The Body and Blood of the Lord - Year A

Deuteronomy 8:2-3.14-16; 1 Corinthians 10:16-17; John 6:51-58

Modern man has a great love - the mind; or more exactly - his own mind.

The mind of modern man is sacred territory on which no other person may set foot and which he defends with powerful sentinels called opinions. Within this territory he dwells secure, luxuriating in the confidence his impenetrable fortifications afford him. Should an enemy approach, a piece of clear logic, a reasoned argument, or merely a wise thought, he can simply direct one of his innumerable sentries to completely disarm the invader with an invincible: But in MY opinion…

Insulating the mind in this way from all external threats has several wonderful spin-offs, the most significant of which is that it enables modern man to say: I am always right. An even more satisfying way of putting this is: I am never wrong.

Eventually, when this liberating conviction has totally taken charge of him he is ready for the great discovery: I can do whatever I want. And then finally, though he will never dare to utter the words, at least not within earshot of others, he will find himself silently mouthing, perhaps in the mirror: I am God.

An unfortunate and unavoidable negative about all this is that the actual size of the modern mind shrinks, and although it can vary from person to person, it is often reduced to no more than the size of a drink coaster or even, in some rare cases, a postage stamp. This shrinking is a necessary side effect of reducing reality to manageable proportions by denying those bits and pieces of it which make him uncomfortable. Actually, it's all about control; if you can't control it, it mustn't exist.

The main casualty of all this, apart from the horrible wound he inflicts on his own dignity, is that whole 'continents' of reality are excised from his awareness, and modern man finds himself occupying a tiny territory bordered at all points of the compass - by modern man. He begins, as it were, to live in a sadly impoverished world of his own creation whose horizons have shrunk to what he can understand and control.

All this would be sad enough if it didn't get even worse. The same dreadful process has been taking place in the Church. Many, many Catholics are now living in a sadly impoverished church of their own creation whose horizons have shrunk to what they can understand and control.

Today is the Feast of Corpus Christi; the Body and Blood of the Lord. As I sat down to prepare a homily I was struck by the awful truth that  some of you would not accept a single word I said. During Mass this nags at me, tugs at the edges of my consciousness - that I am celebrating the sacred mysteries for people who don’t believe what they are celebrating. Are you one of them?

We have become so infatuated with the discoveries of science, with unproven theories which pose as fact, with technological and medical advances which distract us from our own vulnerable mortality that we have let go of the divinely revealed truths for which Christ died. We no longer walk the  narrow way of faith in the footsteps of the Lord, but a wide, easy path laid out for us by man - by blind guides!

Betty doesn't believe in angels; John doesn't believe in hell; George won't accept indulgences; Mildred doesn't like the teaching on contraception; Fr Rupert rejects adoration of the Blessed Sacrament; while Fred rejects the Sacrament of Confession. But they all vehemently proclaim themselves to be good Catholics!

To be honest, I don't understand. What I do know is that they all live in a funny little church which is no longer capable of offering salvation. It's just a figment of their imagination. If they did what those who were unable to accept the 'hard saying' of the Lord did and just walked away, at least we would know who it is that we have to evangelise.

Science cannot touch the mystery which today the Catholic Church celebrates; a God who, at the consecrating words of the priest, becomes bread - the Bread of Life - bread which becomes God. Can you believe it?

As the Sequence for today's Mass proclaims:

This faith to Christian men is given -

Bread is made flesh by words from heaven:

Into his blood the wine is turned:

What though it baffles nature's powers

Of sense and sight? This faith of ours

Proves more than nature e'er discerned.

The Most Holy Trinity - Year A

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

Everywhere in our readings today we find the Trinitarian formula which we Christians accept and celebrate as the basis of our understanding of the one true and only God.

• Even before the priest reaches the altar the congregation is saying (Entrance Antiphon): Blessed be God the Father and his only-begotten Son and the Holy Spirit: for he has shown that he loves us.

