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Palm Sunday

On ash Wednesday we placed the ashes on our foreheads as a sign of our humility as we began our Journey for Lent and now six weeks later on Palm Sunday we remember Jesus entrance into Jerusalem on a donkey as the people raised their voices in joyful acclamation as they sang hosanna to the Son of David.  As we move from the Hosannas of Palm Sunday to the Upper room on Holy Thursday and then to the denials of peter and the Cross of Good Friday when all seemed to be lost. And then we come to the Resurrection when all that seemed to be lost on Good Friday was redeemed and renewed. So now we stop and reflect for a moment on how we began our journey on Ash Wednesday and where we are now as we approach the life changing and life giving events of Holy Week.  The entrance into Jerusalem is one of the very few events in Jesus’ life which is mentioned in all four gospels.  It is the only time that Jesus accepts and encourages public acclaim as Messiah. 

He even goes as far as organising his entrance by telling the disciples to go and fetch the donkey.  The key moment in God’s plan of salvation is about to begin and Jesus knows exactly how it will unfold as he knew and understood what the will of the father would mean for him. The first reading from Isaiah, speaks of a courageous and obedient messiah-figure, who says, “I have set my face like flint” against the beatings and scourging that lie ahead, “knowing that I shall not be put to shame.” The second reading from Philippians reminds us of Jesus’ total emptying of His divinity in order that He might identify Himself with the lowest criminal being led to His execution, “obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” And the reading continues but God raised him high and gave him the name above all other names. We move towards the heavenly Jerusalem because Christ himself made the journey to the Cross for us and now he offers to make it with us here and now in 2023. The full drama of the Gospel  begins with the crowd’s fickle acclamation of Jesus as King. It reminds us of our own fickle response and our lack of courage in responding to His love and truth.

 Palm Sunday and Holy Week are about Jesus suffering for our inadequacies and our own sins. This week is a time for us to understand what we are really like, and to find that the only remedy for our pain and our fears is love. Our journey during Holy Week is a journey about god’s love for all of us that is manifest in the cross of Good Friday.  May the passion story inspire all of us to try to imitate in some small way the all loving all forgiving Jesus who went through betrayal to death and finally to resurrection for us so that we will have life and have it to the full.  In just three years of his life, Jesus set in motion a change in the hearts of thousands, then millions, then billions of people. Just three years of walking around healing the broken, freeing person’s enslaved spirits, bringing hope, purpose, and meaning to the poor. Those “poor” included people with wealth, with power, with influence. But mostly it includes us ordinary folk who live with pain, suffering, anxiety, failed relationships, fears of inadequacy, lives lived on a hamster wheel in pursuit of wealth, power, influence, and accumulation. The Church leaves us in no doubt on Palm Sunday that we have now set out on the solemn journey of Holy Week. How will we mark this journey in the coming days? Will we let it pass by with little interruption to our normal routines? Or will we prayerfully walk with Jesus through Holy Thursday to the cross of Good Friday and then to the Feast of Easter.  It is up to each one of us to make up our minds how we will celebrate the great events of Holy Week that are at  the heart of all we believe in 2023.

4th Sunday of Lent +

This Sunday has a particular place among the Sundays of Lent. In Advent we had Gaudete Sunday, so in Lent we have a Sunday commonly called Laetare Sunday. The word laetare comes from the Latin and it means rejoice; this Sunday is a day of joy. Even the vestments may be different as the celebrant has the option to wear rose vestments instead of the purple of lent. Our gospel for this weekend  is  about the blind man, in this story we have another example of God’s choice, one which confuses the religious leaders of the day. John’s beautifully crafted story tells how a blind man comes to see the light in Jesus, both physically and spiritually. When Jesus’ disciples first see the blind man they presume that his affliction is a result of sin. But Jesus sees in the blind man something else: this roadside beggar who has always inhabited a world of darkness will be the one to display the work of God and point to who Jesus really is. If we are to really see clearly, we need to let Jesus heal us of our blindness  and open our eyes as He did the man born blind in this weekend’s Gospel.  This is a challenging gospel story for all of us even today because so many people are spiritually blind.

