Week 08 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Peter 1:10-16; Psalm 98; Mark 10:28-31

So what's the deal, Peter asks. His question reminds us of how difficult it is to change our minds, be converted, and open up to living according to grace. Peter's interest is the exchange rate, the currency, in which the relationship with Jesus is to be evaluated: 'what about us, we have left everything and followed you'. His question comes immediately after Jesus' comment about the impossibility of a rich person entering the kingdom and Peter, in spite of himself, shows that he is still 'rich', still keen to know 'the bottom line'.

Has he really left everything to follow Jesus if this question still troubles him? At first Jesus seems to respond in the terms set by Peter: those who have left everything will receive everything back, and receive it a hundredfold (an impressive rate of interest). So there's the deal: give it all up and you will get it all back, and get it back with its value enhanced. This invites us to think in terms of a spiritual economy. St John of the Cross, for example, develops an understanding of detachment from all things, embracing the nada, the nothing, of the cross, but then being given everything back: 'I have the mountains, the quiet wooded valleys, the perfect solitude'. Give it all up for Christ and you receive everything back with Christ.

Meister Eckhart talks in a similar way: the one who detaches himself from all things becomes all things so you own everything in a much more radical way if you decide not to own anything. You will love your family more if you become detached from them, Eckhart says in commenting on today's gospel reading (Book of Divine Comfort, Part II): they become a hundred times dearer to you than they are now. As well as that, everybody else becomes dearer to you than your family is by nature and so you find yourself with many fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters.

It might seem irreverent, presumptuous, to question the interpretations of such spiritual geniuses as John of the Cross and Eckhart. But the question remains as to whether there is something in the teaching of Jesus that resists being contained even by their spiritual logic.

One qualification Jesus adds is that this detachment is to be 'for my sake and for the sake of the gospel'. What needs to happen if we are to find ourselves capable of such motivation? Just because I think that is why I want to do it does not mean that it really is why I want to do it. When can a person honestly say 'this is the reason for my action, Jesus and the gospel'? If we still harbour Peter's question somewhere inside ourselves we are still not understanding the terms in which Jesus is speaking.

A second qualification Jesus adds is this: 'with persecutions'. This is part of the deal as well, then. If glory is on offer then it is not without suffering, a suffering that attends any birth. And if we are to be born into a new way of living how can we know what that will be before we are born into it? How 'do a deal' when we are still in the womb and do not know what life will be like outside the womb, what 'eternal life' might mean? The first reading today uses the term 'grace' and then explains it in terms of glory and hope, a glory that attends suffering and is accompanied by suffering, a hope that means looking beyond the desires of our ignorance, and how are we to do that?

The third and final qualification added by Jesus seems to subvert not just Peter's ordinary, understandable question but also the solutions of spiritually sophisticated teachers like John of the Cross and Eckhart. There are many who are first who will be last, and the last, first. This seems to blow all logic out of the water, destroy all attempts to develop an 'economy' of the relationship with Christ. The first will be last and the last first: does it not draw a line under all measuring and evaluating of how we are doing and catapult us into the puzzling world of grace and holiness, a world in which we are strangers (no matter how hard we try to reduce it to more manageable terms).

We are to be holy as God is holy, the first reading concludes. How is it possible to be in the presence of the holiness of God, to perceive it, to understand it, not to be completely confused and overwhelmed by it? We can only allow it to reveal itself to us, to reveal its ways to us, to give us the courage to follow and entrust ourselves to its laws and criteria. The first reading teaches us that the power or capacity to do this is 'the Spirit of Christ' or 'the Holy Spirit' working in us. It is what we are searching for, as angels and prophets have searched for it, but in finding it we lose ourselves and we come to live for others even to the point of forgetting ourselves. Is it wise to think in such terms? Is God's holiness foolish? Have we really given up anything to follow Christ?

Mary, Mother of the Church (Monday after Pentecost Sunday)

Readings: Genesis 3:9-15, 20 OR Acts 1:12-14; Psalm 87; John 19:25-34

There are few enough homilies that are really memorable. For each person I suppose there are a few that stay in the memory, perhaps more because of a personal significance they have for each person than for anything else about them. Sometimes, though, it is the originality of a homily that causes it to stick.

One such homily for me was given by Herbert McCabe OP, preaching on today's gospel reading, chosen for this new memory of Mary, Mother of the Church. We normally work with this text in its final form, as it is in our Bibles, in which Jesus sees his mother and the disciple he loved, and says something to each of them, things that seem like a neat pair of sayings going perfectly together - woman (Mary) behold your son (the beloved disciple), behold (beloved disciple) your mother (Mary). But Herbert proposed that the original form of this word from the cross was simply between Jesus and Mary: seeing his mother he said 'woman, behold your son'.

