Palm Sunday Year B 2021

 

PALM SUNDAY (Year B)

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Mark 15:1-39)

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The Passion and Death of Jesus which you have just heard according to St. Mark’s Gospel contains a striking passage which most probably comes from Peter himself, generally regarded as the source of Mark’s Gospel.   St. Matthew, also, when writing his own Gospel memories, closely followed St. Mark’s account and Peter’s words.

People of God, we must never forget that though John is universally recognized as the disciple Jesus loved, Peter was the one who actually loved Jesus most, as John himself tells us (21:15):

Simon, Simon, do you love Me more than these?  Yes, Lord, You know that I love You

Here is that striking passage which both St. Mark (Peter) and St. Matthew tell us:

At three in the afternoon Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which is translated, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” Some of the bystanders who heard it said, “Look, He is calling Elijah.” One of them ran, soaked a sponge with wine, put it on a reed, and gave it to Him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see if Elijah comes to take Him down.”   Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed His last.

Saint Luke was not present at the Crucifixion and so does not record that incident in His Gospel.

As for Saint John, at the Crucifixion he was standing nearby Mary, you might say together with her, under the Cross.  He was in no particular danger, being young and somehow personally acceptable to the High Priest’s officials and able to access his home or residence.  Consequently he tells us his own immediate experience of the Crucifixion as, standing beside Mary, he was enveloped in her heart-rending suffering resulting from the violent abuse and vile mockery directed at her beloved Son on the Cross by surrounding Temple officials and servants, Pharisees, and Scribes; and of course John also took special care to mention Jesus’ words to Mary and himself.

Peter on the other hand was a fully-grown and capable Galilean, a well-known and, indeed, already ‘notorious’ disciple of Jesus, willing to defend His Lord by cutting off an adversary’s ear!  Therefore, Peter would have been standing at a somewhat greater distance from the Cross, not so noticeable in the crowd of on-lookers.

Peter had just denied Jesus – as His Lord had foretold – three times, and he was now heart-broken at what he had done: and consequently, he – Peter -- looking at Jesus from some distance, had eyes and ears only for Him, and he told Mark only the very words – the ipsissima verba -- he could gather Jesus was saying. 

Jesus was, Peter tells us, reciting the 22^nd Psalm, which begins: “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?”  “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”, when one of the soldiers ran off to soak a sponge in some available wine, found a reed on which to put the soaked sponge, and then hurried back to show it to the others and finally offer it to the slowly agonizing … criminal ... as he thought.

Jesus – a sublimely pious Jew, now at the moment of His death -- would normally have been murmuring a prayer, a psalm, to Himself: murmuring it, not merely thinking of it, but also not shouting it out.  However, we are told – on Peter’s authority – that Jesus cried out in a loud voice.  Why was Jesus deliberately doing the unexpected, crying out the opening words of the psalm in such an unexpectedly loud voice?  He obviously wanted it to be known that He was – at that life/death moment -- wholeheartedly praying that particular psalm.

Dear People of God, read the psalm for yourselves to appreciate why it meant so much to Jesus at that time!!

Jesus knew most intimately all the Scriptures and, indeed, every word: not one jot or tittle slipped His attention; nevertheless, it was the psalms that nourished His humanity above all.  The Law and the Prophets spoke of God’s will for the Chosen People giving direct strength and guidance for Jesus’ divine character, whereas the Psalms tend to relate the recourse to God of His poor and needy, humble and faithful, servants, the ‘anawim’, suffering from the sin ever-more prevalent and rampant among the worldly ambitious and faithless members of the Chosen People.  These psalms enabled Jesus to take to, upon, Himself, the whole gamut of human suffering, experienced, as it were, in His own Jewish flesh and blood, by that section of Israel historically faithful to God’s covenant (Isaiah 63:16):

Though Abraham does not know us, and Israel does not recognize us.  You, O Lord, are our Father, Our Redeemer from of old is Your name;

thus affording Jesus wonderful divinely-human comfort, inspiration and strength for His own dying experience and expression of human love for God and man at its most extreme.

Why did Jesus have to suffer so much?

Not because His Father was punishing Him for our sins!!

He had to suffer because sin had been afforded entrance -- through Eve’s welcome and Adam’s acceptance -- into our humanity at its very source.  It could not, therefore, be just forgotten or ignored; neither could it be one-sidedly (by God alone) pardoned away, because sin is a reality, an instilled poison which, if not destroyed in men’s hearts, will always be lurking and festering there, as Satan himself had been lurking and festering in the minds and hearts of Jesus’ Jewish adversaries after his initial defeat in the desert at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry until this very moment.

