Advent Week 1 Wednesday

Readings: Isaiah 25:6-10; Psalm 22; Matthew 15:29-37

All three readings speak of the Lord feeding His people. The fish and bread of the miraculous feeding recounted in the gospel might seem a long way from the rich and juicy food and the fine strained wines of which Isaiah speaks in the first reading. Nor do fish and bread seem right as a menu for the banquet which we hear about in the psalm. Unless of course ...

Unless what? Well in Ireland we say that hunger is the best sauce. Food that in times of plenty will seem poor and unappetising, in times of shortage or great need will be received as very satisfactory, and even desirable. As long as it is wholesome it will certainly be welcomed by a hungry person. One Lent I spent some time in a monastery which was observing a strict fast. After three days the humble breakfast of bread and butter with coffee had become for me a banquet.

The gospel reading tells us that the people had been with Jesus for the same length of time, three days. They will therefore have worked up an appetite, carrying their sick relatives and friends to Jesus, hopeful but still anxious, perhaps having traveled long distances.

So what counts as a banquet depends also on the hunger of those who need to eat. And perhaps this is also a way of describing the work of Advent: we are given this time to work up an appetite for the One who is coming. The point is not just how glorious and splendid will be that coming. It will pass us by if we are not disposed to receive it, if we have no appetite for it, if we are satisfying the hunger of our souls on more immediate, fancier perhaps, but less wholesome food.

The Lord is coming to save us but what if we have no need for a Saviour? What if we already find salvation enough elsewhere? Fish and bread might seem like nothing compared with the juicy food and fine wines we get elsewhere. But if we are lame or crippled, blind or dumb, if we are hungry and needy, anxious and tired having travelled already so far - well then His coming will be wonderful and we will appreciate it. It will be enough to have Him with us. The fish and bread he offers will be glorious and fulfilling because we will recognise Him in these gifts, food from heaven, containing every pleasure, every delight, every blessing.

The Lord who is coming is full of compassion for struggling humanity: the gospel today also tells us this, from the lips of Jesus. May God give us a clear sense of our need, a keen awareness of our deepest hunger, so that we will rejoice and exult when that need is met and when that hunger is sated by the Lord for whom we are longing.

Advent Week 1 Tuesday

Readings: Isaiah 11:1-10; Psalm 72; Luke 10:21-24

We have been having some very beautiful evenings the past week or so. There are few clouds and it gets dark early. There are lots of stars in the winter sky including that big one (Venus? the Christmas star?) just below the moon. On the footpaths the few remaining dead leaves glisten in the moonlight. Living here one is restricted to imagining the frost in lands further north, frost settling for another night.

Presiding over these quiet winter evenings is the moon. It contributes significantly to our peaceful nightscape although it cannot itself really be described as a peaceful place. This is because there is no life on the moon. Where there is no life there is no struggle, or anxiety, there is no need, or threat, or fear. If the moon is peaceful then it is the peace of the graveyard, the kind of peace found in dead places and not the full, rich, reconciled, healed, and justice-based peace that the Bible calls shalom.

The earth is not at all like the moon. Here there is life, many kinds of living things, and so there is much struggle, and anxiety, there is need, and threat, and fear. Where there is life there is the possibility of it being damaged, wounded, and even lost. Living things are aware of their surroundings and must keep watch and be attentive. Living things are always anxious or at least alert and they are always needy, for food, shelter, or a mate. Where there is life there is also threat and fear, even (perhaps especially) from other living things of the same kind.

Today's first reading paints a picture of paradise, the restoration of all things to an original peaceful cohabitation, the lamb entertaining the wolf, the calf and the young lion resting together, the children safe with no more hurt, no more harm. The great, groaning act of giving birth is over, and the creation settles into the shalom which comes with salvation.

But before that the earth, in particular the human world, is a place that needs justice, some kind of management and balancing of struggle and anxiety, of need and threat and fear. Inevitably, we contend with each other. We jostle with each other for food and influence. We are aware of each other as potential partners and friends and collaborators but also as different, as rivals, as perhaps not fully trustworthy, not really ‘on my side’.

The human world remains a place where we must strive for justice although justice often seems to be beyond us. Where people take action to restore or introduce justice they often end up doing some fresh injustice. Where one kind of exclusion, discrimination and inequality is removed, fresh kinds of exclusion, discrimination and inequality appear in their place.

