11th Sunday of the Year (B)

Eleventh Sunday of Year B

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

St. Paul’s words in our second reading today:

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

remind me very much of Our Blessed Lord’s words recorded by St. John in his Gospel:

These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but BE OF GOOD CHEER, I have overcome the world.  (John 16:33)

Actually the two Greek words translated in the one case by ‘We are always courageous’ and in the other by ‘be of good cheer’ are almost identical and most closely related, so that we should interpret the words attributed to St. Paul by the words of Our Blessed Lord … since very few indeed would be so bumptious as to say of themselves that they were always courageous, for not everyone can be courageous, and certainly none can guarantee such behaviour.  However, all can, and St. Paul most certainly would -- with faith and trust in the Lord -- hope and aspire to always ‘be of good cheer’ and ‘take courage’ in whatever adverse situation they might find themselves, for St. Paul truly wants to help us face up to what Jesus Himself explicitly tells us awaits all true believers and faithful  disciples:     

In the world you will have tribulation.

And indeed, what tribulation there is in our world today!  I do not intend to speak of wars and rumours of wars; rather I want to highlight the tribulation in the hearts of so many people -- all of them potentially good -- many of whom, however, are sadly being turned aside from what is good by the turmoil around them seeping into what should be the peaceful inner-temple of their being and making of it a den of clamorous thieves.

In our modern world opinions are changing endlessly and seem, at times, to be endowed with such great powers of attraction or momentum as to bring into question, or even sweep aside, what had previously seemed incontestable, immovable, and inviolable, with the result that many find it extremely difficult to hold on to a constant, firm, and abiding faith.

Again, in our affluent society there is so much, regarded by the world as truly desirable and worthwhile, apparently on offer, but for how long will such things be available when change seems unforeseeable and irresistible?   In such circumstances the temptation is great, especially for the young, the needy, and those who are troubled, to seize what is there and on offer before it disappears and is lost without their having tasted it?  In such a milieu, how foreign and out of touch does a religion seem which would have us content ourselves with what, ultimately, is only a promise or foretaste for our present earthly appreciation and encouragement of the full satisfaction reserved for our hoped-for heavenly being.

Again, when power and influence can be bought by money; when multitudes are swept along by popular tides of enthusiasm stirred up by preachers of vengeance, purveyors of pleasure, together with the debilitating influence of an increasingly strident media; when rights are proclaimed and responsibilities ignored; when might is right and popularity cannot be challenged; when the would-be are cajoled into a pseudo-holiness without real faith or true commitment or emboldened to display a brash and brassy faith without humility or fear; when, to sum it up, we are surrounded by so many claims and contradictions, so many false options and easy escapes, that many find it extremely difficult to even imagine let alone recognize any supreme authority of enduring permanence or significance for mankind’s salvation.

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

The joy of peace, the hope of good cheer, the strength of confidence, these are essentials for us today as perhaps never before.

Now our readings today can certainly help us with regard to such essential and basic joy, hope, and confident strength, for St. Paul explains how we are always confident: for the believer walks according to a sure faith, he is confident through faith, that is, he trusts in the Lord and is well-pleased, content, with the proofs the Lord has afforded us and the hope to which He calls us: as St. Paul puts it,  with the prospect the Spirit offers us of one day becoming absent from the (earthly) body and present (at home) with the Lord.

We, disciples of Jesus, being endowed with the gift of the Holy Spirit as God’s gracious Gift and pledge of His continuing and abiding love:

Aspire to please Him (Who calls us by His Spirit).

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

The kingdom of God is as if a man were to scatter seed on the land, and would sleep and rise night and day, and through it all the seed would sprout and grow, he knows not how.   Of its own accord the land yields fruit, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear.  And when the grain is ripe, he wields the sickle at once, for the harvest has come.

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

Jesus gave extra-special emphasis to contentment before God in His second parable: no longer are many handfuls of seeds being scattered but just one single mustard seed, the smallest seed of all.  The apparent insignificance of the beginning is no hindrance to the final realization of God’s plan: that tiny seed can grow into “the biggest shrub of them all”.

