Fullerton T

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

As we gather this weekend we remember all those who have received or will be getting  state exam results over these next few weeks here where I am. We offer a prayer for all those who have done well as well as those who have not done as well as they continue their education. In this Sundays  Gospel Luke tells us about the door policy of the kingdom of God and how there is no such thing as automatic membership. While Jesus is making his way to Jerusalem, someone asks him about the number of those who will be saved. Rather than speculate about the arithmetic of salvation, Jesus gives practical advice to all of them: “Try your best to enter by the narrow door, because, I tell you, many will try to enter and will not succeed.” The image changes from tight space to time up.  

Those who wait until the door is shut try knocking, but the householder regards them as strangers. The latecomers tell the householder about  the common ties that bind them together. They are distressed because they are being excluded, the people in the story try to prove they are part of the group when they say  “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.” Jesus like the house owner is not impressed with this type of superficial acquaintance: people who eat and drink in the same restaurants and bars, read the same papers, watch the same TV programmes, don’t always  share the same commitment to God and their faith. In the gospel stories Jesus has a habit of telling religious people not to be smug; in fact, the so-called “devout and religious” were the ones who rejected Jesus the most.  He was most critical of the judgmental religious leaders who were the very ones to condemn him in Jerusalem. Jesus is our example of the faithful person who goes through a period of trials trusting God no matter what happens. Through Jesus we come to know the faithfulness and love of God.

For Isaiah, a faithful band of witnesses will announce the news of God’s restoring love and they invite all of us  to see the manifestation of God’s power and faithfulness. For us, Jesus is the “sign” of God’s fidelity and love for us . The God who raised him from the dead offers us that same new life through him.  Saint Pope Paul VI said in his famous encyclical, “Evangelii Nuntiandi” that people listen more to witnesses than to teachers. Pope Paul was also right  when he said that the most convincing messengers of our faith are those who speak from their personal experience of God. We are called to be authentic witnesses to the Gospel message Passed down to us through the Scriptures as well as  many individual people. Our lives must be changed by our faith in Jesus. We are given the gift of faith; but a change of heart is expected as our response to that gift so let us not be afraid to change the things in our lives that need to be changed  remembering to give thanks for  the great gift of faith that is ours so we will be able to enter through the Narrow Door knowing that we have Jesus as a friend.

17th Sunday of Orinary Time

As we hear the apostles asking Jesus to teach the to pray we pray for all the intentions we bring to the Lord this weekend. There are so many things  that everyone is praying for but we continue our prayers for Peace in the world especially in Ukraine we also pray for peace and unity in the Church at this time as we remember that God is in charge. In The Gospel this Sunday we hear the disciples asking Jesus to teach them to pray. In response to this request Jesus teaches them how to pray in the words of the our Father. He also encourages them to be unwearied in their prayer because the Father who loves them will pay attention to their pleas.

Prayer is good, because it shows trust in God. As we pray, we are changed as the Our Father says thy kingdom come thy will be done and that is our hope and our prayer that the kingdom of God will come and gods will shall be done. Many people have told me that they have prayed for this or that intention but didn’t get that particular thing that they prayed for. My experience is that we often get the thing that we pray for not when we think we need it but when god knows  that we really need it.  There are so many different forms of prayer such as the Rosary and the Stations of the Cross etc. each of us will have a particular favorite. The greatest example of prayer that has been passed down to us through the generations is the Mass.  Each time we gather as a community of believers to take part in the Mass we reaffirm our belief in God made incarnate in Jesus his Son. We also bring all our intentions with us and we leave them for god to answer in his own time. Persistence in prayer is a worthwhile exercise because the God we believe in is not some sulky, withdrawn figure who is unmoved by what he hears and sees remember that our God is with us.

