Week 12 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Kings 19:9b-11,14-21,31-35a,36; Psalm 48; Matthew 7:6,12-14

The problem about giving what is holy to dogs, or casting pearls before swine, is that they will think it is food you are giving them. It is the first preoccupation of animals. They will be indifferent to the holiness of what you offer them and they will be disappointed if they try to eat pearls.

What about ourselves? Well we are animals too, are we not, and our first preoccupations are often at that level of our existence – food, shelter, sex, security. All kinds of problems follow when people forget that we are animals just as all kinds of problems follow when people forget that we are more than animals.

The challenge is in the communication of good things to us from God. Are we equipped to receive these good things and to value them for what they really are? Or are we more likely to translate them into terms more comprehensible to ourselves, to take them as meant to satisfy our needs and desires, to measure them by those needs and desires. It could mean we will be indifferent to some important aspects of God’s gifts and it could mean that we will be disappointed if we try to use on our terms gifts whose meaning is quite other than what we immediately think.

So there is a narrow path to be negotiated, there is a new language to be learned. It is never easy to learn a new language and the older one becomes the more difficult it is to learn a new language. This applies also to our life of faith and prayer. We settle into patterns of belief and practice from which it can be very  difficult to move us. We settle into patterns of sinning and indifference from which it can be very difficult to move us.

Being offered what is holy, being given pearls of great price: are we equipped to understand the gifts on offer, to appreciate the pearls held out to us? Jesus answers this question by referring us to one fundamental principle: always treat others as you would like them to treat you. This is not just a pragmatic recommendation, a kind of etiquette or strategy for getting on well in society. Jesus says it is the meaning of the Law and the Prophets.

This is a big claim, a bit surprising: the meaning of the Law and the Prophets is to be found in the principle always treat others as you would like them to treat you. The Law and the Prophets reveal to us how the Lord, the God of Israel, wants to be treated by His people. And so He treats them in that way.

This is the key that will open the narrow gate for us. If we want to understand the gifts God wants to share with us then we look not to our needs and desires because that would be to reduce God’s gifts to the measure of our concerns. We look to how God has treated His people across the centuries and we learn from that. It means learning the language of God’s grace and mercy. It means learning the language of God’s justice and persistence. It means learning the language of God’s friendship and love revealed first in the Law and the Prophets and brought to a climax in the work of Jesus Christ.

The holy things offered to us, the pearls set before us: we need to be taught how to appreciate this communication from God. We need to learn how to live in this new world of the divine friendship. It is the road that leads to life and we learn how to travel on that road by imitating God. We are to be perfect as the Father is perfect, merciful as the Father is merciful. We can only enter into such a way of living by looking beyond our immediate needs and desires. We do it by looking at God and by learning how to receive God’s communication of these holy things to us. That means looking at Jesus, the Son of the Eternal Father, drawing life from Him, learning the language He has come to teach us, living the communion He has established for us in the Father and the Spirit.

We share much of our DNA with dogs and pigs. The wonder of our faith is that such creatures as we are, animals full of basic needs and desires, are called to live on a new level, to live a life of mutual knowledge and love in friendship with God, the Creator and Lord of all things. How do we understand the holiness of that? How do we receive such a pearl, of such great price?

You can listen to his homily being preached here.

Week 12 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Kings 17.5-8, 13-15a, 18; Psalm 59/60; Matthew 7.1-5

The image of a person with a plank in his eye is one of the most absurd in the Gospels. It is not the only place where Jesus uses surreal and exaggerated comparisons to make a point. the point here is to warn us about the ways in which our judgement of others is inevitably distorted.

So better to hold back altogether from judging others. Of course there are situations where we are obliged to discern, decide and execute judgement about things and people. The virtue of prudence is concerned with those. But it is a different kind of judgement to the one intended here.

Here the judgement involved is about the fundamental goodness or otherwise of another person, about the motivations of their behaviour, about their intentions in doing what they do. Best to leave that kind of judgement to God while ourselves seeking to be kind and merciful always towards others, as we want God to be kind and merciful towards ourselves.

