1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13

Before we do anything else, let's have a quick look at today's Gospel. It's a cautionary tale about the least likely believer finding the least likely God.

That's the key to unlock our first reading from the Book of Samuel. Saul was the first king of the Jews, ruling from 1027 until 1012. He was about 40 years of age when anointed king by the prophet, Samuel. Samuel had misgivings about the Jews having a king at all. They already had God as King. What more did they need? Today's struggle in Iraq is similar. Should Sharia law rule or secularism? Despite his solid religious loyalty to God, Saul suffered great psychological distress.

Our first reading (1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13) shows the result. God ordered Samuel to replace Saul with one of shepherd Jesse's sons. Jesse's family was camped at Bethlehem.

Samuel, inspired by God, anointed the youngest, David to take Saul's place. So begins the third key concept of the Old Testament …. the dwelling of God in the individual human heart. Muhammad would rediscover that much later.

God had already created the material world. He had, also, created a people, the Hebrews, who would carry His torch throughout salvation history. God then took His place in the heart of a key person, David. God hid Himself in the shepherd king, David, just as he would in the good shepherd Jesus, a thousand years later, beginning where we started today's journey at Bethlehem.

Psalm 22 is our responsorial psalm: 'The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want'.

John 9:1-41

Today's Gospel passage is a perfect reflection for Catholics 'doing' Lent. Let's observe the Jewish people's reactions to the miracle cure of the man born blind. Some open themselves to the light, by which John means faith. Others prefer their own ways of seeing things.

Then, we have the blind man, who immediately understands the significance of the cure. We have, too, the fearful and pragmatic parents. The least attractive players are the Pharisees, the religious know-alls, who do nothing but judge and are unaware that they condemn themselves in the very act of judging. The blind man didn't have an easy time of it. He was cured, sure enough, but needed another meeting with Jesus to make the leap of faith. (Even Paul of Tarsus when cured, needed time.)

His parents valued their place in society more than anything else. So, they refused to see the light. They preferred spiritual darkness presided over by blind religious leaders. It was safe and predictable. Here's a cautionary note for new converts to Catholicism. You may sometimes experience a setback when confused to find no obvious presence of Jesus Christ in theological or moral teachings, or even, in liturgical assemblies. That's why reception of converts, at Easter, places a heavy burden on local church communities to faithfully support newcomers with a palpable, spiritual environment within which faith, hope and love can flourish.

Sunday, 2 March 2008

4th Sunday of Lent - The Lord is my Shepherd. There is nothing I shall want

Before we do anything else, let's have a quick look at today's Gospel. It's a cautionary tale about the least likely believer finding the least likely God. That's the key to unlock our first reading from the Book of Samuel.
Saul was the first king of the Jews, ruling from 1027 until 1012. He was about 40 years of age when anointed king by the prophet, Samuel. Samuel had misgivings about the Jews having a king at all. They already had God as king. What more did they need? Today's struggle in Iraq is similar. Should Sharia law rule or secularism?
Despite his solid religious loyalty to God, Saul suffered great psychological distress.
Our first reading (1 Samuel 16:1, 6-7, 10-13) shows the result. God ordered Samuel to replace Saul with one of shepherd Jesse's sons. Jesse's family was camped at Bethlehem.
Samuel, inspired by God, anointed the youngest, David to take Saul's place.
So begins the third key concept of the Old Testament the dwelling of God in the individual human heart.
Muhammad would rediscover that much later.
God had already created the material world.
He had, also, created a people, the Hebrews, who would carry His torch throughout salvation history.
God then took His place in the heart of a key person, David. God hid Himself in the shepherd king, David, just as he would in the good shepherd Jesus, a thousand years later, beginning where we started today's journey at Bethlehem.
Psalm 22 is our responsorial psalm: 'The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I shall want'.
Today's Gospel passage (John 9:141) is a perfect reflection for Catholics 'doing' Lent. Let's observe the Jewish people's reactions to the miracle cure of the man born blind.
Some open themselves to the light, by which John means faith. Others prefer their own ways of seeing things.
Then, we have the blind man, who immediately understands the significance of the cure.
We have, too, the fearful and pragmatic parents. The least attractive players are the Pharisees, the religious know-alls, who do nothing but judge and are unaware that they condemn themselves in the very act of judging.
The blind man didn't have an easy time of it. He was cured, sure enough, but needed another meeting with Jesus to make the leap of faith. (Even Paul of Tarsus when cured, needed time.)
His parents valued their place in society more than anything else. So, they refused to see the light. They preferred spiritual darkness presided over by blind religious leaders. It was safe and predictable.
Here's a cautionary note for new converts to Catholicism. You may sometimes experience a setback when confused to find no obvious presence of Jesus Christ in theological or moral teachings, or even, in 'liturgical assemblies.
That's why reception of converts, at Easter, places a heavy burden on local church communities to faithfully support newcomers with a palpable, spiritual environment within which faith, hope and love can flourish.

