Week 22 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 2:10-16; Psalm 145; Luke 4:31-37

There are three kinds of spirit spoken about in today's readings: the spirit of a person that knows the depths of a person, the unclean spirit that troubles a person and is cast out by Jesus, the Spirit of God that knows the depths of God. We need to consider all three if we are to understand ourselves fully.

Our own spirit shows itself in many ways: memory and imagination, anxiety and desire, our capacities for knowledge, understanding and love. The human spirit is seen in literature, art, music, technology, the whole panoply of activities and interests that make us to be very extraordinary animals indeed. In poetry and music, philosophy and theology, and many other ways, the 'spirituality' of the human creature is to be seen.

Unclean spirits are realities 'in us without us', we might say, that are known through their effects. As well as obvious external difficulties and obstacles, there are many ways in which human beings are afflicted and distracted from within. We continue to surprise and disappoint ourselves. 'I do not understand my own actions', Paul says in the letter to the Romans. Mean-spirited and selfish, hard-hearted and yet profoundly vulnerable, given to addiction and led by the opinions of various publics: there are many ways in which we are disturbed by the unclean spirits. Christian tradition has identified seven or eight deadly spirits or capital vices: vainglory, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, sloth and pride.

But there is also the Spirit of God who finally reveals us to ourselves. In the first reading Paul says that the depths of God are accessible to the Spirit of God in something like the way the depths of a human being are accessible to the human spirit, but then says that actually the depths of ourselves are only now accessible to the Spirit of God and not to our own spirit. He is speaking of a new possibility, a new spiritual life, that is not simply part and parcel of the nature with which we were first created but that comes about through a new presence of the Holy Spirit in us. If we are to understand the gifts God has given us we need the Spirit of God. If we are to plumb the depths of ourselves it can only be with the help of the same Spirit.

This relativises our natural 'spirituality', placing its conflicts and achievements in a completely new light. There is a new world of wonder and admiration to which we are called. Paul speaks of new human beings who are capable of judging the value of everything, human beings who have 'the mind of Christ'. Natural spirituality is a token or intimation of what the Spirit brings. When the Spirit, the love of God, is poured into our hearts, not only are the unclean spirits put in their place but our capacities for knowledge, understanding and love are opened up to a new and truly transcendent objective, reaching even to God, in the supreme spiritual activities of faith, hope, and love.

Week 22 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Psalm 119; Luke 4:16-30

The heroes of Greek and other militaristic cultures are always the soldiers. These are the characters in these cultures regarded as showing the greatest courage and they receive the greatest honour for it. There is a transformation of courage in Christianity. There it is the martyrs who are the great heroes, men and women ready to die in witness to Christ and the faith, and to do so, like Christ, non-violently.

This transformation of courage is one of the consequences of the gospel as Paul summarises it in today's first reading. I came among you in fear and trembling, he says, knowing only Jesus and him as the crucified Christ, so that my preaching might get its strength not from any worldly kind of power or persuasion but might be simply a demonstration of the power of the Spirit.

Nevertheless, the classical Christian account of courage as we find it in St Thomas Aquinas, for example, is developed not just from the Bible but also taking hints from Aristotle. There are two sides to courage, the ancient Greek philosopher indicates, an assertive and a sustaining side. One is the courage to put oneself forward in the world, to undertake great projects and to take action in spite of fear and apprehension. The other is the courage to be patient and persevering in the face of experiences that generate other kinds of anxiety and fear: coping with illness, enduring long-term challenges, living with rejection or mockery, martyrdom. 

For Christians this second side of courage is the higher one. St Teresa of Avila even says somewhere that it takes more courage to persevere in prayer than to die as a martyr.

So courage is required if we are to follow Jesus. One kind of courage is the kind he showed in the synagogue at Nazareth when his preaching was rejected and denigrated. The other kind of courage is enshrined forever in the mystery of the cross, a courage like that of the soldier facing death with its whole weight of fear, but doing it without returning violence, freely accepting it out of love for the Father and the Father's plan for the world's salvation.

Week 22 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Jeremiah 20:7-9; Psalm 62(63); Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

It was only last week, so still quite fresh in our memories. 'Who do the people say I am?', Jesus asked. And then 'who do you say I am?' Peter's confession - 'you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God' - seemed like a kind of climax. They had arrived at a true understanding of who he is. It was followed by Jesus' declaration that Peter's understanding came not from flesh and blood but had been revealed to him by the heavenly Father.

