18th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Year A. 2014

18^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Isaiah 55:1-3; Romans 8:35, 37-39; Matthew 14:13-21)

Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy?  Heed Me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare. 

People of God, some of you will, I am sure, have known times when your were aware of being strangely unsatisfied, perhaps even feeling profoundly empty, despite having many comforts and interests of various kinds; and at such times, when you were lacking inside, all that was outside seemed to somehow make no difference.  

For many sufferers such occasions, experiences, of self-questioning, can be dealt with in only one way: they try to forget them, distract themselves by amusements and activities of all sorts, anything that will enable them to put those disturbing thoughts aside for a time until, hopefully left behind, they are forgotten altogether.  However, for people who believe that their life’s destiny is in God's hands, and its daily course a gift from His loving Providence, those moments of realized personal emptiness need to be understood, because God could be trying to teach them something by such feelings of personal dissatisfaction; which, if not understood and embraced, might leave them unable to follow God as closely as He would wish; nor could their happiness in Him ever become deeply rooted, for it would always be vulnerable to unexpected and unwelcome recurrences of that strange and deeply disturbing awareness of personal emptiness and possible futility.

If, however, you do begin to think along the lines suggested by the prophet Isaiah:

Why spend your money for what is not bread, your wages for what fails to satisfy? … 

then, you may recall other occasions that have stirred up similarly deep questions in your mind.   For example, have you ever come across someone who, though having nothing much going for them on the outside -- little money and few home comforts, not particularly popular or talented, and perhaps with more than their share of family trials – yet, on the inside they seemed to be deeply happy: content in themselves and at peace with life in general, its future prospects, and their neighbours around.  How are we to understand that: little or nothing on the outside, but rich inside?

Of course, if such people were ill-educated and quite content with knowing nothing; if they were idlers, happiest when doing nothing; or perhaps if they were thoughtless people, content with never looking beyond the present moment; then one might well say, “They may appear to be happy, but I would never want that sort of happiness”, and having said that, never think of them again.  Such people could – with good reason -- be regarded as being superficially happy.

However, the ones I have in mind, those whom you may have been lucky enough, or better, whom you may have been blessed enough, to come across, are in no way superficial, for, though having little to boast of or rejoice in on the outside, yet, they are profoundly happy inside.  Now, that is something remarkable, for the unthinking attitude of the superficially happy embraces living for what they can get out of life’s personal experiences and all that happens around them, and in that sense they are centred on themselves and cannot endure aridity or live through and profit from sufferings, least of all can they contemplate death other than – at best -- as a kind of sleep where thoughts are gone and experiences are none.

The profoundly happy ones of whom I speak, however, are most truly and completely happy since their minds appreciate truth, their hearts love what is beautiful, and -- above all -- their souls are confident in the goodness of God and humbly aspire to future blessedness with Him; and being thus centred on what is over, above, and beyond themselves and their earthy limitations, they are already close to being spiritually dead to themselves and their own interests, and therefore remain steadfast through present trials and difficulties, and hopeful and trusting beyond the certainty and proximity of their own physical death.

If you have ever been blessed to meet and to recognize such a truly happy person, or, if not, if ever you have been blessed personally by God so as to have occasionally felt, to have become unmistakeably aware of, a sense of emptiness welling up  from the depths of your being, then the message of Isaiah should echo within you, prompting you to look closer at yourself saying: 'Am I spending my money on what is not bread, my youth and my strength, year in year out, for what does not satisfy? 

Having asked yourself that question you will be eager to hear the next words of the prophet:

Heed Me, and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare.

At that point, however, you might be inclined to answer both your own self-questioning and the prophet’s exhortation by some such words as: ‘Very well, you prophet of 2600 years ago, I am listening, speak to me now about my soul’s need, about the emptiness I sometimes experience, tell me of the fullness of joy that I seek’.

Isaiah continues (NRSV):

Incline your ear, and come to Me; listen, so that you may live.  I will make with you an everlasting covenant, My steadfast, sure love for David.

