24th Sunday of Year C 2013

24^th. Sunday of Year (3)

(Exodus 32: 7-11, 13-14; 1Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10)

In today’s Gospel reading we are told that Our Blessed Lord was aware – did He just know their hearts or hear some whispered words? – of certain Pharisees and scribes criticising His attitude toward a number of tax-collectors and other publicly known sinners who, as distinct from last Sunday’s ‘great crowds’ just traveling with Jesus, were in fact:

            All drawing near to listen to Him.

 

We are all aware of the dangers of consorting carelessly with unprincipled people, and so Jesus did not rebuke them for their thoughts directly; instead, He spoke to them as to men with understanding and good judgement:

What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?

Now Jesus was, at that very moment -- according to the criticisms of the Pharisees and scribes -- giving too much, and too close, attention to those tax-collectors and sinners, whilst leaving the very important flock of devout Pharisees and learned scribes out of consideration; leaving them, as it were, to continue finding their own pasture on the heights of Israel (the desert in our story) under the watchful eyes of friendly shepherds (the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets).

However, Jesus was not seeking to antagonize the Pharisees and scribes and so He addressed them directly as possible owners of a considerable flock, not as mere shepherds who were lowly esteemed for their religious fidelity.  Now, for prudent owners -- even though one sheep out of a flock of one hundred is numerically little enough -- nevertheless, one hundred is a perfect number and ninety-nine is not, and so, one sheep, perhaps not so very important of itself, could still be missed as part of the flock.

In such a way Jesus’ opening words could have drawn muted assent from even such critically disposed listeners, and He could reasonably have hoped further that they might be able, tacitly at least, to continue to identify with Him when He went on to say:

And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home ... says, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep!

Yes, the Pharisees and scribes could appreciate such a little parable and agree with the sentiments thus far expressed; but there was perhaps one thought that might trouble them somewhat: ‘Who is this fellow comparing us – devout and learned as we are – with mere sheep; not perfect, as a flock, without this one lost  sheep?’  And now, Jesus, the Master, showing His divine wisdom, suddenly changed His earthly ‘pastorale’ into a heavenly apostrophe:

I tell you, in just the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

It was a passing dart that Jesus hoped, indeed, would sting, but again it was not a face-to-face confrontation, for He went on immediately to address another parable to them telling of the deep but simple joy of a woman on finding again  her loved-and-lost coin, with no mention whatsoever, this time, of any righteous people having no need of repentance.

Let us, now, look a little more closely at the wording of Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep:

I tell you, in just the same way, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.

He says, in just the same way because of the saving Shepherd in both cases: the earthly shepherd had gone in search of the lost sheep and, on finding it, carried it on his shoulders back to the flock; and corresponding to that, we have the picture of another Shepherd, this time a heavenly one, Jesus, and the sinners gathering round Him to hear His words; sinners who -- despite appearances -- were not, of themselves, initiating a search for Jesus, but were, even to their own possible embarrassment, actually being drawn by the Spirit to Jesus.

In just the same way, and in each case, the lost sheep grazes until the shepherd  finds what was lost

There however the parallel stops, for Jesus goes on to speak in His last four words of a ‘lost sheep’ which actually participates in its own rescue and return:

there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents.

That is the difference between a lost sheep and a lost human being, a human being can repent on being ‘found’ by Jesus, which means, of course, that repentance is the result of an encounter with Jesus, an appreciation of and response to the divine beauty, goodness, and truth shining on the  human face of Jesus.  For only the experience of holiness can convict someone of their own sinfulness, only beauty can enable another to appreciate and acknowledge their own ugliness, and only innocence and simplicity can lead a liar to hate their own duplicity.

Now, the greatest charge against the Pharisees and scribes complaining against Jesus was precisely the fact that, by constant and carping criticism, they were their closing their hearts and minds to His patent beauty and truth, goodness and humility; ‘patent’ I say, because recognized and sought out -- against themselves and their own immediate interests -- by tax-collectors and public sinners.

