Twenty-first Sunday Year A 2014

Twenty-first Sunday, Year (A)

(Isaiah 22:19-23; Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20)

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Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God!  How inscrutable are His judgments and how unsearchable His ways!  For from Him and through Him and for Him are all things.  To Him be glory forever. Amen

That hymn of St Paul expresses beautifully the spirit which animates those who have a true appreciation of God.  And since the Incarnation and the Work of our Redemption are the greatest works of God’s inscrutable wisdom, how could it be that any mortal, of himself, should understand and recognize the dispositions of God in regard to the Christ, His Messiah?

When James and John asked Jesus -- through their mother (!) -- for positions one at His right hand and the other at His left in His Kingdom, Jesus answered that it was not for Him to give such places; rather, they belonged to whomsoever the Father had chosen for them.  Thus there was mystery even for Jesus as man.  And so, when in today’s Gospel reading we hear Him put first the question:

            Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

and then follow it with another:

            But who do you say that I am?

we can almost sense Him waiting to discover to whom -- if anyone – the Father  would give understanding of the mystery of His Person.  And then it was that Simon spoke up, giving voice to a wisdom that was not his own:

            You are the Christ the Son of the living God!

Who has known the mind of the Lord?  writes St. Paul; and Jesus, recognizing His man, so to speak, said in response to Simon’s assertion:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My heavenly Father.

And here we are at a supremely significant moment for the Church of Jesus: the Father has picked out, designated, Simon for special prominence in the proclamation of the truth about Jesus’ Person and in the continuance and extension of His ministry of saving grace; and Jesus, recognizing His Father’s intervention, adopts His Father’s choice by Himself appointing Simon as head of His Church by bestowing on him a new name, Peter, for that very purpose and function:

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

The name Peter is a translation (through the Greek) of the Aramaic word ‘Kepha’, which is identical in form either as a personal name or as the word ‘rock’.

People of God, this is also a moment of great significance for each of us personally.   The Church, as a visible structure, is established, founded, upon Peter’s faith; and in like manner, as regards the interior and spiritual life of each one of us, the Kingdom of God is to be established in consequence of our act of faith.  The whole supernatural life-stream in us originates with our act of faith whereby we say ‘yes’ to God’s revelation, and to Mother Church’s proclamation, of Jesus.  Just as Mary said ‘yes’ to Gabriel’s message, so our ‘yes’ of faith in Jesus allows God’s saving grace to enter our lives and begin to totally transform and transfigure them.

But what kind of faith is this?  Earlier in St. Matthew’s Gospel (14:33) we were told how Our Lord walked on the waves of the storm-tossed lake towards His disciples labouring hard to keep their boat afloat, and how Peter had – at Jesus’ bidding – begun to walk from the boat towards Jesus, before hesitating and then beginning to sink.  Jesus rebuked Peter for his little faith as He raised him up, before they both got into the boat and the wind ceased.  Whereupon, we read that:

Those in the boat worshipped Him saying, ‘Truly, You are the Son of God.’

Now, to those words Jesus answered nothing at all so far as we know.  Yet, when Simon said, later on, as we have just heard:

            You are the Christ the Son of the living God!

Jesus proclaimed him blessed because he had been favoured with a revelation from His heavenly Father.   What was the difference between:  ‘You are the Son of God’, and, ‘You are the Christ the Son of the living God’, that brought about such a result?

In the second example Peter recognizes Jesus as not only the ‘Son of God’ but also as the Christ, the Messiah … in other words, as distinct from the terrified disciples’ acclamation which expressed their own relief as much as it acknowledged Jesus’ sovereign power, Peter’s inspired exclamation expressed no personal relief, but ‘with heart and voice’ proclaimed a divinely bestowed awareness of Jesus not just as the powerful Son of God, but as the SAVIOUR; the Son of God indeed, but come to save and redeem -- make atonement for – Israel and all mankind!