 

Notice how insistently the prophet repeats ‘incline your ear’, ‘listen’!   Again, however, you might find that more puzzling and frustrating than helpful: ‘How can I hear you, the everlasting Lord, on Whose behalf Isaiah has made promises which both intrigue and delight me.  How can I listen and come to You Who are in heaven above, invisible, untouchable, unknowable?’

Isaiah has done his best; but now we need the Apostle Paul -- brought up and trained to fully appreciate Isaiah’s teaching and testimony before becoming, as the Lord Himself said to Ananias, a chosen instrument of Mine to carry My name before Gentiles, kings, and Israelites -- to give the only full answer to our questions in today’s second reading:

What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword?   No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor present things, nor future things, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. 

There St. Paul teaches that the richest fare of which Isaiah spoke, the fullness of joy that we seek, is only to be found in the love of God in Christ Jesus Our Lord from which nothing in the heavens or on the earth can ever separate us.

Let us now, therefore, turn to Jesus Himself in our Gospel reading where we heard of Him feeding hungry people, people like us,  in need and wanting sustenance:

When it was evening, the disciples approached Him and said, “This is a deserted place and it is already late; dismiss the crowds so that they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.”  (Jesus) said to them, “There is no need for them to go away; give them some food yourselves.”  But they said to Him, “Five loaves and two fish are all we have here.” Then He said, “Bring them here to Me,” and He ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds.  They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over —twelve wicker baskets full.  Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children. 

From that episode we can gather that the fullness of joy to which Isaiah referred with those words 'eat well, eat what is good', can only come to us by literally eating the food given by Jesus, His own Body and Blood in the Eucharist.  Moreover, the prophet tells us that not just any sort of eating will do, for he made it clear how we should eat in such a way as to benefit our soul: 

Heed Me (says the Lord), and you shall eat well, you shall delight in rich fare; 

Now those few words of the prophet are most important for us today but they need to be understood according to the teaching of St. Paul and Mother Church, for far too many Catholics seem to think that receiving Holy Communion, 'eating well', is the one and only key to our religion and to eternal life.  That is quite wrong.  We need also to heed the teaching of Paul and Mother Church concerning Jesus in the Eucharist, for Holy Mass is far more than Holy Communion.  The Mass is, first and foremost, worship of God, the sacrificial offering of Himself by Jesus the Son (and hopefully by us His disciples too) to the Father.  Holy Mass is glory to God in the Highest before it is gift -- Holy Communion -- to men and women of good will.  When Jesus comes to us in Communion, that is not an end in itself: Jesus comes to us, for a few moments, in Communion in order to communicate His Spirit to us, the Spirit of Holiness, Who is to remain with us, abide in us, enlightening and guiding us to worship the Father as He would have us do, with our whole lives in, and together with, Jesus:

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always.  (John 14:16)

We, therefore, have to receive Holy Communion in such a way as to open up our whole life and being to the Spirit of Jesus, for then, and then only, will we experience what the prophet and the apostle foretold and promised: our soul enjoying good things and thereby truly and fully living: experiencing and sharing – by the Spirit -- in Jesus’ abiding love of, and total commitment to, God the Father.

(Jesus said)  Whoever believes in Me, as scripture says: ‘Rivers of living water will flow from within him.’”  He said this in reference to the Spirit that those who came to believe in Him were to receive. There was, of course, no Spirit yet, because Jesus had not yet been glorified. (John 7:38-39)

People of God, learn to live by the Spirit bequeathed to us in Mother Church by Jesus: He alone can form us, in Jesus, for the Father, since He is the Spirit of both the Father and the Son, and He alone loves the Father and the Son in the fullness of Truth and Love.  When He the Spirit, becomes for us, in our lives, what Jesus promised (John 4:14): 

A spring of water welling up into eternal life;

only then, having learnt to yield ourselves unreservedly to the Spirit's guidance,  will we know the fullness of joy and peace for which God made us and for which Jesus redeemed us.       

