Week 14 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 44:18-21, 23b-29, 45:1-5; Psalm 105; Matthew 10:7-15

It might seem strange to quote a military person when the readings today are about reconciliation among brothers and preaching the gospel of peace. But the instructions of the American general Petraeus to his field commanders in Iraq in 2003 were quite striking. They can even be adapted for the preachers of the gospel. Petraeus' instructions went as follows: 'Secure and serve the population. Live among the people. Promote reconciliation. Walk. Move mounted, work unmounted. Situational awareness can only be achieved by operating face to face.'

The speaker and the context might encourage us to be skeptical - a subsequently disgraced general leading an illegal invasion with whose apocalyptic consequences sixteen years later the people of Iraq and surrounding countries continue to live. The Christian communities there also, but not only these.

Jesus' instructions to his field commanders, the apostles, are more radical than those given by the general. The American soldiers arrived fully armed and well protected. From a position of overwhelming strength they sought to be among and with the people, to build good relationships with them. The apostles are to do something similar, seek to build good relationships with the people by living among them. But this is not part of a political or military strategy, it is in order to share with whoever they meet the gifts they themselves are receiving from Jesus.

And rather than speaking and acting from a position of overwhelming strength the apostles are to be vulnerable. In fact they are to practise an extreme vulnerability: no money, no sandals, no walking stick, no change of clothes, no food supplies. They are to trust completely in God's care working through the response of the people. Once again it is not part of a strategy but rather appropriate to the nature of their mission: 'you received without cost, you are to give without cost'. In order to preach grace you must live in grace.

The West invaded Iraq - so it was said - to establish freedom and democracy. The apostles bring the message of a much more radical freedom, the freedom of the gospel, the freedom of grace. All that is asked of the people they meet is that they receive the apostles and listen to their words. No other demand is being made on them except the demand that is contained in their words: 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand; you received without cost, give without cost'.

Human beings continue to struggle to serve the kingdom of heaven while living in a deeply sinful world, finding that world also within themselves. The divine message of generosity, freedom and peace seems too fragile and too vulnerable in a world that finds itself more at home with commerce, control and confrontation.

But God is working his purpose out through the preachers of the gospel even when their mission seems to carry little weight in the world. Joseph lost everything when he was sold into slavery by his brothers. But the providence of God, working through his extreme vulnerability, is seen at the end of the story: 'it was really for the sake of saving lives that God sent me here ahead of you'.

So too with the preaching of the gospel. The disciples of Jesus remain a source of life in the world and for the world. There may be times when the world shows little interest or understanding of what is being preached. There may be times when the world's values seem opposed to what the gospel promises. But we must stay faithful to the instructions of our 'general' - 'serve the population, live among the people, promote reconciliation, walk, work face to face, take nothing for the journey, give without cost, share the gifts you have received, proclaim 'the kingdom of heaven is at hand'.' It is for the sake of saving lives that God sends out the preachers of the gospel. In more traditional language they are sent to preach 'for the salvation of souls'.

Week 14 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 41:55-57; 42:5-7, 17-24 ; Psalm 33; Matthew 10:1-7

The story of Joseph, sold into Egypt by his brothers, but then rising to a position of supreme importance in the government of that country, being in a position to save his family from famine, and finally being reconciled with them, remains one of the most popular Bible stories. We have only to recall the success of Lloyd-Webber's musical Joseph and The Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat to see how popular this story remains.

But although it is a story from the Bible, there are very few references to God in it. It is quite a contrast to what we read about the other patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or about Moses and David later on. In their lives God was much more directly and consistently involved, talking and arguing with them, arranging things and demanding things that will ensure their perseverance in the relationship with him. In the case of Joseph it is more like life as we experience it from day to day, dominated by ordinary human interactions and needs, with faith, yes, in the overall providential care of God for the people, acknowledging that from time to time, but for the most part getting on with the tasks and demands of each day.

This occasional reference to God in the narrative about Joseph should not deceive us however. Coming as it does today, along with the gospel reading in which we hear about the call of the apostles, invites us to compare Joseph and Jesus in their responsibility and care for the people. The twelve apostles are the patriarchs of the new Israel where the twelve sons of Jacob were the patriarchs of the first Israel. Just as Joseph ends up as giver of the bread that feeds and sustains God's people - and so ensures that the covenant continues - Jesus is giver of the bread that feeds and sustains the Church, the new Israel.

It is surprising that the New Testament does not refer to this giving of bread by Joseph in Egypt but it is a link we can make. For Joseph became a kind of saviour of the world for his capacity to distribute food for everybody in a time of universal famine. Jesus is the true saviour of the world for his capacity to give life to the world through the sacrifice of his body and blood, the bread and wine broken and poured out so that all might live.

The apostles are called to share in this mission of Jesus, to be his assistants and co-workers in distributing the gifts of God to the people. In this they are like Joseph. Many of us have the privilege of participating each day in the Eucharistic meal, eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ for the life of our own souls and for the life of faith we are called to share with others. But even if we do not have that privilege, we receive each day the gifts of God in ordinary food. Usually now we take this for granted and God appears explicitly as rarely as he does in the stories about Joseph. But it does not mean that he is not present, feeding us not just in the sacrament but also in the ordinary food and drink for which we give thanks and which we receive as signs of his continuing care. He is constantly feeding us also through the teaching of the Church in which he nourishes our minds and hearts, strengthening in us the life of faith, hope and love, which is our true life hidden with Christ in God.

Week 14 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 32:23-33; Psalm 16; Matthew 9:32-38

Some time ago a good friend, the father of two boys, told me that his relationship with them was changing. The boys were then about 14 and 12 and whereas up to that point the father would allow them to win at football and other sports, things had now reached a point where he was unable to beat them even if he tried his hardest. His sons were now better than him at sports. Where once he had allowed them to win, now they won on their own ability and strength. It was a key moment in their growing up and it brought things home to my friend, about aging but also about pride (in positive as well as negative senses).

