Trinity Sunday - Year B

Deuteronomy 4:32-34.39-40; Romans 8:14-17; Matthew 28:16-20

Do you sometimes, quite unexpectedly, find yourself drawn from within to acknowledge the presence of God? You may be busy with some task or other, reading a book or just listening to a song on the radio, and suddenly for no apparent reason your eyes close, your awareness, your inner self senses the reality and the closeness and the love of God.

It seems in those moments that the divine suddenly and most gently overtakes you and comes to stand in the midst of the concerns of the moment which obligingly ‘bow their head’ before this wondrous visitor as if he was saying: Just for a moment, be still and know that I am God (cf. Ps 46:10 NIV).

An elderly lady I knew used to call it ‘the blessing’. She would say, ‘Sometimes the blessing comes to me and I have to stop what I’m doing.’

God has a way of presenting himself without warning. Just look at the way he revealed himself to Moses while he was tending the flock of Jethro; or to Samuel as he was lying down in the sanctuary.

A few weeks ago, during Easter, we read: the doors were closed in the room where the disciples were, for fear of the Jews. Jesus came and stood among them.

And then only last week we witnessed the totally astonishing manifestation of the Holy Spirit to the anxious apostles when: suddenly they heard what sounded like a powerful wind from heaven, the noise of which filled the entire house in which they were sitting. [When God comes he has to fill the whole entire house; it would be unseemly if he didn’t.]

We know well the rest of this wonderful story and the many similar stories of God’s interventions in the lives of his children. One of my favourites is that mystical moment in the life of the young girl Helena Kowalska, now known as St Faustina. She was at a dance when Jesus appeared to her. In her diary she relates:

As I began to dance, I suddenly saw Jesus at my side, Jesus racked with pain, stripped of His clothing, all covered with wounds, who spoke these words to me: How long shall I put up with you and how long will you keep putting Me off? At that moment the charming music stopped, [and] the company I was with vanished from my sight; there remained Jesus and I.

At this moment I am wondering if perhaps there are not a number of you in this church right now who are recalling a graced moment when they were touched by a visit from God, an experience of God? Many of the saints of the Church had these experiences and each one taught them, and us, what God was like.

Abraham experienced God; that’s all we are told. We are permitted to believe it was God the Father. It was Jesus, the Son, who came and stood among the disciples and the Holy Spirit who invaded the room where the apostles were praying together with Mary.

Above all it is the experience of Jesus as recorded so faithfully in the Scriptures which teaches the Church about the inner nature of God and provides for each of us a touchstone against which to judge our own religious experiences.

Jesus spoke of the Father as God. He constantly spoke of the love he had for the Father and of the obedience with which he carried out the works of the Father (Jn 5:19): I tell you most solemnly, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees the Father doing: and whatever the Father does the Son does too.

The Jews well understood that for a man to claim that he was doing what ‘the Father does’ went way beyond just doing good works. This, indeed, is why they wanted to kill him (Jn 5:18): But that only made the Jews even more intent on killing him, because, not content with breaking the sabbath, he spoke of God as his own Father, and so made himself God's equal.

Jesus referred to himself as the Son of the Father and equal to the Father in his own divinity. As a man he recognised that (Jn 14:28): the Father is greater than I; while as God he could use of himself the sacred phrase ‘I am’ which God spoke to Moses: Jesus replied: 'I tell you most solemnly, before Abraham ever was, I Am (Jn 8:58).

So, the heavenly Father is God and Jesus is God. However, Jesus is not the Father and the Father is not Jesus; they are distinct and separate persons.

The Holy Spirit is mentioned by name no less than eighty-eight times in the (Jerusalem Bible) New Testament. Without quoting chapter and verse the truth which emerges from the Scriptures is that the Holy Spirit is God, the third person of the Blessed Trinity.

We all know that there is only one God and that he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the Trinitarian Christian faith. It is and must also be the Christian experience of God. Through Jesus, in the Spirit, we are drawn to the Father who wants nothing less than to draw us close to him, into communion with the life of the Blessed Trinity.

Though our minds cannot fully grasp this miracle of love let us at least do our best to joyfully live the life of discipleship, to worship in gratitude, and to praise God that we are chosen to be his own.

Pentecost Sunday - Year B (Year of Grace - Australia)

Acts 2:1-11; Galatians 5:16-25; John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Year of Grace 2012 – 2013 (Australia)

The Bishops of Australia have invited the whole Church to a Year of Grace which commences today – Pentecost Sunday - a whole year to ponder, learn, marvel at, praise, open up to and live the wonder of grace.

Youcat, the youth catechism given by Pope Benedict to the youth attending WYD in Spain, defines grace as: everything God grants us, without our deserving it in the least(338).’

