Week 25 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Ecclesiastes 3:1-11; Psalm 144; Luke 9:18-22

As so often in St Luke's gospel Jesus is at prayer before making a key decision or asking a decisive question. Here it is the familiar question, 'who do you say that I am'? Coming as it does directly from the heart of his prayer (in solitude, with the disciples) it seems that this must also have been his prayer's content. Many human beings all over the world are probably doing this right now, praying to God about their vocation: who am I? what is it you want me to do? who is it you want me to be?

In his humanity Jesus also prays about this question. The issue had arisen already in his experience of the temptations (Luke 4): in fact those temptations can be understood as pervading the whole of his public ministry, questions about who he is and what his mission is, questions he put to his disciples, having first, presumably, put them to himself and to the Father in prayer.

He seems embarrassed by the response of Peter, rebuking the disciples and commanding them to tell this to no one. 'The Christ of God' is Peter's answer but Jesus continues by speaking about 'the Son of Man who must suffer many things, be rejected, killed and be raised'. It must be that it is a matter of the right time, or, to be more precise, of the wrong time. What is the problem? He is engaged in teaching them something very delicate as he appropriates for himself the teaching he is sharing with them. What kind of Christ is he to be? When is the right time for speaking more explicitly and more publicly about the answer that is emerging? Not now, it seems, not for the moment.

Human wisdom and prudence are often seen in good timing: what to do or say can be clear, the challenge is to find the right time, the right set of circumstances, in which to say or do it. For teaching the wisdom of the cross, the hard paradoxical wisdom of the gospel, when is the time right and when are the circumstances favourable? We might say never, it will always be challenging to teach that wisdom. Or we might say 'the fulness of time' is the right time for teaching this wisdom, a kairos moment in the life of each individual, a moment of grace and understanding, when the knowledge of the cross can be received not just as reasonable and intelligible, but as desirable and infinitely wise.

Week 25 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2-11; Psalm 90; Luke 9:7-9

At the end of some readings from the Bible it can feel very strange to say 'this is the Word of the Lord / thanks be to God'. Today's first reading is an example, the famous 'vanity of vanities' passage at the beginning of the Book of Ecclesiastes (Qoheleth). What is the point? Where is it all going? Days come and go, months and years, there is nothing new under the sun, we wear ourselves out, have nothing to show for it, and in a hundred years time what difference will it have made?

The monastic tradition in Christianity has given us reflections on the seven or eight deadly sins or principal vices among which we find sloth or acedia, a kind of listlessness in which everything seems pointless and meaningless. Evagrius of Pontus is one of the monastic teachers who writes about these sins or vices which he calls 'thinkings', or 'thoughts'. Logismoi is his Greek term, we would perhaps use the term 'fantasies'. They refer to things we find insinuating themselves into our minds, mixtures of thought and feeling that distract, disturb, darken, and fragment. From different directions they take away our serenity and peacefulness. With acedia specifically we lose a sense of purpose and energy, things come to seem pointless.

The sun plays an important role in all this. Ecclesiastes speaks of human toil and effort under the sun. The sun rises and sets as day unendingly follows day. Is there anything new under the sun? Acedia was also called 'the noonday devil', noon being the time when the sun is at its highest and hottest, the time of day when this problem is most acute. But Evagrius says the problems start at 10.00am and goes on until 2.00pm! The monk looks out his window, wondering whether the sun is moving at all. When will it be 3.00pm? Perhaps there was food, or a break, at 3.00pm. Or perhaps it was just that the heat of the sun has eased by then.

Anybody who has lived through a Roman summer will have some idea of the effect of intense heat day after day. There is a story of a Scottish Cardinal who claimed that it was impossible to commit a sin when the scirocco was blowing in Rome, the hot wind from the Sahara, on the grounds that nobody could think straight in such conditions.

So what is the solution to acedia? It is not clear that the spiritual masters who wrote about it - Evagrius, Cassian, Gregory the Great, Isidore, Aquinas - have any easy solution. Perhaps it is enough good news to know that this human experience is recognised and acknowledged in the Bible and in Christian traditions of spirituality. Whatever its roots - physical, emotional, intellectual - it seems to be a universal and perennial human experience.

