The Holy Family Year C, 2024

 

Today I wish to bring to the forefront of our minds the Father, the Heavenly Father, wellspring and inspiration of our earthly iconic Holy Family of Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.

The love of the heavenly Father for His only-begotten Son at Christmas is not generally adverted to, because people are emotionally enthralled by what is so immediately understandable and strikingly beautiful for our human sensibilities. When we think of Mary’s birth-giving love for her new-born, only born, God-Given-Son, we recognize that he was the source of sublime joy and gratitude for her, and that He is the pride and glory of our humanity, fallen though it be in us as yet. Nascent as our Lord and Saviour, He was yet destined to become a blood-stained figure, hated relentlessly by officialdom and ignored by the vast majority of those He came to save from the wounds of their own willful sinfulness and relentless self-seeking.

As Saviour of Mankind, He was born of a people prepared by God for over 2,000 years for His coming, by means of experiences evocative of God, by prophetic leaders and by their own growing religious awareness and the gradual structuring of their society according to such God-given sensibilities.  Ultimately they had become a people so endowed as to find its culmination in the flesh and blood of the immaculate Virgin Mary of Nazareth, through whom God was able  to prepare a suitable home where His own beloved Son might take on, assume, human flesh as Saviour – perfect God and perfect Man -- Who, though He would be seen to be of Jewish nationality, His mission would, nevertheless, be that very purpose for which He willed to be thus sent from heaven to this earth, the salvation of all mankind, be they of Jewish or pagan nationalities, citizens of historic and cultural powers, such as those of Greece or Rome, or of yet more contemporary origin, or be they simply members of Earth’s swarming and blindly warring tribes and dominions of whatever ilk.

The unmentioned, heart-wringing,  ‘love untold’ centre-piece of this most beautiful and joyful day of Christmas is the fact that today the Father has deliberately sent (Jesus’ own word) His beloved, only-begotten, Son into our world, knowing full well that He would end-up being betrayed, deserted, ignored by all save Mary and a handful of fearful disciples; knowing above all, that He would depart this world leaving behind a body tortured to perfection by the world’s supreme and most professional artists in such skills.

However, thus far, I have only told you the half of this divine drama … it get’s much richer, much deeper, for the Father sent Jesus on that prophetically foretold mission because He knew that His only-beloved Son wanted to undertake it.   That was because of His own, absolutely Filial and self-sacrificing, love for His Father:  because of His burning desire to heal His Father’s rueful awareness that so many of those He had created in His own image and likeness with free-will --- created them for their earthly joy and eternal fulfilment --- had been led astray, deceived, by the angelic LIAR, Satan.   Free will, what a gift!   A gift lost by Eve’s folly, Adam’s weakness, and Satan’s collusion!

Therefore, dear Catholic People of God, dear Orthodox and fellow, original, believers with us, dear believers of less clear vision but nevertheless total Christian commitment,  rejoice that Jesus has come as man, indeed as God-made-man for our salvation, to show us and enable us, how to use ‘free will’ for God our Father’s glory and for our own fulfilment and eternal salvation; and to teach us that this would be brought about by the indwelling of His ‘Gift’, the most Holy Spirit of both Father and Son, through our Faith, our belief, in both the Person and the Mission of Jesus.

Through that secret presence and mysterious working of God’s most Holy Spirit in our lives He will gradually form us into an ever-more authentic likeness of Jesus, for the glory of the heavenly Father, and for our ultimate and eternal destiny as sharers in the love and glory of the most Holy Trinity of life and love, yes, He will form us in Jesus as true ‘family’ of God, the Father of us all.     

Christmas Day Year C, 2024

 

(Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18) 

What a wonderful evocation of joy and gratitude Isaiah offers us in the words:

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace. 