17th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A 2014

17^th. SUNDAY OF YEAR (A)

(1 Kings 3:5, 7-12; Romans 8:28-30; Matthew 13:44-52)

What beautiful readings we have heard today!!  Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of heaven as a treasure … something we normally ‘treasure’ in our hearts, to ourselves; He also compared it to ‘a pearl of great price’, something one might delight to display to, and share with, others.  Both these attitudes can, without difficulty, be given perfectly Christian expression: a treasure leading one to exclaim, ‘thanks be to God’ in personal prayer; and a pearl of great price leading me now, for example, to delight in displaying before you and for you: ‘Such is our Catholic faith, how beautiful it is!’

The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a man finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Forgive, or at least understand me, People of God, for I changed the word -- the modern, politically correct, word -- ‘person’ into the original ‘man’, which they dare not print even though they could not avoid a few words later saying ‘he has’.   Political prudence is such a craven attitude at times and can lead to somewhat ludicrous formulations!

Now let us turn away from tortuous, modern, secular ideas of charity and equality and look at the simple beauty of the Gospel of Jesus.

Did you -- on hearing those words of Jesus I have just quoted -- experience any ever-so-slight qualms of modern conscience which anti-religious people can so easily drum up against the Gospel of God?  ‘He should not have bought that field after hiding the treasure!’ they can say with most righteous indignation.   Remember last week’s weeds growing tall among the wheat and crying out, ‘Look at me how tall I have grown and how beautiful I am, just like, indeed, even better than, the wheat’?

We, however, know better than that; we can learn from our Blessed Lord always. For, though He may occasionally choose to shock us, we know for certain that He is always -- so to speak -- deeply right, and has much to teach us if we will but listen so as to learn and love.

This ‘treasure’ of the Kingdom found buried in a field is of such absolute, total, all-embracing, and indeed all-comparison-excluding importance, that it can never – under whatever circumstances – be set aside or passed over.  It is a matter of life and death, indeed, eternal life and death.  Think of the boy Jesus after His coming of age as a Jewish young man staying behind in the Temple speaking with those who knew God deeply (‘we worship what we know’), and communing with, delighting in, His own Father at a level He had never known as man before (‘never call anyone on earth you father, for you have only one Father, and He is in heaven’).  He forgot all about Mary and Joseph, about returning home with the caravan to Nazareth among relatives, friends and acquaintances!  Indeed, He forgot all about Himself: what did He eat, where did He stay?  On finding Him in the Temple Mary dutifully expressed her concern as being primarily for Joseph, ‘Your father and I were worried’; but that was inappropriate at that moment, provoking, as it did, Jesus’ immediate response: ‘Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business, in My Father’s house?’

Dear People of God, Jesus’ deliberate ignoring of modern ‘humanistic, science-of-ethics’ morality, just as He ignored so often the Pharisaic morality of His accusers, was demanded by the supremely transcendent importance of His teaching:

The Kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a man finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Jesus then went on to address another parable to His audience highlighting a further, most important, aspect of the Kingdom of heaven:

Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls.  When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all he has and buys it.

Here we have a man searching for what is beautiful.   It is true that he sells all that he has to buy it, but he is able to pay for it: he divests himself of what is good, helpful, useful, and to a certain extent necessary, for all these things cannot rival the sheer pleasure, joy, admiration and delight, this beautiful pearl affords him.  Therefore Jesus tells us that he buys it, pays for it in open bargaining: it is not something of transcendent, life or death, importance that absolutely cannot be missed, it is rather something of such great beauty that the buyer wants to possess it even though it be at very great cost.

These two minuscule parables (61 English words in total) say absolutely all that needs to, must, be said about the Kingdom of God which Jesus came to bring!  Further words can add nothing to them:  the Kingdom is life, divine in its nature and in its beauty; and one can surely say with St. John (21:25):

I suppose not even the world itself could contain the books that would (have to) be written to unfold all that they contain and promise.