We can say, from stories like the one we read today from the Book of Genesis, that God wants us to be His adult children, grown up in the faith and in spiritual experience. 'Some man' wrestled with Jacob through the night - is it God, or an angel of God, or Esau his brother, or is it Jacob wrestling with himself? The experience is taken traditionally to be about prayer, the relationship between a human being and God. And about perseverance in prayer, through the night, until the day dawns. Jacob spends the night wrestling with God.

Relating between adults is, or at least ought to be, honest and straightforward, frank and trusting. We do not need to pretend to anything about ourselves, nor pretend to anything about how we are experiencing (or not experiencing) God. Just tell God all about this in prayer in the way that adults who trust and love each other can talk with each other about all the things that matter to them.

Life will wound us inevitably seems to be another point in this story of Jacob wrestling. But there is a wisdom to be gleaned from the struggle, a power in the wound. God is seen, and what would we not give for that vision. Jacob becomes Israel because he has seen God during this night of wrestling. Job is another great wrestler with God and he too comes to see. The outcome of Job's struggle is, on one level, not the answer to his questions that he was hoping for. At the end he has no more knowledge about God that he had at the beginning. But he does get the other thing he asks for: a face to face meeting with God and a chance to put to God the points he has already put to his 'comforters'. 'I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear', Job says at the end, 'but now my eye sees you'. We can imagine Jacob saying something similar: I had believed in the Lord, the God of my fathers, but now I have seen him.

But no one can see God and live - at least they cannot go on living in the way they did before. The struggle with God, in prayer and suffering, changes us, of that there is no doubt. It would be appropriate to give everybody a new name as they emerge from such a struggle. Jacob came to see and is changed and Job came to see and his life too is transformed. We believe that in the most radical sense Jesus always saw God, was never for a moment without the fullest possible human realisation of God's reality and presence. Nevertheless Luke's account of the agony clearly echoes today's first reading, Genesis 32. The struggle goes on, through the night. An angel comes to 'strengthen' him (for the ongoing struggle). Being in agony he prayed more zealously, and his sweat was like gouts of blood descending to the ground. Jacob limps after his night of wrestling with the Lord. Job's life is never the same again although he is given a new family and restored possessions. Jesus enters even more deeply into the world's wrestling with God in his betrayal, passion, and death. But the morning of the resurrection brings not just one New Man with a new Name, but a whole new creation. The struggle in prayer and suffering, whatever forms it takes in individual lives, prepares us for the joyful vision of God's light. In us it is always a function of what has happened to Jesus.

As we continue to pray for labourers in the Lord's vineyard, we pray that those already working in it will understand the meaning of the difficulties they experience, especially the interior difficulties. We are thinking of bishops, priests and deacons. Also of teachers and catechists. And parents, spiritual directors and counsellors. All of these vocations oblige those who receive them to find words that will enlighten, guide and encourage. Not to remove people from the struggle, but to strengthen them to persevere in the fight.

Bringing everything to God in our prayer, we pray that through our perseverance in prayer and suffering, we will become more and more God's adult children, growing (like Jesus, with him, and in him) in wisdom and in favour with God. The hero in Chariots of Fire says that when he runs he can feel God's pleasure. When we fight with God, engaging as adult children with Him, then we can say the same: we can feel the pleasure of God that his creature is fighting with Him, wanting more than anything to stay with Him, wanting more than anything to believe in and to love God.

Week 14 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 28:10-22; Psalm 90; Matthew 9:18-26

There is the great sanctuary of Beth-El, the 'house of God'. How did it come by its name? How did it get its importance? The first reading tells us. At a shrine already established Jacob rested one night and had a dream. His dream, as often in the Bible, is a vision and a revelation from God. The covenant already made with Abraham and re-affirmed for Isaac the son of Sarah (remember those readings recently about Ishmael and Hagar) is now once again renewed, for Abraham's grandson Jacob. The promise is the same: a people, a land, a special relationship with God.

But Jacob is, it seems, an inveterate businessman. Here are the terms of the contract he is prepared to make with God: keep me safe, give me bread and clothes, return me safely to my father, then the Lord will be my God and I will give him back ten per cent of what he gives me. God is, it seems, happy with the arrangement. (Though, as we will see, God has other things in store for Jacob.)

In the gospel reading we see Jesus as the place in which 'commerce' between God and the people is taking place. There are no deals here, however. The official and the woman simply state their needs - 'come and lay your hand on her and her life will be saved', 'if I can only touch his cloak I shall be well again'. There is the trust and confidence of faith, an atmosphere of frankness and love - and in this the two miracles happen. (We might be tempted to say 'in this the two miracles can happen'.)

A Christian reading the Old Testament sees Jacob's dream as referring forwards, and ultimately, to Christ. It is what is called a 'type' of what was to come, a sign pointing forward, an echo before the event. In fact it is Jesus himself, speaking to Nathanael in the first chapter of the Gospel of John, who tells us to understand it this way. The providential care of God, made known to Jacob, is fulfilled in the Son of Man standing under the angels.

So where is the 'house of God'? The place of contact with God, where the special relationship is experienced, is now Jesus. Here now is the point of commerce between God and human beings. It is not the commerce of business (though we must still be simply frank and straightforward in telling God what we need) but more than that, a place of shared life, of love, of faith.

Week 14 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Isaiah 66:10-14; Psalm 65/66; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

'Salute no one on the road' seems like strange advice. Are we to be rude as we go about the task of preaching the gospel? It might even seem unChristian, if we take Christianity to mean a certain kind of middle class morality. And it certainly seems like a bad strategy if public relations is our task, a bad move politically.

But perhaps public relations is not our task. Instead the disciples are to be single-minded and focused, intent on the mission on which they have been sent. Do not let yourselves be distracted along the way, even by good things: this seems to be the message.

It can seem odd, to ignore people along the road. A friend of one of our communities asked some of us one evening whether Father X was odd. 'Some days he says hello to me', she said, 'and other days he ignores me.' And then she added (charitably), 'I suppose he does be thinking'.

