Week 21 Saturday

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 4.9-11; Psalm 98; Matthew 25:14-30

The parable of the talents is a hard parable about a hard man. This is how the phrase 'a demanding person' is sometimes translated; he was 'a hard man'. He is a businessman, clever and prudent, looking for results, and ruthless in dealing with what would nowadays be called 'losers'. The poor man to whom one talent was given seems like a bit of a loser - it may explain why he was only given one talent in the first place. (At the same time this businessman still holds the quaint view that banks are safe places in which to deposit money!)

How are we to receive this parable? Hearing it in English can send us very quickly in a certain direction because the term 'talent' has come to refer to personal gifts and abilities. The obvious homily then becomes 'use your talents, use the gifts God has given you'. Or else. (Or else what?) But this is not the original meaning of the term 'talent'. Like the word 'pound', it referred originally to a weight, of silver or gold, that served as a unit of currency: money in other words.

What weighs like silver and gold for the Bible and for the Christian tradition? God's word, we are told, is like silver from the furnace, seven times refined. And love is described as a weight by both Augustine ('amor meus pondus meum') and Aquinas ('amor est pondus animae'). God's wisdom and love, given to human beings, are like weights, or inclinations. They bring with them a certain gravity or tendency. It seems we are to think firstly, then, of God's gifts, not of our own. Given to human beings, these gifts, of wisdom and love, bring with them a certain inclination or tendency. They carry a certain weight and pull us in a certain direction. The nature of these gifts is that they be handed on and shared around. They are to bear fruit and not be buried in the ground. The businessman in the parable 'entrusted' the talents to his servants and God entrusts His gifts to us.

The servant who is described as not just lazy but also wicked does not do his job which is to make money for his master. He is over-cautious and fearful, and simply returns what he has been given. There has been no development, no initiative, no fruit. In the sense in which we are receiving the parable, the wicked and lazy servant has failed to understand the nature of a gift from God. The gifts of wisdom and love are 'liquid' and flowing, they spread out and are generative. They are diffusive of themselves by nature, giving and sharing, developing and living, growing and bearing fruit. If what we have received of wisdom and love is not being shared and developed, then we have not truly received these divine gifts at all. It is not possible to be on the receiving end of these divine gifts and remain sterile. God's glory (another term that comes from 'weight') is always fertile, always creative, always radiating.

A risk-taking Master is served well only by risk-taking servants. There is truth, then, in the popular reception of this parable: use your talents to the best of your ability. But it refers not in the first place to the gift of playing the piano or of drawing pictures. (At the same time all such 'talents' can be made to serve the glory of God.) It refers firstly to gifts that are properly divine, wisdom and love, the currency in which our relationship with God is established. They incline us towards the service which pleases God. All we have to do is follow the direction in which wisdom nudges us, follow the inclination which love places in us. In any case, as Paul reminds us in the first reading, for all that we have and are we must be grateful to God, boasting only in him who is the source of all wisdom, the source of all love.

Week 21 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 2.1-8; Psalm 139; Matthew 23.23-26

Paul is at his most tender in how he writes to the Thessalonians, one of his favourite congregations. It was not for any ulterior motive that I preached to you, he says, and he continues by listing many inadequate reasons for preaching the gospel.

It is important for preachers and would be evangelizers to meditate on this text of Paul. It is important for them to examine their motives for preaching. Are they deluded? Is their interest in others immoral in some way? Are they deceiving people? Are they seeking popularity and fame? Are they seeking money or power? Are they seeking to be flattered and to please human beings? Am I really doing it for others or for myself? Paul presents all of these motives and assures the Thessalonians that his motivation is not to be found among them.

It is a veritable examination of conscience. Instead, Paul says, 'I was gentle among you, like a nursing mother caring for her children'. He wanted, he says, to give himself completely to them. He is a man in love.

It is how we think of Jesus himself very often, as gentle and tender, a kind and good shepherd. Though this is not how he is in today's gospel reading. We are in the middle of Matthew 23, the woes against the scribes and Pharisees, in which Jesus lacerates them for their legalism and hypocrisy. They do not measure up against the examination of conscience Paul proposes.

Because they are teachers of the law, presenting themselves as guides for living and purveyors of wisdom, the criticisms of Jesus are all the fiercer. 'They should have known', seems to be the reason for Jesus's anger, 'if anybody should have known, they should'.

