Palm Sunday Year C 2022

 

Palm Sunday (C1)

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; St. Luke 22:14-23:56)

Today’s reading of the Passion and death of Our Blessed Lord Jesus was written by St. Luke who was not one of the Twelve Apostles nor was he present at Our Lord’s crucifixion.   The other two synoptic Gospel accounts of the crucifixion were written by SS. Mark and Matthew: Matthew was, indeed, himself present on Calvary, while St. Mark is generally understood to have been the disciple and amanuensis of St. Peter, and thus His Gospel gives us Peter’s unique experience and memory of Jesus’ life and teaching before the horror of His sufferings and death on Calvary.

For such close disciples of Jesus as Peter and Matthew (Levi), being present on Calvary when Jesus’ crucifixion took place must have been an overwhelming experience, and both Matthew’s and Mark’s Gospel reflect their authors’ seared memories of that tragic event.  Luke was not present on Calvary and, by that very fact being less traumatized by the visual horrors of the Crucifixion, he alone thought to tell us of the beginning of the Last Supper Jesus held with His Apostles before Calvary:

 

When the hour came, Jesus took His place at table with the Apostles.   He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.”  He took a cup, gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves.” Then He took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them, saying, “This is My body, which will be given for you; do this in memory of Me.”  And likewise, the cup after they had eaten, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which will be shed for you.”  

 

Notice that People of God: immediately before His dreadful suffering, Jesus rejoiced at being able to eat that supper with His Apostles, and taking a celebratory (!) cup of wine He gave thanks!  Then, He took some bread and said, “This is My body, which will be given for you, do this in memory of Me”; and finally, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which will be shed for you.”   All expressions of Our Lord’s deep joy at loving beyond measure, and humbly expressing that touchingly human desire that His love be both remembered and returned by these unique Apostles of His own choosing.

Dear fellow disciples of Jesus our Lord and Saviour, Saint Luke has left us a treasure here!  Where he got it, so to speak, is irrelevant, for this is God’s Gospel truth and it is essential for our right understanding of the saving Passion and Death of Him Who was sent by the Father as Saviour of mankind!

In life’s sufferings we all are offered -- what SS. James and John so eagerly desired for themselves (Mt. 20:22) -- a share in the chalice Jesus would drink, and St. Luke shows us how Our Lord Himself prepared not only to accept but to positively embrace His cup of most outrageous sufferings! And we, as Catholic and Christian disciples of Jesus, can only fruitfully accept our God-given share of life’s trials IF we try to embrace them with love as Our Lord and Saviour embraced His crucifixion, for Personal love of His Father and for love of us and our salvation! 

The Father created us and wanted us to be saved: our salvation originates in the Father’s saving will for us.   Jesus loved His Father totally, and, loving His Father totally, He willed above all to carry out His Father’s desire for our salvation (John 10:14–15):

             

I am the good shepherd, and I know Mine and Mine know Me, just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and consequently, I will lay down My life for the sheep.

 

Jesus’ agony in the garden before His Father showed most clearly that He knew what was going to happen to Himself, but in preparing to undergo it He willed -- for Himself and for His Apostles -- to face it resolutely, and He most earnestly urged His Apostles to rejoice -- quite deliberately -- with Him.  He said:

“I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” And then, He took a cup, (a celebratory cup!)  gave thanks, and said, “Take this and share it among yourselves.”

Only after having thus established the appropriate atmosphere, did He mention His body and blood, to be sacrificed and become sacramental.

Dear friends in Christ, deliberate joy and obedient love make a cross-conquering and a life-affirming weapon for all who in Jesus aspire to become true children of the heavenly Father, Who calls us, draws us, to Himself in Jesus by the Spirit of them both, the Spirit of Truth and Love.   Come, Lord Jesus, come!

 

5th Sunday of Lent Year C 2022

 

.. 5th. SUNDAY OF LENT (C)

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

 

Today’s Gospel about the woman taken in the very act of adultery was much loved and worshipfully understood by Mother Church from the beginning, and in the course of her development of our Catholic liturgy she decided to ‘assign’ two other readings to support, strengthen, or broaden our understanding and appreciation of the Gospel passage.  Today, the jewel of divine wisdom contained in our Gospel is most admirably displayed in the fulness of its liturgical setting for today’s Eucharistic celebration.

