Lent Week 5 Saturday

Readings: Ezekiel 37:21-28; Psalm: Jeremiah 31:10-13; John 11:45-56

The reading from Ezekiel summarises the ways in which the people of Israel knew that the Lord was still with them, that he was still on their side. He had given them a land and now, after the exile, they were to be restored to it. He had taken them from among the nations to make them one people and now he would do this again. He had given them laws and statutes that would guarantee their fidelity to the covenant. He would give them a leader, a new David who would be both prince and shepherd. He would dwell with them in a sanctuary, in a new temple, in which His glory would once again be present.

These gifts - the land, being a nation, laws and statutes, a leader, a sanctuary - made real the covenant whereby Israel was God's people and the Lord was Israel's God. It was in these gifts that the shared life of the covenant was to be seen.

The Jewish leaders feared that Jesus was a threat to all this. They feared that the Romans would come and take away their land and destroy their nation. They feared another fall of Jerusalem, another loss of everything, a new exile. And for reasons that remain unclear they feared that the teaching of Jesus would provoke it. 'Better', prophesied the high priest Caiaphas, 'that one man die for the people rather than the whole nation be lost'.

Paradoxically, Caiaphas gave believers in Jesus one of the most powerful statements of the meaning of his death: he died for the nation and to gather into one the scattered children of God. He died for all, in other words. Paradoxically also, it was precisely through this death that the promises treasured by Ezekiel and the other prophets were brought to fulfillment.

On one level it might seem that the fears of Caiaphas and others were justified: soon after the Temple was destroyed, the land was lost, and the nation was scattered. But before that, and separate from it, a new land was established which was no longer geographical but spiritual (for a worship of God in spirit and in truth). A new sanctuary was set up which was no longer a building but the body of Jesus from which saving waters flowed. A new nation was born which is the Church, made up of Jews (the first nation) and the Gentiles (the scattered children of God). A new leader rose up who is both prince and shepherd. The everlasting covenant of peace was sealed in his blood. A new law was given which did not dissolve the old one but which brought it to perfection, its demands (the great commandment) being written directly on the human heart.

'I will be their God and they will be my people'. This communion, this shared life, was always the goal of the covenant. Through many vicissitudes, through trials and errors, through triumphs and losses, through times of fidelity and times of apostasy - the desire persisted for a definitive sealing of this covenant.

'Will he come to the Passover feast?' is the question with which today's gospel reading ends. Will the Lamb be present for the feast? How could they have known that this ancient ritual, and the covenant it remembered, were to be fulfilled and transformed beyond anybody's imagination? So that now, in these coming days, two thousand years later, millions of people all over the world will read about the land and the temple, about the law and the nation, about the sacrifices and the promises, and they will see these things as promised also to them.

The promise remains valid and is now true at all times for all men and women: 'I will turn their mourning into joy, I will console and gladden them after their sorrows'.

Lent Week 5 Friday

Readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 18; John 10:31-42

We return to the comparison between the experience of Jeremiah and that of Jesus. We heard about it some days ago and here it is again. There are many similarities but there are also some striking differences. They are both preachers of the Word of God. They both seek to serve the cause of truth and justice. They are both betrayed or abandoned by friends, and left alone to suffer persecution from their enemies.

One striking difference is this: whereas the Lord fights as a mighty champion alongside Jeremiah, the Lord fights as a mighty champion in Jesus. Believe the works, Jesus says in today's gospel, so that you may realize and understand 'that the Father is in me and I am in the Father'. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself', St Paul will say later. A second striking difference, presumably following on from the first, is that Jeremiah's understandable cry for vengeance is not repeated on the lips of Jesus. 'Let me witness the vengeance you take on them', prays Jeremiah. It is a very understandable prayer. Pope Francis said that someone who laid a hand on his mother could expect a punch from him.

The way in which the divine power works in Jesus is different. It is not a simple moralistic correction of the understandable reactions of Jeremiah and Francis. It is not simply saying, in the words of Jesus, if you suffer oppression, persecution, and violence, instead of giving the perpetrator a punch, try to 'turn the other cheek'. It is saying that vengeance as exercised by God - whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts - will take a radically different form to vengeance as exercised by human beings. Through the works of Jesus, everything is being taken up into a new dispensation in which all human relationships will be transformed.

'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'. This will be Jesus' prayer concerning his persecutors, his only remark about them from the cross. It gives us a glimpse, not of divine weakness in the face of human violence, but of the divine power when confronted with human violence. Because God is love, and His characteristic action is to create, the vengeance of God, like any other of God's actions, must have those characteristics - it can only be loving and creative. And so it will be that God will take vengeance on his enemies who have killed his Son by raising his Son from the dead, establishing for all men and women, even for those enemies who kill him, a kingdom of peace, justice, reconciliation and love. Imagine a world in which reconciliation becomes possible, forgiveness becomes natural, and new beginnings take the place of endless retribution.

'Many began to believe in him' is how today's gospel reading concludes. It is a start and if we can even say this much - I have begun to believe in him - we are doing well. We are on the right road. Through faith in him the Spirit of Jesus comes to dwell also in us, not just to struggle alongside us but to work within us, praying in us when we do not know how to pray, pouring the love of God into our hearts, making us to be 'gods', creatures participating in the divine nature.

Lent Week 5 Thursday

Readings: Genesis 17:3-9; Psalm 105; John 8:51-59

In the first reading God seems like an enthusiastic lover, pleading his suit with the one he wishes to be with him. Let's live together, you and I, here in this place. We will be fruitful and for many generations and can make our home together here. It will be wonderful and we will be happy together. At the end of the reading, almost as an afterthought, he adds 'of course you must keep the covenant as well'.

It recalls Pope Francis' comments in the early days of his papacy that we will grow tired of asking for mercy before God grows tired of showing mercy. God seems more engaged and more involved in the work of establishing this covenant than do the human beings who are to be the partners in the relationship.

Abraham always reminds us of the covenant and of the faith that is required if we are to be loyal to the agreement God has made with His people. Abraham figures in the discussion between Jesus and the Jews in today's gospel reading. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus - there are these high points marking the journey of the covenant across the centuries and through the pages of the Bible. Each moment in which the covenant is endorsed and renewed involves God becoming more involved with the people, coming ever closer to them, being ever more intimately involved in their lives. And each such moment obliges God, so to speak, to reveal more about himself.

