21st Sunday Year A 2020

          Sermon 146a:Twenty-first Sunday, (A)

(Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20)

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Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How inscrutable are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways!  For, from Him, through Him and for Him, are all things.  To Him be glory forever.  Amen.

That hymn of St Paul expresses beautifully the spirit which animates those who have a true appreciation of God; and since the Incarnation and Work of our Redemption are the greatest works of God’s inscrutable wisdom, how could any mere mortal know the dispositions of God in regard to His Christ, the Messiah?

When the mother of James and John asked Jesus for positions for her two sons, one at His right hand and the other at His left in His Kingdom (Matthew 20:21), Jesus answered that, despite the sacrifices she and her husband Zebedee had made  by wholeheartedly supporting their sons decisions to leave home and their father’s business in order to follow Jesus, it was not for Him Jesus -- out of an imaginary debt of gratitude? -- to give places such as she was asking for, because they were exclusively at the disposal of His heavenly Father and belonged to those  whom His Father had chosen or would choose to give them.  Thus, there was mystery even for Jesus concerning His disciples: true, He had chosen them, but they had been sent to Him by His Father (John 6:44):

            No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.

And so, in today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus puts the question:

            Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

and then follows it with another:

            But who do you say that I am?

we can sense Him waiting to discover which of the disciples the Father would choose to give the right understanding of the mystery of His Person. 

It was then that Simon spoke up, giving voice to a wisdom that was not his own:

            You are the Christ the Son of the living God!

Who has known the mind of the Lord?  writes St. Paul; and Jesus -- recognizing His man, so to speak -- said in response to Simon’s assertion:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My heavenly Father.

And here we are at a supremely significant moment for the Church of Jesus: the Father has picked out, designated, Simon for special prominence in the proclamation of the truth about Jesus’ Person, and in the continuance and extension of His ministry of saving grace; and Jesus, recognizing His Father’s intervention, adopts His Father’s choice by Himself appointing Simon as head of His Church by bestowing on him a new name, Peter, for that very purpose and function:

And so, I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

The name Peter is a translation (through the Greek) of the Aramaic word ‘Kepha’, which is identical in form either as a personal name, or as the noun, ‘rock’.

People of God, this is also a moment of great significance for each of us personally.   The Church, as a visible structure, is established, founded, upon Peter’s faith; and in like manner, as regards the interior and spiritual life of each one of us, the Kingdom of God is to be established in consequence of our act of faith.  The whole supernatural life-stream in us originates with our act of faith whereby we say ‘yes’ to God’s revelation, and to Mother Church’s proclamation, of Jesus.  Just as Mary said ‘yes’ to Gabriel’s message, so our ‘yes’ of faith-in-Jesus allows God’s saving grace to enter our lives and begin to totally transform and transfigure them.

But what kind of faith is this?  Earlier in St. Matthew’s Gospel (14:33) we were told how Our Lord walked on the waves of the storm-tossed lake towards His disciples labouring hard to keep their boat afloat, and how Peter had – at Jesus’ bidding – begun to walk from the boat towards Jesus, before hesitating and then beginning to sink.  Jesus rebuked Peter for his little faith as He raised him up, before they both got into the boat and the wind ceased.  Whereupon, we read that:

Those in the boat worshipped Him saying, ‘Truly, You are the Son of God.’

To those words Jesus answered nothing at all so far as we know.  Yet later on, Jesus having left the Sea of Galilee with His disciples for the northern hills approaching Mt. Hermon, when Peter used similar words as reported in today’s Gospel:

            You are the Christ the Son of the living God!

Jesus proclaimed him blessed because he had been favoured with a revelation from His heavenly Father.

What was, what is, the difference between: ‘You are the Son of God’, and, ‘You are the Christ the Son of the living God’, that brought about such a reaction from Jesus?