The law of God, his way, is truly taught only by those who stand in the light of God's truth and love, whose motivation for what they do originates in that light. It is the only light which allows a true valuation of ourselves and of our motives. The same light - always truth and love together in God - establishes in us a disposition of tender and sincere love.

Who can claim that his motives are totally pure and absolutely uncontaminated? At least we have these guidelines from Paul and these warnings from Jesus which call us back to reflect on our motives. They should encourage us to persevere in the journey of the Christian life and to seek to do that more and more completely, every day, by living in the light of God's truth and God's love. So our motivations will be revealed and purified, and where necessary replaced with those which belong to the mind of Christ himself. It is a transformation we see in the life of Saint Paul and it is offered to us also.

Week 21 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5,8b-10; Psalm 149; Matthew 23:13-22

Today we begin reading Paul's First Letter to the Thessalonians, the earliest of the New Testament texts. There is older material, of course, in the Gospels and in other texts of the New Testament, but this is probably the first Christian text to be finalised. So we are at the beginning, receiving the document in which the Christian movement first presents itself to history in written form.

It is all the more striking, then, that its opening paragraph gives us one of the finest summaries of the Christian way of life, whose most important elements are here identified as the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. Paul speaks of them elsewhere, either individually, as pairs or as a threesome (most famously in 1 Corinthians 13.13), but there is a great strength in how he describes here these essential components of the Christian life: the work of faith, the labour of love, the steadfastness of hope.

These are active gifts, then, virtues in the strict sense, graces that enable those who receive them to get down to the business of living this new way of life: not just thinking and speaking but acting in accordance with the call they have received. It requires work (ergon), labour or fatigue (kopos) and patience or endurance (hupomone). The virtues of faith, hope and charity that require these things of us are also the gifts by which we receive the energy we need in order to live them.

They are called 'theological' virtues because they unite us directly with God and have God alone as their primary object. Jesus calls us to this in the gospel reading today, criticising the Pharisees for lowering their sights and giving to things that are less that God the commitment and obedience that should be given to God alone. It is a standing temptation of religious systems, to close us in to particular forms and practices. When believing, hoping and loving God become too difficult to sustain, we fall back into religion, forms and practices that concern themselves more or less directly with the things of God and which re-assure us that we are still doing okay. Or so it seems.

The theological virtues on the other hand open us in different ways to what is transcendent, infinite and eternal - to see something of the mystery now revealed in Christ though hidden from before the ages, to entrust ourselves to Christ in what he teaches and promises about what God has prepared for us, and to venture into the ocean of God's love which has heights and depths beyond our imagination. They are ways of transcendence, looking to what is beyond, living from what is yet to come, loving as Jesus loved his disciples, 'to the end'.

Grace is not magic, and this way of living demands of us work, fatigue and endurance. What God's grace does is strengthen us for faith, sustain us in hope, and enable us to love God and one another with the greatest gift of all, God's own love poured into our hearts.

 

Week 21 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 116 (117); Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30

There are some initial puzzles in today's gospel reading.

'I do not know where you come from', Jesus reports the master of the house saying to those knocking to get it. But a few lines later 'where you come from' does not seem to matter since people will come from east and west, north and south, to recline at table in the kingdom of God.

So too the door which at first is narrow, is then shut. But Jesus has already taught his disciples that to the one who knocks the door will always be opened. In John's gospel he even says 'I am the door' and that entry is through him.

'The first will be last and the last first' is a familiar challenge to our ordinary logic: what would put an end to this reversal, what is the criterion for priority in the kingdom of God?

How could anybody ever know where they are in this 'geography of salvation'?

The truth is that we do not know where we are as regards salvation. We are talking here about our own salvation since it is really the only one we need worry about. Our obligation to love others obliges us also, obviously, to hope for their salvation. This is the first reversal effected by Jesus in today's gospel: 'what about others?' is the question put to him. 'What about yourself?', is the question with which he replies. We have a 'sure hope' about our salvation, of course, but it is essential that we not presume that this is 'knowledge' about our salvation. Having a hope keeps our minds fixed always on the one in whom our hope is placed. Thinking we know means we can stop considering the one in whom our hope is placed.