Ezekiel was certainly odd and many of the prophets were ill-fitting to the contexts in which they preached. There was a single-minded urgency about them, an intense preoccupation with the communication of the Word to the people. This oddness continues in the apostles who are the prophets of the New Covenant. The love of Christ compels us, Paul says, and the world is crucified to me as I am to the world.

But the message is truly good news: 'the kingdom of God is very near to you'. Jesus elsewhere tells a lawyer that he is 'not far' from the kingdom of heaven. Very near and not far, but not exactly the same. The world is ablaze with the glory of God but it is not to be simply identified with God, nor God with the world. God has visited his people and continues to abide with them, but he is not to be identified with anything in this creation nor anything in this creation with God.

Very near and not far, but still something other, new, different. There is no perfect fit between the world and the kingdom. There will always be discord between the Church, the sacrament of the Kingdom already come, and the world, whose unity and salvation is symbolised in the Church. We might make efforts to collapse one into the other, to overcome the very near and the not far, to turn the Church into the world or the world into the Church. But there is always an impossibility, a gap that cannot be overcome. Even within the Church wheat and tares grow together until the harvest.

Rejoice, Jesus says to his disciples, not because the powers of this world have, for a time, become subject to your power. Rejoice rather that your names are written in heaven. That your true citizenship is in heaven. That your identity, your life, your preoccupation, is there rather than here, and that even as long as you are here it is towards there.

Jesus's teaching will seem impractical to this world. He does not ask the Father to take the disciples out of the world but to remain with them there, to keep their hearts and minds fixed on his word and his commandment. The way of living to which Jesus invites us belongs not to this world ('my kingdom is not of this world') but to a new world where his way of living is not only practicable but inevitable, necessary, normal.

Here the message of Jesus will always be 'very near', 'not far', odd and not quite fitting with the needs and values of the world. But it will still always call to human hearts, awakening them to the harvest yet to be reaped, to paths yet to be trod, to dreams yet to be fulfilled. The preachers of the gospel are to sing of a love already known which calls us on to the new Jerusalem which is coming towards us, the place where our names are already written.

Week 14 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 93; Matthew 10:24-33

For the most part the prophets of the Bible are reluctant prophets. It is the case with Jeremiah, Amos and Jonah, for example. Isaiah responds positively to the call but only after his lips have been cauterized by a burning coal from the fire. If that was the initiation required then it is easy to see why so many would be reluctant to undertake the task.


Of course it is a symbolic representation of what is required in the life of the prophet if he is to be a loving servant of the Word of God.. The real anxiety for those called to be prophets was about the reaction of people when they began their preaching. To be a preacher at all can provoke disdain and rejection. To be the bearer of bad news was even worse and to be asked to call people to change their lives worse again.


What consolation can be offered these men and women called to be prophets? They will have some assurance that they are serving God in what they do although there may be times when this assurance becomes weaker and they are not so sure. They have also the company of fellow prophets, those who were called across the centuries to bear witness to God's Word in a myriad of situations. And they have finally the company of Jesus, the greatest of the prophets, the prophet like Moses, who is not just a bearer of the Word to the people but is himself that Word Incarnate.


The service of Truth - to be what Catherine of Siena calls 'the bride or groom of Truth' - is never an easy task. To speak of holiness and justice in a world that is more comfortable with compromise and lies can provoke the strongest reactions, even to the point of persecuting and killing the prophets. The disciple can expect to be received and treated in the same ways in which the Master has been received and treated.


But we are not to be afraid of those who can kill the body but cannot touch the soul. The only real fear to entertain is the fear of those powers that can kill the soul. The hairs on the prophet's head are numbered and he is worth more than many sparrows. It means his fate can never fall outside the knowledge and concern of the Heavenly Father. We can be confident that the Father will stay with the ones who bear witness to Him in the world even as he stayed with the Son and vindicated him in the glory of the resurrection.


We have only to acknowledge God before men and women, and we will be acknowledged by him.

Week 14 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Hosea 14:2-10; Ps 50/51; Matthew 10:16-23

There is a puzzle set up by the fact that we hear these two readings together. Hosea tells us to prepare words to say and return to the Lord. In the gospel reading Jesus tells us not to worry about how or what we should say. Obviously the contexts are different. We can fruitfully reflect on this puzzle, I think, taking that well known saying about Saint Dominic, that he spent his time speaking either to God or of God.

These are two ways of serving the Word of God, in prayer and in preaching. The fundamental one is prayer and the other comes after. Often we are tempted to do the opposite. Even this morning, I gave more energy to worrying about what I was to say in this homily than I did to trying to find words with which to pray to God. Presumably if I had spent more time in prayer the homily would have a different character, a depth or flavour that comes from something informed by prayer. We know it when we taste it. We know that our preaching becomes superficial, a bit ritualistic, where it is not originating in the freshness of prayer. And  prayer is then instrumentalised: I do it when I'm stuck, when I'm at a loss for words, rather than for its own sake.

So we must give time and energy in the first place to trying to find words with which to pray. And in the second place, and on the basis of our prayer, we need not worry about what we are to say or how we are to say it when it comes to speaking to people. In prayer we are with the Word, reflecting on Him, spending time with Him, meditating on the scriptures, seeking to be in the intimacy of that encounter with the Word of God. Having become familiar with Him we can move more easily in the affairs of the world, taking Him with us in our hearts.

But in prayer we also learn about another puzzle that emerges from today's readings. Why is it that the mission of the apostles that we heard about yesterday, a mission to carry the word of peace and grace, a message of compassion and healing, meets such fierce opposition? Why the hatred, the envy, the persecution provoked by the preaching of this good news which Jesus speaks about in today's gospel?

Spending time with the Word of God in prayer gives us an insight into this too. In prayer we realise, in relation to our own lives first of all, that the Word is indeed like a two edged sword (Hebrews 4:12). One edge is compassion and mercy and tenderness. The other edge is justice and coherence and truth. We cannot swallow one but not the other.

Only when we become familiar with the Word, and with both sides of its blade, will be be serene in the task of bringing the Word to the world, knowing that one side of God's Word will be very welcome and the other will be rejected, sometimes violently. Our task is to work hard to find words for prayer and to trust in God when it comes to witness and preaching. We learn everything in prayer, Saint Catherine of Siena teaches, the comfort of God's love and grace as well as the fierce clarity of God's holiness and truth.

