6th. Sunday of Year (B)

Sixth Sunday of Year (B)

(Leviticus 13:1-2, 44-46; 1^st. Corinthians 10:31-11:1; Mark 1:40-45)

In the first reading we heard that, in Jewish society of Gospel times, anyone with a skin disease whom the priest had pronounced to be unclean was obliged to separate himself or herself from society and live apart; alone, that is, or with other similarly diseased people:

As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean, since he is in fact unclean.  He shall dwell apart; making his abode outside the camp.

Moreover, in order to prevent contact with ordinary members of society:

The one who bears the sore of leprosy shall keep his garments rent and his head bare, and shall muffle his beard; he shall cry out, 'Unclean, unclean!'

As a result, a leprous person was – according to rabbinic teaching and in the popular estimation -- as good as dead so far as normal society and normal human contacts were concerned.   Moreover, leprosy made the victim liturgically unclean according to the requirements of the Law and unfit to participate in the worship of Temple or synagogue … and this was interpreted so severely that were such a person so much as to enter a house all vessels therein would be immediately rendered unclean for Jewish use.  Worst of all, however, for the stricken one, leprosy was considered as a direct punishment from God by rabbis and lawyers (who had drawn up a list of four possible crimes he might have committed), which meant the sufferer was considered and proclaimed to be one cursed and rejected by God Himself.  Consequently, the rabbis considered the cleansing of one suffering from leprosy to be as impossible as raising the dead, and a story we are told concerning Naaman the Syrian shows how clearly Israel and the ancient world recognized that none but divine power could cure it:

Naaman brought (a) letter (from the king of Syria) to the king of Israel, which said, Now be advised, when this letter comes to you, that I have sent Naaman my servant to you, that you may heal him of his leprosy.  And it happened, when the king of Israel read the letter, that he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to kill and make alive, that this man sends a man to me to heal him of his leprosy? Therefore please consider, and see how he seeks a quarrel with me."  (2 Kings 5:6-7)

Now, we are told by St. Mark that:

A leper came to Jesus, and kneeling down begged Him and said, "If You wish, You can make me clean." 

There we can recognise the hope (perhaps nearly worn out) still managing to spur on the leper, and the faith (just beginning to blossom) sustaining him, while Jesus in heart-warming spontaneity:

Moved with pity, stretched out His hand (and) touched him.

In this momentous encounter of human suffering and dereliction with divine goodness and mercy, comes to mind some words from a hymn by Fr. Faber:

The love of God is broader than the measure of our mind: we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.

For, in response to the leper’s courage and faith, Jesus -- powerful in word and deed – had reached out and touched (some would translate ‘embraced’) the man before having actually cleansed him -- thus totally destroying any possible thought of the leper being one cursed or rejected by God.  Only then did He solemnly add:

I do will it.  Be made clean.

 Here Jesus helps us appreciate what we read in the letter to the Hebrews (11:3)

By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God.

This creative Word is expressive of the very essence of God, and therefore, in the Church, we have sacraments, bequeathed to us by the Word made flesh, consisting of words together with specific actions -- symbolic of divine grace and human agency -- just as Jesus healed the leper by His divine word of power and human touch (or, embrace).

If we would look a little closer at Jesus and try to understand and learn from His very attitude, it could be of much help and might save us from many errors.

Warning him sternly, Jesus dismissed him at once, and said to him: See that you tell no one anything; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses prescribed; that will be proof for them.

In accordance with the Torah He directed the man to a priest that he might be authoritatively recognized as one completely cleansed of his leprosy, and so be pronounced able, once more, to live among men and serve and worship the God of Israel.  Jesus told the man that such an action would “be proof for them”; that is, it would testify to the priests that Jesus had both respect for the Law and for them. And, of far greater significance, it would bring to their attention the fact that here was Someone Who could, by His very word of authority, cure leprosy which had always been acknowledged as notoriously incurable for mere man.

Notice how Jesus adheres to the Law set down in the Torah even after previously having most decisively rejected the excessive interpretation given it by the Scribes and Pharisees.  Now this law of exclusion embodies a divine principle, both Jewish and Christian, whereby the good of the whole transcends that of the individual, and the individual good should be conducive to the good of the whole.  This was one of the guiding lights for St. Paul throughout his many missionary labours, as you heard in the second reading:

I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit, but that of the many, that they may be saved.

