5th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Job 7:1-4.6-7; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19.22-23; Mark 1:29-39

Jesus’ life was saturated with hard work. Indeed, his first recorded words, spoken to his anxious parents, set the tone for his entire life: Did you not  know that I must be busy with my Father's affairs? (Lk 2:49)

During the years of his hidden life Jesus worked as a carpenter: This is the carpenter, surely, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon (Mk 6:3). These years of manual labour were no less the ‘business’ of his Father than his public ministry. If it can be said that he sanctified the waters of Baptism by submerging himself in the Jordan at the hands of the Baptist, it can most certainly be said that he sanctified daily toil by his ‘full immersion’ in the carpenter’s workshop at the hands of Joseph, his father.

And Jesus drew to himself men and women who were likewise accustomed to hard work. When he called Simon and Andrew they were ‘casting a net in the lake’ (Mk 1:16) and James and John were in the boat ‘mending their nets’ (Mk 1:19).

Luke’s account of their call is even more emphatic: 'Master,' Simon replied 'we worked hard all night long and caught nothing, but if you say so, I will pay out the nets.'(Lk 5:5)

In a world choking on ‘labour-saving’ devices we do well to keep in mind the beauty, value and holiness of work. The work of our sanctification is, in great part, accomplished through, and in, the day by day employment which circumstance has placed before us. So we should not make artificial and false distinctions between our spiritual life and our regular work.

Jesus reversed the image of the very authentic relationship of work to sanctification by associating sanctification with work. He conceived of his own sanctifying mission as the work of a shepherd or of a sower of seed, and even called his heavenly Father a vine-dresser (Jn 15:1). He often referred to his miracles and teachings as ‘works’: so Jesus said to them, 'I have done many good works for you to see, works from my Father; for which of these are you stoning me?' (Jn 10:32)

Naturally enough, those who followed in the footsteps of the Lord as disciples would find themselves spoken of, even by Jesus himself, as ‘labourers’: The harvest is rich but the labourers are few, so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers to his harvest (Mt 9:37). Or again (Mt 20:1): Now the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner going out at daybreak to hire workers for his vineyard.

Jesus had taught his followers that as the Father loved him, so he had loved us, and so we must love one another. In this way we would give glory to the Father.

The dynamic is true also in another sense. As the work of the Father became the work of Jesus for us, so it must become our work for others, and equally for the glory of the Father.

Speaking to his Father Jesus says: I have glorified you on earth and finished the work that you gave me to do (Jn 17:4). And speaking to us Jesus says: In the same way your light must shine in the sight of men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven (Mt 5:16).

We are privileged to participate in the mission of Jesus. As the Father sent him so he sends us, and with the promise: I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father (Jn 14:12).

St Paul in today’s second reading confides to us: (1 Cor 9:17) If I had chosen this work myself, I might have been paid for it but as I have not, it is a responsibility which has been put into my hands.

Truly, St Paul laboured like the Master himself. Through all sorts of trials he battled courageously for the gospel and finally gave his life. It was as though he had taken to heart the words of the Lord from John 9:4: As long as the day lasts I must carry out the work of the one who sent me; the night will soon be here when no one can work.

Paradoxically, the daily work we do, when offered to the Lord, when done for him, even strenuous daily, grinding toil, can itself become the happiness we seek, so that we can say with Jesus: My food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to complete his work (Jn 4:34). Whether it is spending time in prayer, attending Mass, watering the garden or looking after the grandchildren, it can all bring the kingdom closer when done in his name.

Let us do everything for him. Everything. Let us bring all our labour to him and we will be at peace. This is the true meaning of his words: Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest (Mt 11:29).

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Deuteronomy 18:15-20; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

…he went to the synagogue and began to teach.…his teaching made a deep impression on them……he taught them with authority.…a teaching that is new……with authority behind it…

It must have been wonderful to see Jesus heal the sick. It must have been astonishing to see him cast out devils. It must have been awesome to see him raise Lazarus from the dead. Nevertheless, if I had a choice, I would like to have been able to see and hear Jesus teaching.

In Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ, it was that short snippet of Jesus at table with his disciples at the Last Supper, just before his passion, which moved me most. To be honest, it gave me goose bumps. The apostles were seated round him, listening, eyes glued to him. His voice was gentle, confident and clear. He was teaching them.

