‘prodigal’ had suitably repented …. So may we all do likewise, in Jesus, by His most Holy Spirit, for the Father.

Second Sunday of Lent Year C 2019

2^nd. SUNDAY of LENT (C)

(Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:20–4:1; Luke 9:28-36)

Dear People of God, today’s Gospel is replete with teaching about Jesus.  Notice first of all that:

While Jesus was praying, His face changed in appearance, and His clothing became dazzling white.  And behold, two men were conversing with Him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His exodus which He was going to accomplish in Jerusalem.

The meaning is clear.  Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the most charismatic figure among the OT prophets were speaking with Jesus about His imminent exodus, Passover, in Jerusalem; thereby telling us that the Law and the Prophets of Israel had indeed been leading to, speaking of, and preparing for, Jesus at their deepest level and according to their supreme intention and purpose.  We, Catholics and Christians, who desire to know and love our Lord and Saviour as fully as we can, should aspire to recognize and appreciate ever better the witness to Jesus contained in the writings of the Old Testament.

In the Old Testament God spoke frequently to Moses from a cloud that accompanied Israel throughout her desert wanderings:

The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain … and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.”   Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and cloud covered it six days.  On the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud, so Moses went into the midst of the cloud and up the mountain.  And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.  (Exodus 24:12, 15-18)

In such a way Moses was taught by God throughout Israel’s forty years journeying to the Promised Land.

Notice, however, that in today’s Gospel reading, God the Father -- again speaking from a cloud -- told the disciples Peter, James and John:

            This is My chosen (beloved) Son. Hear Him!

That would seem to be saying that no more would there be a voice from a heavenly cloud speaking to the new Israel, but that the words of Jesus Himself would be all that could be desired or would be needed.  Indeed, those words would seem to proclaim Jesus as God, speaking on behalf of, and with the authority of, the Father Himself.

‘Hear Him’ is a command, a command for Christians of all time, meaning ‘hear and obey’.  There, indeed, we have the first of all commandments for Christians, a command which Jesus Himself confirmed:

If you love Me, keep My commandments. (John 14:15)

But there is more in the Father’s words beside the commandment to ‘hear’ Jesus; there is also a most intimately Personal invitation or call – This (Gift) is My chosen, My beloved, Son, hear Him – hear Him in such a way as to love Him as well as to obey Him; the implication being that the only true knowledge of Jesus (‘hear Him’) is that which results in love for Him.  Jesus Himself is sublime in His humility: He is well-satisfied concerning our love for Him if we keep His commandments.  But the Father’s words are words of the ultimate and most sublime Father about His only chosen, begotten, and beloved, Son: they not only mysteriously embrace the full ardour of the Father’s beatific love for His Son, they also indicate something of the Father’s burning desire that we who receive this gift of His Son, should both hear Him and also come to love Him as the Father Himself wants us to love Him, that is, by our sharing, participating in and with, the Father’s very own love for Him.

Turning our attention now to the first reading we were told that, on hearing God’s humanly-inconceivable promise:

Abram put his faith in the Lord, Who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

However, that most laudable initial faith of Abram -- soon to be named Abraham -- had to be strengthened for future trials:

The LORD said to Abram: “Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.   But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth.  You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.

And so, as an unforgettable support for such enduring faith by Abram and subsequently of Israel, Abram was given – as you heard -- a mysterious vision and historic promise.   Abram himself had had some part to play in that vision, for he had brought, prepared, and arranged the animals called for by the Lord; and subsequently, he had stayed beside them, to protect their integrity as sacrifices, until such time as the Lord God Himself had appeared under the same fiery symbol He would later use again in the burning bush for Moses and the column of fire going before and guiding Israel through the desert of Sinai, and ultimately climaxing with the tongues of fire at Pentecost. 

When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire-pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those (sacrificial) pieces.

Such was the awesome background to the Lord’s words of confirmation for Abram’s faith:

To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the great River, the Euphrates.

