14th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Zechariah 9:9-10; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30)

 

My dear People of God, in the first reading from the prophecy of Zechariah, who lived some 470 years before the coming of Our Lord, we heard him say:  

See, your King shall come; a  just Saviour is He, meek and riding on a colt, the foal of an ass, He shall proclaim peace.  

And how beautifully Our Lord fulfilled that prophecy, not only literally when He chose to ride into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday as we call it, but also by His words expressing the very essence of the mission given Him by His heavenly Father:

Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.   Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls.   For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

There He speaks not of the physical --commonly experienced -- rest, He speaks of a “rest for your souls”: a rest transcending all the terror and turmoil of this world, even all the secret anxieties and anguish of our minds and hearts.

How are the weary and burdened to find this unique and definitive rest?

Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am meek and humble of heart.

Jesus’ teaching, People of God, can be summarized as follows: all who are wearied and overwhelmed by troubles -- deserved or underserved -- should turn to Jesus for true rest,  rest for the soul: which does not allow any compromising or embitterment to soil such souls. This most wonderful rest is a rest from the assaults and depredations of sin.  However, it is a rest only for those who will take Jesus’ yoke upon themselves; it is only for those who, by putting their faith and trust in Him and striving to live according to His word, allow themselves to be gradually formed in the likeness of their Lord by His most Holy Spirit.

There are many people today who, far from wanting that gift of peace from Jesus, desire, above all, to feel the thrills of pleasure and excitement, and for such ends they resort to drugs, to glorying in whatever moments of pride, satisfaction, sensuality and pleasure, may come their way; thereby wearying and burdening themselves with yet greater troubles.  For, as those sought-after moments of excitement, pleasure, and exultation inevitably become less frequent and less satisfying, they find themselves more and more aware of a gnawing fear of that inevitable time when -- either through old age or suffering, or even through the dreadful curse of boredom -- weariness will cloud over their search for worldly fulfilment and they will find themselves empty, embittered, and alone, being forced to recognize that what they once had considered best and most desirable has finally shown itself to be both empty and unfulfilling.

And yet, my dear people, rest for your soul is not the greatest gift Jesus offers, nor is it the supreme secret He has to teach us.

You will remember that for the greater part of our Gospel reading Jesus was speaking to His Father, or to us about His Father.  To the weary and overburdened He offers rest first of all, indeed; but for those who, having become His disciples and, through faithful perseverance, have also begun to experience something of His rest, He puts before them the prospect of a far greater blessing yet to come.  For it is His supreme desire to lead His true disciples to a foretaste of the glory and splendour of their heavenly and eternal fulfilment in His Father’s presence:

All things have been delivered (entrusted) to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father.  Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

People of God, “no one knows the Father except the Son”, that we can understand; but what follows is the supreme manifestation of the infinite love of God, namely, the fact that the Son chooses to reveal the Father to His faithful and persevering disciples.  In fact, He makes knowledge of the Father -- that is, a personal appreciation of, relationship with, and responsiveness to, His Father -- a sign or token of authentic discipleship.  True disciples of Jesus should know their heavenly Father in such a P/personal way because Jesus has taught us that, in order to pray as His disciples, we must learn to use and to mean the  word ‘Father’ as He would have us, in the prayer He gave us as the norm and model for all our prayers.

We can glimpse further along this road of true discipleship if we consider the words of the apostle Philip who once said to Jesus:

Lord, show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us. (John 14:8)

Philip was indeed orientated in the right direction, because he did long to see the Father; but Jesus was truly disappointed at the little progress Philip seemed to be making, and His disappointment was such that He suggested that Philip hardly knew Him at all:

Have I been with you so long, and yet you still do not know Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father; so how can you say, 'Show us the Father'?  Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me?   (John 14:9-10)

Jesus obviously considered that His whole life’s mission was to make the Father Personally known and loved; and, consequently, He found it both disappointing and frustrating that Philip who -- as a chosen apostle -- had both shared His presence and experienced His teaching so intimately and for so long , nevertheless, still seemed unable to recognize the Father in Jesus Himself.

People of God, this awareness of and love for the Father is what Jesus longs to see in us above all else; but it is a shared knowledge, shared by Jesus with us: it can never be our own possession, it is ours only in, with, and through Jesus.  Therefore, if we have no longing for the Father, no desire to see Him, no awareness of His beauty, wisdom, goodness and power, then we have not yet come to know Jesus.  Jesus’ gift of rest for the weary and the burdened is as nothing compared to that which His very being cries out to bestow: that is, knowledge of, and love for, His and our, your and my, Father.