What we do know is that Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem. This is clear and there is no doubt about it. He is opening a way, travelling a path before us. He is following a course and becoming the leader who will take us to our salvation. Jesus is 'the first who will be last and the last who will be first'. Jesus enters into the knot of these reversals and unties that knot through his experience of suffering and death, of resurrection and glorification.

The greatest of all reversals, and the key to all the others, will be the stone rolled away from the door of the tomb. Now the narrow, even closed, way is opened. There are many strategies by which we continue to strive not to need salvation. Our pride leads us to think that we can still do enough or understand enough to get ourselves to where we want to be. But it is not possible without him: otherwise we will have no need of a saviour.

Our task is to strive to follow him along the narrow way which he has taken. Our task is also to trust in the promises he has made and the help of which he assures us. We are to trust that he now knows where we come from, because he has visited our place and tasted its reality. We are to hope for but not presume on our salvation, as if we could be with him without the help of his grace, as if we could enter the kingdom without the price he paid for our redemption.

Week 21 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Joshua 24:1-2a, 15-17, 18b; Ps 34; Ephesians 5:21-32; John 6:60-69

The first creation comes about purely at God’s word – God says ‘let there be light’ and there is light – whereas the new creation, salvation or redemption, does not come about without the human creature’s graced involvement in it. The place where this is clearest is in the Annunciation, which is why it is such a central moment for our faith. The old creation waits expectantly on Mary’s word in response to the angel’s message. Her fiat, her ‘let it be done to me according to your word’, means this new reality is now underway.

There is an intimation of it in the first reading where Joshua calls the people to a decision. As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord, he says. You decide what you are going to do, either follow after other gods or commit yourselves to the Lord and his covenant, the God who brought you out of Egypt into this promised land. The people re-affirm the covenant and say that they too will serve the Lord.

Peter’s words in the gospel reading is a comparable affirmation or reception by the Church of what Jesus has been saying. This is John’s account of Peter’s great profession of faith and it is the first time ‘the twelve’ are mentioned in his gospel. We can take it that Peter and the twelve represent the Church, the community of believers. The reaction to Jesus’ words in John 6, and to the signs he has been giving, has been mixed and some have chosen not to walk with him anymore.

So what about you, Jesus says, echoing his namesake Joshua from many centuries earlier, what are you going to do in response to what you have seen and what you have heard?

Peter speaks on behalf of the twelve and the rest of the disciples. Where is there to go? You have the words of eternal life and we believe – we have come to know – that you are the Holy One of God. Although many aspects of what is happening are new and mysterious to the disciples they have come to believe, and see no reason to place their faith elsewhere than in the One whose mysteries they are coming to understand.

Covenants, contracts and commitments are established and sustained through the exchange of words, through people saying ‘I do’, ‘I promise’, ‘I will’, ‘Let it be so’, ‘I give my word’, ‘I believe it is true’, and so on. The covenant of life and love established by God with His people had often been compared with marriage. Human marriage too is a covenant of life and love, becoming sacramental for our faith, not just in the sense that it can serve as an illustration or analogy for God’s dealings with us, but in the sense that it comes to instantiate those dealings, as a sacred union in which Christ’s love for the Church is not only pointed to but is realized.

One translation of today’s gospel reading begins ‘these are intolerable words’, referring to Jesus’ teaching about the Eucharist. Coming as they do in this Sunday’s readings straight after that Ephesians passage, many people might nod their heads in agreement: ‘wives be subject to your husbands in all things’, ‘the husband is the head of his wife’ – these have come to be intolerable words because of the way in which they have been ‘cashed out’ socially, culturally and, it has to be said, religiously.

There are other words in that reading too, of course, that tend to be drowned out by the intolerable ones, in particular the words ‘as the Church submits to Christ’, or the words ‘as Christ loves the Church’, or the words ‘be subject to one another in obedience to Christ’ – serve each other in obedience to the one who has become the servant of all.

If we can remove the gender politics from our hearing of that reading (difficult as that is), if we can see that there is a rich mystery into which it invites us and from which it encourages us to understand our experiences of friendship, love and marriage – that all those things are understood most deeply when we understand them in relation to Christ and the Church – then we might find our way beyond words that seem intolerable, sayings that seem hard, into a glimpse of the kingdom of love which Christ has established. 

