24th Sunday Year A 2020

                                       24^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Sir. 27:30-28:7; Romans 14:7-9; Matthew 18:21-35)

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Once again, dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our Gospel story is unique to Saint Matthew.

Saint Luke gives us the same saying of Jesus that we have just heard but in a slightly different form:

If your brother wrongs you seven times a day, and returns to you seven times saying, ‘I am sorry’, you should forgive him.  (17:4)

In our Gospel reading Saint Matthew did not mention the fact of the penitent brother asking for forgiveness:

Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him?  As many as seven times?

He would seem to have presumed it.

He would have been right to presume it, of course, because one cannot forgive someone who does not ask for forgiveness, someone who is not wanting forgiveness, for in such a case the original wrong would still hold sway, and even God does not forgive those who do not repent of their sin, because forgiveness – the re-establishing of an original relationship -- has to be received in order for it to be given.

Saint Matthew, however, in his account of this saying of Jesus about forgiveness, is not concerned primarily about the circumstances between the offender and the offended, for, as I earlier mentioned, he does not mention that the repentant sinner came back asking for forgiveness; but rather, Matthew’s great concern is about the relationship between the one offended and God, and in that respect, dear People of God, we must first of all recognize that the ‘huge amount’ owed by debtor no. 1 to the king is ultimately to be regarded as the debt of sins forgiven by God -- a huge amount -- for the sake of His Son’s self-sacrifice as our Saviour on Calvary, and as a huge debt – now of gratitude and gratefulness -- owed by all aspirants to heavenly life  in Jesus before the Father. 

Bearing in mind that essential fact, Matthew is most insistent about members of his congregation of Pharisee-converts in their personal response to a sinning brother, now a convert Christian brother sinning against a fellow convert.  I say Matthew is insistent about this secondary relationship because he here invokes another of his unique memories of Jesus, quoted earlier in his Gospel (5:45), to the effect that, as children of God, you must do, not as the Law of Moses taught or allowed you to do, but as Jesus in His Law of Gospel Grace and Charity teaches you: God never refuses forgiveness when sinners sincerely seek it of Him, and that is what St. Matthew has in mind when he alone quotes that seventy-seven times which means ‘any number of times’, or, ‘times without limit’. 

There is, however, a certain strangeness about Our Lord’s parable, in that the cancellation of the whole debt is far beyond any question of forgiveness, concerning the repayment of a debt, or the time of any such repayment.  And I do not think that Our Lord was insisting that, His Christian disciples must quite literally always write off the whole debt, wipe the slate clean, so to speak, in such cases.  What I am certain about, though, is that He was and still is insisting that we wipe the slate (of our memory) clean in that we truly forgive, without holding onto any grudge or resentment.  And here Matthew has a most important and, once again, unique teaching of Jesus for us to note and most carefully remember: God does not and we must not hold grudges or cherish animosity:

He makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on the righteous and also on the unrighteous; (Matthew 5:45)

such gifts of God are given to all irrespective of their personal sinfulness.

That is absolutely important for us to remember, dear People of God, because our granting forgiveness does not mean that, let us say, the original state of friendship is to be restored immediately; that may take time, or it may be impossible; but what is to be restored immediately is the manner in which we treat the forgiven offender, that is, we treat him or her without any cherished animosity or resentment, that we treat ‘him’ as normally, open-heartedly, and courteously as we treat others, just as God ‘makes His sun to shine and His rain to fall on he righteous and also on the unrighteous’. 

Of course, Jesus knew that such an attitude is not humanly possible even when He was deliberately saying those words, ‘Not seven, I tell you, but seventy-seven times’, in which the word seven is a figure of plenitude, perfection.  Jesus chose those words, I say, to make us realize that the Christian life – life as His disciples and witnesses to Him on earth, aspiring to a heavenly destiny in Him before His Father – is beyond us, of ourselves; it is not something merely human, it is a share in God’s life and gives us a claim on God’s strength.  We cannot say as an excuse, ‘It is beyond me’; of course it is, but it is not beyond God for us, with us, in us, and through us.  We Christians, above all we Catholics,  have the fulness of God’s grace available to us in the Sacraments, and we are meant to live not a merely human life, but a divinised human life, in Christ Jesus, divinised by His Gift of the most Holy Spirit, for the Father, which is what Saint Paul told us in our second reading:

If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord; so that alive or dead we belong to the Lord.

That, dear People of God, should be the ultimate principle of our conscious Christian behaviour: we belong entirely to God in Jesus, and we should strive to react to each situation in life with Him in mind, not ourselves; and for that, our supreme model is blessed Mary at the Annunciation, totally God-centred and self-less!  Of course, we may be taken by surprise or even overcome by our native and instinctive self-love, and led into returning evil for evil, but any such happening should be a clear warning to us and we should make sure that such a surprise does not become deliberate and most certainly not habitual!

Such steadfastness in God’s service, however, can only be achieved not by will-power, but by love-power, so to speak; and that love-power is a gift of God, a gift ‘contained’, ‘understood’ in those words of St. Paul, ‘we belong to God’, words which mean ‘we are His possession’, ‘we are possessed by God’, words which, in turn, can only mean that we are those people who have opened ourselves up to Him -- above all in the highs and lows of life, in our troubles and  trials, in our joys and delights -- and besought Him, most ardently and perseveringly, to rule supreme there.

(2020)

 

 

23rd Sunday Year A 2020

23^rd. Sunday of Year (A)

(Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20)
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When the harmony of human life was shattered by sin, that mutual love which fostered harmony was forgotten as each individual became more independent of, less concerned with, his or her neighbour, brother or sister.  As a result, when God asked Cain:

             Where is Abel your brother?

Cain’s reply was:

             I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?    (Genesis 4:9)

… the very prototype of all ancient and modern ‘couldn’t care less’ and ‘look after number one first of all’ attitudes!

But in the Kingdom of God, in the new, redeemed and restored, human community inaugurated by the sacrifice, and configured to the teaching, of Our Blessed Lord Jesus -- such cold indifference has no legitimate place, as the Gospel reading for today clearly shows:

Jesus said to His disciples: ‘If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone.  If he listens to you, you have won over your brother.  If he does not listen, take one or two other along with you ….. if he refuses to listen to them, tell the church, if he refuses even to listen to the Church, treat him as you would a Gentile or a tax-collector.

Now St. Matthew is the only evangelist to give us those words of Jesus: obviously important words as shown by their very closely and sequentially developed form; and some ancient writers recognizing their seriousness proclaimed them to be a serious commandment of the Lord for all;  and indeed, some even declared -- with relentless logic -- that anyone sinned-against who would not enter on that possible procedure of personal confrontation, witnesses, and ultimately church judgement,  was to be considered a greater sinner than the one guilty of the original fault!

Alas, even individuals who loved the Lord, when faced with the difficulty of understanding particularly ‘thorny’ passages of Scripture can be found to have, at times, unwittingly distorted Our Lord’s words with an interpretation of their own; as Father Faber laments in these famous words of his:  'The love of God is broader than the measure of our mind; we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.'

However, thanks to the work and achievement over many years of Catholic scholarship and Church guidance we are now in a better position to understand, more accurately and more lovingly, that which previously Mother Church – not fully understanding why St. Matthew alone reported those words Jesus -- had only been able to treasure in faithful trust, and hand-down literally and completely for later understanding.

Today, there is a conviction that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel memoirs of the Lord for a particular community in Jerusalem, now often referred to as Jewish Christians, that is, for former faithful pharisaic followers of the Mosaic Law -- in which, of course, Jesus Himself as a Child had been brought up most perfectly and much less rigidly at Nazareth – devout pharisaic followers of the Law who had  come to recognize Jesus as the Son of God, their Saviour and Redeemer, and had consequently left the synagogue to become members of the Christian Church in Jerusalem.

Now, their background was far different from that of the Gentiles, pagans for whom the letters of St. Paul and the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John were mainly addressed; and are we to think that Jesus had nothing to say to those of His own background who had left all for Him, and who now found themselves rejected and reviled by their former fellow-Jews, and perhaps not fully understood by their new-found fellow Christians?

Matthew earnestly desired to guide and sustain this his congregation of former Pharisees in the ways of their chosen Lord and Saviour, Jesus of Nazareth, and he most certainly did not think that Jesus had nothing particular to say for such converts. 

He, Matthew, had been appointed as ‘watchman’ for this congregation, and he was well aware that their lives till then -- lived in faithful observance of the Law of Moses and following traditional Jewish practices -- had brought them to recognize, love, and choose to obey Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.  Matthew too, had good reason to think that he, along with Paul, also ‘had the mind of Jesus’:

 We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.  And we speak about them not with words taught by human wisdom, but with words taught by the Spirit, describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.  For “who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?” But we have the mind of Christ.   (1 Corinthians 12-16)

Now, Matthew had some most explicit words of Jesus to guide him in what he, imitating His Lord, was seeking to do for his congregation, words to be found in his Gospel, for he remembered Jesus once severely criticizing His opponents:

You pay tithes of mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier things of the law; judgment and mercy and fidelity.  These you should have done without neglecting the others. (Matthew 23:23s.)

Tithes of mint, dill, and cumin, were part of their background as Pharisees, that is, as Israelites specially devoted to serve the God of their fathers by diligent observance of the Law, observance not limited to what was explicitly commanded but which also embraced practices that were thought to help better observance of what was prescribed.   And Jesus was saying that such extra devotional practices could still be acceptable if they truly helped them observe the weightier things of the Law better:

            These you should have done without neglecting the weightier things.

With such explicit words of Jesus-- the most supremely devout observer of the Law (Can any of you charge Me with sin?) and the very Son of the God of Israel -- Matthew would not rubbish the life-background and the deeply ingrained, devout endeavours of many of his community by trying to eradicate all traces of Pharisaic Judaism ‘hook, line, and sinker’ from them!  Instead he followed his and their Lord’s own example and words, these (procedural requirements) you learned to do before becoming a Christian you can continue to practice among yourselves -- they have become part of your life as devout servants of the Law – but they must not in any way cause you to neglect the essentials of your new life as Christians, walking in the way of Jesus according to the new law of grace, a law of far deeper love and fear of the Lord.  

How wonderful and instructive to be able to see Saint Matthew and Saint Paul both interpreting the ‘mind of Christ’ for those for whom the Spirit of Christ had established them both as watchmen! 

However, those words of Matthew are a good way of ‘having it out with a brother’, whereas the weightier things of Jesus’ Gospel Law, those not-to-be forgotten weightier things,  Matthew reserved until a little later (18:21-22) when he reported how Jesus responded to a question from Peter:

“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how many times must I forgive Him? As many as seven times?”  Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times!”

Isn’t it, indeed, lovely to glimpse St. Matthew using his knowledge of Jesus, his own awareness of the ‘mind of Jesus’, to help these Pharisee converts develop in the way of Jesus!  You must remember that Matthew was formerly a renegade Jew, a tax-collector for the Romans -- named Levi -- despised by all Jews, most especially however by the Pharisees!!  All that however is now ‘water under the bridge’ as Matthew digs out of his personal memories of Jesus to find a way to help and encourage these new converts in the way of Christian faith and, by his own example, unconsciously to show them that ‘weightiest’ and most beautiful, ‘item’, jewel,  of the Christian Law: charity ... the love and concern of a convert ex-Jewish tax-collector for the well-being and confirmation of convert ex-Pharisees in their shared new Faith!!

We should now dwell, just for a moment, on another point.   Jesus wants us to be concerned about, to love, both our fellows and the truth: He wants us to be concerned, in the right way, to ‘win back our brother’.

We are not to judge hastily; we are not to condemn; as our Blessed Lord commanded explicitly:

            Stop judging, that you may not be judged (Matthew 7:1);

and as His most faithful Apostle Paul re-iterated to the Romans (14:10):

Why then do you judge your brother? Or you, why do you look down on your brother? For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of God.

Nor are we to make accusations freely and inconsiderately before other people, for the name given to Satan in the early Church was ‘The Accuser’ as we read in the book of Revelation (12:10):

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: Now have salvation and power come, and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Anointed. For the accuser of our brothers is cast out, who accuses them before our God day and night.

It may, a times, be necessary to speak,  not secretly to ourselves – cherishing grudges or contempt – not openly to other people – slandering our neighbour, ruining his public reputation unnecessarily – but charitably to the offender himself: not in order to accuse him, but only if such action might serve to help win him back to the right way:

We urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, cheer the fainthearted, support the weak, be patient with all (1 Thess. 5:14); for:

Better is an open rebuke than a love that remains hidden (Proverbs 27:5).

In all cases, we should recommend the whole affair, the offender, ourselves and the offended, to the Lord Who lived among us and, in the Spirit, knows us all most intimately: our actions and our intentions, our fears and sensitivities.

As St. Paul says (Romans 12:17-18):

Do not repay anyone evil for evil; be concerned for what is noble in the sight of all.  If possible, on your part, live at peace with all.

And here I would add myself: having committed everything to the Lord, live at peace yes; and above all at peace with, and in, yourself, your own heart and mind -- a skill, an art, not always easy, but one which can be learned by those who are willing to humble themselves and practice seriously that other great Christian virtue of patience.

Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.  (Romans 12:21)

22nd Sunday Year A 2020

   22^nd. Sunday of Year (A)

(Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27)

The words of St. Paul in our second reading:

Do not conform yourselves to this age but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good, and pleasing and perfect,

are as pertinent and necessary today as they were at the very beginning of Christianity.  Then, many Christians were tempted, or driven, by fear of the persecuting might of the Roman Empire, to conform to the expected state-worship and thus save themselves from being reported as refusing to join in sacrifices to the traditional gods for the well-being of the Empire and of the Emperor himself.

Likewise today, many wavering or nominal Catholics strive earnestly to keep in tune with the currently acceptable opinions and attitudes of society around them, and today’s first reading from the prophet Jeremiah was one that would not have been comfortable hearing for them, since the common impression of people these days with regard to the prophet Jeremiah --- if, indeed, such people have any awareness of the prophet at all --- derive from the cloud which hovers over his very name: for they regard a  ‘Jeremiah’ as one who always looks on the dark side of things, a harbinger of evil whose legacy is an ancient book called ‘Lamentations’, the like of which are now frequently termed as ‘Jeremiads’.

Occasional Catholics dare not resist such talk because it is so very easy for those who decry the prophet to turn around and mock any who would show him or his writings respect, as being weak personalities, fragile characters, unable to share and rub shoulders with others in the normal joys of life; of being – to put it bluntly – modern Jeremiah’s, full of despondency and complaints concerning modern society.

And so, although Jeremiah’s personal courage or fidelity to his office of prophet-in-Israel can never be questioned let alone denied, nevertheless, he seems condemned to permanently suffer under the misapprehension that he was a ‘moaner’, even though today’s short first reading show how far he was, in fact, from being a true ‘moaner’.  For moaners are always complaining to others, constantly soliciting the sympathy of those around them, whereas Jeremiah only gave expression to his anxieties and fears in the secrecy of his personal prayer to God; and -- far from being public cries for human sympathy -- his words were private and most humble acknowledgements before God alone of his deep fear of being personally unfit for the divine task being asked of him.

Before men, as I have just said, Jeremiah showed himself to be most courageous, being called to suffer much over many years as a servant of the Lord.   It is true that he publicly and frequently forecasted disaster, but that was the task given him by the Lord: the words and the warnings were of the Lord’s commissioning, not of Jeremiah’s choosing.

In one passage of his book he tells us (Jeremiah 15:16) just how much he loved the word of God:

Your words were found, and I ate them, Your word was to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart; for I am called by Your name, O LORD God of hosts.

But, rejoicing so whole-heartedly in God's word, and having sincerely tried to fulfil the Lord’s command for the good of Israel, Jeremiah was both puzzled at the reception given his proclamation by God's Chosen People, and alarmed at the outcry it stirred up against him personally; and so, in his private prayer to God he says:

Why is my pain perpetual and my wound incurable?   Will You surely be to me like an unreliable stream, as waters that fail? (15:18)

You will get an idea of his courage if you appreciate that what was happening to him was that which most people today fear above all: he was being mocked, opposed -- rejected by his friends and acquaintances -- and even hated by his own people because he was he was proclaiming in the name of the Lord a message they would not accept:

Whenever I speak, violence and outrage is my message; the word of the Lord has brought me derision and reproach all the day.  

Foreshadowing in that way the loneliness of our Blessed Lord on Calvary he cried:

Woe is me, my mother, that you have borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth!  (15:10)

Surely you will appreciate that only a man of great courage and strong spirit would have dared to repeatedly proclaim a message everyone considered unpatriotic and defeatist, a message no one wanted to hear, and which brought down so great a measure of public opprobrium and contempt upon his head.

In his prayers Jeremiah told the Lord how he had thought of keeping his mouth shut: why keep on shouting what no one will accept, what only brings me increased hatred and derision?  However, when he tried to keep silent he found that:

(His word) becomes like a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones; I grow weary of holding it in, I cannot endure it.  

He was in a dilemma: for though he dreaded speaking out, yet he was finding it impossible to keep quiet.  He did indeed need to pray, to seek God's help and guidance, for only the Lord could appreciate and alleviate his situation.

Listen carefully to what the Lord said to him, however, because it may well surprise you, since it clearly shows that commiseration and empathy are not always or necessarily the true expression of divine love:

If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve Me; if you utter worthy, not worthless, words, you will be My spokesman. Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.  (15:19)

Notice those words “If you repent, I will restore you that you may serve Me”.  In other words: repent, because at present you are not showing yourself as one worthy to serve Me; for, to serve Me -- even if it involves earthly suffering -- is a privilege.  We should also notice those other words:

Let this people turn to you, but you must not turn to them.

You must not try to make your preaching acceptable: My Word is My Word, it alone is good for My people, don't you dare change or adapt it to their liking.

Yes, People of God, it is a privilege to serve God and any suffering it involves does not change the fact that it is a privilege.  Moreover, God's message is not to be evaluated by its popularity: God's message cannot be adapted, let alone changed, in order to accommodate modern fancies, opinions, or desires. 

The heroism of Jeremiah and his fellow prophets who faithfully proclaimed God’s message at such great cost, was absolutely vindicated and sublimely confirmed when Jesus, the Son-of-God-made-man, came to destroy sin in man, and thereby proclaimed the worldly reality and universality of such sin and the inevitability of its ultimate destruction in the punishment of those who embrace it, by His own sinless Death and Resurrection for the salvation of all repentant sinners. 

Dear friends in Christ, our world, not just our country, is in the grip of a deadly pandemic destroying not merely lives, but human living and working together as social beings, and leaving in its wake poverty, homelessness, and despair. And are we to assume that this world-wide phenomenon has no message for God’s people and the world today? Are there no prophets today like Jeremiah of old?  Or, is God today not allowed to speak a prophetic message – as Jesus Himself was not allowed to speak God’s truth by the Pharisees and Chief Priests of His day -- for His People in this coronavirus pandemic because He might draw unwelcome attention to that other modern, and much more deadly, pandemic of sin?

For sin is a concept which is totally absent from the vocabulary of modern social ‘teaching’ and legislation, which promote, with almost ‘evangelical’ zeal, equality and freedom for all, ignoring, of course, that most blatant and shamefully hushed sin of the millions of unborn children who have had and still have to be killed (‘aborted’ is the preferred word) perhaps in those very hospitals so rightly praised for the self-sacrificing, life-saving, anti-virus, work done there; those fetuses (they must not be seen as children!) have to continue to be ‘aborted’ to cover up our ‘mistakes’, to save us from embarrassment, or inconvenience!

Nevertheless, today I do not want to exclusively reprove a negligent Church or poor Catholics, but also and indeed thereby to build up Mother Church and encourage good Christians, because in our Gospel reading there is encouragement for us -- such as was given to Jeremiah -- by the Lord.
 

Jesus began to speak to His disciples about His forthcoming condemnation and crucifixion, and we are told that:

Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him, "God forbid Lord!  No such thing shall ever happen to You.”

Whereupon Jesus turned sharply on Peter saying:

Get behind Me, Satan! You are an obstacle to Me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.

There Jesus insists most firmly  -- but not uncharitably as milk-and-water Christianity would ‘teach’ -- that He Himself, and consequently His Church and His disciples, cannot expect to live untroubled lives here in this wicked world:

You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.

Consequently, we who love Mother Church should not, must never, allow ourselves to be alarmed or become despondent, when our Faith is attacked, mocked, denied, or simply ignored by the majority: it happened to Jesus Himself:

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. If they kept My word, they will keep yours also. But all these things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him Who sent Me.  (John 15:20s.)

In our present trials, and in the present persecutions suffered by Catholics and Christians all over the world, we must always bear in mind Jesus' words:

Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow Me.   For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
   

People of God: have quiet confidence and firm trust in God, for you have all been personally called by the Father to serve His Son and to find salvation through Him.  You have divine strength available to you, for you are in the Church where the truth about Jesus and all the grace and power of His Spirit are at your disposal in her teaching and through her sacraments.   Try to realize and appreciate just how close you are to those earliest Christians who suffered for the Faith in the pagan atmosphere of the Roman Empire and to whom Peter wrote words which apply personally to us today:

Beloved, do not think it strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened to you; but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad with exceeding joy.  If you are reproached for the name of Christ, blessed are you, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.  (1 Peter 4:12-14)

21st Sunday Year A 2020

          Sermon 146a:Twenty-first Sunday, (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, 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 Work of our Redemption are the greatest works of God’s inscrutable wisdom, how could any mere mortal know the dispositions of God in regard to His Christ, the Messiah?

When the mother of James and John asked Jesus for positions for her two sons, one at His right hand and the other at His left in His Kingdom (Matthew 20:21), Jesus answered that, despite the sacrifices she and her husband Zebedee had made  by wholeheartedly supporting their sons decisions to leave home and their father’s business in order to follow Jesus, it was not for Him Jesus -- out of an imaginary debt of gratitude? -- to give places such as she was asking for, because they were exclusively at the disposal of His heavenly Father and belonged to those  whom His Father had chosen or would choose to give them.  Thus, there was mystery even for Jesus concerning His disciples: true, He had chosen them, but they had been sent to Him by His Father (John 6:44):

            No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draw him.

And so, in today’s Gospel reading, when Jesus puts the question:

            Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

and then follows it with another:

            But who do you say that I am?

we can sense Him waiting to discover which of the disciples the Father would choose to give the right understanding of the mystery of His Person. 

It was then 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 noun, ‘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.’

To those words Jesus answered nothing at all so far as we know.  Yet later on, Jesus having left the Sea of Galilee with His disciples for the northern hills approaching Mt. Hermon, when Peter used similar words as reported in today’s Gospel:

            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, what is, 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 reaction from Jesus?

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 of Jesus as Son of God, that is as One able to perform such wonders as silencing the storm, which was an acclamation which expressed their own relief as much as it acknowledged Jesus’ sovereign power, Peter’s inspired exclamation expressed no such personal relief, but ‘with heart and voice’ he proclaimed a divinely bestowed awareness of Jesus not just as the powerful Son of God able to work miracles, but as the SAVIOUR; the Son of God indeed, but come to save and redeem from -- make atonement for – the sins of Israel and all mankind!    And this was presaged years before by Zacharias the father of John the Baptist, one taught of God about the calling and future mission of his son:

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, for He has visited and brought redemption to His people.   He has raised up a horn for our salvation within the house of David His servant, even as He promised through the mouth of His holy prophets from of old.  (Luke 1:68–70)

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 and saving-power in Jesus -- His beloved, only begotten Son, come among us as Man in order to-save-us-from-sin in His Person and through 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 are said to imply an overbearing, intolerant, and rigidly narrow cast of mind, to stifle our spontaneity and thwart our native 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, both 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.  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 that salvation to the whole of mankind by means of His uniquely Personal self-sacrifice on Calvary, now sacramentally offered in His name in 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 most significant expression in the New Testament writings, to do the truth (John 3:21; in the Latin, ‘qui facit veritatem’) well rendered in a more modern idiom by:

Whoever lives (practices) 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, hold fast to your awareness of Catholic doctrine.  Do not let random vague feelings determine your deliberate thoughts, do not allow the emotionality of those who speak so much about the sufficiency of human help, human goodness, mutual sympathy, and scientific pseudo-knowledge (science knows nothing more than the latest working hypothesis) betray your oneness with the eternal, creating-supporting-and-saving God.  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’ 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 our individual lives at last take on a transcendent significance and purpose, so that we begin to experience something of the unimaginable joy of life penetrated through and through with a love leading to 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, we must learn to love the Father in heaven and our brethren on earth at all times and in all circumstances.  Only as we -- His humble and sincere disciples -- appreciate this ever more fully, will we be truly living in the heart of this sinful world as authentic witnesses to and members of Jesus, and in Him as Spirit-formed and Spirit-endowed children of the heavenly Father.

(2020)

Assumption of Our Lady 2020

 Assumption of Our Lady                

    (Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10; 1^st. Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56)

The Assumption of Our Lady -- celebrated in the Eastern Liturgy since the 6^th. Century, and in that of Rome since the 7^th. -- was defined by Pope Pius XII in 1950 as a dogma of our faith.  It states that, at the end of her life on earth, Mary did not know corruption, but was taken up to heaven -- assumed body and soul - into heavenly glory.

That is the first point I want to stress today: Mary was taken up to heaven as a human being, in her human flesh; the whole person of Mary, the body and soul of a woman, is supremely happy in heavenly glory, showing us that the joys of heaven are for our human fulfilment and glorification.  In heaven we will see and experience unimaginable heights of divine beauty and truth, goodness, faithfulness and mercy: they may, at the most, be but fleetingly envisaged even in the course of a whole lifetime of commitment and devotion to God here on earth; but, the delight that mere glimpse bestows is enough for overflowing gratitude and profound humility to reign in the human mind and heart.

However, it may help us ‘earthlings’ to try to appreciate certain positive aspects of that life. 

Imagine, for example, a farming couple who started out with a small holding, who had to struggle through years of natural adversity, drought, floods, blights of various kinds, and through periods when capital was short and anxiety was oppressive.  Imagine such a couple, years later, when their farm has grown beyond anything they might have anticipated; when the can look out upon acres upon acres of fine crops growing and feel secure in the knowledge that they have built up something which will last because it is established on firm foundations of hard work and sound finance.  Their joy on looking out over their smiling fields will be all the greater because they are now seeing the fruitful outcome of all the efforts they had made over the years before.

Our experience of heaven will be similar to that in that its joys will not be something entirely new and unconnected with our earthly experiences. We will recognise the great mystery and goodness of the divine love which originally called and steadfastly guided us throughout our lives, which endowed us with personal God-given abilities and the gifts of human friendship and love we have experienced in our dearest relationships.  We will rejoice to understand why/how a concatenation of seemingly ‘chance’ happenings gradually shaped our lives, and how certain truths of our faith -- such as the fear of God -- guided and protected us in ways we had not known or appreciated before.  In other words, heavenly joy will be the full flowering and glorious fulfilment of all that has been truly beautiful and worth-while in our lives as disciples of Jesus on pilgrimage through this world.  St. Paul in his letter to the Romans (8:29-30) writes:

Whom (the Father) foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover, whom He predestined these He also called; whom He called these He also justified; and whom He justified these He also glorified.

Mary is indeed the only one who has shared in the glory of Jesus so far, it is His supreme gift to His most faithful and loving mother; but since she is -- by His gift -- also our mother, all His true disciples can receive and one day will receive, with her, their share in His glory when He comes in the fullness of time to judge the world.  Mary has already been glorified in her humanity: she is the pledge that what Jesus won in His triumph over sin and death, has been won for all His true disciples. 

Now let us turn our minds back to the first reading where we heard:

            A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun.

Pope Paul VI strongly suggested that Our Lady of Fatima’s appearance was the fulfilment of that prophecy, and Pope St. John Paul II not only suggested but even affirmed that this “great sign in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun” has been fulfilled, after 1900 years, in the events that took place at Fatima on the 15^th. October 1917 when 70,000 people saw the “sun dance”.

Let me read the account in the masonic and anti-clerical newspaper “O Seculo” reporting those events:

We saw the huge crowd turn toward the sun which appeared at its zenith, clear of the clouds.  It resembled a flat plate of silver, and it was possible to stare at it without the least discomfort. It did not burn the eyes.  It did not blind.  Before the dazed eyes of the people the sun trembled, it made strange and abrupt movements, outside of all cosmic laws, the “sun danced” according to the expression of the people.

According to other eyewitnesses “it seemed the sun was being detached from the sky and was falling on us.  It was a terrible moment.”  The miracle lasted about 8 minutes, after which the sun returned to its place in the sky, while the ground, which before the miracle had been saturated due to an all-night driving rain, was seen to be dry.  Likewise, the clothes of those who had been standing all day in the rain before the miracle were completely dry.

Saint John Paul II said:  According to divine plan, “A Woman clothed with the sun” came down from heaven to this earth to visit the privileged children of the Father.  She speaks to them with a mother’s voice and heart: she asks them to offer themselves as victims of reparation, saying that she was ready to lead them safely to God. The message of Fatima is a call to conversion, alerting humanity to have nothing to do with the “dragon” whose “tail swept down a third of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth.

In those appearances, Mary affirmed clearly the existence of heaven and the reality of hell where, as she said to the children: “You have seen Hell where the souls of poor sinners go”.  She likewise affirmed the reality of Purgatory: when Lucia, one of the three children to whom Our Lady appeared, asked about a friend of hers who had died at about the age of 18 or 20, Our Lady answered, “she will be in Purgatory until the end of the world”.  Another friend of Lucia’s, however, who had died at the age of 16, was in heaven Our Lady said.

The important thing for me to do today, People of God, is to remind you of the great joy and confidence that should be ours because of Mary’s commitment to us as our God-given, cross-given, Mother, and also of our ‘duty’ of trust and confidence in such a mother.  Her prayers are totally dedicated to ‘making-up’, so to speak, for all the many failings in our response to God’s grace; grace which has been so abundantly won for us by her Son, and is so freely offered to us by His Spirit.  She is totally committed to us her children, and what she asks of us in return is prayer.

However, the final point I wish to highlight is concerning those words from the book of Revelation which state, as you heard:

Another sign appeared in heaven: and behold, a great red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and on his heads were seven diadems.  And his tail swept away a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth.

Dear People of God, those were and are prophetic words being verified today.

What are the stars?  Catholic commentators have commonly said that the stars of Heaven represent the Catholic clergy.  Sister Lucy says the most effective way the devil can do harm to souls is by taking away their leaders, the priests.  Fr. Nicholas Gruener, perhaps the priest most closely associated with efforts to spread abroad the message of Fatima said:

If one third of the stars of Heaven are dragged down, then people will find it harder to save their souls.  The faithful must be careful to follow those Catholic clergy who preserve the faith.  It is important for people to pray for priests, for bishops, for the Cardinals, for the Pope. 

People of God, Our Lady’s Assumption is the pledge of our future blessedness and fulfilment in God; and just as sinful Eve, talking to Satan and leading Adam, closed the gates of Paradise to her children, so Mary Immaculate, listening to the Spirit and following her Son, the second Adam, opened those blessed gates once more for her children.  And now in modern times, Our Lady of Fatima -- the Woman clothed with the Sun -- has come to warn us of the dangers which threaten us her children in a world where the dogma of human self-sufficiency, and a plethora of human self-donated ‘rights’, seek to make everything available for mankind’s grasp and pleasure.

Let us therefore look once again at Our Blessed Lady on this celebration of her Assumption into heaven to learn more of the supreme glory of the divine inheritance that can, and should, be ours if we will but heed Our Lady’s warning and follow Our Lord’s way.

Mary received the Gift of God, that is, the Most Holy Spirit, when, St. Luke tells us:

The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you…” (1: 35ss.)

The Spirit was given her then to enable her to be the worthy Mother of God.    It was like that with Jesus Himself when the Spirit came upon Him at His baptism in the Jordan by John the Baptist: for then the Spirit came upon Jesus for a particular purpose, namely, to prepare Him, in His humanity, to undertake and carry through to its fulfilment His public ministry to the People of Israel; and again, when Jesus rose from the dead He did so in the power of the Spirit Who glorified His human nature for His ascension to heavenly and eternal life.  Mary did indeed meet her Son in His Risen glory, but such earthly joy was short-lived, for He was to ascend into heaven, necessarily leaving her behind gazing after Him, because her human relationship with Him, even that of immaculate motherhood, could not sustain the intimacy, depth, and intensity of a heavenly and eternal relationship.

Mary, however, received the Holy Spirit once again, this time at Pentecost, for her role as Mother of the Church; she welcomed Him in our midst on our behalf, before He fulfilled His most immediate and primal task of glorifying her in her Assumption so that she might be and might reign with her Son for all eternity.  The Holy Spirit alone … the Spirit Who bonds Father and Son in the Most Holy Trinity ... could suffice to lift Mary up to enter upon her heavenly relationship with Jesus her Son, and in Him, with the heavenly Father.

Today therefore, let us both rejoice wholeheartedly with our Mother and -- being deeply and tenderly grateful for her solicitude manifested so publicly at Fatima -- let us carefully heed her warnings.

And if, dear brothers and sisters in Christ, you have not thus far recognized the present peril of coronavirus in our midst as Catholics and Christians, learn from Our Lady.  Secular governments -- blatant disbelievers as a whole -- are not the only ones who can speak on this world-wide event; Mother Church herself is supremely gifted, by the Spirit, to recognize the signs of the times, and Our Lady’s Fatima warning is of supreme importance today for our Catholic, Christian, and religious AWARENESS OF AND RESPONSE TO the coronavirus: sin is real and hostile to humanity, it inevitably has consequences, and we can see them being manifested in our world today.