11th Sunday Year B (Gospel: Mark 4:26-34) The kingdom of God is like...

There is a story told of Napoleon when he was at the height of his power.  At one stage he met the cardinal of Paris and said to him, “I am going to destroy the Vatican!”  The cardinal replied: “You won’t be able.”  Napoleon said, “I will.  Just you wait and see.”  The cardinal said to Napoleon: “You will never be able.  We priests have been trying to destroy it for the last 1800 years and we haven’t been able!”

I often think it is amazing how so many people keep coming back to the Church, or even just remain with the Church, in spite of so many reasons to leave it: scandals, bad example, bad preaching and so on.  Working in Lourdes as a confessor a couple of times I was amazed at how people from all over the world would come and confess their sins, many after being away from the Church for decades.  Why is this?  It is because the Spirit of God goes on moving people, drawing people and inspiring people to keep coming back.  And where the practice of the faith decreases in one part of the world, such as in Europe at the moment, it increases in another and so the cycle continues.

The Lord does not wait until we are ready to act, or to preach, or to reach out to people.  God simply goes on loving his people all over the world and moving people to act where it is needed, whether we are ready or not.  In the Gospel today are these lovely examples of what the kingdom of God is like.  Jesus compares it to plants growing in the ground.  The farmer plants the seed, but the plants grow by themselves, ‘how, he does not know.’  God continues to work and guide people to himself whether we take part or not.

Sometimes I think that our work is a bit like that of the farmer in the parable.  We are called to plant seeds.  We try and be signposts to God, pointing them in the right direction and then God does everything else.  By ourselves we are very limited in what we can do, but the thing is that we do have a part to play.  God invites us to be part of his work, helping others along the road to heaven, perhaps by prayer, by example and for a few of us by preaching.  But all of us are invited to play a part.  For most of us it is a hidden part.  I think we often underestimate the importance of praying for others.  We speak to them about God mostly by the way we live.

Jesus uses the parable of the mustard seed.  It is a tiny seed, but it can grow into something many thousands of times its size.  In other words, although we are small we can have a lasting influence on the world around us, even though we may not realise it in our own lifetime.  The Church is meant to be small.  We are not meant to be big and powerful and we have seen what happens when we get too big and powerful; we forget what we are about and we caught up in prestige and status and our own importance.  But when we are small we remain dependent on God and focused on God.  That is when God can work through us most effectively because we don’t get in the way.  When we are not full of ourselves there is room for God.

I’m sure that one of the things that is happening in the Church at the moment is that God is helping us to become small again.  While once we were big and powerful, now we are despised in many places.  It is painful, but it is also helping us.  The Lord allows this to happen because He loves us and He knows what will help us the most.

The Apostles too wanted Jesus to be big and powerful.  James and John asked if they should call down fire on a town that didn’t make them welcome.  Another time one of them asked Jesus if the time had come for God to ‘restore the kingdom to Israel,’ in other words to kick the occupying Romans out and become powerful once again.  But the way of Jesus was something very different and unexpected.  His was the way of the cross.  He was despised and rejected and appeared to be a complete failure.  The Apostles found this very hard to accept, but eventually God helped them to learn that this was the path that they too must walk.

God goes on making his kingdom grow; drawing people to himself and helping people to find their way; most of the time we don’t know how.  We are invited to play our part by praying for those around us and speaking about God by the way we live. 

Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ ‘Corpus Christi’ Year B, (Gospel: Mark 14:12-16)

 

Sometimes when I think of some of the different things that people of different faiths believe, and how strange they seem to me it also makes me think of the Eucharist.  For those who do not believe as we do, it must seem like the craziest notion of all; that God makes himself present through the hands of a priest, in a tiny piece of bread and some wine.  What could be more bizarre than that?  And we don’t just believe that it is a reminder of Jesus or similar to Jesus, but really and truly the body and blood of Christ.  I also think that it is a teaching so extreme that only God could come up with it and get away with it, so to speak.  What human being would try to convince others that Jesus was present in a piece of bread when a priest says certain prayers over it?

