Christmas Day Mass 2017

 Christmas Mass of Day 

(Isaiah 52:7-10; Hebrews 1:1-6; John 1:1-18)

War was never far removed from the experience of Israel of old; few indeed would have lived their lives without having experienced several war campaigns: not only those on foreign soil, but also those necessary to repulse attacks on Israel and Judah, or perhaps even to endure a siege where an enemy had been camped outside their city within which were crowds of refugees suffering from shortages of food and drink, and ever- deteriorating public health.

Therefore, many people in Isaiah’s time might have been able to recall an occasion when they themselves had been anxiously waiting in their city -- on its walls -- for news of an approaching threat: they would remember the dreadful occasion when they had first seen, from a distance, a long, slow-moving, motley string of people, obviously  fleeing exhausted, in terror and under a cloud of defeat; and they might still find themselves unable to repress a shudder as they recalled how that sight had first filled their hearts with fear and foreboding.

They might also have been able to recall those other, happy occasions, when a single figure had been perceived in the distance, running with vigour in his stride and joy in his bearing; a runner who, when within hailing distance, had shouted out glad tidings of proud victory along with joyful assurances of security and hope.   Then there was overflowing relief, gratitude, and a treasured scent of peace, perhaps only to be short-lived, but oh so, so precious!

How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who proclaims peace, who brings glad tidings of good things.

Such a messenger is evoked by Isaiah in our first reading.  What is the message he brings?  Isaiah has him report the supreme message of good tidings and joy for all Israelites:

          (He) says to Zion, "Your God reigns!"

Then he pictures for us those who had been watching on the walls running to the sector from which the messenger was said to be visible so that they might glimpse him for themselves; whereupon they would break out into shouting and singing, for it was no illusion, they could indeed clearly see the runner, perhaps they could even imagine themselves already able to hear him:

Your watchmen shall lift up their voices, they shall sing together; for they shall see eye to eye.

Finally, having both seen and heard the watchmen’s jubilant excitement, the whole heaving population -- crushed and crowded inside the city walls – bursts out, in one great sigh of relief and thunderous explosion of joy, into a paean of praise:

Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem!  For the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.  The LORD has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations.

The ultimate reason for such extreme jubilation, is that a victory has been won, and an enemy conquered; not, however, an ordinary victory over an earthly enemy, a victory that might be reversed when armies go out to war again next season, but a victory of universal and eternal significance and validity:

For the LORD has redeemed Jerusalem, He has (indeed) comforted His people;

and He has done this by means of a bloody victory, for:

          The LORD has made bare His holy arm in the eyes of all the nations.

It has been a victory of such magnitude that:

          All the ends of the earth shall see the salvation of our God.

And so, this ‘comforting’ of the God’s Chosen People is not to be understood in the exclusive context of childlike innocence restored and maternal tenderness; both are there, of course, in some measure, but this comforting of Israel is above all to be recognized as arising out of a titanic battle of momentous earthly consequence and eternal significance.

This means that only those can fittingly appreciate the Incarnation and receive the consolation of God in the tenderness of Mother Church who have been made aware, have become aware in themselves, of the prodigious contest implied behind such peace and joy.
  

All the pain and suffering, all the anxieties and torments of the world, all the hatred and greed, envy and jealousy of society, all the selfishness and indifference of individual human beings, is the result of sin .... sin is the most terrible enemy of mankind and indeed of the whole of creation, and only those who have come to appreciate something the evil that has been ruling in them, over them, and through them, that is those who have appreciated and whole-heartedly accepted the truth of repentance preached by Jesus and His forerunner, John the Baptist, only those repentant ones can fittingly and fully embrace this Christmas feast where our Redeemer comes into our midst, and the dawn of our redemption begins to appear on the horizon of history.

With such an understanding in our minds we can now allow the second reading to make clear for us the wonder of this occasion of which Isaiah the prophet spoke, and in which Mother Church now invites us to share:

God, Who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, Whom He has appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds; Who, being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His Person, upholds all things by the word of His power.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, Mother Church today announces this glorious news of salvation to us and invites, indeed urges and exhorts, us all to respond with heart-felt joy and acclamation to her news and her gift.  For she not only proclaims God’s Good News, she also bestows God’s gracious Gift: the Lord Jesus, our Saviour, Himself; and with Him, through Him, the Holy Spirit, ever to remain with us in Mother Church, and abiding in His faithful ones.  For, as the Gospel reading proclaimed:

(God’s co-eternal) Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld (and are called to share in) His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. 

How blessed are we who are privileged to perceive and to receive this salvation!  For, as John said:

          No one (absolutely no one) has (ever) seen God at any time.

It is true, John admits, that God’s Law had been given through Moses to prepare God’s people.  However, God Himself was only clearly revealed and truly known when:

The only begotten Son, Who is in the bosom of the Father, declared Him, (for) grace and truth came (in and) through Jesus Christ.

As you heard, dear People of God:

To which of the angels did He ever say: "You are My Son, today I have begotten You"? 

But, precisely, that is what God is saying to each one of us today, and this is the second and confirming reason for our great rejoicing.  To each and every one of us here with good will and in sincerity of mind and heart, God the Father is saying, that thanks to His only begotten Son Whose birth we are celebrating:

If you will hear My voice aright, TODAY I HAVE BEGOTTEN YOU.   I WILL BE A FATHER TO (YOU) AND (YOU) SHALL BE(COME) A CHILD (OF) MINE.