 Our modern Western society is so ostentatiously committed to human individual rights that the good of the whole is easily overlooked. And yet, individual rights are only valid when, and indeed can only exist if, they are conducive to the well-being of the whole of society; and the validity of this principle is being vindicated in our day by the fact that now, at last, the evil of abortion is becoming manifest to all as the European birth rate is increasingly unable to support the continuing viability of its member nations: several of which are dying out; dying on their feet, so to speak.   For many of our contemporaries, however, this principle is neither clearly understandable nor readily acceptable; consequently, although as a divine principle it is, indeed, for the common good, nevertheless, today, none but the Church and some other religious bodies have sufficient conviction to resist prevalent western hedonistic tendencies and doctrines, such as abortion above all, but also homosexuality when accepted and presented as an alternative life style to that of heterosexual love and marriage.  For, heterosexual love in marriage is the bedrock of human society, fulfilling the spouses and serving the whole human race through the children they raise as a wholesome family.  Homosexuality, on the other hand, when practised, and presented as an optional life style -- distinct that is, from a more noble and perfectly blameless psychological tendency that might be termed homo-empathy (witness David’s love for Jonathan) – can satisfy only the individuals concerned, at the expense of society which is thereby debilitated, as, once again, our modern experience of diminishing home populations in this country and on the mainland of Europe shows.

Again, lack of discipline in our schools -- due in no small degree to the slavish adhesion to what are thought to be human rights -- is leading to an educational and social crisis, because an education that is not able to teach children self-control and personal responsibility by the exercise of discipline can neither produce balanced adults truly at ease with their personal make-up, nor, a fortiori, dependable members of society.  Indeed, such faulty education is increasingly liable to turn out young adults who are a potential danger to their neighbour and to society, because their un-recognized and un-appreciated emotions are not subject to their own control, and can be wildly at variance with the rights of other individuals or of the social body as a whole. 

And so it was in our Gospel reading, where human emotions apparently served to confer a right:

The man went away and began to publicize the whole matter. He spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places, and people kept coming to him from everywhere.

Jesus had come to cure Israel, and ultimately the whole of mankind, from the supreme uncleanness of sin, but the cleansed-leper was only able to think of his own case.  Jesus had cured him!  That was all that mattered. He must go and talk of what had happened to himself!

Of course, today some might think, because the man was presumably so grateful to Jesus and so happy in his new-found health, that therefore he is not to be blamed.  But in fact, because of that man’s (understandable) ignorance of Jesus’ overall purpose, and because he (culpably) ignored Jesus’ express command, in other words, because of his self-centeredness (blameworthy, no matter how understandable we might like to consider it), Jesus could no longer enter a town to preach His message of salvation, and perhaps other sufferers were denied the opportunity for a healing such as he himself had received.  The Healer, the Master, had said ‘keep quiet’ and the former leper -- carried off by the flood of his own emotions, and perhaps his own ‘human rights’(!) -- ignored his Saviour’s strict warning.

People of God, Jesus came to take away the sins of the world; and our personal needs and desires are but tiny components, however important to us, of God’s overarching purpose, and they must, therefore, be subject to its requirements.  It is so easy for us to be totally unaware of, and more or less indifferent to, the needs of mankind as a whole when our own personal needs are pressing upon us; and yet none of us can find fulfilment and happiness apart from our integration into the well-being of the whole body of society.  So often in the lives of each and every one of us, we would like -- we would love -- as disciples of Jesus, to make some great gesture, give some generous and remarkable response, adopt some striking initiative, and, consequently we can find it both frustrating and depressing when quiet obedience to God seems to be required of us most frequently and above all else.  Whereas we might want to find things happening, to make things happen, have other people see things happening, in our lives as Christians, all too often we can feel ourselves to be mere nobodies of whom nothing more than simple obedience, sincere prayers and a modicum of sacrifice is requested or required ….  and that, human self-love can find extremely hard. 

