4th Sunday of Lent Year B 2018

4^th. Sunday of Lent (B)

       (2 Chronicles 36:14-16, 19-21; Ephesians 2:4-10; John 3:14-21)

It must have seemed very mysterious to the People of Israel when, later on, scrutinizing the Scriptures in order to better understand and serve the Lord their God, they were faced with that bizarre incident taken from the history of their forebears journeying across the desert from slavery to the land the Lord would give them, that there they might serve Him in freedom.  It was, indeed, mysterious for them -- and unavoidably so -- because the whole episode has been found to be rich with meaning and significance not only for subsequent Israelites over more than 1000 years, but even more particularly for the whole future Christian people.  In the desert, several hundreds, perhaps a few thousands, of the children of Israel were saved by looking up at the bronze likeness of a deadly serpent; and that saving incident, interpreted for us by Jesus’ words in the Gospel, has carried and still bears with it salutary teaching for Christian people of all times.  For God, having sent the punishing serpents to do their work among a sinful and rebellious people, was subsequently able to turn that deadly instrument of His wrath into a saving grace: ‘look faithfully at the bronze serpent in sincere acknowledgment of your sin, and you will be healed of your wounds’.

For us now, Jesus says that God the Father has allowed His only begotten Son, His Beloved, to be rejected by the religious authorities of His own people and cruelly tortured, before being lifted up on the Cross by the powers and principalities of imperial Rome, and finally being left as an exhibit to suffer a slow and agonising death.  Can God turn that most brutal, degrading, and horrendous event to serve any good purpose?  Most assuredly He can, for love -- divine love -- was involved: for He Who suffered chose to call Himself the ‘Son of Man’.  As Son of His Father Jesus was consumed with divine love for us, while, as Man -- and indeed as our Head -- He loved His Father and our Father with the total fullness of His divinely perfect humanity. 

The complete answer to our question was made manifest when Jesus, three days later, rose from the dead; for then His rejection and suffering on the Cross was shown to have been but a prelude to, and preparation for, His sublime exaltation to heavenly glory in our humanity!

Father, the hour has come.  Glorify your Son that your Son may glorify You.  (John 17:1)

Look on the bronze serpent, raised up on high that all might be able to see it, and find healing!  The bronze serpent showed the cause of Israel’s suffering, for it recalled and represented the original serpent in Eden who injected the poison of sin into human life, for indeed it was Israel’s sin that brought on the punishment of those serpent bites in the desert of Sinai.  Jesus-crucified-on-high likewise represented the horror of human suffering from sin (not His own but His people’s); but Jesus’ Pasch did not end with suffering for it was entered upon and embraced as but the initial stage of His way back to His Father; and so it is Jesus, having returned to His Father and been lifted up in the glory of God by the Spirit of God, Who now manifests the healing power being offered to all mankind against the primordial and still enduring ‘bite’ of sin and eternal death.

The LORD said to Moses, "Make a serpent and mount it on a pole, and if anyone who has been bitten looks at it, he will recover."

People of God, it is not enough for us -- the new Chosen People of Spirit and Truth -- to look on Jesus crucified with nothing more than sincere sorrow decrying such barbarity, for many humanists pride themselves on such sentiments.  It is necessary for us Catholics and all who aspire to salvation, to look at Jesus on that pole of suffering not only humbly confessing Him to have been raised up there for our sins, but also gratefully acknowledging that that same Jesus – still in His human flesh -- has now been raised up on high in glory.  The Risen and Glorious Lord Jesus is the One to Whom we must commit our sinful selves with absolute faith in His promises of Divine Goodness for our salvation, and with unshakeable confidence in the dying manifestation of His now-eternal human compassion:

            Father, forgive them for they know not what they do

            Amen I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise. (Lk. 23:34, 43)

Only thus will we come to that living hope of which St. Peter speaks with such gratitude and confidence in his first letter:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who in His great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.  (1 Peter 1:3)

People of God, the message of Christianity is perennial, and it has been proclaimed implicitly from the beginning of man’s relations with God, and explicitly in the life and teaching of Christ and His Church: in order to reach the fullness of our human capacity for life, the fullness for which we were originally created by God and subsequently redeemed by Christ, we must leave our sin and sinfulness behind by faith in, obedience to, and companionship with, Jesus our Saviour, present to us and for us in and through His Church.

The alternatives are stark and irreducible: as shown, on the one hand, in the horror of the Son of Man suffering as Jesus of Nazareth on the Cross on Calvary, and on the other hand, in the divine majesty of the same Son of Man raised up to, and sharing in, the eternal glory of His Father by the Spirit of them Both.