Isaiah had said:

Break forth into joy, sing together, you waste places of Jerusalem!  For the LORD has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.

And so it is today.  For all those whom the Father is now comforting and calling, all those He has chosen in His Son, cannot fail to recognize that we, like those shut up in the threatened cities of old, are indeed today in “waste places”: this world, even this our own society, is evil to the extent that it disgusts us, even though it also touches our heart, because it is our society, our world, besmirched indeed with something of our own failures and filth.  And, in this condition, lest we fear this coming of the Holy One of God to do battle with the evil and filth around us and within us, He comes as a Child, for He is well aware of, and full of compassion for, our weakness.  And surrounding Himself at His Birth with shepherds from the midnight fields He assures us that He Himself comes as our Shepherd, for He comes into our darkness in order to search out those of His sheep who have strayed and, disregarding the mud that may cover their feet and flanks, the thorns that may entangle their wool, He wills to take them up in His arms and carry them back to the flock which He is leading to a fold where His heavenly Father awaits Him, Himself looking into the distance, as it were to see the runner returning with good news, to see Jesus that is, His own dear Son, at the head of a flock He is leading with joy towards  the eternal pastures of salvation.

                                      

4th Sunday of Advent Year B 2017

4^th. Sunday of Advent B)

(2 Sam 7:1-5, 8-12, 14a, 16; Romans 16:25-7; Luke 1:26-38)

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, all our readings this week-end speak about what God is going to do.  David, you heard, planned to build a temple for the Lord:

When the LORD had given King David rest from his enemies on every side, he said to Nathan the prophet, “Here I am living in a house of cedar, while the ark of God dwells in a tent!” Nathan answered the king, “Go, do whatever you have in mind, for the LORD is with you.”

However, it was God Who would build the temple He wanted when – in accordance with His Providence -- the time was right.  Therefore, He sent Nathan back to David with this message:

Go, tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the LORD: Should you build Me a house to dwell in?  When your time comes and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your heir after you, sprung from your loins, and I will make his kingdom firm.  I will be a Father to him, and he shall be a son to Me.  Your kingdom and your house shall endure forever before Me.’

In those words there is a most important point for us to recognize and appreciate:  whatever good work we do for God is essentially dependent upon the intention we have in mind when doing it; but even when our work and our intention are both good, the attitude in which we do it can be of essential importance.  David was adopting a somewhat condescending attitude to God, therefore the Lord answered him:

          Should you build Me a house to dwell in?

A comparatively faint trace, you may think, of the original pride that led to Adam and Eve’s disregarding of God’s authority and providence; but any trace whatsoever of that original catastrophic evil left uncorrected would quickly sour David’s present zeal for the glory of Israel’s God and gratitude for His goodness; therefore, the prophet was instructed to make it clear to David just Who was leading and guiding, just Who was protecting and saving.

David subsequently lived long enough before God to gladly look forward, in his restored humility and hope, to the beginning of the fulfilment of the Lord’s promise through his son Solomon who did indeed build an earthly Temple for the Lord in Jerusalem.  However, that first Temple would be destroyed by the Babylonians after some 350 years  and was not replaced until a second and truly splendid Temple was later built by the wicked King Herod, who did produce a wonderful structure which amazed the world in its time but was in no way pleasing to God in so far as it had been built with the wrong intention, not indeed for God’s glory -- as with David and Solomon before -- but for the personal glory of Herod and the renown of his kingdom under the watchful eyes of his imperial overlords in Rome.  It was, however, the Romans who -- as Jesus foretold -- not only destroyed, but indeed totally obliterated, that symbol of Herod’s glory before one hundred years had passed. 

And so, God’s word by the prophet was looking over and beyond Solomon, for it envisaged Jesus Himself Whose risen, glorious, Body would become the ultimate Temple of God among men: a temple not built by human hands, a Temple wherein Jews and Gentiles without distinction would have access to the Father by the one most Holy Spirit:

The Jews said to Him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’  Jesus answered and said to them, ‘Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.’   The Jews said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days?’  But He was speaking about the Temple of His body.   (John 2:18-21)

Consequently, our Gospel was all about God choosing when -- in the fullness of time -- by Whom (His own Son), and through whom (the virgin Mary of Nazareth), salvation would ultimately be offered to the human race:

The angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary.  And coming to her, he said, ‘Hail, full of grace!  The Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!’ But she was greatly troubled at what was said, and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.  Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God.  Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son, and you shall name Him JESUS.  He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.  And He will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.’ 

It is God alone Who gives salvation and works wonders.  However, we are not excluded from His purposes for we are called – in Jesus -- to share in and contribute to His work.   Although the Lord did not allow David himself to build the Temple in Jerusalem, his desire to do so was most pleasing to Him, and therefore He rewarded David with great blessings, the greatest of which being that He, the Lord, would build David a house, and from that house the Messiah Himself, Israel’s supreme King, would eventually come. 

Now Mary had always wanted to give her utmost for the God of Israel, and therefore she had longed to devote herself completely by offering her virginity to Him.  However, such a gesture was almost inconceivable among the Jewish people who held marriage and childbirth in such great honour, but it was the only way Mary could think of that would give expression to her burning desire to belong entirely to, and totally glorify, Israel’s God.  Therefore, she said in response to the angel Gabriel’s good news:

How can this be, since I have no relations with a man?