Ezekiel also has words for our guidance and comfort.  He told us of the Lord’s dealings with faithless Israel; she had broken the covenant made with God and had received her punishment: banishment from the Promised Land.  Only a remnant were left behind in the land once known as Promised and they swore to obey their conquerors.  What a fall from the proud kingdom of David and Solomon!  Nevertheless, with trust in the Lord Who, as the Psalmist says:

            Upholds all who fall and raises up all who are bowed down, (Ps. 145:14)

there could have been a future for them.  But, in the event, there was no trust in the Lord: the remnant broke the oath of obedience to their conquerors, just as the whole nation had, before them, broken their covenant with the Lord Himself, and they turned to Egypt for human help.  They were not content with the Lord’s provision, they wanted – with the help of Egypt – to win for themselves something apparently bigger and better.  It did not turn out as they had planned, and the Lord spoke through Ezekiel the oracle we heard in the first reading:

Thus says the Lord GOD: "I, too, will take from the crest of cedar, from its topmost branches tear off, a tender shoot, and place it on a high and lofty mountain; on the mountain heights of Israel I will plant it.  It shall put forth branches and bear fruit, and become a majestic cedar. Birds of every kind shall dwell beneath it; every winged thing in the shade of its boughs.  And all the trees of the field shall know that I, the LORD, bring low the high tree, lift high the lowly tree, wither up the green tree, and make the withered tree bloom.  As I, the LORD, have spoken so will I do."

A beautiful prophecy concerning Our Lord, ‘a tender shoot’ from the crest of the cedar (of Israel): Jesus, Son of Mary and of the House of David.  He was planted on the Cross on the Hill of Calvary just outside Jerusalem on the heights of Judah, and He subsequently produced branches and became a splendid cedar as His  disciples spread His Word abroad and established His Church throughout the world, that Church in which you and I, People of God, find shelter from the storms of sin and tribulation, and comfort and hope for our souls.

All this was again reflected in the Responsorial Psalm (92:12) where we heard:

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

Who are these just ones?   The Psalmist foresaw the disciples of Jesus, who, in the power of His Spirit would be confident through faith, that is, trusting in their Lord and content, well-pleased, with the hope set before them in the promises He had made to them and which were already being fulfilled in them through the Spirit He had given them; and from a distance of centuries he hails and greets them with these words:

Trust in the LORD, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.  Delight yourself also in the LORD, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.   Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.   He shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your justice as the noonday.  Rest in the LORD, and wait patiently for Him.   (Ps 37:3-7)

The world hates you; but be of good cheer I have overcome the world.

How strange that we should be of good cheer though the world hates us!  It is a fact that our sophisticated, affluent, proud and self-sufficient, faith-rejecting Western world hates us and the teachings of Jesus we both proudly profess and faithfully proclaim.   And it is because of this modern-day hatred that we should indeed be of good cheer because this hatred proves the truth of Jesus’ words and encourages us to recognize that He has indeed overcome the world.

People of God, pray with renewed insistence and solicitude for our world where so many are suffering because they do not hear the truth, because they are being fed with lies and given poison to drink, and let us give heart-felt thanks to God that He has led us into the company of those called and empowered to trust in the Lord at all times, and under all circumstances to be well-pleased and supremely content with the hope His Spirit stirs up within us.

Corpus Christi (Year B) (2012)

 

THE MOST HOLY BODY & BLOOD OF CHRIST (B)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            For God knows that in the day you eat of (the apple) your eyes will be        opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil. (Gen 3:5)

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

The Son of God, out of His great love for His Father and compassion for our suffering and subjection, came as One among us offering both His Body and His Blood, in order to convince His People of their constant need for both cleansing and strength: the Gift of the Eucharistic Food, Bread and Wine, Body and Blood, is meant to help us become a humble and grateful People, constantly aware of our need for the purification and power of that heavenly nourishment whereby we  can walk – in the power of the Spirit -- safely and successfully along the way of Jesus through the desert of this world towards the promised fulfilment of our heavenly Father’s home. 

