The Body and Blood of Christ - Year C

Genesis 14:18-20; 1 Corinthians 11:23-26; Luke 9:11-17

Every now and then we have one of those experiences which come unexpectedly and powerfully into our life and change it for ever. Sister Angela's visit was like that. She needed something from the church and I took her there.

We walked in through the side door. The church was empty. I was chatting to her about something or other and suddenly realised she was no longer beside me. I looked back and there she was - on both knees, her head bowed, motionless, facing the tabernacle.

I genuflected and waited for this young Sister to finish. She took her time and seemed not to notice my embarrassment.

Actually, it was a wonderful, powerful moment of correction for me. A reminder that I had grown careless, that I was taking things for granted. Her deep consciousness of the Lord in the Blessed Sacrament and her simple, spontaneous act of homage touched me deeply and will never be forgotten.

These days I always make a point of genuflecting before the Lord and sometimes people say, 'Aren't you overdoing it a bit? Why do you need to genuflect every time you pass the Blessed Sacrament?' and I say, 'Because if I don't, I will forget.'

If only Moses could get through to the people as easily and as effectively as Sister Angela got through to me. We catch a glimpse of him in the First Reading today.

Moses said to the people: Remember ... the Lord your God ... do not forget ... the Lord your God.

Can you see Moses there, standing before his stubborn people? Can you see the expression on his face? Tired, patient, hopeful, that this time they will take notice of him. Poor man!

He is standing before his people who have already a number of times betrayed the God who set them free from slavery in Egypt. Poor Moses!

No sooner had the Lord brought them through the Red Sea to safety and freedom than they forgot his power and began to complain. 'We have no food' - and he gave them manna. 'We have no water' - and he brought forth water from the rock. 'We have no meat' - and he gave them quails by the thousands. But still they kept forgetting their Lord and his care for them.

When Moses had gone up the mountain to receive the 10 Commandments from God the people couldn't even wait for 40 days. They simply forgot the Lord and made a golden calf to dance around.

No wonder Moses' favourite word to the people seems to have been 'Remember, remember, remember ...'

And our Gospel begins: Jesus said to the Jews ...

The Jews - they are the same people Moses spoke to. And now it is not Moses but Jesus who stands before them. Such a wonderful message, the Good News, the word of life!

I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.

Will the people, will anyone accept these words? How difficult is the task of the prophet! Most of them just walked away!

Well, right now it's me who finds himself standing before the people. My message is the same message of Jesus - the message of God. I will put it before you bluntly:

The bread we eat at Holy Communion is not bread, it is the Body of Christ. The wine we drink at Holy Communion is not wine, it is the Blood of Christ. The bread and the wine only look like bread and wine. They are, in fact, the Lord himself, Jesus Christ, in his body, blood, soul and divinity. In other words, when we receive Holy Communion we receive Jesus himself under the appearance of bread and wine. We don't know how this happens. We accept it in faith because we accept the word of Jesus. Do you believe him? I do.

But wait, there's more:

If we are to receive the Body and Blood of Christ at Holy Communion we must be 'in communion' with the Church and with Christ. In other words, we must not receive Holy Communion if we are conscious of mortal sin. If we are conscious of mortal sin we must first be reconciled through face-to-face sacramental confession before we receive Holy Communion. To receive Holy Communion when we are conscious of an unconfessed mortal sin is to commit a sacrilege. You don't want to do that!

Well, how's it going? Are you still with me or are you, in your heart or in your mind, walking away?

I pray you have accepted this teaching - it is not mine - it is the Church's teaching, Jesus' Church, and therefore it's his teaching, straight from the mouth of the Lord. And let us always remember that we live on 'everything that comes from the mouth of the Lord'.

The Most Holy Trinity - Year C

Proverbs 8:22-31; Romans 5:1-5; John 16:12-15

Anthony de Mello tells the story of a Chinese boy who wanted to become a carver of jade. He was apprenticed to a master craftsman and could hardly sleep the night before his first day with the master.

When he arrived for work he greeted the master and sat down in front of him. The master continued to work but gave the boy a piece of jade to hold. All day the boy sat there before the master, watching him work, and all the time holding in his hand the precious piece of jade.

The next day and the next passed in the same way and when his parents asked him how it was going he said it was not like he expected because all he did was sit there with a lump of jade in his hands while the master worked.

After more than a week of this the boy decided to end his apprenticeship if the master did not give him some work to do and again asked him just to sit with a piece of jade in his hands.

Sure enough, he had hardly sat down when the master gave him another piece of jade to hold. He was just about to make his complaint when his attention was drawn to the stone in his hands. 'But master' said the boy 'this is not jade!'

