Divine Mercy Sunday - Year A

Acts 2:42-47; 1Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31

The prayer Jesus I trust in you is the heart of the Divine Mercy devotion.

The mercy of God is our only hope - and every day, as we walk the difficult paths of life, we learn to whisper over and over again, deep down in our hearts: Jesus, I trust in you! Jesus, I trust in you. This simple prayer of faith, this grace of confident trust, is a gift from the merciful God which gives us power to do all sorts of things in our spiritual lives.

I come from the Latrobe Valley, in Victoria, and live very close to a huge power station called Loy Yang. This power station sends energy all over Victoria and provides the energy for new growth and development all over the State. And this simple prayer, Jesus I trust in you, is a power station for our spiritual life. But we have to mean it and live it. It means: Jesus, I trust in your merciful love for me.

When we can truly make this prayer the way Saint Faustina made it, we are saying to God: You lead, I’ll follow, because I trust in you! Now this makes the world of difference to the way we live our lives. You lead, I’ll follow, because I trust in you! So for the rest of this time let’s reflect on what kind of power this prayer, this powerhouse, makes possible for us in our lives.

Firstly, it enables us to repent of our sins by taking from us the fear that we will be humiliated or rejected. Now this is a really big issue and there are many people who hold back in this area because it is so painful and scary and difficult for them - but not when we say, Jesus, I trust in you!

If we knew the doctor could not help us, or was going to scream abuse at us for getting sick, or was going to say, 'Get out of my office, your disease disgusts me!' would we bother going to see him? Would we bother telling him where it hurts? Of course not. It would be a waste of time. But when we trust the doctor we tell him everything:

• What’s the problem? I have this itch. How long have you had it? Two weeks. Where is it? Under my arm. Which arm? My left arm. Show me. Have you been in the garden recently? Yes, we've just moved in to a new house. Ah ha! I think you've been bitten by something. Try this for 7 days and come back if it doesn’t clear up and we’ll have a further look. Thank you, Doctor!

Now I will interrupt myself and ask you at this point: Can Jesus cure spider bites? Yes? Of course he can. So why does he send us to a doctor? Why all this messing around? Why can’t we just kneel down beside our bed, say a prayer of petition, and have Jesus cure our spider bite? Why does he send us to the doctor?

Why did Moses have to lead the people out of Egypt? Couldn’t God have done that himself?

Why did Moses have to stretch out his hand and hold the staff over the waters of the Red Sea before God parted the waters?

Why did he have to strike the rock with his staff before God let the water come out of the rock?

When Jesus cured the ten lepers why did he command them: Go and show yourselves to the priest?

The answer to all these questions is the same as the answer to the question - Why do we have to confess our sins to a priest?

We let the priest baptise us, confirm us, bring the Body and Blood of Jesus onto the altar at Mass and give it to us in Holy Communion, marry us, and anoint us, but many of us won’t let him forgive our sins. We invent weak excuses to justify our behaviour. How sad!

We all know that before we can be cured we have to identify the disease - and so it is for our soul.

Maybe for some this is the scariest part. Looking at what they have done - admitting that this is their sin.

• I’ve had an abortion, or maybe two or three ... I’ve been unfaithful to my wife, my husband … I’ve slept with my boyfriend … I’ve committed homosexual acts … I’ve stolen money … I’ve sexually interfered with someone … I’ve had a vasectomy, or a tubal ligation, or I’m on the pill… I murdered someone’s good name … I refuse to forgive my mother, my father, or someone else … I’ve taken drugs … I've spent all our money on gambling ...

Yes, it’s hard to admit our sins; let’s not pretend about this, we need a special grace, a special simple humility and trust. St Faustina says in one of her poems: And a soul all black will turn into snow. The Mercy of God is waiting for us to say YES! And having washed us clean it will lead us on to salvation.

Though your sins are like scarlet they shall be white as snow. (Isaiah 1:18)

Jesus said to St Faustina: Let no soul fear to draw near to Me, even though its sins be as scarlet. My mercy is so great that no mind, be it of man or of angel, will be able to fathom it throughout all eternity. At the same time he said to her, speaking about the Feast of Mercy: The soul that will go to Confession and receive Holy Communion shall obtain complete forgiveness of sins and punishment.