There are two kinds of teachers: those who teach facts and those who teach truth. A mathematics teacher or a chemistry teacher might be said to teach facts, while Jesus, and his Church, her bishops and priests, teach truth. The Bible, now that we are on the subject, contains many facts, however, its overriding interest is in teaching truth.

A good teacher of the facts knows how to place the seed of knowledge into the minds of his students; a good teacher of the truth knows how to place the seed of truth not only into the minds but also into the hearts of his pupils.

But there is a complication. A good teacher is nothing before those who have closed their minds and hearts to him. Even the Lord was powerless before the stubborn refusal of the Pharisees to open themselves to his teaching. How often have I not experienced this in my own life. I recall vividly the absolute disbelief I felt when a parent approached me after school one afternoon (a Catholic secondary school) accusing me of teaching her children that abortion was a good and acceptable means of birth control. I couldn't believe it! Was I that bad a teacher? Fortunately I discovered afterwards that the reason was nothing to do with the quality of my teaching.

Jesus experienced this I’m-not-going-to-listen-to-a-word-you-say phenomenon long before I did, and it cut him to the heart.

A good teacher, apart from the quality of all that goes to make up a good teaching style, like clarity of voice and presentation, understanding of the ability level of his students, and so on, must believe in what he is teaching. He must be one with what he is teaching.

Parents cannot teach their children that honesty, discipline, forgiveness, or Sunday Mass is important if their own lives witness to the contrary. Children are very quick to spot a phoney and will most often judge the truth they are being taught by the integrity of the one who is teaching them.

Precisely here do we come to the astonishment good people felt before the teaching of Jesus: his teaching made a deep impression on them because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority; and it was an authority he drew from both his humanity and his divinity.

We humans are a unity of various elements including the intellectual, emotional, spiritual, physical, psychological. But in none of us are these elements perfectly integrated. Therefore we find intellectual giants who are emotionally crippled, or psychologically damaged individuals who are heroic saints.

This lack of integration or congruence was not the case with Jesus. His human integrity was flawless. Of Jesus we could say that he was truly whole, one with himself, seamlessly fused into human perfection.

What’s more, Jesus’ moral life was perfectly one with his teaching. Jesus believed the truth he taught; Jesus lived the truth he taught; Jesus was the truth he taught. No wonder the poor demons could not resist his word – the word of God spoken by a perfect man – hypostatically united to the perfection of God.

Hebrews 4:12 fittingly describes the teaching of Jesus as the word of God which: is something alive and active: it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely: it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts.

And so it did. The Pharisees rebelled at the truth and sought to destroy him; while the tax collectors and prostitutes welcomed him and were saved.

And what about you? Do you welcome the truth?

3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Jonah 3:1-5.10; 1Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

The simple, clear, decisive message of all three readings today is that there is little time left for conversion; little time before we die and find ourselves standing before the judgment seat of the Lord.

Jonah preaches: Only forty days more …

St Paul writes: …our time is growing short.

Jesus proclaims: The time has come…

The true object of this critical shortage of time is conversion; your conversion, my conversion. Indeed, when we say ‘time for conversion’ we often overlook the ambiguity. Time and conversion go together; time is precisely for conversion – a gift from God which affords us an opportunity for conversion.

But how are we to understand the idea of conversion? What is it, really? Many think it simply means stop being bad and start being good. This answer has undoubted merit but it seems to me there is a more complete way of understanding conversion, and that is to see it as entering into a personal relationship with Jesus.

Simon and Andrew, James and John are pictured in the gospel with charming, and yet powerful, simplicity. They are fishermen. Simon and Andrew were casting a net in the lake; James and John were in their boats mending their nets.

And what was Jesus doing? He was just walking along.

Actually it’s quite a strong picture of daily life by the Sea of Galilee, and, despite the interval of 2000 years, a rather easy scene to equate with our own working lives. We all know what it is to be busy with our work, regardless of what that work may be.

Simon and Andrew are out in the boat casting their net in the sea to catch fish. The net and the boat are their ‘tools of trade’. They are concentrating, focussed, absorbed – they are ‘making a living’. James and John are sitting in their own boat which is pulled up on the shore. They are with their father; mending their nets. As they work they chat.

Boats and nets are such useful things to possess. They enable Simon and Andrew to go out onto the water to catch fish and bring them safely to shore. Inside the boat they can work in relative comfort and some degree of security.

However, if the two would-be apostles own the boat we might also say that the boat ‘owns’ them. Fishermen are tied to their boats and, we could almost say, ‘caught’ in their own net. They cannot do without either.