Here, as in the case of David, her desire itself was most pleasing to God and so would be neither disregarded nor frustrated; on the contrary, it would be most sublimely fulfilled in the way God wanted: Mary could, indeed, remain a virgin; notwithstanding, she would bear a child, God’s Child, the very Son of God.

We find this pattern so often among the great saints, People of God:  Francis of Assisi longed to be a martyr for Christ, he even went to preach Christ among the Muslims.  Though God had His own plans for Francis, He did make him great and He even gave him the signs of Jesus’ own martyrdom: the stigmata!  Again, St. Therese of Lisieux most ardently desired to become a martyr, or else a missionary; indeed, she did not know how to satisfy her manifold and ardent desires for God’s glory.  God, however, wanted her in the solitude of an enclosed convent where she was to serve Him with whole-hearted love in each and every one of the minutely regulated, and very ordinary, details of her life as a nun.   For all that, He did love and respect her ardent desires, as is shown by the fact that He had her proclaimed as the heavenly patroness of all those living, working, and dying in the mission fields of Mother Church today.

My dear people, it is a fact that God alone does the work of salvation, for to Him alone is the glory and power.  Nonetheless, He wills to associate us in the work His own dear Son accomplished in human flesh and blood, to the extent that even the bread and wine we offer Him at daily Mass must be, and must be declared to be, made by human hands.  Moreover, God does not use human beings like tools; for, in Jesus, we are called to co-operate with Him as true children trying to glorify their Father, and that is the attitude we should always have as we work to do His will for His glory; for it is through such work that we are enabled to receive, by the Holy Spirit, a personal share -- in Jesus -- of God’s infinite holiness and eternal blessedness.

Since, in the work of God, there is absolutely nothing any of us can do of ourselves, therefore, none of us can excuse ourselves by complaining that we are less talented than others.  Whereas our natural physical powers and mental abilities are individual and strictly limited, our spirit, on the other hand, is capable of being tuned into the infinity of God Himself, but this can only come about, if each and every one of us, diligently and perseveringly, exercises our freedom -- won for us by Jesus -- to love good and reject evil.

The true criterion for a faithful servant of God is, therefore, the nature and the depth of that person’s desires and intentions. What do you desire most sincerely and, ultimately, above all else?   Do you, in all truth, want to make something of your life with and for God, to serve Him faithfully and supremely?  Do you want with most sincere desire to become a true Child of God in Jesus?  If you can say “Yes” to such questions, and if you can keep on aspiring to serve Him even though you see little of worth in your life … if you will keep on telling God of your desire even though He never seems to hear you, then you will indeed be used by Him for His purposes -- be they secret or manifest -- and you will become a disciple after Jesus’ own most sacred heart, and in Him, a true child of the heavenly Father.

Of course, that is not easily done nor is it done in the short term, it is a life’s work.  Today people expect to see results come quickly: that is part of the character of modern Western society; and when, in the spiritual life, things do not seem, are not seen, to come quickly, the temptation for many is to give up the attempt to live life religiously.  The advantages resulting from sin in the world are more easily, quickly, and intensely, experienced than the blessings accruing to us through devotion to God and constancy in the Faith; and consequently, though the wages of sin are ultimately pernicious, their passing pleasures can cloud over God’s eternal and sublime blessings for those who prefer the present delights of earthly solicitation to God’s promise of eternal fulfilment in Jesus, as beloved children of His in heaven.

There are other ways of succumbing to sin and the world, however, than by openly falling away from the practise of the Faith.  Some, yielding to pride, try, by subtle or by blatant means, to make themselves appear holy, to put on for themselves what they cannot wait to receive from God, seeking to establish a reputation in the sight of men rather than humbly persevering before God Who might seem to be ignoring them. Those, however, whose mind is centred on God, though they may, at times, be made painfully aware of their own nothingness, do not become thereby downcast or disheartened, precisely because their mind is always occupied with desires, intentions, for His good-pleasure and glory, and they are, consequently, always looking forward and hoping in Him rather than despairing of themselves. 

People of God, our readings today reveal to us something of the secret of Christmas joy and peace.  Let us welcome Jesus anew into our lives this Christmas; let us seek to serve Him humbly as King David learned to do, allowing Him to guide and rule our lives, for St. Paul told us that God is able to strengthen us by the gospel of Jesus Christ.  Mary, our Mother, urges and encourages us to follow the example she herself gave in our Gospel reading, when, abandoning worries about herself and her standing before men, she explained her attitude before God to the angel He had sent to her:

Behold I am the handmaid of the Lord! May it be done to me according to your word.

Than that, there is no surer way to experience the unique quality of Christian, Christmas, joy, which comes from the divine fulfilment -- by His most Holy Spirit -- of the sum total of our human potential; a joy that bathes us in peace while it heals our wounds of sin and separation by our human fellowship in and for Jesus our Brother, and by forming us as  faith-committed disciples of the heavenly Father’s only-begotten Son, sent to us and given for us who were destined and have been called, to become, in Him, members of God’s family in heaven.

3rd Sunday of Advent Year B 2017

 3^rd. Sunday of Advent (B)

                (Isaiah 61: 1-2, 10-11; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1: 6-8, 19-28)

 I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul; for He has clothed me with a robe of salvation, and wrapped me in a mantle of justice.