 

Our first reading emphasized the very essence of our human nature and the ultimate purpose for its creation.  Mankind, having been originally created in the likeness of God, His very own Chosen People were formed for God that they might announce His praise:

My Chosen People, whom I formed for Myself, that they might announce My praise.

And to prepare, help, and guide His Chosen People for the fulfilling of that duty of praise, God gave them -- through Moses -- the Law; and then, His chosen prophets -- ‘ad hoc’ interpreters of the Law of Moses over the ages -- to perfect and prepare God’s Chosen People that they might recognize the sovereignty of Jesus’ Person when He came and appreciate His fulfilment of that original Law.

In accordance with the great prophet Isaiah’s appreciation of the wonder and the goodness of God we heard him, in our second reading, declare in God’s name:

Remember not the events of the past, the things of long ago consider not; see, I am DOING SOMETHING NEW.

And this gradually developing newness in God’s providence for His Chosen People came to its glorious climax when the Law was ultimately superseded by the GOOD NEWS of Jesus, our Lord and Saviour.

Now, in Mother Church’s proclamation of that Good News, St. Paul was our Risen Lord’s own Personal choice as teacher of the nations, and he testified most eloquently in our second reading concerning the newness of God’s Providence for us:

I even consider everything as a loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have accepted the loss of all things and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having any righteousness of my own based on the law but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God, depending on faith to know Him and the power of His resurrection and (the) sharing of His sufferings by being conformed to His death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Surely, dear People of God, those words resound in our minds and stir our hearts, who have ourselves learned -- through the gift of Faith -- something of the truth and beauty of God’s great goodness and majesty, and have experienced something of the loving proximity of the glorious Jesus Himself in the Holy Eucharist.  The Scriptures and the Holy Eucharist are truly sublime blessings, thanks to Jesus’ Gift of His most Holy Spirit, abiding with Mother Church and sacramentally bestowed on her faithful children.  St. Paul assures us (1 Corinthians 10:13) that that resonance with Jesus for the glory of God can thrill and fulfil our whole being, and is a privilege to be treasured with firm confidence and sure hope despite all the world’s trials and opposition, because:

God is faithful and will not let you be tried beyond your strength but with the trial will also provide a way out, so that you may be able to bear it.

 

However, in that context of the fullness of today’s liturgy there came, in our Gospel reading, an anti-climax so tragically characteristic of mankind’s response to God today.  The Scribes and Pharisees – having appropriated the seat of Moses for themselves (Matthew 23:2) – planned to destroy both the Mission and the very Person of Jesus by taking advantage of human persistence in and affection for sin:

Teacher, this woman was caught in the very act of committing adultery.  Now the Law of Moses commanded us to stone such women.  So, what do You say?

Their secret thoughts and deepest plans they did not dare mention, for they were poisoned by bitter pride, and instead of humbly seeking to understand God’s truth for God’s Chosen People, they were using devilish cunning to further their own presumptive authority: ‘The people expect us, and You most especially, to uphold our Jewish Law, but the Romans – our oppressors -- will not allow us to put anyone to death. What do You say?’

What a scenario!!  The religious leaders try to use God’s Law against God’s Son; they try to turn the people against Jesus their Saviour and thwart His redeeming mission and also to provoke the Roman authorities against His regal Person!

It is our Gospel reading that finally makes crystal clear the seriousness and depth of the issues involved in the apparently every-day issue of human infidelity:

Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin anymore.”

Those words of Jesus show us that although the time for the condemnation of sinners is not yet, nevertheless, such sexual infidelity was in no way trivial.

Let us now therefore, dear People of God, turn our attention to Jesus’ very self, in His human attitude, to both His ‘professional antagonists’ -- the Scribes and Pharisees -- and so many of His thoughtless pseudo-supporters, so easily yielding themselves to pleasure like the woman in the Gospel story, and ever comforting themselves with words such as, ‘it doesn’t really matter’; and we find yet again Divine Love’s wisdom and patience most beautifully Personified.

Jesus does not argue with the Pharisees and Scribes, He respects what measure of love for the Law of God might possibly be behind their exposure of such immorality; He even seems to go just a very few steps along the way with them:

 Let one among you be the first to throw a stone at her, IF HE IS WITHOUT SIN.

And thus, His opponents are enabled to reluctantly withdraw, slink away, from the scene with a certain measure of humility-for-public-appreciation.  What a wonderfully wise and divinely simple discomfiture!!

