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26th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This weekend we begin the month long synod on synodality being held in Rome during October which is the first of 2 synodal meetings the next will be held in 2024. There have been many arguments on various things that people believe this synod will do or not do and those people will find that they are wrong as our God is a God of surprises. Above all else we have to pray that all those who are at the synod will have wise heads and give proper consideration to all the points raised in the meetings that will take place. In our Gospel reading for this weekend we hear the story of the two sons. The first son, who said no to his father but then went out and did what his father wanted. And then the second  son, who says yes to the father but does not deliver . The first son “thought the better of it.” He was open to change. The second son was set and closed. The ability to change one’s mind is essential to all healthy relationships.  

A mind that is closed, whether from pride, stubbornness or stupidity, tends to destroy all relationships, e.g., when we refuse to admit a mistake, when we are unwilling to apologise and change our ways, when we persist in prejudice against a person or group, when we think we know it all when we don’t.  Jesus surprises the people around him by responding favorably to the actions of the tax collectors and prostitutes who may have gotten it wrong at first but have since repented and come back.   Too many of us are down on ourselves for our past lives. Many of us can truthfully say, “I have made mistakes.” But we are here now. We are doing our best to follow the Lord. We try our best to receive the strength of Christ, the power of the Gospel, and integrate this into our daily lives. This Gospel passage points out something very important about faith and religion. Sometimes the terms faith and religion are taken to be the same. But they are not at all the same. The difference between them be seen more clearly if we speak of religious practices rather than religion. There is of a close relationship between religious practice and faith.

 Religious practices have to be based on and animated by faith It is easy to say that we are going to do something to please someone. If we really want to honour our God, we must find ways to do the will of God. Sometimes it won’t be easy, sometimes it will put us out.  The Lord calls us to a living faith whereby we enter into a living relationship with God. That involves something more than adherence to a system of ideas or obedience to a collection of rules or the practice of certain rites. It requires an authentic desire to follow Christ, whatever the costs to us material or otherwise. Through this parable of “the second chance,” grace is given to enable us “to change our minds.” We can start anew. This parable is Good News indeed, for those who think it is too late to change, or can’t change. Jesus  who tells this parable to us today assures us we have his help to redirect our lives – to say “Yes” to the God who calls and enables us to change our hearts and our minds in order to bring about his kingdom in our world where we are today.

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

In this weekend’s gospel story  we hear about the Laborer’s in the vineyard. As unskilled workers, they lived day to day just above the poverty line. In areas where such workers got employment, they got   together in a common area known to employers called  the marketplace that acted as their gathering area. The employers sought the workers out, hired them only for the day, and paid them the same night . Day laborers in the vineyard objected to the amount of pay the owner gave them as the first was paid exactly the same as the last one denarius. This tense image rode against the popular view of the Kingdom as a peaceful feast of the faithful in paradise. Jesus told this story to emphasize how the Kingdom differed from people’s  ideas and expectations what people expected and the actual kingdom of God were two very different things.  

According to Jesus, the faithful, even those who practiced faith all life long, did not earn the Kingdom. The Father gave his children the Kingdom as a gift. The pay issue scandalized Jesus’ followers the most, however? Imagine the most dedicated and hard working were paid the same as the others. And they were paid last! Beyond the question of money lies the question of social treatment. The owner treated those who worked for only an hour as he would treat his own family. Those hired at dawn were treated as mere workers. The owner gave greater honor to those who worked the least by paying them well and paying them first. The owner belittled those who worked all day long by paying them so little and paying them last. And, when the workers grumbled, the owner rebuked them in public. No wonder they gave him the “evil eye.” If our  ways of thinking and judging are truly far from the Lord’s way, then we have some adjustments to make!

Perhaps we  need to work harder in the areas of forgiveness, mercy, and generosity, to name a few. Maybe the answer lies in the first reading for today: My ways are not your ways; my thoughts not your thoughts. In other words the ways of God are not always in sync with what we want to do. So often in the scriptures, God has a totally different way of approaching things to most of us. To think as God thinks requires openness and a broad vision, free of self-pity and selfish brooding. It takes a habit of gratitude. It means sitting down and reflecting, “What does God want me to do in this  or that situation?” It takes courage, humility and grace to act this way. The parable of the  workers in the vineyard is the Lord’s call to all of us  who have received Him in word and sacrament to share generously with all people  what we  have received and that means sharing our resources and our time.

