Maundy Thursday 2014

Maundy Thursday  April 2014                  

(Exodus 12:1-8, 11-14; 1^st. Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15)

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The disciples, even though their time with Jesus was coming to its end, were still far from perfect in their following of Him and apparently -- according to St. Luke -- they had just been quarrelling about who was the greatest among them.  It would seem that, for the Supper, Judas Iscariot had taken the highest position to the left of Our Lord around the table while John who, as we know leant back on the breast of Jesus to ask Him a personal question, would have been reclining on Our Lord’s right.  Peter meanwhile, having taken to heart Jesus’ words chiding them for their lack of humility had, typically, responded whole-heartedly and taken the lowest place opposite John.  In that way Peter was able to speak directly to John telling him to ask Jesus whom He had in mind when He said that one of them was to betray Him.  This arrangement also explains how Judas could ask Jesus “Lord, not me surely” and Jesus could answer him affirmatively without any of the other disciples hearing His words. 

In the Gospel reading we heard how Jesus washed the feet of His disciples, exemplifying the humility He wanted to teach them.  He would seem to have begun with Peter seated in the lowest place.  Peter’s loving impetuosity, however, would not allow him to see Jesus thus humbled before him:

"No," said Peter, "You shall never wash my feet." Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with Me."

Why was this washing of the disciple’s feet so important?  Obviously, it was of symbolic importance: “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me” were Jesus’ stern words.  He then went on to explain:

A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.

“And you are clean” Jesus had said, but still the feet had to be washed, or else Peter could have no share with Him.

How had the disciples, apart from Judas Iscariot, been made clean?  We learn that from Jesus Himself when He went on to say to them (John 15:3):

You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.

Clean already in mind and heart by the receiving and believing the truth of Jesus.  That faith, however, had to be translated into works:

I am the true vine, and My Father is the gardener.  He cuts off every branch in Me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit He prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.  You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you.  Remain in Me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in Me.  I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in Me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from Me you can do nothing.  If anyone does not remain in Me, he is like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned.  If you remain in Me and My words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given you.  This is to My Father's glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be My disciples.  (John 15:1-8)

We can perhaps recognize a reference to Judas in the branch that is thrown away and then left to wither before being thrown into the fire.  On the other hand, those who remained true to Jesus, treasuring and believing the words He had spoken to them, would now have to let those words bring forth fruit in their lives.  That is why their feet had to be washed, even though they were clean in mind and heart.

We can think of the words of a modern hymn: “Walk with me, oh my Lord, through the darkest night and brightest day, be at my side o Lord, hold my hand and guide me on my way.”  There we describe the course of our lives, the way we respond to all of life’s circumstances, the aims we set for ourselves, as a walking with the Lord.  So it is with the disciples whose feet Jesus must wash if they are to have a share with Him in the Kingdom of God which is now beginning and will ultimately triumph.  What they have received from Him is meant to make them the light of the world and the salt of the earth; their light must shine because it has to enlighten the whole of God’s house:

You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.  In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.  (Matthew 5:14-16)

In this movingly memorable scene Jesus gives His disciples (that includes you and me!) strong teaching to match His strong words to Peter: teaching which not only tells us but also warns us that to have heart and mind washed clean in Christ is not enough if the feet are not daily consecrated by sincere endeavours to walk further along His way and in His service.  That is not all, however, for by so humbly and lovingly washing their feet Jesus indelibly prints on their minds the manner in which they must serve Him: wherever they walk and in all that they do they must seek always to give humble service to each other and to their neighbour.  Such an attitude will first of all establish unity among the disciples, above all among these future apostles.  No more arguing about who might be the greatest, they must all be willing to humbly serve each other; and then serve with each other the greater good of the flock of Jesus which He has chosen them to lead (Ephesians 4:3):

Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.

Never again would these chosen ones who had seen their Lord and Master humble Himself by washing their feet allow personal pride to detract from their apostolic witness to Jesus; on this St. Paul most insistent in his teaching for the churches he established:

There is one body and one Spirit-- just as you were called to one hope when you were called -- one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, Who is over all and through all and in all.

We are all called, People of God, to be apostles of Christ, each in our degree.  The teaching and the example so lovingly given by the Lord are for all of us.  Let us, therefore, aspire more and more to walk along the paths of the Lord in the power of His Spirit: let us not try to kid ourselves into thinking that nice thoughts about Jesus and the Church are enough.  We have to bring forth fruit for the Father’s glory by seriously trying to serve Jesus by doing His work with His attitude: finding strength from our unity in the faith of Mother Church and cherishing the joy of true charity in our parish and personal life.

Palm Sunday (Year A) 2014

PALM SUNDAY (A)  

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

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

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

Those words show us that Jesus lived His life, as St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:3) puts it, ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’:

I handed on to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures; that He was buried; that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures.