That petition of the Our Father is a risky one, therefore, the one by which we ask that the Lord might forgive us as we forgive others. There's the rub, and the first thing to think about: how do I forgive others? do I forgive them?

God allows us to set the criterion: 'what you measure out is what you will be given'. If we do not understand forgiveness in relation to others neither will we appreciate the great gift it is when we ourselves receive God's mercy. It will be a foreign language to us, beyond our ken, as if we had a plank in our eyes.

Week 12 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Jeremiah 20.10-13; Psalm 68/69; Romans 5.12-15; Matthew 10.26-33

"The free gift is not like the trespass". It is a statement of Saint Paul that really should be in lights over every place where the gospel is preached. It should be spoken in the light and proclaimed on the housetops.

Why so? Because more often than not our real faith reaches only to something less than this. We fall back into thinking that the free gift meets the needs and desires of the ones who have trespassed. It is a gift, yes, and free, yes, but trimmed to the measure of our need. As if God is simply 'our god', the solution to our problems, the answer to our questions, the one to set things right for us.

So often we understand grace in the shadow of the trespass - of our sin and weakness, our need and desire - when the truth is that grace, as Paul goes on to say, bursts these bounds, it 'abounds for the many' ('many' meaning the generality, humanity, in other words all of us). Paul's hymn in exaggeration of grace (so we might think) continues: If the reign of sin means death for many through one man's disobedience, 'much more surely', 'much more surely' - he says it twice! - will the reign of grace mean life for the many through the obedience of the one man Jesus Christ.

The teaching of Jesus - his parables, miracles and discourses - is with a view to shocking us into an appreciation of the reality of grace, that in God's kingdom different standards apply. He speaks of different criteria of justice, reconciliation, community: the first will be last and the last first, more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, prostitutes and tax-collectors go in first - there are so many paradoxical sayings, to us often seeming simply contradictory.

We are more comfortable with an arrangement that fits into what we manage to establish as 'justice'. We are more comfortable, truth be told, with fearing God than with loving God. We know more about the first, arising from sin and its consequences, than we do about the second, coming to us as grace and a new creation. 'Fear no one', Jesus says in today's gospel, 'do not be afraid'. But we are afraid, preferring the familiar fear of sin and punishment to the awe and wonder that accompanies the unknown height and depth, length and breadth, of God's boundless love.

What might it mean for us, that love? What might it yet ask of us? Better the fear you know than the love that is mysterious, all-consuming, re-creating (which means first de-creating, undoing, requiring a new birth).

Jeremiah, in the first reading, is once again a 'type' of Christ anticipating in his experience what Jesus would undergo. The Lord proves himself to be a mighty champion, saving Jeremiah from his enemies. God did not spare his own son, however, but gave him up for us all. The most remarkable 'rescue' then takes place, the Resurrection, which is not just the restoration of life to what it was before but the initiation of a new creation. The free gift is not like the trespass. The risen life is not like death. The fear that so often holds us is not like the awe and wonder that fills the disciples as they encounter the Risen Lord, glimpsing thereby the glory of God's love.

"Every hair on your head is counted." How crazy is that? It is just one more indication of the criteria that prevail in the kingdom of God, a kingdom whose only law is the limitless love of this tremendous Lover for each one of his creatures.

Week 11 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Chronicles 24.17-25; Psalm 88/89; Matthew 6.24-34

The Davidic regime is really testing God's patience in the readings we hear these days. After the drama of ensuring that Joash would finally become king, he turned against the religion of Israel establishing the worship of idols and even murdering the prophet Zechariah for criticising him. Zechariah was the son of the man who had gone to so much trouble to establish Joash as the rightful king. It is difficult to imagine a deeper betrayal, a greater corruption.

But it is 'par for the course', as we might say, with the people once again doing what was evil in the sight of the Lord. How often we come across that expression as we read through the historical books of the Bible. It all culminates in the disaster of the Exile, the Lord having tried other less radical ways of encouraging the people to be faithful to the terms of their covenant with him.

