Week 05 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 58:7-10; Psalm 112; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16

With a range of imagery the Bible speaks about a choice presented by the Word of God to those who hear it.

According to the Book of Deuteronomy the choice to observe the commandments of God or not to observe them is a choice between life and death, between a blessing and a curse. For much of the 'wisdom literature' the choice is between walking in the way of wisdom or descending the path of foolishness, depending on how we relate to others and to God.

In his preaching Jesus speaks more starkly of this choice. It is between a narrow gate opening onto a hard road and an easy and broad road which leads, however, to perdition (Matt 7:13-14). Paul contrasts life according to the Spirit and life according to the flesh, while John is fond of the imagery of light and darkness.

This Sunday's readings give us a physical and very concrete image for the choice we face between two contrasting ways of living: the clenched fist and the open hand.

Think of the difference between being confronted with a clenched fist and being offered an open hand. The clenched fist signifies threat, rejection, arrogance, exclusion, refusal, anger and violence. The open hand means friendship, help, peace, sharing, communication and connection.

Isaiah encourages his listeners to 'do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word', and to do it by 'sharing your bread with the hungry and clothing the man you see to be naked'. Psalm 111 continues the theme: 'the good man takes pity and lends … is generous, merciful and just … open-handed he gives to the poor.'

Where the clenched fist is ungenerous, unreceptive and closes things down, the open hand is generous, welcoming and vulnerable.

Paul pleads his own openness and vulnerability among the Corinthians. I was with you in fear and trembling, he says, and in my preaching I avoided the complexities of 'philosophy'. 'All I knew among you,' he continues, 'was Jesus as the crucified Christ.'

The crucified Christ opened his hands and arms and heart on the cross to give us the definitive revelation of God. This heart open to the world contains a love beyond all expectation and beyond any natural hope, a love beyond any singing or telling of it. The God who opens wide his hand to satisfy the desires of all who live (Ps 145) has now opened wide his heart to bring to eternal life all whom He has chosen (Eph 1:11).

There may be many reasons why, at times, we choose the way of the clenched fist rather than the open hand: hurt and disappointment, tiredness and indifference, fear and misunderstanding, selfishness and disdain.

Whatever the reasons, the clenched fist always involves turning from our own kin and denying, in effect, that others are of the same kin. The open hand, however, means turning towards others as our kin, fellow human creatures, brothers and sisters, children of the same heavenly Father sharing a common call and a common hope.

Just as the presence of salt and light cannot be hidden and their absence will be noticed, the kindness of the good person cannot be denied and the shock of the clenched fist will stop us in our tracks. The good works of the open-handed shine forth so that people might praise the Father for the holiness they glimpse in His creatures. We have come to know that this is what God is like, causing his sun to rise on bad as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest as on dishonest people (Matt 5:45).

In many parts of the world the sign of peace at Mass is a simple handshake and often its exchange is perfunctory and lazy. But it symbolises something crucial, the difference between two ways of approaching our neighbour and of approaching life.

Are we to turn in and close ourselves away, hardening our heart and clenching our fist? Or are we to follow Christ by opening our hands and our hearts, by reaching out to others in generosity and justice? What is the point in opening our hands in prayer to God if we do not lend a hand of kindness to our brothers and sisters in their need?

This homily first appeared on Torch, the preaching website of the English Dominican Province

Week 4 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 3:4-13; Psalm 119:9-14; Mark 6:30-34

In the wilderness sheep wander but people learn. If they have a good teacher, that is. Jesus' response is classic, then, teaching them 'many things'. Another translation has 'at some length', it seems to mean something like 'everything'.

When we are lost in a wilderness we are apt to learn. We have lost our sense of direction, are not sure where we should go, what we should do, where food and shelter are to be found. So we are disposed to learn, docile in an exceptional way in exceptional circumstances.

Teaching and learning are mysterious processes, perhaps we should say one mysterious process. Is it a matter of drawing out what is already inside but has become hidden in some way, forgotten, or is it putting something new into a person, new knowledge, new understanding?

Two great teachers of the Christian tradition, Augustine and Aquinas, say (following Jesus in the gospel) that God is the only real Teacher. Our appreciation of the truth comes about as a result of God's presence and stimulation in the human mind. Human teachers can serve that process but only God teaches us interiorly, can reach inside our minds to assist processes of understanding and knowledge. It is not a kind of magic, though, even with infused knowledge or special gifts of understanding and knowing. We must learn and if something is to become really 'ours' then it must take the shape of our sensation, our perception, our understanding, our language.

