Ascension of the Lord - Year A

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Matthew 28:16-20

The eleven disciples set out for Galilee ...

Eleven is such a strange, awkward number. We might even call it a sad number. Twelve minus one. It’s like the smile of a Hollywood star – with a tooth missing. And the missing tooth is, of course, Judas the traitor, but not only.

In that same empty space the disciples can see their own infidelity and cowardice, not to mention their present incomprehension and uncertainty. They ran away when their Master was being crucified and one of them even explicitly denied him. In that space lies the incompleteness of their own faith and trust in the Lord; their own ‘absence’.

Perhaps this is why I imagine there is something gauche, and perhaps even a little stunned about these men. Watching them set out we might be reminded of Mark 10:32: They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem; Jesus was walking on ahead of them; they were in a daze, and those who followed were apprehensive.

Yes, the eleven were setting out. This, too, is worthy of remark. Jesus and his disciples were always setting out, and now that he has died, and is risen, his disciples are still doing it. For us who have followed the Lord for so many years this comes as no surprise. We well understand that ‘setting out’ is the hallmark of the Christian life. And when in old age or illness we are finally laid in that bed in which we will eventually draw our last breath we know that this is only another form of Christian ‘setting out.’

The disciples are heading for Galilee, back home to where it all began for them. They were heading for ‘the mountain’, which is Bible-speak for ‘they were going to meet God’. And they did meet him. As Matthew tells us : Jesus came up and spoke to them.

Most of them did what one would naturally do if one were to come into the presence of God: they fell down before him. Young John would have been among the first. He had always been the first to believe, even before Peter. When he looked into that empty tomb on Easter Sunday, at the cloths lying there: he saw and he believed (John 20:8).

But some hesitated. After all the teaching and the miracles and resurrection appearances they still were not sure. How honest the Gospels are about the Apostles’ slowness in coming to the fullness of faith! It’s almost a proof of their authenticity.

Also in the first reading Luke’s description of this final meeting of the eleven with their Lord demonstrates what we, with the benefit of hindsight, might even call the ‘obtuseness’ of the Apostles: Lord, has the time come? Are you going to restore the kingdom to Israel? The mind-boggling silliness of the question might tempt us to shake our heads and look away but fortunately for us, for you and for me, in the embarrassing spectacle of the uncertainty and hesitation and slowness of the eleven, in the hole caused by that missing tooth, is found our own hope that there might just be room in God’s Church for us – poor, hesitant, half-hearted Christians that ‘some’ of us still are.

Jesus’ answer to his disciples betrays not a hint of the annoyance he clearly demonstrated on previous occasions. Perhaps he is consoling himself with the thought that the Holy Spirit will enlighten them in ten days’ time. Indeed, if we have been puzzling over the ‘poor eleven’ and suspecting that ‘something’s missing’, this surely must be the key to our disquiet; the Holy Spirit is missing! And when he comes all doubts will be resolved, all hesitation and confusion will evaporate, and all faintheartedness will give way to confidence and courage.

For the moment Jesus simply tells them that these matters are in the hands of the Father and it is not for them to be privy to his decisions. All they could do, and they did it, was to ‘look on’ and to ‘look up’ as the mighty plan of God unfolded before them.

Of course, Jesus himself is that plan, the plan of the Father. Jesus, the obedient Son, realises the plan of the Father with the power that his Father has given to him. Whereas the Father decides ‘by his own authority’, Jesus is careful distinguishes his own power as something that ‘has been given to me’. In John’s Gospel Jesus makes this explicitly clear when he declares (14:28): … the Father is greater than I.

The language of the first reading subtly refers to this power beyond Jesus in such phrases as ‘he was taken up to heaven’, ‘he was lifted up’, and ‘Jesus who has been take up from you’. The passive verbs direct our attention to the supremacy of God the Father who here acts on behalf of his Son.

Having perfectly fulfilled the plan of his Father Jesus is now able to announce that: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. As Jesus was sent by the authority of the Father so now he has the authority to send his disciples: Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations…

And as he leaves them he promises to be with them always; a paradox well known to the Christian!

6th Sunday of Easter - Year A

Acts 8:5-8.14-17; 1Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21

It's really good to be able to sit in a comfortable chair in a room by yourself and read, meditate, and pray on the Sacred Scripture. This practice is called Lectio Divina and it is slowly becoming more and more common among the Faithful.

Today's first reading is a good passage to practise on if you are not accustomed to this spiritual exercise. The opening line, like the rest of the passage, is rather matter-of-fact and seemingly unremarkable: Philip went to a Samaritan town and proclaimed the Christ to them.

So we place ourselves in Philip's shoes and wonder what he must have been feeling as he entered that town. We should not rush this but, in a very relaxed way, do our best to enter into the reading. What would the town have looked like; how would he have gone about proclaiming Christ to them?