Maybe the bishops should have just declared a ‘Year of Everything’ or perhaps, even more comprehensively: ‘A Year of Everything, Everywhere, Always’.

The word grace means gift and has its origins in the Latin word gratia. Indeed, all is gift – the universe, the planet earth, the human race, you and me, the pews we sit on, the bread and wine of the Eucharist, the praise we give. All has its source in the goodness of God towards us, his creatures. As St Paul reminds us in 1Cor 4:7: What do you have that was not given to you?

And that’s precisely the trouble with grace, it’s everything. All we can do is embrace it, explore it, try to understand it and reverence it, and then, out of the gratitude which will arise quite spontaneously in our hearts, give praise and thanks for it.

Perhaps a basic distinction to make is between those of God’s gifts which are material and those which are spiritual. There is a hierarchy of graces. In other words, there are greater graces and lesser graces; spiritual graces and material gifts. This difference is expressed in Jesus’ statement in Mt 4:4: Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Here bread is the material and word is the spiritual. Jesus knows we need both, but the word of God is the greater, the higher gift. St Paul, echoing the Master, encourages us to: Be ambitious for the higher gifts …(1Cor 12:31).

I have no doubt the bishops were well aware of all this and that in their invitation to celebrate a year of grace they were thinking mainly of the spiritual graces. Theologians have divided these graces into various categories which you may recognise from your school days: sanctifying grace, habitual grace, actual grace, sacramental grace, the grace of state, and, of course, as the song says, it’s all ‘Amazing Grace’.

Another way of knowing grace, of coming to understand it, is by recognising what it does to us. Youcat says (339): God’s grace brings us into the inner life of the Holy Trinity, into the exchange of love between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It makes us capable of living in God’s love and of acting on the basis of this love.

Living in love and acting on love – is this not a summary of the whole of our earthly Christian pilgrimage? Grace is the way God communicates himself to us so that we are able to live in communion with him. Surely this is the greatest effect of God’s love – to be able to live in communion with him – the branch connected to the vine.

This grace, won for us through the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus and poured out on us by the Holy Spirit is, according to St Augustine, the greatest of God’s works, greater even than the creation of heaven and earth and all they contain.

The bishops have given us a whole year to celebrate the wonders of God’s grace bestowed upon us in countless different degrees and ways. Let us content ourselves with the present feast – the coming of the gift of the Holy Spirit upon the infant Church.

Gathered in prayer, and in fear, the ‘dry bones’ of the Church were called into life by the Holy Spirit and made into the living Body of Christ. The Church became the ‘first’ sacrament of Christ the primordial sacrament, and through her the Holy Spirit would continue to be poured out for all time.

Through the mysterious will of the Lord, from the day of Pentecost on, all those who approach worthily the sacraments of the Church would receive this same gift of the Holy Spirit, the very life of God. Though the Holy Spirit can ‘blow where he will’, the most excellent place for us to receive his grace is in the sacraments.

The Holy Spirit gives us a new life, a spiritual life, a life which will not desert us. This life makes us capable of sharing in the divine life of God himself. As the Catechism says (1995), the Holy Spirit gives birth to the ‘inner man’ because he is the ‘master of the spiritual life’.

The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it (1999).

Surely this is the greatest of God’s graces, the very life of God infused into our souls by Christ, and leading us to eternal life. As God’s greatest grace we should have the greatest gratitude for it. It can be lost only by mortal sin but quickly recovered by a good confession.

St Augustine said: You are a child of grace. If God gave you grace, because he gave it freely, then you should love freely. Do not love God for the sake of a reward; let God be your reward!

Ascension of the Lord - Year B

Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 4:1-13; Mark 16:15-20

The Ascension of Jesus inaugurates the time of the Church which carries on his mission. What is your relationship to the Catholic Church?

Some people seem angry about being Catholic. I used to be like that as a child and think how lucky non-Catholics were because they didn’t have to go to Mass and do all the things we had to do. Of course, when you think like that living the Catholic life is always a chore.

Some people seem quite happy to be Catholic so long as it doesn’t interfere too much with their own lifestyle. Like a friend of mine who became a Jew but it didn't seem to make much difference in her life. She told me, 'We shouldn’t take it all too seriously.'

My dad used to look up from his reading sometimes and say “I’m so glad I’m a Catholic!” For him it was one of God’s greatest gifts. And he took it personally. He was glad his children accepted the Catholic faith but in the first place he was glad for himself; he loved being a member of the Catholic Church.

What about you? Are you glad? And how glad are you about being a Catholic?

Some people say 'All churches are the same and it doesn’t matter which one you belong to.' But this is obviously not so. There are huge differences and contradictions between religions, not to mention the other Christian denominations and the Catholic Church.

