Easter Sunday Yr C (Gospel: John 20:1-9) Jesus Christ is Lord

A few years ago I got an email from a friend of mine to say that he and some others were setting up a group called ‘Count me in’. This was a group of mostly young people who wanted to stand up for their faith and be counted and to do whatever they could to bring about renewal in the Church in Ireland. They were starting this group partly in reaction to another group called ‘Count me out’ which, as you might guess, was a group of people who no longer wanted to have anything to do with the Church. I must admit I was very heartened to hear of this group ‘Count me in’ especially being started by young Catholics who felt the need to stand up and be counted. As my friend so rightly stated in his letter to me, ‘Though we want very much to count ourselves out from any kind of abuse and cover-up by individual Church members and ministers, there is no way we can count ourselves out from Christ’s Body and from his offer of salvation.’ I was hoping for and half expecting that something like that would happen, as the Holy Spirit always moves people at the right time.

At a time when we are seeing so many very frightening things in the world, it is good to remind ourselves who it is we believe in. We believe in the Son of God who conquered death and evil. If we stay focused on the world and what is going on, we could easily become overwhelmed with fear and even despairing. But if we keep our focus on Jesus we will see the world in a different way. Remember that his death was just like some of the horrific and pointless killings that we are hearing about in the news; the death of completely innocent people.

I can’t help thinking of the time when Jesus gave the teaching about his body and blood, saying that ‘Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you cannot have life in you.’ It says that ‘After this many of his followers stopped going with him.’ His teaching was too much for them. But when he turned to the disciples and said, ‘What about you. Do you want to go away too?’ Peter said, ‘Lord to whom shall we go, you have the message of eternal life.’ That is very much how I feel myself. I am horrified and disheartened by all the horrors we are hearing about in our world, but I also feel, where else would I go?  I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, that he is Lord and that he has revealed God to us.  Why would I want to go anywhere else?

What has all this to do with Easter you might ask? What is key to the event of Easter is that it was the last thing that anyone expected to happen. As far as the disciples were concerned it was all over. The master had been killed and they didn’t know what to do. It took quite a bit of convincing for them to believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. When the women first came to them and told them that they had seen a vision of angels who told them Jesus was alive, the Apostles simply didn’t believe them. Then Jesus began to appear to them himself and it still took quite a while for them to really believe.

Either Jesus rose from the dead or he didn’t. If he did, then we have nothing to be afraid of, because it is the Son of God who is guiding his Church, who continues to make himself present in each mass, who continues to minister to his people through the priesthood. If the resurrection of Jesus is not true, then none of us should be here, because everything we believe in is based on the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead.

All that happened at Easter was totally unexpected. The worst disaster—the death of the only completely innocent man—was turned into the greatest event imaginable, an event that changed the course of history. This man Jesus, whom we celebrate, is Lord and he is the one who is guiding us. He is the one we believe in and we must keep going back to his words and his teachings. ‘In the world you will have trouble. But do not be afraid; I have overcome the world.’ Remember too that several of his apostles let him down badly, but it didn’t stop Jesus from using them and from passing his teaching on to us. 

At the moment our faith is being tested with what is going on in the world, but we must remember the event of Easter. God turned everything around when people least expected it and in a way that they could never have imagined. This is the God we believe in, who is just as powerfully present to us today. So let us never lose heart or be afraid. God has always been with his people and He always will be.

‘I am with you always.  Yes, until the end of the world.’

Passion Sunday Year C (Lk 22:14-23:56) My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

One of the things that I always find difficult to deal with is injustice. I think it affects most of us in the same way and the closer to home it is the harder it is to take. A few years ago I met a lady friend of mine whom I hadn’t seen for some time. She was now separated and trying to finish the house they had been both building. But she began to tell me of how the builder they were dealing with had ripped them off, but now that she was on her own he was even worse. He intimidated her, stole furniture, all kinds of things that were so wrong, and to make it worse he lived just down the street from her new house. I was so angry I could hardly contain myself, and the worst thing was that there was little I could do about it.

No doubt everyone here could tell me different stories of injustice.  It’s all around us and it seems hard to get away from it. The worst thing is that there is often little we can do about it. Why does God allow these things to go on? We say that God is all-powerful and loving; if that is so why doesn’t He intervene?

The answer, if it is an answer, is given to us in the account of the passion. The last day of Jesus’ life involved, corruption, betrayal, lies, hatred, abandonment, jealousy, torture and murder. Even the trial used to prosecute Jesus was illegal by their own law. Why didn’t God intervene? How can God allow these things to happen?

