23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20

If your brother does something wrong…

Jesus is speaking here to his disciples about correction within the community of believers. The manner of this correction is aimed at preserving communion even if, ultimately, the offender refuses correction and shows himself to be outside the communion of the Church.

It is important to note immediately that Jesus is not just giving advice. Jesus well understands that even in the Christian community there can be individuals or groups who threaten communion, and since communion is the hallmark of the Christian community it must be dealt with sensitively, justly and firmly.

If your brother does something wrong go and have it out with him, alone, between your two selves.

This would appear to be an exceptionally simple and self-evidently sound instruction. I imagine there would not be a single person in this congregation who would disagree with it. And yet, I also wonder if it is not the least listened to instruction Jesus ever gave?

Remember that this counsel is aimed at only one thing – preserving communion – the larger communion of believers (which can easily be fractured by poorly handled disputes) and the ‘re-entry’ of the offending brother into that communion through repentance.

Therefore Jesus desires that we first of all approach our brother: and have it out with him, alone, between your two selves. Notice Jesus’ insistence: Go (to him)… alone ... between your two selves?

This ‘going’ is not always easy to do but we must remember it is our brother. We are going to speak with one who shares with us in the loving communion of the Church. He is family.

We have all experienced those who go stomping off to have it out with someone they are angry with, perhaps we have done it ourselves. Going to a brother is a very different kind of going than that. We go to present our difficulty to him in an honest, loving way and we listen with great openness to his response. We are alone and his dignity is respected (and should we prove to be the one in error then our dignity is respected too).

To do otherwise than follow this teaching of Jesus is fraught with dangers for our brother, the community, and for ourselves. Our brother has a right to dignity, to proper correction and to the opportunity to reform himself. When we act hastily in anger, or fear, or even self-righteousness we run the risk of depriving him of all this and of ourselves becoming even more guilty than he is.

Jesus is aware of the dangers of a false step in the very beginning of this process of correction and so, I repeat, he insists that we should go alone and speak with our brother.

Naturally this requires a certain degree of personal maturity and a great deal of true Christian love. The temptation is always to tell ‘others’; to get it out of our system. Unfortunately, what we tell others goes into the system and soon extraordinary damage can be done out of all proportion to the initial wrong.

Only when individual communication with our brother bears no fruit despite our best efforts should we ask that others become involved, and only when this, too, fails should we tell the community. It will then become clear to our brother that he has placed himself outside of the communion of the Church. We have then ‘had it out with him’ in the way which Jesus commands and in the way which preserves our innocence.

The practical implication of all this for us as individual Christians here today is the duty we all have to bring our behaviour into line with the gospel. All of us, including myself, have failed and still do fail from time to time in this matter of correction. If we are looking for some area of our lives in which we can improve we should take today’s instruction from Jesus very seriously. There would be a lot less gossip in our community and there would be many more deeper friendships because the truth is that we often build the strongest and best friendships with those who have corrected us in a proper way.

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Gospel 16:21-27

The secular, godless, materialistic world has two great enemies – suffering and death. From these two calamities it seeks to be delivered by its many gods: medicine, technology, psychology, science, and so on. For a Christian things are very different. The worst thing that can befall a Christian is sin - and the eternal death it leads to and brings about.

Jesus begins to make it clear in the Gospel today that he is to suffer horribly, die, and then be raised up on the third day. Peter is apparently so shocked by the first two elements of this announcement that the third doesn’t register with him. He takes Jesus aside. Can you imagine that? He takes the Lord aside to set him straight, to change his direction, to give him the benefit of his impulsive, ill-considered response: Heaven preserve you, Lord … This must not happen to you.

We can’t blame Peter. Not a single one of us can blame Peter; he is reacting as we all react when the reality of suffering and death presents itself on our horizon: This must not happen!

It is so difficult for us to change our thinking about suffering and death because they seem to be so real, so tragic, so final. In their presence even Jesus wept (Jn 11:35). For the non-believer and the atheist, of course, they are final. No wonder euthanasia is so attractive to them. And why not? Why put up with suffering, and death, which leads nowhere, which has no meaning? If I didn’t believe in the God of Jesus Christ I would be lining up with them for that needle which painlessly ends it all.

Jesus rebukes Peter and puts his finger on the essential problem - Peter’s way of thinking: The way you think is not God’s way but man’s.

If this ‘way of thinking’ was an obstacle in Jesus’ path it must also have been so for Peter, and the lesson for us is certainly the same. Our human way of thinking can be an obstacle (skandalion, stumbling block) in our Christian journey.