Week 14 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: Hosea 11:1-4, 8e-9; Psalm 80; Matthew 10:7-15

Is there anything original in the teaching of Jesus? The question arises from today's readings. All this week we have been reading the prophet Hosea, prophet of the divine hesed. At the heart of the prophecy is a celebration of God's grace, mercy, compassion, and tenderness. God loves his people, wants to be loved by them, and wants them to share the same love with each other. Today's reading includes what may be the most tender image of God in the Bible: like a father teaching his infant to walk, God reaches down to support Israel, guiding and protecting her with the reins of love. The picture is of the harness used sometimes to support infants as they learn how to walk: this is how solicitous God is with Israel, how delicate and tender.

The gospel reading includes instructions for what the apostles are to lay aside as they set out on their mission. This list of instructions is found also in the Talmud, a collection of Jewish traditions. On entering the Temple, the Jewish man was to leave aside his belt and shoes, his bag and money. Jesus quotes this list, applying it now not to the Jew entering the Temple but to the apostles setting out on their mission.

So what is new with Jesus? Well we can say firstly that he gives us a name for the tender Father, 'Abba'. And he teaches us a prayer, gives us his own words with which to pray to this Father.

We can say also that Jesus makes incarnate - realises - the pictures and images, the promises and anticipations, that we find in the Old Testament. They could remain simply beautiful images and aspirations, but the incarnation of the Word of God, the coming among us of the only Son from the Father means they are real. In Jesus the divine hesed becomes flesh. He is full of grace and truth, St John tells us, full of hesed and emet, the divine faithfulness. These are not simply nice ideas but flesh and blood reality. In Jesus the Father is present among us, we see the face of the hidden Father.

The instructions Jesus quotes to his disciples are all about grace. The Jew entering the Temple leaves everything to one side to show that the relationship with God is not an ordinary business or commercial one, not a relationship like the others we establish in human affairs. The complete trust expressed, the complete dependence on God's goodness, makes it clear that this is a relationship of grace. Freely you have received, freely give, Jesus says to them. It is all about grace.

What Jesus does with this list of instructions about entering the Temple is worthy of long meditation. He teaches us that the whole world is a holy place. Or at least that wherever there are people needing the Word of compassion and grace, there is the divine presence. Wherever the Word of Grace is needed and preached, there is God. Wherever there are people living in faith, hope and love, once again God is there. It is not just in certain places or in certain buildings that God is to be found but wherever grace is at work. True worshippers worship in spirit and truth, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman.

Finally we can say that Jesus in his turn teaches us how to walk. He teaches us the way along which we are to walk. He shares with his disciples his own teaching and saving work. He clearly wants us to grow up, to be the mature and adult children of God, walking the way with Him and participating in His work. We are called to share responsibility in the family of God to which we belong.

A closing thought, requiring another homily. We know too that the way on which Jesus teaches us to walk leads to the cross. Now there is another biblical image, the final revelation, of the divine hesed. Is it beautiful or is it ugly? What is the mystery that explains this particular realisation of the tender love of God for humanity?

Week 14 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Hosea 10:1-3, 7-8, 12; Psalm 105; Matthew 10:1-7

The term 'humility' is connected with humus, meaning the ground or the earth. To be humble could then be taken to mean lowering oneself, perhaps considering oneself as of no particular value, perhaps even allowing oneself to be walked on ... it can get extreme and we move towards the vice of pusillanimity which one colleague described colourfully as 'humility gone mad'.

A better way to take this connection with humus, the ground or earth, is to link it with something like the message of Hosea in the first reading today: 'break up for yourselves a new field'. It means be prepared to start all over again. It means be prepared to allow the Lord to plough up your life, to turn things over, to reach down into the depths of your heart and soul in order to freshen things up.

Pride is solid, isn't it, strong and resistant, whereas humility is soft and docile, it is open to learning new things and to being available in new ways. The new field that is broken up by the plough has the potential to bear much fruit. In a similar way the humble man or woman has the potential to bear much fruit. In fact the beatitude that brings us closest to humility, 'blessed are the meek', is the one that brings the reward of inheriting the earth.

In the gospel reading Jesus sends the apostles back to the beginning, to the heart of Israel. For the moment forget about pagan territory and Samaritan territory, he says. There is a need to go back to that old field, Israel, and to make it new again, to plough it up, freshen it up, and get it ready for a new era of fruitfulness.

The kingdom of heaven is at hand. If we are to enter into that kingdom, to live its life, then we must become like little children. That means being fresh and open, being keen and eager to learn again the lessons of life. To be humble is to be like that, ready and willing that the Lord should once again shake up my life, dig deeply into the soil of it, break the crust of pride that threatens to choke it, and liberate the potential for love and life and joy which lies hidden within it. Unclean spirits will be driven out and every disease and illness of soul will be cured. A new world begins with the turning of the sod, with the sowing of new seed, with allowing the earth to breathe. And the door that opens us to such an experience is called humility.

Week 14 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: Hosea 8:4-7, 11-13; Matthew 9:32-38

In his commentary on this passage of Matthew's gospel, St Thomas Aquinas says that in how he acts here Jesus 'gives an example for preachers'. It is not the only place where he uses this phrase, understanding the public ministry of Jesus as the apostolic school, the place in which Jesus is teaching the apostles what is expected of them.

Thomas picks out three points in this education of preachers. Jesus goes around the towns and villages. Preachers must be ready to move, Thomas says, not staying always in one place. We can think of place geographically, of course, but in other ways also. The preacher must be willing to work in different situations and contexts, with different kinds of people responding to different needs and challenges. There must be an availability in the preacher, a willingness to move to where needs are greatest.

Secondly, Jesus preaches and teaches and cures as he goes from place to place. The preacher must be ready not just to talk but also to act. Jesus is a healer as well as a teacher. The one who preaches but does not practise will realise (please God) that his words are empty, blowing in the wind. Compassion is the root of preaching as we are also taught in this passage and compassion moves people not just to preach and to teach but also to alleviate suffering in other ways, to correct injustice, to undertake any of the works of mercy.