Humanity in its original purity had to reject, overthrow, and destroy Satan’s power in a direct and immediate contest under the leadership of One far greater than Adam: One loving us divinely and therefore inexplicably, unimaginably, in the eyes of Satan, who most foolishly despised Him because of such love, and because of the perfect and humble authenticity of His humanity.

Jesus had begun His public ministry and merited His Father’s manifestation of His loving approval by joining Himself to those penitents awaiting John’s baptism in the Jordan; and now, at the very end of His life among us, He takes upon Himself Israel’s and humanity’s most dreadful suffering:

 

My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?

 

Jesus wills to be with us – whoever we are and whatever we may have made of ourselves and done with His gifts -- as Saviour, from beginning to the very end.  He most deliberately and humbly lived and died among us and with us, under circumstances not always subject to His human choice, indeed, as in our case, often against His and our wishes, and subject only to patient acceptance and loving prayer for God’s provident goodness and trustful love.  Thus, He ultimately died with us and for us, that we might be able to turn to Him for hope and redemption even in the very last moment of our distressed lives.  Let us therefore take to our hearts and cherish most gratefully the final words of His dying prayer shouted aloud that we might hear and learn to love (vv. 20; 31-32):

 

But you, LORD, do not stay far off; My strength, come quickly to help Me.

And I will live for the Lord; My descendants will serve You.  The generation to come will be told of the Lord, that they may proclaim to a people yet unborn the deliverance You have brought.

 

 

 

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year B 2021

 

 Fifth Sunday of Lent (B)                                                                 (Jeremiah, 31:31-34; Hebrews, 5:7-9; John 12:20-30)

 

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, when relations between Israel and the Lord her God had, so to speak, broken down, the Lord determined to punish Israel for her unfaithfulness by driving her into exile in Babylon.  However, the Lord wanted to assure Jeremiah the prophet, and through him the whole people of Israel that, despite the severity of their present punishment, there would be a future to look forward to, to hope for, during their years of exile and apparent abandonment.  To this end He told Jeremiah of a new covenant -- the covenant to be ultimately ratified in the blood of Jesus -- saying:

“This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” says the LORD: “I will place My law within them and write it upon their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.”

Israel had not been faithful to the covenant God had made with her through Moses.  Freed from slavery, and at last in her own promised land, she did not want to live according to the Law for the praise and glory of the God Who had saved her and in accordance with her own instinctive sense of gratitude; no, she wanted freedom from the Law to enjoy the pleasures of the world now so plentifully available, and to share in the licentious practices of her neighbours.  To become a specially chosen people, holy as her God was holy, was very far from her mind ... and for such a fulfilment it was necessary she go back into servitude and learn to look to, hope and long for, the salvation of her God once again.

On returning to Judea, thanks to Cyrus king of the Medes and Persians who had conquered Babylon, the Jews recognized their ancestors’ unfaithfulness to the God of their fathers Who had originally brought them out of slavery in Egypt; and the Pharisees especially tried to reverse that infidelity and wantonness by an intense study of the Law and all its implications, together with a literal – at times scrupulously literal -- observance of its legal and material prescriptions. The Pharisees however were not like the prophets of old.  They did not wait for, hear, and then proclaim the word of God, they had plans of their own for Israel’s future, traditions of their own for Israel’s safe-guarding.   This resulted in them proudly putting their own scholarly knowledge and extravagant observance of the letter of the Law first and foremost, while gradually losing touch with the spirit of the Law, given by God to prepare a humble people, able and ready, to welcome and embrace His Son-made-flesh as their Messiah.  They proclaimed themselves as the beacon of Jewish life: their own understanding of, and exact conformity with, each and every prescription written in the Law.  They had the Law, as it were, on an operating table, and like skilful surgeons or morticians, they cut and dissected each and every individual passage and phrase of the Law for classification and documentation according to their own understanding; but all the while, the over-riding meaning and significance of the Law was becoming more and more unrecognizable to them, for, cutting the body up into every conceivable constituent part, they were becoming increasingly unable to put it together again as a vital and recognizable whole.   Instead of being reformed by the Law they were re-fashioning the Law according to their own appreciation, capabilities, and desires.

When the Lord had spoken to Jeremiah of a new covenant, He had, most critically, said:

I, I will place My law within them and write it upon their hearts.

This new Law of the new Covenant was to be put into man’s mind and heart to guide and inspire him – we now know it as our conscience – and God would not allow men bound fast by their personal pride and their corporate traditions, to act as protectors and guides of restored Israel by taking charge of His Law in order to make it conform to their merely human understanding, so warped as it was.  God’s new Law was intended to gradually raise Israel above the level of the pagan peoples around them and form her into a true People of God’s choice, able, ultimately, to become adopted children of God in Christ Jesus.  This new law from within was to be the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, given by the Father, through His Son.