Strong stuff. Nothing stronger could be imagined. He had revealed himself to them and they, by God's grace, had understood and believed. What a shock, then, that Jesus' next words to Peter refer not to the heavenly Father, nor even to flesh and blood, but to Satan as the source of Peter's next words to him. 'This must not happen to you, Lord'. 'Get behind me, Satan.' What was happening? It seemed as if Peter's confession was a point of arrival. Now it seems as if they are not even at the beginning of understanding.

All three synoptic gospels have this turning point after Peter's confession of faith. 'He began to teach them' (Mark 8:31). 'He began to show them' (Matthew 16:21). 'He set his face to go to Jerusalem' (Luke 9:51). The first act of the drama of Jesus' life is over, the second act is beginning. They have learned something but in another way they still have everything to learn - he began to teach them, he began to show them. Has he been with them this long, already shown them and taught them so many things, and still ... he begins?

Peter's confession of faith, which last week seemed like such a wonderful point of arrival - and it was and is: on this rock Jesus builds his church! - we now see that same confession to be also a point of departure. Jesus is ready to move on to the next stage and to try to take them with him.

The first act had opened 'after John had been arrested' (Mark 1:14; Matthew 4:12). It is a first darkening of the story with the shadow of the cross. The second act opens with Jesus beginning to initiate his disciples into the deeper mystery: if he is the Messiah then his mission will be accomplished through what the prophets had foretold as the birth-pangs of the Messiah and which he sketches as follows: his rejection, his suffering, his death, and on the third day his being raised. This last bit goes over the heads of the disciples for the moment, it fails to register. They discussed among themselves at other moments what rising from the dead could mean. But not here. They do not say, 'oh that's all right then, there will be a happy ending after all!' They hear only the talk of suffering and death. 'God forbid', says Peter - the same God who had revealed to him that Jesus is the Christ, and God's Son. May this same God forbid that things should happen in the way Jesus foretold.

What a shock then to hear Jesus' words: 'Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me, for you are not on the side of God but of man'. Other translations say something like 'your way of thinking is not of God but of man'. Praised for his divinely-inspired way of thinking last week, Peter is condemned for his diabolical way of thinking this week.

The glory of the Son of Man, of the Messiah, of this Son of the Living God, is the glory of love in a sinful world. What shape will that glory take - must that glory take? - in a sinful world? If the world so loved by God is to be redeemed and healed? Jesus has just given them a sketch of the glory and it is nothing like what they - or we - would count as glory. They should have had some preparatory understanding - the experience of Jeremiah (see today's first reading), the words of Isaiah (the Suffering Servant, the birth pangs of Messiah), the very recent experience of John the Baptist. But not for Messiah himself: surely he would be the one to bring all such injustices and oppression to an end? Yes, but to end it by embracing it, by entering into it more deeply than any prophet or martyr before or since, by drinking the cup of the world's suffering - this they did not expect and they could not accept.

As Act Two of the drama of Jesus' life opens, the disciples still have everything to learn. We still have everything to learn in the face of human suffering, of the world's evil, of the reality of sin and death. 'God forbid, Lord, this must not happen to you, to us!' But notice how the apostles and disciples did quickly come to understand when the events foretold by Jesus actually took place. Paul sums up so well what they had learned from Jesus - 'offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, let yourselves be transformed, renew your whole way of thinking, so that you will discern the will of God' - not of Satan, not of flesh and blood, not of this world - 'and so know what is good, acceptable to God and perfect.'

This is today's so apt second reading. And this is what Jesus is beginning to teach them and to teach us who are always at the beginning of this understanding. At first he teaches them in words, later in his actions and in his passion. The same for us - we learn the way of Jesus not just by understanding his words but by entering into the mystery of the Cross, through prayer, through our own suffering, through sharing the suffering of others, through seeking to understand what it means truly to love another. It is a wisdom we learn only through the renewal of our minds - over and over again - and the transformation of our hearts - over and over again.

Passion of John the Baptist - 29 August

Readings: 1 Corinthians 1:26–31; Psalm 33; Mark 6:17–29

Herod feared John the Baptist, and whenever he heard him speak, he was perplexed. He was afraid because he knew that John was holy and righteous, yet he enjoyed listening to him. Herod is the classic example of an indecisive person, drawn to what is good, perhaps even capable of seeing what is right, yet lacking the strength of character or moral maturity necessary to follow what he knows to be right and to order his desires accordingly. In a sense, Herod is ‘the man in the street’.

