Maundy Thursday 2017

 Maundy Thursday

In Jewish circles this is a most holy and a most joyful night, a night of family feasting in grateful remembrance of God’s wondrous blessings; it is a family night because the Passover feast was, from the times of Moses, not a Temple feast celebrated according to minute details of public ritual, but a family gathering in the privacy of the home, a celebration with family and friends.

We are told in the Gospels that Jesus reclined at table with His disciples for what we call the Last Supper.  This was prescribed for faithful Jews; they would have ordinarily been seated, but for this special Passover meal they had to eat reclining, stretched out on their left side with head towards the food; it was a symbol of the liberty they were enjoying and celebrating, the liberty God had won for His Chosen People by the wonders He had worked in Egypt and their desert wanderings; wonders whereby He had delivered them from slavery and idolatry and brought them to their own land where they might freely learn to live and worship as God’s Chosen People.

This was the occasion to which Jesus had really been looking forward, for it would serve as a launching-pad, so to speak, for the ultimate freedom of God’s People -- freedom from sin -- that Jesus was about to win and commit to His Apostles’ care:

And He said to them, “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. (Luke 22:15)

The Last Supper was no sad occasion for saying “Good-by”, nor should our memorial of it be overshadowed by thoughts of impending loss and grief.  How on earth could Our Lord have eagerly desired to eat such a sorrowful leave-taking meal with His disciples?  This was, on the contrary, something to be eagerly desired, something towards which His whole life’s endeavour had been leading, something that would express the fulfilment of His consuming zeal for His Father, His compassion for His People and for us.  It was to be a celebration based on the grateful remembrance of God’s historic goodness indeed, but much more, one looking forward to something memorable beyond measure, for they were now prefiguring and indeed actually setting in motion the ultimate fulfilment of the mission for which Jesus had been sent by His Father, for which Israel had been gradually prepared over many centuries, and for which the nations had been languishing long; a fulfilment the disciples had been chosen to serve with their lives, and one that would – drawing them through Calvary to the Resurrection and Gift of the Holy Spirit -- totally transform them into selflessly brave  and devoted Apostles of the Risen Lord, and wise servants and leaders of His Church on earth:

I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.

This meal was, therefore, the final preparation for the salvation to be brought about, purchased indeed, by Jesus the Messiah: it was to be the seal of His now fully discovered life-purpose for which He had so humbly and patiently searched and scrutinized, communed with and prayed over, the Scriptures; yes, every single word, every ‘jot and title’ of them.  This meal was to be the most intimately human and life-fulfilling gift of Self to His disciples present and future; to be the ultimate and most sublime celebration with His disciples of His Father’s eternally enduring ‘good will towards men’ of all nations.  How truly is it said:

            Happy are those who are called to His Supper.

Humanity had long been in darkness, alienated from the true happiness of life.  Created, indeed, by God and for God, but deceived by Satan and enchained in sin, the human state stirred such compassion in the Father that He sent His only Son to share in and save the weakness of human flesh by living and dying as Son of Man sinless despite Satan’s power, cunning, and hatred.  Having thus broken the chains of sin He rose again as Son of God, and in the power of that Resurrection ready to pour out His healing and Holy Spirit upon all believers in His name, whom the Spirit who would then form into a likeness of their Lord and Saviour for the glory of the Father.

This was, therefore, no time for sad forebodings, but for ardent aspirations for what was to come: Jesus was indeed to suffer and to die but it would be for a divine purpose to be most surely achieved by His embracing the shameful cross on Calvary before entering upon the consummate glory of His Resurrection on the third day, (cf. Hebrews 12:2):

Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Although it might seem that Jesus’ life was being taken from Him by the superior power of death after having been betrayed by human treachery and condemned by human hatred, Jesus was not going to allow His disciples to suffer any such deceits of Satan.  At this Supper He now most deliberately offered His coming crucifixion and death to His Father, resolving to accept it and embrace it out of obedient love and in total commitment.  It would not be a result of the tragic betrayal that Judas’ action would seem to signify, because that imminent Passion and Death was now being lovingly embraced and yet more lovingly dedicated and offered by Jesus to wipe away the sins and betrayals of men and women (including Judas) of all times.  The whole tenor of tomorrow’s crucifixion was being pre-determined now, at this very meal, by Jesus.  He would die out of supreme zeal for His Father’s great glory, out of redeeming love for His People and compassion for sinful humanity the world over: all in accordance with and fulfilment of the wisdom, the beauty, and the sublime goodness, of divine Providence.