The city had been under long siege and neighbouring towns and cities had been taken and destroyed.  Hope was no more in evidence than the almost non-existent and much-disputed food, with no more than a few pitchers-full of water available from what had once been deep, brim-top-lapping, cisterns.  The army had gone out to fight indeed, but they left more in desperation than in expectation; some of the people had cheered them on their way, but the conviction was not there; prayers also had been offered, but with lips that trembled; and now those left inside the city walls waited in silence, with hearts unable to shake off a dark foreboding of what might soon befall them.

Eventually a runner was noticed in the distance by those keeping watch from the protecting walls.  He had been expected of course; but, as they caught clearer sight of him, they began to look at one another in disbelief: this runner is running strongly, running confidently; he is not pumping his arms in agonizing effort, he is raising them, waving them exultantly!   He is, surely, one who:

PUBLISHES PEACE, WHO BRINGS GOOD NEWS

At such a sight, first of all the watchmen on the towers, then, the citizens within the walls, in unconscious obedience to the prophetic words of exhortation:

Break forth together into singing  you waste places of Jerusalem;

They did indeed break out into a veritable delirium of thanksgiving and praise, while the priests – with now more firmly solemn voices -- began to intone:

            The LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem!!

Dear People of God, Jesus comes to us each year at Christmas like that runner, giving us  supreme cause for our brim-full joy: our God reigns over sin and death!  Whatever the past year may have witnessed and no matter how miserable our own record might have been over that period, Jesus comes to assure us that:

The Lord has bared His holy arm, and all the ends of the earth  shall see the salvation of our God. 

He comes, as we heard in the reading from the letter to the Hebrews, as One Who:

Is the radiance of the glory of God and the express image of His nature.

Therefore, seeing Him, we can be confident and sure that God is able and willing to reign for us, both in us and through us, if we -- for our part -- are humble and brave enough to look away from our sinful projects and ludicrous gods (money, power, pleasure etc.) and return faithfully to Him with hopeful sincerity and humble obedience in all our needs.

This Christmas rejoicing calls for much more than mere joy of heart, however; for Jesus, as our second reading told us, is:

God’s Son … heir of all things, through Whom also He created the world; Who upholds the universe by the word of His power;

to which St. John, in our Gospel, adds:

In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

Therefore, Jesus’ coming means not only passing joy for our heart, but fulfilment for the whole of our being, since He is most truly our Lord and Saviour: our Light to guide us, our Hope to sustain us, and our Life that leads to the eternal peace and joy of our heavenly home.   His coming manifests and indeed offers to us:

            His glory, as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth;

and, by sharing that glory with us, He wills to transform all who believe in Him from human beings subject to sin and death into children of God, as St. John again tells us:

To all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God.

Children reborn, that is, no longer from merely human stock through the will and/or passion of our parents before us, but born anew of water and the Holy Spirit: God’s Fatherly gift expressing to the full His infinite Goodness; and our free-will responding with appropriate  filial longing by the obedience of faith. 

And it is thus -- as children reborn of water and the Spirit -- that we can repeat:

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Dear People of God, our ability to catch passing glimpses of saving beauty and power, to understand snatches of divine truth concerning the glorious reality  of the Word-made-flesh, proves not only that He has become with us, as one of us,  in our Marian flesh and blood, it proves not only that He has deliberately chosen to be for us in all things, but it proves that we – though caked-over with all sorts of filth -- are, root-down, mysteriously like Him, because He is, has become, our Brother.  He has, most wondrously become one of us while remaining infinitely, savingly, above us; and that is our share in the glory which is His as the only begotten Son of the Father, as the letter to the Hebrews puts it:

As much superior to  angels, as we have, by adoption in Him, obtained a more excellent name than they.

And thus, being able to be reborn and renewed in Jesus, and able to share His glory which enables us to live through faith, by His Spirit, our Christmas joy and hope is crowned and completed by the Father Who now says (2 Corinthians 6:18):

I will be a Father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters.    

