29th Sunday Year A 2017

Sermon 49a: 29^th. Sunday (A)

(Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; 1^st. Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21)

In our first reading from the prophet Isaiah we learned that God is indeed Lord and Ruler of all, even of certain supremely important happenings in the course of human history:

For Jacob My servant's sake, and Israel My elect, I the Lord have named Cyrus, though you have not known Me; I will gird you, though you have not known Me.

And St. Paul in our second reading took up that appreciation of God’s divine authority when he wrote:

Our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction, as you know what kind of persons we were among you for your sake.

How Mother Church today needs such ‘persons’ whose faith is for them a fount of holy power and assured commitment to Jesus Who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever!

A disturbing aspect of modern Church life, however, is the growing tendency to find the Jesus of yesterday, today, and forever, too unpopular to turn to, look to, for guidance, to love with zeal, and to proclaim fearlessly.  Rather many figures in Mother Church today look to society around, to observe what is happening there, especially in matters of popular sexual morality and social responsibility, and to then try to make the Jesus we know -- the traditional Jesus of countless martyrs and saints, the Jesus proclaimed and fought for by St. Paul and St. John in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction , the Jesus of the Gospels -- and then, I say, try to make that Jesus somehow fit in seamlessly with society’s popular practices and ‘beliefs’! 

The traditional analogy of the development of doctrine with human growth is much used now to say -- as has always been the case -- that change is necessary for life; but today’s advocates do not advert to the fact that nowhere in the course of human growth does the person become unrecognizable as, or contradictory to, what he or she was before.  Nowhere did Jesus ever say that His disciples, His Church, would be popular, with ‘bums on all seats in their Churches’.  He did indeed say that His Gospel was to be preached to all, but not that it would be accepted by all, or even by the majority.  In fact, He did give voice to one of His most solemn and considered warnings:

          When the Son of Man comes, will He find faith on earth? (Luke 18:8)

Certain passages of our New Testament are now regularly omitted in liturgical readings; how many more will have to be omitted in future to accommodate modern ‘popular “Catholic” sensitivities’, to allow those whose public words or open life-style contradict the Gospel yet feel at home in Mother Church?

In modern Western society, effeminacy is widespread; not simply because women are becoming more preponderant and powerful in our society, more appreciated in the life of Mother Church (where, however, they have always been not merely popularly, but most devoutly recognised, admired, and beloved as religious), nor, indeed, simply because some are showing themselves to be generally much more career-conscious, self-promoting, and confrontational in men’s regard, with mordent criticism of masculine attitudes as being violent, insensitive, unloving, lacking in communication skills etc.  But it is also a fact that, in conjunction with those feminist tendencies in individuals and society, too many men are, alas, imitating Adam by allowing themselves to be over-influenced, at times even intimidated, by humanistic and overly-emotional individuals, and by public appreciations based, not on the Christian trilogy of Faith, Hope, and Charity, but on the (French) revolutionary and iconoclastic ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity.

‘Freedom’: who can speak better of that than St. Paul who says:

Brothers and sisters: For freedom Christ set us free; so, stand firm and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.  (Galatians 5:1)

A yoke defined, indeed, definitively for us who are Catholics and Christians by Jesus when He said:

Amen, amen, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34),

a yoke which is totally ignored by modern humanists who know no sin, with the result that its crushing weight bears down upon innumerable slaves delighting in and/or subject to the power and pleasure of drugs and sex, industries that disfigure and disgrace our society and our world today!

‘Equality’ … what a word, just right for inciting nit-picking and fostering discord and dissension!!   What words have we Christians been taught and received?  Men and women are ‘equal’ indeed in divine dignity as children of God; ‘complimentary’, however, in personal relationships and shared human endeavours for the coming of God’s kingdom:

Now the body is not a single part, but many. If a foot should say, “Because I am not a hand I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body. Or if an ear should say, “Because I am not an eye I do not belong to the body,” it does not for this reason belong any less to the body.  If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be?  But as it is, God placed the parts, each one of them, in the body as He intended. (1 Corinthians 12:14–18)

‘Fraternity’ … the Romans of old, at least those in the upper echelons, prided themselves on their fraternity/friendship!  If I might, I will quote Peter Brown in his book, ‘Through the Eye of a Needle’ (p. 101):  Whatever their beliefs, Symmachus wished to treat members of his (senatorial) class as peers held together by the old fashioned “religion of friendship.”

And what, originally all-conquering, Christian word have we, in this respect, fecklessly lost by repeatedly allowing our opponents to degrade our words and determine our use of them?   ‘Charity’, divine love, able to inspire and elevate our human relationships and endeavours above all merely human understandings of ‘love’ which, so very frequently and manifestly, show themselves open for, and prone to accommodate, all sorts of disgraceful distortions and open contradictions. 

And so, although the Catholic understanding of Christian marriage rightly emphasizes  that  man and woman marry for both the divine blessing and social good of giving birth to children as also for their own personal and mutual benefit, nevertheless, in this modern social context, Christian family life is suffering because contention and challenge are eroding the unity and thus ruining the example of the spouses; with the result that, for example, children are now being seriously damaged due to a lack of authentic discipline and an absence of true love: they are even being thought able (though not yet sixteen!) to go to court in order to change their native sexuality against their parents wishes!

A Christian husband should teach his children how to love their mother by his own example, and likewise, a mother should insist that her children follow her example and learn to respect and obey their father.  Thus, the Christian husband and father should use his accepted authority not as a despot to get absolute obedience for himself from his children, but to insist on and exemplify love and honour for his wife; while the Christian wife and mother should use her unique hold on the family’s heartstrings, not to get ever more love for herself from her children -- as some neurotic might -- but to lead and guide them in showing respect and obedience for their father, her husband.