Jesus lived in Palestine, the place where Europe, Africa and Asia meet. It was a key province of the Roman Empire, guarding the great trade routes to the East and to the South. For centuries it had been fought over by Egyptians and Assyrians and Persians and Greeks and Romans. Even today ‘Palestine’ presents the knottiest of human problems. It is the place where Jews, Christians and Muslims struggle to live together in justice and in peace. There are many other places where cultures, languages, races, and religions meet and where they must find out how to live together. But ‘Palestine’ is symbolic of them all, in particular of the difficulties they all face.

Jesus was born into this knot in the world’s history and geography. We believe him to be the Messiah promised in the scriptures, the one who has initiated God’s reign of shalom. The word means peace but not just in the sense of no fighting. It means a rich, reconciled, healed, justice-based peace, the peace that comes with the Messiah and is won, as it turns out, through His rejection, death and resurrection. ‘He himself will be peace’, the prophet Micah tells us. ‘In his days justice will flourish and peace till the moon fails’, says the great messianic Psalm 72, speaking about the kingdom of a future son of the House of David. Through him the earth has been filled with the knowledge of the Lord.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle wrote the first book to be called Politics and in it he says that human community and civilization are built on communication. It is by talking and listening that we recognize and establish justice. Thomas Aquinas liked the idea: ‘communication builds the city’, he says, commenting on Aristotle’s text. It is part of human greatness that we understand the need for justice and can work together to try to build it. And we build it through listening and talking.

The Word became flesh in Palestine in the first century. Into the knot of human struggle and anxiety, of need and threat and fear, God entered to speak His Word. Jesus is God’s contribution to the human conversation about justice and peace. We will find peace, he says, only by loving our enemies. People laughed at this, of course, but he has shown us that it is the only way: you must love one another as I have loved you. We celebrate his birth because he is our hope. He is the light shining in this world’s darkness. With the birth of this Child the time has arrived in which justice has begun to flourish and his peace grows till the moon fails.

Advent Week 1 - Monday

Readings: Isaiah 4;2-6 Psalm 122; Matthew 8:5-11

Today's psalm is one of the psalms 'of ascent', songs sung by the people as they made their way in pilgrimage to Jerusalem. They are among the most beautiful and joyful of the psalms. In them the people look forward to their first sight of the holy city, to their arrival within its walls, and above all to the moment when they enter beneath the roof of the Temple to be as close to the glory of God's presence as it was possible for most human beings to be. Only the King and the High Priest could go closer, into the Holy of Holies itself, and then only on rare occasions.

These psalms evoke a settled time in the history of God's people. They are resident in the land, doing their work and rearing their families, seeking to be faithful to the covenant and to receive the blessings promised for that faithfulness. Part of that faithfulness was their worship in the Temple, on the appointed days, for the appointed feasts. It was after all 'the house of the Lord for the tribes of Israel' - both parts of that statement to undergo radical revision as the story unfolds.

The first reading is a passage from the early chapters of Isaiah which take us to a particular historical moment. Jerusalem, Judah, Israel - all are under threat from foreign armies and already it seems that there have been significant losses. But the Lord says, through his prophet, that a remnant will remain in the city. It feels like an effort to 'patch things up' or at least save something. Things are slipping away, falling apart, but for now the Lord will confirm the presence of his glory in the city, a cloud by day and a fire by night just as in the years of desert wandering. For now the Lord's glory will continue to provide shelter and protection.

Later came exile and the radical challenges it presented to the people's self-understanding and to their understanding of God. The loss of everything - land, city, temple - meant thinking out again from the beginning how they understood their own call, how they understood the Lord their God whose glory had then departed from the Temple, how they understood what God had to do with all the other people there are in the world and what all those other people might have to do with the Lord, the God of Israel.

The Advent season invites us to think about where we might be in relation to such historical experiences of God's people. Are we settled and secure, peaceful in our worship of God and in our understanding of our relationship with him? Are we under pressure, feeling that things are slipping away but that a moment of 'searing judgement', as Isaiah puts it, a re-affirmation of God's call, might just be enough to get us back on track, certainly if it comes with a new manifestation of God's glory present among us? Or are we in exile, having lost the securities which up to now had confirmed for us the call of God, His favour towards us, His presence with us, our special place in His plan?

Perhaps we need to prepare ourselves for a new moment in the history of God's people, a new chapter in the history of the Church? The coming of Jesus was just such a moment. Instead of people seeking the Lord in Jerusalem we see the Lord seeking the people wherever they are. 'I will come and cure him' is Jesus' immediate response to the centurion who asks his help. Instead of preparing himself to enter under God's roof, the Lord offers to come under the roof of the centurion, to come to where he is, to dwell with him. 'Only say the word', the centurion says to Jesus.

