9th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Year A

Deuteronomy 11:18.26-28.32; Romans 3:21-25.28; Matthew 7:21-27

When the desire to love God meets the demands of true love there is usually a crisis. Most people have a genuine desire to love God – we could almost call it ‘genetic’ – a deep, existential longing for God, the source of all that is good.

What draws us to God is love – our need to receive it and our need to give it. Each of us longs to love in a total and unrestricted manner. Some would say we have a deep-seated longing to love ‘madly’, even to death, and so to be loved in return.

This kind of love, heroic love, totally maturing, healing and freeing love, comes at a price. It requires that we shift the entire focus of our being away from ourselves and our own needs to the welfare and happiness of the beloved. Only love demands we make this shift and, at the same time, only love makes the shift possible. To put it in other words, the happiness of the beloved becomes our greatest need. Love like this is rare, but it does exist in many places.

When a person begins to understand the total cost of the love they aspire to give and receive there is always a crisis – followed by a moment of decision. It does not usually come at the beginning of love. At the beginning there is infatuation, beguilement, euphoria and an ‘exchange of gifts’. No, it comes later on in the relationship when time has settled the turbulent waters of the emotions and immature fascination has dissipated. Then the choice to love becomes somehow ‘a price to be paid’ – not a choice between two thing but of two things – love and suffering.

It is here that true love rises to greatness, conquers all fear, and gives assent to the beloved. This is a human being’s finest moment, the moment he or she becomes a human person.

In very different terms Moses puts all this before the people in the reading from the book of Deuteronomy. He proposes the choice as a blessing or a curse which he then restates in a series of oppositions: blessing – curse; obedience – disobedience; true God – false gods; observe the commandments - or leave the way. Jesus, in today’s Gospel will do the same thing.

The decision to love heroically is actualised in an utterly simple way; the lover must obey the demands of love. Keep, observe, obey the commandments are the words Moses uses. The verbs are active because love is not a feeling. Love is an act and the blessing is realised when we keep the commandments.

Jesus tells us today: It is not those who say to me, ‘Lord, Lord’, who will enter the kingdom of heaven… . Real relationship, i.e. to enter the kingdom of heaven, is not built on words alone. We must obey the very word of love we speak – we must do it.

Therefore, everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a sensible man who built his house on rock.

Whether we enter the kingdom of heaven or the house built on rock (these expressions are metaphors for our relationship to God), the foundation must be laid in keeping, observing, doing.

From this perspective we can perhaps view the Catholic / Protestant divide more clearly.

Protestants profess salvation through faith. This is not wrong, just incomplete, and certainly misleading. Catholics profess salvation through faith made real in action or works. For us, and for Jesus, faith that is not expressed in action is not saving faith, and risks the sad words: I have never known you.

To drive the point home let me quote from Sacred Scripture: Anybody who receives my commandments and keeps them will be one who loves me … (John 14:21)

Anyone who says, 'I know him', and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth. (1John 2:4)

Even our father Abraham, who believed God’s words, went as Yahweh told him (Genesis 12:4). He did what he believed. He listened to God’s words and acted on them and so we call him the father of our faith.

The Apostle James tells us: But you must do what the word tells you, and not just listen to it and deceive yourselves. To listen to the word and not obey is like looking at your own features in a mirror and then, after a quick look, going off and immediately forgetting what you looked like. But the man who looks steadily at the perfect law of freedom and makes that his habit - not listening and then forgetting, but actively putting it into practice - will be happy in all that he does (James 1:22-25).

A body dies when it is separated from the spirit, and in the same way faith is dead if it is separated from good deeds (James 2:26).

Can there be any more doubt? The commandments are a blessing actualised through obedience. To obey the commandments is to love God. Do you hear that? To obey the commandments is to love God. [And if you don't obey the commandments you don't love God - and if you say you love God but you don't keep the commandments you are a liar.]

And so we return to our beginning. Love of God which obeys the commandments is a love which suffers. The silhouette of true love is always suffering and the soul which sees this truth and yet says Yes is an heroic soul, a saint.