Accordingly, when -- in the Gospel reading today -- Jesus saw this saving process beginning to take effect in those to whom He had been sent -- that is, his disciples and the Jews  in the first place, but also, ultimately, the whole Gentile world as represented by the Greeks now asking to be introduced to Jesus -- He knew that His work was nearly complete: only His saving death and resurrection was needed to seal and ratify His new Covenant and enable His Church to continue His saving work on earth throughout the rest of time.

Now there were some Greeks among those who had come up to worship at the feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, and asked him, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus.”

Greeks -- contemned by the Jews as Gentiles, pagans – were coming forward, under no other compulsion than that of the Spirit working within their own minds and hearts, asking to see Jesus, wanting learn from Him.  The new Covenant and the new law promised through the prophet Jeremiah, the Gift of the Spirit and the Good News of Jesus, was at work; and, having begun, the new process needed the power of Jesus’ saving death and resurrection to continue, and therefore Jesus immediately turned to His disciples and said:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.  Now is the time of judgment on this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out.  And when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw everyone to Myself.

What significance does all this have for us, here and now?  It does, most certainly, have much significance for us because in today’s readings we have been given an outline of our human situation in the world today.

Although Christ came to call all men and women, although Christianity is spread world-wide today, many, many Christians behave like the Israelites of old: they do not want to belong to a chosen people called to be holy because their God is holy; on the contrary, they want to enjoy all the pleasures, no matter how disgusting, of the pagans around them.  They want to be free, they say, to taste whatever the world has to offer; the irony of their situation, however, is that though they claim to be advocates of freedom, they gladly abdicate their freedom of spirit by enslaving themselves to self-will and spiritual ignorance, to lusting for the pleasures of the flesh and the power money can buy.

There are others who try to manipulate the Gospel and indeed God Himself rather than allow themselves to be formed by the Spirit according to the way of Jesus’ Good News.  They seize upon some particular aspect or teaching of that Good News and then try make their choice the whole of the Gospel message; they rejoice in their version of the Good News but have no time or desire to let their minds be illuminated and guided by the whole Gospel.  The Gospel, some say, is Good news, which, for them, means that Christians should be make themselves seen to be continually rejoicing with clap-happy attitudes which worldly people can recognize.  Others will seize upon the discipline of the Gospel and forget compassion, sympathy and understanding for others: strong in their own observance of that discipline they freely give way to criticism of the failings and weaknesses they think they observe in others.   Even more frequently encountered today is the idea that the Gospel is compassion and love to such an extent that the Gospel has no commands and no sanctions, nor does the majesty of God demand any reverence or humility from us.

People of God, the Father has drawn us to Jesus in Mother Church, and He has given us His Holy Spirit to form us for heavenly life.  That formation extends to and involves the whole of our being: the way we think, the way we love; the hopes we cherish for the future and the ideals we try to realize here and now; the joys we accept and the sorrows we refuse to avoid; the service we seek to give and the selfishness we try to reject.   Because we are to be formed for a heavenly life we cannot yet see, therefore we cannot prescribe for ourselves; on the contrary, we have to pray the Holy Spirit that He will guide us in the way of Jesus; and, having prayed thus, we must have the patience to accept life as coming from Him and the courage to respond with love for Him in whatever situation with which we find ourselves involved:

Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.  Whoever serves Me must follow Me; and where I am, there also will My servant be. The Father will honour whoever serves Me.

Perhaps the greatest, most difficult and yet most beautiful lesson we have to learn from the Gospel is love of the Cross, because the Cross seems to contradict all that is natural within us.  We need to learn, therefore, to accept, with Jesus, that we are here for a purpose which is not of our own direct choosing, it is God’s purpose and plan for each and every one of us individually, in Jesus: a hidden purpose we have to embrace personally and fulfil sincerely throughout our life; one that is already -- here on earth -- our greatest privilege, and will be -- in heaven -- our supreme glory:

I am troubled now. Yet what should I say?  ‘Father, save me from this hour’?  But it was for this purpose that I came to this hour.  Father, glorify Your name.” Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.”

In order that God’s name be glorified and His purpose fulfilled in and through us, we have to be totally informed and reformed by the presence and the working of His Holy Spirit in our lives.  Let us therefore beseech the Spirit to form us in Jesus for the Father, to the extent that we may be brought to cry out with Him, “Father, glorify you name”, and hopefully be privileged to share, in Him, that heavenly response:

            I have glorified it (in My beloved Son), and I will glorify it again (in you, My child).

