Palm Sunday Year A (Gospel: Matt 26:14-27:66) God in the midst of chaos

 

I don’t know about you, but something I find very disturbing in our modern world, is the amount of corruption everywhere. Lying and cheating seem to be accepted as normal practice by many. We read about corruption in just about every government and every organisation, including the Church. Struggles for power, people being tortured. It is horrible to read about these things, and we often seem to be so helpless. Where is the loving God we speak about, who brings justice?

 

The readings today paint a similar picture. The only man who was completely innocent and who only did good throughout his life, is betrayed by a close friend, arrested, tortured, given an illegal trial—it was illegal according to their own law—and on the basis of false evidence is put to death. Where is the justice in that? Where is our just and loving God? How could God allow such a terrible miscarriage of justice?

 

And yet out of all this chaos and terrible injustice, God brings about the most extraordinary good for the whole human race, something no one could ever have foreseen, but it happens by means of his suffering. Jesus makes it possible for us to go to heaven when we die. Because of this terrible evil, brought about by human hands, God does something unimaginably wonderful.

 

There is a line in the Exultet—the hymn sung at the beginning of the Easter Vigil—which says, ‘Oh necessary sin of Adam, which won for us so great a redeemer.’ ‘Oh necessary sin...’ If Adam and Eve hadn’t sinned, there would have been no need for the Incarnation and so we wouldn’t have Jesus. This event changed the whole course of history. Everything was different after this, but what was really going on at that time was not obvious. In fact no one knew what was really happening. It was only afterwards, when Jesus himself began to reveal it to the disciples, only then did they begin to understand what it all meant and even then it took a while for them to grasp it.

 

So is there a message in all of this for us today, apart from remembering what happened? Can these events still speak to us now? In many ways our modern, so called ‘civilised’ society sounds remarkably like the one Jesus lived in. There was great corruption then and there still is. But there is above all else, a message of hope in all this, that even though there is a lot of evil around us and there always has been, it doesn’t stop God from being present to us, and guiding us through the chaos, as it were. Not only that, but the very difficult events that we come up against, God can and does bring extraordinary good out of, even the worst of situations, but we don’t always see that good. All these events took place for our benefit and that is a reminder that God is just as much with us now as He was then. That is why we go over all these events each year, to remind ourselves what has happened, what God has done for us and that God is still with us, even in the midst of chaos.

 

Having the hope that our faith gives us, makes all the difference in the world. You can see in the faces of so many people, fear and anxiety, because they have nothing to put their hope in except other human beings. That is a sad way to live your life, because people will let us down. God is the only one who will not let us down, even though we may not see that until afterwards.

 

‘Oh necessary sin of Adam, which won for us so great a redeemer.’

5th Sunday of Lent Year A (Gospel: John 11:1-45) Our hope is in the Lord

 

Stephen Hawking (1942-2018)

A few years ago I saw a program about Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), the English physicist who was confined to a wheelchair most of his life because of Lou Gehrig’s disease, but whose brain was working perfectly. He was one of the world’s most brilliant minds. He wrote A brief history of time, attempting to explain the origins of the universe. Apparently it is one of the most bought, but least read books. I bought it and gave up after about 3 pages. At the age of 21 he was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease and he was told he had at best two years to live. Up until his death in 2018 he was still doing ground-breaking work in physics, although the only muscle he could still move was one of his cheeks. There was a small sensor beside his cheek, which was attached to a computer. By moving his cheek he was able to speak to people and continue working through his computer. No doubt one of the reasons why he was still alive was his will to live. He had a great determination to keep going.

 

There is so much more to being alive than just physical health, although that is what we all wish for. Many people would consider that life would not be worth living if you were in the physical state that Stephen Hawking was and yet look at what he did.

 

When visiting hospitals I have often seen people who, having lost the will to live, would go down-hill very quickly and die. I also saw people who were told that they would probably not recover, but because they were absolutely determined to keep going, they would recover, often completely against the odds. One of the key differences between those who keep going and those who don’t is something spiritual: hope. If we have hope we can keep going even against the odds. If we have no hope, we may not survive even the ordinary.