When Jesus says 'before Abraham was, I am' he is clearly making the most explicit claim about his mission as Messiah and about his nature as the Son of God. He uses the Divine Name to speak about himself which explains the fierce reaction in his hearers. Because he is 'I am', he is the heart and foundation of the covenant established with Abraham. He is the suitor seeking to be in relationship with his beloved, standing at the foundation of the covenant, 'before' it then, the One.

We believe the covenant established in Jesus is the final and definitive one, the new and eternal covenant. God could not have become more involved in the life and history of His people than He has done in Jesus. And God cannot reveal more about Himself than He has done in opening His heart to us in the paschal mystery of Jesus.

We are called to be participants in this story, interlocutors of God in the unfolding of His relationship with human beings. It is a story whose origins are lost in the mists of time - before Abraham was - but it is a story established in the present eternal moment - I am. Whoever keeps this word, the covenant promise, will never taste death for, as the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel said, to say 'I love you' is to say 'you will not die'. And God says to us 'I love you' and I want to establish with you an everlasting pact.

Lent Week 5 Wednesday

Readings: Daniel 3:14-20, 91-92, 95; Daniel 3:52-56; John 8:31-42

Today we have another set of readings which relativise human structures of power, authority and justice. The three young men in the fiery furnace are one more 'type' of Christ, saved as they are by divine intervention because they are servants of the true God and refuse to worship any other god. They are at odds with Nebuchadnezzar and with his system of power, authority and justice, just like so many thousands of martyrs across the centuries who gave their lives rather than serve or worship gods other than the Lord, the God of Israel and the Father of Jesus, the one God who is living and true.

One of the most often quoted statements of the gospel is found in Jesus' comments about this same matter: 'the truth will set you free'. In his life of Saint Dominic the English Dominican Bede Jarrett (who died on St Patrick's Day in 1935) shows how Dominic confirmed for his first followers the truth of this gospel principle: by seeking the truth in the way Dominic taught them (and in this he is simply 'dominicus', the Lord's man), the first Dominicans did not 'find' the truth (since who can contain God?) but they did become free, they found a new freedom of joy and love in their service of the Word of God which is the truth.

It is important to quote the full statement of Jesus: 'If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples, you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free'. This freedom that comes from the truth is found by remaining in the word of Jesus. It means by living as his disciples, following his way, living out in our own lives the way of loving the Father and the world which is the heart of Jesus's life and mission.

We have seen Jesus appealing to Moses, teaching his interlocutors that fidelity to Moses should lead them to faith in him. Now he appeals to Abraham, teaching them that fidelity to Abraham should lead them to faith in him. It is not on the basis of some esoteric exegesis that he argues in this way with them but simply on the basis of the Father's presence in the life of Moses and in the life of Abraham. Is Moses your father? Is Abraham your father? There is one who is 'the Father', Jesus says, the Father of Moses and the Father of Abraham, and my Father too, the one who sent me and because of whom I am here.

Jesus is struggling to convince them to lift their eyes beyond Moses and beyond Abraham, beyond their own traditions and laws, beyond their own structures of power, authority and justice, to look up and beyond and within to the One who sustains all things, who confirms all goodness, who establishes all truth. It is He, 'First Truth' as Thomas Aquinas will call him, who sets free, who draws our minds and hearts through the contingent and passing concerns of this world, to rest in Him, in his power, his authority, his justice - the reality we will see revealed in the greatest of the Son's works, his glorious resurrection from the dead. There is the truth waiting to be revealed. There is the place of true freedom.

Let us remain with Jesus, living as his disciples, so that we will know this truth and enter already into the freedom which comes with our thirst for it.

Lent Week 5 Tuesday

Readings: Numbers 21:4-9; Psalm 102; John 8:21-30

The birth we are witnessing has many consequences. One of them is new life - eternal life - for those who come to believe in Christ, those who come to believe that he is, as he says twice in this gospel passage, the 'I am'. He is the Lord, the presence of God, the one who reveals the Father to the world.

The salvation of humanity and the healing of the world: these are consequences of this birth whose labour pains are steadily stronger as we move through the fifth week of Lent. And these things come about alongside another consequence of infinite significance: we are given a new understanding of God. The One Jesus refers to as 'the Father' is made known to us and we glimpse what he is like.

The contrast between two pictures of God in today's readings brings this out very clearly. In the Book of Numbers God is vindictive and punishing, a 'big man' whose patience is limited, who speaks the language of sin and punishment, who is trapped, it seems, within the same recurring dynamic as the people. If they are ungrateful and complaining then he will punish them and this time he does so by sending deadly snakes among them.

We will, of course, sympathise with the people who are trying to understand God's way of working in their lives. God continues to act like an unsteady 'big man' who is at times sentimental about his people and at times angry with them. Here, when they show signs of repentance also, he immediately repents of the evil he is doing them: they kiss and make up and the story continues.

Jesus also associates sin and death. He speaks of people dying because of sin, or rather of people dying in their sins. But he does not say that the Father is out to kill them. Sin brings death with it. Sin is itself a kind of death. Who will rescue us from this body of death?, Saint Paul cries. Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The bronze serpent, by a kind of sympathetic magic, cures people who have been bitten by the real serpents. Jesus lifted up on the cross is a kind of bronze serpent taking into himself all the power of sin and evil and death, so that whoever comes to believe belongs with him where he is in the company of the Father. Believing in the Son of Man lifted up is the equivalent of looking at the bronze serpent.

Jesus is also pleading with us to understand what the Father is like, that he is not the primitive god of tribal religions anymore than he is a lifeless idol. He is the one who sent Jesus and that already tells us much about him. He is the one who sent Jesus not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through him.

Our ego will have us focusing on the consequences for us of this birth. But the more important consequences are simply the revelation of the Father (what God is like: the only Son alone can teach us this) and the revelation of the union between the Father and the Son (I do nothing on my own, I say only what the Father taught me, he is with me, and I always do what pleases him).

Let us try to forget ourselves and to think only in the second place of the consequences for us of this birth into which Jesus is entering. Let us try instead to keep our minds and hearts fixed on him, the loving servant, the beloved son, the one who is teaching us that the life of God is love, the unity of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Just as sin is already a kind of death, so seeing this divine mystery is already eternal life. 'This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent' (John 17:3).

