Week 21 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 22:19-23; Psalm 137 (138); Romans 11:33-36; Matthew 16:13-20

In the Latin church the predominant interpretation of this gospel reading has been juridical and legal. In St Peter's Basilica you will find it high up around the cupola, the key text (pardon the pun) for the power of the keys given to Peter and in support of the Church's understanding of the role of Peter's successor in the government of the Church. There is good reason for this traditional interpretation as we see also from the first reading. A certain Eliakim is appointed majordomo of the royal palace and the tool of his office is the key he is given. It is a familiar reality: the one who has the key to open doors has authority and power, or at least has access and influence with those in authority and in power. The unlikely rock on which Christ builds his Church, Simon Peter, is given the keys of the kingdom of heaven. He has no authority or power apart from Christ but he is given access and influence, as well as delegated powers to bind and loose not just on earth but in heaven as well. However we interpret the text it is an extraordinary declaration.

The conversation between Jesus and Peter has other aspects to it. They are becoming friends and the key to the heart of one's friend is love. It is a personal encounter between them, not just a doctrinal interrogation or a juridical delegation. As they spend more and more time together Jesus and Peter are coming to know each other more and more. Jesus already knows all that is in Peter, the strengths and limitations of his personality and character, and Peter is coming to know more and more about Jesus. The question is not 'what do you say I am' but 'who do you say I am'. It is a matter of personal knowledge, and therefore involves the kind of faith and love that are always part of the personal knowledge between friends.

'You are like this', 'you are like that': it is familiar language between friends and lovers, parents and children. It is part of the gift of friendship that we can allow our hearts to be opened by the key of love, by the trust our friend shows in us, and we come to know ourselves better in the light of his or her love. Likewise for him or her. We are encouraged in our gifts and received kindly in our weaknesses. 'You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God', Peter says. His knowledge and understanding of Jesus have grown and deepened to this point. What Jesus was to be in the future - well that remains hidden from Peter for the moment as we will see when we read on in Matthew 16, for within a few verses Jesus is calling him 'Satan' as Peter once again gets the wrong end of the stick. But Jesus does know what Peter can be in the future. 'You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church'. Sometimes this is what happens in ordinary human friendships also: we see our friend's heart, her gifts and limitations, but also possibilities that perhaps she does not see. Imagine a parent encouraging a son or daughter, seeing what they might yet be, when the son or daughter is impeded by fear or lack of confidence or some rejection by others.

The key of love unlocks the heart of persons and allows the one who loves them to see who they are and what they might yet be. When it is Jesus we are talking about - the Christ, the Son of the Living God - then obviously he sees more deeply than anyone else what is in human hearts. Because of who he is he can also create and transform, placing in us gifts and strengths that we did not suspect before. We can imagine him speaking also to us, then, and saying 'You are John and in the future ....', 'You are Mary and in the future ...' - what might he have in mind for us for the future? We must remain open for that, ask him to make it known to us as he made it known to Peter. We may not fully grasp it at first as Peter does not fully grasp it but it keeps us in relationship with Jesus and it sets us on our way.

Jesus refers to us already in today's gospel for he speaks of Peter and his faith, his friendship with Jesus, as the rock 'on which I will build my church'. We can at least take strength from that since, poor as we are, we are already His church, built on the foundation of Peter's relationship with him and called (as the first letter of Peter puts it) to be 'living stones making a spiritual house' (1 Peter 2:5).

In thanking God for His many gifts, in particular for the gift of His Son, we pray that we will have the courage to allow Him to open our hearts with the key of His love (as He has already opened His heart to us with the key of His love), to speak to us there, to tell us who it is he knows us to be and especially to hear from Him what it is He knows we might yet be. All for God's glory, for the service of the Church, and for our salvation.

Queenship of the Blessed Virgin Mary - 22 August

Readings: Isaiah 9.1-6; Ps 112(113); Luke 1.26-38

With the readings chosen for today's memory we seem to back (or already arrived?!) at Christmas. the opening line of the first reading - 'the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light' - is practically the official opening of the celebration of Christmas for it also opens the same first reading at the Midnight Mass of Christmas. The gospel reading is Luke's account of the annunciation, a reading we hear a few times each year but one which is also very much a reading of the Christmas season.

Today the focus is on the royal status of the central figures in these readings. Jesus, the Lord Incarnate, is a king of the House of David but one whose kingdom will never end. The child celebrated in the first reading is the good king Hezekiah, the child born of the young woman and promised to King Ahaz in Isaiah 7. His birth meant a time of blessing for God's people and a reassurance that the covenant made with David was continuing.