Sunday, 9 March 2008

5th Sunday of Lent - I am the Resurrection and the Life

Today's gospel is about Our Lord's raising Lazarus from the dead. It's also, the key in the search for the meaning of our Old Testament reading (Ezekiel 37:12-14). Ezekiel may have been a young priest taken to Babylon in Chaldea (modem Iraq), along with 10,000 Jews, after the siege of Jerusalem in 598 BC.
There, he was called by God to predict the total destruction of his country, but also its eventual, but definite, 'resurrection'.
His prophecy is famous for the vision of a valley of dry bones, representing the destruction of Israel. But bones are, as we know from Auschwitz and the Tsunami, the only human remains that survive death.
So thanks to Ezekiel a theology developed about the remnant, the remains of God's people, coming back to life!
Today's verses from Ezekiel are full of hope. Before the Chaldeans attacked them, the Jews had destroyed themselves by splitting into two kingdoms following Solomon's death. Many societies die from within before natural disasters overtake them.
The seed of national spiritual death had been planted.
Israel couldn't fulfill its mission to the nations while she, herself, was disunited. Even today, Israel is the key to Middle East and World peace!
All the prophets had called for reform, again and again. They planted the seeds of resurrection.
Some commentators see the same process occurring throughout Church history'. There's unfaithfulness one generation, a return to Gospel values the next.
How does our diocese, our parish measure up?
Thanks to our religious educators, most of us are familiar with the Gospel story' of Lazarus.
'I am the Resurrection and the Life'. This statement in John's version is at the centre of the Gospel of 'the raising of Lazarus' (John 11:1-4).
To believe Jesus is Messiah and Son of God is already to have within oneself eternal life, which death cannot destroy. Jesus himself was under a death threat from the religious authorities in Jerusalem. They couldn't easily carry out that threat, unless Jesus came to them, in Jerusalem, where they had power through strong organisation.
Jesus avoided them, as long as He could, by staying on the far side of the Jordan. But, he broke cover to visit his three friends, Martha, Mary' and Lazarus in Bethany a short distance from Jerusalem.
For John the Gospel writer, Lazarus represented and personified the person wounded by sin who is in the process of dying, spiritually, unless Jesus calls him to life.
This noticeable miracle only foretells the real resurrection, which does not just prolong life but transforms our whole being.