It is no longer simply the case that God beholds the earth from his heaven. Now he leads us in our journey from this world into the kingdom of eternal love. It is a journey that will take him to Gethsemane and to Golgotha before it takes him to Easter and Pentecost.

Lent Week 5 Monday

Readings: Daniel 13:1-9, 15-17, 19-30, 33-62; Psalm 23; John 8:12-20

It is a fair attempt at ensuring due process and a fair trial, to insist, as the law of Moses did, on the testimony of two or three witnesses (Deuteronomy 19:15-21). It was an effort an ensuring that there could not be miscarriages of justice. Of course conspiracies to frame people and have them unjustly tried were always possible as long as people were prepared to get together to bear false witness. It was one of the major commandments of the law, and is one of the essential structures of any just society, that people not bear false witness but speak the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

We know from experience that no system of justice is perfect and that no combination of human beings involved in administering a system of justice will do so perfectly. It is one of the strongest arguments against capital punishment: no matter how good the system of justice might be, it is always administered by human beings and therefore liable to distortion and corruption. In the case of capital punishment there is no going back.

In the final days of Lent we are presented with figures who are unjustly treated even when the system of justice is being followed correctly. Susanna is one such figure and we hear about her in today's long but dramatic first reading. From the early days of the Church she has been a 'type of Christ', foreshadowing in her experience what was to happen to Jesus later on. It requires divine intervention, working through Daniel, to illuminate the truth of the situation. Here the testimony of two corrupt witnesses will be enough to condemn Susanna unless the Lord intervenes to ensure that a higher justice - the justice of truth rather than simply that of evidence - triumphs in her case.

In the final days of Jesus' life there is much focus on the justice of the trial he received. It was easy for the authorities who wanted to destroy him to find someone in his circle to betray him and it was easy for them to find others to testify against him. When false witnesses arise and speak against him they report his words but fail to see the true meaning of those words. 'He said he would destroy the Temple and raise it in three days'. 'He is telling us not to pay tribute to Caesar and that he himself is a king.' They are confused, Mark's gospel tells us, and understandably so since Jesus is trying to lead people beyond their normal categories of thought, expectation and understanding.

Who are to be the witnesses that will vindicate Him? In the passages from John's gospel which we read these days there is much about this question. We see the kind of non-judgmental judge Jesus is - his treatment of the woman taken in adultery is simply the most powerful moment in that revelation. But what of Jesus himself? Who will bear witness to Him? Who can vindicate the justice of His cause? Who will confirm the truth of His teaching?

It can only be the Father, says Jesus, He is the one who vindicates me, who bears witness to me, who confirms the truth of what I am saying. The Father knows where I come from and where I am going, Jesus says, because it is He who sent me. So the requirement of the Law, that there be the testimony of two witnesses, is fulfilled: the Father and Jesus can bear witness to who he is, to his origin and to his mission. But we might well sympathise with the confusion of the witnesses, even with disciples struggling to understand, if the logic of Jesus's argument in today's gospel reading is not immediately clear.

We need more light if we are to have any hope of understanding what Jesus is saying here. We believe that light has been given in the events we celebrate in the coming days. For the moment at least this much is clear: Jesus moves forward on the strength of his relationship with the Father. If everything else falls away, as eventually everything else will fall away, this will stand. He is sure of the Father's presence and certain too that, when the hour comes, the Father will bear witness to the Son in ways that only the creating power of God can as yet imagine.

Lent Sunday 5 Year C

Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 125; Philippians 3:8-14; John 8:1-11

From the very beginning, the Church, the community of believers in Jesus, was unsettled by this story. We have evidence for this in the earliest manuscripts of the gospels. This story wandered around the New Testament before finally settling at the beginning of John 8. The most ancient authorities actually omit it, others add it here, or after John 7:36, or after John 21:25, or even in St Luke's gospel, after Luke 21:38. Not only does it wander from place to place in an unusual way, there are also differences, as we would expect, in the text.

What does it mean? It seems to mean that the first Christians were pretty much like us, unsure how to show forth mercy without it seeming to be indulgent, unsure how to illustrate justice without it seeming cruel and lacking in compassion. We can note in passing that the word of Jesus from the Cross, 'Father forgive them for they know not what they do', suffered similar treatment before it finally settled as part of Luke's passion narrative: the believers were unsure about it. Might Jesus seem too soft, tolerant of evil?

We need to be grateful, therefore, to the Holy Spirit who found a way to fasten this story into the Gospel of St John in spite of the perplexity of believers. It has come down to us in spite of the doubts of believers and thank God that it has.

The treatment of the woman caught in adultery reminds us of something seriously wrong in human beings. We have an interest in thinking about other people's sins and, even more, we do not hesitate to use other people's sins to serve our own purposes and agendas. The people who bring her before Jesus have no real interest in the woman, they are using her to trap him. But they are no match for the combination of intelligence and love that we see in Jesus, they melt away miserably before the combination of justice and mercy we see in him. One of the Fathers of the Church wrote of it, 'quam dulcis est Dominus per mansuetudinem et rectus per veritatem', 'how sweet the Lord is in kindness and how right in truth'.

One of the places where this story ended up in the early manuscripts was after John 21:25, after the Resurrection. And there is lots here about newness and about the re-creation that forgiveness is, reconciliation, the new creature made right before God through the love and obedience of the Son. The other readings at Mass support this view of it: 'I am doing a new deed' (Isaiah), 'I forget the past and strain ahead for what is still to come' (Philippians). The opening of the story draws us towards the cosmology of the resurrection: 'it was early in the morning', the encounter is at the dawn of a new day. The finger of God writes something in dust as the hand of God brought the first human being out of the dust.

The iron trap set by his enemies and by the woman's tormentors seems to leave no way out, no resolution. But the intelligence, love, justice, and kindess of God transforms the situation. It can be a model for us as we think about approaching Christ in the sacrament of reconciliation this Easter time. No matter what 'iron traps' bind our hearts or paralyse our lives, God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, through the grace of the sacrament spring forth freedom and new life.