Jesus is that Word, the only Word, spoken by the Father into the world and its history. All other messages and revelations are echoes, before or after, of this one Word. We are getting prepared once again to celebrate the birth of this Word. Looking at our world, at the Church, and at our own lives, we might well be tempted to say 'Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof'.

The centurion is a foreigner, not a believer by the criteria of Israel's religion and yet nowhere in Israel has Jesus encountered such faith. Once again our understanding is to be blown open (this is the searing judgement spoken of by Isaiah). We need to think it all out once again, to seek a fresh understanding of God and of God's presence to human beings, to understand in a new way the meaning of the call we have received as 'members of Christ', to think again about what God has to do with all the other people there are in the world and what all those other people have to do with Him.

Our minds are focusing on Bethlehem, the house of bread, a temple for all peoples, God pitching His tent among us. This new thing God wants to do - speaking His Word once more into our world and into our history, into our time and place - will be, as always, particularly directed to places, communities and individuals who are 'paralysed and suffering greatly'. We find hope and courage in the response of Jesus to the centurion, 'I will come and cure him'. 'Come Lord, cure us.'

Advent Week 1 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 2:1-5; Psalm 122; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:37-44

We have tested and tasted too much, lover – 
Through a chink too wide there comes in no wonder.

These are the opening lines of a poem called Advent, written by Patrick Kavanagh (1904-1967) and learned by every Irish schoolboy and girl of my generation. The adult who is experienced, compromised and perhaps a bit cynical envies the wonder and amazement that characterise the child’s soul. So the poet speaks of ‘the newness that was in every stale thing when we looked at it as children’. He hopes that ‘the dry black bread and the sugarless tea of penance will charm back the luxury of a child’s soul’. 

As children we have a strong and natural sense of wonder. Part of the price of growing up seems to be the loss of the freshness and clarity that goes with it. The world becomes ordinary. It becomes less magical and more serious. It becomes indifferent and perhaps even hostile. Something is lost, a sharpness, an edge, a light, in which even the most ordinary things are magical and the most ordinary events mysterious. We find it briefly again, perhaps, by going to see Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings but the point is whether it can be found again in our real lives and not just in the flickering images.

What about a bridge, a boat, a river bank, a field, a red bus (now there’s a wonder!), early morning sun on a distant sea, unused tram tracks, tar bubbling on a summer’s day, the buzz of insects, the Christmas lights – and many other ordinary things and what they meant to the child you once were.

Grown-ups still ‘get’ something of wonder at second hand, through their children. The excitement and amazement of children, especially at Christmas time, is contagious. Through their eyes we glimpse again what we once knew – the excited waiting of the Advent season, the longing, almost beyond bearing, for a great day ahead.

The season of Advent invites us to return and rediscover something we have lost. This is what the word ‘repent’ means – turn back, turn around, return. We are to do this not just to lament what has been lost but to re-discover a sense of excitement, to be alert and keen and awake and attentive once more. We are to be open to the wonders that the Lord will yet reveal in our lives (tired and cynical as we may be at times), the wonders he will yet reveal in our world (unjust, violent and corrupt as it often now is).

We have tested and tasted too much. The cares and worries and sad events of life overpower us. Distractions keep us from settling deeply into our own hearts. It may be that the hardening and darkening that follow sin have overtaken us. Whatever the state of our adult heart, Advent holds out the promise of again living in a wonder-full way.

This note of joyful expectation and keen wonder is sounded throughout the liturgy of the Advent season. Let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, rejoicing as we approach his house. Swords will be turned into ploughshares, spears into sickles. There will be no more training for war. Wake up because it will soon be daylight and the time of dreary darkness will be over. Stay awake! Stand ready! Be alert and keen and expectant because the coming of the Son of Man will be sudden and full of significance.

Often people say that Christmas is for children. It is more true to say that Christmas is for adults who have not forgotten what it means to be a child. It is for those who have suffered ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ and have not allowed it to destroy their wonder or joy or hope. Christmas is a time to rekindle our faith that our God will return, paving a way through the valleys and mountains of our lives, making possible what seemed impossible. He is, after all, the God who raises the dead.

The child in us has no difficulty believing such wonders and all we need do is trust that that child is seeing something true. We are to be the adult children of our Heavenly Father, charming back the luxury of the child’s soul through prayer and reconciliation, penance and right living. It is not really a luxury, this child’s soul in us. It is essential for our maturity since unless we become as little children, we shall not be ready to enter the kingdom of heaven when He comes.

