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11TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Here we are at the 11^th Sunday of ordinary time and for us here in Ireland we are right bang in the middle of the schools college and university examination season. It is a time of anxiety and annoyance with a lot of frayed nerves with moms and dads trying to get the youngsters to do the revision and they not wanting to do it.  We all have been through the exams and we all have got out the other side unscathed and hopefully with reasonable results. In all of this I think that we have to remember that it is not always the exams that count but that we produce well rounded young people who are not afraid of the world and all it will throw at them good bad and in-between.

 The “theme” of the First Reading, Psalm and Gospel today is “forgiveness of sins”. We hear the touching Gospel story, of the “woman with a bad name in the town” coming to anoint Jesus’ feet. Living inspired by the love of Jesus is the key to our discipleship – his crucifixion is the sign of his love, which is in itself the forgiveness of sins. A sinner among sinners, Mary Magdalene was greatly loved by Jesus. How could it have been otherwise? If Jesus loves sinners, he does so to love his Father in them and through them. Jesus loves his Father in us and through us! For we are but creatures But, as every man or woman was created in the image of God  (cf. Gen. 1:27), Jesus, in loving his Father, also loves every man and woman in Him. So Jesus loved Mary Magdalene in loving his Father, that is to say divinely. Mary, the Mother of Jesus, followed the same path as her Son. Indeed, she imitated him, while preceding him in time, having contemplated in advance, in the Old Covenant, the unique model who is the Saviour of men! Thus Mary also loved God above all, in loving he who became her mystical Spouse, the Holy Spirit, during the Incarnation of the Word.

Mary gave herself to God from the first instant of her existence, enlightened and strengthened by the fullness of grace in her. May today’s Holy Communion teach us and help us to love God above all things, through the intercession of Mary Mediatrix We are challenged by the Good News of salvation to imitate God’s desire to forgive. As people who are forgiven, we are called to be forgiving towards ourselves and others. If we refuse to forgive, then we will be unable to value forgiveness when it is offered to us from other people and God. We pray that we will be gracious in accepting forgiveness when it is offered and that we will be generous in forgiving others. Sometimes we think that, unless we forget whatever was said or done that hurt us, we have not forgiven. But forgiveness is about an act of the will — it has nothing to do with the emotions which may remain. And it is not necessarily about forgetting the hurt caused. Forgiveness is about deciding not to be controlled any longer by the effects of the hurt, and not to nurture the grievance which only makes us bitter and angry. On a spiritual level forgiving means recognising that nothing we suffer in this life is equivalent to what Christ, who was totally innocent, suffered and died to secure our salvation. By uniting our sufferings with his suffering, we strengthen our character and our souls. Only then will we be really free people, because only then will we be able to think about or be in the presence of those who have offended us without allowing their damaging behaviour to cause further hurt. The reality is that it is easy for God to forgive sinners because he loves us. The readings for this Sunday underline the importance of our faith–faith in the dying and rising of Jesus Christ for our sins, and faith in the mercy of God toward sinners. God is much more concerned about our faith than He is about our sins! Without faith, David would never have asked for God’s forgiveness. Neither would have the penitent woman of this Gospel, whose great faith and love so pleased Jesus. Without faith, we cannot expect to enter heaven so in faith let us continue our faith journey as the beloved people of God forgiven and restored .

Tenth Sunday Of Ordinary Time

As we return to “Sundays in Ordinary Time,” the liturgy begins with the tenth week! Why I hear you ask? Well by beginning here after Lent, Easter and the various feast days that are held on a Sunday the numbering will come out right at the 34th and last week at the end of the church year. Then, on December 1 this year, we’ll begin another church year with the First Sunday of Advent! (Now you know why this Sunday is the “Tenth Sunday”!) So As you can see it can be a bit of a jump to get back into the pattern of readings for the season of ordinary time. Readings chosen  are not the particular ones to celebrate a particular feast or mystery such as Corpus Christi or Pentecost, but the Sunday by Sunday continuous reading of the Gospel and Apostolic Letters. So this Sunday we get back into Saint Luke’s Gospel with the dramatic story of the raising of the widow’s son in the town of Nain.