The Body and Blood of Christ - Year A

Deuteronomy 8:2-3; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

That God gave his People manna from heaven is wonderful indeed but is it any more wonderful than that he gave them oxygen to breathe or sunlight to walk in?

We tend to classify the gifts of God according to how often he gives them and how accustomed we are to receiving them. Sunlight is always with us but is it less wonderful or less miraculous than water springing from a rock or the sea parting to let his People scramble through to freedom?

God begins by giving us the miracle of life and sustains us through an endless serious of miracles, great and small.

Today we celebrate a great miracle – the miracle by which ordinary bread and wine become the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ – which he then gives us to eat saying: Anyone who eats this bread will live forever.

In the desert God fed his People with manna. Twice we are told in today’s Gospel that this was unheard of. Moses called the People to remember it, and we do well to remember it also: ... he fed you with manna which neither you nor your fathers had known ... in this wilderness fed you with manna that your fathers had not known.

The manna was totally unexpected, totally new, totally beyond human possibility; it kept the People alive in the desert. That’s why it was such a good image for Jesus to use when he spoke about himself. He was going to give the People of God a heavenly manna which was also totally unexpected, totally new, totally beyond human possibility, but with this added extra – anyone who ate this new manna would live forever.

Those who ate the manna in the desert died and so it was, in a sense, the bread of death. Jesus was claiming he had the bread of life.

At first the People shouted ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme! Let’s have some of this manna!’ If I’d been there I would have shouted too, maybe louder than most. I would have remembered that the day before he had worked the miracle of the loaves and fishes – he had fed five thousand men, not to mention the women and children. Now he was offering something even better.

…and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.

Oh dear, say the bystanders, did we hear him correctly? Did he just say … the bread that I shall give is my flesh…? Yes, he did, there’s no doubt about it. He wants us to eat his flesh!

We can almost hear one of the people there saying: ‘I can believe in the miracle of oxygen and sunlight. I can believe in the manna in the desert. I can even believe that he can change water into wine because I happened to be there among the guests at the wedding in Cana, and I did have some of that wonderful bread on the hill yesterday but … this … this is a bit too much.’

Then the Jews started arguing with one another: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they said.

It’s strange how, suddenly confronted with this proposal of Jesus, my mind feels like it’s back in a sort of lonely desert with not a single familiar landmark and not a single comforting footprint in the sand anywhere. I can well imagine why the Jews started arguing; there seems to be no line of continuity between the manna in the desert and the flesh and blood of Jesus. Certainly he is asking us to take a huge leap of faith and, apparently, not many have a faith agile enough to make that leap. Can you?

Do you believe that when you consume the small, white Host offered you by the priest as Holy Communion you are really receiving the flesh of Jesus, his Body? Do you really believe it?

Some people try to explain it away with varying novel interpretations. They say it’s only a symbol for his Body and Blood. It only represents the flesh of Jesus. They give it a name like transignification which means basically that when the words of consecration are said the bread and wine take on a different significance – without actually changing into the Body and Blood of Christ.

Well, we Catholics believe in transubstantiation which is a word given us by St Thomas Aquinas. It means that when the words of consecration are spoken the bread and wine retain all the elements of the appearance of bread and wine (smell, taste, look, etc) but the substance of the bread and wine is changed to the Body and Blood of Christ. To put it in a nutshell – the bread and wine IS Jesus – truly present in his body and blood, soul and divinity.

He is not more completely present in heaven than he is here on our altar and in our tabernacle. He will be seen or experienced more fully in heaven but he will be no more present then than he is today, here in this church.

Actually, this should help us respond to those strange people who say we don’t need to come to church to worship Jesus because ‘Jesus is everywhere.’ Yes, he is, spiritually. But in the fullness of his presence, body, blood, soul and divinity, he is present only in the tabernacle, or on the altar during Mass.

I want to mention a simple but often forgotten truth about receiving Holy Communion and that is that sometimes it can be very wrong to receive it.

Did you know that sometimes it is actually a very great sin, a sacrilege, to receive Holy Communion - that even though it is always good to come to Mass it is not always good to go to Holy Communion? Did you know that by receiving Holy Communion when we shouldn't we commit a very serious sin and we leave Mass in a worse condition than when we arrived?

