Week 11 Thursday

Readings: Sirach 48:1-14; Psalm 97; Matthew 6:7-15

ORDERING OUR DESIRES

A REFLECTION ON THE OUR FATHER

What if we were to pray as follows:

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Deliver us from evil

Lead us not into temptation

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us

And give us this day our daily bread.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Thy kingdom come,

And hallowed be thy name.

It is of course the Lord’s Prayer recited upside down. Although we continue to recite the prayer in the order in which Jesus taught it, perhaps if we are to be honest the real ordering of our desires and so the order in which we actually pray to God is as I have just presented it: the Lord’s Prayer but upside down.

The thought came to me over the weekend when I was looking through some things written by Vincent McNabb about prayer. He speaks about the centrality of the Lord’s Prayer, its frequent use in the Divine Office, and the fact that it encapsulates not only every request that we might want to make to God but also the order in which those requests should be made. St Thomas, in a lovely phrase that I’m sure I’ve quoted for you before, says that prayer is desiderii interpres, the interpreter of desire. The human heart desires and prayer, oratio, is the articulation of its desires. The words of prayer on our lips give form to the desires in our hearts, Thomas says.

What McNabb adds to this is that in reciting the Lord’s Prayer we learn not only what we ought to pray for but also the order in which we ought to pray for it. So it is not just an interpreter of our desire but also a teacher of our desire, a school in which we learn the right ordering of human desires. If it is, as we call it, the Lord’s Prayer, then perhaps it is only Our Lord who can sincerely say it in the order in which nevertheless we continue to say it. Jesus is the one whose heart is, without qualification and without reserve, placed at the disposal of the Father’s will. He is the one whose life is simply and completely about giving glory to God’s name. He is the one whose life is simply identified with the coming of God’s kingdom.

If we look at our own poor efforts at prayer we will very quickly see, I think, that we do say the Lord’s Prayer but more or less upside down. All the desires are there but their order still requires attention and it is why we must pray constantly as St Paul tells us. Let us have a look and see if what I’m saying is not true.

Deliver us from evil. This will be our first petition in the upside down Lord’s Prayer. It is true, is it not, that we turn to prayer and often return to prayer when we hit trouble. The presence of evil is the strongest incentive in getting people to pray. Famous cartoons show lines of City bankers queuing up to pray where there is talk of war or a stock market crash. There were no atheists in the trenches, people said at the time of the First World War, and it is difficult to imagine somebody who would not pray in some way in an aeroplane whose engines have begun to sound peculiar. When our backs are to the wall, whether through illness, failure, sin, loneliness, or some other evil that has come upon us, we will pray.

Lead us not into temptation. We may like a challenge but there will always be limits to what we can bear. The evil now is not on top of us but something threatening but, in such circumstances, we will want God’s help. For the time ahead, for the homily to be given, for the class we have to give, for the meeting that is coming up. There may be moral or physical dangers in some of the things we are called to do and it is natural to ask God’s help with them. There is nothing wrong with that. It is a legitimate desire that we might do things well with God’s help and not be put, too much, to the test.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Was it one of the Monty Python films that has God appearing and lamenting the fact that people are always moaning to him about their sins? ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m fed up with people telling me they’re sorry. Why can’t someone say they’re not sorry?’ It may not be exactly in those words, and it is a bit irreverent, but it might help us to see something. Another desire that sends us to our knees is the desire for forgiveness when we have sinned but it may be that we are often thinking more about ourselves than we are about God even in asking for forgiveness. And it may be that we forget that this petition, like the great commandment, is in two parts. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Just as our relationship of love with God cannot be understood without reference to our love of neighbour (and of enemies) likewise our participation in the forgiveness of God cannot be separated from our willingness to forgive others – at least to be aware of our need to be reconciled with our brother first before presenting our gift at the altar.

And give us this day our daily bread. There is nothing wrong with this one either. Ask and you shall receive, seek and you shall find, knock and the door will be opened to you. There is a venerable tradition from Tugwell and McCabe back through Victor White and Vincent McNabb that not only does not despise the prayer of petition but actually gives it an honoured place. We are to develop the kind of relationship with God in which we will feel comfortable, as a child with its parents, telling God what we need and asking him to grant it to us. We pray for the needs of the world and of the Church, for the protection of travellers, the comfort of mourners, food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, peace for the oppressed, the healing of the sick, the comfort of the dying, to pass an exam, to see a person again. These are all legitimate desires and appropriately brought to God in prayer.