Why must there be this utterly un-crossable divide?   Because of the divine beauty and unimaginable goodness of God’s love for us.  Our scientists search ever more frantically for other life-supporting planets such as our Earth.  There are none in our solar system and so they go ever further and deeper into mind-numbingly distant galaxies and stars looking for possible planetary systems to be found there … but nothing can be found like our dear Earth … for we are uniquely loved and divinely created in the image and likeness of God.  Profligacy in creation or indifference in our moral response to it are unthinkable because they are both absolutely alien to the beauty, holiness, and sheer majesty of Divine Love willing to express and to expose Itself in our fleshly being for our eternal calling.

St. Paul in today’s second reading guides us to the ultimate root of our faith:

God, Who is rich in mercy, BECAUSE OF THE GREAT LOVE HE HAD FOR US, even when we were dead in our transgressions, brought us to life with Christ (by grace you have been saved), raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavens in Christ Jesus.

Dear People of God, the great tragedy and the ultimate wrong afflicting and threatening our world today is ingratitude to, wilful ignorance and defiance of, God’s love for us and all mankind; above all, however, such ingratitude, ignorance, and defiance shown by nominally Catholic Christians!  The very first petition in the only prayer taught us by Jesus goes immediately, as did His whole life, to this most radical evil afflicting our world today: Father, HALLOWED be Thy name.

We all have to treasure our God-given faith most carefully as was explained in our second reading:

For by grace you have been saved through FAITH, and this is not from you; it is the gift of God; it is not from works, so no one may boast.

And I think it is essential in today’s climate in lands formerly Catholic and Christian (now delighting in a pseudo-freedom to sin and do whatever they want to proclaim themselves) to emphasize, in the words of Jesus Himself, what Faith really means for us, it is Life and Love:

Now this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and the One Whom You sent, Jesus Christ.     (John 17:3)

I am doing this because our second reading ended, somewhat unfortunately, with these words:

For we are His handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

Dear fellow Catholics, how ‘do-gooders’ who reject our faith, reject Jesus, reject the existence of any supreme God and any idea of everlasting, eternal, Life before God in heaven, must love that translation ‘that we should LIVE IN them’.  Those words are far too close to being what do-gooders would ideally want them to be, which is ‘that we should LIVE BY them’.

People of God, we Catholics do not live by good works, we walk in them as our Vulgate official bible, and the majority of the best modern translations also, translates the Greek original.   We live by the Faith explained to us by Jesus Himself and still proposed to us by His Catholic Church today:

Now this is eternal life, that they should know You, the only true God, and the One Whom You sent, Jesus Christ.   (John 17:3)

We walk in good works (of whatever sort God has prepared us for and called us to), ‘For we are His handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for (such) good works’.

Dear Brothers and Sister in Christ, may our lives, refreshed and renewed by today’s fellowship in and with Jesus our Lord, help Mother Church bring to fulfilment His work and our glorious legacy:

For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him.

 

           

           

3rd Sunday of Lent Year B 2018

 3^rd. Sunday of Lent (B) 

  

   (Exodus 20:1-17; 1^st. Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25)

Notice the confidence of Paul and the early Christians: they were small in number, poor, persecuted by the Roman authorities, and outcasts from what was, for some, their native Jewish society; but for all that, Paul could say, as you heard in the second reading:

The foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

Paul and the early Church were full of confidence in their vocation to proclaim and bear witness to Jesus the Christ, not only in despite of, but even because of, all the forces arraigned against them.  The power of those forces opposing them showed, as Paul tells us, the hidden might of the Gospel proclamation, so peacefully, so humbly, and yet so irresistibly drawing more and more followers to Jesus while continuing to solidly confirm and ever more surely establish disciples already experiencing suffering for the Name of Jesus openly before men, but finding themselves being secretly buoyed-up and born-along by a Spiritual conviction and peaceful strength in Jesus and before God:

We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

What pride and confidence they had in the Faith!  Those forebears of ours were totally convinced of, and boundlessly grateful for, the Faith they had been privileged to hear and embrace, and for the amazing fact that they had been personally called to witness before the world to the truth of the apostles’ proclamation of Christ, through the power of the Holy Spirit received from the risen Lord of Glory through the ministry of His Church on earth.

Now, if we are to bear witness to Jesus today, in our modern society which is largely secularised and unsympathetic to religious attitudes and values, we also must have confidence in our Catholic faith.

I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.  (John 17:14)

Our confidence, however, cannot be a worldly confidence which sometimes manifests itself as the brashness found in certain Jehovah’s Witnesses who come knocking and stand arguing at peoples’ doors; nor can it be, what is much, much worse, a devilish confidence based on a presumed personal holiness.  Our confidence must be a confidence in God, Personalized and shot through and through with gratitude to the God the Father who has deigned to choose and call us as disciples of His beloved Son Jesus Whom He sent among us, and Who now wills to bestow on us  His most Holy Spirit for the fulfilment of His saving purposes in our world of today.   People of God, without such deep and humble gratitude our confidence would not be Christian confidence.

