4th Sunday of Lent - Year A

Samuel 16:1.6-7.10-13; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41

• The Lord said to Samuel …

In its own way this disarmingly simple statement is quite mysterious. Everywhere throughout the Scriptures we find similar phrases in which we are told - the Lord spoke.

The Lord said to Samuel …

I wonder how? How did the Lord speak to Samuel? Was it an inner voice like the one Mother Teresa heard in the train to Darjeeling? Was it a vision like St Faustina had on many occasions? Was the Lord’s message spoken through an angel, as it was to others of the patriarchs and prophets, and to the Blessed Virgin Mary? The only thing we are told here, very simply, is that the Lord spoke – mysterious.

At any rate we learn that God does speak to us – he is not a distant God. He communicates himself to individuals and to humanity as a whole in many and varied ways but, of course, especially through Jesus Christ, and today, his Church.

Many people will tell you that God has spoken to them. As a priest I am privileged to hear many of these stories and some are very powerful. Has God spoken to you?

• The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Fill your horn with oil and go. I am sending you to Jesse ..’

God’s call is always one which causes us to move somehow beyond ourselves. It may be moving from point A to point B or it may be a movement within, a decision, like the yes he asked for from Mary. Usually we have to leave something behind, or let go of something, in order to be able to do what God asks of us. A great example of this is when he spoke to Abraham: Leave your country, your family, and your father’s house for the land I will show you.

Every priest or religious or married person has answered a similar call and in order to remain faithful to their calling they have to answer it over and over again, every day. Abraham obeyed and Samuel obeyed. Do we?

• I have chosen myself a king ...

If God speaks to us, and asks something of us, it is because he has a plan. This is apparent from the mission on which he sends Samuel. I have chosen myself a king .. . It is not Samuel’s plan, it is God’s plan.

Samuel is sent to Bethlehem, to Jesse, to chose a king from among his sons. God’s plan is always comprehensive – in this case involving Jesse, David, his brothers, Samuel and, indeed, the town of Bethlehem and all its inhabitants, not to mention the history of the Jewish people and later, with the birth of the Messiah from the shoot of Jesse, the whole human race.

God’s plan for us is always wonderful – far more wonderful than any plan we may have for ourselves. That is why it is always wise to say yes to God’s plan once we learn what it is. If God wants us to be a priest we do well to go to the seminary; if God’s plan is for us to be married or to stay in the single life we do well not to become a priest. If it is God’s plan that we have more than 2.33 children it is always wise to let God’s plan unfold in our lives. Happiness is always to be found in God’s plan. Abraham and Samuel followed God’s plan. Do we?

Samuel goes off to Jesse’s house and sees the eldest boy Eliab and, taking note of his height and appearance, immediately thinks he must be the one the Lord wants to make king.

• ... but the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Take no notice of his appearance or his height …’

Again the Lord speaks to Samuel and this time teaches him and corrects him. For us the message is clear – when we obey the voice of the Lord in our lives we become wise with the wisdom of God and begin to see things as God sees, to think as God thinks, to do as God does.

Pope Benedict says a beautiful thing in his book A New Song For The Lord. He says: Faith is obedience; it means that we relearn the essential form of our being – our nature as creatures – and in this way become authentic.

We have already noted that Abraham’s faith led him to obey and that Samuel did likewise. What we tend to overlook, especially when we see obedience to God as a kind of irritating imposition on our freedom, is that in our obedience we become more and more attuned to the essential form of our being as creatures.

Our obedience makes us authentic because it reconnects us to our Creator in an intimate process of allowing him to reshape us to the extent that we say yes to him. After all, isn’t this is what we were created for – to say yes to God?

Our ways, corrupted by Original Sin and further confused by our own personal sins, are most certainly not the ways of God. Seeing the stature of Eliab Samuel is tempted to think that power resides in strength and imposing looks. God teaches him that power resides in obedience to his word, to his way of seeing. This is the lesson of the Cross on which Jesus emptied himself of all his plans and surrendered in total love to the plans of his Father – and thereby found life for us all – eternal life.

• … Samuel … anointed him … the Lord seized on David and stayed with him from that day on.

Not many of us understand the power of obedience. All too often we have a narrow, partial view. We see the individual opportunities for obedience through eyes searching for the grand, the heroic, the spectacular. Samuel was asked to pour some oil over a young boy’s head. We might say: Big deal! Certainly it was not a very heroic act requiring much effort from the prophet. All it required was obedience. And yet, look at the consequences - a shepherd boy became king of Israel from whose line the Saviour of the world would be born; the Jewish people were to find in David’s son Solomon, the peace for which they yearned; Jesse’s name became a household word for all ages to come; and Samuel himself drew another step closer to his Lord.

We must never underestimate the power of loving obedience, especially in small things. Sometimes these are the most difficult because they seem the least significant. It is through disobedience that we were lost and through obedience that we are found.

It is now the Lenten task of each one of us to question himself or herself on the subject of obedience. Pope Benedict says in his book: …only the obedient person perceives God.

3rd Sunday of Lent - Year A

Exodus 17:3-7; Romans 5:1-2.5-8; John 4:5-42

Today the curtains open on a well, a particularly good well, full of cool, clear, drinkable water - Jacob’s well.

Stage left – enter: Jesus. Tired by the journey he sits straight down by the well. It was about noon.

Stage right – enter: A Samaritan woman. She has come to draw water.

First let’s look at Jesus for a bit: A man in his thirties, long hair, beard. He is hot and sweaty, tired from the journey, that’s why he sits straight down by the well. He is alone because his disciples have gone into town to buy food.

How wonderful to look at him, to watch him – the Master! He is exhausted but recollected, focussed and peaceful. Is he thirsty? He must be. We are told it was about the sixth hour, that is, about noon, the thirsty time of the day.

There was only ever one other time he admitted to being thirsty – that was on the Cross – when he moaned, I thirst! – but he wouldn’t drink. He was thirsting for more than water. He was thirsting for souls.

A few years before her death Mother Teresa reminded her followers: Jesus wants me to tell you again … how much is the love He has for each one of you – beyond all what you can imagine … Not only He loves you, even more – He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close. He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy …

It is this Jesus who now sits by the well, the one who thirsts more for human hearts and their salvation than for water.

Now let’s look at the Samaritan woman who has come to draw water. Not old, attractive, perhaps a little brazen. She has had five husbands and was living with a sixth man. Obviously she has been drawing from a different well altogether, searching for something, maybe the perfect man. Little does she realise he is now sitting opposite her – deeply in love with her, thirsting for her.

This woman makes one realise once again that sin is only the search for true happiness, true peace, true love, true fulfilment – but in the wrong place and in the wrong way – and we should be very slow, to judge anyone. The soul of this woman, too, is thirsting for the truth.

Jesus doesn’t ask, he tells her: Give me a drink. If only she had realised that she herself was the ‘drink’ Jesus was looking for.

The woman is taken aback. ‘What? You are a Jew and you ask me, a Samaritan, for a drink?’ – Jews, in fact, do not associate with Samaritans.

Poor woman, like so many others she has no idea who Jesus is!

• How can this man forgive sins?
• How come his disciples don’t fast?
• Where does your authority come from?
• Are you a king?

Jesus makes no sense at all if you don’t know who he is.

So he replies: If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink …

At the mention of living water the woman is all ears but not yet on his wavelength. It takes us all a while to ‘tune in’ to Jesus – we must be patient – with ourselves and with others.

‘Sir,’ said the woman ‘give me some of that water, so that I may never get thirsty and never have to come here again to draw water.’

We smile at the woman’s simplicity but Jesus is not put off.

Mother Teresa used to say: People are so hungry for God.

How true this is in my experience also! Most people, the overwhelming majority, have a hunger for God deep within their hearts, even when they loudly refuse to admit this is true. Then they are like the man with clenched fist and white knuckles who loudly protests: I am not angry. All one can say - quietly, reverently, firmly is – Yes you are!

Jesus can see the need within the Samaritan woman as well as her basic honesty.

Go and call your husband. – I have no husband.

The Lord fills in the details, showing the woman her life is known to him, and compliments her on her honesty: You are right … you spoke the truth … .

A moment later he reveals to her that he is the Messiah.

It seems Jesus didn’t get the drink he asked for, or did he? Although the woman is not yet fully convinced of his identity - I wonder if he is the Christ? – she has clearly set out on the path to faith and manages to bring the whole town to the Lord. He must have been pleased. We may rightly hope that God’s grace, and her basic love for truth and her thirst for fulfilment, would eventually bring her conversion to full maturity.

The Gospel leaves us pondering deep questions - God’s insatiable love for us, the maturity of our love for God. Do we have, metaphorically speaking, ‘five husbands’ in our lives, holding us back from full discipleship? Lent, above all, is a time for discovering their names, and sending them on their way. Only then will the ‘living water’ of God’s love flow into our lives.

2nd Sunday of Lent - Year A

Genesis 12:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:8-10; Matthew 17:1-9

The Lord said to Abram, leave your country, your family and your father's house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name so famous that it will be used as a blessing. 'I will bless those who bless you: I will curse those who slight you. All the tribes of the earth shall bless themselves by you.' So Abram went as the Lord told him.

It's no wonder we call Abraham the father of our faith. He heard the word of the Lord, he believed, he obeyed, and, although he was already old, he set off on a journey into the unknown. He surrendered his life in faith to the plan and promise of God. Very courageous!

First Abraham had to listen to God, to hear. It’s easy to overlook this fact. The ability to listen and hear is not to be assumed. Some of us can’t listen. I was trying to get someone to listen to a short piece of music some time ago and there were so many interjections from this person I finally gave up; they were just not able to listen. Hearing is, of course, a deeper matter still. We might listen to the notes but not hear the music. Abraham listened to the voice of God and then he heard the call addressed to him. In other words, he obeyed.

Abraham obeyed because he trusted and believed. No one listens to a voice he doesn’t trust. When people ask me why I believe the testimony of the Apostles I now realise that it’s because I trust them. They are good men. Their witness holds together in a unified whole. Their message has integrity, in other words, there are no contradictions, just an integrated truthfulness.

Liars are usually easy to spot. First this strange uncertainty, later a suspicion, then a definite conviction – this person is lying! When the proof arrives it is often too late; we already knew, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to believe this person.

So Abraham listened, heard, believed. Then he had to leave. That must have been painful. And it was a comprehensive leaving - country, family and father's house. It's painful leaving even when we know where we are going but Abraham wasn't told that part. He was simply told to leave for the land I will show you.

Now comes the promise: I will make you a great nation ... I will bless you ... make you famous ... I will make you a blessing ... . Five times the personal pronoun I is used. None of this is coming from Abraham; this is something God is planning; this is God's work.

And it is work. Notice how God says: I will make you ... ? The short passage uses the phrase twice. I will make you ... . God means to be very powerfully active here, to shape Abraham, to make him become something he is not yet and which he could not ever become without surrender to God. This is made clear by the fact that Moses has no heir and yet God promises him: I will make you a great nation.

So Abram went as the Lord told him. What I personally admire so much about Abraham is that, at such an advanced age, he managed to change the direction of his life in such a radical way. Not many among us are capable of such heroism as this.

Abram heard God's call; he trusted; he had courage; he obeyed. God changed his name. That's what happens when we follow God – he makes us different, new.

Saul, too, got a new name because he radically changed direction at God's call. Something happened that changed the whole course of his life. On the road to Damascus – he heard, trusted, and obeyed a voice that was believable, a voice that was true. Obedience to this voice set Paul travelling down an unknown path to a destination he could not foresee. The hardships of the journey serving only to show forth God's plan more clearly.

And finally we come to the Gospel reading. The story of another man, a thirty-year-old carpenter. He heard the same voice and he obeyed. Like Abram and Saul he knew there would be hardships, even death. Nevertheless, he heard, trusted, and courageously obeyed. And because he obeyed God changed his name and gave him a name above all other names – Lord.

One of the ways we Christians know that we are listening to the same truthful voice of God is because all the footprints of the people obeying the call of this voice are pointing in the same direction. These are our compass, the steps of the holy men and women who travelled before us, witnessing to the oneness of truth, to the joy of the Christian life and to its ultimate goal.

First Sunday of Lent - Year A

Genesis 2:7-9.3:1-7; Romans 5:12-19; Matthew 4:1-11

The drama of the First Reading has four characters – God, Satan, Adam & Eve.

• What does God do?

God creates (fashions), gives life, nurtures, makes fruitful, provides, plants, and causes an abundance of life.

God's actions are good, beautiful and truthful. Good because he creates man and gives him all he needs; beautiful because he creates a beautiful world; truthful because he sets limits to Adam and Eve and thereby gives them the security of knowing who they are. ie. He is God and they are not. They are creatures.

• What does Satan do?

The only thing he does is speak. The tongue is Satan’s main weapon, his weapon of mass destruction, undoing the good God has done.

Did God really say you were not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?

No! You will not die! God knows in fact that on the day you eat it your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.

• What does Eve do?

Eve made the horrible mistake of speaking to Satan. This was fatal. He is far cleverer than she.

Eve answered the serpent, saw that the tree was good to eat, pleasing to the eye, desirable, took, ate, gave to the man.

In the Rite of Exorcism the exorcist is counselled not to speak to the demon, not to ask him questions beyond what the Rite permits.

Sin loves company. It was not enough for her to sin, she had to make Adam sin too.

• What does Adam do?

Adam took the fruit from Eve and ate.

Adam was like most men. He did what the woman told him (just kidding).

The Church warns us that Satan and his demons are still among us. There are still serpents who wish to become like gods, choosing for themselves what is good and evil. And we are warned to be on our guard against them or they will tempt us to disobey God and the teachings of his Church.

These serpents will tell you lies: Did God really tell you? Does the Church really teach such and such?

I have had experience many times of these serpents. They will say: No, you will not die. In other words: It’s not a mortal sin to do this, or to do that. Choose for yourselves what is right or wrong. Just let your conscience tell you it’s ok. You can be like gods. You can decide.

Don’t ever listen to that kind of talk. It’s the talk of the Evil One who can use good people as well as evil people to broadcast his errors.

We don’t have time to speak of the Gospel at length. Let’s just draw some quick parallels.

• Adam and Eve had everything in Eden but they wanted more - Jesus had nothing in the desert and rejected the temptation to have something.

• Eve listened to Satan's words – Jesus listened to the words of Scripture.

• Adam & Eve were free from work but ended up working by the sweat of their brow – Jesus laboured in the desert, fasting and praying, and the angels came and ministered to him.

• Adam and Eve disobeyed God and plunged all mankind into sin – Jesus obeyed God and set us all free.

Ash Wednesday - Year A

Joel 2:12-18; 2Corinthians 5:20-6:2; Matthew 6:1-6.16-18

Lent is my favourite time of the year, it has been for decades. I think it came about as a result of the Lenten homilies given by the parish priest (now a venerable Monsignor) of my youth. This man somehow managed unfailingly to inspire in me a kind of joyful excitement about Lent. It was a new beginning, a time for growth, a time for hope, a time for drawing closer to the Lord. I don't know from where this priest drew his inspiration but perhaps it was from the Office of Readings for Ash Wednesday which I read with delight this morning.

The prophet Isaiah, in Chapter 58:1-12, describes what God offers to those who seek repentance and conversion in their lives:

Then will your light shine like the dawn
and your wounds be quickly healed over.
... your light will rise in the darkness,
and your shadows become like noon.
The Lord will always guide you,
giving you relief in desert places.
He will give strength to your bones
and you shall be like a watered garden,
like a spring of water
whose waters never run dry.
You will rebuild the ancient ruins,
build up on the old foundation.
You will be called `Breach-mender',
`Restorer of ruined houses'.

Now I ask you, isn't that exciting? What could be better than having your wounds 'quickly healed over'; your shadows become 'like noon'; your bones given strength for doing good; 'rebuilding' the ancient ruins ... 'on the old foundations' and becoming 'like a watered garden'?

For anyone with the least sense of their own sinfulness and of the 'ruined house' that they have made of their soul through sin, Lent is the most wonderful time - a time of extraordinary grace - in which the Lord draws us, once again, through the Lenten exercises of prayer, fasting and almsgiving, closer and closer to himself.

In a moment I am going to sign you with this black substance I have in this little bowl. You know what it is - burnt ashes and holy water - mixed together. The ashes of death are sprinkled with the waters of life.

I will place them on your forehead in the sign of the Cross of Jesus, the true sign of death and life. And then you will return to to your seats to begin with this Mass, nourished with the Body of Christ, the journey of Lent.

Are you excited? I am.

Many of you will have made a Lenten resolution - no coffee, no alcohol, a daily Rosary, or maybe an extra weekday Mass, money for the victims of the latest disaster? Good .. great!

But let me give you a context for your Lenten penances. Do them in silence!

For many people today what stands between them and God is not sin but 'noise'.

Noise is a terrible thing and it's everywhere. Why is it terrible? Because it threatens to drown out the voice of God and even the thought of God.

There are two noises I am thinking of especially. The noise that comes out of us and the noise that comes into us.

The first noise sounds like 'Yak, yak, yakketty, yakketty, yak, yak' and sometimes it goes on and on. We have to do something about that noise.

Maybe it would be good to see people walking about during this Lent with a tape over their mouth. That would stop at least the noise that comes out of us.

The second noise is made by such things as television sets, radios, computer games, computers, the books we read, and so on. These noises are much easier to turn off than the first - usually a flick of the dial or a press of the button will do it.

When we succeed in lowering the noise level of our lives we will begin to hear things and think things and hope things we thought we'd long ago left behind. Then we can begin our Lenten exercises - prayer, fasting, almsgiving - but quietly.

No trumpets, no long faces, no standing on street corners - just shhhhh!

After Mass let's just quietly slip out of the church and into the Lenten silence together.

He's waiting for us there .....