Pentecost Sunday (Year B) 2015

                   PENTECOST SUNDAY (B2)   

                              (Acts of the Apostles 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27; 16:12-15)

Jesus, speaking to His apostles before His Passion, Death, and Resurrection, and wishing to both comfort and strengthen them, said (John 14:16–18):

I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. But you know Him, because He remains with you, and will be in you.  I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you.

The Holy Spirit is, indeed, our very own – and in that sense -- secret treasure for:

            The world cannot receive Him, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.

However, He is ours because He remains with us in Mother Church by the fact of our abiding membership of Mother Church, the Body of Christ; and He is in us by our personal reception of the sacramental Body and Blood of Christ at Holy Mass.

Today  we celebrate His abiding in Mother Church with deep joy and hope as the crowd of pilgrims-cum-converts celebrated with wonder and amazement the first Pentecost when:

       

Suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were.  Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them.  And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.  Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.  At this sound, they gathered in a large crowd, but they were confused because each one heard them speaking in his own language.  They were astounded, and in amazement they asked, “Are not all these people who are speaking Galileans?  Then how does each of us hear them in his own native language?” They were all astounded and bewildered, and said to one another, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:2–12)

Our rejoicing is, of course, for different motives today since we do not actually hear Apostles speaking miraculously to people of many nations; but we do hear – with most humble admiration – of so many apparently ordinary Catholics and Christians heroically suffering mockery, loss of homes and property, personal hatred, and public persecution even to death, for the Name of Jesus throughout the world today.  We do, indeed, through their witness recognize the fact that the Spirit is still -- and indeed most manifestly -- in Mother Church today; and we celebrate His abiding presence with fitting pomp and glory, giving expression to the gratitude and praise that fills us all for such a Divine Presence of Power and Truth with us in the Catholic and universal Church of Jesus.

We must, however, on this special day celebrate, quite deliberately, the fact of His being in us personally and individually through Jesus’ timeless and enduring promise I will come to you in Holy Communion; for this personal and most intimate celebration is absolutely necessary for Mother Church herself, since without such ever greater delight in, and commitment to, the Person of Jesus we will not be able to serve and succour her in all her needs in the increasingly deviant, hostile, and sinful world surrounding us today.  He comes to us from the Father indeed -- at Jesus’ request -- but most secretly, because He is the supreme Personal treasure of both Father and Son being the Spirit of their mutual Love; He comes almost unnoticed … on the coat-tails of Jesus so to speak … only to those who have come to believe in, and learned to love and obey, Jesus Whom alone we explicitly welcome in Holy Communion.  At Jesus’ request He comes from the Father with but one supreme purpose expressive of His Mission, He comes as the invisible bond of Love to make us, individually, one with Jesus for the Father.

He, Who alone knows the Father and the Son in the fullness of Truth and Love, comes to form each of us in Jesus for the Father.

Jesus in the course of His Public Ministry once, with both manifest indignation and great courage, cleansed the Jewish Temple for His Father:

He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, money-changers and those who sold doves saying, "Take these out of here, and stop making my Father's house a marketplace." His disciples recalled the words of scripture, "Zeal for your house -- which shall be a house of prayer for all nations -- will consume me."  (cf. John 2:14ss. Mark 11:15ss.)

That same zeal for God’s house, a house of prayer, still consumes Our Blessed Lord; but now, in Holy Communion, He comes:

(As) it says: “(Having) ascended on high and taken prisoners captive; He gives gifts to men.” (cf. Ephesians 4:8)

Yes, and His most sublime Gift is -- with Himself -- His Own Most Holy Spirit of Love and Truth, that He, the Spirit, might in His uniquely Personal way, purify our souls -- already partially prepared by faith and charity -- for the indwelling of Father and  Son:

He who receives Me receives Him Who sent Me.  (John 13:20)

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

At the last Supper, when endeavouring to prepare His Apostles for His Own imminent departure, Jesus said:

I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you. (John 16:7)

It is as if He were saying, ‘It is to your advantage that I go, for in your subsequent feelings of abandonment and dereliction, in that state of humble recognition of your own emptiness, and desire for fulfilment in and with Me … I will send you the Holy Spirit, My own Spirit.   In the past it has been I Who have known loneliness and dereliction, for although you were mostly by My side, yet your hearts and minds were at times far from Me; your thoughts were not My thoughts, for your desires and fears were still carnal and selfish.  But when I send you My Spirit He will enlighten your minds, inflame your hearts, strengthen your wills … so that, although you will no longer see Me with the eyes of your body, yet, through the eyes of faith and by the Holy Spirit, you can be truly one with Me in mind and heart; and thus, a great joy -- a joy this world can never take away from you -- will fill your whole being, at the unheard-of experience, in Me, of oneness with the Father Himself.

People of God, Jesus made a deliberate choice of spiritual presence over mere physical proximity; He wanted totally committed disciples and friends, not just helpers to accompany, obey and serve Him (John 17:11, 13, 21.):

And now, Father, I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, while I am coming to You.  Holy Father, keep them in Your name that You have given Me, so that they may be one just as We are.   But now I am coming to You.  I speak this in the world so that they may share My joy completely.  I pray not only for them, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word, so that they may all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, that the world may believe that You sent Me.

People of God, we should on this wonderful day of celebration and hope, beg the Holy Spirit to come into our lives ever more and more, for He is, indeed, our strength, our joy, and above all -- being the Bond of Love between the Father and His beloved, only-begotten Son -- our new-life love; and all activities and experiences in our life as Christians should be related to His most loving, Personal, purposes.