It used to be jokingly (?) said that ‘a lady is a woman who makes it easy for a man to be a gentleman’; and I personally grew up with a deep awareness of and admiration for my ‘complementary’ mother, whom I never saw as undermining my father, but rather as helping him to be and become a man, by supporting him as her man-of-the-house and my father.   As for my father he -- by his own personal discipline -- in return helped my mother become more capable of being a truly loving mother, wife, and person by controlling her own emotional exaggerations and excesses.   This mutual helping and oneness – this complementarity -- of the spouses is, moreover, truly sacred, being meant to exalt and support both of them in their dealings with their children: no child should ever be allowed to threaten or break that unity of father and mother; no child should ever be used in selfish confrontational attitudes by either of their parents.

The present-day fragility of family life is reflected in society as a whole, where criminality is rampant because – among other factors – Christians, having too often supinely surrendered words and their meanings over many years, have thereby allowed emotive enthusiasts to decry right punishment as vengeance, and portray justice as inhuman, branding both punishment and justice therefore, as unchristian words and unacceptable social practices. 

There are other passages in today’s Gospel reading relevant to our times in which political violence and racial terrorism seek to cover themselves with a cloak of so-called moral sensitivity or religious devotion, for there we are clearly shown the Pharisees and the Herodians trying -- as consummate hypocrites -- to lull Jesus into a sense of false security:

Teacher, we know that You are true and teach the way of God in truth; nor do You care about anyone, for You do not regard the person of men.

They were using such flattery to soften up Jesus before the putting to Him the punch question that was ready on their lips:

Tell us, therefore, what do You think? Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?"

The idea was, of course, to get Jesus into most serious trouble.  If He were to have said it was right to pay taxes, then those patriotic Jews and the Zealot agitators would have decried Him as some sort of traitor or quisling.  On the other hand, had Jesus said it was wrong to pay the taxes, then the Romans would have been informed immediately and they would have deemed it necessary to seek Jesus out as one potentially troublesome and deal with Him accordingly; which, of course, was just what the Pharisees and the Temple hierarchy wanted. 

Jesus was not going to fall into the trap.  He answered them:

Show Me the tax money."  So they brought Him a denarius.  And He said to them, "Whose image and inscription is this?"  They said to Him, "Caesar's."  And He said to them, "Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

Oh! dear People of God, who can fail to recognize the beauty of God’s wisdom in those wonderful words spoken in such a situation?  That beauty -- both simple and sublime -- is something for us to admire and contemplate most gratefully before God!!  But now, at this moment, gathered here as disciples of Jesus wanting to learn from Him how to worship and serve the Father, let us consider something of the implications of those words and perhaps understand Jesus’ attitude of mind and heart a little better.

Those words of flattery spoken by the Pharisees and Herodians were meant to ensnare Jesus, and the attitudes they sought to promote are a perennial temptation and conceit for Christians of all ages, and today we should -- like our Blessed Lord -- be quick to recognise their poison and strong to reject their subtle infiltration into our lives.

We, as disciples of Jesus, are called to lead good lives, that is, lives of integrity before God not conformity with society’s – be it lay society or Church society -- prevailing modern standards and judgements; we have to try to live up to the role set before us in Jesus’ Scriptures and called for in the traditional teaching of Mother Church. 

However, knowing full well that our sins are many and our weaknesses manifest to the eyes of God, we -- needs must -- seek to assimilate this awareness of faith more and more fully and deeply into our personal self-consciousness, so that our Christian integrity may ever be ‘instinctively’ accompanied and embellished by a corresponding degree of humility, truly vigilant lest we ever begin to slide into an easy acceptance of the demands or wishes of men, as ever, willing and wanting to give immediate rewards of praise for compliance with their views.

Jesus Himself was not in any way swayed by such flatteries: His personal integrity would always and only be used to glorify His Father and promote the true well-being of all those who heard and listened to His words; and so, His resolute independence of men and their opinions would be -- always and only -- the other face of His constant care to be free to serve them, for Jesus was always the Servant, never a braggart.  Nevertheless, His requirement of independence made it necessary for Him to be fearless, and so, here, He separated State and Religion for the first time.  Until Jesus came the state had been in total charge of religion: Emperors were worshipped as gods in the all-powerful Roman state.  And therefore, those famous and most beautiful words of Jesus:

Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's,
  

are not only wonderfully wise words, they were also remarkably brave words for those times.

People of God, only the power of the Holy Spirit and the assured commitment to Jesus which our faith affords us can enable us to be independent and free in our proclamation of and witness to our Catholic and Christian faith before the society in which we find ourselves today.  However, we must never allow such aspirations to become insidiously perverted so as to serve our own personal pride or profit.  We are, above all, servants and disciples of Jesus; and, at all times and in all situations, we must seek -- in Him and by His Spirit -- to glorify God our Father.  Therefore, we must never forget that we are, individually, members of His People, of His family, of His Body, and consequently we can never think of ourselves as independent of our brothers and sisters in Christ: our own personal integrity and independence must be consonant with and embrace the authentic Christian good of all those for whom Christ died.   Just as true glory can only be given to God the Father in and through the whole Body of Christ, Head and members, so also, praise and profit can only come to us as living members of the whole Body of those who, in accordance with the Father's will and the working of His Holy Spirit, are being led to share in the fullness of salvation won for them by Jesus.

28th Sunday Year A 2017

 28^th. Sunday, Year A

Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14

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On this mountain the LORD of hosts will provide for all peoples a feast of rich food and choice wines, juicy rich food and pure choice wines.  On that day it will be said: “Behold our God, to Whom we looked to save us! This is the LORD for Whom we looked; let us rejoice and be glad that He has saved us!”

This passage, indeed the whole of the first reading, is wonderfully suited to picture the blessings of Christianity, and by that, I mean above all, the Catholic religion,  for those who, be they pagans or nominal Christians, have felt the anguish of ignorance accompanied by a vaguely oppressive sense of sinfulness and inadequacy, weakness and insignificance, those who have felt the insufficiency of all merely human ideals to enable them to withstand the trials and temptations of life – “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” (Romans 7:19) -- and all who have suffered from divisions within themselves, within family, society, and between nations.  All who have experienced and want to learn from such occasions of suffering and sorrow, the Catholic faith is a most wonderful reconciliation with God, with the world, and with one’s own self.  It is a setting free, a restoration of peace, meaning, beauty, and above all, of hope, to life.