God gives us an answer, but maybe not the kind of answer that we would like. When we cry out in frustration to God, He points us to the passion of Jesus. Jesus was the only one completely innocent, who only did good during his life. Yet because of jealousy and hatred, he was set up, convicted, tortured and killed in the most brutal way.

I think that God tells us two things through the passion of Christ. Firstly God is well aware that we suffer, and suffer unjustly. God knows the pain it causes us and the frustration at often not being able to do anything about it. When we ask, ‘Why do you allow this Lord?’ God points to Jesus on the cross. For some reason suffering is part of the journey that leads us to God. ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’ (Mt 16:24). But perhaps more important is the fact that the suffering that we go through is leading to something else.  It is a suffering that often transforms us, and it will not last forever. It will end and the whole point of the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus, the Just One, is so that we can access a life that no longer involves any suffering. That is what God promises us and God only speaks truth. That is where we have to hold on tight in hope and remember that this life is not the whole picture. If we live as if this life were everything, then we will be disappointed. But if we remember that this life is leading to something much better and that it is a time of service, then it will help us to stay close to God and not lose hope. That is the difference that our faith makes. It tells us what our life is about and the purpose of our being here.

The passion of Christ also reminds us that Jesus has experience the greatest depths of suffering, even to the point of feeling that the Father had abandoned him. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mt 27:46). For us this means that Jesus understands our worst suffering and feelings of despair or abandonment. He has been there and so we know that He is with us. We are never alone.

5^th Sunday of Lent Year C (Gospel: John 8:1-11)

So that sins may be forgiven

Each time I celebrate the mass there is one line that strikes me more than any other. It is when the priest prays over the chalice and says ‘This is the cup of my blood... it will be shed for you and for many so that sins may be forgiven.’ This phrase is what sums up the whole celebration of the mass. The blood of Jesus was shed so that sins could be forgiven. This forgiveness is offered to us until the end of time, but it is up to us whether we accept it or not.

The flip side of this is that it means we have sinned and we sin continually. That is what God has taught us. If you think you haven’t sinned, or don’t sin, remember these words from the first letter of St. John: He says, ‘If anyone says they have not sinned, they are calling God a liar.’ Pretty strong words, but he meant it and you can see why, because if we say we have not sinned then there is no reason for the death and resurrection of Jesus; then there is also no reason for the mass. If we haven’t sinned, then the mass is meaningless. In each mass we become present to the death and resurrection of Jesus and then we can actually receive his body and blood, so that we can be united to the Son of God in the most intimate way possible, receiving his body into our own body.

Now I know that most people will acknowledge that they are sinners. That is a good start, but God also asks us to confess our sins to a priest, the sins that we are aware of. Why? So that we can be reconciled to God in a very concrete way, through another human being, one who is specially appointed by God to do just that. God acts through the priest in a unique way, offering his forgiveness, guidance and encouragement. We believe this is what he did. This is what Jesus said to his Apostles:

If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven;

If you retain anyone’s sins, they are retained (John 20:23).

Whoever listens to you listens to me.

Whoever rejects you, rejects me (Luke 10:16).

Why is it so important that we are reconciled to God? Because only in God will we find complete fulfilment. God knows that, but the difficult part is that we cannot see that properly. In fact we are even suspicious of it. If we could see what being fully united to God meant, we would do everything to stay as close to God as possible. Sometimes people are given a particular grace to see the importance of this, and they go to the ends of the earth to make this known to others as well. One such person was St. Paul. In the second reading he says:

I believe that nothing can happen which will outweigh the supreme advantage of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For him I have accepted the loss of everything and I look on everything as so much rubbish if only I can have Christ and be given a place in him (Phil 3:8-9).

After he had this profound encounter with Jesus who appeared to him, he was completely changed and he spent the rest of his life telling people that this man Jesus, who had been killed, had risen from the dead and was the Son of God; and boy did he suffer for it. He was put in prison several times; many attempts were made on his life; five times he received the 39 lashes, three times he was shipwrecked, etc. But nothing could stop him because God had allowed him to see that everything was worth being united to God.

‘So what are we supposed to do?’, you might ask. ‘We can’t see how important it is.’ Even though we do not see this so clearly ourselves, we listen to the accounts of those who have experienced it—because God is speaking to us through them—and we push on in the same direction. But we would be foolish to ignore the way that is pointed out to us and one of the most important ways to be reconciled to God, is to confess what we have done wrong; not just to acknowledge it, but to actually confess it; the way we constantly judge people, curse, resent others, are selfish, ignore God’s commands, lust, talk about others and so on.