Peter must have been absolutely mortified to have his Master call him ‘Satan’ and ‘a stumbling block’. If it had been me I would have asked the evangelists to leave out that bit as they wrote their Gospels, or at least to change it a little, to make it less … humiliating. But our marvellous Peter, our Rock, our ‘bearer of the keys’ is even more humble than he is impetuous. What a great example to us he is!

Jesus turns to his disciples and begins to teach them. You will have noticed that little phrase in the new translation of the Mass, just before the Our Father: At the Saviour’s command and formed by divine teaching we dare to say … .

Isn’t this the urgent need of our times, that disciples (you and I) be ‘formed by divine teaching’? Do you think the young rioters in the UK were formed by divine teaching? Or the young people who abuse their dignity with drugs and alcohol and sex; are they formed by divine teaching? Are the euthanasia advocates, or the abortion proponents, or the homosexual lobby formed by divine teaching? I think not.

The more important question, of course, is are you, am I, formed by divine teaching and how do we get to be so formed?

A Bible Christian will answer: When we think according to the Bible! A Pentecostal will answer: When we are listening to the Holy Spirit! A Catholic will answer: When we think like the Church! Christ is the head of his Church and we wants nothing more than to form our minds according to his. Consequently, if we are differing from Church teaching in a significant way, on a matter of essential faith or morals, we have not yet completed our formation; our mind is not yet the mind of Christ.

St Paul puts it neatly in our second reading today: Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind. And our ‘new mind’, of course, will think like God, not like the world.

And so we come back to the subject of suffering and death. Jesus, who thinks as God thinks, has no problem with the thought that it is God’s will that he suffer and die, and rise. Naturally, as a man, Jesus would have felt the human emotions associated with such a terrible prospect as crucifixion. We all share those emotions with him.

But it was his grasp of the meaning of suffering in accordance with the will of God that lead him forward to his fate. Suffering is not ‘the cross’; suffering in loving union with the Lord is the cross. We must never forget this. We can, in fact, waste suffering. Suffering in a sick bed is wasted suffering unless the sick bed becomes a cross.

Suffering in union with the Master, in loving communion with the Master, is not only bearable but it is fruitful in peace and joy and strength and perseverance and ultimately in resurrection and life.

Let us never forget that we follow a ‘crucified’ Lord. It was in the Cross that his love found its greatest expression and ‘relief’. This miracle of transforming suffering has been discovered by many ordinary men and women of the past, and we pray that we may be among those who discover it in the present.

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Isaiah 22: 19-23; Romans 11: 33-36; Matthew 16: 13-20

The liturgy of the Word this week centres on a moment which irreversibly changes the world.  Sacred Scripture is full of such moments, some obvious and memorable, others hidden to all but the serious student of the ways of God. They are potent moments of revelation in which we suddenly catch a glimpse of God at work, ‘caught in the act’ as it were, as he sets about changing history into salvation history. For us these moments are graced insights into the profound wisdom of all his ways.

Jesus asks the disciples a question whose answer will become part of the deposit of Catholic faith: Who do people say the Son of Man is?

Numerous opinions are reported and their diversity testifies to the fact that the people don’t really know. So the question is addressed to the disciples themselves: But you, who do you say I am?

Peter answers on behalf of the Twelve: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

I imagine Jesus would have left a moment of silence before he replied to Peter; at least some seconds to let the breathtaking enormity of the moment sink in. You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.

There is a solemnity about this pronouncement by Peter which immediately reminds us of other similar moments like the Father’s words at Jesus’ baptism or at the Transfiguration: This is my Son, the Beloved; my favour rests on him.

The pronouncements are similar because in each case it is the Father speaking: Simon son of Jonah, it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven.

And so this ‘moment’ is firstly a moment in which God speaks; a moment of truth.

It is also a Trinitarian moment revealing the action of the Father and the Son through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of knowledge and understanding.

It is a moment which changes Peter. The heavy clouds of what seems like an almost habitual incomprehension suddenly part above the head of Peter and the divine spotlight beams down on him. He is enlightened with a power not his own and becomes the rock of the Church, the source of unity, the guarantor of truth.

Therefore this moment is also a moment of gift. In this world of uncertainty and confusion where men attempt to define right and wrong, truth and falsehood, and even the nature of human dignity by means of fallible legal processes, God gives us an unerring source of infallible truth and guidance direct from heaven. What a grace for mankind!

Peter becomes the rock on which the Church of Christ is built and the holder of the keys of authority. In that electric moment of divine communication we could apply to Peter the words of today’s reading from Isaiah: I invest him … gird him ... entrust him … and he shall be a father (a Holy Father).

What follows next is a lovely image which tells us so much about what it means to be, not only the Pope, but every bishop and priest. God says: I drive him like a peg into a firm place.