Yesterday I bought the current issue of the periodical ‘New Scientist’ and on the outside of the front cover I read: ‘The Blip at the start of the universe made everything.  But why did it happen?’

Whoever heard of science answering the question ‘Why?’ ?   Science can, and most remarkably does, answer ever more and more fundamental and arcane questions concerning ‘what happened?’, ‘when, or how, did it happen?’, but science can never answer the question ‘Why, oh! Why did it happen?’, because such a question calls for, requires, implicitly postulates, the decision of a personal intelligence.   Here we can recall again Our Blessed Lord’s words:

The world cannot receive Him (the Spirit), because it neither sees Him nor knows Him.

Ultimate questions, ultimate aspirations are not foreign to us, dear People of God, they are not inscrutably hidden or forbidden to us, because the Spirit -- Jesus’ Spirit of Love-and-Truth -- has been given to Mother Church to cherish and follow and is given to us that we might learn to share in His Love and live by His Truth.

First of all we must learn from the Spirit to love the Person of Jesus most humbly and sincerely, and to walk with reverence, understanding, and perseverance, along the path He traced for us; in so doing we will enable the Spirit to do His most secret, utterly untraceable, work of forming, indeed transforming, us personally, ever more and more in the likeness of Jesus.  By such obedience to and love for Jesus, by such docility to and reverence for the work of the Holy Spirit in us, we will gradually become more aware of the Father Himself in our lives as Jesus promised:

If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and

We will come to him and make Our home with him.  

This day is the birthday of Mother Church; it is the day which commemorates and renews the birth of hope in our hearts, of power and purpose in our lives: for the Spirit offers us an eternal destiny of joy and glory as children of God in the Body of Christ, and such a destiny also promises us an unutterably beautiful personal fulfilment in Jesus, by the Spirit, for the Father.

              

Ascension of Our Lord (B) 2015

ASCENSION OF OUR LORD (B)

(Acts 1:1-11; Eph. 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20)

In our second reading Saint Paul said that, having heard of the Ephesians’ faith in the Lord Jesus and of their love for the saints, he had not stopped giving thanks for them and was constantly asking God to bless them with the Gift of the Holy Spirit so that:

The eyes of (your) hearts may be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to His call, what are the riches of glory in His inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of His great might, which He worked in Christ, raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens.

Today’s celebration makes clear just what St. Paul had in mind when he prayed that they might know what is the hope that belongs to the call they had received, for surely the holy Apostles exemplified that hope when:

They were looking intently at the sky as He was going, (when) suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them.  They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus Who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen Him going into heaven.”

Their hope was clear indeed, to follow Jesus to heaven: to finally leave behind this world where beauty does indeed abound, but not without the ugliness of sin,   suffering, and death; where human knowledge, though ever increasing, can never be comprehensive, and thus, being under constant threat from our native ignorance, fallibility and pride, does not always or necessarily lead us to peace or wisdom; and where, consequently, though much is promised and envisaged, true fulfilment is rarely close at hand.

And so, the disciples must wait, perhaps long years, and experience many trials, before they are called to follow the Lord Jesus heavenward.  What, therefore, are they to do, above all how are they to live, in the meantime?   Let us turn back to Saint Paul’s words:

That you may know what are the riches of glory in His inheritance among the holy ones.

Yes indeed, our hope is not only to ultimately leave behind and below our sinful selves and this sin-scarred world, but also -- and much more urgently -- to know how the riches of God’s glory may become active and fruitful in our earthly lives as they have been so wonderfully displayed in the lives of His saints in Mother Church.   We have some knowledge and awareness of God’s inheritance among the Saints here on earth: saints now glorious in the heavenly kingdom and in the memory of Mother Church for their courage under persecution and torture; saints both strong and faithful despite being, at times, but slight in body and tender in years; saints whose perseverance was not sustained by hatred or bravado but characterized by humility and forgiveness; saints whose goodness towards the poor and needy, the homeless and sick, those outcast and despised, has inspired countless followers over centuries of darkness and cruelty; saints whose wisdom has been such as to enlighten both their world and ours; and again, others whose simplicity and artlessness proclaimed and still proclaims them -- to our great delight -- as true children of God.

Yes, we know something of God’s glorious inheritance among His and Mother Church’s saints here on earth; and we most ardently praise Him, congratulate her, and admire them!   But how can our life and death come to be so resplendent with God’s glory as was theirs!   We admire them; but they do embarrass us, perhaps even frighten us!!   For they remind us of those words of Saint Paul:

If (we are) children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow-heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. (Romans 8:17)

And how can we – so faithless and full of self-love -- hope to be able to suffer with Him as they did, in order that we –with them -- may also be glorified with Him?

Ah, that is what the Apostle finally prayed for us in our second reading today:

May the eyes of (your) hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the surpassing greatness of His power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of His great might, which He worked in Christ, raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens.