(2021)

 

4th Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B

 

         4^th. Sunday of Lent (B)                         

 (2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-23; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21)

 

 

 

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.

Dear People of God, those words in our Gospel reading from St John sound very strange to us today, so let’s briefly recall the event which took place when Israel was being led through the desert from slavery in Egypt towards freedom in the Promised Land.

The Israelites complained bitterly against the Lord and against Moses over their hardships in the desert, and finally the Lord sent venomous snakes which killed a considerable number of them.  The people then repented and asked Moses to intercede for them; whereupon, at the Lord’s command, Moses had a bronze symbol of the snakes made, which was then lifted high up on a pole.  Those who, having been bitten, acknowledged their sin and besought God’s help, were told to look up at the bronze snake on the pole and they would live.  And so, indeed, it happened: those who repented and did as the Lord commanded, on looking up to the symbol of the snake high up on the pole, found themselves healed of the effects of that deadly bite.

It must have seemed very mysterious to the People of Israel when, later on, scrutinizing the Scriptures in order to better understand and serve the Lord their God, they came upon that bizarre incident taken from the history of their forebears’ journeying across the desert.  It was, indeed, mysterious for them -- and unavoidably so -- because the whole episode was laden with significance not only for the Israelites themselves over the subsequent 1000 years or more, but even more particularly for the whole future Christian people.  In the desert, a few hundred, perhaps even a few thousand, of the children of Israel were saved by looking up at the bronze likeness of a serpent: but since then, the memory of their experience has carried a salutary teaching recommending the fruits of Jesus’ death to countless millions of Christian people throughout the whole world.

The Lord sent the serpents to do their work among a sinful people and then was able to turn that deadly instrument of His wrath into a saving grace: look at the bronze serpent and you will be healed of your wounds.  For us, God the Father allowed His only begotten Son, His Beloved, to be most cruelly tortured before being exhibited on the Cross and left to suffer a slow and agonising death.  Could He make any use of that most brutal, degrading, and horrendous event?  Could He turn that to any good purpose?

The answer was provided when, three days later, Jesus rose – in our flesh -- from the dead; for then His exposition on the Cross of suffering was shown to have been but a prelude to His ultimate exaltation into heavenly glory as the Saviour of humankind.  Subsequently, those who -- by the Gift of the Spirit -- would believe in Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God, given by His Father to live among us and die for our sins, they too could -- as His disciples and despite our human weakness and all the wiles of Satan -- be raised up from the dead by that omnipotent power which the Father had used for Jesus.  Yes, for all those who would love and believe in Jesus and trust in God’s goodness and mercy, the Father could, would, and does use the Crucifixion of His beloved Son for our salvation and His own glory.

Just go back in your mind to the original event in the desert.  Imagine the terror of those bitten by the serpents: their fear as the poison began inexorably to work in their bodies; why, even those who were not bitten must have been agonized to see all this horror going on around them and hear the cries of those who were in searing pain and staring death in the face.  It was such people, people like us but in such a situation, who were told to look up at the bronze serpent. Trust the command!  Stop your screaming, stop your panic, stop your frantic attempts to somehow suck out the poison or cauterise the wound, stop even your hugging and your sobbing!  Stop all that panic, just get a hold of yourselves, and do what the Lord says: Look at the bronze serpent!

People of God, the message is clear for us.   If we are to look at the Crucifix and draw life from the Lord of life shown hanging there, we must look in a truly serious way.  We cannot look in a merely notional way: saying we believe but being otherwise indifferent and disinterested.   We have to look with the eyes of people who are deeply involved: people who are humbly aware of their own pride and weakness, ignorance and wilfulness, greed and selfishness, and recognize it as a potentially lethal poison flowing through their veins.  Such people have not the slightest doubt of their own need of salvation and are willing to commit themselves completely -- their life, death, and destiny – to Jesus upon Whom they fix their eyes in hope.

Our Lord on the Cross, People of God, is the icon of the Father’s love for us; but likewise, He is also the icon of the Father’s hatred of sin and of the Father’s determination to eradicate sin from His world by uprooting it from the hearts of all who would be His children in Jesus.

And in this regard we must recognize that the signs of the times today are very similar to those of the times that brought-on that great punishment by God of His people, of which we heard in the first reading: 

 

All the princes of Judah, the priests and the people (Today we have to say, “All the faithless Christian peoples now non-practicing) added infidelity to infidelity, practicing all the abominations of the nations and polluting the LORD’S (presence in their midst).   Early and often did the LORD, the God of their fathers, send His messengers to them, for He had compassion on His people and His dwelling place.   But they mocked the messengers of God, despised His warnings, and scoffed at His prophets, until the anger of the LORD against His people was so inflamed that there was no remedy.

