Second Sunday of Advent Year B, 2023

 

(Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2^nd. Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8)

John, a desert-dweller enormously popular with Jews seeking both liturgical purity and greater personal moral integrity, came to the river Jordan to proclaim his God-given message and to ‘baptize’ the crowds flocking  in their thousands to hear him and receive his baptismal ministrations.  John’s God-given message was definitively clear and authoritative proclaiming repentance for the forgiveness of sins to those  who were both religious and humble enough to want to hear and follow his guidance:

One mightier than I is coming after me. I am not worthy to stoop and loosen the thong of His sandals. I have baptized you with water; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.

John the Baptist -- as he is now known -- the greatest, as Jesus said, of all those born of woman, was chosen by God to immediately precede Jesus and personally introduce Him to God’s Chosen People.   John fulfilled that commission perfectly by proclaiming Jesus as the Bridegroom, the Messiah of Israel’s expectations, the One who alone could and would baptize with the Holy Spirit.

John -- the Bridegroom’s precursor and friend to the end -- would be murdered in a lonely, royal, dungeon cell, for witnessing to God’s truth against the displayed pride, indulged salaciousness, and the hidden weaknesses, of a tyrant, himself subject to Rome’s  ever-more-scrutinizing approval.

John’s proclamation of Jesus was no threnody, however, dear People of God; on the contrary, it was an introduction to the supremely Christian song of glory, gratitude, and joy: for, all who would believe in, and be baptized into, Jesus, would receive life from Him Who was willing to die – even on a Roman cross -- to save them, through His own Spirit of Truth and Love, from sin and death.

And it is in that way that obedient and faithful Catholics today already share in some measure -- even here on earth -- the life of the Most Holy Trinity:  called by the Father to faith in His beloved and only-begotten Son, and ‘gifted’ with the Holy Spirit, they share  eternal sustenance as living members of the One True Church which is the Body of Christ, constantly guided and protected in the Truth of Jesus’ Gospel by the Holy Spirit, to worship the Father as His truly adopted children in Jesus, His Son and our Saviour.  

After John had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God: “This is the time of fulfilment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the Gospel.” (1:14-15):

For the authentic Christian understanding and practice of repentance, we need to look closely, very closely, at our readings today in order to appreciate Mother Church’s teaching in this matter.   What was it that John the Baptist said?  What did Isaiah proclaim? 

John said ‘repent’ first; and then next –  on seeing Jesus passing by -- he said to Andrew and another of his disciples, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’.

That, dear People of God, is the composite nature of conversion: first turn from sin, then turn to the Lord.

Turn from sin, try to correct the ravages it has caused in your life; which is what Isaiah proclaimed in those words:

Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!   Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low; the rugged land shall be made a plain, the rough country, a broad valley.

Such indeed is the first requirement of repentance, turn away from sin in all sincerity, and then, by walking in the ways of Jesus, allow the Spirit of Jesus to enter our life, and form us anew in the likeness of Jesus, for love of the Father :

Then the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all mankind shall see it together; for the mouth of the LORD has spoken.   

Notice too that Isaiah’s prophecy provides us with a sure way to test the truth of our repentance: is the glory of the Lord being revealed to you?  Do you, as you grow older, see and admire in Jesus gradually more and more of the glory, that is, of the goodness, the beauty, the truth, and the wisdom, of God?  Do you, as the years pass by, become ever more grateful to the Father for His goodness in calling and guiding you to Jesus?  Do you find yourself gradually more willing to trust Him completely, above all else?  Do you aspire, more and more, to know, love, and serve Him with your whole being?  If you can say “Yes” to questions such as those then, indeed, you are both sincerely repenting, and truly seeking the face of the Lord; and, moreover, I could confidently say that the glory of the Lord is also, indeed, being gradually revealed both to you and in you.

But what if -- as the years go by, when you seriously look at yourself and sincerely question yourself before God -- you recognize that you are thinking less and less of Jesus because you are increasingly absorbed in worldly interests and aspirations; that you are more and more preoccupied by cares about money and people’s opinions or attitudes in your regard, and less and less attentive to God speaking through your conscience or drawing upon your heart-strings?  Do you feel yourself obliged to respond in kind for every little benefit you receive from others, a Christmas card for a Christmas card, an invitation by an invitation, a gift for a gift, and yet never think that you owe a debt of gratitude to God for all the many blessings He has bestowed on you throughout Hyour life?  Are you gradually becoming tolerant of failings you are aware of -- you might like to call them ‘mere peccadillos’ -- in your daily living?  All these things are quite possible where Christian people are found to be no longer looking to God, for God, but looking at others, and looking-after themselves.

People of God, let us now for a short time look at God in our Gospel reading trying  to look after Herod, despite his multitudinous failings.

God speaks to each and every one of us – without exception – in one way or another, for our GOOD, for our eternal salvation; and in today’s Gospel we heard how He kept on trying to straighten out Herod’s hitherto most miserable life: a collaborator with the hated Romans, a most blatant sinner with his own brother’s wife, and add whatever else you like …. a murderer? a rapist? a great hater? a supreme exponent of the art of betrayal? …. All most helpful for one wanting to become a royal figure with a measure of authority in those hectic days and seasons after the death of  Herod ‘the Great’, who had been a superb servant of  Rome, and whose sons – including the Herod-Antipas of our Gospel reading – were doing their very best!! – to win Rome’s favour by whatever means.   

Dear People of God, God was still trying to communicate with Herod Antipas, encouraging him, right to the end, to hear, and in certain measure, to listen to John the Baptist speak of Israel’s faith!   But now, although he in-his-way reverenced John, Herod couldn’t go-back-on his foolish word to the lascivious daughter of his scheming, adulterous, and murderous wife!  He didn’t dare give cause for his nobles and ‘mighty men’ to look down on him and question his authority … so he ignored his God’s spiritual life-line and plunged head and shoulders into yet greater sin and deeper spiritual disgrace.

