Tuesday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 49:1-6; Ps 70; John 13:21-33, 36-38

There is a twofold drama, things happening with meaning at two levels. On one level, the 'human' one, we see how the events of Holy Week affect different characters in the drama and how their own actions cause those events to happen. On another level things are happening 'as it is written', or 'as the scriptures foretold'. What is enacted in these events is not just the political climax of the career of Jesus of Nazareth. Through the messy, unjust, and cruel execution of a good man, things hidden from the foundation of the world are revealed, the mystery of an eternal love that binds the Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit.

Today, at the human level, we are presented with a contrast between Peter and Judas. Why does one find his way back to repentance and forgiveness and the other, it seems, does not? The difference is that Peter, even in his sinful betrayal and rejection, continues to look to Christ, remembers Christ, whereas Judas cannot now believe in the possibility of forgiveness.

At this level today's readings may be taken as an encouragement to pray that in our sin we will be like Peter rather than Judas, that we will believe always in the possibility of forgiveness, and that we will not fall into despair or give up hope.

What about the other level, on which the eternal and divine mystery is revealed? How can it be that God's will is achieved in spite of human sinfulness? We have to think of God as an artist or composer in whose work for us our shadows and betrayals are somehow integrated. Fulton Sheen spoke about the bum note sounded by an instrument in the orchestra that can never be unplayed. The only solution is for the composer to take this note and make it the first note in a new movement.

Julian of Norwich wrote that sin is 'behovely', a word that means fitting, appropriate, even convenient. Against the darkness which we create, and even within the darkness we create, the light shines more gloriously. For Julian, sin's fittingness comes from the mercy it calls forth - it allows us to see how deep is God's mercy.

Not that sin is no big deal. Are we to sin that grace might abound, Paul asks. Don't be ridiculous, he says (or words to that effect). Are we to sin so that God can show more mercy, Julian asks. Not at all, she says, to ask that question shows that you have not yet understood what sin is.

Or rather it shows that we have not yet understood what love is, and so are unable to understand the burden we have asked Him to carry. It is love that helps us understand what sin is, not the other way round. Love takes us deeper into the mystery of betrayal, making us sensitive to another's pain, giving us an inkling of the wound sin causes. Judas' efforts are exhausted and neither will Peter have the strength he needs. It becomes clear that we can only know what love is (and so what sin means) if we allow ourselves to be taught by Christ, the one whom the Father glorifies in the darkest night of this world.

Monday of Holy Week

Readings: Isaiah 42:1-7; Ps 26; John 12:1-11

The first half of Holy Week offers us a three part liturgy of the Word. Each day we read one of Isaiah's 'Songs of the Servant' (the fourth is read at the Good Friday liturgy). The gospel readings these days are centred on Judas and his betrayal, comparing his treatment of Jesus with that of others in their circle, Mary of Bethany (Monday), Peter (Tuesday), and the Eleven (Wednesday). In three scenes, then, this first act of Holy Week presents us with a deepening sense of tragedy, through acts of love, disappointment, doubt, and betrayal.

Mary is on the side of light. She understands - so Jesus says - his way to glory, the kind of Messiah/Servant he is to be. She is ready at least to some extent for the hour of his glorious kingship on the Cross. Judas is increasingly under the power of darkness, failing to understand, and losing a sense of loving Jesus.

Mary's perfume fills the whole house. This seems to be John's way of saying 'wherever the gospel is preached, what she has done will be told in memory of her'. The perfume of her act will accompany the preaching of the gospel everywhere.

The most striking characteristic of her act is its extravagance: it is exaggerated, unnecessary, wasteful (as Judas, with some justice, indicates). But it anticipates the extravagance we will witness in the second half of Holy Week, the extravagance of God's love poured out in the sacrifice of Christ. Mary's extravagant love of Jesus continues to strengthen the faith of believers, for it helps us to appreciate the extravagant love that is the world's salvation.

The requirements of justice are extravagant, as Mary understands. There are many references to justice in the readings today. Sometimes we think of it as cold and blind, strict and merciless. But the justice of which Jesus is the sun is a justice that has reached the heart. It is a matter of words and actions originating in a heart that loves and is merciful. Mary shows her heart today as Jesus' heart will be shown on Friday, the heart of our 'most human God'. He has not forgotten the poor but is remembering them in each step of his via dolorosa. He becomes the poorest one of all, experiencing the most radical poverty of humankind, so that we might become rich from him, anointed with his endless mercy, his constant forgiveness, his everlasting love.