Lent Week 4 Saturday

Readings: Jeremiah 11:18-20; Psalm 7; John 7:40-53

We are well into the second part of Lent. We have left far behind our concern with ourselves and with our efforts at repentance. The concern now is Jesus and the growing opposition to him. The first readings tell us of innocent people unjustly persecuted – Joseph, Jeremiah, Susanna, the just man of Wisdom 2 – while the readings from Saint John's gospel show how the pressure is mounting on the leaders of the people as the questioning about the identity of Jesus grows more intense.

Today’s gospel reading ends strangely: ‘then each went to his own house’. It seems like an insignificant detail, as if it were to say ‘then they went home for their supper’. There is a contrast between the ordinariness of this return home and the significance of what they had been talking and arguing about.

One of the main questions for now is this: ‘where is Jesus’ home?’ Some prophecies said he would come from Bethlehem while others seemed to indicate that he would be a Nazarene. The gospels give reasons for believing that he comes from each of those places, Bethlehem the home in which he was born, Nazareth the home in which he grew up.

But there is a growing contrast between these ordinary senses of ‘home’ – the comfort of knowing where people come from gives us the comfort of knowing something of their identity – and a sense that the true origins of Jesus are mysterious. They are mysterious not just in the sense that historical scholarship will fail to prove things one way or the other. They are mysterious in a much more profound and transcendent sense. The true home of Jesus is the one he shares with the Eternal Father. The true origin of Jesus is his being sent from the Father. When St John says that ‘each went to his own house’ it means in the case of Jesus that he went to the Father. For the moment he does this in prayer and prayer permeates his life: he is always in the presence of his Father. As the story unfolds he will return home to the Father in the mystery of his death, resurrection, and ascension.

Jesus is more and more a stranger whom the people and their leaders try to pin down, to find out whether or not he is the messiah, whether he is the prophet who was to come. Jesus simply gets on with his work, which is to open the doors of his home to all who will become his disciples. We are being prepared for further instruction about the indwelling of the Blessed Trinity in the hearts of believers. If we keep his commandments and live according to his way of love, then God will dwell in us and with us. God will share His home with us, so that where the Son is, when he goes home at the end of His day, we will be there also to share the glory that was His before the world was made.

Lent Week 4 Friday

 Readings: Wisdom 2:1a, 12-22; Psalm 34; John 7:1-2, 10, 25-30

From her work with very young children, Melanie Klein concluded that envy is a basic and perennial aspect of human experience. In her account of things, envy becomes the ‘original sin’ of humanity, a negative reaction to the source of good when it is being good towards me. It is a kind of resentment that the source of good is so good. The generosity of ‘the good breast’ is experienced as a kind of power over me which obliges me to be grateful and causes me to feel humiliated.

The first reading of today’s Mass is a powerful description of the effects of envy. The good person, simply by being good, is experienced as passing some kind of judgement on my way of living. Klein spoke of envy driving people into what she called the paranoid-schizoid position and we see these things described also in the first reading. The other person’s holiness is experienced as a threat to me even when that holiness places itself at my service. ‘Even to see him is a hardship for us’. We can presume that the just one is not making the judgements that the wicked attribute to him but their paranoia projects these judgements on to him. ‘In their thoughts they erred’: the deadly sins originate always in fantasies, thoughts that we find rising up within us without our having put them there. Of all these deadly thoughts, envy is one of the most insidious.

Envy hates to see others happy, or good, or holy. It experiences the happiness, goodness and holiness of others as some kind of deprivation. Thomas Aquinas describes it as a kind of sadness which results from feeling that God’s gifts to another person somehow take away from my worth and excellence. In this it is, of course, a kind of madness, but then all the deadly sins are forms of madness. Envy prevents me admiring and respecting others. I will feel obliged to pull them down in some way, to attribute wicked motives to them, to undermine the reputation they have for goodness.

Envy cannot bear to be grateful which is why it resents the source of good not only when it is being good to others but even when it is being good to myself. To be grateful is to acknowledge dependence and this is something envy cannot bear, it feels like a loss of self. At its worst envy becomes violent and physically destructive. The sense of humiliation and resentment that accompanies it makes it feel justified in trying to destroy the good one whom it feels has brought about this terrible feeling of denigration, dependence and even annihilation in itself. So Jesus becomes the victim of envy, the motivations of his eventual destruction at the hands of men following exactly this analysis of envy and what it leads to.

To ‘begrudge a brother his grace’ is one way of describing what arises from envy. Not only does the envious person feel that God's gifts to others are a threat to him, he also envies the Holy Spirit who is the source of grace. We see clearly the kind of madness it is, not only to resent God’s gifts to others as if this were some kind of slight in my regard, but to envy the generosity of the Spirit, the abundant kindness of God’s good breast.

Envy would prefer that all should be equally unhappy and is the most debilitating of sins. It seeks to pull everybody down to the same level of misery. After it has done its worst to others it becomes self-consuming and self-destructive. In his Canterbury Tales, Chaucer says that envy is the worst sin – all other sins are only against one virtue whereas envy is against all virtue and against all goodness.

For Thomas Aquinas the cure for envy is charity. We see how powerful a vice envy is: only the most powerful of the virtues can dissolve its power. Loving others enables us to enjoy, rather than envy, their achievements and blessings. The gifts of God to those I love I will experience as gifts in which I share. It is essential that we understand the roots of envy in us, that we understand its madness, and that we grow in the virtue of charity, which alone conquers the violence and destruction wrought by envy.

The kindergarten, Melanie Klein's 'laboratory', is a place full of sweet and innocent children. It is also a place where envy first raises its ugly head and begins to distort and destroy any possibility of communion and friendship. Our hope depends on the One who, destroyed by our envy, is raised to a new life. This new life means even more abundant kindness and blessing for the world, along with the capacity to rejoice in, rather than to resent, the love that is beyond all envy.

Lent Week 4 Thursday

Readings: Exodus 32:7-14 ; Psalm 106; John 5:31-47

It is strange how the conversation between Moses and God in Exodus 32 parallels the conversation between the prodigal father and the elder brother in Luke 15. In the parable, which we have heard a few times recently, the elder brother disowns the prodigal son, referring to him when speaking to his father as ‘your son’. The father reminds his elder son that the prodigal is not just his (the father’s) son but is his (the elder brother’s) brother: ‘this, your brother, was lost and is found, he was dead and is returned to life’.