Jesus is our righteousness, our peace, our wisdom, our justice. He is the one who can teach us all things, the only one who can do this. He does it, Aquinas says, through the questions he asks his disciples, the signs he gives them to illustrate and support his teaching, and the love he has for them. (We can only teach people we love.) Augustine speaks of Jesus on the cross as 'magister in cathedra', a professor on his chair. Here is the deepest love, the most compelling sign, and the most disturbing question posed by this Teacher as he enacts in his own flesh and blood the truths and values he spent his life teaching.

Moved with compassion for the needy crowd, Jesus began to teach them. The need of the neighbour takes precedence even over the time we might like to spend alone in prayer with God. Solomon is praised in the first reading because he asked for wisdom. In Jesus we believe we have been given the Wisdom of the Father. He is a light to guide us in our knowledge and understanding. He is a Teacher to lead us in our actions and decisions. He is a Doctor of truth and goodness, curing our ignorance and healing our weakness.

Week 4 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Sirach 47:2-11; Psalm 18; Mark 6:14-29

There is a hollow ring to Herod's vow. He piles up oaths, vows and promises: he will not break his word to the daughter of Herodias. But it is a false integrity, at the service of wickedness. He seems decisive, but only when in his cups. In the bigger picture Herod is fearful, perplexed, and split. He seems to be powerful but in fact is lost.

John the Baptist by contrast seems to be powerless but in fact is secure. He is an outsider (his odd way of life in the wilderness) but he knows what justice requires. His integrity is at the service of goodness. He knows how essential it is that vows, oaths, and promises, should be reliable, not the kind of promise a drunken Herod now makes to Salomé but the kind of promise on which marriage is established.

Not that John the Baptist necessarily saw the bigger picture. He is sustained by his faith in God and his confidence that in defending justice he is serving God. His job is to do what he knows to be right and leave the final outcome to God. So it was also with Jeremiah, Stephen, Thomas More, and countless other persecuted believers and martyrs. They entrust themselves to God, do what they know to be right even at the cost of their lives, and leave the final outcome to God.

Week 4 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: 1Kings 2:1-4, 10-12; 1 Chronicles 29:10-12; Mark 6:7-13

A first meaning of Jesus' instruction seems obvious: take nothing for the journey because you are to move freely and quickly. There is an urgency in the work you must do. You need to be unhampered, uncluttered, in order to do it effectively.

Another meaning sees this simplicity, even poverty, as essential for the credibility of a teacher or preacher. The Cynics, philosophers of the ancient world, supported their words with a lifestyle of dramatic simplicity and austerity. In the time of Saint Dominic, the Cathars of southern France lived lives of similar poverty and asceticism. Dominic realised that if Catholic preachers were to have any hope, they would have to embrace similarly poor and penitential ways. The credibility of their message depended on it. And was it not, in any case, simply returning to the simplicity of the first apostolic missions?

There is a danger in this of course: 'my guru is more ascetic than your guru'. Monastic communities were not always free of this kind of rivalry, as if asceticism were some kind of end in itself. What's the poverty for? what's the simplicity about?

The only acceptable answer in a Christian context is that it is in order to come closer to Christ, to imitate him more completely in how we live and work. The apostles are being formed for their mission. Christ instructs them not just through his words but through his lifestyle. Like him, they are to preach repentance, cast out demons, and anoint people with oil in order to heal them.

We may think that these things can still be done from a position of wealth and power. But the teaching and practice of Jesus, and the experience of the Church, says the opposite. A moment's reflection confirms that our own most convincing teachers of the gospel impressed us by their simplicity, their sincerity, their non-attachment to wealth or power. Their freedom in the service of truth enabled them to teach, and reconcile, and heal, as they did.

Christian simplicity needs to be physical and material, not just an idea or a notion. On the other hand it is never an end in itself. It serves the preaching of the Word, prepares the way for the power of the Word to show itself, and follows inevitably on our repentance and our acceptance of the Word.

We know from the other gospels that this experience of simplicity and its effectiveness filled the apostles with joy.

Week 4 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Samuel 24:2, 9-17; Psalm 32; 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.

Presentation of the Lord -- 2 February

Readings: Malachi 3:1-4; Psalm 24; Hebrews 2:14-18; Luke 2:22-40

In celebrating the birth of the Word as a man, we are celebrating a new kind of knowledge, a new light, a new understanding of human life, that has come into the world with him. He is God's eternal wisdom. But this is not just an intellectual change, a new piece of information: it is a new praxis, a new possibility for living, for this new light is a new life and a new love.