Palm Sunday Year A

Readings: Matthew 21:1-11; Isaiah 50:4-7; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

Crucifixion was a form of execution devised by human beings to get rid of rebels, thieves, murderers and nuisances. The electric chair, the gas chamber, shooting, beheading, stoning, strangling, poisoning, lethal injection: human beings have used their imaginations to invent many ways for the judicial elimination of other human beings.

Crucifixion has a special place because it involved a slow and painful death for the unfortunate person, as well as maximum value as a public display, and therefore as a deterrent to others. The person was stripped, stretched, totally exposed and vulnerable to the blows, insults, spits and ridicule of onlookers.

Because the cross and the crucified Christ have such a secure place among religious symbols, and in our own religious awareness, it may be that they do not any more seem strange, weird, scandalous, or shocking. We can forget that the cross was an instrument of torture and death, that the crucifix represents a dead human body nailed to wooden beams.

Saint Paul very quickly pointed out that the language of the cross is illogical and paradoxical, a sign of God's foolish wisdom and of God's vulnerable power. Christianity is not a morbid religion which is preoccupied with suffering and death. It is a religion whose heart is love. Because the crucified Christ is all about love, his cross is a symbol of hope. His death is the prelude to new life. As the Easter Liturgy puts it, the tree of death on which he died has become the tree of life for us.

The image of the crucified Christ is venerated, as is the wood of the cross, because they represent the way in which salvation came into our world. The cycle of violence and reprisal, the impossibility of forgiveness and reconciliation, the ever-deepening darkness which can lay hold of sensitive and vulnerable spirits, the apparently inevitable cruelty of the world: all of these things are stopped and broken open by the event of the crucifixion of Jesus.

Here is one who does not respond to violence with violence, and who establishes God's kingdom of long-suffering love. By his wounds we are healed. Here is one who intercedes for forgiveness for those who killed him and who, because he is the Son, thereby reconciles the world to the Father. Here is one who has entered the deepest darkness which can afflict human beings. Here is one who does not summon armies to his aid but offers only the gentleness and compassion of loving: an apparently fragile thing, easily disposed of ... yet vindicated and endorsed by the power of God who is love. This is the human face of God, 'an obstacle', 'a madness', says Saint Paul, 'but to those who have been called, a Christ who is the power and the wisdom of God'.

We already experience something of this power of the crucified Christ in our own human attempts to love, no matter how poor and imperfect. Love always means opening up to the suffering of the one who is loved, sharing it with him or her, becoming vulnerable to suffering and pain which is not our own. The strength to be vulnerable in that way is strength indeed. It is the strength of the Lamb who was slain but who thereby turned history around, who transformed human experience, who is worthy to receive glory and honour and power.  To love is a wise foolishness and a vulnerable power. It is the only atmosphere in which human beings really flourish.

We are called to take up our own cross and to follow this crucified Christ: Try to imitate God and follow Christ by loving as he loved you, giving himself up in our place as an offering and a sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:1-2).

Lent Week 5 Saturday

Readings: Ezekiel 37:21-28; Psalm: Jeremiah 31:10-13; John 11:45-56

The reading from Ezekiel summarises the ways in which the people of Israel knew that the Lord was still with them, that he was still on their side. He had given them a land and now, after the exile, they were to be restored to it. He had taken them from among the nations to make them one people and now he would do this again. He had given them laws and statutes that would guarantee their fidelity to the covenant. He would give them a leader, a new David who would be both prince and shepherd. He would dwell with them in a sanctuary, in a new temple, in which His glory would once again be present.

These gifts - the land, being a nation, laws and statutes, a leader, a sanctuary - made real the covenant whereby Israel was God's people and the Lord was Israel's God. It was in these gifts that the shared life of the covenant was to be seen.

The Jewish leaders feared that Jesus was a threat to all this. They feared that the Romans would come and take away their land and destroy their nation. They feared another fall of Jerusalem, another loss of everything, a new exile. And for reasons that remain unclear they feared that the teaching of Jesus would provoke it. 'Better', prophesied the high priest Caiaphas, 'that one man die for the people rather than the whole nation be lost'.

Paradoxically, Caiaphas gave believers in Jesus one of the most powerful statements of the meaning of his death: he died for the nation and to gather into one the scattered children of God. He died for all, in other words. Paradoxically also, it was precisely through this death that the promises treasured by Ezekiel and the other prophets were brought to fulfillment.