Go to Confession to a priest - face to face - telling him each one of your sins - beginning with the ones you don’t want to tell him - the grave ones - not making excuses - not minimising - not trying to hide the big one in amongst the little ones - but simply, honestly, humbly confessing. Name your sin and claim your sin and be forgiven. And then receive him in Holy Communion!

As I said at the beginning: to be able to say Jesus I trust in you is to be able to confess your sins confidently at the Throne of Divine Mercy, which is the Sacrament of Confession. There you will hear no recriminations, no accusations, no gasps of shock or looks of surprise, just the Divine Mercy of God poured into your heart through the words of the priest: I absolve you from your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

As a priest I have a certain deep respect for those who come regularly to confession and bring the same sins over and over again. They are my heroes. I respect and love them dearly. They are such brave and humble souls. Sometimes they have habits of sin they cannot yet break, serious sin, sometimes less serious sin. But week after week or month after month they come, humbly, stubbornly confessing, asking forgiveness and healing again and again, trusting that God will forgive and one day set them free. And I have seen many of them set free.

Let me now, briefly, point out some other areas of our life where deep trust in the Divine Mercy of God gives us energy to live the Christian life. It give us power to believe all that the Catholic Church teaches. There is a great need for this today. How many people are there in the Church who consider themselves Catholics in good standing but who say 'But I don’t believe this, and I don’t believe that'? And what damage are these people doing to the Church and to the souls of those who listen to them!

Today there is this strange phenomenon where people judge reality and truth by what they themselves can understand with their mind. So they say 'Oh, I don’t understand that so it can’t be true!'

What pride! What lack of trust in Jesus and in the Church he established to bring us his truth! What error! - to reduce reality to the level of our own IQ.

Today we need people who can say Jesus I trust in you and I trust you would not allow your Church to teach me error. I don’t understand this or that teaching but I trust in your Church to tell me the truth because she is YOUR Church and I trust in you. It enables us to believe what the Church teaches us because it is His Church.

Our prayer of trust in the Divine Mercy of God also gives us power to deal with the sufferings of our life. Do you have a child who is in moral danger, walking the wrong road? You pray for your child but there seems to be no improvement? Jesus, I trust in you!

Is there a shortage of money in the house? Poverty? Unemployment? Jesus, I trust in you!

Do you, or someone close to you, have a terminal illness and are dreading the moment of death or the process of dying? Jesus, I trust in you!

Do you look to the future with great fear and anxiety for some reason? Jesus, I trust in you!

Have you been humiliated, abandoned, rejected, accused, punished unjustly? Jesus, I trust in you!

There is no human situation which we cannot face if we truly trust in the Divine Mercy of Jesus!

Finally, trust in Jesus gives us power and permission to be silent and to suffer with him in silence. When we can’t yet trust we are always complaining and telling people our worries. 'Oh, my son this, and my daughter that, and my wife, such and such'

Deep trust causes deep, powerful silence in our hearts and we find ourselves more and more ready to share our pain only with him.

The Christian life is a life of struggle and we should not give up. The fruits of trust are seasonal. They will come in due season if we continue to struggle trustingly. I pray today that you will learn to trust the Divine Mercy of God and that you will begin again, with renewed resolve, to walk your life with him.

Easter Sunday - Year A

Acts 10:34.37-43; Colossians 3:1-4; John 20:1-9

A friend of mine who had been raised a Catholic but left and came back to the Church later in life told me she came back because she missed the silence.

She said that in the protestant denomination she joined they had everything from red hot preaching to red hot singing to sharing and fellowship, but they had no silence.

She was referring to those moments of stillness and peace with which our liturgy abounds, or should abound. Particularly she mentioned that mysterious moment of silence when the priest speaks the words of Consecration and then holds up the Sacred Host to the people and they look up in faith.

There is no silence like that moment and it happens every time, even if there is a screaming baby or two. At that moment we look up at the Host and our minds struggle to come to terms with the miracle: This is Jesus!

She said there is nothing like that silence anywhere in any of the other churches she attended and sometimes, she said, she wished the priest would just go on and hold the Host there for much longer so that this silence would be prolonged and have time to sink into her soul.