Once again the contrast with the teaching of Jesus in the gospel reading is very striking. He seems to have no interest in power or wealth, in the things that drive political life in the world. Cast yourselves on the providence of God is his message, for see how he has already showered his gifts on the world.

Is it romantic, unrealistic, irresponsible? Imagine saying to a poor person asking for help 'cast yourself on the providence of God'! Of course in that encounter it is I who am to be the instrument of God's providence for the poor person. But do I really believe in God's care for me, for us, or is my 'faith' in fact just another political strategy, keeping my options open while at the same time engaging in the worldly occupations of power and wealth with the jealousies and conflicts to which these occupations inevitably lead?

'You cannot serve God and mammon' is one of the clearest teachings of Jesus. Mammon is money. Elsewhere he says we are to use money, 'that tainted thing', but to do so wisely and carefully, remembering that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. Only by God's grace, for whom nothing is impossible.

The requirements for citizenship in God's kingdom are clear and radical: to live with total trust in God's care and to live in the freedom and mutual generosity which that trust makes possible. It is to live in the condition of complete simplicity of which TS Eliot speaks, costing not less than everything. Only by God's grace can it be done as we see in the lives of great saints: Francis of Assisi, Theresa of Calcutta, for example. The rest of us look on with admiration and amazement hoping that we might, at least occasionally, glimpse that freedom and practise that generosity.

Week 11 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Kings 11.1-4, 9-18, 20; Psalm 131/132; Matthew 6.19-23

We are familiar from history with dynastic quarrels and arguments, wars being fought over the succession to thrones and kingdoms: who is the rightful heir? is might always right? Such conflicts break out within societies between different groups, even within families often over rights of inheritance.

Human beings have an infinite capacity for finding reasons to divide off from others, to create rival factions, to fight over wealth and power. The history of God's people contains such moments also as we hear in the first reading today. We might find ourselves scandalised and shocked, wondering why we listen to such stories. What have they to do with me or you, with my relationship with God or with yours?

The words of Jesus in the gospel are fresh air by comparison: treasure things that are eternal, not things of this earth. Place your heart's desire there, with Christ, in the kingdom of heaven, not in any earthly kingdom. The heart and the eye need to be sound, what we desire and how we see things. Our love and our hold on truth, in other words. If these are right, all will be well.

It does not mean that we will not sometimes get our hands dirty with the world's affairs: power, wealth, social and political questions, the complexities of human relationships. But it will mean that these are never ultimate for us, they are not divine realities and do not deserve our fundamental loyalty and commitment.

There are good believers engaged in worldly affairs, men and women who are striving to follow Christ in how they live their lives and who are also politicians, soldiers, public servants of one kind or another. They carry out their duties with an eye always to the dignity of each human person and to the requirements of the common good. They do it for motives that are not self-serving.

When they do that, even though it is in world of politics and business, such disciples of Christ are keeping their heart and their eye sound. They serve the human community but valuing that service always as a preparation, an anticipation, of the eternal kingdom where God alone is king, and whose life and business are always characterised by justice, love and peace. 

Week 11 Thursday

Readings: Sirach 48:1-14; Psalm 97; Matthew 6:7-15

ORDERING OUR DESIRES

A REFLECTION ON THE OUR FATHER

What if we were to pray as follows:

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Deliver us from evil

Lead us not into temptation

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

And give us this day our daily bread.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Thy kingdom come,

And hallowed be thy name.

It is of course the Lord’s Prayer recited upside down. Although we continue to recite the prayer in the order in which Jesus taught it, perhaps if we are to be honest the real ordering of our desires and so the order in which we actually pray to God is as I have just presented it: the Lord’s Prayer but upside down.

The thought came to me over the weekend when I was looking through some things written by Vincent McNabb about prayer. He speaks about the centrality of the Lord’s Prayer, its frequent use in the Divine Office, and the fact that it encapsulates not only every request that we might want to make to God but also the order in which those requests should be made. St Thomas, in a lovely phrase that I’m sure I’ve quoted for you before, says that prayer is desiderii interpres, the interpreter of desire. The human heart desires and prayer, oratio, is the articulation of its desires. The words of prayer on our lips give form to the desires in our hearts, Thomas says.