 

Several years ago in a housing subdivision called Moyross, in Limerick city, which is an hour south of where I grew up—one of the toughest and most troubled areas of that city—a new group of Religious moved in. They are called the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal, which were started by Fr. Benedict Goreschel in the Bronx, New York. They live very like the Missionaries of Charity (Mother Teresa’s order) in poverty and great simplicity. Apparently, the area has been transformed since they moved in, for the simple reason that they have given the people there new hope. By moving in there, they have shown those people that they are worth something and that in itself has given them new hope.

We believe that God wants us to be happy, to live life in all its fullness and that gives us hope, which we to pass on to others, though often we are unaware of it. ‘I came that you may have life and have it to the full’ (Jn 10:10). One of the early Christian writers called Tertullian wrote, ‘The glory of God is man fully alive.’ The more alive we are in every sense, the more we develop our talents and abilities, the more we give glory to God and hope is a big part of being fully alive.

 

I always thought that one of my professors in the seminary was the best teacher. But later I realized that from an academic point of view he wasn’t particularly good, but he was so passionate about his faith, that it got everyone enthusiastic. He had a great passion for God and for life and that was inspiring.

 

When we have hope we are able to work to promote and strengthen married life even when it goes wrong; we continue to work with young people and encourage them not to give up, even when they have messed up through drugs, or alcohol; we continue to work for justice and peace often in very difficult circumstances. Our faith in God gives us hope, which in turn inspires others to keep going. Think also of the hope that Pope Francis has given people by the way he lives. He reached out to many people on the margins, showing them that they were not forgotten. That is exactly what Jesus did.

 

In this beautiful Gospel we hear how Jesus deliberately waited when he heard that Lazarus was sick, in order to work this miracle before everyone’s eyes. He wanted to show them something. He wanted to show them that God has power even over death and that when He allows people to die that it is not the end. Just as Jesus called Lazarus out of death, so Jesus will also call us out of death when we die and we will begin a new and wonderful life with him, unless we have rejected God. We make that choice by the way we live, the everyday decisions that we make. 

 

In bringing Lazarus back to life, Jesus was helping people to believe in him. He is the one who has power over life and death. He is master of all things. He will judge the living and the dead. He was also giving the people hope, showing them that there is a bigger picture that we do not understand. Death is not the end. Physical health is not the end, but a doorway to what we are created for. But having hope is essential if we are to keep going through the many difficulties that we continue to face. Our hope in God and the world to come, gives us strength to keep going even when we are suffering, or struggling, or when everything is going wrong.

 

If we lose hope we may despair. When people believe there is nothing else apart from this world, then when faced with some of the difficulties we face here on earth, sickness, suffering, in justice, sometimes people despair, because they don’t know what to turn to. Sadly that is one of the reasons why there is such a high rate of suicide at this time, because so many people have lost faith and so have no hope.

 

In one of his letters to the Christians in Corinth in modern day Greece, St. Paul wrote the following: “If our faith in Christ has been for this life only, then of all people we are the most to be pitied” (1 Cor 15:9). If we think that this life is everything, then we have completely missed the point. But our faith tells us that this life is only a small part of the picture and it is so important that we don’t lose sight of the bigger picture. He also said, ‘Keep your eyes on the things that are above, not on the things below’ (Col 3:2).

 

So often you will hear people say, every day I am still alive is a good day, even when their bodies are old and in pain. I guess it would make you wonder what they believe happens after death. Clinging desperately to life, is a sign of not being convinced of what awaits us after death. If we are convinced that what awaits us is something unimaginably wonderful, then we will long for it, or at least look forward to it. Would you rather be clinging to life in pain and in a world of suffering, than in a world of joy where there is no more pain, or evil, or sorrow? Jesus’ dying and rising was to make sure that we could reach that happiness which awaits us. What greater hope is there than to believe that we will be with our loved ones again, in a place where there is only joy. That’s what all of us want and that is what our faith promises us.