Thirdly, Thomas makes the point that some preachers have the task of preparing the harvest and others (it seems to be implied by him) the task of reaping it. Perhaps he is influenced by how St Paul was to speak later about Christian preachers, that some sow, some water, and some reap the harvest. How has the harvest become 'full'? Thomas understands it in the sense of mature or ripe and feels that some work of preaching and teaching must already have taken place to bring it to this point.

All of this in the context of the cure of a dumb man. It is a reminder to the preacher that it is God who gives not just words, the capacity for speech, but effective words, words that achieve their purpose. It is God who takes away our dumbness, the limitations of our preaching that come from sinfulness and tiredness and whatever other source. Wherever the words we speak become for another person words that carry the Word, it is the work of the Spirit moving their minds to see what is true and their hearts to embrace what is good. But the preacher has an essential, and privileged, role in assisting this process of encounter with God's compassionate Word.

Pope Francis, in his exhortation on The Joy of the Gospel, reminds us that all baptised Christians are, by virtue of their baptism, missionary disciples.  All must be ready to bear witness to Christ, in ways appropriate to each one's vocation, through availability, through speaking, through action.

Week 14 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Hosea 2:16, 17-18, 21-22; Ps 144/145; Matthew 9:18-26

'Jesus rose and followed him'. We are more used to this phrase being used about people who follow Jesus: they take up their beds and follow him, they leave their nets and follow him, they leave their tax office and follow him. But here we are told that Jesus gets up and follows the man whose daughter has died. Jesus too is obedient, he hears a call and he responds to it.

The first reading, a well known and very beautiful passage from Hosea, teaches us about the kind of relationship God wants to have with His people. It is not to be that of master and slave in which one kind of obedience will be found but that of bridegroom and bride in which another kind of obedience will be found. The obedience in marriage is mutual, between equals, arising from the committed love of bride and groom. Love is the source of this obedience and so it is an obedience that is completely free. This is how God wants His people to be relating to Him. But it also binds God to a comparable obedience for the covenant is always two sided.

The love of Christ compels us, St Paul says in 2 Corinthians. There is a love compelling God also. Or better the love that God is compels Him. We learn from Jesus, God-with-us, that He too is listening out for human need, for the places and people who need compassion and help. His obedience is to turn towards those people and those places, to respond to the call of their poverty and distress, to get up and seek them out.

It is the ideal of obedience for which we strive, an obedience that arises simply and solely from love and that gets all its meaning from the love from which it flows. Of course there are other loves, other desires, jostling together in us but we can pray that this love, for Christ and his way, will become more and more the fundamental and dominant love of our lives, the one that obliges us to the obedience of love, the utterly free obedience which, Jesus shows us, God is.

Week 14 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6

There is a famous saying of the English writer, Lord Acton, that 'power tends to corrupt and absolute power to corrupt absolutely'. We know so many examples of this throughout the centuries and throughout the world, the power of power to corrupt people. In human relationships, power is perhaps the most difficult reality to control and regulate.

                                                                                                    

Today's Mass readings all three speak of power, of different kinds of power. In the first reading there is a contrast between the power that entered Ezekiel to make him stand (a spirit entered me, he says), and the power of those he had to confront, the leaders of the people, both political and religious. Paul, in the second reading, boasts of his weakness, not because he has no power, but because he is well aware of the dangers of power. Lest I should mount up in pride, he says, God sent an envoy of Satan, a thorn to the flesh. He prayed to the Lord to remove this thorn from him, to the point that this word from the Lord was revealed to him: 'My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is fully manifested in weakness'. Strength is shown fully in weakness: how strange, this thought, how paradoxical.

The Gospel reading speaks of Jesus' return to his hometown and the antagonistic way in which he was received. What went wrong? Like all prophets who bring the Word of God to his own people, he is rejected. 'We know who he is,' they say, scornfully. 'Who does he think he is?' they ask, scornfully. Jesus' power is neutralised by this reaction - we know who he is - and St Mark tells us that Jesus could not perform any wonders in his homeland.

Power gives us a sense of dignity and worth, of counting for something and being effective in the world. Human beings are prepared to sacrifice many other things to have this sense of worth and effectiveness. We look to ourselves, and to the groups we identify with, to feel powerful and meaningful, secure in our identity and, more than ever, our superiority to others.

In contrast, love and goodness, truth and grace, may seem weak and ineffective in the everyday affairs of life. To expect that God will give value, integrity and effectiveness to my life: this might seem foolish. But Ezekiel knows the strength that comes from having the Word of God within him. Paul also knows this strength, just as he knows the internal struggle generated between the different forms of power in his heart. He often writes about the battle between the spirit and the flesh, between the power of the world within us and the power of the Word of God, the power of the Spirit, which is also within us.

Jesus understands best of all because he knows what is in every man . He knows the power and authority of love, just as he knows the difficulties encountered by love when it tries to convince the world of its wisdom. Is this way of love truly wise and not stupid? Is it truly powerful and not weak? Love is the only great power in the world that does not become violent, because it contains and reconciles within itself this paradox of strength and weakness, of wisdom and foolishness. Love brings with it vulnerability, acceptance, patience, experience. And love also brings with it strength, dignity, value, identity.

The temptations of power are relentless and insidious, and even when we think we are detached from them they return in subtle, confusing forms. Pride, arrogance, superiority - these are the roots that sprout indifference, exploitation, corruption, abuse of others. In the face of these things, faith counts for nothing and Christ himself is rendered powerless: he can perform no wonders where there is no vulnerability, no frankness, no acceptance of limits and weakness. Christ's wisdom will be rejected as unrealistic and impractical, even if we continue to pretend that we are followers of his way of love and truth. Jesus' power will be regarded simply as weakness. His great saving act of radical powerlessness, his death on the cross, will be ignored or turned into something pious.