Who can speak like that?  Only the Christ, speaking of His humanity,

Like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem,

and the blessed Virgin Mother referring to her Immaculate Conception:

like a bride bedecked with her jewels.

The book of Revelation (19:7) gives us another viewpoint:

Let us rejoice and be glad and give Him (God) glory, for the wedding day of the Lamb has come, His bride (humankind) has made herself ready.

And the reason for all this our Advent rejoicing is because, as the prophet Isaiah tells us:

          The Lord God will make justice and praise spring up before all the nations.

However, the greatest of all the prophets who was uniquely close to our Blessed Lord Jesus on the very cusp of Israel’s fulfilment, found himself confirming Isaiah’s prophecy by making use of more sober language in order to reveal with all clarity a truly disconcerting reality:

I am not the Christ; I am the voice of one crying out in the desert, make straight the way of the Lord; for there is One among you Whom you do not recognize, the One Who is coming after me, Whose sandal strap I am not worthy to untie.

That, dear People of God, is the setting for our Advent preparations to welcome the Lord coming to His spouse, Mother Church, like a bridegroom adorned with a diadem:

            There is One among you Whom you do not recognize.

Dear People of God, look all around you this Advent time at the great majority of Christmas celebrations and you will have no doubt about the truth of the Baptist’s words:

            There is One among you Whom you do not recognize.

Why is Jesus not recognized today by those, so many of them, who were formerly professing Catholics or Christians?  It is, to a certain extent, because many have succumbed to the lure and enticements of popular sin, or have fainted or despaired under the burden of personal and worldly cares.

There is, however, another cause for Jesus being unrecognizable to too many modern self-styled believers, and that is because they are out of touch, unaware of and insensitive to the authentic Traditions of Mother Church … they are ‘undoctrinal’ believers, being entirely given over to and satisfied by the emotional feelings and convictions welling up from their just-me-and-Jesus-here-and-now drive, enthusiastically accompanied by others who much prefer to feel rather than to think about Jesus; who prefer to demonstrate publicly rather than to privately pray to God in the solitude of their hearts, or to consider calmly with other good Catholic friends, or (most unacceptable of all) to humbly seek enlightenment.   They make use of the Bible of course but interpret it popularly for themselves, as they will, as they want, here and now.

Dear Catholic People of God, we Catholics are the original Christians, members of the original body established by Jesus as His Church on the foundations of His Personally chosen and endowed Apostles, to whom He uniquely said:

I no longer call you slaves, because a slave does not know what his master is doing. I have called you friends, because I  have  told  YOU  everything        I have heard from My Father.    (John 15:15)

Moreover, He promised those original Twelve:

The Advocate, the Holy Spirit that the Father will send in My name — He will teach you everything and remind you of all that (I) told you.    (John 14:26)

Those original Apostles are thus the source of Mother Church’s essential doctrines and traditions, and it is absolutely necessary that those Apostolic memories of Jesus’ words, addressed Personally and directly to them as His personal friends for the good of further friends to come through their ministry, that those Apostolic traditions known from Jesus’ very actions and attitudes witnessed by their own eyes and heard by their own ears, remain intact in Mother Church today.  No one -- not even Pope, and certainly not Prince -- can sever us from Jesus’ love and guidance handed down through the ages in those Apostolic traditions and teaching.

There are difficulties today for a faithless generation wanting to justify itself and confirm its worldly popularity: it tries to confuse issues by subtly ‘updating’ texts, by teaching in accordance with modern preferences while, on the other hand, simply trying to consign to oblivion what cannot be thus ‘updated’.

This is due to the fact that (as Jesus Himself said, John 14:17):

This is the Spirit of Truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him. You know Him, because He abides with you, and He will be in you.  

The world cannot receive the Spirit of Truth because it does not, will not, believe in Jesus: 

And when He (the Advocate, the Spirit of Truth) comes, He will convict the world in regard to sin, because they do not believe in Me.   (John 16:8–9)

The Apostles, on the other hand, know the Spirit of Truth, because He now abides with them as the future Catholic (universal) Church of Jesus, and will be in them, individually, as faithful disciples of and witnesses to Jesus their Lord, their Master and their Saviour.

The season of Advent is a time of great expectancy, because we are looking forward to the coming of the Lord; and, being certain that His coming anew this Christmas will be for our blessing, we beseech His most Holy Spirit to prepare us to welcome Him with hearts and minds authentically attuned to Him in the Apostolic purity of Mother Church’s teaching and traditions.

We are also aware that at the appointed time -- we do not know when -- He will come in glory to judge the world, to triumph over all His enemies and cast out Satan; and then, after having ultimately established the Kingdom of God, He will lead all His faithful ones to worship, and rejoice in, the supreme Lordship of His Father. This is what St. Paul explained when writing his first letter to his converts in the great Greek seaport of Corinth (1 Corinthians 15:22-26):

As in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.   But each one in his own order: Christ the first-fruits, afterward those who are Christ's at His coming.  Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power.  For, He must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet; the last enemy that will be destroyed is death, for, "He has put all things under His feet." 