Remember this beautiful Gospel today; the woman caught in adultery. There was no condemnation on Jesus’ part, only compassion. According to the law they were entitled to stone this woman to death, and they believed that the law came from God, but Jesus turned the situation around and showed them that they were in no position to condemn someone else. Neither are we and God has no interest in condemning us either, only bringing us back. That is the meaning of his death and resurrection.

So going back to what I said at the beginning. The blood of Jesus has been shed so that our sins may be forgiven. How do we accept that forgiveness, by asking for it through confession. This is God’s gift to us, so that we can be healed. It is not something forced on us or inflicted on us. Rather, it is an extraordinary gift that God has given to us, so that we may be healed and so that we may draw closer to the only One who can fulfil us.

‘This is the cup of my blood... It will be shed for you and for all, so that sins may be forgiven.’

4th Sunday Lent Yr C (Gospel: Lk 15:1-3, 11-32) The Prodigal Son

Entrance to 'Newgrange', a 5000 year old passage grave in Eastern Ireland

Trying to say anything about God is extremely difficult if not impossible, because God is completely beyond our understanding. St. Thomas Aquinas was a great genius and wrote one of the greatest works of theology called the Summa Theologica. Towards the end of his life he had a vision of God or heaven, and after that he stopped writing and he said ‘It’s all trash, we have no idea!’ This is one of the reasons why Jesus spoke in parables, to try and give us some idea of what God is like. Today’s parable of the Prodigal Son is a particularly beautiful one.

This story could also be called ‘The parable of the forgiving Father.’ We usually tend to focus on the rebellious son who basically told his father that he wished he was already dead and so he wanted his inheritance now. Having insulted his father as much as is possible, he eventually comes back in hard times to ask forgiveness. Now the son is looking at all he has done wrong, all the sin, all the insults to his family, but the father looks right beyond the sin and just loves his son. He doesn’t condemn him, he doesn’t ask for an apology, he doesn’t do anything that you would expect him to do. Instead he just celebrates and loves his son. Maybe it should be called ‘The parable of the foolish father’.

This teaches me something about God in a very practical way. When I think of myself before God, I tend to do as the younger son did. I usually think only of the sins I have committed and my failings rather than my strengths; but from the parable I realise that God’s approach to me is very different. God is not interested in my sin, or my weakness, or what I could have done better. He is interested in me as a person, and He rejoices and celebrates every time I come back to him, especially if I have drifted away from him. God rejoices in the child before him, like you would with a toddler. You don’t focus on what a small child has done wrong, you just see the child that you love.

Then there is also the older brother. In many ways I think most of us are probably more like the older brother than the younger. We probably haven’t done anything too outrageous; we may even have been quite faithful to our duties all through our life. But we may well despise those who have apparently walked away from God, and especially those who obviously do what is wrong. It is easy for us to resent the fact that God loves them. This is exactly what the Pharisees (who were the religious people of the time) were doing. They said, ‘Why is this prophet hanging around with those people. They are disgusting, they do everything wrong and they know it.’

However, through the parable Jesus is showing us that that is not how God sees things. God does not act as we do. It may be understandable from our point of view, but we are in no position to judge the heart of another person. We can judge their actions as right or wrong, but we cannot judge their heart. Only God knows what causes another person to act as they do. This was what the older brother did. He resented the Father’s forgiveness, but the Father also loved him, forgave him and reached out to him. 

God is not interested in what we have done wrong. His desire is just that we are reconciled to him so that we can enjoy all that He has done for us and all that He has created for us.  His design for us is that we find happiness. This is the mercy of God that we trust in. That is also why in the second reading the Apostles are at pains to point out that we have already been reconciled to God, through the death and resurrection of Jesus. There is nothing we can do that God hasn’t already forgiven, so long as we turn to God and ask for that forgiveness. That is why we talk about forgiveness and repentance so much, especially during Lent, because this is what God asks us to do. 

What we are appealing to you before God is: be reconciled to God.

 

3rd Sunday of Lent Yr C Forgiveness and healing

This Friday Pope Francis has asked all parishes to have 24 hours of confessions as part of the ‘Year of Mercy’. So all over the world people are being invited to take the time to go to confession. Here we will start at noon on Friday until 11pm and then 9am on Saturday until noon. Why has the Lord put this idea into Pope Francis’ mind? Perhaps because it is something we have neglected and we need to take more seriously. Let me try and make sense of why it is so important to confess.

