Fullerton T

FOURTH SUNDAY OF ADVENT

This weekend we come to the last Sunday of the Advent season. In our churches we light the last purple candle as well as the other three leaving the last candle the white one for the first Mass of Christmas Day. It’s only in this last few days  before Christmas that we begin to hear about the “Christmas story” itself. For the past weeks we have been preparing ourselves to greet the Lord, when he comes. Now we prepare to remember how he first came, by listening to the prophecies of his coming, and by hearing of the events before his birth. We meet Mary, who herself had been prepared for the coming of the Messiah. She has received the angel’s greeting, and his strange news, and accepted her role in God’s plan. Now she hurries to her kinswoman, Elizabeth, who herself bears John the Baptist in her womb. John,  alerts us to the presence of the Lord, as he leaps for joy in his mother’s womb.

His joy is that God has kept his promise, and is with his people. Matthew is well planted in his Jewish tradition. He shows that from the very beginning of his gospel. By quoting the prophet Isaiah, Matthew tells us that God is with us; not in general, but now on the throne of David – as God had promised. The promise found in Scripture has been fulfilled.  By referring his readers to the scriptures, Isaiah reminds his readers that believers do well to put confidence in the word of God especially to sustain hope and strengthen faith in discouraging times. God enters into our world: it’s a world where plans don’t always work out and where people have to adjust to the reality presented to them. Joseph was betrothed to Mary; he had his plans. Mary’s pregnancy turns his world and plans upside down. Instead of exposing her, he “decided to divorce her quietly.” He was a “righteous man” and he will protect Mary from being publicly dishonored. He is not vengeful and, though wronged, displays mercy.

After his dream Joseph, “took his wife into his home.” The world God chose to enter was one of poverty, hard labor and political and military oppression. God took a big chance being born among us especially in those circumstances. Surely there must have been neater options for God, to make the savior’s path and work a bit smoother. But who has a “smooth path” through life none of us that’s for sure? It’s good to know that Emmanuel, “God with us,” chose to be with us his people who live in  the real and messy world. God is with us in the mess of our daily lives! So as we come to the end of this Advent as we look forward to the Christmas Celebration there is much to be thankful for. We  thank God for being with us through good and bad as well as happy and sad times and we also remember with all the secular razzmatazz that is going on around us that Jesus the Son of God is the reason for the Christmas season.

27TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

This week  we began the extraordinary month of Mission, October is the month when we pray for the missionary’s who bring the gospel message to those in other countries so that the people there will have faith in Jesus and what he teaches us. The Gospel for this Sunday is made up of two apparently unrelated sayings of Jesus, one dealing with the gift  of faith and the other a very stark and challenging reminder to the apostles of the call to service they have received as people sent by God to share in Jesus’ mission of proclaiming the Good News. We might be tempted to skip over such ‘hard sayings’ but we are asked to listen to them because the Gospel always liberates us from false ideas about ourselves and God and that can only be a good thing.

So many people have little or no faith and many who have been brought up in the catholic faith have left for many reasons. Perhaps we think that having faith means believing certain things. Thinking our faith is small can keep us from doing so many things that we are called to do by our faith in Jesus the Son of God.  The disciples must have thought their faith was so small they couldn’t act on it. But Jesus wants his disciples and by association ourselves to trust and act on our god given faith.

The alternative to acting out of faith would be saying things like: I can’t take on that responsibility, I don’t have enough faith. I can’t be kind to those people that will take more faith than I have. The disciples may have felt similar inhibitions after hearing what Jesus just taught about not leading others into sin and the necessity to forgive someone seven times a day (17 1-5). But Jesus teaches, “Act on the little faith you have. You’ll be surprised what you can do.” His example of the deep-rooted mulberry tree underlines his lesson to us about the power of the smallest seed of faith to work marvels. We may find ourselves doing something that surprises us and those who know us. Perhaps it’s a great act of charity; working away on another’s behalf; or, an act of forgiveness. Such deeds often win praise among those around us. But despite the remarkable things we might do, we must acknowledge the source of all our good deeds the mustard seed that is faith planted in us by God. Realising this we can say with those servants in the parable: “We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do.” We could also add: “We have only done what the mustard seed of  our faith has enabled us to do. “God gives us the grace to do great things in his name.

As we pray for our faith to be strengthened we thank god for all those people who helped us to have faith in the first place, our parents, families, teachers, friends and our clergy throughout our lives all of them played their part in giving us the faith.   Although Christ was speaking to the Apostles, His words apply to all of us, in our own lives here and now. Following the example of the Apostles, we must all pray for greater trust and faith in God and his love for all of us.

2ND SUNDAY OF ADVENT

This Sunday we light the second purple candle on the Advent Wreath and we hear the gospel story of the voice in the wilderness that is John the Baptist. John was called to be the herald of the Lord calling the people of his time to  repentance John the Baptist plays a prominent role in all the gospels, but particularly in Luke. John hears the word in the desert and preaches prepare the way for the Lord make straight his paths” throughout the whole region of the Jordan.” The Jordan was another important place in the faith life of the Jewish believers. After their desert wanderings the people crossed over the Jordan river into the promised land. They left behind slavery, came to know God in the desert and were finally prepared by God to cross into new life. All the readings share a marvellous insight: people begin to change when they are encouraged to see the best in themselves, not when they are asked to dwell with the worst in themselves.

