29th Sunday Year C (Gospel: Luke 18:1-8) Telling the future

There is a lot of confusion these days as to what comes from God and what does not.  I am talking in particular about things like going to fortune tellers, Tarrot card readers, psychics, playing the Ouija board, or going to mediums, and many other practices that come under the general term of Occult.  A lot of people just consider them harmless fun; besides what could possibly be wrong with them?

God expressly warns us in the Scriptures to stay away from such things.  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 enchantments or who consults the spirits, no diviner, or one who asks questions of the dead.  For the Lord abhors those who do these things (Deuteronomy 18:10-12).

In another book it says, ‘Do not have recourse to the spirits of the dead or to magicians; they will defile you.  I, the Lord, am your God’ (Leviticus 19:31).

Now I would like to try and explain why these things are a problem for us, because the Lord God doesn’t just give us rules for the sake of rules.  If God tells us to stay away from something it is with good reason, just like you will tell your children to stay away from the fire or they’ll get burned.  The Lord does the same for us, telling us what to avoid if we want to stay healthy.

So why are these things, which are now available everywhere, a problem?  The first and most important reason is that they interfere with our free will.  Our free will is an extraordinary gift which the Lord has given us, because it means that we have the freedom to do anything we choose, be it good or evil, although of course the idea is that real freedom is freedom to choose what is good.  We can even reject God if we choose.  It is an extraordinary thing that the Lord who has created us respects us enough even to giving us the freedom to reject him, and sadly some people do this by the way they live.  Going to fortune tellers or any of these other things that I mentioned is basically an attempt to gain knowledge of the future.  The problem is that if we have any kind of knowledge of the future it is going to influence our freedom to choose, because we will probably start acting out of fear or what we think might be going to happen.  The Lord does not want us to be afraid, but to be at peace.  That is why the Lord does not reveal the future to us.  We don’t need to know it.  If we did, He would show us, because He wants the very best for us.

The second reason why these things are a problem for us, is that by dabbling in them we are going directly against something God has asked us, which is a way of creating an obstacle between us and God.  We sin when we do this.  From a spiritual point of view they can also have a hold or influence over us.  If God does not reveal the future to us, then where is this information coming from?  It is not coming from the Lord, even if the fortune teller starts off by praying the Hail Mary, which I know some of them do. 

I worked with an exorcist priest friend of mine for a while and saw first-hand the mess that some people get themselves into by dabbling in these things that the Lord tells us specifically to keep away from.  They are very real.  Satan is cunning and will do anything to lead us away from God, because he hates us as God’s creation.  And yes I did say Satan, which may surprise you, but if Satan is not real then Jesus is a liar, because Jesus frequently mentioned him in his teaching.

I guess we have to ask ourselves do I believe what Jesus said is true or not?  Either the Bible (the Scriptures) is the word of God or it isn’t.  If it is, we have good cause to listen to it.  If it’s not true, then what are we doing here?

The Lord wants the very best for us and will continually guide us along the right path, the path that will help us to reach our full potential as human beings.  But sometimes we get misled and go astray.  That’s not a problem so long as we recognise it and come back again.  I’m sure you want God’s blessing for your lives and for your families, just as I do.  But if we mess with what God expressly tells us to stay away from, we will be blocking God’s help from us. 

If you have dabbled in any of these things at any stage, confess it, which is what the Lord asks us to do.  By confessing it you break any spiritual hold that it can have over you.  By repenting of it you also open the door to God’s grace as well.

In the readings today the Lord is assuring us that He does and will answer our prayers.  We have to trust that the Lord in this.  God only speaks truth.  If God has assured us of his help, then we would be foolish to look for any spiritual help from any other source.  We know that God wants the very best for us and if we believe that then we must also listen to what He tells us to do and what He tells us to avoid.