Yes, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the faith which saves us today, the faith which is God’s gift, is not merely knowledge about God but the ability to recognize and respond to the divine truth of God’s-presence-to-save in Jesus and in His Church.

There are those today who denigrate concern for doctrinal accuracy, not only in public words but also personal thinking.  For them, with them, the words ‘dogma’ and ‘dogmatic thinking’ have acquired unsavoury overtones of meaning whereby they imply an overbearing, intolerant, and rigidly narrow cast of mind; they are said to stifle our spontaneity, extinguish constructive adaptation, thwart our spiritual growth.  Again, such thinkers and speakers claim that there is no such thing as objective truth, no incontrovertible truth concerning God.

But look at Jesus in today’s Gospel!  How interested and concerned He was that men, above all His disciples, should think the truth about Himself; and such was His esteem for that truth that when He heard Simon give voice to it He immediately concluded with absolute certainty that His Father had spoken to and through Simon, with the result that He most solemnly declared:

Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.  For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My heavenly Father.

Moreover, He then went on to speak words of enduring validity:

And so I say to you, you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.

Again, later on He would declare (John 18:37):

For this was I born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth;

and would, on the eve of His crucifixion speak in prayer to His Father these most holy words:

Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you, and (these You have given Me) know that You sent Me (John 17:25),

where knowledge of truth embraces as one with the Father, Jesus and His disciples.

Faith is, indeed, a most sure knowledge of divine truth, for Jesus Himself is ‘the Truth’; and it requires, calls for, a total commitment of love.

To know the Truth, to recognize the Truth, to appreciate, love and proclaim the Truth … that is a most sure sign of God’s loving presence.  On the other hand, to embrace error, rejecting the truth, is subject to the following dread judgment of Our Lord:

Because I speak the truth, you do not believe Me.  If I am telling the truth, why do you not believe Me?  Whoever belongs to God hears the words of God; for this reason you do not listen, because you do not belong to God.”  (John 8:45-47)

A theologian may be able to write volumes about God and more volumes about the Church and what it should be like .. but that, in itself, is not the exercise of Christian faith.  You who see in Christ your own Saviour, you who have come to Mass,  who draw near to the Holy Table at Communion, you who frequent the Sacraments and listen to the Word of God and obey it … you are those of whom  Jesus said:

Blessed are you; for flesh and blood have not revealed (such things) to you but My heavenly Father!

That ability to recognize Jesus as Saviour, the God-Man, come to save each one of us personally and to offer salvation to the whole of mankind in and through His Church, that is the true Christian faith which is the Father’s best gift.

A most important aspect of the need for dogmatic teaching in the Church and accurate personal thinking is the fact that our thoughts guide our choices and form our characters.  And that is the reason for the apparently strange, but in reality one of the most significant expressions in the New Testament writings, to do the truth (John 3:21; in the Latin, ‘qui facit veritatem’) well rendered in more modern idiom by:

But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

You who are true disciples of Jesus and desire earnestly to grow in love of Him and fidelity to Him, know your Catholic and Christian doctrine.  Do not let random emotional feelings determine your deliberate thoughts.  But rather, through your deliberate thoughts mould and adapt your feelings to the Truth of Jesus in the Church, and then endeavour whole-heartedly to love that Truth (at times it has to be willed as Truth before it can become loved as Truth) with your total commitment.

Note also that Simon said ‘You are the Christ’, the Christ foretold by the prophets from of old; the Christ whose message is for Israel and for the whole world through Israel; the Christ with Whom the whole world in all its inarticulate beauty, majesty, and power resonates in deep, mysterious, harmony; the Christ who fulfils all the longings and desires of the human heart; the Christ in Whom alone my own individual life at last takes on transcendent significance and purpose, as it experiences the unimaginable joy of a beginning to its fulfilment both temporal and eternal.