This season of Advent is, consequently, a time of joyful expectancy, because the true disciple of Jesus, although being fully aware of his human weakness and personal sinfulness, nevertheless, most assuredly hopes and trusts that, ultimately, he will be called to share in His Lord’s heavenly glory and experience eternal blessedness in His Kingdom, for Isaiah (40:10) rightly spoke of the Lord God coming to His People with an abundance of blessings:

Here comes with power the Lord GOD, Who rules by His strong arm; here is His reward with Him, His recompense before Him;

and therefore, even now, all true disciples of Jesus can take up in all simplicity, humility, and sincerity the blessing, the  reward and recompense, of rejoicing enshrined in Isaiah’s great prophecy: 

I rejoice heartily in the LORD, in my God is the joy of my soul.

                                                                                                                              (

2nd Sunday of Advent Year B 2017

 2^nd. Sunday of Advent (B)

(Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; 2^nd. Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8)

           

There is one thing, my friends, that you must never forget: that with God ‘a

day’ can mean a thousand years and a thousand years is like a day.

God is infinite, He is not subject to time; and so, the admonition contained in this morning’s reading from St. Peter recalls to our minds that John the Baptist’s preparing the way for Jesus around 28 AD., yes, and even the first reading from the prophet Isaiah which was first heard about 540 BC., are still as relevant as they were then: they tell us how, in this Advent time, to prepare to welcome the God Who is coming, coming into our lives to transform them, if we will allow Him.

‘If we will allow Him’, yes, Jesus’ message to mankind, His Gospel proclamation, is an address, even an appeal, to our freedom.  The time will come when He will be revealed as Judge and then, we will have no say in the matter, we will be judged according to our works; for the present, however, we are offered a choice, we can opt for good or for evil.  If we choose evil, or, let us put it in St. Paul’s language, if our choice of preference is for the flesh – all the sensible joys and pleasures offered to us by this world – if we deny our need for, our dependence upon, God and prefer to trust in the strength of our own right hand so to speak and the cleverness of our mind, we shall, St. Paul warns us, choose corruption and death, with all that they bring of pain and bitterness.  Make such decisions for pleasure and power in youth, comfort and profit in middle age, with immediately-to-hand advantages always being in view, and it will become a habit you cannot break, not even as those pleasures become daily more insipid and short lived, and the desired advantages prove ever more illusory; ultimately, indeed, it can become a habit so ingrained that there is neither pleasure nor advantage, or anything of that sort left to be tasted, nothing but unsatisfied self, thwarted sensuality, and bitter pride.  And the terrible danger, dear People of God, is that, having been destined for eternity before God, our denial of such a destiny will be no mere peccadillo but a deliberate anti-life option, and could indeed, even become a positive choice of death and corruption in a self-destructive fury of frustration and pride.

That is why the option for good is characterized as salvation: it is God saving us from ourselves, saving us from the powers of destruction which allure us on every hand with their seeming sweetness and deceptive promises.

Our Catholic and Christian Advent season is a time for truth about ourselves and about God, a time for sizing life up in all its aspects, for listening to and recognizing the deepest needs and aspirations of our being, it is also a time for youthfulness of spirit, looking forward in hope and opting for life in all its fulness, eternal life, in the conviction that by God’s goodness to us in Jesus we can attain it.

Advent is a time for divine truth, for listening to the voice which, as the Gospel said ‘cries in the wilderness’, a ‘still small voice’ that whispers in the depths of our hearts as we wander in the wilderness of youthful experience, a voice which urges us to give the Lord Jesus a chance in our lives, to prepare a way for Him, to make His paths straight, that He might come to us, enter into our lives, as King and Saviour; every valley of despair is to be filled in with confidence, trust, and hope in the Lord Whose Spirit  guides and sustains His People in all circumstances; no matter how difficult, painful, or shameful they may be.

Advent is a time for truth about ourselves, for every mountain and hill of pride and self-conceit to be laid low, for there can be no peace, no true fellowship or love, in the heart of a proud and conceited person centred on self-first-and-foremost, and every cliff of precipitous anger and violence must become a plain where justice, patience and peace rule, allowing the ridges of anxiety to become a valley of trust and contentment.

However, such blessings, desirable and admirable as they are, are not ends in themselves, for Christianity does not offer us merely a happier, but still earthly, life; it offers the truly authentic fulness of humanity where death no longer overshadows all, indeed, it promises that:

The glory of God shall be revealed (for us and in us), and all mankind shall see it.

Christianity offers the prospect of eternal blessedness and glory in God, thus making Advent a time of supreme hope, giving us a sense of belonging and significance in creation, and among our fellows of being endowed with a supremely beautiful, transcendent purpose: the opportunity of being a channel, an instrument, an influence for good which is able to face up to and overcome the forces of evil that wreak so much havoc in our physical world and human society today; and above all, Advent offers us the supreme joy of personal communion with, and eternal fulfilment in, the all-holy God Who is our Father, our Saviour and our Brother, and our most intimate Spirit of holiness and truth,  God’s Gift to guide and sustain us in the darkest depths and details of our life and being.

People of God, Isaiah tells us that:

            The time of service (slavery) is ended.

We need no longer have to endure being pushed around, hither and thither, by our fears and passions, by every passing emotion that froths up in the unending disturbances of life.  We can learn this Advent to appreciate and mould ourselves to the responsorial psalm we heard today:

I will hear what the Lord God has to say, a voice that speaks of peace, peace for His people.  His help is near for those who fear Him, and His glory will dwell in our land.