He then turns to the woman.

Notice there are no emotional words; no modern gestures (comforting arms round shoulders) of humanistic sympathy in order to make manifest the speaker’s own understanding and caring attitude.    For Jesus, sin is sin, ever real and hateful in whatever circumstances; the sinner, however, is not yet bound hard and fast, and salvation can still be hers, true joy can still fill her heart and mind with peace, if she will turn her face from the easy and pleasurable way and begin to look for God:

Woman, has no one condemned you?   Neither do I condemn you.  Go, and from now on do not sin any more.

Dear People of God, so many knowingly allow themselves to foolishly listen to the Liar, the Persuader, and weakly follow his suggestion, ‘it doesn’t really matter’. 

Today, one third of young people do not know their own sexuality we are told, because too many young people with no principles follow bad examples for reasons as puerile as popularity and immediate personal pleasure: trying this sexuality on for so long, so to speak, and then another sexual attitude for another time: dabbling with what God made seriously beautiful and thus befuddling themselves concerning what was created to be fulfilling and has now become for them a meaningless puzzle and source of bitterness and pain. In that so modern setting, devotion has to face up and respond to not only to thoughtless disregard and disdain for religious observance and love of God, but also to the more diabolical opposition of professional and powerful pride, big-time money and the large-scale promotion of pleasure and excitement.

And, though this world of pleasure, power, excitement and greed allows itself to ignore and even ridicule the name and teaching of Jesus, nevertheless His words are eternal and true, offering life or pronouncing judgement:

If I had not come and spoken to them they would not have sin; but as it is, they have seen and hated both Me and My Father.

 

 

 

 

 

       

 

4th Sunday of Lent 2022

 

                                     4^th. SUNDAY OF LENT (C)

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

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My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, today we are encouraged to rejoice on this Sunday called ‘Laetare Sunday’, and so it is up to me now to show you something worth rejoicing about; indeed, something we should be continually bringing to our minds and cherishing most gratefully in our hearts.  That ‘something’ is encapsulated in those words of the father to his elder son:

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. 

Because human beings are sinful there are situations or questions which can only be understood through suffering.  Sin is in the world -- whether it be known or unknown, acknowledged or unacknowledged -- and because it necessarily brings suffering and death into human life, it cannot long remain totally undiscovered or unsuspected.  That is at the root of the old adage that one never truly appreciates something or someone until you have lost it, which is the guiding principle of our Gospel parable today, which begins with the words:

                Then Jesus said, ‘A man had two sons’.

Immediately its hearers are put under a slight tension of anticipation as to what might distinguish these two sons; one is older the other younger, that is just a physical fact of itself, but our Lord uses it to explain why He received sinners and ate with them to the displeasure of the Pharisees and their Scribes, and that is why we have before us two sinners being reconciled by their loving father.

It would appear that the younger son did not fully appreciate his home experience as a privilege because we are told that he said to his father:

                Father, give me the share of your estate that should come to me.

No doubt the father asked him why he was unsettled, but he got no answer so far as we know; perhaps the boy was jealous of his elder brother as the privileged first son, and, ashamed of such sin in his own heart, said nothing, but felt he just had to leave.  

The father went along with his son’s request and divided his property accordingly.

After a few days the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation.

The elder son, on the other hand, does seem to have had greater appreciation of his father and awareness of his own responsibility as the first-born, elder, son.  He seems to have understood something of the worthiness of his father and his own duty to reverence and serve him.  He lived in that respect unselfishly and, duty-well-done had certainly given a measure of dignity to his life thus far, which his younger brother most certainly did not have.

However, he too had some sin hidden in his heart waiting to manifest itself at the first opportunity, and it raised its head when his younger brother came back to a ‘right royal’ welcome from his father.  We are told that the older son on hearing the rejoicing:

Became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. 

His filial obedience and dutiful service had been, it would seem, not so much a response of humble love for his father, as a very deep awareness of and careful solicitude for his own future freedoms: and now he was jealous of the whole-hearted welcome – witness the fattened calf – given to his brother’s return.  Perhaps he himself, despite his years of faithful service, had never been able to evoke anything wholehearted in response to his own careful exactitude in compliancy with his father, an exactitude totally resistant to any overflow of generosity.

Whatever it might have been, it caused him to forget his customary respect for his father:

He said to his father, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends.  But when your son returns who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughtered the fattened calf!’