In Mother Church our eyes are nowadays enlightened to know that the Spirit Who raised Jesus from the dead up to the right hand of the Father in heaven has been shared with us, sent to us from the right hand of the Father by Jesus.  He is the Spirit of the Resurrection and Ascension of Our Lord, and has become for us, in Mother Church, the Gift of Pentecost and the shared Spirit of our Eucharistic Lord, sent to fill our minds and hearts with joy, hope and confidence, even in our present times of growing public opposition, opprobrium, and persecution. Above all, however, He is the Spirit Who will work at Jesus’ behest throughout our lives to form us -- according to the measure of our willingness and co-operation -- in the likeness of Jesus for the Father, so that we may be able to celebrate with ever greater love, compassion, and contrition, the Lord’s Passion and Death both in the liturgy of Mother Church, and in our response to life as coming to us daily from the hands of the Father. 

What are the riches of God’s glorious inheritance in the Saints?  They are indeed some participation in the glory which He won for us when One with us, and in the glory which He had with the Father before the world began; for He has raised our humanity up far beyond our native state and above all the angelic choirs.  We do not know what our personal share of that glory, of such an inheritance, will be, for even St. John the beloved disciple could only promise:

Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we shall be has not yet been revealed. We do know that when it is revealed we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.  Everyone who has this hope based on Him makes himself pure, as He is pure.

We shall see Him as we have come to know Him -- and be known by Him -- through our faithfulness, love, and perseverance here on earth.

Therefore, as today we celebrate the Ascension of Our Blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we look forward in anticipation to next week’s celebration of Pentecost, calling to mind once again and cherishing yet more deeply in our hearts the words of the Apostle’s prayer:

May the eyes of (your) hearts be enlightened, that you may know what is the hope that belongs to His call, what are the riches of glory in His inheritance among the holy ones, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power for us who believe, in accord with the exercise of His great might, which He worked in Christ, raising Him from the dead and seating Him at His right hand in the heavens.

6th Sunday of Easter (B) 2015

 6^th. Sunday of Easter (B) 

(Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48; 1^st. John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17)

Today we have heard much about fraternal charity in our readings.  We know, of course, that Jesus said it was second only to love of God; indeed, when asked, He said that it could not be separated from love of God:

“Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22:36–40)

However, fraternal charity is so frequently, easily, and even flippantly, bandied around in our modern society that it is often popularly regarded as the main, characteristic, teaching of the Christian faith, relegating love of God to something vague, unappreciable, and ultimately unimportant; with the result that, as you are well aware, monks and nuns who dedicate their whole lives to the worship of God in solitude and seclusion are often enough said to be wasting their lives, which would be better spent in doing good to people.  Contemporary society, being very much influenced by scientific enquiry, consequently likes to think that it can indeed, test, prove, manifest and boast of chosen acts of charity to others in need; but who can show, who can prove, demonstrate, love of God?

Despite such popular misconceptions, however, there can be no doubt that love of the Father is first and foremost in Jesus’ own life and in His will for us; and we, His disciples, must learn to take care in our dialogue with the world and in our zeal to stand up on behalf of, or proselytize for, the Faith, that we do not – so to speak -- joust with people proffering mere arguments, by the use of words made holy by the faith they express; that we do not gradually come to accept the premises on which all the actions, thoughts and words, of our adversaries are based: the scientific reality of this physical world and the exclusive worthwhileness of the hopes and expectations it seems to hold for them.

Our blessed Lord Jesus gave us His disciples -- at their express request -- the prayer we call the “Our Father”.  In it we pray, first of all, to the Father, for His glory and for the coming of His Kingdom: the now inchoate, but to-become ultimate spiritual reality for us, on which all our thoughts and aspirations, words and actions, must be based; and to that end Jesus seeks to lead us, first and foremost, into a truly real and personal relationship with the Father.  The second part of the prayer He gave us is not directly for the world and our life in it, but for God’s family, of which we have chosen, and are privileged, to be a part, emphasising and cementing our oneness in charity with our fellow disciples, each and every one of whom is our brother or sister in the Body of Christ and the family of God.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells us the meaning of His life on earth when He says:

          I have kept My Father's commandments and remain in His love.

Likewise, He wills that our life as His disciples should have the same meaning and purpose as His, and therefore He says:

By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; and become My disciples.  

And the ultimate joy of His life, and of ours too if we abide in Him, is the fact of the Father’s love:

The Father loves Me; I have kept (His) commandments, and abide in His love.

Love of the Father is indeed the first and the greatest commandment; it is also the supreme reward and deepest joy of the Christian life of faith even here on earth.

What then is the special significance of the great emphasis given today, especially in the Gospel and letter of John, to love of neighbour?  Let us recall part of that letter:

Beloved, we belong to God, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent His only Son into the world so that we might have life through Him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son as expiation for our sins.  (1 John 4: 5, 7-10)

John’s whole aim there is to show that love, true Christian love, originates with, comes from, and must involve, God the Father.  Such love is of God’s very essence.  Those words teach us that Christian love – caritas -- is only bestowed, exercised and shared, in God, and among those who already belong to Him and/or are open to Him.

John is writing in his letter to fellow Christians when he says, ‘Whoever is without love does not know God’.  There he is saying, ‘You who claim to be followers of Christ, Christians, adopted sons and daughters of God in Christ by the Spirit, cannot be such without love, God’s love, caritas, being in you and among you’.  And in his Gospel from which our principal reading was taken, the words of Jesus were addressed to His chosen future Apostles at the Last Supper, not to the generality of the Jews or even of His numerous followers.  Fraternal love – caritas -- among Christians is a most intimate aspect of their love for and response to God.