Let us pray to the Lord that he will free us from the chains of pride and power, that he will give us courage for this journey towards truth. Let us pray that he will lead us into his kingdom, where love tends to heal and save, and absolute love to heal and save absolutely.

Week 14 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 46:1-7, 28-30; Psalm 36; Matthew 10:16-23

Egypt plays an important role in the story of God's chosen people and again in the story of God's chosen one, his son whom he 'calls out of Egypt'. The first reading today tells of how the people first went to Egypt. It was to find food and refuge in a time of famine. Providentially, Joseph, the son of Jacob/Israel, betrayed by his brothers, ended up in Egypt where, after various adventures, he rose to a position of great power.

So leaving, temporarily, the land which the Lord had given to his ancestors, Jacob/Israel goes with his whole family to  Egypt. There is no indication that this temporary visit would last as long as it did, or that the eventual return of the people would be as dramatic as it turned out to be: Moses and plagues, release and pursuit, the crossing of the Red Sea and the wandering in the wilderness ... What seems like a good idea a the time can, in later circumstances, look very different. Joseph's foreign family is initially welcomed but over time is oppressed and enslaved. In the life of Jesus, Egypt is a place of refuge, until the danger from a particularly cruel wolf, Herod, is past.

Perhaps the reading invites us to reflect on our own relationship with 'Egypt', if we take it to mean 'the world outside', the place where we are strangers, the place of those wolves Jesus speaks about in the gospel reading today. In that place we are obliged to be as cunning as serpents while seeking to remain always as harmless as doves (in imitation of the one we follow).

We might reflect also on the variety of instruments God uses to fulfil his purposes. On the one hand we have Jacob/Israel, whom the Bible presents as the shrewdest and most calculating of the Patriarchs, and on the other we have his son Joseph, like his namesake in the gospels 'a just man', a bit of a dreamer, but innocent in the face of betrayal by his brothers and the seductions of Potiphar's wife. To live effectively among wolves while maintaining innocence, a combination of shrewdness and harmlessness is needed Jesus says. That is if we are to be effective as Jesus himself is effective.

So we too move back and forth between 'Egypt' and the land that is promised, obliged for now to live in the world with its dangers and possibilities while longing for our true homeland, the place of justice, peace and love. Living where we are we seek to temper the world's cunning - flowing from its fears and anxieties - with the gracious light of that homeland - living with those 'Joseph virtues' of faithfulness, integrity, strength of character and tenderness.

We all spend time in 'Egypt', facing its challenges in order to develop those virtues needed to respond to them. Not to worry, Jesus says, because the Spirit of your Father is always with you, and the Son of Man is coming soon to reveal his Kingdom and to lead you home again.

Week 14 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 32:23-33; Psalm 17; Matthew 9:32-38

There are dozens of references throughout the Scriptures to the compassion of God. In the historical books, in the psalms, in the prophets, God promises to be compassionate to his people and the people pray that God will be compassionate towards them. God withdraws his compassion in response to their sin and indifference, and promises once again to show compassion as part of his reconciliation of the people to Himself.

So if God is anything, God is compassionate. And so it ought not to be a surprise to find Jesus, the messenger of God, feeling compassion for the people who are harassed and dejected, like sheep without a shepherd. What draws attention to it is the Greek term that is used in Matthew 9, one of the most physical words in the New Testament. Although compassion in God cannot be a feeling because God does not have a heart that might miss a beat, or intestines that might turn over, or a stomach in the pit of which God might feel something, Jesus however feels all these things, the combination of physical, emotional and intellectual response that make up the human experience of compassion: feeling pity for another, dismay at their situation, and wondering what one might or ought to say or do about it. 

These moments of compassion in Jesus, which occur frequently in the gospels, are the divine compassion translated into human language. If God were to be among us, this is how God would respond to our situation if God is, indeed, compassionate. The divine compassion in human language refers, of course, not to the Greek or English terms we might use, but to this feeling in the bowels of Christ (as Paul puts it), this movement in the heart of Christ, this teaching on the lips of Christ (which is what Mark says his compassion urges him to do in the first place), the actions undertaken by the feet of Christ and by the hands of Christ. 

Creation itself, we are told by theologians, can be understood as a work of divine compassion. God takes pity on what is nothing, we might say, is filled with compassion for all that is not, and so causes things to be. And his eye continues to be drawn to the most needy parts of his creation. His eye is drawn to Israel, the Book of Deuteronomy says, the most needy of the peoples of the earth. A puny worm, Israel, a sad and promiscuous girl discarded by her lovers at the side of the road (so Ezekiel paints the picture for us). 

God condescends by showing compassion but it is condescension in a positive rather than a negative sense. He steps down from his high place and reaches into the lives of his people so as to rescue them, chastise them, bring them back, and sometimes even turn the hearts of their captors so that they will be more compassionate towards captive Israel. God patronises his people by showing compassion but it is patronage in a positive rather than a negative sense, the one who is full of gifts – being and life and intelligence – choosing to share what He has and what He is with those who are nothing and have nothing. It would be strange for the creature and the sinner to resent the condescension and patronage of God.

But it seems also that the compassion of God is exclusive and selective. Certainly this is how the Old Testament speaks of it but it is also how Jesus speaks of it in today’s gospel reading. Although God is Creator and Lord of all things and of all peoples, this living and true God is the Lord, the God of Israel, and it is through Israel that his compassion is made present in the world.

In Matthew’s gospel Jesus is often presented as the new Moses, the new lawgiver and leader of an Israel restored. So here, he says that the apostles, whom he is sending out to heal and preach and exorcise – in other words to do the same works of compassion as he himself has been engaged in – they are to go ‘to the lost sheep of the House of Israel’, not to the Gentiles and not to the Samaritans. It seems as if the divine compassion is not only condescending and patronising but is now selective and exclusive.

But this is the order in which the divine compassion is revealed, the plan originally promised to Moses and David and Isaiah and Jeremiah, that it would be in Israel and through Israel that God would visit his people and establish his kingdom. ‘Salvation is from the Jews’, Jesus says even more bluntly to the Samaritan woman in John 4. 