This is a most important lesson for us Catholic Christians to learn today; for we are now being called to account for our faith in times when our governments -- the United Kingdom, the United States, and, of course, France -- are abandoning or have long abandoned their Christian heritage in favour of self-proclaiming scepticism and rationalism, and are even openly advocating the arming of rebels in Syria regardless of their sectarian fanaticism and known enmity towards Christians living where Christians have always lived and first proclaimed Jesus as Lord.  

In our account for our faith it is not Christian dogma that needs to be quoted, even though that is the backbone of our life and the substance of our hope; it is not the superiority of basic Christian morality as taught by the Church  -- though that is undoubtedly the case over the course of history and when sincerely studied and objectively appreciated  What is needed above all for an up-to-date and effective ‘account’ of our Faith is living, personal, witness: witness, that is, to the joy and peace, strength and inspiration, each of us, as individual Catholics, finds in our experience of Jesus Himself, and in the beauty and strength of His truth in our appreciation of life and the experience our sufferings.

Toward that end, let us learn from today’s Gospel, and endeavour -- with those tax-collectors and sinners -- to draw daily ever closer to Jesus in our appreciation of the fact that the Good News we proclaim is His Good News: Good News embodied in His Person and in the salvation He brings and offers us; Good News to be lived in the power of His Spirit for the Father Who sent Him and Who calls us in Him.  

Dear People of God, draw ever closer to Jesus by reading the Scriptures with Him in view, above all read the Gospels which proclaim His words and recount His deeds; draw close, however, not so much by remembering words that can be used in arguments but by a whole-hearted appeal to His Spirit, in the Church and within you personally, for enlightenment and power that you might fully appreciate and respond to His unique expression of divine love and eternal truth.

24th Sunday of Year C 2013

24^th. Sunday Year (C)

(Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10)

People of God, you may have felt today's Gospel parable to be somewhat unfair and consequently rather difficult to appreciate:

I tell you there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

However, the second word-picture Jesus went on to paint for us was much easier to understand.  In it we learned of a woman who had lost one silver coin, a notable part of what little wealth she had, and we were told that:

When she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbours together, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I lost!'  In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

As I said, I think we can easily understand that example of joy in heaven over one sinner repenting.  Why therefore did Jesus deliberately choose, in His first little parable, to speak in such a way as to make His point more difficult and appear somewhat unfair?  Was He trying to shock, and if so, why?  Let us recall the beginning of our Gospel passage:

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

So we can see who Jesus was seeking to shock: those Pharisees and scribes who were watching Him at some little distance and who, in their critical thoughts, were comparing themselves most favourably with the ‘rabble’ crowding around Jesus to see Him and hear His words:

I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

What is the joy of heaven?   Catholic theology tells us that heaven is where God is all in all; and where the Holy Spirit of love -- proceeding from the Father to embrace the Son, and, flowing back from the Son in acknowledgment of His Father -- is the bond of unity whereby the three Divine Persons are one God.  The Father's love for the Son in the Spirit is the source of all joy in heaven and life on earth.

Behold!   My Servant (My Son) in whom My soul delights!   I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. (Isaiah 42:1)

The Father willed to make manifest His love for His Son when, at Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, He declared in the hearing of John the Baptist: 

This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased (Matthew 3:7),

and then – this time on the Mount of Transfiguration – the Father’s voice rang out once more from the overshadowing cloud and said to Peter, James, and John:

This is My beloved Son, listen to Him! (Mark 9:7)

For His part, Jesus -- speaking not openly but to the intimate circle of His Apostles -- several times mentioned the bond of love uniting Himself to the Father:

The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.