The world has gradually taken over those initial words out of their original context and come up with a parasitical likeness, ‘everyone who loves – not, of course, in God’s way, because there is no God – but everyone who “loves” in our emotionally acceptable way, that is, unfettered by any religious considerations demanding our obedience, such a person is truly good in our eyes.’  It is doing the same with other Christian words, especially key words such as ‘marriage’, ‘conscience’, and ‘sin’.

Because it is essentially divine love, caritas-charity can only become part of our lives as a gift -- the very Gift of the Holy Spirit Himself -- from God.  The fact is, that just as worldly society knows nothing about divine holiness, so too, of itself, it knows nothing about true love, divine love.  Proponents of modern society can and do use words learned from centuries of Christian teaching, but the realities signified by those words are unknown to them, lost by their rejection of God Himself.  We can see evidence of this every day around us: our respectable and politically correct society identifies love with sentimentality or emotionalism and passion, with the result that many parents actually harm their children by the ‘love’ they mistakenly show them.  Again, the majority of worldly pleasure-seekers proclaim, as their pleasures show, that love -- for them -- means the shared pleasure of any and every sexual passion; which, being separated from and independent of any moral law, inevitably brings harm, first of all, to themselves.

The Christian revelation, however, teaches us that only God, only Jesus, can tell us what is an authentic expression of our divinely created nature, and of God‘s love being in and acting through us; and John, in our readings today, insists in the name of Jesus, that one, decisive, sign of the authenticity of our love for the Father, is His Spirit of love being active in us, and leading us to love our neighbour as He would have us do.  For He is the Spirit of Holiness, given to lead us to holiness of life and love in God, and our supreme mission in life is to let Him lead us and form us in Jesus for the Father: in that way we keep God’s commandments.

And in order that He, the Spirit of Jesus, may be able to thus work in us and form us in the likeness of Jesus, we must humbly and patiently endeavour to:

Love one another, just as He, the Lord, has loved us and commanded us.

However, just as the origin and nature of Christian love is divine caritas, so too its end is divine: we are called to love our neighbour in God, we are called to care for his or her good in and before God.  We are not thereby called to publicly acceptable manifestations of human love and liking, but we are called to care for and promote, if possible, our neighbour’s well-being in and before God, that is, according to his or her need and in accordance with the commandments of God our Father Who is the supreme lover of all.  Such being the case, just as there is never a time when, never any circumstances where, we can absolve ourselves from loving the Father, so too, there can never be any people, with regard to whom, we can absolve ourselves from the obligation of such fraternal charity.

People of God, we can never be sure of the authenticity of our own personal love for God, nor can we ever be sure of the true nature of our love for our neighbour: we like to think we know ourselves, but we are aware that people are not always either able or willing to recognize the deep desires that motivate their actions or attitudes, and we must also acknowledge and confess our own personal weaknesses and ignorance.   That is why some commands from God are necessary for us, being totally independent of our own selves and selfishness.  And here today we know that we can be sure of the authenticity of our love for God, if, and to the extent that, we try by the Spirit to love our neighbour as Jesus wills, for the greater glory of the God and Father Who calls us to become His adopted and beloved children.

5th Sunday of Easter (B) 2015

5^th. Sunday of Eastertide (B)    

                   (Acts 9:26-31; 1^st. John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8)

Our Gospel reading today puzzled me somewhat, because it begins with the words:

            Jesus said to His disciples: “I am the true vine …”

and then it ends:

By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become My disciples.

I am aware, of course, that one might interpret those last words in the sense of: ‘bear much fruit and thus become My disciples’ or ‘show yourselves to be’ My ‘true’ disciples, but that is not what John actually says.   What then is he saying? 

Part of the second reading from St. John’s first letter, gives us a clue, for there we read:

Those who keep His commandments remain in Him, and He in them; and the way we know that He remains in us is from the Spirit He gave us.

Now, according to John, Jesus only spoke about asking the Father to send His disciples another Advocate -- the Holy Spirit -- in the course of this present discourse; and then He only spoke of the Spirit being sent in the future (14:15-17; 14:26; 15:26):

If you love me, you will keep my commandments.  And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Advocate to be with you always, the Spirit of truth, Whom the world cannot accept, because it neither sees nor knows Him. But you know Him, because He remains with you (all, as a body now), and will be in you (individually).

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My name, will teach you everything. 

When the Advocate comes Whom I will send you from the Father, the Spirit of truth Who proceeds from the Father, He will testify to Me.

So, for St. John’s presentation of Jesus, there is an essential difference between His faithful followers during His Palestine days, and those same followers later endowed with the Risen Lord’s Gift of the Holy Spirit sent from the Father: the first are called ‘disciples’ by John who writes, ‘Jesus said to His disciples’; whereas the others are designated as such in accordance with Jesus’ own most positive and emphatic words, ‘bear much fruit and become My disciples’.

John’s letter quoted in our second reading backs up these thoughts, as can be seen, perhaps more clearly, in another translation:

All who obey His commandments abide in Him and He abides in them.  And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit that He has given us. (NRSV)

We ‘become His disciples’ – that is, those who know the abiding-in-them-Jesus, those who know Him thus by the personal communion they have with Him -- by the Gift of the Spirit sent in the name of Jesus by the Father.  For it is the Spirit Who establishes a personal relationship of loving solicitude and devout obedience between Jesus and His follower, whereby all who obey His commandments abide in Him and He abides in them; and, by virtue of that relationship, they also come to know that He abides in them, by the Spirit (He) Jesus has given them.