Is that happening in our days, dear People of God?  Are modern ‘pseudo-believers’ allowed to profess ‘faith-without-obedience’ before God with impunity? Today’s non-believers do indeed say with modern arrogance and pride that, “There is no God”; but then they must realize that they can no longer aspire to have any share in those Christian hopes of eternal life, divine mercy, justice, and love, saintly human fellowship and shared joy; indeed, they find themselves no longer able trust in the saving and guiding presence of the Holy Spirit in their lives.

 (God) raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus; for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you, it is the gift of God (that is, the work of the Spirit, Who is Himself the very Gift of God’s own Being).

For those of us who believe, however, for those who like us, look with hope and love at the Crucified One, the Father has given us His Son’s Holy Spirit -- that other Advocate and Comforter promised by Jesus -- to abide with us in Mother Church, to be in all who are faithful and obedient, to guide and sustain them, throughout their lives.

He has already placed us in our promised land, or rather, in that garden, which is Mother Church, where the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is given to us according to our measure, together with the grace that enables us to use such knowledge for our greater good.  Of course, we know all too well today that the Church -- not Mother Church -- but the Church, our Church, made up of men and women still too prone to sin, often messes up God’s work and plans, and for that we must ever be dismayed, distressed, sorry and repentant; but we are never left to ourselves in MOTHER Church, God’s Holy Spirit is ever with us there and He will raise up from among our brethren, saints for His glory, and also -- of His great mercy and goodness -- from among us, even from you and me, servants for His saving purposes

Even when we were dead in our transgressions, (God) brought us to life with Christ.

And now, living by the Spirit of Jesus Who is, henceforth, our divine Guide, we have to allow ourselves to be led by Him -- not constantly complaining as did the Israelites of old in the desert-- but willingly and gratefully being led along the ways of Jesus through our share of the trials and tribulations of life on earth.  Ultimately, it is the Holy Spirit Who is guiding Mother Church, and it is by His grace, active in our lives, that we are enabled to appreciate her sacraments and obey her teaching, as St. Paul said:

(God) raised us up with Christ, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus; for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not from you, it is the gift of God (that is, the work of the Spirit, Who is Himself the very Gift of God’s own Being).

Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done … that is what we pray, People of God, and that is what is happening in us, to us and through us, because the Father is, imperceptibly at times but always and irresistibly, bringing about His Kingdom for His children, and we are being borne along the flood tide of His eternal goodness, wisdom and power.  On this Laetare Sunday, therefore, let us indeed rejoice with great joy and deep gratitude, with sure trust and calm confidence, that the Lord has so mercifully chosen us; and let us humbly pray that we may always swim with that tide until it brings us to our home shores:

Raised up and seated with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.

 

             

 

2nd Sunday of Lent 2021 Year B

 

Second Sunday of Lent (B)

(Genesis 22:1-2; 9-13, 15-18; Romans 8:31-34; St. Mark’s Gospel 9:2-10)

 

Jesus was well aware that His disciples were, at present, rejoicing in the presence of their Lord: He was the Bridegroom and they were the Bridegroom’s most privileged friends.  However, such present, earthly, joy, though holy, would not be enough to sustain them through the trials that lay ahead of them.  And that, People of God, is something we should notice. Joy in the Lord, based largely on emotional experiences would, most certainly, not be enough for Jesus‘ disciples: their joy, their love, had to be firmly established, as must ours also, on Faith, shot-through and made incandescent, with Hope, and aspiring to a self-less culmination of love for the Person of JESUS.  Therefore:

Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them.

Why did Jesus take these three particular disciples with Him on that momentous occasion?

The case for Peter is clear enough since he had just -- in the presence, and in the name, of all the disciples – confessed Jesus as the Christ:

            ‘Who do you say that I am?’   ‘You are the Christ!’  (Mark 8:29)

Moreover, Jesus recognized that Peter had been personally chosen and blessed by His Father in order to make that confession; therefore, as we learn from St. Matthew (16:17), following His Father’s lead, He named Peter as the Rock upon which He would subsequently build His Church.  Peter – spokesman of the disciples, individually blessed by the Father, and chosen as the rock on which Jesus would build His Church – was indeed pre-eminently suited to accompany Jesus to the mountain top.