In his first letter to the Christians in Corinth (1 Cor 11:23-26)—which is the oldest account of the mass that we have—St. Paul says straight out, “This is what I received from the Lord and in turn passed on to you…”  He doesn’t say that he received it from the other Apostles, but from the Lord himself.  Jesus, as you probably remember, appeared to St. Paul while he was persecuting Christians and turned his life around.  He appeared to him several other times as well.  And Paul was so affected by what happened to him that he dedicated the rest of his life to preaching about this man Jesus.  But the line that always strikes me is where he says, “This is what I received from the Lord…”  He is saying, “I didn’t make this up and neither did any other person.  Jesus himself taught us this and taught us to do this in his memory.”  And so every time an ordained priest says the words of consecration at mass, “This is my Body… This is the chalice of my Blood…” Jesus becomes present in the form of bread and wine.  

How are we supposed to understand this?  We aren’t!  I do not understand it at all, but I believe it.  That is why we try to fast for an hour before receiving Holy Communion and why we don’t eat or smoke in the church, to remind us that this is something unlike anything else in the world.  It is also a beautiful sign of how close God is to us that He would continually come to us in the middle of our lives, each week, each day, to help and encourage us.  He comes to us as we are, not as we should be, but as we are.  It is also God himself who makes it possible to receive him, because we could never be ready or worthy enough to even come close to the divine presence, not to mention receive him.  That is why we always say the prayer: “Lord I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed” (just as the Roman soldier said when Jesus offered to come to his house to heal his servant).

There are two extremes that I come across with regard to the Eucharist.  One is where someone will say to me, “Oh father I don’t receive the Eucharist because I really am not worthy enough.”  Correct!  No one is worthy enough nor ever could be, but since the Lord himself is happy to give himself to us this way, we should not be afraid to receive him.  The other extreme is where people feel they have a ‘right’ to receive the Eucharist without any kind of repentance or need to confess every once in a while.  Wrong again.  There is no question of this being a ‘right’ on our part.  The Eucharist is pure gift from God and for our part we must try to approach it as well as we can, especially by confessing our sins every so often.  But the most important thing to remember is that the Lord wants to give himself to us, and so we should not be afraid to come to him.  Remember that ultimately it is God himself who makes it possible for us to receive him.  “Lord I am not worthy to receive you but only say the word and I shall be healed.”

I want to finish with this story:

In the late 1500s there lived a woman named Margaret Clithero in the town of York in England.  She was a convert to Catholicism at a time when it was against the law to be a Catholic.  Priests used to come to her disguised as cloth penders, bringing her the Eucharist and she would hide them.  She never saw mass in a public church or heard a Catholic hymn being sung even though she lived next to York Minster Cathedral.  It was an Anglican church at the time.

She was eventually found out and she was dragged from the butcher shop where she worked and brought before magistrates and ordered to plead guilty or not guilty, so that she could go on trial.  She refused as she didn’t want her innocent blood to be on the head of twelve jurors.  She said, “If you want to condemn me, condemn me yourself.”  The judge said, “Because you are a woman I will let you go free, but you must promise never to hide these priests again.”  He then handed her the bible and told her to swear on it.  So she took the bible in open court and held it up in the air and said, “I swear by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if you let me go free, I will hide priests again, because they are the only ones who can bring us the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

So just over 400 years ago, she was brought to St. Michael’s bridge in York and given the punishment, worse than being hung, drawn and quartered.  It was called in English law, ‘the punishment most severe’.  She was pressed to death under heavy weights.  It was to take three days and she was to receive only a little muddy water to drink to keep her alive.  The executioner was bribed and he put a stone under her head so that she died within an hour as her neck was broken.  She was the mother of eight children, and some of them were there when she was executed.

In the little chapel that is there to her memory in York today, there is an inscription over the door, which is a message for our times.  It says ‘She died for the mass.’

So the next time that you find yourself bored with the mass, or just not too bothered to go because you’re tired, think of her and think of the many priests and men and women who have been executed for carrying the Eucharist or for saying mass.  God has given us an extraordinary treasure in the Eucharist may He give us new eyes to see what is here before us.

“I swear by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, if you let me go free, I will hide priests again, because they are the only ones who can bring us the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.” – St. Margaret Clithero.