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

28th Sunday Year C (Gospel: Luke 17:11-19) Healing and the forgiveness of sins

 

In my work as a priest over the last fifteen years I have come across many people who have told me about miracles of healing which they or someone close to them have experienced.  A close friend of mine by the name of Sandra, who is married with 6 children, saw one of her own children miraculously healed at Lourdes a few years ago.  Her son Joe, who was about 7 at the time, was suffering with severe eczema all over his body.  It meant that his skin was raw and bleeding a lot of the time.  He had to be covered in wet bandages from head to toe which took his mother an hour and twenty minutes to put on each time.  They decided to bring him on pilgrimage to Lourdes to pray for him.  While they were there he was brought to the ‘baths’ which is where many of the sick are brought in order to bathe in the healing waters of Lourdes as Our Lady told St. Bernadette to do.  After he had been to the baths he started to say, ‘Mom, I’ve been healed!’  She paid no attention to him as he was often playing up as little boys will do.  But then he started to say it to others on the bus and eventually he said, ‘Mom I’ve been healed.  Why don’t you believe me?’  She started to get suspicious at this point and said, ‘I do believe you.’  When they went back to the hotel she took off the bandages and his eczema was almost completely gone.  That is just one of many stories of healing that I have heard and I’m sure there are many of you here who could tell me more.

Why is it that we don’t see more miracles of healing?  Jesus healed many people during his time on earth, so why doesn’t God seem to heal more today?

For two summers I worked as a confessor in Lourdes; just hearing confessions, nothing else.  It was one of the most wonderful experiences I’ve had as a priest so far, although it was exhausting.  People are amazed when I say that hearing confessions for hours could be such a wonderful experience as most people couldn’t imagine anything more boring.  However, the reason it was so great was because it is where a huge number of miracles take place every day and very real miracles too.  When people are given the grace to be able to confess sins they have been burdened with for years you can physically see a change in their faces.  They are being healed and it is usually a much deeper healing that a purely physical healing.  The body needs healing, but the healing of the spirit is more important because it affects us much more.  Many people came to me and the other priests and confessed sins they were carrying for 20, 30 and even 40 years.  It is a very moving thing to watch the transformation in people’s faces when they realize they have been forgiven.  A weight is lifted off  them and they are made free.  I saw this happen right before my eyes many times and you can tell straight away that this is the healing power of God at work. 

The greatest healing ministry of the Church is the forgiveness of sins.  The life, death and resurrection of Jesus was about the forgiveness of sins.  In each mass at the consecration the priest holds up the chalice and says, ‘This is the cup of my blood, which will be poured out for you and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.’  The mass is all about the forgiveness of sins, because at each mass we are at the event of Calvary when Jesus was killed.  This was all done so that our sins could be forgiven.  That is why the mass is so powerful and that is why we pray for everyone and everything in each mass.  God the Son is offered to God the Father, so that sins may be forgiven.

Because of the way we are made with body and spirit we need concrete ways of relating to each other and we need concrete ways of being able to understand God.  That is one of the reasons why Jesus gives us his body and blood in the form of bread and wine.  They are things we can see and touch and taste.  We can relate to them.  When it comes to the forgiveness of sins Jesus has given us the gift of confession.  Through confession we have a definite way of being able to confess our sins to another person in total secrecy and so to be healed.  Confession is an extraordinary gift of healing which the Lord offers us, because He knows how much we need it.  It’s not just about confessing everything so that we can be good enough for God, because we can never be good enough for God.  This is a gift that God has given us for our benefit, so that we can be healed and not be dragging around the mistakes of our past with us.  The Lord wants us to be free and to be able to enjoy our lives and this is one of the wonderful ways that the Lord has done this.

You may ask, ‘Why can’t I just tell God I’m sorry myself?  Why do I have to go to a priest?’  Well you can if you want to and I’m sure that the Lord forgives us when we do that, but God knows that in our humanity we have a psychological need to confess to another person.  If you don’t believe me listen to the TV and radio chat shows where you find people ‘confessing’ their sins to the whole world every day.  We have a need to confess, because that is what helps us to heal.

