The Birth of John the Baptist 2018

 The Birth of John the Baptist

(Isaiah 49:1-6; Acts 13:22-26; Luke 1:57-66, 80)

 

The fact that God gave Zechariah and Elizabeth's child the name "John" is most significant.  It was considered to be the father's privilege to name his child, and the fact that God Himself chose a name for this child shows that John was indeed to be, as we would say, "God's man".  As you heard in the first reading from the prophet Isaiah:

Before I was born the LORD called me; from my birth He has made mention of my name.

The name ‘John’ means ‘The Lord has been gracious’ and it leads us to anticipate that, in His Providence, God would subsequently be gracious to His Chosen People through John.

John’s background fostered the development of his distinctive character: he was born into a provincial priestly family and, as he came to know more and more of what went on in the side-wings, so to speak, of the priestly society in Jerusalem -- above all concerning the wealth, luxury, pride and venality of leading families -- the more indignant and alienated he felt:

The child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived (by preference) in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.

In the desert we are told that:

John's clothes were made of camel's hair, and he had a leather belt around his waist. His food was locusts and wild honey. (Matthew 3:4)

When he did, at last, appear publicly to Israel he seems to have preached strongly against the lives of luxury, trappings of wealth, and quest for money and power which characterized the upper echelons of priestly society in Jerusalem; and equally the pride which motivated so many Scribes and Pharisees in their search for influence and public esteem. These things so disgusted John that, on noticing certain figures coming to witness or avail themselves of the baptism he was giving by the Jordan, he burst out:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. And do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father.' For I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.

In this respect, John was indeed the culmination of the prophets of old who had so often, over the centuries, castigated the sins of Israel; and how often would Jesus Himself have to hear His opponents claim, ‘We have Abraham as our father’!

All that, however, was what John himself, as it were ‘picked up’ in the course of life, he was not directly taught such attitudes of disgust and anger.  For his ‘formation’ given by his priestly father we must look at the Benedictus where St. Luke pictures for us an elderly father and priest, who has -- ever so recently – come, through suffering, to a very real and personal awareness of and reverence for the God of Israel.  Moreover, this is an Israelite and a priest who has heard from his wife all about Mary and the Child she was carrying, and we can well imagine him musing in the presence of his son about the great goodness and majesty of Israel’s God, in His dealings with and purpose for His People:

       The oath he swore to Abraham our father, to grant us that, freed from the hand of our enemies, we might worship Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before Him all our days  (Luke 1: 73-75),

and about his own son’s part to play in God’s plan because he, John, had been the first to experience the grace of God’s gifted Saviour when, even though being still in his mother’s womb, he had leapt for joy at his Saviour’s presence as his mother joyfully greeted Mary’s arrival.

And you, child, will be called prophet of the Most High, for you will go before the Lord to prepare His ways, to give His people knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins.  (Luke 1:76-77)

However, even that was not the whole of John, for though his family background and personal gifts conspired to make him both significant and remarkable, it was his subsequent vocation from God that rendered him quite unique.  God did not only "make his mouth a sharp sword" against the Lord's enemies, but he was also "honoured in the eyes of the Lord" to the extent that he was called to begin to "bring back Jacob to the Lord", which is why, as we all heard in the first reading, John went about the region of the Jordan:

             Preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

And here we must take most careful notice of John.  He offered a baptism, an immersion, for the forgiveness of sins, but only to those coming forward for that baptism with the sincerity of their repentance backed up by evidence of good works done:

            Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

Such was John’s insistence: they had to stop standing on their dignity by thinking "we have Abraham as our father" or "we are Levitical priests”, or again, “we are learned scribes or holy Pharisees"; instead they had to show the truth of their sorrow for past sins by their present efforts at righteousness.  John would also give advice to those who asked him for guidance on what sort of fruit for repentance they should bring with them:

“The man with two tunics should share with him who has none, and the one who has food should do the same." Tax collectors also came to be baptized. "Teacher," they asked, "what should we do?"  "Don't collect any more than you are required to," he told them. Then some soldiers asked him, "And what should we do?" He replied, "Don't extort money and don't accuse people falsely, be content with your pay." (Luke 3:11-14)

Only if and when they had produced fruit worthy of repentance, would John baptize them with, immerse them in, water; whereupon, they then could they go to the Temple and perform there the many cleansing ceremonies with right dispositions and so hope to receive the grace of God attached to those ritual ablutions. 

John however, was fully aware of the limitations of the baptism he himself was offering, and therefore, as a true forerunner of Jesus, he used to speak to those who were truly repentant about the One Who was to come:

I baptize you with water. But One more powerful than I will come, the thongs of Whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

In this way, St. Luke tells us:

With many other words, John exhorted the people and preached the good news to them.