Dear People of God, no matter what might be the state we find ourselves in at this moment, Mother Church urges us to aspire once again this Advent time to prepare to welcome Jesus anew into our lives that His truth might enlighten us, His love inspire us, and the Gift of His most Holy Spirit might protect, guide, and sustain us along His way to the Father.   Time is irrelevant to God, it of this world, not of His heavenly Kingdom, our future home. 

With the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years like one day.

What is essential for us, therefore, is that here and now, we have the will to prayerfully aspire to the blessings He has prepared for us, and that we have the humility and fortitude to forget our self-solicitude and, by our daily prayer and Christian living, learn to rejoice as He gradually makes those promised blessings an ever more real experience for us.

As St. Peter’s put it:

Waiting for the coming of (Our Lord and) God, you ought to be (found) conducting yourselves in holiness and devotion; eager to be found at peace, without spot or blemish before Him.

First Sunday of Advent Year B, 2023

 

(Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; 1^st. Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37)

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah on this the first Sunday of the Advent season, is a direct preparation for what is the supreme teaching of the Gospel: the revelation of God as Father, and of the re-birth -- by the Holy Spirit -- of Jesus’ faithful disciples, into living members of His Mystical Body, and adopted children of the heavenly Father.

Isaiah was very conscious and proud of the fact that God was a Father to Israel, and In our first reading he referred to God three times as Father, twice in the opening verse:

You are our Father.  Were Abraham not to know us, nor Israel to acknowledge us, You, LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer you are named from of old.   

But, what did he understand by his use of that word ‘father’? 

Let us turn our attention to the Law, to the book of Deuteronomy, source of the fountain which supported and inspired Isaiah, and there (32:18) we read:

Of the Rock Who begot you, you are unmindful, and have forgotten the God Who fathered you.    

Though the word ‘father’ is used there, and even backed-up by the words ‘begot’ and ‘fathered’, nevertheless they are all used metaphorically, since it is all about the birth, that is, the calling, formation, and establishment of a nation from those who had previously been wandering desert tribespeople and latterly a persecuted minority of slaves in Egypt.  And the prophet Isaiah himself was not, and could not have been, fully aware of the real meaning and ultimate significance of the word he was being led to use when calling God the ‘Father of Israel’, for that required further revelation  

God did indeed continue to guide His People over the subsequent centuries and gradually formed their history in such a way that those prophetic words and traditional faith were finally shown to be true in the sublime beauty of their ultimate meaning and significance, when He brought about through Mary of Nazareth -- the Flower of Israel -- the birth, in time, of His only-begotten and eternally-beloved Son as Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of Man for mankind’s salvation.

That, dear People of God, is why you heard St. Paul exclaim in the second reading:

I give thanks to my God always on your account for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus.

As we are now entering upon a new Church year, it is not only right and proper, but surely also most helpful and beneficial, for us to be aware of the ultimate goal of our life in Jesus under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is, that we should become truly adopted children of the Father:

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

The Father Himself, therefore, comes with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to abide with us and make us His children in Jesus, and this He does in a way that is unique to Him, that is, by showing Himself to be the most perfect Father to us and for us.

Therefore, we Catholics especially must always remember those unique words, those most ‘invasive’, serious, and solemn words, of Jesus, which are generally considered – or consigned! – to be words of no special significance:

Do not call anyone on earth your Father; for One is your Father, He Who is in heaven.    (Matthew 23:9)

Moral theologians will tell you that those words ‘Do not’ are a direct prohibition.

Now, such words used by Our Lord Jesus are not ‘over-the-top’, neither are they meaningless; they are indeed, as I said, ‘invasive’ because they penetrate to the depths of our personal being, both physical and spiritual.  They pertain to, and concern, the supreme responsive awareness, grateful love, and self-sacrificing obedience, of which we can be capable as children of God;  they are hights to which we can be ‘vocationally called’ when the sovereign name of Jesus in Mother Church is impugned or threatened.    

             One is your Father, He Who is in heaven.

In the begetting of a child, the father initiates the life-giving process in the mother who subsequently gives growth, nourishment, and ultimately birth to a child, a unique personal human being.

Spiritually, the heavenly Father is the unique Begetter of all true disciples of Jesus.  He   can contact us -- if we will listen and hear -- because He, our Creating Father and  our Spiritual Father, is able to address us through unspoken words uttered in the  depths of our being and personality.  Because, in our early years we had do not normally  learn to recognize His traces, any first and/or early experiences of such communication can seem to originate within ourselves and to be, unaccountably, ours: mysterious longings and desires, sudden lights and quiet convictions, protecting fears (! sic), and simple assurance, all can seem to be very much a part of us because they come from the centre of our being. And yet, because they are, in fact, communications from the as yet unknown-to-us-Father, they can become intelligible to us by our walking in the ways of Jesus and thus learning to share in His infinitely sensitive awareness of, and responsiveness to, His Father’s abiding Presence and loving Providence.  And when many apparently unrelated events and diverse incidents come to be seen and recognized as connected and coherent parts of one embracing plan of Providential care, then the Father’s loved-and-appreciated Presence reveals Itself to us in glimpses reflecting the beauty of His truth in the Scriptures and the splendour of His grace in Mother Church. 

In ways such as these the Father can speak to us in any situation and throughout the whole extent of our life.  No earthly father or mother, no lover, no friend, can speak so intimately, or be present to us in such a way; because He is the God Who originally made us in His Own likeness for Himself.

Yet, there is even more than that; for He -- God the Father -- wills to be our All, not only in our origins, but also in the fulfilment and ultimate justification of our being, because He wants to be for us the sublimely perfect Father, such a Father Whom only Jesus can reveal to us, for Whom only the Holy Spirit of Jesus can prepare us; a Father Whose Presence we can encounter only as living members of the mystical Body of Christ, our Brother and our Head. 