 

Jesus deliberately waited until Lazarus was dead, so that he could bring him back to life before everyone and show us that He is Lord of all things and that He has power to bring people back from death. Jesus is the doorway to heaven and Jesus is the only One who makes sense of our life on earth. That is why we must keep our eyes on him. Make sure that he is at the center of all that we do. When we are confused, or suffering, He is always the One to turn to. He is the only one who can makes sense of our life.

 

‘I have come that you may have life and have it to the full’ (John 10:10)

 

 

4th Sunday of Lent (Gospel: John 9:1-41) Spiritual blindness

 

A question I have frequently been asked, when I visit someone in hospital, is, ‘Why has God done this to me?’ Sometimes they will add, ‘I never did anything wrong.’ I guess the second part is debatable, but many people wonder if sickness is a punishment from God. Jesus answers that question in this Gospel passage. The Apostles ask the same question, ‘Who sinned?’ In other words who is to blame for this. They are presuming someone did something wrong and so this is a punishment, but Jesus says that neither sinned, but in fact this sickness will serve a higher purpose. He says, ‘So that the works of God might be made visible through him.’

 

In this case the purpose it served was to bring people to faith. When the blind man was healed, he came to believe in Jesus and so did others because of the miracle they witnessed. The only people who didn’t come to faith, were the priests or Pharisees. They had a narrow understanding of how God worked, and if anything didn’t fit into those categories, they couldn’t be from God. In this case the only thing they could see was that Jesus supposedly broke the Sabbath, because he worked on the Sabbath. Sadly, even with an extraordinary miracle like this, they still weren’t open to the fact that maybe there is a bigger picture than what they could see. They were hardened of heart and so they were not open.

 

Remember the raising of Lazarus from the dead (See John 11)? When Jesus was told that Lazarus was sick, he waited another two days before he went to him. And Jesus said to the Apostles that his death would lead to God’s glory. Jesus deliberately waited so that Lazarus would die. It says that when Jesus got to the home of Martha and Mary, his sisters, Lazarus had already been dead for four days. And then Jesus raised him from the dead, which brought many people to believe in Jesus. His sickness and even death, served a higher purpose. Before he died, I’m sure many people would say, what possible good could come from a persons death? What possible good could come from the torture and killing of an innocent man? And yet it changed everything and won us eternal life, but no one could see that at the time.

 

Sickness is part of the human condition, part of our fallen human nature, but sometimes God also uses it so serve a higher purpose. I have seen it many times where someone in a family has become sick, especially if it is a young person and how it has changed other members of the family. Sometimes it brings people to faith, sometimes it drives them away.

 

If God is good and all-powerful, then there wouldn’t be suffering in the world, therefore God could not exist. That is one of the common arguments against the existence of God. It is an understandable one, because the most difficult thing that most of us struggle with is the mystery of suffering. Suffering is there primarily because of Original Sin. When Adam and Eve rejected God, evil came into the world and suffering is part of that evil. Does God want us to suffer? No, but God allows suffering to be there because it can serve a higher purpose. We may never see that purpose in this life, but sometimes you can see the effect of suffering. People who suffer the most are usually the most compassionate. Even the word compassion, means ‘to suffer with.’ Yet today many people will say that compassion is to alleviate suffering, abortion, euthanasia. Jesus says, ‘Unless you pick up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.’ (Matt 16:24).

 

C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘Pain is God’s megaphone, to a deaf world.’ When we are in pain we begin to think differently and listen differently. It will often shake us out of the trivial, worldly things, that we get so caught up in. You know how an unexpected tragedy changes everything. Everything we thought was so important up to that point often becomes irrelevant. We start to think of the eternal things. What is the purpose of our life? What will happen when we die? And it is important that we do think about these things. The more we address these questions, the more we will be at peace about suffering, because we will see it differently.

 

A few years ago there was a tragedy somewhere in the mid-west, where a couple and their two children were all killed in a small plane crash. As it happened the parents of one of them lived in this parish. They weren’t Catholic, but I visited them just to express my sympathy. Not being Catholic I wasn’t sure how I would be received, but when I met them they were very grateful for the visit, but apart from that, their faith astounded me. Instead of wailing about why God would allow this, they knew it was a terrible tragedy, but they also believed those people were now with God, no longer suffering and they looked forward to seeing them when they died. It was so inspiring to hear them talk that way. They had incredible faith and more importantly, they could see the bigger picture. Our time on earth is short and sooner or later we will cross over ourselves.