Jesus said to his Apostles, "Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained" (John 20:21–23).  Jesus was saying that He would be working in and through his priests, since it is only God who forgives sins, but the Lord ordered it in such a way that He would offer his forgiveness through his priests.  That is why we have the gift of confession.  It is meant to be a gift, not a burden, but Satan is quick to convince us that we don’t need it; that we can go to God ourselves.  Why should we have to confess to a priest when he is just a sinner?  Of course priests are sinners like anyone else, but this is the gift that God has given us through the priesthood, in order to help us, to heal us and to help us be free.

All through our lives God offers us so many things to help us and I’m quite sure this is one of the greatest gifts of healing that we have, but like everything else that God gives us, it is never forced on us, simply offered, just like the Eucharist.

The greatest healing ministry of the Church is the forgiveness of sins.

27th Sunday Year C (Gospel: Luke 17:5-10) The mustard seed and the dignity of life

So many people I have met feel that they have very little faith, or tell me that they are not very religious.  However, I think most people have far more faith than they give themselves credit for.  Being ‘religious’ and having faith are not the same thing.

Today we are given the unusual image of something as tiny as a mustard seed, which is about the size of the tip of a pen.  Jesus tells the Apostles that if their faith was even as big as that they could move mountains, or in this case a mulberry tree!  There are two ways to look at this.  First we could say, if it only takes faith the size of a mustard seed to move mountains I must have very little faith at all since I could never do anything spectacular like that!  But the other way to look at it is to say that with very little faith you can do an awful lot.  Most of us do have faith and that faith grows as our relationship with God grows.  We often talk about the Lord ‘testing our faith’ when we find ourselves going through a crisis.  But by ‘testing’ I think what is meant is that God is stretching our faith to full capacity.  It is not so much a test to see if we are up to standard, rather a time of growth.  God knows what we are capable of and God is all the time helping us to reach our full potential.

The Apostles had faith and must have seen extraordinary things when they were with Jesus.  Peter even walked on water for a few seconds, but then he began to sink as he started to realize in human terms that that couldn’t be happening.  But even the Apostles had a lot to learn with regards faith.  After the crucifixion of Jesus they hid themselves away in a room because they were afraid.  It was only after they received the gift of the Spirit that they were transformed and began preaching fearlessly and working miracles.  They had to grow too and I’m sure that as their life went on their faith continued to grow.  No doubt their faith was very different at the end of their lives than it was when they were with Jesus.  They then had a life-time of trying to serve God and seeing many extraordinary things.  Faith grows gradually, but it does grow.

This weekend we are also focusing on respect for life, reminding ourselves that all life is a gift from God and all life is sacred from the moment of conception to natural death.  At the moment we are living in a ‘culture of death’ as John Paul II described it, where life is quickly discarded if it is not convenient.  The weakest and most vulnerable are the first to be got rid of. If a child in the womb is not convenient for our lifestyle, it is destroyed.  This has to be a terrible crime against God and his creation.  When we decide what can live and what can die we are playing God which we must not do.  Every human being has equal dignity, whether it is someone who is severely handicapped, or someone who finds themselves living on the street because of a crippling addiction.  Whatever situation we find ourselves in, we are still created in God’s image and we all have the same dignity as human beings which deserves equal respect.

When we hear of all the terrible things that go on in our world, such as abortion, human trafficking and so many others, we can feel very helpless.  But going back to the mustard seed it is good to remember that even with very little faith we can do a lot.  You could be cynical and ask, ‘What difference will my faith make?’  But if you remember recently when President Obama was threatening a military strike against Syria because of the use of chemical weapons, Pope Francis asked everyone to pray and fast for one day.  Just after this President Putin stepped in and offered to work out a deal with Syria over its chemical weapons and a possible war was averted.  We never know what our faith can do, even if it is smaller than a mustard seed.  With this in mind let us keep praying and fasting for the protection of life at all its stages.

