21st Sunday in ordinary time

These days we are preparing for the re opening of the local schools and the return of the pupils after the holidays. The children and parents out there are wondering what will happen and how things will go. We keep our teachers and our school going children and their families in our prayers as the youngsters return to School. This Sunday in our gospel reading Jesus asks the apostles “who do you say the Son of Man is?” Jesus was in Caesarea Philippi in the north eastern corner of Palestine. There no one would not look for Him. He had much to teach the twelve before He could leave them this was quality teaching time. So, He put the question to them that went to the heart of the matter, “Who do you say I am?” Peter acting as spokesman for the others told Him He was “the Son of the living God” Peter confesses the deep mystery of Jesus, who is the Christ and the Son of God.

In the light of this inspired confession, Peter is chosen to be the rock or the foundation on which the Church is built.. Peter received the gift of being the leader of the Church When Jesus told him “ you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church” And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it and the apostolic succession has continued from that time right until; today. Peter was first among the apostles, first among those who were called to proclaim the Kingdom of God on earth. Peter took the leadership of the Church at Pentecost. After he, the apostles and Mary, received the Holy Spirit, Peter led everyone out to the Temple and began preaching the good news to the people. After Saul became Paul, after the persecutor of the primitive Church accepted Jesus Christ, Paul spent three years in the desert reflecting on his experience of the Lord on the Road to Damascus.

He then went to Jerusalem to receive Peter’s blessing and commission to bring the Good News of the Gospel to the world.  We do not know how Peter got to Rome. We know that he was there, though. We know that Peter died in Rome, crucified upside down. The excavations under the Basilica of St. Peter revealed a tomb with the words, Here Lies Peter. We also know that when Peter died, the charism he was given to lead the Church remained active in Rome. The ones who took his place, St. Linus, and those who followed him, St. Cletus, St. Clement in the Apostolic succession. Peter’s job was to use the ‘keys of the kingdom’ to unlock and release the reign of God’s grace into the world. This is true even today with the successors of Peter right down through the ages.  In this work of faith, decisions have to be made for the whole community of the church. Here, Matthew’s words about ‘binding’ and ‘loosening’ have nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins.

They are a kind of pledge that the sincere and honest decisions of the Petrine Ministry have divine backing. It does not mean that these decisions are the best or most perfect ones. Discernment and decision-making are part of the job of being faith filled disciples finding the way of the Lord; of being the living presence of God in the world where we live. All of the successor’s of Peter he rock are recognized as having received the  same charism that the Lord gave to Peter to lead the Church and this has passed down through the centuries.  Peter is a lot like us. We really want to believe, to become the presence of God for others, but we don’t always seem to be able to do it. We have great moments of faith and moments in which we are deeply in tune with the heart of God. We also have moments when we fall back into narrow and harsh ways that cannot hold the power of God’s love.But the Gospel reassures us that, in spite of our weakness and the many ways in which we may be found wanting, God is still close to us and faith is a journey, not a destination. So let us continue our Journey as we go forward together in faith to our heavenly homeland that is our final destination.

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We are now at the mid point of August and soon the schools around will be reopening for the new school year. Time is flying by. Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is all about the faith of the Canaanite woman whose daughter was being tormented by a devil, but when you read the story we realize it is really about  the great faith that she has and it was that faith in Jesus that cured her daughter even though she had to be persistent in dealing with the Lord. The woman in this Sundays  Gospel story is not satisfied with just tears though.  Her daughter “is tormented by a demon.”   Parents among us know what that might feel like and how fiercely we would spring into action if a “cure” was before us for our own sick child.   She cries out and asks Jesus for help and perseveres even when the disciples try to send her away and Jesus Himself rebuffs her!  Jesus relents because her faith is great. The message of today’s readings is all about FAITH life can be a bit of a pickle with good and bad things within it, but a life lived with faith will see all the various obstacles being removed.  

The woman  of this Sundays  gospel is a clear sign to all of us  that God’s salvation was meant for all people and all nations – not just for the Jews.  Jesus encounter with the Canaanite woman shows a change in his human understanding of God’s plan for humanity. How does this change take place? By the woman’s persistence and unwillingness to accept a narrow and restrictive view of God. She realized birth and religious origins cannot hold back the outpouring of God’s love on all people where and who ever they are. If we make God too small and puny in love we have not heard the gospel. She proves to be one of the most remarkable people in the Gospels. She digs in, takes Jesus on, and proves herself to be the wordsmith He is and even better. She hits Him right between the eyes with her famous reply, “Lord, even dogs get the crumbs that fall from their owner’s table.” But she doesn’t want crumbs. She wants the whole loaf – her child’s cure. His irritability and even bad manners indicate Jesus was strung out. His nerves must have been as tight as an overstretched rubber band. The heat was 100 plus degrees. This Canaanite was the first Gentile of record whom He had dealt so aggressively with.

 Still, confronted by this courageous woman and, unlike us. He cools down. It is an admission of bad manners on His part. He honors the woman by learning from her. Besides, Christ was charmed out of His sandals by her reply.  He may well have broken out into laughter at Himself and given her a high five. Score Canaanite woman 5 and Christ 0. Wit is still prized in the Middle East by both Jews and Arabs  the ability to match riddle with riddle, to cap one wise saying with another, to match insult with insult, and to turn raw insult into a compliment. Christ cured her child. He also salutes her Great faith She was also great for a second reason. She was the only one in any Gospel who had beaten Him in public debate. Would our faith be as persistent as the faith of the Canaanite woman in this Sundays Gospel? Only you can answer that one for yourself and I hope that your faith is persistent like the Canaanite woman whose daughter Jesus Cured because faith moves mountains but as the saying goes we need to keep on climbing!!

The Assumption

Here we are at the 15^th of August  as we celebrate the Assumption of Our Lady into heaven. Our Gospel Reading for this feast  shows us that Mary’s faith found expression in prayer as she went to visit Elisabeth Our faith also finds its expression in prayer as we listen to the great evening hymn of praise and thanksgiving the Magnificat.  The Magnificat has occupied an important place in the Liturgy of the Church since the fourth century. The. canticle is taken from the Gospel of Luke (1:46-55) where the events of the Visitation of Mary to her kinswoman Elizabeth are recorded.

 Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist at the time, greeted Mary with the phrase “Blessed art thou amongst women,, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb.” Mary responded with this canticle. Every time  we pray the Magnificat we encounter a wonderful model of Christian spirituality in Mary our mother, who according to the Second Vatican Council is “a model of the Church in faith, charity, and perfect union with Christ” (Gaudium et Spes, 63). Mary’s faith expressed in the Magnificat reached out to others in love and it reached out to God in prayer. If our faith finds expression in love, it will also find expression in prayer. In her prayer, Mary comes before the Lord as his lowly servant, ready to receive from God all the great things that God wants to give. Mary teaches us that when we pray we always come before God with open hearts ready to receive all God has to offer us and there is so much on offer. Mary’s prayer also shows another side of her faith. It shows us that her faith is one  that hungers for God’s justice to become a reality on earth.

She speaks to us about a God who pulls down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly, she tells us about a God who works to fill the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty.  The Assumption celebrates Mary as one who not only shows us the glorious destiny that awaits us at the end of our life’s journey but also how we are to travel on that journey as disciples of the Lord. Mary Our Mother was  born to be the first and perfect disciple, unstained by Original Sin. We who want to be disciples of the Lord, look to her as our guide in this life, learning from her example especially that of faith in God and what he wanted her to do be the mother of his Son as well as the mother to all who share the catholic faith. The Assumption is God’s crowning of His work as Mary ends her earthly life and enters eternity.  The feast days of the Church are not just the commemoration of historical events; they do not look only to the past. They look to the present and to the future and give us an insight into our own The Assumption looks to eternity and gives us hope that we, too, will follow Our Lady to heaven when our life is ended.  So let us renew ourselves with Mary as we celebrate the  Assumption  as we pray the words of the Magnificat giving glory to God for all he has done for us.relationship with God.

19the Sunday Ordinary Time

The gospel reading this weekend is all about  Jesus  walking on water but if you look beyond the walking on water this story is really about the trust all of us have in God. We have no problem identifying with Peter he is so like ourselves . He is confident one moment and then, when things get difficult and he has bitten off more than he can chew, he falls apart. By then it is too late and he needs help. Life is like that, we start at something like a new job, college, marriage, or a project to help others, but then it gets complex and beyond what we are capable of. We didn’t realize it was going to require so much time and effort and maybe we didn’t call out for help from other people or from God when we were sinking or drowning. Not an uncommon experience in so many situations of life and in the way we deal with them.

God doesn’t always give us an immediate cure or a fast solution when we bring ourselves in prayer for others as well as  ourselves. Jesus shows us that our father in heaven is not distant from our problems when he reaches out a hand to Peter and to us he is our companion who makes the journey of life with us especially  during the storms that life brings.  At times we may well be floundering, like Peter, but Jesus reaches out to help us, to rescue us. What better image of salvation could there be than Jesus reaching out to Peter to save him from drowning. What better analogy could there be of our own lives and relationship with Jesus. We live messy lives, we doubt and we lack faith but nevertheless we are still moving towards the Lord and our heavenly homeland  For us there is a lesson in this particular incident. It is that we must continue to trust in Christ and his loving Father, even when God seems to have deserted us.

Most of the troubles and trials of our lives are caused by the injustice and lack of charity of our fellowmen. The remainder can be attributed to our own weakness in so many things. But God foresees all these misfortunes, and he lets them take their course, because they can and should be the means of showing us life’s true meaning and they should draw us closer to god. Christ knew the storm was coming and the risk the Apostles would run when He sent them across the lake. But that trial and the grave danger was for their own good, because they learned that Jesus was from God and they could always trust Him. Our trials and our earthly ailments are also foreseen by God and permitted by him so that they will draw us closer to Him and help us on the road to heaven. May we like Peter reach out to Jesus and ask him save us as we put our trust in you for you are the son of God.

Transfiguration of the Lord

We are now well into the month of August  and for many of us  the summer holidays are over and it is back to work. For others who have children the run up to school starting in September will shortly begin. As usual we are on a never ending circle of everything being the same but different as time never stays still. This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the transfiguration. In the Gospel story the disciples went to an out of the way place, a mountaintop. The  Apostles are responding to the invitation of Jesus to come apart and rest for a while and mountains were the best place to get away from it all. On that mountain the disciples heard A  loud voice from the heavens that told them, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

The Transfiguration was a grace-filled moment of clarity for the disciples. But it was only a moment along the journey of their lives as today the transfiguration is just a moment in the journey of our lives. The question for us today is do we listen to what Jesus is telling us here and now in 2023? We don’t have such a spectacular revelation as the disciples had on the mountain side but like them we come apart to our place of worship each Sunday and there we hear the voice of God the Father that asks  to   “Listen to him.”  We listen to Jesus In the scriptures proclaimed for us and they tell the story of  God’s forgiveness, compassion and unfaltering love for us.  The voice we hear on this mountain directs us to be not afraid as we listen to Jesus, because in our world  there are many competing voices that might lure us to ways of living other than the one Jesus calls us to follow.

Worshiping together as the community of believers gives us an opportunity to  listen to the Word of God and what it is saying to us,  and the word of God  calls us to point out a number of things. The scriptures tell us that we need the presence of God in our lives and recognize how good he has been to each of us. Despite the dramatic way this message is revealed to the disciples they are consoled by the words of Jesus, ‘Do not be afraid.’ They look up into the eyes of Jesus and they see their friend. We need to let people know that just as His Love for us has no end   it will be the same for  them as it is for us as it was at the beginning for the apostles his first followers. We do not walk alone He is with us always, until the end of time.  People do want to be with people who are happy within themselves.

We are Happy because we know that God is with us in all the stages of life. The disciples will have to delve deep into their well of memories after the death of Jesus, to recall those wonderful moments of intimacy with him, where he often said, ‘Courage, be not afraid.’ Let us take this refrain from today’s Gospel as we rejoice in the Lord who calls us to not be afraid as we remember that  Jesus the Son of God is with us  in our lives with all their ups and downs and we should listen to him as he guides us along the right paths that lead to salvation.