In the second example Peter recognizes Jesus as not only the ‘Son of God’ but also as the Christ, the Messiah … in other words, as distinct from the terrified disciples’ acclamation of Jesus as Son of God, that is as One able to perform such wonders as silencing the storm, which was an acclamation which expressed their own relief as much as it acknowledged Jesus’ sovereign power, Peter’s inspired exclamation expressed no such personal relief, but ‘with heart and voice’ he proclaimed a divinely bestowed awareness of Jesus not just as the powerful Son of God able to work miracles, but as the SAVIOUR; the Son of God indeed, but come to save and redeem from -- make atonement for – the sins of Israel and all mankind!    And this was presaged years before by Zacharias the father of John the Baptist, one taught of God about the calling and future mission of his son:

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for He has visited and brought redemption to His people.   He has raised up a horn for our salvation within the house of David His servant, even as He promised through the mouth of His holy prophets from of old.  (Luke 1:68–70)

Yes, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the faith which saves us today, the faith which is God’s gift, is not merely knowledge about God, but the ability to recognize and respond to the divine truth of God’s presence and saving-power in Jesus -- His beloved, only begotten Son, come among us as Man in order to-save-us-from-sin in His Person and through His Church.

There are those today who denigrate concern for doctrinal accuracy, not only in public words but also personal thinking.  For them, with them, the words ‘dogma’ and ‘dogmatic thinking’ have acquired unsavoury overtones of meaning whereby they are said to imply an overbearing, intolerant, and rigidly narrow cast of mind, to stifle our spontaneity and thwart our native spiritual growth.  Again, such thinkers and speakers claim that there is no such thing as objective truth, no incontrovertible truth concerning God.

But look at Jesus in today’s Gospel!  How interested and concerned He was that men, above all His disciples, should think the truth about Himself; and such was His esteem for that truth that when He heard Simon give voice to it He immediately concluded with absolute certainty that His Father had spoken to and through Simon, with the result that He most solemnly declared:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My heavenly Father.

Moreover, He then went on to speak words of enduring validity:

And so, I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

Again, later on He would declare (John 18:37):

For this was I born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth;

and would, on the eve of His crucifixion speak in prayer to His Father these most holy words:

Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and these (You have given Me) know that You sent Me (John 17:25),

where knowledge of truth embraces as one with the Father, both Jesus and His disciples.

Faith is, indeed, a most sure knowledge of divine truth, for Jesus Himself is ‘the Truth’; and it requires, calls for, a total commitment of love.

To know the Truth, to recognize the Truth, to appreciate, love and proclaim the Truth … that is a most sure sign of God’s loving presence.  On the other hand, to embrace error, rejecting the truth, is subject to the following dread judgment of Our Lord:

Because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.  Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not listen, because you do not belong to God.  (John 8:45-47)

A theologian may be able to write volumes about God and more volumes about the Church and what it should be like ... but that, in itself, is not the exercise of Christian faith.  You who see in Christ your own Saviour, you who have come to Mass,  who draw near to the Holy Table at Communion, you who frequent the Sacraments and listen to the Word of God and obey it … you are those of whom  Jesus said:

Blessed are you; for flesh and blood have not revealed (such things) to you but My heavenly Father!

That ability to recognize Jesus as SAVIOUR, the God-Man, come to save each one of us personally, and to offer that salvation to the whole of mankind by means of His uniquely Personal self-sacrifice on Calvary, now sacramentally offered in His name in His Church, that is the true Christian faith which is the Father’s best gift.

A most important aspect of the need for dogmatic teaching in the Church and accurate personal thinking is the fact that our thoughts guide our choices and form our characters.  And that is the reason for the apparently strange, but in reality most significant expression in the New Testament writings, to do the truth (John 3:21; in the Latin, ‘qui facit veritatem’) well rendered in a more modern idiom by:

Whoever lives (practices) the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

You who are true disciples of Jesus and desire earnestly to grow in love of Him and fidelity to Him, know, hold fast to your awareness of Catholic doctrine.  Do not let random vague feelings determine your deliberate thoughts, do not allow the emotionality of those who speak so much about the sufficiency of human help, human goodness, mutual sympathy, and scientific pseudo-knowledge (science knows nothing more than the latest working hypothesis) betray your oneness with the eternal, creating-supporting-and-saving God.  But rather, through your deliberate thoughts mould and adapt your feelings to the Truth of Jesus in the Church, and then endeavour whole-heartedly to love that Truth -- at times it has to be willed as Truth before it can become loved as Truth -- with your total commitment.