And so, dear People of God, Jesus demands obedience from all His disciples, but above all He desires such commitment to be imbued with the intimate beauty of personal communion, whereby the ‘do-er’ of His will, delights in the awareness that it is His will.

St. Luke presents the same teaching prominently in our first reading:

The Church was being built up and walked in the fear of the Lord; and with the consolation of the Holy Spirit it grew in numbers.

There we have the difference between those who love Jesus and think that Christians have all they need for their understanding and imitation of Jesus in the Bible, perhaps more simply in the New Testament, or even, indeed, in the Gospels alone, and those – like ourselves – who, in the God-given Church, seek not simply to know the words Jesus uttered and imitate the things He did, but aspire to be formed by the very Spirit of Jesus in the likeness of Jesus.  We pray for and invite the Holy Spirit to guide us, who are already members of Christ through faith and obedience, way beyond and immeasurably far above the awareness of our own thoughts and the strictness of our personal discipline… no matter how developed and specialised we (in our pride and folly) may think them to be … into a Spiritual conformity with Jesus.  For God desires that the full majesty and beauty of the Son-made-flesh be manifested in the most sensitive detail and to the closest conformity by a multitude of complementary family likenesses formed by the Holy Spirit for the glory of the Father of all goodness and truth.

People of God, God is holy, we are not; God is good, we are needy; let us not, therefore, try to prescribe ourselves a ‘Jesus’ for our imitation, based on our own thoughts, no matter how studious or learned they may be; on our own aspirations or imaginations, no matter how pious they may be.  Rather let us try to just love the Lord proclaimed by Mother Church with all our heart, understand Him in her Scriptures to the utmost of our mind, embrace Him in her Eucharist with heart-felt warmth and sincerity, and then both humbly and prayerfully entrust ourselves to the Holy Spirit, beseeching Him to form us into a likeness of Jesus in Mother Church, as He most wonderfully formed Jesus Himself in the womb of Mary.

For we are all, throughout our lives, meant to be formed as other, mutually complementary, Christs in the womb of Mother Church, by the Spirit.  And after such a life-time gestation, our ultimate birth into heavenly life should be characterized first and foremost by a sublimely childlike cry of ‘THANK YOU my Father, my God, and my All’, a cry most befitting those worshippers in Spirit and in Truth who, as Jesus Himself revealed and John alone reports, the Father desires above all:

 The hour is coming, and is now here, when true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth; and indeed the Father seeks such people to worship Him.   God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and Truth.  (4:23s.)

Thus with the Holy Spirit of love having formed us in Mother Church, the Body of the Christ Who is the Truth, we will find ourselves most lovingly adopted, and ‘fully at home’, members of the family of God the Father.

           

4th Sunday of Easter (B) 2015

 4^th. Sunday of Easter (B)

 (Acts of the Apostles 4:8-12; 1^st. John 3:1-2; John 10:11-18)

I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.

In the oldest parts of the Bible the word ‘shepherd’ is bound up with the idea of nomadic life.  Nomads lived above all as shepherds moving their flocks or herds from one pasturage to another.  The prophets of the OT always tended to look back on Israel’s early years when the people were nomads moving from place to place, as the ideal period in her history as God’s Chosen People; because – like nomads – true seekers of God should never be settled, fixed, attached to any particular place or situation, but be always in search of God, ever listening for His voice and prepared to follow wheresoever it might lead them.

Jesus presents Himself in today’s Gospel as the true shepherd sent by His Father to lead His flock of believers on their journey through life to the rich pastures of eternal beatitude before His Father in heaven.  Let me now quote a pertinent passage from H. V. Morton’s book, “In the steps of the Master” (p. 154s.):

On the roads of Palestine and on the hills, you see the good shepherd.  He comes along at the head of his flock … He never drives them as our own shepherds drive their sheep.  He always walks at their head, leading them along the roads and over the hills to new pasture; and as he goes he sometimes talks to them in a loud sing-song voice, using a weird language unlike anything I have ever heard in my life.  The first time I heard this sheep and goat language I was on the hills at the back of Jericho.  A goatherd had descended into a valley and was mounting the slope of an opposite hill when, turning round, he saw his goats had remained behind.  Lifting up his voice he spoke to the goats in a language that was uncanny because there was nothing human about it.  The words were animal sounds arranged in a kind of order.  No sooner had he spoken than an answering bleat shivered over the herd, and one or two of the animals turned their heads in his direction.  But they did not obey him.  The goatherd then called out one word and gave a laughing kind of whinny.  Immediately a goat with a bell round his neck stopped eating and, leaving the herd, trotted down the hill, across the valley and up the opposite slopes.  The man, accompanied by this animal, walked on and disappeared round a ledge of rock.  Very soon a panic spread among the herd.  They forgot to eat.  They looked up for the shepherd: he was not to be seen.  They became conscious that the leader with the bell at his neck was no longer with them.  From the distance came the strange laughing call of the shepherd, and at the sound of it, the entire herd stampeded into the hollow and leapt up the hill after him…..  Everything is done by word of mouth – not by our principle of droving.  The sheep dog is used not to drive sheep but to protect them against thieves and wild animals.  One reason why the sheep and the shepherd are on such close terms in the Holy Land is that the sheep are kept chiefly for wool and milk, and therefore live longer and exist together as a flock for a considerable time.  Also, the shepherd spends his life with them.  He is with them from their birth onwards, day and night, for even when they are driven into a cave or sheep-fold for the night he never leaves them.