Sunday, 16 March 2008

Passion Sunday - Local churches must be open and alert to God’s spirit

The trials and tribulations of Jesus, as narrated in today's Passion Gospel, are the key to understanding the first reading from Isaiah. This prophet is the most important of them all. Jesus and his disciples often quoted from his writings.,
Isaiah's own words are found in chapters 1-39 of the book bearing his name. The second part of the book, namely chapters 40-66, brings together the words of other prophets who wrote a century and a half later.
In today's passage (Isaiah 50:4-7), the speaker may be the prophet himself or a minority group of exiled believers, struggling and suffering to keep the true faith in the midst of awful loneliness and alienation.
The invader had rolled through Israel, the northern kingdom and turned on the south, Judah, and its capital, Jerusalem.
Miraculously, Jerusalem was saved.
Isaiah insisted God would save the loyal, spiritually alert and robust servant (sometimes an individual, sometimes a faithful minority group).
Such a person (or group) will be able to encourage others to stand firm because he, himself, will listen 'every morning' and 'keep his ears open'. JP2 does it. So does a mother or lover.
To sustain others who are tired, spiritually, we must be trained by God: the true prophet is a prayerful person, open to God's own spirit. In our own times, Catholics are called to encourage our fellow Australians, themselves spiritually tired.
Local churches must be open and alert to God's spirit. Prayer and worship must be hotly pursued in case organization and business matters assume top billing.
Each version of Jesus' ordeal and death has a particular, special point to make.
Matthew's account (Matthew 27:11-54) gives us the beginnings of an elaborate theology of fulfillment. For Matthew, nothing involving Jesus was accidental. It formed a destined part of God's plan for each and every one of us. So true is this, that he was able to make of the Passion the end of the old era and the beginning of the era of the Church.
The collapse of the old economy of salvation was heralded, according to Matthew, by the torn curtain in the Temple and the arrival of the spiritual age by the earthquake. Similarly the northern Queensland floods could be the beginning of a new era of tolerance in that region.
The conversion of the centurion was the first good result, pointing to the conversion of unlikely people throughout the ages.
The priests, when they handed over Jesus' body to the disciples, showed the priestly caste was giving up spiritual leadership, leaving the Church to be the sign of Christ within secular society.
After the Resurrection, Matthew would write his version of the Gospel for convert Jews. They would need constant reassurance that they had kept the best of the old faith by accepting Jesus as Messiah of the God of Abraham and David and Moses. We Vatican 2 propagandists didn't reassure strongly enough the 'old time' religionists between 1955 and 1975.
This is a spiritual resurrection, but physical, too.
It begins when faith moves a person to give up wrong ways of living to become open to receiving God's own life.
Australian Catholics, inheritors of this revealed truth, feel sad, like Jesus at Lazarus' graveside, when confronted with secular society's totally inadequate, and soul-destroying, culture of death and the Church's occasional lapse into self-destructive behaviour.

Sunday, 23 March 2008

Easter Sunday - Christians must experience the emptiness of the world, secular society

While Jesus was alive the apostles wavered from belief to its very opposite. They never, gave up I, believe.
Our first reading (Acts 10:34, 37-43) illustrates that point perfectly, because it shows Peter, a waverer until the finale on Calvary, presenting himself with such confidence and in public, that an explanation is called for.
The explanation, that Jesus is alive and influencing his church even now is the core of the Acts of the Apostles and the Book of Apocalypse.
That's not the only point made in today's reading.
There's another. God has no favourites!
The leaders of the early Church of Jerusalem had, naturally, expected Christianity (the Way as it was first called) to be confined to the Jews.
The Spirit intended otherwise.
Cornelius, captain of the Italian Battalion based in Caesarea, himself not Jewish, invited Peter to visit him. Such a visit broke Jewish ritual laws. Imagine a gentile US Marine in a Baghdad mosque!
Peter rightly discerned that the Spirit was using him to question Jewish prohibitions, even regarding non-kosher foods! Jesus had previously put the Sabbath law in its place, now Peter was to do likewise with discrimination involving ritual cleanliness. The reaction of the Jerusalem Christians shows us what a revelation was the baptism of Cornelius.
If we're blessed, our own parishes will open up to neighbourhood outsiders.
John's gospel today (John 20:1-9) is all about the empty tomb.
It's just part of the story of the apostles' pilgrimage of faith in the Risen Lord.
Up to this time, God had been referred to as Lord. From this earliest time in Church history, the Father will be called God and Jesus will be called 'Lord' to show the Church's earliest grasp of the unique divine relationship between Father and Son.
Mary Magdalene has been called 'apostle to the apostles' for her unique role in bringing good news from the tomb to Peter and others.
She was the first to find the tomb empty. She was the first to whom Jesus appeared, according to the scriptures. (To be honest, this doesn't impress all Catholics).
Another salient point is that Peter, himself, had to experience the emptiness of the tomb before he, too, was accorded the comfort of a personal encounter with the Risen Lord.
There is, of course, a lesson here for the Church in every generation. Christians must experience the emptiness of the world, secular society. Maybe, even, the emptiness of church.
Spare a thought for Christians, following vocations, exercising missions, within secular society. We need to support them with prayer and pastoral care. They suffer deeply when confronted with the spiritual emptiness of public life.
Even some parishes may experience, hopefully temporarily, the death of God among themselves.
Someone, or ones, will always be called by the Spirit to 'roll back the stone' so the Risen Lord may again take His place at the centre of such local churches.

