Fullerton T

33rd Sunday of Ordinary Time

This Sunday as we head towards  the end of the Liturgical Year we listen to Jesus’s words concerning the end times. The vision of the future in the Gospel Reading for this weekend doesn’t look very appealing. The bad news is delivered first of all. Jesus imagines a time of terror and trouble and persecution. People will be betrayed and handed over to the authorities. There will be wars and earthquakes and famines. Jesus says, “These things must happen.” Then there will be cosmic upheavals: “the sun will be darkened, the moon will lose its brightness, the stars will come falling from heaven”. After this catalogue of disaster there is the good news. Jesus looks beyond the time of distress to the final time, when the Son of Man will gather the scattered people of God to himself. Jesus sees beyond suffering and persecution to a future of peace with the father in heaven.  God does not call us to be anxious, but he calls us to confidence in the message we hear in the gospel and proclaim in our lives that we remain in his light. Christ remains our high priest who has offered himself for the forgiveness of our sins. God knows what it is to be human.

The apocalyptic prophecies of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures are a cautionary tale even for us today. Even though the forces of wickedness take control, God is still the Lord of the Universe and all that is in it. These narratives are meant to provide us with hope to stay the course, to hold fast to the faith that resides in our hearts and souls. That faith is the foundation of our charity and provides our spirits with the energy that is hope. It may sound like a fluffy non relevant thing to speak of faith residing in our hearts. The experience of the Jews, in this period a couple of hundred years before Jesus, is an inspiration. Our hearts pretty much dictate our actions. It is the movement of our hearts that provides the energy to take on overwhelming odds and preserves us through all the struggles. It is the overwhelming power of what resides in the heart that provides us with wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. If our hearts are right, then our lives are based on the Truth that is God’s creative love. If our hearts are empty of that love, we tend to get overwhelmed by threatening despair and hopelessness. The Lord calls us to stay awake amidst the distractions of life, so that we will recognize him when he comes again. St. John of the Cross wrote, “When evening comes, you will be examined in love” (Sayings, 60).

We prepare for the day of Christ’s coming by recognizing him in our brothers and sisters and by knowing him through  his word and sacraments. False securities and shallow guarantees will not sustain us in times of testing. God alone must be our hope as he has been for many people over the time of the COVID19 Pandemic and so many other troubled times. God’s ways must be our ways, so that when our securities and misplaced confidences fail us we can turn our eyes to God’s saving light and he will show us the way.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

This weekend at the beginning of the month of November we remember the Souls of all our families and friends who have died. Throughout November we think of all those who have gone before us in faith and we pray that we will meet them again in heaven when we get there.

The scribes in This Sundays Gospel need more than a defence counsel, for Jesus is putting his case for the prosecution and the scribes do not have much of a defence. The scribes were expert lawyers, who interpreted and applied the written Law through a complicated system of traditions. Jesus makes a series of charges against the scribes and what they are actually doing.  He criticises their habit of wearing distinctive clothes, which marks them as different from others. He criticises their habit of taking the places of honour at religious and civil functions. He criticises their habit of long-winded prayers, that are for  their immediate audience to hear  and not directed  to God. Finally, he denounces their practice of exploiting the widows by living off their savings.  

The gospel story goes on to tell us about the poor widow who went along to the treasury and how she puts in two of the smallest coins in circulation. In the arithmetic of the kingdom the widow’s offering is worth more than all the other contributions put together. The others who have given money give from their surplus, the widow gives everything she has. That is the key point in this reading she gave everything she had the widow’s action follows immediately on Jesus  critique of the scribes who profit from their status within their communities . The Gospel story about the widows contribution to the treasury is a good lesson in having a proper perspective of oneself and what you are doing or not doing. Her humility is praised, as an honest thanks giving to God for all she has and all she is. This should encourage us to try and stretch our resources rather than seeing the giving as an obligation or an after thought, certainly giving from the heart rather than for show is a good and noble thing. And that is really what we should be about giving from the heart recognising that we need to be like the widow of the gospel who gave everything she had. So many people in positions of power can easily fall into the pretence of high office. When that occurs, they are no longer open to hearing and seeing the needs of their people.  

Jesus hopes that his own disciples will take their cue from the example the widow gave  and not from the scribes who were hungry for all the status and honour that they could get. Jesus hope for us is  that we, his followers, will also take the example of the widow and be equally generous with our own resources. We are called to give our time, our talent, our understanding. We are asked to give not just from the abundance of all we have but to give from our hearts. Like the widow, we might feel that we have nothing much to give; but it’s that kind of giving that counts with Jesus. May we not be afraid to be like the widow in the Gospel who gave all she had.