The message of Jesus in the our Father is that our God is one who cares for us as well as concerned about us and those who are close to us. So can we depend on God’s providence to feed us, to shelter us, to clothe us, to save us from violence? If we pray hard enough will God see to it that we have a new car, a better house, maybe win a lottery? God Doesn’t work for us in that way. When things don’t go the way they should, we benefit from our prayers. Think of Jesus in the Garden of Olives. He prayed what was coming his way would not happen. He also added he would abide by God’s will when he said Abba, Father let it be done as you not I would have it. If we stay in sync with the will of God and realize that he is in charge of everything  we will grow day by day, despite the good or bad things that come our way we will know that God is our refuge and our strength in all things.  These days when so many parts of the world are hurting for many reasons let us remember the power of prayer to help us to do the right thing in the situations we might find ourselves for God will direct us along the right road as we pray to him with a sincere heart.

16th Sunday in ordinary time

Wherever we are these day the summer holidays are in full swing with many people going to foreign destinations and many more staying at home.  All of us are sweltering in the hot weather that is in Europe at this time. We pray for all those in France, Portugal and Spain who are affected by the wildfires and we also continue of prayers for Ukraine and its people.  In our Gospel reading for this Sunday we hear all about Martha and Mary. On his way to Jerusalem, Jesus led his entourage into the village to call at  the home of Martha. As the good host, she served them but, her sister, Mary, sat listening to Jesus. Martha tried to shame Mary into helping with the work but Jesus would have none of it.

Instead, he praised Mary’s choice when he said leave her alone for she has chosen the better part. Martha loved Jesus as much as Mary did, and it is clear that he treasured them both. Her mistake was in not trying to find out how Jesus wanted to be entertained, while visiting her house. Her sister correctly senses that when Jesus comes on a visit the last thing he wants is to have people fussing over how to feed him.  So, while Martha makes the greater housekeeping effort, Mary understands better what is expected of her by Jesus. Her contemplative intuition grasps the real reason for Jesus’ visit.  He is there not to receive but to give, not to be served but to serve. He has something he needs to say and the one thing necessary is to listen to him when he speaks.  There is a whole theology of contemplation in this gospel reading, on how to receive the Lord’s visit. It starts off from the basis that, no matter who our visitors may be, there is always something to be learned from them. When Jesus comes to us he wants to talk to us in quietness of  our hearts and he wants to share with us the Word that brings us salvation. He comes not because he needs us but because we need him.

The one thing that is necessary for all of us, is to listen to the Word of God in the quiet moments of life and there like Mary in the Gospel  we will  find the better part. Martha’s roles of welcome and service are important works of the church as we welcome the Lord in the stranger and person in need especially these days when we have refugees coming to live in our midst from Ukraine and other places in the world.  There were many gifts among women in the early church, some like Mary  were quiet disciples attentive to the words of Christ; others like Martha were active in getting the work done. In their own ways, both Martha and Mary welcome Christ, each has apparently heard his teachings and shown love to God and service to neighbor. If we are to make people welcome in our community it will be by being attentive to who that person is and what they seek rather than giving them the impression that their presence is disrupting our well ordered lives.  let us not be afraid of being like Mary in the Gospel attentive to what Jesus is telling each of us today and then may we  take action to put it into our lives where we are.

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This weekend we celebrate the 15^th Sunday in ordinary time and we pray for all the intentions that our families and the people around us in our communities have and we also continue our prayer for the peace of the world as well. In our Gospel reading for this Sunday Jesus is asked the question ‘who is my neighbor?”  When I was a youngster your neighbours were the people that lived next door to you or those who lived in your street or road they were the families you would go to when you ran out of milk or sugar to borrow some or to share the news about the people and happenings in the area.  The Gospel story also tells us about the Good Samaritan it is a story that all of us are familiar with. It was the Samaritan who stopped with the man who was lying on the side of the road it was the Samaritan who was moved with compassion to help him. The Priest and the Levite walked on and passed by on the other side of the road because they felt that it was beneath their dignity to help the man. What does our Gospel story tell us about love for one’s neighbor today?

