13th Sunday, Year C, The feast of Saints. Peter and Paul. ‘This is what I received from the Lord…’

 

It is interesting what different cultures consider important qualifications for leadership. In 2015 when Rodrigo Duterte was president of the Philippines, he was challenged by a journalist that he was known to have killed three men when he was mayor of Davao for twenty years. The journalist asked, ‘Don’t you think that makes you unsuitable for being president? But he said, ‘No.’ He thought they were important qualities, as it showed that he was tough and that’s what the country needed in fighting drugs.

 

In Italy when the billionaire Silvio Berlusconi was running for president, one of the things he did was to show off his multi-million dollar yacht, indicating what power and wealth he had. They considered that an important quality.

 

Here in the United States, when someone is running for president, the opposite party always tries to find some dirt on the candidate, to prove that they are unsuitable to be a president, even going back to mistakes they may have made in their teens, as though you could find someone with a perfect record.

 

Then we are presented with the kind of people God chooses to be his instruments and leaders in his Church, often the most unexpected people. Often the kind of people that we would never consider suitable.

St. Peter was a fisherman, probably uneducated, which was normal for the time. Very few people could read or write then. He was zealous and quick to jump into action, but also full of himself. He seemed to continually put his foot in it and as we know he publicly denied Jesus, in spite of his best intentions to be faithful. Fear got the better of him. Yet that did not stop Jesus from choosing him as the first leader of his Church. His betrayal didn’t disqualify him, because God sees the heart and not the outside.

 

This Gospel passage is another account of where Jesus appeared to the Apostles after the resurrection. It says He was waiting for them on the shore after they had been out fishing. When they were coming back in, Jesus called out to them, ‘Have you caught anything, friends?’ When they said ‘no’, He told them to put the nets out to the right of the boat. When they did, there was another miraculous catch of fish. I’m sure it immediately reminded them of the miraculous catch of fish three years before, when he called Peter and the others to follow him. They then realized it was Jesus.

 

When they came ashore, it says that Jesus was there and he had made breakfast for them. They didn’t just see him in a vision, but he was actually there with them on the shore and they ate breakfast together. After the meal Jesus challenges Peter: ‘Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?’ Asking Peter this question three times was addressing the three betrayals. It was making Peter face his mistakes, so that he could be healed of them and move on. Peter needed to be humbled, so that he would recognize that he needed to depend on Jesus for everything and that is how the Lord wanted it to be. He didn’t need someone with a perfect record, but someone who was open to him and was aware of how fallible he was as a human being. That made him the ideal instrument, because he was then completely open to Jesus and not depending on himself. That is why all of the Apostles were able to do such amazing work, because they had come to rely completely on Jesus.

 

Then we have St. Paul, who was almost the opposite. He was a Pharisee, which meant he was highly educated. He was also what we would call a religious extremist. He was determined to wipe out the Christians and he was in the process of doing just that, by whatever means necessary, killing and imprisoning as many of them as he could find. He wasn’t just dealing with any Christians he came across, he was out hunting for them. Then Jesus appeared to him and everything changed. Overnight he came to understand everything differently, as Jesus revealed everything from him.

 

He says that after Jesus appeared to him, he went off to Arabia by himself for some time. Only after three years did he go to Jerusalem to meet some of the Apostles and he only met Peter and James. He spent two weeks with them and he wanted to check that what Jesus had revealed to him, was the same as what Jesus had taught the Apostles during his life on earth and of course it was.

One line in the second reading today (Vigil readings) is interesting. St. Paul says,

‘I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel preached by me is not of human origin. I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.’ (Gal 1:1).

This was before he met any of the Apostles.

 

He also describes the mass by saying, ‘This is what I received from the Lord and in turn passed on to you, that on the night He was betrayed the Lord Jesus took some bread…’ (1 Cor 11:23). He didn’t get this from the Apostles, but directly from Jesus.

 

But his conversion was so dramatic that many of the Christians were afraid of him. They couldn’t believe his conversion was real.

 

Imagine if we heard that one of the leaders of ISIS had become a Catholic and wanted to come to our church to speak. Would you trust him. I would certainly be very wary, until we knew for sure that he was sincere.