If we are conscious of having committed a grave sin, what we call a mortal sin, we should definitely not go to Holy Communion until we have confessed this sin. If we do go we commit a sacrilegious communion and we need to confess that also.

Again we have the folks who will tell you to just make an act of sorrow, an act of contrition, and then you can go to Holy Communion. Please be clear about this: under normal circumstances, and I don’t have time to go into the details of the rare times when other rules apply, when it comes to a grave sin we absolutely must go to Confession before receiving Holy Communion.

When we receive Jesus himself, Lord of the Universe, Redeemer and Judge of all humanity, into ourselves, we must surely be prepared. A spotless soul, cleansed of all sin is the only place we should dare invite his presence, anything less and we dishonour and offend him.

I conclude with a word from Pope Benedict which he spoke only three days ago: We, Christians, kneel only before God, before the Most Holy Sacrament, because we know and believe that in it is present the one true God...

Trinity Sunday - Year A

Exodus 34:4-6.8-9; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18

The Blessed Trinity is the central mystery and doctrine of the Christian Faith. In fact, it is more than a doctrine, which simply means teaching or belief, it is a dogma, a truth revealed by God which must be believed by the faithful if they are to consider themselves Christian.

Some people see mystery as a bolted door beyond which we may never penetrate. They maintain we simply have to believe what the Church tells us is behind this door without ever being able to see it or understand it.

Others, and that includes me, see mystery as a wide open door inviting all to enter. Though we will never grasp all we see because it is infinite and incomprehensible, we are invited as much as we are able to participate in the mystery, to feast on it, to gaze upon it, to praise and worship it.

What is the Church’s teaching about the Trinity? To put it in a nutshell, it is the doctrine that in the unity of the Godhead, or more simply, in God, there are three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and that these three Persons are truly distinct one from another, and yet there is only one God.

As St. Athanasius puts it: the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, and yet there are not three Gods but one God.

In this Trinity of Persons the Son is eternally begotten of the Father, and the Holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son. So there is a difference in the origin of the Persons but they are co-eternal and co-equal, un-created and omnipotent.

Co-eternal means they all existed from all time. Even though the Father begets the Son he does so eternally. In other words, there never was a time when the Father existed without the Son. This is true also for the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son. There never was a time when the Holy Spirit wasn’t.

Co-equal has to do with the fact that none of the persons is greater than the other. They are all equal in everything.

Uncreated means what it says, none of the Persons was created. Sometimes people ask ‘Who made God?’ And the answer is always ‘No one.’

Omnipotent means the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are almighty.

What the Church teaches in regard to the mystery of the Blessed Trinity is called revelation. This means that it did not originate with us here on earth but it was revealed to us by God. Revelation always comes down to us from God, we could never have arrived at these truths unless they had been revealed to us. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, came upon earth to reveal the truth of the Blessed Trinity to the world and, for the Church, it has become the foundation of her entire faith.

In Scripture the word trinity does not appear. Theophilus of Antioch, about A.D. 180 speaks of 'the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom' but, of course, the term may have been in use before his time.

The evidence for the dogma of the Trinity is everywhere in the New Testament and some scholars even suggest it is in the Old Testament. In any case Jesus gradually made it known to his disciples.

He began by teaching them to recognise him as the Eternal Son of God, and that God was his Father in an entirely unique way. Have you ever realised for example that Jesus never referred to God as ‘our Father’ – he always said ‘your Father’ and ‘my Father’ - he always made a distinction? Even when he taught the Our Father to his followers he said, when, you pray say ‘Our Father’.

When Jesus had established himself as the Son of his Father in a way we could not claim, he began to promise that the Father would send another Divine Person, the Holy Spirit, in his place. After his resurrection, he revealed the doctrine very clearly when he commanded them to: go and teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18).

I will conclude with a lovely word from Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity. In November 1904, her Carmelite community was renewing their vows and Elizabeth suddenly felt drawn back to her cell where she wrote the following Act of Self-Offering. She wrote: O my God, Trinity whom I adore! Help me to become utterly forgetful of self, that I may bury myself in You, as changeless and as calm as though my soul were already in eternity . . . O my Three, my All, my Beatitude, Infinite Solitude, Immensity wherein I lose myself! I yield myself to you as your prey. Bury yourself in me that I may be buried in You, until I depart to contemplate in Your light the abyss of your greatness!