Nevertheless, all these wonderfully great blessings do not easily penetrate through to the warm sensitive core of men as individuals.  For men are formed by, and live most fully in, their personal relationships with others.  It is in the deliberate and free gift and acceptance of whole-hearted personal love (not the impulsive, driving passion of sexual encounters!) that a human being first opens him- or her-self up for maturity.  When a man or woman gives and receives such love for the first time they are changed thereby, and life is no longer the same as it was before that encounter and embrace… it is the initial warrant and seal of one’s worth as a personal being.

Now it is the Eucharist which brings that glow of personal, loving, encounter, fully into prominence in the spiritual life of a Catholic Christian, for the Eucharist is indeed the feast, the banquet, of rich food and pure, choice, wines.  For the most stupendous fact and meaning of the Eucharist is that Jesus, the very Son of God made Man for us, there presents and renews (not repeats!) His original and eternally enduring gift of Himself as man in sacrifice for us all, and in Personal love to each one of us who receive Him.  Now that gift of total love by Jesus is unique and absolutely inimitable: we human beings can only offer ourselves partially to another, and can also only receive another’s gift partially, even though most sincerely and committedly.  Uniquely with Jesus, in the Eucharist, is total gift and commitment to be found, and -- by the Spirit of Jesus -- to be gradually and most carefully nourished in us who receive Him.  As foreshadowed on the human level, so here most sublimely, this union of love (CHARITY) is indeed the ultimate fulfilment of one’s being, it is the total vindication of one’s worth as a human-being now become a child of God the Father in Jesus.  For Christ is Truth, Love, and Life, and He comes to us that He might give us a share – chosen for us by the Father – in His Own Life of Truth and Love before the Father.

All these blessings, which reach to and transfigure the core of our human being are ours in Christ indeed, but we are only aware of them through faith, and we have to pray that we might grow in faith precisely in order that we may appreciate, esteem, value, and respond to these blessings to which our Father invites us.

That is not always easy for us since we, like children who seek all that glitters, are very subject to the impressions of our external senses and our resultant inner emotions, and these can easily drive us to over-involvement in worldly activities; not that is wrong to be fully involved in all that we undertake -- indeed St. Paul warns us against half-heartedness – but that over-involvement so easily leads us to over-esteem success in those worldly activities and under-value those spiritual blessings which we can only perceive through faith, to which our instinctive emotions do not immediately respond.  And it is here that we must turn to our Gospel reading.

The invited guests in Our Lord’s parable were first of all, self-regarding-righteous Jews, and the OT covenant with God was the first invitation.  Jesus Himself was the servant ultimately sent to announce that the Messianic feast, long foretold, was now prepared.  Because that meant leaving aside the pursuit of power, profit, and success, the excuses came back thick and fast from all sides with varying degrees of politeness: but they all had the same fundamental meaning, ‘We have much more important things to do just now than come to your feast.’

That is the great danger for us today, People of God: we can come to value earthly, visible, emotionally stirring, activities exclusively if we allow ourselves to become too wrapped up in them … the traditional fault, indeed, of too many husbands in their family life, and sadly the modern, and yet more unnatural failing of some wives – I am writing as a Catholic priest for married Catholics, not for legal ‘partners’ or pseudo-wives -- who find they have not enough time,  when money can be earned and personal success be gained, for them to be true mothers.  Of course, the surety which such sinners feel in denying any significant value to religion is not so much a proof that religion has nothing to offer, no meaning for them, no reality in itself, but rather an indication of the extent to which they have been blinded by earthly attractions, and deafened by the cares and solicitudes of life, to the intimations of spiritual truths.

In this parable Jesus teaches on the one hand that no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven by his own efforts without an invitation from God which has to be not only heard but also recognized and accepted as being  for our compliance; and, on the other hand, that no one is condemned to remain outside the Kingdom except as a result of their own deliberate rejection or willful disdain of God’s offer.

People of God, there is no automatic predestination or salvation, no impersonal fate.  A choice has to be made by all of us; it is a choice for Jesus,  a choice involving  life or death, a choice to be made not once by God judging for us or against us, but one to be made and re-affirmed by ourselves many, many, times over the years of our life.

Lest light-headed, and perhaps big-headed(!) youngsters, care-oppressed adults, weary elders, are inclined to think of these things as of no modern importance, let me quote some tragically beautiful and yet so sadly mixed-up thoughts of a modern philosopher of renown, Bertrand Russell:

“The centre of me is always and eternally a terrible pain – a curious, wild pain – a searching for something transfigured and infinite.  The beatific vision—God, I do not find it.  I do not think it is to be found – but the love of it is my life.”

The only-begotten, most beloved, Son of the heavenly Father came as our Lord Jesus to save those original likenesses of God still loved by His Father but cut off from the benefits of that love by life preferences and practices adopted through ignorance and weakness.  Our Lord died and rose from death to save those spoiled ‘likenesses’; and ascending back to His Father in heaven He offered them the Gift of His Most Holy Spirit to enlighten their ignorance and support their weakness, and, as living members of the Body of Christ on earth, Mother Church  (unknown or at least unappreciated by Bertrand Russell looking for understanding and truth exclusively to his own powers of human thought) to lead them to the fulness of earthly life and heavenly glory as ‘other Christs’ in the beatific vision divinely revealed to us in Mother Church, and so vaguely loved and doubted by Russell.