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now this marks a change in our desire for it is the first one in which we begin to think of what God might want. The four petitions we have made up to now are all about ourselves and about our needs. The interest in God that we show in them is a genuine interest in God but it does not go beyond an interest in what God can do for us: delivering us from evil, protecting us from temptation, forgiving us our sins, giving us what we need. Here, for the first time in this upside down Lord’s Prayer, we show a real interest in the desire of the other party to this relationship of prayer. Perhaps God wants something. Perhaps God has a will about things, on earth as in heaven. Well we believe He does, don’t we, and so it ought to be part of our desire not only to want the things we want God to give us, but also to want the things that God wants to give us.

Tby kingdom come strengthens this desire. Something new is opening up, for we are no longer simply saying, ‘Hey God, isn’t this cool? I’ve found a place for you in my world. I see reasons (when many do not) for including you in my way of living’. Now we are beginning to realise that it is not so much a question of us finding a place for God in our world as of God having found a place for us in His kingdom. This looks like a relationship that is becoming mature and growing into something stronger than before, where the desire of the one who is praying is becoming aligned with the desire of the one to whom he is praying. I am beginning to want what God wants. But we are not to think that this transition can be made easily. The place where it is most dramatically presented is in Gethsemane where Jesus utters his own prayer upside down: ‘Father, remove this cup from me (deliver me from evil, lead me not into temptation), yet not what I will but what thou wilt (thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, thy kingdom come)’.

And hallowed be thy name. In our upside down Lord’s Prayer this is the final petition. This is the climax of our desire, not something for ourselves but something for the Other who through prayer we come to know and love. May His name be held holy. The high priestly prayer of Jesus in John 17 may be taken as a commentary on this petition. ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify thy Son that the Son may glorify thee. I glorified thee on earth, having accomplished the work which thou gavest me to do. I have manifested thy name to the men whom thou gavest me out of the world’ – and so on. A few chapters earlier, in what seems like John’s transfiguration scene, Jesus uses a phrase very close to what Matthew and Luke give us in the Our Father: ‘Jesus said, ‘Father, glorify thy name’. Then a voice came from heaven, ‘I have glorified it and I will glorify it again’‘ (John 12).

What if that were to become the fundamental desire of our lives, the desire that controls all the others, that in everything and no matter what God’s name be glorified? Perhaps the whole point of our perseverance in prayer is that we might, some day, be able to say the Lord’s Prayer right way up, our desire for the glory of God’s name having become in fact our fundamental desire. In the meantime it is a salutary exercise, more rewarding than any yoga position, to say the Lord’s Prayer upside down and I recommend that you all have a go at it. There is much to be learned about our desires and what we can honestly say we want from God. Jesus, the only Son from the Father, can say this prayer right way up and so he taught it to his disciples. But this reflection may help us to realise that the disciples were asking for more than a formula of words when, having seen him at it, they asked Jesus to teach them how to pray.

Week 11 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Kings 2.1, 6-14; Psalm 30/31; Matthew 6.1-6, 16-18

There is a reward either way for fasting, praying and almsgiving. If our motivation is to be seen and admired by others then we will already have had our reward in their attention and their interest in us. If we do these things for their own sake, in secret, without fanfare, and without drawing attention to ourselves, then the Heavenly Father who sees in secret will reward us. This is the teaching of Jesus in today's gospel reading which is also the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday.

What will be the nature of our reward? It is impossible to predict except that it will be what is for our greatest good and happiness. That means it will bind us more closely to the Heavenly Father who dwells in silence and invisibility.

When we have said all we have to say in prayer, when we have prepared ourselves through fasting, and when we have given alms to the needy, then we encounter without ourselves a silent and empty place where words, images and concepts no longer function for us. We encounter within ourselves the dark cloud in which God is said to dwell. 

That presents us with the challenge of living from the interior to the exterior rather than the other way around. It is all too easy to give in to the temptation to fill that invisible and silent place with images and sounds. The contemporary world swamps us with images and sounds chosen especially for us by the systems that are tracking us all the time. It is a kind of lethargy which leads us to give in to the exterior stimulation once again, to turn away from the austerity of our interior self.

So what about switching off the computer, iPad and smartphone? What about fasting from them for a while? Irt would move us to an arid, desert place where we would be obliged to encounter our own thoughts, feelings and desires directly. 

To persevere in that secret place, our own interiority, is not easy, but the Heavenly Father is there, waiting for us. It is essential for our salvation that we do manage to stay in that place. It means staying with ourselves, facing up to ourselves, without dressing ourselves up in disguises and camouflage, in some kind of false persona.

All the works of penance lead to that point - fasting, praying, and sharing what we have with others. In those activities, or our avoidance of them, we see the truth about ourselves, a truth that will set us free no matter how unpalatable it is, even if it is at times a bitter truth. But it will become sweet because any truth is a divine spark revealing the presence of God who is Truth.