 

Another aspect of this, is what we believe happens when we die. If we believe we will be with God in heaven, in unimaginable joy and contentment, with our loved ones, that changes everything. When we lose some, even through tragedy, it means that they have gone ahead of us, sooner than we expected. And even though it leaves terrible pain because of the separation, sooner or later we will also cross over and be with them again.

 

When people grow in their faith, the things of the world usually become less and less important. They realize what really matters and it often creates a longing to be with God. I know so many people like that, who long to be gone, because their faith has helped them to see what is important. If the life after this one is eternal, then the choices we make are extremely important, because they have eternal consequences. That is also why God spells out for us exactly what will lead us to him and what could separate us from him.

 

Also, when people we love die, we often tend to remain focused on the sufferings they went through before death. However, that is the wrong thing to focus on. If they are with God in heaven, then they are experiencing a fulfillment and happiness that we can only dream of for now. That is what we should focus on. Otherwise it would be like focusing on sickness that we have gone through in the past, when we are now completely healthy again.

 

Suffering will always be a mysterious thing for us and I think we will always struggle to understand it, but that is where our faith is so important. That is why Jesus helps us to make sense of it. If suffering was what changed the course of history, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, then it must be extremely powerful from a spiritual point of view. Padre Pio said that if we understood the power of suffering, we would pray for it. So when you are suffering, keep offering everything to God, for the people and situations you are praying for. It is the greatest thing that we can offer to God.

 

When your children seem to have lost their way, or when there are problems within your family, offer the suffering that it causes you, for them. It is a way of turning it around from a spiritual point of view. And when we offer our suffering to God, God multiplies the generosity of our gift, far beyond what we could ever imagine.

 

‘Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents?

Jesus replied, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned. It is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.’

3rd Sunday of Lent (Gospel: John 4:5-42) The waters of life

 

 

Any time I go into schools, or get to talk to young people, someone nearly always asks me if I have ever seen an exorcism. When I tell them I have and it is real and something to be very careful of, they are usually a bit shocked. I suppose we tend to associate these things with Hollywood, but they are real.

 

In March 9^th, 2023 in a high school in Columbia, 28 girls were taken to hospital after fainting and anxiety attacks, after playing the Ouija board. The Ouija board was available to them in their school.

 

All around us we see signs for Tarot card reading, fortune telling, psychics, all kinds of alternative healing and other practices that come under the general heading of Occult. We are told to stay away from these things that so many people find fascinating. Why is this? What is so wrong with it? Are we over-reacting because we do not understand it?

 

If the Scriptures tell us to stay away from something, there is a good reason for it. God does not give us rules just for the sake of rules. There is a reason for everything. In the Old Testament, in the book of Deuteronomy it says:

You must not have in your midst anyone who... practices divination, or anyone who consults the stars, who is a sorcerer, or one who practices magic, or who consults the spirits, no diviner, or one who asks questions of the dead. For the Lord abhors those who do these things. (Deut 18:10-11)

 

So what is the problem with these things? Anything that is occult is an attempt to gain knowledge or power of the future. One of the greatest things that God has given us is the gift of free will. All through this life we have the freedom to choose to do what we want, even to reject God, which is quite amazing. God does not reveal the future to us because if He did, it would influence our free will. If I thought there was going to be an earthquake in the city center tomorrow, the chances are I would avoid the city center. If I think I know what is going to happen, I am most likely to make decisions based on that information, but the problem is that then I am not totally free to choose, because my free will has been influenced. That is the main problem with things such as fortune telling, tarot card reading, etc. We think we are gaining knowledge of the future, but this influences our freedom to choose and God wants us to be free.