The Father and I are one.  (John 3:35; 10:30)

So, People of God, there is only one Holy Spirit of love, one joy, one rejoicing, in Heaven, it is the love of the Father, rejoicing, delighting, in His Son, it is the love of the Son responding wholeheartedly to His Father, by the Spirit.  Therefore, when we hear Jesus say:  There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who have no need of repentance,

He is speaking of the Father's rejoicing because one sinner has come to repentance through Jesus; that is, because one sinner, by acknowledging and repenting of his own sin and turning to Jesus, has rejected any self-righteousness of his own and become – by the Spirit -- clothed in the righteousness of Jesus.  The Father rejoices in heaven over one sinner who has thus been transformed and reformed into the likeness of Christ and has become, thereby, a son in the beloved Son.  St. Paul puts is very clearly for us (Philippians 3:8-9):

I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 

God the Father does not delight in any way over people who, considering themselves ‘to have a righteousness of their own coming from their observance of whatever law’, consequently think they have no need to put on the wedding garment of the righteousness of Christ in order to enter the great feast in God’s heavenly Kingdom; and yet, as I have just said, the Father's love for the Son in the Spirit is the originating source, the total fullness and fulfilment of all joy in heaven.

Jesus said to the Pharisees, You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.  (Luke 16:15)

John the Baptist, prepared the way for Jesus by preaching in the wilderness of Judea:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  (Matthew 3:1-2)

And Jesus Himself began His public ministry in a like manner:

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’   (Matthew 4:17)

And this call to repentance by Jesus was so urgent and so essential that He once declared in Jerusalem:

Unless you repent, you will all perish. (Luke 13:5)

Now that was not meant just for the inhabitants of Jerusalem of those days; no, it is meant for all mankind as St. Peter, at the very beginning of Mother Church's proclamation of Jesus, made totally clear:

Let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.  This is the 'stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.'   Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:10-12)

Repentance means, however, much more than just sorrow for the past; it requires a change for the future, as John the Baptist had told those who came to him:

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. (Luke 3:8)

Sincere repentance for the past, John warned, must also involve something he described vaguely as "bearing fruits” for the future.  Since John was only preparing the way for Jesus, having reached this point he could proceed no further, it only remained for him to seal his witness by his death. 

Jesus took up John’ legacy and advanced to where John could not go.  Focusing His mission on calling ‘sinners to repentance’ (Luke 5:32), He showed clearly what John's vague words ‘fruits for repentance’ really meant, for the theme of Jesus' public ministry was to be:

Repent and believe the Good News. (Mark 1:15)

There can be no Gospel repentance without fruits arising from faith in Jesus, for God gives us the grace of repentance for our past, sin-scarred, lives in order to bestow on us the supreme gift of faith, whereby we aspire to live our future in loving witness and obedience to the Person and teaching of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, that is, as sons in the Son, by the Spirit, for the Father. For what is faith but a total self-abandonment, and -- in the power of the Spirit – commitment, to the overwhelming goodness of God revealed to us in beauty on the face and truth on the lips of Christ Jesus our Lord?

People of God, all this is implied by, and contained in, those "shocking" words of Jesus:

There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need repentance. 

How wonderfully wise is God!  How full of meaning and life are the Scriptures!  One apparently shocking passage containing so much heavenly beauty and saving truth!

We have rightly gathered here today to praise and glorify God for His wondrous goodness to us in Jesus.   And, having begun to appreciate the beauty of His wisdom, we must also seek to learn from His truth; for the fact is that Jesus came, as He Himself said, to call not those self-styled, so-called, virtuous ones, approved and accepted according to worldly standards, but those who were -- in their own eyes and before God -- sinful and desperately sick.

People of God, we are not holy, none of us; let us therefore learn from divine wisdom and accept that God rejoices not in any ‘home-spun’ holiness of ours, but exclusively in our grace-enabled rejection of self and love for Jesus.  The only holiness that rejoices the Father is likeness to His Son, Jesus; a holiness which originally comes to us as an undeserved gift, but one in which we can share and gradually appropriate to ourselves in some measure by means of a life of true faith and loving obedience.

Our first Catholic and Christian duty, therefore, is to come before God in a spirit of repentance and offer Him the only acceptable worship, the worship Jesus first offered on our behalf and for our salvation on Calvary, the worship He continues to offer Personally in heaven and sacramentally at every Mass here on earth, the worship of His own sacrifice-of-Self-for-Love.   Therefore we should always come to Mass to offer: Jesus, in the first place, for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind, and then ourselves -- in and with Jesus -- to the Father; then, indeed, can we fittingly make our requests of His mercy and compassion, and draw near to receive Holy Communion that we might have grace to fulfil in our lives the offering we have just made and give thanks for His great goodness.

