St Justin Martyr - 1 June

Readings: 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; Psalm 34; Matthew 5:13-19

'And all who seek you with a sincere heart' is a phrase that has survived into the most recent English translation of the Roman Missal. It is in the Fourth Eucharistic Prayer, where we pray for all who participate in any way in the Eucharist being celebrated, those present, all God's people, and all who seek God 'with a sincere heart'.

Justin the Martyr whose memory we keep today might well be taken as a patron of all who seek with a sincere heart. A pagan philosopher, his quest for truth took him round the various schools of philosophy operating in the ancient world. He found something in each and likewise something lacking in each. So he learned from the Stoics and the Aristotelians, the Pythagoreans and the Platonists. 

 

The truth Justin sought was not just knowledge about the world, how it is put together and how it works. He sought always a moral truth, where the good is to be found and in what does a good human life consist. He also sought a truth that was practical, which enabled its adherents not just to think and to know but to put into practice the truth they had come to see.

 

Eventually he found his way to Christianity and to faith in Christ as the Logos or Eternal Wisdom of God. It was the promise of resurrection, the witness of Christian martyrs, and the longing for the return of Christ, that moved Justin's heart from the philosophical quest to the way of discipleship. He embraced the paradoxical wisdom of the Cross of Jesus, not easy for anybody to 'get their heads around', perhaps more difficult for the philosophically minded than for others.

But this did not lead Justin to reject or to despise what he had learned before. Instead he developed a characteristic understanding of how the Logos, the Eternal Wisdom of God, revealed in creation and in the history of God's dealings with his people, is present in all quests for truth. Sparks of the Word are found everywhere, he said, in all knowledge and science and philosophy. Its fulness, however, is found only in Christ.

 

For Justin it is Jesus who, in his own words, is the light of the world. But, as today's gospel reading reminds us, Jesus said the same thing of those who came to believe in him: 'you are the light of the world'. Justin is a wonderful teacher of this truth and a witness to it also in his death. Just as he had sought wisdom with a sincere heart, always anxious to profess it, to live it, and to celebrate it in the liturgies of the Church, so he was ready to die for it. He was confident that the One in whom he had placed his faith would welcome him into His kingdom of light, love, and life.

 

TRINITY SUNDAY (YEAR A)

Readings: Exodus 34:4b-6,8-9; Daniel 3:52-56; 2 Corinthians 13:11-13; John 3:16-18

The difficulty of preaching on Trinity Sunday is not that of having to speak about a logical conundrum or a mathematical puzzle, but that of having to speak about a theological mystery whose depths are never exhausted and whose implications are never completely understood. There is too much to say rather than too little. We have come to know more about God than we can manage and so run the risk, in whatever we say, of failing to do justice to some other aspect of the mystery which we ought also to have mentioned.

The gospel passage just read, short as it is, nevertheless presents us with the question in this way: what must we believe about God if we are to take literally two of its statements, the first that God has an only Son whom he gave so that the world might be saved, the second that God has a love for the world which moved Him to give His Son for its salvation. They seem simple and straightforward, these statements. God loved the world and God gave His only Son.

They are so simple and straightforward, so familiar, that their implications can pass us by completely. The theology of the Trinity, developed in the early centuries of Christian history, spells out the implications of these statements, as well as of many other familiar and seemingly straightforward statements throughout the New Testament.

One option is to hear them as metaphors, not intended literally, but meant to teach us something about God that we would express literally in some other way. What 'only Son' means, we might say, is that Jesus is a unique human being, whose spiritual experience, knowledge of God, faith and trust in God, and so on, makes him stand out before all other spiritual teachers and guides. He is so far above the rest of us in this that we can call him, for all practical purposes, 'the only son', the human being who served God best during his earthly life, the one from among us who was most open to God and most filled with God's presence.

This understanding of Jesus was never a serious contender among Christians as a full statement of what it means to call him 'the only Son'. Of course all of it is true when applied to him. We believe him to be that human being most open to God whose love and obedience are the salvation of the world. But the Christian community always believed that there was also something divine about him, believed that he belonged as truly to the side of God as to the side of humanity.