Feast of the Holy Trinity, Year B (Gospel: Matthew 28:16-20) We are made in his image

We believe that God was perfectly happy and content, not in need of anything, before He created the universe and the human race.  Wouldn’t it make you wonder why on earth did God bother to create us at all, since we have proved so much trouble?  And God would have known about all the trouble that it was going to cause.  So why did He create us?

Well this is how it makes some sense to me.  Think for a moment of some time when you were deeply happy about something.  Usually our instinct is to share it.  We want someone else to be a part of that happiness.  That’s why most people have a big party at their wedding, because they want others to share in their happiness.  And that is one of the reasons why God created us, simply because in his goodness he wanted others to share in his own happiness.  And so he created the spirit world, that we understand as the angels and then He created the human race, in order that we could share in his own happiness.  The book of Genesis says that we were the last thing that God created which is a biblical way of saying that we were the most important thing, the masterpiece of God’s creation.  And we were created with the ability to love and reason.

 

But there was one ‘catch’ as it were.  That is, that in order for us to be able to love God we had to be free, so that we could freely choose to love God, otherwise it wouldn’t be real love at all.  Real love has to be free, since you can never force someone to love you.  You can encourage them, but you certainly can’t force them.  Love has to be free.  So God had to make us free, and this meant that we would have the freedom to love God and gradually find our way to happiness, or to reject God which would ultimately mean we would lose that happiness that God had intended for us.  It’s a strange paradox.  But in his goodness He created us and gave us the freedom, even though He knew that some of his own creatures would reject him. 

 

I think the most beautiful image we are given of how God loves us is in the story of the prodigal son.  While the Son has gone away and squandered everything his father is constantly waiting and hoping that he will return.  And when he does finally return the father just celebrates.  There is no giving out, no warning that this must not happen again, just celebration and rejoicing.

 

The Lord knows how difficult it can be for us to make the right choices and so He gives us people to guide us, the commandments, the teaching of his Church, his own Word in the bible and many other things to help us along the way, so that we won’t be short of the direction and encouragement that we need.  He also sends us holy people every so often, like Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Theresa, and many others, because they radiate God and they are a real sign to us of the Lord’s presence among us.  These people seem to radiate God and so many people are drawn to them because they sense that presence.  That is why God sends us particular chosen souls every so often, to inspire us and remind us that we are not alone.  I know of several people who worked with Mother Theresa and it completely changed their life, because they met God through her.

 

The feast of the Holy Trinity is a celebration of love; the Trinity is a community of Persons who share total love and joy between themselves, and this Holy Trinity reaches out to us with that same love and invites us to join them.  If we respond to the Father, the Son and the Spirit, then we are gradually drawn more and more into that love.  It starts in this world and it will be fulfilled in the next.

 

Pentecost Sunday, Year B (Gospel: John 20:19-23) The Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will teach you everything

There is a priest friend of mine—one of my classmates actually—who does a lot of work with the Legion of Mary calling from door to door speaking to people about faith.  He was a Quantity Surveyor before he became a priest and he is one of the most amazing organizers I’ve ever met.  He often said to me that the hardest places he found to work in were usually the wealthier areas.  When people felt they had all they needed they were generally not as open to hearing about God.  The poorer areas were usually much more open to what he had to say.  It doesn’t surprise me.

 

From all the various crises that are happening at the moment one of the good things that is coming from them is that they are helping people to ask a lot of questions and to search for God in a new way.  Economic crisis helps us to realise that we are much more vulnerable than we might have thought.  Religious crisis and serious scandals—such as we are seeing at the moment—help us to remember that while religion can be a great help, it is absolutely deadly if it is misused.  Any religion is simply a way to help us live out what we believe in, but unless it is completely focused on God and unless God is at the centre, it can become an end in itself and a very dangerous one at that.