Peter becomes like a tent peg holding up the entire structure because it is driven into a firm place, which is the promise God makes to him. The nomadic Hebrews used to hang cups and pitchers from the rope held taut by the tent peg; it became a kind of ‘throne of glory’ for the family, as Isaiah says. If the peg were to loosen, all those who depend on it would fall and be destroyed.

But Peter is a rock which will never be moved; built on him the Church is indefectible: the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it. The whole Church depends on the firmness of Peter. It is our glory, the glory of the entire Church.

The moment of Peter’s first pronouncement of truth would be followed by many others.

We remember Pope Pius IX in 1854: The most Blessed Virgin Mary was, from the first moment of her conception, by a singular grace and privilege of almighty God and by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, Saviour of the human race, preserved immune from all stain of original sin.

We remember Pope Pius XII on 1^st November 1950 who declared: …by the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory.

Let us thank God always for the gift of the Holy Father who upholds the Church in Jesus’ power and name and who, despite the human frailties he shares with Peter, his predecessor, gives us security in the truth and confidence in the Church.

20th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Isaiah 56:1,6-7; Romans 11:13-15,29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

As a hospital chaplain I was once called to the bedside of dying man in his seventies. His daughter kept vigil by his bed and clearly he had but a few hours of life left. She was not Catholic and neither was her father. Not a Canaanite woman as in today's gospel, but a pagan nonetheless. She asked me to baptise her father.

It was an awkward moment for me as I felt I might have been guilty of taking advantage of his helplessness by baptising him. 'He's had more than seventy years to be baptised' I suggested, 'isn't it a bit unfair to do it now when he is unconscious?'

'But he always wanted to be a Catholic, it's just that he could never bring himself to approach a priest. That's just the way he was.'

I was still reluctant. I had passed that bed a number of times over the days he was in hospital and had never been asked to baptise him.

Then a strange thing happened. The woman at the bed came and stood in front of me, looking into my face. 'Look,' she said, 'I'm telling you my father wanted to be a Catholic but because he was a dysfunctional kind of person he was never able to get round to it. Now I'm asking you to baptise him.'

My response took me completely by surprise. I felt a great surge of admiration, I could almost say love, for that woman. She had (verbally) grabbed me by my shirt-front and, full of the great desire she had that her father should now receive what he had always wanted, made it clear she was not about to take no for an answer.

The man was baptised and confirmed and passed away a few hours later. A few months later the woman knocked on the door of the presbytery and said, 'Now it's my turn to become a Catholic.'

Such episodes in a priest's life are very important, very meaningful. They set in train a process of reflection which can go on for years.

It was when we read the gospel of the feeding of the five thousand that this woman came back to my mind, and now again today. What caused me to think of her then were those twelve baskets of scraps left over from the meal. What was going to happen to them? Who was going to eat them? The children of Israel had been fed, their stomachs were full, so were those baskets of food left over to be just thrown away? Unthinkable!

In my mind's eye I saw those baskets and each of them had a sign "FOR THE GENTILES".

Indeed, the very existence of those scraps was a foreshadowing of the ministry to the gentiles; as were the stone jars of wine left over from the wedding feast of Cana. Talking this over with a friend he said 'That Canaanite woman was looking for those scraps!'

As the responsorial psalm sings today: So will your ways be known upon earth and all nations learn your saving help.

Further reflection on my ministry at the hospital leads me to appreciate how the presence of a priest in the wards every day, a priest wearing a Roman collar, is very much an echo of Jesus' presence in 'the region of Tyre and Sidon'.

Jesus must have known that to make himself present there, so close to pagan territory, would inevitably 'draw out' the pagans; and it could not have been a surprise when: out came a Canaanite woman from that district …

Jesus well understood that he was sent by the Father to the People of Israel as their long-awaited and promised Saviour. As he tells the woman: I was sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. What the woman did was make plain the truth that implicit in his mission was a necessary openness to the entire world. This fact needed to be firmly established in the minds of his disciples if the newborn Church was ever to undertake her mission to the pagans.

Besides, the woman's daughter was 'tormented by a devil'. Is the devil more interested in the pagans than the Lord? Does the Saviour of the world intend to save only the Jews, or the Catholics? Certainly not! If he came through the Jews he came for all the nations.

So:

Let the peoples praise you, O God;

let all the peoples praise you.

May God still give us his blessing

till the ends of the earth revere him.

19th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

1 Kings 19:9.11-13; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

A while ago I happened to notice this statement from Fr Ron Rolheiser OMI: We're finding it more difficult to dwell in a universe inhabited by unseen presences: the presence of God, saints, one another. Today's world is reduced to what is physical, what can be measured, seen, touched, tasted, smelled. We're mystically tone-deaf, all the goods are in the shop window.

