31St Sunday of Ordinary Times

This weekend we celebrate the 31^st Sunday of ordinary time.  In the gospel reading a scribe asks Jesus, “Which is the first of all the commandments?” Jesus gives his reply and the scribe gives his approval At that moment there is a great meeting and agreement between the best of the Jewish and Christian traditions: that love of God has precedence over all other religious requirements, observances and loyalties. In his reply to the scribe Jesus also makes it clear that you cannot compose summaries of the Law while forgetting love of god and neighbour.  The scribe is pleased with Jesus’ reply and adds his own point, that the love of God and neighbour is far more important than any ritual worship. The transformation caused by the love god has for us is so profound that it is expressed in the love of god and our  neighbour. Jesus calls us to love God with our entire being because his life and death are a manifestation of God’s love for each of us.

 The scribe states that the law of love of God and neighbour is greater than any of the religious observances and laws concerning sacrifices. Revered Temple worship and sacrifice must take second place to the observance and sacrifice that comes with loving God and neighbour. Jesus says that the scribe has answered wisely about the superiority of love over any sacrifice and then says to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God. Our God is the God of the past , the present and the future. Our God is the creator of all that is that was or will be. We are God’s dream. Our living with God  in faith is not only for our places of worship our living in and with God is really about our  communities of love and faith right where we are as we bring the love of god to the world. God is with us in the market place, on the factory floor, in the politics of life. God is with us on the streets, in homeless shelters, in the hospitals.  As a matter of fact God is with us wherever we are and in whatever good  we are doing in his name. Our lives are not divisible into secular and religious though some might want it that way. Jesus’ summary of the Law is a personal challenge to love God wholeheartedly and have regard for our neighbour actively promoting his good. That is not only Jesus’ digest of the Law, it is also the Gospel portrait of Jesus.

The Kingdom of God is not in some far off place, but it is there in the moments when God’s life breaks into the every day story of our own lives. Those moments bring love, wisdom, grace, compassion, generosity, forgiveness and peace to us where we are. We are called to love the Lord our God and  our neighbour as ourself and to bring that love that god has for us out into the world where we are asked to share it with all those around us so that they can see the love, wisdom, grace, compassion, generosity, forgiveness and peace that god brings to us as we bring it to others wherever we are in our world.

MISSION SUNDAY 2021

This Weekend we celebrate the missionary effort of the Church throughout the world. All of us know someone who as a priest, nun or lay person have gone to bring the message of Jesus to the far ends of the earth and we pray for all of them.  Our Gospel reading is all about Blindness or should I say spiritual blindness as all of us can be blind to the call that god gives us. In our Gospel story Christ walks along the streets of the ancient city of Jericho. With his disciples and a great crowd following him, our Lord is leaving the city and Bartimaeus the blind beggar calls out to him: “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.” Bartimaeus, though blind, could see. His instincts were sharper than a new razor blade. The divinity of Jesus had come across to him in waves. But those  around and about him, who enjoyed good vision, were blind to the Son of Man and what he was. Helen Keller who was blind and deaf said, “The most beautiful things in the world can’t be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.” It is possible for good people to spend their days searching but never finding their spiritual hearts.

Spiritual blindness often prevents people from perceiving the way a follower of Jesus should live. We are not compelled to accept the mission of God to transform the world after the pattern that Jesus gave us and many people have chosen to go out to bring the message of Jesus to the world. We must not listen to  the loud voices that would silence us and many of those voices are deaf  to the Spiritual voice of the heart of faith. The gift we seek is the ability to capture the vision of a new creation brought about by a faith filled community of people both those around us and those who by their lives have shown us the road to take. The disciples, on the road with Jesus, must have thought of themselves as part of the “in crowd,” the way James and John did when they asked Jesus to give them seats of power in his kingdom  in last Sundays Gospel. While they were physically close to Jesus, they were a long way from understanding and taking his message on board. The blind beggar, with nothing but a cloak, was exactly the kind of person Jesus noticed and invited to come close while those with Jesus still didn’t get it  and as a result they were not his true followers on “the way.” God wants us to say in the silence of our hearts, “Lord that I may see.”

 Jesus wants our prayer like that of Bartimaeus to come from a sincere heart that asks not only for the gift of sight so that we can see the world around us, but also for the gift of seeing – of seeing the truth, or the lack of it in the depths of our being, and then taking the action necessary to reverse our blindness. Bartimaeus saw Christ with the eyes of faith and  a faith filled heart. So we must look and see Jesus with eyes of faith so that we may be able to see more clearly what we have to do as people of faith to lead others to Jesus and what he teaches this mission Sunday as we go forward together into the future.

29th Sunday of Ordinary Time

In today’s Gospel two brothers James and John the sons of Zebedee are asking Jesus for a big favour to ensure their privileged seating arrangements when they come to meet Jesus in glory. They want to sit, one at Jesus’ right hand and the other at his left. While they don’t specify which of them should sit at Jesus’ right  no doubt that problem would have emerged later  they imagine themselves in a cosy triumvirate of their own making. Of course Jesus blows this notion out of the water when he tells the two brothers that they don’t know what they are asking. Their request is to share Jesus’ power when he comes into glory, so timing their appointment to begin when the suffering is over but this was not the way of things.  The two disciples mention nothing about the suffering of Good Friday but Jesus brings the conversation back to what happens before the glory which is suffering the glory comes as a result of the suffering. Jesus’ kingdom is not about who wears the crown, but who wears the crown of thorns and bears the cross .  So he asks the brothers as he asks us today: “Can you drink the cup that I must drink, or be baptised with the baptism with which I must be baptised?” They boast that they can.

The message from Jesus is clear: there is no shortcut to God’s favour. Jesus does what he asks all of us to do: that is to serve, not to be served; to give love freely, not to exact everyone’s worship; to reach out to those in need. Christian discipleship and endeavour  are a vocation of service and there is much work out there for everyone to do. To be servants in the way that Jesus was servant means to live in complete trust that God will look after us. Jesus was not  a servant out of fear of a tyrant Father, but as beloved Son, who in turn loved as he was loved by the Father. Ours  is a free service of love, not of fear So,  like Jesus, Christians serve others by proclaiming the truth of God, by praying, giving a good example, acting to defend human rights, and by being respectful, fair, kind, compassionate, caring and forgiving towards others. His teaching and example have left us with a brilliant example of an authentic life, for becoming the best people we can be.

28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This Sunday we hear the Gospel story of the Rich man and Jesus invitation for him to give everything to the poor and  follow him.  Besides being a very interesting story, this Sunday’s Gospel gives rich spiritual advice for us. To put it simply, God is worth more than anything else in our lives. Jesus looks on the rich man with love; he wants this blameless enthusiast to become one of his disciples. So the challenge is made: “There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The cost of Christian discipleship is heavy for this prospective disciple as there has been a heavy cost for many throughout the history of the Church. The man in the gospel must renounce the security and the prestige that wealth brings him; when he sells everything he owns, he must not give the money to his family or friends, but to the poor. If he does this he will have treasure in heaven. That treasure will be his new security. The sorrowful departure of the would-be disciple that Jesus loved is one of the most touching scenes in the Gospel. He is too attached to what he has to become what Jesus asks him to be.

 When he goes, and we hear no more of him, Jesus turns round to tell his disciples how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.   For us today Jesus asks the same question do you want to follow me and many have done that but for others the call has been accepted but it was just too hard to follow the path of Jesus and they have left the faith behind. All of us have many riches that have been given to us by God Family, faith, friends are just a few example of gods goodness to all of us would we leave everything to follow Jesus that is another question. Instead I think that we are called to follow Jesus in our world were we are by trying to be faithful to what Jesus teaches us as we pass his message on to others by the things we do and say that is a hard thing to do in the world especially when people put their own slant on the message of Jesus using it for the own not always good ends.  This Gospel text is reassuring but challenging. Sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom is an essential requirement of those who wish to truly follow Christ. The Christian follows a difficult path in life but it is the  journey of life with a destination. And the destination is nothing other than the Kingdom of Heaven so let us take up the challenge to follow Jesus as we go forward.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Our readings for this weekend  set the ideal of God’s purpose and plan for creation and marriage.  In the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament. A sacrament is the presence of God, the most powerful presence of the Lord possible in this world. In the sacrament of Baptism, God is present giving the Life of the Trinity to the baptized. In Penance God is present through his Son giving his forgiveness to the penitent. In the Eucharist, the Son is present nourishing the communicant and uniting him in an intimate way to the Divine Presence as Jesus is offered to the Father for us. In the sacrament of marriage, Jesus is present uniting the love of the husband and wife. Marriage, according to Genesis, was always meant to be a joining of man and woman in one flesh, in one heart, and in one spirit. It all begins with caring about the other. It all begins with a sense of respect and dignity for the other. It all begins with each contributing to the Then follows a walking together, side-by-side, holding hands and confronting whatever would seek to divide. The effect of all of this  is a growth in love. In that growth of love there comes to each an understanding of the magnificence of God’s love for us.

 Marriage is a sacrament, a making present the Son of God who sends us God’s Spirit. That Spirit unites us, makes us whole. Contentions and disagreements become not a divider but a pathway to greater union. There are many people who are in various forms of civil partnership and I am not going to knock them for not following what marriage is all about in the sacramental sense. The people involved in Civil  partnerships  have made a commitment to their partners and we need to show respect for the commitment that is there while being true to why we think so much of the Catholic idea of marriage and what it stands for.  The “rit of divorce” in the Gospel Reading for this Sunday was there to protect the woman from being discarded arbitrarily without any possibility of survival in a society where she could not work or support herself.  How does our society and our Church actually treat and those who find themselves as unable to keep the “happily ever after” scenario?  Togetherness for life certainly remains the ideal both for Jesus and his followers.  But our Church community has to face the reality  that many marriages break down, and some of the victims of a broken marriage feel a deep longing for a new life partner and a new start.

 But this raises an acute question for the Church community: Can there be only point-blank black and white refusals there is much debate around all of this as there has always been as this is not the black and white issue many people would like it to be. I have been blessed in seeing so many people getting married and many others celebrating the 25^th 50^th and even the 60^th anniversaries of their marriage commitments. But many people will tell you that their married lives were not always a bed of roses. Married life, like any human endeavour, requires effort, work, and discipline. The exchange of vows is  only the beginning of a life together it is not the high point. The term “partner” should be taken literally as true marriage means that the 2 people work together in partnership. Whenever marriage is celebrated and respected, there is peace, joy, and Love. So today we pray for a proper understanding of what marriage means in the catholic sense as we acknowledge the goodness that are there in other forms of partnerships that are more normal these days than in the past.