His comments about it are in a homily entitled 'The Wedding Feast at Cana' (God, Christ and Us, 2003, pp.79-82). He develops his thought about it from the fact that the words of Jesus to Mary and to the beloved disciples in John 19 has many echoes of the wedding feast of Cana in John 2. There are many links between the two texts, most notably Jesus addressing his mother as 'woman' and speaking of his 'hour'. In saying 'behold your son', referring to himself, he is showing her what she was really asking when, at Cana, she asked him to anticipate this hour.

It remains a very apt reading for today's memory, whether we go with the normal interpretation or the more eccentric McCabe one. Mary is Mother of the Church as mother of Jesus, for the Church is the Body of Christ. Mary is Mother of the Church in her care for and her being cared for by the disciple Jesus loved, for the disciples of Jesus, baptised into him, are members of that body which he had from her and so they are entitled to Mary's maternal care.

'Behold your son' Jesus says to Mary, showing her and all of us the kind of Messiah he was destined to be. Here is the hour in which the Father is glorified by him. Mary has a particular place in that story, in relation to Jesus and in relation to all who belong to Jesus. Mary is with the members of Christ's body in prayer and in charity but she is also with them in suffering as each one is asked to take up his or her cross and to follow the way of her Son. She has first place among the disciples in this also.

And it is what the McCabe interpretation seeks to underline. Mary is Mother of the Church, yes, but only because she is in the first place Mother of Jesus, mother of the Messiah, sharing his hour with particular force so that she could be maternal in her care for the beloved disciple, for all the apostles and disciples of the Lord, for all men and women who have been, or are, or will be, members of his Body.

It is because of her relationship with Jesus that Mary is Mother of the Church and, each day, our life, our sweetness, and our hope.

PENTECOST

Readings: Acts 2:1-11; Psalm 104; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-7,12-13 / Romans 8:8-17; John 20:19-23 / John 14:15-16,23b-26

The Spirit is about speech as we see from today's first reading. The disciples receive the gift of speech, each person present hears them speaking in his own language, telling the mighty works of God. In the Old Testament the Spirit came, or even fell, on the prophets giving them speech, making them to say things in the name of the Lord. In the Creed it is one of the first things we say about the Holy Spirit: 'he has spoken through the prophets'. Jesus teaches us that we are not to worry about what we are to say if we are dragged before tribunals for our faith because the Spirit will give us words and tells us what it is we ought to say.

The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of words but is also the Spirit of the Word, the Spirit of Jesus. Jesus is the Spirit-filled or anointed one, the Messiah, 'the breath of our life' (Lamentations 4:20). Jesus is the Word that breathes Love, words needing breath if they are to live and breath needing words if it is to have form and meaning.

The Spirit is also about depth. The Spirit is radical. Paul tells us that the spirit searches the depths of everything, the spirit of a human being searching the depths of that human being, the Spirit of God searching the depths of God. In Psalm 18 we read that 'the foundations of the world were laid bare at the blast of the breath of your nostrils'. We would like - or would we? - for the Spirit to lay bare for us the foundations of our world, the depths of ourselves. In fact it is the ministry entrusted to the apostles by Jesus when he breathed the Spirit on them and said 'whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain are retained'. What is more intimate, or deeper, in a person than his or her sins? But the Spirit reaches there, to bring to light and to heal.

It is from within, Jesus says, from the heart and soul of a person, that words originate. They are conceived in our desires, born as motivations and plans, come to birth in our intentions and our actions. This is the spirit of a human being, his intellectual and free nature, the originating place within where there are thoughts for which we have not yet found the words, words that have not yet been expressed in actions or omissions. And what lies deeper than thoughts? When we do not know how to pray as we ought - do not have access to our thoughts and desires - then the Spirit himself prays in us and for us, with sighs too deep for words.

We are given the Spirit to drink. Plunged into the depths of the baptismal font, we are immersed in the Spirit. We absorb Him into ourselves, drinking Him in, but we are also absorbed by the Spirit, enfolded in the fire of His love which has been poured into our hearts.

The Spirit is about speech, and is about depth. And the Spirit also builds a new community. Communities are established through language. It is because we are linguistic animals that we are political animals, Aristotle says. Thomas Aquinas summarises it: 'communicatio facit civitatem', communication builds the city. There is unity and reconciliation where people can find a formula on which they agree, find a form of words to sign together, an agreed statement, a treaty, words to which all can be committed. The Spirit works in human beings to articulate laws to structure a society, to protect justice and the rights of each one who is part of it. The disunity of Babel, the anarchy and chaos that ensue from the multiplication of languages, is undone by the unity of Pentecost. The gift of speech sounds the depths of human need and articulates the heights of human destiny. The gift of speech binds into one the diverse peoples of the earth.

