Palm Sunday (Year A) 2014

PALM SUNDAY (A)  

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14 – 27:66)

In Matthew’s presentation of the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ we heard some words that are not to be found in the other Gospel accounts:  

Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.   Do you think that I cannot call upon My Father and He will not provide Me at this moment with more than twelve legions of angels?  But then how would the Scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must come to pass in this way?” 

Those words show us that Jesus lived His life, as St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:3) puts it, ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’:

I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that He was buried; that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

Jesus Himself would seem to have confirmed this when, after His Resurrection, He appeared to His disciples on the way to Emmaus and said:

Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them what referred to Him in all the Scriptures. (Luke 24:25-27)

Therefore, Jesus can be said to have lived His life ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’; but what does, what should, such a statement mean for men and women of today?

It can all too easily be understood as saying that Jesus looked to the Scriptures to find out what was planned in advance for Him, to discover actions for His obedience to bring to fulfilment ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’.  However, it is noticeable that St. John never uses the phrase ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’, or even the word ‘Scriptures’, in such a way as to give the impression that Jesus learned in authoritative detail from the Scriptures how He should live His life.  On the contrary, indeed, John quotes a saying of Jesus to the Jews that we do not find elsewhere, a saying that would seem to warn us against any such misunderstanding of the Scriptures; for speaking to His Jewish critics He declared:

You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf;  (John 5:39)

before shortly going on to say:

Just as the Father … gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever He wishes;  (John 5:21)

The Scriptures testify to the God of salvation, they guide those who meditate on them to that God; but the reality of eternal life is exclusively the Gift of God, the Gift of Jesus, Who have that life in themselves; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God, are Lord of Life and of the Scriptures.

John himself therefore prefers to express the truth contained in those words ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’ by emphasizing Jesus’ constant communion with and perfect understanding of His Father:

My food is to do the will of the One Who sent Me, and to finish His work; I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the One Who sent Me; (John 4:34, 6:38)

The God and Father Who sent His Son as man on earth had prepared Israel through the Scriptures and inspired prophets for over 2000 years to receive Him: to become first of all a fitting ‘seed-bed’ where the Son could strike root, so to speak, and also to become a Chosen People able to recognize, appreciate, and respond with grateful love to Him when ultimately He came among them. The whole purpose of the Jewish Scriptures was, therefore, to prepare for and lead to Israel’s promised Messiah, the Son of God and Saviour of mankind; and those Scriptures continue to validly serve that same purpose today. 

As for Jesus Himself, however, He did not need to learn how to live His life from the Scriptures -- inspired indeed -- but received, conceived, and proclaimed by men, for men.  They did, of course, give Jesus light, comfort, and strength, as He grew to manhood; and as mature man He delighted in them as a revelation of His Father’s lovingly providential preparation for His advent.  But for His own life’s ultimate guidance and fulfilment, Jesus was in constant Personal, prayerful, communion with His Father:

 I am not alone, I am with the Father Who sent Me.

 When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on My own, but I say only what the Father taught Me.

The One who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to Him.”     (John 8:16, 28–29) 

The Spirit of God -- given provisionally and proleptically to Israel in and through her Scriptures and her prophets -- is now given, in the name of Jesus, Personally and in supreme fullness, to Mother Church, and through her offered to all the faithful by her proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel and bestowal of Jesus’ baptism, as by her celebration of the Eucharist and all the other sacraments of the glorified Jesus.

Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats Me will live because of Me. (‎John 6:57)

And St. John urges us, People of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit to recognize, appreciate, and welcome in the Scriptures a truly Personal aspect: a call from the Father Who wills to communicate Personally with His children in Jesus.  We should not merely ‘scrutinize’ the Scriptures for stark facts and objective information, but meditate on, and study, them for the teaching they contain.  Yet more, however, and indeed preferentially, we should use those Scriptures as an inspiration and invitation to ever deeper understanding of and communion with the God Who in His great goodness wants to hear our personal response to His invitation and sacrificial commitment to us His children, called in Jesus, through the Spirit.