Because we are chronically self-centred, therefore, we need to constantly remind ourselves that none can cure the malady of mankind but Jesus Who is ceaselessly, and  ultimately infallibly, at work by His Spirit in and through His Church; and if we want to be His co-workers, to become faithful instruments serving His purposes, we have to resist all yearnings to carve out for ourselves some niche of acclaim, and aspire to seek, first and foremost, His supreme glory, await patiently His most holy will, and proclaim always His great and unfailing goodness.

And so for us, the good of the individual, though valid in itself and truly necessary for the good of the whole, must subordinate itself, or be subordinated, to that good of the whole, and such subordination is not necessarily recognized nor always proclaimed by society.  Nevertheless, it is that balanced good, the true and ultimate good prescribed by God the Father and proclaimed by Our Lord Jesus Christ, that we should make our joy and privilege to seek, work and pray for, in the power of God’s Gift, the Spirit. 

I try to please everyone in every way, not seeking my own benefit, but that of the many, that they may be saved.

5th Sunday Year (B)

Fifth Sunday Year (B)  

   (Job 7:1-4, 6-7; 1^st. Corinthians 9:16-19, 22-23; Mark 1:29-39)

Simon and his companions searched for Jesus and, finding Him, they said to Him:

“Everyone is looking for you.”  He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For that is what I came out to do.”

We can gather from that passage of the Gospel that Jesus considered His preaching to be supremely important.  This fact led that great imitator and apostle of Jesus, St. Paul, to declare in his first letter to the Corinthians (1:17):

            Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.

Therefore, we should not be surprised to find that, throughout His public ministry, Jesus’ preaching provoked astonishment as well as opposition and confrontation among those who heard Him; and they reacted in this way first of all because of the content of His preaching -- many, for example, would say after hearing Him:

             Where did this man get this wisdom? (Mt. 13:54)

There were others astounded by the manner in which He spoke, as you heard in last week’s Gospel passage:

The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.

Now, this was not just the reaction of simple people perhaps too prone to religious excitement, it was also the response of soldiers notoriously untouched by any such sensitivities, as St. John tells us in his Gospel (7:46):

            The officers answered, "Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.”

And, indeed, the religious authorities themselves -- those highly intelligent and extremely dangerous enemies of Jesus -- had a like appreciation of His preaching and Person:

The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.   (Mark 11:18)

Now, when the scribes -- learned in the Law and the Jewish oral tradition -- taught the people, they frequently did little more than string together a series of quotations centring on some brief passage of the Torah -- taking them from earlier authorities or currently well-known and influential teachers – without making personal statements that might involve or commit themselves.   With Jesus, however, it was quite different: He would, indeed, quote on occasion, but only from the Scriptures; then, also, He would frequently refer to the natural world around, and recall everyday events and situations of human life, before finally -- by the fullness of the Spirit that was in Him -- bringing forth a supremely authentic revelation of God’s presence and purpose in the Scriptures, and in the history -- past and present -- of Israel.  In this way His teaching was able to reveal the divine meaning and eternal purpose, as well as show something of the present beauty and hidden significance, of everyone’s ordinary experience of life and their vocation to worship in Israel.

His was, indeed, a unique authority, being based upon a unique awareness of divine realities:

Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know and testify of what we have seen, and you do not accept our testimony. If I told you earthly things and you do not believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven, but He who descended from heaven: the Son of Man. (John 3:11-13)

All things have been delivered to Me by My Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father.  Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and the one to whom the Son wills to reveal Him.  (Matthew 11:27)

St. Paul, again, appreciated this aspect of Jesus’ teaching, as we can tell from the advice he gave to Titus, an early convert of his whom he later established as head of the church in Crete:

These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you. (Titus 2:15)

As Paul bears witness, this authority, so striking in Jesus’ own Person and preaching, was essential for the founding of the Church, and consequently, is still essential today for the well-being of the Church.  It is not, however, something that can be directly imitated by ordinary human beings: to attempt anything of that sort would smack of the heretical illusion of those who believe themselves to be divinely inspired or the satanic pride of those who want to impose their own personality and ideas on others in order to seize hold of, and enjoy the experience of, some measure of power.