First, it tells us that we must be willing to help even if others brought trouble on themselves for whatever reason. Second, our concern to help others must be practical, and lastly, our love for others must be as wide and as inclusive as God’s love for us.  We remember that God excludes no one from his care. So we must be ready to do good to others just as God is good to us. Jesus not only taught God’s way of love, he also showed how far God was willing to go to share in our suffering and to restore our wholeness in life and happiness. Jesus overcame sin, suffering, and death through his victory on the cross. True compassion not only identifies and empathizes with the one who is in pain, it also takes that pain on in order to bring freedom and restoration.  Our world is mor inclines to do  things that hurt more people You only have to look at the war in Ukraine to see that. We are members of the community of nations that make up our  world so we cannot pretend that it’s got nothing to do with us for it has everything to do with us as Christians.

In these days with a lot of turmoil and confusion in the world the  words of the first reading ring in our ears obey the voice of the Lord and what is the Lord asking us to do ? we are being asked  to reach out in order to show friendship to our neighbours and those who have come to be our neighbours from other places. At the end of the Gospel Jesus askes the Lawyer Which of these three, do you think, proved himself a neighbor to the man who fell into the brigands‘ hands?’ ‘The one who took pity on him’ the lawyer replied. Jesus said to him, ‘Go, and do the same yourself.’ There it is in the readings we as followers of Jesus today are asked to go and  do the same as the good Samaritan to show compassion and not to walk on by like the Levite and the priest.  

Corpus Christi

In our Gospel story this Sunday we hear the story of the feeding of the five thousand. The reading and the feast itself are filled  with the richness of faith. Jesus fills us with nourishing food spiritual and physical. Then we are sent out to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom to all around us, in doing this we provide food for others. the Word of God and the Eucharist  continue to live in our communities and in the world. The Eucharist  is the sign and the sacrament of thanksgiving. When we see the Eucharistic Bread, we believe that it is Jesus who is there before us such is our faith in the Blessed Sacrament. The Church tells us that the Eucharist is “the source and summit of the Christian life.” (CCC 1324)   Remember, the crowd in our gospel story was first taught, healed and then fed. Their hungers were both spiritual and physical.

Now it is our turn, to find ways to address the physical and spiritual needs of the hungry we have noticed along the way. These needs can seem overwhelming. But, as with the bread and fish in the gospel story we take what the Lord has given us and give it freely to others. He will do the rest and all will be satisfied. The eucharistic meal is also a promise: one day we will sit at the heavenly banquet where there will be no more hunger, no more illness and our satisfaction in God will be complete. This weekends feast celebrates the enduring sign of Christ’s presence with us in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist. It is the Church’s act of homage and thanksgiving to Christ, who by instituting the Holy Eucharist gave us the members of the Church the body of Christ our greatest treasure. 

At the Last Supper, Jesus dramatically acted out his care and concern for, his bonding and union with, his followers. He got down on his knees like a slave, went round the group, and washed their feet, one by one. It’s interesting that St John, in his gospel of the Last Supper, does not mention the action of Jesus with the bread and wine. Instead, he tells us of the action of Jesus with a basin of water and a towel. In this way, John tells us the meaning of both actions of Jesus. It is all about belonging to one another in the same community of Christ, the community of faith, hope, and love, the community which is the Church. It is all about bonding and union with one another. It is all about humbly serving one another. The Eucharist is our sacrament of communion, not only with Christ and God, but also with all those called into the Christian community. So as we come to the eucharistic feast this weekend let us remember exactly what we are doing in a sacred union of mind and heart with Jesus the son of god who is the bread of life who leads all of us to salvation.

TRINITY SUNDAY

This weekend we celebrate Trinity Sunday, which is the celebration of the Father, Son and Holy spirit the three equal persons that make up the Holy Trinity. Today we seem to be celebrating a dogma of our faith., but we don’t come to church to celebrate dogmas. Today we celebrate the mystery of the Trinity and how the 3 divine Persons have influenced and continue to influence our lives. God is Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier  named for us as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, through our worship and prayer we are invited into the mystery of God. In the Holy Trinity the Father is equal to the Son and the Son is equal to the Spirit three in one and one in three and we hear this in the breastplate of St. Patrick. St Patrick, with a brilliance that the Irish justly celebrate found in the three leaf shamrock rising from the one stem an image of the Trinity which is still used today.