26th Sunday Yr C (Gospel: Luke 16:19-31) Rich and poor

A few years ago I was driving somewhere and I gave a lift to a man.  He was a musician, a busker and basically lived by busking on the streets.  Not an easy way of life.  He had practically all his possessions with him.  He told me he knew over 350 songs, which was quite impressive.  When he realised that I was a priest he began asking me about religion.  I can’t remember much of what he said except for one thing.  He said that he wasn’t very religious but that he preferred to stay out of it and sit on the fence.  When we spoke about death and meeting God he said that he would plead ignorance.  That was the thing that struck me the most.  He said, ‘I’ll just plead ignorance.’ 

I suppose if God were just another human being, we might get away with pleading ignorance, but since God knows everything about us, including our motivations, all the things that have influenced us during our life that cause us to act as we do, how free or not we are to make choices, I don’t think that pleading ignorance will be much use!  This is not to just focus on the negative as if we should be afraid of God because He is out to get us.  On the contrary, the Lord loves us and wants to help us in every way possible.  He knows our weaknesses and what we struggle with, but He also knows when we avoid responsibility.  That's what the first reading is about.  Through the prophet Amos, God condemns those who lavishly enjoy themselves while ignoring those around them who are suffering and in want.

In the readings today we are presented not so much with the rich and the poor, rather with those who deliberately turn their back on justice and responsibility.  We are shown the two extremes.  The poor man Lazarus was at this rich man’s gate (the rich man is traditionally known as Dives).  In other words the rich man couldn’t have missed him because he was right under his nose.  And it says that ‘Lazarus longed to fill himself with the scraps that fell from the rich man’s table’, which implies that he was offered absolutely nothing, not even a small amount.  So it’s not as if the rich man did a certain amount and it wasn’t enough.  Jesus is telling us that he did absolutely nothing.  That is why he was condemned and lost heaven, not because he had riches.  There is nothing wrong with having riches.  What we do with it is what’s important.  If I am wealthy then that is the situation God has given me in this life (provided I acquired it in a just way, of course!).  What I do with it is what’s important.

Equally you might think that Lazarus could have got up and done something for himself.  But the fact that he ‘lay’ at the rich man’s gate and that he was covered in sores, tells us that he was sick and helpless.  You could say that God put him there deliberately to allow the rich man to help him, but he chose to do nothing. 

I have no doubt that God often puts people in our path who may need our help, but we always have the choice to help them or not.  God has given us that freedom.  The help we give people may not even be financial help.  It may be something as simple as a smile or an encouraging word that is needed.  All the time we are coming across people who need our help and if we are open to it we will recognise them.  If we have plenty, let us thank God for it, but it also means that we have an obligation to help those who are in need and there is no shortage of them, both in this country and all over the world.  ‘The poor will always be with you.’

So there is a double message here.  First, let us thank God for what we have.  Second, let us also ask God to help us make good use of what we have.  God has given us freedom to do what we want in this life, but we are also expected to be responsible.  There is a common misconception today that being free means being able to do anything you want, good or bad.  However, true freedom is the freedom to choose what is good.  That is what the Lord wants for us and that is also what will help us the most.  If we find ourselves in a situation where we have plenty, we must remember first that we are in the minority, and second that we have a responsibility to look out for those who are in need and they are in the majority.

25th Sunday Year C (Gospel: Luke 16:1-13) Responsibility

In my hometown a few years ago a man took his own life as sadly often happens.  He was a great family man, involved in his local parish, well known and respected and he had also become very wealthy.  Everyone was shocked.  After his death it was discovered that he had got much of his wealth through fraud and it was about to come to light.  It seems he couldn’t face it and he took his own life.  A terrible tragedy that no one would want to happen.

