32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Wisdom 6:12-16; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

There are five words in the Gospel today which present us with a very simple image of the most critical moment in all human destiny.

Those five words are: ...and the door was closed.

The image is simple enough - a closed door. Since the bridesmaids who came later could not get in we can assume also that the door was locked, or perhaps it had no handle on the outside.

That door is the most important door in the whole of existence, it is the door to the wedding banquet, to the Kingdom of God - the door to heaven.

But this image of a door is also the image of a decisive moment:Those who were ready went in with him to the wedding hall and the door was closed.

We may wonder, does the door of heaven make a noise when it closes? Does it close with a thunderous, frightening, once-and-for-all bang? And, if heaven is a place of light and joy, when the door closed did it leave all those on the other side in darkness and in deep silence? We can only wonder.

The whole purpose of the parable is to get us thinking about the choices we make during our life which prepare us for that moment when the door closes - choices which will make sure that we are on the right side of the door.

Surely one of the lessons of this Gospel is that once the door is shut, it won't be opened again, for anyone.

In our first reading from the book of Wisdom God invites Soloman to ask for any gift he wants - and he asks for wisdom! - wisdom to run his kingdom.

Would you have thought of asking for something like that? 'Gosh, Lord, I do have a huge mortgage, and those credit card bills, and then, of course, my health problems, my kids, and I would like a good holiday - but no, Lord, I know what I want - give me wisdom.'

We thrill at the compelling image, which emerges from the heart of the first reading, of wisdom energetically roaming the streets searching for those who are searching for her.

St Augustine said: You would not be seeking him [God] if you had not already found him.

So in the time remaining let's look at the first reading. There are two characters on stage: Wisdom, and the one who values her.

Those who want Wisdom:

• love her
• look for her
• desire her
• watch for her
• think about her
• are on the alert for her
• are worthy of her

It's pretty obvious that these people really do value wisdom because the search for her seems to preoccupy them.

Wisdom herself:

• is bright
• is readily seen
• is readily found
• is quick to anticipate
•  makes herself known
• is sitting at your gates
• walks about looking for those who are worthy of her
• graciously shows herself
• comes to meet [those who seek her]

What does all this tell us?

• We obtain wisdom by wanting her.
• Those who want wisdom go looking for her.
• Wisdom wants to be found and gives herself readily to those who seek her.
• Those who receive her desire her even more.

So eager is wisdom to give herself to us that in order to remain 'foolish' we practically have to fight her off.

What is wisdom? What good is wisdom?

• Wisdom is a gift of God.
• Wisdom helps us ‘understand’ God, ourselves, others, and the world.
• Wisdom helps us to make the right choices.
• Wisdom allows us to see things the way God sees them.
• Wisdom is ‘understanding fully grown’.
• Wisdom is a sharing in the thinking of God. [The wise person thinks like God.]
• Wisdom brings us closer to God and makes us more pleasing to God.
• Wisdom makes us better at teaching others.
• Wisdom leads us to heaven; it keeps us ‘awake’ to God.
• Wisdom ensures that we are on the right side of the door when it shuts.

Look at the amazing soul who is ‘thirsting’ for God in the Psalm.

• I long for you.
• I thirst for you.
• I gaze on you.
• I speak your praise.
• I bless you.
• I lift up my hands to you.
• I remember you.
• I muse on you.
• I rejoice in you.

Wisdom is something we ‘choose’ like the five bridesmaids did. Having chosen it wisdom becomes second nature to us.

We can also reject it like the other five bridesmaids did. And then we remain condemned to a foolishness we ourselves cannot see.

I don't know if there really is a door but I do know there really will be such a moment, such a moment of truth; I pray that when it comes, we may all find ourselves together in the wedding hall - for all eternity.

The Five Luminous Mysteries

We were talking about intentions for each mystery of the Rosary and how we don't really have any for the Luminous Mysteries. I have made up my own:

• 1st Mystery - For those who have prayed for me.
• 2nd Mystery - For those for whom I've promised to pray.
• 3rd Mystery - For those who have asked for my prayers.
• 4th Mystery - For my enemies.
• 5th Mystery - For the Holy Father. 

31st Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Malachi 1:14 - 2:2. 8-10; 1 Thessalonians 2:7-9. 13; Matthew 23:1-12

Not many priests will feel comfortable with the readings today; they are aimed directly at us, though every word could be applied in some way to the laity too.