All of us share equally in the task, whether called early in the morning or late in the evening, we are called  to be the workers in the vineyard who  build up the kingdom of God in this  unjust and often times hard world. When we focus upon the needs of others, even if they encroach upon our rights, we give  ourselves for the Kingdom. Our work  becomes more honest and our leadership will then lead others to Christ. Ultimately, service means sacrifice. What are we willing to give up for the Kingdom of God as we proclaim the good news in what we do and say for others where we are in 2023 ?

24th Sunday in ordinary time

As we come to another weekend we have many people and things to pray for. We remember the people of Morocco after the devastating earthquake as well as the flood hit areas of Libya. We pray for the people of these countries as well as all those involved in the rescue efforts. Our Gospel reading for this Sunday is all about forgiveness. The parable of the unforgiving official is told in order to underline our need for forgiveness. When the king calls his court officials to audit the accounts, one shows a deficiency of ten thousand talents, a colossal sum of money. The sum is deliberately extravagant, running into millions of pounds, to heighten the contrast with the few pounds owed to the official.  When the king orders the sale of the debtor and his family into slavery, the official pleads for time. The king feels sorry for him and decides to remit the whole of the vast debt.  

The official, however, learns nothing from his experience, for he refuses to give a colleague time to pay a trifling debt; instead, he has him thrown into prison. When this heartless behaviour is reported to the king, the grant of full forgiveness is withdrawn and the unforgiving official is thrown to the torturers. What do we learn from this parable about showing mercy? The saying goes that the mercy we show to others will also be the mercy that  will be shown to us . We often forget that God showed us mercy In the same way that the king showed mercy to  the official!  If we think we do not need the mercy of God we need to stop for all of  us need forgiveness  and mercy in one way or another. I am sure you have found yourself in a situation like I have where it was difficult to forgive someone who offended you all of us have been in that situation at some time in our lives. Forgiveness can be very hard sometimes, and for this reason it takes a long time before we bring ourselves to forgive those who sin against us  especially when it might be  someone we trusted a lot.

In this Gospel Jesus tells us that God’s forgiveness has necessary limits, but perhaps these are just the limits we set by what we do and say. The unforgiving slave brings judgment on himself by treating his own forgiveness as a license to bring judgment on others which it was not. He thus transforms a merciful king into a vengeful judge by his actions. The problem lies not with the king, or even by analogy with God, but with the world the slave insists on constructing for himself, under which terms his fate is now set.  The moral of the parable is that God is merciful and forgiving to those who practice mercy and forgiveness. The cost of human forgiveness is insignificant compared with the cost of Divine forgiveness. Let us ask the Lord for forgiveness for all our sins. Let us also forgive all those who have sinned against us in word or deed because that is what our father in heaven asks us to do in this gospel story. Let us pray that the lord will show us his loving mercy and grant us his saving help as we move forward in faith and hope.

23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

In our Gospel passage for this Sunday St Matthew recounts Jesus’ instructions to the disciples about how they should deal with a brother who does something wrong. This same instruction applies to us and our dealings with other people in the here and now of today. This passage is very different from those of the two previous Sundays. They were dramatic stories, marked by deep emotions and with deep implications for the characters involved. This is a very practical common-sense teaching on that most common and most prosaic of community problems – conflict. It is a great wisdom teaching which continues to be valid for us in our own time. Management has become a science today, and Jesus teaching stands for us as a model of how to “manage” conflict in any situation.  

It is the duty of the disciple we are told  to point out the error and even if our correction might not be well received. St Matthew wants to let the Christians in his community know how to deal with those who drift away from the teaching of Christ or blatantly contravene the commandments.  Matthew chooses those words of Jesus which most stress the authority and the competence of the Christian community, the Church, to deal with these cases: Whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.  However, there are some safeguards built into this teaching on reproving those who go astray. Jesus says that first of all you must have it out with him alone. This might lead to a speedy solution and the person’s good name is preserved. Yet it seems  from the gospel reading that the only sanction is that the person be excluded from the community of the Church.