The mother of the king is an important figure in the Biblical histories of the royal family in Israel. She is a queen but also the most important woman in the Davidic court. Mary now takes up this position as the woman closest to the king. And just as Jesus is a king of a very different kind - ruler of a kingdom of justice, love and peace - Mary is a queen of a very different kind, a queen after her son's heart.

The queen mother remained always with the king, the first to be named after him whenever the members of his court are listed. Last weekend we celebrated Mary's assumption into heaven, a new fulfilment of that relationship. Now she is the first person mentioned after the king when the members of the heavenly court are listed.

Today we celebrate this fact, that she is queen of heaven and earth, the queen in the court of the Eternal King. Just as she stayed with him throughout his public ministry, through his passion and in the moment of his death, so she stays with him now, participating fully already in the glory of the resurrection.

A new kind of king, then, a new kind of queen, and so a new kind of people in that kingdom where everyone is 'a first born son and a citizen of heaven' (Hebrews 12.23). The royal status of Jesus and Mary is shared with all who are brought within the embrace of his grace. We belong to a royal priesthood, privileged to offer the perfect sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

The dignity human beings have by nature is strengthened and transformed by the dignity they have as sons and daughters of the Heavenly Father. Mary is the first such child and so is for us an exemplar, showing what we are called to be, and an ever present help for us in striving to live up to our new dignity. We rightly call her Queen and Mother, Mother of God and Mother of the Church, Queen of Heaven and earth, Queen of All Saints and Queen of Peace.

Week 20 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 37.1-14 ; Psalm 107; Matthew 22.34-40

Just when we thought Ezekiel might have exhausted his supply of surreal and unusual metaphors and visions, he comes along with one of his best known ones. He is led into a place filled with dry bones. Can they live, he is asked by the Lord. You are the one who knows, is his wise answer. Prophesy to them, the Lord says, and tell them to hear the word of the Lord. So Ezekiel does so. (Remember he has done stranger things already than talk to bones!)

So imagine the noise as the bones begin to move, are given flesh and sinews and skin, come together to form people once again. But are they alive? Only when the Spirit comes upon them, the breath of life, God's creating power, which causes them to stand up, fully restored.

It is a wonderful illustration of a message Ezekiel has already passed on to the people: 'I mean to raise you from your graves, my people, and restore you to the land, cause you to live according to my statutes, and truly to know the Lord'. 

That knowledge means loving God with all of ourselves and our neighbour as ourselves. This is the great commandment in which Jesus summarises the statutes and precepts, the commandments and prescriptions of the Law (and the Prophets). To observe that commandment is to be truly alive, alive to the fullest potential of the human being.

But the capacity to observe it is a gift of God's grace, the gift or virtue of charity, which means loving God and our neighbour with the selfsame love with which God loves. For it is the Spirit of God, poured into our hearts, who makes such love possible.

So loving, knowing, living is what is promised in these readings; loving truly, knowing deeply, living fully. The dry bones of our lives are transformed by the gift of the Spirit as our hearts are opened to love, our minds are enlightened to know, and our souls are strengthened to live. Then we will know that the Lord is our God, we will love him with all our hearts, we will live the eternal life Jesus has won for us. He is the Lord. He has promised to do this for us. And he will do it for us.

Week 20 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 36.23-28; Psalm 51; Matthew 22.1-14

It seems at first that there is quite a contrast of mood in how God is presented in the readings today. The first reading is a beautiful passage from the prophet Ezekiel, a passage so valued in the Church that it is one of the readings chosen for the Easter Vigil. "I will take out of your bodies your hearts of stone and give you hearts of flesh instead". That stone, the hardened heart, can be as difficult to move as the stone that sealed the tomb of Jesus.

It is a moment of repentance on the part of the Lord, undertaken in order to show his holiness to the nations through what happens to Israel. Concern for his name among those nations moves God to restore his people, to give them new hearts and spirits, and to make them walk in his ways. Only then can it be said once again that he is their God and they are truly his people.

The parable of the wedding feast represents God in a very different mood. It speaks of another moment in his fraught relationship with humanity. We have heard enough about it from Ezekiel also in recent weeks. The king's generosity meets indifference and disdain as people refuse his invitation and even mistreat the messengers he sends to them. Finally he takes revenge on them, destroys them and their cities, and sends his messengers to call anybody and everybody to the feast.

