Fullerton T

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time

The gospel reading for this Sunday is all about being Calm amid the storm. The context of this passage is the calming of the storm when Jesus rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And he says the same to us now in all our trials ‘Quiet now! Be calm!  Jesus understood that all would be well even if he and the disciples perished or if the storm subsided. Mark’s original audience was a community undergoing persecution. Their leaders had been martyred and, they questioned what was happening to them. The church was undergoing internal strife as well as they struggled to combine Jews and Gentiles into their new Christian community. Mark’s church was hardly sailing through calm waters not unlike our church today. We hear  Jesus asking the disciples in the midst of the storm, Why are you so frightened and why do you have so little faith. He could be saying the same thing to us today as many lack faith in God and humankind.  For many of us these days we are frightened with the various events that are ongoing throughout the world. Especially the COVID19 pandemic. When that storm comes Jesus reminds us of the glory of the life to come after the storms of life have ended.

He changes the darkness that is often in our daily lives into the sunshine of everlasting life, and replaces our distress with comfort and peace. When we don’t know the best way forward or the best way out a particular problem Jesus gives us peace to make the decisions needed at that time. At such a crossroads of life, we can ask him in prayer, ‘Lord, what road should I take what way should I Go?’ The best way will become so much clearer, and bring us calmness and peace of mind as well as the knowledge of a decision well made. We have so many things to occupy our minds these days with pandemic and so many other things that are going on in our lives and the lives of those around us. Despite everything that is going on we believe that Jesus accompanies us on our journey to God, that he is “on board” with us. Sometimes, when we see such disorder and chaos around our world, we might wonder if Jesus has chosen to sleep through disaster – even though we know that his presence is no insurance against our own fear and anxiety.  To journey with Jesus is all about going through the storms, not around them. The peace of our lives will be disturbed. But we know that the disciples of Jesus went on to face hardship and rejection. Ultimately, many of them came face to face with a violent death and martyrdom.

What kept them going is what keeps us going: and that is our faith that  tells us  God the Father is in charge and  he is the person who brings calm of all chaos the storms of life bring, it is the faith which tells us that there is no storm that will not be stilled by the peaceful presence of god. So let us be at peace amid the storms of our lives for God is in Charge and he knows we will get through whatever happens because we have faith.

11th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This weekend we celebrate the 11^th Sunday of ordinary time as we continue to slowly get back to a sort of normality after COVID19.  Jesus seemed especially fond of using parables and we hear once again the parable  of the mustard seed the ancient Middle Eastern parable is an explicit comparison of one item or one person to another. Jesus’ parables tell his listeners what God is like by comparing God the father and what he might do to something familiar and known to the people from the culture of the time in this case the wee mustard seed. The faith that we have handed down to us through the generations is represented in this Sundays Gospel by the mustard seed and that faith is something that all of us need to nourish. When the seed that is the Word of God takes root within us the Kingdom grows. We are called upon hearing the Word to meditate upon it in prayer so that it may take root in us and bear fruit.  We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, and that of history the page on which the ‘today’ of God is written.

The parable of the seed shows us that there is an almighty power working for us through the smallest thing the mustard seed. Our part is simply to do a good job preparing the soil of our hearts and then when the seed is  planted within us we let God take over.  The word  of God calls for a lot of hard work, especially during these post-pandemic days when we are struggling to understand what has happened as we move forward. We are challenged to apply ourselves where we see the needs are, which might be as close as in our own homes and streets right where we live. As we work we will see the Church continues to grow; for the Lord, not people, gives the Church spiritual growth. The Church will adjust and flourish in the future just as it has in the past as it rises to the challenges of daily life.  When we are confronted with all kinds of things that run against what we believe in  we should not despair, the Church not only lives on through the muddle and the mire of the world, it actually grows.  We also grow like the mustard seed slowly and surely as long as we do everything possible to stay united in faith with Jesus and the Church. For in the face of turmoil, outside and within God is with us.

When we think of the small beginnings of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee to the spread of his message throughout the world, we appreciate the vast growth from the small mustard seed that has taken place over the years. We have reason to rejoice in God’s work, that the kingdom still attracts and welcomes so many different people. We are part of that kingdom so let us rejoice and be glad in it for the lord has done great things for us and holy is his name.

Corpus Christi

As we celebrate corpus Christi we pray for all those who are contemplating whether they should return to the Mass and Sacramental life of the Church we need to pray for them that they will return. In many places throughout the world the Feast of Corpus Christi would have been celebrated last Thursday but we in Ireland celebrate this feast on the weekend after Trinity Sunday. On Saturday 5^th June we have 4 First communion ceremonies in our parish for our school kids. With the COVID19 regulations in force things are different but what we were celebrating is the same as the children receive Jesus in the blessed sacrament for the first time.  The readings for this feast mirror the readings of Holy Thursday evening when Jesus gave us an everlasting memorial of his body and blood. The Gospel Reading tells us as they were eating he took some bread, and when he had said the blessing he broke it and gave it to them. ‘Take it,’ he said ‘this is my body.’

Then he took a cup, and when he had returned thanks he gave it to them, and all drank from it, and he said to them, ‘This is my blood, the blood of the covenant, which is to be poured out for many. This is what we celebrate every time we come to Mass the new and everlasting covenant. In the action of the Mass we hold as sacred the memory of Jesus, we share the bread that is broken, we accept the cup that is held out to us. When we see the Eucharistic Bread, we believe that it is Jesus who is there before us:  such is our faith in the Eucharist.  The Church teaches that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” (CCC 1324)  This means that, because Christ is really present in the Eucharist, we recognize that all the graces we enjoy as Catholics come from this great Sacrament, and all we aspire to, the fullness of the life of God, is contained in the bread of life. Gathered at Mass we bring ourselves and our prayers to God in the words of the response to the psalm we raise the cup of salvation and call on the Lord’s Name.  We have this hope because God is with us and continues to be with us in good and bad times through the sacramental life of the Church and through the Eucharist in particular.

 On the feast of Corpus Christi we celebrate the greatest gift our Lord has left us. By following in our Lord’s footsteps, Christians over the centuries have sacrificed greatly, in a labor of love, for their Christian way of life. Then as now, it begins with each individual person asking God to show the way and to provide the strength needed to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. This strength comes from the sacramental life of the church especially the Eucharist which is the body of Christ the Bread of Life.  When we celebrate the Eucharist we recall Jesus’ radical values the way he  talked  about God and the kingdom; his insistence on forgiveness; his opposition to the religious sham that he saw around him; his commitment to peace; his willingness to die to overcome sin all of these things put him in opposition to so many of his own people and all of this led to Calvary on good Friday. In receiving the body and blood of Christ we become his body in our world.  As St Paul says: “Though there are many of us, we form a single body because we all have a share in this one bread.”

 In communion we share with Christ and with one another; we become one with his memory. That way, his memory and the memory of the last supper never dies it is up to us to keep that memory alive in our lives and the lives of those around us as we go forward as one body united in Jesus  the bread of life.