We can understand from that picture just how absolutely important and quasi-personal is the relationship between the shepherd and his flock: the sheep have to be in the flock and in tune with the shepherd in order to find food and protection, because the shepherd not only leads the flock in search of fresh pastures but he also guards it from animals which would slaughter and men who would steal.  With that, therefore, in mind we can recall the following words from the Song of Solomon (1:7):

Tell me, you whom my heart loves, where you pasture your flock, where you give them rest at midday, lest I be found wandering after the flocks of your companions.

Lord Jesus, all Christian people would say that they love you.   Therefore, why are so many of them content to be among the flocks of your companions?   Surely, if they loved you as much as they say they would pray in those words:

            Tell me, O You Whom my soul loves, where do You pasture Your flock?

Jesus is the ultimate, the sublimely unique Good Shepherd, Who, as the letter to the Hebrews tells us (10:12s.):

Offered one sacrifice for sins, and took His seat forever at the right hand of God; now He waits until His enemies are made His footstool.

Knowing that He was indeed soon to leave His disciples and go back to His heavenly Father at Whose right hand He now makes constant intercession for us:

Jesus, when they had finished breakfast, said to Simon Peter, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me more than these?” He said to him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Feed My lambs”.  He then said to him a second time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord, You know that I love You.” He said to him, “Tend My sheep.”  He said to him the third time, “Simon, son of John, do you love Me?”  Peter was distressed that He had said to him a third time, “Do you love Me?” and he said to Him, “Lord, You know everything; You know that I love You.” (Jesus) said to him, “Feed my sheep.” (Jn. 21:15s.)

So, here on earth, there is one flock, one Catholic and universal Church, belonging to the one Good Shepherd, and that flock is under the leadership of a shepherd who is himself a sheep, but one expressly appointed and endowed by the Risen Lord to bear the Keys of the Kingdom, one whose supreme privilege and  most solemn duty it is to lead the flock in such a way that it might become God the Father’s chosen instrument to:

            Make all His (the Lord Jesus’) enemies a footstool for His feet.

And when that will have been achieved Peter himself, the leader chosen for that work, tells us (1 Peter 5:4):

            When the Chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory;

for Peter knows himself to be shepherd of the flock only to glorify the Chief Shepherd and -- in the power of the Spirit -- to prepare a people for His coming.

Why, then, are there so many who – loving Christians at heart – do not cry out in chorus with the lover in the Song of Songs again:

Tell me, You Whom my heart loves, where You pasture Your flock, where You give them rest at midday?

Why are so many Christians apparently content to be where she says could not bear to be found:

 Wandering after the flocks of your companions?

The answer, People of God, is: the mystery of sin.  For, though we in Mother Church are the instrument which the Father has specially chosen to:

            Make all His (Jesus’) enemies a footstool for His feet;

nevertheless, we are still not allowing the truth of Jesus to shine clearly in and through our lives; with the consequence that some of those apparently content to be separated from the flock of Jesus shepherded by Peter, are not, it would seem, as yet able to recognise the fullness of the truth about the Jesus they love, in our proclamation of His Name.  For Jesus said quite unequivocably:

            Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to My voice. (John 18:37)

Let us therefore pray most urgently, People of God,  that we may be able so to listen to the voice of Our Lord that it may penetrate into and resonate deeply within us, transforming our personal lives so that, His voice, His truth, may be persuasively perceptible in our humble proclamation of and daily witness to His most Holy Name.

I am not speaking here about any dramatic endeavours, certainly no histrionics; I am not even thinking of deliberate efforts to witness before others, certainly not of publically arguing with any; I am just thinking of heart-felt, personal, love of Jesus; humble obedience to His will; and sincere gratitude to God the Father for His great goodness to us in Mother Church… because that is the ‘ammunition’, so to speak, that the Spirit wants us to provide for Him, with which to target those He seeks to bring into the glorious beauty of Catholic Unity.

To that end, we – His witnessing disciples --  must have greater desire and deeper longing to personally re-discover, hear afresh, and respond more faithfully to, the voice of Jesus sounding clearly in the teaching and Sacraments of Mother Church today:

First of all in our conscience: ‘when he listens to his conscience, the prudent man can hear God speaking’ (Catechism 1777).   People of God, seek to consult, learn to listen to, and try to follow, your conscience in simplicity and humility, and gradually you will come to hear and more clearly recognize, appreciate, and  more lovingly obey, God thus speaking most intimately with you and to you.

Secondly in our intimacy with the Scriptures of Mother Church; as, with Mary, we ponder them, lovingly and frequently, in our heart:

All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for refutation, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that one who belongs to God may be competent, equipped for every good work.

Jesus said, “It is written: ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God.’”      

So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, but shall do My will, achieving the end for which I sent it.

(2 Timothy 3:16-17; Matthew 4:4; Isaiah 55:11)

And finally, the voice of Christ is to be heard in the public teaching, and our personal experience of divine worship (above all the Most Holy Eucharist), and Christian fellowship in Mother Church:

Behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.  (Matt. 28:20)

Whoever listens to you listens to Me. Whoever rejects you rejects Me. And whoever rejects Me rejects the One Who sent Me.” (Luke 10:16)

That great mystery of human sinfulness -- which does not only occasion, more or less unwittingly, the obstruction and/or distortion of the beauty of Jesus’ ‘Good News’, but can even lead to and provoke the deliberate rejection of God’s great goodness and mercy contained therein -- is the reason why our blessed Lord Himself had to die: His supreme sacrifice alone could save us.   