As one of those described by St. Paul in the second reading whose ‘citizenship is in heaven’, Abram was subsequently named Abraham and, as befitting our Christian awareness of him as our ‘father in faith’, he lived St. Paul’s exhortation in today’s second reading, in the most exemplary manner:

            Stand firm in the Lord.

People of God, let us now closely observe and carefully imitate both Abraham and Mary.  Yes indeed, let us keep our eyes firmly on Abraham whose admirable faith in God was  confirmed by the Lord’s mysterious and fiery self-manifestation amidst the sacrificial flesh; let us keep our eyes even more firmly fixed on Mary, whose supreme faith in God’s promise was confirmed both by the awesome mystery of the Lord’s Incarnation brought about in her own womb, and by the consummate mystery of the His Passion, Death, and Resurrection given us for our confirmation and constant growth in the faith we have received from God the Father Who first drew us to Jesus.  Today, God renews His choice of us by calling us anew to ‘hear’ His Son -- Who speaks clearly and surely to us in and through His Church -- and on hearing Him, to love Him by the Spirit, now gifted by God for that very purpose, that we might in some measure become ablaze with the Father’s own love for His Son.

There is no faith without promises, there is no faith without mystery, and our Christian faith, in its ultimate awareness of and response to the totality of human experience and divine goodness, embraces unimaginable promises together with unfathomable mystery.   There, indeed, lies an inescapable tension, but it is one designed not for our destruction but for an ever-continuing and harmonious development of all our human capabilities originally given us as the ‘image and likeness of God’.

Promises and mystery are not to the liking of modern secular society where tangible, controllable, profitable, and temporal – quick -- attainments are sought at every level.  All too often, for such people, as St. Paul said in the second reading:

Their God is their stomach, their glory is in their shame.  Their minds are occupied with earthly things, and their end is destruction.

For us, however:

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.  He will change our lowly body to conform with His glorified body.

And although we ‘await’ the fulness of what can only be bestowed on us in our heavenly and eternal home, we already have, and even now rejoice and delight in, what is a foretaste of that heavenly fulfilment: the mysterious presence and power of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in our life … the Father anticipating and fulfilling us so mysteriously, knowing us and loving us so intimately; the Son, our Lord and Saviour, our glory, our example and our companion; the Holy Spirit Who enlightens, guides, sustains and comforts us in all our efforts to love and follow Jesus with our whole mind and heart.

Dear People of God, those are true Catholic and Christian joys; they are not worldly joys but they are truly human and deeply personal joys, arising from a personal relationship with and love of God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit -- and given for the Christian fulfilment of children of God become strangers in this world.  They are far richer and deeper than the pseudo, much sought after, joys of this world where those who seem richest suddenly, and not infrequently, put an end to their lives in painful emptiness; where crimes are committed for pleasures which are totally insufficient because of their passing and yet ever-recurring and demanding nature, pleasures which can prove deadly for those who indulge them and, too often, harmful to others.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm in the Lord.

           

       

First Sunday of Lent Tear C 2019

 First Sunday of Lent (C)

(Deuteronomy 26:4-10; Romans 10:8-13; Saint Luke’s Gospel 4:1-13)

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Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert for forty days to be tempted by the devil.

Surely, we have here the source of those words recommended later by Our Lord for our own most intimate and personal prayer with His heavenly Father: ‘Lead us not into temptation’.  Lack of understanding, whether on the part of episcopal bodies or individuals, cannot justify tampering with Our Lord’s very-own-teaching-words, words He uniquely recommended us to use when praying to His Father, words handed down to us by tradition given us to continue His uniquely saving purpose for men of all time.

Setting aside misunderstanding or controversy, let us now try to develop our own appreciation of today’s Gospel reading and the Lenten season we are entering upon.

Jesus, I believe, had longed to begin His mission for perhaps some 25 years, for had not John the Baptist heard from his father Zachary (Luke 1:76s.):

And you, child, will be called prophet of God the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give His people knowledge of salvation?