So another view quickly emerged. Perhaps Jesus, while not being quite the same as God - for how could a man be God? - is a visitor from the divine realm who belongs more to that side than to our side. Perhaps from the court of the heavenly Father, where he has a special place, he is sent with a special mission into this world. So he is a divine being, something between God and man, and so very well placed, it might seem, to be the mediator.

But it was clear that this view was not going to be acceptable either. Someone who does not really belong to either place - who is neither truly God nor truly human - is not the kind of mediator who can do what needs to be done. (So some of the Fathers of the Church put it.) The mediator in whom we believe is one who belongs truly and fully to both. This is much more difficult to say, with a number of qualifications and distinctions needing to be made. But they are qualifications and distinctions with which we are all quite familiar for we say them every Sunday at Mass:

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father; through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven ...

If we want to say, then, that God gave his only Son, so that through him the world might be saved, and that this is not just a nice piece of poetry but is true in its simple and straightforward meaning, then we must begin to speak about the theology of the Trinity.

What moved God to give his only Son, Saint John tells us, is the fact that God loved the world so much. In the First Letter of Saint John it is put even more bluntly: 'God is love', it says. Once again these are simple and straightforward statements and the question is: how literally are we to take them? Is there love in God? If there is only a unitary God, and His creation below Him, then the word 'love' could only be used in some metaphorical sense. Because the distance between creatures and God is infinite, because their difference is infinite, because there can be no equality or mutual dependence between them, the term 'love' could only be used metaphorically of God. Between God and creation there could only be some kind of condescension but not love in the full sense of the word, meaning a relationship between persons that is equal and reciprocal.

But the fact that the Father has an only Son, who is equal in dignity and nature to himself, means that the Father has an equal to love. It means that to say 'God is love' and to say 'God is a trinity of persons' are two ways of saying the same thing. If we want to say, as I am sure we do, that the God we believe in is Love, and we want to understand this literally, then we must begin to speak about the theology of the Trinity. If we want to say, as I am sure we do, that God loves us and has enabled us to love Him in return through adopting us as his sons and daughters in Christ, then we must begin to speak about the Trinity.

Love between persons involves mind and heart, and so the other Advocate of whom Jesus spoke, the Spirit sent on the Church on the day of Pentecost, then easily found His place in this theology of the Trinity. The church came to understand the Holy Spirit as the love which unites the Father and the Son, the bond between them, their embrace. The Spirit too, we believe, is Lord and is the giver of life. He proceeds from the Father and the Son. With them He is worshiped and glorified as God. He has spoken through the prophets. We believe that the life-giving Spirit is at work in the Church, in baptism for the forgiveness of sins, in forming the communion of saints. We believe that the Spirit of love will bring about the resurrection of the dead, for the life he gives is not only the life of this world but also the life of the world to come.

Our simplest and most cherished Christian statements, like John 3:16, 'God so loved the world that he gave his only Son', have led the Church to develop its unique belief in the one God as a Trinity of persons. Far from being an esoteric corner of Christian life and reflection, the Trinity is at the heart of everything we do and are. We are baptized into a Trinitarian faith. We offer the Eucharistic sacrifice to the Father, through the Son, in the unity of the Holy Spirit. Our gatherings begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In fact, rather than saying that the Trinity is at the heart of everything we do and are, the whole point of today's liturgy is to remind us that everything we do and are is taken up into the heart of the Trinity.

Week 08 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: Jude 17, 20b-25; Psalm 63; Mark 11.27-33

In a sermon entitled Puer Iesus ('The boy Jesus'), Thomas Aquinas, preaching to a university congregation, gives advice about how to learn well. One of the things he recommends is to answer questions prudently. Any response should correspond to the intellectual ability of the one responding - don't try to answer something that is beyond your capacity. Your response should correspond to the character of the one who is asking the question of you. Thirdly, it should be a response to the question asked and not just waffle or, in St Thomas's words, 'full of wind'.

Obviously it is the second of these which is in play in today's gospel reading. The chief priests, scribes and elders put a question to Jesus about his authority for doing the things he does. Jesus replies with a question of his own: was the Baptist's baptism from heaven or earth?