No one can tamper with the Gospel of Jesus because it is Jesus as Word, just as the Eucharist is Jesus as Sacrament.  Jesus made abundantly clear that no one could come to Him unless the Father had drawn them thereto; and that the Father gives, sends, followers to Jesus so that He, Jesus, might save them for eternal life: it is not our job to persuade people to come to a Jesus we concoct up for them.  We all -- priests and people -- are, in our degree, Catholic witnesses to Jesus, and as such we have to offer all who seek their Saviour the Jesus revealed in the Scriptures as understood by Mother Church; in other words, we have to be authentic, Spirit-guided, witnesses to Jesus, not purveyors of popular or personal human persuasions concerning Him.   Such is the Jesus for Whom the Father Himself calls disciples that they might learn to know, love and serve Him in sincere faith; and such disciples the Father Himself loves and will visit because of their commitment to and love for His only begotten and most-beloved Son.  How we -- practicing and proclaiming Catholics -- can fittingly respond, and bear authentic witness, to such love of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, is our foremost vocation, privilege, responsibility, and glory.

Once again, dear People of God, notice Jesus’ third parable today, repeating what He said last Sunday but with even greater clarity and emphasis:

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a net thrown into the sea, which collects fish of every kind.  When it is full … the angels will separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.

Such a net is expected to collect fish of every kind, good and bad.  Such bad fish are -- I say -- to be expected but not, ultimately, tolerated; because they, at the end of the age, will be separated and thrown into the fiery furnace.   For the present, however, it is no disgrace that the Kingdom of Heaven – like a good fishing net – collects bad fish as well as good, because the Kingdom only collects fish that are candidates originally called to become good fish, which the Kingdom as such nourishes, helps, and encourages that they might fulfil their calling (from the Father) and their own original promise.   That some, perhaps many (Will the Son of Man find faith when He comes?) fail, is a cause of sorrow rather than surprise; it is always a reason for prayers: of intercession for sinners, for the blessing of Mother Church, and of sorrow and ‘compassion’ for the God Who is great enough to be able to ‘suffer’ on such occasions.

Let us now give our attention to what is most attractive in our two main parables today, where the Kingdom of Heaven is portrayed as a supreme, and incomparable treasure, and also as a pearl of outstanding beauty and great price.   Why the Kingdom is such a unique treasure and so beautiful a pearl today’s reading from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans explains; for there, Paul tells us what – so to speak – ‘goes on’ in the Kingdom of Heaven in the course of its earthly preparation:

All things work for good for those who love God, who are called (by the Father) according to His purpose.  For those He predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son He also called; and those He called He also justified, and those He justified He also glorified.
 

You, dear People of God here at Mass for our Sunday celebration, have been called, drawn, by the Father to Jesus, and you are thereby in the Kingdom of heaven’s preparatory stage.  You are predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son; and in the Kingdom God is justifying you, beautifying you, so that you might be enabled to put on, be endowed with, some share -- an ever greater share -- in the glory of Jesus as a member of His glorified Body.  

Notice, People of God, that it is at this precise point that we can appreciate the real nature of the horror, the tragedy, of sin among Catholic and Christian figures: as apparently representative members, called-by-the-Father members, of the Kingdom, they are actually refusing, rejecting, repulsing and distorting His desires and efforts to beautify them.

However, forget that necessary aside about the tragedy of sin among the chosen, and let us turn back in gratitude and admiration, love and humility, to the God of great goodness and the Lord of salvation, opening our mouths and our hearts wide to welcome and embrace their Spirit of beautiful hope.

Lord, let Your kindness comfort me according to Your promise, let Your compassion come to me that I may live; for Your law gives understanding to the simple, and is my (great) delight.