It is possible that the places and things we think we are seeing clearly are not as clear as they should be.  Remember that the ones, who were 100% sure they knew what was going on, the Pharisees, were blind to God. They were religious experts, like many other experts they missed the truth staring them in the face. The one who is turning their world upside down was the Son of God who was trying to open their eyes. There are many things that raise questions and upset our routines these may be the very places God is trying to open our eyes and give us the vision to set things right for our lives. The story of the blind man getting his  sight gives us an opportunity to pause and ask ourselves:  How well do I see? Do I see what is really going on in my life? Has the road I have taken made me lose my way?  Are things happening to me that make me trip up and stumble like a person walking and groping around in the dark? We need to ask ourselves: what is blurring our spiritual vision these days? What’s dulling our appreciation of life and gods place within it? As we remember the Blind spots in our own lives we also remember that faith always remains a choice we make that helps us to see with great clarity of vision. When we choose to trust in God and believe in what he reveals to us, we exercise our freedom to believe.  Our minds and wills freely cooperate with God’s grace.

Faith is not and can never be an act coerced by God or others. Faith in God and each other is a journey which takes along many roads and the road we are called to follow during Lent is the road that leads us to Jesus the light of the world at Easter. The question we should ask ourselves is this: will we continue to be blind or will we let our faith in God heal the blindness of our lives and our world so that we may rejoice in the Lord at Easter and there after as we continue our lives of faith.

Third Sunday of Lent

As we continue our journey of prayer for lent we come to the 3^rd Sunday. Our gospel story tells us about the Samaritan woman at the well.  What a surprise it must have been for her when Jesus, tired, hungry and thirsty, asks her for a drink of water! He broke all the rules in speaking to her and as we know Jesus didn’t let the rules get in the way when he saw an opportunity to make a difference to someone and the life they are leading. Jesus suggests that He can give her living water that is far superior to anything she had ever tasted. We presume she was no stranger to intoxication, power, and money! Jesus offers this woman spiritual grace that is living water. Finding her heart curious and open to this miraculous water, He proceeds to raise her vision. He asks her to go back and bring her husband to the well with her. Of course, this is the turning point of the story. When He confronts her with the truth, she could have flounced off in righteous indignation and denial as many people do when confronted with the truth of their lives but she doesn’t run away as many of us would do.

In true humility, she accepts the reality of her life. Because of her humility, Jesus floods her soul with grace. Lent is a time for us to let Jesus satisfy our thirst for the truth. Like the Samaritan  woman, we too have tried the all kinds of water to quench our thirst for happiness, satisfaction, and peace of mind without really finding it. Lent   is the time for us to find real joy and satisfaction of letting the Lord fill us with grace in order to fully enjoy the season of Easter. We will find that our joy comes from the well of salvation the living water is greatest when we share the gift of salvation with others by really listening to them, praying from the heart in a quiet place, reflecting on the Word privately or at Mass, and letting the Eucharist change us into the Body of Christ his church.  The Samaritan woman at the well reminds all of us who doubt, or struggle with faith that we should take encouragement to stay in the conversation with Christ. The Woman at the well  came looking for physical water and found Jesus, the “living water,” who would quench her thirsty spirit. Physically, our bodies are dependent on water: without it we die. Spiritually, our life depends on the grace and pre­sence of Christ, so he is like spiritual ‘water’ which refreshes, quenches our ‘thirst’ or longing, and gives us health and vitality; without it we are bound to die spiritually.  One of the responses for the psalms of the Easter vigil sums up what this gospel is really about  it tells us with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation May we find joy at the well of salvation which is Jesus Christ, the living water of salvation and life.