Note also that Simon said ‘You are the Christ’ foretold by the prophets from of old; the Christ whose message is for Israel and for the whole world through Israel; the Christ with Whom the whole world in all its inarticulate beauty, majesty, and power resonates in deep, mysterious, harmony; the Christ who fulfils all the longings and desires of the human heart; the Christ in Whom alone our individual lives at last take on a transcendent significance and purpose, so that we begin to experience something of the unimaginable joy of life penetrated through and through with a love leading to fulfilment both temporal and eternal.

In this aspect of our Catholic and Christian faith, People of God, lies the hidden treasure of our heavenly calling and earthly service for our world today; for we have to live ever more deeply our faith that Jesus is the unique Christ and only Saviour for the whole of mankind, because He is Perfect God and Perfect Man. We must develop our ability -- by grace and through prayer -- to recognize and respond to Him; and, in Him, with Him, we must learn to love the Father in heaven and our brethren on earth at all times and in all circumstances.  Only as we -- His humble and sincere disciples -- appreciate this ever more fully, will we be truly living in the heart of this sinful world as authentic witnesses to and members of Jesus, and in Him as Spirit-formed and Spirit-endowed children of the heavenly Father.

(2020)

Assumption of Our Lady 2020

 Assumption of Our Lady                

    (Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10; 1^st. Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56)

The Assumption of Our Lady -- celebrated in the Eastern Liturgy since the 6^th. Century, and in that of Rome since the 7^th. -- was defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950 as a dogma of our faith.  It states that, at the end of her life on earth, Mary did not know corruption, but was taken up to heaven -- assumed body and soul - into heavenly glory.

That is the first point I want to stress today: Mary was taken up to heaven as a human being, in her human flesh; the whole person of Mary, the body and soul of a woman, is supremely happy in heavenly glory, showing us that the joys of heaven are for our human fulfilment and glorification.  In heaven we will see and experience unimaginable heights of divine beauty and truth, goodness, faithfulness and mercy: they may, at the most, be but fleetingly envisaged even in the course of a whole lifetime of commitment and devotion to God here on earth; but, the delight that mere glimpse bestows is enough for overflowing gratitude and profound humility to reign in the human mind and heart.

However, it may help us ‘earthlings’ to try to appreciate certain positive aspects of that life. 

Imagine, for example, a farming couple who started out with a small holding, who had to struggle through years of natural adversity, drought, floods, blights of various kinds, and through periods when capital was short and anxiety was oppressive.  Imagine such a couple, years later, when their farm has grown beyond anything they might have anticipated; when the can look out upon acres upon acres of fine crops growing and feel secure in the knowledge that they have built up something which will last because it is established on firm foundations of hard work and sound finance.  Their joy on looking out over their smiling fields will be all the greater because they are now seeing the fruitful outcome of all the efforts they had made over the years before.

Our experience of heaven will be similar to that in that its joys will not be something entirely new and unconnected with our earthly experiences. We will recognise the great mystery and goodness of the divine love which originally called and steadfastly guided us throughout our lives, which endowed us with personal God-given abilities and the gifts of human friendship and love we have experienced in our dearest relationships.  We will rejoice to understand why/how a concatenation of seemingly ‘chance’ happenings gradually shaped our lives, and how certain truths of our faith -- such as the fear of God -- guided and protected us in ways we had not known or appreciated before.  In other words, heavenly joy will be the full flowering and glorious fulfilment of all that has been truly beautiful and worth-while in our lives as disciples of Jesus on pilgrimage through this world.  St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (8:29-30) writes:

Whom (the Father) foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He predestined these He also called; whom He called these He also justified; and whom He justified these He also glorified.

Mary is indeed the only one who has shared in the glory of Jesus so far, it is His supreme gift to His most faithful and loving mother; but since she is -- by His gift -- also our mother, all His true disciples can receive and one day will receive, with her, their share in His glory when He comes in the fullness of time to judge the world.  Mary has already been glorified in her humanity: she is the pledge that what Jesus won in His triumph over sin and death, has been won for all His true disciples. 

Now let us turn our minds back to the first reading where we heard:

            A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun.

