Seventeenth Sunday

Our Father

What was your father like?

This is a tough and deeply personal question to each of us. It is a hard to be objective about one’s own family.

But it can be difficult to pray the ‘Our Father’ or to approach God in confidence if we have a rather jaundiced view of what it means to be a father. Some psychologists and authors speak of the ‘father wound.’

A lot hangs on our own experience of what our image of fatherhood is.

There are two extremes – I think of a friend of mine at the seminary who one day told me about his own father. I was complaining about the predictability of seminary institutionalised food, and especially the dried overcooked roast beef we got four times a week in our first year, when he told me of his father who spent the entire weekly wage packet on alcohol. Often his main meal was tea and bread and jam. It sobered me up and I began to appreciate that I didn’t have that experience and I thought of the food differently too.

Another extreme in the other direction was that of St Therese the Little Flower whose father doted on her and he called her has ‘little princess’. In her own writings she admits that she was, as the youngest, rather spoilt by her father after her mother died when Therese was only four. It was heartbreaking for her later to learn of her father’s mental illness and dementia.

Fathers come in different packages and it’s a rather delicate topic.

In this Year of Mercy I think now may be the opportunity - if we need to do so and if we have not yet done so - to forgive our fathers their failings and shortcomings. I see people who live long years of trauma and resentment over the failings of their distant angry fathers – or even towards male father-like dominant figures in authority – such as priests, doctors, Gardai (police) and teachers -  and then who often develop the traits they most hated. It’s a vicious cycle that can only be overcome by forgiveness with God’s grace in prayer.  They strive to still live up to unrealisable expectations. Some people relive old rows, arguments and disputes and harsh words exchanged that stung and continue to sting years later.

So either your father was distant, seemingly unemotional, uncaring, and undemonstrative in affection, controlling, harsh, overbearing, and authoritarian or worst of all, absent

Or

Your father was just honest, diligent, fair, sensible, a man of integrity, with quiet strength, practical, caring and authoritative.

Or he was a mixture of both

It’s so easy to generalise and to concentrate on the negative aspects of our upbringing. It is more challenging, but possibly easier as we grow older, to think of the many sacrifices of our fathers in providing for us, who were there for us on our toddler years holding our hands, and as we grow older, provided sound advice.

Jesus teaches His disciples, i.e.  us, how to pray to God as Father.

I think that the Our Father can be summed up in 4 P words – Praise, Provision, Pardon and Protection. We can pray the Our Father better when we learn to appreciate what our father/father figure did for us, when we see how he/they provided for us, financially, materially, advisedly, when we see and appreciate their efforts at our protection, and above all when we learn to forgive them, recognising now our own shortcomings as fathers or mothers.

Praise, Provision, Pardon and Protection therefore are the key words to recognising God’s love for us, as Father, experienced and shown first to us however imperfectly in our own parents and now the key to our praying to God and loving and trusting Him more confidently in the words our Saviour gave us.

Sixteenth Sunday

Martha and Mary

The Gospel of today’s Mass is one where we are puzzled at why the Lord Jesus seems to take issue with Martha’s busyness and where he praises Mary’s sitting in front of Him.

Mary appears to do nothing! Mary even says nothing!

This was a Gospel scene I never really understood as a boy. At home there were plenty of us at home and we all had assigned tasks to perform, we were quick to point out to our parents if a brother or sister did not seem to be pulling their weight and equally we were outraged if someone was slacking or got less work to do and finished before us and were free to leave the kitchen or dining area!

If a guest was coming to visit there was plenty of work in preparation for the visit to create a good impression that everything all over the house was clean and tidy. Also while the guest was at table - in our home - Mum and Dad got to sit down and visit while we ‘slaved’ in the kitchen.

Why is it that Martha ‘busy about many things’ is left high and dry?

There is a message for us in that at times we focus more on the ‘what’ and less on the ‘why’ and ‘for whom’ we do things. This in modern parlance is called burnout. We are taken up with so many things that our minds get distracted and we spin out and get frustrated with others who ‘sit idly by’.

Perhaps there was also a sense of forced embarrassment. Martha could have handled things differently and taken Mary aside – then or later -instead of creating a scene in front of their invited guest.  After all what guest would want to be drawn into a ‘domestic’ and be seen to take a side? Personally I would take the side of the person cooking for and feeding me! I would want my dinner and I wouldn’t want to be poisoned if I was against them!

The fact is that Jesus is once more challenged to take a side in a dispute. Jesus’ words of judgment always leave us disturbed and challenged in equal measure. Jesus sides with Mary who has ‘chosen the better part.’ It is not that Martha hadn’t chosen something good but that there was something better. How often in our decision making are we called to prioritise between two apparent goods, but one must take precedence for the sake of a higher value, namely what best serves Christ and leads to my sanctification in serving Him and others?

Finally Mary is praised because she availed of the unique opportunity that was presented to her – Christ was in her home, and He was teaching her and she was learning as a disciple from the master.

She was giving Him quality time as we must to all others, because He will tell us when we meet Him - ‘you did it to me’. We must pray – and spend more time doing it. We must spend time in adoration, praise and thanksgiving. All it takes is time.  It gives meaning and direction to all that we must do. It deepens our relationship with Christ and our love for others and purifies our intention. Let us ask our Lady to help us draw closer to Her Son so that in prayer we may learn to ‘do whatever He tells you’.

Fifteenth Sunday

The Good Samaritan

Isn't it interesting that you can come back to a familiar story and see a detail you never saw before? The detail that challenges me - and in the Year of Mercy too - is the fact that the Samaritan made a commitment which we can assume (despite it being a parable) that he would be sure to follow up on. He knew he could not do everything at that moment of crisis though he did more than enough. The poor man overcome by brigands was injured and stripped of everything. Yet healing and recovery still had to happen, but would be an ongoing process. Not all the recovery could happen that day. And so the Good Samaritan would come back and make good any expense the innkeeper might have. But we can't imagine him forgetting about the victim of the assault on his return.

So the challenge to me is how many promises have I made that I have failed to live up to? And how many people have I promised to pray for that I quickly forgot? How many people need an ongoing visit or care after bereavement or a hospital visit or sickness that they or a family member underwent? There is a critical time frame of the aftermath of a funeral in which family need support and a time when the sick themselves or others accompanying them through the illness need a visit. The time I repeat is critical, and if delayed too long may betray or be perceived to be a lack of genuine concern.

In this Year of Mercy – the merciful Good Samaritan – who represents God’s mercy as well as the call to ‘do likewise’ calls me and challenges me to follow up and follow through on my verbal promises of aftercare. It is then that the bereaved and the sick need us more because the world moves on and we quickly forget them when a crisis abates. The acute problem becomes a chronic need that requires long-term care, concern and charity. In a word, mercy.

Fourteenth Sunday

At this time of year, if we can afford to get away, go on holidays and the anticipation of travel fill us with a renewed excitement. We get down our baggage and start packing our suitcases, but are now ever vigilant and aware of weight restrictions.

The disciples in today’s Gospel were on a trial run on their first journey away as it were before they would be sent after Pentecost with the Holy Spirit and with the anointing to forgive sins to baptise and to preach.

Funnily enough the disciples are called to go forth without any spare ‘anything’! Why is this? This ensures a speedy and unhindered visitation and area cover in the shortest time possible. The Lord will provide through receptive and hospitable hearers on the first mission of the disciples. And the disciples return comparing notes and stories at the wonderful signs that accompany the message and the preliminary mission.

There must be in all of us at all times that message and that confidence and trust that the Lord is ahead of us in all things and our pilgrimage journey in this life. He knows what lies ahead and He will provide for us. Wherever life brings us, He will be there waiting as well as with us every step of the way. We are therefore to practice detachment form things that can hinder effective witness.

But there is another kind of baggage we carry, and the term ‘emotional baggage’ is used for a person with mental or emotional problems. Often a term that is employed of a disturbed person, often dismissively, is that ‘they have issues’.

Who does not have issues today? Just under the surface there is in all of us baggage we carry, the things that weigh us down, the heaviness in our hearts, the stresses and strains of life, the financial burdens of so many people, the uncertainties of life, the failure of our elected representatives to truly represent us in areas of pressing concern, the cynicism in the media, the relentless doom and gloom in the economy, and daily we are drawn to the blaring headlines of crashes and disasters and terrorism and other acts of violence. There is so much lack of hope in people’s hearts, not knowing where to turn to for relief, solace or comfort. What can explain the depression in young people, taking the ultimate dreaded step? There is in society the lack of a hopeful vision of a clear and consistent moral as well as spiritual leadership.

But any desired change in the world at large, or in society begins with the individual decision-making process.  Rather than be trapped in an ever downward spiral, we must turn to Christ and form a relationship with Him in prayerful trust.

We must recognise the baggage and weight we carry in our hearts. The Bible refers to the burden that sin is, which with anger, shame, self-loathing and guilt can be overwhelming. The burden of sin, and forgiveness is described in the psalms as follows: ‘too much for us our offences but you wipe them away’ (Psalm 44)

He took away our offences for us

“Come now, let us reason together,” says the LORD. “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” – Isaiah 1:18

 The Lord has lifted us up, by lifting Himself up on the Cross.

‘Come to me, all you that labour, and are burdened, and I will refresh you.’  (Mt 11:28)

We cannot give what we do not have. Pope John Paul – soon to be saint – said that ‘those who have had a genuine encounter with Christ cannot keep it to themselves.’ That is our experience too.

 ‘Blessed be the Lord our God who has helped us and we too are called to help one another in their time of need. Just as we share in God’ consolations, so we share in God’s great help.  (2 Cor 1:4).

To sum up therefore we are called to ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (John). This love means that we should ‘bear one another’s burdens, not as a duty but gladly’. (1 Th 5:14). The fact that we are unburdened (of sin in Confession) becomes a source of joy – the joy of knowing and experiencing Christ’s ready forgiveness most of all, and therefore we are called to forgive as well as be forgiven. This is the greatest challenge of the call to love one another- to forgive one another in Christ. That is truly ‘bearing one another’s burdens.

In effect the disciples were called to carry no baggage in order to more effectively relieve people of theirs!

Let there be no baggage between us or overhead!

Thirteenth Sunday

What does Jesus Christ want of us?

Any parent of a sluggish (usually teenage) child knows the expression, ‘How many times must I call you?’ as a teenager will often put off a painful duty. A girl in her 20s told me how her teenage niece texted her from the couch in her home to the kitchen to make her a cup of tea! How lazy can you get?

We delay the inevitable thought of discomfort. We text ahead that we are running late (but what really delayed us?). There is no ad break or commercial break, there is no ‘I’ll get back to you’ for our response to God.  Abraham Lincoln once said that ‘my father taught me the value of hard work, but he didn’t teach me to like it’.

What does God want? There is no snooze button or pause button where God is concerned. Nor does He does not want to be put on hold!

He wants obedience –

·       listening,

·       and doing,

·       promptly

·       to the present moment.

He wants our friendship and a return of the love that He has shown us.

He calls each one of us, not just priests and nuns or missionaries, to follow Him. He wants of each person the faithful performance of their daily duty as required of their state in life. It need not necessarily be (though may include) getting up and facing the day sometimes on a dark, dreary wintry morning that is bleak and daunting to go off to work.

He wants us to follow Him to Jerusalem - to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. He wants a particular kind of friendship and relationship – of trust and of reliability.

What kind of friend am I to Him? What kind of person am I?

Three people make what we might deem valid excuses in their response to Christ’s call today.

But the excuses that we make tell us a lot about ourselves in our present state. The delay tactics, the reasons for delay are about us wanting to put off an uncomfortable but necessary duty that urgently presents itself to us!

‘I’ll do it later’ tasks are often never done at all, of if done are done later in the day, under the pressure of the clock or deadline, and grudgingly or slipshod. As creatures of habit we might work better under the pressure of a deadline and how ironic it is that the more time I have on my hands, the less I get done.

‘I don’t feel like it’ is not refer to things that a matter of taste but those very things are a matter of duty, of honouring and being faithful to a commitment. As Nike ads say ‘Just do it’. Laziness, or sloth in one place will ultimately spill into all areas of our lives. This is part of the self-indulgence that St Paul warns the Galatians about in today’s Sunday reading. A good test of our response, our obedience to the present moment, to the duty required of us, is our punctuality vis à vis suiting ourselves.  So we see that the Cross that we are called to pick up every day (last week) does in fact involve denying ourselves, and if for no other reason let us at least be motivated to act straight away by our consideration for others’ feelings. This is very telling when we see that Our Lady went with haste to visit her cousin Elizabeth and was so attentive at Cana before everyone else noticed that the wine had run out and spared the couple’s and family’s embarrassment in a real concrete situation.

We are at constant war with the self-indulgent back-sliding that years of bad ingrained habit tempt us back to, and the striving to live a life in the Spirit – the new life which Christ calls us towards and ultimately leads to eternal life.

If we are truly, madly, deeply in love with Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and faithful to Him in prayer (even when we don’t feel like praying when the opportunity presents itself), we will find ourselves saying more and more often when we are tempted backwards: ‘How could I do that to Him?’ and throughout the day we will see Him and serve Him with consideration more and more in our neighbour. Then our constant question will be ‘what am I waiting for?’

Twelfth Sunday

One of the advantages of a name like 'John' is that is so common. There were 4 Johns in my class at primary school and sometimes the teacher would ask a question I wouldn’t know the answers to. I am sure looking back one teacher got great pleasure in asking ‘now who will I ask? John…’  the four Johns would gulp and be on hold, and a sigh of relief would come from this John who didn’t know the answer when another John surname was called out because he hadn’t his learning off homework done!

A teacher asks questions of course out find out how much the pupils understand what they have learned (if they have taken the trouble to learn!). That is in fact what to educate means ‘to draw out from’.

Jesus was, among other things, a teacher to his followers. He was often addressed as ‘Rabbi’ which means ‘teacher’. Someone once counted how many questions Jesus asks in the 4 Gospel accounts and there are about 200 questions he asks, often rhetorically, but all ultimately directed at all Christians for all times and at us today, addressed to us, and He wants an answer from each person.

Jesus asks two questions today

Who do people say that I am?

And of course opinions are divided and none of the answers turn out to be correct. People’s opinions are not necessarily right. Popular opinion is very elusive. So much for what people think of us.

But Jesus is not really that concerned what people think of him (unlike us!). This was simply a lead in question to the real question: ‘who do you say that I am?’ That is a very different prospect altogether! Jesus is getting personal.

This is a crucial question. After all we know that He will meet with us one day and ask us the very same question! It is Only Peter who comes up with right answer – ‘The Christ of God’.  Likewise in class there was always someone who knew the right answer to every question!

We come to realise then in the account of what follows that then Jesus teaches us who he says He is Himself! And that we cannot have Him without the cross. And all of us have one, which can be external or internal, even unknown to a spouse or family member.

The inescapable reality of the cross in all its forms – spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, in relationships, the cross can take the form of everyday criticism, anger, trials, contradictions and humiliations. To be a disciple is to be a follower of the Lord Jesus not in a piecemeal fashion, picking and choosing, but with hardships and ordeals and all sorts of unexpected challenges and trials. There is no-one who escapes suffering. To be a follower means to be open - and to be willing to be opened to the very likely possibility of suffering.

It only begins to make sense when love is brought into the equation. Even on the happiest day imaginable in a person’s life, in two people’s lives in fact – on their wedding day, a couple exchange vows. The good and the bad are accepted in equal measure, in a balanced equation as it were. - For better or worse for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part. Often a couple are quite moved by this exchange. What a married couple effectively say is: we will face the future together and we will suffer together. It is love, as well as  prayer, duty, mutual trust and tenacity that help them to persevere and not to give up on each other.

People sometimes wistfully say to themselves or aloud – ‘if I knew then what I know now!’ Each choice in life, single, married, religious or priestly, brings its own cup of suffering in unexpected ways. The grass is always greener elsewhere. No matter what life we choose, we bring our personality, our temperament, our upbringing with us. We will make our share of mistakes; we will have our coping mechanisms, bad habits and good. We will have good days and bad days, sunshine and rain. In marriage two personalities must work for a lifetime, religious must lives their vows in a community setting, a priest and even single people must find it in the sacrifices to their comfort, convenience and control.

With the passage of time we begin to see all the implications of that first yes, but it was a free yes, made in love and hopefully now even more mature and developed, made stronger and with more resolve. The permanent and lasting cost becomes clearer to us, especially at milestone events, ages or anniversaries,  with the renewed and deeper sense or realisation of what we have accepted as well as given up, renounced or surrendered. Sometimes growth involves the more complete 'yes' that entails a  fuller surrender of self, a stripping off of vanity and pride, of self-centredness and control. But the 'terms and conditions' that bind us at one level are meant to free us at another.

Now today, Jesus asks: ‘Who do you say that I am NOW? After all these years? Or will you too go away?’ At every stage of life we must face the daily cross, not back-sliding, but denying ourselves, making sacrifices, doing our duty. Obedience, the calling and sacrifices that our state and age in life brings. Take up your cross, whatever that may be!

Andrew said to Bartholomew – ‘we have found the Christ.’  We too must find Him, but He must find us - in prayer. Jesus says firmly and finally that we must ‘lose our lives’ in order to find them. Therefore we must regularly die to self and  surrender the three C words of our Convenience, Comfort and Control. With the help of prayer we realise that:

‘When you have found the Cross, it is I you have found’ (Our Lord to Bl Josefa Menendez).

Eleventh Sunday

The woman who was a sinner

 

The story of the compassion of Jesus in Luke continues in the Gospel account of the woman who has sinned much and been forgiven much.

The saying goes that every saint has a past and every sinner has a future!

Who among us has not sinned grievously in the past? Some of our (repented) sins remain known to God alone, thank God! If people we count among our friends knew all our (sometimes repeated) sins of the past – and present - they would be truly shocked and scandalised! We might take little consolation that we might feel that way in return if we were privy to their sins. So some things are better left unsaid between friends. They know us for who we are and still love us, for our warts and all!

The readings today at Mass tell us about three sinners – David, who committed lust, murder and adultery; Paul, the convert from fanatical persecution of Christians, and the woman who was a sinner, with a ‘name’ in the town in which she lived.

The woman in the Gospel passage of today shows great love – tears of joy of repentance and the knowledge that she is forgiven much, and tears too of sadness of sins she committed against herself, perhaps against her own body, but certainly sins against her own dignity. That is one of the effects of sins, even private ones. They degrade us, and sometimes we are completely at fault, with perfect knowledge and full consent, as the Catechism teaches us.

We might beat ourselves up for sins we would not commit know now with the benefit of age, wisdom and hindsight. So we can see what damage sin does to our own psyche, and the harm we do not only to our spiritual well being but our mental, physical and emotional well being before and having been forgiven.

 All this does not include the offence given to God, and sins we may have committed in collusion with, or which gave scandal to, others.

Many people carry around - for years - the unnecessary burdens of guilt, anger and shame. Some of the anger directed at the Church and her priests is due, at least in part, to guilty consciences and people’s upset that in fact the Church especially in her moral teaching might be right after all. But without the grace of God, people can level hatred at the Church projecting their own self-hatred.  

The deeper the hurt, the greater the pain. With sin, there are no winners, only losers. But the sense of joy, of a great burden lifted, with the experience of at last confessing personal sin, is therapeutic and uplifting, and gives a peace and joy the world cannot give.

This is the heartfelt experience of the woman who was a sinner, who became a disciple. And are we not all disciples, and all sinners one at the same time. Is there anyone among us who has not sinned? Let us turn to the Lord of mercy and compassion and live lives of mercy towards all we meet - in  prayer, thought, word and action.

Tenth Sunday

The widow’s son at Nain

Now we return to Ordinary Time Sundays, for the remainder of the liturgical year we will be encountering the Christ of Luke or of Christ from the perspective of Luke. Luke was a convert and had a keen sense of coming in from the margins as a Gentile convert. So it is that he has empathy for the outsiders in Jewish society. We see in the coming Sundays the compassion of Jesus for women as one of the interests of Luke in how he presents Christ. Might it be too bold to say that Luke was a feminist? We see today the woman who is widowed is also now childless and therefore in an incredibly vulnerable position in society. She is impoverished by this cruel twist of fate that sees her outlive her husband’s and her only son.

 We are presented with this Gospel passage today alongside its counterpart in the Old Testament of Elijah raising a widow’s son. Elijah calls on God, but Jesus is God and has the power to raise the young man Himself. It is the clear and consistent action of Christ to raise up all those who are bowed down, or in  Mary’s words in the Magnificat - also recorded in Luke -  ‘he lifts up the lowly in their nothingness’(Luke 1:52).

 The compassion of Christ is for the widow’s fate. In this month of the Scraed heart we are called once more to consider the Lord’s merciful heart – aheart filled with love, mercy and compassion. The Lord’s mercy is indeed truly astonishing to the crowd – ‘God has visited his people’!

Jesus does an astonishing thing in interrupting a funeral procession. He puts his hand n the wooden bier, and while that was considered unclean because of the close contact with a dead person, the fact that the boy is raised up means that there is no uncleanness ritually either.

The phrase common to both accounts, written centuries apart, is that ‘he gave him to his mother’ (Luke7:15).

Death loses its power. Jesus takes on death and ultimately triumphs. He is reversing the effects of the Fall, when death entered the world through sin. He will conquer death in the wood of the Cross.

In a great parallel at the end of His life, as Jesus’ hands were touching another piece of wood, the wood of the cross,  Jesus gives ‘the son to his mother’ when He gives the disciple to Mary, calling him ‘your son’ …’and ‘from that hour the disciple took her to his own home’ (John 1:27).

 Applications in our own lives

We may have had the experience of someone encouraging us, lifting is up, singling us out as it were for a word of consideration or kindness. We were not forgotten or neglected by them; we were made feel that we matter; we were made feel that we were of use, that we have an indispensable purpose in the order of things, and our dignity and sense of meaning was restored to us. Anyone who acted that way towards us has acted in a Christ-like manner. The challenge to us is to do likewise (Luke 10:37).

The message we can take from today’s passages is that God does not want us to feel abandoned or alone, in want or desperate. In fact ‘true religion is this – to come to the aid of the widow and orphan in their distress’ (James 1:27). We are called to reach out to the very same sense of compassion and empathy to the destitute, and to ‘raise them up’ as it were, in their need.

And at those times of desperation in our own lives, it is Christ's gift of His Mother Mary who can be our companion and our consolation in this ‘valley of tears’. Let us give ourselves completely to her, following the example of Blessed John Paul II whose motto was ‘Totus Tuus Ego Sum’ – ‘I am all yours’.

The raising up of the man also points to the resuscitation (through the Spirit) we experience in big raised up and restored to ‘Mother Church’ in the forgiveness of sins, restored to the Christian family, restored to the community, reconciled. Now again like the young man, we must truly live as is disciples.

Corpus Christi

The Most Holy Trinity

Pentecost Sunday