And it’s true of our own lives too. A truck driver may own a huge, beautiful Kenworth, but there is a sense in which we can say that it in turn owns him. Though the firm offers us a living we are all ‘property of the firm’.

So now along comes Jesus. He has already begun to proclaim the Good News from God: The time has come and the Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the Good News. In other words, he has already given the first half of the answer to the question ‘What is conversion?’ – in other words, turn away from sin and believe in the gospel. Now he completes the answer by saying: Follow me.

God does not just command us to ‘be good’. This would be a cruel command because he knows, and we know, all too well that we just can’t be good; we lack the power. We don’t have what it takes. Sure, we can from time to time ‘do’ a good thing, but to ‘be’ good, to become good, is beyond our reach.

That is why Jesus spoke those words to Simon and Andrew: Follow me and I will make you into fishers of men.

I will make you …

In discipleship is given the power for conversion, for transformation.

Simon and Andrew at once left their nets. They are now free; free to follow. Likewise James and John who left their father in the boat with the men he employed, and went after him.

The gospel today is in a way the Gospel for Dummies. Mark dramatises the call of Jesus, the leaving, and the following which are essential elements of conversion.

And so we find ourselves back at my preferred definition of conversion which is: to enter into a relationship with Jesus. This is the challenge to which we are called to respond today. We cannot make substitutions. Jesus didn’t say to the four future apostles ‘Be good’; he said ‘Follow me’.

2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

1 Samuel 3:3-10.19; 1 Corinthians 6:13-15.17-20; John 1:35-42

Life is full of arrivals and departures. No sooner do we reach our end than we’re summoned to set out anew, perpetual travellers, seeking the promised land of this or that friendship, the ideal job, a longed for promotion, the perfect spouse, a house of our own, the first child or, even, retirement. And, of course, there are those among us whose ‘home’ button on their spiritual GPS is firmly set to heaven.

To find one’s vocation in life is no small ‘arrival’. How many young men and women out there are wondering, sometimes with a nagging anxiety, whether they will ever find their purpose in life? Youth can be a very trying time.

To experience a particular call from God, a vocation, is to experience one of God’s greatest blessings. A religious vocation is primarily a call to adventure, and the image of journeying to the promised land is not altogether inappropriate.

I used to wonder a great deal about the infinitely patient and subtle way God has of calling some individuals to such a life, but with a listening, humble ear the message usually finds its target.

In my own case I used to ask God, as I struggled with the ‘call’ I imagined came from him, why he didn’t just come out and ask. Why not just somehow make the call once and for all, clear as a bell?

Strangely I found the Lord’s words in Exodus 23:30 very helpful. God was giving instructions and promises with respect to how the Israelites were to enter the Promised Land. At one point, referring to the warlike occupants of the land he tells the people: I shall not drive them out before you in a single year, or the land would become a desert where, to your cost, the wild beasts would multiply. Little by little I will drive them out before you until your numbers grow and you come into possession of the land.

Yes, of course, little by little, one yes followed by another yes, until knowledge and strength and confidence and faith and trust in the Lord grow to a point where we can have the courage to accept that we are being called and then, what we are being called to.

Naturally enough, in every vocational call God always ‘arrives’ first. Young Samuel, in the first reading, is lying down in the sanctuary of the Lord. Jesus, in the gospel, is very conveniently passing by the place where John and the disciples are standing. God always makes the first move. The next is ours; we must say Yes! Jesus waits for our response before he makes the next move, just as the Israelites had to capture the each town, before they could move on to the next.

Samuel answers the voice which calls him. He not only says: Here I am; but he gets up and runs to Eli. No wonder he deserves a second and then a third summons from the Lord. Eli eventually understands what is going on and points the way forward for Samuel.

John the Baptist too, points out the Lord for his disciples: Look, there is the lamb of God.

Hearing this, the two disciples followed Jesus; and because they responded the Lord was able to make the next move:

What do you want?

Rabbi, … where do you live?

Come and see.

So they went and saw .. and stayed with him the rest of that day.

Invitation – response – new invitation – new response, and so on, and so on … ‘til the promised land is reached.

Note also how the Lord uses others in helping both Samuel and the two future apostles on their journey. It’s a lesson for us too. We should not be slow to accept the advice of discerning and proven spiritual guides if it promises to lead us to the Lord. That is why we read the sacred Scriptures in all our sacramental celebrations.