Today, part of the failure of Christians to bear witness to the truth about Jesus is due to the fact that they are embarrassed by and afraid of the total simplicity and sheer confidence of St. Paul’s words:

We proclaim Christ crucified, to those who are called, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

They feel it is somehow proud and sinful to think like that; because -- fearing men more than God -- they don’t want to appear to non-believers as being disrespectful of other peoples’ religious or irreligious opinions.  What faith they have, therefore, must be couched in words that both irreligious people proud of their ‘logical’ thinking and self-satisfied do-gooders can find understandable and acceptable.   These are people who, at times, come out with plans and policies that are ‘logical developments’ of certain shreds of Christian teaching they might have retained or absorbed (e.g. Christian marriage is good; therefore, we should allow anyone and encourage everyone – be they heterosexual, homosexual, or trans-sexual -- to marry), while nevertheless totally rejecting any idea of there being a transcendent spiritual God relating to a human being’s personal conscience.  And being totally ignorant of, or unwilling to accept, the very possibility of any human spiritual life, understanding, or development, they have no comprehension at all of what Jesus wanted to say with such words as:

It is not right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.

            I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance;

Judas said, ‘Why was this oil not sold and the money given to the poor?’   Jesus answered, ‘Let her alone.  You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have Me.

Get behind Me Satan: You are thinking not as God does but as men do.  Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but who ever loses his life for My sake will find it.  What profit would there be for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life?

How sad and foolish for Catholics and Christians to be afraid to witness to and clearly express their faith because of such ‘logically-good’ people!   For, as I said, the confidence we must have is a confidence in God’s power and God’s wisdom, together with a humble awareness of our responsibility to live up to the calling He has given us.  The modern refusal to embrace such confidence is a sign of lack of faith in God, lack of gratitude to God, and also a most serious overdose of self- love which makes its’ sufferers afraid of stirring up opposition or receiving criticism from others held in public favour or holding popular opinions.

The glorious apostle Paul had no doubt concerning his own obligation and calling to bear witness to Jesus by his ministry:

I became a minister (of the Gospel) according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power. (Ephesians 3:7)

His fitness for the work of apostle was a gift; and that gift of the grace of God was not in any way exclusive to Paul himself since he proclaimed a like gift of power and fruitfulness for all true believers when (Ephesians 1:19-21) he spoke of:

The exceeding greatness of (God’s) power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places.

Moreover, the Word of God we are called to bear witness to, the Word we celebrate and meditate here at Mass every Sunday, does not, of its very nature, return to God fruitless, as the prophet Isaiah (55:11) tells us:

My word that goes forth from My mouth shall not return to Me void, but it shall accomplish what I please and it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.

However, God’s working in and through us might well appear to critical viewers as the foolishness and weakness of Catholics and Christians before it is revealed as the wisdom and power of God; and such a thought might incline some to tremulously consider whether, in our proclamation of Christ, in our work for Him, we should not seek, first of all, to ingratiate ourselves, to tone down, soften, our proclamation of the faith we hold in our dealings with others who either do not believe at all or who have a different faith to ours.  That is not the true Christian attitude.  Look at Jesus in our Gospel today:

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.  He found in the temple area those who sold oxen, sheep, and doves, as well as the moneychangers seated there.  He made a whip out of cords and drove them all out of the temple area, with the sheep and oxen, and spilled the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables, and to those who sold doves He said, "Take these out of here, and stop making My Father's house a marketplace!"

Jesus, quite clearly, could be firm, even -- as on this occasion -- forceful, whilst at other times He might be kindly, gentle, humble, or persuasive in proclaiming His Good News of salvation.  Never, however, will you find Him trying to ingratiate Himself or tone down the implications His Good News.  Likewise, only if our witness to Jesus is made authentic and strong by our forgetfulness of self and simple trust and confidence in Him – that is, in His truth unadulterated by any scheming of our own -- will it bear the fruit He wants from His true disciples.

The world we are seeking to serve in Christ is beyond our acceptance or understanding:

While He was in Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover, many began to believe in His name when they saw the signs He was doing.  But Jesus would not trust Himself to them, because He knew them all, and did not need anyone to testify (to Him) about men.  He Himself understood them (too) well.

Only God fully knows the mind and heart of man.  Jesus, the Son of Man, did not trust Himself to those in Jerusalem who proclaimed primarily their own authentic religiosity or who appeared to only reluctantly believe in Him because of some miracles He had performed.  Likewise, we must not rely on human words, posturizing, schemes or stratagems, for only God’s wisdom can guide us in our endeavours to promote the Gospel in our world today.  Our witness to the Faith has to be a proclamation of Jesus’ truth made in love and sincerity; we most certainly have no need to seek to ingratiate the Gospel, or ourselves, by trying to conform it to modern preferences or practices. The Faith we profess and proclaim is God’s gift to mankind; through faith in Jesus His Son, it is the supreme expression, and only authentic channel, of God’s uniquely saving love for men and women of all times.