How common is this ambivalence in the face of holiness and righteousness? The Bible speaks of it often, in very different moments and contexts throughout the history of the people. ‘This people honours me with their lips, but their heart is far from me’ (Isaiah 29:13; Matthew 15:8). ‘Purify your hearts, you who are double-minded’ (James 4:8). ‘How long will you waver between two opinions?’ (1 Kings 18:21). ‘I do not do the good I want to do, but I do the evil I do not want to do’ (Romans 7:19).

Herod is not a likeable figure, and we might easily dismiss him as pathetic and ineffective. The frequency with which the Bible exhorts the people to resolve their wavering, reminding them of their own duplicity, is enough to assure us that the problem is not Herod’s alone, and that where we say ‘his’ or ‘theirs’, we should in fact say ‘mine’ and ‘ours’.

We see Herod’s problem in dramatic terms; indeed, it has often been dramatised by composers, playwrights and painters. For us, however, it is more useful to reflect on our own duplicity, on how this problem is present within ourselves. In what ways do I waver between different opinions? In what ways do I see what is good and yet do what is wrong? In what way do I continue to profess in words that I follow Christ whilst my heart, at least in part, is elsewhere?

We might find John the Baptist admirable but a little off-putting, a man of integrity, yes, but somewhat fierce in his manner and his teaching. As long as we see him in this light, we are more or less on Herod’s side, fearful of what John asks of us and yet eager to listen to him. For what he proclaims is simply the kingdom of God, the good news. His message is the message of Jesus, just as demanding and uncompromising. ‘Wretched man that I am,’ concludes Paul, reflecting on his own indecision. ‘Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ (Romans 7:24).

When we confront this problem head-on within ourselves, we arrive at the same question. Is it a problem of character or of upbringing? Is it a problem of nature or of nurture? Is it a matter of good fortune or misfortune? Is it simply a desire that proves too strong for reason?

Herod does not know whom to turn to for help, and the tragedy of John’s martyrdom ensues. Paul, on the other hand, knows whom to turn to: ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.’ Let us, too, continue to look in that direction, towards the One whom John the Baptist pointed to as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Our hope is that He may also deal with the sins of my indecision. He teaches us not to be afraid, but to seek, to ask and to knock. He asks us to open the door to Him and to allow Him to strengthen us in holiness. He can do this, even though at times we may be like Herod.

Saint Augustine - 28 August

Saint Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430)

As Dominicans we mention three saints in our formula of profession, Mary, Dominic and Augustine. Of course if the provincial of the day or the Master of the Order turns out to be a saint then we mention one or two more, but we are unlikely to be around to see them raised to the glories of the altar.

We make profession according to the rule of Blessed Augustine. It is the first part of the contract we make with each other in the Order, to live together according to this rule, one of the shortest of the monastic rules and the one chosen by St Dominic for his new community of brothers. Just as Augustine, as someone has put it, ‘exceeds all other theologians in the consistency and clarity with which he makes caritas, love, the focal point of the Christian life, so too the whole of life in the religious community that lives by his rule is to be a living expression of Christian love’.

Love which remains forever is to prevail in everything, the Rule says in its fifth chapter. The opening statement of the Rule – at least in the Latin edition of our Constitutions: in the recent English translation this first sentence has disappeared – is that before all else we are to love God and then our neighbour, for these are the chief commandments given to us. So the first thing our rule asks of us is nothing more, and nothing less, than observance of the great commandment in which Jesus summarised the whole of the law.

Augustine’s moral theology is centred on charity, love. His understanding of the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude is that they are different expressions of love. In different situations and circumstances what is asked of love is that it be just or temperate, prudent or courageous, but it is all basically love. It is as if he sides with Socrates in agreeing that there is one fundamental virtue to which all others can be reduced, wisdom for Socrates now baptised to become caritas or love for St Augustine.

In his commentary on the first letter of John, Augustine at one point says ‘love and do what you will’. Sometimes people assume that he must have said ‘love God and do what you will’ but he actually says ‘love and do what you will’. Of course he meant that one who loves truly must end up loving God and neighbour. ‘Let love’s root be within you’ is how he concludes this section of his homily (In I John VII.8), ‘and from that root nothing but good can spring’. Because St John says in that first letter that God is love, Augustine concluded that love is the surest guide and the most reliable criterion for us in seeking to follow Christ. He was convinced that love in the true sense is from God and leads to God.