Do not call anyone on earth your Father; for One is your Father, He Who is in heaven.

Dear, present-day People of God, that most serious command of Our Blessed Lord is not ‘over-the-top’ because Jesus knew full-well the ordinary, homely, use of the word ‘father’, as His mother testified most emphatically, being concerned about Saint Joseph more than herself (Luke 2:48):

When His parents saw Him, they were astonished, and His mother said to Him, “Son, why have You done this to us? Your father and I have been looking for You with great anxiety.”

What then was Jesus’ intention in that solemn injunction about our use of the word ‘father’?

We know that He sometimes used words to startle, jolt, His hearers into thinking, as distinct from just idly hearing.  But that is not the case here, for Jesus was not telling a parable, He was responding to a particular threat hanging over the People of Israel in His days, a threat still virulently alive, and Jesus’ response is too imperious to be just passed over by us today.

Jesus had in mind the Pharisees who were claiming the teaching authority and taking over the words of Moses in the Law of God, for themselves; they would say that they were ‘adapting the words of Moses, the Law of God, for modern times’, by interpreting those words in accordance with a multitude of their own, very human and proud, traditions.  A ‘take-over’, indeed, not unlike  that now being practiced by a majority of the bishops – the Church ‘Fathers’ -- in the German pseudo-Catholic Church of today; a take-over some “Jesus’-teaching-needs-updating” Catholics are today wanting to foist on the universal Catholic Church.

In that original confrontation with the Pharisees in Jerusalem, and in today’s similar situation, Jesus’ words were direct and unambiguous, in order to protect; and today they are still meaning-full and authoritative for His Church:

Do not call anyone on earth your Father; for One is your Father .... in heaven.

Yes, God sent His co-equal Son in fulfilment of the words of the prophet to save His People and all mankind from Satan’s power of sin and death.  Through faith in, baptism into, and obedience to Jesus -- the Son of God become our Brother -- we are enabled by the Gift of His Holy Spirit to become living members of the Unique Body of which Jesus is both Lord and Head, and in Him we can become children of the One, true God and Father of us all. 

He is indeed, and wills to be known by each one of us personally as, our sublime Father, supremely authoritative, and yet One Who is always there, with us, closer to us even than we are to ourselves: the Father Who can only be known by the words and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth -- His only-begotten Son, born of the Virgin -- and can only be understood aright in accordance with the authoritative guidance of His most Holy Spirit, in teaching passed down to our days by the Apostolic tradition and teaching of Mother Church, and contained in the Scriptures of the Old and the New Covenants, and Mother Church’s own doctrinal teaching.

Advent now calls us to prepare a welcome for the nascent Son-Who-is-to-come, let us do so joyfully, and oh! so lovingly, carefully, and courageously, as did Mary our mother and model.

Christ the King Year A, 2023

 

(Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; 1^st. Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Matthew 25:31-46)

Following the Gospel of Matthew we have recently heard Jesus warning us in parables, first of all, to be faithful and responsible, after the example of the wise and faithful servant set over the household whilst his master was away; then -- in the parable of the 5 wise and the 5 foolish virgins -- to be prepared and alert at all times; and finally, last week, He admonished us -- in the parable of the talents – to put to good use the gifts we have received by bringing forth fruit for eternal life.

And now, just before the chief priests and elders of the people meet to plot Jesus’ death, Matthew puts before us this awesome scene of the Last Judgement pictured for us by the Lord Himself:

When the Son of Man comes in His glory, and all the angels with Him, He will sit upon His glorious throne, and all the nations will be assembled before Him. And He will separate them one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.

Jesus goes on to make clear the grounds on which the sheep are to be separated from the goats, and in doing so He fills in with greater detail the advice given us previously in His parables by showing us how to remain faithful and responsible, ever alert and prepared, and how to invest for the future by bringing forth fruit for eternal life:

I was hungry and you gave Me food, I was thirsty and you gave Me drink, a stranger and you welcomed Me, naked and you clothed Me, ill and you cared for Me, in prison and you visited Me

Those, on the left hand, who do not remain faithful, alert and prepared, who make little or no effort to gain profit for heaven, will be most severely judged and condemned, and the immediate continuation of our first reading from the prophet Ezekiel tells us why:

Then the King will say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, you accursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

“As for you, O My flock,” thus says the Lord GOD: "Behold, I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats.  Is it too little for you to have eaten up the good pasture, that you must tread down with your feet the residue of your pasture -- and to have drunk of the clear waters, that you must foul the residue with your feet?"  

St. John Chrysostom, a Greek Doctor of the Church, when commenting on today’s parable of the Final Judgement, told his congregation at the imperial court in the city of Constantinople some 1600 years ago that God does not demand great things of us, for He is gracious enough to reward even little things:

And in return for what, do they receive such a great reward as a share in heavenly glory?  For offering the covering of a roof, for giving a garment, some bread to eat and cold water to drink, for visiting one languishing in the prison.   In every case it is for what is needed; and sometimes not even for that, for surely, as I have said, the sick, and he that is in bonds, seeks not only a visit, but the one to be loosed (from his chains), the other to be delivered from his infirmity. But the Lord, being gracious, requires only what is within our power.

At times this parable of the Last Judgment has been wrongly interpreted as though it  asserts that our salvation will ultimately depend exclusively on works of fraternal charity done or omitted by us.  However, when looked at in the whole context of St. Matthew’s presentation of the teaching of Jesus, works of fraternal charity are valid and valuable only in so far as they are true expressions of love for God.

A lawyer, asked Jesus a question, testing Him, and saying, "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?"  Jesus said to him, "'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.'  This is the first and great commandment.

The second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself.'  On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." (22:35-40)

Love God with all your heart, soul and mind;  love your neighbour, as yourself.