Notice immediately, however, that the old man was very understanding, and responded in such a way as to make it quite clear that his elder son should have an awareness of the special appreciation in which he himself was held, and where his ultimate fulfilment and happiness were to be found.  His father said to him:

My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours.  But now we (you and I as one, as we most truly are) must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.

He calls the elder ‘My son’, while in the same breath referring to the younger, despite being the cause for such heartfelt rejoicing, simply as ‘your brother’.

This parable of Jesus is unique in that it speaks directly and intimately of a father’s personal relationship with two very different sons, and I have no doubt that speaking of the father in this parable Jesus was irresistibly drawn to portray something of His own love for, and appreciation of, His heavenly Father; for it is truly a parable not about a Prodigal Son, for there are two sons; but a parable about of His own Father’s love for sinful men.

My dear People of God, there is nothing whatsoever in life that can compare with the dignity and glory which is already ours as disciples of Jesus -- the only-begotten and eternally beloved Son of God – disciples called, in Him, to become members of the heavenly Father’s family, His adopted and beloved children, for all eternity. Correspondingly, there could be no greater tragedy in our lives than that we should lose such an incomparable privilege and destiny: Esau sold his birthright as first-born to his younger brother Jacob for some bread and a quickly consumed stew of lentils; and, despite a subsequent heart-rending plea of to his father Isaac, forfeited all:

“Father, bless me too!  Have you only one blessing, father?  Bless me too, father!”  And Esau wept aloud. (Genesis 25:31-34)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the Father’s love for us, is His love for-us-in-Jesus:

The Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have come to believe that I came from God (John 16:27).

That is the essential constituent of our being as God’s adopted children, just as Jesus describes His own earthly being and experience within the same framework of a relationship with the Father:

I came from the Father and have come into the world.  Now I am leaving the world and going back to My Father (John 16:28).

Originally opening up the possibility of such a relationship for the Chosen People we were told in our first reading that:

The Lord said to Joshua, ‘Today, I have removed the reproach of Egypt (the servitude in Egypt) from you.’

The reproach of our modern world is yet more virulent than that of Egypt, therefore keep in the front of your minds and close to your hearts those words of St. Paul in our second reading:

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold new things have come.  And all this is from God (the Father) Who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ.    

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

St. Paul in our second reading told us that:

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

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

According to Middle East culture and Jewish traditional values, such an elder son would hold the position of mediator in a family crisis.  When the younger son asked for his inheritance the responsibility and obligation of the elder one was clear to the first-century listener: the old father should have been asked to leave the matter in the hands of his elder son, because the younger boy did not really mean what he had said; the elder should then have demanded that his younger brother apologize to their father.  However, the elder son had –over the years -- shown too little personal appreciation of and love for, his father as to be able, now, to influence his brother’s youthful selfishness; nor was it enough to help the older brother himself rise to the occasion and give positive help when his brother first began thinking of leaving home with his patrimony.  Ultimately the elder brother, like his younger sibling, regarded his father impersonally: not indeed so coarsely as his brother, for whom his father was primarily the one in charge of the money; but nevertheless, as we learn from his own words, as little more than a distant and authoritative figurehead, and he seems to have been quite content to see his younger brother go off with his share of the inheritance.

Of course, the fact that he was not pleased when his brother returned home is understandable, I suppose very few brothers would have been pleased to see such a wastrel back home again.   The elder brother would only have been able to embrace his brother’s return out of deep love for his father … and he seems to have had difficulty in accepting his father’s extreme joy at his younger son’s return home.  Again, that is understandable, for this father’s joy, being the expression of the unique love of a truly exemplary father for his lost-and-returning child, was almost unimaginable, due to Jesus’ love for His heavenly Father overflowing into His portrayal of this earthly father.

We see this yet more clearly in the father’s somewhat pathetic attempt to promote a special bond of mutual concern with his elder son:

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

Ultimately, however, the elder son had shown too little personal appreciation of, and love for, his father, to have been able to influence his brother’s selfishness; he was, consequently, also quite unable now to appreciate and respond to his father’s one, self-revealing, word of appeal:

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

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

Many, especially young people, find such passionless obedience -- given, they think, more out of fear than zeal -- unattractive; if they have intelligence and some understanding of life, they might admit that -- though faulty -- such obedience is both reasonable and wise; but, finding it unattractive, they are prepared to totally ignore it.   Failure to delight in the Lord is a fault in the believer.  Such a failure is not simply due to being undemonstrative by nature, but also to an insufficiently committed, perhaps lazy, spiritual attitude.  For delighting in the Lord is not a matter of blind emotion or natural excitability; rather true delighting in Jesus flows from a habit of faithfully remembering, deeply appreciating, and gratefully acknowledging one’s blessings.

