Cobhsermons: Eighteenth Sunday of Year A

Cobhsermons: Eighteenth Sunday of Year A: There are times in all of our lives when we need to be left alone – not necessarily out of selfishness or escapism, but to recharge, solit...

Eighteenth Sunday of Year A

There are times in all of our lives when we need to be left alone – not necessarily out of selfishness or escapism, but to recharge, solitude is necessary to absorb the impact of a traumatic event. To be left with family alone in a time of bereavement, to have the space to be away, to shed a tear when no-one is looking. We often hide our grief from public view, we are too self-conscious and it is nobody’s business to see our tears and our momentary vulnerability. We in turn all value the need for friends and colleagues to grieve.

This is the mood as the news of John the Baptist’s awful death must have shaken the disciples who now turn their loyalties and hopes in Jesus. John had predicted his own death saying of Jesus that ‘He must increase, I must decrease’. The disciples’ time with John is over. Now, with Jesus they seek to be alone to cope with their grief. Jesus knows, and perhaps the disciples suspect, that a similar fate awaits Jesus too.

 But even at the time of bereavement and a funeral we know there is a time to withdraw and leave the family by themselves. At a removal we often depart the mortuary chapel to allow the family to close the coffin on their loved one for the last time.

 In the Gospel Jesus and His disciples are given no time for any of the above.  As they try to get away, the crowds press even closer and make demands on Jesus to heal their sick. How mercifully selfless Jesus is in forgetting His own cares and putting others first!

But interestingly, after some time the place of solitude is experienced as ‘a lonely place’ and hunger rears its head as appetites return. Jesus is concerned for their material bodily needs as well.

The feeding of the crowds of the loaves and fish is an anticipation of Jesus feeding us in the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is the foretaste, promise and pledge of heaven.

St Paul, in the Second Reading, beautifully describes how nothing in the visible or invisible world can form a barrier to Jesus’ love for us. People may pledge: ‘Nothing will ever come between us.’ Many human friendships, relationships, marriages often begin on this hopeful note, but these can fail as people drift in and out of ours and others’ lives. If we are lucky we have been able to sustain certain relationships with others through thick and thin. St Paul experienced much hardship in his own life, but there was one constant in His life, one person who would and could not ever let him down – Our Lord Himself.

For us this loving relationship with Jesus Christ is sustained by the vital communication we call the life of prayer and by reunion which we call Reconciliation and Communion. When we receive Jesus in the Eucharist we are strengthened in the midst of the sorrows, trials and sicknesses of life. We encounter Jesus the Healer who nourishes us with His Body and Blood. Only Jesus has the answers we seek, as the crowds knew who followed Jesus. He healed them and fed them. Each time we approach Jesus and receive Him in Holy Communion we too are healed and nourished at the deepest level of our being. This is what we know from the experience of faith, and perhaps a reason to explain to others who have lapsed form their faith why we continue to go to Mass on Sunday.

 Happy are those who are called to His supper!

 

Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Each year in our home there was an event that was equivalent to ‘taking out of the storeroom things old and new.’ Every summer on our long school holidays we would empty the garage, hall cupboard and attic for the annual airing of the ‘could be handy someday’ items. My parents grew up in the war years and the rationing era, so nothing would go to waste. There would be an inspection of the laid out items, a longing in our eyes that something might finally see the bin, but also the ‘we’ll wait for your father to come home to decide’. The last mission was to fit everything back the way we found them and close the bulging doors.

 

My parents would sometimes throw an eye over the piling junk in a neighbour’s skip and invariably something might catch their eye and we might be mortified and be instructed to pick something out. So much so that there would be an ever increasing pile of ‘you-never-know’ second hand furniture, bicycle parts, lawn mowers and heaven knows what.

 

Another adventure awaited us when that ‘someday’ would arrive and we would be sent to fetch the buried treasure! ‘It’s got to be there somewhere’ is another comment that sends shivers down my back as we would be sent back on the thankless task of retrieving the urgently needed missing ‘someday’ item’!

 

The Gospel is very much a ‘sorting out’ theme, and whereas last week it was the land, now Jesus focuses on the sea as the source of parables. There is a final decision, a final weeding out process. And unlike a job interview process or audition, there is something very final being alluded to today, as on the Last Day there are no more opportunities to make up for any faults. This does not sit well with us in a modern culture of second chances.

 

We do not like being told ‘no’, or you can’t, or you mustn’t, or else’.

It is always a very instructive process to ask someone preparing for marriage – on their own - among the questions in the Pre Marriage forms (known as Pre Nuptial Enquiry Forms).

Are you intent on entering a marriage that can only be dissolved by death?

Do you understand that marriage is a lifelong commitment to love and support each other?

 

There is usually at least one gulp, and that is reassuring, as it is a necessary wake up moment. The vows mean to say something before God and mean it, permanently and irreversibly.

 

That gives us a different slant in life, that there are certain decisions that we must live with, for good (and sometimes for ill). There are cold realities where the consequences must be thought through, and sometimes aren’t when we get caught up in the heat of the moment.

 

The parable of the sorting out of fish – those that are of value, commercially and nutritionally, from those that are poor value and not particularly attractive or pleasing, maybe too small or what have you, is an image given to us today to a permanent lasting judgment. The angels are portrayed as the fish sorters, some 'fish' (i.e., us) go to their reward and others are set aside. Heaven and hell, as a reward for faith, virtue and generosity on one hand, and punishment for vice, evil choices and selfishness on the other.

 

The choice is ours and we are already making it. It is not too late for us now to make the decision to repent and find our way to salvation. We have been duly warned. We have the freedom that the Father gives us, because He wants a free loving response made in faith and trust and obedience to His Will to make the right choices every day.

 

Are we listening?

 

Sixteenth Sunday of the Year A

I read an interesting article recently about a plant that is causing huge problems. To an English  this plant botanist was an attractive curiosity and what became a beautiful display - Japanese knotweed was unknown in this part of the world in 1900 - now it has all but taken over, the war is lost!

What was attractive has proved to be a pest and a liability. It is impossible to control because it can take root up to five feet underground. Above ground its tendrils choke other plants, it wins out.

To me it is an instructive parable on the attractive allurement of sin. Something that appeals to the senses and curiosity is succumbed to and it takes root to the detriment of everything else.

Today in the Gospel the darnel is deliberately chosen as a symbolic weed to us but it was a real threat among farmers and a means of exacting revenge from an enemy. It was impossible soon enough to detect to prevent infiltration because it has all the appearances of the good crop of wheat.

The enemy is the devil, and he acts surreptitiously, maliciously, in silence, at night, like a burglar or graffiti artist, awaiting the opportunity to pounce, and to escape undetected, but having accomplished in evil design.

The harvesters are the angels. The crop is actually ourselves and is symbolic – of our hearts, of society, of opportunities to repent, the need to extricate ourselves from evil as an apparent good

The good harvest, like the mustard tree and good wheat point to the virtuous – we are called to be virtuous people and to perform practical good deeds of mercy, the darnel is what attracts to follow a very different path.

Externally it points too to the mystery of the co-existence of good and evil in our world and God’s apparent patient non-intervention.

There is a reckoning however, and the consequences are final. We must decide to avoid as far as possible the evil tendrils, the temptations and occasions of sin, the company of those who commit vice,  of those who would lead us astray by their seeming appealing and plausible arguments – that what is harmful to us and to society through the false gods of ‘choice’ and ‘live and let live’. We must act to rid ourselves of evil influences and make all the right choices to do the greatest good to the greatest number while the opportunity is ours. We have the examples of the canonised saints to lead us by example as to what are the virtues necessary to live a good and holy life to render ourselves admissible as wheat for the harvest and for the granary that is our heavenly home.

 

Fifteenth Sunday of the Year

Sunday 15A

There are all types of crosses and suffering in life, psychological, physical, emotional and spiritual. Some crosses are the result of our own foolishness, others are beyond our control or we share in the suffering of others. We see all too often the suffering of mental illness, of addiction, of physical suffering.

No-one escapes suffering in this life – the truth is that we can run but we can’t hide.

There is for each one of us the cross of daily duty – of the sacrifices required of us through our calling in life, of our earning our daily bread, of our putting in the effort required of us, without slacking off, out of a sense of responsibility to others. It can be monotonous drudgery, seemingly unrewarding relentless effort on a bad day. There is the burden of the various stages of life we will inevitably experience.

Then there are the crosses of other people in our lives including the inconveniences that others place on us through their characters and personalities, the unreasonableness of others who are completely unaware of it themselves, the people we try to avoid, hoping they haven’t seen us!

But for all my whinging once a while I get a wake-up call, that puts me back in my box as it were, when I see a child in a wheelchair, or someone shuffling along in a walking stick, slowed by the passage of years. Or from time to time having to go to an A & E ward and then when I can walk out, passing by the tired faces of those waiting to be seen, with anxious loved ones, I ask myself how I can be so caught up in myself and my own worries. I recall the cross of a sick child - I remember anointing a child who still had a dummy in her mouth who held her hands out to be anointed - who due to defective kidneys had already been to hospital for 37 operations. I remember the Redemptorists used to visits from time to time our parish for a Parish Mission; being hugely impressed by the petition box. People weren’t named, but their petitions were called out – it opened my eyes to the suffering and problems of others, when I got so caught up in my own.

 ‘I think that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the joy/glory that awaits us.’ (St Paul, Second Reading)

This is our hope – this is the hope that Christianity offers, that suffering is, despite all its awfulness, temporary. Every hardship of this life patiently borne for the sake of Christ, gives way to the promise of eternal life. The unimaginable happiness of heaven eclipses the sufferings of this world.

God gave us His answer – in the cross, the crucifix. In the Catholic tradition there is no shortage but rather a great variety in meditating on Christ’s suffering that helps to bring meaning to ours. How often I have found comfort there in prayer, or meditating on the Stations of the Cross, the Divine Mercy Chaplet, the Seven Sorrows of Our Lady, the Sacred Wounds or Precious Blood, the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary, meditating on Gethsemane in a Holy Hour.

Can I pray this week bringing my cross or the crosses of others before the Cross of Christ? Emerging from mediaiitng on the Word of God in prayer can I be more sensitive to the sufferings of others?

Can I then bring hope, help or strength to alleviate others or can I at least listen more patiently - this week, more consciously aware myself and bringing others to the awareness that ‘the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the glory that awaits us.’ (Romans 8:18)

This is a concrete example of how the Word of God, in a single sentence that states, ‘I think that the sufferings of the present time are not worth comparing with the joy/glory that awaits us’ symbolised by the seed, and watered by prayer, bears fruit and brings forth a harvest in my life and the lives of others, ‘so the word that goes from my mouth does not return to me empty, without carrying out my will and succeeding in what it was sent to do.’(Isaiah 55:11)

‘And the one who received the seed in rich soil is the man who hears the word and understands it; he is the one who yields a harvest and produces now a hundredfold, now sixty, now thirty’ (Mt. 13:9)

14th Sunday of the Year

14^th Sunday

‘Come to Me all you who labour and over burdened and I will give you rest’, says the Lord.

Recently I had the experience of fulfilling an ambition of mine, to walk on the famous Camino de Santiago de Compostela. I read that at least 4,000 Irish people walk some part of the Camino each year. It is increasing in the popular imagination. If you are preparing to walk 16 miles a day and sleep at night with up to 60 (other) snorers in bunk beds, then this is the trip for you!

Seriously, I enjoyed it even with the hardships of hot feet and aching legs on my arrival in Santiago. It was great to be in a supportive group and we egged each other on.

Once the week was over I stayed in another week to hear confessions in the cathedral there.

What surprised me in the course of the week was that 4 non-Catholic Christians approached me asking me to hear their story and some even knelt as if it were confession to all intents and purposes. One Danish Lutheran lady said, ‘I get great comfort coming into a Catholic church.’ Another lady, from Australia, lamented that there was no equivalent in her denomination. Here were people who had walked several weeks of the Camino and now felt the need to express themselves before God in some way. They had reflected on life, on God, on relationships and on their personal strengths and weaknesses that came to light over those weeks. What was moving was the tears of deeply felt emotions, of relief in at last being able to talk, and tears of gratitude as well as of sorrow. Needless to say this was also the experience of the many Catholics who returned to the sacrament after many years. As a priest it was and is a tremendous privilege and a very humbling one. Afterwards some even approached me on the street or in a café thanking me for the opportunity to talk.

It made me reflect on what a great healing gift that the Sacrament of Reconciliation is to us in the Church. Do we appreciate it? When I saw those non-Catholics pining for something, someone, some ritual, I am all the more grateful now.

When Jesus speaks of laying down burdens and seeking rest in Him, my thoughts turn back to the Camino of the daily relief of taking off the walking boots and laying down for a rest. But there are, of course, other burdens, and Jesus in the Gospel this Sunday specifically refers to ‘rest for your souls’. This is a different kind of relief – a deeper need in all of us to be able to unburden ourselves of things that have weighed us down, perhaps emotionally, mentally, spiritually and morally. Is this our experience? Is now the time to heed the words of this Sunday’s Gospel to lay aside our heavy burdens? Might I now encounter Him in Confession/Reconciliation?

On several occasions in the Gospel Jesus invites us with the word ‘COME’ – ‘come and see’, ‘come follow me’. The letters of the word COME can stand for Christ Offers Me Everything, or Christ Offers Me Eternity. Will I now accept?

 

Saints Peter and Paul

CORPUS CHRISTI

Corpus Christi

The Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ brings us back to the central mystery of faith – God became Man – He took on human flesh and blood - the same is sacramentally present to us in the Holy Eucharist.

How do we best honour someone’s memory? By holding on to something that belonged to them. We give that item a place of special honour in our home and hearts.

 

Artefacts – photo albums, a framed picture, an anniversary Mass, a Mass in their birthday, a memento, an antique, an item of clothing, even a lock of hair, their signed name on a book. These are true treasures and of sentimental, though nonetheless real value to us.

 

Something they wanted to leave us personally and particularly, amidst their last words and breath.

We may have something they treasured and they in like pass it on to us and we treasure it as deeply.

Something we would want to hold on to and keep even if we are moving house.

Something they would want us to remember them by.

Something in particular they would want us to do for them as a special last request and favour, to honour them and their request we would feel terrible not to honour that and not to keep our word to them.

All of this is what Jesus asked of His disciples, the first priests at the last Supper – his last meal, his farewell: His last time meeting all of them together was a meal, and a memorial, and linked to His sacrifice: This is my Body, this is My Blood, Do this in memory of me. What did Jesus give as a parting gift? – Himself, His very Body and Blood.

Grief and memory, recalling words and actions: Their words, phrases, wisdom, words to live by, with meaning, relevance and personal application. That is summed up for us in the Liturgy of the Word in the Mass – speaking, repeating His words, listening, attending to and putting into practise in our lives what He wants us to do.

We are honouring His wishes in doing precisely – in ritual – in re-presenting His sacrifice at the Mass in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The meal is sacred and shared.

Finally when someone dies, their spirit is with us.  We feel their presence around us in ways we cannot adequately express in words. They are somehow present to us, how, we cannot say.

But Jesus is truly present – His Spirit is with us – His Holy Spirit, but also His real Presence in the tabernacle, in the monstrance. He is not dead He has risen and is alive in our midst. His last words, His parting words, risen from the dead and about to ascend to His Father, were ‘I am with you all days, until the end of the world.’

Let us pray to Our Lady the first Tabernacle, where Jesus was present in His Body and Blood for 9 months, and who was therefore in the presence of the Lord in a unique way in the history of salvation, to help us grow in what Pope St John Paul II called ‘Eucharistic amazement’.

Come let us adore Him, Come let us worship.

TRINITY SUNDAY

Holy Trinity

 

This Sunday we meditate on probably the most abstract topic – in His mystery it is so difficult for us to conceptualise, or visualise – the Blessed Trinity – GOD!

What is your image of God?

If you were to ask a child to draw a picture it would be probably of an old man in white – elderly –with long flowing beard, on a puffy cloud, looking down on us sometimes kindly, other times angrily at us, waiting to catch us out, ready to send a lightning bolt! But at least we know a bit more than that simplistic image!

God is One and yet God exists as the relationship of mutual inter-personal love of Three Persons. We pray ‘In the Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit’ at the beginning of Mass, we bless ourselves at Mass; and every day in prayer – yet we cannot ever comprehend the Greatest Mystery of all – God.

What is the best image we can come up with?

I find Rublev’s Icon helpful – not only to preach about but as a visual reminder of the Mystery of the Three Persons in One God.

You may have seen this icon before. It is simply beautiful and worth pondering.

The first thing to notice is that the three angels as depicted are all identical facially. This points to the equality – the similarity as in a family -of the Three Persons in the One God. They all have haloes – pointing to the holiness of God

Next, the Father is seated on the left – He points to the Son and the Holy Spirit who look back at the Father – Christ who is sent to redeem us and the Spirit who is sent at Pentecost to sanctify us.

We see the colour blue – which iconographers use to signify divinity or God. Christ and the Spirit have more because they have been seen –become visible

Each holds a rod or staff pointing to their divine majesty and authority. As the queen of England celebrates 60 years this weekend, her ‘majesty’ is miniscule in relation to the Majesty of God.

 

Each of the Divine Person’s hands are also worth examining more closely – that of the Father sending, that of the Son with two fingers pointing downwards symbolising His journey to earth and  His humanity and divinity, and that of the Holy Spirit being sent downwards also to sanctify us.

Christ has a stole on His shoulder pointing to His priesthood and that He has offered Himself for our sakes.

The tree behind Christ points to the Cross on which hung the Saviour of the world.

 The house behind the Father points to our heavenly home

The Mass is the foretaste of ‘first course’ – the Body and Blood of Christ are on the table – the wedding banquet or supper of the Lamb in heaven – to which all are invited.

The three Persons are seated around a table that seats four – the fourth place is for you and me – God invites you to sit with Him and feel at home as an equal - comfortable – there is a place for you in this relationship.

There is restlessness in all of us that can only be satisfied by God and our relationship with Him in prayer and the sacraments. Let us try to know him, love Him and serve Him better in this life on order to be happy with Him forever in the next.

Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit: As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen

PENTECOST

ASCENSION

6th Sunday of Easter

5th Sunday of Easter

4th Sunday of Easter

3rd Sunday of Easter

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY

DIVINE MERCY SUNDAY

EASTER

Palm Sunday

5th Sunday of Lent

4th Sunday of Lent

3rd Sunday of Lent

2nd Sunday of Lent

1st Sunday of Lent

Eighth Sunday of the Year

Seventh Sunday of the Year

Sixth Sunday of the Year