Sunday, 30 March 2008

2nd Sunday of Easter - Yes, you can be sure, it was truly Him! You, too, must believe

Our first reading (Acts 2: 42-47) provides a brief and clear picture of the earliest Christian communities. From the start we were united but, definitely, not uniform. We need to recall that these communities were still very much influenced by Judaism, and proud of it. They weren’t yet distinguished from other Jewish sects. Our members looked to the Temple for sacrifices and used private houses for reunions, which stressed fraternal feeling and fervour in prayer.
These Jerusalem Christians were mainly strangers in the city, Galileans who had become displaced, poor people without homes, expatriates returned to Jerusalem but with no fixed address. All these were doubtless happy to put their feet under a common table. Here they could catch a glimpse of Heaven. Weekly Mass is meant to be a near life ‘experience’!
They could access instruction from the apostles, just like their beloved synagogue sessions, and pray from the heart, as taught by Jesus. They continued the Jewish domestic ritual of ‘the breaking of the bread’.
However, there was added the President’s thanksgiving prayer and the unique making of the Eucharist.
Their Jewish neighbours were impressed, greatly, with the Christian communal spirit.
All this euphoria evaporated when the authorities, again, felt threatened. The apostles were arrested, repeatedly. The final blow, causing dispersal of the Jerusalem Christians, was the destruction, by the Romans, of the great city in about 60 AD. (That city still dominates world news!)
There is a revival, around today’s shrinking world, of smaller church communities. Is small better?
Our Gospel passage according to St John (John 20: 19-31) tells how nothing could now stop the Risen Lord from meeting, at will, with the true believers.
He came to give them the Spirit and the best products of His mission: peace, joy, and, especially, the power and privilege of forgiveness of sin.
As for Thomas, who had demanded to see the Lord for himself and had, indeed, touched him, he seems to say to the Christian of every generation: 'Yes, you can be sure, it was truly Him!'.
The apostles had come, spiritually, a very long way, but not without anxiety, doubt and suffering. Same as us.
Our Risen Lord was embarked on the most important phase of his mission when He joined, even confronted, the apostles, on several occasions, after his Resurrection.
Just as they had gathered around Him during three long years, so now they must be prepared to be the rallying points for other believers. That’s still Bishop’s work – no more, no less.
So, Jesus established the Church essentials of hierarchy, the Sacraments (especially Reconciliation) the shared meal, the assembly itself and, already, the Sunday nature of that gathering.
John stressed mission to secular societies, the world, as Jesus’ final commandment.
And, the Church was entrusted with a unique instrument that secular society would always find difficult to handle well – forgiveness and reconciliation. God knows, even Church finds that hard! Gusmao and Ramos Horta of East Timor will show us the way.

Sunday, 6 April 2008

3rd Sunday of Easter - The two disciples didn’t experience Our Lord’s Real Presence until the three sat down and broke bread together