Their hesitation reveals that their initial question was disingenuous: their interest in his answer was not genuine as they wanted, as they did elsewhere in the gospels, to trap him. So he leaves them with the question about his own authority.

Apart from confirming the wisdom of Saint Thomas's advice - your response should correspond to the character of the one who is asking the questin of you - what else can we take from this incident? One thing we can take is the reminder that we need to clarify our own motives in asking questions of others. Are we genuinely interested in the knowledge they can share with us or have we some other motive in asking it of them? Are we genuinely interested in them at all or only in some agenda of our own?

Likewise for the questions we put to God.

Sincere questioning means we have put our faith in the one to whom we put the question. We are not teasing or provoking or trying to embarrass them. Sincere questioning is one of the most important things a student has to do. But 'a student must believe' is a piece of wisdom from the ancient world. A student must trust the teacher. And this is what is lacking in the opponents of Jesus. They do not believe in him, they do not trust him, and so he does not entrust himself to them.

The first reading today is from the Letter of Jude but frm the verses we read it omits his reference to scoffers which is actually very relevant to the gospel that accompanies it. The words of the apostles to which Jude refers, omitted from the reading, are that 'there will be scoffers, setting up divisions'. Recalling that then what follows makes more sense: 'build yourselves up on your most holy faith, pray in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, wait for the mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ'. 

If we do those things then we are in a right disposition to put our questions to God. What is even more wonderful, we are in a right disposition to receive from God direct, truthful and life-giving answers. If we entrust ourselves to God, God will entrust himself to us. For He has already done so, sending the Son and the Spirit.

Week 8 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Peter 4.7-13; Psalm 96; Mark 11.11-26

'Stay sane and sober for your prayers' is another translation of a sentence in today's first reading. Sanity and sobriety are obviously good things to enjoy, a good preparation for prayer. Sometimes, however, they are the very things for which we need to pray rather than the condition in which we find ourselves praying.

Rather than entering further into that question, the reading encourages us not to focus on ourselves but to look outside, to our neighbour, and our neighbour's need. 'Above all' love one another sincerely, it says. Charity is the supreme law of Christian life. This was so from the very beginning, from Jesus himself and the new commandment which he gave to his disciples, to love one another as he has loved them (us). Use whatever gifts God has given you in serving one another.

To curse a tree for not bearing fruit when it is not the season for fruit might seem like the action of a person who is neither sane nor sober. What can it be except a prophetic action calling us to bear fruit at all times, 'in season and out of season' as Saint Paul will later put it.

The theme of prayer returns. This is firstly in the cleansing of the Temple where prayer has been pushed out by commercial activity. And it is secondly in a general encouragement from Jesus to pray with faith. Whatever you ask foir in prayer will be given you. Once again there is then an immediate 'turn to the neighbour' who we must forgive if we are to appreciate the forgiveness we seek from God.

That is a recipe for the sanity and sobriety that we seek and which will come in response to our prayer even if it is not there as we begin to pray.

Week 8 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Peter 2.2-5, 9-12; Psalm 100; Mark 10:46-52

'What do you want me to do for you?' Jesus puts exactly the same question to Bartimaeus in today's gospel as he put to James and John in yesterday's gospel. He often encourages us to pray to the Father in his name, asking simply and straightforwardly for what we want. So Bartimaeus asks in that way, and so too do James and John.

But the reaction to the requests in each case seems very different. Bartimaeus asks for the obvious thing, that he might see. We might even wonder why Jesus needed to ask the question: surely what the blind man will want is to see. But there is a deeper level to this, as there is in John 9 where we read about a man who was blind from birth. Because it is also about the kind of seeing we call 'faith' which enables a person to 'see' Jesus not just in his physical reality and presence but for who he is: the Lord, the Saviour, the Son of God, the One sent from the Father.

Bartimaeus is in touch with his own simple need. His desire, expressed simply and honestly, meets with a response from Jesus that is wider and deeper than his desire. At the end he not only receives his sight, he also 'followed Jesus on the way'. He had become a disciple.