It was their life of love together that impressed Augustine when he visited Christian religious communities soon after his conversion. He writes of them that: 

Love before all else is practised there. It is the norm for food and speech, dress and one’s entire behaviour. All are united in a single love, all breathe a single love. An offence against love is regarded as an offence against God; anything that is opposed to love is rejected and cast out; if anything offends against love, it is not allowed to remain for even a day. For they know that love is so emphasised by Christ and the apostles that if it is lacking, everything else is in vain, and if it is present everything else is made perfect (The Catholic Way of Life, 33.7). 

The Rule by which we live is very practical too in matters of food and clothing, work and companionship, and all at the service of love. For Augustine love is the rule of faith both in matters of doctrine and in matters of practice. Echoing 1 Corinthians 13 he says: 

All may sign themselves with the sign of Christ, all may answer Amen, all may sing Alleluia, all may receive baptism and enter the church … the difference between the children of God and the children of Satan is love alone. Those who possess love are born of God. Those who do not possess it are not born of God … Without it everything else is useless, no matter what you have; it suffices by itself, even if you have nothing else (On I John 5.7). 

This brings home to us even more sharply what Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians 13: I may sign myself with the sign of the cross, I may answer Amen and sing Alleluia, I may receive baptism and enter the church, I may even take vows of religion and promise to live according to the rule of Blessed Augustine and the institutes of the Friars Preachers – but if I am without love then I gain nothing and I am nothing.

As regards doctrine Augustine is equally clear and consistent in referring to the great commandment as the rule of our faith. In his work On Christian Doctrine Augustine has this to say: 

If it seems to anyone that he has understood the divine scriptures, or any part of them, in such a way that by that understanding he does not build up that double love of God and of neighbour, he has not yet understood them (De Doctrina Christiana I, XXXVI, 40). 

Here is a first principle of biblical interpretation. Even the letter of the gospel kills, Augustine says elsewhere, if the healing grace of faith is not present within.

So the first thing our Rule does is send us straight back to the gospel and to the heart of the gospel. Our life is all about growing in the love of God and neighbour. We are here because we believe that this is where we are called to follow Christ. To follow Christ means to love God and our neighbour. And it is here that we must practise this, do it, and become better at it. It is not at some future time, in another situation, with different people, that we might grow in charity. It is here and now, in this community and with these people, that it must be done or it will not be done at all.

The Rule of St Augustine concludes: 

The Lord grant you the grace to observe all these things as lovers of spiritual beauty, the good life you share together rich with the good fragrance of Christ, the life no longer of slaves under a law, but of free people established under grace.

Saint Monica - 27 August

The Mother of Saint Augustine

Among the many personalities who appear in the course of Augustine’s life no one gets more space or more affection in his Confessions than does Monica, his mother. An intellectual reading of that work often omits Book Nine, more than half of which is an account of Monica’s life, her influence on him, and her death and funeral at Ostia. ‘I am passing over many things because time is short’, Augustine himself says, ‘but I will not pass over anything that my soul brings forth concerning that servant of yours who brought me forth from her flesh to birth in this temporal light, and from her heart to birth in light eternal’.

Augustine is as honest in recounting his memories of his mother’s life as he is in recounting those of his own. God’s providence used an angry servant to give Monica a shock which saved her from becoming even more addicted to alcohol than she was as a young woman. Her strategy for dealing with her unfaithful and potentially violent husband was to see him always in the light of God, to give him the example of her own way of living, and to wait patiently and mercifully for his conversion to the faith and so to chastity. (One wonders how like his father Augustine might have thought – and perhaps feared – he himself was.) Monica used the same virtues of devotion, patience and gentleness to win over her mother-in-law whose relationship with her was being poisoned by others in the household. Instructed by God in the school of her heart, Monica acted as a peacemaker and reconciler when tensions and hatreds exploded between people. The way in which Augustine speaks about this makes one think of Monica as a saint for our time, one who was able to chart a steady course through a sea of malicious gossip, lying slander and angry people. In the immediate aftermath of Augustine’s conversion Monica took care of him and his friends ‘as though all had been her children and she served us as though she had been the daughter of all’.