St. Matthew elsewhere (19:16-21) quotes Jesus showing love of neighbour to be a necessary preparation for love of God when he tells how one day a rich young man, who, though having long kept the commandments and shown love toward his neighbour, came to Jesus because he still felt himself to be far from perfect:

"Good Teacher, what good thing shall I do that I may have eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call Me good? No one is good but One, that is, God. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."

There Jesus obviously wanted to lead this promising young man on to the fulfilment of charity in personal love of God.

In our parable today, notice that those called to His right hand by Jesus had indeed shown love of neighbour, but they had not sufficiently recognized God, Jesus, in their neighbour:

Then the righteous will answer Him and say, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You drink?  When did we see You a stranger and welcome You, or naked and clothe You?   When did we see You ill or in prison, and visit You?’

They still needed to learn much from Jesus in order to recognize and truly appreciate the pearl of great price.

The rich young man, however, by his life-long endeavours to find God, merited Jesus’ Personal invitation to “Come, follow Me”: only three short words but of surpassing significance.  “Come and learn from Me how to love both God and neighbour; come, learn to love My Father and your Father so much as to be able to embrace the Cross with Me for His glory and for the salvation of mankind”.  He speaks those same words to us this very day, for we should recognize that there is much for us to learn concerning which none but Jesus can teach us through His Spirit, recalling His words and actions and, in the Holy Eucharist refreshing our charity to respond ever better to His perennial truth and love .  Our world’s greatest need is for divine wisdom to understand God’s will in the signs of the times, especially today under the looming cloud of Sodality, where human beings are presuming to think that their ‘synodal’ thinking is more suitable for the spiritual well-being of modern humanity than the supposedly ‘time-aged’ or ‘not up to modern life-experience’ teaching and example of Jesus, handed down to us by the Apostolic Tradition and brought ‘refreshingly’ to our present-day minds by His most Holy Spirit.   And the Holy Spirit, being with Jesus a truly divine Person in the one godhead of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is the supreme leader and ruler in Jesus’ present-day Church, as He is also Personally active in our individual lives as Comforter and Strength – not some government-trained psychological tyro – but a divinely-gifted source of spiritual peace and sustenance for all the circumstances of our daily lives, no matter what the earthly  pressures, sorrows, difficulties or trials.  Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we – ordinary faithful Catholics -- can now know more of Jesus’ words than did those ordinary disciples of old, because the Holy Spirit has brought, and is constantly bringing  to the Church’s mind for deeper understanding and love, ALL that Jesus said and did, ALL that Jesus intended to be for us and wants of us, and we must always be awake and ready to defend Jesus’ legacy in our lives, as did His Apostles who shed their blood for Jesus and in fulfilment of the mission of truth and grace He had given them, just as Jesus Himself had shed His blood for the salvation of all of us.

‘Do gooders’ always think their idea of goodness is best for the people of their day, but today, those synodal do-gooders apparently inside Mother Church have a far more seriously defective understanding, not only of ‘goodness’, but of the very word ‘God’ if they think Our Lord Jesus’ teaching out-of-date for today’s Church.

Once Jesus’ coming into our lives has freed us from the slavery of sin then, by the gift of His Spirit, those God-given gifts of understanding and love can begin to reform and renew our darkened minds and stony hearts for God’s glory and the blessing of all around us.

If, therefore, we aspire to be counted among the sheep at God’s right hand we must make a beginning by fulfilling, as St. John Chrysostom explained, the first and easiest demands of Him Who will, ultimately, be our Judge.  Only little words and actions capable of expressing both sincere love for God and neighbour are asked of us, for it is only as the ordinary, everyday, attitudes of individual men and women become spiritually healthy and strong through Christ living in them, that the Holy Spirit of Jesus will be able to gradually correct and efface the social and political evils which afflict our country and our world, until that time comes when Christ -- reigning supreme in hearts and minds of His disciples—will be publicly manifested as King of Glory ushering in the Kingdom of God.  Towards that end every disciple of Jesus is able and called to contribute, since all of us have a personal role to play in the development of that Kingdom and a necessary function for its fulfilment.

33rd Sunday Year A, 2023

(Proverbs 31:10-13, 19s, 30s; 1st. Thessalonians 5:1-6; Matthew 25:14-30)

Today’s parable was relatively long and detailed with special emphasis being given to the lot of the servant who received one talent and did nothing with it.  Some people tend to think he was unfairly treated from the beginning by being given only one talent while others had more given them; and so, feeling sorry for this servant who “received only one talent”, they harbour a kind of grudge against the master of those servants and don’t really seek to learn anything from the parable. 

However, we should take care not to project twisted modern psychological attitudes onto the parable, but rather just try, first of all, to appreciate how much a ‘talent’ was worth in those times long-ago.  One talent was equivalent to 6000 denarii, and a man and his family could live adequately for one day at the cost of 2 denarii.  So you see that the man who received “only one talent” was actually entrusted with a sum sufficient to provide a suitable living for himself and his family for over 8 years!

People of God, let us have nothing to do with prevalent greed and self-love which leads many to cry foul where some seem to have more than others!  All of us have, indeed, been most generously endowed by God for the task of bringing forth fruit for eternal life in the course of our earthly pilgrimage.

Their master said to two of the three servants on bringing their profit to him:

Well done, my good and faithful servant. Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.

Such words make us feel glad, happy for and happy with those servants.  But, if we concentrate more directly on the nature of that happiness, we can recognize three aspects mentioned or implied in those words:

Since you were faithful in small matters, I will give you great responsibilities. Come, share your master’s joy.’

You were faithful implies the joy, the peace, the happiness of a good conscience.  I will give you great responsibilities foresees one being able to use one’s talents and abilities to the full, which is what we could call a satisfying and honourable career.  However, even such praiseworthy natural happiness is not able to dominate our attention in this parable because of those last words:

Come, share your master’s joy!