It’s not just about an absence of noise, but a being face to face with a deeper reality, an infinite meaning which puts us all in our place, which tells us who we are, which establishes a proper order in our lives.

Some people bow their heads immediately the priest raises the Host. I think this is a pity. In the Missal it says: The priest now shows the Sacred Host to the people. What do we usually do when someone shows us something? We look at it, right? So that, as the Scripture says, we might see.

What did the angel tell the women at the tomb to do in last night’s reading? Come and see … come and see the place where he lay, and then go quickly and tell his disciples.

We look at the Sacred Host and at the Chalice in deep silence and wonderment and say: I believe, or as the Irish do: My Lord and my God.

This silence of the Consecration can be a part of our daily prayer time with the Lord and from there a part of our daily life. Some people call their time of prayer quiet time and its goal is to reach this silence.

It is in this silence that we learn to believe.

There are a number of special moments such as this in the Sacred Scripture. Mary Magdalene at the tomb hears the risen Lord say her name: Mary. One can imagine the microsecond of silence, of hearing, of seeing, of believing - and she exclaims: Rabbuni!

Then there is the special moment, it was just an instant, described in the Gospel this morning .… then the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in; he saw and he believed…

What went on in the mind and heart of the disciple John we do not know but it was a moment of seeing which suddenly became a moment of believing – and the specific content of that believing was – He is risen! Alleluia!

Easter Vigil - Year A

Romans 6:3-11; Matthew 28:1-11

One of the ugly developments of the modern world is that technological advances have caused us all to think the world belongs to science – not to God. The world is now so ‘wired up’ by science that God has been squeezed out – except if you happen to be weird enough to like that kind of thing. God now stands helplessly sidelined on the fringes of human history and the very proclamation of the Gospel to the ‘plugged in’ ears of affluent Western humanity begins to sound irrelevant and quaint, especially when it encounters that familiar, smiling, ‘I-can’t-believe-you’re-serious’ look.

But it’s all a lie – and a big one. Flick the power switch to off and that confident sense of being in control of it all comes to nothing – darkness, silence – nothing.

Man stands naked, vulnerable, mortal on this shaky planet, more so than ever before, and there are still many who haven’t forgotten it. Man has raised technological skyscrapers which at any moment threaten to topple and crush him and there are still many who are aware of it. Not all have beguiled themselves with their own electronic lightshow, not all have forgotten who they are and what they are made of, and who they are made for. They know that life without God doesn’t work and patiently wait for their godless brothers and sisters to make this greatest of all discoveries.

Only God is life! God is the source and creator of all life. Shout it from the rooftops! – into the wild parties of the drug-crazed youth – into the boardrooms of the money-crazy managers – and into the bedrooms of the poor, unfaithful, pleasure-seeking couples who can’t wait to discover they are not really loved by their latest ‘partner’.

Only God is life! Life born from his power, new life, eternal life. It is his gift to those who seek him.

Today we who believe celebrate together with the whole Church the fact that God raised Jesus to life. Not a resuscitation like Lazarus who would die again but new life, everlasting life. We Christians, all over the world, are celebrating tonight what the rest of humanity is seeking. Christ is risen and with him, so are we. In him we are eternally alive.

This Easter proclamation which I put before you in words is celebrated tonight in signs and symbols and, above all, in the Liturgy of Word and Sacrament.

The candle which burns tonight in the darkness of the world proclaims that he is alive and that we can all enjoy and walk by his light. The renewal of Baptismal vows which we will make in a few moments announces to all our faith in him and our rebirth in the waters. The candles we hold will speak of his dwelling within us and of our call to be his light to the world. The Readings we have heard speak of his love in creating us and redeeming us. The Holy Communion we receive strengthens us in his life and binds us together in communion with him and one another.

Tonight we are drawn together around a candle shining on bread and wine. We hear the words of consecration and we believe something happens which changes everything, our whole existence. A man who is God dies on a cross and rises to new life. Calvary is made present again here on this very altar and the risen one comes among us - offering life.

Alleluia!

Celebration of the Lord's Passion - Year A

Isaiah 52:13 - 53:12; Hebrews 4:14-16;5:7-9; John 18:1-19:42

For some reason the word obedience has been popping up all over the place lately. It started with Pope Benedict’s book A New Song For The Lord in which he says that access to God’s power, the only power worth having, because it is real power, is through obedience. Having entered my mind I now see the word everywhere.