One of my sisters in-law, Claire, used to work as a stenographer (one of the people in court who records every word spoken in each case).  She witnessed many court cases and I remember her saying that many of the cases of fraud and corruption, especially on a large scale, become so complicated that no one can follow them and they eventually get rejected.  It seems that the bigger the crime the more likely you are to get away with it.  One of the judges said to her one time, ‘If you want to get away with a crime, don’t steal something from Dunnes Stores (Walmart equivalent in the US), steal  Dunnes Stores itself!’

We are used to hearing many stories of corruption and it is always so frustrating because there is usually little or nothing we can do about it.  The world economic crash came about because of greed and dishonesty.  The prophet Amos refers to the same problem in the first reading, which was written about 800 years before Christ.  Humanity doesn’t change.  However, the good thing is that everyone will be held accountable when they come before God and why I say that is good news is that even if people get away with corruption now, they will not get away with it when they come before God.  We will all be held accountable for our actions.

There is nothing wrong with having wealth, so long as we realize that we have a responsibility to use it properly.  I have often heard it said from people who have done very well, ‘I worked hard for my money!’  No doubt they did, but the poor work hard too, but their circumstances are different from the beginning and they are often trapped at the bottom.  If we have done well, thank God for it, but remember who gave us the opportunities, the health, the education, the ability, the intelligence?  Everything is a gift from God.  If God has blessed us in this way it means that we also have a responsibility to use it well.  Perhaps the Lord gave you money specifically to help people in various situations, but that is where we must be careful to do just that.  Money is a very useful thing, but it is only a tool which we can use for good or evil.  As Christians who try and follow the way of the Lord we must be especially careful that we do not become slaves to money, or see money as an end in itself.  It is a tool and we must use it wisely and this applies to me as a priest as much as everyone else.  People are very generous to us priests and I have to be careful that I don’t just line my pockets instead of making good use of it.  I too will be accountable before God.

If we are living in great luxury it probably means that others are doing without.  Usually when couples have families they are more pressed for cash as they try and provide for their children.  But then later on when children have grown up, you may find you have you have more surplus and that is when we must remember to try and provide for the next generation and those around us, as others did for us.

Wealth (if we have wealth) and talents have been entrusted to us for a reason, it is up to us to use it well.

‘You cannot serve both God and money.’

24th Sunday of Year C (Gospel: Luke 15:1-32) The Prodigal Son

What happens to us when we die?  I remember thinking in the last parish that it was amazing the number of people I had known who had died over the four years I was there and that was just in one parish alone.  Where are they now?  Are they anywhere?  We usually say they are in heaven and hopefully that is true.  That is what God has created us for.  I know that today most people are probably very sceptical about the idea of hell.  That seems to be a medieval idea that is dead and gone.  However, the reality is that if heaven is real and if we have free will, which we do, then it must also be possible to lose what God wants us to reach.  God has created us for life with him, which we call heaven.  I guess you could say it is the greatest happiness we could imagine, something wonderful beyond our wildest dreams.  Every so often God allows a saint or mystic to experience something of what awaits us, no doubt to reassure us that it is real.  Think of someone like Padre Pio (St. Pius of Pietrelcina), or indeed different places where Our Lady has appeared. 

If being with God means light, happiness, joy, love, no suffering, no injustice and being with the people we love, then the opposite of that is darkness, isolation, pain, loneliness, etc.  Since we have free will it means that we can lose what God wants us to reach.  I think it’s important not to forget that.  God offers us something wonderful but we have the freedom to accept or reject it.

The next thing that comes to most people’s minds is the fear of not being good enough, or perhaps the fear of what we have done wrong.  I remember a priest friend of mine who died a few years ago.  When he was dying he kept saying ‘I’ll never get into heaven.  I’m not good enough.’  I was sorry for him and he was a holy man, but it seems to be a natural fear that many of us have.  I’ve heard so many people express this fear.