Most famously Augustine and Monica get locked down in Ostia, trying to find a boat to get back to North Africa, but hindered by a war which effectively shut down the port. Together they talk about eternal life and what it would be like. There follows the kind of intellectual / spiritual ascent which is familiar from other places in Augustine’s writings, ‘lifting off’ from the beauty of the cosmos, travelling ‘by inward thought and wondering discourse beyond the summit of our own minds, to touch the land of never-failing plenty where God pastures Israel for ever with the food of truth. That Life is the Wisdom through whom all things were made and, says Augustine, as we talked and panted for her (Wisdom) ‘we just touched the edge of it by the utmost leap of our hearts’. Sighing and unsatisfied ‘we left the first-fruits of our spirit captive there and returned to the noise of articulate speech’. And how beautiful that articulate speech is as Augustine takes off again into one of the most poetic passages in the Confessions, retracing the ascent to Wisdom and speaking of how desirable it is.

Monica, perhaps getting a bit concerned at the other-worldliness of her son’s discourse (and Augustine himself says ‘well I didn’t actually use those exact words in that moment’) is characteristically concrete and concerned for others: she has now received the last gift for which she had prayed, she says, to see Augustine a Catholic Christian before she died. ‘What now keeps me here?’, she asks. Five days later she became ill, Augustine and his brother were distraught, hoping that she might survive to return to Africa and be buried there alongside her husband. But she said it did not matter and in words that have become classic in Catholic piety concerning the dead added ‘one thing only do I ask of you, that you remember me at the altar of the Lord wherever you may be’. ‘Nothing is far from God’, she said, ‘There is no danger that at the end of the world he will not know where to find me and raise me up’.

What a contrast the practical mother is in these last moments compared with her ever so intellectual son who is immediately thrown into a fierce inner conflict as he tries to contain the grief that fills him. He was profoundly displeased to find how powerfully he could be affected by these human experiences! What a consolation to us that he was so powerfully affected – the practical wisdom of our time would simply say to him ‘let it out, let the tears flow’. He thinks a bath might help but it doesn’t. Sleep does though and some words of Saint Ambrose which he recalls as he falls asleep: ‘I went to sleep and on awakening felt a good deal better’. It brings to mind an earlier moment in his journey when God soothed his head (the Latin term is the one used to describe a mother turning her infant towards her breast) and closed his eyes, he slept in God and woke to a new vision of things (Confessions VII 14.20). There it seems to have a deeper significance, a moment of insight or realisation about the reality of God. Here it seems more like a more ordinary human breakthrough as Augustine finally gives himself up to tears, though privately, in the presence of God alone. ‘If only humans would acknowledge that they are human’, he says, which is a bit rich considering the effort he was making not to cry and the efforts his friends were presumably making to help him acknowledge the very same thing, that he too was a member of the human race!

And he finishes with a wonderful prayer for his mother, that the Lord will be merciful to her, and to his father, as he asks all those who read his Confessions to join him in praying for them.

As we remember Saint Monica we remember those we have loved and who have died, and in a particular way our mothers, who from their flesh brought us to birth in this temporal light and who from their hearts would bring us to birth in the eternal light.

I have used the very beautiful translation of Augustine's Confessions done by Sister Maria Boulding OSB and published by New City Press, New York in 1997.

Week 21 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Thessalonians 3:6-10,16-18; Psalm 128; Matthew 23:27-32

One of the best known of the Monty Python sketches is the one about the Ministry for Funny Walks. A translation in the first reading today might seem to be objecting to such a Ministry, as Paul encourages the Thessalonians to shun any brother 'who walks in a disorderly way'. Other translations say 'walking in idleness' or 'living a disorderly life'. 'Walking' is a term used elsewhere in the New Testament to speak about a way of living - 'walk in love,' for example, we read in Ephesians 5:2. the other term used here, and translated either as 'disorderly' or 'in idleness', seems to be closer in meaning to disordered or undisciplined. It is presumably what follows that leads translators to identify idleness as the particular form of disorder involved here.

The reason for the idleness is the issue considered earlier in 2 Thessalonians. Some were saying that the day of the Lord had already come and so, with a certain reasonableness, some had already hung up their boots and packed away their tools. What was the need to work if the world was coming to an end?

It is an approach we might be tempted to take for other reasons, a kind of giving up on the world. One sometimes hears of people who decide not to have children because the world is in such a terrible state that it would be wrong to oblige children to live in it. One might be tempted not to engage in the political process, for example, on seeing the alternatives on offer and finding them all unsatisfactory. One might be tempted to become cynical about all teachers and religions, perhaps drawing on Jesus' words in Matthew 23 as he condemns the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. And there may be other reasons also ... the threat of war, the future of the planet, the persistence of the covid virus, increasing violence in speech and action ...