Once reborn in Jesus with the right to become children of God for all eternity, we have an endowment that our sincere endeavour to live a life of faith and filial love will bring to glorious maturity.  Each year Jesus comes to visit us, to see and encourage our progress, and that is why, during Advent, Mother Church cries out to us encouragingly:

            Behold, the Bridegroom is coming; go out to meet Him! (Matthew 25:6)

Every Christmas we do just that, we go out to meet the Lord with lighted lamps that shine with love, praise, and gratitude.  Ultimately, the time will arrive – and we are now already preparing, at the deepest level, for that time -- when the Lord will come for each and every one of us, calling us from this world as He did Lazarus from the tomb, to meet Himself.  Let us, therefore, dear People of God, welcome Him this day as we wish to embrace Him on that our final day, when earth’s fading and fitful light will be transformed into the prospect of eternal glory.       

4th Sunday of Advent Year C, 2024

 

(Micah 5:1-4a; Hebrews 10:5-10; Luke 1:39-44) 

It has been noted from early times in the Church that John the Baptist, while still in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, ‘leapt for joy’ at the proximity of Jesus being carried by Mary.  whereas Elizabeth responded to the presence of Mary.  Is that interpretation unquestionable however?  Let us study the words of Scripture.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Spirit, cried out in a loud voice and said, “Most blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.   And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

We are literally told: When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the infant leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth herself greeted and praised YOUNG Mary for honouring her with her presence for her own (Elizabeth’s) joyful giving-birth, acclaimed, thanks to local friends and relative’s having made a collective decision to a safe-guard this first child-birth of elderly Elizabeth by their own long, caring and calming, experience.  Elizabeth had learnt much from her husband’s experience as  ‘doubting Thomas’ and she immediately recognized and proclaimed the ultimate cause of Mary (a young, inexperienced relative)’s  presence: Blessed is she who believed;  a gift she and her husband Zechariah had only learned to embrace after much suffering.

Why did Elizabeth rejoice at the immediate presence of Mary herself rather than at the close proximity of the Child Mary was carrying, a Child which she acknowledges as being ‘her Lord’?

Listen again carefully to Elizabeth’s words of greeting to Mary; her first words – at the instigation of her own child leaping for joy at Mary’s proximity -- are words with reference to Mary as mother of the Child she was carrying:

Most blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.

Then she goes on to speak, as a senior, more experienced woman to a young virgin, as woman to woman, Israelite to Israelite:

Blessed are you WHO BELIEVED that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.  

Dear Chosen People of God, today Mother Church rejoices in, wonders at, and strives to understand and appreciate ever better, the heavenly Father’s wondrous gift to mankind of faith, believing-faith, in His beloved, only-begotten Son, in His chosen role as Redeemer of mankind.

The whole story of God’s dealings with His Chosen People started with God making a promise to Abraham that he and his wife Sarah would have a child despite their old age.  Abraham believed that promise of God, he believed you might say against all medical probabilities and despite the deep disappointments he and Sarah had suffered repeatedly over many years because of their childlessness, a state so alien to Israel’s traditions.  Abraham glorified God by putting more trust in His spoken promise than in his own years of bitter experience, and the no-doubt snide words of other Israelites not above commenting on their lack of offspring. 

St. Paul tells us that such trust in God:

            Was credited to his (Abraham’s) account as righteousness.  (Romans 4:3)

Thus, he was to be the father of all who believe, so that to them also righteousness may be credited.  (Romans 4:11)

He is our father in the sight of God, in Whom he believed, Who gives life to the dead and calls into being what did not exist. (Romans 4:17)

That is how God’s People came into being, through FAITH, and that is why Elizabeth, herself rejoicing in the fulfilment of a promise of God, greeted Mary personally by saying:

Blessed are you WHO BELIEVED that what was spoken to you by the Lord would be fulfilled.

St. Augustine puts it, artistically, very clearly when he writes that Mary conceived Jesus in her heart by faith before she conceived Him physically in her womb; words which are an echo of the teaching of Jesus Himself (Luke 11:27-28):

A woman from the crowd called out and said to Him, “Blessed is the womb that carried You and the breasts at which You nursed.”   He replied, “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and (believing) observe it.”