James and John are already disciples but struggling to stay with Jesus on the way. They are further on in the journey than Bartimaeus, already to be counted among 'the holy ones' who recognise that Jesus is a prophet sent from God. But, as today's first reading says, 'even God's holy ones must fail in recounting the wonders of the Lord'. It seems that there are new moments of blindness to be experienced along the way, even by those who can see physically and who, up to those moments, had been able also to see spiritually.

'He plumbs the depths and penetrates the heart; their innermost being he understands'. In our innermost being we draw back, inevitably, from the destination to which Jesus is leading us. In our innermost being we recoil from the brightness and precision of the light which his truth shines into our hearts. We can say then that the two conversations are exactly the same. Jesus asks what he can do for people. They tell him honestly. He responds from the full truth of their situation and this means one thing for Bartimaeus setting out on the journey of following Jesus and another thing for James and John who are already well advanced on that journey.

To ask to see is always good. To ask to sit alongside Jesus in his kingdom is also always good. The difficulty is that we have some idea what the first request means whereas we do not understand what the second one means. There is a cup to be drunk, a baptism in which to be immersed, a passion to be undergone.

Let us begin with the truth we do know, no matter how humble, and with the blindess of which we are aware, no matter how physical. We will be led, inevitably, into a deeper blindness, a more brilliant light. The way to stay on course is always to answer the question honestly. 'What do you want me to do for you?' Well, what is it? For today? Say it out simply and straightforwardly, and let's see where we are on the journey.

Week 08 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Peter 1:18-25; Psalm 147; Mark 10:32-45

Someone once described the history of Christianity as a history of the many ways in which Christians have tried to run away from the Cross of Christ, to tone down its message, to draw its sting.

The earliest Christians searched the Old Testament for images and symbols, hints and clues, as to the identity of the Messiah for whom they waited, and the purpose of his mission. In the Book of Isaiah they found long, poignant and beautiful passages about a Suffering Servant. He was to be the servant of God who would carry the sins of all. His life and death would be a victory, not just for himself, but for the many who would become one with him. These passages are in the Book of Isaiah, chapters 42, 44, 49 and 52-53. John the Baptist, and Jesus himself, knew these passages which helped them to understand their mission.

The 'Lamb of God', the 'Son of Man', the 'Servant of the Lord', came on earth not to be served but to serve, and to suffer, to die and to give his life as a ransom for many. Some of the language in today's gospel reading will feel foreign to us, some of it strange, and as it has been interpreted in Christian history, perhaps even scandalous. To speak of drinking a cup is okay but to talk of a ransom is a bit odd. Ransom to whom? Why? What price? A phrase like 'the Lord has been pleased to crush him with suffering' (Isaiah 53:10) sounds positively obscene. What could such a sadistic God have to do with the heavenly Father, merciful and compassionate, in whom we believe?

For some reason we need the shock which the suffering servant gives us. We could easily, through familiarity, forget the horror of the crucifixion, the desolation of Gethsemane, the failure of Calvary, the night of 'my God, why have you forsaken me'. The 'suffering servant' is a constant reminder of what Good Friday involved: strange that it remains one of the days of the year that draws many people to the liturgy who would not otherwise go.

What does it mean to call Christ a suffering servant? What moves our heart and mind when the cross is placed before us in all its solitude and sadness? The cross speaks of human sinfulness. Compare this with the comical concern of James and John as to who would have the best seats in the kingdom - the 'price' of entry to the kingdom was the passion and death of Christ! God's anger is not a defence of his own wounded pride, but rather a sadness at the damage we do to ourselves and to one another. This is the seriousness of sin: lack of love, injustice, cruelty, selfishness.

But the cross speaks also of the great love of God, God's humility and vulnerability, the lengths to which God is prepared to go for those for whom God cares. The suffering of Christ is a cry for our love, a cry echoing down the ages in the hearts of all who seek to love. To call Jesus the 'suffering servant' is to recognise in him the one whom God sent to save his people. Jesus has saved us by his teaching and example. He has saved us by showing us the way of love. He has saved us by breaking through the knot of sin and death in which we were trapped. He has saved us by living in truth, without compromise, even when this meant his own death. He showed that, serious though sin is, love is more serious and more powerful. It is love which creates a place where all can live in integrity and justice, in joy and at peace - what we call the Kingdom of God.