When you come to think of it, loving obedience is the only way we humans have of expressing our relationship with God. Right from the beginning this was so. There is no other way. Adam and Eve, created by God, were established in a harmonious relationship with him which could only be expressed by obedience and destroyed by disobedience: … of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you are not to eat, for on the day you eat of it you shall most surely die.

Alas, Adam and Eve chose disobedience.

Undaunted, God in his mercy promised a Redeemer, one who would re-establish our relationship with him. And how was he to do this? You guessed it, through obedience – obedience to death.

Our beautiful reading from Isaiah today retells the sad tale clearly: We had all gone astray, like sheep, each taking his own way…

Isn’t that an alarmingly exact picture of modern society, and I’m afraid to say, of the modern, liberal catholic? We have gone astray because we take our own way. We disobey God all day long and end up in a mess.

The Saviour took the road of obedience: Harshly dealt with, he bore it humbly, he never opened his mouth, like a lamb that is led to the slaughter-house, like a sheep that is dumb before its shearers never opening its mouth.

Three times we are told in this sentence that he remained silent and in this silence we glimpse the interior obedience of his humble heart.

How difficult it is to keep our mouths shut when God’s providence corrects us, or his will calls us along a path we feel unwilling to take. How strongly we react and to all of us, as he did to Peter, Jesus says: Put your sword back in its scabbard.

We love to be in charge, to direct the course of events, even if it means going against God’s will for us. But not so Jesus who says: am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?

Jesus, the Lord and Master, surrendered himself to death and let himself be taken... . I am suddenly reminded of the words of Mary to St Gabriel: Let what you have said be done to me. Obedience, obedience, obedience!

He learnt to obey through suffering… Could he have made it any clearer for us? Jesus well knew that obedience is an expensive commodity – so expensive it could cost us our lives – but he also knew that it was the only road to salvation. He walked this road ahead of us carrying our burdens, our sins until, as our Second Reading says: having been made perfect, he became for all who obey him the source of eternal salvation.

What more is there to say? If we were lost through disobedience we are saved through obedience. He showed us the way and now it's our turn. It is up to us to eliminate every bit of disobedience to God and his Church from our lives. Every little bit. Until we do so we will never find what we are searching for.

Holy Thursday Mass of the Lord's Supper - Year A

Exodus 12:1-8.11-14; 1Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-15

The Hebrews in Egypt were slaves and their lives were painfully difficult. The Pharaoh kept them busy toiling from dawn to dusk and had ordered their male children killed so as to keep their numbers down.

When Moses came on the scene and promised to lead them out of slavery in Egypt they were suspicious. How could he do this? Pharaoh was powerful and no fool – but then, Moses claimed he had been sent by God, there were those miracles, and the way he spoke with confidence and authority. Still, some of them told him to go away and leave them alone.

Week after week the drama unfolded. Moses kept going to the Pharaoh – Let my people go – and Pharaoh kept saying no. The miraculous plagues piled up – frogs, blood, darkness, mosquitoes, gadflies, boils, hail, locusts – and now the hour had come, the showdown. Moses told them it was time to pass over into freedom.

To the Pharaoh he had said: Let my People go or your first-born male children, man and beast, will die. To the people he has said: Take a lamb, one year old, without blemish, male. Sacrifice it and eat it in the evening. Sprinkle its blood on the doorposts and lintels of your houses. The blood of the lamb will save you from death.

What were the people to make of this? Was this to be the end of the Hebrews, or would Moses really lead them to freedom?

Many centuries later, on another Passover night, Jesus gathered with his disciples in the Upper Room. Jesus knew that the showdown had come – the hour for him to pass over from the slavery of this world to the eternal joy of the kingdom of his Father - and like Moses, he was to take the People with him.

I’m sure the night of the first Passover was in his mind as he sat at table with his Apostles. They were restless, anxious, full of a sense of impending crisis, just like the Hebrews of old. There had been miracles and wonderful teaching. There had been this sense that Jesus had been sent by God – they trusted him - even though many had told him to go away.