That is surely the meaning of the words: treat him like a pagan or a tax collector treat him as an outsider. But in considering such matters we must be very careful; for getting all worked up about the behavior of someone else  can frequently be a sign of something else, something much closer to home.  Encountering the truth about another person and ourselves is daunting  because it makes us face up to the other person and ourselves and the weaknesses that are part of us and all we are. We may try to make others a function of our egos, but it fails. Rather than enter the struggle, in many cases we ignore it. Sadly in some things that have taken place in the Church this seems to have been what has happened as people did not enter the struggle to put things right at the time they happened. In a society where individualism prevails, people  usually “mind their own business’: But together all of us  form a community of faith and love.

That spirit of love, concern, and caring characterizes the members of Christ’s Church. Our human relationships mirror our relationship with God sometimes good  often times not so good.  And this is why the Lord tells us today that when we make the decisions that ultimately matter about how we are going to use the lives we have been given, we must trust, not in the authority of men who believe they know God but in the wisdom and the authority of the Christian community as a whole. We have to open our hearts and our minds as we listen to the voice of the Lord as He speaks to us.   We should not be afraid to encounter the truth about ourselves and others as we deal with the world around us these day’s knowing that Jesus is making the journey with us .

22Nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

In our Gospel Reading this weekend we see Jesus starting to prepare his Apostles for the journey he must make to Jerusalem which ends up with Jesus on the Cross. In foretelling his sufferings and death, which took place some months later, Christ intended to prepare his disciples and other followers for  the severe crisis of faith that would hit them after the crucifixion. He also took the occasion to remind his disciples, and all the others of what their attitude to suffering and death should be. He told them, and us too, that we must be ever ready to accept sufferings in this life, and even an untimely death if that should be demanded of us, rather than deny our Christian faith. Peter is appalled at this prospect and tries to deflect Jesus from the path that lies ahead and yet it was peter who was crucified as well. After having declared Jesus to be the Christ, a title associated with victory and glory, Peter now denies that Jesus must suffer. Peter wants to banish suffering from the agenda; Jesus brings the subject to the forefront of the conversation as he knew he would suffer and give up his life.

Jesus faced suffering which could only be conquered if it was accepted If the suffering was to pass, it had to be endured. He faced rejection which could be transformed only if he assented to it. He told them “For anyone who wants to save his life will lose it; but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it”. The way of the cross which Jesus followed in Jerusalem was one which passed through streets and markets, by houses and palaces, by windows and doors. While it happened people went about their business not giving the procession to calvary a second thought and here we are in 2023 giving this reading a second thought. There are so many people who are suffering from so many things and situations in our communities these days and for many there seems to be no end to the suffering that they are going through mentally or physically. As Christians we live in the assurance that our own particular way of the cross does not go unnoticed that Jesus is there with us helping us bear the cross.  Remember the story of the footprints in the sand their was only one set of footprints in the picture.

As Jesus was carrying the person in the story, anyone who has a cross to bear is the person in that story being carried along the long and hard road of suffering by Jesus. Jesus notices and understands  what we are going through and he is our companion along the way he is our strength and our shield; his power is mighty and we see it most of all in our weakness. If the cross we carry is the price to be paid for love, then carrying it is love in action and I know many people who are actually carrying the cross today paying the price for the deep love they have shown to their families and friends.  It is enough for us to know that all our sufferings large or small were nailed to the Cross on that first Good Friday through the love that God the Father had to send us his Son to be with us for all time.

21st Sunday in ordinary time

These days we are preparing for the re opening of the local schools and the return of the pupils after the holidays. The children and parents out there are wondering what will happen and how things will go. We keep our teachers and our school going children and their families in our prayers as the youngsters return to School. This Sunday in our gospel reading Jesus asks the apostles “who do you say the Son of Man is?” Jesus was in Caesarea Philippi in the north eastern corner of Palestine. There no one would not look for Him. He had much to teach the twelve before He could leave them this was quality teaching time. So, He put the question to them that went to the heart of the matter, “Who do you say I am?” Peter acting as spokesman for the others told Him He was “the Son of the living God” Peter confesses the deep mystery of Jesus, who is the Christ and the Son of God.