And that brings me to a complementary aspect of our Gospel reading today:

This is why the Father loves Me, because I lay down My life in order to take it up again.

Just recall words from our second reading:

See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are.  Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him. (3:1-2)

It is, therefore, absolutely important for us to fix our hope on Jesus: not just for our own selves, but for the whole world, indeed for Jesus and the Father.  For, as you heard, Jesus -- Risen from the Dead -- and speaking most intimately of His heart’s desire and of His own future Kingdom and Glory, said:

I have other sheep, not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.

Therefore, if we are indeed sheep who rightly belong to His fold, then “hearing His voice” we must recognize that His words are our vocation.  “I must bring them also”, means therefore for us, “we must bring them also”.  How?   Through fixing our hopes on Him and thereby seeking most seriously to purify our lives:

(For) we know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is.  And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.

That work will only approach completion to the extent that we Christians and Catholics become pure enough to allow the Spirit of Jesus to shine in and through our lives, thus giving authentic witness to Him before the many who are not in the flocks of those ‘companions’ of Jesus mentioned in the Song of Songs; the many who, indeed, have not yet come to any spiritual awareness of and responsiveness to Jesus as Lord and Saviour, and are to be found consorting -- unwittingly perhaps -- with His enemies or those who thoughtlessly mock Him.

All that demands a deeply serious, loving and committed, spirituality: a continuous walking with Jesus in all the steps we take, the decisions we make, the thoughts we entertain, and the hopes we treasure.  We, His disciples, have to learn from Jesus’ Spirit how to sacrifice ourselves with Him in Mother Church: not, generally speaking, in His sacrifice of body and blood, but, most certainly and not less importantly, in His sacrifice of loving obedience and trust in His Father’s loving Providence, His daily praise and thanksgiving, His patience and strength under trials and temptations, together with our very own humble contrition.  Note however, all such efforts at personal sincerity and spiritual commitment to Jesus in all the nooks and crannies of our life will gain for us who make them the most wonderful blessing of the Father’s special love even here on earth:

Jesus answered and said, “Whoever loves Me will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.  (John 14:23)

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the Risen Lord said: “I must bring them also”; surely, therefore, our lips will best express our hearts in harmony with the Apostles, with the words, ‘let us join with you Lord’.  For, to quote Peter (Acts 4:12):

There is no salvation through anyone else, nor is there any other name (than that of ‘Jesus’) under heaven given to the human race by which we are to be saved.”

                                        

3rd Sunday of Eastertide (B) 2015

 3^rd. Sunday of Eastertide (B)                         (Acts of the Apostles 3:13-15, 17-19; 1^st. John 2:1-5; Luke 24:35-48)

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, once again we have a beautiful Eastertide apparition of the Risen Lord Jesus to His disciples in which we in Mother Church are privileged to be able to share thanks to her Holy Scriptures.

Jesus appeared to His Apostles in Jerusalem as they were gathered together discussing the report of two disciples who claimed to have encountered Jesus – risen from the dead -- as they had been on their way to Emmaus.  To prove that they were not mistaken they told the Apostles how, as He walked with them along the way, He had opened up the meaning of the Scriptures for them, and how they had managed to persuade Him to stay with them and share their meal; a meal which -- in a most wonderful manner -- became quite unmistakeably His meal being shared with them!   The Apostles gathered there in secret in Jerusalem were amazed to hear what had thus transpired on the way to Emmaus, and as they were considering together what it all might mean, suddenly Jesus Himself was standing there in the room with them, and despite His greeting:

            Peace be with you,

they -- thinking were seeing a ghost -- were startled, and indeed terrified to such an extent that Jesus went straight on to say to them:

"Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts?  Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have."    And as He said this, He showed them His hands and His feet.  

Thereupon He opened their understanding that they might comprehend the Scriptures -- just as they had heard of Him doing for those two disciples on the way to Emmaus -- and He said to them:

Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.  You are witnesses of these things.

Now let us turn our attention to the Apostle Peter in our first reading today, addressing the devout Jews gathered in the portico of the Temple in Jerusalem immediately after he, Peter, together with John, had enabled a man who had been lame from birth to walk upright for the first time:

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His Servant Jesus, whom you handed over and denied in  Pilate’s presence, when he had decided to release Him.  You denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked that a murderer be released to you. The author of life you put to death, but God raised Him from the dead; of this we are witnesses.

Peter was making his first attempt to carry out the commission called to the attention of His Apostles by the Risen Lord Jesus, that:

Repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached in the name of the Christ to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

Peter, who had wept so profusely over his denials of the Lord, was immensely grateful that Jesus, appearing so unexpectedly in that upper room, had addressed them with no words of recrimination but only a peaceful greeting and comforting exhortations to confidence; and he, Peter, was here trying to follow his Master’s example:

Now I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance.

Peter was, indeed, following the example of His Master so closely that not only did he not condemn the people who had been led astray into sin, but he even refrained from condemning those who had been responsible for thus leading them into sin:

I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance, just as your leaders did. 

However, since for disciples of Christ there can be no repentance without sin being acknowledged, therefore, Peter was trying to lead his fellow Jews to recognize and to acknowledge their sins as he himself had so broken-heartedly acknowledged his own public betrayal of his Lord and Master.  That done, there would be no recriminations, no accusations, only that which the Apostles -- and above all Peter himself -- had received from Jesus: understanding and forgiveness.