His help is near, indeed very near for those who experience time under the guidance and inspiration of Mother Church’s Liturgy.  For us here today, Jesus is about to come among us as we offer His sacrifice at Holy Mass, He will come into our very hearts as we offer ourselves with Him and receive Holy Communion.   What welcome will we give Him?  Not only our own lives depend on the answer to that question but the well-being of our modern world is likewise in the balance.  Welcome Him, every one of you, with all the sincerity of your joyful heart and trusting mind.

First Sunday of Advent Year B 2017

1^st. Sunday of Advent (B)

(Isaiah 63:16-17, 19b; 64:1, 3-8; 1^st. Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37) 

Our reading from the prophet Isaiah on this, the first Sunday of the Advent season, is a direct preparation for what is the supreme teaching of the Gospel and the ultimate realization and fulfilment of the purpose for which Jesus the Christ came among us as man: namely, the revelation of God as Father, and the re-birth by the Holy Spirit, of Jesus’ faithful disciples as living members of His Mystical Body and adopted children of the heavenly Father.

In our first reading Isaiah referred to God three times as Father, twice in the following verse:

You are our Father.  Were Abraham not to know us, nor Israel to acknowledge us, You, LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer you are named from of old.  

Isaiah was very conscious and equally proud of the fact that God was a Father to Israel; yet, what did he mean by that word ‘Father’? 

Let us now turn our attention to the Law, to the book of Deuteronomy, source of the fountain which supported and inspired Isaiah, and there we read:

Of the Rock Who begot you, you are unmindful, and have forgotten the God Who fathered you.    (Deuteronomy 32:18)

Then it continues in the name of the Lord (32: 21, 28):

They have provoked Me to jealousy by what is not God, but I will provoke them to jealousy by those who are not a nation; they are a nation void of counsel.

So, though the word ‘father’ is used, and even backed-up by the words ‘begot’ and ‘fathered’, nevertheless they are all used metaphorically, since it is all about the birth, that is, the calling, formation, and establishment of a nation from those who had previously been wandering desert tribespeople and latterly a persecuted minority of slaves in Egypt.  That is why when for the third time the word ‘father’ is used in our reading from Isaiah we hear:

O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay and You the potter: we are all the work of Your hands.
  

Obviously, Isaiah did not realize the full significance of the word ‘father’; and though he said: ‘You are our Father, our Redeemer you are named forever’, he showed more precisely what he meant with the word ‘father’ in the words that followed: ‘You are our Father, our potter’.   So we have it: the prophet himself was not, and could not be, fully aware of the meaning and sublime significance of the word he was being led to use when calling God the Father of Israel.

Nevertheless, as St. Paul said to his Christian converts at Corinth in our second reading:

God is faithful, by Whom you were called into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yes, God in His faithfulness guided His Chosen People over hundreds, indeed thousands, of years – surely that is one of the deepest reasons for our loving and trusting Him – and, having thus gradually formed Israel as a nation, He latterly encouraged them through His prophets, Isaiah above all, to refer to Himself by a word they could not as yet, fully appreciate. He then further guided His People and gradually formed their history so that those words of prophecy and traditional faith were finally shown to be true in the sublime beauty of their fullest meaning and significance when He brought about through Mary of Nazareth, the Flower of Israel, the birth in time of His only begotten and eternally beloved Son, as Son of Man, Jesus of Nazareth, for mankind’s salvation.

Yes, God sent His co-equal Son in fulfilment of the words of the prophet to save His People and all mankind from Satan’s power of sin and death.  Through faith in, baptism into, and obedience to Jesus -- the Son of God become our Brother -- we are enabled by the Gift of His Holy Spirit to become living members of the Unique Body of which Jesus is both Lord and Head, and in Him to become children of the One, true God and Father of us all.  That, dear People of God, is why you heard St. Paul exclaim in the second reading:

I give thanks to my God always on your account for the grace of God bestowed on you in Christ Jesus.

As we are now entering upon a new Church year, it is not only right and proper, but surely also most helpful and beneficial, for us to be aware of the ultimate goal of our life in Jesus under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, which is, that we should truly become children of the Father. Moreover, it is not only Jesus and the Holy Spirit who are at work in us, leading us to the Father; no, the Father Himself comes to us, as Jesus promised:

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

The Father Himself, therefore, comes with Jesus and the Holy Spirit, to abide with us and make us His children in Jesus, and this He does in a way that is unique to Him, that is, by showing Himself to be the most perfect Father to us.

The Father can contact us -- if we will hear and listen -- because He, our Creating Father, speaks to us in the very centre of our being;  good parents share this ability, although only to a limited extent, which is why certain words and attitudes of our parents can remain with us throughout life.  However, since our creating Father is able to address us through unspoken words uttered in the depths of our personality, and because, in our early years we had not yet learned to recognize His traces, early experiences of such communication seem to originate within ourselves and to be, unaccountably, ours: mysterious longings and desires, sudden lights and quiet convictions, protecting fears and simple assurance, all can seem to be very much a part of us because they come from the centre of our being; nevertheless, because they are, in fact, communications from the as yet unknown-to-us-Father, they remain inexplicable to us. The Father’s addressing us as His adopted children in Jesus only becomes intelligible to us by our walking in the ways of Jesus and thus beginning to share in His infinitely sensitive awareness of and responsiveness to His Father’s abiding Presence and loving Providence.  When many apparently unrelated events and diverse incidents come to be seen and recognized as connected and coherent parts of one embracing Providential care protecting us from our own sinfulness and weakness; when parents and teachers, friends and personal talents, come to be understood as aspects of the Father’s Providence guiding us out of our native ignorance towards truth and fulfilment; and when the past gradually takes on an overarching shape that gives meaning and purpose, hope and expectation, to our life, then the Father’s now loved-and-appreciated Presence is able to reveal Itself to us in glimpses reflecting the beauty of His truth in the Scriptures and the splendour of His grace in Mother Church, where greater certitude arises from presence rather than proof, and deeper knowledge from experience rather than investigation.  Then, indeed, amazement stuns our mind, while love inflames our heart and restores our soul.
 