At the Passover Meal the Jews celebrated God’s wonders which saved the nation from physical slavery in Egypt; how much more should we, the new People of God, celebrate the wonder of God’s love for us manifested in the gift of His Son to us and for us?  How much more should we rejoice in the love which Jesus had and has for us; that love which led Him to endure the Cross and to scorn its shame so that He might enable us to have access to and, in Him attain to, our heavenly home:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, Who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

This night Jesus rejoices that soon He will be able to lead a host of disciples into the supreme joy of the heavenly banquet in the Kingdom of, and before the very presence of, His beloved Father whose will, purposes, whose Person, He had sought so humbly, so patiently, so whole-heartedly as Son of man on earth to serve and glorify.

Dear People of God, Holy Mass continues, so live it, love it, and above all:

Do this in memory of Me.                                                                                                                        

Palm Sunday Year A 2017

PALM SUNDAY (A)

(Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14 – 27:66)

In Matthew’s presentation of the Passion and Death of our Lord Jesus Christ we heard some words that are not to be found in the other Gospel accounts:

Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its sheath, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword.   Do you think that I cannot call upon My Father and He will at once send Me more than twelve legions of angels?   But then, how would the Scriptures be fulfilled which say that it must come to pass in this way?"

Those words show us that Jesus was indeed, deliberately living His life ‘according to the Scriptures’, as St. Paul puts it, no matter what the cost:

I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Jesus Himself confirmed this explicitly when, after His Resurrection, He appeared to two of His former followers on their way to Emmaus, and said to them:

“Oh, how foolish you are!   How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!   Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into His glory?"   Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them what referred to Him in all the Scriptures.   (Luke 24:25-27)

Final confirmation that the Scriptures are essential for the fullness of our understanding of Jesus’ life, death, and Resurrection was most emphatically underlined when the Risen Lord appeared to the assembly of ‘the eleven and those with them’ in Jerusalem where, having first of all needed to convince them of the physical reality of His bodily appearance, He then sought to confirm their right understanding of Him in His resurrection by saying:

These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about Me in the Law of Moses and in the Prophets and Psalms must be fulfilled." Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. (Lk. 24:44-45)

Now the God and Father Who sent Jesus had prepared Israel, for some 1500 years through inspired prophets and the Scriptures, to become His Chosen People: as it were, a fitting ‘seed-bed’ where His Son might strike root, and a people able to recognize, to appreciate, and to welcome Him when – become Son of Man -- He was publicly manifested as Israel and mankind’s Saviour and Redeemer.

Our modern age, dominated and dazzled by science and its achievements, wants to approach Jesus in an objective manner, seeking to critically examine and test whatever words or actions of His it might feel inclined to investigate, and then to formulate and pronounce thereon a merely rational judgment: a judgment invalidated not so much by its rationality – because reason, after all, is God’s great gift to human kind – but by its impersonal character, both on the part of the investigators who in no way seek personal communion with Jesus, and secondly, with regard to their attitude to Jesus Himself Whom they regard merely and exclusively as an object for scientific study and critical evaluation, not as One, whose divine Personality and human perfection remain unapproachably mysterious until they are acknowledged with humility and sought-after in prayer. 

The whole purpose of the Jewish Scriptures was, as I have said, to prepare for and lead to Israel’s promised Messiah, the Son of God and Saviour of mankind; and they continue to serve a like purpose today.   For us Christians, the Old Testament is still alive as a channel of God’s grace; it is replete with divine treasures -- no longer indeed to be found in its legal prescriptions -- but in its divine portrayal and foreshadowing of God ever-and-increasingly-active among men for their salvation, together with its moral discipline and spiritual teaching for the gradual development of believers seeking guidance in their relationship with God.   The Spirit of God -- given provisionally and proleptically to Israel -- is now given Personally in the name of Jesus and with supreme fullness to Mother Church, and through her to all the faithful by her proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel and her celebration and ministration of the sacraments of the glorified Jesus.

