4th Sunday of Lent (Year C) 2013

      4^th Sunday of Lent (C)                                  

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

It is indeed degrading for a human being to be held in slavery; and, just as someone who has long been under the influence of drugs cannot endure being deprived of their addiction, likewise, those who have been slaves for a long period of time can become so degraded that they are no longer able to conceive of anything more desirable than their daily quota of food and rest.  When freedom has been long denied, victims can find its very idea meaningless and its prospect unattractive and even frightening.  

It had been like that with Israel in Egypt.  During many -- seemingly endless -- years of exhausting labour under the ever-present threat of beatings, the short nights at home with the daily quota of Egyptian food had been the sole and supremely consoling opportunity to experience human peace and bodily rest; the partial satisfaction of their hunger together with a few snatched hours of sleep and family communion was the only joy they could imagine and to which they could aspire.  Long slavery meant that they found the thought of freedom decidedly un-attractive when the struggle to attain it might involve unknown dangers and temporary loss of regular food; and during the trials of their desert journey they were, at times, much tempted to return to captivity once again for its regular supply of food: in comparison with such relative security what did the labour and degradation of slavery matter?  Only after years of guiding, supporting, strengthening, teaching and blessing by God on their way through the desert, did the people of Israel learn to appreciate their new found freedom and recognize their own human dignity once more; only at the end of that long journey from the shackles of Egypt to the borders of the Promised Land, was the Lord able to say to Joshua, the leader of Israel:

Today I have removed the reproach of Egypt from you. 

A similar situation is to be found in our modern society when life lived in this world and for this world’s pleasures and comforts is compared with the life offered us in Christ, which is lived indeed in this world but for the kingdom of heaven.  As St. Paul told us:

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, who has reconciled us to himself through Christ and given us the ministry of reconciliation.

Being reconciled to God means that we become -- in Jesus -- children of God, called to heavenly, 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 and for the world’s pleasures cannot readily imagine the freedom of the children of God which Christ is offering; and the joy, hope, and peace of those called to become, as Paul said, the goodness of God, seems totally unreal.

 

There are also others who started as Catholics and Christians, in some measure,  and then went on to imitate the younger son in the Gospel parable and left their paternal home, the faith of their fathers, in order to taste the forbidden fruit of independence and self-sufficiency, before succumbing, all too often, to the pride and the abandonment, the pleasures and passions, of the world around.  Unappreciative of the blessings that had been their inheritance, they had set out to break what they felt were chains of conformity and to challenge what they regarded as unsubstantial taboos; imagining indulgence to be without weariness or revulsion, they dreamt of total self-satisfaction without any qualms of conscience; and having aspired to free love, they found relationships of convenience to be all that they were able to either give or receive.  As we heard in the parable:

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.   When, however, he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. 

However, our main interest is centred today, ‘Laetare Sunday’ (literally, ‘Rejoice Sunday’), not so much on the younger as on the elder son, the one who remained faithful to his father.  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 a somewhat similar office of reconciliation to fulfil with regard to his younger brother, and he seems to have largely failed in his duty; therefore, perhaps we can learn something from his mistakes that will be of help to us, and through us, also 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.  This does not seem to have happened so perhaps the elder brother had been somewhat remiss in letting the younger one go off with his inheritance too easily; and this appreciation seems to be backed up by the fact that we are told that he was none too pleased when his brother returned home. 

Now something of that sort can happen among us.  Far too often we -- as Catholics and Christians -- do not speak, as we should, about the beauty, the worth, the blessings, and, above all, of the joy of the Faith, as we have both learnt and experienced it in Mother Church and in our daily lives.  For we are all called, each in his or her own degree, to live, like Paul, as ambassadors of Christ, ambassadors through whom God makes His appeal to those who do not yet know or appreciate Him.  St. Peter, writing his first letter to confirm recent converts in their new-found faith said:

Beloved, I urge you as aliens and sojourners to keep away from worldly desires that wage war against the soul.  Maintain good conduct among the Gentiles, so that if they speak of you as evil doers, they may observe your good works, and glorify God on the day of visitation. (1 Peter 2:11-12)

The elder brother -- representing perhaps the Pharisees and scribes to whom in Jesus’ parable was addressed -- seems to have given good example to his younger brother in so far as he was always obedient and respectful to their father, as he himself reminded his father:

These many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time.