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First Sunday of Lent

With the ashes of ash Wednesday and the call to repent and believe the gospel ringing in our ears  we are at the 1^st Sunday of Lent.  Our Gospel Reading  for this Sunday is all about the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness by the devil. In the same way that Jesus went out into the dessert God asks us to go out into the dessert during the 40 days of Lent to undertake this time of renewal. Why do we have Lent every year? Why penance? Why fasting? Why almsgiving? Many people fail to see the connection. “I’m not a sinner when the truth is I AM A SINNER”  So why Lent? Lent is the time for correcting our faults and raising our minds and hearts to God. A time for personal and community conversion of heart and renewal! A time for coming face-to-face with God – our origin, our purpose and our destiny and being changed for the better and forever by that encounter!  The bottom line for all of us during Lent is that we should try to get to know God better by works of faith and charity so that those not too easy to detect lines separating good and evil will become more apparent.  

The Church teaches that prayer, fasting, and almsgiving are significant ways to become closer to God.  The decision for each of us is to determine what form of those three things to make our own this Lent. The temptations, to which our Lord submitted himself, are a source of encouragement and consolation for all of us. If our Lord and master underwent temptation, we cannot and must not expect to live a Christian life without experiencing temptations and trials. The three temptations Satan put to our Lord were suggestions to forget his messianic mission of redemption for one and all of us. He was urged to get all the bodily comforts of life, all the self-glory which men could give him, and all the possessions and power this world has to offer. In the same way all the comforts of life are put before us including the self indulgence and glory which is the exact opposite of our calling as followers of Christ. During Lent we are called not to give in to the temptations of this life instead we are called to renewal of heart mind and Spirit so that we can live in god and god can live in us through faith.   Jesus trusted the Spirit to take him into the desert to be tempted. Jesus knew the Father completely. He weathered the temptations that were presented to him by Satan in the desert. As we begin Lent for this year It is the way, the truth, and the life we seek and we pray to the lord hide not your face. We also  pray that god may give us his grace to make a good Lent as we begin our journey  on the road to Easter joy.

7Th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Next Wednesday with the Ashes of repentance we begin the holy season of Lent. On Ash Wednesday we are called to repent and believe in the Gospel as we place the ashes on our heads. For us the 6 weeks of Lent will be a time of soul searching and a time for renewal of heart mind and spirit as we look forward to Holy Week and the Easter Celebration. This Sunday in our Gospel we are told that we should offer the wicked man no resistance and that we should love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us these are strong words even now in our own time and place. Jesus asks his followers to take a different approach by resisting retaliation altogether. The response to a stronger person who slaps us on the cheek, takes us to court, or demands a service of us is not to resist. Similarly, for a weaker person, such as a beggar or borrower, we are to give him or her what he or she asks for. Those who are called to the Kingdom of Heaven are to go beyond the way the world usually works and serve God’s kingdom here on earth. We must, if we are truly Christian, forgive those who offend or injure us. We must love all people, whether they are friends or enemies.

G. K. Chesterton says : “We are commanded to love our neighbours and our enemies;  very often we find that they are the same people.” . It is very easy for us to love in a theoretical way all people as they never come in contact with us in a personal way and never tread on our feet.  Jesus argues that the love that we his disciples give is not related to the love they receive from others: it is not a social contract or a fair bargain it is unconditional. The disciple loves because that is what the nature of discipleship involves. That means loving your enemy as yourself and doing good to those who persecute you . A disciple is the child of the Father  and look at the Father’s gracious love for us as we are. He does not withhold the sun and the rain from those who oppose him; likewise, disciples must not withhold their love from those who oppose them. The love is offered not because Jesus thinks that it will change the enemy into something else, Love is offered because that is the example and the way of life disciples of the kingdom should follow. Jesus is telling us not to follow the way of the world, which often perpetuates old oppressions and makes new ones as well. Jesus is telling us that we should be agents of real change in the world by acting in unexpected ways. This means that we do not go along with the crowd but rather approach the various situations of life with new and imaginative thinking as befits a disciple of Christ. He wants us to see the world from the top down as God does. And then  by seeing the world the way it really is with all that is good and bad within it we will find that we are in a far better position to change it. True Christian virtue always goes beyond merely what is required. It is always willing to ‘go the extra mile’ in tolerance, love, forgiveness and mercy. It mirrors the excessive generosity of God. The perfection of true holiness is found in acting towards others, including our enemies, as God acts towards us all with love beyond all telling.