Pentecost Sunday Mass during the day - Year A

Acts 2:1-11; 1 Corinthians 12:3-7.12-13; John 20:19-23

When Pentecost day came round…

Pentecost means fifty – seven weeks plus one day - fifty days after Easter.

The Jews called it Shavuot, the Feast of Weeks, the feast of the Harvest, or the feast of the First Fruits. Whatever way we look at this feast it denotes the end of a period of waiting and the fulfilment of something hoped and worked for. For the Jews it was the first fruits of the harvest, for the Christian it is much the same, the harvest of the great work of Christ – the first fruit of his passion, death and resurrection – the Holy Spirit.

It’s a lesson for us Christians that there is a Christian way to wait – waiting, as the apostles did – waiting in prayer, with our hearts and minds directed towards our waiting.

Finally the fiftieth day came round and – the Apostles had all met in one room. This is significant, important. Some people don’t worry about gathering with fellow believers, they say ‘we don’t need to come to church to pray’. It’s like saying ‘I don’t need to come to your birthday party to rejoice for you’ or ‘I don’t need to come to your sister’s funeral to pray for her’.

Ok. No comment! If that’s where you’re at – no comment!

The Apostles, however, did gather – and so did Jesus. They gathered in the synagogue every Sabbath with the rest of the Jews. They found it very important, essential even, to do so and so do millions of Catholics today, every Sunday, without fail.

As a matter of fact, the very word for church has its origins in the Hebrew word for gathering – the gathered-together-ones. That’s what it means to be a member of the Church. It means that we gather. Our religion is not a solitary one. There are no solitary Christians. We are the People of God and we gather to worship him together.

So, the Apostles had all met in one room when the Holy Spirit came.

Eleven Apostles – one room – very important. It was when they met in one room, when they met in unity, in oneness of heart and mind, that the Holy Spirit came.

Suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting..

The noise of the wind filled the entire house. They were sitting in one room but the noise of the wind filled the entire house. What do you make of this? What is Luke trying to tell us? Makes us think of Mary who brought in a pound of very costly ointment, pure nard, and with it anointed the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair (John 12:3). We are told: the house was full of the scent of the ointment.

I’m not a Scripture scholar but to me it says simply – the Holy Spirit, like costly perfume, the perfume of true love, cannot be confined to one room. It reaches out and touches the whole house. Indeed, Jesus promised that the story of this love would be told throughout all the world (Mark 13:9).

So, the Holy Spirit came when they gathered as one, in one room, and the ‘noise’ filled the whole house – could we read the whole Church?

And what was the first effect of this noise of the Holy Spirit?

At this sound they all assembled …

Isn’t it marvellous? The first effect of the Holy Spirit coming to those gathered is to go on gathering – from all parts of Jerusalem, men from every nation under heaven. Surely it is now obvious to us that the gathering of Christians is a work of the Holy Spirit? God wants it that way and when we resist the gathering we are resisting the Holy Spirit.

The apostles hear the noise of what seems like a powerful wind from heaven and then – something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire; these separated and came to rest on the head of each of them.

The Holy Spirit gives itself to each one of the apostles individually. This is so wonderful. There is nothing ‘en masse’ about the Holy Spirit. He may come to all but everything is individual, personal. He comes to rest on the head of each of them – Peter’s head, John’s head, James’ head, Andrew’s head ... and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak foreign languages as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech.

The gift of speech - this was the first of the Spirit’s gifts.

We need to remember that the Holy Spirit which came upon the apostles is the same Holy Spirit which overshadowed the Blessed Virgin Mary and formed the Word of God in her womb. In her the Word became flesh and now, in the apostles, the Word becomes speech. Jesus, the Word of God, is himself the Good News the apostles begin to preach.