Any time I visit people in the hospital or anywhere I always offer to prayer with them. One thing that I nearly always pray for is peace of mind. It is one of the things that people always want to hear, because most of us are not fully at peace. Many of us need God’s forgiveness, to know that we are forgiven, no matter what it’s for. For me as a priest it is always wonderful to see what a relief it is for people when they know they have been forgiven through the priest. Their face is different, they are healed. There is an interesting connection between forgiveness and healing. We look for physical healing all the time and that’s good, but we also look for spiritual healing all the time too, unknown to ourselves.

Jesus was able to work miracles of physical healing, amazing miracles, but that wasn’t his main task. His main task was spiritual healing. Helping people to discover God in their midst, helping people know the healing power of God’s forgiveness so that they wouldn’t be carrying great burdens of guilt. So He taught people about God, about how to live by God’s laws so that they could be better people, healthier, happier people. This is what He spent most of his time doing, helping people put God at the center. ‘Seek first the kingdom of God and everything else will follow.’ The miracles that he worked were signs to help people believe that he was genuine.

One of the many accounts of Jesus healing someone involves a paralysed man who is brought before him on a stretcher (Luke 5:18ff) and an interesting thing happens when he does. First it says that Jesus was preaching the word of God to the people. That’s why they were listening. Then they brought this paralysed man to him. The first thing Jesus said to him was, ‘Your sins are forgiven’. Now I’m sure if you were there, you’d have been thinking, ‘Who cares about his sins being forgiven, let’s just see him healed’!  But Jesus did this deliberately to show us that forgiveness leads to healing, and it is more important than physical healing. What happens to the spirit is more important than what happens to the body. The body is going to get sick and die eventually anyway, but the spirit will live on. Then he says to the people, ‘But to prove to you that I have authority to forgive sins’, in other words, ‘To prove to you that I’m not kidding…’ and then He healed him.

God has passed on this authority to forgive sins to his priests, so that we can all avail of God’s forgiveness and the healing that comes with it.  It is God’s gift to us.  It is there to help us, because God wants us to be at peace and to be happy.

Now there are two tricks that Satan plays on us to prevent us from receiving this forgiveness. Satan hates the human race and does everything he can to destroy it.  He is at war with God’s creation. That is why the Church is constantly under such attack, because it’s where God’s gifts are most powerful. So he attacks it and tries to discredit it continually. Jesus speaks about him many times in the Gospels.

The first things that Satan tells us is that our sin is too big, or too terrible to be forgiven and therefore that we shouldn’t go to Communion any more either. He tries to shame us.  He tries to get many people to become separated from God this way. ‘I couldn’t tell that to a priest.’ God never makes people ashamed. Sin does that and Satan exaggerates it. He also tries to discourage us. ‘There’s no point in continually confessing because you’re not getting any better anyway. You are no good.’

The second thing is this. He says, ‘Why should you confess to a priest? You don’t need to tell a priest. Who is he anyway, what would he know? You can just tell God you are sorry yourself.’ This is pride. Yes priests are just ordinary people, but they are the ones God has chosen to offer his forgiveness through. Jesus said to the disciples, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. Whoever’s sins you forgive they are forgiven. Whoever’s sins you retain they are retained’ (John 20:23ff). 

The Lord also gives us a concrete way to experience his forgiveness because He knows we need it. Listen to the chat shows on the TV and radio. You continually hear people confessing their sins. We have a psychological need to tell someone what we have done wrong. So don’t let anyone or anything come between you and the forgiveness God offers you. God wants us to be healed and this is one of the most powerful means that He uses. Make the most of it.

Look at the first reading today where Moses sees this strange sign of the burning bush. When he goes to approach it, the Lord tells him to take off his shoes because the ground on which he is standing is holy. It is holy ground because God is there. The Lord is telling us not to be casual about coming into his presence; not to be casual about receiving him in the Eucharist. If you got a chance to personally meet Pope Francis, or someone really important, would you make any effort to prepare for it? Of course you would. Well here at each mass we get a chance to receive Jesus, the Son of God, into our very bodies. The very least we should do is prepare as well as possible because we are approaching the ultimate holiness of God. We must never be casual about it. The best possible way we can prepare to come close to God is by confessing regularly; humbling ourselves before God. That is also why we begin every mass by acknowledging that we are sinners. Confessing once a year is the absolute minimum we are required to do as Catholics. Who lives a relationship at the absolute minimum level?