Pope Paul VI strongly suggested that Our Lady of Fatima’s appearance was the fulfilment of that prophecy, and Pope St. John Paul II not only suggested but even affirmed that this “great sign in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun” has been fulfilled, after 1900 years, in the events that took place at Fatima on the 15^th. October 1917 when 70,000 people saw the “sun dance”.

Let me read the account in the masonic and anti-clerical newspaper “O Seculo” reporting those events:

We saw the huge crowd turn toward the sun which appeared at its zenith, clear of the clouds.  It resembled a flat plate of silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes.  It did not blind.  Before the dazed eyes of the people the sun trembled, it made strange and abrupt movements, outside of all cosmic laws, the “sun danced” according to the expression of the people.

According to other eyewitnesses “it seemed the sun was being detached from the sky and was falling on us.  It was a terrible moment.”  The miracle lasted about 8 minutes, after which the sun returned to its place in the sky, while the ground, which before the miracle had been saturated due to an all-night driving rain, was seen to be dry.  Likewise, the clothes of those who had been standing all day in the rain before the miracle were completely dry.

Saint John Paul II said:  According to divine plan, “A Woman clothed with the sun” came down from heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father.  She speaks to them with a mother’s voice and heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them safely to God. The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the “dragon” whose “tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth.

In those appearances, Mary affirmed clearly the existence of heaven and the reality of hell where, as she said to the children: “You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go”.  She likewise affirmed the reality of Purgatory: when Lucia, one of the three children to whom Our Lady appeared, asked about a friend of hers who had died at about the age of 18 or 20, Our Lady answered, “she will be in Purgatory until the end of the world”.  Another friend of Lucia’s, however, who had died at the age of 16, was in heaven Our Lady said.

The important thing for me to do today, People of God, is to remind you of the great joy and confidence that should be ours because of Mary’s commitment to us as our God-given, cross-given, Mother, and also of our ‘duty’ of trust and confidence in such a mother.  Her prayers are totally dedicated to ‘making-up’, so to speak, for all the many failings in our response to God’s grace; grace which has been so abundantly won for us by her Son, and is so freely offered to us by His Spirit.  She is totally committed to us her children, and what she asks of us in return is prayer.

However, the final point I wish to highlight is concerning those words from the book of Revelation which state, as you heard:

Another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems.  And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

Dear People of God, those were and are prophetic words being verified today.

What are the stars?  Catholic commentators have commonly said that the stars of Heaven represent the Catholic clergy.  Sister Lucy says the most effective way the devil can do harm to souls is by taking away their leaders, the priests.  Fr. Nicholas Gruener, perhaps the priest most closely associated with efforts to spread abroad the message of Fatima said:

If one third of the stars of Heaven are dragged down, then people will find it harder to save their souls.  The faithful must be careful to follow those Catholic clergy who preserve the faith.  It is important for people to pray for priests, for bishops, for the Cardinals, for the Pope. 

People of God, Our Lady’s Assumption is the pledge of our future blessedness and fulfilment in God; and just as sinful Eve, talking to Satan and leading Adam, closed the gates of Paradise to her children, so Mary Immaculate, listening to the Spirit and following her Son, the second Adam, opened those blessed gates once more for her children.  And now in modern times, Our Lady of Fatima -- the Woman clothed with the Sun -- has come to warn us of the dangers which threaten us her children in a world where the dogma of human self-sufficiency, and a plethora of human self-donated ‘rights’, seek to make everything available for mankind’s grasp and pleasure.

Let us therefore look once again at Our Blessed Lady on this celebration of her Assumption into heaven to learn more of the supreme glory of the divine inheritance that can, and should, be ours if we will but heed Our Lady’s warning and follow Our Lord’s way.

Mary received the Gift of God, that is, the Most Holy Spirit, when, St. Luke tells us:

The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” (1: 35ss.)

The Spirit was given her then to enable her to be the worthy Mother of God.    It was like that with Jesus Himself when the Spirit came upon Him at His baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist: for then the Spirit came upon Jesus for a particular purpose, namely, to prepare Him, in His humanity, to undertake and carry through to its fulfilment His public ministry to the People of Israel; and again, when Jesus rose from the dead He did so in the power of the Spirit Who glorified His human nature for His ascension to heavenly and eternal life.  Mary did indeed meet her Son in His Risen glory, but such earthly joy was short-lived, for He was to ascend into heaven, necessarily leaving her behind gazing after Him, because her human relationship with Him, even that of immaculate motherhood, could not sustain the intimacy, depth, and intensity of a heavenly and eternal relationship.