John the Baptist knew, therefore, from early childhood of his calling and destiny; surely Jesus was, from His earliest years, secretly orientated by His heavenly Father towards His own future public mission, the very reason for which His Father had sent Him among men.  And here is the first point I want you to notice carefully, People of God:  Jesus, the Son of God, longed for His earthly destiny to open up before Him and aspired to its fulfilment but … He waited long years for His Father’s call.

Now at last – so to speak – His waiting is ended and His longing fulfilled, for we have just heard in the Gospel:

He was led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted

St. Mark tells us, THE SPIRIT IMMEDIATELY DROVE HIM OUT INTO THE DESERT; whilst St. Matthew writes that JESUS ... WAS LED BY THE SPIRIT INTO THE DESERT.

Such words and such unanimity among the evangelists indicate a most compelling, imperious, call which, nevertheless, left Jesus perfectly free; and there we should again learn from Him, dear People of God, lest we ever allow ourselves to be tempted by thoughts of ‘holiness achieved quickly’’ for Christian holiness is a gift before it can ever be said to have been achieved.  We should, indeed, long to be holy and pray to love God without any reserve; but, with Our Lord, let us wait for, and never lose hope in, Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit, working in us for the fulfilment of God the Father’s saving purpose.  Let us humble ourselves as weak and sinful persons, whilst constantly praying to be strong and holy; for, as the Psalmist (2:3) tells us, the just man IS LIKE A TREE PLANTED BY THE STREAMS OF WATER, THAT YIELDS ITS FRUIT IN ITS SEASON.

Jesus’ season had finally come and He was ready to undertake, and succeed in, the contest opening out before Him; we, His disciples, must -- throughout our lives – be on the watch, waiting and praying, that we might be found ready, like Him, to embrace our season and bring forth fruit expected of us by God.

The first Adam, a man of earth, had originally been tested and found wanting; Jesus, the Second Adam, the heavenly man, likewise submitted to a testing; and here, the Gospel warns us modern Catholics and Christians that we who have been baptized into Christ must also be prepared to endure temptation with Him.  We are tempted from without by the Evil One, and from within by our own concupiscence.  Jesus, like the first Adam, could only be tempted from without.  Adam could and did sin, whereas Jesus not only did not, but could not, sin.  Jesus was both perfectly free and, at the same time, infallibly holy.  It is impossible for us to understand fully how temptation affected the Son of God, but we do know, with the certainty of faith, that it could not have touched Him at all had He not been also, and no less truly, Son of Man.  He consented to be tempted so that, as the Epistle to the Hebrews tells us:

He might be able to sympathize with our weaknesses, (as) One Who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. (4:15)

This temptation implies two things: first, that Jesus knew Himself be the Messiah whom the Jews were expecting; and secondly, that He was also well aware that He possessed extraordinary powers.  The time had now come for Him to make use of these powers, and behold, the devil was immediately at hand in the hope of leading Him to misuse them from the very beginning.

He ate nothing for forty days and when they were over, He was hungry.  The devil said to Him, ‘If You are the Son of God command this stone to become bread’.

Self-preservation is the most fundamental of all our instincts, and after such a prolonged and rigorous fast it must have been clamouring at the portals of Jesus’ will for satisfaction.  The devil tried to make use of it.  In the case of Adam and Eve he had not sought any such help from the legitimate needs of an oppressed nature, for, with but little effort, he had sown the seeds of distrust of God into Eve’s heart, and Adam lamely followed her.  It would not be so easy with Jesus ... the devil guessed that much from the beginning.  But perhaps the clamouring needs of nature might serve to blind Jesus as to Satan’s real purpose, for he desired to accomplish in Jesus that of which St. Paul was to accuse the Galatians (3:1-3):

O foolish Galatians!  Having begun with the Spirit, are you now ending with the flesh?