In this aspect of our Catholic and Christian faith, People of God, lies the hidden treasure of our heavenly calling and earthly service for our world today; for we have to live ever more deeply our faith that Jesus is the unique Christ and only Saviour for the whole of mankind, because He is Perfect God and Perfect Man. We must develop our ability -- by grace and through prayer -- to recognize and respond to Him; and in Him, with Him, learn to love the Father in heaven and our brethren on earth at all times and in all circumstances.  For all creation, all men, all happenings, have unique significance, beauty, and meaning when encountered, recognized, and responded to with Jesus the Christ for the Father; and only as we -- His humble and sincere disciples -- appreciate this ever more fully, will we be truly living in the heart of the world as authentic witnesses to and members of Jesus, and in Him as Spirit-formed and Spirit-endowed children of the heavenly Father.

           

20th Sunday of the Year (A) 2014

20^th Sunday of Year (A)  

(Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28)

People of God, today’s Gospel reading is somewhat provocative, in that by showing us something of the intimate Personal character of Jesus it invites us to pay greater attention to our own attitude towards God and religion in general, and to our Catholic life of faith in and with Jesus in particular.

Jesus had left Israel and was walking with His disciples through a Gentile region where men and women did not talk freely to strangers of the opposite sex – as is the case even today, we are told, in conservative areas.  Rabbis, Indeed, did not even talk to female members of their own families in public.  Consequently, there was nothing strange in Jesus’ ignoring the cries of the Syro-phoenician woman.

However, here at the very beginning, the story is already provoking us with regard to Jesus’ behaviour; for surely, not a few critical observers will at this very moment be thinking that it was not very ‘nice’ of Jesus to ignore the woman thus.  After all, is there not a widespread conviction that religion is mainly about ‘being nice to people’?  And if, for some, there is more to religion than that, nevertheless, ‘niceness to others’ is Popularity’s supreme criterion for judging it.

The woman in our Gospel story was herself quite aware of the barrier of social impropriety for her – a woman and a Gentile – to be thus publicly addressing Jesus, a Jewish man, for she put on a smattering of Jewishness by calling out from among the crowd to Him as might a troubled co-religionist have done: 

Have pity on me Lord, Son of David!

However, she then went on to make herself not only something of a nuisance but also rather troublesome and disturbing to Jesus’ disciples, who, in some measure seeking to protect Jesus, drew closer to Him and whispered urgently:

            Send her away, for she keeps calling out after us.

Jesus’ reply to such words shows us just how far the popular idea that religion is about being nice to people was and is from Jesus’ own Personal attitude:

            He said in reply, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

Notice, People of God, how decisively and deliberately Jesus reveals to His closest circle of disciples, and to us this day, that His deepest and most heart-felt concern for the ultimate success of His public ministry was that He be found doing the will of the One -- His Father -- Who had sent Him:

            I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

At this juncture I want you to recall how Jesus responded to His Mother Mary’s strange behaviour at the marriage feast in Cana when she told the servants:

            Do whatever He tells you.

Jesus had not intended doing anything at that moment and so Mary’s behaviour was not only unusual and rather awkward for Him, but also somewhat embarrassing.

The Syro-phoenician women causes something of a like difficulty here:

            (She) came and did Him homage, saying, “Lord, help me”.

Jesus adverted to the woman directly only after having rejected His disciples’ call for Him to get rid of her; nevertheless, that intervention by the disciples seems to have given the woman confidence or opportunity enough to come forward quickly and throw herself at Jesus' feet asking for a miraculous cure for her daughter. Here it is that Jesus breaks His silence in regard to the woman; and this is something we should carefully note and store in our memory:

God never ignores the prayers of Mother Church, the Bride and Body of His Christ.
 

And so it was with Jesus in our Gospel reading.  His apparent refusal:

It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs,

was both uncompromising and uncomplimentary.  Nevertheless, it contained a hidden treasure -- to be discovered only according to the woman’s right dispositions, which thankfully (for we also can profit from her blessing) she was able to show -- a most beautiful grace that provoked (that word again!) her to pour out words unplanned and most beautiful.