These words struck a chord with me as I had been wrestling with the responses I imagined people would have to the Gospel of today - the Gospel of Jesus walking on water in the middle of a storm. I could hear the cynical chuckles, ‘Yeah, sure, walking on the water’.

Fr Ron was basing his thoughts on a book called Sacred Heart, Gateway to God by Wendy Wright. She was a struggling Hollywood actress, more of an agnostic than a believer, when, while killing time one afternoon in a Los Angeles library, she picked a book about St. Hubert to read about her husband's middle name.

At first she was fascinated by the descriptions of Hubert, a scholar, a bishop, and a diplomat. But then: I was chugging along just fine until I came to a description of Hubert's ability to bilocate.

For those of you who don't know what bilocate means it is the well-documented mystical gift of being able to be in two places at the same time.

The book Wendy was reading told very matter-of-factly how St Hubert had been able to be in North Africa and in Continental Europe at the same time. She goes on: Profoundly disoriented, I closed the book. I felt queasy. It was as though two subterranean tectonic plates had collided inside the structured universe in which I lived.

Wendy goes on to explain how this experience was repeated many times during the course of her journey into the Catholic Church as she discovered that reality is not merely physical and that the believer lives in a multi-layered world of hidden realities which science cannot reveal for us.

Let me give another example. On the eve of the Feast of Saint Vincent de Paul, July 19, 1830 St Catherine Labouré was awakened by a brilliant light and the voice of a child: Sister Labouré, come to the Chapel; the Blessed Virgin awaits you.

The child, it turned out was Catherine's Guardian Angel. He led her to the convent chapel to speak with the Blessed Virgin who gave her the Miraculous Medal.

I wonder how many of us stop to reflect on all this - apparitions, guardian angels, the blessed Virgin, miraculous medals? What an exciting world we live in! A world in which our mortal earthly lives are already in intimate connection with heaven, and of profound concern to those who live there.

Each one of us has a Guardian Angel. They are somehow here with us in this church right now, surrounding us. The Catechism has this to say: 336 From its beginning until death, human life is surrounded by their watchful care and intercession ... Beside each believer stands an angel as protector and shepherd leading him to life.

And just so we don't miss the point it highlights for us that: Already here on earth the Christian life shares by faith in the blessed company of angels and men united in God.

And if Guardian Angels can appear to us so can the Blessed Virgin, so can Padre Pio, and Mother Teresa and any other saint, or even a soul in purgatory, or even the demons from hell.

St John Vianney, the patron saint of parish priests, used to receive frequent visits from demons. At first he was terrified but later in life he treated them with contempt.

Saint Faustina, the first saint of the Third Millennium often spoke with the souls in Purgatory who asked for her intercessory prayers, and what's more, she was shown hell and its terrible reality.

Yes, it's true that we believers live in a rich world. A world far richer and more interesting than Harry Potter's world of magic and goblins. His world is make believe - ours is real.

Fr Ron Rolheiser goes on to say in his article: What she (Wendy Wright) describes ... so brilliantly points towards something that is all but lost in our world today, namely, the fact that reality is more than just physical, that it has layers that we do not perceive empirically (with our senses), that these layers are just as real as the physical, and there is more mystery within ordinary life than meets the eye.

• How is it that Padre Pio, and St Francis of Assisi, and Esperanza of Betania carried on their bodies the bleeding wounds of the Passion of Christ - the stigmata?

• How is it that Therese Neumann could live for 50 years sustained only by her daily Communion?
• How is it that the Curé of Ars could tell penitents the sins of their youth which even they had long forgotten?
• How could St Teresa of Avila and St Joseph of Cupertino defy the laws of gravity and levitate during their prayer, in front of many witnesses?
• And how could Jesus walk on water?

The purpose of the Gospels is to bring us to faith. As John says at the end of chapter 20 of his Gospel: These (the things Jesus did and said) are recorded so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing this you may have life through his name.

When Jesus came to the Apostles, walking on the stormy waters of the lake, it was so that they might believe. Jesus wanted his followers to believe that the loving care of God for his children can penetrate our physical world of little boats and stormy lives - and that there is ultimately no barrier between heaven and earth when faith is active.

Faith is our response to God and the Apostles responded in faith: The men in the boat bowed down before him and said, `Truly, you are the Son of God'.

Yes, what an exciting world is the world of faith! Nothing is impossible in that world, because nothing is impossible to God our Father, and we are his children. We have only to look forward to the next miracle.

And what is the next miracle?

Well, that bread and wine over there at the back of the church will be brought up and placed on the altar. The priest will speak over them the words the Lord used at the Last Supper - and the bread and wine will become the Body and Blood of Jesus - offered to the Father so that our sins 'may be forgiven' - and offered to us in Holy Communion so that we may become one with God.