The  proclamation of the Word of God, by public preaching and personal witness, is, indeed, essential for the Christian Church; for us, however, the authority recognizable in the priest’s manner of preaching and the people’s witness of Christian living can only come from faith: a faith gratefully received, wholeheartedly believed, and deeply loved.  This confidence in the Church’s proclamation and assurance in her Christian living cannot come from some stirred-up, emotionally contrived, personal ambition which ultimately only seeks to promote self.  It must come from an absolute and total commitment to what transcends our own being and what, nevertheless, becomes essentially part of, and the very key to, our deepest self; a total commitment to the God proclaimed by our faith, evoked when we come to truly and fully realize that our supreme duty as Christians is to know God:

The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.  (Habakkuk 2:14)

This knowledge, however, is not just the awareness of some facts about God, or about the Scriptures or the Church; it has to be a personal appreciation of, love for, and commitment to, God Himself, as manifested to us in the Person of Jesus Christ, and witnessed to by His revelation of the Father and His Gift of the Holy Spirit in and through Holy Mother Church.  This is a knowledge that can only be received by those who consistently and perseveringly seek to do what Jesus did, that is, commune with God in prayer:

Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.  

It is the lack of such loving knowledge and appreciation of, communion with and whole-hearted response to, the Personal God abiding with and in Mother Church and all the faithful children born of her that bedevils the proclamation and the witness of too many Christians and Catholics today; and just how deeply such ignorance afflicts us and, of course, the whole of our world today, can surely be imagined from the following few words of the prophet Hosea and then of Our Lord Himself:

My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have   rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from being My priest. (Hosea 4:6)

I delight in loyalty rather than sacrifice, and in the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings. (6:6)

Our Blessed Lord, for His part, can be said to have quite literally bequeathed to us  the following most inspiring prayer of praise and intercession revealing the bond of mutual knowledge and love between Himself and His Father with which He would endow and enrich us :

O righteous Father!  The world has not known You, but I have known You and these have known that You sent Me.  And 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 17:25-26)

The world’s religiosity today is above all a proclamation of self-sufficiency and mutual approbation: we can be holy of ourselves without any God.  Because God is rejected as not-necessary, there is no authority able to command respect and give peace, strength, direction and coherence, to our modern experience of life: the institutions and laws that would govern the nations are subject to cynical self-interest, widespread hypocrisy, and frequent barbarism; the law that seeks to govern our society is at times quite derisory in its pandering to popularity, and for an ever growing number of its citizens there appears to be no right law nurturing our society, nothing other than the compulsive pressures of the markets’ search for profit, the corrosive passions of individuals lusting for pleasures of every sort, and the merely political aspirations of parties and candidates hankering after prominence, power, and renown.  This recalls those ancient words of Job we heard in our first reading:

Is not man’s life on earth a drudgery?  Troubled nights have been allotted to me.  If in bed I say ’When shall I arise?’, then the night drags on and I am filled with restlessness until the dawn.  My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle; they come to an end without hope.  Remember that my life is like the wind; I shall not see happiness again.

And yet, People of God, those words of Job are no final assessment, not an end in themselves but a help and provocation for us to appreciate what Jesus and His salvation has brought into our lives; a salvation the prophets Isaiah and Hosea had glimpsed already dawning centuries before Jesus:

He will raise us up on the third day that we may live before Him; so let us know, let us press on to know, the LORD. (Hosea 6:2-3)

They will not hurt or destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

Therefore, let us pray that not only the Lord may give authority to both the preaching of Mother Church and the witness of all her devoted children, but that even our own personal lives may themselves be penetrated through and through by the faith we have most gratefully received, in which we whole-heartedly rejoice, and to which we most sincerely hope and humbly aspire to give witness and expression in all its compelling truth and beauty by both our life and our death in Christ Jesus our Lord.                                         

3rd. Sunday, Year (B)

Third Sunday, Year (B)

(Jonah 3:1-5, 10; 1^st. Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20)

            Repent and believe the Good News

That is what many believe to be the first -- and perhaps original -- Gospel’s summary of Jesus’ teaching, and the quintessential core, marrow, and backbone of Christian preaching:

            Repent and believe the Good News of Jesus.

