Some thoughts on the Coronavirus

A few days ago, Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of England, addressed the people of England. One of the things he said was (in so many words), “The Coronavirus has now come to our shores. Some people will get it and some of our loved ones will die before their time.”

That is not true. No one will die before their time. Everyone will die at the exact moment that the Father in heaven allows them to die and has ordained that their life on earth would be complete, which has been known from all eternity. If you think of it that way, it makes everything different. We may die of the Coronavirus, or something else, but we will die when our time on earth is over. That’s it and it’s not something to be afraid of.

Remember Roy Shoeman, whom we had speaking here recently; the Harvard professor and atheist, who had that amazing spiritual experience where he was shown everything. He saw how everything in his life fitted together perfectly, not only the things that caused him suffering, but especially the things that caused him suffering. Everything fitted together perfectly in the overall picture, so much of it we don’t understand, or like and some of it is caused by evil. But in the end the Father in heaven makes it fit together, for our benefit, because He loves us.

God does not want us to be living in fear. 366 times in the Bible are the words, “Do not be afraid.” That’s every day including a leap year!

In this beautiful Gospel of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well, we are shown several things. The most important thing that Jesus is telling us through it, is that we will only find fulfillment in him.

The woman he meets is on her own in the middle of the day, which tells us that something is wrong. Normally she would be with the other women, in the early morning. So why was she on her own? She had been rejected by her community because of the way she lived. Jesus helps her to see that she has not found fulfillment because she has been looking for it in the wrong way and in the wrong place. He points out that she has had five husbands and the current man is not her husband. She has tried to find fulfillment in relationships, but she cannot. Jesus shows her that the only place we will ever find fulfillment is in him. No other human being can every fulfill us, because we are made for the divine. We will only be fulfilled in God. To expect any other human being, including your spouse, to fulfill you, is asking the impossible. Hopefully they will bring you great joy and be a wonderful companion, but they cannot fulfill you, or you them. If we can accept this, it takes a great burden off our shoulders. As humans we will let each other down, we will disappoint each other, because we are so limited as human beings. The only place we will be fulfilled is in God,

Jesus says to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

What is this ‘living water’? It is Jesus himself, who gives himself to us in so many ways. Above all we can receive him in the Eucharist, his own Body and Blood. There is nothing more intimate than this. He teaches us everything we need to know, through the Scriptures. He offers us his forgiveness and healing through confession. And he offers us eternal life and happiness if we want it.

We waste so much time and put so much energy, in trying to find satisfaction and fulfillment in what can never satisfy. God shows us exactly where we will find fulfillment if only we would give ourselves to him and immerse ourselves in him. That is also why he continually assures us not to be afraid, but to trust in his providence.

At funerals I often read the Gospel of John 14:

Do not let your hearts be troubled or afraid. Trust in God still and trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you with me, so that where I am you may be too.

When our life on earth is complete, Jesus will come to bring us with him, unless we reject him. Then we will find our total fulfillment. That’s what we are created for. Our time on earth is only step one.

“If you knew the gift of God and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink, ‘you would have asked him and he would have given you living water". 

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.

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 God tells 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 thing? Anything that is occult is generally 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.

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 happiness. The only path. He guides and teaches us through the Scriptures and through the teachings of his Church—his Church. Jesus is either telling us the truth or he is not. If he is, then we need to listen.

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.

2nd Sunday of Lent Yr A (Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9) This is my Son the Beloved, listen to him

A few years ago I was out with some friends having a drink. There was an American tourist there, a man about my own age, and he was on his own. Eventually he joined us and began chatting. He told us a bit about himself and his wife and children at home. Then he asked me if I had any children. So I said ‘No, I am a priest.’ He was not expecting that reply, but then he said, ‘Yes, Jesus was a good man.’ I was thinking to myself, ‘Yest, Jesus was a good man, but he was also much more than that: he was and is the Son of God.’ That makes a big difference. 