James the Greater, son Zebedee, would become leader of the earliest group of Jewish believers in Jesus to form the original Christian Church in Jerusalem; and for so prominent a position, and destined to become the first of the Apostles to suffer martyrdom for Jesus’ sake about the year 44 AD, he had to be extremely well prepared for a calling so demanding and controversial, and a destiny so pressing;  he became Jesus’ second choice to follow Himself along with Simon Peter.

Perhaps the reason for John’s being taken by Jesus to the Mount of Transfiguration is to be sought in the mysterious nature of his authorship of the Gospel now bearing his name.  For, strangely enough, all three Synoptic Gospels tell of Jesus’ Transfiguration though none of the named authors was present on the Mount, whereas John, on the other hand, though actually present on that unique occasion does not give us any explicit details of it!

He was quite a young man at the time, a very committed and observant, sensitive and impressionable, disciple of the Lord.  He was so deeply affected by what he experienced on the Mount of Transfiguration – an event second only to the unseen moment of Jesus’ Resurrection as testimony to His divinity – that whereas Peter (the source for St. Mark’s Gospel), a mature man of the world, would give clear and factual reminiscences of the event, John would, just as Jesus envisaged, remain (cf. John 21:22): recalling, considering and reconsidering, lovingly praying-over and contemplating, what had taken place and what had been said on those heights of Tabor, as he unremittingly sought to appreciate their purest truth and assimilate their deepest significance for his apostolic understanding of Jesus.  When he ultimately felt able/compelled to write down or hand on what had by then, for so long filled his mind, heart, and soul, His resultant Gospel would be replete, not so much with factual details of that wondrous occasion, but rather with the all-enveloping atmosphere of divine authority and saving truth engendered by Jesus’ communion with His Father in the unity of the overshadowing Spirit … a presence and communion which John knew full well was not a passing, occasional occurrence for Jesus, but rather a passing manifestation of what was the enduring character His whole life on earth: for He always lived for and in the presence of His Father: doing His will, proclaiming His truth, and promoting His glory to the utmost of His being in the power of the Spirit of Them both.

Therefore, as I have said, the faith of these individuals so very distinct and yet, as pillars of the nascent Church so mutually complementary in their endowments, needed to be made enduringly sure on the basis of the divine authority of the words and teaching of Jesus, the unquenchable hope given by the abiding presence and power of the Holy Spirit, and a sacramentally- incandescent love for the Person of Jesus in His Church.  To that end, these three men were afforded an experience that would allow them to glimpse briefly something of the teaching authority, the hidden majesty, and indeed the heavenly glory of the Lord.

First of all:

Elijah appeared to them along with Moses, and they were conversing with Jesus.

This united witness of the Scriptures – Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets – solemnly confirmed Jesus as Lord of heaven, the long proclaimed and eagerly awaited Seed of God’s promise to Abraham, of which we heard in the first reading and as Jesus Himself said (John 5: 39, 46):

You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.

If you believed Moses you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me.

Dear People of God, we must most sincerely try to love and appreciate the Scriptures aright if we would know and love Jesus in spirit and in truth, if we would remain firm and, indeed, grow even stronger in our faith through times of trial and temptation.

Then, to the yet greater awe and fear-of-the-Lord (a truly sublime virtue!) of the disciples:

A cloud came, casting a shadow over them, and from the cloud came a voice: ‘This is My beloved Son.  Listen to Him!

The heavenly Father Himself – they had no doubt of that – was impressing upon them again the authority of Jesus’ words and teaching.  But surely, there is something more, something far more intimate and personal than ‘listening’ being advised, even commanded, here; for why did the Father speak, as it were publicly, of what was most intimately Personal between Himself and His Son … that is His love for His Son: This is My Beloved?  Surely, the Father is there, not commanding, not even so much as urging, but most delicately drawing those who are initially committed to His Son, to learn from Him, the Father Himself, how rightly and fully to love their Lord:

            This is My beloved Son!

This approach is far more compelling and inviting than any command could be; it is a divine inspiration and heartfelt Personal invitation and call from the Father; it is the sublime source of those subsequent words of Jesus (Jn. 6: 44):

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

Now we too should turn to and prayerfully learn something from the Father drawing us to Jesus, His beloved Son, when, at Holy Mass, we prepare to welcome Him into our midst as the Father’s sacramental pledge of love for mankind; and most especially, as we receive Him into our individual hearts as the Father’s Personal Gift of Love to each one of us.  For we should recall, first of all, that Jesus is being given to us by the Father that we might love Him in the power of His accompanying Spirit of Love, and secondly that the Beloved Son we are receiving wills to live in us, and love as One of us, that He might become – in the sacrifice of Holy Mass -- our gift of love for the Father,  seeking to draw us with Himself as His gift to the Father.