Week 11 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 21:17-29; Psalm 51; Matthew 5:43-48

It happens from time to time that the two readings assigned for Mass give us contrasting and even contradictory understandings of God.

In the first reading today, God is presented as if he is simply 'the biggest thing around'. He seems to be locked into the same mechanisms of fear and threat, revenge and violence, that govern the behaviour of the smaller things around, animals and human beings. It is like a slap in the face at the end, hearing that God will dispense Ahab from the retribution coming to him because he has done penance and instead will bring disaster on his children. What kind of monster is that? What kind of bully?

The gospel reading, from the Sermon on the Mount, tells a completely different story. Here God is free. He is beyond the iron reign in which human beings are usually caught. 'Love your enemies', says Jesus, 'be like your heavenly Father, perfect, letting the sun shine on good and bad alike, giving rain to honest and dishonest alike.' He is not trapped. He is not caught. He is not subject to the dynamics of fear and revenge, but supremely free, always gracious, never anything except loving.

Has something happened in the meantime, in the centuries that separate these two readings? It can seem as if God has been learning through his experience of dealing with human beings. Irenaeus of Lyons speaks in that way. Through dealing with human beings God learns that he is not one of them and that he is not caught, as they are, in the iron reign, the cycles of revenge and violence that seem to be the best human beings can manage when it comes to trying to establish justice. We hear the divine voice speaking through the prophets, expressing this realisation: 'I am God and not man. My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways.'

Jesus reveals that there is a freedom, a grace, a love, in the Father - that this is what the Father is - and it opens up new possibilities also for relationships between human beings.

We can err in many directions in thinking about God and here are two extremes we need to avoid. One is to speak about God as if he is simply the biggest bully around, more knowing and more powerful than anybody else, determined to protect his rights against all comers. And if he does not take it out on the person who has offended him he will take it out on someone else, that person's children for example. It becomes incredible, a God one cannot believe in, a monster. But the other extreme is to turn God into something so soppy that he becomes incredible for other reasons, another God one cannot believe in, a God who seems indifferent to suffering and injustice.

We need to return always to the sending of the Son and to the way in which God has actually engaged with our world. What has God needed to do to struggle with sin and its consequences? We believe that he has pitched his tent inside the iron reign created by sin. From there, through the sacrifice of the Son, he has opened up the space of freedom, grace and love. The perfection to which Jesus calls us is not any kind of human perfection but a perfection that is of God who is love. Love in this sinful world is crucified because love is always true and just. This is what we learn from the Divine Teacher. It is how the Divine Teacher has saved us.

Week 11 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 21:1-16; Psalm 5; Matthew 5:38-42

The 'second mile' is clearly recognised in Christian theology: Jesus is the one to speak of it, in today's passage from the Sermon on the Mount. Biblical critics might be quick to explain away these outrageous demands as hyperbolic language, the graphic speech of one who was, after all, a poet. They are not strictly 'laws' that Christians must obey - so the critic will continue. They are attempts to communicate the spirit of Jesus' own approach to people - a prodigal generosity, whose virtue lies in its freedom, precisely in the fact that it is not prescribed but is done out of love.

We do not depend on this one scripture text however to ground a 'theology of the second mile'. This is part not just of our Christian knowledge, of the tradition of what Jesus said, but is also part of our talk about God Himself, part of our theology in the deepest and simplest meaning of the word: discourse about God. Our God is a God who is always ready to walk a second mile with us.

The God we have come to know in Jesus Christ is, in one sense, an irrational lover. Anselm (in Cur Deus Homo II.13) speaks of the 'supreme wisdom' of the Incarnation, not just a reckless love. He is the God of the Old Testament, of course, Creator and Redeemer of Israel. He drove Adam and Eve out of Eden but himself made clothes for them before they left (Genesis 3:21). He punished Cain for his crime against his brother but marked him to protect him from being murdered in his turn (Genesis 4:15). The earth became so corrupt that God decided to annihilate it. Yet again he cannot finally desert man, for he calls Noah and saves him. He tells Noah what to do to escape the flood and when the time comes it is God himself who closes the door of the ark behind Noah and his family (Genesis 7:16).

When sin increased on the earth again God scattered the peoples of the world and separated them from each other. For the first time people spoke different languages. It is a way of explaining the emergence of different cultures, different mentalities, different traditions. It is a way of explaining the beginning of large scale mistrust, ignorance, fear, rivalry, violence. Yet it was precisely at this moment of deepest gloom, when the melting-pot of all the races of humankind emerged, that the Lord said to Abram, 'leave your country, your family and your father's house for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you, and make your name great ... and by you all the families of the earth shall bless themselves' (Genesis 12:1-3).

