Weekly messages

The Gospel invites the believer into a new relationship with God through Jesus Christ

Posted on January 22nd 2012 in Weekly messages

The sentiment may sometimes be understandable but to go through life thinking ‘I am not going to listen to what the Church tells me to do’ betrays an essentially teenage mentality towards faith. The Gospel rarely tells the believer what to do face to face, something which it would be powerless to enforce in any case. Instead the Gospel speaks of what God is doing in Jesus Christ, and the consequences of His coming and the establishing of the kingdom of God. Jesus counsels repentance, but how one reacts is a matter of personal choice. There is nothing forced about it. The unenforceable quality of faith is something many find difficult to grasp and helps explain the weak sense of evangelisation that exists in this country and elsewhere in Europe amongst Catholics. The Catholic faith requires an adult relationship with Christ, not the attitude of a teenager to a seemingly authoritarian parent. The thought of faith being encompassed by such a relationship is not going to be attractive to anyone looking to meet the living God. The Catholic sophisticate might look down upon the certainties of the Evangelical but their firmly held beliefs in the advantage of believing in Christ often places them at an advantage to Catholic diffidence in a world bereft of meaning.

This revolution in understanding the Catholic faith will help explain why Jesus’ first public act is to gather four future apostles around him to form some nascent community. This little community will be the place to develop the practice of the Christ life in company with the Master. Here nothing can be forced, even when there are difficult lessons to earn about humility, dedication and service. The continuous support of Jesus, however gives the strength to undertake this long journey of formation.

The four apostles are told that they will become fishers of men, and the immediacy of their response to the divine call should alert us to the necessity to choose before the coming of Jesus into the world. The little detail that they dropped their nets points to the fact that the Gospel message is not a trap to lure the unwary. Indeed the Gospel message resonates with the deepest longings of the heart. That is why it need not be imposed; it must always be accepted freely. Therefore the message needs to be preached by those formed through the word. Hence the journey of the apostles, disciples and crowds in the Gospel becomes our own journey as well. To impart a message that resonates with the depths of human conscience requires the evangelist’s and our heart to be so formed as well.

This process of formation need not be off-putting since Jesus offers the Church, and each of its members, the gift of His Holy Spirit, which uses the limited resources of the believer to impart a divine message. The co-operation from us is simply that we accept that the Gospel message is not something imposed upon us, and that we recognise it as a liberation from sin, from unrealisable objectives, from false gods, and an entry into a truly human way of life. There is a value in knowing Jesus Christ, even if personally one finds the journey towards full Christian life a difficult one to undertake.

The journey of the Three Wise Men becomes our own journey to God

Posted on January 8th 2012 in Weekly messages

The ratings battle between Downton Abbey and Eastenders was easily won by the longstanding soap-opera, which only proves that the nation prefers wholesale chaos, arson and fragmented lives rather than a happy ending. The soap-opera format of closely packed episodes easily portrays a fractured sense to human life. The characters are forever responding to one crisis after another. Rarely does someone take any initiative or embark on a human relationship that can stand the test of time. In so doing the authors are only reflecting a malaise in the contemporary human condition. The difficulty in forming long-lasting relationships is not unique to Eastenders but unfortunately has a much wider remit.

Many might consider this malaise to have a religious explanation, so that the gradual disappearance of Church life from the nation has caused society irreparable harm. The danger with this explanation is that it divides the world between the religious and the irreligious, and forgets that faith is a gift from God. Such styles of argument fail to grasp that what is being lost is not faith, but the proper sense of being a human being.

The human person is a spiritual being, whether religious or not. Each person has an internal spiritual life, the life of the soul, unique to him or her, something that can be nurtured and developed over time. This development will remain forever thwarted if life is reduced to reacting to one crisis after another, or oscillating from one strongly held emotion to another. In such situations, individuals can so easily pass from love to hate and from there may descend rapidly into violence, whether in the home or in the street.

This Sunday’s Gospel invites us to share, whether religious or not, another vision, life as a journey, to as yet an unknown destination represented by the star. The wise men of the Gospel allowed their study of astronomy to raise the biggest questions whose answers would ultimately change their lives. They could never be described as conventionally religious people, but rather men who allowed the workings of their mind and heart to seek the bigger picture, and their place within it. The insights of the ancients demonstrate that human life has a purpose. This purpose was expressed by ancient Greek philosophers as the fullest living of life, not in the modern sense of material excess, but with a recognition of humanity’s created nature and of a shared dependence within the family, the community, all ultimately under the one God.

The discovery of the interior life, and the spiritual nature of the soul, made the question of life after death a perennial backdrop to daily existence. This was part of the common patrimony of the western world, for the religious and non-religious alike, until very recently and formed what might be described as common secular spirituality. It formed the backdrop to the drama that was human life, with its crises, moments of joy and love, as well as the steady attention to duty.

The Christian has a lot more to say on all this: first, on what God reveals about the human condition; secondly, on the ultimate end of human life and, thirdly, on the power of grace to effect change from within the interior world of the soul that makes itself visible in the daily actions and purposes of human life. The Holy Spirit brings a real joy and love to the ordinary circumstances of life.

The believer knows that the journey of life has a destination, something that the three kings could only glimpse through the natural light of reason. Their search did prove successful and, in the presence of the infant Jesus, it received a reward way beyond their expectations. To have received the gift of faith on the journey of life is an awesome privilege since it opens up the very heart of our existence.

The Passion Part 4 - The Crucifixion 19:17-30

Posted on December 18th 2011 in Weekly messages

The kingship of Jesus lay at the heart of His trial in front of Pilate, and now becomes the centre piece of the Crucifixion. Jesus dies the death of a criminal, but as a king, a title given originally to Him by ‘the Jews’ and later taken up by Pilate. The notice, written in three languages, intimates that His kingship will be extended throughout the world. Both the religious and political authorities speak without knowing the central truth that Jesus is a king, and His kingdom, though not of this world, occupies the hearts of His followers. The crucified Jesus stands in the middle between two thieves, and a gathering of both followers and soldiers. Even on the Cross He is the focus of unity, and His earlier prediction that ‘when the Son of man is lifted up He will draw all people to Himself’ is now fulfilled.

The detail concerning the fate of Jesus’ clothing fulfils a prophecy found in Psalm 22. Further details from Psalms punctuate the Passion account and are being fulfilled at the same time as they guide the Church to understand the events of the Passion itself. The seamless undergarment was thought of by the early Church Fathers to be a symbol of the unity of the disciples for which Jesus had prayed in the Upper Room.

The narrative quickly moves on to His Mother, St John, and two female disciples who stand at the foot of the Cross. This is the first time that Jesus has spoken to or of His mother since the first miracle at the Marriage Feast of Cana. The outcome of the conversation between Jesus, His mother and St John is the establishment of a new family: The Virgin Mary and the Beloved Disciple are both bound to Jesus in unique bonds of love. The Prologue is being fulfilled; ‘but to those who received Him…He gave power to become children of God, not of the will of man but of God (1;12-3) This uniting of the Beloved Disciple and the Virgin Mary explains her unique role as Mother, and perfect believer, within the new community of God, the Church.

This was Jesus’ final act before His death, and consciously exclaims the finality of His mission with the words, ‘It is accomplished’. His death as ‘king’ has brought together a nascent community who accept His kingship through their mutual love, both of Him and each other. The death of Jesus on the Cross will open the possibility for the believer to cross over into eternal life because of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at the moment of His earthly death.