 The ‘theme’ that unites the scriptures today is found in the psalm: “For me you have changed my mourning into dancing.” Our faith  tells us that the death and resurrection of Jesus has changed death forever – just as both Jesus and Elijah changed it in the stories read today. Christians will always mourn the death of loved one mother, father brother sister or whatever  just as Jesus himself wept over his friend Lazarus: but Christian mourning, while acknowledging grief, will also contain the hope of life and the hope of resurrection, as revealed in the stories we hear today.

 We look to Jesus as the Lord: he is the Son of the Father, the conqueror of death, who has visited us from on high to redeem us. In today’s gospel we see this in his raising a young man from the dead in Nain. We recall this incident from our memory of Jesus not because we expect miracles to happen like this every day, but because they remind us that the life Jesus gives us is not bounded by death. He gives us a new way of living in this world and the promise of the fullness of life with the Father in the world to come. The Gospel of Luke is the Gospel of the Compassionate Lord.  The message is clear: the Lord cares for each of us as individuals.  He is not too big for us, or too great for us.  In fact, He shows His greatness in the concern He has for each of us.And He calls us to follow. To be as He is.  In the Gospel of Matthew, we come upon the order “Be perfect as my heavenly father is perfect.”  In the Gospel of Luke the same directive is rephrased to: “Be compassionate as my heavenly father is compassionate.” It is impossible for us to be too caring, too giving, or too concerned about others.  It’s just difficult.  We have busy schedules.  We can’t handle additional emotional grief.  We find excuses why we can’t spend time with a family with a sick child, or with the elderly lady down the block. Many times people have said to me, “My child came down with cancer, and all my friends became strangers.” We were surrounded with help at first, but as the weeks became months and he became sicker and sicker, many people seemed to disappear.  Perhaps that’s because it hurts to expose ourselves to another’s grief.  But this hurt can bring support, this hurt can bring healing.  Sure, we are busy.   Jesus was busy too.  But He didn’t look for excuses to stop everything and reach out to the hurting. His heart went out to those in need.  He was compassionate. 

 The practical challenge, from reflecting on this miracle story, is to be convinced about God’s merciful love and to be sensitive to the difficulties of those who are less fortunate than ourselves. God is indeed compassionate, and Jesus is proof that God has visited his people. Just as the crowd who witnessed the widow’s dead son being brought back to life instantly recognised that this was the work of God, so we, too, strive to recognise God working, albeit perhaps less dramatically, in the events of our own daily lives. God was close to the widow of Nain and he is also close to each one of us. His heart goes out to us too.  He cares about every one of us.  And He calls us to be like him, to be compassionate. We remember what He said after He washed His disciples feet before the Last Supper: “What you have seen me do, you must do.” We have to allow the compassion of the Lord to flow through us to others. may god change our mourning into dancing as we  go forward in Peace as we continue our faith Journey 

CORPUS CHRISTI 2013

In many places throughout the world the Feast of Corpus Christi would have been celebrated last Thursday but we in Ireland and many other places celebrate this feast on the weekend after Trinity Sunday. Gathered at the Eucharist we bring our prayers to God. We each have our own needs. Friends are sick. Neighbours are losing their home. Kids need work. The person who has been in our lives for so long has died. We bring these prayers to church because they remind us of our need and they raise our hopes in the power of God. We have those hopes because God has rescued us and continues to rescue us time after time. Our relationship with God has produced fruitfulness, satisfied our longings, and brought us peace. Because of God’s faithfulness, we give thanks, offer sacrifice, and once again present our needs. In the story of the five loaves and the two fish, we learn that Jesus fed the hungry crowd by multiplying five barley loaves and two fish. He did this because he was concerned for the people who had stayed with him, listening to him and watching him cure the sick. In a sense, he was acknowledging their commitment to spending time with him.

 Initially, Jesus tested his disciples by asking them where they might get something for the hungry crowd to eat. They had no practical answer to his question, because Jesus always practised what he preached. He never asked other people to do what he was unwilling to do himself. He satisfied the crowd’s physical hunger and, in doing so, he enhanced the authority of what he had already said to them and of what he had already done when he cured the sick.