Now ‘repent’ is not the same as ‘regret’ in the Christian proclamation.  It does not mean look back fixedly, ever reviewing your past life and lamenting, wishing it had been otherwise; but rather:

look up, look forward, to God, Whose goodness and truth is now -- in and through Jesus -- ready to begin the ultimate transformation of mankind and the whole world;

look at God in Jesus, and change your old attitudes of selfishness and pride, acknowledging with  Peter, ‘Lord, you have the words of eternal life’;

 look around, for God, and with mind, heart, soul and strength, indeed, with your whole being, seek to promote His glory and serve His purposes in all life’s circumstances and apparently chance happenings; for:

            The kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent and believe the Good News.

In Jesus’ Good News, and Mother Church’s proclamation, God is Love and He is Life; to listen to Him is to hear Truth and to obey Him is to practice Wisdom; to look at Him is to see Beauty, to trust in Him is to have Strength; while to experience His hidden presence is to find peace and taste beatitude.  ‘Repent’ means: turn to God and prepare yourselves to receive these gifts from Him; stop seeking to promote your own interests of prestige, power, or pleasure; stop turning to and trusting in men who, like yourself, are fragile creatures of flesh and blood, by nature inconstant.   As Our Lord Himself puts it:

Do not labour for food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life.

Surely then, ‘repent’ is a joyous word, something like ‘renew yourself’, ‘be refreshed, restored’, indeed and in all truth, ‘be revitalized’.  Such Christian repentance makes our religious practice authentically human, for a human being, no matter how well placed in life, always aspires to yet more of what is (or at least seems to be) good.  Christian repentance means that a new horizon has dawned, a new destiny is opening up; and how essential that is to a truly human life!  What is the tragedy of unemployment today?  It is not (in our society at least) so much that those without work are starving, barely able to exist, but rather that they have no future to look forward to; for a human being can endure, can triumph over, almost any odds so long as he or she has an ideal, a future, to aim at, to hope for, aspire towards.   Christian repentance opens us up to that new hope, that new future, which promises not merely earthly well-being, but divine, eternal blessedness; it continually urges us to leave behind the past and to look forward, aiming ever higher; for being a response to the proximity of the Kingdom of God, it is always coupled with divine power.

It is not enough, however, to just repent on hearing Jesus’ call; for true repentance, it is also necessary to ‘believe’ the Good News which Jesus reveals about the goodness and mercy of God, about the lovableness of His truth and beauty:

            Repent and believe the Good News.

Obviously, hearing alone can never lead us to repentance if we do not believe what we have heard, and so, we cannot repent without believing; nor, on the other hand, can we believe without repenting … the devils know, but without believing what they know, they cannot repent:

Go into all the world and preach the Gospel …. He who does not believe will be condemned.  (Mark 16:16)

To believe in God and the Gospel’s Good News is to see truly something of God’s holiness and majesty, His goodness and mercy, His wisdom and beauty, and it is impossible to thus realize, and in some slight measure appreciate, such infinite Beauty without at the same time – though painfully and fearfully recognizing one’s own disfigurement, alienation and ignorance -- being nevertheless drawn to it.  And there, precisely, is the root of repentance: for despite the conviction of one’s own nothingness, lovelessness, and culpability, before God’s all-holy Goodness and Beauty, the fact of being so irresistibly drawn by yearning admiration and longing desire towards that Goodness and Beauty urges and gently compels us to a new calm and deep-rooted, fresh-water so to speak, re-appraisal of our life, past, present, and future, together with whole-hearted trust in, and trembling response to, Jesus’ Gospel call.

People of God, we should never allow ourselves to be satisfied with past progress or present well-being.  Christian repentance and Catholic belief should grow in us daily so that, when the call comes for us to embrace death, we might be found forgetful of self and filled with humble joy, hope, and trust in the Lord Who first called us by His Gospel message of Good News, has long guided and sustained us by His Spirit of Truth and Love, and is now preparing  for us a room in His Father’s house.

The Epiphany 2012

The Epiphany

(Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3, 5-6; Matthew 2:1-12)

Why do we love certain people more than others? … because of their goodness, perhaps, or their beauty? or might it be due to their understanding, sympathy, wisdom, strength, courage?  We could go on trying to find such reasons but to no purpose, for the point is that we love someone because of who they are, because of their unique personality, as known and experienced by us.  We cannot love someone who is personally unknown to us.  Although we can admire what we know or hear of another, nevertheless, such admiration can only become true love after having met, personally encountered, and, in some measure, learned to personally appreciate, the other.