27th Sunday of the Year (A) 2017

27^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Isaiah 5:1-7; Paul to the Philippians 4:6-9; Matthew 21: 33-43)

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Our first reading from the prophet Isaiah foretold the destruction of the Temple of Solomon and the kingdoms of Israel and Judah; in the Gospel we heard of Jesus directly warning the Jews of their ultimate rejection as Chosen People called to bring in the Kingdom of God and -- as subsequent history would show -- indirectly that the Romans would raze Jerusalem to the ground and destroy Israel’s Temple, the glory of Jerusalem.  In both cases the destruction was a punishment for the nation's sin, continued and deliberate sin: the vineyard itself – the house of Israel and the people of Judah --failed to produce fruit in the parable of Isaiah, and in Jesus' parable the tenants – vide. the chief priests and religious elders --repeatedly and deliberately, withheld the produce, the fruit, to which the landowner, the God of Israel and Judah, had a right, and ultimately killed his most beloved son.

But of course, God is not concerned about grapes for Himself.  What 'fruit' does He expect of us who are now disciples and members of Jesus called to serve and usher in God’s Kingdom world-wide?

Through Him then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name.  (Heb. 13:5)

We, disciples following Jesus their Lord, are called to offer up His uniquely supreme and eternal sacrifice, with our own accompanying 'sacrifice of praise', 'the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name'; thanks, indeed, to God for the many personal blessings we have received throughout our lives from Him in the name of Jesus and through His Spirit.

In order to give thanks, however, we have to be able to recognize and appreciate our blessings;  and since many people in our modern, western and affluent, society, though constantly relating themselves to the material and physical world around us for what pleasures or riches they can get from it,  do not regard it as God’s generous gift to us, His truly beautiful and wise creation for us, and  they do not, consequently, feel gratitude to God so much as praise for themselves when having been able to grasp something of what they wanted for themselves..  And if such people, wanting much, then envy others who seem better at getting than themselves, how can they appreciate as blessings the things they themselves have already taken from an unacknowledged God?  How can young adults appreciate the blessing of a good home with loving parents if they are all the time wanting to live it up, so to speak, with the wildest and most foolish of their peers around?  Can those who have developed a lust for pleasures a-plenty take in even the wisest words of their parents or teachers about the benefits and joys of a good education?

I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, (but) apart from Me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

What, among the multitude of gifts that God gives, are the blessings for which we Catholics and Christians should most particularly bring forth the fruit of lips giving thanks to Him?  In that regard, the Christian tradition, in its Jewish-Christian origins or its Gentile-Christian development is unanimous in its teaching, as is witnessed in the letter of St. James from Jerusalem:

The wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy.  Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace (3:17-18);

and by those of St. Paul, writing to the Gentile Church at Rome (15:13):

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit;

and again, to his own converts in Galatia (5:22):

The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.

Joy and peace in believing, hope based on the power of God's Spirit, such, St. Paul tells us, are the better gifts that God gives those who truly believe in, and faithfully follow, His beloved Son. 

Let us listen, however, as St. Paul tells us what can threaten that tradition:

The kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.   (Romans 14:17)

Apparently, there were, even in the earliest Christian communities some who were beginning to appreciate immediate worldly pleasures more than heavenly blessings.  Now this switch from the heavenly to what is earthly begins first of all with the earthly imitating the heavenly: pleasure being paraded as joy; sexual and passionate love-making being thought of as an ideal expression of Christian love/charity; indifference and indulgence being accepted as substitutes for patience, kindness, and goodness.  In other cases, however, the heavenly blessings are regarded as no longer suited to more modern situations and so are blatantly substituted by worldly counterfeits: righteousness before God cannot be seen by others, and so, for the spread of the faith, the disciples of Jesus should aim at popularity and public appeal.  Again the gift of peace,  which is rooted in God's Spirit ruling our mind and heart, is popularly supplanted by a carefree ignoring of the claims and commands of conscience; after all, a life-style uncluttered by self-discipline or examination of conscience is much more easy to sell on the doorstep or promote in the street, so to speak: just as an invitation to assemblies promising a communal good time will be accepted with far greater alacrity than one to a gathering for true worship and serious prayer.

That is why our Gospel message today, supported by the age-old experience of God's dealings with His People, is so important for us.  It shows us with all clarity that we cannot turn our hearts to, nor indulge ourselves in, the sin of the world and, at the same time, pretend to know God or hope for His blessings.  It also warns us that we should not allow ourselves to be led into the inviting downward spiral – a truly horrific ‘black hole’ -- which, going round and round, would comfort us, at one moment, by offering what is worldly, and then, occasionally try to reassure us with what might appear heavenly, for it is always and inevitably spiralling round and down from heavenly to earthly according to the strength of one’s worldly desires.  Round and round, indeed, that spiral goes, but ever-more steeply downwards, until, in the end, the worldly is found to be totally illusory while the heavenly is no longer understood or forthcoming.

Through (Jesus) then, let us continually offer up a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that give thanks to His name. (Hebrews 13:15)

To do this, our Catholic and Christian calling, we have to invite God much more seriously into our lives: we need to prepare a welcome for Him by suspending, warding off, holding in abeyance, the cares, anxieties, and fears that can fill our hearts and weigh us down; we need to create a breathing space in the multitude of our daily thoughts and imaginations, preoccupations and fears, so that He might be able to speak with us and we hear Him. Oh, how such interior silence and peace is feared and hated by people today! To encourage us to give time to Him in our daily living God originally established the sabbath rest day; today, interior silence and peace should, for truly Catholic people, be part of the rhythmic routine and strength of our lives; we can never tell Him, ‘I have only a few minutes, You must do all that both You and I want in the only time I have available.’

Moreover, we need to give a truly personal welcome in our hearts to God Who is sublimely Personal Himself: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  First of all, a welcome for Jesus, God the Son made man, our Brother and our Saviour; and in Him, for the Father, our Father and your and my Father; and for the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Guide, my comforter, my strength, and my joy.  For our Faith is more than our common bond and identity, it has to become also, for each and every one of us, our total and most personal, loving commitment.