Jesus knew full well that it was His Father Who sent His disciples to Him (John 6:44):

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

and Jesus the Son longed to reciprocate.  He desired above all else to bring those the Father had entrusted to His care to recognize the One Whose call had led them unknowingly thus far; and in coming to recognize Him as Father, to love, praise and serve Him as true sons and daughters of His, with and in Jesus, by His Holy Spirit:

Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.

Philip, Jesus feared, apparently knowing so little of the Father, could not, as yet, have come to know Jesus Himself truly, despite such close proximity and intimate communion with Him.

People of God, how long have you been receiving the Eucharist?  Have you really come to know Jesus: not with mere book knowledge, not with a knowledge of ritual and prescriptions, but with a living, loving, personal knowledge?  If you want to know the answer, it is not hard to find.  Do you love, long to know more of, the Father?  If not, then no matter what facts or opinions you may know about Jesus, no matter how long you may have been attending Mass and receiving Communion or practicing devotions and doing good works, you still have not come to know Him anywhere near well enough.

Dear people, ask Jesus to help you come to know the Father.  There can be nothing more fulfilling and glorious than such knowledge of the all holy, all wise, totally beautiful and infinitely good God, because such knowledge, appreciation, and love, is, actually, the unshackled presence of the Spirit, the bond of love between Father and Son, dwelling and active within each of us.  That is the beginning, even here on earth, of heavenly life and beatitude.   (2023)

13th Sunday Year A, 2023

 2 Kings 4: 8-11, 14-16a; St. Paul to the Romans: 6: 3-4, 8-11; St. Matthew: 10: 37-42

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Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man’s reward.  And whoever gives only a cup of cold water to one of these little ones to drink because he is a disciple—amen, I say to you, he will surely not lose his reward.”

Dear People of God, those words of our Blessed Lord are words of warning to our world of today: so presumptuous and proud in its understanding of what is “good”: what are good things for persons to do for others, and what is good for people who are in some presumed need.

What are good things to do for others: abortions, of course; but in general, it is good -- our world thinks -- to help people get what they want for themselves, in order to become who they want to be: new selves, able to approve of themselves, now renewed according to their own design or volition.

What is good for people: the greatest good, of course, is freedom.  And here our world bestows such privileged freedom very soon in life, giving children freedom from parental authority; or it bestows freedom later in life with formed characters who are seriously criminal, despite the fact that hundreds of innocent people have been and are being murdered by generously-, lovingly-, freed individuals thanks to panels of good people full of our world’s conviction that it knows what “good” means and how it should to be used, practiced, set up.

All this was anticipated by Our Blessed Lord when thus addressing His Apostles, for He summed it all up with the words:

           

Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.

Modern society in the Western word is given over to finding life for itself and that is why we see, as Jesus warned, the process of life-being-lost rampant around us: immorality everywhere tolerated, even praised, and openly, even blatantly, practiced; because law – apart from temporal criminal law of societies’ occasional making – is unacceptable to those determined to be free.  We see serious lack of essential human dignity in the face of current sexual wishes and excesses, gender disrespect and disassociation.  We see lack of moral fibre, manifest in unwillingness to seriously punish so many crimes,  thereby losing that social unity in peace which demonstrates mutual respect among citizens, and general appreciation for laws balancing crime and punishment.

God is given no place in modern society and now we must glance at Jesus’ words heard earlier:

Whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me; and whoever does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

Those are execrable words for modern deniers of Jesus as our Lord and Saviour; but there is, in truth,  no basis for such an attitude; for there, Jesus simply teaches in a somewhat strikingly different way the whole of what is normal Christian doctrine

 

Those who put father and mother -- son or daughter -- before Me in their spiritual appreciation and obedient service are not worthy of Me.

That however is in no way opposed to human affections for a mother or father -- son or daughter-- being more ardent and impassioned than felt, affectionate, love for God, or Jesus.

And of course, “whoever does not take up his cross …” simply designates those who will not obey God’s commands in the face of human difficulties.

Finally, we have Jesus’ promise to us Catholics and Christians who want to serve God more faithfully and know and love Him ever better:                

 

Whoever receives you (My Apostles) receives Me, and whoever receives Me receives the One who sent me.