A meeting between God and man demands of us a willingness to open ourselves up to Him, and a preparedness to relinquish self in order to receive fully His gifts and graces. Jesus, objectively observed and interpreted according to the narrow limits of our imperfect rationality and individual sinfulness, can never even be conceived let alone embraced in the beauty of His human fullness and the wonder of His divine goodness.  The real, true, and saving Jesus can only be ardently desired in prayer, humbly sought-for with patience in the Scriptures and the Faith proclaimed by Mother Church, before being lovingly embraced in the Eucharist, by those who, under the guidance of the Spirit, are seeking New Life, that is forgiveness, redemption, and fulfilment in Jesus through the total gift of self to Him.

On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus stood up and exclaimed: "Let anyone who thirsts come to Me and drink.  Whoever believes in Me, as Scripture says, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water."  He said this in reference to the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive.    (John 7:37-39).

Dear People of God, consider closely what sort of meeting you are seeking to set up with Jesus this Easter.  If you desire it to be a personal encounter of giving and receiving involving both heart and mind, then pray that with Mary’s help you may learn to recognize Jesus in the swaddling clothes of the Scriptures -- foreshadowing and looking for Him in the Old, adoring and delighting in Him in the New – and that you may thus be enabled to offer your gift of self, humbly and fully, to Him in the Eucharist, and also to allow His return Gift of the Spirit so to possess and rule you as to become your deepest joy and peace, the abiding strength and hope of your life.

                                           

Fifth Sunday of Lent Year A 2017

 Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

(Ezekiel 37:12-14; St. Paul to the Romans 8:8-11; St. John’s Gospel 11:1-45)

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Today’s Gospel, dear People of God, is both dramatic and deeply consoling, revealing Jesus to us in the power of His divinity and the tenderness of His humanity, and also – indeed, most wonderfully -- in the ineffable beauty of His Personal commitment to and communion with His heavenly Father.   And that St. John was well aware of all this is shown by the fact that the raising of Lazarus is the last of Jesus’ Son of Man miracles in his Gospel and, for that reason, of special significance and worthy of our close attention.

First of all we should note that the intention of Jesus to establish, confirm, and fulfil faith is paramount in all aspects of the Gospel account:

Jesus said to (His disciples) clearly, “Lazarus has died, and I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.”

Jesus told Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life; whoever believes in Me, even if he dies, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die. Do you believe this?”

Martha said to him, “Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, the One who is coming into the world.”

Jesus raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.  I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.”

Six times Jesus uses or calls forth the word ‘believe’ in our Gospel passage, before St. John himself ultimately tells us:

Now many of the Jews who had come to Mary and seen what He had done began to believe in Him.

All is indeed directed towards faith, first of all in Jesus’ chosen disciples through whom and upon whom He will build His future Church; in those very dear friends of His, Martha, Mary, and their risen-brother Lazarus whom He loved and whose home in the village of Bethany was ever open to Him, serving, when needed, as a place of refuge for Him; and then in the ‘crowd’ who had come to commiserate with Martha and Mary over their brother’s death.

When Jesus arrived in Bethany He found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb for four days.

Jesus had prepared His disciples for that but He had not been able to calm their anxiety for His safety since He was now back in Judea where the Jews had tried to stone Him.  The disciples were -- as Thomas said -- prepared to die with Jesus such was the hostility they had only recently experienced in Judea, but God’s agenda was quite different  from those their very real fears.   They would witness the glorification of God with Martha, Mary, and the Jewish visitors, and when their former oppressive fears for Jesus’ and indeed their own safety melted away into such a glorious dénouement, they would never ever forget --- as it behoved future apostles --- what they had seen.  The Gospel proclamation was about to be indelibly imprinted in them.

It is not easy to assess just what Martha believed about Jesus; as you have seen she did most certainly believe in Him, but somehow she seems always to have had too much to do, too much to say, too much to occupy her mind, for such belief to slow down her active involvement in whatever might be going on or being said around her, let alone to ‘stop her in her tracks’.   Perhaps her relationship with Jesus might be described as one of religious admiration befitting an awaited-super-prophet and miracle worker, a vaguely understood Messianic figure with, of course, a generous measure of personal ‘affection’; on the whole, a somewhat loosely co-ordinated relationship, very real indeed, but so very different from Mary’s simple and most humble self-demission before One Who was awesome in His power, but above all, mysterious in His Person.  Martha would do anything for Jesus, but she was not one to slow down, let alone stop, her ever-pressing and important work so as to be able to sit and listen intently at the feet of the Person of Jesus.