Mary, however, received the Holy Spirit once again, this time at Pentecost, for her role as Mother of the Church; she welcomed Him in our midst on our behalf, before He fulfilled His most immediate and primal task of glorifying her in her Assumption so that she might be and might reign with her Son for all eternity.  The Holy Spirit alone … the Spirit Who bonds Father and Son in the Most Holy Trinity ... could suffice to lift Mary up to enter upon her heavenly relationship with Jesus her Son, and in Him, with the heavenly Father.

Today therefore, let us both rejoice wholeheartedly with our Mother and -- being deeply and tenderly grateful for her solicitude manifested so publicly at Fatima -- let us carefully heed her warnings.

And if, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you have not thus far recognized the present peril of coronavirus in our midst as Catholics and Christians, learn from Our Lady.  Secular governments -- blatant disbelievers as a whole -- are not the only ones who can speak on this world-wide event; Mother Church herself is supremely gifted, by the Spirit, to recognize the signs of the times, and Our Lady’s Fatima warning is of supreme importance today for our Catholic, Christian, and religious AWARENESS OF AND RESPONSE TO the coronavirus: sin is real and hostile to humanity, it inevitably has consequences, and we can see them being manifested in our world today.

                                    

19th Sunday Year A 2020

19^th. Sunday, Year (A)

(1^st. Kings 19:9, 11-13; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33)

In our Gospel reading last Sunday Jesus fed the five thousand and twelve baskets full of fragments remained over from the original five loaves and two fish, and in that miraculous feeding Jesus was preparing His disciples for the gift of the Eucharist which He was soon to bestow on His Church.  Since this is a time in Jesus’ life of schooling for the disciples, let us look carefully at His dealings with them immediately after that great miracle of feeding the Five Thousand to discover whether or not He might also have been preparing them for other mysteries soon to be revealed or gifts to be given; indeed, even perhaps helping us His distant disciples to better understand our heritage and face up to events in our lives as Christians in our very sinful and adulterous world.

Soon enough, Jesus would be taken away from the disciples and His Church, first of all for only 3 days, by His suffering and death on the Cross of Calvary; after that, He would rise from the dead to be with them again for a short while, until His glorious Ascension into heaven took Him from their sight for ages still unfurling.  Such an apparently definitive absence would most certainly need to be understood aright by His disciples, and so now, immediately after that feeding of the 5000, Jesus:

Made the disciples get into a boat and precede Him to the other side of the lake,

whilst He dismissed the crowds to make their ways home along the shore line, before finally:

            going up on the mountain (again) by Himself to pray.

Now, Peter’s boat has always been seen as a figure of the Church ever since Jesus first chose to put out on the water in it, that thus He might be able to preach to the large crowds gathered on the shore of the lake to hear Him, and so it turned out again on this evening, for, while Jesus was still at prayer:

The disciples’ boat was a few miles offshore being tossed about by the waves for the wind was against it.

This sudden and violent storm on the Sea of Galilee was indeed a matter of life and death, it was not just a chance happening that had caught Jesus and His disciples unprepared, but rather something Jesus was using to teach His disciples a lesson which -- as leaders of the Church of Christ throughout the ages to come -- they must never, ever, forget: for the threatened boat bearing the disciples this stormy night was intended to foreshadow the Church that would carry the Gospel of Jesus across stormy seas to hostile lands and distant continents so that all peoples might hear the Good News of salvation. 

The boat was in serious difficulties that night on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus – quite deliberately -- was not with the apostles.  Physically, He was praying on the hill top, just as when, after His Resurrection and Ascension, He would be eternally seated at the right hand of the Father as St. Paul would write in his letter to the Romans (8:34):

Christ Who died is also risen (and) is at the right hand of God making intercession for us.