It is important for us to understand the mind of Jesus here.  St. John tells us that Jesus once explained that He had not come here on earth merely of His own will; He had been sent by His Father, and consequently was here among men only for express purpose of doing His Father's will:

I came down from heaven not to do My own will but the will of the One Who sent Me.

He did not say He had come among us to do good as He Himself thought; and ‘a priori’ He had not come to do what ‘people’ thought was ‘good’ or imagined ‘would be nice’.  He had come because He had been sent: sent to do the goodness willed by His Father and thus to proclaim His Father’s glory and serve our salvation, as He once declared:

Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. (Mark 10:18)

There we have the key to most of our world's sufferings today.  There are so many people, often called do-gooders, who are prominent and vocal in society and in government, some indeed are judges and law makers in national and multi-national organizations, and all will say they seek to do good, and probably regard themselves as sincere.  But such sincerity is not enough, because the good they seek is, at the best, a good that they themselves -- as members and promoters of a predominantly secular, and proudly anti-religious society -- approve of; in other words, a humanistic, rationalistic, idea of what is good for mankind.

Jesus, on the other hand, did not seek to do good as men saw it, He sought to do the only real and true good for humanity made by God; that is, the will of the God Who fashioned them in His own likeness: His Father's will for the children He is seeking to save.

So here, at this stage in our Gospel reading, we find Jesus seeking to discover what ‘qualifications’, so to speak, this woman had from His Father; for His Father had not sent Him to serve the pagan peoples around but only  'the lost sheep of the house of Israel'.  He therefore said, speaking somewhat sharply to the woman:

It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.

How many people today would have stormed off in a fever of self-righteous indignation after words of that sort!   In fact, in today’s modern, super-sensitive and sanctimonious Britain, they could possibly be construed not only as politically incorrect, but even legally criminal words, words expressing racial hatred!!  

This woman was not of such an ilk, however, and this is where we must start to learn about ourselves from her example of marvellous humility, because she was deeply aware of both her daughter’s, and her own, great need, and of the undeniable power and unmistakable holiness of this Jewish man Jesus from Whom she was seeking a healing miracle for her daughter.  So many of those who decry or ignore God and the Church today are filled with human imaginations of their own personal dignity and secular rights which impose no limits to the abuse of their tongues, whilst having little or no awareness of the spiritual depths of the subjects they address, let alone reverence or awe, for the supreme majesty and sublime holiness of the God they presume to reproach. 

This wonderfully humble woman of the Gospel, however, answered Jesus in all humility and truth, and speaking with a simplicity and wisdom that were not her own, she said:

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

Unknown to herself she had, with those beautifully humble and unstudied words presented her credentials (so to speak): for Jesus recognized at once that such wisdom could only have been given her by His Father.  And so, without further ado – for had He not come for but one purpose, to do His Father’s will? -- He said:

O woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish. 

St. Matthew, recounting that event, was showing his converts, both Jewish and pagan, and is also telling us today, that a miraculous event is nothing more than a few crumbs in comparison with the heavenly banquet prepared in heaven for Jesus’ disciples and for all those who will subsequently become children of God the Father through faith in His Son.  We who are present at Mass, who offer the Eucharistic Sacrifice and share in the Eucharistic food, ought to recognize and appreciate that we are thereby sharing in and partaking of a treasure incomparably more stupendous and awe-inspiring than any miraculous cure.  We would be thrilled if a miracle were to take place here in our midst, why are we not more thrilled by this beginning of heavenly realities and blessings beyond our imagination?  The reason is that we can only come to such an appreciation by an active faith: not just coldly believing mere words without being caught up or involved, but a loving and humble faith which deeply appreciates and wholeheartedly responds, faith such as that of the Canaanite woman, of whom Jesus most approvingly said, O woman, great is your faith!