God is infinitely, sublimely, Personal, and our capacity for a truly personal relationship is a unique gift of God to mankind.  However, it is not a cheap gift, for it demands a foregoing sacrifice: a willingness to open up self to Him and an on-going preparedness to hand over self, to yield personal autonomy for love of Him and His.

Now self is also, in some respects, the great ‘forgettable’ of modern times.  Boy and girl, man and woman, meet, and instead of meeting someone find themselves, already conditioned through social practices and pleasures, to being immediately confronted with a body: a girl or woman displaying, or drawing attention to, her body; or a man … or mannish boy … obsessed with her, or embarrassed by his own, body.  In such circumstances the essential Christian relationship, a truly personal relationship is very difficult if not impossible, and that is why our Faith demands that we must not let sex, bodily gratification (please, don’t even think of the modern word of self-justification, ‘love‘, in this respect!) rule in our lives, mar our relationships.

Our Faith is meant to be far more than our common bond and identity.  We Catholics should be, in this increasingly pagan world, ever more conscious of and gratefully thankful for our difference in the world!   We cannot tell people today how to live; fellow Christians once could help each other by occasional, mutual, correction, but today we can only give the worldlings around us -- some of them perhaps even of our own family -- a humble and sincere witness to Jesus and His Christian teaching by our open service to and love for Himself, and for all in their need for Him.  Our Catholic faith is today called to be, for each and every one of us, our total and most personal commitment:  to Jesus, to the Father, and to the Holy Spirit; and that personal commitment, response, and self-sacrifice should be reflected in the whole of our lives in Mother Church, becoming far more influential than our ‘body’ commitment to the life and culture of our modern society; indeed, it can and, hopefully and prayerfully, will lead us to the fulfilment spoken of in those beautiful words of St. Paul:

Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise —meditate on and practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

           

              

26th Sunday of the Year A 2017

 26^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Ezekiel 18:25-28; Philippians 2:1-11; Saint Matthew (21:28-32)

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Dear People of God, the Gospel passage you have just heard is closely connected with another saying of Jesus (Matthew 7:21):

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord’, shall enter the Kingdom of Heaven but he who does the will of My Father Who is in heaven.

Notice the repetition of the word ‘heaven’.  That indicates to us that it is no arbitrary decision of God which decides whether or not people enter Kingdom of Heaven; but rather, that where the Father is, there is heaven, and to be in heaven is to be with the Father, one with Him; and consequently, to attain to that ultimate union with Him in heaven, we must necessarily prepare ourselves here on earth by doing His will, conforming ourselves to His likeness, that is, to Jesus, perfect God-become-man, as much as we can in all things:

Jesus said, ‘Have I been with you so long, and yet you have not known Me, Philip?  He who has seen Me has seen the Father.  (John 14:9)

Therefore, to be able to enter the Kingdom of Heaven it is not a matter of observing prescribed rules of conduct set before us as a test of our blind obedience and subjection … no, it is a matter of growing in the life and likeness of the Father, as His adoptive children that is, through faith in and loving commitment to Jesus – come from and sent by the Father.  To merely obey rules there is little need for personal involvement; at times, one can do it almost automatically.  There is no need, that is, to be involved with anyone other than oneself; and at this juncture, those who claim to live a good life and say that they are following their conscience, are so mistaken; because to live, to try to live a heavenly life, a life for heaven, it is absolutely necessary to re-orientate our lives and centre them no longer on ourselves (our own conscience) because the new life – offered us by Jesus via His most Holy Spirit – is a share in God’s life, a sheer, and totally gratuitous gift.

The type of change that has to be brought about in us is well characterized by the prophet Ezekiel who writes:

            I will sprinkle clean water upon you to cleanse you from all your impurities,   and   from all your idols I will cleanse you.  I will give you a new heart and place a new  spirit within you, taking from your bodies your stony hearts and giving you        hearts of flesh.   I will put My Spirit within you and make you live by My statutes,    careful to observe My decrees.      (Ezekiel 36:25–27)

The heart of stone which is excellent for the blind observance of impersonal rules and the meticulous execution of mere ritual, is to be replaced with a heart of human flesh and a new, divine, spirit, because all our initiatives are to be divinely ordained.

That fusion of human divine is to be the supreme, all absorbing task of our lives … as true disciples of Jesus.

In Our Lord’s parable today, a man asked both his sons to work in his vineyard; one answered automatically, ‘Yes’ but did not, in fact, go; the other opened himself up, becoming personally involved as he confronted his own personal preferences -- perhaps plans of some standing -- with the immediate wishes of his father, and, needing to give an immediate reply, he answered, ‘I will not’. Notice his honesty, he did not say ‘I cannot’, but ‘I will not’.  The resultant situation was wrong, he realized that almost immediately afterwards.  However, his process, so to speak, had been right initially: he had confronted his own wishes with those of his father … and although after momentary consideration he had chosen wrongly, nevertheless, the relationship he had with his father had demanded first of all that he spoke truthfully to him and that relationship subsequently showed up the bluntness, the harsh bluntness of his words, and the lack of respect in his attitude to his father; that he could not sustain and immediately, he changed his mind and went.  He had taken both himself and his father, and indeed their long-lived-mutual-relationship seriously, and if a man does that with the Gospel message there is real hope, the parable encourages us to think, that he will be likely to say ‘Yes’.

With the other son, however, his automatic words of obedience did not demand that he look into his own heart, nor that he listen seriously to his father, his words were simply a way of ‘keeping the old man quiet’ while he himself could do what he wanted now and perhaps, later on, say a hypocritical ‘Sorry’.

People of God, too many nominal Catholics do the same as that second son: following certain religious practices but living their professed faith on automatic pilot, so to speak, with no sincere mind or human heart behind whatever appears to make them Catholics, seeking only their immediate natural desires and worldly pleasures, while all the time allowing their Catholic and Christian life-blood to drain away until it exists no longer as a force in their lives.