One solution is to bring ourselves, again and again, into our present reality and to remind ourselves that the life of the Spirit is flowing in us for the 'here and now', with these actual people, and through these actual responsibilities. Acedia will tell us that we would be happier if things were different (so we re-arrange the furniture in the room), or if we knew more (so we buy yet another book on the spiritual life), or if we lived with different people (so we think about living in another community or perhaps we should have married a different person), or if we lived at a different time (so we fantasise about living in other countries at other times). But our faith is incarnational, about here and now, and these people, and these responsibilities which are mine today. We are to find meaning - and a meaning deeper than all our imaginings - in the experiences that are ours today: this is what faith assures us. Sometimes we 'feel' this re-assurance, have a lively sense of it, but often we don't, in which case we keep going, placing our trust in the One in whom we believed and continuing to serve Him as best we can.

It is good to know that this experience is recognised and acknowledged in the Bible, in the liturgy of the Church and in our traditions of spirituality. Thomas Aquinas adds a thought of his own about acedia: it is called the noon-day devil, he says, because the mid-point of any work is a difficult moment. It is as if every important human undertaking will encounter a moment of 'mid-life crisis'. Is it too late to turn back? The end is not yet in sight. Was it a mistake to begin in the first place? Like Peter walking on the water we need to keep our eyes on the One who is calling us, the End of our journey. Whether we are afflicted by doubt or oppressed by acedia, keep looking to him, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, the sun of justice who assigns us our daily tasks in the service of his kingdom.

Week 25 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Proverbs 30:5-9; Psalm 119; Luke 9:1-6

The readings speak of two different kinds of trust in God. The reading from Proverbs asks God to arrange the circumstances so that I will not be faced with the temptations that come from being either rich or poor. If I am rich I may forget God, if I am poor I may curse God. It is one way of trusting in God, to believe that he will arrange things so that I am protected from such temptations. If he takes care of the circumstances, I will be able to manage, I will live well.

The other kind of trust is clear in the gospel reading. The Twelve are 'entrusted' with authority and power to teach and heal. They are to be grown up children of God, responsible and taking initiatives. They are not now to be dependent on God to arrange congenial circumstances for them. Rather do they trust God to give them a share of His Spirit so that they will be able to engage appropriately with whatever circumstances they encounter.

They are to be co-workers, sharing in the Lord's ministry of teaching, healing and casting out demons. They are not guaranteed favourable circumstances. Their dependence and trust in God is deeper. It is internal rather than external, to do with what they are becoming in their hearts and minds rather than with the external situations and relationships in which they find themselves.

Saint Paul speaks very well of this second kind of trust in his letter to the Philippians: 'I have learned, in whatever state I am, to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound; in any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and want. I can do all things in him who strengthens me' (4:11-13).

Saint Matthew - 21 September

Readings: Ephesians 4.1-7, 11-13; Psalm 8; Matthew 9.9-13

In 2021 the Dominicans celebrated 800 years since the death of Saint Dominic who died on 6 August, the Feast of the Transfiguration, in the year 1221. The theme chosen for this jubilee year was 'At Table with Saint Dominic', taken from the very earliest picture of Dominic, called the 'Mascarella table', a painting on a refectory table made just a few years after Dominic's canonization in 1234. It shows Dominic sitting at table with forty-eight other friars and is quite unique among icons of medieval saints.

The painting lends himself to some helpful interpretations: Dominic is represented not as a saint exalted on a pedestal but as a brother among his brothers, the experience of being 'at table' with others is a rich theme for reflection, and so too is the variety of tables at which we sit with him - the table of fraternity, of the Word, of study, of government, and so on.

To be at table with another is to be on some kind of intimate terms with them, to be part of their circle, invited to join with them and with their family and companions in friendship and communion. It is our normal way of sealing and celebrating friendship, love and marriage, alliances and reunions, conferences and negotiations - to sit together for a meal.

Hence the strong reaction of the Pharisees to the fact of Jesus sitting at table with tax-collectors and sinners. He has just called Matthew, one of those tax-collectors, to become a disciple and he will eventually be one of the four evangelists. In the end he records another kind of transaction and engages in another kind of administration, the economy of salvation as enacted by Jesus and the beginnings of the Church.

To be at table with tax-collectors and sinners is to share intimacy with them. It says to the world 'we belong together', 'we are in relationship', 'there is peace and communion between us'. This is what shocks the Pharisees. Jesus's response to them is well known: it is not the healthy who need the doctor but the sick, what the Father wants is mercy not sacrifice, love and compassion towards human beings whatever their circumstances and not religious observances.