Since that is undoubtedly true, don't you think it strange that Christians and Catholics speak so little about the beauty, goodness, wisdom and love, of God?  Ostensibly Christian witness, also, is too often couched in terms of an impersonal ethic: doing good to the needy and underprivileged; loving one’s neighbour and especially children; social involvement and comments in favour of international peace.  Worthy people usually, promoting, as a rule, admirable projects and good proposals, but all too often with little to suggest a committed Christian giving convincing witness – even when perhaps necessarily implicit and indirect -- to the Faith as a source of hope and joy, a power for personal fulfilment and eternal salvation, for true social justice, international cooperation and cohesion, and for human advancement.

However, the heavenly fulfilment to which we all aspire as disciples of Jesus will not be ours just because we have kept what acknowledged rules demanded of us or general expectations desired of us: the ultimate criterion for the Christian and Catholic appreciation of our whole life will be "Did you love (or sincerely try to love) the Lord your God with your whole mind, heart, soul, and strength?"   Without such personal love for the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our Christian life can only be -- and inevitably appear to be -- bleak and formal, our Christian witness only lifeless and uninspiring; all in stark contrast to the words of the prophet Isaiah we heard in the first reading:

Arise, shine; for your light has come!  And the glory of the LORD is risen upon you. 

Christians -- above all we who are privileged to be Catholics -- should indeed shine out because we are called both to reflect, and make known, the glory of the Lord which has shone upon us through our faith in the Good News of Jesus.  We are not like our brothers, the Jews and the Muslims.  They speak of God: at times, they speak good, holy, and beautiful things about God; indeed the Jews speak of Him in ways very close, at times, to our own appreciation.   And yet, the Christian faith is so much more glorious than either Judaism or Islam: for we speak not only of the external glory of God, but of the supreme and unimaginably beautiful Personal beatitude of the Father, with His Son, in the Holy Spirit; a beatitude in which we can hope to share in and through Jesus our Saviour, Son of Man and God Incarnate.

We do not know God simply because He has spoken inspiring words through His prophets; nor do we praise Him just because He has reportedly done great and wonderful deeds; above all, we confess, love and worship God, as Father, Son and Spirit: the Father Whose voice is our most secret and original calling, and whose Presence will be our ultimate destiny; the Son Who took our flesh and became our Brother that He might show Himself as our Saviour, and Who, to this very day, continues to give Himself as flesh and blood for you and me to eat and drink in Mother Church, thereby enabling us to live with His life, by His Spirit; and the Holy Spirit Whom we love and praise, in Whom we trust and rejoice, since He is ever with us as our Advocate, our strength and comfort, our light and guide, our hope and our joy.

People of God, today's great solemnity of the Epiphany, the shining forth of God's glory, especially invites us to glory in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, by telling us, in the words of the prophet Isaiah:

Lift up your eyes all round (that is, appreciate the Faith you profess and the Church in which you live); then you shall see and become radiant, and your heart shall swell with joy.

Jesus came to teach us with Him to recognize and in Him to appreciate the Father as a Person, His Father, our Father; He gave us His own Spirit -- comforting and encouraging our hearts, enlightening and strengthening our minds -- to form us in Jesus, and in His likeness, for the Father:

When He, the Spirit of truth, has come, He will guide you into all truth; He will tell you things to come. 

The Spirit also helps in our weaknesses; for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit makes intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.        (John. 16:13; Romans 8:26)

The Father is so personally committed to us that, having given His only Son for us, He speaks to each of us personally and most secretly that we might turn to Jesus and find our salvation in Him:

No one can come to Me unless the Father Who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up at the last day.  (John 6:44)

He looks for, and expects in return, a similarly personal and whole-hearted response and commitment from us.  Jesus assures us that the Father wants to be our most perfect Father:

It is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father who speaks in you. (Matthew 10:20)

And He wants to be recognized and loved -- in Spirit and in Truth -- by children who will ultimately have learned to lay down their lives and confidently turn to Him, saying in deepest trust and self-abandonment: "Abba, Father"

Our Lord Jesus is indeed the Messiah foretold by the prophets; proclaimed by angels and manifested by a star at His birth; revealed by the Father at His baptism in the Jordan; He is, indeed, the Messiah come to change the water of our life into the finest wine.  And this wonderful Jesus Who died on Calvary for our individual sins -- yours and mine -- rose on the third day for the salvation of all; and from His throne in heaven now embraces us so closely to Himself that we live in Him and by His Spirit given to each of us at our baptism in Mother Church, and to be continually honoured and increasingly reverenced in us by our faithful living as her children, and, above all, to be most gratefully and lovingly refreshed and renewed by our reception of the Eucharist at Holy Mass.