In all our relations with God we need to open up our human hearts first of all to the questioning light of God’s truth and the encouraging warmth of His love: I doubt very much that the ‘automatically speaking' second son truly realized why, what were the heart-felt motives why, he didn’t want to accede to his father’s request, and he certainly didn’t consider the dismissive manner of his response in the light of the respect he owed his father and the future benefits he still expected to receive from his father.

Dear People of God, the Gospel puts questions to us at times, questions that can reveal truth about ourselves in so far as we try sincerely to answer them.  For many, however, such questions are too often side-stepped and disregarded.  The Gospel tells us that mankind is weighed down by sin of every sort, but today the majority happily pretend to have no awareness of sin in their lives.  Jesus died for us -- to save us, His brothers and sisters, from the consequences of our sins -- and most people today only see Him as a foolish man, One Who probably meant well but was pathetically misguided.  Again, modern men reject as humanly degrading any idea that God can command their obedience and yet the vast majority are totally subservient to whatever might be the prevailing mantra in their society.  On every hand the Gospel challenges are rejected by mockery and a refusal to see what is true:  minimal dress only shows the beauty of women, foul language only emphasises manliness, while salaciousness serves to promote nothing worse than human conviviality.   Innocence reigns, the Gospel is wrong:

            The Lord’s way/judgement is not fair!

Those Gospel questions need to be humbly considered before being answered; we need to commune with them in our hearts of flesh in order to know what they really mean for us, what response they stir up in us; and we must clothe our considered response with human warmth and sincere devotion, the commitment of our personal and individual act of faith.  It is a matter of recognizing Jesus as Our God and Saviour and embracing His Gospel in the plenitude of its fullness, as presented to us in Mother Church’s proclamation that is, and casting it like some divine fuel on the embers of our warm human hearts.  The resultant flames, divine and human in origin, will blaze for God’s glory and shine -- around and afar -- for the honour of the Name of Jesus.

Our Blessed Lord was, and is, perfect Man.  Being perfect God by nature of His being the only-begotten Son, the Word, of God, He became – sent by the Father, and born on earth of the Virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit – man, true man, perfect Man.  And we now, becoming divine by His grace and the Gift of His most Holy Spirit, are called also to become, in Him, fully, truly, perfectly human with sin totally uprooted from our lives.

Life is a glorious prospect and adventure, because the ultimate discovery, so to speak, is unique in each one of us, being the intimate fusion and balance of God and man in each one of us, as planned by God in creating us.  It is a discovery because it can only be found by being lived with Jesus, by the Holy Spirit living and working in us, for the Father, in the fullness of the Catholic and Christian faith.  As St. Paul said in our second reading:

                        Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.

25th Sunday of Year A 2017

25^th. Sunday of Year (A)

(Isaiah 55:6-9; Paul to the Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16)

At the simple hearing of today’s Gospel reading it is hard not to feel a certain sympathy for the man who complained about having worked all day for the same wage as those who had only done one hour’s work.  We might feel sympathy, that is, for one unable to understand aright what has happened to the super-blessing he imagined would be his, but not sympathy with one totally forgetful of the needs of his fellows and grudgingly unwilling to appreciate the goodness of the vine-owner towards anyone other than himself.

The situation of the poor in the Palestine of Our Lord’s days was hard indeed, and the most remarkable aspect of Jesus’ parable was the fact that the vine-owner fully appreciated not only the ‘market’ needs of daily labourers but also their ‘home’ needs: with wives and children, old parents, all depending on this one day’s work (there were no jobs guaranteed, no pensions available): no work for her man, for their son, and no food for all of them!  Who knows, perhaps there had already been one or two such workless, foodless, days in this particular week.

The owner of the vineyard had a deep sympathy with these men for whom all that they loved and valued depended on so slender a thread as one or two day’s work.  He above all felt a deep compassion for those who had – through no fault of their own – been idle (and worrying?) for almost the whole day.  What good would a mere one hour’s pay be for their needs and those of their dependants?  He makes up his mind at once: he will not send these men back home almost empty-handed …. those who run to greet them back home must not be disappointed … their children must be able to run excitedly and tell mummy what daddy has got for them today!  Can you not imagine the blessings that would have been called down upon his head by those poor families?

This is the picture which Our Lord wishes to give us of His heavenly Father Whose decisions in our regard are always motivated by His loving compassion.   That was how the work of our salvation began.  Man was under the bondage of sin and could not help himself, so God took pity on him just as the owner of the vineyard had compassion for the workless labourers and their needy families.

But there is something more in the parable.  It gives us the picture of a Lord and God Who is just to all, good and gracious to all; but, to certain ones He is especially merciful.  God offers salvation to all men, His blessings and graces are amply sufficient for all; but for some chosen souls His mercy is boundless and overflowing.  God just and merciful to all, yet also supremely free to make a special choice of whomsoever He will.  Here we are introduced to the mystery of Predestination.

What is it that claims our faith?   First of all, the Person of Jesus Christ: God made man for our salvation.  Then, the sacred Scriptures, the dogmatic teaching of Mother Church: above all, the mysteries of the most Holy Trinity, the Gift of the Holy Spirit; the founding of the one, true, catholic and apostolic Church which is the Body of Christ; her sacraments and the spiritual life, the resurrection of the dead and the final judgement?   Eternal Life and Beatitude….?  Yes, all of these in their degree require our faith.  But along with all these great and wonderful ‘objective’ mysteries of Catholic Faith, there is also the ‘personal’ mystery of predestination which concerns each one of us individually and most intimately: the mystery of what position God has assigned to each one of us in His great plan, the mystery of what He expects of each of us, of you and me, as we try to live out our Catholic faith at any and every stage of our lives?

This mystery of our personal predestination is a very great mystery of love, not subject even to the disposition of Our Lord Himself, as Jesus said to the sons of Zebedee, James and John who asked … or    whose mother asked … for places of privilege in His Kingdom:

My cup you will indeed drink, but to sit at My right and at My left is not Mine to give but is for those for whom it has been prepared by My Father.      (Matthew 20:23)

What is ahead of each of us?  How are we to respond, to co-operate best, so that His will be fulfilled in me, that thus I might attain to the place He, in His great love, has prepared for me and to which He calls me each and every day long?