It seems that the early disciples were convinced of Jesus’ Resurrection, not by the empty tomb, but by His appearances. Already, their belief made sense of the empty tomb.
According to Goosen and Tomlinson in 'Jesus – Mystery and Surprise', an attentive reading of the appearances narrative shows a close link between these stories – of the experience of Jesus’ Presence among them – and the Eucharist. (Eucharist reserved for adoration is something else again).
Today’s Emmaus story (Acts 2: 14,22-33) emphasises that link. The two disciples didn’t experience Our Lord’s Real Presence until the three sat down and broke bread together.
After a week in secular society, passing Jesus many times in our daily affairs, without recognising him, we contemporary disciples gather for Mass and have our very own ‘Emmaus’ experience!
The Passover solemnity for the Jews didn’t require pilgrims to stay in Jerusalem for the entire eight days. So, on the day after Passover, Sunday, many of them were already setting out for home.
And, that’s what these two disciples of Jesus did, one of whom was called Cleophas. (Time, place and personality are important in Catholicism).
Hopeless and dispirited over what had taken place, they set out alone, for home, Emmaus, about 10 miles from Jerusalem.
Friday had been all too much for them. We all have experienced some time in our lives that awful emptiness, when the bottom has fallen out of our world. That’s how these two disciples felt.
They had certainly heard from a woman that Jesus’ body had disappeared but they probably had left before Mary of Magadala reported that Jesus had appeared to her.
Indeed, talk of an empty tomb seems to have rubbed salt into the wound of shock and horror at Jesus’ untimely end.
Their application these days would be called ‘post trauma depression’. (Survivors of September 11 suffered the same discomfort – so, too, Sudan, Bali, Aceh and on and on).
These are the two disciples’ words. 'We are hoping that it was He who would redeem Israel'( Luke 24: 13-35).
What redemption was Cleophas thinking of?
Obviously, deliverance from Roman oppression. With Jesus’ death, that hope vanished. It would be safer out of town for the Nazarene’s followers. Our Lord had taught, often, that He was the fulfillment of the old ways, prophets and law, not their nemesis.
Several of us did just that job of ‘enlightenment’ after Vatican 2, commissioned by the Council fathers so to do.
Many of our contemporaries’ hearts burned within them as the Spirit breathed where He chose.
Many apostolic troupers stomped the boards of the Australian church stage. They brought fresh hope and great expectations were before there had been expectancy of 'more of the same' stretching away into the third millennium. (And so, it seems it came to pass!)
As with Cleophas and his companion, rediscovery of the Word, through scripture preached, reflected on and shared did lead to a radical conversion within the Catholic Church – but, alas, not radical enough.
Then, we were impelled, like the Emmaus tow, first to carry the good news to our nearest and dearest, then broadcast it to our wider spheres of influence.

Sunday, 13 April 2008

4th Sunday of Easter - The Lord is my Shepherd: there is nothing I shall want

Our first reading (Acts 2: 14, 36-41) is again, about the first recorded statement made, after the Resurrection, by Peter. The book of Acts tells us about the first stages in the development of the Church, following the Resurrection.
Peter’s courageous confrontations with his compatriots is one of those essential stages.
So, there’s no need for us to ask whence comes the authority for our own Church leaders throughout Australia, to publicly and constructively, criticise the performance of the secular state. It’s all in the Book of Acts.
The Book of the Acts teaches precisely how the earliest communities, such as Jerusalem, emerged: through the hard word of the Apostles and the inspiration of the Spirit during the first twenty years of Church history.
Notice, too, that Peter mentions, as catchment areas of faith in Jesus, not only Jewish people but others.
Franklin Graham was in town recently on a crusade to reactivate lapsed Christians. My question is: Is Christianity caught, taught or both? So, from the earliest years we see the establishment of the 'missionary imperative' as an essential characteristic of the Church.
'The Lord is my Shepherd: there is nothing I shall want.'
Thanks to the parable of the Shepherd Jesus, we can imagine one of those sheepfolds in which the flocks of various shepherds are gathered together, for the night, under the ever-watchful eye of one caretaker (John 10: 1-10).
At dawn, watch shepherd calls his sheep by name and leads them out to pasture.
The same lesson can be learned from the special film ‘Babe’, some years ago now. Nevertheless, ‘a parable’! This little pig, aspiring to the role of ‘sheep pig’ has to have a special language to convince the sheep to follow his instructions. The sheep have to trust Babe, who has the vocation to deal gently, if firmly, with sheep.
Alas! Shepherds of the Jewish people didn’t treat them gently at all. They sought unity, through coercion, by promoting national pride, by maintaining the privileges of ‘higher’ castes, and by discrimination against non-Jews.
On the other hand, Jesus united His people solely by attracting them to Himself, by letting people experience who He was. Is Jesus taught or caught? All who were attracted by Him who recognised His voice and believed His word, were His people.
Those who trust in His way, and only they, are His. He would recruit, from among the Jews, those who trusted his ways. And, he would recruit from other believers.
Our Church has no national boundaries.
The Church is meant to move through history without fear or favour. We humbly confess we have not always achieved this goal.