Therefore, I encourage you today, People of God, to have confidence in God and your own calling: confidence in the wisdom enshrined in the Faith, confidence in the power of His Word to which you bear witness, confidence in His goodness and care that will, if you keep looking trustfully to Him, be with you all the way in all your Christian endeavours.  We must seek to please one only, God; and we can only please Him if we, first of all, have sufficient trust and confidence in Him as to be able to forget ourselves.  Then, under the inspiration of the Spirit of Jesus, we have to go forward in trust and confidence, and work according to the words of Jesus, seeking only the Father‘s glory and the good of souls.  And if, at times, because of our sinfulness and failings, we may need to try to curb or correct our personal character and attitudes in order to help our neighbours hear and recognise the Gospel of Christ, we must never think that the Gospel message itself, the Good News of Christ which is ours in the Faith, needs to be ingratiatingly adapted to what others may want. 

We should therefore hold close to our hearts the following words of St. Paul:

Bring to light (for all) what is the plan of the mystery hidden from ages past in God Who created all things, so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the Church to the principalities and authorities in the heavens.  This was according to the eternal purpose that He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in Whom we have boldness of speech and confidence of access through faith in Him. (Ephesians (3:10-13)

2nd Sunday of Lent Year B 2018

          2^nd. Sunday of Lent (B)                      (Gen. 22: 1-2, 9-13, 15-18; Romans 8:31-34; Mark 9:2-10)

Our Blessed Lord’s Passion and Death was looming on the horizon and He had already seriously forewarned His disciples of it; but, as in so many other matters, they were not yet able to truly understand and fully appreciate His words.  When the time would come for Him to be taken away from them, Jesus realized that it would be a traumatic and potentially faith-shattering experience for them, His great concern was, therefore, that they should be so prepared that they might be able to endure the grief of losing Him and even draw spiritual profit from His own steadfast confidence in His Father and love for them throughout His Passion.  He could not spare them that trial, but He would not have them agonize themselves and lose faith in Him because of it.

How then did Jesus go about this preparation of His disciples?  Considering His later Agony in the Garden, there can be no doubt that He prayed most fervently to His heavenly Father about it.   Let us try to learn something of the efficacy of that prayer.

The bond between her Son here on earth and His heavenly Father was something that the Blessed Virgin Mary could not fully appreciate, something that once caused her to exclaim: ‘Son, why have You done this to Your father and I?’  On that occasion, instead of returning home from Jerusalem with the caravan, Jesus, after having become ‘officially’ a young man-before-God-and-for-God according to the Law, had remained there in the Temple at Jerusalem.

After three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions (Luke 2:46).

Jesus was delighting in His heavenly Father, as He spoke about Him with the doctors and teachers in the Temple.

Years later, as a fully-grown man He went to search out John the Baptist ‘at God’s work’ so to speak; this was at His Father’s secret calling as is confirmed by His Father’s voice from heaven, for He the Father alone knew when and how He wanted His Son to begin His public ministry.

And now here, the Father, in answer to Jesus’ supplication, had plans to comfort and confirm His Son by sending Moses and Elijah – representing the whole of God’s dispensation for the sanctification of Israel through the Law and the Prophets – to emphasize for Jesus that His coming Passion, Death, and Resurrection would be the culmination and fulfilment of all Israel’s hopes and of all His, God’s, salvation plans for His Chosen People and through them, subsequently, for the whole of mankind.  Moreover, Jesus’ chosen Apostles there on the Mount with Him would see and be brought to experience this glorification of their Lord as the fulfilment of Israel’s Law and Prophets, before God Himself would speak Personally from a heavenly Cloud giving testimony to His beloved and supremely obedient Son. 

That those plans and intentions of God were fulfilled is shown subsequently by Jesus own words and those also of His disciples labouring in His nascent Church:

Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, (the risen Jesus) interpreted to them (two of His followers going to Emmaus) what referred to Him in all the Scriptures. (Luke 24:27).

(Peter said): “To Him all the prophets witness that, through His name, whoever believes in Him will receive remission of sins.” (Acts 10:43)

Jesus, most certainly, did not lead His three disciples up the mountain to display Himself; He simply knew, as Man, that He needed to pray; He also knew He had little time to prepare even those three chosen disciples for what was soon to happen, which is why He took them with Him that they might be near Him – as later in the Garden of Gethsemane -- when He was praying for guidance and grace.

The wondrous answer to and fulfilment of Jesus’ prayer on that mountain top, was His Father’s own manifest appreciation of Jesus’ longing to Personally give glory to His most Holy Name (John 18:11):

Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me?  

and also, through His disciples’ future vocational work as leaders in His Church for the Nations, to offer all mankind salvation in and through the proclamation of His Gospel and the bestowal of His Gift of the most Holy Spirit.