About five hundred years before Christ God delivers, through the prophet Malachi, several clear reproaches to priests who:

• don't listen to God.
• don't glorify God.
• have strayed from the way.
• have caused many to stumble by their teaching.
• destroy the covenant.
• have not kept to God's paths.
• have shown partiality in their administration.

These recriminations are gravely serious. One can hear the anguish, the hurt, and the righteous indignation of the offended King, and that fact alone should make every priest tremble. To break faith with the Lord, or as God puts it, 'to destroy the covenant' is no small thing.

A priest is called to 'listen to God'. When Jesus called the Twelve he called them firstly: to be with him (Mk 3:14), and consequently this is a priest's first vocation; to be always with the Lord.

It goes without saying that to be with someone is to listen to that person. Listening is the first casualty of a disintegrating relationship. We have probably all had the experience of drifting from the person at the other end of the telephone line to what is happening on the television screen, and it's rather embarrassing to be caught out.

God is complaining that the priests had stopped listening and were therefore no longer with him, and consequently were no longer able to 'glorify' his name.

The Lord declares that his priests: have strayed from the way …and … not kept to God's paths. If the shepherd does not keep to the right path what are we to expect will happen to the sheep? The Lord spells it out for us: You have caused many to stumble by your teaching.

These words from God, I am speaking personally now, stop me dead in my tracks. To teach in God's name is a terrible responsibility as well as an astonishing privilege which should be exercised with the utmost seriousness. Indeed, a priest is ordained precisely to preach the gospel and to celebrate the sacraments worthily, and so to build up communion in Christ.

Can you imagine the calamity it would be for me to suddenly see that I had 'strayed from the way' of God's truth and 'caused many to stumble'; that I had preached what the people wanted to hear rather than what Christ wanted them to hear. I could think of few other things which would cause me greater shame before God.

Without the slightest ambiguity the Lord pronounces sentence on the guilty: I will send a curse on you and curse your very blessing. In addition God will make those priests: contemptible and vile in the eyes of the whole people… . We all know that when salt loses its flavour it is thrown out and trampled upon.

Jesus, too, points out to the Scribes and Pharisees that they have betrayed the covenant because they do not live the message they preach. In fact, they use their position as leaders to advance their own egos and win prestige for themselves.

Thank God for St Paul and the example he gives of true ministerial zeal. He labours in preaching the gospel and lives it with integrity. The understanding Paul has of his care for the Thessalonian community is of a mother 'feeding and looking after her own children … eager to hand over … not only the Good News but our whole lives'. What a contrast to the Jewish leaders who 'do not practise what they preach!'

And thank God for the Thessalonian community which, on hearing the message of Paul, immediately accepted it for what it really is, God's message, and not some human thinking … . Therefore the message of faith was a 'living power' among them.

The clear light of God's word still searches even today the hearts of priests and people alike.

• Do we priests preach and live the message handed on to us by the apostles to the Church or do we change it and cause people to stumble?

• And do you, the people of God, accept that message from the Church without changing it, or make it into 'human thinking' and thereby cause it to lose its power?

30th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Exodus 22:20-26; 1 Thessalonians 1:5-10; Matthew 22:34-40

'I get so lonely I could die.'

These lyrics from the well known song Heartbreak Hotel by Elvis Presley may speak to our own life experience. Indeed, there's something logical about putting loneliness and death in the same sentence.

Man is made for relationship. He is who he is because of who he loves and whom he is loved by. The philosophers would say that man in relationship is a human person; man alone (without a sense of loving or being loved) is only a human being, i.e. a human who merely exists.

Man is made for love. The guests in Heartbreak Hotel know this only too well. Without love human life loses its meaning and becomes alienation which gives birth to the words: I get so lonely, I could die.

How important then to listen carefully to Jesus' words today: You must love… .

They are framed as a command but are actually an analysis of what gives human life its fundamental significance.

A careful reading of the first three chapters of the book of Genesis will show that in the beginning, from the moment of our creation, God established us in four relationships. These relationships are part of the very substance of our human lives: our relationship with God, with our self, with others, and with the natural world. These four relationships shape the very path we must walk to reach our destiny and therefore, thanks to our fallen human nature, constitute the decisive stumbling blocks on our journey.

It is in our relationship to God, to our own self, to others and to the natural world, wounded but redeemed, that we now live out our daily lives as disciples of the Lord. How important, then, that we get them right, because it is so easy to get them wrong!

It may come as a surprise, for example, to hear a married couple say, 'We have always loved God more than we love each other.' Or for a father to say, 'My first love is for my wife, and only then for my children.'