As with yesterday's advice from Jesus - get down to cleaning the inside of the cup first - Paul's advice to the Thessalonians may seem too small for the big problems just mentioned. In fact it is omitted from the first reading as it is given to us in the lectionary! Edited out ... What Paul says to those tempted to 'walk in a disorderly way', to give up on their engagement in this world and its problems, is that they should go on quietly working and earning their own living (2 Thessalonians 3:12). They are not to grow weary of doing what is good (v.13).

It brings to mind the 'little way' of Saint Therese of Lisieux, that surprising Doctor of the Church. What is important, she teaches us, is not what you have to do today so much as the love with which you can do it. There are many huge challenges and questions for the world today. There are many huge challenges and questions for the Church today. It can all seem too much at times - unsettling, overwhelming, paralysing. Let us continue, with God's grace, to walk in an orderly way, with our eyes fixed on the goal which is Christ, doing every ordinary thing with love. Walking in that way we can be sure that we are following Him and in doing so we are preparing the ground for the kingdom that is coming. For it is also true that the Kingdom of God is very near to us.

Week 21 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Thessalonians 2:1-3a,14-17; Psalm 96; Matthew 23:23-26

We might think that apocalyptic language belongs to another place and time, that it is a way of speaking that is so foreign to us and requires so much interpretation that it is nearly impossible for us to find in it a message for ourselves that is not either far-fetched at best, crazy at worst. But the current political discourse in the United States of America is becoming ever more apocalyptic.

We are accustomed for some time now to the 'right wing' tribe using this language. There is a great battle under way, we are told, between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Obviously those who identify with this tribe regard themselves as belonging to the forces of good. Ranged against them are those who identify - or whom they identify - with the other tribe, 'the left', Democrats, liberals, lefties, and something called 'the deep state'.

Now it seems that this other tribe has joined them, at least in agreeing with this Manichean view of the world. 'The left' has begun to speak also about a great battle under way between the forces of good and the forces of evil. Except - presumably - that now it is they who belong to the forces of good and the right-wing tribe - or those whom they identify as belonging to it - represents the forces of evil.

Saint Paul, in the first reading of today's Mass, tells the Thessalonians not to be alarmed or shaken out of their minds by such apocalyptic language. 'The day of the Lord has come', 'the end is nigh', 'the great battle of Armageddon is underway' - this is always the burden of such language. Its plausibility in our present moment is strengthened by the plague that has paralysed the world. But, says Paul, you must rely instead on the traditions you have received through the preaching of the apostles. Look to Jesus to encourage your hearts and to strengthen them in every good deed and word.

In the gospel reading we find Jesus himself speaking about the same thing. Don't be deceived by the purveyors of myths promoted to support people's quest for power and don't be deceived by the razzmatazz and the gaudy presentation they make of themselves.  Jesus is speaking in the first place to the Pharisees, the religious party to which he was closest. Forget about presentation which is always more or less hypocritical and focus instead on the weightier things - judgement, mercy and fidelity. Good deeds and words originate inside human beings and do not come from outside. Strive to see clearly and to find teachers and leaders who see clearly regarding these matters of judgement, mercy and fidelity. Far too often our teachers and leaders are more or less blinded by their own interests, their own prejudices, their own desires - they are more or less blind guides.

John Hume, a political leader respected by all who know about him, died recently. He was someone who tried to be a teacher and guide who could see not just the prejudices nursed, the injustices  suffered, and the aspirations sought by his own tribe, but to see those things in the other tribe as well. He sought to see beyond such definitions, to a common humanity which everybody, in more or less distorted ways, was trying to serve. The most difficult change to bring about, John Hume said, is the change in human hearts.

As the pressure mounts for us to 'choose sides' in the great battle - which side of the tennis court are you on, left or right? - it is salutary to remember that both the left and the right have carried their fears and oppression of others to the point of establishing concentration camps. Whether you end up in one or the other does not seem to make much difference in the end, the way you will be treated by your fellow human beings will be much the same.

Obviously something else is needed, another vantage point from which to survey the battlefield. However seeking another vantage point seems to lead, sooner or later, to the hill of Calvary. It was from that our crucified Lord surveyed the human scene, taking on himself all its fears and cruelties, to break down the wall of hostility that divides humanity into tribes, to make both one by the shedding of his innocent blood (the only truly innocent blood?).