Jesus was aware that His disciples were, at present, rejoicing in the presence of their Lord: He was the Bridegroom and they were the Bridegroom’s most privileged friends.  However, such present, earthly, joy, though holy, would not be enough to sustain them through the trials that lay ahead of them.  And that, People of God, is something we should notice. Joy in the Lord based largely on emotional experiences would, most certainly, not be enough for Jesus‘ disciples, nor can it suffice for us: their joy, their love, had to be firmly established, as must ours also, on Faith, shot-through and made incandescent, with Hope.  Therefore:

Jesus took Peter, James, and John, and led them up on a high mountain apart by themselves; and He was transfigured before them. 

Now, however, as the three disciples looked:

A cloud came, casting a shadow over them; and from the cloud came a voice, "This is My beloved Son. Listen to Him!"

These words from heaven were given to root the disciples’ joy-in-the-Lord to the faith, proclaimed, by Moses and the Prophets, which had sustained Israel over many centuries.  For, throughout Israel’s wanderings in the desert, the presence of God’s glory among them in the Tent of Meeting had been manifested by a cloud descending upon the Tent.  That same cloud had also covered Mount Sinai when the Law was being given to Moses; and now it was covering the disciples here on the mountain of Transfiguration, and from it a voice was telling them to listen to the law of Jesus.  The disciples could have no doubt about the voice speaking to them from the cloud: “This is My beloved Son.  Listen to Him!”  It was indeed the voice of the God of Israel, the Father of Jesus their Lord and Master.

The disciples were sharing a vision of heavenly glory and they wanted to remain there, basking, as it were, in the glory of Jesus: 

       

Peter said to Jesus, "Rabbi, it is good that we are here!  Let us make three tents: one for You, one for Moses, and one for Elijah."

That was not to be.  For the present they had already been given what was necessary: a vision of faith in the heavenly glory of Jesus, and a hope that would inspire and sustain them in an insatiable longing to share with Him in His glory.  Now, to finally galvanize them to put on this new armour of salvation and prepare themselves for the great trauma that lay ahead they were given a command: “Listen to Him.”

Long ago, as the disciples knew full well, Moses had spoken of a prophet like himself whom the Lord God would give to His people (Deuteronomy 18:15):

A prophet like me will the LORD, your God, raise up for you from among your own kinsmen; to him you shall listen.

Those very words “Listen to Him” were now ringing in their ears!

Now, the disciples were ready indeed to descend from the top of the mountain; for their faith -- rooted in the faith that had sustained and guided their fathers for over two millennia -- had been transfigured into the Christian faith, and they had been strengthened with hope which no earthly trials could ever take away from them: for now they had a vision of Jesus’ heavenly glory, though hidden as yet from earthly eyes; now, they had an eschatological hope to look forward to; now, they had a divine revelation and commission to hold on to. From now on they would be guided and sustained in all their difficulties by a sure and undoubting confidence in the goodness of God, unflinching faith and trust in Jesus’ Person and commands, and unshakable hope in the power of His guiding, ever-present, Spirit of Love and Truth.

People of God, see and learn how to protect yourselves against the snares of the devil and of the world: delight in the heavenly Jesus more and more, for we are not mere moralists -- be they scholarly ethicists or ordinary/professional ‘do-gooders’ -- we are lovers and proclaimers of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour who trust in the traditional teaching of His Church and never give up hoping that the goodness of God will lead us -- if we persevere faithfully along the way of the Cross -- to share in the eternal glory of Jesus before the Father.

Trust the faith.  Trust God’s words as did Abraham our father in faith, who, as you heard, was tested by God saying to him:

Take now your son Isaac, your only one, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah.  There you shall offer him up as a holocaust on a height that I will point out to you.

How fearsome and dread did those words sound at first!  How wonderfully, how beautifully, did they echo when the Lord gave the boy back to his father, resolving to become Himself the Only One Who would offer His only-begotten Son for mankind’s salvation.   How wonderful are the blessings won for us by Abraham’s obedience and trust, he was and is most truly our Father in Faith!

Trust the Faith wholeheartedly and thus enable yourselves to delight freely and fully, and yet more wholeheartedly, in Jesus, for, as St. Paul explains: 

Neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.      (Romans 8:38-39)

   

Again I repeat: trust the faith, delight in Jesus, and thank God for His unfailing goodness.   In that way you will be armed both to resist and to overcome all that the devil and the world can try to do against you: 

For the joy of the LORD is your strength.  (Nehemiah 8:10)     

First Sunday of Lent

                    First Sunday of Lent (B)                               (Genesis 9:8-15; 1^st. Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:12-15)

In the course of history God made four covenants with men: the first was set up through Noah for all time and for the whole of mankind and indeed for every living animal; then there were three temporal covenants for the good of His Chosen People made through Abraham, Moses, and David; and finally, a fifth covenant for the eternal salvation of all mankind, established in and through His Incarnate Son, Jesus Christ.