Holy Communion is that doubly divine and momentous occasion when we are able and called to learn from the gifting Father how to love, better and ever more personally, His beloved Son; and also how best to allow His Son to lovingly respond to and live for the Father in and through us by the Holy Spirit abiding in and with us as Jesus’ Gift.

The disciples descended with Jesus from those heights so beautiful seen from earth and so open to heaven, with a faith now transfigured into an anticipation of Christian and Apostolic Faith.  Despite Jesus’ warning of His approaching suffering -- His rejection by the religious authorities, and resultant death lurking at the back of their minds -- they had received a faith-vision of Jesus’ heavenly glory, hidden as yet from earthly scrutiny, but something nevertheless, both beautiful and sure, that would enable them to relate aright to the Resurrection Jesus promised would follow His Death in three days. Because they would be most sorely tried by their Lord’s suffering and death, this ‘dry-dock’ work of preparation and confirmation undertaken on the Mount of Transfiguration would be sedulously pursued by the Lord as, again and again, for a second and then a third time, He clearly warned and lovingly prepared them for their time of trial and temptation.

People of God, we Catholics and Christians of today are, like the original fathers of our Faith, subject to trial and temptation throughout the world; we must, therefore, learn how to protect our Faith, our Christian civilization, and indeed our own selves.  We must ‘listen to Him’ if we would be strong in faith and love for eternal life, for our adversaries subject the Faith to great stress and savage attacks all over the world.  Our own governments, rejecting their Christian heritage, are solicitous only for their own permanence in popularity and power.  As Catholics and Christians, we are not – like many militant, pseudo-religious groups – allowed to hate and lust, be it for pleasure or for power!  How such connivance with native passions stirs up ‘religious zeal’ in all sorts of people but most especially in the young, short of understanding and emotional stability, and most eager to make their mark by doing what comes so easily and naturally if encouraged and praised by evil masters!

Our Christian strength – for we are not allowed to become ‘wimps’ ever shivering between humanism and emotionalism – our strength has to come, as Jesus taught, from our faith in Himself, and has to express itself through the power of His Spirit: faith must not be explained away by rational expediency, nor spiritual power subverted by trite and emotional platitudes meant above all to avoid trouble or emolliate opposition.

Moreover, as Jesus was so solicitous for His disciples and His future Church, we too must look to our children who need help as they try to understand their humanity and adapt to the society around them.  To those ends they should be taught morals and guided towards love of what is truly beautiful.  Of themselves, they are not ‘positively’ innocent; in infancy their relative helplessness demands that they instinctively wail and grab to satisfy their most basic needs, and they need to be loved and guided lest, as they grow stronger in body, they continue to seek and grab, no longer for what they need, but for what they fancy.  Of course, their greatest need as they are growing up is for faith and spiritual strength to withstand peer-pressure which would force them into compliance with group excitement and amusement without reference to any personal thinking or religious morals.  Of one thing we can be certain, children left to ‘find out for themselves’ will rarely find out what is good and true for themselves; they will be led, drawn along, by the examples and solicitations of others in their group, responding to nothing better than the shared exuberance of youth under the domination of passions and pride.  Because of such sharing in emotional awareness and excitement too few members of a group of friends or ‘mates’ dare to ‘go it alone’ and, following their personal conscience, to resist, or seek to control, that of which they cannot actually approve, but dare not openly disapprove.

Good Catholic and Christian parenthood is indeed demanding, but it is a most beautiful art and school of prayer with lifelong and indeed eternal rewards.

People of God, delight in the Lord Jesus; try ever to follow confidently His example; trust humbly in the teaching of His Church and her Scriptures; and never give up hoping that the goodness of God Who gives His own Son for and to us all, will lead you to share in the eternal glory of Jesus before the Father if you persevere faithfully walking with Him along life’s way to heaven’s reward.

 

 1st. Sunday of  Lent  Year B    2021

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1^st. Sunday of Lent (B)

(Genesis 9:8-15; 1^st. Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15)

  

                          

  

The waters of the Flood had destroyed earthly life, the waters of Baptism would offer supernatural LIFE.  In between those two events -- after the Flood and in preparation for Jesus’ Baptism -- God made three covenants with His chosen people; three covenants whereby, from this Chosen People, would ultimately arise the Promised One -- the Messiah of God -- Jesus Our Lord, the Saviour of mankind: God Himself in human flesh.   All of that is contained in the opening words of Jesus:

            This is the time of fulfilment.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Our Gospel reading recounted how Jesus had been driven by the Spirit of God into the desert where He was tempted by Satan for forty days. We are also told how Satan, in the course of that encounter, tried and failed, to tempt Jesus by offering Him the satisfactions of worldly peace, pleasure, and pride.