Jesus Himself would seem to have confirmed this when, after His Resurrection, He appeared to His disciples on the way to Emmaus and said:

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

Therefore, Jesus can be said to have lived His life ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’; but what does, what should, such a statement mean for men and women of today?

It can all too easily be understood as saying that Jesus looked to the Scriptures to find out what was planned in advance for Him, to discover actions for His obedience to bring to fulfilment ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’.  However, it is noticeable that St. John never uses the phrase ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’, or even the word ‘Scriptures’, in such a way as to give the impression that Jesus learned in authoritative detail from the Scriptures how He should live His life.  On the contrary, indeed, John quotes a saying of Jesus to the Jews that we do not find elsewhere, a saying that would seem to warn us against any such misunderstanding of the Scriptures; for speaking to His Jewish critics He declared:

You search the Scriptures, because you think you have eternal life through them; even they testify on my behalf;  (John 5:39)

before shortly going on to say:

Just as the Father … gives life, so also does the Son give life to whomever He wishes;  (John 5:21)

The Scriptures testify to the God of salvation, they guide those who meditate on them to that God; but the reality of eternal life is exclusively the Gift of God, the Gift of Jesus, Who have that life in themselves; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God, are Lord of Life and of the Scriptures.

John himself therefore prefers to express the truth contained in those words ‘in accordance with the Scriptures’ by emphasizing Jesus’ constant communion with and perfect understanding of His Father:

My food is to do the will of the One Who sent Me, and to finish His work; I came down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of the One Who sent Me; (John 4:34, 6:38)

The God and Father Who sent His Son as man on earth had prepared Israel through the Scriptures and inspired prophets for over 2000 years to receive Him: to become first of all a fitting ‘seed-bed’ where the Son could strike root, so to speak, and also to become a Chosen People able to recognize, appreciate, and respond with grateful love to Him when ultimately He came among them. The whole purpose of the Jewish Scriptures was, therefore, to prepare for and lead to Israel’s promised Messiah, the Son of God and Saviour of mankind; and those Scriptures continue to validly serve that same purpose today. 

As for Jesus Himself, however, He did not need to learn how to live His life from the Scriptures -- inspired indeed -- but received, conceived, and proclaimed by men, for men.  They did, of course, give Jesus light, comfort, and strength, as He grew to manhood; and as mature man He delighted in them as a revelation of His Father’s lovingly providential preparation for His advent.  But for His own life’s ultimate guidance and fulfilment, Jesus was in constant Personal, prayerful, communion with His Father:

 I am not alone, I am with the Father Who sent Me.

 When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM, and that I do nothing on My own, but I say only what the Father taught Me.

The One who sent Me is with Me. He has not left Me alone, because I always do what is pleasing to Him.”     (John 8:16, 28–29) 

The Spirit of God -- given provisionally and proleptically to Israel in and through her Scriptures and her prophets -- is now given, in the name of Jesus, Personally and in supreme fullness, to Mother Church, and through her offered to all the faithful by her proclamation of the Good News of the Gospel and bestowal of Jesus’ baptism, as by her celebration of the Eucharist and all the other sacraments of the glorified Jesus.

Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever eats Me will live because of Me. (‎John 6:57)

And St. John urges us, People of God, in the power of the Holy Spirit to recognize, appreciate, and welcome in the Scriptures a truly Personal aspect: a call from the Father Who wills to communicate Personally with His children in Jesus.  We should not merely ‘scrutinize’ the Scriptures for stark facts and objective information, but meditate on, and study, them for the teaching they contain.  Yet more, however, and indeed preferentially, we should use those Scriptures as an inspiration and invitation to ever deeper understanding of and communion with the God Who in His great goodness wants to hear our personal response to His invitation and sacrificial commitment to us His children, called in Jesus, through the Spirit.

Moreover, St. John seems to be telling us that Jesus did indeed live His life in accordance with the Scriptures, but God’s purpose for us can only be meaningfully recognized, truly appreciated, and allowed to grow and fully develop in us, when we understand the Scriptures, both Old and New, ‘in accordance with Jesus in the bosom of His Father.’

Dear People of God, we are on the threshold of a week’s celebration of Jesus’ love for us in the name of His Father and the power of their Holy Spirit: love the Scriptures that tell us what He did and suffered for our sake, and will explain the eternal purpose and the sublime meaning of those sufferings.  Above all, however, use the Scriptures for personal communion with your God and Saviour; allow them to move, to inspire, you to love in return -- with fitting understanding and total personal commitment -- the Father Who is calling you through those Scriptures; the Saviour Who is goes before you as Shepherd and Saviour; the Gift Who -- as your intimate strength, counsellor and comforter -- wills to bring you to eternal fulfilment in your human identity and in your Christian vocation as a true and well-loved child of God.