You heard of the covenant with Noah in the first reading:

I establish My covenant with you: Never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood; never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth.

That was and still is an enduring covenant: never again will waters become a flood to destroy sinful life on earth.  Notice the connection between water and life in this the first covenant.

The terms of God’s covenant with Abraham were:

Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you.  I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. (Genesis 12:1-2)

And so, the second covenant set up a pilgrim people, a people called to set out on a journey towards the unknown, following God’s guidance in complete trust.   It was a covenant of faith.

You well remember the covenant with Moses:

Moses took half the blood and put it in basins, and half the blood he sprinkled on the altar.  Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. They said, "All that the Lord has said we will do, and be obedient."   And Moses took the blood, sprinkled it on the people, and said, "This is the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you according to all these words."  (Exodus 24:6-8)

This third covenant required God’s Chosen People to live in accordance with the Law given by God through Moses: it was, consequently, a covenant of obedience.

The fourth was that God made with David and his house:

When your days are fulfilled and you rest with your fathers, I will set up your seed after you, who will come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom.  And your house and your kingdom shall be established forever before Me. Your throne shall be established forever.  (2 Samuel 7:12,16.)

In this covenant we have the promise of a Messiah, a Saviour of kingly line, whose kingdom will endure for ever; this fourth covenant was a covenant of hope.

Finally, we have the fifth and eternal covenant which Jesus entered into on our behalf:

He also took the cup after supper, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:20)

A covenant of love, divine love calling for mankind’s return of love.

People of God, we must clearly recognise the wonderful wisdom of our God, for this fifth covenant includes all that had gone before.  Here water, used in the original and still enduring covenant with Noah, is now sacramentally associated with life again: no longer is it to serve as a flood to destroy the life of sinful humanity, but now water under the power God’s word mediates the gift of new, sacramental, baptismal life of the spirit for all who believe in Jesus.  Again, as with all true descendants of Abraham our father in faith, Jesus’ redeemed people are a people of faith, this time, however, of supernatural faith, ever on pilgrimage looking forward to and living for that which eyes cannot see, that which ears have never heard before, that of which the tongue of man may never tell the whole.  Moreover, this new People of God, the house of Jesus, is pledged to obey a teaching foreshadowed, and indeed prepared for, by the Law given to Moses on Mount Sinai, but now become a law, not of letters inscribed on stone tablets, but of grace poured into men’s hearts by the Spirit of Jesus and Gift of God, that they might respond to God as He wills: in Spirit and in Truth.  And finally, the covenant of hope in the line of David is most sublimely fulfilled in Jesus, the Son of God made flesh, the promised Messiah become our Saviour and Leader, and Who, by His Death and Resurrection, is able and desires to make of us a chosen nation, a royal priesthood, called to sing more beautiful praises of God than king David and all the Psalmists could ever bring forth.  This covenant of Jesus is a covenant of fulfilling love, enabling the Kingdom of God to begin even here on earth by beams of heaven’s merciful glory being reflected back in humble and total love for God by disciples of Jesus and members of His Mystical Body.

After John (the Baptist) had been arrested, Jesus came to Galilee proclaiming the Gospel of God: ‘This is the time of fulfilment.  The Kingdom of God is at hand.  Repent, and believe in the Gospel.’

How wise is our God!  How beautiful is the revelation which Jesus -- originally in His own preaching and now through His Spirit -- makes known to us in Mother Church and from the Scriptures!  Cleansing water bestowing new supernatural life called to set out on a pilgrimage from earthly sin and death to eternal joy and divine fulfilment; a pilgrimage along a way not of our own choosing or any merely human imagining, but one marked out for us by the teaching of God’s beloved Son Who – by His own Most Holy Spirit in Mother Church – both calls and enables us to follow Him along His way. 

However, dear brothers and sister in Christ, we must never forget that before Jesus proclaimed His Good News in Israel, before He set about healing the sick, enabling the blind to see, the lame to walk and the dumb to speak, He was first of all led out into the desert -- the devil’s homeland, so to speak -- to fight personally against the power and cunning of Satan.    Why?   Because Satan could not deceive Jesus!

Whereas the multitude of men are largely unaware of Satan’s presence and work in their individual lives and in society, in the case of this man Jesus, Satan was unable so to disguise and hide himself as to be able to stealthily worm his way into Jesus’ human psyche and gradually corrupt before ultimately destroying Him at his own ‘leisure’, pleasure, and will.  Satan was obliged therefore -- even though most reluctantly, for he knew there was something disturbing about Jesus’ ordinary appearance -- to try to overcome Him in a direct confrontation where and when he, Satan, was at his strongest, and Jesus, after His forty-day’s fast, would presumably be at His weakest.