Let us, therefore, for just a few moments, look into the spiritual depths – that is, the essential core of Jesus’ teaching in this simple parable -- of those degrees of happiness, and you will realise how wonderful is that invitation to enter into the master’s joy.

Surely, we have all experienced at times the up-lifting joys and deep happiness that can result from human endeavour in human society: for example, we treasure the subtle varieties of deep personal love and human fulfilment in family life, and the more individual joys of worldly success and achievement.  We can appreciate too the deep ‘selfless’ joys of beauty seen and appreciated in the world around us, or of truth known and understood.

All such earthly types of joy and happiness do indeed delight us and give us a sense of deep fulfilment; and yet, they are so easily, connected indirectly with sorrow and sadness.  There is a famous song, “Plaisirs d’Amour” which tells of the joys of love which swiftly pass and of its pains and sorrows which endure.  That might be a somewhat mawkish and poetic appreciation, but, nevertheless, we all aware, that, in this world, human love is inevitably accompanied by its own particular and penetrating sorrows, however slight.  As regards the joys of personal achievement  and human awareness of beauty and truth can incur both enmity, envy, and perhaps worst of all, the disappointment of being unsustainable.  The physical beauty of the world around us is being shown in these modern times as more and more unreliable, with global heating causing great destruction and insecurity, through such of opposites as floods and fires, while also threatening the harmony of seasonal changes and the ever-recurring short periods of special beauty such as autumn and spring.

That is why so many modern people opt only for present, personal, pleasure and try to avoid love or special attachments of whatever sort; they want just loose relationships without any binding commitment, so that if and when sorrow looms ahead, they can break free and take up another source of comfort and pleasure that promises less trouble or greater satisfaction. 

Our work, so necessary for living life these days, can -- at best -- offer us only limited successes; and, of course, those short periods of apparent fulfilment can be quickly obscured by the shadow of competition and/or soured by occasional threats such as short time or redundancy.

The joy of a good conscience, however, is not in any way connected with sorrow or suffering and is therefore joy of a superior kind; moreover, it leads to another unsuspected joy which can be ours: a share in God’s own eternal happiness – ‘Come share your master’s joy’ -- which totally transcends all earth’s passing joys.

But how can it come about that we -- who know ourselves to be, at the very best, so prone to sin so weak and fragile in doing good -- are capable of receiving and appreciating, infinite, eternal, happiness?  Despite all the outstanding advances of modern scientific thinking and technological ingenuity and expertise, we cannot even imagine, let alone conceive, the immensity, the variety and beauty of the universe God has created and sustains: how then can our poor hearts be expanded so as to be able to accept a fullness corresponding to His own infinite beatitude in which we are promised a share?

The Psalmist (Psalm 81:10) gives the answer to our question:

I am the LORD your God Who brought you out of the land of Egypt; open your mouth wide.

How are we to open wide our mouth?  Listen to the Psalmist (Psalm 119:32) once again:

I will run the course of Your commandments, for You shall enlarge my heart.

That, dear People of God, is the way we can prepare ourselves to receive the divine happiness that can be ours: we open wide our mouth by walking -- indeed by running -- in the way of God’s commandments; and He then enlarges our hearts so that He might subsequently fill them with the riches of His blessings.

However It is often objected – usually by unthinking people -- against the very thought of eternal happiness, that ‘it must be extremely boring’.  Let me counter such a remark with a question.  Could eternal pain be boring?  Of course not, such pain would not allow anyone sufficient respite ever to think of being bored!  The thought of being bored by the joys of heaven is, indeed, an unthinking, foolish, or even stupid thought

I want you to just try to recall the happiest moments of your life.  Do you remember how short the time seemed?  You were so happy it seemed only a moment, even though it might have been hours, days, even years.  Now that gives us the key to heavenly happiness, for even though time is earthly, part and parcel of creation where things are always changing, nevertheless, there are occasions -- yes, even here on earth -- when time seems to stop or disappear, melt, in the presence of happiness.   How much more then is the question of time utterly irrelevant in eternity where there is no time!  Eternity is not endless time, eternity is timeless; time has no meaning for there is nothing to be measured by time in heaven before God’s Presence.  St. Peter tells us something of this in a pictorial way in his second letter (2 Peter 3:8):

Beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.

Therefore, for those who are called to share, with Jesus, by the Holy Spirit, in God’s heavenly blessedness, time will be totally supplanted by transcendent joy flooding their whole being, body and soul.  Think again, People of God!  You have had plenty of experience even here on earth, which is, so to speak, a time-zone: if you are bored or weary, anxious or worried, time drags ever so slowly; and yet, when you are happy it flies!  Therefore, even here on earth, time is relative.  Now, heaven is a time-free zone: that is, in heaven time is totally irrelevant, not only because we won’t notice it, but because it has no being, no function, in the bliss of God to which we are invited in Jesus by the Holy Spirit.

Don’t think little of your gifts, People of God, be they 5, 2, or 1 talents-worth, they are more than ample for all your needs.  Don’t be foolish enough now -- and ultimately wicked enough -- to ignore a happiness which can transfigure your whole being and help transform our world, making you eternally fulfilled and happy beyond all imagining!  It can be yours in Jesus: let Him lead you, in His Church, by His Holy Spirit, to live and work for the glory of the Father, in Whose presence -- Jesus promises -- you will be greeted by those most memorable words:

Well done, good and faithful servant; you were faithful over a few things, I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your Lord!

32nd Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Wisdom 6:12-16; 1 Thessaloniansn4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our first reading reminded us of a supremely important Christian truth: God speaks to, tries to communicate with, all those He has created in His own image and likeness:

Wisdom is readily perceived by those who love (want) her and found by those who seek her.  She hastens to make herself known in anticipation of their desire.