 

But that sort of example was not enough to influence his younger brother despite their years together at home, nor was it enough to help the older brother himself rise to the occasion and give positive help when his brother began thinking of leaving home with his patrimony; for 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.  The elder son had shown too little personal appreciation of, and love for, his father to be able to influence his brother’s youthful wilfulness and lust; and he was, consequently, a this moment of deep tension on his return, quite unprepared and perhaps unable to appreciate and respond to any words of his father: 

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 this son of yours ...

His ingrained relationship of objective obedience to, as distinct from loving reverence for and fellowship with, his father, showed itself immediately in those passionate words against his brother’s behaviour: giving expression not only to indignation against his brother but also, perhaps, to his own self-love in recrimination with his father.  Was there such a complicating aspect to the Pharisees’ rigidity and self-righteousness not only in the face of sinners, but, indeed also in their relations with God Himself?

The father -- surely not a reference to God the Father Himself, but a figure fit to encourage the Pharisees and scribes to reconsider their relations with Him -- made some effort to draw his first-born to himself with the words:

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

Notice, however, that the father does not attempt to draw the elder son into an intimate relationship of shared responsibility, as would have been the case had he said ‘my son’ as well as,’ your brother’.

We must celebrate and rejoice because your brother and my son was dead and has come to life again.

This was because the younger son had never been dead to his father whose love for him kept him ever dear; he had, however, become dead to the elder son, who had heard of and utterly condemned him along with his riotous and sinful behaviour.  The result was that a gulf looms between the father and his elder son who, though first-born and heir – almost inevitably, after living years at an impersonal distance from his father and cocooning himself round with pride and self-satisfaction, -- misinterprets his father’s beautiful but ultimately insufficient words:

We must celebrate and rejoice because your brother was dead and has come to life again;

and finds himself able to think that his father is wrongly blaming him for what has happened in the family.

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 their 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.  With a modicum of patience and understanding they might admit that, though faulty, such obedience could be seen as both reasonable and wise; but, finding it unattractive, they prefer to totally ignore it.   Nevertheless, they do at times, deep down, long to know the strength and peace, to experience the joy and freedom, of a total commitment to  God’s  transcending love; and when a Christian gives such witness to Jesus and the Faith, scoffers can be both impressed and inspired: some, maybe, to nothing more than their present confusion, but others, to their ultimate conversion. 

Failure to delight in the Lord is not simply due to one 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; but oozes up and flows forth from the habit of faithfully remembering, deeply appreciating, and gratefully acknowledging one’s blessings; and such an attitude is normal enough and indeed almost instinctive.   For example, the rich man is perennially pictured as counting his coins, admiring his jewels, adding to his collection; we have had popular songs telling us to ‘Count your blessings one by one’.  In fact, it can be truthfully said that no good -- least of all a great good -- can be suitably appreciated apart from the humanly instinctive practice of recalling and rejoicing over what has been gained or granted.  And the Psalmist applies this  fact to our worship of God 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.  (Psalm 105:3-5)

People of God, I suggest to you, on this ‘Laetare Sunday’, dedicated to spiritual rejoicing, that we would do much to avoid repeating the elder son’s failure, if we learned to truly rejoice in our faith.  By that I mean that we 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, that we 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? 

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 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! 

                                                

Third Sunday of Lent (Year C) 2013

 3^rd. Sunday of Lent, (C)

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

Our Lord’s words today are difficult to understand:

Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way that they were greater sinners than all other Galileans?  By no means!  But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did!  Or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than everyone else who lived in Jerusalem?  By no means!  But I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did.

The attitude of Jesus’ contemporaries to the tragic deaths of those Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with that of the sacrifices they were offering or of those by chance killed by the collapse of Siloam tower was symptomatic of the Jewish people’s understanding of their calling as People of God.  They had come to regard themselves as specially loved and chosen by God for their own material advantage and spiritual precedence over all Gentiles and pagans: if they kept God’s law literally, as closely and exactly as possible, they thought they could expect Him to benefit them – especially in their relations with surrounding nations – in all the circumstances of their normal lives.  They even came to the think that they could, if necessary, remind God of His duty, or even, through radicals such as the Siccarii, seek to force His hand, to come to their aid against their enemies and glorify His Name before them.  They had begun first of all to forget, then they went on to overlook, before ultimately denying, the fact that they were specially chosen by God expressly to serve as His instrument for the spiritual conversion of the Gentiles, who might thus become one with Israel in the universal, and ultimately eternal, family of God’s adopted children.