 The love and generosity of Jesus in tending to the needs of the hungry crowd offer us an insight into his own total self-giving for others at the Last Supper and in his suffering and death. Corpus Christi is an occasion for us to celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist sacrament of Sacraments. It should be an occasion when we enter into the symbolism of this sacrament, letting it teach us deep lessons about life, our relationship with God and with one another. Since the very first days of the church before St Paul had set out on his journeys or any of the gospels were written — our brothers and sisters have been gathering every week for this sacred meal. But when we routinely do anything, we often lose sight of just how wonderful it is. We gather for Eucharist often. We still carry out one of the oldest and certainly the richest rituals in the Christian tradition. And whenever we eat and drink the body and blood of Christ, we proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes.

 It is a privilege to share this Eucharistic meal which is the bread of life. We have inherited it from a long tradition. And with it we have also inherited a responsibility to proclaim the death of the Lord until he comes by the way we live our lives. The Sacrament brings the gift of charity and solidarity, because the Sacrament of the Altar is inseparable from the new commandment of mutual love.

 The Eucharist is the power that transforms us and strengthens us . `It spurs us on our journey through life  and plants a seed of living hope in our daily commitment to the work before us’ in the family, at work and in society. From the beginning of the second century, St. Ignatius of Antioch defined Christians as those who `live according to Sunday,’ with faith in the Lord’s resurrection and his presence in the Eucharistic celebration. By receiving the Eucharist, we are nourished, and enabled to nourish others as Jesus does. As it unites us with the one who satisfies all our yearnings for love and fulfilment, so we must let that power flow through us to a world more desperately in need of God than ever before. Let us resolve to worship the Lord in the holy Eucharist and never to offend and dishonour him by our words or deeds.

Trinity Sunday

RUBELEV ICON OF THE TRINITY

Today is Trinity Sunday and we think of the Father, Son and Spirit one. Three distinct persons within the one mystery how do we understand the trinity? We don’t! God, by definition, is beyond imagination, beyond language. The Christian belief that God is a trinity helps underscore how rich the mystery of God is and how our experience of God is always richer than our concepts and language about God.

 In the beginning was the relation of persons: Father, Son, and Spirit, so goes the Trinitarian formula. Yet this “glory be” is very different from some contemporary reformulations. Notice how “Creator, Sanctifier, and Redeemer”—a phrase sometimes used today—portrays the Trinity only in terms of its function with respect to the created world. It misses the point that God’s actual being is relational. There is otherness in God’s oneness. God is the beholder and the beheld, the lover and beloved. Eternal relationship is expressed in space and time. And the created world, thought and loved into being, is empowered to reciprocate. The human creation—“let us create man in our own image and likeness, God said: male and female God created them”—can love the creator back. With faith and hope in the otherness of God, we mirror the personal mutuality of the Trinity and reaffirm the order of all reality.

 When the Church celebrates the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, it is an attempt to summarise the whole mystery of our God into one day. This is not just a “theological feast” ` but a feast which should speak to us of this simple fact of faith: the Father loves us, has revealed that love in his Son, and has called into a relationship sustained by the Spirit. It is our joy that, as baptised members of the Church, we can somehow share in that divine life and love which is the Trinity – becoming children of God. God has chosen us, and we are his own people, just as he chose the people of Israel long ago.

 In the remarkable Gospel story we heard a few moments ago, Jesus reveals to His apostles and to us, the very intimate relationship that He holds with both the Father and the Holy Spirit, making God a Trinity of Persons. He urges them and us  to “let go” of their narrow focus on His physical presence and to be prepared for their astounding new role of life “in the Holy Spirit” that will expand their minds and hearts to “all truth.” The Holy Trinity is not a distant truth, for we are temples of the Holy Spirit and possessed of the truth, the power, and the love of the Trinity. May we be caught up even now in the dance and joy of that life

Each Trinity Sunday, we only scratch the surface of this great mystery of our faith. In gratitude and faith, 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. Amen.”