The Psalmist applies this human, psychological, fact to religion when he tells us:

Let the hearts of those rejoice who seek the Lord!   Seek the Lord and His strength; seek His face evermore!   Remember His marvellous works which He has done.  (105:3-5)

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

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

Whoever is in Christ is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come!  And all this is from God (the Father) Who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ.              

                                                    (2022)

3rd Sunday of Lent 2022

 

3^rd. Sunday of Lent (C)

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

 

 

In this country many in Mother Church still – despite the fact that persecution shows signs of bearing its claws again -- have a very comfortable understanding of God and their relationship with Him: He is good, merciful, forgiving, and, above all, our Father.

In reality, however, for many such believers, those are empty words, for they consider His goodness to be such they can make requests regardless of whether they are for the spiritual good of themselves or those they love or want to help; and they imagine that the fact that He is merciful and forgiving, means that He won’t punish us for our sins if we just occasionally use the word ‘sorry’.  For after all, He is our Father, and therefore He – along with today’s publicly admired ‘good parents’ – must indulge His children.

Although some may think I am exaggerating somewhat unpleasantly, that is the attitude in which, I believe, many Catholics today live out their relationship with God: they treat Him as One almost irrelevant as regards the determining of their life-style and personal character.  And yet, they regard themselves as acceptable Catholics and, indeed, as somewhat special people, because they are still attending Church, whereas very many people today in our proud and pleasure-seeking West do not believe in God and never enter a church. 

Those who have given up practicing their Catholic and Christian faith still ‘like’ Jesus as a man for the most part, but they do not believe in Him to be God since ’God is redundant’ they say: ‘we can explain all things without Him; He does not interfere in any way in our world, look at all the suffering going on around us, and what He does He do?’

However, we who do believe, we who are serious in our desire to know and love God in Jesus, and serve Him by the Spirit of Jesus, find a truer appreciation of God when we look at our first reading today where Moses was drawn by curiosity to approach a blazing bush in the desert:

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

God called to him, apparently from the middle of the bush:

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

And, what is more, He said it in such a tone that:

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

Obviously, Moses knew what ‘holy’ meant, and he was ready to learn more.  Curiosity and holiness are, it would seem, incompatible; for not even Moses was allowed to draw close to God out of mere curiosity.   That Moses was ‘afraid’ to look at God, however, being much more appropriate to the situation, did win God’s approval and He allowed Moses to draw closer to hear His word, because reverential ‘fear’ is an essential component of ‘love of God’!  And this is the teaching we heard in the psalm reading:

For as the heavens are high above the earth, so surpassing is (the Lord’s) kindness toward those who fear Him.

All that shows quite clearly that our God is not a soft and easy touch as many so fondly imagine.   

That appreciation is confirmed when we turn our attention to the second reading taken from St. Paul’s letter to his converts at Corinth.  There, he recalls how God had led Israel through the desert with miracles -- above all the stupendous crossing of the Red Sea -- and many other subsequent blessings of protection, food and drink, in times of great need.  And yet, despite all that, Paul concludes:

God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the desert.

He then goes on to draw a lesson for us from this rejection by God of many members of the Chosen People:

Now these things happened as examples for us, so that we should not crave after evil things as they also craved.

What were these evil things that Paul says so angered God: they worshipped their stomachs, delighted in sexual revels, they tried to put God to the test in their lives with a defiant: ”if He doesn’t give some sign, I won’t believe” sort of attitude; and then, of course, they were great grumblers.  Paul insisted once again for the benefit of his converts in luxurious Corinth and for us today:

These things happened to them as an example, and they have been written down as a warning to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come. 

The true God, is no soft touch!  He is not One Who will allow us, like spoilt children, to remain at the level of infantile pleasures, for He intends to raise us up to maturity in the likeness of Jesus, as His own true children. Heaven, most certainly, is not for spoilt brats who like to pretend they can be just care-free little dears enjoying themselves in Daddy’s wonderful world.