The people welcomed him. We are told they: united in welcoming the message.

Obviously Philip's fame had preceded him. They had already heard about the miracles he had worked and now they were to see them first hand. I wonder what that must have been like?

In my imagination I am present and try to see their reactions, listen to what they are saying, and try to feel what they would have been feeling.

Philip had a reputation; he had power, the power of the Gospel lived in him. I wonder where he preached to them? Where did he proclaim the Christ? Do the Samaritans have synagogues, or would he have done it in a public square or some other gathering point like a market or, perhaps, the gates to the city? It doesn't really matter what kind of a scene my imagination produces, as long as I remain faithful to the framework Luke gives me, I can flesh them out any way I want.

When my prayer time is finished I can keep some of those questions in our mind and maybe I can research them (Google them, perhaps), or discuss them with a friend who might know more.

Does this seem far-fetched to you? Well, don't laugh! There are many people around who find room in their head for questions like these which help them get closer to Christ; to understand better the message preached by the apostles and recorded in the Scriptures. These people are willing to give time and put serious effort into their spiritual lives. Instead of going down to the local shop to buy a newspaper to find out what's on the telly tonight these people will do a little bit of quiet Bible study in their spare time so that their daily lectio divina time becomes more and more fruitful, and the face of the Lord comes into sharper and sharper focus. What's more, their efforts to answer these questions raises them from the mundane, everyday concerns with which our lives are brimming, to an entirely more worthwhile level.

And we can imagine how excited people would have been hearing that the famous Philip was in town. They would have arranged the affairs of their day to somehow be able to meet up with him, to listen to him, to perhaps see a miracle, and then to perhaps develop their own faith and leave behind some emptiness, some fear, some sin.

It must have been very exciting to witness a miracle; perhaps several miracles. The talk, the buzz, to speak with the person who was healed. I once spoke with Sr Briege McKenna who was totally paralysed with arthritis and was miraculously healed. It was an unforgettable experience for me.

And then there's those other important people in this reading - the paralytics and the possessed. How would they have felt? Who were they? What was their reaction when they found themselves free? Did they praise God for this new freedom that had come into their lives?

And what about Satan? What would he have felt? The anger, the hatred, the humiliation of seeing himself expelled by a simple faith-filled Apostle. Hell would have been in turmoil. It would have been a strange and exciting time to be living in. And Satan would have been working frantically to try to recover lost territory, stirring up opposition, causing misunderstanding and confusion. For Satan it would have been a question of damage minimisation.

That would have been the invisible battle that was raging, one which other people couldn't see, and one which we can only try to imagine - the attempt to distort everything,  the message,  the miracles - to make accusations of trickery and arouse the pagans to reject the Good News.

Satan would have worked on their vested interests, their desire for the status quo to continue, and the misunderstanding caused by false rumours they might have heard about the apostles. Satan would have done everything he could to stir up as much opposition to the Gospel message.

But despite all Satan's efforts, the spirits still came shrieking out of many. Shrieking! This new power which they could not resist was wielded not by Jesus but by his simple followers. How humiliating for this proud opponent of God's divine plan for humanity!

If we have been generous with our time and generous in our efforts to really focus on the readings before us we will soon begin to discover a new joy, a new hope in our lives as the word of God finds, more and more, a place in our heart.

5th Sunday of Easter - Year A

Acts 6:1-7; 1Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

Many of us ask the question: Can we make God sad? Can we make God happy?

We were told as youngsters, and we still are today, in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, that God in Himself, in his Godhead (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), doesn’t really need us for his happiness. And, of course, this is unarguably true. God made the world not for himself but for us; so that we might be happy. As the Penny Catechism teaches: so that we might come to know him, love him, and serve him here on earth and be happy with him forever in heaven.

But why did God make the world? The answer is that he made the world out of the overflow of his love and goodness. Not because he was bored, or conducting an experiment, but because he loved. God in himself is a communion of love in which the three divine persons, one to the other, give and receive the one love which defines their being. God did not need to make us for his happiness as God because in his Trinitarian communion of love he is all-sufficient and totally happy. This happiness could not and would not be increased by creating us.

But we must distinguish between God (the Trinity), and the man Jesus who is God; the second person of the Blessed Trinity, made man.

We might mention here that some people object to the title ‘Mother of God’ being used of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Clearly she is not the Mother of the Godhead, the Trinity, but she is the Mother of Jesus, the Son of God made man. Can you see the difference?

One of the things I like about the Catholic Church is her courage to push truth to the legitimate limits of its expression and to state even those challenging truths which other denominations do not dare to utter. When you stand with both feet on a firm foundation of truth only then can you dare to say what you might fear to say if you did not have the security of a total grasp on the truth.

The Church is not afraid to give Mary the title Mother of God because she deserves it; like the title: Mother of our salvation. Protestants wince at this but the Church gives her this title because she is the Mother of our Salvation, whose other name is Jesus.