 

There is one crucial thing that is needed for faith to be alive and healthy and that is the gift of God’s Spirit.  For me the best way of explaining it is to compare the Spirit to electricity.  In any building you can have all kinds of useful  and sophisticated equipment, such as computers, microphones, lights, projectors, MRI and CAT scanners, and so much more.  However, none of these things would be of any use to us if we didn’t have electricity.  They would just sit there like stone.  The power that goes into them is what transforms them into something wonderful.  In a sense the Holy Spirit is the electricity that makes us alive.  Without God’s Spirit we are dead, the Scriptures are just words in a book; the mass is just an empty ritual; marriage is just a legal way of being together.  But with the Holy Spirit our faith suddenly lights up, the Scriptures become the living word of God and the mass becomes the living presence of Jesus among us in the Eucharist. With the Holy Spirit marriage includes the presence of God, present to support, strengthen and encourage.

 

The truth is that we are nothing without the gift of God’s Spirit.  We would not be able to believe, or pray nor would we even have the desire to know God.  I could stand at the altar and pray all day long, but nothing would happen if the Holy Spirit didn’t transform the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Jesus; the same with confession.  It is the Spirit who forgives people.  The priest is just an instrument; an important instrument, but only an instrument.

 

What we see happening in the Church at the moment and over the last 20 years or so is also the work of the Holy Spirit, purifying and renewing his people.  And that is happening because the Lord loves us and won’t allow his people to be overcome with disease.  All the poison is being taken away and this is painful but absolutely essential.  We will all be much better off because of this work which God is bringing about.  God is forcing us to rely much more on the power of his Word and of his Spirit, something which we should have been doing all along.  Perhaps one of the most important things to remember is that God’s work is always beautiful and God will make things beautiful again, because God is the master craftsman.

 

The Lord doesn’t wait until we are ready either.  God acts when the time is right.  He doesn’t just wait for the hierarchy of his Church to decide what to do, He sends his Spirit who inspires people and moves people to act.  That’s not to say that God doesn’t care about his bishops and priests, but God knows how best to act; and so the Lord sends his Spirit to inspire and move people to step out in faith and live the Gospel, and they in turn move others, until soon God's people are alive again with faith.

 

God knows very well what we are like and that despite our best efforts we continually need to be helped back on the right track, no matter what we are doing.  And this is why Jesus told us before he ascended into heaven, that the Father would send us this ‘Helper’, who would be with us forever, and who would teach us everything.  He knew well that we would need help and so God sent us the best help that we could have, his own Spirit, to guide us and teach us.  And the Lord does teach us constantly through the example of people He inspires, through the Word of God, through prayer when we are open to him and in many other ways we will never even be aware of.  But the Spirit is very gentle and that is why we don’t notice him sometimes.

 

The gift of God’s own Spirit is really the greatest thing God can give us after life itself, because when we have the Holy Spirit we have everything. 

 

Come Holy Spirit and fill the hearts of your faithful people,

send forth your Spirit and we will be created,

And you will renew the face of the earth.

The Ascension of the Lord Year B (Gospel: Mark 16:15-20) He continued to appear to them and tell them about the Kingdom

In my work as a priest people often tell me about spiritual experiences they have had: sometimes they are experiences of the Lord in some way, sometimes of someone who has died, asking for prayers or something like that.  Quite a large number of people do seem to have spiritual experiences.  However, often after a time people begin to wonder did they really have these experiences, or was it all in their imagination.  Of course it is really impossible to know, and in one way it is even not important.  Usually the experience will have helped them, and that is really the only thing that matters.

In the first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles—or the ‘adventures’ of the Apostles, as you might call them—Luke tells us how after Jesus rose from the dead he continued to appear to the Apostles.  Not just once, but many times.  Why? Probably to convince them that they had not imagined it.  One thing that he did on at least two occasions was to eat something with them.  The first time when he appeared to them in the room, they were all standing there speechless, and he said ‘do you have anything here to eat?’  So they gave him a piece of fish and he ate it in front of them.  Then they knew it was not just a vision, but a real person, the same real person they had known before.  It was not even food that he had brought with him, which could also have been part of a vision, but it was something they gave him and then they watched him chew it and swallow it.  This was a beautiful and very human thing to do; something that we could completely relate to.