However, some might still be thinking that those are only readings from the Old Testament and from the writings of St. Paul, whereas Jesus Himself was different.  Let us now, therefore, turn to Jesus as we heard Him speaking in our Gospel reading.

The Jews had tried to stir up hatred of the occupying Roman forces and trouble for Jesus by asking Him about the fate of some Galileans killed by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, as they were offering sacrifices to God.  Jesus, however, would not be so easily deflected from His main purpose which was the sanctifying His people’s relationship with the God of their Fathers, not leading, or sharing in, a political confrontation with Pontius Pilate and the Roman power; and therefore, He replied:

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way, they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?

He then immediately went on to recall a very tragic and provocative incident that had only recently occurred.

With us these days, it is customary to refer to sufferers of regrettable accidents as being now most certainly at peace and happy, somewhere above, after having been so unfortunate on earth. That was not the way Jews of ancient times reacted, for they tended to think that there must have been some secret sin in the lives of those tragic sufferers which would account for their untimely deaths.  As for Jesus, His own attitude was in contrast to both the religious attitude of His Jewish contemporaries and to our modern humanitarian outpourings, for He neither judged the dead nor did He indulge any banalities such as many of our politically-correct, overly-sentimental expressions of condolence, for He simply went on to say:

Those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think that they were more guilty than everyone else in Jerusalem?  By no means!  But I tell you, if you do not repent you will all perish as they did! 

From such a vignette of readings you can, perhaps, begin to appreciate how alien much modern clap-trap piety about “God’s goodness”; modern words – heavy in emotional content but little serious and prayerful thought -- about the dead now looking down from above on those left behind, though heaven is not to be mentioned; and, finally, those ‘heartfelt thoughts’ – a popular modern coinage-- without any mention of ‘prayers’ for the dead!  How alien indeed such tokens of sincere love must be both to Jesus and God Himself Who are deliberately excluded.

Now, I am not denying that God is good.  Far from it!  He is GOOD; indeed, He alone is good, as Jesus Himself said, but He is not good in the way our sinful world imagines Him to be.  God is good FOR OUR BETTERMENT, good to those, who, as Jesus said, repent. That is, God’s goodness is geared first of all towards our repentance and then, further, towards our sanctification; it is not the goodness of indulgence, indifference, or imbecility.   Jesus’ first message as He began His public ministry had been:

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel. (Mark 1:14-15)

That word “repent” was, and is, absolutely essential.  Only human beings can repent: it is part of our unique likeness to God that we can learn to recognize, reject, and hate sin.  No one who fails to repent for sin can be acceptable to God, as St. John tells us:

God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.  If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth...  If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.   (1 John 1:5 ff.)

Jesus had been sent by His Father to plead for and to save those who were sinners, worthy of God’s punishment, just as the fruitless tree in the Gospel parable deserved to be cut down.  Jesus’ parable-plea to His Father, however, was:

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

That is, Jesus, of set purpose, would pour out His blood in the agony of His crucifixion to fertilize our lives, giving us another and final opportunity to learn to repent and bring forth fruit for God, fruit acceptable to Him.  And, to those who do repent, God is quite unimaginably good; for, having purified them through the blood of His very own Son, He then goes on, as St. Paul expressly assures us, to bestow upon them blessings unlimited:

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?  (Romans 8:32)

Paul then intones (8:34-9:1) one of the most beautiful songs to God’s great goodness that could ever be conceived, a song that makes all modern sugar-daddy imaginations seem, as they truly are, sick and utterly unworthy:

Christ (it is) Who died, and Who, furthermore, is also risen, Who is even at the right hand of God (and) makes intercession for us.  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written: "For Your sake we are being killed all day long, we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."  Yet, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.  For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

People of God, may that love of Christ pierce us through and through; may it be seen in us as humble repentance for our sins, as loving zeal for God’s glory and the well-being of Mother Church, and as sincere fellowship with all men and women of good will.  The love of Jesus is being offered us still today: indeed, His Precious Blood -- poured out for us on Calvary -- continues to be sprinkled over us throughout our lives through Mother Church’s sacraments, that we may bring forth fruit ever more befitting God’s great goodness and mercy.  Without repentance, however, He will be found to be no soft touch; for He is a holy God Who, in response to the gardener’s words and Jesus’ saving plea, has warned us:

If it does not (henceforth) bear fruit, you can cut it down.