Sixth Sunday of Easter

Here we are at the 6^th Sunday of Easter soon we will come to Ascension(Jesus returning to the Father) and then the end of the 50 days of the Easter season we get to  Pentecost (The coming of the Holy Spirit sometimes called the Holy Ghost). The Gospel reading for this Sunday tells us that if we love Jesus he will come to us and stay with us and he is with us in so many ways especially in the sacramental life of the church. But he is with us in a particular way in the sacrament of the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ which is the Bread of life. Jesus also tells us in this Gospel that he gives us his peace which is not of this world. We have only to look at the various war zones in the world such as Iraq and the middle east where so many have lost so much, even the Holy Land where Jesus walked while on earth is at war with Israel and Palestine fighting over so many things.

I think that the Peace that Jesus speaks about is the peace of soul, spirit and mind that comes from knowing that we are all members of the family of God and that God the Father is with us in our daily lives and existence. The Gospel reading for this Sunday also tells us that Jesus will be soon leaving his apostles and yet here we are 2013 years later celebrating the rich inheritance of the faith that has been handed down to us through the generations from Jesus and the Apostles. The faith that has been passed down through the generations to us here and now will continue into the future. As Eastertide comes to an end we see the power and influence of the Spirit growing. This is the Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead, and the Spirit who brings the Church to birth at Pentecost which we celebrate in two weeks time. As we journey towards Pentecost – the climax of the Easter Season – we should be considering the presence of the Spirit in the Church today: the reconciler of disputes, the solver of problems, true inspiration for the family of God on our journey to the New Jerusalem!

For us Pentecost is about promise: the Lord at the Last Supper promises that He and the Father will be “at home” with all who keep his words (This includes you and me) – and it is the Advocate, the Holy Spirit who will remind us of these and all his words. Someone once said that the law of gravity and the law of love ultimately have the same source and are both driven by the same spirit, the Holy Spirit. We believe that all Scripture is “inspired” – the word of the Spirit – so as we listen this Sunday let us look for the fulfilment of the promise made by the Lord. 

FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Easter we are now closer to Ascension and Pentecost than Easter, but we are still in the Easter Season which goes on until Pentecost Sunday. the scripture readings of the seven Sundays after Easter describe   the reactions of the apostles to the news that Jesus was even more alive after Good Friday than He was before His death on the cross. The readings this Sunday begin to move us along too, as once more we hear the Lord at the Last Supper preparing his disciples for his departure: he does this by giving them a rule to live by, a new commandment. This commandment, “love one another”, is to be the guiding light of the community of believers after Pentecost and the coming of the holy Spirit it is the risen Lord’s parting gift to his Church. Paul tells us that “although his nature was divine, he did not cling to his equality with God, but stripped himself of all privilege to assume the condition of a slave. He became as we are, and appearing in human form humbled himself by being obedient even to the extent of dying, dying on a cross.” And elsewhere Paul writes: “Though he was rich, he became poor.” Do you not see what is new in Christ’s love for us? The law commanded people to love their brothers and sisters as they love themselves, but our Lord Jesus Christ loved us more than himself.

The apostles gradually began to understand how necessary it was for Jesus  to die in order to accomplish His mission from the Father, freeing mankind from the ancient curse. Each of the readings show  us how the apostles became more and more confident about the future as we should be confidentas well. In the Gospel, taken from Jesus’ farewell discourse just hours before His betrayal by Judas, their Master and Lord solemnly reveals to them a new commandment.  Love one another as I have loved you, that is the   self-sacrificing love for one another, is to be the sign by which all will know we are His followers. That love is to flow through OUR faith and works, into the structure and authority of His Church. Love is to form the basis for its   ministry as well. “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”Our new Pope Francis, in the short time since his election, has made real efforts to bring the outward face of the Church more in line with the humble, loving, and caring face of Jesus as it carries out the everyday work of its worldwide mission. May the example of Pope Francis give new life to the spirit of love, truth, and service in every local Church so that  it can be said of us in our locality that we have loved on another as Jesus Loved us.