We must distinguished between the Godhead which is eternally happy and whose happiness we cannot increase or decrease – and Jesus who is God.

So now we ask -  can we make Jesus happy - Jesus who is God? And now the answer is yes. During his life on earth Jesus wept, rejoiced, became tired, got angry and experienced the normal human emotions; but he did not sin. Therefore, during his life on earth,  we can say that people were able to make God happy in Jesus; to make God sad in Jesus; to make God angry in Jesus.

Jesus rejoiced when he found the sheep he was looking for, and when Peter told him he believed in him as the Christ. He was angry with the money changers in the synagogue and with the Pharisees. He was sad in the Garden of Olives; sad to the point of death, actually. He longed to eat the Passover with his disciple and sang after the meal. Was he pretending? No. These are real feelings from a real man who is truly God.

Today Jesus suffers and rejoices in his mystical body, in you and me. We all understand that he is no longer able to suffer in himself in his happiness in heaven, but we also know that his love still urges him to suffering in his body, the Church. This is truly a mystery and I won’t explore it further. Let me simply add that, as the saints teach us, love finds it’s deepest expression and rest in suffering, and Jesus therefore, Jesus, who still loves, still desires to suffer.

We tend to think of heaven as that place, or rather state, which God made for us so we can be happy, where he wants us to be so that we can be happy. But I think it is also a place where he wants us to be so that he, Jesus, God can be happy.

“I am going to prepare you a place .. so that where I am you may be also.”

Do you get the picture? Jesus wants us in heaven for his happiness as well as ours. He wants you there or there will be something missing – you!

The Cure of Ars used to say ‘My dear people, it is not easy to get to heaven, you must try very hard because if one of you doesn’t make it – it will spoils things for the rest of us.’

Does this mean that the happiness of heaven will not be perfect? Certainly not. The Cure is speaking in an earthly way. To the extent that Jesus is still truly present on earth in his Body, the Church, he is still capable of suffering and rejoicing and lamenting the loss of one of his sheep.

Let’s try very hard to get there, to be good, to love others, to forgive those who are hurting us, to offer up our sufferings in Jesus so that when we enter those pearly gates we will see the happy smile of God on the face of Jesus.

4th Sunday of Easter - Year A

Acts 2:14.36-41; 1Peter 2:20-25; John 10:1-10

You will recall, perhaps, that in the first reading last week St Peter got up at Pentecost to preach to the crowds which assembled at the commotion caused by the coming of the Holy Spirit. This week we go to the end of that mighty sermon of St Peter and we get to see the response of the listeners.

But first, I think it is important to underline something about the quality and tone of St Peter’s words to the crowd. It would be a pity to overlook these.

Do you notice that St Peter speaks in a very confidently assertive or declarative way? As a friend of mine commented, ‘There are no subjunctives.’ In other words there are no ‘mights’ or ‘maybes’.

Good ‘ol Wikipedia tells us that in grammar, the subjunctive mood is a verb mood typically used … to express a wish, emotion, possibility, judgment, opinion, necessity, or action that has not yet occurred.

Peter declares ‘with a loud voice’: …the whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ. There is absolutely nothing subjunctive about that!

Compare this to modern ‘feeling-sensitive’ language whose main aim is to avoid hurting anyone’s feelings (i.e. making them feel uncomfortable) rather than actually telling the truth.

St Peter didn’t get up and say ‘I guess that, in a way, you people might have, perhaps, treated Jesus with, maybe, a little greater kindness.’ No way! Peter says: this Jesus, whom you crucified… .

Go through every word Peter says and there is no hesitant, equivocating, politically correct ambiguity anywhere to be found: …the whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ.'

And why do you think Peter speaks like this? What is the point in expressing the truth of things in this stark and absolute way? Why couldn’t he have said ‘this Jesus, who was crucified’ or ‘this Jesus whom they crucified’ or ‘this Jesus whom evil men crucified’? Surely there were lots of ways of saying it so his listeners would not be put off. Today we ‘pad out’ our preaching with attractive little phrases that soften the truth so no one is uncomfortable, no one is ‘convicted’. And so, as one priest said, we ‘contracept’ our own preaching, making sure it can’t bear fruit.

There are two main reason for Peter’s rigorous statement of the truth. The first is that only when the guilt has been laid at the feet of the guilty, is repentance and forgiveness possible.

The second is that by expressing the crime, the sin, their guilt in its fullest dimensions is Peter able to show that the loving mercy of God will cover even that. Only by making clear the enormity of the sin is Peter able to demonstrate the even greater enormity of the mercy of God.