Jesus Himself said much the same thing but in more easily understood words once:

Whoever chooses to do His will shall know whether My teaching is from God or whether I speak on my own.  (John 6:17)

 

Those who, even in the slightest degree sincerely want make something of their life as a whole, not just here and now in this or that difficulty or challenge, but as a whole, have feelings, thoughts, such as: ‘does my life have a purpose, a meaning?  I personally can’t be meaningless, surely.  How am I to live my life aright, fulfil its, fulfil my purpose?’

 

All who have thought about, wanted to answer, take up, such seeking, wanting, wondering and longing, will most certainly ‘be contacted!’ by Wisdom, our first reading told us; that is by the Holy Spirit, Jesus’ parting Gift to His Church and human-kind.   There is not, nor ever has there been — according to Christian teaching -- any such sincere human being who has never known, experienced, or been aware of, anything from God, about God, from His Spirit of love and truth contacting them, speaking within them.

 

Whoever chooses to do His will shall know … know something that could lead to his or her eternal salvation.

 

As regards our Gospel reading, we can, surely, all agree, if I say that the five foolish virgins were certainly not thinking girls.  Their minds were filled with present happenings, what they had recently heard, seen, or done …. Such people will eventually say, in self-justification, that they never heard anything from God, anything convincing about God.  

 

What they should have said was that they had never adverted to anything from, about, God!  The reason was that they simply lived life as they found it, and in that sense, they were subject to life, servants of life, slaves to, life as it was being lived in their day.  They had no ears for God whatever words He whispered to them, they had no thoughts about the meaning of life, not even about their own life; their whole concern was for living their life span as pleasurably, ‘as well’ they would say, ‘as possible’.

 

Another fundamental Christian truth is made clear in our Gospel reading today for all who have ever -- in their life-time -- thought of responding to, taking up, those whisperings, from the almost unknown depths of your being, about possibilities of life over and above the everyday, more-or-less humdrum, events of life, however important, out-of-the-ordinary, and exceptional they may have once seemed: possibilities, opportunities, to truly understand and joyfully fulfil, the life given you.  And that fundamental truth is, that possibilities not taken up, opportunities offered but rejected, put aside, ignored, can be lost forever, without possibility of recall:

 

“Lord, Lord, open up for us.”  But He answered, “Truly I say to you, I do not know you”.  

 

Others in that situation you may remember said, ‘We heard you in our street, we did this or that good thing!’  

 

But you didn’t want to know Me!  You didn’t answer My call:

 

Truly I say to you, I do not know you”. 

 

Dear friends in Christ, I haven’t said anything about the synod or synodality!  No, such things come and go as excogitations of human minds.  We today have considered – I hope, I pray – fruitfully in some measure, two essential aspects of Jesus’ saving Gospel of Salvation, treasured in the Spirit-endowed memory our Catholic and Apostolic Church.   

31st Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Malachi 1:14 - 2: 2, 8-10; 1^st. Thessalonians 2:7-9, 13; Matthew 23:1-12)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our readings today are topical: we are told of some priests who lead people astray by their bad example and faulty teaching and, in passing, of some lay-people who promise much but produce little. 

If we take a look at the lay person mentioned in our first reading:

Cursed be the swindler who has a male in his flock and vows it, but sacrifices a blemished animal to (Me)," says the LORD of hosts, "for I am a great King.

There, someone vows to offer a fine animal in sacrifice to the Lord, but then, after second thoughts, substitutes a blemished, and unworthy one in its stead, saving himself some money thereby. 

I write as a retired parish priest and former curate, and priest(s) and parishioners are well aware of seemingly fine Catholics  who in no way live up to the impression they give in parish life.  They may be relatively well off but put little or nothing on the collection plate; they may speak the right words but will not perform, they frequently criticise but never seem to help; they usually require certain standards, such as clean pews and nice flowers, but never have time to join any rota for church cleaning and the provision of flowers.  I don't wish to overemphasise the point, however, for no one living in any parish can be ignorant of what I am describing, unless, perhaps, they are themselves among the culprits.

Then we heard of some priests of the tribe of Levi dishonouring the Lord:

“And now this commandment is for you, O priests.   If you do not listen, and if you do not take it to heart to give honour to My name," says the LORD of hosts, "then I will send the curse upon you and I will curse your blessings."

In this respect Pope St. Gregory the Great, who sent St. Augustine to bring the faith here way back in the year 597, over 1400 years ago, bitterly complains in one of his sermons that there were thousands of priests in the Church at that time, but so many of them did not do the work of priests:

“Look how the world is full of priests, yet only very rarely is one of them to be found at work in God's harvest.”

There is no doubt that things are much better now in that respect, for the great majority of priests give themselves sincerely to work in God's vineyard.  Nevertheless, human sinfulness, ignorance and weakness, are still part of every human being’s make up, and so there are today instances of priests dishonouring the Lord.  Malachi said in the first reading to them:

The lips of a priest should preserve knowledge, and men should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the LORD of hosts; but as for you, you have turned aside from the way; you have caused many to stumble by (your) instruction; …. you are not keeping My ways but are showing partiality in the instruction.

The Pharisees to whom Jesus spoke in the Gospel reading were neither priests nor lay-people.  They were religious leaders and guides, handing down the religious traditions of Israel which they interpreted according to their own group principles and practices.    In that way they were, as Malachi said of the priests of his times, partial in their instruction: smothering the observance of the Law with the stifling burden of their own innumerable regulations and restrictions, which earned them these words of Jesus:

They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger.

The Pharisees prided themselves on their fidelity to the Law, and tended to look down on others who were neither so learned nor so meticulously observant as themselves.   Pride, that is, inclined them to arrogance.