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

Today, therefore, thanks to the readings Mother Church has chosen to give us along with Saint Mark’s Gospel account of the institution of the Eucharist, we have recognized something of what Jesus’ offering of bread and wine can mean for us: it both humbles and exalts us.  By directly humbling us it can save us from the folly of human pride; while the exaltation it promises us is above anything we could ever have imagined, and thereby, indeed, humbles us yet more, spiritually this time, in a gratitude that knows not what to acclaim loudest, “Thank you Lord for such unimaginable blessings”, or “Lord, I am not worthy.”  And since neither acclamation can ring pure and true without the other, let us, therefore, most whole-heartedly embrace both, and, leaving aside our own cogitations, calmly trust the Spirit both to guide us in our choice and form us by their use.

                                

           

Trinity Sunday 2012 (Year B)

  Trinity Sunday   (Year B)                

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

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

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

One hears of scholars today who, confident in their own great wisdom and with much approval from other like-minded, politically-correct, potential world reformers, want to deny the fact, and deny Israel the glory, of God originally choosing one people to be His own Chosen People.   Uniqueness would seem, for such scholars, necessarily to mean exclusivity, superiority, nationalism and racism, and, as such, to be condemned as the cause of much, far too much, of mankind’s struggles and strife throughout history.

However, we know that God chooses only those destined by Him to be servants of His own good plans and purposes, as of mankind’s better-being and ultimate salvation.  Israel was indeed chosen by God and remained uniquely honoured as His Chosen People for thousands of years until bringing forth glorious fruit for the establishment of Jesus’ Church as the new and ultimate People of God by the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  God does make choices – sometimes, indeed, with an outstretched arm -- and that means for us, as believers and disciples of Jesus as Lord and Saviour, that we too have, each of us individually, been chosen, deliberately, by God (“no one can come to Me unless My Father draws him”) for His glory, our salvation, and the salvation of mankind.  Moreover, our world, our universe is not, as so many would like to believe, the result of chance -- untraceable and infinitesimal -- coalescing out of the chaos of unimaginable powers and countless conflicting processes over many millions of years before ultimately heading for inevitable self-destruction into the void of oblivion … No! Our world has been deliberately chosen, willed, and created by the God Who shows His hand by willing to choose and then by speaking with love – originally from the midst of the fire, then by His continuing words of the Law and the Prophets given to Israel for her formation and guidance; until now, ultimately and definitively, in and through Jesus His Word made flesh and proclaimed in His Church – because He loves His creation, and His will to share His love with those He has made in His own image and likeness for an eternity of blessed fulfilment is abiding and true in His beloved Son, our Lord and Saviour.

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

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

In those words St. Paul refers to a transcendent blessing won for us by Jesus Our Lord and Saviour: for, by dying in our flesh He destroyed our death, and by rising  glorified in the Spirit, He restored our Life.  That is, by His transformation of His human horror of dying on the Cross into an act of sublime obedience and supreme love for His Father and His plans for us, He shattered the tyrannical hold of death over our human experience of life.  Having risen from the dead glorified in His human flesh, He bestows, in fulfilment of the Father’s promise, His Spirit upon His Church to drive out our sin and set us free; and thereby He gives us the hope of sharing – in Him, as living members of His Body, in His victory over sin and, with Him, as adopted children of God -- in the divine life of eternal beatitude which is His, with the Spirit, before the face of His heavenly Father.

Such forgiveness of sins is a most wonderful blessing indeed.  After all, what good is money, power, or pleasure, if, in all that you hope or do, you are weighed down by the awareness of your sins and of the inexorably approaching time when you will have to give an account of your life and pay for the wrong you have done.  Poverty, suffering, even loneliness, can be borne by one who has peace of soul; on the other hand, no matter how far and wide, however diligently, we may search, there is no refuge to be found that can still the nagging qualms and soothe the haunting anxieties of a guilty conscience:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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