The feast of Holy Trinity goes back to 12th century England and St Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury. Historians say the great Thomas celebrated a Liturgy in honor of the Trinity in his cathedral. In the 14th century, the feast came to be observed by the universal Church.  The feast of the Holy Trinity invites us to contemplate the mystery of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Paul in the Letter to the Romans reminds us that the Spirit of God makes us God’s children, destined to share in the life of God, as Christ does. The gospel reading speaks of the power of presence and the power of the name. We believe that God is transcendent, beyond our experience. Yet, we are created in God’s image and likeness. The image and likeness of God is forever created in infinite variations and all of us are different. The sum total of everything we are fails to even portray in adequate fashion the complexity and utter immensity of God. Jesus came to save us from our ego-centric strivings.

The  proof in  all this if proof is needed is that Jesus was willing to die on the cross as a result of false, charges rather than reject the message of what God the father  is for humanity! The love of God is our model, it is the path we take if we follow Jesus and what he teaches. Today we have to ask ourselves do we have the courage to recommit ourselves to that path that is the path of the Love of God and our neighbour.  When the followers of Jesus  saw the resurrected Lord and heard his command to go out to the whole world, they saw for themselves the Trinity in action. When we live as followers of Christ, we invite others to join us on the journey  not because they see nice people living good lives. They, too, see the Trinity in action as God works through all of  us. Trinity Sunday is the day when we stand back from the extraordinary sequence of events that we’ve been celebrating for the previous five months Advent, Christmas, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ascension and  Pentecost . It is the day when we  are asked to rub the sleep from our eyes and rediscover what the word ‘god’ actually means.  Each Trinity Sunday, we only scratch the surface of this great mystery of our faith. In gratitude, let us begin and end every prayer with greater faith and reverence “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

PENTECOST SUNDAY

This Sunday we celebrate the decent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles at Pentecost which heralded the beginning of the apostolic mission to bring the Christian faith  to the world. It is the birthday of the church so maybe we should sing happy birthday instead of Veni Creator Spiritus and blow out the candles on a birthday cake instead of blowing out the paschal candle and we do that because it’s the end of the Easter season!! With the feast of Pentecost the seven weeks of the Easter season have come to an end with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, manifested, given, and communicated as a divine person. “Peace be with you” was Jesus prayer for his disciples as it is for us today as we listen to this gospel reading. These words have a particular meaning as we hear about the continuing Ukrainian war as well as many other violent events throughout the world.

With the sight of Jesus the apostles fear turned into great joy, and their Anxiety turned into relief. The lack of spiritual direction turned into a sense of deep spiritual grounding. The divine presence stood close to them and with the divine presence came a great sense of peace of spirit mind and soul. We too have the divine presence of Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and it brings Joy and spiritual grounding to all those who come to meet him in the Eucharist. We can’t ignore our own or the problems  other people have. Most of the time the problems in our lives just don’t go away by themselves very often we need to stop and think and pray things through.  If we pray through the problems as well as thinking them through we will find that they it will be so much easier to come through all the difficulties that are sent to challenge us. Simply put Prayer Moves Mountains. 

Gathered at Mass we bring our prayers of intercession to God all of us have our own needs, Family and friends, someone we know may be sick, people need work. Perhaps the person who has been in our lives for so long has died.  We bring these and all our concerns in prayer because they remind us of our need and they raise our hope in the power of God made real to every generation through the Holy Spirit.  Through the Holy Spirit our relationship with God satisfies our longings, and brings us the peace of God which is beyond all understanding. Because of God’s faithfulness, we give thanks, offer sacrifice, and present our needs as we remember the presence of God with us in all our lives through the good bad happy and sad times and we thank God for his enduring presence among us this Pentecost Sunday. Come, Holy Spirit fill the hearts of your faithful, and enkindle in us the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and we shall be created, and you shall renew the face of the earth.