In his personal life style John differed greatly from Jesus.  Jesus did not live in the desert, although it was in the desert where He first conquered the Devil.  Jesus did not wear a garment of camel's hair, nor was His food locusts and wild honey although there were times when He had nowhere to lay His head, times when He was exhausted by lack of food and water. Jesus once referred to the obvious contrast between Himself and John saying:

John the Baptist came neither eating bread nor drinking wine, and you say, 'He has a demon.'  The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and you say, 'Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.' (Luke 7:33-35)

In his teaching, however, John was indeed a man after Jesus' own heart.  Just as we heard God say of David in the second reading, so too it could be said of John that he was, for Jesus:

            A man after My own heart; he will do everything I want him to do.'

It would appear that John did not mention the One who was to come to the unrepentant ‘brood of vipers’; and, in that respect, we call to mind the later words of Jesus to His disciples (Matthew 7:6):

Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.

We also recall the way Jesus used to speak only in parables to those who were not sufficiently well-disposed or well-prepared:

This is why I speak to them in parables: "Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand." In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: "'You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving.  For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear with their ears, and they have closed their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn, and I would heal them.'              (Matthew 13:10-15)

People of God, for many in the Church today John the Baptist is unknown and unappreciated and it is a mystery to them why he has such prominence in Mother Church's liturgy for only he -- together with Peter and Paul -- of all the prophets and apostles, has both a vigil and a solemn celebratory Mass and Office.  Mother Church cannot forget what God has given her to preserve for His children, given her for their future nurture, enlightenment and fulfilment.

John, therefore, has a most important lesson for us children of Mother Church, a lesson and a teaching which makes him little regarded today by many who like to follow trends rather than seek truth.  John was not overawed by religious authority and power because he feared God first – having learnt that from his earliest years listening to his father’s vibrant and heart-felt words  -- and, as one sent on his mission by God, he demanded signs of authentic repentance, otherwise, without such signs he would not baptize the proud and prestigious, the luxurious and sinful ones, who might come to him:

You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath?  Produce fruit in keeping with repentance.

As Mark's Gospel (1:14-15) tells us, Jesus picks up from where John left off:

After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. "The time has come," He said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

Today it is popularly considered that the approach to Jesus should be made as easy as possible, with the result that His call to repentance can easily be watered down and His teaching not so much adapted as adulterated, while the Blood of Christ is splashed around like water in the ‘Asperges’ when the sacraments are given to those who gladly proffer a show of words or tears but withhold substantial obedience. 

This is all to Mother Church's great loss: not because harshness, rigidity, are good in themselves, but because reverence and ‘fear of the Lord’ are absolutely essential if anyone is to draw close to God.  John the Baptist was providentially sent by the Father to prepare the way for His Son because God alone can show His love for and bestow His mercy on His People, not any ‘man of God’ making emotional play with human words; and God will only show His mercy and love, in and through His beloved Son, to those whom reverence prevents from abusing that love and mercy, from mocking His most-beloved, and only begotten, Son.  When reverence and fear of the Lord inspire in us the discipline of good works, when -- eschewing any quick fix -- they lead us to watch and wait dutifully and humbly for the Lord, and, above all, when such dispositions gradually constrain us to seek God first and self last in all our longings and aspirations, all our endeavours and commitment, then can we hope to become true disciples of Jesus, and by His Spirit further the coming of God’s Kingdom.

                                                                

  

11th Sunday of the Year (B) 2018

11^th. Sunday of Year (B)

(Ezekiel 17:22-24; 2^nd. Corinthians 5:6-10; Mark 4:26-34)

St. Paul, speaking in our second reading today:

WE ARE ALWAYS COURAGEOUS, although we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord,

reminds me very much of our Blessed Lord Jesus’ words recorded by St. John in his Gospel (16:33)

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace.  In the world you will have tribulation; but BE OF GOOD CHEER, I have overcome the world.

Actually, the two Greek words translated in the one case by ‘We are always courageous’ and in the other by ‘be of good cheer’ are almost identical and very closely related, so we do well to understand the dictum of St. Paul in accordance with those words of Jesus, because Paul was a truly sublime disciple of his Lord, and no man of his personal discipline and life-commitment to the proclamation of, and witness to, Jesus as Lord and Saviour, could have been so bumptious as to say of himself that he – as a mere man -- was ‘always courageous’.  However, St. Paul most certainly did on many occasions –  more  indeed than any of the other apostles -- suffer for Jesus with very great courage, because of his faith and trust in the Lord Who had urged him to ‘be of good cheer’ in whatever adverse situation he might find himself, and that faith and trust, that being of good cheer, is most certainly what Paul wanted to teach and encourage in his converts who were called to daily face up to the pagan power of Rome and give witness to the Lord Jesus as true and faithful disciples: In the world you will have tribulation.