But he gives us today a first direction with which we can begin even today: 'cleanse first the inside of the cup, so that the outside also may be clean.' Is it too gentle for a world which is physically violent in many places, and already so violent in language in so many more?

Saint Bartholomew - 24 August

Readings: Revelation 21:9b-14; Psalm 145; John 1:45-51

We celebrate today the feast of the Apostle Bartholomew, identified with Nathanael in John's gospel. The two readings we've heard are both wonderful works of theological imagination or at least are readings that appeal to the imagination. The vision of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Bride of the Lamb coming down out of heaven, angels, gates, the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, foundation stones, the names of the twelve Apostles.

The gospel reading then refers to a strange story. We don't know what it was that Jesus and Nathanael were talking about when they referred to what happened under the fig tree. But then Jesus ends with this more wonderful thing, that they will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man. It evokes the story of Jacob's dream in the book of Genesis where he had a vision in his dream of the angels of God ascending and descending. He awoke to say this truly is the gate of heaven, the house of God.

It evokes also that wonderful prayer in Isaiah chapter 63 and 64, 'oh that you would rend the heavens and come down', a prayer which is answered at the baptism of Jesus when we're told in Matthew's gospel that the heavens opened.

People often long for an imagined enchantment which they think the world has lost. Perhaps we just grow up and lose the ability which we had as children to be amazed and filled with wonder at all that we are encountering. But it is often said now that the world is no longer an enchanted place; that it has been emptied of supernatural and preternatural beings; that it has been reduced to a machine at the disposal of human beings and so therefore of our manipulation and exploitation. It leads people to saying that perhaps there is life elsewhere in the universe, perhaps there is intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. People talk about angels frequently in the context of New Age spirituality and so on. Fantasy literature is very popular, so too science fiction, and perhaps other more sinister ways of trying to escape from a world that seems too ordinary too banal too one-dimensional through drugs and so on - all of this we can see as a nostalgia for a sense of the infinite beauty of God.

We believe that God is the creator of all things visible and invisible, in other words things that come within the range of our vision as well as things that he has created which are beyond the range of our vision. It means sthe angelic world and perhaps other worlds beyond our imagination are needed to reflect adequately the infinite beauty of God. The angels remind us of this, that God is not simply our size and our shape, not simply 'our' God limited to our perception and understanding and experience but infinitely powerful infinitely wise infinitely holy and creative and imaginative. It means there might yet be things to be revealed as there are many things to be learned about God.

This is the question which people I think are considering when they talk about intelligent life elsewhere or express nostalgia for the angels or give themselves over to fantasy or science fiction. All that we need to know about God's creation has been revealed to us, all that we need to know for our salvation for our coming into union with God through Christ and what we've learned about the angels helps us to know where we fit within this plan of God. Within this creation the angels set boundaries to our nature and to our situation.

They direct us. Raphael, for example, is an archangel who directs people along the right road. The archangel Gabriel gives guidance and teaching. The archangel Michael gives protection. It was a great tradition in mediaeval Christendom to place Michael at the boundaries of Christendom to set him as the protector of the limits and the boundaries. All those wonderful places like Skellig Michael in Ireland or Mont Saint-Michel. Michael was always the one who protected the boundaries of the Christian Commonwealth.

So the angels help us to know where we are they give us direction and guidance and protection they also help us to appreciate that we are not angels. This is a great danger especially in modern times that we think of ourselves as spiritual beings trapped or for the moment residing in bodies and this of course is a fundamental misunderstanding of what the human animal is, the living human animal. Thomas Aquinas talks about the living human animal as the image of God. The angels may be more perfect images of God in what is primarily involved in that -  rationality and intelligence and freedom - but he says that human beings are fuller images of God and they are fuller images of God because they are animals. Human beings have bodies and the presence of the soul throughout the body for example, and the way in which the soul and body cannot be separated, help us to understand something about the presence of God throughout creation. The fact that human beings reproduce their kind teaches us something and images something about God's generativity God's fertility and creativeness which the angels are not able to image or represent within creation.

So the angels are helpful to us in that they keep us in our place they set the boundaries they help us to understand something about our own nature and not to fall into that very common but deeply mistaken belief that we are somehow ourselves angels trapped in bodies. Christ of course is always at the centre of our experience of God and our understanding of redemption and salvation. Christ Jesus of Nazareth our brother who is our teacher the Son of God the King of Israel one like the Son of Man the Lamb. The angels ascend and descend on him.