The Holy Spirit makes sense only to spiritual people. It is no accident that John records only that ‘devout men’, that is, spiritual men, assembled at the sound of the Spirit’s coming. Is this because they alone heard the noise of the mighty wind of the Spirit or because they alone, like Moses and the burning bush, were moved to investigate? I do not know. We are told they were ‘bewildered’, ‘amazed’ and ‘astonished’ at the great miracle they witnessed.

Each one heard them speaking in his own native language while the apostles were given the gift of speaking many languages. Here again we see that the work of the Holy Spirit is unity, bringing all together into the oneness of the one Gospel, spoken in many languages, but always the same Word.

The strange thought strikes me that the apostles were very much like that burning bush which confronted Moses. They too were 'on fire' and they too were not consumed. As from the burning bush the word of God was spoken to Moses, so too, the Word of God came, and still comes, through the preaching of the apostles. Each one of us is invited, like Moses, to ‘turn aside’ and hear this word of God, and be converted.

The Ascension of the Lord - Year A

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:19-20

Before he became Pope Benedict XVI Cardinal Ratzinger wrote a book called The Spirit of the Liturgy and in Chapter Two of this book he speaks of the double movement by which we come from God and then return to him. He calls it exitus and reditus - a coming out and a returning to. For most of us this is, of course, a novel idea but let's pursue it a little.

In many of the pagan cults and religions this idea was prominent. These religions conceived of creation as having its origins in the divine but not so much as a coming out from the divine as a falling down from it, a bit like a chick pushed out of its nest and falling to the earth.

In this sense we are seen as fallen humanity and our existence is already a kind of sin because it came about as the result of a disaster which now we have to redeem by somehow getting back into the nest.

Well, the Christian exitus is nothing like that. Adam and Eve's creation, their coming out of God, is not a fall, it is not a negative and it is not a sin. It is something thoroughly positive. Our creation is 'the wholly positive fruit of the divine will', as Cardinal Ratzinger says. It is due to a loving decree of God who creates us freely in freedom and dignity.

This notion of freedom is important, even crucial. God's act of creating us is an act of loving freedom, and the principle of freedom is present in our very constitution, and so we are able freely to return his love if we so choose.

So our Christian reditus, our returning to God, is a coming home along the road of freedom. Walking this road we are most ourselves because we are exercising what makes us uniquely us - our freedom. It is our free yes to God's creating love which no human being can make on our behalf.

The first step of our reditus, our return, is acceptance of our creation from the hands of God. Then we begin a loving dialogue in which we give ourselves back to him and in the process become fully ourselves.

This was the path offered to our First Parents but with catastrophic consequences Adam and Eve interrupted this free return to God by their sin of disobedience. They said no to the return. In its place they chose ego and self. They accepted their creation by God but attempted to establish themselves as his equal.

From this point on the journey back to God for all of us would be one of sacrifice and purification - of healing wounded freedom. With the sin of Adam and Eve we found ourselves bound by a knot we could not ourselves untie. We now needed a Redeemer.

Jesus came to our rescue. He came from heaven as a Man and, like the good shepherd who carried home the lost sheep on his shoulders, Jesus took our wounded and broken humanity to the Cross and ascended with it to heaven. There he placed it before the throne of God in heaven - at the feet of his Father. In this way, in his return to the Father, the pathway of our own return was opened again, the knot was undone, we were once again set free for freedom.

This is the feast we celebrate today - the feast of the healing of our reditus, of our return to the God who made us. The road was now cleared of blockages and only one gift was lacking - the gift of the Holy Spirit - who would enable us to walk faithfully in the footsteps of the Master.

The Holy Spirit would make all things possible to the disciples. As Jesus says in today's Gospel: you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you.

One other important thing needs to be said here. The road the disciples were commanded to walk was the same road Jesus had walked, the road of bringing the Gospel to the world. Jesus had started the process in Galilee and its immediate environs but now, with his Ascension, the disciples (that's you and me too, by the way) were to continue this mission.

... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and then you will be my witnesses not only in Jerusalem but throughout Judea and Samaria, and indeed to the ends of the earth.

It is for this mission that Jesus was to send the Holy Spirit from the Father. This evangelising mission is the way of our reditus - this is the road we have to walk if we are to arrive in heaven - we have to evangelise the world.