In the light of this inspired confession, Peter is chosen to be the rock or the foundation on which the Church is built.. Peter received the gift of being the leader of the Church When Jesus told him “ you are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church” And the gates of the underworld can never hold out against it and the apostolic succession has continued from that time right until; today. Peter was first among the apostles, first among those who were called to proclaim the Kingdom of God on earth. Peter took the leadership of the Church at Pentecost. After he, the apostles and Mary, received the Holy Spirit, Peter led everyone out to the Temple and began preaching the good news to the people. After Saul became Paul, after the persecutor of the primitive Church accepted Jesus Christ, Paul spent three years in the desert reflecting on his experience of the Lord on the Road to Damascus.

He then went to Jerusalem to receive Peter’s blessing and commission to bring the Good News of the Gospel to the world.  We do not know how Peter got to Rome. We know that he was there, though. We know that Peter died in Rome, crucified upside down. The excavations under the Basilica of St. Peter revealed a tomb with the words, Here Lies Peter. We also know that when Peter died, the charism he was given to lead the Church remained active in Rome. The ones who took his place, St. Linus, and those who followed him, St. Cletus, St. Clement in the Apostolic succession. Peter’s job was to use the ‘keys of the kingdom’ to unlock and release the reign of God’s grace into the world. This is true even today with the successors of Peter right down through the ages.  In this work of faith, decisions have to be made for the whole community of the church. Here, Matthew’s words about ‘binding’ and ‘loosening’ have nothing to do with the forgiveness of sins.

They are a kind of pledge that the sincere and honest decisions of the Petrine Ministry have divine backing. It does not mean that these decisions are the best or most perfect ones. Discernment and decision-making are part of the job of being faith filled disciples finding the way of the Lord; of being the living presence of God in the world where we live. All of the successor’s of Peter he rock are recognized as having received the  same charism that the Lord gave to Peter to lead the Church and this has passed down through the centuries.  Peter is a lot like us. We really want to believe, to become the presence of God for others, but we don’t always seem to be able to do it. We have great moments of faith and moments in which we are deeply in tune with the heart of God. We also have moments when we fall back into narrow and harsh ways that cannot hold the power of God’s love.But the Gospel reassures us that, in spite of our weakness and the many ways in which we may be found wanting, God is still close to us and faith is a journey, not a destination. So let us continue our Journey as we go forward together in faith to our heavenly homeland that is our final destination.

19the Sunday Ordinary Time

The gospel reading this weekend is all about  Jesus  walking on water but if you look beyond the walking on water this story is really about the trust all of us have in God. We have no problem identifying with Peter he is so like ourselves . He is confident one moment and then, when things get difficult and he has bitten off more than he can chew, he falls apart. By then it is too late and he needs help. Life is like that, we start at something like a new job, college, marriage, or a project to help others, but then it gets complex and beyond what we are capable of. We didn’t realize it was going to require so much time and effort and maybe we didn’t call out for help from other people or from God when we were sinking or drowning. Not an uncommon experience in so many situations of life and in the way we deal with them.

God doesn’t always give us an immediate cure or a fast solution when we bring ourselves in prayer for others as well as  ourselves. Jesus shows us that our father in heaven is not distant from our problems when he reaches out a hand to Peter and to us he is our companion who makes the journey of life with us especially  during the storms that life brings.  At times we may well be floundering, like Peter, but Jesus reaches out to help us, to rescue us. What better image of salvation could there be than Jesus reaching out to Peter to save him from drowning. What better analogy could there be of our own lives and relationship with Jesus. We live messy lives, we doubt and we lack faith but nevertheless we are still moving towards the Lord and our heavenly homeland  For us there is a lesson in this particular incident. It is that we must continue to trust in Christ and his loving Father, even when God seems to have deserted us.

Most of the troubles and trials of our lives are caused by the injustice and lack of charity of our fellowmen. The remainder can be attributed to our own weakness in so many things. But God foresees all these misfortunes, and he lets them take their course, because they can and should be the means of showing us life’s true meaning and they should draw us closer to god. Christ knew the storm was coming and the risk the Apostles would run when He sent them across the lake. But that trial and the grave danger was for their own good, because they learned that Jesus was from God and they could always trust Him. Our trials and our earthly ailments are also foreseen by God and permitted by him so that they will draw us closer to Him and help us on the road to heaven. May we like Peter reach out to Jesus and ask him save us as we put our trust in you for you are the son of God.