28th Sunday of Ordinary Time

This Sunday we hear the Gospel story of the Rich man and Jesus invitation for him to give everything to the poor and  follow him.  Besides being a very interesting story, this Sunday’s Gospel gives rich spiritual advice for us. To put it simply, God is worth more than anything else in our lives. Jesus looks on the rich man with love; he wants this blameless enthusiast to become one of his disciples. So the challenge is made: “There is one thing you lack. Go and sell everything you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” The cost of Christian discipleship is heavy for this prospective disciple as there has been a heavy cost for many throughout the history of the Church. The man in the gospel must renounce the security and the prestige that wealth brings him; when he sells everything he owns, he must not give the money to his family or friends, but to the poor. If he does this he will have treasure in heaven. That treasure will be his new security. The sorrowful departure of the would-be disciple that Jesus loved is one of the most touching scenes in the Gospel. He is too attached to what he has to become what Jesus asks him to be.

 When he goes, and we hear no more of him, Jesus turns round to tell his disciples how hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God.   For us today Jesus asks the same question do you want to follow me and many have done that but for others the call has been accepted but it was just too hard to follow the path of Jesus and they have left the faith behind. All of us have many riches that have been given to us by God Family, faith, friends are just a few example of gods goodness to all of us would we leave everything to follow Jesus that is another question. Instead I think that we are called to follow Jesus in our world were we are by trying to be faithful to what Jesus teaches us as we pass his message on to others by the things we do and say that is a hard thing to do in the world especially when people put their own slant on the message of Jesus using it for the own not always good ends.  This Gospel text is reassuring but challenging. Sacrifice for the sake of the Kingdom is an essential requirement of those who wish to truly follow Christ. The Christian follows a difficult path in life but it is the  journey of life with a destination. And the destination is nothing other than the Kingdom of Heaven so let us take up the challenge to follow Jesus as we go forward.

27th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Our readings for this weekend  set the ideal of God’s purpose and plan for creation and marriage.  In the Catholic Church, marriage is a sacrament. A sacrament is the presence of God, the most powerful presence of the Lord possible in this world. In the sacrament of Baptism, God is present giving the Life of the Trinity to the baptized. In Penance God is present through his Son giving his forgiveness to the penitent. In the Eucharist, the Son is present nourishing the communicant and uniting him in an intimate way to the Divine Presence as Jesus is offered to the Father for us. In the sacrament of marriage, Jesus is present uniting the love of the husband and wife. Marriage, according to Genesis, was always meant to be a joining of man and woman in one flesh, in one heart, and in one spirit. It all begins with caring about the other. It all begins with a sense of respect and dignity for the other. It all begins with each contributing to the Then follows a walking together, side-by-side, holding hands and confronting whatever would seek to divide. The effect of all of this  is a growth in love. In that growth of love there comes to each an understanding of the magnificence of God’s love for us.

 Marriage is a sacrament, a making present the Son of God who sends us God’s Spirit. That Spirit unites us, makes us whole. Contentions and disagreements become not a divider but a pathway to greater union. There are many people who are in various forms of civil partnership and I am not going to knock them for not following what marriage is all about in the sacramental sense. The people involved in Civil  partnerships  have made a commitment to their partners and we need to show respect for the commitment that is there while being true to why we think so much of the Catholic idea of marriage and what it stands for.  The “rit of divorce” in the Gospel Reading for this Sunday was there to protect the woman from being discarded arbitrarily without any possibility of survival in a society where she could not work or support herself.  How does our society and our Church actually treat and those who find themselves as unable to keep the “happily ever after” scenario?  Togetherness for life certainly remains the ideal both for Jesus and his followers.  But our Church community has to face the reality  that many marriages break down, and some of the victims of a broken marriage feel a deep longing for a new life partner and a new start.

 But this raises an acute question for the Church community: Can there be only point-blank black and white refusals there is much debate around all of this as there has always been as this is not the black and white issue many people would like it to be. I have been blessed in seeing so many people getting married and many others celebrating the 25^th 50^th and even the 60^th anniversaries of their marriage commitments. But many people will tell you that their married lives were not always a bed of roses. Married life, like any human endeavour, requires effort, work, and discipline. The exchange of vows is  only the beginning of a life together it is not the high point. The term “partner” should be taken literally as true marriage means that the 2 people work together in partnership. Whenever marriage is celebrated and respected, there is peace, joy, and Love. So today we pray for a proper understanding of what marriage means in the catholic sense as we acknowledge the goodness that are there in other forms of partnerships that are more normal these days than in the past.

26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Few of us go through life without joining some kind of group or club. Joining a particular group, religious, political or social, can enlarge our world and introduce us to new people and new possibilities. It can help us to move within a relatively secure network of relationships. That sense of belonging is important to our identity: membership is proof of how others accept and recognise how we see ourselves. Rejection is a clear signal of disapproval and this is what this Sundays Gospel reading is all about rejection. The man in the Gospel who was healing in Jesus name is put before us as the example of someone who was rejected because he was not one of the apostles. The disciples consider Jesus their own personal treasure and they want keep him for themselves.