Today, however, People of God, it can happen at times, that priests who fail the Lord and their people, do so, not out of a perverse or domineering attitude towards people but, from a mistaken understanding of how to honour God.  They want to make Him more easily appreciated by their people, more immediately likeable and understandable to them, and so they seek to make themselves -- as His servants and representatives -- popular with, liked by, even loved by, the people to whom they have been sent.  They try to be found humanly understanding and sympathetic, whilst studiously avoiding any appearance of teaching with authority, correcting or reproving.  St. Gregory the Great, again, speaks of this in his 'Pastoral Rule' saying:

“Just as thoughtless remarks can lead people into error, so also ill-advised silence can leave people in their error … Negligent religious leaders are often afraid to speak freely and say what needs to be said – for fear of losing favour with people.”

Besides keeping silent for the sake of popularity -- and they think they are making Jesus popular too, don't forget -- such priests and bishops may also pursue the same end by over-adapting the Gospel truth to modern opinions and expectations: the Gospel's strictures are softened; hard words of Jesus are passed over or explained away, while those of the apostles, especially St. Paul, omitted altogether; the word 'love' is much used, indeed it is bandied around repeatedly, despite the fact that 'love', in our world of today can and does commonly mean attitudes that are quite contrary to the Gospel; and the Christian word 'charity' is no longer understood or used.

However, just as the prophet Malachi reproved both faulty priest and what he called 'swindling' lay people, so also St. Gregory is even-handed in his appreciation of what was wrong in the Church of his time:

“It is often the fault of those in their care that leaders are deprived of the opportunity preach … sometimes preachers are prevented from speaking through the sinfulness of those in their care, as the Lord says to Ezekiel: 'I will make your tongue cleave to the roof of your mouth, so that you shall be dumb and unable to reprove them; for they are a rebellious house.'  It is as if he had said quite openly: you are not allowed to preach, precisely because this people is not worthy to have the truth preached to it.”

In such situations priests can be encouraged in their pursuit of popularity by people who want to hear only good news, or those who want the priest to preach only that which they themselves want to practice, or finally those who simply want the sermon to end as soon as possible.

And so, People of God, it has always been the same: in the times of the Prophets, in the Church of Jesus Himself, of St. Gregory the Great (about the year 600 AD.) and still today in our times, there are some leaders, priests and religious, bishops and popes, who go astray and fail both God and their people for reasons that can be quite personal, professional, or perhaps, even sordid, reasons for which, at times, not only those leaders and priests are at fault, but also the people themselves.

What then should, what can, be done?

Listen to Jesus speaking to ordinary Israelites, including some of His occasional  ‘disciples’,  semi-observant of the Law at best:

The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; therefore, all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. 

Note that Jesus said 'do and observe all they tell you' because such occasional, temporary followers of Himself, such ‘surface’ observers of the Law,  would not be harmed by the literal law-teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees. Indeed, Jesus Himself, when teaching His saving truths to such followers, spoke to them only in parables

Jesus bequeathed Mother Church to us as He bequeathed His Mother Mary to John the beloved disciple; for her, Mother Church, He sustained the Cross and poured out upon her, and now continues to bestow, His most Holy Spirit: He knows well how to protect and sustain her no matter what her trials.   Jesus will, most certainly, never fail those seeking Him, in sincerity and truth, through the Church which is His Body and our Mother.

People of God, do not let those who hate Mother Church or those who may fail her, ever diminish your confidence and trust in Jesus,  or your care and solicitude for His much loved and faithful Spouse; for Mother Church is structured and strengthened by Jesus’ abiding ’Gift’ of His most Holy Spirit and our, His People’s, service and prayers.

Today, despite the current example of the Church in Germany, which is far from sharing fully or worthily in the name Catholic (universal) Church, we are having synodality officially stuffed down our throats.  And I, with your prayers in mind,  and in my own solicitude, want to cite only one small, most disturbing – and not only -- quote from documents sent to me concerning the recent synod of Bishops in Rome: “Christian Initiation … Convergences … section ‘e’ “

‘The celebration of the Eucharist …. “By calling us to participate in his (sic!) Body and Blood, the Lord Jesus  forms us into one body, with one another and with Himself.’

Dear People of God, by calling us to participate in His Body and Blood the Lord Jesus forms us into one Body with Himself directly.  The words “forms us into one body with one another” are misplaced and also dangerously ambiguous: they can, possibly and rightly, mean ‘forms us as members of His Body, the Church’; they cannot mean ‘forms us – you and me, neighbours and friends, here and now – directly, into one body.   Jesus must come first, for all is through, in, Him

Jesus, in our reception of His Eucharistic Body, forms us into one Body with Himself, and all that can, in God’s design, follow such a wondrous fact and truth, is dependent on, subservient to, for the glorious fulfilment of, that unique, self-standing, truth.

30th Sunday Year A, 2023

(Exodus 22:20-26; 1 Thessalonians 5c-10; Matthew 22:34-40)

Dear People of God, Our Lord Jesus, out of sublime love for, and obedience to, His Father in Heaven, came to live as a man on this earth in order to serve and save us from the eternal consequences of our sins.

Why do our earthly sins incur heavenly consequences?   Because God made us in His own image and likeness.  All God’s creation He pronounced  ‘good’, but we human beings were meant to be His supreme delight in creation, destined for a home in heaven as His truly-adopted children, through our faith in Jesus of Nazareth, the only-begotten Son-of-God,  sent by His Father to become man, by birth from Mary the Virgin of Nazareth and the sublime Gift of the divine Spirit of Holiness.

From the beginning of Israel Moses had been unique by reason of his love for and commitment to the God Yahweh Who  saved Israel – His ‘Chosen People’ -- from physical slavery in Egypt.  Yahweh, the only true God and Lord of all creation,  wanted to save His people from all forms of slavery, above all from the spiritual slavery to sin that would make them spawn of Satan and deprive them of that likeness to God which was the very basis of their intended being.  Moses received from Yahweh a unique Law, which he, as first and greatest of Israel’s subsequent prophets, proclaimed to Yahweh’s Chosen People: a law embodying national love for and obedience to their saving God, along with mutual respect and care between all members of God’s People, a Law quite unique in the world of those times.  Moses thus in his own person exemplified and manifested both the Law and the Prophets.