In today’s first reading it is God who seeks to disown the prodigal people, saying to Moses ‘go down at once to your people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt, for they have become depraved’. Moses then takes the place of the prodigal father saying back to God, ‘why should your wrath blaze up against your own people whom you brought out of the land of Egypt?’ Jesus in the gospel reading sends his listeners back to this point also: if they will not believe what Moses wrote then they will not listen to what Jesus is saying.

The most fascinating thing about this combination of readings is that it seems to be the Lord, the God of Israel, who was the first to listen to Moses and to believe in him! Moses called God back to Himself, as the prodigal son needs to come to himself. Moses reminds God of who He is, as the prodigal son needed to remember who he was. You are the One, says Moses, who brought your people out with mighty hand and marvelous works. They are not my people, thank you very much, they are your people, whom you brought out of the land of Egypt. What are the nations to say now about your purpose in doing this? Was it with an evil intention, to deceive and mislead this people and only, in the end, to destroy them?

And if that does not work, Moses makes a deeper, more ancient appeal. Remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, he says to God, and your promises to them. You are the God of our fathers, not just the God of this recent wonder at the Red Sea, these recent marvels in Egypt. You are the God who has been involved with your people from way back, fashioning a people for yourself from ancient times. You swore to these promises by your own self: are you to be true to yourself, to who you are, the God of our fathers, now revealed as the Lord, the God of Israel?

It is stirring stuff, these dramas of betrayal and reconciliation, of forgetfulness and remembrance.  And we are approaching the final act of the definitive drama. Now, says Jesus, there are many witnesses to me. There is John the Baptist and there are the works I have been doing. There is the testimony of the Father speaking through these but to accept this you must believe in the Son whom the Father has sent. There is the scripture, the Word of God, written down by Moses but also remaining in the hearts of believers. With all these witnesses, a great cloud on every side we might say, why is it that you still do not believe?

Because you are stiff-necked, we hear God saying to Moses in the first reading. And Moses’ response is not to deny the people’s sinfulness and forgetfulness, just as the prodigal father does not deny the prodigal’s mistakes. Moses’ response is to remind God of who they are and who God is – they are your people whom you called long ago, and you are the God who swore by your own self that you would be their God and they your people.

Like an old married couple who have fought long and hard God and the people are inextricably bound to each other, they have grown into each other. This is not to minimize the consequences of their sins, which are great. It is to exalt the way in which God will now once again swear by His own self that He is committed to this covenant: He will seal it now in the blood of the Son, a new and eternal covenant which is yet as old as Abraham.

So God relents and repents of what he intended to do. Once again He visits His people and once again He faces into their sins and forgetfulness, to remind them and to restore them to His family: He forever their God, they - we! - forever His people.

Lent Week 4 Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 49:8-15; Psalm 144; John 5:17-30

Christ is our judge, appointed to this office by the Father who has seated him at his right hand. What do we hear in the sentence 'Christ is our judge'? It may be that the word 'judge' stands out, making us fearful. Contemporary culture encourages the non-judgemental which strengthens what seems like a natural anxiety about our lives, our work, or our actions being judged.

It is, however, part of the wonderful good news that Christ is our judge. The word in the sentence that stood out for the first Christian believers was the word 'Christ' and not the word 'judge'. What a blessed relief it is, and what a gift, that the judge of our lives, our work, and our actions, is Jesus Christ. Nobody else, in the end. Of course we are all the time judging others and being judged by them. But the import of this gospel is that in the end, fundamentally, and most radically, we are judged by Christ, and by him alone.

There is even more, since for those who believe in him there will be a judgement without judgement - 'without being brought to judgement they pass from death to life' (John 5:24). Those who believe in him know the truth and there is no need for a further moment in which the relationship between their lives and the truth needs to be pointed out. In seeing the truth, those who believe see the distance between themselves and truth. They see their lives, their work, and their actions, in the light of truth, at once perfectly just and infinitely compassionate - and so they are judged without being judged.

Two great representations of the Last Judgement illustrate the point. The best known Last Judgement scene is that of Michelangelo, in the Sistine Chapel. A huge, brooding Christ comes to separate sheep and goats, just and unjust, and his presence is formidable and terrifying. The fact that this has become the best known Last Judgement scene serves to confirm that we know more about fear than we do about love.

A less well-known Last Judgement, whose theology is much sounder than Michelangelo's, is that of Fra Angelico in the priory of San Marco in Florence. There is the same separation of sheep and goats, of just and unjust, but Christ is not terrifying. He is gentle, and beautiful, and all he does is show his wounds. Those who believe in him do not need any further evaluation or criterion for assessing their lives, work, and actions. They are judged by the truth of his loving sacrifice and glorious resurrection and in the light of that truth can judge themselves: they see what is the case.

The saintly person knows that he falls seven times a day. Those of us whose consciences have become less sharp are not equipped to see the true state of our lives, work, and actions. Then judgement is needed, we need help, that things be pointed out and made clear for us. Jesus says further on in Saint John's gospel, 'the word that I have spoken will be (your) judge on the last day', the Word from the Father that is truth (John 12:48; 17:17).

Lent Week 4 Tuesday

Readings: Ezekiel 47:1-9,12; Psalm 45; John 5:1-3,5-16

There is a wonderful hospitality in Jesus' question, 'do you want to be well again?' It can seem a bit strange: surely the answer is obvious. But Jesus does not presume. As well as his hospitality there is his obedience in the literal sense of the term: his listening, the way he provides a space in which the other person can speak and be heard. It is at the heart of all loving, that we allow the other to be, to speak, to tell us what it is they want, to listen to what they want to say and not just hear what we think they want to say.

It makes Jesus' comment towards the end even more perplexing: 'be sure not to sin any more, or something worse may happen to you'. Worse than what, we might wonder. Worse than being ill for thirty eight years? But surely Jesus himself has been fighting hard against this connection of sin and suffering, has been trying to break that link. In Chapter 9 of St John's gospel we will find him resisting the idea very strongly, in the case of the man born blind.