Fifth Sunday of Lent (Year A) 2014

Fifth Sunday of Lent, Year A

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

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Today’s Gospel, dear People of God, is both dramatic and deeply consoling, revealing Jesus to us in the awesomeness of His divine power and the tenderness of His compassionate humanity, and also -- most wonderfully -- in the ineffable beauty of His Personal commitment to and communion with His heavenly Father.   That St. John was well aware of all this is shown by the fact that the raising of Lazarus is the last of Jesus’ miracles in his Gospel and, as such, is of supreme significance in itself and worthy of our closest attention. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All is indeed directed towards faith, first of all in Jesus’ chosen disciples upon whom and through whom He will build His future Church, and then, in those very dear friends of His, Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus, whose home in the village of Bethany was ever open to Him and, when needed, served as a place of refuge for Him and a blessing for them; as when, for example, after His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, He left the city, its fickle crowds, and the ever more insistent criticisms and threatening plots of the Pharisees and Temple authorities:

“Do you hear what they are saying?”  Jesus answered them, “Yes; and have you never read the text, ‘Out of the mouths of infants and nurslings you have brought forth praise’?”   And leaving them, He went out of the city to Bethany, and there He spent the night.   (Matthew 21:16-17)

All is directed towards faith in the Person of Jesus, here revealing Himself in the full beauty of His humanity and in the divine majesty of the miracle He was about to perform for His friends: a miracle which would perfectly foreshadow His decisive victory over Satan in the cosmic conflict even now raging around Him and threatening an imminent climax – the supreme and totally conclusive climax indeed, though not yet the ultimate confrontation -- in the holy city of Jerusalem, so near and dear, yet become so threatening and unworthy.

Jesus reveals not just the reality of His human nature, but, as I said, its beauty and perfection in the profound depth of His fellow-feeling and understanding, and the humble tenderness of His sensitivity and compassion:

When Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at His feet and said to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.”   When Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her weeping … He (Himself) wept.

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

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

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

So Jesus came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay across it.  Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the dead man’s sister, said to Him, “Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.”   Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believe you will see the glory of God?”    So they took away the stone. 

It is not easy to assess just what Martha believed about Jesus; as you have seen she did most certainly believe in Him, but somehow she seems always to have had too much to do, too much to say, to keep in mind, for such belief to slow her down, let alone ‘stop her in her tracks’.   Perhaps her relationship with Jesus was one of religious admiration befitting a traditional prophet figure or miracle worker, with perhaps a touch of personal ‘affection’; a loosely-bound or somewhat independent relationship, rather than a fully humble self-demission before One Who was awesome not only in His power but most of all in the mystery of His Person; a humbling akin to the commitment of discipleship and conducive to an instinctive and sympathetic understanding and appreciation, and perhaps even to worship.  Martha would do anything for Jesus, but she was not one to sit down and listen intently at the feet of Jesus; and anyhow, everybody knew that only the God of Israel could give bring the dead back to life.   Thus, she most probably expressed the thoughts of all the visiting Jews present when she exclaimed, ‘Lord, by now there will be a stench; he has been dead for four days.’

To that Jesus replied, somewhat reprovingly indeed, but again and above all, mysteriously:

           

 Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the glory of God?  

Martha's ‘belief’ needed to be both deepened and purified; for the moment, though, her undoubted commitment would allow her to see something of that glory as she managed to humble herself and patiently look to, and wait for, Jesus.

Saint Paul gives us a clue to the nature of that glory of God she was about to witness when he wrote to his converts at Corinth:

God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to bring to light the knowledge of the glory of God on the face of (Jesus the) Christ.  (2 Corinthians 4:6)

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

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

Jesus had undoubtedly spoken to Martha of the glory to be made manifest by the life-giving, life-restoring, miracle He was now about to perform when:

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

Nevertheless, we are surely not erring if, in this case, we allow ourselves to think that the glory visible on Jesus’ up-turned face and which we can still find reflected  in His prayer, the glory expressive of the wondrous beauty of Jesus’ total oneness with and undying presence to His Father; the glory of His absolute selflessness, seeking not His own will, His own renown, but that of His Father, as expressed in those words, that they may believe that You sent Me;  the glory of His unconditional obedience to and love for His Father; all this is, surely, even yet more glorious than the truly divine power so splendidly manifested when Lazarus came out -- still wearing all his burial bands -- from the tomb where he had lain for four days.  And again, dear friends, notice that, as we began so here at the end, all is entered upon and carried through to fulfilment, for love of His Father and of us: That they may believe. 

‘Believe’ what?  Jesus had told His disciples on His first hearing of Lazarus’ death:

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

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

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

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

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