The master smiled and said 'Well done, young man, you have learned your first lesson well.'

The old man was very wise because he knew there was something about jade that could be learned only by first hand ‘lived’ experience. That’s why he put the jade into the boy’s hands. He brought him into relationship with it over a number of days and so the boy learned to recognise by experience what the qualities of jade were. And the mystery of the Trinity is just like that. We can only understand or penetrate the mystery to the extent that it penetrates us. Perhaps we can explore this a little more deeply by asking ‘How do we know God is Trinity?’

The Jews knew only that God is One - the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob - one God. Jesus certainly never taught the doctrine of the Trinity to his disciples though we can say that the doctrine came from him. What is more, it is difficult to find in the Scriptures, or in any texts from the very early Church, anything explicit about the Blessed Trinity. The Sacred Scripture certainly never used the word "Trinity" anywhere in its pages even though it is saturated with its presence. So where does this teaching come from?

The answer, you already know, is Jesus - Trinity was the way Jesus experienced God. He experienced God as his Father and himself as co-equal Son. He told us that he and the Father were one yet he made it clear that he was not the Father.

Similarly he experienced the Holy Spirit, through whom he was conceived, as the Spirit and power and love of God, and yet, at the same time, he recognised that the Spirit was not the Father, nor was he the Son.

The Holy Spirit was the 'Advocate' who would teach the Apostles everything. The Father (and the Son) would send him when the Son had departed this earth at the Ascension.

How then did the Church come by the knowledge of the Blessed Trinity? How did Jesus pass this reality on to the Church?

Essentially the Church arrived at the doctrine of the Trinity after careful reflection and prayer on its experience of Jesus and of God. This reflection was painstakingly and, often, controversially thrashed out.

Trinity is how Jesus experienced God and how the Church experiences God. As the Church, through Sacred Scripture and Tradition, shapes our understanding of God it also instructs our experience of him. Like the boy with the jade we must be in touch with God in the experience of our own prayer and day to day life. It is here we will learn to say with Jesus - God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Pentecost Sunday (Day) - Year C

Acts 2:1-11; Romans 8:8-17; John 14:15-16.23-26

Eleven days ago, in the Church of the Holy Trinity in Fatima, the Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI consecrated all priests to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. To be perfectly honest I felt a leap of joy when I first heard this and I'm deeply grateful to 'my chief' for doing this. The words of his prayer are finely sculpted, most beautiful and most thoughtful.

Now you may be wondering why I would choose to speak of this on the feast of Pentecost so I'll explain.

There has spread throughout the contemporary Church a deadly pandemic called the 'we-can-fix-it' virus. This virulent pest has escaped into the house of God from the mind of a godless individual, we won't bother mentioning his horrible name, and infected good people everywhere. The 'we-can-fix-it' virus causes sufferers to imagine that there is no human problem, material or spiritual, for which the solution cannot be found somewhere in the cleverness of human beings. This, of course, is why we have so many programmes, meetings, bureaucratic structures in our parishes. We are searching for the idea or the individual who will 'fix it all' for us.

Politicians understand all this very well and make enormous capital out of it. They present themselves as 'Mr Fixit' - and 'it' includes most, if not all, the problems which beset us. And strangely enough, it doesn't seem to matter how often they let us down, we stubbornly go on believing that somewhere in the human genome, or somewhere in here, in our mind or heart, lies the cure to the human dilemma.

Within the Church there are enormous problems reported among priests - disobedience, dissent, abuse of power, defections and all sorts of other misbehaviour.

And what does the Pope do? What does the Pope do when he raises his head and tearfully surveys poor struggling priests and bishops? Does he hold an inquiry, assemble a 'think tank', develop a plan, produce a glossy brochure? No, he consecrates them all to the Immaculate Heart of Mary.

Why? Because he is humbly admitting that he can't fix it.

Immaculate Mother ... we consecrate ourselves to your maternal Heart.

We are mindful that,
without Jesus,
we can do nothing good. (cf. Jn 15:5)

Bride of the Holy Spirit,
obtain for us the inestimable gift
of transformation in Christ.
Through the same power of the Spirit
that overshadowed you,
making you the Mother of the Saviour,
help us to bring Christ your Son
to birth in ourselves too.

Obtain for us the gift of transformation in Christ!

How?

Through the same power of the Holy Spirit that overshadowed you.

The Holy Spirit of God is the only power which can transform us - the Church and the world - and it is a power to which Mary not only entirely surrendered herself but which she can now, through her intercession, obtain for us all.