Therefore, we, His disciples who aspire to further the mission of Jesus in our world today must first of all -- under the guidance of the Gospel and in the power of the Spirit -- enter into serious combat against our own personal sinfulness by sincere repentance, a repentance not merely to be pronounced by formulaic words but deeply experienced by a ‘humbled and contrite’ heart.

Have you ever read of, heard of, perhaps even experienced, true, self-sacrificing, love or heroism; have you ever listened to music or read poetry, seen landscapes or looked at paintings, of such beauty that afterwards – even though only momentarily – you most deeply, and even painfully, felt unable to ignore a humbling awareness of your own emptiness and pettiness, your own lack of love, innocence, and true worth?  Well, that is some slight, vague, but nevertheless true, likeness of repentance before God; repentance before a glimpse of God seen in the Person of Jesus and heard in His Gospel of salvation:

The Father Himself loves you because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from God (John 16:27);

a glimpse of God observed in the wonder and beauty of His Creation, and in a whisper -- barely heard in your heart of hearts – yet known as coming from Him Who is our true and only Father, calling you secretly and most persuasively to become a child of His now in the Jesus He sent for our salvation, and ultimately a member of His heavenly family by His Spirit of Love.

Let us all, therefore, try to follow Jesus in this Lenten season by making serious efforts both to resist, and – in God’s great goodness -- to overcome, sin in our lives, the only sure sign of love for God on earth, and the unshakeable pledge of eternal salvation thanks to the saving Passion, Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

6th Sunday of Year (B) 2018

Sermon 66: 6^th. Sunday, 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 who had been pronounced ‘unclean’ by an officially appointed priest because of a manifest skin disease, was obliged to separate himself or herself from society and live apart: alone, that is, or with other similarly diseased and therefore ‘unclean’ 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 who were clear of leprosy:

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 -- in the popular estimation -- as good as dead so far as normal society and normal human contacts were concerned.
 

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 missionary labours, as we 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.

For many of our contemporaries, however, this principle is neither clearly understandable nor readily acceptable; consequently, although as a divine principle it is for the common good, nevertheless, today, it is mainly religious bodies who alone have sufficient conviction to resist prevalent western hedonistic tendencies and doctrines, such as abortion, and homosexuality when accepted and presented as an alternative life style to that of heterosexual love and marriage.  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 as an optional and sexual life style -- as distinct from being personally recognised and accepted as a preferred emotional, but non-sexual, relationship (as was the case with David and Jonathon in the Old Testament) -- satisfies only the passions of the individuals concerned at the expense of society which is thereby debilitated and frustrated, as modern experience in this country and abroad shows.

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 Elijah in the second book of the Kings (5:6-7) 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.’

Now, St. Mark in our Gospel reading told us that:

A leper came to Jesus, and kneeling down begged Him and said, "If You wish, You can make me clean."  Moved with pity, He stretched out His hand, touched him, and said to him, "I do will it.  Be made clean."

Here we can recognise the faith which sustained the leper; for, risking public disapproval and official punishment, he sought Jesus out and, with humble confidence and faith, cried: ‘If You wish, You can make me clean’.  In response, Jesus -- powerful in word and deed -- reached out and, touching the man, said “I do will it”, whereupon the man was completely cleansed of his leprosy.  Learning from that short Gospel incident we can, in a certain measure, take to ourselves those words of the letter to the Hebrews (11:3):

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

For, that creative word of Jesus is expressive of the very essence of God, and it helps us  understand why, in Mother Church, we have sacraments given us by Our Lord, the Word of God made flesh, consisting of words and specific actions -- symbolic of divine grace and human agency – reminiscent of Jesus healing the leper by His divine word of power whilst at the same time stretching out His human hand to physically touch him.

If we continue to look more closely at Jesus, trying to understand and learn from His human attitude, it can 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.

According to the Torah -- the God-given law binding all practising Jews -- anyone affected by leprosy was, as you have heard, to be pronounced unclean by a priest and banished from society.  Likewise, on being healed (should that ever occur), such a person would then have to present himself again before a priest in order to be officially recognised and pronounced clean, whereupon he or she would be authorized to come back into human society.  Therefore, as you heard, Jesus told the man He had healed to go to a priest, adding 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 their official authority, whilst, at the same time, it would bring to their attention the fact that here was Someone Who, by His very word, could cure leprosy; cure, that is, what for centuries had been recognised as incurable by mere men.

However, as you heard:

The man went away and began to publicise 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 told him to keep quiet about the cure and the man began to talk freely about it. Since it was a matter of his own personal health being restored and his own great distress relieved, one can easily think up excuses for him; but, in fact, his publicising of the cure made things much more difficult for Jesus, because it meant that:

It was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside in deserted places.