The disciples thought they were alone, and it was supremely important for them to learn that no matter how lonely, vulnerable and dispirited they might find themselves they should never and would never be separated from the protecting love and power of Jesus.  Though rapt in prayer, Jesus was both aware of their difficulties and willing to help them in their need: He came towards them walking on the waves.  We are told: 

            They were troubled saying, “It is a ghost!"   And they cried out for fear.

Most assuredly, these future apostles of Mother Church were meant to remember this occasion, it was a most important part of God's plan to prepare them for their future: for Mother Church, the barque of Peter, following, pursuing, mankind wherever they might be over subsequent long centuries, would have to endure, and profit from, dangers and threats of all kinds, and she would not be able to do so without this rock-and-anchor original experience of Jesus’ ever-watchful awareness of her needs and willingness to save.

Their spontaneous outcry on seeing the figure of Jesus approaching them through the storm, apparently walking on the raging waters:

            It is a ghost (a spirit)!

contained, in itself, unsuspected potential.  For, the enlightened apostles would find it all the more easy to appreciate Jesus’ future Gift of the Spirit as  ‘the Spirit of Jesus’ (Gal. 4:6) for all needed help in their proclamation of His Good News and establishment of His world-wide Church,  and would not fail to assure God's People that security and peace would hold enduring sway in Peter's barque so long as they would trust and turn to Jesus, invoke, and commit themselves to the Spirit of Jesus, aka the Holy Ghost, bequeathed in unique measure to, and abiding unfailingly with, Mother Church.

People of God, let us admire and give thanks for both God's wisdom and love.  He never springs total surprises on His servants; He aims to lead them to salvation and so He prepares them to accept and embrace His plans for their well-being.   Consequently, we should always aspire to hear, and expect to learn from, God as He seeks to help us walk ever farther, and with ever greater confidence and trust, along the ways of Jesus.

In our first reading we heard of Elijah.  He of all the prophets was the man for the big occasion.  Didn’t he -- on Mount Carmel -- call down fire from heaven to consume the sacrificial offering he had carefully prepared for the Lord before thoroughly soaking it with barrels of water?  Didn’t he subsequently order the slaughtering of the 450 prophets of Baal who were Queen Jezebel’s favourites?  Again, didn’t he inflict a drought upon Israel that went into its fourth year?  And didn’t he revive the widow’s son from death?  And in today’s first reading, once again he was in a climactic situation as he sought to find and learn about his own future from the Lord:

A great and strong wind was rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks;

then, the mighty hurricane was followed by a shuddering earthquake and a consuming fire.

In all these manifestations of primeval power, however, Elijah did not expect the Lord to be present, nor indeed was the Almighty Lord present to speak with him about his future.  Elijah showed himself a true servant of the God he knew and loved because, despite his dramatic past history he waited more patiently and listened more closely for the Lord to communicate with His prophet through:

            A gentle blowing sound,

or, as other translations have it ‘the soft whisper of a voice’, ‘a still, small, voice’.

The voice of the Lord was being carried, as it were, on the breath of a floating sigh, and the Lord was demanding that Elijah listen; for only in one sublime moment of total self-forgetfulness and divine awareness in the depths of the prophet’s being was the – oh so breakable! -- silver thread of contact between divine and human able to make God’s message heard with understanding and acquiescence by the prophet of so many previous, humanly discernible, prodigies.

Here we should immediately recall that humble virgin of Nazareth, our blessed mother Mary, who alone heard the Angel Gabriel’s message of salvation!  This is not simply due to the fact that the angel was sent only to Mary; rather is it the case that Mary was the only one in the whole of Israel, past and present, able to hear such an angelic voice, to appreciate and respond to, such a sublime message: Mary was the only one possessed of a heart and soul so humble, so devout, and, indeed, so tranquil, that the divine message could be clearly heard, understood, and allowed to freely bring forth its Fruit.