The Apostles seemed to have been an ambitious group last Sunday we heard them arguing over who was the greatest among them.  This Sunday they complain that they saw someone who was not part of their group performing a healing in Jesus’ name. If there had been laws  concerning  copyright at the time I think the Apostles would have copyrighted Jesus name and the power that went along with it. I can just imagine them licensing the use of Jesus’s name and then asking “How many times do you want to use Jesus’s name that will cost so much. How many times do you want to cure someone in his name that will be so much more”. They felt they were privy to Jesus that is to say he was the apostles and no one else’s, it’s as if Jesus was a rock star and they are his agents, with exclusive rights over what he does and says. What they really wanted was a tidy little religious box, clearly in their control but they hadn’t factored in Jesus and what he had been sent into the world to do and the fact that they were not in control God the Father was.

They forgot how compassionate he was, remember Jesus compassion for others never ran out and wasn’t limited to a few people or those who had the proper disposition to receive it.  There was plenty for everyone in terms of Love and Compassion  then as there is now. Jesus is the visible face of the God that we can’t see and yet we believe; we believe in the God who wants to speak words of love and joy to everyone, not just a few; who wants to reach out and touch all those broken in mind body or spirit, not just those who carry the right credentials. After they see Jesus crushed on the cross and later, when he rises from the dead, the apostles finally get the message and understand what had happened to them as a result of their involvement with Jesus. Then they would do exactly what we are doing right now, retelling the stories about Jesus as they set out to continue to write the story without restrictions or limits of any kind. When they went out to continue the story they would have been speaking and acting in Jesus’ name, not just to a select few, but for everyone they met, or came to them in any need. In Jesus’ name they opened the eyes of the blind, cured the cripples, and gave the people a sense of something special, the great love that God has for them. At first they got it wrong, but when they learned what it meant to speak and act in Jesus’ name they knew that everything was possible for them and that meant they were able to share the message of Jesus with the people of the world.  In our world today we often forget that faith is not about the chosen few but faith is for everyone who accepts it as a gift from God freely given and accepted as such. We need to understand  that we don’t always get it right and remember that everything is possible to those who have faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God and the message he proclaims and that is the  message of the compassionate love of God the father for all people regardless of who they are or where they are in the world.

We are called to take up the challenge to be messengers of Jesus in our daily lives sharing the compassionate love of god with those we meet wherever we are.

25TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

In our Gospel for this Sunday we begin with the second prediction of the passion. Like many things in the biblical tradition, a threefold repetition gives emphasis and dignity to the pronouncement. The predictions are also a reminder to us that Jesus was not surprised by the later events in Jerusalem; he had seen them on the horizon for a great part of his journey. The predictions are each constructed in the same way with Jesus’ teaching followed by misunderstanding. Towards the end of this Gospel Jesus brings the child to centre stage and instructs his disciples: “Anyone who welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.” In this instance Jesus doesn’t ask his disciples to become like children; he asks his disciples to welcome them. The disciples have a problem about welcoming littleness because they think that they are at the top of the tree and are above this. This basic Christian teaching, common to all the Gospels, is one that has not always been honored. “To be first in the group is to occupy the last place and to be a servant to the group.”

That means to be the greatest you must make yourself the least in service of other people especially those around you. Jesus taught his followers the true meaning of leadership. Leadership does not mean power but service. Power often strangles life and brings a slow death. But, service brings life, even from death itself. An attitude of serving others should not be a triumphal attitude lording it over everyone else, yet much of our history has been about individuals seeing themselves as better than everyone else. In this passage we listen to the words of Jesus about the child he tells us “Whoever receives a child like this in my name receives me. Whoever receives me receives God”. In the first part, the disciples are told that a measure of their discipleship is their attitude to power. In the second part, discipleship can be judged on the disciple’s attitude to children who are powerless in many ways. Jesus compares himself to the little child, the one who cannot resort to power tactics when threatened or maltreated. Jesus’ protection is his Father; his trust is placed in the God who will ensure his protection. When suffering comes, Jesus refuses to abandon trust in the Father.  

That trust makes him vulnerable, like a little child, but unless the disciples can come to welcome that vulnerability they will never understand the way of Jesus. When we welcome the stranger we might understand what Jesus means in this Gospel reading that wee bit better. Jesus offers us a permanent challenge to welcome the powerless, to take to heart the weakest members of the community. He places himself in their company. Their vulnerability is something that Jesus not only shares but values. May we understand that to be be first in the group is to occupy the last place and to be a servant to the group.”  May we take up the challenge that Jesus places before us in this gospel reading and that challenge is to become humble servants of those who need us whoever they are.