Luke also says that he not only appeared to them, but he also continued to tell them about ‘the Kingdom.’  What is ‘the Kingdom’  and what was he telling them about?  I have no doubt that he was telling them about the reality of heaven: life with God which we have been created for; that it is real and that we could also lose it if we are foolish. There we will be reunited with the people we love and we will experience happiness there in a way that we can not even begin to imagine now.  He was probably also explaining to them what the purpose of his life was on earth, why he had to suffer and die the way he did, what all this meant for the human race; God’s plan for his people.  Also he probably told them that he had a lot of work for them to do and that they must remember that their life here on earth was a time of service and not to worry if things were not easy, because when their work here was done he would bring them home to be with him again. 

Why was it they were suddenly able to go out and start preaching to everyone about a man that most people had never heard of before?  And not only preach about him for a while, but for the rest of their lives and with passion.  I think all of them ended up being martyred, but they didn’t care, because they knew that the only thing that was important was to be faithful to the Lord Jesus as best they could.

Why am I telling you all this? because the same thing exactly applies to us. The Apostles were real people and these are real experiences that we are reading about. Our life on earth is just as short as theirs was and it is also a time of service, just as theirs was. For many people it will be lived out in service by looking after their families. For many others and also for priests and religious it will be in a slightly different way. But that is why we are here, to learn to love, to serve, to freely choose for or against God. However, I think it is also worth remembering that we are living in a time when people are very cynical about religion, and they point to the scandals of the Church as being ‘proof’ of just how hypocritical the whole thing is. We must not let that put us off. It has always been difficult to believe and probably always will be, but we ask the Lord himself to help us to persevere and not become negative or cynical. And when our time here is complete God will come and bring us home.

I have no doubt that this is probably what Jesus was telling the Apostles about during those forty days. He wanted them to have no doubt about why they were here, so that we also could have a good understanding of our purpose here, through their teaching.

You might say, ‘But it is too difficult, or not realistic, or too hard to believe.’  God has given us every possible help that we could ask for.  If it seems too difficult it is only because we are not using the help that He has given us.  What help? Above all, the Eucharist, where Jesus feeds us with himself and we are united to him in the most intimate way possible; also through the word of God which guides and teaches us; then there is confession which heals, forgives and encourages us, and there are so many other ways too.  It is all there waiting for us.  The clearer a picture we have in our own head as to what our life is about, the easier it is to keep going.  That is also why we needn’t be afraid of anything in this world.  If we offer ourselves to God, then why should we be afraid? All things are in his hands.

I am going now to prepare a place for you

and after I have gone and prepared you a place,

I shall return to take you to myself

So that where I am you may be too (Jn 14:3).

6th Sunday of Easter Year B (John 15:9-17) “I call you friends”

 

A few months ago my brother Cathal who was studying in Canada told me that he had gone to a particular jazz concert where a world famous trumpeter called Wynton Marsalis was playing.  My brother studied music and is a big jazz fan.  After the concert he went to a local jazz bar only to find Wynton Marsalis had also gone there and played for the rest of the night.  At the end of the session Cathal went up to say hello to this guy.  He couldn’t believe that he even had the chance meet Winton.  When he went up Wynton was talking to another man.  After a minute he realised that my brother was waiting to meet him and he just turned around and put his arm around him and said, ‘Hey, how are you?’  My brother Cathal said he felt so chuffed that this famous musician would be so kind as to recognise him and greet him in this way. 

I remember also hearing a story of John Paul II visiting some place in Poland.  And whatever building he had been brought to all the staff were lined up to meet him.  When he came into the room he recognised one woman he knew from years before and straight away he said, ‘Mary, what are you doing here?’  and he gave her a big hug.  She was so overcome to be singled out by the Pope in this way that she just burst into tears.  For whatever reason we love to feel that we are remembered, or recognised; that we’re not just nobody.

In the Gospel today there is a simple phrase which you could easily miss.  Jesus says, “I call you friends,” because he says he has taught us everything about himself and about the Father.  Can you imagine if the Lord appeared in the sky and we were all watching and he singled you out and said, “Oh this is a friend of mine.”  How bizarre, and yet what a wonderful privilege.  The Lord tells us that we are not his servants, but his friends and even children.  We say that often, but I think we forget what it means.  Our friends are the ones who look out for us, do favours for us and stick with us.  Real friends won’t let us off the hook either, even if we are out of line.  They are the ones who will challenge us, because they love us.  Jesus is telling us the same thing.  He treats us as friends, which is a sign of his enormous respect for us.  A servant can be let go at any time if they are not up to standard, but you don’t let go of a friend, even if they are not up to standard.  Jesus is telling us that this is the regard he has for us.  I find that very comforting. 