People of God, just as the Lord prepared His disciples for life in and leadership of the Church, so He is always ready to guide all who are striving to be His faithful disciples in Mother Church.  However, it is a far too common failing among such disciples that they are overly-dedicated to ‘important’ moments and the big gestures; and this is mostly because they are not sufficiently strong in faith or humble enough in person to be able to wait and listen for long.  Many of them find long-listening wearisome, and quickly reject it as fruitless; others become so anxious in their waiting that they are irresistibly primed to high-jack the situation rather than wait for, and attend to, any still, small, apparently unimportant, voice addressing them.  Nevertheless, God will only speak decisively where His words are able to be heard and obeyed, and Mary was uniquely self-less and self-sacrificingly obedient, uniquely prepared, that is, to become the mother of such a Son as Jesus.

Truth and beauty go together, dear People of God, and holy Catholic living -- like Christian parenthood -- is to be seen as an art rather than a science, since it is not merely a knowing of factual truth, but rather a loving appreciation and response to living truth, which is only known in the fullness of its integrity when its beauty is appreciated and loved.   In that sense we disciples of Jesus are called to become true artists!   Artists whose selfless commitment to their art as distinct from worldly success and advancement are rare; but such a characteristic in a few secular artists can help us appreciate in some small measure the sublime virtue of humility and love in the life of Mary, the supreme artist of Christian living.

People of God aspire to know and love Catholic truth; seek to become, with Mary, sincere artists of humble, Christian and Catholic, living: and for that you must be willing and ready above all to hear and learn from the Spirit of Jesus in and through all the ordinary, apparently not very important, happenings of daily living in Mother Church. 

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.  Delight yourself also in the Lord and HE SHALL GIVE YOU THE DESIRES OF YOUR HEART. (Psalm 36:3-4)

                              

     

 

     

18th Sunday Year A 2020

 18^th. Sunday, Year (A)

(Isaiah 55:1-3; Romans 8:35, 37-39; Matthew 14:13-21)

In the ancient world of the Gospel’s beginning Christians were mocked by the learning of Athens and persecuted by the power of Rome for proclaiming a unique God Who having taken on human flesh, lived, died, and rose again for our salvation.  And still today, Christians and above all Catholics, are mocked and reviled, rejected and persecuted more than any other religious body, for proclaiming this Jesus as the Way, the Truth and the Life for human beings, whereas so many of the wise ones of this world still repeat the question of Pilate, ‘What is Truth?’, and so many non-believers hate a God Who warns that a life of self-will and pride, pleasure and plenty, will ultimately lead to death and even damnation.

In Isaiah’s time, as you heard in the first reading, things were much the same: the success many people looked for was that of having a life of rich fare, lands, flocks, and houses to boast of, whilst worship of the most popular god from the local pantheon was the obvious way to walk
 together with plenty of companions of easy persuasion rather than the disciplined way of obedience in response the Israel’s one and only God.

What did Isaiah proclaim in the name of the God of Israel:

            Pay attention, come to me; listen, and your soul will live.

Isaiah spoke in the name of the God of Israel Whom no man could ever see and live; a God unseen indeed but not unknown, since He had been active in Israel’s history for over a thousand years, and, indeed, it was He Who had made Israel into a nation.

In our second reading, however, this true but unseen God had taken on human flesh, becoming incarnate in Jesus Christ, and St. Paul offers for our aspirations not a pottage of worldly success or social popularity, but that supreme blessing for the human heart and mind, which is the abiding love of the God Who made us:

Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ …. Nothing can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.

St. Paul offers us there a shield, a helmet of salvation, for our present situation:

Even if we are troubled or worried, or being persecuted, or lacking food or clothes or being threatened or even attacked …. These are (but) trials through which we triumph, by the power of Him who loved us.

From that you can appreciate how the spirits that rule our modern world and technological society are increasingly hostile to Jesus: He claims a power they will not acknowledge because it is greater than anything they themselves can muster; a power He exercises, moreover, through those who appear to be nothing, because they fear, obey, and love, the God Who speaks to them in their conscience: Who teaches and guides their experience of life as disciples of Him Whose love for mankind triumphed over the torments of the Cross.

Today, our alien society and hostile world, along with their ages-old  proclamation of success and popularity as the only criteria for a worth-while life, also assert that there is no creator-god greater than modern mankind itself – armed with scientific knowledge and technological ability – able to fulfil modern aspirations now freed from all the taboos of religious fears and imagining: there is no God Who wants to speak with you personally; there is nothing special about you that cannot be seen and appreciated by society around you, and treated appropriately by socially approved ‘health-and-happiness experts’.