Dear People of God, our world gives nothing ‘to a prophet because he is a prophet’ because it does not recognize prophets; it gives nothing nor does it receive a righteous man or a disciple of God because he is righteous or a disciple, because, again, indeed, our world does not recognize God in anyone or anything.

And yet, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we have received many benefits from our current society and world, and therefore, let us most sincerely pray for all those around us who do not know the truth of life and the God of True Life and Love, but who might, by our prayers and His grace, still be able to open wide their mouths for the Good Who is way beyond and above any good they now know or can imagine, Who is our Good, our God, and our All.        

12th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Jeremiah 20:10-13; Romans 5:12-15; Matthew 10:26-33)

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Jesus was speaking from His own experience when, in our Gospel reading, He told His disciples not to be afraid.  He Himself had come into this world to speak peace to God’s people and to free them from the darkness and servitude of sin by proclaiming His Gospel of salvation.  He had not been well-received by the ‘religious establishment’, and He knew that worse, including Roman involvement and popular disenchantment, was to follow.  Therefore, He was sending these Apostles out on a preparatory mission to the lost sheep of the house of Israel with this commission (Matthew 10:7):

As you go, preach, saying, 'The kingdom of heaven is at hand'.

He warned them (10:16-18):

I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; therefore, be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.   Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to councils and scourge you in their synagogues.  You will be brought before governors and kings for My sake, as a testimony to them and to the Gentiles.

Jesus' warning cannot have failed to impress them, perhaps prompting them to remember what happened to Jeremiah when God had been sent him to preach forthcoming disaster to the people of Jerusalem, long become ‘stiff-necked’ in their disobedience to their God; for, as you heard in the first reading, despite his divine commission, it had not made Jeremiah acceptable to the religious and political leaders; on the contrary, he found it a most dangerous message for him to deliver to them:

I have heard the whispering of many, "Terror on every side! Denounce him; yes, let us denounce him!"  All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine saying: "Perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him and take our revenge on him."   

A message acceptable to those in power was wanted, not authentic divine guidance for the good of the whole people.

And yet, well aware of the ‘Jeremaic’ opposition to divine truth still prevalent among the Temple authorities and the self-appointed spiritual leaders of the people -- the Scribes and Pharisees of His time -- Jesus insisted that His Apostles should proclaim His message not only without fear, but to the very utmost of their powers:

What I say to you in the darkness, speak in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.

Jesus had already spoken -- and would still continue to speak -- many things to them in the calm solitude of their evenings together, and what He had, in that way, told them privately ‘in the dark’, they were to speak publicly in full light of day.  And perhaps those words ‘what you hear whispered’ is a reference to the Holy Spirit Who – according to Jesus’ promise -- would recall to their minds and hearts whatever aspects of His teaching they might otherwise have forgotten.  Whatever, whether it was words Jesus' own voice had spoken in their hearing, or the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whispering to their minds and in their hearts, all had to be proclaimed without fear.

How can we today learn from Jesus’ sending His Apostles then?

The Twelve were being sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, to a people that is who had been prepared over thousands of years to hopefully hear, understand, and embrace their message:

Whatever town or village you enter, look for a worthy person in it, and stay there until you leave.  As you enter a house, wish it peace. If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; if not, let your peace return to you. Whoever will not receive you or listen to your words—go outside that house or town and shake the dust from your feet.  Amen, I say to you, it will be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.      (Matthew 10: 11-15)

Jesus’ words and intentions still offer wise guidance for us who want to be His true disciples in our modern world where rejection of God is rampant and the exaltation of human ‘virtues’, values, and expectations is blatant and verging on the devilish at times.  I think that St. Paul – suffering for his love of Jesus’ truth in the proudly pagan times of the Roman Empire at its lustiest under Augustus -- has better advice for men and women of today than government representatives and popular social demagogues:

The one who sows for his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but the one who sows for the spirit will reap eternal life from the spirit.   (Galatians 6:8)

People of God, there are many pseudo-disciples of Jesus today -- in our own society and in our Western world -- who are afraid of the consequences that might result for them if they were to publicly support/proclaim the teaching of Jesus, for such teaching is not popular today, just as Jesus Himself is not popular.  Of course, almost everyone today will say that Jesus was a good man, indeed, a great man; but what they do not like about Him, is His claim to have a Personal calling and authority; and indeed, above all, to have a Divine dignity, which obliges all who acknowledge Him and His appreciate His Gospel to decide either for Him or against Him in this proudly sinful world.  Deciding for Him could oblige them to keep His word at the risk of public derision or opprobrium; while, on the other hand, deciding against Him might threaten their eternal destiny:

Whoever is ashamed of Me and of My words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when He comes in His Father’s glory with the holy angels.  (Mark 8:38)

Therefore, despite His great goodness, beautiful truth, and sublime promises, this Jesus of authority is unacceptable to modern society, as is the authoritative teaching of His Church.  We have to recognize, People of God, that in this -- our devilishly proud and irreligious world -- proclamation of the name of  Jesus and of His Gospel does not necessarily involve, and most certainly does not mean, arguing with enemies; nor does it involve constantly trying to persuade incorrigible people.  What proclamation does mean, however, is clear and confident, and if necessary, courageous, witness to what is true and beautiful in the Catholic Christian Gospel; something that can only be done by patient and persevering testimony.

For priests and leaders of the people, there can be, at times, an almost overwhelming temptation to seek success by flirting with popularity.  Jesus, however, wanted love leading to self-commitment, not popularity that feeds on enthusiasm and cries out to be surrounded by others, similarly excited.  Jesus’ message was neither intended nor phrased to provoke or promote His own popularity, rather He deliberately sought to challenge, inspire, and then convert, individual consciences before and for His Father.

Jesus therefore sought to comfort and strengthen the Twelve by explaining:

Fear no one.  Nothing is concealed that will not be revealed, nor secret that will not be known.

There will be a final denouement, a day of judgment when all false colours will be lowered in shame, all injustices corrected, and when all who have suffered for God will be both acknowledged and rewarded.

St. Paul followed the mind and took up the purpose of Jesus when he told his converts in Corinth who were seeking to overcome the notorious corruption and depravity of that great sea-port:

The natural person does not accept what pertains to the Spirit of God, for to him it is foolishness, and he cannot understand it, because it is judged spiritually.  

And, because the Christian message is ultimately about redemption through the Cross of Jesus, St. Paul said quite clearly (1 Corinthians 1:18, 25): 

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.   

Therefore, for the Church and for all God's good people, there will inevitably be much obloquy, suffering, and disadvantage to be experienced and indeed embraced in our time on earth, in the course of which we are neither to fear nor rebel; for both fear and rebellion come from looking at ourselves, our situation and our possibilities, whereas our hopes and expectations as Christians should all be centred on God. 

Jesus Himself offered His disciples three motives for rejecting fear.  First of all, if you are going to fear, He said, at least fear Him Who is supremely powerful:

Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. But rather fear Him Who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.  

That is basic reality, and all true spirituality has to be built on reality.  However, Jesus did not limit Himself to correcting earthly fears with the greater threat of supernatural loss.  Such a corrective measure can indeed hold a man back from sin, but it will hardly ever lead one to virtue, let alone love.  Therefore, He gave the apostles, and us, further advice:

Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will.  Do not fear therefore; you are of more value than many sparrows.  

We must remember and realize that our natural fear is meant to relate us above all to the God Who made us, for fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and at times only a healthy fear of the Lord can save us from the solicitations of sin and the morally corrosive fear of men.  On that basis, however, since love is the truest motive power of any human being’s life, we must then learn to love God aright, and that we begin to do by recognizing and embracing the fact of having been long-loved ourselves.  That is why Jesus make beautifully clear to His apostles the heavenly Father’ love for them:

            Why, the very hairs of your head are all numbered by the heavenly Father;

Therefore, let us confidently commit ourselves to the Spirit of the Lord constantly working in Mother Church and in our personal, targeted, lives; and thus allow Him to lead us along the way of the Lord and Saviour we know and love, into the presence of Him Who is above all, in all, and through all, the One eternal Father, waiting to embrace us, in Jesus, as His own truly adopted, and beloved children for eternity.

11th Sunday Year A, 2023

 

(Exodus 19:2-6; Romans 5:6-11; Matthew 9:36 –10:8)

 

In the first reading we heard what the Lord expected of the house of Israel after having rescued them, through Moses, from their slavery in Egypt:

'You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to Myself.  Now therefore, if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all peoples; for all the earth is Mine.  And you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.'  