Just listen, for example, to the wise and holy advice of St Paul in the second reading: Keep away from sex outside marriage…you should use your body for the glory of God. St Paul is speaking God’s words; words which seek our response. Perhaps for those whom the Lord is calling to a vocation as priest or religious – the adventure begins here.

The Epiphany of the Lord - Year B

Isaiah 60:1-6; Ephesians 3:2-3.5-6; Matthew 2:1-12

In the Church we speak of the ‘ministry of presence’, and rightly so. The presence of a convent of holy religious, for example, just by virtue of their presence in a parish can make an enormous difference. It is as though they mysteriously change the atmosphere, the air quality of the place. And it’s amazing how people will find their way to the convent door. There may be no star rising and halting over the roof but word soon gets round.

This miracle of presence is very much in evidence in the Christmas gospels. Jesus doesn’t do anything at all; he just arrives. Nevertheless, everything is different; the whole world has changed. We could almost say that the rest of the Scriptures, indeed the rest of human history, is really nothing more than the story of what individuals and groups do in response to this ‘presence in our midst’; a presence which ‘discovers’ us.

Today’s gospel is a microcosm – a miniature – of that drama.

The divine Infant has entered the world and now rests peacefully in his mother’s arms. Perhaps it would not be altogether wrong to recall here the words of Isaiah: He does not cry out or shout aloud or make his voice heard in the streets…(42:2).

Jesus has been sent by the Father in accordance with the Father’s plan and it is the Father's will to make the Child known: …a joy to be shared by the whole people Lk 2:10).

But observe how the Almighty goes about this. He sends an angel to announce the birth of the Redeemer first to some poor shepherds in a field watching over their sheep in the dead of night: And suddenly with the angel there was a great throng of the heavenly host, praising God and singing: 'Glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace to men who enjoy his favour (Lk 2:13-14)'.

Heaven opens its splendour and delivers its glorious message to a handful of nobodies. It’s as though the entire spectacle of Sydney’s New Year’s Eve fireworks were to be presented to just three or four individuals. A modern marketing manager would say to the Father, ‘Step aside, Lord, I’ll show you how to get your product out there.’

The Father’s next ‘grand move’ seems, humanly speaking, even more puzzling. By the guidance of another heavenly manifestation, this time a star, he draws three pagan astrologers from the East (Iran?) to the house where the infant Jesus is to be found with Mary and Joseph. Just three men from a foreign land!? Again we have the same ‘cosmic’ proclamation made to a tiny group of individuals.

To make matters worse, the wise men stop off at Bethlehem and alert precisely the wrong person to the birth of the ‘King of the Jews’. Herod is terribly troubled by the news and, typical of so many with vested interests, sets out to eradicate what he perceives as the threat.

What we see in this snippet from the life of Jesus is, in fact, a miniature of the drama of salvation which is to unfold, and which is still unfolding, among us. It is as though God has ‘sketched’ the outlines of the painting, outlines which the fulness of time will colour in.

And so, from the Epiphany event we learn a few truths:

• The Father is presenting the world with his only Son, born of the Virgin. He is indeed ‘King of the Jews’, as the wise men call him, but only when he is ‘exalted’ on the Cross will the title take on its most accurate meaning.
• The Father has a plan to make his Son known to the world. It is a sovereign plan; which, despite all resistance, will be fulfilled. Herod may plot but God’s purpose will be accomplished– the wise men will simply return ‘by a different way’.
• God sees the heart. The presence of God’s Son on earth will reveal what lies in the hearts of men. The Magi who travel to seek the divine child travel in a line as straight as their hearts; while Herod shows himself to be evil. He is the precursor of all those throughout history who will oppose Jesus in one way or another, trying to expunge him from the earth.
• God has come for all men. The Magi were pagans, perhaps even astrologers, and were invited to find and worship the Lord of the Universe. He was revealed to them and before him they fell to their knees and ‘did him homage’.

And at this point let us allow the spotlight to shift from these humble truth-loving and truth-seeking hearts to ourselves. What about us? What is our reaction to God’s presence in our midst?

We need go no further than his presence in the Eucharist. What is our … ‘position’; what stance do we take towards the Lord here present not only ‘among’ us – but ‘before’ us – in the tabernacle? How do we relate to his presence in the Scriptures; in the priest? And how do we relate to his presence in those gathered in his name?

In all four of those presences it is truly him; truly the same Lord as the Magi found.