Sunday, 20 April 2008

5th Sunday of Easter - When you see me, You see the Father

Some years ago I wrote the following for the 5th Sunday of Easter: 'The Australian secular press has recently covered discussions within Catholicism about the shape of the future Church in this country'.
Each diocese tackled the question differently. There was controversy and heated argument right around the nation. Then Rome solved the problem for us Australians. We were to be the Catholic Church in Australia. Not the Australian Catholic Church. But, we should be reassured that this dialectic is nothing new. It is splendidly Catholic.
Today’s first reading (Acts 6: 1-7) proves that.
In the first 30 years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, there arose a bitter conflict between two factions, the Jewish Christians were being favoured in the distribution of welfare. They had the 'numbers', hence the power. They helped their own first.
The Greeks complained. The leadership intervened. Seven Greek deacons were commissioned to preach care to both factions. (Deacons! Where art thou?)
Be that as it may, we should note that from the earliest times, the Church has been innovative in solving pastoral problems.
Australian Catholics, not just bishops, should expect to be challenged by the Spirit to discover new and unexpected solutions to contemporary problems facing Catholicism today.
The National Council of Priests has recently written to global and local HQ’s about this very question. Check the internet for the repot.
Our Gospel passage (John 14: 1-12, as we should expect from John, preaches the core of catholic spirituality. 'When you see me, You see the Father'. The setting for Jesus’ speech was the Last Supper, or immediately after it.
Those who had lived intimately with Him for several months would soon need to discover another way of living with the Risen and present, though invisible Lord.
'I was with You' said Jesus: henceforth, 'I shall be in You'.
Heaven is not like a performance, the same for everyone in the audience. God’s radiance will draw from each one the resonance only He can bring forth.
Christ enables us to enter into the divine family. Thus we need, no longer, speak of approaching God as if He were far from us. We need no longer feel as if God were a single person in front of us. We enter into the mysterious community life of the Divine Persons.
This is the scriptural source for developing a modern spirituality able to energise contemporary lay people living in a hectic secular society.

Sunday, 27 April 2007

6th Sunday of Easter - We must go where angels fear to tread

Our first reading (Acts 8: 5-8, 14-17) gives an insight about what it is to be Christian. Within the first 30 years after Jesus’ disappearance (my way of describing the resurrection and ascension), there were power struggles galore.
The ‘true blue’ Jews wanted the Jewish Christian sect suppressed. There were arrests, court-cases, miraculous escapes from custody and the killing of Stephen.
The process of selecting a new Pope, hopefully, shows the same spirit at work.
The ‘troubles’ caused Philip, a Greek Christian, to leave Jerusalem and preach the Gospel in Samaria. However, this was a politically incorrect thing to do. All Jews, including converts to Christianity, weren’t keen on Samaritans who were considered heretical Jews at best or pagan, at worst. Philip discovered an eager enthusiasm in Samaria for the Gospel. A pervading sense of joy dominated the area where Samaritans accepted Jesus as the Christ.
Word got to Jerusalem, where Peter and John were in charge – and a miracle occurred. Peter & John, risking their own reputation in the Jerusalem church, went to Samaria and endorsed Philip’s mission.
Modern Catholics can learn from this experience.
Jesus, about to leave His disciples ‘in charge of the shop’ urged His followers to keep His commands (John 14: 15-21). He, also, promised them the gift of the Spirit.
That’s how Jesus ‘comes back’ to us today: if we live His spirit, keeping His few, but essential commandments, we shall recognise Him as alive among us.
It took time for early Jewish Christians to accept that Our Lord’s commandments were few. He didn’t command Saturday observance of the Sabbath. He didn’t command abstinence from certain foods, like non-kosher meat. He didn’t command circumcision of the flesh but He did insist on a spiritual cutting of hard heart.
He promised a Helper, we call the Holy Spirit, to shed light on complex social issues, confronted by churches then and now. The real marvel of help from the Spirit of Truth is not that the Church has never made mistakes. It is, however, that, over and over again, above all generational mistakes, the Church have never been deserted by God’s truth.
Discernment of the Spirit will save the Irish and US church, the two most publicised examples of a fall from Grace. Discernment has been going on within churches since the beginning.
Founders of religious orders and spiritual movements have been providential exponents of the Spiritual and of discernment. Every baptised person has the grace of discernment.
Now is the right time for all of us to exercise that blessed gift.