Subsequently, further Prophets were sent by  God who repeatedly reminded Israel about Yahweh’s concern that sincere mutual respect for and service of their fellows should grow ever more among His Chosen People rather than an ever-greater multitude of unasked-for and ostentatious individual sacrificial offerings in His Temple.

The Law and the Temple authorities on the one hand, and the God-sent Prophets on the other, thus  gradually came to be more and more at loggerheads in Israel until  Jesus, the second and greater Moses, was sent by His Father to make all things one in His own unique human being and divine Self: the beloved and only-begotten Son of His Father in heaven, and our own flesh-and-blood brother and Saviour.

Our Gospel reading  told us that in the course of His public ministry in Israel Jesus said:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, this is the greatest and first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Now, that first and greater commandment cannot be fulfilled without obeying the second; because love of the God-Who-loves-humankind necessarily involves our loving the humanity we encounter daily, that is, our neighbour.    And here, Jesus’ fundamental words concerning Christian marriage are totally relevant and supremely important here:

          What God has joined together let not man separate.

For that, dear People of God is precisely what modern godlessness is trying to do!!

God, first of all by creating man in His own image and likeness, joined man to Himself, in his very essential being; and that is why modern godlessness – I mean the deliberately intended denial and hatred of the very idea of any God – can only and ultimately fail or destroy humanity … and in our days we are regularly seeing and hearing of such a gradual destruction of the glory of God’s creation in and among our fellow beings.

Denying God, of course, means that the true understanding of ‘love’ is lost in the whirlpool of life being lived simply for the experience of living itself – no ultimate purpose involved – just living as best you will and for what want so long as no ‘criminal’ acts are committed.

How ambitious, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, is the devil’s project to  divide what the very Person of Jesus so gloriously manifested, and what His Holy Spirit so graciously and powerfully supports and furthers, as vocationally and potentially one!

Who are the devil’s instruments?   All those do-gooders of today who remember something of the beauty of Jesus’ once-loved teaching while refusing to follow His example of obedience to His Father, their God. They will practice a love towards men which makes themselves feel good, but not a love of God that calls for their obedience!!   And how can they do this?  Because their ‘doing good’ makes them feel  independent of God!  They feel no need to give glory and obedience to God once they have embarked on the good ship ‘Good will to all men’.  The ‘do-gooders’ of whom I am now speaking are not fools, they are not necessarily insincere or hypocritical; some of them truly love being able to do good to others in need; but from a Catholic and Christian point of view they are foolish in thinking that they can separate what God has joined together, by their attempt to practice authentic ‘goodness’ without themselves being obedient to the God Who alone is Good.

Such ‘do-gooders’ deny that they themselves are subject to the slavery of sin: their good works, they would say, show their goodness!!   They themselves should know that that is not logical thinking, nor is it factually true in so many cases!

Jim’ll-fix-it … a popular man’s public name in Margaret Thatcher’s time … did very much  good indeed, but his self-confidence involved self-indulgence of the grossest kind. That grossness reflected not so much his common humanity as his own distinct personality, for any and every unredeemed man or woman who rejoices in the goodness they do as being a work of their own goodness, is already a slave of the devil, is already being prepared by him to do whatever work he may want of him  … not necessarily something so gross as in the case of Jim’ll-fix-it, but something ultimately very indicative of the deepest human and angelic sin, that of pride: I have no need of God, least of all to do good to fellows of my choice!

Let us look back to Jesus’ own experience (Matthew 26:6–12):

Now when Jesus was in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, a woman came up to Him with an alabaster jar of costly perfumed oil, and poured it on His head while He was reclining at table.  When the disciples saw this, they were indignant and said, “Why this waste?  It could have been sold for much, and the money given to the poor.”  Since Jesus knew this, He said to them, “Why do you make trouble for the woman? She has done a good thing for Me.  The poor you will always have with you; but you will not always have Me.  In pouring this perfumed oil upon My body, she did it to prepare Me for burial.   

St. John (12: 4-5) gives some more particular and pertinent details of the one whom we may consider as the prototype of ‘do-gooders’:

Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus’ disciples, and the one who would betray Him, said, ‘Why was this oil not sold for three hundred day’s wages and given to the poor? 

Our Church is much divided today, People of God, and that is due, I believe, largely to the fact that Jesus is not being preached and proclaimed sufficiently today, to the fact that His own standard-setting words are not being followed:

You shall love the Lord your God with all heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.

The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.

Mother Church’s proclamation is no longer centred on the greatest and first commandment but rather on synodal, social, sexual, relations and difficulties which are being emotionally ‘stirred up’ to such an extent that they are disturbing her centre of gravity and ultimate identity which will be, and should now be:

You shall love the Lord your God with all heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.            

One of the great and burgeoning, so to speak, evils of our day is suicide in both young and old.   In the deepest depths of the human personality there was, is, something missing for such people, and that is the Personal presence of the acknowledged God of Love Who created us originally in His Own likeness and for Himself eternally.  And Jesus is the God-given link, bond between that lonesomeness which is ours of ourselves, and the blessedness of Divinity which is His from ‘the beginning before the world was made’;  Jesus the only-begotten and most beloved Son of the Father, and at the same time our Self-sacrificing Saviour, Lord, and Brother;   Jesus the Link and our Lord, Jesus our supreme Pontiff!

Dear People of God, we are weak and ignorant human beings: Adam and Eve were once monstrously deceived by the devil showing himself as an angel of light; and that is why Jesus speaks to us today in and through His Church using words that are of crystal clarity:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and first commandment.

The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself.