31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

The scene for the Gospel for this Sunday is, set by the first reading from the Book of Wisdom in praise of a God whose love for what he has created allows him to overlook sin. God is all-powerful and all-merciful, the lover of all he creates and the lover of all life, ‘whose imperishable spirit is in all’. God corrects his people through forgiveness, drawing people away from evil and towards trust in himself and that was what happened to the Tax Collector in the Gospel Jesus drew Zacchaeus to himself. The tax collectors in Jesus time were despised because they were seen as enforcing the tax system of a foreign country. It seems that Zacchaeus was a small man who was anxious to see the person that all the fuss was about; as he climbed up into the branches of the sycamore tree to get a look at Jesus as he passed by.  Zacchaeus put his dignity and the prestige of his position on the line when he scrambled up the tree Jesus saw him and he saw his willingness to accept the message of salvation.  The story of Zacchaeus encourages us to seek and find Jesus in our daily lives.

Sometimes we need to go and climb up to a different level to see the Lord as he passes by. All of us have a role to play in the ongoing work of building up the kingdom of God in our own place. We come to worship in our churches each week to get a better glimpse of Jesus as our Faith is the “tree” we climb. Our hope is that Jesus will  give us a clearer view of where he is in the midst of the issues and struggles we face day and daily. We’ll stay in this “tree” for a short while, then we will climb down to return to our daily lives. The final verse in today’s Gospel can help us interpret many other stories about Jesus. His key mission was “to seek out and save what was lost.” Like Zacchaeus, we are pleased to hear that Jesus wants to stay with us. We tell Jesus: ‘Come to us, and we welcome HIM with joy.’ But then we add, quickly, as Zacchaeus did ‘lord, whatever we did wrong, we shall put right again.’ Jesus wants to make a home with us in the very places we have closed up and locked away. He knocks on the door of our hearts and invites us to let him in to change what we have given up on and so many people have given up on Faith and all it entails in recent times.

There is just so much enlightenment and comfort for all of us in this touching incident. We see Jesus for what he was and what he remains – ‘the friend of sinners’,. Our understanding, compassionate, and forgiving friend! Our friend who is there when others fail or desert us! Just like Zacchaeus, then, let us welcome this great person Jesus and his ‘amazing grace’ into our homes and lives, knowing and trusting what an amazing and lasting difference he will make!

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The month of October is Mission Month when we celebrate the missionary effort of the Church throughout the world. This Sunday we celebrate Mission Sunday and we remember all those who have given up everything to go to far off lands to bring the gospel message  to the people there. We also remember all those who support them such as the Apostolic Work and Missio here in Ireland. The readings in our Liturgy for this weekend are all about the HUMBLE person of faith that God calls all of us to be. What does the Gospel Reading about the tax collector and the Pharisee say to us today ? Also and I think more importantly what about the words of the Tax Collector who said in a humble way  God be merciful to me a sinner what do these words  say to us?

The Tax Collector despised by the people because of the job he was doing  is saying to us that we need to be humble before God who knows that we are sinners even before we acknowledge that we are we also have to be humble with other people dealing with them with real humility. Real humility is about facing  the truth  about the person we are and often times we don’t like to hear the truth about ourselves.  It is a long journey from the Pharisee at the front to the tax-collector at the back. It is a journey of repentance and of facing up to the truth. It is a journey that Life will provide if we have the courage and honesty to find it. If any of us  still think that we should be up at the front with the Pharisee, then our lives will be not be as happy and we will never find peace. In our modern world, Pride which was very strong in the words the Pharisee spoke dominates many situations of life and it is this pride which has led  many people the world over down a lonely road.

The Pharisee gives thanks to God for not being like everyone else. He is a person of means, he has enough money to tithe. He lives a virtuous life; he’s not “greedy, dishonest, adulterous.” He probably feels “blessed” by God for all he has. So, he offers a prayer of thanksgiving. But his self-satisfaction counters whatever sincerity he might have.This Sunday’s parable demonstrates the necessity of knowing oneself. In order to avoid building up false self-image, creating a bogus reality in our minds and hearts. We need to stop and see where we should be saying with the tax collector Lord be merciful to me a sinner. These words from prophet Micah really sum up what we are asked to do and the people we are called to be  as faith filled Christians this Sunday and everyday. Micah asked and what does the Lord require of us? He requires us To do justice,  to love kindness, and to walk humbly with our God? The Lord requires us to be just, and kind in our dealings with one  another and other people as we walk humbly with him and as a result of this we will be  able to help  those who need us most where we are in the world.

29th Sunday of ordinary time

We remember in prayer the people of Creeslough in Donegal who have lost loved ones and we also pray for all those who are showing the compassion of a caring community to them at this sad time. Long after the TV cameras and the worlds media have left Creeslough the words of young Hamish O’Flaherty at his fathers funeral will be remembered he said “We should be grateful for our families. Cherish them. Be grateful because they won’t be there forever so use up the time you have wisely,” “Be grateful for your own life, because that too will not last forever, For you will be able to rest after your hard work. “Be grateful that God has given us this life and the times in it, our families our friends and our home and this world that is awash with hope and love that God has given us.” There in these few words is a great lesson for all of us .

In our Gospel for this Sunday Jesus tells us about our need to pray and not to lose heart when we don’t get what we pray for straight away.Over a long period of time many people have prayed for various things for example family concerns for healing of body mind or spirit or whatever. We  often pray for things and don’t get them straight away but we get the things we pray for when we really need them. Remember No great work can ever be achieved without long and patient effort and this is the same for us in our prayer lives. The work of patient persistent prayer will yield results as God helps us to get through all our problems large and small. Remember the saying that nothing is impossible for those who have faith and if our faith is the size of mustard seed it can move mountains.  Like one of the ten lepers in last weeks gospel, we ask, and then when our prayers are answered, we return in order to  thank God. When we meet the judge and the widow in this Gospel passage we meet them at a crisis point. We have no case history for the widow but we do for the judge. He is a hard man who isn’t influenced by religious principle or by public opinion. Both justice and compassion are absent from his dealings with the widow.She has no influential friends to bring pressure on the judge and she has no money to bribe him: all she has is the justice of her cause and her own persistence. Jesus encourages us to be persistent in our prayer and never lose heart.

We have to invest in our faith  and prayer will help us to do this. Through this parable, Jesus teaches us the need for perseverance in prayer. This perseverance develops our trust and confidence in God. It helps us realize how weak we are when left to ourselves. It keeps us close to God, as we learn how dependent we are on His generous love. Let us  pray for what we need, but above all let us pray that we will lead a life filled with faith in God as we go forward in Faith..

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We pray this weekend for the people of Creeslough in Donegall as they come to terms with the events that took place at the Applegreen station  on Friday. We pray that those who died will rest in peace and their families and friends will find solace in the love of their extended families, friends  and the community around them. We also pray a prayer of thanksgiving for the work of the emergency services who worked tirelessly since the explosion to save life.   This Sunday our readings are all about gratitude and the attitude of gratitude  The leper we hear about in the first reading is Naaman he was desperate for a cure and made another expedition into Israel, not to capture slaves but to be cured of his leprosy. When Elisha heard he was coming, he sent a message to the Syrian commander to bathe seven times in the Jordan river. Naaman was furious, but eventually his friends persuaded him to follow the advice of the prophet. He did and was cured. Rather than return to Syria, he sought out the prophet to show his gratitude and offer him a reward. Elisha declined the reward but agreed that Naaman should take back some earth to build a shrine to the one true God. Naaman not only rejoiced in the gift of healing he had received but also recognised the giver. He praised God and thanked the prophet. So it is that the God of Israel heals the outsider and the pagan.

In our Gospel Reading  we hear the story of the ten Lepers and their lack of gratitude for their healing. It is no accident that the grateful leper is not a Jew but a Samaritan – an outsider, excluded by race, religion and his illness. He joins the others in asking a Jewish Rabbi for mercy. In this incident the man who had the decency to return and say thank you  was the one least expected to do so. This pleased our Lord and led Him to remark on the ingratitude of the others. This Gospel story is not only about the Lepers it’s also about our lack of gratitude for the many good  things that we have in our lives given to us by God. When we were youngsters growing up we were taught to say, “Thank you” by our parents when they gave us a sweet or whatever, when we didn’t we would be dutifully reminded, “What do you say?” and of course we said the magic words ‘Thank You.’ All the lepers showed great faith and confidence in Jesus’ power to heal but only one of them said thanks. They had not heard Him preach nor had they seen any of His miracles. They lived in isolation camps because of the leprosy, yet they believed the reports they had heard. The nine lepers were appreciative of what Jesus had done; we don’t know, why they didn’t bother to show their gratitude to Jesus. We can only look to ourselves to ask why we are often reluctant to say thank you for all the good things we have. There is seems to be great deal of awkwardness surrounding the attitude of gratitude and saying thank you. All of us have reasons to give thanks for so many things yet very few turn to the Lord with words and hearts expressing our thanks for all the wonders he has done for us in our lives.  Do we have the attitude of gratitude which thanks god and those around and us for their goodness to us.

When we gather in prayer we come to join God in the midst of the assembly with gratitude in our hearts. We give praise and thanks to God and we thank him for all those who have given us their help. May all of us have the attitude of gratitude for all the good things that we have in our lives which means that we are thankful for all that we are and all that we have especially in this time of worldwide crisis when so many have very little or nothing at all.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This weekend we begin the month of October and there is a dual theme throughout the month. It is the month when we celebrate the missionary effort of the Church throughout the world as well as celebrating the Rosary. Also this Sunday we have the annual Day for Life and it has as its focus caring for the Older Person. We  remember all those members of our families and our friends who are Older as well as those who care for them. In the First Reading  for this Sunday the prophet Habakkuk asks God how long he is going to ignore the cries of his battered people. He accuses God of simply looking on while tyranny and violence flourish.  His cry is not a scream of despair but a cry that is rooted in faith in God and what he had done and is doing for his people it is a cry of faith. The Prophet  believes God will do something and his perseverance in prayer and faith is proved right.. This Reading with its cry to God is our cry to God as we see all the things that are happening in our world today. We pray like  the prophet that god will listen to our prayers knowing that he will hear and answer in due course.

 The Gospel is made up of two apparently unrelated sayings of Jesus, one dealing with the gift  of faith and the other a very stark and challenging reminder to the apostles of the call to service as people sent by God to share in Jesus’ mission of proclaiming the Good News. We might be tempted to skip over such ‘hard sayings’ but we are asked to listen to them because the Gospel always liberates us from false ideas about ourselves and God and that can only be a good thing. Perhaps we think that having faith means believing certain things. Thinking our faith is small can keep us from doing so many things that we are called to do by our faith in Jesus the Son of God.  The disciples must have thought their faith was so small they couldn’t act on it. But Jesus wants his disciples as well as ourselves  to trust and act on our god given faith. The alternative to acting out of faith would be saying things like: I can’t take on that responsibility, I don’t have enough faith. The disciples may have felt similar inhibitions after hearing what Jesus just taught about not leading others into sin and the necessity to forgive someone not  seven times a day but 77.  

Jesus teaches, us  to “Act on the little faith you have. You’ll be surprised what you can do.” His example of the deep-rooted mulberry tree underlines his lesson to us about the power of the smallest seed of faith to work marvels. We may find ourselves doing something that surprises us and those who know us. Perhaps it’s a great act of charity; working away on another’s behalf; or, an act of forgiveness. But despite the things we might do, we must acknowledge the source of all our good deeds the mustard seed that is faith planted in us by God. Realizing this we can say with those servants in the parable: “We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do.” We could also add: “We have only done what the mustard seed of  our faith has enabled us to do. “God gives us the grace to do great things in his name.  As we pray for our faith to be strengthened we thank god for all those people who helped us to have faith in the first place, our parents, families, teachers, friends and our clergy throughout our lives all of them played their part in giving us the faith.  Although Christ was speaking to the Apostles, His words apply to all of us, in our own lives here and now. Following the example of the Apostles, Going forward we pray for greater trust and faith in God and his love for all of us so we are able to bring the seed of faith to others in their time and place .