Perhaps someone is thinking, ‘Oh, that’s not very hard to answer: believe Mother Church’s dogmatic teaching, follow approved moral teaching, and all will be well.’

But, precisely, the question is, ‘How does God want me to live, respond to, the Church’s universal teaching?  Moral theologians give guidance that is suited to all Catholics.  I, however, want to know what God wants of me in particular.  St. Paul writing to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 6:12) says:

            All things are lawful for me but not all things are beneficial.

One only has need to look at the saints to see what immense scope there is for variety in response to the challenge of the one, true, Catholic faith, and in the choice of generally acceptable moral decisions that may be made.  To simply find out what is allowed and then to do it without further thought, however, is not sufficient if I am to fulfil my destiny, become the person God wants of me and attain that personal relationship with Himself that God has planned for me and for me alone: for me, that is, in my relationship with Him as His true, adopted child who, in Jesus, seeks to know his Father, and wants to respond lovingly to Him by His Holy Spirit.  The way to life is narrow, how am I to walk best along that way?? 

In order to help us make our personal response in faith to the destiny that God has set for each one of us, I recommend that we follow the example of the Scriptures.  Israel escaped from Egypt, crossed the Red Sea, received the Law on Mount Sinai, traversed the desert, entered and took possession of the Promised Land … and all these events were taken up by the psalmists and prophets before God, in thanksgiving and prayer that they might more worthily praise His great goodness and more fully understand His saving purposes. Ever blessing God for what He had done for her in the past Israel lived through the subsequent centuries constantly looking forward to God’s promises, learning from her past experience of God to anticipate and prepare for her future with Him.

Dear People of God, such is the path we should follow.  We should thank God for all the wondrous things He has done for Jesus and His Church, above all for the mysteries of the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension … and indeed that is precisely what we are doing here at Mass.  But there are other wondrous deeds which God performs for each one of us personally, of which we alone are aware, deeds which, though they are not of world-wide significance, yet precisely, because they are personal to each one of us and for each one of us, can, should, and indeed must, be used to serve as great stimulants and guides in our service of God. This is a liturgy which each one of us alone can celebrate, and if we do not celebrate it, then there will be one harmonic missing, which no-one else save Our Lord can supply, in the great symphony of praise rising from Mother Church to the throne of God.  These are the events, the happenings, in our lives which though they may seem ordinary enough to other people, nevertheless, we – as did Israel of old – see them unmistakeably as the effects of God’s great goodness towards each one of us.

Therefore, let us all, with the Church and in the Church, thank God for all the marvellous things He has done for us in Christ … and that we do best of all here at Mass and through our reception of Holy Communion.  And in that context, let each one of us ever treasure, meditate on, give thanks for, all those blessings which God has lavished upon us as individuals.  For in them we are granted an opportunity to see what God wishes to do for us in the future; there, is already foreshadowed the outlines of that beautiful relationship which God wills to have with each one of us, a relationship unique to each one of us.

Such a constant faithful and trusting relationship with God can become a fount of joyous hope and grateful love bubbling up throughout our lives.  And when we reach our end on earth we will join the family of the blessed in heaven finally freed from our straightened earthly circumstances, possibilities, and powers, and endowed with a previously unknown ability to lose ourselves in a mind-surpassing and soul-absorbing act of gratitude and praise before God, far transcending even that most pure joy and gratitude of the poor families of the last-hour workers in today’s Gospel reading.

  

24th Sunday (A) 2017

 Twenty-fourth Sunday (A)

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

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Our Gospel reading today is very familiar, but don't let that fact lead you into a semi-dormant, 'we've heard all that before' attitude of mind for, being the Word of God inspired by the Holy Spirit, even today’s short passage from the Gospel leads us to a fount of ever-flowing, purest, water.  So, let us drink deep now as we direct our particular attention to the first two verses of the Gospel reading:

Peter approached Jesus and asked Him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?"   Jesus answered, "I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times”.

That is the main part of the Gospel reading, as is shown by the fact that the following parable of the Unforgiving Servant was told by Jesus in order to bring out graphically the meaning of the words He had just spoken; although for Jesus there may perhaps also have been a more Personal desire to show His Father as the king and supreme authority deciding such a fundamental issue, all the more especially because that issue formed so prominent a part of the ‘Our Father’ prayer He Himself gave us all at His disciples’ request:

I say to you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.   That is why the kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king who decided to settle accounts with his servants…

Why did Jesus answer as He did:

I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to seventy-seven times?

Let me say first of all that this was no mere use of words, neither was it any expression of emotional religiosity, on the part of Jesus: His words are both relevant in their historical, and supremely important in their theological, significance. They were not spoken just to emphasise the need for us to have a forgiving spirit, that would indeed have corresponded partly, but by no means fully, with Jesus’ intentions.   The words He so emphatically used are part of the Scriptures inspired by the Holy Spirit of Wisdom and Truth which have become yet more significantly important and meaningful by their being specially picked out, spoken, and used by the Lord Himself.   We should, therefore, try to recognize as closely as we can, just what attitude Jesus was wanting to instil in, what blessing to bestow on, Peter and Mother Church today and throughout all ages; and to do this, we must follow Jesus by bearing in mind the witness and teaching of the whole of Scripture.

Not seven times, but seventy-seven times, those words are to be found first in the book of Genesis (4:23-24), as one of Israel's millennial traditions:

Lamech said to his wives:  "Adah and Zillah, hear my voice; wives of Lamech, listen to my utterance!  For I have killed a man for wounding me, even a young man for bruising me.   If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times."  