This is the kingdom where God makes himself the servant of his people to such an extent that, as Thomas Aquinas puts it in his famous Panis Angelicus, ‘manducat Dominum pauper, servus et humilis’: ‘the poor man, the servant, the humble one, eats his Lord’. If any words are intolerable, demanding a whole new mind in order to receive them, then surely such words are.

All sacramental life in the Church is nuptial because it is about the union of God and God’s human creatures, the sharing of life and love between God and human beings, and the sharing of life and love with each other by human beings in obedience to Christ. The life and love of the new and everlasting covenant is established in baptism, strengthened in confirmation, healed in reconciliation and anointing, celebrated in the eucharist, and made manifest to the world in the love of married people and in the ministry of priests. 

For now the moment of greatest intimacy we share is our communion in the Body and Blood of Christ. In the Eucharistic Prayers we pray that ‘all of us who share in the body and blood of Christ may be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit’, and that ‘we who are nourished by his body and blood, may be filled with his Holy Spirit, and become one body, one spirit in Christ’.

So it is about a marriage, it is about poor ones who eat their Lord, it is about the glory of one who is exalted except that his exaltation is on a cross. The Word has indeed become flesh, and flesh to an extent that for some is incredible. We pray that we may continue to believe that here are to be found words of life, words of eternal life.

Week 21 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 4:1-8; Psalm 97; Matthew 25:1-13

Sometimes people say that Christianity, and in particular the Catholic Church, is too preoccupied with sexual morality. At the same time, to judge from advertising, songs, films and books, not to mention the vast pornographic industry, sex is clearly a preoccupation of the whole world. Look at the stories reported in any newspaper today and see what you find. Look also at the other things Church leaders have spoken about in the past month - questions about justice, education, immigration and so on - and that get little or no attention.

What people object to is Christianity's moral code regarding sexual activity which, at least in the form in which the Catholic Church continues to teach it, is regarded as old-fashioned, out of date, and long over-taken by modern attitudes.

Paul's first letter to the Thessalonians is the earliest Christian text that survives, written sometime soon after the year 50AD. Already, as can be seen in today's first reading, it speaks about the appropriate way of ordering one's sex life. 'Refrain from immorality' has the sense in this context of 'refrain from sexual licence, permissiveness and promiscuity'. Act honourably in this area of life as in others, treating people always with respect and not exploiting or taking advantage of them.

So far so good. Thessalonika was a modern Roman city. Even if it did not match the reputation of Corinth for sexual permissiveness, it presumably had some of the looser morals that accompany city life everywhere. We can imagine people objecting already that the Christian teaching was old-fashioned (hadn't the Jews been teaching the same for years already?), not modern, in any case unrealistic and impractical.

Paul is clear that God's call to holiness reaches also to this area of life. To choose immorality is to disregard God, not because 'God does not like sex' (it was He who conceived it after all!), but because human beings are God's creatures, now established in Jesus Christ as God's sons and daughters. They have a personal and individual dignity, by nature and by grace, which obliges us to treat them always with respect and honour. To exploit another or take advantage of them for sexual pleasure is a failure, therefore, an offence against human dignity and an offence against God whose holiness, shared with that person, is thereby disregarded.

It is a pity when people think morality and immorality refer exclusively to questions of sexual behaviour. There are many other areas of life that require ethical behaviour, appropriate virtues, respect for relevant values. But all reasonable people will agree that sexual behaviour too must be guided by values and principles such as respect, honesty, justice and love.

We are rightly horrified by the sexual abuse of persons. We are rightly concerned about how exploitation of the world's resources has led to an ecological crisis. We need to translate that horror and concern into right action in regard to sexual behaviour. In doing that we honour the dignity of others and we respect the holiness to which they are called. In this way too we respect the laws that govern the natural environment that is closest to each of us, the human body itself, which is also an instrument by which we either disregard or glorify God.

Week 21 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 3.7-13; Psalm 89/90; Matthew 24.42-51

If we try to impose this kind of attentiveness and perseverance on ourselves from outside, it will be well-nigh impossible. How could anyone, by willpower alone, maintain the kind of constant and alert readiness which Jesus demands of us in the gospel? Especially when the hours begin to drag, when the one expected is delayed, when tiredness sets in ...