What McNabb adds to this is that in reciting the Lord’s Prayer we learn not only what we ought to pray for but also the order in which we ought to pray for it. So it is not just an interpreter of our desire but also a teacher of our desire, a school in which we learn the right ordering of human desires. If it is, as we call it, the Lord’s Prayer, then perhaps it is only Our Lord who can sincerely say it in the order in which nevertheless we continue to say it. Jesus is the one whose heart is, without qualification and without reserve, placed at the disposal of the Father’s will. He is the one whose life is simply and completely about giving glory to God’s name. He is the one whose life is simply identified with the coming of God’s kingdom.

If we look at our own poor efforts at prayer we will very quickly see, I think, that we do say the Lord’s Prayer but more or less upside down. All the desires are there but their order still requires attention and it is why we must pray constantly as St Paul tells us. Let us have a look and see if what I’m saying is not true.

Deliver us from evil. This will be our first petition in the upside down Lord’s Prayer. It is true, is it not, that we turn to prayer and often return to prayer when we hit trouble. The presence of evil is the strongest incentive in getting people to pray. Famous cartoons show lines of City bankers queuing up to pray where there is talk of war or a stock market crash. There were no atheists in the trenches, people said at the time of the First World War, and it is difficult to imagine somebody who would not pray in some way in an aeroplane whose engines have begun to sound peculiar. When our backs are to the wall, whether through illness, failure, sin, loneliness, or some other evil that has come upon us, we will pray.

Lead us not into temptation. We may like a challenge but there will always be limits to what we can bear. The evil now is not on top of us but something threatening but, in such circumstances, we will want God’s help. For the time ahead, for the homily to be given, for the class we have to give, for the meeting that is coming up. There may be moral or physical dangers in some of the things we are called to do and it is natural to ask God’s help with them. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a legitimate desire that we might do things well with God’s help and not be put, too much, to the test.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Was it one of the Monty Python films that has God appearing and lamenting the fact that people are always moaning to him about their sins? ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m fed up with people telling me they’re sorry. Why can’t someone say they’re not sorry?’ It may not be exactly in those words, and it is a bit irreverent, but it might help us to see something. Another desire that sends us to our knees is the desire for forgiveness when we have sinned but it may be that we are often thinking more about ourselves than we are about God even in asking for forgiveness. And it may be that we forget that this petition, like the great commandment, is in two parts. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Just as our relationship of love with God cannot be understood without reference to our love of neighbour (and of enemies) likewise our participation in the forgiveness of God cannot be separated from our willingness to forgive others – at least to be aware of our need to be reconciled with our brother first before presenting our gift at the altar.

And give us this day our daily bread. There is nothing wrong with this one either. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you. There is a venerable tradition from Tugwell and McCabe back through Victor White and Vincent McNabb that not only does not despise the prayer of petition but actually gives it an honoured place. We are to develop the kind of relationship with God in which we will feel comfortable, as a child with its parents, telling God what we need and asking him to grant it to us. We pray for the needs of the world and of the Church, for the protection of travellers, the comfort of mourners, food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, peace for the oppressed, the healing of the sick, the comfort of the dying, to pass an exam, to see a person again. These are all legitimate desires and appropriately brought to God in prayer.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now this marks a change in our desire for it is the first one in which we begin to think of what God might want. The four petitions we have made up to now are all about ourselves and about our needs. The interest in God that we show in them is a genuine interest in God but it does not go beyond an interest in what God can do for us: delivering us from evil, protecting us from temptation, forgiving us our sins, giving us what we need. Here, for the first time in this upside down Lord’s Prayer, we show a real interest in the desire of the other party to this relationship of prayer. Perhaps God wants something. Perhaps God has a will about things, on earth as in heaven. Well we believe He does, don’t we, and so it ought to be part of our desire not only to want the things we want God to give us, but also to want the things that God wants to give us.