According to the Scriptures, Lamech was the great-great-great-grandson of Cain.  In the verses preceding the words I have just quoted we read of great progress being made in the quality of life for the family of Cain: a city had been built by him, and we heard of livestock being raised, of artisans making tools of all kinds from bronze and iron, and -- for times of public rejoicing and personal pleasure -- there were players of harp and flute.  As we would say today, the economy was flourishing.  But, just as we experience today, with the growth of prosperity and greater opportunities to seek and find what is necessary and good but also what is pleasurable and even addictive, there came also an alarming growth in wickedness and sin.  Cain the original sinner had begged God’s protection lest he himself be killed in revenge for his murdering of his own brother Abel, an action he learned to regret.  However, when we look at his great-great-great grandson Lamech, we find him actually glorying in and boasting about the fact of his having killed a man for merely wounding him, even of killing a young man or boy for simply bruising him.  Obviously Lamech, if and when provoked, would not hesitate to kill; and his characteristic violence, once aroused, was unrestrainable to the extent that he recognised no distinction between young and old: indeed, it was his insanely proud boast that whoever crossed him would pay for it, and that he alone, Lamech, not God, would decide both the price to be paid and the person to pay it.  He vaunted the irrevocability of his decision and the inevitability of its fulfilment by invoking and yet, at the same time, managing to downgrade, the traditional tribal and family reverence for the founding father by those words:

If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.

Such devilish pride, coupled with a vicious and vengeful attitude, characterised Lamech, and that was the way he ruled his family; nor was he alone in that, for the society of which he was part developed along similar lines until, eventually, it called for its own destruction by the God-sent flood.

Lamech had been a ‘puss-laden’ boil of pride and violence in the old, pre-flood, world; and we ourselves -- or at least some of us -- have ‘in our days’ seen, heard of, similar things in, for example, Sicilian society and the Balkans, Palestine and Northern Ireland, and with the Tutsis in Africa. And going via Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and Idi Amin, we can soon touch back to Stalin's horrendously vengeful cruelty towards his own people and Hitler's totally consuming hatred for all things Jewish.  And yet, most sadly, there are not a few regions in our world even today where like cancerous growths of pride and violence can still be found proudly proclaiming and promenading themselves.

With such things in mind we can begin, perhaps, to appreciate something of the importance and the significance of Jesus' reply to Peter’s question:

Peter approached Jesus and asked Him, "Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?",  

and we may also learn to admire and rejoice in the wisdom of Jesus who knew both the full beauty and power of the teaching of the Scriptures, and also the full extent of human frailty and sinfulness as it would develop over the succeeding ages. 

Peter and the disciples had been cleansed by the word Jesus had spoken to them and they were to receive new and heavenly life by the Holy Spirit Who would be poured out upon the Church after their Lord's Death and Resurrection; in the meantime, they were being trained to proclaim and proffer His redemption to the whole of mankind, which, despite its own native frailty, was soon be re-destined and endowed anew for heavenly fulfilment in Him. The flood-waters of destruction and death which destroyed the gross evil and wickedness of Lamech and his world, were never to be repeated; men might continue to destroy themselves by their steadfast pursuit of pride and pleasure, but the Flood would be replaced by a far greater outpouring of waters, this time the healing waters of grace from the Holy Spirit of life, Gift of God and most sublime fruit of the tree of Jesus’ Cross.  Jesus wanted Peter and the Apostles -- as He also wants us -- to realize that on taking up their saving mission in the Church for the whole world, they must have total, absolute, confidence in the presence and power in their lives and in the Church of Him Who can overcome the power of any and every future upsurge of evil; as for the persuasion of such evil, there is the beauty and wisdom of divine life and love in Jesus to lead to salvation all those of good will.

We are all sinners redeemed by Jesus, and even the best of us are only earthenware vessels, as St. Paul says:

We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.   (2 Corinthians 4:7)

But, being thus aware of our own inherent weakness and repeated failings, we can all recognise and -- in our measure and at any given time -- perhaps even feel traces of the passions and fears ruling, and gradually destroying, some of our brethren. Therefore, we are supremely well-placed, and should be well disposed, to show in our lives that forgiveness which is at the root of all God’s dealings with us: we recognise the evil afflicting some of our fellows and we thank God with all our heart for the fact that His grace alone protects and preserves us.   In other words, forgiveness should be our characteristic Christian virtue, whereas unforgiving vengefulness would constitute for us a most outrageous sin and comprehensive defeat at the hands of Satan, as we heard in our first reading:

Forgive your neighbour the hurt he does you, and when you pray, your own sins will be forgiven.

If one who is but flesh cherishes wrath (resentment); who will forgive him his sins?

That is why, when Peter questioned Jesus mentioning the number seven which, for the Jews, was a number of completion and perfection since God had created the old world in seven days:

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

Jesus replied so firmly:

            I do not say to you, up to seven times, but up to seventy times seven.

This sort of thing goes back to the very beginning and reaches to the very heart of man, Jesus is hinting.  Recognize the signs of your adversary, Satan, whose deceits of old brought about the destruction of those he led astray into pride and viciousness, Lamech above all.  For you are called to be – in Me -- a new creation, and the perfection of that new creation will so great that seven is no longer suitable, only seventy-seven can suggest something of the supreme wonder of heavenly life beginning here on earth for you and in you.  The devil is still at work, still trying to undermine and disfigure God's new creation and your souls too but, having seen in Lamech whither Satan would lead you, be firm against him and strong in Me and, by My Spirit in you, be prepared to forgive whoever may have, wherever and whenever, wronged you,

            not seven times, but seventy-seven times.  

To help and enable us to do this work -- which alone is befitting the new creation He has made of us, and the new perfection He to which He calls us -- He the One Who loves us is always Personally present to us in Mother Church, seeking to encourage and sustain us in our daily endeavours in love of God and service of men through the gift of His own Most Holy Spirit: the Spirit of both the Father and the Son, the Spirit of our adoption as crowned heirs of the heavenly Kingdom and children of our heavenly Father.