Forgiveness and healing go together. It’s not always easy to go through with treatment for a disease, but it is necessary if we want healing. It is not easy to admit that we are wrong and to confess, but it is essential if we want to be forgiven. It is God’s gift to you. Don’t let anyone deprive you of it.

          ‘Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven.

          Whoever’s sins you retain, they are retained.’

2nd Sunday of Lent Yr C (Gospel: Luke 9:28b-36) Hope comes from faith

One of my appointments as a priest was working in a hospital in my hometown. As in any hospital many people died there. One of the readings that I would often read as part of the prayers for the dead is part of the second reading, the part where it says, ‘For us our homeland is in heaven, and from heaven comes the Saviour we are waiting for…’ I’m sure when I read this out it usually wasn’t heard, because the people there were too much in shock, too numb, but the reading is important because it is a reminder to us of the hope that we have, through our faith.

Can you imagine what it would be like if we had no hope; if we didn’t believe in any kind of an afterlife? It would make this life very difficult. How would we keep going when things go wrong, when everything seems to fall apart? One of the greatest things that our faith gives us is hope. We mightn’t think of it this way, but it’s true. You may even think that you don’t have much faith at all, but if you’ve even come this far, to mass, then you have faith. We believe, even if we don’t have it all figured out. We believe that there is a better life after this one, if we choose it by the way we live. We believe that we will see the people we love again. It’s very important that we have this hope.

In the first reading God promises Abram, who later becomes Abraham, the Promised Land: a land for his people, a home, but the Promised Land is also a sign or a symbol of what he is promising us: eternal life in heaven. The Lord is saying that it is there for us if we want it and if we want it, then we are to try and live the way he taught us, because that is the path that brings us there. And so we do, we struggle and try to live as the Lord pointed out to us. It’s not a particularly easy way, but Jesus never said it would be. In fact he said it is the narrow road.

Our faith is what guides us along this difficult path and helps us to keep going, because our faith tells us that it’s worth while. Otherwise why would we bother to try and be different? Trying to live as a Catholic is what this journey is all about for us. It’s not about rules and regulations, it’s about a relationship with God. The rules and regulations and all the moral problems, they come afterwards. When our faith is alive, then these things fall into place. If we start off by focusing on the controversial issues, then we will miss the point and our faith will never grow. Our relationship with God is what comes first. Everything else is secondary.

What is the worst situation that you’ve ever been through? Maybe a death, or a separation. If you had no faith at all, it would be very hard to keep going, because you would have no hope, but we believe that God will see us through.

In this Gospel an interesting thing happens. Jesus let his three closest men see his glory. He let them have a glimpse of who he really was. He showed them that he was God. This happened just before Jesus went to Jerusalem and was arrested, tortured and killed. Do you know why he did this? He showed Peter, James and John his true splendour as God so that they would have hope. They were about to become very confused and disillusioned when he was killed. Everything they had come to believe in was about to appear to fall apart right before their eyes. So he gave them this vision to keep them going and it is also a reminder for us of the hope that we have.

I think it’s lovely to see Jesus giving these men hope even before they needed it. We usually turn to God when we get in trouble, but here, Jesus is anticipating what they will need. He is ahead of them, providing for them and the Lord does the same for us even though we may not be able to see it. 

‘This is my chosen Son. Listen to him.’

1st Sunday of Lent (Gospel: Luke 4:1-13) The way of service

 Since I was ordained a priest almost 18 years ago, one of the temptations for me 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 in the bread and wine, 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 some kind of a strange religious ritual.  So why doesn’t God do something more spectacular every once in a while to help people believe?

The account of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness is really the explanation as to why God doesn’t do more extraordinary signs and wonders to convince us of his presence.  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.  Now for any campaign you must choose the weapons you are going to use.  Jesus must have been aware that he had extraordinary powers, 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 couldn’t do it anyway, so this must have been a very real temptation for Jesus, to misuse his power.

The first thing he was tempted with 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 what they want.’  We are much deeper than that and we can only be fully satisfied by God because we are spiritual and not just physical.

 

The second temptation was to compromise with evil.  This is a huge 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, 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.  It may be 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.

 

The third temptation that Jesus was presented with 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, as you know, and that is why Jesus chose the more humble way, and left it open to us to see what God offers us and then to freely choose to follow him or not.

 

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. 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 invites us to follow the same path that He took, the path of humility, the path that is often misunderstood.