This reflection was first published in the parish newsletter of St Dominic's, London

Week 34 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Daniel 7:2-14; Daniel 3:75-81; Luke 21:29-33

Trafalgar Square in Central London boasts a column with a statue of Nelson on top, four great lions, some fountains, and four great plinths, three of which support enormous statues of military heroes and the fourth of which is empty. Or at least much of the time it is empty. In recent years there have been competitions to see what ought to go on this fourth plinth and the work of many artists, professional and amateur, has been exhibited on it.

In November 2005 a life-sized statue of Jesus was placed on the fourth plinth. Compared with the monsters on the other three plinths, men and horses many times magnified, this life-sized figure looked pitiable and pathetic. He was a pale and feeble creature, not impressive at all when compared with Nelson and his military companions. They are the right size and strike the right attitude for expressing power, importance, and significance. This is what makes the world go round, makes history, gets things done, and keeps them moving. He on the other hand was practically invisible in the great and busy square.

Today's reading from the Book of Daniel speaks about four monsters which represent four kingdoms, each more powerful, more important, and more significant than the one that preceded it. They are monstrous not just in their size and shape but in their cruelty and indifference. They came, they saw, and they conquered ... but each in turn corrupted and collapsed, each in turn gave way to a monster greater than itself.

Into the midst of this heaving of monsters comes one like a son of man, a human being, representing a different kingdom, one that has its origins and strength in God, and it is his kingdom that is eternal. The more empty and insecure a kingdom, the more vacuous and superficial it is morally and spiritually, then the more it needs the panoply of monstrosity. Like the visions that tormented Saint Antony the Hermit the monsters of the Book of Daniel are full of sound and fury, flamboyant and distracting, but in the end they are devoid of meaning and value, and they fall under the weight of their own emptiness.

The kingdom of God, a kingdom of love and truth, is full and secure, strong and reliable, and it can be among us without the panoply of monstrosity. The kingdom of God is among us like a human being among monsters (Daniel). The kingdom of God is among us like a young woman who is expecting a child (Isaiah). The kingdom of God is among us like a lamb at the centre of apocalyptic turbulence (Revelation).

All the things foretold by Jesus in the course of Luke 21, and which we have heard again these past few days, things monstrous and apocalyptic, all of these things are fulfilled in a young man stripped, led to death like a lamb, crushed by the powers of this world, raised on a cross in foolishness and weakness ... but because of who he is, because of the love in his heart, and because of the truth on his lips, this foolishness is the wisdom of God and this weakness is God's strength.

And yet we often want God to show Himself in the garb of worldly kingdoms, with glorious pomp and terrifying majesty. That would all be more impressive, would it not, more convincing, and more effective. One person looking at the statue of Jesus in Trafalgar Square said 'if that's Jesus Christ, it's a bloody miracle. You couldn't put your faith in someone like that, he's as weak as a kitten'. Another said that 'his smallness just shows what little meaning Christianity has in the world today.' The artist, Mark Wallinger, said he wanted to give Jesus a place among the oversized imperial symbols because he was 'at the very least a political leader of an oppressed people'. Another comment begins in sentiment but ends in the most profound thought quoted: 'I just want to go up there and give him a hug ... he looks so vulnerable you just want to take him home. Seen from the side, it's just amazing. And the closer you get the more young and beautiful he gets'.

It becomes an invitation to reconsider our perspective on Jesus, and our position in relation to him. Seen from the side - what can it mean? - it's just amazing. You want to take him home, at first on account of his vulnerability but later for other reasons. Because the closer you get the more young and beautiful he gets. The monstrosities have their day and bite the dust. The one raised on the cross, weak as a kitten, continues to draw all people to himself. It is he who will reign for ever and ever, this Beauty, ever ancient and ever new, for the closer you get the younger and more beautiful our God is.

Week 34 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Daniel  2:31-45; Daniel 3:57-61; Luke 21:5-11

It does not seem fair. It seems very unfair in fact: this extraordinary climax to a drama in which none of us chose to get involved in the first place. It is all God's idea - to invent the thing and keep it going. Why should he get so furious if his creatures make mistakes or opt out or lose interest?

We find ourselves within this story, like characters in a play, at the mercy of the creator, the writer of the story. To opt out, to say I do not want to have anything more to do with this God or with the Christian story, is simply to move to a different part of the stage, to take on a different role in the same play.

We seem to be trapped. And the stakes at the end are so high: at least if the gospel readings of these next three days are true. An extraordinary fate awaits us, who never really chose to be involved in this drama in the first place, who never agreed to play for such high stakes. And the preacher is supposed to do what seems like some kind of mental gymnastics to show how all this talk of judgement and punishment, fire and disaster, fearful sights and great signs from heaven, is just another angle on our good God, who is only love, only truth, only goodness.