6th Sunday of Easter

This weekend we celebrate the 6^th Sunday of Easter and soon we will be at Ascension and then Pentecost. In this Sundays Gospel Jesus promises to send the Holy Spirit to the apostles as the advocate. Although Jesus had spoken to the Apostles and told them many different things, he knew them well and realized that they wouldn’t remember everything he said Jesus also knew that they would have to endure many struggles, that they would have to face ambiguity and confusion, difference and disagreement. We see all of this in the Church today with many people agreeing with Pope Francis and many others disagreeing with him on issues of faith. The Apostles would not see eye to eye on everything; they would have different memories of Jesus; they would emphasise different things. In the conflicts that would arise they would have to put their faith to work. That is why he told them and he tells us that the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in his name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.

These words are a direct pointer towards Pentecost and the gifts that the Holy Spirit would bring to the apostles as well as us.  We don’t have the physical presence of Jesus with us the way his first disciples did when he talked with them around the table at the Last Supper, washed their feet, and gave them his reassuring promises. His farewell to them was the  real deal he was going, he would no longer be with them as he had been. But he assured them and us that he is present in a different way, in his gift of the Holy Spirit. In the Gospel Reading Jesus also promised the Apostles Peace  ‘A peace that the world cannot give.’ Sometimes we mistake this peace for our idea of quietness or tranquility, but the peace the Jesus gives is a peace that can be found even in the midst of turmoil. This peace is not something we can manufacture ourselves by our own power. It’s a gift that comes from Jesus, who doesn’t want to lose touch with us. Jesus chose his followers to carry out God’s plan of salvation. He chooses us today to do the same. By allowing us to participate in his work of redemption, he gives us a personal stake in the Kingdom of God.

With all the confusion ambiguity and disagreement that we see in the world at the present time as people of faith  we remember the great gift the Holy spirit. If we keep on trusting in the presence of the Spirit of God we will have peace in the midst of any personal, family, or community turmoil that comes our way as well as someone who will keep us going along the right Road!

5th Sunday of Easter

This weekend we stop and say a prayer for all those who will doing exams in the weeks ahead. Many people is our world put great store on education and sometimes they forget the pressure that this puts on our young people especially at exam time and not all of them are able to deal with that pressure. During this exam season we remember all those who are finding the exams hard to get through and we pray for all those who are doing exams that they may be inspired to do their best and know that there are people out there family, friends teachers and lecturers who value them no matter about the exam results.

In this Sundays Gospel Jesus calls us to a new way of living when he tells us to love one another as I have loved you.  At one level this is a simple call to love, at another it is a big challenge for us to be Christ like  to others in this sometimes horrible world. This means that we should love as Jesus loves, in order to be the face and heart of Christ to a wounded and hurting world. 

The love Jesus speaks of seems to be narrow and restrictive. He is addressing his disciples when he says, “love one another.”  This love may seem insular and applicable just to an inner circle of his followers. Is he telling us that the sacrificial love he calls us to applies only to those around us in the Church? No, of course he is not saying that because we know from other parts of John’s gospel that Jesus’ mission of love includes an outreach to the world. That outreach in our modern times must include all those who are on the margins for many reasons we should not leave them behind as many people might want to do. Jesus wants us to be united with him and one another in A loving and caring community. A loving and caring community that has a great effect on others bringing those who might be doubtful with it.

 What more articulate proclamation of the gospel can there be than a group of diverse people drawn together, not by similarities in education, economic status, neighborhood, citizenship, race, etc., but by the love that God has for them and their bringing that love for one another to other people? Love always demands the best from us and brings out the best in us. Being loved gives us surprising energy and courage. Love makes us fruitful, productive, strong and constant in doing good. Love is the flame that warms our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives. It’s our connection to God and one another.’ We are called to show the love of God to those around us and this is not easy to do but we should try and not be afraid to do that as we go forward in the love and joy of  the risen Lord.