And then, this Holy Spirit -- relating to each and every one of us individually – works His divine purposes in the secret depths of our minds and hearts forming and attuning us to recognize and appreciate His presence and urging us to respond to His inspirations.  Indeed, He is so personal to us that it is His task to lead each one of us to our own individual and personal fulfilment and perfection in Jesus for the Father.

People of God, Christians and even Catholics today are often afraid of the wonders of our faith.  Many, each according to their own make-up, want to imagine what they can easily accept or appreciate: some, a distant God Who demands, not personal communion and commitment in love, but merely the impersonal observance of laws, such as Sunday Mass, baptism, first Communion etc.; others like to fancy a God who is so like us as to be satisfied with actions serving no higher aims than those largely humanistic ideals of doing good to everyone so that we may all live in peace and prosperity.  They want to be able to tick-off the laws they have complied with, or tot-up the accepted good things they have done; and this, because they cannot bear to feel unsure of themselves, because they are afraid to trust totally in God’s merciful goodness and in His unknown plans and future purposes for us.

Jesus, however, came to lift His disciples up to heavenly glory, lift them up, that is, with Himself, from human nothingness and need, as experienced by Himself on Calvary, through selfless trust and unconditional love, to share with Him in the depths of divine charity where Father, Son and Holy Spirit are eternally and indivisibly one.  For we belong to Jesus, as St. Paul tells us, just as Jesus belongs to God; our relationship with God is that personal:

For all things are yours, whether (it be the Church) or the world or life or death or things present or things to come; all are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. (1 Cor. 3:21-4:1)

There, in the Son, by the Holy Spirit, caught up into the mystery of the personal charity uniting the Most Holy Trinity, and echoing the songs of myriads of angels, you and I are called to personally share in the great, eternal, and unimaginable, ecstasy of praise to the glory of Him Who, as St. Paul (Eph. 4:6) tells us, is:

             The one God and Father of all, Who is over all, through all, and in all. 

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

Solemnity of Mary, the Mother of God

(Numbers 6:22-27; Galatians 4:4-7; Luke 2:16-21)

In the second reading we heard St. Paul telling his converts in Galatia:

As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!”

Those words of St. Paul invite us today to consider how wonderfully the Spirit dwelt in the heart of Mary!   They show us, indeed, the magnitude of her blessing when we consider that the Spirit abided in and filled her whole being to such an extent that, whereas we are enabled by the Spirit, Paul tells us, to express our love for God with the word 'Father', Mary, on the other hand, was so devoted and open to God, that the Spirit dwelling with her was completely free to work most wondrously in her, enabling her to respond to God’s calling with a love of such total commitment and a trust of such selfless abandon that the angel’s message could come to total fulfilment with Mary’s ‘Fiat’, and she conceived in her womb the Divine Word Himself -- now Incarnate, the Father’s co-eternal Son -- now  Son of Man!   Indeed, such was the faith with which Mary responded to God’s word delivered to her by the angel Gabriel, that Jesus always and openly praised her for that above all else:

It happened that, as (Jesus) spoke these things, a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and said to Him, "Blessed is the womb that bore You, and the breasts which nursed You!"  But He said, "More than that, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" (Luke 11:27-28)

"Who is My mother, or My brothers?"  And (Jesus) looked around in a circle at those who sat about Him, and said, "Here are My mother and My brothers!  For whoever does the will of God is My brother and My sister and mother." (Mark 3:33-35)

And, although in this respect the following teaching from one of the Cappadocian Fathers in the early Church is both beautiful and uplifting:

Whenever you receive Christ’s word within you, and let it live in your heart, and build it up with your thoughts as in the womb, then you can be called Christ’s mother;

perhaps the teaching of St. Augustine is more direct and inspirational:

Whoever believes with all his heart and is ‘justified by faith’ (Romans 5:11), he has conceived Christ in the womb.  And whenever ‘with the mouth confession is made unto salvation’ (Romans 10:10) that man has given birth to Christ.   Be you therefore overflowing with fertility in the spirit, and at the same time unchanging in the soul’s virginity.