If is only possible if it comes from within, in the way that people who are in love with each other do not need to be told to keep each other in mind. Where there is love, there will be watchfulness, attention, readiness, and we will be constantly looking out for the beloved. Then we will not mind the troubles and sorrows that accompany our watching, as Paul says in the first reading, but will be able to breathe again, looking for the arrival of the beloved. He or she will fill our hearts and minds. Our service of him or her, of his and hers, will be an easy yoke to carry, a burden that is light.

We are to practise in the meantime, practise loving, loving those in our care, and even loving the whole human race (remember that aspect of being in love with one, being in love with all?). And that is what holiness is, Paul concludes, to be strong in faith and generous in love. It is not any kind of forced righteousness but a life that flows from those gifts of faith and love. It means living then in freedom and with joy even as we stay disciplined, awake, alert and ready for the arrival of the Son of Man, our 'King of Love'.

 

Week 21 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Thessalonians 2.9-13; Psalm 138/139; Matthew 23.27-32

One of the most intriguing statements in the gospels is that which speaks of John the Baptist as the new Elijah who will 'turn the hearts of fathers to their children' (Lk. 1.17). It comes from the final statement of the prophecy of Malachi, that Elijah would return and would do this, turn the hearts of parents to children and of children to parents (Mal. 4.6).

A situation where this would not be the case might well seem unnatural to us - why would it be necessary for a prophet to come to help people do what ought to come naturally? Parents love their children, surely, and children their parents?

On the other hand there is usually also a kind of rivalry or threat which each generation can represent for the other. Turgenev's 1862 novel Fathers and Sons, regarded as the first great modern Russian novel, deals with this question: the tensions and difficulties that can arise between generations, even when the bonds of kinship and friendship are in place and are strong.

The readings at Mass today also raise the question. Paul describes his care for the Thessalonians as that of a father for his own children. He is anxious to ensure that he was not a burden to them. He is anxious to ensure also that they have come to appreciate the most valuable things he wanted to share with them: that they receive his teaching not simply as 'human words' but as the Word of God, at work in them through Paul's words and example.

In the gospel passage Jesus also speaks of fathers and sons but negatively, saying that the scribes and Pharisees are hypocritical in trying to distance themselves from the persecution of the prophets perpetrated by their fathers. You are their children, he says, you are saying this yourselves. The implication is that they would have acted in exactly the same way. Their veneer of goodness and integrity is just that, a veneer, but inside they are the same as their fathers. It is salutary to remind ourselves of this when we think we would have treated Jesus differently to how the generality of people treated him at the time. It is salutary to think of this when we are tempted to reject or even despise our fathers, the generation before us.

'You search me and you know me' is the illuminating response to the psalm. It reminds us of the heavenly Father, who knows his children through and through. So don't waste time trying to present yourself to yourself as something you are not. Don't get depressed either when you remember what there is inside that you would prefer to keep hidden. Paul's way of 'fathering' the Thessalonians is the model for how the heavenly Father treats us: impeccably right and fair, teaching us what is right, encouraging us, appealing to us to live the best possible life, a life worthy of God.

How do we know that the heavenly Father is like that? Because the Only Son, who is nearest the Father's hearts, has made him known to us (Jn 1.18). And he has shown us, through his own impeccable treatment of us, that that heart is always turned towards us. All he wants in return is that we keep our hearts turned towards him, towards Jesus and towards his Father, seeking in every moment to serve their kingdom.

Week 21 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 22:19-23; Psalm 137 (138); Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

In the Latin church the predominant interpretation of this gospel reading has been juridical and legal. In St Peter's Basilica you will find it high up around the cupola, the key text (pardon the pun) for the power of the keys given to Peter and in support of the Church's understanding of the role of Peter's successor in the government of the Church. There is good reason for this traditional interpretation as we see also from the first reading. A certain Eliakim is appointed majordomo of the royal palace and the tool of his office is the key he is given. It is a familiar reality: the one who has the key to open doors has authority and power, or at least has access and influence with those in authority and in power. The unlikely rock on which Christ builds his Church, Simon Peter, is given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He has no authority or power apart from Christ but he is given access and influence, as well as delegated powers to bind and loose not just on earth but in heaven as well. However we interpret the text it is an extraordinary declaration.