Something that you will come across quite often in discussions on religion, is the idea that Jesus is another one of the enlightened masters, like the Buddha, or Gandhi. You will come across this in what is generally called New Age thinking as well. He is a prophet and a great teacher and spiritual leader, but that is it. However, for us it can not stop there. We believe that he is fully human, yes, but also fully divine. He is God, revealed to us in human flesh. If this is not true, then we should not be here in this church. And if this is not true then what we do here in the mass is idolatry, because it would mean that we claim that this same Jesus, becomes present in the form of bread and wine. It is no wonder that many other religions think what we do is completely crazy. It is hard to blame them. Jesus himself claimed he was the Son of God. Either he was a liar, he was mad, or what he said was true. We believe that what he said was true, that he is the Son of God, fully human and fully divine.

This vision that the three Apostles Peter, James and John, were granted on the mountain tells us a lot. These three Apostles seem to have been given a more intense training than the others. The Gospels tell us that on three different occasions Jesus allowed only them to go with him. One time was when he brought back to life the twelve-year-old girl, Jairus’ daughter. He only allowed her parents and Peter, James and John to be there. The other time was in the Garden of Gethsemane when he allowed them to see up close, the fear and terror that he went through, knowing what was about to happen to him. He sweated blood, which is a real medical condition called Hematidrosis, caused by extreme stress.

Why were they given this vision? It was for their benefit, to leave them in no doubt that Jesus was not just another prophet, even if a great prophet. He was the Son of God and then they heard this voice from the cloud saying ‘This is my Son the beloved... listen to him.’ It was another way of telling them, ‘Do not be in any doubt as to who he is. Listen to him.’ He is the only one whose voice we need to listen to. We are constantly being called in different directions. Different voices tell us what to believe, where to go. ‘Don’t listen to the Church because it is corrupt. The teachings of Christ are not real’, etc. But God the Father says, ‘Listen to him’.

Why did these other two men, Moses and Elijah, appear with Jesus? Moses represented the Ten Commandments, which were known as the Law. This was the law they were to follow, which would lead them to God. Elijah represented the Prophets. The prophets were the people whom God sent to point people back in the right direction. The Jewish people believed that if they followed the teachings of the Law and the Prophets, that was their path to heaven. That is why they were so keen to keep the law as perfectly as possible. Now Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus, which was a sign that Jesus was now the new path to heaven. All of us will go to heaven because of what Jesus has done for us. He is the new path to heaven, the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets. ‘I am the Way, the truth and the life’ (John 14:6).

Peter, James and John were also being strengthened for the passion which was to happen right after this event and in spite of being granted this vision, they fled when Jesus was tortured and killed. If it was that difficult for them, it is not surprising that we can find it difficult too and that we doubt and wonder are we all crazy to believe in these things. But that is why God granted them this vision of Jesus in his glory, which must have been both wonderful and terrifying at the same time. God allowed them to see this so that afterwards they would regain their strength and courage. They saw Jesus in glory, to show them who he was/is and also to remind us that this is how we will see him when we die. Years later, Peter writes about this event in one of his letters:

For He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to Him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” And we ourselves heard this voice from heaven when we were with Him on the holy mountain. (1 Pet 1:17)

We too need the same strength and courage, especially when we are all the time being told how foolish it is to believe all this stuff and that we should really get with the times. The Church is out of date, corrupt, etc. If Jesus is just a man, or a prophet, then what we do here is idolatry and indeed blasphemy. But if Jesus is the Son of God, which we believe he is, then what happens in each mass is the most extraordinary miracle in the world and it is also the most incredible privilege for us to be able to receive his body and blood in each mass. Who could even think up such an idea except God? No human would try to convince other humans of something so outrageous. Jesus told us to repeat this ritual in his memory and so we do, so that we can have him with us continually in a beautiful way, where we can actually receive him into our own bodies.

Despite the difficulty at times to believe and all the confusion that is around us, remember this event on the mountain and the voice that the Apostles heard:

This is my Son the Beloved... listen to him.