By nature we are sensitive, responsive, to physical blessings and miracles.  By faith we must endeavour, strive, long, to find ourselves growing more and more aware of and responsive to the supremely wonderful blessings and miracles of grace offered to us in the sacramental life and public prayer of Mother Church, and to be enriched by the wondrous privilege of personal prayer in the Spirit, with Jesus, before the Father.  This, I believe, is a truly essential work incumbent upon us as Catholics today. 

The Canaanite woman appreciated and loved her daughter by nature.  She came to appreciate Jesus first of all from what she had heard of Him; and then she did all she could – not to everybody’s liking, indeed, as was the case for blind Bartimeus also -- to draw close to Him, approaching Him above all with humility, aware of His majesty and her own need.  And yet, although she was so humble, she was also most courageous.  Her courage -- whereby she would not allow herself to be put-off from her desire to meet and plead personally with Jesus -- was not only stronger than any belligerence with others, but also very much more discerning and effective; for she was wonderfully firm and courageous with herself, refusing to be drowned by self-pity or exalted by pseudo-indignation, on hearing words of Jesus whose apparent meaning and deepest, hidden, purpose she could in no way understand.

People of God, we, each and every one of us, have to try to develop such a faith within us: a humble seeking, a persevering longing, and an ever more grateful and responsive faith.  Without such faith we will, at the very best, only be able to digest scraps from the table of the Lord; which would indeed be tragic, because we have been called personally to the fullness of faith in Mother Church and are being prepared to participate in a banquet of heavenly proportions.  It is up to us: we have been invited and Mother Church cannot fail us on the way, the Holy Spirit guarantees that.  So let us help ourselves and try to help each other, for, as St. Paul tells us:

The gifts and the call of God are irrevocable.      

19th. Sunday in ordinary time, Year A 2014

 19^th. Sunday, Year (A)

(1^st. Kings 19:9, 11-13; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33)

 

In our Gospel reading last Sunday Jesus fed the Five Thousand and twelve baskets full of fragments remained over from the original five loaves and two fish, and in that miraculous feeding Jesus was preparing His disciples for the gift of the Eucharist which He was soon to bestow on His Church.  Since that was a time of schooling for the disciples let us look carefully at Jesus' dealings with them immediately after that great miracle of feeding the Five Thousand to discover whether or not He might also have been preparing them for other mysteries soon to be revealed or gifts to be given; indeed, perhaps even helping us better understand our heritage and face up to events in our lives and in our world as Catholic Christians.

Soon enough, Jesus would be taken away from the disciples and His Church, first of all for only 3 days after His suffering and death on the Cross of Calvary, but subsequently -- for ages still unfolding -- by His glorious Resurrection and Ascension into heaven where, bodily glorified at the right hand of the Father, He makes constant intercession for us as St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Christians at Rome.

And so now, immediately after the miracle of the feeding of the Five Thousand – foreshadowing, as we said, the Eucharist -- whilst the crowd were making their way home following the wandering shore line, the disciples, crossing the lake directly by boat, ran into serious difficulties when a sudden storm arose.   Now, Peter’s boat has always been seen as a figure of the Church ever since Jesus first chose to preach from it to the crowds assembled to hear Him on the shores of the lake; and so the threatened boat bearing the disciples this stormy night is easily recognised as foreshadowing the Church that would subsequently carry the Gospel of Jesus across stormy oceans to hostile lands and continents ever new so that all peoples might hear the Good News of salvation.  This sudden and violent storm on the Sea of Galilee was indeed, at the time, a matter of life and death for the disciples; but it was not just a chance happening that had caught Jesus and His disciples unprepared, but rather something Jesus willed to use in order to teach His disciples a lesson which -- as leaders of the Church of Christ throughout the ages to come -- they must never, ever, forget.