The Spirit of God had brought Jesus, Son of Man, into this wilderness ... would He not take care of Him there?  Indeed, He would.  The devil, however, invited Jesus to doubt this, by suggesting that He make use of the power which was His for the salvation of men and the glory of God, to satisfy a purely natural need.

But Jesus answered, ‘It is written, “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God”’.

Jesus did not deny the fact that man needed bread for his body, but affirmed that he also had need of God’s word for his soul, and He implied that spiritual considerations transcend, and sometimes can over-ride, the needs of nature.  This is why the apparently excessive fasting and mortification of some of the saints was not sinful, even though it may have ruined their health and notably shortened their lives.

Notice also, dear friends, that Our Lord simply quoted Sacred Scripture.  How we should reverence the Bible, for the very Son of God chose to cite its words rather than formulate His own reply!!

Another point also imposes itself for our consideration here.  We read very frequently in the Old Testament of the anger of God, Whose wrathful presence is manifested in upheavals of nature ... the mountains are shaken, the sun, moon and stars fall from their courses, lightning flashes are His arrows, the thunder His voice, and the storm clouds His chariot.   Those figures of speech give most eloquent expression to the inspired author’s realization of the utter and absolute incompatibility between the all-holy God and sin.

Look now, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, at Jesus, God made Man: for our sake He patiently, humbly, endured being tempted by one He found supremely loathsome and absolutely disgusting!  Will we not, for His sake, try harder to support patiently others when we find them trying?

The devil made a further bid.

He took Jesus up (Luke does not say where), and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a single instant, and said ‘I shall give You all this power and glory for it has been handed over to me.  All this will be Yours, if You worship me.’  

In Psalm 2 we read of the Messiah: (THE LORD) SAID TO ME, ‘YOU ARE MY SON, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.  ASK OF ME, AND I WILL MAKE THE NATIONS YOUR HERITAGE, AND THE ENDS OF THE EARTH YOUR POSSESSION.’   Notice well, dear People of God, how the devil tries to usurp the place of God by offering to fulfil God’s faithful promise in his own duplicitous way.

Was Jesus’ Kingdom to be a kingdom of this world?  Was it to surpass, by its universal embrace, the magnificence of all the empires ever seen upon earth?  Was the kingdom indeed thus to be restored to Israel in the way the Jews wanted, was Jerusalem thus to become in a new sense the CITY OF THE GREAT KING?

Jesus answered him:

It is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and Him alone shall you serve.’

Notice, once again, Jesus quoted Scripture to the devil.  The drama continued:

Then the devil led Him to Jerusalem, and made Him stand on the parapet of the temple, and said to Him, ‘if You are the Son of God, throw Yourself down from here; for it is written, “He will command His angels concerning You, to guard You” and “with their hands they will support You, lest you dash Your foot against a stone.”’

There is (sic!) no lack of heights in the Judean desert from which Our Lord might have been tempted to cast Himself down; but the desert could not provide an admiring, stupefied, crowd to behold the spectacle, and that is why the devil, Satan, took Jesus to Jerusalem.

Jesus had been sent as Man to make us -- in Himself -- adopted children of God, His own brothers and sisters.  Could the bonds which would thus bind us to Him and to the Father in heaven ever be formed out of curious amazement and superstitious awe?  No!  They would have to be unbreakable bonds of love, indeed of bonds of shared divine charity, able to endow us with heart-willed, mindful and humble, obedience.  Love cannot be exacted by force but must be gradually won; it cannot be foisted upon men, but has to be gently instilled into their hearts.  Jesus did not will to prove to men that He was the Messiah ... He preferred, He willed, to lead them to spontaneously recognize Him as such.  All this, however, could only come-to-be in the Father’s good time; and here, yet again, Jesus refused any attempt to precipitate events.

Jesus said to him In reply, ‘It also says, “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”

Jesus would not become a political figure.

The devil departed from Him for a time.

