24th Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Isaiah 50:5-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35)

We heard in the first reading a prophecy of Isaiah concerning the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, the coming leader who would deliver Israel from her bondage to sin.  He is known as the Servant because He would be totally obedient to the Lord the God of Israel, and totally devoted to His people.  He is better known as the Suffering Servant because it would be by His human sufferings -- pictured so graphically for us by the words of the prophet -- that He would fulfil God’s plans and purposes for His Chosen People, not by any triumphs of military prowess.  Moreover, since those sufferings would come His way as part of God’s will for Him – not as mere chance manifestations of human wickedness -therefore the Suffering Servant would be also be characterized by His constant attention to Israel’s God in order to know His will and walk His way in total and unfailing obedience:

The Lord GOD has opened My ear and I was not rebellious, I turned not backwards.

Having come to do His Father’s will, Jesus’ constant aim throughout His life was to hear, obey, and thus glorify His Father.  And this He showed, for example, when -- in today’s Gospel reading --- He so suddenly chose Peter as the foundation rock for His future Church because He, Jesus, recognized that it was His Father Who had just revealed the truth ‘YOU ARE THE CHRIST’ to Peter: “It was not flesh and blood which revealed this to you but My Father in heaven.”  Indeed, Jesus’ final and supreme prayer was that His own death would serve for the ultimate glorification of His Father:

Jesus lifted up His eyes to heaven, said, "Father, the hour has come.  Glorify Your Son, that the Son may glorify You.” (John 17:1)

Therefore, in order to show that faith of which St. James spoke so very simply in our second reading we must always, as disciples of Jesus, seek to hear, and respond to, God.  As you well know, faith is not something we are born with, it is our God-gifted, truth-full, response to the earthly witness of His beloved, only-begotten-Son-made-flesh, lovingly sent to convict the sinfulness of men’s mind and convert the weakness of their heart and will, to the beauty and strength of the Father’s true children, adopted in Jesus and empowered by the Spirit.

In the Gospel reading we were told that:

Jesus went on with His disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”  And they told Him, “John the Baptist, and others say Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.”  And He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Even Peter himself, as the first of those totally-committed disciples of Jesus uniquely called ‘fishers of men’, had -- like all of us -- originally needed to respond to the Father, as Jesus Himself tells us:

No one can come to Me unless it is granted him by My Father  (John 6:65);

and now he became the first to publicly recognize and confess Jesus as the Messiah, with those typically Petrine, decisive and uncompromising, words: YOU ARE THE CHRIST.

Peter was totally committed to Jesus  -- indeed, he loved Jesus more than any and all of the other disciples – and that loving and total commitment to Jesus was alarmed beyond measure when Jesus began to teach His disciples about His own forthcoming Passion, Death, and Resurrection.  Those words raised a question in Peter that he had never before needed to resolve: how to distinguish between the proper, true expression, of His love, and those intensely emotional feelings evoked by Jesus’ words, feelings of an intensity he had never experienced before.  Peter needed to somehow express HIS TOTAL LOVE, as a disciple, and that was something he had never done before.  Consequently, not knowing what to do, not knowing how to do what he aught to do,  Peter acted decisively as usual:

             Peter took (Jesus) aside and began to rebuke Him.  

I would much rather have said that he went aside to join Jesus, but in fact the gospel says that he took Jesus aside and began to rebuke Him!  Peter was, as I have just remarked, decisive by nature; but, on this occasion, his loving fears concerning Jesus’ safety and honour led him to completely overstep the boundary between disciple and master, servant and Lord, with the result that:

(Jesus) turning  and seeing His disciples, rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind Me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

What a put-down!!  However, notice what St. Mark tells us: Jesus turned around and looked at His disciples.  Jesus words were not words of anger, they were measured words deliberately chosen to guide and protect His other disciples – who both admired Peter and were accustomed to follow him with full confidence -- by correcting Peter’s presumptuous impetuosity.  For Jesus, God His  Father was in loving command over, and total control of, every aspect of His life; and every detail of His Father’s plan would evoke a response of absolute commitment from Jesus: there was nothing that God could ask of His Son that His Son would not embrace, even to the extent of His Passion and Death on the Cross.   Peter’s present anxious fear for Jesus’ well-being was altogether alien to Jesus.