We learn how very serious this was in Jesus’ eyes by the fact that He doubled on their original tragedy and emphasised His own words -- which were in no way pleasant hearing for His audience -- by repeating them exactly:

I tell you, if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did. 

As we know, there was no repentance by the Jewish body as a whole and they did perish at the hands of the Romans; their joy and crown -- Jerusalem the golden -- was raised to the ground from which they were banned and, as a people, they were scattered far and wide, at the best tolerated not welcomed wherever they went.

However, those words of Jesus are of perennial significance, no longer for the political situation of the Jewish nation, but for the spiritual awareness of the corporate body of Christians and the individual souls of all believers. 

Do you think because these Galileans who suffered in this way, or those eighteen people who were killed when the tower at Siloam fell on them,  were greater sinners than all other Galileans, than everyone else who lived (at that time) in Jerusalem?   

By no means I tell you, (and) if you do not repent, you will all perish as they did.

Therefore, those who perished were not greater sinners before the world.  For Jesus is not simply saying that they were not shown to be greater sinners by their unfortunate end, He is saying quite categorically and authoritatively that they were by no means greater sinners than all around.  Now that is of the utmost importance for modern attitudes among Catholics and Christians even today, because many, so very easily and quickly spring to the defense of their own flagging, failing, and lapsing Christian witness or Catholic observance by words such as, ‘I live as good a life as other people’, ‘I am certainly no worse than many others and better than a lot of them’.

After Jesus’ words today, that is no justification, defense, or excuse whatsoever! 

‘There would be no Catholics left if my failings are considered so bad’.   Perhaps, that might be in some measure true ... but precisely, the Jewish audience Jesus was addressing with the words:

if you do not repent, you will all perish 

did largely perish!   Jerusalem was flattened, millions died in the Jewish war with Rome, and the nation was scattered far and wide among the Gentiles and pagans.  That is one understanding of the word ‘perish’ ... there is also a spiritual meaning and application for it, perish before God.

And that other word ‘repent’ ... what does that really mean in this context?

As I said at the beginning, Our Lord’s words today are difficult to understand!

‘Repent’ means ‘change your mind, your attitude, turn from your evil ways back to looking for, serving, answering to, God above all’; it can be regarded as a condensation of those other (again very difficult to modern ears) words of Jesus:

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 the cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me.  Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for My sake will find it.  

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace but a sword. (Matthew 10:33, 37-39)

‘Repent’ can be accurately understood as the effort a disciple needs to make in order to understand, appreciate, and appropriately adopt into his own style of life, those and other like words of Jesus, where He demands first place and supreme love for God, and for Himself as Son sent by the Father, where He calls for love of neighbour and death to selfishness.

In the first ‘tragedy’ of the Galileans whose blood was mingled with that of their sacrifices we can see that even at worship, even at our Sunday Mass, impenitence is not excluded.  We are all called to Our Lord, to Holy Mass each Sunday as was Moses called in the first reading, Moses! Moses!  Note how Moses answered, Here I am Lord as he walked towards the burning bush:

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

Moses had been drawing close to God from curiosity:

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

God so urgently required ‘repentance’ that, as we are told:

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

We too should be present at Sunday Mass with a sincerely repentant attitude, wanting simply and solely to worship God: to learn of Him and the glory of His goodness, wisdom and beauty; to join in declaring (singing) His praises in the psalms and canticles; to seek His will, His way forward for us, as we hear the Scriptures read and the homily delivered; and, perhaps above all else, we should be most intent and committed in offering Jesus’ sacrifice with Jesus Himself through the ministry of the priest, most sincere and humble in joining our own sacrifice of self with that of Jesus to the Father, for the praise and glory of His most holy name.