6th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This weekend we celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes on Saturday as well as the world day of Prayer for the sick. We remember  in a special way all those who are sick in the places where we live as well as all those caregivers who look after them.  Following two Sundays of discipleship training we come to the discipleship that is the  easiest to understand. It is about compliance, about rules and regulations. The First  reading from Sirach sets the theme very clearly. “If you choose to keep the commandments, they will save you: if you trust in God you shall live. Before man are life and death, good and evil, whichever he chooses shall be given him.” That is a clear statement about will-power, choice. There seems to be nothing about using our heads to think, to discover meaning, nothing about growing spiritually, nothing about forming our personal characters. Just show me the rules, give me the commandments, let me know what behaviour is expected and I’ll choose life.

Stick to the letter of the law and we’ll be saved from an eternity of damnation and that’s what the pharisees in the Gospel for this weekend were all about keeping the rules and regulations.  In the Gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus tells us that he has come to fulfil the law not to abolish or replace it.  When he introduced the New Law of the Kingdom of God Jesus said something that was absolutely shocking to those heard what he told them that the holiness of the people had to surpass that of the scribes and the Pharisees. How could anyone be holier than the Pharisees who were supposed to be holy men”!  They dressed well, they fasted said their prayers loudly for all to hear. Jesus explains, our external actions must be a reflection of what we are really like. If what we do is not a reflection of who we are, then we are hypocrites. Hypocrite, is the word that Jesus uses over and over to describe the Pharisees. They were considered the righteous and holy ones who in truth were neither righteous or holy in so many ways.  Jesus’ challenge was not only to his followers, but to the Pharisees and scribes as well.  

Their religious faith was to go deeper than exterior works – the right motives were supposed  to support the right behaviour. His demands are high indeed!  They seem impossible to achieve. The Pharisee spent a lot of time and energy fulfilling the Law like so many people today the law was more important than compassion. They were of the middle class and unlike the desperately poor, who were most of Jesus’s followers, the Pharisees had the education and leisure to pursue the purity of observance. What chance did the illiterate, overworked and burdened poor followers of Jesus have? For that matter, what chance do we have in fulfilling these teachings? Jesus’ demands are more radical; his vision sharper; his expectations greater in regard to  looking after his  poor illiterate, overworked and burdened followers. When we see our own record of doing good against the demands of Jesus in the Gospel, we all come away feeling helpless. Our own efforts look so shabby against the clear unambiguous demands of the larger vision that Jesus had.

May we be courageous in taking up the challenge that Jesus vision gives each one of us today that is the call to live our lives so that everyone will see that we are faith filled people who live our lives with the compassion of God for those around us in our hearts and that we are not afraid to show it.

5Th Sunday in Ordinary time

In this weekends Gospel  passage Jesus speaks again in the present tense, “You are the salt of the earth.You are the light of the world.” It is very common these days, upon entering a church or religious institution, to see the community’s “Mission Statement” prominently posted. Usually, such a statement is the result of a prayerful dialogue by the community to arrive at a description of its identity and mission in the light of the Gospel. Jesus’ mission statement to us, his followers, fits the requirement of a brief, focused and easily remembered summary of our task. Even those who don’t read much scripture can quote today’s teaching, “You are salt of the earth….You are light of the world.” Jesus begins to describe the task for his disciples by using two images. We are to affect the world the way salt and light affect their environments.

 Salt seasons food, and in Jesus’ world, it was used as a preservative. It kept food from spoiling. Light removes or pushes the darkness back.  Even one lighted match can be seen at a distance on a dark night. With the salt image comes a warning. “But if salt loses its taste…it is no longer good for anything but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot.” that means that if we loose our ability to show we are people who believe in Jesus then we will be trampled underfoot by the faithless secular world We must change what needs changing in ourselves and the world around us to be the salt of the earth that brings the saltiness of faith to other people. Remember the saying, “If it were a crime to be a Christian, would they have any evidence to convict you?” Would the charges against us  be upheld and what exactly would we be convicted by?