Sunday, 3 May 2008

Ascension of the Lord - They fell down before me

Catholicism has shown itself, by promoting World Youth Day, to be aware of its Post Ascension mission.
The Ascension is the turning point between Jesus' own ministry and the end of the Church's mission: a time that looks towards the return of the Lord.
Other biblical incidents, such as Elijah's own ascension in the fiery chariot and God's glory leaving the Temple, suggested to Luke the imagery he used to describe Jesus' leaving (Acts 1:1-11).
It's good that we have a Sunday celebration of the Ascension. It's so important to see the Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost as one, extended Passover. We shall spend months reviewing the words and deeds of Jesus during His three-year ministry.
Now we have a month or more to deepen our realisation that it's good that Our Lord disappeared! Otherwise, how could we have accepted responsibility for spreading the Gospel message to every age and culture?
The disciples were naturally disappointed on two counts; one, that Jesus was no longer visible to them and, two, that they were not the cadre of a liberation army to install a new messianic leadership in Jerusalem.
It took till Pentecost for them to realise that, while Jesus was no longer seen, he was certainly felt; He was gone, but still with them, in a new role as spiritual centre of the cosmos. He was, also, careful to have two other worldly beings to warn the disciples not to 'sit on their hands' but to begin the long, missionary journey.

Matthew, like Luke, wrote his version of the Gospel years after Jesus had physically disappeared and when the Apostles were already faced with all kinds of questions from the ever-increasing members of the earliest church communities.
He, Matthew, needed to emphasise three non-negotiable elements for genuine churches: (i) the universal Lordship claimed by Jesus; (ii) the Apostles' authority to speak to all nations; and (iii) the continuing presence of the Lord Jesus among His followers. Today's short gospel passage (Matthew 28: 16-20) preaches all these three essential characteristics of any faith community aspiring to be a church of the Lord.
Matthew even makes us watch as the Apostles learned that their Friend was now in a special position of divine responsibility: 'They fell down before Him'.
They hesitated, at first, not because they doubted the Resurrection, as Thomas had, but because they didn't understand the implications of a mission to all nations. (Modern bishops are continuing this unique fathoming of Church mission).
Only one thing is necessary, however, and that is to continue to bring the Good News to everyone, everywhere.

Sunday, 11 May 2008

Pentecost Sunday - Lord, send out your spirit and renew the face of the earth

On the fiftieth day after Easter (which is what Pentecost means) the Jews of Jesus' time recalled and celebrated the gift of the Law on Sinai in the Arabian Desert.
It was a good day, a very good day, to launch what we may describe as the New Order. Just so, not only the Church but the world looks to our new Pope Benedict XVI to facilitate the coming of the New Order, symbolized by his visit to the US.
Expatriate Jews assembled in Jerusalem, annually, to be part of Pentecost. Today's scripture passage (Acts 2:1-11 emphasises that point by giving a list of places, comprising the world as the Jews knew it.
John the Baptist's promised baptism of fire eventuated on this occasion. So, also, did the breathing of a new Spirit into the heart and soul of humanity. Moses had brought God's Law, written on slabs of stone, to the Hebrews assembled at Sinai. On this latest Pentecost, a new Law will be written in the hearts of the descendants of those ancient Hebrews.
This is the answer to the question which so vexed the disciples after the Resurrection - where is Jesus' body? God gave the answer: ' Nowhere and Everywhere'.
The Spirit of Jesus provided a new language for true believers. Loving actions speak louder than words. That new language is spoken daily wherever and whenever love displaces hatred.
Responsorial Psalm 103 leads us into today's gospel: 'Lord, sent out your spirit and renew the face of the earth'.
As the Creator breathed life into the first human, so the Risen Christ, breathing on his disciples, gave them the Spirit, who renews all things and gives wholeness, once more, to forgiven sinners.
Jesus had spent a lot of His three-year ministry with people 'gazetted' as sinners. They were blacklisted.
He deeply resented, in the name of the Father, that the religious authorities of Judaism had evolved a flawed system of religious justice. People were outlawed, because of ritual and legal 'uncleanliness'. That system mocked God.
Jesus personally, and in the name of the Father, (John is the main witness to this relationship) provided a source of forgiveness and reconciliation.
It was, perhaps, the key element of His mission because forgiveness and personal responsibility go together.
After His resurrection, He was able to instill forgiveness at the centre of His gospel kingdom.
John wanted to record, not only the institution of a sacrament of forgiveness but, also, a sharing with the disciples of Jesus' victory over evil and death (John 20:19-23).
Today's Catholic communities are called again to restate reconciliation as the heart of the Church's mission to secular society - but first among ourselves.