That love for the children of Abraham which had led God to thus save Israel from slavery, was now moving Him to exalt them yet further by offering to make them into a holy nation and a kingdom of priests for the glory of His Name and the benefit of mankind:

Now, if you obey Me, (although) all the earth is Mine, you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.

However, Israel did not come – thanks to the hatred of the Temple Authorities and the jealous opposition of the Scribes and Pharisees -- to fully recognize Jesus as the Son sent by God, His heavenly Father, for mankind’s salvation.  And so, God has done an even greater work In our New Testament times for those Israelites who did form the original members of Jesus’ Apostolic community, and all those Gentiles who subsequently have come to believe in His name and walk in His ways, as St. Paul tells us:

While we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  One will hardly die for a righteous man -- though perhaps for a good man someone would dare even to die -- but God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.  Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God by His life.

God has -- through Jesus -- freed us, not just from external slavery such as Israel suffered in Egypt, but from the far more insidious, oppressive and destructive, slavery to sin and death. And what is yet inconceivably much more, He offers us an opportunity to win eternal happiness and personal fulfilment in heaven as His adopted children in Jesus.

Having done that wondrous work of salvation for us through His beloved Son Jesus, God now calls us, as Jesus’ true disciples in Mother Church, to participate in that glorious work now to be accomplished, of continuing Jesus’ mission by extending God’s offer of salvation to the whole of mankind and to the end of time:

For the LORD is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.  (Psalm 100:5)

Therefore, it is no surprise that we find in the Gospel that:

When (Jesus) saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd.  Then He said to His disciples, "The harvest truly is plentiful, but the labourers are few.  Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers into His harvest."

We can understand a little something of the compassion of Jesus as He looked on the crowd, for we know from our own experience of life in a trans-gender, disbelieving and irreligious world, that there is no happiness in sin or spiritual ignorance: for just as sin inevitably breeds harm, hurt, death, and revenge, so does ignorance of our spiritual calling, debase our humanity.  Even for those deliberately taking no account of sin,  our earthly life offers no real fulfilment of itself: because such a ‘sinless’ life inevitably involves frustrations and compromises of all sorts, that is, it is faceless, without fulfilment, and always ends in suffering and loss, that is, in death of which the confines open only to the voice of Jesus calling His sheep to obey the Spirit He has sent them, and walk confidently in His ways to their heavenly home.

Jesus’ loving obedience to His Father led Him to sweat blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, so great was the need of mankind, so real our servitude to the horror of sin, and so consuming the Devil’s hatred for this Man from Nazareth!

That is why -- having done such a glorious work through, and at such cost to, His beloved Son -- God the Father now wants us to continue that work of His Son, in the power of His Spirit sent by the risen Jesus to be with us for ever.  This, dear people, is not an optional matter; it is something we need to do or else risk losing our share in the salvation won for us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, by slipping back into the worldly ‘business-of-life’ concerns, and the search for satisfactions along the way.

Obviously, we are not all called to be missionaries in the sense of priests and religious going out in the name of Christ and His Church to foreign lands, leaving home, family, and all earthly prospects.  We are, however, all called and obliged to help the spread of the Good News of Jesus.  This we can and must do, FIRST OF ALL, by fighting against sin and the devil in our own lives  All of us must, in that way, share the mission of the Church to save mankind in the name of Christ; for just as our personal, private, sins harm the whole Church, so too, our personal, even hidden, virtues benefit the whole Body of Christ.  None of us are unable to fulfil that work of becoming a healthy member of the Body of Christ, thanks to the power which Jesus gives through the presence in Mother Church and in our lives of His most Holy Spirit.   

There are many and varied ways to serve as truly apostolic witnesses to Jesus, which, according to our circumstances and our gifts, are for our choice, as Jesus showed us when, for example, He said (Mark 14:7):

You have the poor with you always, and whenever you wish you may do them good.

But, dear People of God, do notice those few words He then went to add:

            But Me you do not have always.

Those are heart-stopping, stupendous, words for all walking lovingly along the ways of Jesus.  Love of Jesus, love of God, is not something one can put off to a later date, a better situation!  Love of God, love of Jesus, can only be grasped, seized, if and when offered by the Spirit-at-work-your- heart, disciple of Jesus!!

And when that happens, yes …. at the very beginning, thank the Holy Spirit, and pray that He may lead you ever on and on, to truer love for Jesus and the Father Who sent Him,  and ultimately to a death with Him, in the Spirit, for the Father