This reminds us that the compassion of God is not an idea, a pleasant thought with which we might comfort ourselves in those times when we need poetry and music. It reminds us that the compassion of God has taken flesh and come to dwell among people, within this world and its history. That compassion is incarnated in a people to whom God gives his law and with whom God seals his covenant. It is always, from the very beginning when he made a covenant with Abraham, that God is choosing Israel for the sake not only of Israel but also of all the nations for whom Israel is the sign. 

A text in Isaiah 14 seems to be important background to what Jesus says when he is moved with compassion for the people: ‘the Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel and will set them in their own land and aliens will join them and attach themselves to the house of Jacob’ (14.1). I will indeed have compassion for you, God says later through Isaiah, just as a woman cannot fail to have compassion for her child, and that compassion is seen in the fact that they will all gather, they will all come to you (Isaiah 49.15,18). 

Israel retains its place in the ‘order of compassion’ even as the disciples of Jesus are becoming a new Israel, the Church, which is in its turn a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. As the earlier promises of divine compassion become flesh in the body and feelings and thoughts of Jesus, in his words and in his actions, in his teaching and in his training of teachers to teach after him, so new promises and possibilities of divine compassion are realised. This is what we, as Christians, believe: the Holy Spirit, the spirit of compassion, has been poured on these same apostles chosen by Jesus, witnesses of his death and resurrection, and that they have gone out and established a new people of God in the world, the Church which in its turn is the sign and sacrament for the nations of the compassion of God.

The particular, as before, is at the service of the universal. God calls individuals and groups for the ‘apostolate’, as we say, to be sent out and to work within the world for its salvation and reconciliation and healing. All who are baptised in Christ and confirmed as adult Christians in the Church participate in some way in the apostolate. In other words we, in our turn, are not just recipients of the compassion of God but agents of that compassion, members of the body of Christ, called to translate the pity we feel in our bodies and in our hearts, into words and actions. Compassion may begin in the bowels and the stomach but it is to find its way to the heart and beyond that to the hands and the feet, a response to the world’s need that finds its way into teaching and into action.

 

Week 14 Sunday (Year A)

 Readings: Zechariah 9:9-10; Psalm 144; Romans 8:9, 11-13; Matthew 11:25-30

The task set by the Father for the Son is entirely a work of love which does not mean that it is not also a demanding work, a work that, in human terms, costs not less than everything. The mission of the Son provides a background, then, for the strange invitation he extends to his disciples: if you are tired and burdened, come and take this yoke on your shoulders, a yoke that is easy and a burden that is light. So what is this new weight which actually makes lighter, this yoke or harness which actually brings freedom?

If you do a Google Images search for 'yoke' you will find that the first set of pictures shows double yokes, the kind that bind two oxen together as they plough or pull a cart. Only on scrolling down do you begin to see the single yoke for one animal, or perhaps for a person carrying two buckets, that kind of thing.

So there are double yokes and there are single yokes. In the Bible the single yoke is an image of the Law. The Law was a yoke laid on the people which was, yes, restricting but which was also the guarantee of the covenant which the Lord had made with them. This yoke gave guidance and direction, keeping the people on the straight path, helping them to live well.

The yoke of the law (moral obligation and duty) is easy and light when it is carried out of love. If it is understood as a burden imposed from without, and its reasonableness is not understood, then it will be experienced as a heavy weight, a demanding master. But where its purpose is seen, and the life it protects is valued, and the relationship it seals is the centre of our lives, then to carry this yoke is not a burden. 'He ain't heavy, he's my brother' found its way into a popular liturgical song many years ago. Carrying one another's burdens not only fulfills the law of Christ, as Paul says, it is also easy when it is inspired and enabled by our love for one another. 'My food is to do the will of my Father in heaven', Jesus says elsewhere. Carrying burdens becomes easy and light; we even find rest in doing so when it is an experience of love, for in love human beings always take delight and find joy.

But perhaps we are to think also of the double yoke, the one that binds animals in pairs as they work together on a common task. If Jesus means a double yoke of this kind when he invites us to take his yoke on us, then when we look to the side to see who is in the harness with us, it is Jesus himself since it is his yoke. We are alongside him and partnering him in this work of being obedient to the Father's will. He is alongside us and partnering us and so, once again, it becomes easy and light, desirable and joyful.

Take my yoke on you and learn from me, he says. What is it we are to learn? We learn that the heart of all reality is God who is love. We learn that God has set his heart on a people and that he seeks them out. We learn in this yoke of Jesus that God has first loved us, taking on himself the yoke of our sins, so that anything we do in partnership with Him always has the character of response and acceptance, an act of gratitude for far greater gifts won through a far more demanding sacrifice than any we might be asked to make.

This double yoke in which we are harnessed with Christ so as to share in His work clearly evokes that moment in the passion when Simon of Cyrene stood alongside Jesus and helped him to carry his cross. He is with us always. If we take his yoke on us and learn from him then we are with him always, shaping our lives according to his way, and giving our hearts according to a love that is, in the first place, his.

The yoke is also about humility and today's first reading draws our attention to this aspect. Yoked animals work the earth, faces to the ground. Humility is from 'humus', the ground, or earth. To be humble does not mean regarding ourselves as so much dirt. It means rather being open and ready to learn again about the direction of our lives, ready to have our hearts husbanded by God one more time (ploughed, prepared for bearing fruit).

The learned and the clever tend to become attached to the ideas they form and the theories they prefer. It can be more difficult for them to change direction or to change their minds, and ideas can become an imprisoning yoke for them.  Children are simpler and humbler, open to new things, and not yet attached or fixed in their ways. So to be childlike, as Jesus says often in the gospels, is to be open to life in the kingdom of heaven. Jesus invites us to become like children and to take up his yoke, to submit to his teaching and his way of living, with simplicity and expectancy. In doing so he is inviting us to share an adventure, to explore the path of his love and obedience to the Father, to enter for example into the mystery of understanding what Paul says in today's second reading, to journey with Jesus towards a destination whose nature is not yet fully clear. All we know is that we will be with Him there as He is with us all along the path.