In ways such as these the Father can speak to us in any situation and throughout the whole extent of our life.  No earthly father or mother, no lover, no friend, can speak so intimately or be present to us in such a way; because He is the God who originally made us in His Own likeness for Himself.

Yet, much more than that; for He would be our All not only in our origins, but also in the end and ultimate justification of our being, because He wants to be for us the perfect Father, such a Father Whom only Jesus can reveal to us, for Whom only the Spirit can form us, and Whose Presence we can encounter only as living members of the mystical Body of Christ, our Brother and our Head.  He is indeed, and wills to be known by each one of us personally, as our sublime Father Who is always there, with us, in us, closer to us even than we are to ourselves; the Father Who gives us to Jesus and Who, in Jesus, forms us for Himself by the Spirit.

If we bear in mind that, in the Catholic and patristic tradition, the Son and the Holy Spirit have been spoken of, figuratively, as the hands of the Father, we are now in a position to understand the true significance of Isaiah’s words:

O LORD, You are our Father; we are the clay and You the potter: we are all the work of Your hands.

Understanding the significance of Isaiah’s words and realizing that they were pronounced hundreds of years before Jesus, we are also in a position to appreciate not only the loving providence and sublime wisdom of our God, but also the fact that, as the most perfect of Fathers, He has indeed loved us before we were born, and continues to love us in such a way and to such an extent that, in return, we most surely can commit ourselves to His infinite wisdom and goodness wherever life may lead us or death o’ertake us, ever beseeching the Holy Spirit to inflame and inspire us in Jesus to echo, in perfect harmony, His sublimely Filial love, thanks, and praise to His Father and our Father.

                              

         

Christ the King Year A 2017

Christ the King (A)

(Ezekiel 34:11-12, 15-17; 1^st. Corinthians 15:20-26, 28; Saint Matthew 25:31-46)

Dear Brothers and Sisters Christ here at the end of the Christian year we have a Gospel passage which is often seized upon with great enthusiasm by unbelievers as ‘the do-gooders’ charter’ which is supposed to do away with all Christian, and most especially Catholic, religious doctrines, moral practices, and even any need for divine worship; for this Gospel reading, it is said, shows that all Christian waffle can be boiled down to one thing, easily acceptable to and understood by, men and women of all conditions and cultures, namely, doing good to others, whatever that word ‘good’ may mean.  And, of course, modern do-good-Governments with their vast resources do that best of all by legally making everybody equal, no distinctions based on sex, race, colour, or religion being allowed; for the world is mankind’s world, and though we did not make it originally -- indeed  it was not made at all, but just came about -- the main fact is that we are certainly making the world and our very selves just as we want them to be, independently of what religious believers like to call ‘nature’ or God’s will.  Indeed, mankind’s specially enlightened scientists are even now lining up other planets for our possible use when this one comes to the end of its suitability or adaptability.   However, the great difficulty for all of us do-gooders is that, at present, we can’t ‘line up’ anything at all for ourselves when we die and this causes deep distress and despair for many of us, especially when we just know our worth-living-life is dead even though our heart still keeps on beating.

Let us now, dear People of God, have a truer, closer, Catholic/Christian look at today’s Gospel where Matthew is presenting the Lord Jesus to and for his own Jewish-Christian congregation, comprising Jewish converts to Christianity, and Jewish Law adherents looking into, or on-the-way-to, Christian belief.

Matthew’s congregation knew all about the value and necessity of good works, for the Pharisees of the synagogue where so many of them were brought up cherished what they called ‘works of love’, and the six examples given by Our Lord were all included in the commonly accepted Jewish lists of meritorious actions: feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, showing hospitality to strangers etc.   But the Pharisees, those teachers of Israel sitting on the chair of Moses, were very conscious of those works of love as their works of love, and they built their hopes for a heavenly reward not on God’s mercy and goodness but on a calculated expectation that their ‘credit account’ accruing from such personal ‘works of love’ would surely outweigh any debits due to their transgressions against, or failings in fulfilment of, the Law.

Jesus, however, would have no such outrageous pride, no such lowering of their appreciation of God’s supreme holiness, among His disciples, and in our Gospel reading He presents those on His right hand as being blessed by My Father and inheritors of the Kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world.  Guided by the Spirit of Jesus, those disciples were not calculatingly aware of having personally done anything meriting such blessings – their right hand had not known and they themselves, not having closely observed, consequently could not remember, what their left hand had been doing.  However, Jesus explains to them in His parable:

Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.