 

Something you will often hear from people who disregard the message of Christianity, is that it is just a story. It is unlikely that anyone would give up everything they were doing and dedicate the rest of their lives to preaching this message, unless they were absolutely convinced it was true. Apart from St. John, all of the Apostles were martyred for passing on the teaching that Jesus had given them.

 

It is good that every so often we are reminded of this. People don’t sacrifice their lives for a story, but they will sacrifice something they believe is truth. All down through the centuries people continue to dedicate their lives to God and pass on the message Jesus commanded the Apostles to preach. And most of those people, including me, have never seen Jesus or actually heard his voice, but they have been completely convinced of it by God’s Spirit.

 

In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus said to the Apostles, ‘There are many things I want to share with you, but they would be too much for you now. But when the Spirit comes, He will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.’ (Jn 1612). God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, continues to teach us and give us that conviction that what Jesus taught was true, is true.

 

Why is it so important that we know this? Because the message of Christianity is what makes sense of why we exist, where we come from, why we struggle with sin and what awaits us, because of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Everyone should know this. They don’t have to accept it, but everyone should know it and that’s why Jesus told the Apostles to go out and ‘teach all nations.’

 

The messengers who pass on this message, like me and thousands of others, are not always the best witnesses because of our own human weakness, but Jesus knew that when He called us.

 

Jesus said, ‘The Scribes and the Pharisees occupy the seat of Moses. Therefore, you should listen to what they say, but do not be guided by what they do, since they do not practice what they preach.’ (Mt 23:2).

The same applies to all of us messengers, bishops, clergy. What is important is the message that is passed on, even if the messengers don’t give the best example.

 

Think of the first leaders of the Church, St. Peter, St. Paul and so many others. All that mattered is that they were open to God, not that they were perfect. God doesn’t need our greatness, but our openness to him. And all of us pass on this message to those around us, mostly by the way we live. Our witness is far more important than anything we could say.

 

‘I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the Gospel preached by me is not of human origin. I did not receive it from a human being, nor was I taught it, but it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ.’ (Gal 1:1)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Feast of the Holy Trinity (Gospel: John 16:12-15) Created for happiness

 

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

Think for a moment of some time when you were very happy about something: the birth of a child, a wedding, or graduation. Usually our instinct is to share our joy. We want someone else to be a part of that happiness. That’s why most people have a big party at to celebrate these occasions, because they want others to share in their happiness. 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. We are God’s greatest creation! God also created us to be like him, with the ability to love and reason and free choice.

However, there was one ‘catch’ as it were. 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 or it isn’t love. So God made us with free will, which 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 the happiness that God had intended for us. It’s a strange paradox. God created us and gave us freedom, even though He knew that some of his own creatures would reject him.  

A friend of mine, a very devout Catholic, after he was married and had children, said to me one time that when he looks at his children, he couldn’t believe that God who is so loving would let people go to hell, that God would create hell? How could any parent allow their children deliberately to suffer? But the paradox is that no matter how much you love your children, you cannot force them to love you in return. You know the pain of falling in love with someone who doesn’t love you back, or pushes you away. Hell is the pain that people who reject God end up with, because they reject the only One who can give us total fulfillment. If you push away total happiness, you get total misery. If you reject all joy, then you end up with all pain. That’s what hell is: losing all that can fulfill us and bring us joy. God doesn’t send us to hell. We choose it if we reject God. If we have real freedom and heaven is real, then hell must also be real. If heaven was guaranteed for everyone, then we are not truly free, because to be truly free means we have the choice to love or not to love to accept God or reject God.

I think the most beautiful image we are given of how God loves us, is in the story of the prodigal son. In this story, a father has two sons. One of them demands his inheritance before the father has died, which is the equivalent of wishing him dead to his face. He then goes off, wastes all the family’s hard earned money and finally comes back to his father ashamed. While the Son has been away, 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 story of the prodigal son is teaching us how God is with us, how God sees us. No condemnation, only God’s desire for us to find happiness. God only wants us to come to him, to be with him. That is why He created us. God has created us to be with him for eternity and God will make that happen unless we reject God. We accept or reject God by the way we live. Jesus says, ‘If you love me you will keep my commandments. (Jn:14-15)

The Lord knows how difficult it can be for us to make the right choices and so He gives us many different ways to guide us: the holy Eucharist, which is the gift of Jesus himself, the Commandments, the teaching of his Church, his own Word in the Scriptures 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. God also sends us holy people every so often, like Francis of Assisi, Padre Pio, Therese of Lisieux, Mother Theresa and many others, sometimes people we know, 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. I know of several people who worked with Mother Theresa and it completely changed their life, because they experienced God through her.