 

The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?  The LORD is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?  When evildoers assail me to eat up my flesh, my adversaries and foes, it is they who stumble and fall. Though an army encamp against me, my heart shall not fear; though war arise against me, yet will I be confident.  (Psalm 27:1-3)

 

And so we see how, in order to guide His disciples -- Peter above all – into total trust in His Father’s overseeing wisdom and love, Jesus rejected Peter’s blind emotionalism with those heart-felt and shockingly pertinent words: ‘Get behind Me, Satan!’  For Peter – being overly subject to his predisposition to decisive action -- was actually carrying on where Satan in the desert had temporarily stopped: trying to persuade Jesus to seek His own ends, His own self, rather than follow His Father’s way, do His Father’s will.

Notice also: not only those already fully committed to Jesus, not only those seeking to learn more and more about Him and His Good News, but even those ordinary people who were just seeing Him and hearing of His Gospel message for the first time, ALL of them had to appreciate this absolutely fundamental truth concerning Jesus’ crucial oneness with God His Father in His Father’s plan for mankind’s salvation, and in the Gift of their most Holy Spirit, bond of Love, and source, for men, of all truth and might:

if anyone would come after Me let him deny himself and take up his cross, and follow Me.   For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.”

One of the iconic pictures of modern advances in social awareness and personal  fulfilment is that of a young person looking forwards and upwards -- that is, to an ideally bright and better future -- with words like ‘I want to do something worthwhile with my life’ on his or her lips.  In reality, however, the life offered to such young people is almost always a life in accordance with the aspirations of the pagan society in which they live, aspirations such as success, popularity, charism, talent, all leading to plenty and pleasure; aspirations such as singular achievement, endurance, fighting-spirit and indeed ruthlessness, all  manifestations of the individual ego striving to prove itself in the multiple and varied aspects of life in the jungle of modern society.

For us Christians and Catholics, however, that is not the life to which we are called.  The life offered to us cannot be achieved by us, for us; it is a life centred on God, on His will for mankind’s greater good on earth,  and for the heavenly home awaiting each and every ultimately true son and daughter of His.   It is a life to be lived with Jesus Who is the ‘Way, the Truth, and the Life’;  a life to be realised in the power of His most Holy Spirit with which we have been gifted.   It is a life to be gratefully embraced and lived to its fulfilment in the company of all the angels and saints for the ecstatic praise and glory of Him Who is the most loving Father of us all: INFINITELY WISE, TOTALLY BEAUTIFUL, ALL HOLY AND TRUE, THE ALMIGHTY, YET … INCONCEIVABLY … HUMBLE AND GOOD.

23rd Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Isaiah 35: 4-7; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37)

Jesus was in a region – the Decapolis, on the other side of the Sea of Galilee – where a sizeable Jewish population lived; they were, however, influenced by the alien culture prevalent in those 10 cities (‘Decapolis’ is a Greek word meaning ten towns or cities) whose citizens lived in a Greek-style society with Greco-Roman government, and whose laws and religious beliefs – especially when taken together with their moral standards and practices -- were regarded by devout Israelites as ‘heathen‘.

There was sufficiently close contact between Jews and Greeks to support business activities and also to enable the ‘Greeks’ to acquire some awareness of and acquaintance with Jewish customs and religious practices.  Jesus had recently healed the daughter of a pagan Syro-Phoenician woman who, you will remember, had said that even the dogs were allowed to eat scraps from the children’s table. On that occasion Jesus had healed her daughter at a distance, her mother having come alone to beseech Jesus’ help.

Here, however, there was a crowd of expectant people, including numerous  Jews, who:

brought to Jesus one who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged Him to lay His hand on him.  (Mark 7:32)

Jesus, you will notice, did not seek out this man any more than He had sought out the woman  whose daughter He had healed despite His initial unwillingness to do any such healing for a Gentile.  On this occasion, however, it was a crowd, probably most of them members, by birth, of the Chosen People, who “begged” Him to lay His hand on this deaf and dumb man.

People of God, recognize that this episode might well have brought a certain joy to the heart of Jesus.  The pagan woman had come to Him for the sake of her natural daughter; here, however, there is a crowd of people united in the faith of Israel asking for the healing of a fellow Jew.  They did not, most probably, observe their faith with sufficient care -- living and working, as they did, side by side with pagans -- but for all that, they still kept firm hold of a most important characteristic of their Jewish background, their faithful care for each other.