Week 14 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5; Psalm 123; 2 Corinthians ; Mark 6:1-6

Jesus comes to his own country, literally to his 'fatherland', to what belongs to his father. The word is used twice in this short gospel passage (vv.1,4). And perhaps this is the root of the problem in his own country: what he has come to is not, truly, his fatherland. They think they know him, that he belongs to them, that they have made him. They say they know his mother, his brothers, his sisters. Notice that they do not mention his father. Is this because they do not know who his father is? In a deeper sense, of course, that is precisely the problem: they do not know who his Father is. They do not know where he has come from, his origin, his nature. He does not belong to them in the way they think he does. In Luke's gospel, as an adolescent, he says to his mother, 'did you not know that I must be about my father's business, in my father's house, in my (true) fatherland?'

They know he is a carpenter, a tekton. They know what his job is, therefore, what he is meant to produce. So where do these mighty works come from? He is a craftsman, skilled with his hands, not a teacher. Whence comes the wisdom that shines in his words as in his actions? One of their own, yet they do not know him. They are unsettled, tripped up by him (the literal meaning of  'scandalised'). A familiar face, and yet he is a stranger to them. He is a craftsman, yes, a poet, author, and master, but they fail to put two and two together. Who is the author of these mighty works he does, works that renew, heal and re-create broken humanity? It cannot be him, they say, because we know who he is, and where he belongs, and what is to be expected of him.

Jesus has come to reveal his Father to them. That means he has come to introduce them to their true homeland (their true fatherland). He is present with them as the witness of the Father, teaching them marvellous things, and as the Father's instrument in a work of re-creation. In the chapters just before this one we have seen his power over all the levels of creation. His own people fail to see that he is indeed a tekton, a craftsman and more, the one through whom all things were made. It is too much to expect that they would understand so much, so quickly. The Church took a long time to realise all it has about the nature and person of Jesus. And we continue to explore His mystery centuries later.

The sad thing is that his own country, his own kin, his own house, has the power to disempower him, to block the marvellous teaching and the wonderful works. We might be tempted to think, 'well that was them and we are we and he belongs to us in a different way'. That would be to make him a citizen of our fatherland rather than agreeing to follow him into his Fatherland. We must keep alert to the temptation of thinking that now it is we (and we alone) who are his own country, his own kin, his own house. It seems like a sure road to misunderstanding him, a way of failing to grasp his teaching, in fact a way of tripping ourselves up because of him and, in the process, placing the obstacle of faithlessness in the path of his saving power.

Week 14 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2 Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6

Lord Acton famously said that ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. We see examples of this across history and we are witnessing another example of it at present, with the collapse of the power of the Catholic Church in Ireland. For some it is all due to secularism and there do seem to be ‘enemies of the Church’ there, driving the process forward as energetically as they can. But for most ordinary people it is the corruption revealed at the heart of the Church that has brought it down. That heart, at present, seems morally and spiritually empty.

Another quotation attributed to Lord Acton is equally relevant to the situation: ‘every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity’. Discussion and publicity are the air in which truth and freedom prosper, which is why free media are a crucial element in a democratic society. Not that democracy is perfect either its evil being, as the same Lord Acton pointed out, the tyranny of the majority. Yet democracy does still seem to be the least worst form of government.

Power, corruption, discussion, publicity, truth, freedom – why speak about such things? Well, the readings for the Mass are about power. In the first reading there is a contrast between the kind of power that comes into Ezekiel to make him stand up, and the kind of power he must confront in the defiant and obstinate political and religious leaders. Paul, in the second reading, boasts of his powerlessness, not because he has no power but because he is aware of its dangers. To keep me from becoming proud, he says, God sent an angel of Satan, a thorn in the flesh, a saving weakness. I prayed for it to be removed, again and again and again, he says, until the point was revealed to him, the word of the Lord saying ‘my grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness’. Power is made perfect in weakness. What a strange thought.

The gospel reading is Mark’s account of Jesus’ return to his home town and the antagonistic way in which he was received. What went wrong? If he had played the game of power he might have kept them onside: local boy does well, bringing fame (and perhaps fortune) to his own people. Instead he speaks and acts on another basis, with a wisdom from beyond Nazareth, doing mighty works with strength and authority originating beyond Nazareth. Like all prophets who try to bring the Word of God to their own people, he is rejected. ‘We know who he is’, they say, dismissively. ‘Who does he think he is?’, they ask, dismissively.

Power is about a sense of worth and value and meaning, of counting for something and being effective in the world, and human beings will sacrifice many other things in order to have these. We go looking for them in ourselves and in the groups with whom we identify, to feel powerful and significant, secure in our identity and our superiority to others.

By contrast love and goodness, truth and grace will often seem weak and ineffective in the world. Waiting for God to give our lives worth and value, identity and meaning: this will often seem foolish. But Ezekiel knows the strength that comes from having the Word of God inside him. Paul knows that strength too, just as he knows the internal struggle that these contrasting kinds of power set off.

Jesus is the one who knows all this better than anybody else. He knows the strength and authority of love, just as he knows the difficulties love encounters in trying to convince the world of its (love’s) wisdom. Love is the only great power in the world that is not violent because it contains, and reconciles, this paradox of strength and weakness. It is all about vulnerability and acceptance and patience and learning. It is all about strength and worth and value and identity.

The temptations of power are relentless and insidious, and even when we think we are detached from them they return in subtle and confusing forms. Pride, arrogance, superiority – these are the roots from which corruption, exploitation, indifference, and the abuse of others finally sprout. In such places faith counts for nothing and so Christ is rendered impotent: he can perform no mighty work there. His wisdom will be dismissed as unrealistic and impractical, even if people continue to pay lip service to it. His power will be regarded simply as weakness. His great saving act of radical powerlessness, his death on the cross, will be ignored or turned into something pious.

Thanks be to God that he is freeing us from the chains of pride and power. May he give us courage for this journey. May he guide us into his kingdom, where love tends to heal and save, and absolute love heals and saves absolutely.