Last week we marvelled at the ignorance, passivity and helplessness of the Apostles who merely 'look on' as God's plan unfolded before them in the Ascension of his Son. This week we marvel at what the Holy Spirit can accomplish in powerless human beings when they are willing to wait for him in prayer and open their hearts to receive him.

When it comes to transformation into Christ humans cannot but the Holy Spirit can. This lesson so badly needs to be re-learned in the Church today. Young men and women struggling to remain chaste, couples in difficult marriages, people facing drugs, pornography, addictions of all sorts find their lasting help only in the power of the Holy Spirit. Above all, a priest can remain faithful to the Church and her Master only in and through the power of God's Holy Spirit. Without him we can't; with him we can.

The clearest expression of the incapacity of the Apostles was their obedience to Jesus' command to stay in Jerusalem and wait there for what the Father had promised. The Holy Spirit came to them when they 'met together'. First they heard him, then he appeared to them, then he came to rest on them. All was gift, none of it was achievement.

It was only when they were filled with the Holy Spirit that they began to speak and even now, Luke hastily adds: as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech. The miracle of tongues caught them all by surprise. If the Apostles had been asked later how it had all happened they would have shrugged their shoulders and answered, 'We don't know.' And those who heard them speak in their own language wondered, 'How does it happen that each of us hears them in his own language?'

Obedience, gathering in prayer, waiting on the Holy Spirit - all these are the special competence of the Blessed Virgin, and Pope Benedict implores that she obtain these gifts for us priests. In the Holy Father's prayer in Fatima all of us, priests and people, can find the blueprint for the way ahead. Let each of us consecrate himself, herself to Mary and ask that she obtain for us the beautiful gift of the Holy Spirit who alone can transform us into her Son.

Ascension of the Lord - Year C

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Luke 24:46-53

Today's readings are for all those among us who have come to realise that they are not in control.

This may seem a rather banal comment to make but it constantly surprises me how the older I get the more I realise, each time at a deeper level, my utter powerlessness to direct the unfolding circumstances of my own life, let alone those of others. More and more I feel like the Apostles in the first reading, a mere onlooker to the unfolding plan of God.

As he said this he was lifted up while they looked on...

Actually, the first reading is notable for its emphasis on the passivity and helplessness, and even ignorance, of the Apostles. It is as though all God required of them was that they watch attentively and take careful note of all that Jesus said and did. This seems to have been the main qualifications of a true Apostle. We see this clearly later on in this same chapter when they set about choosing a replacement for Judas. St Peter says: We must therefore choose someone who has been with us the whole time that the Lord Jesus was travelling round with us, someone who was with us right from the time when John was baptising until the day when he was taken up from us - and he can act with us as a witness to his resurrection.

Before we look at the language of the first reading more closely we note also that the Apostles have nothing which they have not received. This truth became starkly apparent to me as a hospital chaplain. The doctors and nurses cared for their patients with all sorts of treatments which needed great skill and expertise. They inserted cannulas, injected medicines, performed procedures of all kinds.

I, on the other hand had nothing of my own to give except what I had been given. I anointed with the Church's oils and said the words the Church gave me to say; I absolved with the Church's powerful words of absolution to forgive sin. There was nothing of my own that I could give. Not even the Good News I preached was my own. And this is true of every priest. And yet, as St Paul says: Taken for paupers ... we make others rich. (2 Cor 6:10)

Ponder all this in the following phrases from the first reading; what do they tell you?

• Jesus had done and taught
• he gave his instructions to the apostles
• he had shown himself alive to them
• he had continued to appear to them
• he had told them not to leave Jerusalem
• but to wait there
• you ... will be baptised with the Holy Spirit
• It is not for you to know times or dates
• but you will receive power
• when the Holy Spirit comes on you
• and then you will be my witnesses
• he was lifted up while they looked on
• and a cloud took him from their sight.
• staring into the sky
• two men in white were standing near them
• why are you men ... standing here looking into the sky?
• Jesus ... been taken up from you.
• he will come back

Do you see? It's all the work of the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit! The Apostles just stand there looking, staring, waiting and this is precisely what God asks of them. It is only when they receive power from on high that they become something - witnesses - to all they have seen and heard and received. Do you see? It's all God's work and, consequently, you are all God's work.

Just as with the Apostles, the Father completes his work in us by the gift of the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who gives us power to become all that we can be, all that we should be. In spiritual terms this means becoming witnesses to Christ in the lives we lead and the words we speak.

So if you are feeling powerless, out of control, hopeless, don't despair and don't try to play Mr Fixit. Stay put and wait (in prayer, of course), and 'you will receive power'.

Be patient, do what you can, pray - without giving up.