Jesus would have thought of that ancient lamb, male, spotless, in the prime of its life – sacrificed and eaten. Its body had been given up and its blood poured out to save the People from the wrath of God.

Jesus would have said to himself: I am that lamb. I am to be sacrificed. I am to save my People from their real slavery, their slavery to sin. My body will be given up, my blood will be poured out, so that they might be free. But how am I to be eaten? How can I give them myself to eat so that they will have strength to follow in my footsteps, on the journey that lies ahead of them?

He took the Passover bread into his sacred hands, he blessed God and gave thanks, he broke it into portions and showed it to his disciples and said: This is my Body. Take and eat.

Then he took the cup of wine, blessed it, gave it to his disciples and said: This is my blood. Take and drink.

Palm Sunday - Year A

Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

The Passion began at the Last Supper when Judas left the room. Jesus goes on peacefully speaking encouraging words to his disciples but we know he is stunned by the callous ingratitude and infidelity of his disciple. All you who have been betrayed by a friend will readily know how Jesus felt – and the closer the friend, the deeper the pain.

They rise from table and he takes them to the Garden of Gethsemane. A growing sadness overcomes his features and he begins now to agonise with a heart sorrowful to the point of death – they fall asleep. Have you ever seen indifference on the face of a friend to whom you were confiding some hurt or anxiety of your life? You will know how Jesus felt.

He goes back into the garden and begs his Father to spare him the torture of the Cross – not just the physical pains but the unbearable thought that for some souls this would all be in vain. Covered with the sins of humanity Jesus seeks the face of his Father but his Father can no longer bear to look at his Son, disfigured by sin, and he turns away. Jesus accepts the Father’s will even in this. Have you ever felt God was not listening to you, that he had actually turned away from you? You will know just a tiny bit how Jesus felt.

Judas now arrives and with a kiss hands him over to the cohort to be arrested. They have come with spears and clubs as though to arrest a violent criminal. Jesus is bound and dragged away – humiliated. Have you ever been falsely accused and treated like a criminal? You have begun to know how Jesus felt.

The disciples, his special friends, run away and leave him in the hands of the mob. Jesus is now alone, totally unsupported, undefended. Have you had the experience of watching your friends melt away in the face of some accusation brought against you – leaving you all alone? You will know how Jesus felt.

Jesus is brought before the High Priest, the religious leaders of his time. They sneer at him and reject him and accuse him falsely, even seeking his life. Jesus suffers this horror in silence. Have you ever been misunderstood or even falsely accused or wrongly punished by a religious leader – the one who should be your shepherd rather than the destroyer of your rights? You will know how Jesus felt.

Peter, the leader of the Apostles, denies Jesus three times. How painful this must have been for Jesus who pierces him with such a loving look that Peter goes away and weeps bitterly. Have you ever experienced the pain of becoming invisible to your friends because they did not want others to know they were close to you? Then you will know how Jesus felt.

Jesus is brought before Pilate, the civil authority, and again falsely accused. Pilate is weak and sentences him to death, knowing him to be innocent. Have you ever been punished because your boss couldn’t stand up to his staff? You will know how Jesus felt.

Rejected by the religious authority as well as the civil authority Jesus is now rebuffed by the people he spent himself serving. They demand that Barabbas, a convicted criminal be set free – as though to add to their scorn. How humbly Jesus accepted this, despite the hurt! If you have ever been wrongly punished while the guilty party goes free you will know how Jesus felt.

Now Jesus is handed over to the soldiers, men who promised on oath to give their lives to protect the freedom and rights of citizens. As a common criminal he is mocked, spat upon, struck and humiliated by them. He is savagely flogged for crimes he didn’t commit. Crowned with a mock crown of thorns and made to carry his Cross to his own crucifixion.

How did he endure it all? How did he put up with it? What power enabled him to drink this bitter cup to the end? Of course, it was the power of his love for us, the power of his love for you and for me. How little we understand this and how urgently do we need this to change! The saints tell us the remedy lies in regular meditation on the Passion of Jesus. They say that bit by bit our lives will be transformed.

5th Sunday of Lent - Year A

Ezekiel 37:12-14; Romans 8:8-11; John 11:1-45

We marvel today at the close correspondence between the words of Ezekiel and the actions of Jesus.