And so, dear People of God, we who follow St. Luke’s lead and join with Elizabeth in her greeting to Mary, are brought back to Jesus immediately and with deepened conviction, for Mary’s faith is centred on the miraculous Gift of God’s own Son which no human mind could then conceive without God’s most special grace … given to Joseph (You shall call His name  Jesus), and to Elizabeth thanks to the closeness of her spiritual relationship with Mary.  Give thanks, therefore, to God, dear Catholic people, for the wondrous beauty of His truth and the glorious gift of our faith.

And how much we need Mary’s example and Elizabeth’s spiritual awareness this Christmas time where all the celebrations seem to trumpet but one thing: GIFTS manifesting human GOOD-COMPLACENCY!!   And people say, “Isn’t that what Christmas is all about?”  In our modern western world God’s Gift to man is forgotten, ignored, even denied, while so many people publicly rejoice about their own giving-gifts-goodness, without the need of any God interfering in their lives.

However, Mary has another supremely important lesson for us to appreciate in this Advent time.

God the Father Himself, by His Spirit, made Mary of Nazareth one with Jesus her Son through faith, love, and body-and-blood physicality; in no way are they to be separated. Mary is now living eternally in heaven for the glory of God, and her prayerful influence there for us on earth is totally for the glory of her dear, dear, Son in the hearts of all men, so that those well-known words of Jesus:

            What God has joined together, let no man separate

are most important and significant for our considerations today.

In Luke’s story of the Visitation of Our Lady, Mary is shown as a figure, a foreshadowing, of the Church:  Mary is, by Jesus’ EXPLICIT gift, our heavenly mother; the Church is our spiritual mother on earth.  As Mary gave birth to Jesus, the Church gives birth to disciples of Jesus who are born from her proclamation of His Good News or by birth from her womb -- the baptismal font -- by the power of the Holy Spirit bequeathed to her by Jesus. Mary is praised in Scripture as ‘she who believed that what was spoken to her by the Lord would be fulfilled’ while Mother Church ‘unfailingly adheres to the faith … delivered once for all to the saints.     We have to recognize this mystery of the real oneness between Jesus and Mary, and also the spiritual oneness between Mary and Mother Church; and we should learn from St. Luke to reverence the Church as Elizabeth reverenced Mary; it is only the devil who works to separate what God has joined.

Jesus has promised to be with His Church to the end of time; He has given His Holy Spirit in fullness to His Church, to guide her into all truth.  When His disciples gather together as Church, Jesus is infallibly in their midst; and He has promised that He will defend her against the Devil’s attempts to destroy her.   As we heard in the second reading that:

For this reason, when He came into the world, He said: “Sacrifice and offering You did not desire, but a body You prepared for Me; holocausts and sin offerings You took no delight in.  Then I said, ‘As is written of Me in the scroll, Behold, I come to do Your will, O God.’”

The Son of God took a human body from Mary in order to do His Father’s will on earth for our salvation; so, now in heaven seated at the right hand of the Father, He still uses His body to continue His Father’s work: not the glorified fleshly body -- which is, as I have said, at His Father’s side in heavenly glory -- but His sacramental Body and Blood, in the mystical Body of Mother Church, of which He is the Head.

Mother Church is greater than any individual, even greater than Mary who is a member of the Church, and as such is of the Church, in the Church, not above her.  And so, we must reverence Mother Church given to us for our salvation by the Lord Who is her Master and ours.  He uses His Church, our earthly Christian-and-Catholic Mother, to guide us and bless us; and He never allows the inherent human weakness of her individual members to betray His divine Truth committed to her for protection and proclamation for the salvation of mankind.