I know, brothers, that you acted out of ignorance just as your leaders did; but God has thus brought to fulfilment what He had announced beforehand through the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer.  Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away.

Peter then went on to add a little something more, something personal, saying:

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be wiped away, that the Lord may grant you times of refreshment.

There we see something of the beauty of a right understanding of the work of the Church!  There we realise why we call her Mother Church: because she uses the Scriptures, given into her care by the Lord, for our refreshment: that is, not only for our understanding and enlightenment, but also for our consolation and comfort, our strength and our hope; if -- that is -- we will treasure them in our hearts and ponder them lovingly in our minds as we look to our Lord and God ever more hopefully and confidently.

Notice, People of God, in these times when the Church is often accused of preaching homophobia, exemplified above all by hatred of the Jews, notice that there is no hatred in Mother Church’s earliest response to the Jews through her supreme leader on earth, Peter the Rock who openly said:

            Brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers.

Nor was there hatred in the personal attitude or apostolic preaching of Paul, even though the Jewish Christians had by then been driven out of Jerusalem and begun to experience persecution from the Jewish authorities.   Paul’s public proclamation in his letter to the Christians of Rome testifies to this:

I say then, has God cast away His (Jewish) people?  Certainly not!  For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.  God has not cast away His people whom He foreknew. (Romans 11:1-2)

People of God, be likewise in no way afraid of charges of homophobia against the present teaching of the Church.  It was Jesus’ lot to slowly grow to manhood in order that He might bring back to God human nature in the full development not only of its human potentialities but also of its divine possibilities, and that is why His Resurrection is absolutely pertinent today, when men aspire to live to the utmost.  Let us learn from Our Lord to give glory to the Father and testimony to the world as He did, the glory and testimony of fully matured Christian men and women finding their supreme fulfilment in living with Christ and doing the Father’s will in all things.  The contemporary desire for integral personality in the exercise of responsible commitment is good, but let us try to show how it can be realized in Christ alone; for in Him alone, by the power of His Spirit, can all our warring passions be restored to their original cohesion and unity, and in Christ alone can we find not only ourselves but also the heavenly Father, dwelling in our soul where we can hear Him, speak with Him, love Him, in an unceasing and ever-more intimate ‘I and Thou’ communion.  All this is ours in Christ, if we use the means He has given to us, that is His Church, His Sacraments, and His Sacred Scriptures, our Bible. All are ours, and we are Christ’s, and Christ is the Father’s.

St. John, addressing us for our refreshment in the second reading, says:

(Jesus) is the expiation for our sins, and not for our sins only but for those of the whole world.    The way we may be sure that we know Him, is to keep His commandments.

All true seekers after God must have fears, at times, if not doubts, about their own sincerity as disciples of Jesus.  It is therefore refreshing, indeed, and comforting, to hear St. John explain what makes a true disciple of the Lord.  For he tells us that, although there are people who think themselves to be true disciples of Jesus because they have warm feelings for Him, and can speak enthusiastic words about Him, nevertheless, in so far as they pay little attention to His commandments, such people are mistaken about themselves:

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.

Despite modern popular assertions, such words are neither cold doctrine nor do they express homophobia; but, on the contrary they are the very core and centre of Jesus’ own relationship with His Father, and of His and His Father’s love for mankind (John 12:49-50):

I did not speak on My own, but the Father who sent Me commanded Me what to say and speak.  And I know that His commandment is eternal life.”  

God’s commandments, People of God, are eternal life and express divine love; they must be understood, appreciated, and appropriately accepted and embraced as such, not manipulated and adulterated for the human expression of pretentious, insufficient, and ultimately fake love.

And that is why Jesus asks for that indisputably authentic sign of love from us:

                    Whoever has My commandments and observes them is the one who loves Me. Whoever does not love Me does not keep My words; yet the word you hear is not Mine but that of the Father who sent Me. (14:21, 24)

Far from being cold doctrine, it is the keeping of Jesus’ commandments that alone can prepare us to receive the ultimate privilege that human life and death can afford:

Whoever loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and reveal Myself to him.  Whoever loves Me will keep My word, and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our dwelling with him.

And so, from the readings set before us today by Mother Church, we have learnt something about ourselves as Catholics: we should be here in Church not simply out of obedience responding to our acknowledged obligation, not even out of fidelity to our bounden duty, we should be here desiring and seeking for our supreme refreshment as true disciples – admirers, lovers, and most willing servants -- of Jesus, by giving our very selves to Him (above all in Holy Communion) as He gives Himself to us.

Let us, therefore, not fail to renew our willingness and resolve to obey His commandments for we know that His commandments are eternal life.  May we leave this Church today gratefully strengthened and confirmed by an obedient spirit bountifully refreshed for the service of, and witness to, Mother Church; she who is so divinely wise as to cling resolutely to her Scriptures and to her earliest and most firmly established teachings and traditions despite, and in the face of, all modern flights of intellectual froth and fancy (not true scholarship) or tides of popular, emotional feeling (not true devotion).  And thus being herself obedient to Her Lord, and true to His founding truths and her own most ancient traditions, she has not failed us; she has called us, in His Name, to come here obediently today and rewarded us with the most sublime nourishment and incomparable comfort for our souls.