We are all called to sit at table with Jesus, called to the Eucharist. It is the table of God's Word and the table at which we are fed on Christ's Body and Blood. Between us there is intimacy and peace, communion in a shared life. Nobody is worthy of this invitation, of course, and yet the invitation is for everybody.

Paul speaks of this call in the first reading and points us to the heavenly table, the table of the Blessed Trinity, so beautifully represented in the famous icon of the Trinity by Rublev.  The table of the Blessed Trinity is our ultimate destination. We can read the Trinity into the phrases Paul uses - there is one God who is over all, through all and in all, the Father, the Son and the Spirit, working to build the body of Christ in the world, the Church, through the gifts he bestows on those who believe in him.

We sit at this table already when we participate in the Eucharist, the sacrifice of the Son. There he gives his life so that tax-collectors and sinners, and Pharisees too, might grow in their knowledge of God and in their likeness to the one who feeds them, the 'perfect man', Christ. He is the Brother among brothers and sisters, sharing the Father's love with all who join him at his table. Let us join him there today and be strengthened in the call we have received.

Week 25 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 55:6-9; Psalm 145; Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16

As humanity becomes ever more sophisticated in technology, in science, in communications, and so on, it sometimes seems as if it stays fixed morally and spiritually, at an infantile stage of development. when we see the level of political debate at present, the absence of good leaders, the increasing influence of the most basic human emotions - greed, envy, fear, rivalry - and the appeal being made to them by the leaders we do have - it can seem that we are living Lord of the Flies except with computers, drones, and nuclear weapons. We have good reason to be apprehensive and fearful - which further feeds the way in which politics is being played at present.

The instinctive reaction to today's parable - that those who spent the whole day working should receive more than those who only worked the last hour, or else that these latter should receive less - comes from that base level of understanding and feeling. There is a kind of justice in it, we will feel. The landowner's decision to pay everyone the same seems like a too simplistic, a too univocally mathematical, understanding of equality. Or perhaps it is we who want to apply a too univocally mathematical an understanding - equal pay for equal work, more pay for more work, less pay for less work. How else can things be done fairly?

One difficulty with that - as the landowner points out - is that it leaves no room for generosity but the gain there is in that exclusion is that it leaves no room either for envy and so might head off at least some of the reasons why human beings are so violent. All is clear when it is a matter of Xa for X1, Xb for X2, etc. Is the landowner a patronising capitalist, wanting to show off somehow, throw his wealth around, sow division, provoke envy, keep the workers of the world divided?

How can there be a place for generosity and gift - for grace - where a certain kind of iron mathematics determines how 'equality' is to be understood? How honour diversity at the same time as respecting equality? How leave space for the requirements of fraternity alongside those of equality?

The needs of human beings are basically the same and in important ways varied. Can we imagine that the landowner is applying the criterion - known in early Christianity and in monastic communities - 'from each according to their ability, to each according to their need'? Or will such an ideal always be subverted by the baser emotions, especially envy, which will always see it as a kind of injustice, a kind of discrimination. Which it is, in favour of meeting human needs.

Putting the first reading from Isaiah 55 alongside the parable encourages us to interpret it along these lines - the landowner being 'God', his ways and thoughts not our ways and thoughts. Why be envious (angry, jealous, resentful ... sexist, racist, etc.) because God is generous (also in his creativity, spontaneity, freedom, in his delight in difference and variety and multiplicity, etc.)

The Lord is close to all who call him, the psalm says, ready to be found. But how ready are we to live in his kingdom? Is the 'first Adam' in us still so powerful - and we see it in the infantile passions that determine so much of human behaviour - that we are not even at the beginning of understanding the thoughts and ways of generosity and grace? What new way of seeing, what new way of thinking, do we need if we are to understand the economics of that kingdom, the value of each person, whether it comes to our attention in the dawning light of that kingdom's day or in the evening when the time of judgement has come nearer?

Week 24 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 15:35-37, 42-49; Psalm 56; Luke 8:4-15

Some parts of the west of Ireland have become overrun with gunnera tinctoria. It is called either Chilean rhubarb or giant rhubarb and has spread like wildfire in places, forcing out the indigenous shrubs and bushes. It produces seed pods by the thousand which explains of course why it has been able to spread so quickly. It has also, it seems, found lots of favourable soil in which to flourish.

Nature is not mean when it comes to seeds. Flowers and animals produce them by the thousands, even by the millions, with extravagance and what might seem like recklessness. There is a profound desire somewhere that nature should continue, that what is alive should increase and multiply and fill the earth

The first meaning of the famous parable of the sower is simply this then: as in nature, so in the dissemination of the Word of God. It is freely available, shared extravagantly and recklessly, cast upon the earth here, there and everywhere, preached to people everywhere, public, free, available.