At Pentecost we celebrate the birth of a new community that is centred on the Word that breathes Love, that lives by the new law which is the Holy Spirit dwelling in human hearts, and that is apostolic and missionary, sent to evangelize as Jesus was sent by the Father to show the world the extent to which it is loved by God.

Easter Week 7 Saturday

Readings: Acts 28:16-20, 30-31; Psalm 11; John 21:20-25

The world continues to fill with books about Jesus. As I write this, for example, there are thousands of people around the world reading or even writing new books about Jesus. All aspects of the mystery of Christ are studied, prayed over, and written about: the doctrine He taught as well as the doctrines about Him which the Church later formulated; His spiritual and moral teaching; the parables, miracles and sayings; His passion, death, resurrection, glorification and sending of the Spirit; His grace in the life of Mary and in the thousands of saints whose lives we can read; the writings of preachers, teachers, bishops, monks, nuns, mystics, pilgrims, historians, artists, poets, musicians; the living books which are the individual lives of millions of believers in every century since then, each one a 'fifth gospel'.

The world cannot contain the Word even though it is but one, simple, Word, the Word eternally uttered by the Father, the Word that heals human souls and re-creates them, the Word that breathes Love.

Likewise as I write, there are thousands of people around the world preaching and teaching as we see Paul doing at the end of Acts. Like him, their subject is Christ the Lord, the Kingdom of God which is established in Christ, the fulfillment of the hope of Israel. This writing, reading, preaching and teaching will continue as long as human history lasts.

Long before he arrived in Rome and was able to speak with the Jewish leaders there face to face, Paul had written to the Christians of Rome and concluded his meditation on Christ and the hope of Israel by saying, 'O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways' (Romans 11:33). The gift of the Spirit, however, reveals the depths of God to us so that Paul can elsewhere pray 'that you may have the power to comprehend with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fulness of God' (Ephesians 3:18-19).

St John of the Cross writes that 'there are depths to be fathomed in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many recesses containing treasures, and no matter how people try to fathom them the end is never reached. Rather, in each recess, people keep on finding here and there new veins of new riches'.

So the year continues to run on, and year succeeds to year, and even the course of a long life is not enough to explore fully the riches of Christ. It is not enough even for reading all the books already written about Him. But we continue to mine those depths, to savour one rich seam after another - in deepening love, in growing wonder, in endless, nay, eternal, joy.

Easter Week 7 Friday

Readings: Acts 25:13b-21; Psalm 103; John 21:15-19

The white wine produced in the Italian town of Montefiascone has the unusual name of Est! Est!! Est!!!. The story is that a German bishop on his way to Rome, a connoisseur of wine, sent an assistant ahead of him to track down good wines for his lordship. Where he found a good wine he was to write Est! to mark the place, and where he found a very good one Est! Est!!. (The Latin word means 'it is'.) Arriving at Montefiascone sometime in the year 1111 the bishop saw the words Est! Est!! Est!!! written in praise of the local wine. At least this is the story and the local wine bears this name ever since.

It is a theme in the Bible that something confirmed by three witnesses, something to which there is a triple testimony, is beyond doubt. We read in Deuteronomy that a charge can be sustained only on the evidence of two or three witnesses (19:15), a text quoted in Matthew 18:16 as a principle to guide relations within the Church as well. Where something is said three times it means we have not heard incorrectly, there is no ambiguity about what we are hearing, it is definitely the case.

In today's gospel reading Jesus gives Peter the opportunity to confirm his love for him by a threefold testimony. 'Do you love me?' Jesus asks him three times. 'You know that I love you', Peter answers three times. Obviously it gives Peter the opportunity to undo his threefold denial of Jesus. I do love you, it is true, I definitely love you, Peter is given the space to say. Three times Peter was given a vision in support of his preaching to the Gentiles (Acts 10-11), three times Samuel is called until Eli is no longer in doubt, three times Paul prays to God about the thorn in his side (2 Corinthians 12). These are only some examples of the place of threefold testimony in the scriptures.

But the love we preach is not our love for God, it is God's love for us, and it is fair to ask whether there is a threefold testimony also to this love. The First Letter of John tells us that there is: the water, the blood, and the Spirit, three witnesses, and these three agree (5:8). The water is baptism, and therefore faith, the blood is the Eucharist and love, the Spirit is the love of God poured into our hearts. Here is a threefold confirmation of God's love for us. We have not mis-heard. There is no ambiguity. It is clear and certain. All three testify to Jesus' love on the cross: he gave up his spirit, and water and blood flowed from his pierced side (John 19:28-37).