That is the background to those words of Jesus which Mother Church still proclaims in His name:

            Repent, and believe in the Gospel;

words she continually recalls and proclaims because the need for such repentance is abiding.

It is commonly thought that repentance is needed in order to convert to Catholicism or Christianity, and after that, only when sin has been committed.  But such a view is by far too superficial. Repentance is, indeed, necessary in order to believe and embrace the Gospel promise of eternal life in Jesus; but such repentance – turning from the sins of this world in order to embrace the Gospel of eternal life in Jesus – only becomes an enduring reality through the power of God’s most Holy Spirit, God’s Gift to us in Jesus, actually guiding and ruling our mind and heart here on earth so that we might live a truly Christian, authentic, Jesus-witnessing, life.  Repentance and the Gift of God’s most Holy Spirit can be seen as two sides of one coin: death and Life, so to speak.  The whole purpose and meaning of our repentance is that thereby we might die to sin and be enabled to turn to Jesus and live in-and-with Him an abiding, ever-developing, relationship of obedience and love, a Gospel-witness for God’s glory and the fulfilment of our human being.

(Jesus) went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax office. He said to him, "Follow Me" so, he left all, rose up, and followed Him.  (Luke 5:27-28)

And all the Apostles, likewise, left everything to follow Jesus.

On the other hand, the rich young man /who wanted to be perfect, could not follow when Jesus said (Matthew 19:21-22):

"If you want to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me."  But when the young man heard that saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

In his case, it is abundantly clear that, though he was living a good life -- indeed, he thought he wanted to be perfect -- love of riches would not allow him to grow in repentance, that is, would not allow him to turn to Jesus wholeheartedly, motivated not so much by revulsion with regard to sin, not so much by a merely theoretical idea of ‘religious perfection’, but by an ever-deepening and developing, indeed, an ever more absorbing and demanding love for the Person of Jesus Himself and an obedient manifestation to the beauty of His truth and teaching.

Jesus Himself made this absolutely clear when He told His disciples (Matthew 10:37-38}:

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me.  And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me.

Very often, in order to promote or to popularize the Faith, it is presented as being a commitment that will make our lives more enjoyable.  That however can be wrongly understood, because Christian faith is not intended to top up our present experience of life so much as to change it altogether, to consign it to the rubbish bin, as it were, so that we can start anew, afresh, on a life of truly heavenly aspirations, as St. Paul tells us:

I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ. (Philippians 3:8)

St. Paul is there speaking in a very emphatic manner in order to get over a most important aspect of Christian discipleship.  He did not, literally, count the advantages and blessings that had been his in Judaism -- the blessings of his careful upbringing -- as so much rubbish in themselves; but, out of love for Christ, he regarded those things as if they were rubbish, in so far as he turned away from them in order to give himself ever more completely to Jesus; and in so doing Paul was continually repenting of things past.

I count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord.

He remained always proud and grateful for having been brought up a Jew and he would have given his life to help his former Jewish brethren; but when he glimpsed something of the glory of Christ, he turned away from his past, thereby repenting of it, and he never looked back again because he was always, henceforth, striving to give himself ever more completely and perfectly to Christ.

And so, People of God, “repent and believe the Gospel” are words for all time, words to be realized throughout our lives as we seek to grow in the love of the Lord.  We repent of our pride when we are suddenly enabled to see the truth about ourselves -- our weakness, our ignorance, our folly, our pretence -- and are allowed to recognize, appreciate, something of the wonder of Jesus, and to long and pray for, a humble pride-crumbling love of Him.   We likewise repent of our slothfulness and little faith when, for example, when we come to a calm and sincere appreciation of those other words of Jesus in our Gospel passage:

            The time of fulfilment, the kingdom of God is at hand,

and we seriously acknowledge that it is at hand for us if we will only prevail upon ourselves to make the necessary effort to take up the offer and work for it.  

Repentance is an ever-growing sensitivity and responsiveness to the call of God’s grace, a call that would lead us higher and further, thereby requiring us be always prepared and ready to turn away from what is below and behind and look to what is upward and to come. But repentance is only seen in all its grandeur when it fills us with gratitude: when we find that, as it enables us to see more clearly our past sins and failings, it also allows us to appreciate more fully what a debt of gratitude we owe to God for so many past blessings so long ignored during our years of repented ignorance. 

Yes, repentance is indeed a great gift of God: for the gratitude it generates is a virtue both beautiful in itself and delightful in the joy with which it fills our heart and life; while the goodness it reveals is an awesome and a humbling presage of the fulfilment to which it aspires.