My best friends are the ones who have stood by me through thick and thin.  And as you know well, you will know who your true friends are when you make a mess of things, or when times are hard.  They are the ones who will stand by you.  That is what the Lord Jesus is saying to us.  He is with us and He will stand by us regardless. 

There is another line in the first reading today that I also want to mention, where Peter says: “The truth I have come to realise is that God has no favourites; but that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right, is acceptable to him” (Acts 10:35).  And then as though to prove the point, just after he said this, the Spirit of God came down on all who were present and empowered them and these people weren’t even baptised.  They were pagans.  God was showing them something wonderful:  All people who try and do the right thing, are acceptable to God. 

I know there are a lot of people here who are worrying about their children or loved ones, perhaps because they don’t seem to be practicing, or living their faith in the way that we think they should.  Well remember this line:  ‘The truth I have come to realise is that anyone of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to God.’  Most people I know, whether they practice or not, do fear God and try to do what is right.  I think this should give us and the people we love great hope. 

5th Sunday of Easter Yr B (Gospel: John 15:1-8) "Cut off from me you can do nothing"

One of the most successful movements ever started which has been able to help people get their lives back together is the group known as Alcoholics Anonymous or AA.  By now there are also many other ‘twelve step’ groups, as they are called, such as Narcotics Anonymous, Workaholics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, and others.  The interesting thing is that the twelve step program on which they are based, is basically a summary of the Christian life.  The twelve steps involve admitting that you are powerless over your problem, whatever it might be; that your life is unmanageable, that only God (as you understand God) can help you and so you must turn to him; also that you need to atone for the hurt and damage that you may have caused others.  But the main reason why these groups have helped so many people is because they are based on the idea that we need the support of like minded people if we are to be able to live any kind of way of life.

Our coming to mass on a Sunday has a very similar thinking behind it.  We come together primarily to worship the Lord of course, but also because we need the support of like minded people who also believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Holy One of God.  And this was exactly why the early Christians began to come together in each others houses, so that they could share their faith together, listen to the Word of God, receive the Lord Jesus together in the Eucharist and be encouraged by each others presence and witness.

Today we do the same thing but in a more organised way.  But the reason we still come together is not just because it’s Sunday and we have to go to mass, but because we need the support of others who believe as we do.  We need to listen to God’s word for guidance and inspiration, so that we can learn how God wants us to live.  And of course most importantly to receive Jesus in the Eucharist. We are nourished by Jesus himself when we receive him in Holy Communion and are intimately united with him in the most extraordinary way.  The Lord knows much better than we do how much we need this kind of strength and support and that is why he has set it up for us this way.  All of this is for our benefit, because we need this kind of support.

In the second reading St. John says that what the Lord asks of us is this: to believe in the name of Jesus Christ, that He is the Son of God, and to love one another.  If we can do that much we are doing a lot.

More and more in our society it becomes obvious that we don’t all believe in the same thing and that is alright, there is room for everyone.  But if we are to blossom, we need the support of each other and to know that we are not on our own.  We also need to look out for each other, because that is the practical way of living out our faith.  It is not easy to live as a Christian, but then it never has been.  In the Gospel Jesus says, ‘Cut off from me you can do nothing.’  If we are serious about following this way of life, then we must recognise what it is we need.  Just as with someone suffering from an alcohol or drug addiction, if they want to get well, they need to work the twelve step program.  Well it is the same for us.  If we hope to survive as Christians, we need to stay close to Jesus, to listen to his word, to receive him in the Eucharist and to love one another. Jesus is our source of life in every sense. If we wish to remain alive as Christians, we must be rooted in him. No one else will give us life as He does.

‘I am the vine, you are the branches... Cut off from me you can do nothing.’