On this occasion Jesus willed not only to speak words of healing, but also to use His own human flesh to touch the man, and so we are told that Jesus:

            took him aside from the crowd privately,

because – having deemed it necessary to use His own body in order to save this man’s ‘Jewish’ soul -- Jesus did not want any noise from the excited pagan onlookers to disturb the mute man’s close attention to Jesus’ every word, whisper, gesture or touch.  Jesus then … first of all:

put His finger into his ears, and after spitting, touched his tongue, and looking up to heaven He sighed ….

Jesus wanted the deaf-mute man’s faith to grow step by step as He – Jesus, famous in all Galilee across the water --  did what the half-pagan Jew  could ‘faithfully’ relate to: he could see Jesus spitting, and then feel Him touching his own tongue with that saliva; ‘magical saliva?’    No, not really, for Jesus was now coaxing this man  --- in His own most wonderful way as Perfect God and Perfect Man – trying to draw him closer to His Father by looking up to heaven as He sighed deeply, encouraging, urging -- by the very depth of that sigh from His own most Sacred Heart --  the mute man first of all to relax and then open himself up for healing by looking up with Jesus hopefully in a heavenward  glance -- being a Jew by birth, he remembered that heaven was said to be God’s home -- and  then to rest, if only for an instant, expectantly in Jesus' arms as:

Jesus said to him, ‘EPHPHATHA’

in Aramaic, the common language understood well enough by both pagans and Jews present.

Then, all of a sudden, everyone around him was speaking to him as Jesus had just done, in Aramaic, and he was hearing them, he was cured!  

His ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly.

People of God, we should try our best to appreciate that Jesus still uses human nature: we Catholics do not pray to a God who is just “up there”: we pray to, we turn to, we love, a God Who   is with us also here on earth, a God Who is with us in His own flesh and blood in the Eucharist; indeed, in so far as we are true disciples of Jesus, in so far as we live in His Body by His Spirit, we are all “flesh of His flesh, blood of His Blood”.  Because Our Blessed Lord deliberately continues to use His Body for mankind’s salvation through the instrumentality of His Church -- His Mystical Body -- He thus ALSO deigns to use our flesh, to use us, His disciples, in His work of redemption even today.  Our Christian vocation in Mother Church is therefore clear: as loving and obedient disciples of Jesus, the Son of God made flesh for men, we are called to become, each in our degree, willing instruments for His continuing work of salvation: by our Catholic prayer and worship, by our Christian living and loving, by the very way “we live and move and have our spiritual being” in Him.

That “sighing deeply”, also expressed the deep compassion felt by Jesus all mankind suffering so much under the burden of sin, as St. Paul tells us:

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.   And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly waiting for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.  Likewise, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what we to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.      (Romans 8:22-26)

His sighing deeply is indeed also the result of His immense indignation that His Father’s creation, originally so good and so beautiful, should have become so deformed and ugly, thanks to the Devil’s lies and our complicity.  This is why, People of God, we should, indeed why we must, hate sin for dishonouring the Father of glory, for bringing such sorrow to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and for the degradation and grief, the pain and loss, it continues to bring about in the lives of all men and women, children, and even those still in their mother’s womb.  

Make no mistake about it, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are called to HATE SIN; but also, as Christians, we must still love the sinner; that is, we must convict sin (‘do good-ers’ cannot do that) yet without condemning the sinner.

Jesus does indeed will that we, His People, share in His saving work for the whole world, but we can only do this by learning to ‘love the sinner’ as Christ loved us, it does not, as St. Paul tells us explicitly tells us, mean our cosying-up to sinners:

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?   What accord has Christ with Belial?   (2 Corinthians 6:14-15)

That true wisdom which alone can wholeheartedly convict the sin whilst lovingly restrain from condemning our sinning neighbour requires us to have both sincerity of heart and an enlightened and humble mind.  That is, hatred of the sin and love for the sinner demands our being wilfully subject to the Holy Spirit of Truth and Love, the only means whereby that most beautiful vision and prophecy of Isaiah, heard in the first reading, can come to true fulfilment:

Be strong, fear not!  Behold, your God will come with vengeance, with the recompense of God (hating and destroying sin); He will come and save you."  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf  unstopped.   Then the lame man  shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.  For waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert.   The burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water.   A  highway shall be there,  and it shall be called the Way of Holiness.  The unclean shall not pass over it. (Isaiah 35:4-8)             

 

22nd Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Deut. 4:1-2, 6-8; James 1:17-18, 21-22, 27; Mark: 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23)

Our readings today are centred upon what one might call the art of loving God in Mother Church. 