The desert had ever been, in the tradition of the Bible, the place of temptation, the domain of the devil.  Now Jesus had indeed, as St. Mark tells us (3:27) ENTERED A STRONG MAN’S HOUSE ... (AND) BOUND THE STRONG MAN; and St. Matthew tells us the same thing by having Jesus reveal the devil’s personal and intimate name as Satan.  Because He had thus defeated the devil in a deep personal encounter, Jesus was, and is henceforth, able TO DELIVER US FROM THE HAND OF OUR ENEMIES ... TO GIVE LIGHT TO THOSE WHO SIT IN DARKNESS AND IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH.  (Luke 1:73-79)

Never again did the devil (Satan) dare to enter into personal combat with Our Lord.

But the battle went on, nevertheless, to the end of Jesus’ life, for the devil stirs up men to fight his battle for him.  To the end Our Blessed Saviour continued as He had first set out, as to His disciples, concerned about Him having had nothing to eat, He said, MY FOOD IS TO DO THE WILL OF HIM WHO SENT ME (John 4:34); so, when the Jews asked for a sign made to suit them He said, AN EVIL AND ADULTEROUS GENERATION SEEKS FOR A SIGN; BUT NO SIGN SHALL BE GIVEN TO IT EXCEPT THE SIGN OF THE PROPHET JONAH (Mathew 12:39); and when the crowds wanted to seize Him and make Him king JESUS WITHDREW AGAIN TO THE HILLS BY HIMSELF (John 6:15).

However, when the final drama of Calvary was to be played, the devil once again tempted Jesus with the same three suggestions he had made in the desert, THE RULERS SCOFFED AT HIM, SAYING, ‘HE SAVED OTHERS; LET HIS SAVE HIMSELF, IF HE IS THE CHRIST OF GOD, HIS CHOSEN ONE! (Luke 23:35).   SO ALSO, THE CHIEF PRIESTS MOCKED HIM ... SAYING ... LET THE CHRIST, THE KING OF ISRAEL, COME DOWN NOW FROM THE CROSS, THAT WE MAY SEE AND BELIEVE.’  (Mark 15:31-32).   But Jesus would give neither relief to His tortured body nor a sign to those ill-disposed Jews.  To Pilate, indeed, He did give an answer, PILATE SAID TO HIM, ‘ARE YOU THE KING OF THE JEWS? .... YOUR OWN NATION AND THE CHIEF PRIESTS HAVE HANDED YOU OVER TO ME; WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?’   Jesus answered, ‘MY KINGSHIP IS NOT OF THIS WORLD ... FOR THIS WAS I BORN, AND FOR THIS I HAVE COME INTO THE WORLD, TO BEAR WITNESS TO THE TRUTH.’ (John 18:33-37)

Dear People of God, let us now look at the world around us in the light of Jesus’ truth.

Secular society today wants to be rid of the very idea of sin because it hates above all the idea of a God of Salvation, a God becoming Man, living, suffering and dying as a man for love of, and the-saving-of, us human beings.   But men of the world today hate above all the very thought of One having both the right and authority to interfere in their lives.  That, People of God, is the very ESSENCE of sin: there is no one who has any right or authority to interfere in MY life.  Ultimately sin is not a matter of doing wrong things … much that is good is being done in our present-day secular society, but sin has never been more deeply rooted in society because most of its citizens are now disbelievers, against the very thought of any divine power, because each and every one of them wants to be free to commit their very own choice of (pet) sin when it seems necessary to them.  They do not often want to be always doing wrong things, bad things, in fact they want to think of themselves as GOOD; but, good-without-God.  A ‘free-goodness’, isn’t that the best sort of goodness … no, because only One was free before the face of, in the presence of, the Devil, being devilish, that is TEMPTING.  And only because that One, Jesus Christ, has bestowed His most Holy Spirit on those who believe in and obey Him,  can any human person do ‘free-goodness’.  All disbelievers, rationalists, or whatever God-less people may be called or call themselves, want, theoretically, and will, actually, commit their own choice of sin when they feel the need to do that personal something God would prohibit.