Obviously there is much more to say in order to finetune exactly the hierarchy of love I am attempting to assert here. But the truth remains that we can get our relationships wrong all too easily and cause, thereby, significant disorder in our own life, and in the lives of those who form our relationship network.

I love to hear engaged couples telling me they have decided to live chaste lives until marriage because they 'want to be faithful to God!' These couples have got it right. They have put God before themselves; they are in a right relationship with him and therefore, with each other.

You must love the Lord your God … this is the greatest and the first commandment.

And when they marry this couple will be in a right relationship with their children who have a right to be born within a loving, stable, committed and secure marriage.

To get the order of our love relationships right is to bring about the 'order of God's love'. St Ignatius sometimes used this beautiful phrase. It is an order which brings peace and life, health and fruitfulness.

The greatest and first commandment is to love God. How? With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. The second commandment is to love our neighbour. How? As yourself. This is the divine vision and plan according to which we were 'put together' in our mother's womb.

It is a great tragedy to meet individuals who live as though they understood the first and only commandment to be: I will love my self with all my heart, with all my soul, and with all my mind. Let us pray to be preserved from this catastrophic corruption of our true nature.

Next week each of the three readings affirms what we sometimes forget - that we are all brothers and sisters, children of the one Father. The love we have for our self is the definition, the template, of the love we should have for each other, and there must be no exceptions.

As we have just heard in the first reading today we must not molest the stranger because we ourselves were once strangers in the land of Egypt. We must not be harsh with widows or orphans or the Lord will make our wives widows and our children orphans. The consequences of breaking the bond of love between ourselves and our neighbour are severe.

Christian warfare is fought on the battlefield of relationship. Let us examine ourselves in the light of the great commandment of love, and allow the Lord's words to be both encouragement and correction for us.

29th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Isaiah 45:1.4-6; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5; Matthew 22:15-21

The Pharisees are not happy.

Jesus has just told (last week) a parable about a king who had lovingly prepared a wedding feast only to discover that those who had been invited refused to come. The Pharisees knew Jesus was speaking about them and they were not happy.

To add insult to injury the parable suggested that the gentiles, the non-believers, the 'dogs' were to enter the feast instead of them. How absurd, how impossible, how unthinkable! So there they go, stalking off, angry-faced and bent on revenge.

What Jesus encountered, of course, was their blindness. The Pharisees had absolutely no idea who Jesus was and were somehow unable even to recognise the holiness and truth of his words and deeds. Jesus appeared on the horizon of their deep conviction they had everything worked out and challenged them so radically that it became for them a question of either clinging to their identity or of acknowledging his. Clearly they opted for the former.

We might remember here the words of Jesus to the Samaritan woman: If you only knew what God is offering and who it is that is saying to you: Give me a drink… . The Pharisees would have done well to recall the response of faith that woman made to the Lord.

So we are told: The Pharisees went away… . They left the company and presence of Jesus and went away - never a good idea!

Judas, too, left the company of the Lord and look what happened to him. To leave the Lord is always a big mistake; to remain in his presence is a guarantee of all things good.

They went away to work out between them... . How foolish they were, and how confident of their own powers and resources! They were suffering from the same distressing mentality so prevalent today. It's called the we-can-fix-it mentality and it's everywhere: politics, medicine, psychology, technology, finance, and even religion.

These poor unfortunates had such a serious dose of the disease that they thought, can you believe it, that they could 'fix' Jesus.

They put their heads together and came up with a plan: to trap Jesus in what he said. In other words, they were going to 'trap' the Word of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word through whom the whole universe was created!

Confident of success, and yet anticipating the remote possibility of failure, they didn't bother confronting Jesus themselves but sent their disciples to him, together with the Herodians, another group who wanted to do away with Jesus. It is typical of cowards, as well as criminals, that they fire their bullets from the guns of others.

And so step one of their grand strategy is to flatter Jesus, to awaken his ego and cloud his thinking.

Flattery, of course, is not praise, and certainly not worship. So lavish is their fawning that even the most conceited of us would be put on our guard. The impregnable humility of the Master recoils at once from their hypocrisy.

Ironically, every word of flattery they speak to Jesus is the truth, but so full of pretence and blindness are they that on their lips the word of truth becomes evidence of their malice.

Tell us your opinion, then.

Oh dear! Are they serious? Are they really asking the Son of God for his 'opinion'? Has no one told them that Jesus does not have opinions; not a single, solitary one?