This is the God of Israel. This is what He is like. He set in motion a great plan to win again the love of human beings. He called His special people out of slavery into a land of their own. He nurtured their life, protected them and made sure that they were safe to worship Him. Yet they sinned and turned from Him. They turned to gods with whom they could live in greater comfort. These were gods who would keep their covenants.

Their own God, Yahweh, did not keep His covenant. His love for His people prevented Him from implementing the curses which the covenant obliged Him to carry out in the event of their infidelity. He never did, although He was sorely tried. And when it seemed that His rejection of His people was total, and final, and they mournfully chanted by the waters of Babylon, He gave in again and made this exile the occasion for a new exodus, a new covenant, a fresh beginning for this promiscuous bride (Hosea, Ezekiel).

The story went on as before. The story goes on as before. God came again to a new beginning, a covenant which would this time be final because sealed in the blood of His Only Son - and what else is left? This was the fulness of God's time. It did not matter that men were still sinners - precisely in this was the love of God clearest, that it was while we were sinners that God sent His Only Son to be the sacrifice that takes our sins away. This was the 'second mile', the bit He did not really have to do - in fact there was none of it that God 'had to do', right back to the first stirrings of human life under the breath of God's mothering Spirit. John the Theologian draws the conclusion from God's 'second mile' - if God so loves us, we also ought to be loving one another in this way.

Week 11 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Exodus 19.2-6a; Psalm 99/100; Romans 5.6-11; Matthew 9.36-10.8

The call of God is always particular and always universal. The call of Abraham is particular, the call of one man, but so that he would be a blessing for all the nations. Likewise the election of Israel is particular - they are to be God's special possession, a kingdom of priests and a holy nation - but once again in order that all the nations would, in due time, come to Mount Zion, would come to worship God in Jerusalem.

If we continue to think of ourselves as his people, the sheep of God's flock, this is never simply something for ourselves alone. Whenever the elect begin to think and act in that way they lose their place in the plan of God and oblige him to visit them again to set things right. The particular call of some is always so that God's name will be exalted among all the nations. Some are called first but so that through them all will hear the summons to attend to the Lord, God of all. God first revealed himself to Israel and entered into a special relationship with her but in the course of that relationship with his chosen people he revealed himself as more than just 'their God': he is rather the Creator of all things and the Lord of all history.

We see this order of things unfolding once again in the public ministry of Jesus. In today's gospel reading, coming immediately after the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus sees that the people are still lost and distracted, like sheep without a shepherd. His compassion moves him to take action, the 'tender love of the heart of our God' which has always been the engine driving the covenant history with Israel. And so in the first place Jesus sets about reconstituting the chosen people of God, choosing twelve apostles (representing the twelve tribes of ancient Israel) who are to expand his mission of preaching, healing and exorcism.

But it remains particular: this first evangelisation is for 'the lost sheep of the house of Israel' and for them alone. At least for the moment. Later the full universal scope of the mission of this new Israel will be revealed. This will be after his resurrection when he will send the same apostles, now fully formed and transformed by the events of his suffering, death and resurrection, to preach and to baptise all the nations.

So for ourselves, in our personal lives of faith, in the life of parishes and communities, and in the life of the Church. There is an order to be observed. First comes a strengthening of our own relationship with God so that we appreciate once again the gifts we have received. Then comes the inevitable missionary moment of reaching out, in faith and charity, to anybody and everybody, in order to bring the great good news of God's compassion to the whole of humanity. In doing this, by our witness, our words and our actions, we are being compassionate as our heavenly Father is compassionate.

The Immaculate Heart of Mary

Readings: Isaiah 61.9-11; 1 Sam 2.1, 4-8; Luke 2:41-51

The day after the feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the Church's liturgy honours the Immaculate Heart of Mary. There are two explicit references to Mary's heart in the Gospel of Luke. They speak of her keeping in her heart the things she was experiencing at the time of Jesus' birth along with the things that were being said about him (Luke 2:19; 2:51). She pondered these things, not surprisingly, for they were strange and wonderful things, what the shepherds had to relate about the vision of angels they had received, and what Jesus himself said to her and to Joseph when they found him teaching in the Temple at Jerusalem.