 The danger for the church and us  its members  is that, being in the world, we can take on worldly ways and lose our “saltiness” of faith. As salt of the earth we are called to draw out goodness in the world by supporting what protects, nourishes and enhances life, while rejecting what limits or destroys it.  If we cannot bring about better conditions through  everything we do and say  then Jesus is right, we are salt without flavor and useless for his purposes of passing on the good news. In this Gospel reading Jesus urges those who had just heard His teaching on the Beatitudes not to “light a lamp and then put it under a bushel basket.” No, “your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.” We need always to look outward to those who are looking for light, as well as to those who have given up hope of ever finding it!  As we hear the challenging call that  Jesus gives us we can feel what those first disciples must have felt  we are not large or influential enough to affect the world and resist the powers that “run the world’s affairs.” On our own, that’s true. But remember we are not on our own.  Through Word of god and the Sacramental life of faith we are formed and reformed by God. We strive, with God’s grace, to live out the gospel mission statement to be salt of the earth and the light to the nations as we go forward in faith and hope.

4th Sunday in Ordinary Time

This week we have been taking part in Catholic Schools week, over these days we have been celebrating what it means to be a catholic  schools. We pray for our teachers, parents, grandparents and the young people  that make up our school communities where we are. The Gospel text for this weekend is the story that  we know as the ‘Beatitudes’. The beatitudes introduce Jesus’ teaching about the kingdom, discipleship, the true meaning of the Law and true righteousness (virtue), interior disposition of the heart against external fulfilment of Law, trust in God and keeping the Kingdom as the focus of the disciples life. In the ancient languages of Aramaic and Greek, the statements of blessedness are an exclamation of surprise and applause. “Oh, Blessed the poor in spirit.” This is acclamation, a shout of praise. The first Beatitude strikes the keynote for the seven Beatitudes that follow.  The decisive word in this first Beatitude is the word, poor.

The poor are called ‘blessed’ and ‘happy’ because God’s compassionate gaze rests on them. The poor in the Bible are the humble people  who bear a burden on their shoulders. They are given God’s favour and because of this they are  identified as just, meek and humble of heart. All kinds of attitudes are included in the eight beatitudes. The poor the weak, the gentle, those who mourn, the merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted and the peacemakers. These eight blessings stand at the head of the Sermon on the Mount, pointing out eight ways in which we can welcome God into our lives. They are ways of living out God’s blessing. The first and the last knit them all together with ‘theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. Those who are called “blessed” or “happy” in these beatitudes can hardly be described as fortunate or lucky in the eyes of the world: the lowly, the mourners, those deprived of justice, those who are persecuted and abused. In structuring the beatitudes in the way he does, Matthew is not offering a programme that leads to worldly happiness; instead, he is describing what happens to Christian disciples when the kingdom of God breaks into their lives and our broken world.  The beatitudes speak of a variety of experiences that disciples undergo as a result of following  Jesus message. The result of this involvement might appear to the world as senseless suffering, but Jesus heaps loads of blessings on those who struggle to love and live the truth of the Gospel in their own time and place. Because of who he is Jesus will change us and others will change because they see the change that he makes in us. Without the person of Jesus, Christian discipleship is meaningless.

We are people of the beatitudes when we show the attitude of the beatitudes when we stand for the truth, for the marginalized, for the alien, for the victims of war, for the victims of  economic and political systems that serve only the capitalist when they should serve everyone.  We are stronger when we show that there is another way and that way is the way of blessedness that is proclaimed in the beatitudes. In that blessedness we remember the poor, the weak, the gentle, those who mourn, the merciful, the pure in heart, the persecuted and the peacemakers we who are the people of god inheritors of the Apostles are called to pass that blessedness on to those around us so the Kingdom of God will be theirs.