The feast of the Holy Trinity is a celebration of divine love. The Holy Trinity is a community of Persons who share total love and joy between them, 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. The greatest way that we imitate God is by loving the people around us, sacrificing ourselves for others. That is what God did for us and that is what God invites us to do for each other.

God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,

So that everyone who believes in him might not perish

but might have eternal life. (John 3:16)

 

A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

 

I often come across people who are afraid that they cannot, or will not be forgiven by God, because of a sinful past, or mistakes in their past. That is why Jesus used so many stories of forgiveness and mercy, to encourage us and so that we won’t lose heart. God’s mercy is something that we don’t experience from other people, which makes it all the harder for us to grasp. That is why Jesus used so many stories and parables to try and help people understand this.

 

God wants us to be with him so much, that even though our first parents rejected God and lost paradise, God himself won it back for us, through the death and resurrection of Jesus. If God is willing to go to that length to re-open the gates of paradise for us, that should give us great courage. It means there is nothing that God won’t forgive.

 

Yet Jesus also said, ‘Every kind of sin and blasphemy can be forgiven, except blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which will never be forgiven.’ (Mt 12:31).

 

What does that mean? He said this when the Pharisees were claiming Jesus was healing people by the power of Satan. In other words they were calling God’s love evil.

The Holy Spirit is the love between the Father and the Son. To blaspheme against the Spirit is to reject God’s love. If we reject God’s love, we ourselves are cutting ourselves off from God and God respects the choices that we make. It doesn’t come down to one instance of calling God evil, but a continual rejection of God. But it keeps going back to the same thing: God has created us to be with him and that is what will happen unless we deliberately reject God.

 

A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you keep my commandments. (John 15:13-14)

 

 

 

Pentecost Sunday, Year C (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 going from door to door, speaking to people about faith. He was a quantity surveyor before he became a priest and he is the most amazing organizer. 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. In the poorer areas people were usually more open to what he had to say.

 

From all the upheaval in our world at this time, one of the good things that is coming from it, is that it is making people ask a lot of questions and to search for God in a new way. Economic crisis and wars help us to realise how vulnerable we are. Religious crisis and terrorism—such as we are seeing at the moment—help us to remember that while religion is really important, it can be 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 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 like this one, we have all kinds of useful equipment, such as microphones, lights, projectors, but none of these things would be of any use to us if we didn’t have electricity. The power that goes into them is what transforms them into something wonderful. You could say that 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 comes alive, the Scriptures become the living word of God, which speaks to our hearts and challenges us to grow; the mass becomes the living presence of Jesus among us in the Eucharist, where we can have the most intimate encounter possible with Jesus. With the Holy Spirit marriage involves a third person, present to support, strengthen and encourage every couple, as they try and live out their married life together. With the Holy Spirit, marriage goes from being a civil contract to a covenant. A covenant can be described as a sacred, family bond.

 

We are nothing without the gift of God’s Spirit. We would not be able to believe, or pray, or even 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 is true with confession. It is the Spirit who forgives people. The priest is just an instrument, an important instrument, but only an instrument. It is an extraordinary thought that the Holy Spirit acts on the words of a human being! When a priest says the words of consecration at the mass, ‘This is my Body which will be given up for you,’ the Holy Spirit immediately and humbly transforms the bread into the body of Christ. And when the priest says the words, ‘I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,’ the Spirit blots out the sins of that person. Such is the amazing generosity and humility of God.

 

When we see scandals coming to light in the Church, that is also the work of the Holy Spirit, purifying and renewing his people. 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 essential. We are always better off because of the purifying 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 already be doing. And 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. God sends his Spirit, who inspires people and moves people to act. That’s not to say that God doesn’t work through his bishops and priests, but God knows how best to act and so He 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 the people are alive with faith again.

Despite our best efforts we continually need to be helped back on the right track, no matter what we are doing. 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. The Lord knew that we would need help and so He sent us the best help that we could have, his own Spirit, to guide us and teach us and God teaches us through the example of people He inspires, through the Word of God, through prayer, and in many other ways we will never even be aware of. The Spirit is very gentle and that is why we don’t notice him sometimes.