Sunday, 18 May 2008

Holy Trinity - Jesus would offer Himself to be taken into people's hearts

Today is an opportunity to deepen ou admiration for God's own and latest handiwork - CHURCH.
Just as God is Trinity, so too, is Church - family of the Father, Body of Christ, dwelling place of the Spirit. Church as Trinity, is not only a dogma but first and foremost a universal assembly of people. Our first reading was chosen by liturgical planners to emphasise the intimacy meant to exist between God and people. It recalls a special encounter between God and Moses. Both had gone through earlier, difficult times. Moses had received the commandments from God - then smashed the stone slabs upon which they were written, when he discovered his followers worshipping a local deity, a golden calf. God and Moses met again to negotiate the problem. God insisted He was kind and merciful, full of compassion. Moses begged God to stay always staunch towards these stubborn people. Here we have a very early revelation of God's intention to share Himself with a sinful people.
Australian churchgoers need to be challenged to do the same kind of reassessment of God's place in their lives by pondering reconciliation with refugees and our original people.
Our Gospel (I John3:16-18) is from John, who made it his mission to present Jesus as God's last Word. Whereas Moses had handed over commandments written on stone, Jesus would offer Himself to be taken into people's hearts. Whereas Moses begged for God to always show His face to His people, however sinful they were, Jesus presented Himself as people's food and drink. God was, at least, after such a long and troubled journey of preparation, firmly embedded in the heart of at least one person, Jesus. And, through Jesus, God lives in the hearts of all true believers. The Jews had been taught to pray to God that he would come and condemn human society - the world. Yet, on today's conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, we hear the exact opposite. 'I have come to save, not to condemn'. Anyone of us dedicated to injustice has already condemned himself.
In his own lifetime, Our Lord kept trying to save people, especially those apparently beyond salvation. For example, he continued to meet with Pharisees, hoping beyond hope, that they would abandon 'bad' religion to accept him and his Gospel.
Our church, through all the small, valiant local churches, spread internationally, has to present to secular societies, working models of people living the self-sacrificing Gospel by serving others, not condemning them. This is genuine evangelisation.
As I wrote earlier, the Church is a trinity the Father's family, the Son's body, the Spirit's home.

Sunday, 25 May, 2008

The Body and blood of Christ -Jesus is remembering John as describing Himself as food and drink for believers.

We're indebted to our faith elders, the Jewish people, for recording and protecting the memory of their desert experience. As well as assist, God tested His people during those years, as was His divine right. God's people needed to practice confidence in Him (Deuteronomy 8: 2-3,14-16). Much later, God would again be discovered in the desert, this time by Islam.
They needed to be convinced that God in the desert was the one and only God - a radical concept.
He promised survival and development as a nation-state, an ethnic family, to those who followed His advice, (kept His commandments). They experienced God in the natural desert environment, but also, in faithfulness to God's gift of a moral code.
It's interesting that we citizens of a western liberal democracy sense the disaster that awaits us, if we don't learn to live morally, including respect for our natural environment, so threatened by our voracious lifestyle. Hence, the abundance of secular prophets calling for the conversion of humanity to reconciliation with nature. The Church needs to locate itself within the contemporary debate about green' issues, so as to breathe 'soul' into that debate.
Australians living in rural areas have to face, on a regular basis, the clash between conservation and development.
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