16th Sunday of the Year (A)

16^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Wisdom 12:13, 16-19; Romans 8:26-27; Matthew 13:24-43)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, among those regarding themselves as devout Jews in the time of Jesus were at least two groups who claimed to be the ‘holy remnant’, alone faithful to the commands of Israel’s God-given Law in its fullness, and who thought they would, exclusively, usher in the coming  Kingdom of God.  Outsiders were, in the eyes of these two groups, ‘beyond the Pale’.  They formed, so to speak, ‘closed’ remnants, small gatherings of those alone worthy to belong to God’s Chosen People because of their strict obedience to the Law of Moses, their passionate adherence to and observance of all their groups’ requirements for liturgical purity and traditional piety, and also for their own personal asceticism. 

One of these two groups, the Pharisees, separated themselves from other people’s popular society but not from their physical proximity; the other, however – the monastic community of the Essenes at Qumran, near the Dead Sea -- carried out this separation to most stringent extremes.  The Pharisees set out to represent the priestly character of God’s chosen ones in their spiritual practices; but the Essenes expressed this claim even in their clothing: each member of the order, even the laity, wore a white linen robe, the ceremonial dress of priests in office.  The Pharisaic movement demanded ritual washing of hands before meals from all its members; the Essene community accentuated, and indeed exaggerated, this requirement to the extent that it demanded a full bath before every meal, in order to achieve the highest possible standards of purity.

And how exclusive these groups were!  Even the physically handicapped were not allowed to belong to the assembly of the Essene community.  So what hope was there for sinners?  

Now, such separation from outsiders was utterly foreign to the community of the Church founded by Jesus, as was patently clear from the way in which He recommended His disciples to invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind to their table; and from His own sitting at table with the friends of Levi/ Matthew, the former tax-collector become a disciple, and uttering those most famous words of public reprimand to critical Pharisees:

Those who are well have no need of a physician, but the sick do.  Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy not sacrifice’.  I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance.  (Luke 5:31s.)

What distinguished Jesus from these groups was the universality of His message of salvation: proclaiming the Father’s will to save all – without exception -- who would turn to Him; offering unlimited grace, uniquely able to bring about the eternal salvation of each and every person willing to repent in accordance with Jesus’ own proclamation of truth. 

Of course, Jesus was aware that there would be a division between sinners and those ultimately chosen, for He preached a call to repentance, and not all want to repent from the evil of their self-promoting and self-satisfying practices which ultimately and inevitably destroy their hosts and perpetrators.  In Jesus’ public and popularly-understood parables there were five wise virgins with five foolish ones, there were goats and sheep that needed to be ultimately separated.  However, the final manifestation and separation is not for this world, and so there was and is still a chance for all who hear the Lord’s message, now become the teaching of His Church, to open themselves up to His boundless and all-powerful grace, and bring forth fruit worthy of repentance.

And so, in the field of the Church wheat and tares live side by side, not as in the parable, just for the exclusive good of the wheat, but also for the ever-possible improvement and benefit of the human tares; for the fruitless, sinful, and stupid members of the Church receive and can profit from countless blessings percolating down to them because innumerable saintly men and women have lived, and are still living, holy but largely inconspicuous lives … unknown to those around them but not unnoticed by God, Who for the sake of such fruitful and much-loved disciples of Jesus, pours out His innumerable blessings on all in the Church.  We cannot know how much each of us may owe – perhaps even something of decisive significance – to some simple, holy person we neither knew nor would perhaps have sufficiently appreciated if we had known them.    Conversely however, and we should never forget this, every time we knowingly sin, we harm the whole Church by impeding the full flow of grace throughout the whole Body, just as when some cell or organ fails to function appropriately in our own physical bodies. 

But the wheat and the tares growing together are not only to be found in a farmer’s field as in Jesus’ parable, not only in Mother Church, but also in our individual lives; and some saints -- for example, the Curé of Ars -- are known to have asked God to let them see their sins as they really were.  The holy and humble Curé, however, was unable to bear the horror of the sight allowed him, and he immediately besought God, of His great mercy, to withdraw the vision.