• Each of the two Opening Prayers expressly prays this formula ‘to our God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit’.
• St Paul in the second reading prays: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
• The Gospel Acclamation sings: Alleluia, alleluia! Glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit … Alleluia!
• The Preface, the Communion Antiphon and the Prayer after Communion also explicitly mention the Trinitarian being of God while the final blessing at every Mass is always given ‘In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’

But knowing and repeating the Trinitarian formula is not our problem - nor is understanding it - because we all know it is mystery and that mystery can never be understood. Indeed, in the very statement of what we do know about the Trinity is contained our helpless incomprehension.

What we most struggle with is its relevance. What difference does it make to my life that God is three Persons in one God?

The mystery of the Trinity can seem not only baffling but lofty and remote. It concerns the nature of God - his essence, his inner being, his identity in himself - and most of us are happy to leave it at that. And this would be a quite satisfactory response if it were not for one little detail - we are made in the image and likeness of God.

God, the Blessed Trinity, is a communion of love - the love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father - in the unity and joy of the Holy Spirit. And this love is so great that it spills over, as it were, and seeks to give itself. This is why the angels were created; this is why we were created.

God's Trinitarian love is a love which seeks to give itself; or, in other words, God loves in order to give himself.

The key word here is give. So much does God love the world that the Father is ready to give his only Son who, in his turn, is ready to give himself to the Father('s will). The Holy Spirit of love overshadows the Virgin Mary who totally shares in God's self-giving love 'and the Word was made Flesh'.

Our Christian faith tells us that it is in the image and likeness of this love that we were created; it is built in to us, as it was built into the body of Jesus.

If you don't believe me, look at your own body. Is it not true that your body is made for 'giving itself'? Is not a man's body made so that he can give himself to his wife? Is not a woman's body made so that she can give herself to her husband? And in the divinely ordained giving of husband to wife and wife to husband, a new life, a new life! neither the life of the wife nor of the husband, an entirely new and unique life is 'given'.

SELF-GIVING is the fundamental nature of our being, of who we are and of what we were made for. The mystery of communion in the self-giving love of the Trinity is written into our very bodies so that we can never forget that 'giving ourselves in love' is the core meaning of our lives.

It is no digression from our theme to point out here that this is why Jesus gave his body for us. The crucifixion is a manifestation, the definitive manifestation, in human terms, of the nature of the inner Trinitarian life of God, because on the Cross Jesus first of all gives himself (in the body) to and for the Father, and only then to and for us.

In revealing himself, therefore, as the Son ready to die for the Father, he lays bare the nature of the love to which we are all called. And, given that we are human, it is only in the body that we are capable of this love.

Is it any wonder then that Satan has concentrated his greatest efforts on perverting the world's concept of the meaning of the human body? He has done everything he can to obscure our understanding of God's call inscribed in the very blueprint of our bodies. Satan knows that it is only to the extent that the communion of the Trinity is present in the communion of husband and wife, that there will be peace on earth.

Let me conclude by indicating some of the key intersections at which a husband and wife must pause, if they are to remain faithful to the truth of self-giving love written into their bodies.

The most obvious, and in some ways the most crucial, is the question of contraception. Here Satan offers what seems to be, at first glance, a solution to many human problems. However, at heart, contraception is not only a point of closure to God, it is a betrayal of both their love making and their integrity. Whilst the language of their love-making appears to be the language of self-giving and communion it is in reality, without the possibility of new life, a profound and corrupting lie.

Homosexual acts, likewise, can never express the love proclaimed by the complementarity of the human body which is made for the opposite sex. The love of a man or woman for a person of the same sex can therefore best be expressed, and even heroically expressed, by abstinence from any sort of sexual expression.

By now you will have recognised in what I have said the theology of the body of Blessed Pope John Paul II. He makes it abundantly clear that faithfulness to the Trinitarian love of God which gives form True joy and true life can only be found in the sincere gift of one person to another in accordance with the self-giving Trinitarian love in whose image we are all made. This is the way to personal happiness and fulfilment and also the way to peace on earth.