The boat was in difficulties that night on the Sea of Galilee and Jesus was not with the apostles.  He was absent, physically, praying on the mountain (as St. Matthew calls it) just as -- after His Ascension -- He would be eternally seated, as St. Paul tells us, at the right hand of the Father in heaven:

Christ Who died is also risen (and) is at the right hand of God making intercession for us. (Romans 8:34)

The disciples, thinking they were alone, were extremely fearful, and it was most important for them to learn that no matter how lonely and vulnerable, threatened and dispirited, they might feel themselves to be, they would never and could never be separated from the protecting love and power of Jesus.  And so -- though rapt in prayer -- Jesus was most surely aware of the danger in which they found themselves; and willing to help them in their need, He approached them walking on the sea.  Whereupon, we are told: 

            They were terrified.  “It is a ghost," they said, and they cried out in fear.

Surely, the future apostles of Mother Church were meant to remember this occasion vividly, it was an integral part of God's plan to prepare them for their future: for Mother Church, the barque of Peter -- following, pursuing, mankind wherever they might be found over subsequent long centuries -- would have to endure, and profit from, dangers and threats of all kinds, just as the disciples were intended to survive and learn from this near capsizal on the Sea of Galilee.

People of God, let us admire and give thanks for God's wisdom and love; for just as Jesus had already prepared the disciples for the Eucharist, so now He is gently, but most surely, preparing them for both His own absent-presence in Mother Church and also for the Father’s promised Gift to her of His abiding Holy Spirit.  For, that spontaneous outcry ‘It is a ghost!’ on seeing the figure of Jesus approaching them through the storm and walking over the raging waters contained, in itself, unsuspected potential.  For, whatever the future trials of Mother Church, the apostles were always to remember that security and peace would ever hold sway in Peter's barque so long as God's People could invoke the name of Jesus with faith and love, and -- in confident hope – trustfully commit themselves to the guidance of His Most Holy Spirit.

God never springs total surprises on His servants; He seeks to prepare them to appreciate and embrace His plans for their well-being.   Consequently, People of God, we should always aspire to hear, and hope to learn from, God as He seeks to prepare us to walk ever farther along the ways of Jesus.

In our first reading we heard of Elijah who, of all the prophets, was the man for the big occasion.  Didn’t he -- on Mount Carmel -- call upon the Lord to send down fire from heaven to consume the sacrificial offering he had previously carefully prepared by thoroughly soaking it with barrels of water?  Didn’t he subsequently order the slaughtering of the 450 prophets of Baal who were Queen Jezebel’s favourites?  Again, didn’t he revive from death the son of a widow of Zarephath before inflicting a drought upon Israel that went into its fourth year?  Hadn’t he called down fire upon the soldiers of faithless king Ahaziah, before finally himself having been taken up to heaven in a chariot of fire?  And in today’s first reading, he is seen again in a typically unique and climactic situation as he seeks to learn about his own future from the Lord:

A strong and heavy wind was rending the mountains and crushing rocks before the Lord; (and) after the wind there was an earthquake, and after the earthquake, there was fire.

In all these manifestations of primeval power, however, the Almighty Lord was not present. They were natural representations of the titanic events that had been part and parcel of Elijah’s life and had ruled his mind and heart thus far.  But now they had to be put behind him in order that he might be exposed to the sustaining root and divine height of his own and indeed mankind’s mystery: his personal nothingness and impotence, along with the indisputable fact of being loved by and responsible to the Living God.  Elijah had therefore to empty his mind and calm his spirit, to wait humbly and listen more closely than he had ever done before, because the Lord willed to communicate with His prophet through nothing more than:

            A tiny whispering sound;

the voice of the Lord being carried – so slight it was -- as it were on the breath of a floating sigh (as one scholar, desirous of the utmost accuracy, poetically expressed it).  Only in that ever-so delicately tense and yet most tranquil moment of self-less and attentive awareness in the depths of his own conscience was Elijah able to hear and recognize the Mighty One of Israel addressing him.  Here we have the first Old Testament foreshadowing of the Christian teaching on individual conscience; a first intimation in the life of one who was one of Scriptures greatest extroverts, and of such significance that it would be enhanced and extended by another great prophetic figure, Jeremiah who says (31:33–34):