Or we can appeal to the most profound threefold testimony of all, the Father who speaks to us in creation, the Son who is with us with his wisdom and his saving power, the Spirit whose coming we await in these days and who transforms and renews us in the love of God. Thinking of this Trinitarian confirmation of the truth God has revealed about himself we can say in a much more profound and serious sense, Est! Est!! Est!!!

Easter Week 7 Thursday

Readings: Acts 22:30; 23:6-11; Psalm 16; John 17:20-26

'Divide and conquer' is Paul's strategy facing the chief priests and the Sanhedrin. He knew better than most the make up of that body, on one side the Sadducees of the priestly families with their liberal, reductive, style of theology, and on the other the Pharisees, more zealous and religious, believing not only in angels and spirits but also in 'the resurrection of the dead'. Whether the Pharisees understood this as yet another kind of 'spiritual' reality is not clear. Perhaps they did, while Paul had come to believe in the resurrection in quite a different sense.

But that did not matter for the moment. Strategically, the most important thing is that Paul set them at each other's throats. From the perspective of the Divine Strategy of Acts the most important thing is that Paul, having borne witness to the Lord in Jerusalem, is told (by the Lord, in a vision) that he must now also bear witness in Rome.

It is fitting that Paul of Tarsus, citizen of the Roman Empire, one of the most significant figures of the ancient world, should end his career in the capital city of that world. In him will be fulfilled the prophecy of Jesus at the beginning of Acts, that the apostles would bear witness to Jesus in Jerusalem, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). Paul thought of going to Spain (another kind of 'end of the world') but the Spirit of Jesus led instead to Rome.

Today's gospel passage brings Jesus' 'high priestly' prayer to an end. It is, fittingly, a doxology, celebrating the glory which the Son has with the Father before the foundation of the world. A mysterious unity in mutual knowing and loving (what we usually call simply 'the Holy Spirit') is shared with human beings through the life and teaching, death and glorification of Jesus. It is an intimacy in knowing and loving, a union of life and love, for which our most fulfilling experiences of love are invaluable but still very poor analogies.

It is clear in what the glory does not and does consist - not a shining light and rolling thunder, not a blazing storm or a shattering earthquake, but something like a still, small voice, or a lamb led to the slaughter. Unity, loving, mutual knowing. What are such things in a noisy world of conflict, struggle, argument? Paul has no hope of getting round to teaching his accusers something about this rich mystery which is the Father in Jesus, Jesus in us, and so the Father in us. There is the gospel and the rich promise of eternal life which it carries, a shared life even now in the Blessed Trinity. But there are always also the hearers and receivers of the message. Something has to happen in them too if they are to believe what they hear, something like a conversion, a new heart, a veritable resurrection of the spiritually dead.

Easter Week 7 Wednesday

Readings: Acts 20:28-38; Psalm 68; John 17:11b-19

There are striking similarities between the two texts read at Mass today. They are both farewell speeches that have turned into prayers. Paul takes leave of the presbyters (elders, later 'priests') of the Church of Ephesus. He speaks of grace and the gift of the Spirit who has appointed them overseers (episkopoi, later 'bishops') of the flock.

Jesus continues to pray in John 17 for the apostles and for those who believe in him through their preaching.

In both cases there is sadness at parting and in both cases also a certain reserve, even more, a warning, about 'the world'. Experience informs both texts that the Lord Jesus and those who follow His way are vulnerable to various kinds of attack. Paul warns his listeners about 'savage wolves' who will not spare the flock. He is referring to people from within the community who will pervert the truth and seek to lead them astray.

Jesus speaks in similar terms: the world has hated his disciples, he says, because they are the bearers of the Father's word, like him witnesses to the truth, and they do not belong to the world. He prays not that the Father will take them out of the world, but that he will protect them from the evil one. The evil one is also the 'father of lies'. The contrast is between a community living by the truth and a society built on lies.

'It is more blessed to give than to receive' is a saying Paul attributes to Jesus. He commends the leaders of the Church of Ephesis to God and to the word of his grace (a phrase that recalls the reactions of the crowd to Jesus' preaching at the synagogue in Nazareth, all wondering at his 'gracious words').

And both texts end with a reference to consecration, being made holy in the service of God in the world. We tend to react to any kind of exclusivity these days but there it is. 'Consecrate them in the truth', Jesus prays, make them holy in the truth as I made myself holy - set myself apart, dedicated myself - in the truth.

The contrast is underlined, between a life in truth which means justice, honour and love, and a life flawed or even corrupted by lies which means confusion, dishonour and ultimately hatred. The promised Spirit is the Spirit of Truth. The prince of this world is judged. Jesus has overcome the world. It does not mean the disciples are spared. In fact it means that they will excite and attract the anger and hatred of those who prefer the darkness to the light. Jesus in his agony, and Paul in his weeping at Miletus, were seeing the ways in which the ones they loved would be asked to suffer.