Week 08 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Peter 1:10-16; Psalm 98; Mark 10:28-31

So what's the deal, Peter asks. His question reminds us of how difficult it is to change our minds, be converted, and open up to living according to grace. Peter's interest is the exchange rate, the currency, in which the relationship with Jesus is to be evaluated: 'what about us, we have left everything and followed you'. His question comes immediately after Jesus' comment about the impossibility of a rich person entering the kingdom and Peter, in spite of himself, shows that he is still 'rich', still keen to know 'the bottom line'.

Has he really left everything to follow Jesus if this question still troubles him? At first Jesus seems to respond in the terms set by Peter: those who have left everything will receive everything back, and receive it a hundredfold (an impressive rate of interest). So there's the deal: give it all up and you will get it all back, and get it back with its value enhanced. This invites us to think in terms of a spiritual economy. St John of the Cross, for example, develops an understanding of detachment from all things, embracing the nada, the nothing, of the cross, but then being given everything back: 'I have the mountains, the quiet wooded valleys, the perfect solitude'. Give it all up for Christ and you receive everything back with Christ.

Meister Eckhart talks in a similar way: the one who detaches himself from all things becomes all things so you own everything in a much more radical way if you decide not to own anything. You will love your family more if you become detached from them, Eckhart says in commenting on today's gospel reading (Book of Divine Comfort, Part II): they become a hundred times dearer to you than they are now. As well as that, everybody else becomes dearer to you than your family is by nature and so you find yourself with many fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters.

It might seem irreverent, presumptuous, to question the interpretations of such spiritual geniuses as John of the Cross and Eckhart. But the question remains as to whether there is something in the teaching of Jesus that resists being contained even by their spiritual logic.

One qualification Jesus adds is that this detachment is to be 'for my sake and for the sake of the gospel'. What needs to happen if we are to find ourselves capable of such motivation? Just because I think that is why I want to do it does not mean that it really is why I want to do it. When can a person honestly say 'this is the reason for my action, Jesus and the gospel'? If we still harbour Peter's question somewhere inside ourselves we are still not understanding the terms in which Jesus is speaking.

A second qualification Jesus adds is this: 'with persecutions'. This is part of the deal as well, then. If glory is on offer then it is not without suffering, a suffering that attends any birth. And if we are to be born into a new way of living how can we know what that will be before we are born into it? How 'do a deal' when we are still in the womb and do not know what life will be like outside the womb, what 'eternal life' might mean? The first reading today uses the term 'grace' and then explains it in terms of glory and hope, a glory that attends suffering and is accompanied by suffering, a hope that means looking beyond the desires of our ignorance, and how are we to do that?

The third and final qualification added by Jesus seems to subvert not just Peter's ordinary, understandable question but also the solutions of spiritually sophisticated teachers like John of the Cross and Eckhart. There are many who are first who will be last, and the last, first. This seems to blow all logic out of the water, destroy all attempts to develop an 'economy' of the relationship with Christ. The first will be last and the last first: does it not draw a line under all measuring and evaluating of how we are doing and catapult us into the puzzling world of grace and holiness, a world in which we are strangers (no matter how hard we try to reduce it to more manageable terms).

We are to be holy as God is holy, the first reading concludes. How is it possible to be in the presence of the holiness of God, to perceive it, to understand it, not to be completely confused and overwhelmed by it? We can only allow it to reveal itself to us, to reveal its ways to us, to give us the courage to follow and entrust ourselves to its laws and criteria. The first reading teaches us that the power or capacity to do this is 'the Spirit of Christ' or 'the Holy Spirit' working in us. It is what we are searching for, as angels and prophets have searched for it, but in finding it we lose ourselves and we come to live for others even to the point of forgetting ourselves. Is it wise to think in such terms? Is God's holiness foolish? Have we really given up anything to follow Christ?