On the other hand it is all true and deadly serious. There are wars and revolutions. Hundreds of people have died through violence in the past weeks. There are plagues and famines. There are fearful sights.  There is unimaginable cruelty and exploitation of women, of children, of men too. There is betrayal and violence and persecution.

We are here whether we like it or not. And we need salvation here: light in which to understand, and help to make changes that are beyond our capacity, if we are to grow towards the fulness of our being.

It is a strange story, all the stranger for being true. It is not armchair stuff. We have to be ready to do battle. We have to be ready to fight for our souls. We have to be ready to defend love and justice. We have to be ready for tears and sweat. We have to be ready to lay down our lives.

We do not know what God is. As life moves on the answer to the question 'what is God?' becomes more elusive. As the world's history moves on the answer to this question too seems ever more elusive. But we believe that Jesus Christ is God's best word about himself. He is a word of truth and love, of blessing and healing. He is the image of the unseen God, the first-born of all creation (and so he is fundamental to our being in the story at all) and he is the first to be born from the dead (and so he is the principle of our salvation into eternal life). He has made peace, but it is by his death on the cross that he has done it.

Although he dwelt among us as truth and love, as blessing and healing, although he worked deeds that brought life, forgiveness and freedom, still, this word spoken by the Father from all eternity, dwelling in time with us, provoked opposition and fear, violence and hatred. Wherever that same word is still proclaimed authentically and wherever his message is truly lived, it still provokes these things.

It is all very strange. Jesus teaches, and shows, that love is the first and the last word about God. And yet Jesus provokes the world's hatred and violence.  It is not always easy to see that love is the last as it is the first word. Sometimes it is very difficult to see this, whether in some pages of the Bible (which in this simply reflect the reality of the human world) or in the events of our own lives.

Feast of Christ the King (Year C)

Readings: 2 Samuel 5:1-3; Psalm 122; Colossians 1:12-20; Luke 23:35-43

In ancient Rome, 'dignity' referred to the weight of authority a public figure gained through his experience and service of a community. Later it was something attached to public roles even where there was a distance, more or less great, between the personal character of the occupant and the significance of the role. Thus popes and presidents, prime ministers and monarchs, are 'dignified', even where there is such a distance, because of what they represent for the ones they serve. If the distance becomes too great, of course, something has to be done!

Although the prophet Isaiah foretells that the suffering Messiah would have 'no beauty that we should desire him', Jesus is in fact the only person in whom there is no distance at all between the person he is and the roles he occupies. There is a simple identity of who he is and what he does, and both his person and his roles are worthy of the highest dignity.

Biblical and Christian tradition teaches us that he is the priest, the prophet, and the king. The readings for today's feast, not surprisingly, talk about him as a king, king of Israel of the royal house of David, and king of the Jews in his enthronement on the cross.

The events of his passion leave him with no dignity at all, as Isaiah had foretold: dressed in royal purple only in order to be mocked and spat at, crowned with thorns rather than jewels, his triumphal procession is the way of the cross, his enthronement is his being nailed to its wood, and his exaltation in the sight of the people is his being lifted up on that cross. He was despised and rejected, the man of sorrows acquainted with grief. Nothing seems further from the 'wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace', to whom earlier sections of Isaiah had looked forward.

Yet he continues to speak of his 'kingdom'. It is not of this world, he tells Pilate, and now, from the cross, he tells the thief that today he will be with him, Jesus, in 'paradise'. As king and shepherd of his people he leads them - us - not into a new historical period, or a new political arrangement, or a new era of prosperity. He opens the way into a new reality, of which he is the beginning, the head, and the king. Compared to this new reality all that we know is darkness and his is the kingdom of light. From the cross he judges the world by his love and his truth. He is the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, we read elsewhere, the only true king, because this 'first-born of creation' is now also 'first-born from the dead'.

The Church, his body, is the sign and foretaste of his kingdom which today's liturgy tells us is a kingdom of truth and life, of holiness and grace, of justice, love and peace. But we can never forget that this divine and human reality has been established through his death on the cross.

'Let us give thanks to the Lord, our God', the liturgy invites us as we contemplate his sacrifice. Dignum et iustum est, we reply. It is a difficult phrase to translate well - 'it is right and fitting', 'it is meet and just'. But notice that ancient Roman word 'dignity'. In spite of its being trampled underfoot, we acknowledge the weight of authority in this man, this man of incomparable dignity. Ecce homo, Christ our King, in whom all things hold together, through whom and for whom all things were created, through whom and for whom all things were redeemed.

This homily was first published on the Torch website for the Feast of Christ the King 2010