The conversation between Jesus and Peter has other aspects to it. They are becoming friends and the key to the heart of one's friend is love. It is a personal encounter between them, not just a doctrinal interrogation or a juridical delegation. As they spend more and more time together Jesus and Peter are coming to know each other more and more. Jesus already knows all that is in Peter, the strengths and limitations of his personality and character, and Peter is coming to know more and more about Jesus. The question is not 'what do you say I am' but 'who do you say I am'. It is a matter of personal knowledge, and therefore involves the kind of faith and love that are always part of the personal knowledge between friends.

'You are like this', 'you are like that': it is familiar language between friends and lovers, parents and children. It is part of the gift of friendship that we can allow our hearts to be opened by the key of love, by the trust our friend shows in us, and we come to know ourselves better in the light of his or her love. Likewise for him or her. We are encouraged in our gifts and received kindly in our weaknesses. 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God', Peter says. His knowledge and understanding of Jesus have grown and deepened to this point. What Jesus was to be in the future - well that remains hidden from Peter for the moment as we will see when we read on in Matthew 16, for within a few verses Jesus is calling him 'Satan' as Peter once again gets the wrong end of the stick. But Jesus does know what Peter can be in the future. 'You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church'. Sometimes this is what happens in ordinary human friendships also: we see our friend's heart, her gifts and limitations, but also possibilities that perhaps she does not see. Imagine a parent encouraging a son or daughter, seeing what they might yet be, when the son or daughter is impeded by fear or lack of confidence or some rejection by others.

The key of love unlocks the heart of persons and allows the one who loves them to see who they are and what they might yet be. When it is Jesus we are talking about - the Christ, the Son of the Living God - then obviously he sees more deeply than anyone else what is in human hearts. Because of who he is he can also create and transform, placing in us gifts and strengths that we did not suspect before. We can imagine him speaking also to us, then, and saying 'You are John and in the future ....', 'You are Mary and in the future ...' - what might he have in mind for us for the future? We must remain open for that, ask him to make it known to us as he made it known to Peter. We may not fully grasp it at first as Peter does not fully grasp it but it keeps us in relationship with Jesus and it sets us on our way.

Jesus refers to us already in today's gospel for he speaks of Peter and his faith, his friendship with Jesus, as the rock 'on which I will build my church'. We can at least take strength from that since, poor as we are, we are already His church, built on the foundation of Peter's relationship with him and called (as the first letter of Peter puts it) to be 'living stones making a spiritual house' (1 Peter 2:5).

In thanking God for His many gifts, in particular for the gift of His Son, we pray that we will have the courage to allow Him to open our hearts with the key of His love (as He has already opened His heart to us with the key of His love), to speak to us there, to tell us who it is he knows us to be and especially to hear from Him what it is He knows we might yet be. All for God's glory, for the service of the Church, and for our salvation.

Week 21 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3a,14-17; Psalm 96; Matthew 23:23-26

We might think that apocalyptic language belongs to another place and time, that it is a way of speaking that is so foreign to us and requires so much interpretation that it is nearly impossible for us to find in it a message for ourselves that is not either far-fetched at best, crazy at worst. But the current political discourse in the United States of America is becoming ever more apocalyptic.

We are accustomed for some time now to the 'right wing' tribe using this language. There is a great battle under way, we are told, between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Obviously those who identify with this tribe regard themselves as belonging to the forces of good. Ranged against them are those who identify - or whom they identify - with the other tribe, 'the left', Democrats, liberals, lefties, and something called 'the deep state'.

Now it seems that this other tribe has joined them, at least in agreeing with this Manichean view of the world. 'The left' has begun to speak also about a great battle under way between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Except - presumably - that now it is they who belong to the forces of good and the right-wing tribe - or those whom they identify as belonging to it - represents the forces of evil.

Saint Paul, in the first reading of today's Mass, tells the Thessalonians not to be alarmed or shaken out of their minds by such apocalyptic language. 'The day of the Lord has come', 'the end is nigh', 'the great battle of Armageddon is underway' - this is always the burden of such language. Its plausibility in our present moment is strengthened by the plague that has paralysed the world. But, says Paul, you must rely instead on the traditions you have received through the preaching of the apostles. Look to Jesus to encourage your hearts and to strengthen them in every good deed and word.