1st Sunday of Lent, Year A The temptations of Christ in the desert

Since I was ordained a priest almost 22 years ago, one of the temptations for me and I’m sure most priests, has been to wish that God would do more spectacular things through me, which would convince people of the presence of God. I believe that God does extraordinary things through the priesthood, such as becoming present in each mass when the bread and wine becomes the Body and Blood of Christ, but as you know it happens in a very humble and hidden way. It is not spectacular and if you don’t believe in it, then it just seems to be a strange religious ritual. So why doesn’t God do something more spectacular every to help us believe?

The account of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness gives us the answer. This is an extraordinary story because it must have come directly from Jesus himself, since no one was with him during this time of temptation. At some stage he must have told his apostles what happened there and what he had to go through. 

Jesus was about to embark on his public campaign to teach people about God and to win people over for God. For any campaign you must choose the weapons you are going to use. Jesus must have been aware that he had extraordinary powers, or otherwise Satan wouldn’t have tempted him to use them. There would be no point in tempting any of us to throw ourselves down from a great height or to turn stones into bread, because we know we couldn’t do it anyway. So this must have been a very real temptation for Jesus, to misuse his power.

Wilderness of Judea

His first temptation was to find satisfaction in material things. ‘Give people the material things that they want and they will love you.’ In this case it was bread to a man who was starving. But Jesus said, ‘No. Man does not live on bread alone.’ The human being is not satisfied by material things. Jesus was saying, ‘I am not going to try and win people over by offering them just what they want.’ This is what our society does. It tells us that if we have enough money and enough of the right products, then we will be satisfied, but we won’t. We are much deeper than that and we can only be fully satisfied by God, because we are spiritual and not just physical.

Jesus’ second temptation was to work signs and wonders for the people. ‘Throw yourself down from the temple since God will save you.’ If he started doing this, then no doubt he would have thousands of followers in no time, but Jesus also rejected this, because he knew that the way he had to take was the way of service and the way of the cross, which would win people over heart by heart. You cannot buy love and that is why Jesus chose the humbler way, and left it open to us to see what God offers us and then to freely choose to follow him or not.

The third temptation was to compromise with evil. This is a big temptation for most people. When you hear people say ‘The Church needs to get with the times’ this is often what they mean. The Church needs to ‘adapt’ (compromise) some of its teachings to the more difficult moral demands of our age. It is always a temptation for me as a priest to water down the teachings of God so that they are easier to swallow, to keep people happy. But that is not what we are asked to do and when Jesus was tempted this way, he rejected it outright. He was being tempted to compromise with evil, just a little bit, so that it would be easier for people to be convinced. But right is right and wrong is wrong. We must not compromise on the ways of God. Yes, it is more difficult, but if it is the truth then it is better to struggle with it, than to try and change it to suit ourselves. The teachings of God don’t need to change; we are the ones who need to change. I don’t understand some of the teachings of Christ, but I will try and accept them because they come from him. That is why the teachings of our Church don’t change, because we believe they come from God.

The first reading is the account of the Fall of Adam and Eve. They represent our first parents. The tree of good and evil can be understood as the limits that God sets for us. We must not be the ones who ultimately decide what is good and evil. God shows us what is good and evil and we need to listen to and accept his teachings, or we will get ourselves in trouble. ‘Recognise your limitations. Don’t play God.’ But Satan—the Deceiver—tempted them to ignore the word of God and they did. As a result they opened up a whole world of sin and evil. See how he twisted what God had said: ‘Did God really tell you not to eat from any of the trees in the garden?’ That is not what God said at all. They decided to listen to Satan, over God. They rejected God’s word. We continue to do the same today. We think that we know better than God’s teachings and that we can decide what is ultimately good and evil. People justify abortion in all kinds of ways, yet God’s law says, ‘You shall not kill.’ So much of our country has abandoned the ways of God and look at our society. It is falling apart. Constant killings, for no apparent reason and we still defend our rights to be able to kill and lie and cheat.