People of God, if the wisdom and truth of God lead us to repentance and faith, then, through the sacraments -- above all through our participation at Holy Mass -- and our daily prayers, God’s power and majesty can be effective in and through our lives.

Therefore, let us praise our God today, let us admire and acknowledge the wisdom and the beauty of His truth as contained in the Good News of Jesus proclaimed by Mother Church, and let us put all our hope and trust in the power of His Spirit unfailingly sustaining and guiding her, and ever at work in our lives.   Such worship is the wedding garment that will give us the right to take our seat at the heavenly banquet; it is the token of all those who belong to that flock of which Jesus is the true and supreme shepherd. 

                                                                                    

23rd Sunday of Year C 2013

23^rd.Sunday (Year C)

(Wisdom 9:13-18; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33)

How strange Our Lord seems to us, at times!

And yet, that appreciation is more truly the sign and the measure of our alienation from Him!  We search feverishly and anxiously these days for more people in our Churches, and, in that respect, we regard ourselves as being motivated by the true Christian spirit of evangelization.  And yet Our Blessed Lord was not, apparently, over-pleased by the fact that Great crowds were travelling with Him, for we are told:

He turned and addressed them, ‘If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Why such a difference between Jesus and ourselves?

First of all, let us give careful attention to the actual situation which provoked those words of Jesus: we are told that great crowds were travelling with Him, and Jesus effectively told them -- with sorrowful compassion for their well-intentioned but only surface-love -- that only those who would follow after Him, behind Him, walking in His footsteps, along His ways, and learning from Him, could possibly become disciples who might eventually learn to walk -- as the apostles -- with Him.  

And there we have a partial answer to the question above, ‘Why such a difference ...?’  It is because too many Catholics these days want and pretend to walk with Him before they have learned to walk behind Him and learn His ways.

Jesus, looking at the ‘great crowds’, wanted disciples who would learn, first of all, obedience and self-commitment: disciples willing to learn, that is, to commit themselves to His Spirit and submit themselves, with Him, to His Father in total love and  trust.  We moderns, on the other hand -- if we are willing and able to recognize, understand, and admit our own motives and propensities aright -- want and seek after ‘great crowds’, ostensibly indeed, to fill our churches, exalt Mother Church, and give glory to God, but also -- and all too often -- to satisfy those more personal needs we might even be hiding from ourselves: that is, to quieten our spiritual anxieties and comfort our fears, to confirm our Catholic confidence or  even stir up our pride.  

Whereas Jesus did all in humility for total love of His Father and suffering mankind, we do so much from deep-rooted self-love and subtle self-interest.

And looking back again at the Gospel account, why did our Lord use such an emotive and, dare I say it, ‘objectionable’ word as ‘hate’?

As you probably know, ‘hate’ in that context means ‘put in second place’; and it’s objectionable connotations are useful because Jesus wanted to strongly -- very strongly -- emphasize the fact that God must always come first; parents, family, even self, always second, never before God. However, we should notice too that Jesus understood such ‘hatred’ to be a cross for human nature; part, perhaps indeed the essential part, of that cross He immediately went on to refer to when He added:

Whoever does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple.

Again, Jesus speaks most earnestly of the need for any one wishing to become a disciple of His, to seriously ‘count the cost’; and yet we, so light-heartedly at times, seek to encourage converts and claim back ‘lost ones’ by the fellowship we can offer them, and also by the joy of our family and parochial gatherings: such as the  tender simplicity of our baptisms where the innocence of the child so easily prevails over the sublimity of the prayers being offered and responsibilities being assumed, and the splendour of our weddings where the beauty of the bride-to-be and the parents’ hopes for future happiness and fulfilment assume a heart-tugging pre-eminence over the lovers’ for-better-or-for-worse commitment to each other before Christ, over the Church’s prayers for the blessing and abiding presence of the Spirit, and for God’s greater glory in His universal plan of loving salvation.