Moreover, St. John seems to be telling us that Jesus did indeed live His life in accordance with the Scriptures, but God’s purpose for us can only be meaningfully recognized, truly appreciated, and allowed to grow and fully develop in us, when we understand the Scriptures, both Old and New, ‘in accordance with Jesus in the bosom of His Father.’

Dear People of God, we are on the threshold of a week’s celebration of Jesus’ love for us in the name of His Father and the power of their Holy Spirit: love the Scriptures that tell us what He did and suffered for our sake, and will explain the eternal purpose and the sublime meaning of those sufferings.  Above all, however, use the Scriptures for personal communion with your God and Saviour; allow them to move, to inspire, you to love in return -- with fitting understanding and total personal commitment -- the Father Who is calling you through those Scriptures; the Saviour Who is goes before you as Shepherd and Saviour; the Gift Who -- as your intimate strength, counsellor and comforter -- wills to bring you to eternal fulfilment in your human identity and in your Christian vocation as a true and well-loved child of God.

Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A) 2014

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

(Ezekiel 37:12-14; St. Paul to the Romans 8:8-11; St. John’s Gospel 11:1-45)

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Today’s Gospel, dear People of God, is both dramatic and deeply consoling, revealing Jesus to us in the awesomeness of His divine power and the tenderness of His compassionate humanity, and also -- most wonderfully -- in the ineffable beauty of His Personal commitment to and communion with His heavenly Father.   That St. John was well aware of all this is shown by the fact that the raising of Lazarus is the last of Jesus’ miracles in his Gospel and, as such, is of supreme significance in itself and worthy of our closest attention. 

First of all we should note that the intention of Jesus to establish, confirm, and fulfil faith is paramount in all aspects of the Gospel account:

Jesus said to (His disciples) clearly, “Lazarus has died, and I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”

Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Martha said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that You are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world.”

Jesus raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.  I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.”

Six times Jesus uses or calls forth the word ‘believe’ in our short Gospel passage, before St. John himself ultimately tells us:

Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what He had done began to believe in Him.

All is indeed directed towards faith, first of all in Jesus’ chosen disciples upon whom and through whom He will build His future Church, and then, in those very dear friends of His, Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus, whose home in the village of Bethany was ever open to Him and, when needed, served as a place of refuge for Him and a blessing for them; as when, for example, after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He left the city, its fickle crowds, and the ever more insistent criticisms and threatening plots of the Pharisees and Temple authorities:

“Do you hear what they are saying?”  Jesus answered them, “Yes; and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings you have brought forth praise’?”   And leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany, and there He spent the night.   (Matthew 21:16-17)

All is directed towards faith in the Person of Jesus, here revealing Himself in the full beauty of His humanity and in the divine majesty of the miracle He was about to perform for His friends: a miracle which would perfectly foreshadow His decisive victory over Satan in the cosmic conflict even now raging around Him and threatening an imminent climax – the supreme and totally conclusive climax indeed, though not yet the ultimate confrontation -- in the holy city of Jerusalem, so near and dear, yet become so threatening and unworthy.

Jesus reveals not just the reality of His human nature, but, as I said, its beauty and perfection in the profound depth of His fellow-feeling and understanding, and the humble tenderness of His sensitivity and compassion:

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at His feet and said to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”   When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping … He (Himself) wept.

And this He did in no foppish manner, for in line with the Vulgate translation we learn that when He saw their weeping:

 Jesus became perturbed -- not just upset, not merely distressed, but with a certain mixture of anger and indignation -- and deeply troubled.

It was in pursuance of such indignation that He asked to be shown the place  where Lazarus had been placed that there He might make manifest His determination to overthrow the abusive power of Satan in the human lives of all who would believe in Him and learn to walk in His ways.

So Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.  Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to Him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”   Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”    So they took away the stone. 

It is not easy to assess just what Martha believed about Jesus; as you have seen she did most certainly believe in Him, but somehow she seems always to have had too much to do, too much to say, to keep in mind, for such belief to slow her down, let alone ‘stop her in her tracks’.   Perhaps her relationship with Jesus was one of religious admiration befitting a traditional prophet figure or miracle worker, with perhaps a touch of personal ‘affection’; a loosely-bound or somewhat independent relationship, rather than a fully humble self-demission before One Who was awesome not only in His power but most of all in the mystery of His Person; a humbling akin to the commitment of discipleship and conducive to an instinctive and sympathetic understanding and appreciation, and perhaps even to worship.  Martha would do anything for Jesus, but she was not one to sit down and listen intently at the feet of Jesus; and anyhow, everybody knew that only the God of Israel could give bring the dead back to life.   Thus, she most probably expressed the thoughts of all the visiting Jews present when she exclaimed, ‘Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.’