This is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD. I will place My law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be My people.    No longer will they have need to teach their friends and kinsmen how to know the LORD. All, from least to greatest, shall know Me, says the LORD, for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

Here we should immediately recall that humble and immaculate virgin -- Mary of Nazareth -- who alone would hear the Angel Gabriel’s message of salvation in the depths of her own personal conscience and awareness.  That was not due simply to the fact that the angel was to be sent only to Mary; rather is it the case that Mary would be – in her own time and subsequently throughout time -- the only one in the whole of Israel, and ‘a fortiori’ in the whole world, able to hear such an angelic voice, able to appreciate and respond to such a sublime vocation.  Mary was and is unique: the only woman possessed of a heart and soul so humble, so devout, and, indeed, a conscience so pure, sensitive and tranquil, that the divine message would be clearly heard by her and freely allowed to bring forth its Fruit in her and through her.

People of God, just as the Lord prepared His disciples for life in, and leadership of,  the Church, so is He always ready to guide all who are striving to be His faithful servants in Mother Church.  However, it is a far too common failing among such disciples that they are not sufficiently strong in faith or humble enough in character to be able or willing to wait and listen for long.  Many of them find listening wearisome, and quickly reject it as fruitless; whereas others become so anxious in their waiting that they are irresistibly primed to pre-empt rather than attend to any still, small, voice addressing them.  Nevertheless, God will only speak Person to person when His words are able to be heard and understood, and likely to be appreciated and obeyed.

It is written in the prophets: ‘They shall all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to My Father and learns from Him comes to Me.  (John 6:45)

Truth and beauty go together; and holy Catholic living -- like Christian parenthood -- is to be seen as an art rather than a science.  It is not merely a matter of factual knowledge and practiced techniques, but rather a loving appreciation of and response to spiritual reality, which is only known in the fullness of its integrity when its beauty is appreciated and its truth humbly embraced.   In that sense we are called to become true artists!   True artists have, at times been secretly admired because of their selfless commitment to their art irrespective of whether they have monetary reward or popular success; and that characteristic of certain great artists unconsciously relates them to, and directly reminds us of, the sublime virtues of divine love, spiritual sensitivity, and personal humility in the life of Mary, the supreme Christian artist.

People of God aspire to know Catholic truth and beg for grace to love it.  Strive to become sincere artists of humble, Catholic and Christian, living.  And to that end, be ever more and more desirous of hearing and learning from the still, small, voice of the Spirit of Jesus which can sound in and through all the daily happenings of your apparently ordinary life in Mother Church.   But take care lest you make the same mistake as St. Peter, who, setting out – perhaps, as was his wont, over-exuberantly -- to answer the call of Jesus over the waters, did not keep his eyes fixed on Jesus: in an instant of anxiety he turned his eyes to the boiling waters instead of walking steadfastly and trustfully towards Jesus Who was calling him.  Trust when broken, be it ever so slightly, cannot be taken up again at will; repentance and a rescue -- Lord save me! -- is required which only Jesus can ratify and effect:

Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.  Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart. (Psalm 37:3-4)

The voice of conscience is too often tied up -- well-nigh exclusively -- in the minds of some modern Catholics, with situations predominantly imagined as unpleasant, threatening, disturbing: situations involving commands obeyed or disobeyed, investigating right and wrong, and, usually, apportioning blame; situations always uncomfortable for weak humans aware of their insufficiency.

However, in God’s gift – for conscience is a gift of intimacy with Himself -- there is also to be found an awareness of and joy in what is so supremely beautiful and sublimely true as can be communicated to us in no other way with such sensitivity as of that tiny whispering sound calling to be heard, understood, and embraced, in the depths of a tranquil, trusting, and most grateful conscience.

            Speak Lord, for Your servant is listening.