What tribulation there is to be found in our world today!  I will not speak of wars and rumours of wars; rather I want to highlight the tribulation in the hearts of so many people, all of them potentially good, but far too many of whom are sadly being turned aside from ‘being of good cheer in Jesus’ by the turmoil and despair of evil all around them.   Today, change is continual and seems to have ever greater momentum, sweeping aside what had previously seemed established and inviolable, and as a result many find it extremely difficult to hold on to a constant, firm, and abiding faith.  Moreover, in our affluent Western society there is so much the world considers desirable and worthwhile presently on offer to us; and yet, there is no telling how long it will be available, because change approaches almost unnoticeably before suddenly manifesting itself as well-nigh irresistible.   In such circumstances the temptation is great -- especially for the young and the needy -- to grasp, seize, what is on offer here and now before it disappears, before it is lost, without their having tasted of it.  And how alien such a worldly set-up finds, portrays, and decries, our Christian religion and Catholic faith which advise and encourage us to aspire to, and learn to be supremely content with, what seem -- for those unable to recognise or appreciate spiritual blessings – to be only promised nothings here on earth!

Dear People of God, when power and influence can be, and frequently are, bought by money; when multitudes are swept along by popular tides of mindless enthusiasm stirred up by preachers of vengeance, purveyors of pleasure, and the debilitating influence of an increasingly prurient media; when rights are proclaimed and responsibilities ignored; when might is right and popularity cannot be challenged; when people are cajoled and led astray by preachers of holiness-without-commitment and emboldened by addicts of faith-without-fear-of-God; WHEN, to sum it up, we are surrounded by so many claims, counter-claims, blatant lies and hidden contradictions, that disciples find it difficult to recognize the soul-calming supreme authority of the unseen, but all-seeing and all-powerful, God Who created us, and hard to accept the teaching proclaimed by our historic Lord and Saviour claiming both ultimate veracity and an unfailing power to transform all who embrace it into disciples reborn and chosen out of this world, for what is eternal and beatifying; THEN, in such situations, how immensely important it is for us to hear and take heart from the concordant voices of our Lord Jesus and His most faithful disciple St. Paul:

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace; be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.

We are always courageous, although we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord.

The believer, Paul went on to say, is confident by reason of his faith; he trusts in the Lord and is well-pleased, content, with the hope to which he looks forward; in all circumstances, the disciple seeks to please the Lord he serves and loves:

We walk by faith not by sight, and we aspire to please Him before (Whose) judgement seat we must all appear.

Now, that Christian trust and contentment is pictured in Our Lord’s first parable today:

The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground, and should sleep by night and rise by day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he himself does not know how.   For the earth yields crops by itself: first the blade, then the head, after that the full grain in the head.  But when the grain ripens, immediately he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.

The sower does not know how the planting he has made develops to fruition: it takes place whether he himself is waking or sleeping.  He continues to play his part, however, by waiting for the Lord and trusting in Him, before ultimately reaping the resultant harvest.

Dear People of God, too few supposed sowers-of-God’ seed, too few preachers of Jesus’ Gospel, seem to know how to wait for the Lord and trust in His word!  Too many, high and lowly, want to adapt Catholic traditional, centuries-long and original, teaching to ‘modern’ people who apparently find themselves in situations never experienced before and both unknown to, and unforeseen by, Our Lord.

Jesus gives special emphasis to trust in and contentment before God in His second parable: there, He no longer speaks of many handfuls of seeds being scattered, but of just one single mustard seed, the smallest seed of all.  The apparent insignificance of the beginning is no hindrance to the final realization of God’s plan: that tiny seed can grow into the biggest shrub of all.

Ezekiel told us of the Lord’s historic dealings with faithless Israel.   She had broken the covenant made with God and had received her punishment: banishment from the Promised Land.  Only a remnant was left behind in the land and they swore to obey their conquerors.  What a fall from the proud kingdom of David and Solomon!

And yet, with trust in the Lord Who, as the Psalmist (145:14) says:

            Upholds all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down,

there could still be a future!

But there was no longer any trust in the Lord; the remnant broke their oath of obedience to their conquerors, just as the whole nation had broken its covenant with the Lord Himself, and they turned to Egypt for human help.  They were not content with the Lord’s promised future provision, they wanted to win for themselves – with the help of Egypt – something immediate, here and now, something hopefully bigger and better.  It did not turn out as they had planned, and the Lord spoke through Ezekiel the oracle we heard in the first reading:

Thus says the Lord GOD: "I too will pluck from the crest of the cedar the highest branch.  From the top a tender shoot I will break off and transplant on a high, lofty mountain.   On the mountain height of Israel I will plant it.  It shall put forth branches and bear fruit and become a majestic cedar.  Every small bird will nest under it and all kinds of winged birds will dwell in the shade of its branches; every tree of the field shall know that I am the LORD.  I bring low the high tree, lift high the low tree, wither up the green tree, and make the dry tree bloom.  As I, the LORD, have spoken so will I do."

This was reflected once again in today’s Responsorial Psalm where we heard:

The just one shall flourish like the palm tree, like a cedar of Lebanon He shall grow.

Who then are those just and righteous’ ones?   The Psalmist foresaw the disciples of Jesus who would be confident through faith: trusting in their Lord and well-pleased with the hope set before them in the promises He had made to them, promises already being fulfilled in them through the Spirit bestowed upon them ‘as a first instalment’; and from a great distance he greeted them with these words:

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.   Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.   He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.  Rest in the LORD and wait patiently for Him.        (Psalm 37:3-7)

The world may hate you; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world!

How strange that one should be of good cheer though the world hates us!  It is a fact that our sophisticated, affluent, proud and self-sufficient, Western world has long –secretly at first but now quite openly and indeed blatantly -- hated the teachings we proclaim.  For the present, it is content to mock and deride us personally, but such mockery and derision quickly turned to hatred for our Lord Jesus Himself, hatred so intense that only His crucifixion would satisfy them or sate it.

And yet, it is because of the modern-day hatred we experience that we should indeed be of good cheer as St. Paul exhorts us, because such hatred proves both the truth of the words of Jesus, and the fact that He has indeed overcome the world Whose Spirit is still at work in us today drawing us along the Gospel way of Truth and Life:

For this reason, we too give thanks to God unceasingly, that, in receiving the word of God from hearing us, you received not a human word but, as it truly is, the word of God, which is now at work in you who believe.  (1 Thess. 2:13)

That nascent belief, being fostered and nurtured by the Holy Spirit at work within us in the name of Jesus, opens up for us a prospect immeasurably preferable to that which the world offers us: first of all, moral confusion where there is no divine right or wrong, no natural or unnatural, only human legal prescriptions and personal options; then, satiety for some and despairing hunger for many; and ultimately for all, a wordless – unintelligible – void instead of spiritual fulfilment: a void, a spiritual black hole, which growing numbers of both rich and poor, celebrated and unknown, cannot face up to, cannot live with, and therefore they make their own final and most personal option, suicide.  

People of God, let us today pray with renewed insistence and solicitude for our world where so many are suffering because they do not hear the truth, because they are being fed with lies and given poison to drink for such, indeed, is the teaching of this worlds leaders and authorities, such indeed are many of the examples portrayed and extolled on every hand!   And let us thank God that He has brought us into the company of those called and empowered to trust in Our Lord at all times, and under all circumstances to be well-pleased, supremely confident and content with the hope His Spirit stirs up within us.

St. John tells us that Jesus -- before He left this world to go back to His Father -- was most desirous of protecting His disciples, and so He solemnly forewarned them:

If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you.  Remember the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you.  These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.    (15:19-20 & 16:33)

10th Sunday of the Year (B) 2018

Tenth Sunday of Year B

(Genesis 3:9-15; 2^nd. Corinthians 4:13 – 5:1; Saint Mark’s Gospel 3:20-35)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, Jesus said in today’s Gospel reading words both puzzling and encouraging:

            Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.

To speak of one ‘doing the will of God‘ seems such an impersonal criterion, whereas ‘my brother and sister and mother’ are words so personal and bespeaking spontaneity. 

Of course, as you surely well know, we become brothers and sisters of Christ when He – by baptism and the Gift of His most Holy Spirit in and through Mother Church – assimilates us to Himself and so nourishes us that we become His brothers and sisters and adopted sons and daughters of His heavenly Father.  And we can even become His mother in the sense that Christ lives in us and grows gradually to maturity in us through our fidelity to His Gospel, Mother Church’s faith, and our responsiveness to His guiding Spirit.

And yet, for Jesus, the ultimate and supremely decisive criterion for a true and acceptable disciple is, ‘Whoever does the will of God’.

You will have noticed that Jesus’ words to describe a disciple of His speak of a brother, a sister, and mother.  There is no mention of ‘a father’.

Dear People of God, the relationship of Jesus on earth with His Father in heaven was so mysterious, so intimate and imperious, that even Our Blessed Lady was, so to speak, ‘at a loss’, at times or even ‘at sea’, with it, as we learn from the occasion when, in yesterday’s Gospel reading, she thought it right to reprove her Son Who had remained behind in the Temple at Jerusalem unknown to herself and Saint Joseph.  At that time Jesus’ answer totally puzzled her:

            Did you not know that I must be in My Father’s house?

words which can also mean, about my Father’s business, and which thus offered to one so contemplative as Mary something she would remember and ultimately treasure when her Son left her and went with His disciples to preach His Good News to the people; ultimately walking alone yet wholeheartedly -- because He was ‘about His father’s business’ -- to Calvary, before returning to His heavenly Father’s home.

So, brothers and sisters, dear fellow disciples in Christ, Jesus words:

            Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother,

are both heavenly and earthly words, perfectly befitting Him Who is God become Man for men; they are heavenly words of devotion, ‘Whoever does the will of My Father’, and of God-pleasing emotion, where ‘My brother and sister and mother’ are mentioned as true expressions of spontaneous human love.

The observance of God’s will has an indispensable role in leading us to the full development of our earthly role of ‘mother of Christ’.

‘Doing the will of God’ was the aim of the Law under the Old covenant.  St. Paul discussed that question of the role of the old Law, and his teaching is admirably summed up by the late C.H. Dodd in one of his early works:

‘Every individual of the human race is so entangled in the general “wrongness” that he has no power left to himself to avoid committing acts which, whether he knows it or not, add to the sum of wrong.  To know (thanks to the Law’s teaching) these acts are wrong does not prevent him from doing them, but it does imprint upon his conscience, in the indelible characters of shame and guilt, the contrast of good and evil.  It brings “sin” home, from being a general state of the human race, to be a conscious burden upon the mind of the individual.  And Paul sees that it is a great advance to have discovered sin in one’s own heart as guilt.  Only the man who is conscious of his guilt can be saved from the sin of which he is guilty.’

That saving from sin comes to us through Christ’s Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, via the sacrament of Baptism; and today, our efforts to conform our behaviour in all circumstances to God’s will as revealed to us most sublimely by the teaching and example of our blessed Lord Jesus has a similar role to that of the Jewish Law in Old Testament times which is, to quote Saint Paul to the Ephesians 4:12–13:  

To equip the holy ones for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the extent of the full stature of Christ;

or in simpler words, to become sons and daughters of God to the utmost of Christ’s gift (by His Spirit) to us.

Our effort to do God’s will (we have indeed to be willing to make an effort to achieve salvation!) is not meant so much to disclose sin as guilt in our hearts, because the grace of Christ is given us to overcome sin and thus wipe out guilt, so much as to enable us to learn by experience that we are weak of ourselves and that God is faithful, true, and mysteriously powerful as He works in us by His grace in response to our prayer: doing, bringing about, for us the good we could not do of ourselves.

In sum, the effort to do God’s will is meant to make us profoundly humble as regards ourselves, and totally confident and trusting in God.  It is intended to promote and cement a truly intimate and adult relationship with God, one leading to spontaneity, for when we fully abandon ourselves, when we cast aside self-solicitude, we are then free to love Him and serve Him … in Jesus and by His Spirit … as members of His family with that spontaneous love acknowledged by Jesus in our Gospel reading, and now divinized to its ultimate beauty and worth, with emotion having become devotion and ultimately life in Christ, by the Spirit, for our heavenly Father.

Just a final word, however, and one of warning, because spontaneity before God is such a precious fruit of grace that attempts made to counterfeit it can be truly harmful, hypocrisy at a most dangerous level, and that is because spontaneity can only exist with most sincere humility as its bosom companion.  When true spontaneity comes it is impelling: not the following of a personal whim or thought-out measure, but an obligation of conscience and an expression of love for God … an expression which will be unique, corresponding to the subject’s unique relationship with God … and the joy that accompanies it is unique also, a milestone in life.

Let us, therefore, ask Our Blessed Lord in this Mass, at Holy Communion, to grant us that we may faithfully endeavour --- in all the manifold details of daily living --- to do the will of God our Father in heaven, again with and in Jesus and by His Spirit guiding and empowering us in all things, that we might thereby be brought to the fulness of our personal calling by, and relationship with, Christ as His brother, sister and mother.

           

The Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ Year B 2018

THE MOST HOLY BODY & BLOOD OF CHRIST (B)

(Exodus 24:3-8; Hebrews 9:11-15; Mark 14:12-16, 22-26)

It was noticeable that today’s first reading taken from the book of Exodus and also the second one from the letter to the Hebrews mentioned only the blood sprinkled on the Israelites by Moses in the desert, or again the blood poured out by Christ on Calvary to cleanse His people from their sins.  At the Last Supper, however, as St. Mark’s Gospel told us, Jesus blessed and offered bread first of all, and only afterwards did He offer some wine.  Why did Jesus not simply offer wine become His Blood?  Why did He bless bread and offer His Body also?

Our Lord’s divine wisdom is beyond any merely human explanation or scrutiny; and that is why Mother Church offered us several readings at Holy Mass, so that we might gain some understanding and appreciation of Jesus’ actions in the Gospel by viewing them in the light of the other bible texts, both of which in this case, as I said, speak only of blood, thereby provoking and inviting me, and I hope you also, to wonder why Jesus took both bread and wine, and thereby offered both His Body and His Blood.

In our reading from the book of Exodus, Moses had led the people of Israel out of Egypt and they had arrived at their first destination, Sinai, where Moses had encountered God on the mountain top and been given the Law; then we were told:

Moses came to the people and related all the words and ordinances of the LORD, they all answered with one voice and said, "We will do everything that the LORD has told us."   Moses then wrote down all the words of the LORD.

Our reading from the letter to the Hebrews spoke of Jesus ascending, not simply to the top of a mountain, but to heaven itself with His blood:

Christ came as High Priest of the good things that have come to be, passing through the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made by hands, that is, not belonging to this creation, He entered once for all into the sanctuary, not with the blood of goats and calves but with His own blood, thus obtaining eternal redemption.

Both readings emphasize the blood, used by Moses and given by Jesus, and both tell us what the blood was for:

Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, "This is the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words of His."

If the blood of bulls and goats and the sprinkling of a heifer’s ashes can sanctify those who are defiled so that their flesh is cleansed, how much more will the blood of Christ, Who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from dead works to worship the living God?

The blood was, therefore, for a sacrificial cleansing leading to a commitment to God by observing His laws, following His teaching, keeping His Word.