It is easy to contextualise this within Jesus' conflict with the religious authorities. They are the ones who have shown disdain and indifference towards God's generosity. So far so Ezekiel-like. But there is a twist in the tail. The man who shows up without a wedding garment at a wedding to which he was not expecting to be invited, is thrown out, which seems very unfair. We are accustomed to that response in ourselves to things Jesus says and does: it seems unfair. What kind of justice is at play? 

The teaching of Jesus is not candy-floss. It makes real and serious demands. To accept the invitation, to respond to the call, requires a certain way of living on the part of those who are invited and called. It is a warning against presumption. If the Pharisees and other religious leaders presumed on their own righteousness, and are criticised for it, those who hear the call of Jesus cannot in their turn begin to presume on the gifts they have received.

It is a question once again of having a new heart and a new spirit, of living by the statutes and decrees of the Lord. It confronts us once again with the mystery of grace. We need God's gift if we are to live in the way that is right for us. We need God to make us live by his statutes. But we cannot presume on his generosity and simply go on living as we have done up to now. We must put on the wedding garment and we need God's Spirit to enable us to do that. Only then will we truly be among God's people, and He be our God.

Week 20 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 34:1-11; Ps 22; Matthew 20:1-16

‘It’s not fair, he’s got a bigger slice than I have.’‘It’s not fair, she’s got more!’ ‘It’s not fair, I wanted the blue one!’

Cries of childhood echo in my head. The parable of the workers in the vineyard (today's gospel reading) tells of a group of workers some of whom have worked all day, others for part of the day, and a few for just an hour. At the end of the day the owner pays each of them the same amount. The ones who worked all day feel, naturally, that ‘it’s not fair’. The owner of the vineyard was quite just in giving them what had been agreed at the beginning of the day. But still, there’s something about it ....

Most of us, I imagine, will feel that the ones who worked all day have a point. The ones who came later were actually paid more per hour of work. How galling for the first group to hear the owner pointing out that he was being perfectly fair, knowing that, strictly speaking, he was but at the same time feeling hard done by.

It is very difficult to combine the ideas of justice and mercy. As we understand and experience them they seem to be incompatible. How can you be completely just while showing mercy (because mercy sounds to us like ‘letting someone off’, ‘agreeing to overlook something’ or even ‘letting someone get away with something’). How can you show mercy and still be strictly just (because not to insist on one’s rights, or not to insist on what we are owed sounds like a decision to forego justice).

The same problem comes up in the story of the prodigal son where the older brother feels that the younger one is getting away with murder, having a great old time in another country, wasting his inheritance, and then coming home to be received like a long lost crown prince instead of the irresponsible wastrel that he was. Matthew’s parable of the workers in the vineyard deals with the same issues as Luke’s parable of the prodigal son.

What issues? Well, in the context in which Jesus first told these stories, the main issue was the reaction of the Pharisees and others to the fact that he was welcoming sinners and eating with them. The Pharisees are the ones who have laboured all day in the Lord’s vineyard, the sinners are the ones wandering in when the day is nearly over. Or the Jews are the ones who have laboured all day — God’s people from centuries back — while the pagans are the ones wandering in late in the day. This was the import of Jesus’ preaching, linked especially with his frequent assertion that he had come not for the healthy but for the sick.

So a first question is whether we think of ourselves as sick or healthy. In relation to God, do we regard ourselves as belonging with the righteous who have been working hard all these years or do we feel that we belong with sinners who are today given the re-assuring message that ‘it’s never too late’?

A second question is how we regard other people, especially those whom we might think of as having wandered away from God, and from the ways of goodness. What if they return, even at the very end? Is it a cause of rejoicing for us, a joy we share with them, or do we feel a bit peeved that they’ve got away with so much, and feel like crying out to God that ‘it’s not fair’?

Part of envy is the feeling of exclusion from what another person is enjoying. But the gifts of God are not like other kinds of gifts. As children we knew very well that the more the cake and chocolate was divided the less there was for each one. With God’s gifts — grace, compassion, love, mercy — the more they are divided the more they increase because each one who truly receives these gifts of God and appreciates their meaning becomes in their turn a source of grace, compassion, love, and mercy in the world.

We cannot get our minds and hearts around God’s ways so as to contain or comprehend them. ‘God’s ways are not our ways and God’s thoughts not our thoughts’, says Isaiah. Many scripture readings remind us that God is not like us. Our standards of fairness and reasonable dealing are turned on their heads the more we enter into the world of God, contemplate the mystery of his love, and try to live according to his spirit. ‘The last will be first, and the first, last.’ Only love can teach us the truth of this paradox.