Those who, on the other hand, failed to win God’s blessing were told:

Depart from Me you accursed, Amen I say to you, what you did not do to one of these least ones – brothers of Mine – you did not do for Me.

The criterion in both cases was ‘what you did – or did not do – to one of the least of these brothers of Mine’.

Now those ‘brothers of Jesus’ are not any-and-every human being as modern irreligious do-gooders quite hypocritically like to claim, rather are they those concerning whom Matthew had earlier (12:48–50) taught his congregation by quoting Jesus at His most explicit and dramatic:

“Who is My mother? Who are My brothers?”   And stretching out His hand toward His disciples, Jesus said, “Here are My mother and My brothers.  For whoever does the will of My heavenly Father is My brother, and sister, and mother.”   

All three synoptic Gospels report that particular incident, but Matthew makes it most intimate and Personal to Jesus by quoting Jesus as speaking not simply about ‘God’, but about His heavenly Father; while the gentle St. John’s accepted parallel is the most incisive and exclusive of all:

            You are My friends if you do what I command you. (John 15:14)

The ever-faithful St. Paul, for his part, takes that teaching of Jesus for granted when, writing to his converts in Corinth about their doing good most effectively and most fruitfully, he says:

As a result of your ministry, (the saints in Jerusalem) will give glory to God. For your generosity to them and to all believers will prove that you are obedient to the Good News of Christ.     (2 Corinthians 9:13 NLT)

People of God have confidence in the Gospel and Mother Church’s Spirit-guided traditional understanding of it, and do not let modern unbelievers try to high-jack it and turn it into their own hogwash: the Gospel, Christianity, our Catholic faith, is not concerned with making mankind apparently equal but with making all believers one in Jesus, sharing in His glory before His heavenly Father as complimentary members of the one eternal Body of which He alone is the supreme Head.  We are not rationalists idolizing manageable abstractions such as ‘equality for all’; we are Catholics and Christians, disciples of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour, aspiring to oneness with, and unity in, Him Whom alone we worship.

Dear People of God, St. Matthew gives us here Jesus as Universal King by offering us a ‘personally tailored’ share in His own Resurrection life of eternal beatitude in His Father’s heavenly Kingdom (we must use such earthly regal terms because they are the best ones we know able to open our hearts and minds to what is glorious and beautiful awaiting us), and we should now set aside all earthly distractions by concentrating our minds and stirring up our hearts by contemplating the wisdom and beauty, the goodness and holiness, the most sublime majesty and supreme power of Jesus, Our Lord and Judge, the King of the Universe.

Before that final and universal judgement, however, how do we experience, how can we proclaim, Jesus as King of the Universe?

We can do that first of all by recognizing the wonder of Mother Church spread throughout the world over nigh 2000 years; we can look upon the mighty empires that arose and fell in the course of those centuries, more especially those that tried to destroy her by, crush her under, their physical tortures and psychological terrors.   We can look at her unique endeavours to bring the various and distinct races, nations and cultures – in their very uniqueness and difference – into one worldwide body united in their love and worship of Christ their Lord and Teacher by the power of His most Holy Spirit enabling and empowering them all.   No doubt Mother Church has a long record of mistakes, failures, and even human wrong-doing; but precisely, she is made up of human beings not all of whom responded or are responding whole-heartedly to the teaching of Jesus and His Church or to the grace of His most Holy Spirit.   However, no body or organization is to be judged by its failures, by those who do not express truly their being as practicing members, such judgement can only be made on the basis of the quality of her healthy fruit, and by such criteria Mother Church on earth has no rival.

So therefore, dear People of God, read the history of Mother Church and her glorious martyrs from all peoples, read the lives of her innumerable saints in all their amazing beauty and glorious variety, look at the wondrous Cathedrals and Churches built out of devotion and in despite of poverty, temples whose glory all our modern money can hardly maintain let alone imitate!  Above all, however, dear People of God, to experience and proclaim Jesus as King, look into your own lives and try if you can to number all your blessings as a disciple of Jesus, one by one.

The Old Testament gave to Israel immediately a moral human law blessed with insights of divine truth which enabled Israel to produce that supremely beautiful example of humanity, the Blessed Virgin Mary, a woman of such wisdom, humility, unshakeable faith, decisiveness, amazing courage and totally self-less commitment (all those attributes fill my mind from her first meeting with the angel Gabriel at the Annunciation) that I am amazed.   She was and is indeed the glory of Israel and of the whole of humanity, a woman to be backed up – as was necessary -- by an Israelite, Joseph, a man of true humility, with a moral strength and deep piety that helped to provide safety and engender peace for those entrusted to his care.  

Israel of old produced and formed those two highlights of humanity but is was Mary’s unique privilege to receive, embrace, and indeed clothe Divinity Itself with her personal humanity.  And that dear People of God is our greatest treasure: Jesus, the Son of Mary, Who brings to us and opens up for us the most sacred beauty and totally unfathomable glory of Divine Life at its most intimate, a life of mutually sublime knowing and loving, giving and sharing, resting and ‘soaring’, resting and ‘soaring’.

I am sorry, People of God, that I must finish here; time is short and the subject is now overwhelming me, but, with St. Augustine, I hope that, where most opportune, God will inspire you by His Spirit to better appreciate and proclaim the treasures of our Faith in Jesus Christ the Universal King, our beloved Lord and Saviour.