Now it is eminently possible for some, even perhaps many, to leave Sunday Mass without really having participated in it at all, yet still regarding themselves as good as anyone, with no easy-to-see sins troubling their conscience: that is to be in a state calling forth those words of Jesus:

if you do not repent, you will all perish. 

Jesus does not demand perfection of us, He does, however, require humble aspiration and sincere endeavour to walk perseveringly in His footsteps. 

We know nothing explicit about those crushed by the collapsing tower of Siloam, but Saint Paul gave us advice adapted to our every-day living:

Do not desire evil things; do not grumble; and, whoever thinks he is standing secure, take care not to fall.  

Do you fear that all these dangers, all these warnings might make life burdensome and tiring for you?   Warnings are not against you, they are only to protect and help you, they are like the precious Blood of Jesus being poured out to:

            Cultivate and fertilize (our souls) that (they) may bear fruit for the future;

and the dangers only loom ahead because infinitely more wonderful blessings are already awaiting us in God’s great love and Providence:

I have come to rescue them and lead them into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Second Sunday of Lent 2013

Second  Sunday of Lent (C)

(Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; Philippians 3:20–4:1; Luke 9:28-36)

Today’s Gospel is replete with teaching about Jesus.  Notice first of all that: 

While Jesus was praying, His face changed in appearance, and His clothing became dazzling white.  And behold, two men were conversing with Him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of His exodus which He was going to accomplish in Jerusalem. 

The meaning is clear.  Moses the Lawgiver and Elijah the most charismatic figure among the OT prophets were speaking with Jesus about His imminent exodus, Passover, in Jerusalem; thereby telling us that the Law and the Prophets of Israel were indeed, at their deepest level and in accordance with the intention and purpose of their supreme Author, speaking of and preparing for Jesus.  We can  therefore, and indeed we always should, with humble confidence and deep gratitude, seek to learn from the foreshadowing of Jesus to be found in the writings of the Old Testament.

God spoke frequently to Moses from the cloud which accompanied Israel throughout her desert wanderings:

The Lord said to Moses, “Come up to Me on the mountain … and I will give you tablets of stone, and the law and commandments which I have written, that you may teach them.”  Moses went up into the mountain, and a cloud covered the mountain.  Now the glory of the Lord rested on Mount Sinai, and the cloud covered it six days. And on the seventh day He called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud.  The sight of the glory of the Lord was like a consuming fire on the top of the mountain in the eyes of the children of Israel.  So Moses went into the midst of the cloud and went up into the mountain.  And Moses was on the mountain forty days and forty nights.  (Exodus 24:12, 15-18)

In some such way Moses was taught by God throughout Israel’s journeying to the Promised Land.  Notice, however, that here in our Gospel reading, God the Father -- again speaking from the cloud -- told the disciples Peter, James and John:

            This is My chosen (beloved) Son.  Hear Him!

That would seem to imply that no longer would there be a voice speaking from the heavenly cloud to the new Israel, but that the words of Jesus Himself would be all that could be needed.  Indeed, the Father’s words would seem to proclaim Jesus as God, speaking for, on behalf of, and with the authority of, the Father Himself.

There is yet more, however.  Those final two words Hear Him contain and convey a command for all Christians, meaning ‘hear and obey’.  There, indeed, we have the first of all commandments for Christians, a command which Jesus Himself confirmed:

If you love Me, keep My commandments. (John 14:15)

However, those words of the Father convey much more than a mere commandment to hear and obey Jesus; there is also an invitation -- a most intimate invitation indeed -- to know Him in such a way as to love Him; love Him, that is, not simply according to our own measure but in obedience to, together with, and in imitation of, the Father Himself.  Although Jesus, for His own part, is most humble, being well-satisfied if we keep His commandments, which are, for Him, sufficient proof of our authentic love, in it’s initial stages at least; nevertheless, those words of the  Father, not only indicate the extent of His love for, and appreciation of, His Son -- ‘My beloved Son’ -- but also, surely, express His desire that those privileged to hear Him should also learn to love Him as the Father Himself loves Him.  Indeed, there is even an implication that the only true knowledge of Jesus is one which promotes such appreciation of Him, that calls for, sustains and nourishes, and ultimately demands supreme, all-consuming, love for Him:

            This is My chosen (beloved) Son. Hear Him! 