Before this incident the leper had been obliged to remained in deserted places outside ordinary villages, towns and cities, Jesus had cured him and now the former leper was free to mingle with men while Jesus had apparently taken the man’s leprosy upon Himself being unable continue His saving mission in the towns and villages of that area.

That incident is again a helpful insight for us in our understanding of Our Blessed Lord Who later on, dear People of God, would even become ‘sin’ and ‘a curse’ for our sakes!!

For He (God) made Him Who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.   (2 Corinthians 5:21)

Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’).    (Galatians 3:13)

Jesus had come to cure the whole of 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, he must talk of what had happened to himself; and, as a result of such forbidden praise of his Healer, Jesus, we are told, found it:
 

 Impossible to enter a town openly.

Of course, people today like to think that because the man was obviously so grateful to Jesus, so happy in his new-found health, he is therefore not to be blamed.  But in fact, although that man’s ignorance of Jesus’ overall purpose is perfectly understandable and blameless, the fact that He ignored Jesus’ express command to ‘keep quiet’ turned out to be not only reprehensible for him personally, but positively damaging for others. because He -- the Healer, the Master -- was no longer able to continue His healing, saving, mission in that vicinity.

What unknown harm, People of God, do our sins, our failures to obey the Lord’s commands in our lives, cause for others in need of God’s saving help and strength?

At this point we should call to mind Our Blessed Lord’s words which explain His own Personal attitude in all such matters of obedience, an attitude that would lead Him to embrace death out of loving obedience to His Father and for our salvation (John 12:50):

I know that His (My Father’s) commandment is eternal life!
  

People of God, Jesus came to take away the sins of the world, and our personal needs and desires are but miniscule elements, however important to us, in 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 our brethren.

As in the case of today’s cured-leper, often enough in the lives of the faithful, individuals can rise to occasional situations that seem to evoke from them memorable actions and/or words which are subsequently seen as worthy of praise and admiration by others; but the steadfast and almost unnoticeable-to-men obedience which God wants above all, calls for a moral strength, a humble selflessness, and a devout faith of a much superior order, which, far from meeting with human praise and approval, often enough leads to remarks such as ‘how boring your life must be’ or ‘I would find such a life terribly frustrating’; and such attitudes from those around can all too often lead Catholics and Christians as yet only learning to become true disciples of Jesus to feel themselves to be nobodies, only asked for simple prayers, only capable of a modicum of ordinary and very routine sacrifices ….  and how the imaginations of modern life-seekers, and alas, even some modern God-seekers, want to fly higher than that! 

Because we are too self-centred, we therefore need to constantly remind ourselves that none can cure mankind’s  malady of sin but Jesus the Christ, sent by God His Father for that specific purpose, Who is ceaselessly at work by His Spirit in and through His Church; and if we want to be His co-workers, become faithful instruments to bring about His purposes, we have to cease thinking about, seeking for, some niche that might be rich in acclaim for ourselves, and resolutely seek only His glory, await patiently His will, proclaim always His goodness.

Our modern Western society is so ostentatiously committed to human rights -- the rights of the individual -- that the good of the whole is easily overlooked; and the result of this is that individuals can become in some measure out of control, to the detriment of both the security and the cohesion of society as a whole.  This is the case because individual rights are only valid to the extent that 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 unable to support the continuing viability of its member nations: several of which are dying out, dying on their feet, so to speak.   Again, lack of discipline in our schools -- due in no small degree to the slavish application of what are thought to be human rights for children who are as yet unable to appreciate that rights and duties are inevitably co-related -- is leading to an educational and social crisis, because any educational system that is not able to teach its children and students self-control and personal responsibility by the imposition of recognized and necessary discipline cannot produce true citizens.  Indeed, such a system is liable to turn out a number of young adults who are a potential danger to their neighbours and to society as a whole, because their emotions are not sufficiently subject to control, and the only rights they are aware of are their own ‘personal’ rights, rights which -- they like to think -- should in no way be restricted or overruled by any ‘supposed rights’ of the larger body of society. 

In His time Jesus was regarded as a rebel because He was never intimidated by the expectations of contemporary popular thinking nor by the pressures of self-serving officialdom; and we, as His disciples, should likewise practice independence from the pagan attitudes of people around us whilst maintaining, with Him, a right humility before lawful authorities established for the good governance of society.  Throughout His life Jesus recognized His Father as the exclusive ruler over all the decisive events of His life on earth, as the only guide for all His Personal attitudes, and as the supreme goal for all His Personal actions and decisions.  And so for us, the good of the individual, though necessary for the good of the whole, is nevertheless subordinate to that good of the whole, a subordination that is not always recognized or proclaimed by modern society. And that balanced good is an integral and necessary part of the true and ultimate good prescribed and wanted by God the Father and proclaimed by Our Lord Jesus Christ; a good that we, as living members of His Body, have to seek, work and pray for, in the power and under the inspiration of His most Holy Spirit.