Then we come to the parable of the prodigal son which we have today.  I think it is one of the most wonderful stories in the Bible for several reasons.  What it says more than anything is that God does not act the way we do.  In spite of the way we can behave the Father in heaven has compassion for us in a way that we do not understand because we never experience that kind of compassion from other human beings.  What it says more than anything is that God doesn’t care how badly we mess things up or whether we are the model child.  The only thing God is interested in is that we reach the happiness that He has created us for.  And God will do everything possible—apart from forcing us—to make sure we reach this happiness which we call heaven.  However, because God completely respects the freedom He has given us He will never force us.  The death and resurrection of Jesus is all about making sure that our sins can be forgiven and that we can reach this happiness that God wants for us.  That’s also what the mass is.

In this story of the Prodigal son, the younger son was a disaster, but it says that ‘while he was still a long way off, the father saw him and was moved with pity.’  The older son appeared to be the loyal child who ‘turned out fine.’  Yet he was seething with resentment, but the father also showed him compassion.

God is not interested in how good or bad, successful or unsuccessful we are, rather that we will keep coming back to him.  If we remain open to him, we have nothing to worry about.  Think of the younger son, the one who basically said he wanted nothing more to do with his father or his family and took off.  I’m sure there are many of you worrying about children who have said they want nothing more to do with the Church or religion.  Well remember this parable.  The Lord still loves them just as much as any of us and God will go on reaching out to them until the end of their lives, perhaps through ways that we never see or even think of.  But that is where we also have a duty to pray for them.  That’s what the first reading is about.  Moses intercedes for the people and God has mercy on them.

To sum up: God has created us to experience the fullness of life and to reach a happiness that is more than our wildest dreams could imagine.  God will do everything possible apart from forcing us, to make sure we and our loved ones get there.  So let us have great confidence in this and never be afraid of our mistakes or of how our lives have turned out.  All that matters is that we try and stay open to God.  The rest is in God’s mercy.

‘While he was still a long way off, the Father saw him and took pity on him.’

23rd Sunday, Yr C (Gospel: Luke 14:25-33) Providence

 

There is a Chinese story of a farmer who used an old horse to plough his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer's neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?" A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?"

Then, when the farmer's son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg, they let him off. Now was that good luck or bad luck?  Who knows?

When we look back over our life, whether it be long or short, I think many of us have regrets and there have probably been many disappointments: relationships that didn’t work; marriages that broke up; careers that fell apart; unexpected sickness that changed everything.  We think that ‘If only things had gone differently…’  While it is normal to experience disappointment I think the eyes of faith can help us to see it differently.

In the story it talks about ‘good luck, bad luck’, but we call it providence.  The Lord provides.  As humans we continually make mistakes, but the wonderful thing is that the Lord can and does bring extraordinary good even out of our mistakes.  In the book of Genesis we read that Moses actually murdered a man and then in fear of the punishment he fled the country.  That was his life written off you’d imagine.  Yet years later God appeared to him in the burning bush and sent him to rescue his people from slavery.  King David committed adultery and then had the woman’s husband murdered to cover his tracks.  This was a terrible double crime.  Eventually he took this woman Bathsheba to be his wife.  However, the second child born to Bathsheba was the future king Solomon who was considered probably the greatest king of Israel because he brought peace and rebuilt the temple.  God can bring extraordinary good out of our worst mistakes.  God is not put off by our mistakes.

Many of the things that went wrong for us that we look back can seem quite different if we look on them with the eyes of faith.  I don’t mean by that that it’s good that they happened, but sometimes they also lead us to other unexpected good things.  That is what we call providence.  This also gives us great hope because it means that even when things do go wrong it’s not the end of the line.

I always find it inspiring to see the great goodness that comes out in people when someone experiences tragedy or when a natural disaster occurs.  People come out of the woodwork to help and often the charity shown in turn brings more goodness out of people.  It is contagious.

So we are wise when we leave it to God to decide what is good fortune and what misfortune, and thank him that all things turn out for good with those who love him.

Who can know God’s counsel,

or who can conceive what the Lord intends?

For the deliberations of mortals are timid,

and unsure are our plans.