By those two readings we are encouraged, almost forced, to think, on hearing our Gospel passage: why did Jesus add the bread, His Body?   This question becomes all the more important when we realize that blood alone evokes easily and clearly that required cleansing from sin and commitment to God; but when bread is also used we begin to think of bread and wine as one, carrying an implication of food and drink, with the result that the Body and the Blood offered by Jesus seem likewise to take on a suggestion of nourishment, refreshment.

The People of Israel, the original Chosen People, as you heard, pledged themselves to keep the Law given to them through Moses by the Lord:

All the people answered with one voice and said, "We will do everything that the LORD has told us."  

However, both early on in their desert wanderings, and ultimately and most disastrously, over the span of many centuries leading to the Messianic times, they failed, repeatedly, to keep their part of the covenant they had originally entered into with God at Sinai.

They failed because they tried to do the impossible: not that God had required what was impossible of them, but because they failed to recognize and appreciate the divine aspect of their calling, because the basic sin of devilish pride once again reasserted itself into mankind’s relationship with God.  Instead of invoking God’s help for their weakness and His grace for their ignorance, they tried to keep the Law not so much by aspiring towards, longing for, its spiritual fulfilment, as by reducing its scope to the level of their own natural understanding, and its requirements to their natural capacity for meticulous observance.  In that way their fulfilment of the requirements of the Law became more of a testimonial to their own spurious holiness and undeniable strength of character, rather than a means for their education into a spiritual understanding and appreciation of God’s choice of Israel for the good of all mankind, and an invitation and spur to a whole-hearted and humble personal response to His inconceivable wisdom and love.

The offering of sacrificial blood alone came to remind the Israelites above all of obligations, requirements, to be met -- as promised -- in a vain attempt to legally fulfil their side of a bilateral agreement made at Sinai.   For the old covenant entered into by Moses at Sinai had been one of the type made between a sovereign Lord and his vassals, a type of treaty common in the Near East of those early days, a treaty in which a Great King would offer a binding covenant to His subjects, whereby He would protect them and they, in return, would fulfil material and specific obligations of praise, honour, and service as His servants; such treaties, among the nations around, were not commonly considered as involving -- let alone binding -- the minds and hearts of those obeying.   

Humankind has always striven, since stretching out a grabbing hand for forbidden fruit in the original temptation of Eden, to become like to God without in any way becoming godly:

God knows well that when you eat of it (the apple) your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, who know good and evil. (Genesis 3:5)

Indeed, such is the extent of human pride, that human beings even try to make themselves superior to God, trying to force Him, for example by magical practices and incantations, to do their will.

The Son of God, however, out of His great love for His Father and compassion for our suffering and subjection, came as One among us to offer both His BODY and His BLOOD; and at the Last Supper Jesus offered His Body first of all:

He took the bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take it, this is My Body.

Thus, Jesus gives His Body first to make His disciples one with and in Himself, indeed, as closely one with Him as conceivably possible, before associating them with Himself in the sacrificial offering of Himself by His Blood:

Which will be shed for many.

Under the Old, Mosaic covenant the victims blood … the blood of goats and bulls … was sprinkled upon the people of the covenant; it was their sacrificial offering of their animals, it was a pledge that: 

            We will do everything that the Lord has told us.

In the New Covenant the sacrifice is Jesu’s, His blood is shed for us and we are invited to be one with Him in that sacrifice by the fact of His previously making us one with Himself by the gift of His Body.  Our partaking of His Body, whereby He assimilates us into Himself and thus invites us to sacrifice with Him, is a union far more intimately loving and efficacious than any superficial sprinkling, even with blood:

Jesus said to them (James and John), “You do not know what you are asking. Can you drink the cup that I drink or be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?”  They said to Him, “We can.” Jesus said to them, “The cup that I drink, you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized. (Mark 10:38–39)

In order to convince His People of their constant need for both cleansing and strength: Jesus’ divinely wise gift of Himself takes on the symbolism of bread and wine, our essential food; It becomes our Eucharistic Food, our essential Bread and Wine, meant to enable to us become a humble and grateful People, constantly aware of our need for heavenly nourishment, whereby we can – in the power of the Spirit -- walk safely and successfully through the desert of this world towards our promised heavenly fulfilment in and with Jesus: our Lord so intimately one with us, God’s eternal  Word, the heavenly Father’s only begotten Son, our Saviour.

But there is yet more, for by bringing in the aspect of food and nourishment whereby we constantly look to God for help and strength to do His will, we are also made aware of our calling to an eternal banquet with God in heaven, where we will find ourselves being given a place at the divine table that we could never have stolen for ourselves, a position of honour and – in Jesus, by the Spirit -- of a certain equality with God, as adopted children in the Kingdom and Family of their eternal Father.  The New Covenant is no longer a mighty-Lord-and-vassal covenant but a bond of mutual love, by the Spirit, in Jesus, wherein we share in the very relationship that exists between Jesus and His Father: we are to become children of the Father, adopted indeed, but most truly His children, because the Spirit uniting Jesus and the Father is our very life: the blood coursing through our veins and in our heart, the breath of life that fills our lungs.