However, there is still something that makes us yet more mysterious and suspicious to all secular influences around us, for our Faith in God and Love for our Saviour are imbued with an unbounded Hope, and a resulting confidence which springs up within us from the Gospel proclamation you heard:

Jesus said to His disciples: There is no need for them (the hungry) to go: give them something to eat yourselves.  He took the five loaves and two fish, raised His eyes to heaven and said the blessing.  And breaking the loaves, He handed them to His disciples who gave them to the crowds.  They all ate as much as they wanted, and they collected the scraps; remaining, twelve baskets full.  Those who ate numbered about five thousand men, to say nothing of women and children.

There, of course, we see foreshadowed the Holy Eucharist in Mother Church, that sacrificial offering and sacramental banquet we are now in the process of celebrating. 

Holy Mass is, indeed, the deepest and surest source of our Hope since here Jesus’ very sacrifice of Himself is our offering to the Father, and the Holy Spirit we receive in return is the Gift of the Father and bequest of the Son, through Whom God’s life and power are at work in Mother Church and in our individual lives.  The sacramental Gift we receive is a power that can easily transcend our personal weakness, and cannot be thwarted even by our sinfulness, because the Spirit’s Personal mission is to raise up children of Mother Church who will not bend the knee to Satan, children whose Faith, Hope, and Love will allow Him to form them in the likeness of the Jesus Who said:

In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.  (John 16:33)

So today, in the face of the world’s mockery Jesus calls us, as He did His Apostles in our Gospel reading to ‘give our needy world food yourselves',  that is, from your Catholic and Christian awareness, experience, understanding and love of Jesus in your contemporary lives, in fulfilment of the prophetic calling by Isaiah:

            Pay attention, come to me; listen, and your soul will live.

Have no part therefore, dear People of God, in the throng of lusty, easy-going companions enjoying life as they would going to some mega occasion, crowding to worship their popular idols who -- with microphone in their hands -- sway and gesticulate hoping to encourage you likewise to sway with them and thus imbibe yourselves and communicate to all around you the emotion that is driving those idols to caress the microphone they are holding so lovingly and the head of which needs to be brought ever nearer to their glittering and quivering lips or gaping throat!!

TURN ASIDE, Isaiah says, from such pseudo-emotion, so carefully stoked-up with the help of glaring lights and pulsating music, AND LISTEN to God Who seeks to speak with you in the depths of your heart, hearken to Him, Who alone can give you true fulfilment – not childish/devilish excitement, not  success  which consists  in nothing more than passing popularity or plentiful possessions -- but real life itself, soul-life, transcendent and eternal life, at peace with One far greater than your own needy self, with the One Who knows you through and through, and whose love is not emotional but simply a commitment of being totally FOR YOU which is far, far above, immeasurably better and beyond, what is earthly.

And now we come to the very essence of today’s Gospel for our modern times, for Jesus says to His present-day apostles, mere local people – not Pope or Bishops so strangely silent – but like the original yokels from Galilee as the high society of Jerusalem thought:

            Give them some food yourselves!

Yes, you who think you have nothing to give: ‘Bring that nothing, here to Me’.

What do you have, dear People of God here at Mass?  You do not know? 

Let me tell you:  You have the power to bear witness to Jesus, by the mere statement that you are a Catholic, a Christian, a believer who loves Jesus, who trusts Him, who hopes in Him for heavenly life to come.  Notice that the disciples had only five loaves and two fish for thousands of people, you need only witness to the fact that you believe Jesus, you love Him .... you don’t have to give an explanation, maybe you can’t, but that is not essential, bring what you have to Jesus, that is, I repeat, the FACT of your love for Him, your belief and hope in Him!

You can then leave it there, as did those apostles of old, Jesus took what they had and used it to do what only He could do.   Put your neck on the line and have confidence in Jesus, He wants only your witness, He does not expect you to give also an explanation for your belief, your love, your hope, He will call others to do just that.  Remember,

            It will not be you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.

Go in peace with God, dear People of God, when you leave this Church; and go also with a greater measure of confidence in your Catholic and Christian selves too.