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw Him, she fell at His feet and said to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”  

All is now ready for Jesus to publicly reveal -- by a most remarkable miracle -- His divine power, first of all to His disciples and friends, to anchor their faith and reward their devotion and courage and to the Jews present awaiting the Messiah of God; but also to afford us modern Catholics and Christians, together with all those so very dear to Him who were present on that day in Bethany, a deeply comforting awareness of the beauty and integrity of His human nature by a most privileged -- almost secret -- glimpse into the depth and tenderness of His sympathy and compassion: 

When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping … He (Himself) wept.

He did that, however, in no foppish manner; for in line with the Vulgate translation we learn that when He saw their weeping:

 Jesus became perturbed -- not just upset, not merely distressed, but with a certain mixture of anger and indignation -- and deeply troubled.

It was in pursuance of such indignation that He asked to be shown where the body of Lazarus had been placed that there He might make manifest His determination to destroy the abusive power of Satan in the human lives of all who would believe in Him and learn to walk in His ways.

So Jesus, perturbed again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.  Jesus said, “Take away the stone.”

Martha could now no longer control herself and she gave agitated expression to her own thoughts and feelings and surely those of all the Jews around, saying:

“Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”   Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”    So they took away the stone. 

Martha’s ‘belief’ needed to be both deepened and purified; for the moment, though, her undoubted commitment would allow her to see and appreciate something of the glory promised by Jesus as she managed to take hold of herself for a very short while and wait for whatever Jesus would choose to do.

Saint Paul gives us a clue to the nature of that glory of God she was about to witness when he writes to his converts at Corinth (2 Corinthians 4:6):

God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of Christ.  

And indeed, what unutterable beauty, what other-worldly glory, was now to be seen on the face of Jesus as He:

Raised His eyes and said, “Father, I thank You for hearing Me.  I know that You always hear Me; but because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

He was actually allowing the ‘crowd’ to overhear/see, and hopefully learn from, His Personal relationship with His heavenly Father!!

And then, suddenly breaking off such tranquil intimacy:

He cried out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”  The dead man came out, tied hand and foot with burial bands, and his face was wrapped in a cloth. So Jesus said to them, “Untie him and let him go.” 

We are surely not erring if we allow ourselves to think that what was to be seen on Jesus’ up-turned face and echoed in His short prayer, was a transcendence expressive of the wondrous beauty of Jesus’ total oneness with and undying presence to His Father, of His unconditional obedience to and love for His Father ever seeking not His own will but the will of His Father and the glory of His Name … all that was, surely, even more glorious than the divine power so wondrously manifested when Lazarus came out -- still bound in all his burial bands -- from the tomb where he had lain for four days.  And again, dear friends, notice that, as we began so here at the end, all is for love of His Father and of us:

That they may believe. 

‘Believe’ what?

Jesus had told His disciples on His first hearing of Lazarus’ death:

I am glad for you that I was not there, that you may believe. Let us go to him.

That was further clarified when, standing before the tomb of Lazarus and surrounded by the accompanying crowd, Jesus prayed:

Father, I thank You for hearing Me … because of the crowd here I have said this, that they may believe that You sent Me.” 

Belief in Jesus as the One sent by the Father; that is the kernel of our faith in, and the true glory of, the Son of Man.  He is God the Son become flesh of the Virgin by the Holy Spirit; and His glory on earth lies in the self-sacrificing love of His proclamation and manifestation of the ultimate Glory of the eternal God:  the sublime oneness and goodness of the most Holy Trinity, Father and Son -- begetting and begotten -- in the unity of the Most Holy Spirit of Truth and Love. 

Dear People of God, we are most surely meant to draw strength for our faith, consolation, comfort, and joy, for our heart, as we ponder today’s readings.  For, in and through the temptations and trials, the difficulties and griefs, of living and ultimately, of dying, the most important question we will all have to answer is, ‘Do you trust in My love, do you believe in My power, to save you?’   And if in such a moment of crisis we can say with Martha, ‘Yes Lord, I believe’; if indeed, with Mary, we can trustfully allow any stone blocking, or ever-so-slightly impeding, the entrance to our heart to be fully rolled away and thus -- despite any fear, great or small, of what might be hidden there -- leaving the way to our innermost self being opened up wide to the saving power and healing love of Jesus, then, undoubtedly, we shall, as Jesus promised, see the glory of God and rejoice whole-heartedly and most gratefully for His Church our Mother who has taught us so firmly, so clearly, and so beautifully that,

                JESUS CHRIST is indeed for us PERFECT GOD AND PERFECT MAN.