'Something worse' can only mean spiritual paralysis, worse than the physical disability from which he had suffered. It brings this story close to that of the paralysed man let down through the roof to whom Jesus says 'your sins are forgiven'. Which is more difficult, to say your sins are forgiven or to say arise and walk? To forgive sins must be the more difficult, the healing of humanity at that radical level where desire is confused, understanding is clouded, and the will is distorted.

But this is the healing promised by the paschal mystery. All who have entered the waters of baptism (the Sheep Pool) are made new, born again, set right, made able to walk in the way of Jesus. He is never sentimental and always truthful. The sick man is brought into the light of that truth. He is healed but he must continue now to walk in the same light. And so the man becomes an apostle, telling them that it was Jesus who had cured him.

Lent Week 4 Monday

Readings: Isaiah 65:17-21; Psalm 29; John 4:43-54

Here we are told that Jesus is going down well with the Galileans. Perhaps it was only in his home town of Nazareth that he was not welcomed. But a mis-match continues between people's expectations and desires on the one hand, and the teaching and call of Jesus on the other. We find it here again. The man's request seems innocent and straightforward: his son is ill and he would like him to be healed. It is now Jesus who seems to get it wrong: 'so you will not believe unless you see signs and portents'. We can imagine the poor man saying, 'well no, actually, I just want my son to be well again'.

But Jesus receives the expression of any desire - for healing, for teaching, for more wine - as a desire for faith and seeks to lead all who approach him to the deeper level of faith. So it is with the disciples, the Samaritan woman, the man born blind, Martha and Mary, even his mother Mary. God's gift is not simply the meeting of our need. Faith is a gift that opens us beyond our need to the reality and truth of God.

So all gifts of God also have the character of 'signs and portents' because they always point beyond themselves to God who is infinite and eternal. God is not just 'our size'. He has become our size - the Word was made flesh - in order that we might grow beyond our immediate needs and basic desires. The theological virtues of faith, hope and love open us up in this way. These are the capacities or virtues of the new creature, the one who is being transformed by God's grace, the one who is being divinised.

So the court official receives the gift of his son's healing but he - and all his household - also receive the gift of faith in Jesus. From now on the liturgies of Lent focus more and more on the coming paschal mystery through which Christ not only fulfills the thirst of creation but reveals the thirst of God for creation. The fulfillment of that divine thirst is the new creation established in the Resurrection, a new heavens and a new earth, a city that is 'Joy' and a people that is 'Gladness', things beyond what the human heart can imagine, what God has prepared for those who love him.

Lent Week 4 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Joshua 5:9a, 10-12; Psalm 34; 2 Corinthians 5:17-21; Luke 15:1-3, 11-32

The turning point in the story is when the prodigal son remembers something: he came to his senses, he came to himself, he remembered who he was. The road to reconciliation and forgiveness lies through remembering. Popular wisdom might encourage us to forgive and forget but we know from experience that forgiveness comes rather through remembering. The 'truth and reconciliation' commissions set up to establish good relations between people who before had been at war with each other operated on this basis. Only by remembering truthfully, by remembering everything that needs to be remembered, can we hope to find reconciliation and a new beginning.

So we must remember our need and our weakness. We must remember that we are indebted to the Father for his forgiveness. We must remember the judgement of our lives in the light of God's truth and love. We must remember the covenants and the law. We must remember the sacrifice of Christ that seals the new and eternal covenant and which he asked us to repeat in memory of Him. If the damaged network of relationships is to be healed and given new life then it needs to be remembered in all its parts and the wounds of each one need to be acknowledged and honoured.

The Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas raises serious questions about forgiveness. Is there not, he says, an acceptance of injustice inherent in the concept of forgiveness? Is it not inhuman to try to set limits to a person's need for forgiveness, to set the boundaries within which forgiveness must be given? When we remember what it is that has been suffered by some victims of injustice, how can we dare to think that we have the resources to undo that injustice, to remove that victimisation, to create a situation where what people have suffered no longer matters.

These are powerful and pertinent questions. They oblige us to think again about what it means for one person to say to another 'I forgive you for what you did to me'. It is a very different matter, more complicated, where a person or group apologises, seeks forgiveness, on behalf of a third party: 'I forgive you for what you did to them' (my family, my ancestors), 'I apologise for what they did to you' (my ancestors to your ancestors). How can anybody ever feel able to say such a thing?

In the Christian understanding, as Paul says in today's second reading, forgiveness and reconciliation are only possible if there is a 'new creation'. Paul would have understood Levinas's questions, and as a zealous Pharisee would have seen - and shared - the problems he raises. How is the righteousness of God to be defended? How can the broken order of justice ever be mended? What is the cost of forgiveness? Is there any 'rate of exchange', any currency, in which forgiveness can be given?

The sinless one is made to be sin so that those who are sinful might become the righteousness of God. This is Paul's account of the exchange, the currency in which the new creation is established. It gives the basis in truth for Alexander Pope's comment that 'to forgive is divine'. If it involves a new creation then it can only be from God because only God can create. To claim such a possibility for ourselves would be blasphemous. So we can only think of forgiveness if we stand with others before God, stand on a ground of equality with them and have the courage to look at our offences against them.

Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who perished in Auschwitz, has left a remarkable diary of her spiritual journey in the last years of her life. On this topic she says the following: 'Give your sorrow all the space and shelter in yourself that is its due, for if everyone bears grief honestly and courageously, the sorrow that now fills the world will abate'. Christians believe that God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself. In other words God was giving in himself all the space and shelter due to the world's sorrow. We believe that Jesus, the Christ, bore this grief of the world honestly and courageously. Although it might seem that the sorrow that fills the world has not abated, we believe that in Him it has found its way to the heart of God, the only place from which truth and reconciliation can arise.

You will find here another homily on today's gospel

Lent Week 3 Saturday

Readings: Hosea 6:1-6; Psalm 50; Luke 18:9-14

A friend told me about a teacher who, in explaining the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, was horrified to hear herself saying to the children in her class,  'so let us thank God that we are not like the Pharisee'. This is the wonderful trap set by this parable. We cannot imagine the publican returning home, kicking the air in delight, and saying to himself (and perhaps to others), 'I did it. I made it. I am not like the Pharisee.' So we need to be very careful in reading this story and thinking about it.