To that Jesus replied, somewhat reprovingly indeed, but again and above all, mysteriously:

           

 Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?  

Martha's ‘belief’ needed to be both deepened and purified; for the moment, though, her undoubted commitment would allow her to see something of that glory as she managed to humble herself and patiently look to, and wait for, Jesus.

Saint Paul gives us a clue to the nature of that glory of God she was about to witness when he wrote to his converts at Corinth:

God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of (Jesus the) Christ.  (2 Corinthians 4:6)

And indeed, what beauty, what glory, was now to be seen on the face of Jesus as He:

Raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.  I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

Jesus had undoubtedly spoken to Martha of the glory to be made manifest by the life-giving, life-restoring, miracle He was now about to perform when:

He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.”  

Nevertheless, we are surely not erring if, in this case, we allow ourselves to think that the glory visible on Jesus’ up-turned face and which we can still find reflected  in His prayer, the glory expressive of the wondrous beauty of Jesus’ total oneness with and undying presence to His Father; the glory of His absolute selflessness, seeking not His own will, His own renown, but that of His Father, as expressed in those words, that they may believe that You sent Me;  the glory of His unconditional obedience to and love for His Father; all this is, surely, even yet more glorious than the truly divine power so splendidly manifested when Lazarus came out -- still wearing all his burial bands -- from the tomb where he had lain for four days.  And again, dear friends, notice that, as we began so here at the end, all is entered upon and carried through to fulfilment, for love of His Father and of us: That they may believe. 

‘Believe’ what?  Jesus had told His disciples on His first hearing of Lazarus’ death:

I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.

That is further clarified when, standing before the tomb of Lazarus and surrounded by the accompanying crowd, Jesus prayed:

Father, I thank You for hearing Me … because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

Belief in Jesus as the One sent by the Father; that is the kernel of our faith in, and the true glory of, the Son of Man.  He is God the Son become flesh of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit; and His glory on earth lies in the self-sacrificing love of His proclamation and manifestation of the ultimate Glory of the eternal God:  the sublime oneness and goodness of the most Holy Trinity, Father and Son -- begetting and begotten -- in the unity of the Most Holy Spirit of Truth and Love.  

Dear People of God, we are most surely meant to draw strength for our faith, consolation, comfort and joy, for our heart, as we ponder today’s readings.  For, in the difficulties and griefs, in the temptations and trials, of living and dying, the most important question we will all have to answer sometime is, ‘Do you trust in My love, do you believe in My power, to save you?’   And if in such a moment of crisis we can say with Martha, ‘Yes Lord, I believe’; if indeed, with Mary, we can trustfully allow any stone partially blocking the ready entrance to our heart to be fully rolled away and thus -- despite any fear, great or small, of what might be hidden there -- leaving the way to our innermost being opened up wide to the saving power and healing love of Jesus, then, undoubtedly, we shall, as Jesus promised, see the glory of God.

           

           

           

           

4th Sunday of Lent Year A 2014

 4^th. Sunday of Lent (A)

(1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41)

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, our Gospel reading today tells of a prophetic miracle performed by Our Lord warning the Jewish establishment that their tenancy of God’s vineyard was in danger of being revoked and transferred to others; that God was determined to have fruit from His planting even though it meant the creation of a new People of God.

In the first reading you heard how the Lord made a surprising choice when He set about replacing Saul as King in Israel and shepherd of God’s People.  He chose no imposing figure such as Saul himself, who had been a man of outstanding physique; instead He told Samuel to anoint a mere boy, the youngest in his family, with no public standing or experience, and thought to be fit only to look after his father’s sheep. 

In the same vein, in our second reading St. Paul told the Ephesians:

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.