It is good to ask yourself, ‘Who do I listen to?’ Whose teaching will I live by? Will I keep going back to God’s commandments—commandments, not suggestions—or will I listen to the opposite, which is from the deceiver? Living by the ways of God may seem ‘impractical, unrealistic,’ but they are what makes our society work. We are still quick to justify a different way, but whose voice do you want to listen to? We will be tempted again and again, to compromise, just as Jesus was in the wilderness, but we have to go back to whether we accept God’s teaching as God’s teaching, or not. If we want to live by God’s law, which is what works, then we have to keep going back to it and listening to it, to make sure we are not just taking our version of it.

In many ways I would still love it if God worked spectacular signs and wonders now, so that people would be easily and quickly convinced, but that is not how God works, and I think it is good to remember that, especially when we live in times of great change when God often seems to be very quiet. The Lord knows what He is doing and He puts it to us continually to follow him freely. No one is going to force us.

"Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God".

7th Sunday Year A (Mt 5:38-48) Love your enemies?

British soldiers, Northern Ireland

During what was known as ‘The Troubles’ in northern Ireland, that time of guerilla warfare when the north was riddled with tit-for-tat killings—British soldiers being shot, Catholics and Protestants being shot—I was amazed every so often at the bravery of parents who were interviewed after one of their children had been shot. Sometimes in those very interviews the parents would say ‘We want no revenge, no retaliation. We forgive the people who murdered our son/daughter.’ I think those statements shocked people more than the murders themselves. Much of the time people were ambushed and shot dead simply because they were Catholic or Protestant, which gives you an idea of the kind of evil at work behind such actions. I think anyone would understand if these parents sought revenge, and yet quite a number did the opposite. It was a very inspiring and hope-filling thing to hear.

We have heard it several times here in the States too. Remember the young man who entered a prayer gathering in Charleston North Carolina in 2015 and shot almost everyone there. The following day their families came out and publicly said they forgave that young man. Extraordinary courage and strength. There is great goodness in most people.

When Catholic churches were burnt to the ground, often Protestants would donate money to help rebuild them, but you don’t hear those things on the news. There is great goodness in most people.

Today we are presented with what is probably the most difficult commandment that Jesus gave: ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ So far, I have never met anyone who wants to do this! Did Jesus really expect us to take that literally? Maybe it was just a figurative way of speaking? Jesus meant exactly what he said. Remember his own words when he was dying on the cross, a death that was considered so brutal that the Emperor Constantine eventually had it banned: ‘Father forgive them, for they don’t know what they are doing.’ The Lord does expect us to try and live this commandment, but how we are to do it is the key thing. Essentially it comes down to God’s power and strength at work within us, but that will only happen if we remain close to God. Our relationship with God is what gives us super-human strength, the kind of strength you need to love your enemies. That is also why Jesus gave us the Eucharist, so that we can be intimately united to him every day if we wish. That is where we get our strength from. We continually read the Scriptures so that we are being formed in God’s way of thinking and not just a worldly way of thinking. 

Another aspect of this is to try and see people as people, rather than Mexicans, or Irish, Christians, or Muslims. If we see them as human beings before anything else, that changes things.

A few years ago I was watching a documentary about a Kurdish women’s group of fighters in Northern Syria. At this stage there are over 20,000 of them. They have been fighting largely against Islamic State. The journalist interviewing them asked one woman who had been fighting for two years, what it was like to fight these people who were trying to kill them and their families and I was astonished at one thing she said: ‘We have to remember that they are people too.’ She was big enough, mature enough, to be able to see beyond Muslim Extremists. She could see human beings, even if those human beings had a very evil twist on reality.