We were told of the good things God promised and did for Israel, that you may live and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and, bequeathing such gifts to Israel, Moses urged those Israelites to:

 Listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you.

However, the subsequent history of Israel – even at its very best -- can be characterized by the words of Fr. Faber, ‘We make His love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own” -- was perfectly exemplified by the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Jesus’ days.  The Pharisees were relatively new-comers to religious life in Jerusalem and Israel as a whole; they were popular with the people and, indeed, they had become the self-appointed religious leaders of the common people. The traditional Sadducees  were the priestly authorities in charge of the world-famous Temple in Jerusalem and men of power in Jewish society.   The Pharisees knew the Law very well but they were most enthusiastic about their own traditions and they were seriously jealous of their own assumed authority as teachers of the people.   The Sadducees on the other hand dealt with the occupying Roman power as authorised rulers of the Temple with multitudes of gift-bearing worshippers coming from abroad every year to join their Palestinian brethren for the great religious feasts.  

The first and second readings should also serve to remind us of the great blessings God has bestowed on us in our Catholic Faith and Mother Church:

Keep (what you have been taught) for this will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. 

Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.  Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. … Therefore, receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls.  But, be doers of the word and not hearers only.

Moses told the Israelites how they should treasure God’s gifts:

You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you;

And in these modern ‘synodal’ times  such words are of supreme importance for us Catholics, because  the Faith  we have received is to be kept in its unstained integrity because it is not of human origin, as Jesus made abundantly clear when He said, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel reading:

            The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63-64)

It was blessed Peter -- first and greatest Pope -- who was inspired by the Father to give the only true response to Jesus’ words, not only on behalf of all his fellow Apostles, but in the name of all subsequent Catholics and true Christians:

Lord, You have the words of eternal life.  Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (John 6:68-70)

And it is that same spirit to which you heard St. James give expression in our second reading:

Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls, (and) be doers of that word.

But what about the Scribes and Pharisees, self-appointed, and ‘God-exclusive’ spiritual leaders in Israel proclaiming their own traditions:

Jesus said to them: ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy  of you hypocrites, as it is written: “This people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do they worship Me teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.” (Mk. 7:6)

In order face up to the modern versions of such malign influences  we must, above all else, learn to truly appreciate and love the Faith which God has so graciously bestowed upon us, and cherish it in a personal relationship of love with God, mirroring Jesus’ love of His Father, and the Holy Spirit’s bonding power.  For the Faith has been given us in order to change us from what – from who -- we are, into what – who -- God wants us to become ; it has been given us to re-form us, not in accordance with the maxims and examples of the world around us, nor for the fulfilment of our own personal preferences and ambitions, but after the pattern, and according to the will, of Him Who is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, preparing a place for us to live there with Him for all eternity.

The traditions of the elders to which the Pharisees and Scribes were so devoted were originally practiced -- and subsequently handed down -- as a means of helping and protecting true devotion among the people of Israel.  And there were undoubtedly some in Israel who had profited and would continue to profit from their observance.  The trouble was, however, that the zeal of the Pharisees and Scribes for such traditions led them, at times, to disregard or even reject God’s Personal commands and His broader spiritual teaching given through the Prophets of Israel.

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. (Mk. 7:8)

Moreover, this excessive and misplaced zeal of the Pharisees and Scribes pushed them further, even, indeed, to assert that everyone in Israel should be bound by their traditions.  This amounted, Jesus said as He quoted the prophet Isaiah, to them:

Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.