However, we have no way of knowing whether the information we are given is true or not and perhaps more importantly, where is it coming from? If God deliberately does not reveal the future to us, then the information is not coming from God. So where is it coming from and how can we trust that it is reliable? Exorcists will be the first ones to tell you that the Occult and New Age practices are a doorway to the world of darkness. They are a deception of Satan. We are dabbling in the world of the spirit, without knowing what we are dealing with and make no mistake about it, Satan is very cunning in how he deceives us. He hates God’s creation and wants to lead us away from God wherever possible. Jesus called him ‘The father of lies, and the deceiver.’ And don’t be fooled by the fact that a fortune teller starts of with a Christian prayer, as some of them do. If the Lord tells us that these things are detestable to him, then we would be wise to stay away from them. If what the Lord teaches us is true, then the Occult is a deception and a lie. If Occult practices are true, then Christianity is a lie. Who do you want to believe?

 

I know of a woman who was given the initials of someone she was told she would marry. And she met a man with those initials and she married him, and it was a disaster. Being told this had influenced her. She was now looking for this person, but she was deceived.

 

The former exorcist of this diocese was telling me about a house he was called to, where footsteps kept appearing across their couch. When he asked them a little about themselves, he learned that the woman practiced witchcraft, her daughter practiced witchcraft and she was living with a man who was not her husband. There was nothing he could do unless they were prepared to change their lifestyle and start following the ways of God. One is against the other.

 

If you have dabbled in any of these things it is important to confess them to break any kind of influence they over you, spiritual or otherwise.

 

Now listen to what Jesus says to the woman at the well:

If you only knew what God was offering you and who it was that was asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water.

What is this ‘living water’? First of all it is the life of faith, the path to God, the truth about God, as given to us by Jesus who is the Son of God. He is telling us that what He is offering us is the path to follow, because it is the only path that leads to our happiness and our fulfilment. We will only find fulfilment in him.

 

In the Gospel Jesus points out to the woman that she has been married five times and is now with another man. She has been looking for fulfilment in a husband and hasn’t found it. If we hope to find complete fulfilment in another human being, even someone we love dearly, we will be disappointed, because only God is capable of completely fulfilling us, beginning in this life and completely in the world to come. In fact to expect someone else to completely fulfil us is being unfair to them as you are asking the impossible of them. But if we can recognise that the things of this world and even the most wonderful human beings, cannot fulfil us, it takes a great pressure off of us as we won’t be expecting to find fulfilment there.

 

When people lose their faith they begin to look for fulfilment in other places, but they will not find it and so they will never be satisfied. That’s one of the reasons why we see more and more anger in people, because they are no longer looking for fulfilment in the only place that can bring them fulfilment and so they are more and more frustrated. Once we realize that only in Jesus is our fulfilment, then we can enjoy the things of the world, as the Lord intends us to, without letting them take us over.

 

The fact that this woman was on her own in the middle of the day indicates that something is not right. Normally the women would be getting water early in the morning when it’s cool and in groups, but she is being shunned and so she is on her own at the middle of the day. Her search for fulfilment has led her nowhere and in fact has brought her more misery. Jesus is telling her that she will only find fulfilment in him. Water is a perfect symbol of life, because it is the first thing we will die without apart from air. We will only find true life in Jesus.

 

For two thousand years the teachings of Christ have been guiding people on the path to God. The fact that it has lasted this long is itself a sign that it must be from God, especially when you look at the history of the Church, which is nothing to boast about. Yet in spite of that, the message of God is still passed on, through sinful people like me, but passed on none the less. It is there for anyone who wants it. Many things are continually offered to us, but not all of them are good and not all of them will help us. What we believe is that what God offers us—the waters of life—is what will lead us to total happiness, beginning now and fulfilled in the world to come. This is what the Lord is teaching us. Do you believe that? 

 

Sometimes I think it comes back to something as basic as asking ourselves, ‘Do I believe the Scriptures are from God?’ ‘Do I believe that Jesus teaches us through his Church?’ If we believe that, then we need to listen to it. If we don’t believe that, we shouldn’t be here in the first place. God offers us his word to guide us, his Body and Blood to feed us, his forgiveness to heal us, but if we want to follow the path that He is showing us, then we must listen to what he teaches us and act on it.

 

If you only knew what God was offering you and who it was that was asking you for a drink, you would have been the one to ask, and he would have given you living water.