You might say to these people 'Well, if there’s no difference, why don’t you become a Catholic then?'

Jesus founded only one Church to whom he gave the gospel, one truth, under the one authority of the Apostles and their successors. I believe that Church to be the Catholic Church. That’s why I belong to it!

It’s not that it’s a nicer Church, or a bigger Church, or a more orderly Church - it’s that it is the one, true Church. That’s the only reason I belong to it because, in many ways, it’s one of the hardest things to be a good Catholic.

St Bernadette of Lourdes was once asked what she feared most and she replied 'Bad Catholics'.

And that’s another thing my dad told me: Lots of people can’t make up their mind about the Catholic Church. They can’t let go of it but they can’t practise it either. How sad! They hobble along, always feeling a nagging guilt about not living the faith and at the same time not being able to turn their back on it.

Well, I am blessed to be able to say that I am one of the many Catholics who believe all that the Catholic Church believes and teaches and who do their best to live up to it, despite occasional failures.

Some people say 'I believe all of it except this bit and that bit .. '

This amazes me. If the Catholic Church can be wrong about this bit or that bit why shouldn’t she be wrong about all the bits?

No, faith in the Church is a package deal and until you accept, with all your heart and mind, the entire package, your faith will always be a burden to you, a source of discomfort and unease.

We must believe all the teaching, the whole package, especially the difficult and challenging bits - euthanasia, confession, missing Mass, Real Presence, abortion, women priests, homosexuality, and so on.

If I thought the Church was wrong about women priests or homosexuality or condoms or mortal sin I’d leave, quick as a flash. But thank God I believe it all. For me the Catholic Church is the living voice of Jesus Christ in the world today.

Jesus taught many things while he walked among us and then ascended into heaven, leaving us in the hands of his Church. Does that mean that he had nothing further to teach succeeding generations? Not at all!

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now(Jn 16:12).

He gave that task, through the Apostles, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, to his Church. That is the part of the Church we call the teaching Magisterium. When the Church says no to contraception it is Christ himself speaking and that’s why I say, the Church is the living voice of Jesus Christ.

Do you believe that? If it is not Jesus speaking through his Church why would we want to be members of that Church?

Once at a healing Mass in another place we came to the moment of saying the Creed together. I invited, or maybe more exactly, challenged the people 'If you don’t believe these words, don’t say them.' One man was very moved. He came to speak with me later and admitted, maybe for the first time in many years, that he did believe but that he hadn’t really been living his faith very well.

The fullness of truth which Jesus gave his very life to bring to the world now resides only in the Catholic Church. Other denominations have lots of that truth but not all of it – and some even oppose and deny some of the truths they once believed.

A priest friend of mine put it very neatly one day when a pastor of another denomination was telling him all about the teachings of his particular communion. My friend replied 'What you say is full of truth … it’s just that there’s not enough of it.'

So let me ask you again. Do you rejoice that you are a Catholic? The Church is the Bride of Christ and a bride deserves to be loved. So maybe I should be asking 'Do you love the Church?'

6th Sunday of Easter - Year B

Acts 10:25-26.34-35.44-48; 1 John 4:7-10; John 15:9-17

Jesus continues this week what I describe, perhaps a little irreverently, as a kind of ‘divine pillow talk’.

I have loved you … remain in my love … my own joy may be in you … and your joy be complete … I have loved you … you are my friends … I have made known to you everything … I chose you.

The divine intimacy is undeniable, alluring, captivating and grounds us in a place in which there is no anxiety, no fear; in a place where there are no questions.

And what response can we give other than: I love you too, Lord, and I want to remain in your love?

It really is like coming home isn’t it? Like finding, at last, that place where one can truly settle down, put down one’s roots, and live in secure peace. As Jesus said last week: Make your home in me.

If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

It’s such a clear and oft-repeated refrain throughout the gospels – love is synonymous with keeping the commandments. That’s how Jesus himself showed his love for the Father. Astonishing!

Just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and remain in his love.

Human love can be a rather messy affair full of volatile, occasionally out-of-control, emotions. How often, in fact, do people say ‘I just don’t feel like I love God’?  Divine love is not like that.

We have become so habituated to equating love with emotion, with ‘feeling’, that we fail to grasp that keeping the commandments of God is an altogether better way, a higher road; and this precisely because doing the will of the beloved causes the lover to die to himself and to his feelings.

Jesus does not promise stirring emotions to those who keep his commandments, instead he promises knowledge. Keeping the commandments shifts the expression and experience of love from our hearts to our minds- a giant and necessary leap.

Those who keep his commandments come to ‘know’ him. As St John says (1Jn 2:4): We can be sure that we know God only by keeping his commandments. Anyone who says, 'I know him', and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, refusing to admit the truth.