Week 20 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 28.1-10; Deuteronomy 32.26-36; Matthew 19.23-30

We tend to read all biblical passages with the same level of seriousness, a kind of respect for the Word of God I suppose. But there is comedy in the gospel reading today. First of all we are asked to think again about that strange idea, a camel being forced through the eye of a needle (a bit like the joke about getting an elephant into a paper bag: follow the instructions carefully). It is impossible for human beings that a rich person will enter the kingdom of heaven (rich meaning not just wealthy but powerful, successful in worldly terms).

Peter speaks up and, as usual, gets the wrong end of the stick. What about us, who've left everything to follow you, what will we get? What are the 'economics' of the situation from our point of view? There is, perhaps, a note of exasperation in Jesus' reply: okay, if you are still thinking in such terms then imagine yourselves sitting on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel: this may in fact be another joke which we will only 'get' when we come to the punchline.

But it is a comment we take very seriously and read very solemnly and it may seem irreverent to suggest that it is some kind of tease on the part of Jesus. It does, of course, have a deep truth in it: the Church is founded on the apostles' and on their preaching. But this is another moment in a long struggle Jesus has with the disciples as He tries to teach them who He is and how His mission is to unfold. You must become like a little child, the one who wants to be great must be the servant of all, the one who exalts himself will be humbled ... and still Peter is wondering about the exchange rate: what, for us, in return? The love Jesus has come to establish for us does not ask that question.

The first reading, from the prophet Isaiah, is a warning to men who think they sit on godly thrones. The prince of Tyre thinks of himself in that way. He has been successful in business and politics, is rich and powerful, thinks he has the mind of a god, but his heart grows haughty and what he thinks is his great wisdom (greater than that of Daniel, Isaiah notes) is actually profound foolishness. The challenge for Jesus is to convince people that the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. It continues to be the challenge for preachers of the gospel: how to explain this paradox, the apparent contradiction on the path along which God leads those who seek Him?

Back in the gospel reading, the banter continues and there is a sting in the tail. Of course - Jesus adds to his comment about the apostles sitting on thrones to judge Israel - it is still the case that the first will be last and the last, first. In the 'divine comedy' that unfolds Jesus ends up on the cross and that is the throne of his glory, the throne from which He judges the world. The apostles, as he predicted, did end up also on crosses and gibbets and other platforms of execution, bearing witness to the love they had found in Him and joining Him in judging the world, by their witness, as martyrs. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. Now that is funny and peculiar, the mystery of true love revealed in the cross of Jesus.

Week 20 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 24.15-24; Deuteronomy 32.18-21; Matthew 19.16-22

The prophet Ezekiel interprets the death of his wife in relation to the breaking of Israel's relationship with God. It is a loss as radical and as significant as the death of a spouse. But strangely the message to the prophet is that he is not to mourn in the usual ways to show the people that they are not to mourn their loss of God either.

What can it mean? Perhaps it means that such mourning by the people could only be hypocritical considering how they have been living. It would be a case of 'crocodile tears' as the saying goes. The condition of their relationship with God is so bad that any mourning about God's departure from them will be unreal. The flash of anger at the end of the reading, continued in the verses of the psalm, seem to support this: 'you shall rot away because of your sins', the reading ends. In effect, God is saying to them 'you are dead as far as I'm concerned'.

The rich young man in the gospel reading is called to a radical following of Christ. He is not just to keep the commandments as all are called to do, but is to sell what he has, give it to the poor and then follow Jesus along the way he is taking.

Once again, through this encounter, we hear the voice of the Lord saying to his people, 'being in relationship with me is a serious business'. It involves radical choices and commitments. What makes it possible for a person to do what Jesus asks? Even among those who are 'officially' consecrated to follow Him in voluntary poverty, how many actually arrive at the interior freedom and trust which such a consecration involves?

'You have forgotten God who gave you birth', the psalm says. We find our sense of identity and meaning in various places - possessions, a partner, esteem, success - when our identity and the meaning of our lives is found in God fundamentally, the Creator who has brought us to birth and from whom we receive all that we have and are.

We make various attempts to break free from that dependence, to be autonomous over against God, but these attempts are bound to fail because they are built on sand, they are unreal and untrue. Only by receiving and living the radical call of Jesus, whatever our state in life, will we enter into true freedom. That is the freedom that comes from accepting our full and permanent dependence on God for absolutely everything.