Often the interpretation Jesus gives is taken to refer to different kinds of people but it might be more true to understand it to refer to four different moments in anybody's reception of the Word. All hear the Word, nobody is deaf to it, not even those represented by the stones. At different times and in different circumstances we who have heard the Word relate to it as if we were stones, or thorn bushes, or pathways, or good soil.

There are obviously also two different meanings of the term 'life' and two different terms are used in the gospels. One is the kind of life (zoe) God wants for His creatures, the life he gives to all things by his spirit,  the life he wants his human creatures to have in all its fulness. And there is another kind of life (bios) whose cares and riches and pleasures prove too much of a distraction for us and take us away from our service of the Word of God.

The call of Jesus to us is to allow the Word find its way to our life in its deepest sense so that we are not just existing but living, so that we are not just living biologically as if we were only animals, but are living spiritually also, living the life not just of the first Adam but of the last Adam, a life that takes us beyond what we can imagine might be possible for us.

The different moments of our relationship with the Word of Life require different kinds of pruning. There are struggles to be engaged, things to be learned, insights to be painfully gained. So it must be, for all living things, they must learn to live in their environment. If we are to live in the environment that is called the kingdom of God then it can only be by receiving his Spirit which prepares the ground of our hearts, making them to be good and honest places where fruit is brought forth in patience.

Our Lady of Sorrows - 15 September

Readings: 1 Corinthians 12,12-14, 27-31a; Ps 100; John 19:25-27 OR Luke 2:33-35

Along with the scripture readings the Church's liturgy for today also proposes the sequence, the famous Stabat mater dolorosa, so beautifully set to music by many great composers, most recently by the Scottish composer James Macmillan.

How can such beauty - think also of Pergolesi's setting of the Stabat mater - be built on such unpromising foundations? It is all about pain and loss, sorrow and abandonment. These are not things we seek out or try to provoke. They constitute suffering which in its literal meaning refers to what comes to us, what is imposed on us, what we can only either accept or protest.

In another powerful and beautiful work of art, Oscar Wilde's letter from prison called De profundis, he explains that he came to see suffering as a revelation. His words about it are quite extraordinary. Clergymen get as far as describing suffering as a mystery. But it is a revelation. We find Oscar Wilde repeating, unconsciously it seems, the words of Simeon, that through the suffering of Jesus and Mary the secret thoughts of many are laid bare. 'In suffering', says Wilde, 'one discerns things one never discerned before. One approaches the whole of history from a different standpoint. Sorrow is the supreme emotion of which man is capable, it is simply true and it wears no mask.'

'There is no truth comparable to sorrow', continues Oscar Wilde, 'there are times when sorrow seems to me the only truth. Other things may be illusions of the eye or of the appetite, made to blind the one and cloy the other, but out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star, there is pain.' 'The secret of life is suffering', he concludes.

The clergyman proposing suffering as a mystery might use the same words - the secret of life is suffering - and struggle then to show how suffering and love go together. But the suffering man or woman who has tasted sorrow to the depths can speak these words with authority: the suffering man or woman who has had this revelation, can say this with authority: the secret of life is suffering.

Oscar Wilde again: 'Now it seems to me that love of some kind is the only possible explanation of the extraordinary amount of suffering that there is in the world. I cannot conceive of any other explanation. I am convinced that there is no other, and that if the world has indeed ... been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection.' In no other way than suffering could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. So sorrow must be the work of love, and Jesus too, although he was Son, as we read in the Letter to the Hebrews, learned to obey through suffering, and having been made perfect, became for all who obey him, the source of eternal salvation.

This homily has been largely given by Oscar Wilde, speaking de profundis, out of the depths of pain, sorrow, loss and abandonment. It is better to quote him than to repeat banal and hackneyed phrases about the mystery of suffering. He speaks of what it revealed to him. And that unites immediately with Mary's pain as she stands at the foot of the Cross and with Jesus' pain in the garden and on the Cross.

Our celebration of the Eucharist today, when we meditate on Mary's pain and sorrow, could well be followed, later, by listening to Pergolesi's or Macmillan's setting of the Stabat mater, or by reading Oscar Wilde's De profundis, and in doing so praying to God for all who today are asked to realise the revelation that lies hidden in suffering.