On one level it might seem that the fears of Caiaphas and others were justified: soon after the Temple was destroyed, the land was lost, and the nation was scattered. But before that, and separate from it, a new land was established which was no longer geographical but spiritual (for a worship of God in spirit and in truth). A new sanctuary was set up which was no longer a building but the body of Jesus from which saving waters flowed. A new nation was born which is the Church, made up of Jews (the first nation) and the Gentiles (the scattered children of God). A new leader rose up who is both prince and shepherd. The everlasting covenant of peace was sealed in his blood. A new law was given which did not dissolve the old one but which brought it to perfection, its demands (the great commandment) being written directly on the human heart.

'I will be their God and they will be my people'. This communion, this shared life, was always the goal of the covenant. Through many vicissitudes, through trials and errors, through triumphs and losses, through times of fidelity and times of apostasy - the desire persisted for a definitive sealing of this covenant.

'Will he come to the Passover feast?' is the question with which today's gospel reading ends. Will the Lamb be present for the feast? How could they have known that this ancient ritual, and the covenant it remembered, were to be fulfilled and transformed beyond anybody's imagination? So that now, in these coming days, two thousand years later, millions of people all over the world will read about the land and the temple, about the law and the nation, about the sacrifices and the promises, and they will see these things as promised also to them.

The promise remains valid and is now true at all times for all men and women: 'I will turn their mourning into joy, I will console and gladden them after their sorrows'.

Lent Week 5 Friday

Readings: Jeremiah 20:10-13; Psalm 18; John 10:31-42

We return to the comparison between the experience of Jeremiah and that of Jesus. We heard about it some days ago and here it is again. There are many similarities but there are also some striking differences. They are both preachers of the Word of God. They both seek to serve the cause of truth and justice. They are both betrayed or abandoned by friends, and left alone to suffer persecution from their enemies.

One striking difference is this: whereas the Lord fights as a mighty champion alongside Jeremiah, the Lord fights as a mighty champion in Jesus. Believe the works, Jesus says in today's gospel, so that you may realize and understand 'that the Father is in me and I am in the Father'. 'God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself', St Paul will say later. A second striking difference, presumably following on from the first, is that Jeremiah's understandable cry for vengeance is not repeated on the lips of Jesus. 'Let me witness the vengeance you take on them', prays Jeremiah. It is a very understandable prayer. Pope Francis said that someone who laid a hand on his mother could expect a punch from him.

The way in which the divine power works in Jesus is different. It is not a simple moralistic correction of the understandable reactions of Jeremiah and Francis. It is not simply saying, in the words of Jesus, if you suffer oppression, persecution, and violence, instead of giving the perpetrator a punch, try to 'turn the other cheek'. It is saying that vengeance as exercised by God - whose ways are not our ways and whose thoughts are not our thoughts - will take a radically different form to vengeance as exercised by human beings. Through the works of Jesus, everything is being taken up into a new dispensation in which all human relationships will be transformed.

'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do'. This will be Jesus' prayer concerning his persecutors, his only remark about them from the cross. It gives us a glimpse, not of divine weakness in the face of human violence, but of the divine power when confronted with human violence. Because God is love, and His characteristic action is to create, the vengeance of God, like any other of God's actions, must have those characteristics - it can only be loving and creative. And so it will be that God will take vengeance on his enemies who have killed his Son by raising his Son from the dead, establishing for all men and women, even for those enemies who kill him, a kingdom of peace, justice, reconciliation and love. Imagine a world in which reconciliation becomes possible, forgiveness becomes natural, and new beginnings take the place of endless retribution.

'Many began to believe in him' is how today's gospel reading concludes. It is a start and if we can even say this much - I have begun to believe in him - we are doing well. We are on the right road. Through faith in him the Spirit of Jesus comes to dwell also in us, not just to struggle alongside us but to work within us, praying in us when we do not know how to pray, pouring the love of God into our hearts, making us to be 'gods', creatures participating in the divine nature.

Lent Week 5 Thursday

Readings: Genesis 17:3-9; Psalm 105; John 8:51-59

In the first reading God seems like an enthusiastic lover, pleading his suit with the one he wishes to be with him. Let's live together, you and I, here in this place. We will be fruitful and for many generations and can make our home together here. It will be wonderful and we will be happy together. At the end of the reading, almost as an afterthought, he adds 'of course you must keep the covenant as well'.

It recalls Pope Francis' comments in the early days of his papacy that we will grow tired of asking for mercy before God grows tired of showing mercy. God seems more engaged and more involved in the work of establishing this covenant than do the human beings who are to be the partners in the relationship.

Abraham always reminds us of the covenant and of the faith that is required if we are to be loyal to the agreement God has made with His people. Abraham figures in the discussion between Jesus and the Jews in today's gospel reading. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Jesus - there are these high points marking the journey of the covenant across the centuries and through the pages of the Bible. Each moment in which the covenant is endorsed and renewed involves God becoming more involved with the people, coming ever closer to them, being ever more intimately involved in their lives. And each such moment obliges God, so to speak, to reveal more about himself.