Tby kingdom come strengthens this desire. Something new is opening up, for we are no longer simply saying, ‘Hey God, isn’t this cool? I’ve found a place for you in my world. I see reasons (when many do not) for including you in my way of living’. Now we are beginning to realise that it is not so much a question of us finding a place for God in our world as of God having found a place for us in His kingdom. This looks like a relationship that is becoming mature and growing into something stronger than before, where the desire of the one who is praying is becoming aligned with the desire of the one to whom he is praying. I am beginning to want what God wants. But we are not to think that this transition can be made easily. The place where it is most dramatically presented is in Gethsemane where Jesus utters his own prayer upside down: ‘Father, remove this cup from me (deliver me from evil, lead me not into temptation), yet not what I will but what thou wilt (thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, thy kingdom come)’.

And hallowed be thy name. In our upside down Lord’s Prayer this is the final petition. This is the climax of our desire, not something for ourselves but something for the Other who through prayer we come to know and love. May His name be held holy. The high priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17 may be taken as a commentary on this petition. ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee. I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do. I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world’ – and so on. A few chapters earlier, in what seems like John’s transfiguration scene, Jesus uses a phrase very close to what Matthew and Luke give us in the Our Father: ‘Jesus said, ‘Father, glorify thy name’. Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it and I will glorify it again’‘ (John 12).

What if that were to become the fundamental desire of our lives, the desire that controls all the others, that in everything and no matter what God’s name be glorified? Perhaps the whole point of our perseverance in prayer is that we might, some day, be able to say the Lord’s Prayer right way up, our desire for the glory of God’s name having become in fact our fundamental desire. In the meantime it is a salutary exercise, more rewarding than any yoga position, to say the Lord’s Prayer upside down and I recommend that you all have a go at it. There is much to be learned about our desires and what we can honestly say we want from God. Jesus, the only Son from the Father, can say this prayer right way up and so he taught it to his disciples. But this reflection may help us to realise that the disciples were asking for more than a formula of words when, having seen him at it, they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.

Week 11 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Kings 2.1, 6-14; Psalm 30/31; Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18

There is a reward either way for fasting, praying and almsgiving. If our motivation is to be seen and admired by others then we will already have had our reward in their attention and their interest in us. If we do these things for their own sake, in secret, without fanfare, and without drawing attention to ourselves, then the Heavenly Father who sees in secret will reward us. This is the teaching of Jesus in today's gospel reading which is also the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday.

What will be the nature of our reward? It is impossible to predict except that it will be what is for our greatest good and happiness. That means it will bind us more closely to the Heavenly Father who dwells in silence and invisibility.

When we have said all we have to say in prayer, when we have prepared ourselves through fasting, and when we have given alms to the needy, then we encounter without ourselves a silent and empty place where words, images and concepts no longer function for us. We encounter within ourselves the dark cloud in which God is said to dwell. 

That presents us with the challenge of living from the interior to the exterior rather than the other way around. It is all too easy to give in to the temptation to fill that invisible and silent place with images and sounds. The contemporary world swamps us with images and sounds chosen especially for us by the systems that are tracking us all the time. It is a kind of lethargy which leads us to give in to the exterior stimulation once again, to turn away from the austerity of our interior self.

So what about switching off the computer, iPad and smartphone? What about fasting from them for a while? Irt would move us to an arid, desert place where we would be obliged to encounter our own thoughts, feelings and desires directly. 

To persevere in that secret place, our own interiority, is not easy, but the Heavenly Father is there, waiting for us. It is essential for our salvation that we do manage to stay in that place. It means staying with ourselves, facing up to ourselves, without dressing ourselves up in disguises and camouflage, in some kind of false persona.

All the works of penance lead to that point - fasting, praying, and sharing what we have with others. In those activities, or our avoidance of them, we see the truth about ourselves, a truth that will set us free no matter how unpalatable it is, even if it is at times a bitter truth. But it will become sweet because any truth is a divine spark revealing the presence of God who is Truth.