And Mother church still has modern Pharisees at work within her, preaching doctrines of their own by adding their modern and more popular interpretation to her pristine doctrines, like certain ‘synodal decisions’ of the German hierarchy, some of whose members have also shown clear signs of the Pharisaic ‘love of money’ (Luke 14:15)   And as for present-day Scribes we can sometimes come across  clerics who  are firmly Catholic  both doctrinally and morally, unlike the German Pharisees,  but who, nevertheless, are more functionaries of the Church establishment than serving disciples of Jesus.   And as for the laity in Mother Church, how many have found Jesus’ words ‘hard’ and have left Him and her … millions in our Western world.  And that leaves us who seek and strive to love and live in, work and pray for, Mother Church to learn as much and as best we can from today’s Eucharistic celebration

In Mother Church there are those in positions of authority that entitle or at times require them to give advice and authoritative guidance to the People of God who are members of their flock.  Occasionally, that guidance – because the authority behind it stems from learning, experience, and above all, from the acknowledged and invoked guidance of God’s promised grace --  requires obedience, even strict obedience, at times, and it always merits sincere respect and thoughtful attention.  No one can totally ignore or disregard such guidance.

Nevertheless, we must always realize that we have been set free by Jesus Christ to serve God in Spirit and in Truth as living members of the Body of Christ, in response to the guidance of His Holy Spirit living and working within us; and that no human guides can ever be allowed to cut us off from that personal response to God so long as we remain in Jesus by keeping His known commands, and following His general teaching mediated to our conscience through the Gospel proclamation of Mother Church.  St. Paul makes this absolutely clear in his first letter to the Corinthians (3:21-23):

Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come -- all are yours.  And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

As we go through life, striving to listen ever more carefully to God and follow Him ever more closely, we are always advancing to what is -- for us – new and unknown territory so to speak.  Therefore, it is indeed good and necessary that we should have the help of guidance from Mother Church, for on her alone did Jesus bestow the fullness of His Spirit, and to her alone does the Spirit recall all that Jesus taught and did.  Nevertheless, after personal prayer to God, after listening to His Spirit whispering in our conscience and abiding in Mother Church, after acknowledging our own inclination to sin and God’s wonderful goodness to us,  it is still up to each of us, personally, to decide finally which way to go, because such responsible commitment is the hall-mark of a personal relationship with God intimately known and loved in our heart and life, it is the glory of a Christian which we should not yield, and certainly never abandon, to another.  Jesus once declared to His disciples:

When they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should speak, for it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you. (Matthew 10:19-21)

Jesus might have said, ‘the Spirit of My Father will guide you’, but no, He actually said, ‘the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you’ will help you.   As it were obliterating Himself, Jesus shows us how closely He wants His disciples to be united to, one with, His Father, and it is for that end He gives us His Spirit at baptism and renews His Spirit within us every time we rightly receive Holy Communion. Oneness with the Father, in Jesus, by the Spirit, that is the culmination, crowning and fulfilment, of all Christian life and holiness.

At no stage in our life can we presume that we have heard, understood, and responded aright, without regularly checking -- as we proceed further -- that we are, indeed, not only within the parameters of the Faith, but also walking in the direction of, and in a comforting conformity with, the life-thrust of her who is both the unique Bride of Christ and also our own Mother.  And this constant longing for, and looking to, God; this unceasing watchfulness for the motions of His Spirit within us; this abiding awareness of personal weakness and ignorance together with an ever growing awareness of and reliance upon God’s goodness to us, … all these endeavours and experiences gradually build up in us an ever deeper confidence and abiding joy in Mother Church, together with an ever more humbling and grateful experience and awareness of the presence, power, and goodness of God in our individual lives.

The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God: the things which God has prepared for those who love Him; things which God has revealed to us through His Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:9-10)  

21st Sunday Year B, 2024

 

(Joshua 24:1-2, 15-18; Ephesians 5:21-32; John 6:60-69)

In our readings today, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, we are reminded of the fact that, in the course of our life decisions -- difficult and even decisive -- have inevitably to be made:

If it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD,  choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.    But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Many of (Jesus’) disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him.  So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?"

God the Father made such a decision when He allowed His only-begotten Son to take human flesh in order to free us from the tyranny of sin and death; and therefore, would-be-Christians -- appreciating that ‘unimaginable token’  of God’s love for us -- must be prepared to make a reciprocal decision when embracing His offer of salvation.

With God, His decision is perfectly final and decisive; we, however, are weak beings hindered by our sinfulness and ignorance, with the result that any seriously binding decision of ours has to be repeatedly re-affirmed and renewed if we are to live it out to fulfilment; and therefore, any such decision can be made only on the basis of sincere Love motivating the choice, and persevering Commitment enabling us to sustain and ultimately fulfil our original decision.