Transfiguration of the Lord

We are now well into the month of August  and for many of us  the summer holidays are over and it is back to work. For others who have children the run up to school starting in September will shortly begin. As usual we are on a never ending circle of everything being the same but different as time never stays still. This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the transfiguration. In the Gospel story the disciples went to an out of the way place, a mountaintop. The  Apostles are responding to the invitation of Jesus to come apart and rest for a while and mountains were the best place to get away from it all. On that mountain the disciples heard A  loud voice from the heavens that told them, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

The Transfiguration was a grace-filled moment of clarity for the disciples. But it was only a moment along the journey of their lives as today the transfiguration is just a moment in the journey of our lives. The question for us today is do we listen to what Jesus is telling us here and now in 2023? We don’t have such a spectacular revelation as the disciples had on the mountain side but like them we come apart to our place of worship each Sunday and there we hear the voice of God the Father that asks  to   “Listen to him.”  We listen to Jesus In the scriptures proclaimed for us and they tell the story of  God’s forgiveness, compassion and unfaltering love for us.  The voice we hear on this mountain directs us to be not afraid as we listen to Jesus, because in our world  there are many competing voices that might lure us to ways of living other than the one Jesus calls us to follow.

Worshiping together as the community of believers gives us an opportunity to  listen to the Word of God and what it is saying to us,  and the word of God  calls us to point out a number of things. The scriptures tell us that we need the presence of God in our lives and recognize how good he has been to each of us. Despite the dramatic way this message is revealed to the disciples they are consoled by the words of Jesus, ‘Do not be afraid.’ They look up into the eyes of Jesus and they see their friend. We need to let people know that just as His Love for us has no end   it will be the same for  them as it is for us as it was at the beginning for the apostles his first followers. We do not walk alone He is with us always, until the end of time.  People do want to be with people who are happy within themselves.

We are Happy because we know that God is with us in all the stages of life. The disciples will have to delve deep into their well of memories after the death of Jesus, to recall those wonderful moments of intimacy with him, where he often said, ‘Courage, be not afraid.’ Let us take this refrain from today’s Gospel as we rejoice in the Lord who calls us to not be afraid as we remember that  Jesus the Son of God is with us  in our lives with all their ups and downs and we should listen to him as he guides us along the right paths that lead to salvation.

17th Sunday of ordinary Time

Here we are at the last weekend of July and the summer holidays are now at the half way stage. I’m sure there are many parents out there wondering when will the long holidays end it will be no time until the beginning of the new school year.The readings for this Sunday are about the wisdom of God which is very different from the wisdom of the world. Biblical wisdom is about everyday life; it concerns practical matters and guides us in living a godly life. Anyone who is  familiar with the bible will know the unique qualities of this wisdom. A person of wisdom may not be the most intellectually brilliant person in the room. When the bible speaks of a wise person, a wisdom figure like Solomon, or a prophet, it presents a person who is closely tuned into the things of  God. The wise one and God have a strong and intimate relationship and the recipient of wisdom is characterized by very practical, everyday knowledge that enables him/her to live an ethically upright life.

The first reading recalls how Solomon requested the gift of understanding instead of material goods or power. The psalm reminds us that God’s commands are more precious than gold. The second reading tells us to work for God’s purpose and that is not always what we want for ourselves or those around us. In this Sundays Gospel we hear the story of the treasure hidden in the field . The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field or a pearl of great price. When its great value is recognized, one gladly does all that is necessary to obtain it. The kingdom of heaven is also like a net that collects all sorts of fish. Just as the useless fish are thrown away, at the end of the age the wicked will be rejected. To be members of the Kingdom means to share our knowledge of it with others. To truly believe in Christ means leading other people to the same knowledge by what we say and do; for secret faith is no faith at all. We should be happy to bring out of the house that is our life all kinds of treasures to share with our neighbors. But these treasures are not physical things but attitudes that are virtues like love and justice and truth and hope and so on. The things that  we bring out from our treasure store of faith are the values of the Kingdom and the knowledge of God the father. God loves us just the way we are, but He refuses to leave us that way. He wants us to become his treasure for other people so that they can discover the faith which is the pearl of great price the treasure hidden in our hearts.