Paul’s converts at Ephesus were mainly Gentiles, and we too are of Gentile origin.  As such we are the very ones Jesus was foreshadowing as God’s surprising choice to become members of the new People of God, when, in our Gospel episode, His attention was drawn to a man born blind:

As Jesus passed by, He saw a man blind from birth and His disciples asked Him, ‘Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

 

Now, there was nothing very unusual about a blind beggar in Jesus’ time, so why should this one have drawn particular notice?  The disciples had apparently been talking among themselves about the man; and it would seem that at least one of them knew him, because they were discussing the fact that the man had been born blind and they were expressing opinions as to why that should be.  Being unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion they turned to Jesus and said:

Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Jesus was always alert for and responsive to the least indication that His Father was at work,

Though I sit in (am surrounded by) darkness, the Lord is my Light (Micah 7:8); 

and here He immediately recognized that His Father was behind both the blind man’s presence and the disciples’ animated discussion among themselves and questioning of Himself.  He answered them:

Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.

Notice that answer, People of God: Jesus tells his disciples, ‘Whether this man or his parents sinned is not the point, this has happened in order that I should, in and through this man, do the work, and make known the will, of My Father.’

            Though surrounded by darkness, the Lord is my Light 

Jesus then spat on the dusty ground and made a paste.  Such application and use of spittle on the Sabbath was forbidden by the Law … all the better, indeed, for Jesus’ purposes because that made His Jewish adversaries take note (such a simple but supremely wise awareness and use of human psychology!) … for, having been alerted by that legal fault, some of them would then have slowly  gone on to recognize that something of supreme significance for the Jewish leaders and people was taking place before their eyes:  God’s original act of creation was being mirrored here (!!) according to Genesis 2:7: 

The Lord God formed the man out of the dust of the ground.

Now, nothing is ‘formed’ out of dust that is dry!!

In our Gospel passage, Jesus -- the Word of God through Whom all things were made -- being about to renew a man’s life, symbolically foreshadows the creation of a new People of God from those Gentiles spiritually blind from birth:

He answered, ‘While I am in the world, I am the light of the world.’   When He had said this, He spat on the ground and made clay with the saliva, and smeared the clay on his eyes.  

Having utilized dust of the earth and His own saliva to coat the eyes of the man born blind, only the bringing of those eyes to life was needed for the symbolic re-creation; and in order to do that, Jesus performed another such action -- like Elisha of old with Naaman the Syrian -- by sending the man off with the words:

"Go wash in the Pool of Siloam" (which means Sent).  So he went and washed, and came back able to see. 

Now, recall that, at the last Supper Jesus would say to the Apostles:

            You are clean because of the word I have spoken to you. (John.15:3)

Here, the blind man heard the words Jesus had spoken to him and, having obediently washed his eyes in the Pool of Siloam, he was able to see again; moreover, on seeing again he would ultimately come to believe in and confess Jesus as His Saviour.  All this symbolized the new People of God to come, who, being washed in the waters of baptism and confessing their faith in Jesus, would thereby receive the Gift of God, the Holy Spirit, the breath of divine Life:

Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. (John 3:5)

The Pharisees and Temple authorities, of course, heard of this event, indeed Jesus intended they should; some no doubt saw what He did, or were told of it by friends, because He wanted those who were celebrated because of their supposedly superior spiritual awareness to learn from an occurrence where not only the man and the miracle, but also the time and the place, were all of His Father’s choosing:

It was a Sabbath when Jesus made the clay and opened his eyes;

 

and Jesus, as Lord of the Sabbath, was at hand to bring about the fulfilment of the Sabbath. 

However, their party’s interpretation of the Law held the majority of these Pharisees firmly bound to fixed and unbending legal trivialities:

Some of the Pharisees said, "This Man is not from God, because He does not keep the Sabbath." Others said, "How can a sinful man do such signs?" And there was a division among them.

And so, blind in their opposition to Jesus and after much arguing and discussion, they rejected the man whom Jesus had healed:

They said to the blind man, "What did He do to you?  How did He open your eyes?"  He answered them, "I told you already, and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become His disciples too?" They ridiculed him and said, "You are that Man’s disciple; we are disciples of Moses!  We know that God spoke to Moses; but we do not know where this One is from."  The man answered and said to them, “If this Man were not from God, He would not be able to do anything."  They answered and said to him, "You were born totally in sin, and are you trying to teach us?" Then they threw him out. 