Pentecost Sunday Vigil Mass - Year A

Joel 3:1-5; Romans 8:22-27; John 7:37-39

'If any man is thirsty, let him come to me! Let the man come and drink who believes in me!' As scripture says: From his breast shall flow fountains of living water.

Thirsty, drink, flow, fountains, living water, Spirit. Even the most distracted, preoccupied, or disinterested among us could not miss the point, and in case one of us did John adds: He was speaking of the Spirit …. .

Today I want to speak to you of the Holy Spirit and of one of the great sources, springs, wells of the Holy Spirit - the Sacred Scriptures – from which we can drink to our heart’s content.

However, we do well to recall, firstly, that the Holy Spirit is referred to in Scripture in other images too. Wind is a common one, as in the first reading from tomorrow’s Mass: they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven… . Fire is another common image for the Holy Spirit: something appeared to them that seemed like tongues of fire … .

But today Jesus is speaking of the Holy Spirit as water, as he did to the Samaritan woman at the well: If you only knew what God is offering … you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water… (Jn 4:10). As we press on we could make the Samaritan woman’s ingenuous request to Jesus our own: ‘Sir, … give me some of that water… .

And, of course, Jesus has given us some of that water; he was born, suffered, died and rose to give us some of that water. He gives it superabundantly in the sacraments. He gives it, along with fire and wind, in our prayer time, when we ask him for it (..how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him! (Mt 7:11). He gives it also in our good works and even in our sufferings, when we join them to his.

And yet the Bible is a place we Catholics rarely think of when we seek the Holy Spirit. St John of Fecamp calls it ‘a source of living water’. Rupert of Deutz confirms for us that this living water is indeed the Holy Spirit when he says that in Scripture we ‘drink from the fountain of divine knowledge’, and divine knowledge, as we know, is given by the Holy Spirit. As St Paul says: …the depths of God can only be known by the Spirit of God (1Cor 2:11).

Just to open the Bible is to 'unfurl my sails to the Holy Spirit' says St Jerome, using the image of wind or breath, while Archbishop Magrassi proposes that the prayerful reading of the Sacred Scripture will see, 'A blazing fire is enkindled in the soul, one that is capable of spreading.' The prophet Jeremiah feels the word like a burning fire shut up in his bones(Jer 20:9). The two disciples of Emmaus felt their hearts 'burning' within them as the Lord explained the Scriptures to them;

The Scriptures were written under the guidance of the Holy Spirit and can only be read and assimilated in the light and power of that same Spirit. This is why the Bible is a ‘living’ word. Just as God did not make the world and then go away, so the Spirit did not inspire the Scriptures and then leave.* St Gregory holds that just as the Holy Spirit touched the mind of the biblical authors so ‘he also (though not in the same way) touches the mind of the reader.’*

In the sacred pages of the Bible, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we come to know Christ, the goal of all our knowing. St Paul develops this by describing the Good News as ‘the power of God for salvation to everyone who has faith’(Rm 1:16).

Salvation is the overarching theme of the entire Bible, Old and New Testaments together, and that salvation is none other than the person of Jesus Christ. But not only does Scripture speak of him, it causes us to ‘meet’ him.

Pope Benedict says in Verbum Domini No. 87: The documents produced before and during the Synod mentioned a number of methods for a faith-filled and fruitful approach to sacred Scripture. Yet the greatest attention was paid to lectio divina, which is truly “capable of opening up to the faithful the treasures of God’s word, but also of bringing about an encounter with Christ, the living word of God”.

In reading the Scriptures diligently and with faith we open ourselves up to ‘an encounter with Christ’, and isn’t he the real object of our ‘thirst’.

It is no surprise that the Scripture is an essential part of every Eucharist. Word and Sacrament always go together. Indeed, the Mass in defined by its two constitutive elements – the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist.

To be honest, my words today have no other purpose than to once again bring to your attention the crucial importance of making the reading of Sacred Scripture a normal part of our daily spiritual life. Jesus meets us and reveals himself to us in many ways but undoubtedly there is no more privileged and certain way than in the Scriptures.

*PRAYING THE BIBLE by Mariano Magrassi, Liturgical Press, page 22 ff.