Think of all the commercials, radio and TV programs and newspapers, that we read and hear each day. We spend a lot of time feeding our mind with the values and thinking of the world around us. But the ways of God are not the ways of the world. They are quite different. Our culture tells us that we should sue people and seek revenge if we feel we have been slighted. There are so many commercials on TV encouraging us to sue people. That’s not what God tells us to do. Jesus says, ‘If you only love those who love you, then what reward can you expect. Everyone does that?’ But our faith calls us to go farther, to see the enemy as people before anything else. That can help us to be tolerant. It doesn’t mean that we can’t protect ourselves, or defend ourselves, but it helps us not to succumb to evil ourselves. Otherwise we are no different to our enemies. That’s exactly what Jesus puts to us in this Gospel. We are called to be different by the way we live and think. When we try and live this way, then we stand out because we are different. Then we are the salt of the earth and the yeast that makes the dough rise. We are small but we can have a big difference on the world around us, just like those parents who publicly said they forgave the people who killed their children. I am sure it was their faith that enabled them to do that, because that takes more than human strength. But our ability to do that, comes from our relationship with God. The more it grows, the more we immerse ourselves in God, the more we see the world differently.

A priest friend of mine from Iraq, was shot dead by Islamic extremists. I have to remind myself that they are not monsters, even if what they did was monstrous. They are human beings, whose minds have been corrupted. If I can see them that way first, then it prevents me from being filled with hatred myself, which only destroys me.

I want to finish with a short part of a very famous speech given by Martin Luther King Jr which reflects this:

To our bitterest opponents we say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will, we shall continue to love you… Throw us in jail, we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half-dead and we shall still love you. One day we will win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process. (Martin Luther King, Strength to Love)

‘Love your enemies.  Pray for those who persecute you.’

6th Sunday Year A (Mt 5:17-37) If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of heaven

Several years ago I heard a woman giving her testimony of how God had healed her from terrible abuse she had suffered from her father, from an early age. She said that her family knew nothing but abuse, incest, pornography. She was even sold to other men by her father and yet they went to mass every Sunday as a family. To outsiders, they looked like a perfectly normal family. Obviously the practicing of their faith didn’t mean an awful lot.

 Here’s another example: A man I met in a hospital in Ireland told me angrily that it was alright for the Archbishop of Armagh (the head of the Church in Ireland), to pray for priests who had done wrong and to spend the whole day praying for them if he wanted, but that he shouldn’t expect him or anyone else to have to pray for them. In fact how dare he even suggest that anyone else should have to pray for such people.

‘If your virtue goes no deeper than that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.’  In modern English we would say, ‘If your faith is only outward signs, like going to mass, and saying religious things, you will never go to heaven.’ You will never get to heaven! That seems pretty strong coming from a God whom we say loves us so much. God takes us seriously, but He expects us to take him seriously as well. In fact He insists that we do.

This man I mentioned was obviously very angry and felt let down by priests who had done wrong. I don’t blame him for feeling angry, but the point is that he seemed to think that he could quite happily go on practicing his faith, on the outside, so long as he didn’t have to do anything like forgiving, or praying for others who have done wrong, the very things that our faith is all about. This is exactly what Jesus is talking about and it applies to every one of us, priests, Religious, all of us. The Lord is saying, ‘Go deeper than what you can just see. Live from your heart. Pray from the heart. Let your outward practice of faith, like praying at mass and doing novenas etc., be an outward sign of what is already happening on the inside.’ 

Jesus also says something quite shocking. ‘If your hand, or your eye, causes you to sin, cut it off... pluck it out! It is better to enter heaven missing one of your limbs, than to go to hell with all your limbs. What is He talking about? He is talking about the seriousness of sin. Today we have lost a sense of the seriousness of sin. Sin is the one thing that can prevent us from going to heaven when we die. If we do not repent of what we have done wrong, we may not enter heaven. If sin is not serious, then Jesus dying on the cross was meaningless. If sin is not serious, then the mass means nothing, because the mass, which is a re-presentation of the sacrifice of Jesus, is all about the forgiveness of sins. That means that sin is very serious.