Opinions belong on this side of the gulf which separates us from absolute truth. They may be our most treasured possessions, flaunted and paraded, but they in no way oblige God, or in any way hinder the proclamation of truth.

You hypocrites! Why do you set this trap for me?

The response from Jesus is strong and uncompromising but it is not an attack. Jesus is not 'name-calling' for he has not come to condemn but to save, and every one of his utterances intend this loving purpose.

Let me see the money you pay the tax with.

With unbounded compassion Jesus takes these hypocrites by the hand and leads them into their own trap so that he might show them the 'escape route'. They had set before him what was basically a political problem to which they hoped Jesus would and could give only a political answer. Instead the Lord reminded them that all human problems and issues could be answered only in relation to the just light of God.

Their question to the Lord, meant to disconcert him, had perplexed them too; it was a hot issue of the times. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not?

Jesus' unexpected response releases them from the snare they had set for him so that, hopefully, they might be open once more to the much more crucial question of his mysterious identity.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Isaiah 25:6-10; Philippians 4:12-14; Matthew 22:1-14

Do you remember how last week God lovingly prepared a vineyard on a fertile hillside? He dug the soil, cleared it of stones, and planted choice vines … built a tower, .. and dug a press…(Isaiah). What care God took! In fact God said: What could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done?

This week God lovingly prepares a marriage feast: a banquet of rich food, a banquet of fine wines, of food rich and juicy, of fine strained wines (Isaiah). What a feast! …my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready (Matthew).

Note that: Everything is ready! The vineyard is ready for the harvest and the feast is ready for the guests - and so God sends his servants.

Incredibly the tenants of the vineyard seized the servants: thrashed one, killed another and stoned a third. Those who were invited to the feast ignored the servants and some even thrashed and killed them.

Last week God asked for what was rightfully his and found himself rejected; this week he offers what is rightfully his to those he loves and finds himself contemptuously spurned.

Last week he was disobeyed; this week he is humiliated.

The marriage feast, of course, is the kingdom of heaven. The servants are the prophets, the greatest of whom is Jesus, and those who were invited are the Chosen people, represented particularly by their leaders.

The disconcerting question which baffles us is 'Why would they refuse?' Why would people so comprehensively, so completely and maliciously refuse to enter the Kingdom so lovingly prepared for them?

The Scriptures are littered, so to speak, with the sad memory of those who failed for all sorts of reasons to enter the Kingdom, beginning with Lucifer, the angel of light, and his demons.

The elder son in the parable of the prodigal son would not enter the feast because his pride was stung by his father's generosity to his wayward brother. It becomes clear that his relationship with the father had always been that of slave,  rather than son. And since he was the more obedient 'slave' he felt he was worth more.

The five foolish virgins failed to enter because they had not taken the Kingdom seriously enough. They had not adequately appreciated the greatness of the gift and so had not adequately prepared. The door was shut in their faces.

The householder just fell asleep and the judgment which unexpectedly sneaked up on him like a thief, found him not ready.

Fornicators (those having sex outside marriage), adulterers (those having sex with someone else's husband or wife) or practising homosexuals, were found unfit for the Kingdom.

Those who hear the word of God but do not keep it will not be recognised by the Lord and will not gain entry into the Kingdom. When they knock on the door they will hear the Lord say, 'I do not know you.'

The goats, those who showed no love or mercy towards their neighbour, and consequently showed no love towards God, will be cast out into the darkness and not be permitted to enter the Kingdom.

Those who will not wear the wedding garment, in other words, those who lack the necessary dispositions for entering heaven will be cast out.

The busy, those preoccupied with worldly concerns, those who build their houses on the shifting materialistic sands of power, pleasure or possessions, who worship money rather than God, who try to 'save' their lives rather than 'losing' them in the service of the Lord are not worthy of the Lord and cannot enter the Kingdom.

Let us remember that the invitation God gives us is to the king's feast. We are invited to a wonderful communion with God and with each other. The Sunday Eucharist we celebrate on earth is a rehearsal for this eternal banquet. That is why it is so important. It is here, at each Mass, that we are slowly transformed and sanctified for the moment we are called to take our seats at the marriage feast in heaven. It is here, at each Mass, that we are strengthened to live the kind of life God looks for in us.

When we refuse God who has prepared a place for us in his house he does not punish us, we punish ourselves. We miss out on all he has made ready for us. We miss out on the 'party', the feast and have to spend eternity outside the Father's house, in the dark. That would be hell, wouldn't it?