Even the so-called, at times self-styled, ‘little sinners’ – massively insensitive as they are to the grace of God -- find their lives pretty intolerable under stress, as a very famous French philosopher, Blaise Paschal, wrote centuries ago:

‘Whoever fails to see the vanity of the world must be vain himself.  For who does fail to see it except those young people surrounded with noise, distractions, and dreams of the future?  Now, take away their distractions and you will almost see them dry up with weariness; they then feel their nothingness without recognizing it; how unfortunate it must be to find oneself in unbearable sadness as soon as one is forced to think about one’s self, one’s own state, and not to be distracted from that thought.’

Again Paschal wrote: ‘If our condition were really happy, we would not find it necessary to seek our happiness in distractions.   How many people – especially young people – can endure a quiet night, day, week?  And yet, if we really were happy we would not want distractions, amusements, all the time.’

Well, that is what Christian life is all about.  It is meant, in God’s great goodness, to give us real happiness, true love and fulfilment, deep peace, and unshakeable hope; it is meant to make us fully human, more human than any irreligious life – no matter however charismatically endowed and successful -- could ever make us; for Jesus Christ alone was and is Perfect God and Perfect Man possessing the keys of life and love both here on earth and in heaven.

This week-end we have some very topical and comforting teaching concerning Mother Church in Our Blessed Lord’s three parables.

First of all note that God puts good seed in His field of the Church by drawing souls to Jesus through the discipline of faith and the obedience of love.  The enemy (the devil, do not forget him!) slyly puts in some pseudo-seed of his own, and such seed can – and, as Jesus tells us, is allowed to -- grow to maturity with the wheat, and even at times to stand upright alongside it, proclaiming to all the world, ‘Look at me, how tall I have grown, just like wheat; look how good and holy I am too!’.  The devil can also produce other weeds by perverting some initially good seed or making it disfunctional.  This presence of weeds in Mother Church should not cause alarm – Where have the weeds come from? -- it is sad indeed when friends or loved ones are involved, it is also humbling at times to our pride and/or indolence, but it is always a clear warning for Mother Church that her true seed needs to be further protected and more deeply cherished against something about which Jesus has warned us from the very beginning, and about which the Apostles, especially Paul and John in their letters, who -- following the Lord and Love of their lives -- were not afraid to serve His memory with such a commitment to His pure teaching and so ardent a love for the spiritual well-being of His disciples and children, that led them to speak with a clarity and decisiveness often considered too risky and unpopular for some politically over-sensitive prelates and priests of today.

Dear People of God, reverence, respect, and whole-heartedly trust Mother Church for the good seed sown in her and growing to maturity through her teaching and sacraments; that good seed which is still bringing forth good fruit for the Lord and which -- when left standing and shining in its sunlit and  golden splendour after the weeds have been collected and burnt -- will be found ready and worthy to be ‘gathered into the Lord’s barn’.

There are also many in the world looking for and aspiring to Mother Church.  The mustard seed parable tells of the little birds, not flying to the ‘mountains’ for human help:

In the Lord I take refuge, how can you say to me, ‘Flee like a bird to the mountains’?  (Psalm 11:1)

but finding shelter and rest from storms and predators in the shelter of the Kingdom: for the sceptical, so insignificant and powerless; for those of faith and self-commitment, so comprehensively sustaining, protecting, and inspiring.

The parable of the leaven shows us yet another essential aspect of the Kingdom of God here on earth in which the power of Mother Church’s teaching, worship, and fellowship can not only illuminate some of the pressing human questions and resolve certain of the immediate personal difficulties we encounter daily, but which can penetrate to the very core of our being and raise up the whole tone of our life to transcendent aspirations and blessings that lead ultimately to heavenly and eternal fulfilment and joy.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ we owe such much to our Blessed Lord for this time of His glory and our refreshment!  To Him be glory, honour, and our whole-hearted and most grateful thanks now and for ever.