Commitment and Love are the two qualities St. Paul had in mind when giving his converts guidance with regard to the Christian institution of marriage; guidance which envisages eternal fulfilment, not simply earthly happiness:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. 

Wives submit to your own husbands as to the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is head of the church … so wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

Jesus seriously required commitment in His disciples – their submission to His teaching  -- as you heard in the Gospel reading:

It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is of no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.  But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning those who did not believe and who it was who would betray Him.   After this, many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with Him. So Jesus said to the Twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?”

Jesus would have none of those disciples who would like to re-negotiate, so to speak, their allegiance to Him after each and every difficulty that might arise for them in His teaching; their commitment had to be total:

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.   We have believed and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”  

Jesus, for His part, as St. John tells us (John 13:1) embodied such commitment:

Before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father,  having loved His own who were  in the world, He loved them to the end.

Commitment and love are what St. Paul had in mind when he told his converts who were entering marriage:

  Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

In that context of ‘out of reverence for Christ’ such submission is, of course, called for  in the important, not each and every trivial, decisions of family life … and also to be given in the framework of mutual love and respect between the spouses.

The future is not, for us Christians, something totally dark, hidden, and unknowable: we believe in God, a God Who is good and has created us for a ‘purpose’ … He indeed has a purpose for each of us … a purpose that will serve for His glory,  our individual salvation, and the ‘social’ fulfilment of mankind as a whole.   Human beings, made, as we Christians believe, in the image and likeness of God, are called to guide their lives towards a goal being offered them by God, revealed and promised to all believers by Jesus, and being realized in them individually -- if they co-operate – by the Holy Spirit. 

In other words, we Christians and Catholics believe that the future is essentially knowable, desirable, and attainable for all who believe in Jesus, and are willing to commit themselves to His promises, and to the Holy Spirit of Truth and Love He has bequeathed us.  This attitude of self-commitment is so essential to Christianity that we believers have been given, as our mother, she of who it was said:

Blessed is she who believed, for there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.  (Luke 1:45)

In our Gospel reading we heard that many of His disciples found  Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist a ‘hard saying’ and, like the Jews earlier, they too grumbled among themselves.  Jesus then, as if to confirm His teaching, went on to say:

What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?

You are My disciples because you like My parables, you admire the wonders I do, you even have your own ambitions  -- King of Israel – for Me; but when I give more serious teaching  about what is above your line of vision and beyond your earthly imagination, you find it ‘hard to accept’.

             What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where He was before?

Jesus has come down from heaven, and His words, consequently, are no ordinary words but spiritual words, and therefore He added most seriously:

It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh is of no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.   

People of God, in the first reading Joshua put clearly before the Israelites a choice they had to make.  We are in a like situation today, for, in our society, Christianity is largely derided and the Catholic Church is, not infrequently, hated. 

Our Christian faith in Mother Church calls us to a life -- empowered by the Spirit -- of self-commitment, willing subjection of self, to something greater than self: a subjection, a commitment, a devotion, to God, to His purpose-for-us, to the fulfilment He has planned for mankind in His heavenly Kingdom.

 Our Christian faith and Mother Church urge us to a commitment, to a selflessness, which, by a process of spiritual osmosis, will inevitably show itself in the ordinary things of our everyday lives: in marital love and life-long commitment, sincere and lasting friendship, unfeigned neighbourliness, and penetrating down even to our most mundane social obligations, such as doing an honest day’s work and living as a good and responsible citizens.

 In making life’s choices, we must never forget the truth expressed in the words of Joshua:

If it is evil in your eyes to serve the LORD,  choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell.    But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.

Whatever we choose, we will always be servants, because that is our nature.  If, however, we make the right choice, we will be serving a Lord Who is so good that He intends -- after our faithful service here on earth -- to give us share with Him in His heavenly glory.   His word is true, His promise is sure, and His Way is straight; indeed, His beloved Son chose to walk it before us, and the Spirit of His Son will be with us in all our endeavours to keep up-with and close-to Him on our way towards that home where the Father now awaits us, and will embrace and reward us as His own adopted, and specially privileged (Our Lady is Queen of heaven), children in His heavenly Kingdom.