Ezekiel proclaims in the First Reading today that God will:

1. open your graves...
2. raise you from your graves...
3. lead you back to the soil of Israel...

This is precisely what Jesus does for Lazarus.

1. He opens his grave - Take the stone away.
2. He raises Lazarus - Lazarus, here! Come out!
3. He leads him back - Unbind him, let him go free.

To lead the Jewish People back to the soil of Israel was to set them free from their captivity and this certainly is what the Lord does for Lazarus - he lets him go free and, if you will be generous with your imagination, the Lord leads Lazurus back to 'the soil' - that is, the soil of his own body.

In the time remaining I would like to reflect a little on the concept of 'the land' or 'the soil'.

Three weeks ago in the First Reading we heard the words of the Lord to Abraham: Leave your country, your family and your father's house, for the land I will show you. This land the Lord swore he would give to the descendants of Abraham and it is this land, Canaan, the promised land, the future land of Israel, which Joseph and his whole family left to go and settle in Egypt where they became slaves.

Now this is important because in the Bible Egypt becomes a symbol for slavery and sin, while the Promised Land, Israel, becomes a symbol for freedom and righteousness. We need to keep this opposition clearly in mind.

Moses was the one called by God to lead the People of God out of Egypt. He had taken pity on their sufferings and he had heard their cry for help. Not only did he want to set them free from the land of slavery but he wanted to bring them into the land of freedom and plenty.

So Moses goes to pharaoh and says: This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, has said, 'Let my people go, so that they may keep a feast in the wilderness in honour of me.'

Now this is very interesting! Do you notice the reason God wants his People out of Egypt? It's not simply that he wants them to be rid of their slavedrivers and their sufferings. It is because he wants them to worship him.

We tend to think of freedom in rather selfish, limited, personal terms but freedom is, in essence, freedom to worship God. Let my people go, so that they may keep a feast in the wilderness in honour of me.

From this point on we are able to make an even more precise statement about the purpose and meaning of God's gift to his People of a land of their own - it was so that they would have the freedom and the place within which to worship him.

Worship and the land were now always to go hand in hand. Worship justified the the gift of the land; the land made possible the worship of God.

Do we wonder at the anger of God when the People used, or rather abused, the wonderful gift of freedom in a land of their own by turning to the worship of false gods. Time and time again God warned them that their sins were 'polluting the land' and that if they did not turn from their idolatry the land would be taken from them and they would be 'scattered' among the surrounding peoples.

This is, in fact, what eventually happened. Contrary to the Law the people were using the Sabbath as a time for work and when they were finally taken into captivity in Babylon Jeremiah the prophet said: 'Until this land has enjoyed its sabbath rest, until seventy years have gone by, it will keep sabbath throughout the days of its desolation'. By this he meant that while the People were in exile the land would have seventy years of the Sabbaths the Israelites had refused to give it.

So there is was, and still is, an intimate connection between the Chosen People and their land. If they did not use it to worship the true God it would be taken from them while if they lived righteously upon the land they would prosper.

There are two further ideas I would like to propose. Firstly, the question of how we use the land of Australia that the Lord has given us. Our National Anthem exults:

Australians all let us rejoice
For we are young and free
We've golden soil and wealth for toil...

Again the notions of freedom and soil (land) come spontaneously together. We too are given the land of Australia as a place within which to worship the Lord. We are bound by the same imperative of gratitude and integrity before the Lord and we do well to examine ourselves in this regard.

The other idea, perhaps a little less easy to grasp, is the awareness of our relationship to the 'soil' which is our body. This 'land' no less than the Promised Land, is a gift given on trust as the locus of our worship of God. I like the Protestant Our Father which prays that God's will be done in earth as it is in heaven. This has always been a reminder to me of the fact that my relationship to my body is important and that the 'soil/land' of my body can be polluted by sin as truly as the Hebrews polluted the Promised Land by their sin.

The ultimate Promised Land, of course, should be our soul. It is possible that it has become for us our Egypt, a slave to sin. Lent is a special time of hope-restoring grace. The offer has been made - he will open our grave of sin and raise our soul through a good Confession, and lead it back to freedom. Once more we shall live in integrity on the land.

I pray that Lazarus' astonishing miracle will be performed for all of us this Lent and we will be led to new life.