In the Bible the heart refers to the centre of the person, the deepest core of a person's being, from which originate all good and evil things a person does. It is the place of moral responsibility, of energy and life, the place where intentions are formed and commitments are decided. Hearts can be hard or soft, they can be open or closed, hearts can lose hope so that people need to be encouraged anew, to take fresh heart. The great commandment is to love, with your whole heart, God and our neighbour as ourselves. The seed that falls on good soil refers to those who, hearing the word, hold it fast in an honest and upright heart. Where a person's treasure is, there also is their heart.

All of this can be applied to Mary as we ponder in our hearts what we hear and read about her. She is contemplative, meditating on all that is happening. She is good soil, holding fast the word of God and bearing the fruit of that word. She is one who loves God deeply and tenderly, without compromise, with all her energy, life and commitment. 'I am the handmaid of the Lord', she said to the angel Gabriel, 'let what you have said be done to me'.

What is caught by adding the adjective 'immaculate'? Literally it means without sin, without spot or stain. We can gloss it to mean without deviation or distraction, without qualification or condition. Her heart is given, and it is given completely. Her heart is open and pliable, ready to be used for the work of her Son. We can imagine her saying 'did you not know that I must be busy with my son's affairs? So do whatever he tells you'.

Her son's affairs are the salvation of the world, the healing of the sick, the reconciliation of sinners. So she is fully given also to that work, the work of the Father. It is not unusual to meet a mother who is totally dedicated to the affairs of her son or daughter. There is something fierce and uncompromising in the natural love of a mother. Mary is at least as passionately devoted to her Son's mission, and is devoted in that way not just by nature but by grace. Her devotion is fittingly described as immaculate - pure, unconditional, absolute.

We can turn to her with confidence therefore for we are among those affairs with which Jesus is busy and so we already have a place in her heart. Let us do it using the oldest known prayer to  Mary, from the 3rd century, which already recognises her love, her heart, as immaculate -

Beneath your compassion we take refuge, Holy Mother of God. Do not despise our petitions in time of trouble but rescue us from dangers, only pure, only blessed one.

The Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Year A)

Readings: Deuteronomy 7:6-11; Psalm 103; 1 John 4:7-16; Matthew 11:25-30

It was confirmed some years after her death (rip) that my mother was a Jesuit agent. Every month a small package was delivered to her house, containing 10-12 copies of a little red book which she delivered to friends and neighbours whose subscriptions to it she also collected each year. The little red book was not the thoughts of Chairman Mao but the Sacred Heart Messenger, a monthly periodical produced by the Irish Jesuits. It contained articles of religious interest, current affairs, devotional material and letters from readers telling of graces they had received through their devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Although that devotion in its modern form dates from just a few centuries ago, the biblical and theological foundations for devotion to the human heart of Jesus go back to the beginning of Christianity, and even beyond, into the Old Testament, in a kind of prophetic anticipation.

Today's first reading, for example, speaks of the heart of God, how it is set on the people he chose as his own. Already the notes of tenderness and mercy are there. Israel is first chosen precisely because it is a nation that evokes compassion and pity. The Lord's kindness is everlasting, says the psalm, in fact that kindness is abounding, so that God deals with people graciously and courteously.

Inevitably there is a reading also from the Johannine writings of the New Testament, where much attention is given to the theme of love. 'Love is of God', today's reading begins and it ends with the simple declaration, 'God is love'. The origin of all love is in God, in the love that God is and in how that love has been manifested in the human heart of Jesus Christ.

The gospel reading is also well known, a passage from the Gospel of Matthew which speaks of the intimacy there is between the Father and the Son, an intimacy into which we are invited. The condition of entry? To be meek and humble of heart as Jesus is.

Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, on the cross opened in love to the world, means devotion to the divine humanity of our Saviour. Does it refer to Jesus in his humanity primarily or in his divinity? A famous banner on view in Dublin streets during the Eucharistic Congress of 1932 read 'God bless the Sacred Heart!' It seems to opt for the humanity of Jesus as the place of that heart, his human love and tenderness. But of course it must refer also to the 'heart of God' which is revealed in Jesus, through his human love.

My mother, along with many of her generation, had great devotion to the Sacred Heart. The family home was consecrated early on to the Sacred Heart, long before many other things could be done to the house. It is a way of staying close to God in tenderness, entrusting everything to his heart's care.

Catherine of Siena speaks of God seeing us first in his own heart, falling in love with us there, and deciding we were too good not to be real! So God created us and created us to share one day his own life of love. It hardly needs saying that Catherine was not a Jesuit but she cheers on the sons and daughters of Saint Ignatius as they promote this devotion. So too Catherine and all the other saints of the tender love of the divine humanity, watch over all agents and messengers who distribute the little red book that continues to celebrate the graces flowing from the pierced heart of Jesus.