In the gospel reading we find Jesus himself speaking about the same thing. Don't be deceived by the purveyors of myths promoted to support people's quest for power and don't be deceived by the razzmatazz and the gaudy presentation they make of themselves.  Jesus is speaking in the first place to the Pharisees, the religious party to which he was closest. Forget about presentation which is always more or less hypocritical and focus instead on the weightier things - judgement, mercy and fidelity. Good deeds and words originate inside human beings and do not come from outside. Strive to see clearly and to find teachers and leaders who see clearly regarding these matters of judgement, mercy and fidelity. Far too often our teachers and leaders are more or less blinded by their own interests, their own prejudices, their own desires - they are more or less blind guides.

John Hume, a political leader respected by all who know about him, died recently. He was someone who tried to be a teacher and guide who could see not just the prejudices nursed, the injustices  suffered, and the aspirations sought by his own tribe, but to see those things in the other tribe as well. He sought to see beyond such definitions, to a common humanity which everybody, in more or less distorted ways, was trying to serve. The most difficult change to bring about, John Hume said, is the change in human hearts.

As the pressure mounts for us to 'choose sides' in the great battle - which side of the tennis court are you on, left or right? - it is salutary to remember that both the left and the right have carried their fears and oppression of others to the point of establishing concentration camps. Whether you end up in one or the other does not seem to make much difference in the end, the way you will be treated by your fellow human beings will be much the same.

Obviously something else is needed, another vantage point from which to survey the battlefield. However seeking another vantage point seems to lead, sooner or later, to the hill of Calvary. It was from that our crucified Lord surveyed the human scene, taking on himself all its fears and cruelties, to break down the wall of hostility that divides humanity into tribes, to make both one by the shedding of his innocent blood (the only truly innocent blood?).

But he gives us today a first direction with which we can begin even today: 'cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.' Is it too gentle for a world which is physically violent in many places, and already so violent in language in so many more?

Week 21 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10,16-18; Psalm 128; Matthew 23:27-32

One of the best known of the Monty Python sketches is the one about the Ministry for Funny Walks. A translation in the first reading today might seem to be objecting to such a Ministry, as Paul encourages the Thessalonians to shun any brother 'who walks in a disorderly way'. Other translations say 'walking in idleness' or 'living a disorderly life'. 'Walking' is a term used elsewhere in the New Testament to speak about a way of living - 'walk in love,' for example, we read in Ephesians 5:2. the other term used here, and translated either as 'disorderly' or 'in idleness', seems to be closer in meaning to disordered or undisciplined. It is presumably what follows that leads translators to identify idleness as the particular form of disorder involved here.

The reason for the idleness is the issue considered earlier in 2 Thessalonians. Some were saying that the day of the Lord had already come and so, with a certain reasonableness, some had already hung up their boots and packed away their tools. What was the need to work if the world was coming to an end?

It is an approach we might be tempted to take for other reasons, a kind of giving up on the world. One sometimes hears of people who decide not to have children because the world is in such a terrible state that it would be wrong to oblige children to live in it. One might be tempted not to engage in the political process, for example, on seeing the alternatives on offer and finding them all unsatisfactory. One might be tempted to become cynical about all teachers and religions, perhaps drawing on Jesus' words in Matthew 23 as he condemns the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And there may be other reasons also ... the threat of war, the future of the planet, the persistence of the covid virus, increasing violence in speech and action ...

As with yesterday's advice from Jesus - get down to cleaning the inside of the cup first - Paul's advice to the Thessalonians may seem too small for the big problems just mentioned. In fact it is omitted from the first reading as it is given to us in the lectionary! Edited out ... What Paul says to those tempted to 'walk in a disorderly way', to give up on their engagement in this world and its problems, is that they should go on quietly working and earning their own living (2 Thessalonians 3:12). They are not to grow weary of doing what is good (v.13).

It brings to mind the 'little way' of Saint Therese of Lisieux, that surprising Doctor of the Church. What is important, she teaches us, is not what you have to do today so much as the love with which you can do it. There are many huge challenges and questions for the world today. There are many huge challenges and questions for the Church today. It can all seem too much at times - unsettling, overwhelming, paralysing. Let us continue, with God's grace, to walk in an orderly way, with our eyes fixed on the goal which is Christ, doing every ordinary thing with love. Walking in that way we can be sure that we are following Him and in doing so we are preparing the ground for the kingdom that is coming. For it is also true that the Kingdom of God is very near to us.