Blessed John Henry Newman reminds us that “Advent is a time of waiting; it is a time of joy because the coming of Christ is not only a gift of grace and salvation but it is also a time of commitment because it motivates us to live the present as a time of responsibility and vigilance. We all need help and encouragement to leave behind all the things that have become destructive in our lives. We need help in thinking about ourselves differently, and imagining the good effect that will have on others. We have to take time during advent to reflect what kind of person God wants us to be, what God’s plan is for us as we prepare the way for the Lord. We need to have faith in the future, to see the power of God working in the change that Jesus brings to us and through us to others. In this Gospel passages John calls all of us to a better faith filled life. This  means the necessity, of an industrious, living ‘wait’ as we prepare the way for the Lord pruning away all that hinders us from making him welcome when he comes at Christmas .

As we continue our  advent  journey we need to ask ourselves what are we waiting for. Are we waiting for the presents and razzmatazz that the secular part of Christmas bring or are  we preparing spiritually for the greatest gift of God, his Son, Jesus the light in the darkness who John the Baptist foretold.

31ST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

This weekend we celebrate the 31^st Sunday of ordinary time and last Thursday we celebrated the feast of All Saints. Each of us are called to be saints and the feast of All saints  honours all those unsung heroes of the faith who are saints even though the Church has not Canonised them. They are the men and women who “hung in there” despite all sorts of obstacles, to faithfully believing in God and His Son, Jesus.   All of us have this “universal call to holiness.” What must we to do in order to join the company of the saints in heaven? We “must follow in Jesus footsteps and try to conform ourselves to his image as we seek  to do  the will of the Father in all things In this way, the holiness of the People of God will grow into an abundant harvest of good, as is admirably shown by the life of so many saints in Church history”.

Our Gospel reading this weekend is all about the first and greatest commandments of the law. In his reply to the scribe Jesus makes it clear that you cannot compose summaries of the Law while forgetting love of neighbour.

The scribe is pleased with Jesus’ reply and adds his own point, that the love of God and neighbour is far more important than any ritual worship. In supporting the scribe’s addition, Jesus places the demands of liturgy far below the demands of active love.The transformation caused by God’s love is so profound that it flows from us towards God and is expressed in love of neighbour. Like Moses, Jesus calls us to love God with our entire being because his life and death are a manifestation of God’s love for each of us. The scribe in this Gospel states that the law of love of God and neighbour is greater than any of the religious observances and laws concerning sacrifices. Revered Temple worship and sacrifice must take second place to the observance and sacrifice that comes with loving God and neighbour. Jesus says that the scribe has answered wisely about the superiority of love over any sacrifice and then says to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God. Our God is the God of history. Our God is the creator of all that is. We are God’s dream. Our living with God is not only in our places of worship and community. God is with us in the market place, on the factory floor, in the politics of life. Our God is with us on the streets, in homeless shelters, in the hospitals and mental institutions that seek to heal us.

As a matter of fact God is with us wherever we are and in whatever we are doing in his name. Our lives are not divisible into secular and religious though some might want it that way. We are called like the pharisee in this Gospel story to love the Lord our God and  our neighbour as well and to bring that love out into the world where we are.

21st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Pope Francis has Landed. I am in shock as I write this I didn’t think that nearly 40 years after the visit of Pope John Paul to Ireland I would be writing about another pope visiting Ireland with the visit of Pope Francis to Ireland for the world meeting of families. I remember as a 12 year old the anticipation of the visit and even now the excitement is there as the pope comes to Ireland. So much has changed in terms of faith and people and it would be easy to be critical and many are with good reason but we need to stop for a while and bask in spiritual sunshine that the world meeting of families and the pope’s visit bring to us and the world. There is much that has changed in my lifetime in relation to the faith that we profess and family life and I am sure that much will change if the future. But the words of Oscar Romero  who will be made a saint in October sum up what we are about we are workers, not master builders, ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future that is not our own.  So as we go forward we thank God that we are at this point and we acknowledge that we are not perfect as the Church is not perfect as we look to the future that is gods not ours to own.

In this Sundays Gospel, Jesus puts the choice to His apostles of following Him, or of leaving Him. Many of the Lord’s followers had left Him because of His teaching that He Himself is the Bread of Life. After hearing Jesus’ teaching on the bread of life, many of the people find Jesus’ language intolerable. As a result of this intolerable language some  of them choose to leave him. Today in a similar way so many people find the words of Jesus to be intolerable language as many Christians have got up and left their faith behind them and some may never return again. When Simon Peter answered Christ’s challenge—”will you too go away?”—he spoke not only for his fellow-Apostles that day with: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” but for all of us in our own time and place as well, people who really believe that Christ was the incarnate Son of God.

Peter made his act of faith before he was fully convinced of the divinity of Christ, but he was already convinced that Christ was close to God and spoke nothing but the truth. We have the proofs of Christ’s divinity which Peter and the Apostles later got. We have also the faith of two thousand years of Christian people whose belief in the bread of life as a sacrifice and sacrament was at the very center of their Christian lives. This belief was passed down to us through each generation. We have also the noble example of many martyrs who gladly gave their lives in defense of this truth. “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Lord we will go to you for you have the message of eternal life now as in the past and will lead us into the future by your grace and hope.