There is a prayer that reaches heaven and there is a way of praying which, it seems, does not reach heaven. It sets obstacles to its own success. We are told that the Pharisee said his prayer 'to himself'. His prayer involves a kind of mathematics which he believes ought to justify him in the sight of God. In fact he does more than he is strictly obliged to do and so ought to be really safe and sound. It is essential to his mathematics that he should compare himself with others: this is how mathematics works, with proportions, sizes, comparisons.

But prayer does not work this way. The publican, or tax-collector, does not pray to himself, he prays to God. He is unable to raise his eyes to heaven, but his prayer is in the right direction. He is not comparing himself with others, he looks just at himself and at God, and he sees all he needs to see in that comparison. He stands in a kind of solitude before God and sees his poverty in the light of that solitude. There is a long tradition in the Bible of recognising this kind of prayer as the one that is truly effective, the prayer of the humble person, the one who is broken hearted, the person who is truly contrite for their sins. This is the prayer that pierces the clouds and reaches the throne of grace.

There is no time now to compare oneself with others, the matter is too urgent, too critical, and comparisons with others have become a luxury. If life is a contest, a struggle or 'agonia', then it is not against others that we must struggle but only with ourselves. And also with God. Prayer is the only weapon we have for the struggle with ourselves and with God, the struggle to live in the truth. George Herbert in his wonderful poem about prayer speaks of its power. It is, he says, 'Engine against the Almighty, sinner's tower, / Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear'. The prayer of the humble person pierces the clouds and reaches the throne of grace.

At this point in Lent we should, by God's grace, have found our way to this kind of praying. The sacrament of penance is a gift of Christ to the Church which allows us to confess God's mercy, to seal our repentance, and to return home justified. But that justification is not on the basis of our own performance: it is completely God's mercy and something that is ours on the basis of our hope in God.

Lent Week 3 Friday

Readings: Hosea 14:2-10; Psalm 81; Mark 12:28-34

‘Take with you words’, the Lord says through the prophet Hosea. ‘Prepare a speech’ is another translation of the phrase. Like somebody trying to figure out the best words for a difficult meeting with another person, we are to think hard and decide on the best thing to say. ‘You have collapsed through your guilt’, the prophet says, which will make the people feel powerless and probably speechless. If it is so – and it is so, very often – what words can ever be adequate to bring with us into God’s presence?

And yet a simple effort at repentance, acknowledging their helplessness, immediately wins the Lord’s renewed attention and His renewed care. ‘I have humbled him but I will prosper him’. This in response to words that are ordinary, honest, and not dramatic. It means that any turning back towards the Lord immediately wins his forgiveness. Once again the father in the story of the Prodigal Son comes to mind, watching out for the first sign of the son’s return, ready to rush out to welcome him back.

We now say each day at Mass ‘say but the word and my soul shall be healed’. What word is it that will immediately heal the soul? One candidate is, clearly, the Word of God Himself, the Word incarnate in Jesus. Is this the word uttered by the Father and which effects the healing of our souls? Yes has to be the answer: Jesus is the one who saves us from our sins. It might also be the word ‘love’ or ‘come to me’ or ‘do not fear’ or ‘your sins are forgiven’ or ‘I will, be healed’. All of these simple words effect great things in the gospels: all that is needed on our side is the acknowledgment of our need and the request for help (however fumbling our words).

This faltering conversation between God who speaks a word to us and we finding words with which to come to him means we are ‘not far from the kingdom of God’. As long as the exchange continues we are in the right place. The temptation is to give up on the exchange, to stop the conversation, and then we are really lost. Pope Francis says that we tire of asking for forgiveness long before God tires of showing mercy. In fact God is tireless – infinite – in showing mercy. It encourages us to continue the Lenten journey, to continue trying to find words even when we know that what really counts is the word that comes from God. ‘Say but the word and my soul shall be healed’.  Or (Hosea puts these words too on God’s lips) ‘because of me you bear fruit’.

Lent Week 3 Thursday

Readings: Jeremiah 7:23-28; Psalm 94; Luke 11:14-23

The best known 'finger of God' is the one painted by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Across the gap between the tip of God's finger and the tip of Adam's finger the mysterious energy of creation is transmitted. The phrase has also become part of the hymn Veni, Creator Spiritus as a title for the Holy Spirit who is dextrae Dei digitus, the finger of God's right hand.

The image is not used very often in the Bible but whenever it is, it is in relation to the most significant things. In the Book of Exodus, the magicians of Pharaoh describe the power working through Aaron as the finger of God (Exodus 8:19). The law or wisdom of God was inscribed by the finger of God on the tablets of stone given to Moses (Exodus 31:18). Psalm 8 celebrates God's power as Creator: 'when I see the heavens, the work of your fingers'. 

So in creation, in the giving of the Law, in mysterious events, in the casting out of demons, the 'finger of God' means the power of God is at work.

There are two other references, less clear but each of them intriguing. At Belshazzar's feast, as recounted in Daniel 5, the writing on the wall is done by the fingers of a human hand. But it is another divine intervention, a revelation of God's providence for the people concerned. In John 8 Jesus wrote on the ground with his finger in the presence of the woman taken in adultery. Nobody knows what he wrote or what the gesture meant but presumably something to do with God's providence in relation to the woman and to her accusers.

So an ordinary thing, the finger, applied to God as an image, is used rarely in the Scriptures but always in contexts of great significance: creation, revelation, covenant, providence. As a result it finds its way into one of the great hymns of the liturgy and onto the ceiling of Christianity's most famous chapel.

Lent Week 3 Wednesday

Readings: Deuteronomy 4:1, 5-9; Ps 147; Matthew 5:17-19

The 'end', or 'purpose', of the Law is that the holiness of God be revealed, and that a people living according to that law might be brought into communion - a sharing of life and love - with God who is holy. What does the word 'holy' mean? We know it means infinitely just and loving, and we know this from Christ who is the fulness of the Law.

The verses of Matthew read today are said to be the most controverisal in that gospel. If we have a narrow understanding of law and of what the term refers to here, then these verses are very difficult to reconcile with, for example, some of Paul's statements about the Law. But if the term 'law' is understood more profoundly, as it is for example in Baruch or in Psalm 119/118, then it refers to God's wisdom, God's word, God's way for His people. We know where that way, that truth, and that life, are revealed fully. It is he, Jesus, who is the fulness of the Law, he is the one who keeps it to the letter, because he is himself the Word (= wisdom; = law).