Many of us have even lost an understanding of what sin is. You would be amazed at how many people come to confession and tell me they have no sins, or hardly any sins, even after several years. If you were to come before God for judgement right now, you would see something different. Does that mean we should be afraid? No, but we should be careful, because our actions have eternal consequences. The first words of the first reading say, ‘If you choose, you can keep the Commandments; they will save you.’ If you choose. All day every day, we are being given choices for good or for evil and we must choose. ‘Before man are life and death, good and evil. Whichever he chooses, he will have.’

Anything that offends God, is sin and we sin all the time. Sin is not just the big things, committing adultery, abortion, murder, stealing; it is also the everyday things that we do without even thinking about. We judge people: I mean we judge their heart. We see someone do something wrong, even minor things and we condemn them in our mind. That offends God. We speak badly of people—gossip—and that offends God. We lie and think it doesn’t matter and yet that is one of the commandments: ‘You shall not bear false witness.’ We get jealous, we lust, we refuse to forgive, we harbor bitterness and resentment, we use sharp words with people we have never even met. We neglect the people around us who need our help. We think that we are only obliged to look after our families. If God gave you enough money to be comfortable, be thankful, but don’t forget you have an obligation to use it properly, not just for yourself and the same goes for me.

Recently I read of several cases where people were given an illumination of conscience, that is, they were shown how they would be judged at that moment if they had died. More and more people seem to be experiencing it. The testimonies of those who have experienced it are quite shocking. Many of them are well educated professionals, doctors, lawyers and many others. They were shown everything they did in their whole life that offends God. Many of them were shown that if they had died at that time, they would have gone to hell, because they had pushed God so far away by the way they lived and in our world many of them would not be considered particularly sinful. Why did God grant them this shocking illumination of conscience? to help them to change, because He loves us and doesn’t want any of us to be lost. Their lives changed drastically after this experience. They are written about in a book called The Warning, by Christine Watkins. I would highly recommend it.

Maybe the language of being ‘lost’ and being ‘saved’ seems archaic, but it is what Jesus taught. It is real and the Lord constantly warns us to be careful of how we live. Our actions have eternal consequences.

To help us even more, God has given us the beautiful gift of confession, so that our souls can be made like new and we can be healed. This is an amazing gift, but so few people take advantage of it. ‘I don’t need to go. I can tell God I’m sorry myself.’ Who told you that? It wasn’t God and that is pride, because you are saying that you know better than the teachings of Jesus, who gave us this gift. ‘You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church. Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven. Whoever’s sins you retain are retained’ (Matt 16:18-19). We need to repent of what we have done wrong and the Lord warns us of this, many times.

‘Before man are life and death, good and evil. Whichever he chooses, he will have.’ (Sir 15:18)

5th Sunday Year A (Gospel: Matthew 5:13-16) Let your light shine

Every so often the Lord raises up men and women who live their faith in an exceptional way. It usually seems to be at a time when people really need to be inspired and often when the Church is in crisis. At the end of the 13^th century God called a man called Francesco, or Francis, to live in a radically different way. He was from a town called Assisi in Italy. Francis was from a wealthy family, but he felt that God was calling him to leave everything and follow him and so he did. To the horror of his father who strongly objected, Francis renounced everything and in front of everyone he stripped off all his clothes and any belongings he had and went off to live on his own as a poor man, living only for God. Soon afterwards while he was praying alone in a broken down church he felt God speaking to him from the cross and saying, ‘Francis, rebuild my Church, which as you can see is falling down.’ So Francis started to collect stones and reconstruct that building.  However, God had a much bigger project in mind. God was talking about the whole Church. Around the same time pope Innocent III had a dream of a poor man holding up the Church which was collapsing. It was a sign of the role that Francis was going to play. 

Not long after Francis began to live in radical poverty others began to see the kind of simple way of life that he was living and one by one they began to join him. They spent their time looking after the sick, the lepers, praying together, preaching the Gospel and most importantly… inspiring people by the way they lived. Eventually when they had been living this way for a while Francis went to Rome to get permission for this new group to officially become a Religious Order. When some of the bishops were discussing this with the pope, one of them said, ‘It is not possible to live in this kind of extreme way,’ but one of the others pointed out that if it wasn’t possible to live that way, then it wasn’t possible to live the Gospel, since all he was doing was literally living the Gospel.