We can also compare and contrast Mary with Moses who, as you heard in the first reading, brought great blessings down on Israel.  There, we were told how God would bless the Chosen People of the Old Testament through the use of certain words of priestly blessing that He gave to Moses for the use of Aaron the priest, his sons, and their descendants:

Speak to Aaron and his sons and tell them: “This is how you shall bless the Israelites. Say to them: The LORD bless you and keep you!   The LORD let his face shine upon you, and be gracious to you!  The LORD look upon you kindly and give you peace!   So shall they invoke my name upon the Israelites, and I will bless them.” 

Those are truly beautiful words used to confer a treasured blessing.  But consider how God the Father blesses us, and all who share with us in the New Testament covenant, through Mary and her Son.  For, Mary does not simply hand down, pass on, God-given words for occasional, though repeated, blessing in Israel; she receives and clothes with her own flesh and blood the One Eternal Word of God, and giving Him birth offers mankind its supreme blessing for all time and for eternity.  No longer simply a prayer invoking blessing for Israel, but God's gracious presence in Mother Church for the salvation of the whole world!

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.  In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace.  (Eph. 1:3-8)

Holy Mary, you are indeed blessed above all women by God the Father, for you have given us the One through Whom and in Whom all the blessings of heaven itself are ours!

Again, in our Gospel reading we learned that those who searched for the Child found:

            Mary and Joseph, and the Infant lying in the manger.

So it is for all of us, today: in our search for Jesus, we find Him with Mary.  For, when Jesus was on the point of dying on the Cross of Calvary, He addressed all His future disciples in the person of John, the one apostle standing there at the foot of  the Cross, and told him to take Mary to his heart as his own Mother.  And so, Mary is no mere optional extra, and -- most certainly -- no unwarranted or unwanted complication, for Catholic spirituality.  For we recognize and appreciate that Mary leads each and every one of us to Jesus when we also recall that she is not simply  the model of the Church, but is the Church itself in its origins, and only in Mother Church can each and every one of us find Jesus truly and love Him fully:

            ‘Woman, behold your son!’   Then, to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother’

Finally, we also need to understand that Mary, who is, as it were, Mother Church’s conductor for the Holy Spirit’s lightning and a channel of countless blessings, is also our model and inspiration in our personal relationships with Jesus, in so far as the Scriptures tell us that she, our Mother, was always sublimely one with Jesus:

keeping all these things (that she had experienced and heard concerning Jesus),  reflecting on them in her heart.

There is to be found the supreme example and the ultimate guidance for anyone  longing and hoping to find God our most loving Father in and through Jesus:  imitate Mary by treasuring the Good News of Jesus handed down to us by Mother Church who, with her teaching of the Scriptures, illuminates our minds to understand and appreciate the promised Christ of God; and, through the economy of her sacraments, enables us to fittingly welcome and worship His very presence in our midst and receive Him with whole-hearted and personal love into our  individual hearts and minds.

As children of Mary, therefore, hear the Word of God proclaimed in Mother Church, with reverence and joy; treasure the goodness of His grace in your heart; and, above all, seek to respond – by the Spirit – to the Father, the Giver of all good gifts, with that wholehearted trust and gratitude to which Mary herself gave perfect expression when she said:

Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word.   (Luke 1:38)

Let us close our considerations with heartfelt words of gratitude and praise for Mary, the Mother of Our Lord and Saviour, and His most loving gift to us:

You are the glory of (heavenly) Jerusalem, you are the great boast of (God’s Chosen People), you are the great pride of (all reborn in Christ)! … You have done great good and God is well pleased.  May the almighty Lord bless you forever!”  And all the people said, ‘Amen.’     (Judith 15:9-10)

So be it, today: Amen, amen!  Deo Gratias!!