If we now turn our attention back to the first reading where:

Abram put his faith in the Lord, Who credited it to him as an act of righteousness;

that initial faith of childless Abram, soon to be named Abraham and destined to become the father of Isaac and Jacob needed, in the meantime, to be strengthened for his own imminent trials and also for those of all who would subsequently rejoice in his blessing:

The LORD said to Abram: ‘Know for certain that your descendants shall be aliens in a land not their own, where they shall be enslaved and oppressed for four hundred years.   But I will bring judgment on the nation they must serve, and in the end they will depart with great wealth.  You, however, shall join your forefathers in peace; you shall be buried at a contented old age.’  (Genesis 15:13-15)

Therefore, as an unforgettable support for such enduring faith in Abram himself and subsequently in Israel, Abram was given – as you heard -- a mysterious vision with a sublime promise.   Abram himself had had some part to play in that vision, for he had brought the animals called for by the Lord, then prepared and arranged their corpses in accordance with his native Chaldean covenantal prescriptions; and had then stayed beside them to protect their integrity as sacrifices until such time as the Lord God Himself had appeared, under the same fiery symbol He would later use again in the incidents of the burning bush with Moses, the column of fire guiding Israel through the desert of Sinai, and ultimately the tongues of fire descending on the disciples of Jesus at Pentecost.  

When the sun had set and it was dark, there appeared a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, which passed between those (sacrificial) pieces.

Such was the awesome background to the Lord’s words of covenantal sustenance for Abram’s faith: 

To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi of Egypt to the Great River, the Euphrates.

Abram -- subsequently named Abraham – lived St. Paul’s exhortation in our second reading to the utmost, stand(ing) firm in the Lord,  and thereby meriting the title of ‘our father in faith’.  Let us, therefore, keep our eyes firmly on him whose faith in God’s promise was so mysteriously confirmed by the Lord’s fiery self-manifestation -- as fire-pot for food and flaming torch for light -- passing between the orderly, sacrificial pieces of flesh set up by Abraham; for, would not Jesus Himself subsequently say to the Jews:

 imselfH

Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see My day; he saw it and was glad.  (John 8:56)

Let us keep our eyes even more firmly fixed on Mary, whose supreme faith in God’s promise was likewise tested and confirmed: initially by the awesome mystery of the Lord’s conception at the Incarnation, before being ultimately crowned when her heart was pierced by the sword as her dearest Son and sovereign Lord suffered His bloody Passion and Death on Calvary.

Blessed is she who believed that what the Lord had promised her would be fulfilled.

Yes we should closely observe and carefully imitate both Abraham and Mary, that  we ourselves may consider with delight and observe with love the supreme mystery of the Lord’s Passion, Death, and Resurrection likewise given us here at Mass for our enduring confirmation and constant growth in the faith we have received from God the  Father.  He it was Who first drew us to Jesus, and today He renews His choice by calling us once more this Sunday to hear His Son speaking clearly and surely to us in and through His Church; and to learn, by the Spirit – the hidden and abiding treasure of our Communion at Mass -- to share yet more in the Father’s own love for His beloved Son, our self-sacrificing Lord and Saviour. 

People of God, there is no faith without promises, there is no faith without mystery; and our Christian faith, in its ultimate awareness of and response to the totality of human nature and experience, expresses divine goodness through unimaginable -- yet supremely desirable and fulfilling, -- promises together with unfathomable -- yet most satisfying and credible -- mysteries.   There, indeed, lies an inescapable tension, but it is one designed not for our destruction but for the ever-continuing and harmonious development of all our human capabilities given us in the ‘image and likeness of God’.

Promises and mystery are not to the liking of modern secular society where tangible, controllable, and immediately profitable activities and experiences are sought at every level.  All too often, for such people, as St. Paul said in the second reading and as our daily experience tends to confirm ever more emphatically:

Their God is their stomach, their glory is in their shame.  Their minds are occupied with earthly things, and their end is destruction.

For us, however:

Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ.  He will change our lowly body to conform with His glorified body.

Therefore, my brothers and sisters whom I love and long for, my joy and my crown, stand firm in the Lord.