Two words in the gospel support this interpretation. Jesus says he has come not to abolish but to complete or fulfill the Law, to bring it to its pleroma. He is the pleroma, the fulness of time and the fulness of things, and God's wisdom, word and way are all complete in him.

The other phrase is variously translated. Nothing disappears from the law 'until its purpose is achieved', or 'until all things are accomplished'. At this point in Lent we cannot but think of Jesus' 'hour', the fulness of time, when all that has been foretold and all that has been promised will be fulfilled. God's holiness will be revealed as never before, God's heart of justice and love exposed as never before.

The new and eternal covenant sealed in his blood does not replace the old but brings it to its full flourishing. The Lord our God is nearer to us now than when we first believed, is how Paul puts it, the wisdom of God's Word now dwelling in our hearts through the Spirit that has been poured into them.

As we turn the corner of this mid-point of Lent we begin to look away from ourselves and our own spiritual and moral efforts, to look simply at Christ in whom those efforts dissolve on the one hand (come to their end) and in whom they find their destination on the other (fulfill their purpose).

Lent Week 3 Monday

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-15; Psalm 42; Luke 4:24-30

The idea for this homily was given to me by one of the Dominican cooperator brothers. Formerly called lay brothers, the cooperators are Dominicans called to serve our mission of preaching as solemnly professed lay members of the Order. It is a distinct vocation from that of the Dominican priest although the two vocations are intimately connected. The brothers protect our religious life, remind us that we are not only priests, and in many cases have far more helpful relationships with people than some priests manage to establish. I met with one of our brothers some time ago and in chatting about this and that he opened my eyes to things in today's first reading.

There are 'important' people in the story, some whose names we know, Naaman and Elisha, and some whose titles we know, the King of Aram and the King of Israel. But the action is achieved through crucial interventions by a number of anonymous people - the servant girl who told Naaman's wife about the prophet in Samaria, the messengers who carried the information about the cure from Elisha to Naaman, and the servants who massaged Naaman's ego and tempered his pride by saying 'if the prophet had asked you to do something difficult, would you not have done it?'

The brother speaking with me about this story did not have to spell it out: as well as the well known and public actors in these events there were the 'cooperators', the people whose names are not remembered but without whose service the thing would never have happened. We know that life is like this everywhere. There are people whose names become known and there are others whose lives remain hidden. On the last day there will be amazing revelations as we see not just Mary and the other saints already recognised by the Church but a huge band of anonymous people whose prayer and love for others, heroic and extraordinarily generous, will be made known to the whole Church.

In the meantime it is salutary for us to recall the 'cooperators' who have helped us in all kinds of ways in the course of our lives, to remember them with gratitude and thank God for their help, to pray for them and to them, that they might continue to help us on our journey towards God.

Lent Week 3 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Exodus 3:1-8a, 13-15; Psalm 103; 1 Corinthians 10:1-6, 10-12; Luke 13:1-9

‘Hope springs eternal in the human breast’, wrote the poet Alexander Pope. Where there’s life, there’s hope, we are told. Human beings survive enormous difficulties still ‘nursing the unconquerable hope’. Hope seems to be natural to the human being. Perhaps this is why we find suicide so shocking, that a human being would ever find themselves in such tragic hopelessness as to take his or her own life.

Its capacity for hope is the quality that makes the human species so adaptable and so successful at surviving. It is our ability to take the future into account in our decisions, to plan, to dream, to anticipate, to act confident of survival and success, and then to cope with failure if this is necessary.

This is something that marks the human being off from the rest of the natural world. We can relate to the future, take it into account in our decisions, decide what it is going to be like, and then act to bring about the plan or project.

Hope is central to both the Old Testament history of God’s dealing with Israel, and to the New Testament revelation of God in the teaching and example of Jesus;. What the Bible makes clear is that hope has to do with the human being’s relationship with time: the past, the present, the future. It has a special relationship to the future but hope also determines how we relate to the past and to the present.

Take the example of Moses’ experience of the presence of God in the first reading of this Sunday’s Mass. The God who appears to him in the burning bush identifies himself as the God of his ancestors, the God who was present with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who promised great things in the past and fulfilled those promises.

‘I am well aware of your sufferings’, God says to Moses, reassuring him that God has not abandoned his people, He is aware of their difficulties and is preparing to do something to help.

And so, God promises Moses, ‘I will deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and bring them to a land where milk and honey flow’. Because of what God has done for his people in the past, because of his awareness of their difficulty in the present, Moses places his confidence in God’s promise for the future. This confidence, and the freedom it brings, is what is meant by hope.

The basis for this hope is that our God is who he is. He identifies himself to Moses as a God who is faithful to his promises. He is a God who has been with his people, who is with his people, and who will be with his people. This is the meaning of the personal name by which he identifies himself to Moses: ‘I am who I am’: I am the one who is present, and will be present, with his people.

God is patient, realising that for human beings things take time. Love takes time, forgiveness takes time, but God is patient with us. We must be patient with ourselves and with others, giving the ‘fig-tree’ another chance, another year, more time.

Some people feel that Christian hope in life after death can distract us from getting down to work now, in the present time. If my ‘insurance policy’ is for pie-in-the-sky-when-I-die, will this mean that I will undervalue my life in this world, my work on this earth, the pressing social and economic and political problems, which human beings have to face? If it does result in such detachment and undervaluing of the concerns of human beings then it is not Christian hope, but a caricature, or a very badly presented account, of Christian hope.

Hope is a quality of how I live now. Because a person’s trust and confidence in God is strong, he is free to involve himself totally in the tasks of this world, in building a kingdom of justice, love and peace here on earth. God is with us. He will be with us in the future. This is the basis for my hope for the future - and of my hope in the present.

The lives of the saints are a strong case in point. Those whose hope was strongest were precisely the ones who involved themselves most completely in living and working in this world. They did this through their involvement in education and health-care, in the responsibilities of family life, in preaching the Gospel, in ‘taking on’ authorities and governments, in fighting for justice, freedom and dignity, in pursuing the life of prayer. They involved themselves with that urgency and commitment that always characterises those who have been liberated by Christian hope.