As the Lord himself testifies in Jn 8:55: I do know him, and I faithfully keep his word.

So let it be abundantly clear to us that keeping the commandments is our only guarantee that we both love and know God. Nothing else is ‘admissible evidence’ before the heavenly tribunal. Keeping his word is the narrow door through which we all must enter and if we attempt another way he will say: I do not know where you come from. Away from me … (Lk 13:25).

Let us conclude with a final observation. Jesus does not say: As the Father has loved me so I have loved the Father. Nor does he say: As I have loved you, so you must love me.

The love which Jesus receives from the Father he passes on to us, and commands us to pass it on to others so that we may plot the passage of divine love from the Father to the Son; from the Son to us; from us to others – to the glory of the Father.

Jesus who declares his love for us is himself much loved. We who declare our love for others can do so only because we ourselves are much loved. In the power of this love let us receive the final exhortation at Mass today: Go and announce the Gospel of the Lord.

5th Sunday of Easter - Year B

Acts 9:26-31; 1 John 3:18-24; John 15:1-8

The gospel we have just read describes communion; in fact, it insists on communion.

Firstly, what is communion?

Communion is the oneness of love in which God lives in himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Our God is not a lonely God; he is three divine persons in one God. We call this the Blessed Trinity. I like to image this for myself as a kind of whirlpool of love between the Father and the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

So we see that the notion of communion has its origins in God. God, in the three divine persons, is the perfect communion of love.

Now, let your mind go back to the family of man after the Fall of Adam and Eve. One could hardly describe this family as a communion of love; quite the opposite. Man had rejected God and now found himself trapped in a hopeless and destructive state of alienation from God, from others, from himself and from the natural world.

Fortunately, however, God in his goodness did not abandon his creation. He came among us. He entered the prison in which we had locked ourselves and from which we had no escape. He came to us as one of us; like us in all things but sin (cf Hb 4:15). He came among us in the person of his only-begotten Son, Jesus.

Jesus came, sent by God, to set us free. In other words – to draw us, to invite us, to make it once again possible for us to enter into communion with his Father. We might say, Jesus invites us to enter the whirlpool or, as the Gospel so tantalisingly bids us: Make your home in me.

However, and we need to be quite clear about this, Jesus forces no one. He did not come to ‘drag us’ into communion. He came, firstly, to make it possible and, secondly, to call us to it. It is an invitation to communion which will be accepted by many – but not all.

Those who do accept are those who, gathered around Jesus and in communion with him, will be called Church; the Christian Community.

And so, now we must ask: How do I enter into communion with Jesus? St John, in the second reading, makes it clear beyond all dispute: Whosoever keeps his commandments lives in God and God lives in him.

Not only does Jesus invite us into communion with him, and hence his Father, but he insists on it for two reasons. Firstly, so that we might live: Anyone who does not remain in me … withers; and secondly, so that we might bear fruit: Whoever remains in me … bears fruit in plenty.

The privileges of remaining in him are fourfold. We will be ‘pruned’ (by the expert hands of the Father); we will give glory to the Father; the Father will grant our prayers; and we will truly be disciples of our Lord.

The call to communion is universal, that is why we describe the Church as one, holy, catholic (i.e. universal), and apostolic. But the call is not heeded by all. Those who do not answer the call, who are not ready to accept the conditions of entering into communion namely, ‘keeping the commandments’, exclude themselves from communion with him.

To express his desire for communion with us God could find no better analogy than sacramental marriage between a man and woman. It is in this communion of love between a man and a woman that God wants us to understand our communion with him. Just as a man forsakes all other women, and a woman forsakes all other men, in the bond of marriage, so we must forsake all other Gods in our bond of communion with the blessed Trinity.

Just as the communion of man and wife, therefore, is exclusive so, too, is our relationship with God exclusive. This simple statement can be especially challenging to those today whose mantra is that we must be inclusive. We are a universal Church, not an inclusive Church. We are not one, holy, inclusive and apostolic Church.

The reality is that those who are not willing or ready to enter into life, or to remain with Christ in his Church exclude themselves from this communion. For anyone to pretend that they are in communion, despite their refusal, would be to deny that our response to God’s invitation in Jesus is essential.

The gospel describes communion; it insists on the necessity for communion; it warns of punishment for those who refuse communion or leave it through sin. This punishment is not meted out by God, it is a natural consequence of the branch refusing to remain a part of the vine.

Jesus came to us last week as the good shepherd with arms stretched wide to embrace us all and draw us into his flock. This week he presents himself as the vine, willing to nourish with eternal life all those who remain in him as his branches. The image is extraordinarily appealing. As it sinks into our consciousness we become aware of what it is we are being offered and before long we find ourselves responding: Yes. Yes, Lord. Yes.