Today, over 800 years later, people are still inspired by St. Francis of Assisi, because we still need to be inspired. There have been others like him too, a modern-day example being Mother Teresa of Calcutta, now St. Teresa of Calcutta. What is especially important about these people is not so much the work they do, as the effect that has on others. They usually become renowned all over the world, because they inspire. They preach about God by the way they live more than by anything they could say. St. Francis of Assisi had the lovely saying, ‘Let us go and preach the Gospel and if necessary, use words.’

The Missionaries of Charity in India at least, spend a lot of their time bringing people in off the street who are dying. They clean them up as best they can and allow them to die with dignity. Most of these people would be Hindu or Muslim, but they don’t try to convert them. That is not what they are called to. They are called to bring the love of God wherever they find themselves, among the poorest of the poor. In fact they really say more about their faith in God by what they do than by anything they could say. There is a story of one man they found who was in a particularly bad way. It took them several hours to clean him up and then he said to them:

‘All my life I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for.’ Mother Teresa went on to say: ‘It was so wonderful to see the greatness of a man who could speak like that, who could die like that, without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything. Like an angel - that is the greatness of our people.’

In the first reading today we are called to look out for those around us who are in need and there are always plenty around us in need, often hidden. Some time back I was talking to a man in Sarasota who is homeless. He told me that he had served in the military, he had also done time in prison and now he was homeless. He also said: ‘You know, doing time in prison is one thing, but trying to survive on the streets of Sarasota is quite another.’ It’s not what you would expect. While helping the poor materially is really important, respecting the dignity of each person is just as important. The way we look after people and treat people is how we tell the world what we believe in. It is not even about giving great amounts; it is about giving what we can with great love and treating those around us with great respect, whether we like them or not and regardless of what they believe in.  That is how we tell others about God.

In this Gospel Jesus says, ‘You are the light of the world… the salt of the earth.’ When we live by the teachings of Jesus, we give hope to the people around us, because we show them that they are not forgotten. We become a light in the middle of a world of selfishness, which tells us only to take care of ourselves. Think of how tiny grains of salt are and yet they can bring out the flavor of a meal. They affect their surroundings. We affect our surroundings, for better or worse. Is your focus only for yourself and your family? If it is, you are not living the Gospel. That doesn’t mean we have to give away everything we have, but the Lord is telling us that we must also remember those around us who are in need. When we have enough, God is giving us the opportunity to share with others and if we don’t, we will be asked why we ignored them, because we are accountable for our actions and for using all that God has given us.

You may argue, ‘I worked hard for my money.’ I’m sure you did, but who gave you the intelligence, the opportunities, the health, the success?

Last week I was talking to a good friend of mine, who is quite wealthy. He was telling me that he had given away a large amount of money to a particular university. He said he couldn’t get over how much joy it gave him to do that. Not many people are in a position to do that, but that’s not the point. The point is that all of us can do a certain amount and we have an obligation to do so.

I’d like to finish with this prayer which you have probably heard before.

Anyway

From a sign on the wall of Shishu Bhavan, the children’s home in Calcutta.

People are unreasonable, illogical and self-centered.

Love them anyway.

If you do good people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.

Do good anyway.

If you are successful you win false friends and true enemies.

Succeed anyway.

The good you do will be forgotten tomorrow.

Do good anyway.

Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable.

Be honest and frank anyway.

What you spent years building, may be destroyed overnight.

Build anyway.

People really need help, but may attack you if you help them.

Help people anyway.

Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth.

Give the world the best you've got anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God;

It was never between you and them anyway.

(from the book, ‘A Simple Path’)

Your light must shine before others, that they may see your good deeds

and glorify your heavenly Father.