Today therefore, dear People of God, thanks to the readings Mother Church chose to give us along with the Mark’s Gospel account of the institution of the Eucharist, we have seen something of what Jesus’ offering of bread and wine can mean for us: it both humbles and exalts us.  By humbling us it can save us from the folly of human pride, while our exaltation is above anything we could ever have imagined.  Let us therefore, dear friends, give truly heartfelt thanks to our Saviour God and loving Father for such undreamt-of blessings.                         

Trinity Sunday Year B 2018

Trinity Sunday (Year B)

(Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20)

Dear People of God, our readings today open up for us a wonderful panoply of Trinitarian glory and goodness, for our deep peace, supreme hope, and undying gratitude.  It all began with Israel as recorded in our first reading:

Ask from one end of the sky to the other: Did a people ever hear the voice of God speaking from the midst of fire, as you did, and live?   Or did any god venture to go and take a nation for himself from the midst of another nation … with strong hand and outstretched arm which the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your very eyes?

There are biblical scholars today who want to deny the fact, and Israel the glory, of God originally choosing one people to be His own Chosen People.   Uniqueness, for such scholars, necessarily leads to exclusivity, superiority, nationalism and racism, and is therefore -- as the supposed cause of too much of mankind’s struggles and strife throughout history -- to be condemned in the moral estimation of a world denying God’s existence … a modern, social, moral order that condones abortion but criminalizes mere words.

Those biblical scholars, or university professorial writers, concerned with their standing in the semi-closed world of biblical scholarship and, IN ORDER TO MAKE THEMSELVES KNOWN AND NOTED, are always reading, commenting on, and replying to, fellow scholars’ works with ideas of their own, sparked off in the maelstrom of their scholarly activities where they read, read, and read (they must keep up-to-date with what is being said!), skip over, abstract, and absorb as quickly as possible, and reply with their own distinctive (creativity is essential!) and hopefully to-be-noticed (that is of the supreme importance!!) observations.  They have no time to spare, cannot miss the golden opportunities available to them, in order to be more humble and faithful before God awaiting His guidance, they must relate with and respond to men (and women) on what is currently topical, they are too often members of a band-wagon, trying to imitate one outstanding leader (still with us, Deo Gratias!) they cannot match in scholarship or fidelity to the Gospel.

As for the Gospels accounts of Jesus’ life activities, it is suggested, that they are not so much visual reports (at first, second, or third hand), as literary devices, stratagems, devised to back-up some chosen Christian teaching of importance.  Those original Gospel authors were not humble disciples inspired to hand down, transmit, God’s saving truth and the truths concerning the life and death of Jesus, but human geniuses it would seem, ‘scholars’ in fact, centuries ahead of their times, somehow able and determined to write a cleverly devised, non-historical, code-cum-story: not written for believers to believe in, live by, and die for, over the intervening two-thousand years but for fellow ‘scholars’ of the 21 st. century to triumphantly discover, decipher, and unlock for faith-deprived people of today.

However, dear People of God and faithful children of Mother Church, we know that God does choose special minsters destined by Him to be servants of His own good plans and purposes for mankind’s better-being and ultimate salvation.  Israel was indeed chosen by God and remained uniquely honoured as His Chosen People for thousands of years until finally bringing forth the glorious fruit, Mary of Nazareth, and, indeed ultimately, the very Son of God Himself made Flesh, for the establishment of a new and ultimate People of God by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost: the Christian, Catholic Church of today.  Yes, God does make choices – sometimes, indeed, with an outstretched arm as with Israel of old -- and that means for us, as believers and disciples of Jesus Our Lord and Saviour, that we too, each of us individually, have been deliberately chosen by God for His glory, our salvation, and the salvation of mankind:

No one can come to Me unless My Father draws him.

Moreover, our world, our universe, is not -- as so many gratuitously opine -- the result of chances, infinitesimal and untraceable, coalescing out of the chaos of unimaginable powers and countless conflicting processes over many millions of years before ultimately heading for inevitable self-destruction into the void of oblivion … No! Our world has been deliberately willed and created by the God Who shows His hand by choosing and then by speaking with love – originally from the midst of the fire on Sinai, then by His continuing words of the Law, the teachings of the Prophets given to Israel for her formation and guidance; until now, ultimately and definitively, in and through the Gospel of Jesus Christ, His Word-made-Flesh, proclaimed in and through His Church – because He still loves His creation, and still wills to share His love with those He originally made in His own image and likeness.