People of God learn from Elizabeth; she was, as the Gospel tells us, ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’ and the Holy Spirit led her to cry out:

And how does this happen to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  

Reverence and love, honour and delight in, Mary, now Queen of Heaven but ever our deeply-concerned Mother and multi-occasional (!) visitant; and in the same spirit pray and stand up for, trust in, Mother Church; not because of her earthly pomp, prestige or influence, but because she is the instrument Christ wills to use for our salvation and God’s greater glory; she is His Mystical Body, He is her Head, and His Spirit is her very life. Such is the purpose of God, dear friends in Christ, that, as loving and obedient children of her He has chosen to serve His purposes of salvation, His Spirit will fill our lives and form us ever more and more into the likeness of Him Who is to come, our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, Who is our present hope and will be our future reward.

3rd Sunday of Advent Year C, 2024

 

(Zephania 3:14-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Saint Luke 3:10-18) 

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Jesus, here are three beautiful quotations taken from each of our three readings today:

Sing aloud, O daughter of Sion, shout O Israel!  Rejoice and exult with all your heart O daughter of Jerusalem! …. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst … a mighty One Who will save; HE WILL REJOICE OVER YOU WITH GLADNESS, He will quiet you by His love; HE WILL EXULT OVER YOU with loud singing … you will no longer suffer reproach. (Zephaniah)

Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say, rejoice … do not be anxious over anything … and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.  (Philippians)

I baptize you with water, but He Who is mightier than I is coming, … He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.   (St. Luke)

Thanks to those readings we have an easily forgotten truth thrust to the forefront of our minds today: namely, that the loving faith and obedience of those of His children at Holy Mass today – that is you, dear People of God whom God the Father first directed to Jesus -- and your ‘quiet’ trust and confidence in His own fatherly love for you, is so very pleasing to God, the Father of us all that the prophet Zephania did not hesitate to describe it with words, as it were straining at the leash, to help us to understand them:

          HE WILL REJOICE OVER YOU WITH GLADNESS,

          HE WILL EXULT OVER YOU WITH LOUD SINGING.

Can one speak of God like that?  Isn’t that too human a way of speaking??

Zephania did not know about the HOLY TRINITY, he only knew of the God of Israel, but didn’t he express a most amazing fulness of divine rejoicing?

Rejoice and exult with all your heart O daughter of Jerusalem!  The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst!

There he speaks of the Father; Jesus was not appreciated by His Jewish brethren!

A mighty One Who will save; HE WILL REJOICE OVER YOU WITH GLADNESS, He will quiet you by His love;

Now, those words do express Jesus’ love for His people.

Surely there we hear something of the Most Holy Spirit delighting, transporting, the awareness and majestic humility of God the Father?

Dear People of God, you who are today spiritually offering the crucified Jesus to the heavenly Father, thanks to the Holy Spirit guiding your heart and mind in sympathy with your sacrificing priest at the altar … you who are thereby fulfilling your Lord-and-Saviour’s dearest wish, and are also inviting the Holy Spirit’s most expressive joy to resonate within your own hearts … you dearly beloved Catholic Christians are -- in this sacred hour -- giving, causing, such joy for your heavenly Father, that Zephaniah’s words, wondrous though they are, are by no means enough.

That spiritual outpouring of Zephaniah needs to be expressed in Apostolic and Catholic fulness and truth by our other two readings from St. Paul:

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus;

and then from St. Luke quoting most appropriately St. John the Baptist concerning JESUS:

          HE will baptize you with the HOLY SPIRIT and fire.

Jesus always knew that His service was pleasing to His Father and that gave Him insuperable strength and an unbreakable resolve in seeking to do His Father’s will at all times for our salvation.  And a certain measure of that confidence and joy of belonging to, and being beloved of God in Jesus, should encourage and embolden each of you here in your relationship with the Father Who has a specific purpose for your uniquely  individual life as a child of His, even IN THIS WORLD OF DARKNESS.

Dear Catholic and Christian People of God, ‘rejoice in the Lord always’ and always endeavour to make His love the ultimate joy and delight of your life for Jesus.