 

Jesus said to the Apostles, ‘I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at this time. But when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.’ (John 16:12)

 

God keeps revealing himself to us in deeper and deeper ways. God wants to teach us everything, just as we want to teach the next generation what we have learnt. The more open we are to the Holy Spirit, the more that will happen. How do you become open to the Spirit? Just tell him your desire. ‘Holy Spirit of God, please come into my life. Teach me and reveal yourself to me and make my faith alive.’

 

Every time I am about to preach, I ask the Holy Spirit to anoint the words I speak, so that they will speak to your hearts and that you will hear what the Lord wants to say to you. Every time I go to visit someone sick, or in any difficult situation I always ask the Holy Spirit to guide me and give me wisdom. Wisdom is one of the gifts of the Spirit. Keep praying for wisdom and that the Lord will make himself known to you. Every time you read the Bible, ask the Lord to teach you, because He wants to teach you, but He also wants us to ask him for it.

 

Think of a time one of your children, or any young person, asks you to explain or teach them something. Usually we are happy to do so. There is a joy that comes with passing on knowledge, but the student has to be open. There is a Chinese proverb that says, ‘When the student is ready, the master will appear.’ It is much harder to pass on knowledge if the other person is not interested or open to it, but once they open their heart to it, then it is easy to teach. It is the same for all of us. The Lord wants to reveal so many things to us, and the more open we are to him, the more He will show us. God does this through the teachings of his Church, but also individually. Keep asking God to reveal himself to you.

 

When I was nineteen, I was searching for God and someone put in my path a book called Power for Living. This was a Protestant book and it gave a series of personal testimonies of people who had opened themselves up to God and how it had transformed their lives. At the end of the book it said, ‘If you want God to become part of your life, ask him now to make himself known to you’ and I did exactly that. I remember I was in my bedroom and I sat on the end of my bed and said, ‘Lord if you are there, please make yourself known to me.’ Then I put away the book and forgot about it.

 

Several days later I met a classmate who told me that a mutual friend of ours called Louise, had gone to Medjugorje on pilgrimage and that she had had an awakening of her faith.  His description of her was, ‘She has become all religious and holy.’ Louise was my own age and from a very similar background to myself. So I called to her and asked her what had happened. I can’t remember exactly what she said, but I listened to her for about an hour and a half and I could see that something profound had happened to her. At the end of the conversation she asked me if I would like to go to a prayer group in another friend’s house. I wasn’t that interested, but she asked another girl who I had a crush on, to ask me. Naturally I went. Now those two ladies are married and I am a priest!

 

When I went to the prayer meeting I was surprised to find about fifty young people, singing hymns, praying the rosary, praising God out loud and reading Scripture. I was intrigued and I could see that their faith was alive. I knew I wanted what they had. So I began attending these meetings and it got me praying and going to mass more often.

 

After a few weeks they had what is called a Life in the Spirit seminar. Over the course of about six weeks there are teachings on the reality and power of the Holy Spirit. I heard different testimonies from other young people of how their lives had been transformed when they really invited the Holy Spirit to come into their hearts. On the fifth night of the seminar they always pray with people individually, that they will experience an outpouring of the Spirit. When they prayed with me, nothing really happened and I was disappointed. I felt very peaceful, but not unduly so. However, in the weeks and months that followed I suddenly found that my faith was coming alive. I had a profound desire to spend a lot of time in prayer. I found that the Bible had also come alive and was speaking to me as I had never experienced before. I also found that I began to hear the words of the mass as though I had never heard them before. I had received an outpouring of the Spirit. That was in October 1988 and it was when my faith really came alive. I continue to pray to the Holy Spirit to teach me and God continues to reveal things to me. The more open I am the more I receive.

 

The conviction of our faith is also a gift of the Holy Spirit. ‘I have many more things to say to you, but you cannot bear them at this time. But when the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.’

 

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. Keep praying to the Holy Spirit asking him to set your hearts on fire. This is the Lord’s desire for us, but God never forces himself on us. The more open we are, the more God gives himself to us. If you find that your faith seems dry and uninteresting, ask God to give you the gift of his Spirit and you will be surprised what will happen.

 

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.