Jesus once said (Matthew 23:15) to some Pharisees,

You cross sea and land to make a single convert, and you make the new convert twice as much a child of hell as yourselves,

 and that should be borne in mind by us today, lest our modern zeal makes new converts twice as superficial in their Catholicism and discipleship as too many of us have long been.

Our Blessed Lord summed up His thoughts in these few words:

Anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be My disciple.

 

St. Bede gives us great help to rightly understand these words, for he distinguishes clearly between those called to ‘leave behind, relinquish’ all possessions, and those here called to ‘renounce’ such possessions: that is, those called to take great care that they do not allow themselves to be possessed by their possessions.

What, however, are we to understand with that word possessions?

It does not refer to merely material things, for there are many human spiritual realities we appreciate and treasure: for example, ‘my freedom’ was of great significance in the early years of the Church and, indeed, still is in many parts of the world where Mother Church -- even to this day -- suffers persecution; and there are, of course, the frequently encountered and unworthy memories of such treasured freedom lingering on the lips of those who like to invoke ‘my opinion’ to excuse their public words and actions.  ‘My reputation’, ‘my good name’, ‘my peace of mind and heart’, are also among such ‘possessions’ which a man can value much more highly than merely material things.

Jesus’ words:  If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple; and  Whoever does not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple, seem to refer to personal bonds of love on the one hand and to our instinctive rejection of suffering on the other, and here Jesus’ words were soon to be backed up by His own Personal example and experience whereby they have acquired a most touching intensity of significance and depth of meaning for us.

For, surely, His deepest Personal suffering came when He had to leave His mother – already a widow – as He died in great ignominy and ‘excruciating’ pain on the Cross on Calvary: committing her, of necessity, to the loving care of one of His disciples, not to family; and the greatest physical and psychological torment of His humanity undoubtedly began in the garden of Gethsemane where He – sodden with sweat like drops of blood -- besought His Father three times that He be spared the trial!

            If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother ...

           Whoever does not carry his cross and come after Me ...

As, in our Gospel reading, Jesus looked round to see the crowd travelling with Him He would appear to have foreseen what ... the biggest and most terrible WHAT of His life ... lay ahead of Him; and surely the words He uttered, those very words before us, are most heavily laden with heart-rending meaning and significance, penetrated through and through with that total love and commitment which would lead Him, most compellingly, to leave His mother a Childless widow in Israel, and to take upon Himself the horrible pain and total ignominy of the Cross: 

If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.

The awareness of His Passion and Death was always with Jesus, close to the surface, never to be ignored or disdained, because He needed to prepare Himself for Satan’s final assault and thus fulfil His own longing to give the ultimate expression to His love for His Father and for us when the opportunity came.  Therefore, as with the great crowds who, light-heartedly travelling along with Him, stirred His pity and sorrow for their incomprehension of what was truly involved, so too did James and John later on stir Our Lord to a similar response:

‘Teacher, grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’  But Jesus answered them, ‘You do not know what you are asking.  Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptised with?’  (Mark 10: 35-38)

Our Gospel story is much more emotive than that episode with the somewhat ‘pushy’  mother of James and John and her two still young and ambitious sons, for in our Gospel the great crowds seemed to instinctively recognize their shepherd; but most touchingly for Jesus, they themselves were, unfortunately and  most sadly, no better than sheep in their following of Him for they had so very little comprehension of what He was doing, and no idea where He wanted to lead them or what were the forces against them.

It was for such a situation that we heard in the first reading:

Scarce do we guess the things on earth, and what is within our grasp we find with difficulty; but when things are in heaven who can search them out? 

Dear People of God, let us give most heartfelt thanks to God for our Lord and Saviour come down for us from heaven; let us endeavour to serve Him with ever deeper and more sincere love, with ever greater humility in our understanding of Catholic truth, and with quiet and patient confidence in our witness to and suffering for the coming of His Kingdom.