Being thrown out of the synagogue was extreme punishment; as St. Paul, having himself been cut off from all that he had held dear in the past, explained:

I consider everything as a loss for the supreme good of knowing Christ  Jesus my Lord.   For His sake I have accepted the loss of all things, and I consider them so much rubbish, that I may gain Christ.  (Philippians 3:8)

This was as Jesus Himself had once foretold:

If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple. (Luke 14:26)

The man whose eyes had been dead and were now open and alive had been rejected because of Jesus, and so Jesus sought him out in his isolation.  The actions Jesus had performed on the man had, as I said, prefigured God’s creation of a new People of God, and now the man himself was ready to have his whole being -- not just his eyes -- made alive; and so we read:

When Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, He found him and said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”  He answered and said, “Who is He, sir, that I may believe in Him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen Him and the One speaking with you is He.”   He said, “I do believe, Lord,” and he worshiped Him.  Then Jesus said, “I came into this world for judgment, so that those who do not see might see, and those who do see might become blind.” 

People of God, wonder at the sublime wisdom of our God; admire Jesus the perfect and beloved Son, so eager and ready to recognize, follow, and fulfil His Father’s will!  And try to appreciate ever more deeply that fact that Jesus our Lord and Saviour has sought out each one of us and joined us to Himself by giving the light of faith to eyes perhaps previously blinded by ignorance and the glittering allurements of the world, and by infusing living and loving hope into souls previously weighed down by cares and sin!  But I would have you also recognize the warning with which our reading from St. Paul closed:

You were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light, for light produces every kind of goodness and righteousness and truth.  Try to learn what is pleasing to the Lord.   Take no part in the fruitless works of darkness; rather expose them, for it is shameful even to mention the things done by them in secret.

We know of such shameful deeds going on all around us and we know that we must take care to have no part in them.  However, we should realize that such avoidance of sin in no way exceeds the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees, which is the minimum required by Jesus of His disciples.  Israel and Judah had been sent into exile in the past because the people -- as a whole -- had ‘given up’ on the God of their fathers … by indifference and ignorance allowing themselves to do what came naturally, following the example of the surrounding nations.  Today, the same is happening in Mother Church with so many nominal Catholics slackening the reins of their obedience and commitment, doing what unbelievers do, while trying to comfort and convince themselves by words such as: ‘it doesn’t seem to matter; does God see?’

On their return from the Babylonian exile back to the Land of Judah certain of those Jewish erstwhile deportees had resolved to serve God and His covenant more faithfully, with the result that their descendants -- the Pharisees and Scribes -- were very devout and deeply committed.  However, over time their very religiosity became a stumbling block: they came to love themselves more than God by trusting in their own meticulous observances rather than hoping in His merciful goodness.

People of God, we have, in the Church today, modern versions of such failings: from scholars this time, not Scribes, from enthusiasts not Pharisees; but all, showing – in their lack of humility before God and the Church – the same failings as their Old Testament forerunners.  However, were it not for the fact that there are today -- as in Old Testament times -- far too many indifferent and unconcerned members of the People of God, the vanity of some relatively few scholars and the blatant excesses of emotional enthusiasts would have very limited effect on Mother Church as a whole.   In the present situation of Mother Church, therefore, we should appreciate that the faith and faithfulness of each and every individual is of the utmost importance.  Before God, we matter; each of us individually, for we have been personally drawn to Jesus by the Father, and each one of us is offered, in Jesus, a personal relationship with the Father by the Spirit.  That awareness should give us a renewed confidence in the goodness of our God and guide, and also a deeper sense of individual pride in, and personal concern for, the good name and well-being of Mother Church.  And that, dear People of God, is what St. Paul had in mind when he told his Ephesian community:

Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will give you light.   

 Watch carefully then how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise, making the most of the opportunity, because the days are evil.   Therefore, do not continue in ignorance, but try to understand what is the will of the Lord; you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light.