In some ways it is an old commandment, the wisdom he brings, the original commandment, since the law given through Moses is already a revelation of this same wisdom. But in other ways this is a new commandment, because of Christ's birth, since now the true light is already shining.

It is not just that God gives us a new and more attractive example of good living. It is not just that God gives us a more compelling motive for good living. God has done a new deed, acted in a new way, and thereby given Himself to the world as never before, establishing in a moment of the world's history a new beginning and a new destination for humanity.

The presentation of Jesus in the Temple shows very clearly how this change comes about. Everything is done in accordance with the law of the Lord - this is stressed, more than once. But everything is done also by the prompting of the Spirit who rests on Simeon, reveals new things to Simeon, and prompts him to come to the Temple to meet God's new act, the salvation that will enlighten the pagans, and the glory of Israel - a glory long promised to Israel but whose realisation is in a way nobody could ever have anticipated.

So the Spirit manages the change from the old to the new, working in these good people, Elizabeth, Joseph, Anna, Simeon, and, above all, Mary. So the new commandment - that we can only be sure of understanding things truly if we love our brother - is planted in a soil well prepared by fidelity to the original commandment.

The Word made flesh is, as Thomas Aquinas puts it, 'the word that breathes love'. It is not just that love is the meaning of this word. Love is the power and the life of this word. Love is the reality of this word. He is a word that is only understood and only received where there is love, where people are living the same kind of life as Christ lived.

This new light, the Word of life, the Word breathing love, is destined to encounter opposition, difficulty, and rejection. All who follow him must be ready for a struggle. But where they have received him, and given the Word a home, they can walk without fear of stumbling. These are people who have come to know Christ and so live as he did. They live in the light. Their lives are established on the Word of life. They love their brothers and sisters. These are the people we call 'saints' and it is in them that we see perfectly clearly that knowing God and loving humanity are one and the same reality.

Week 3 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Samuel 12:1-7a,10-17: Ps 50; Mark 4:35-41

In Mark's account of the calming of the storm the disciples are afraid only after Jesus has stopped the storm and calmed the sea. What frightens them is not the storm: we can take it that as fishermen (some of them) they would have been familiar with storms on the lake. What frightens them is the divine power working through Jesus: in the Bible the One who commands the seas and sets limits to the waters and controls the winds is the Creator and Lord. This is why they are 'frightened with a great fear', filled with awe.

The forces of nature obey their Lord as the demons have obeyed him, as illnesses have obeyed him, as the Gadarene pigs will obey him (next Monday's gospel). All creatures are obedient. That is, they hear the voice of the Lord, they 'understand' it somehow, and they respond to it.

So what about the human creature? 'Have you no faith?', Jesus asks the disciples. Faith is the distinctively human response, the distinctively human obedience, to the Word of God. Having ears do you not hear? Having eyes do you not see? Having minds do you not understand? So what then about your faith, your free decision to assent to the truth of what you hear and see and understand?

Jesus is engaged in the work of establishing and sustaining faith in the disciples. We know from personal experience that there are moments when we must, once again, choose to believe. There are situations and events that present us very clearly and very directly with Jesus' question: 'have you no faith?' Even when we 'practice our faith' every day, we are still faced with these moments of decision and choice.

It is sometimes suggested that people are religious because religion offers comfort and consolation. Well it may, at times, but more often it seems to offer discomfort and perplexity. More often it brings us back to our freedom, or lack of it, and how we are exercising that freedom. Freedom is a great gift. Without freedom there would be no responsibility, no credit, no friendship, no love, no faith, no poetry; there would be no blame, no sin, no morality; artistic creativity would mean nothing.

When the prophet Nathan exposes his sin to him, King David, to give him credit, does not attempt to justify his actions. He does not seek refuge in excuses or mitigating circumstances, nor does he try to blame Bathsheba or anybody else. He simply says, 'I have sinned against the Lord'. There is something noble in this free admission of guilt. Just as we see human freedom in the confession of faith in God, so we see human freedom in the confession of sins. It is one reason why confession is good for the soul: we are acting nobly when we confess our sins.

On the other end of the spectrum is the freedom of Mary in the moment of the Annunciation, one of the central icons of the human participation in the work of salvation. 'Let it be done to me according to your word', Mary says, aligning her freedom with the will of the Heavenly Father. We celebrate her today, Saturday, and it is for this above all that we celebrate her. At the heart of her vocation, of her grace, is this free response to God's Word, this act of faith and love. In this she is a supreme model of the human being listening, understanding, and freely assenting.

'Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?'

You will find here another version of this homily.