Such is the beginning of a series of blessings ever more wonderful and unimaginably beautiful.   Let us move on to our second reading from St. Paul:

The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

With those words St. Paul refers to a transcendent blessing won for us by Our Lord Jesus: for, by dying in our flesh He destroyed our death, and by rising -- glorified in the Spirit -- He restored our Life.  That is, by His transformation of His human horror of dying on the Cross rejected by those to whom He had been sent, into an act of sublime obedience and supreme love for His Father and His Fathers plans for us, He shattered the tyrannical hold of death over human beings and their experience of life.  Having risen from the dead glorified in His human flesh, He bestows, in fulfilment of the Father’s promise, His Spirit upon His Church: to wipe away human guilt, correct our personal sins and sinfulness, indeed, to set us free for Himself and His Father’s Kingdom.  Thereby He gives us the hope of sharing in Him, as living members of His Body and adopted children of God, in the divine life of eternal Trinitarian beatitude which is His, with the Spirit, before the face of His heavenly Father.

Such forgiveness of sins is a most wonderful blessing indeed.  After all:

What profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?  For, the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward each according to his works.  (Matthew 16:26f.)

Of course, there are some who like to think that they can distract themselves from the awareness of right and wrong characteristic of Christian humanity and learn to forget God and all traces of any sensitivity to sin or awareness of personal responsibility.  Of them the psalmist says:

Sin lurks deep in the hearts of the wicked, forever urging them on to evil deeds. They have no fear of God to hold them back.  Instead, in their conceit, they think they can hide their evil deeds and not get caught.  Everything they say is crooked and deceitful; they are no longer wise and good.  They lie awake at night to hatch their evil plots instead of planning how to keep away from wrong. (TLB.  Psalm 36:1-4)

However, though they may, to some extent, hide their sins from themselves, and though their eyes may refuse to recognize or their minds to admit the truth about themselves, nevertheless, God is the One Who sees all and knows all, and He hates wickedness; above all, He hates the wickedness of those who claim to be innocent of wrong-doing, holy without Him:

With You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light.  Oh, continue Your loving-kindness to those who know You, and Your righteousness to the upright in heart.     The workers of iniquity have fallen; they have been cast down and are not able to rise. (Psalm 36:9-10,12)

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10)

For all who, on the other hand, live humbly in Jesus by the Spirit for the Father, the gift of forgiveness of sins and freedom from their enslavement brings into our lives a truly sublime experience of peace and hope.

The next blessing Jesus offers us is inconceivable because St. Paul tells us that:

We are children of God and, if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with Him so that we may be glorified with Him.

St. Paul is therefore able to speak of the “glory of the children of God”.  For the present time, the fullness of that consuming glory is, as I said, something we cannot possibly conceive, for it is heavenly and transcends all earthly categories or human imagining.  However, we can begin to experience of something of that heavenly glory here on earth, because it is given us – even here and now -- to enter into communion with the Father, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit in accordance with the explicit prayer of Jesus (John 17:5, 24):

Father, I desire that they also, whom You gave Me, may be with Me where I am, that they may behold My glory which You have given Me. 

That means that we are able to have, even now, some share in the Son’s loving relationship with His Father by the Holy Spirit: in Jesus, we too can commune with the Father, speak personally with Him as His children and experience His Fatherly love and care for us, as the Spirit of Jesus -- gently working in our spirit and guiding us along His ways – forms us ever more and more in Jesus’ likeness.  In that way, in Jesus and with Him, we can come to know that we are not left to ourselves and that, despite our weakness, whatever our need, we will never be left alone:

Indeed, the hour is coming, yes, has now come, that you will be scattered each to his own, and will leave Me alone.  And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me. (John 16:32)

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him. (John 14:23)

(Father) I have declared to them Your name, and will declare it, that the love with which You loved Me may be in them, and I in them. (John 17:26)

And so, dear People of God, there is every right reason for our whole-hearted celebration of the Most Holy Trinity today: for, thanks to Jesus, we know by faith, and can appreciate in our spiritual experience, something of the love of the Father: that love from all ages, which upholds our world and embraces us; that intimate and abiding love which is ever at hand to comfort, guide, and protect us; that inviting love, to which we can give whole-hearted response following the wisdom of Jesus’ words and example in the power of His most Holy Spirit.

For such incomparable blessings we are undyingly grateful to Jesus, Our Lord and Saviour, because it is He alone Who both reveals the Father and bequeaths to us His Most Holy Spirit:

Jesus said, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, except through Me.” (John 14:6)

The Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. (John 14:26)

And Jesus does all this for us through His faithful Spouse, Mother Church, which continues to do as He originally commanded her:

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Therefore, dear People of God, our gratitude to the Father, to His Son -- our Lord and Saviour -- and to the Most Holy Spirit, necessarily holds also Mother Church in its embrace.  And although Mother Church is not yet become the ‘spotless Bride of Christ’ of which we hear in the letter to the Ephesians (5:25-27):

A glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, holy and without blemish;

nevertheless, ever gleaming through the stains of our collective weakness and willfulness, her love for Her Lord and Spouse is unfailing; and, being blessed by His Father as the chosen instrument of mankind’s salvation and channel of His grace, we recognize her as our Mother and see in her the likeness of Mary, the Mother of Jesus, to whose tender care and prayers Jesus committed us by His dying wish and command.

When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing nearby, He said to His mother, “Woman, behold your son!”  Then, to His disciple, “Behold, your mother!”  (John 19:26-27)