All this is a great, practical lesson for those who enter the confessional to confess their sins. If they minimise and obscure the seriousness of their guilt by using ambiguous or ‘subjunctive’ language with the priest they will inevitably deprive themselves of that joyful realisation of total forgiveness. Whether they understand it or not, there will always be lurking that ‘remainder’ of guilt which they refused to acknowledge and which now lingers vaguely in their consciousness.

The crowd responds with the same fullness with which Peter delivered his message; they were ‘cut to the heart’. Peter’s razor sharp words have caused them to see themselves in a new light; they have seen the truth about themselves; they have seen themselves before God as they really are – and isn’t this the entire purpose of the Gospel?

‘What must we do, brothers?’ they ask.

‘You must repent … and every one of you must be baptised …’ replies Peter.

Peter is not making a suggestion, he is not giving his opinion, he is not offering an invitation. Peter is declaring in the clearest way possible what everyone (from every nation under heaven) who wishes to reach salvation must do. In return they will receive forgiveness of their sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Peter called his generation ‘perverse’. Strong language but accurate, and equally, if not more so, descriptive of our own. We must cease blindly resisting the thought that all is well in our lives and that all is well in the world. If the violence, confusion and evil in the world is nothing more than an expression of what is in the human heart then we need to seriously face the truth of our own need to repent.

May we be like those who listened to Peter. They ‘accepted what he said … And that very day about three thousand were added to their number.’

3rd Sunday of Easter - Year A

Acts 2:14.22-33; 1Peter 1:17-21; Luke 24:13-35

On the day of Pentecost Peter stood up with the Eleven and addressed the crowd in a loud voice: ‘Men of Israel, listen to what I am going to say … .’

It was important that Peter stood up with the Eleven, the whole Church, because the message he was about to preach was not his own - it was the solemn proclamation of the whole Church.

It was important also that this be done 'in a loud voice'. The Church must speak fearlessly and with unmistakable clarity.

And furthermore it was vitally important that this first declaration of the Gospel, of the Catholic faith, should have been made to the whole world. As Luke spells out clearly for us (2:6): Now there were devout men living in Jerusalem from every nation under heaven … .

The Catholic Church is universal; that’s what the word catholic means. Therefore she wants the whole world to listen to 'what I am going to say'.

And how does Peter begin? As the Church always begins, with the word 'Jesus' - Jesus the Nazarene … .

A few miles away, on their way to Emmaus, a couple of disappointed ‘former’ disciples, in answer to a stranger’s question, begin their testimony with much the same words as St Peter: All about Jesus of Nazareth….

Actually, their story is remarkably similar in structure and content but these disciples lack two essential ingredients. Firstly they appear to give their account of events without any reference to the Scriptures and, secondly, they are not convinced of the resurrection. Without this dimension their story does not bring joy, encouragement or peace - only downcast faces. What’s more, it leads them away from the community of the Church, away from Jerusalem.

Indeed, they had heard rumours of the resurrection, some women from their group had gone to the tomb and seen a vision of angels 'who declared he was alive'. But these rumours were not enough. They needed to see, to experience the Risen Lord for themselves. As yet they were like those who had gone to the tomb after the women but 'saw nothing'. Their eyes had not yet been opened.

We can only imagine the manner in which Jesus spoke those words: 'You foolish men!' to Cleopas and his friend. I imagine it would have been in somewhat the same tone with which Jesus had chided Philip: Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and still you do not know me?

The problem here was that, although these two men knew the Scriptures, they didn’t understand them, and therefore they didn’t relate the events which had so disappointed them to the word of God. It was a classic case of St Jerome insight: ‘Ignorance of Scripture is ignorance of Christ.’

St Peter, with the benefit of his Easter faith, on the other hand, now sees all that happened as completely in accordance with what scripture had foretold. He speaks of Christ’s resurrection using the words of Psalm 16. He refers to King David and the promise God had made him that one of his descendants would succeed him on the throne, and speaks also of the promised Holy Spirit.

Jesus sets about instructing the demoralised disciples and soon their hearts are ‘burning’ within them. Jesus shows them that all is as it should be and that the word of God had foretold everything from the beginning.

What Jesus actually said to the two men is not recorded. What we do know is that he brought them to understand and believe the scriptures and to grasp the truth that the passion of Christ was a necessary forerunner to his entry into glory.

But one further surprise awaited these men: While he was with them at the table, he took the bread and said the blessing; then he broke it and handed it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognised him… .

What a shock! It had been Jesus all the time, the Risen Lord! He had shown them the ‘word’ and the ‘sacrament’ and then disappeared. Instinctively they knew there was only one thing to do. They must seek him in the ‘community’ and: They set out that instant and returned to Jerusalem.

There they found ‘the Eleven assembled together with their companions’ – the Church – which verified for them the Good News: Yes it is true. The Lord has risen … .

The disciples who had so forlornly walked away from the mystery had returned. They were home, in the only community on earth that knew Jesus had risen from the dead. Alleluia!