When Jesus says 'before Abraham was, I am' he is clearly making the most explicit claim about his mission as Messiah and about his nature as the Son of God. He uses the Divine Name to speak about himself which explains the fierce reaction in his hearers. Because he is 'I am', he is the heart and foundation of the covenant established with Abraham. He is the suitor seeking to be in relationship with his beloved, standing at the foundation of the covenant, 'before' it then, the One.

We believe the covenant established in Jesus is the final and definitive one, the new and eternal covenant. God could not have become more involved in the life and history of His people than He has done in Jesus. And God cannot reveal more about Himself than He has done in opening His heart to us in the paschal mystery of Jesus.

We are called to be participants in this story, interlocutors of God in the unfolding of His relationship with human beings. It is a story whose origins are lost in the mists of time - before Abraham was - but it is a story established in the present eternal moment - I am. Whoever keeps this word, the covenant promise, will never taste death for, as the French philosopher Gabriel Marcel said, to say 'I love you' is to say 'you will not die'. And God says to us 'I love you' and I want to establish with you an everlasting pact.

The Annunciation of the Lord

Readings: Isaiah 7:10-14; 8:10; Psalm 39 (40); Hebrews 10:4-10; Luke 1:26-38

In the first reading the Lord offers King Ahaz a sign, coming either from the depths of Sheol or from the heights above. This is where we would expect any decent sign to come from, from out of this world, either from the depths or from the heights, something to make us sit up and take notice.

The sign eventually given is not the one first offered, an offer Ahaz rejects. Instead it is the most natural, the most ordinary sign: a young woman will give birth to a son and her son will not only continue the line of David but will rule wisely and well. He is Hezekiah, one of the best of the kings of Judah, the son of Ahaz and the young woman.

More of the same, then, we might be tempted to say, but in the circumstances of threats against Judah, the southern kingdom, and the fall of Israel, the northern kingdom, a sign that Judah would survive and even prosper was, surely, a welcome one. And this is what the birth of this good king meant: God was still with his people.

Mary does not exactly ask for a sign when she hears Gabriel's message. 'How can this come about', she says, 'since I am a virgin?' The natural and ordinary pregnancy and birth of this child, another son of the house of David, becomes supernatural and extraordinary: the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the child will be holy and will be called 'Son of God'. Undoubtedly a sign from the heights above, then, this child who will rule wisely and well, and whose kingdom, unlike that of Hezekiah, will have no end.

What about the depths of Sheol though? Well, he is to be called 'Jesus', or 'Joshua', the one who led the people through the waters of the Jordan, out of the wilderness and into the land flowing with milk and honey. Let what you have said be done to me, Mary says, and the child is conceived in her body. The offering of the body the child receives from Mary is the sacrifice that takes away the sins of the world: this is what today's second reading teaches.

The natural and ordinary is under constant threat from the depths of Sheol. All that is, and lives, and seeks to love, is pulled down by a void of nothingness from which it has come, by the fascination of evil which distorts its desire, by a kind of gravity towards death which brings disintegration, disharmony, and utter darkness.

So the body cannot remain peaceful and serene, natural and ordinary. As he grows in strength and wisdom, so too forces of evil gather against him and the kingdom that has no end is established through a battle that pits the heights above against the depths of Sheol. Asked whether he thought Vatican Two's document on the church in the world should be more optimistic or more pessimistic Cardinal Jean Daniélou replied 'both'.

We are unlikely to overestimate the power of darkness - part of its power is precisely to turn us the other way, to underestimate its power (except when we see it working dramatically in others), even to forget it as applying to ourselves. But we can never overestimate the power coming from above, the power of the Spirit that overshadowed Mary, the power of the holy king who is called Son of God, the power of the Father, infinite and eternal, wise and good.

The battle is engaged in the body Jesus received from his mother. All who are incorporated into that body draw close to this battle, Mary in the first place in the sufferings she endured, all who make up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ, the Church which is his body and which itself at times seems close to disintegration, disharmony, utter darkness.

We may not have asked for a sign, perhaps for fear of tempting the Lord our God. But we have been given one not in the ordinary and naturally beautiful body of the child recently born but in the body hanging on the cross, a body which Mary allowed to come about ('let what you have said be done'), a body that remains a sign of contradiction, revealing the depths of the world's sin but from whose defeated side flows the life of that kingdom that is without end, the everlasting kingdom of justice, love and peace.

You can listen to this homily here