Everything in these texts is towards Christ, places Christ at the centre. He is the Lamb and this city is his bride. He is the one on whom the angels of God are ascending and descending. So the angels are preachers as Saint Augustine puts it, they are witnesses pointing us towards God teaching us something about God leading us towards God protecting us on our way to Go. Now it is Christ who is at the centre of this experience, this root, this road, this way to God for us who are the firstborn of creation, the firstborn from the dead.

You can listen here to a homily for the feast of St Bartholomew

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.

Week 20 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 56:1, 6-7; Psalm 66; Romans 11:13-15, 29-32; Matthew 15:21-28

How are we to understand this story in which Jesus is rude to a Canaanite woman whose daughter is possessed by a demon?

There is a feminist interpretation that says that Jesus, as a limited human being needs to be helped, in particular by the women who come into his life, and that here we see him being helped by the Canaanite woman to realize the full extent of his mission. She calls him, as it were, beyond the boundaries of his own understanding and imagination.

I don’t think this is to be simply dismissed. We do, often, have difficulty accepting the full humanity of Jesus and what it entailed. We are probably much happier, for example, accepting that Jesus needed to be taught how to pray by Mary and Joseph than we are with the suggestion that he needed to learn something about his mission from the Canaanite woman.

If we work with the belief that Jesus knew exactly what he was about and understood what his mission was and how he was to pursue it, how are we to explain the strange conversation that takes place between him and this woman? In the first instance he remains silent. (As he did also when confronted with the woman taken in adultery in John 8.) The disciples encourage him to do something for her, whether to help her or just to get rid of her is not clear. Jesus then makes the statement about being sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Whether he says this to the woman or to the disciples is, once again, not clear. The woman repeats her request: ‘Lord, help me’. Notice that she makes exactly the same prayer as Peter in last Sunday’s gospel: ‘Lord, save me’. In situations of great need we don’t need to be told how to pray. Then Jesus makes this strange statement in which he seems to imply that she is a dog. But is immediately taken by her answer about the dogs at least getting the scraps that fall from the master’s table. And so he acknowledges her faith and heals her daughter.

Here’s a suggestion as to what might be going on here. I spent a short time in Trinidad but learned that the people there liked what they call ‘piquant’. It is a French word that has hung around and refers to an exchange between people that is witty and clever, moving towards being daring and even (to one who does not understand what is going on) insulting. I can remember one or two conversations of this kind where each party is expected to give as good as he gets – there is excitement and fun in the conversation but an onlooker might not understand what is happening and might even feel uncertain about it.

Might it be that the Canaanite woman and Jesus are immediately attuned to each other – they were able to see each other’s eyes, for example – and that their exchange is of this kind, a kind of verbal sparring that both sides will enjoy. They are then enacting a parable for the sake of the disciples in order to teach them something about the universal mission of Jesus.

There is plenty in the prophets about the universal reach of God’s promises to Israel and we cannot imagine that Jesus is unaware of this. The first reading at Mass today is an example. In fact placing it alongside the story of the Canaanite woman, the Church is inviting us to see this prophecy fulfilled in this encounter. The pagans, represented by the woman, will come to the temple, Jesus, and their prayers and sacrifices will be acceptable to the Lord. The text is quoted later in Matthew’s gospel, when Jesus drives out the moneychangers and says it is to be a house of prayer for all the peoples.

The second reading too is about this, Paul grappling with the fact that the Jewish people as a whole had not accepted Jesus as the messiah. Romans 9-11 is the great New Testament text for thinking about this question, the starting point for thinking about the relationship of Christianity with the Jewish people. And of course it is not only Jews who have from time to time looked down on other people (or been looked down on by them) – there are many nations that have done this.

But Jesus in his encounter with the woman takes the opportunity to teach the disciples something about the call of human need, that there is no limit and no boundary to where the light of the gospel and the healing love of Christ are to be brought. Wherever there is human need the gospel is to be preached.

And the missionary learns from the missioned, if we can put it like that. We might be tempted to think that we know what people need and that we are the ones to provide it. But Jesus, remember, does not presume to know that: ‘what do you want me to do for you?’ My first assignation as a priest was to Edinburgh where I studied at the University and helped out at the chaplaincy. I was 24 years of age and supposed to be an ‘elder’ in the community! I learned what I was to do as a priest from the people who came to me, they taught me what a priest was to do, the ways in which he was expected to serve. There must always be this dialogue, between the teacher and the taught, the missionary and the missioned, the helper and the helped. We do not realize the gifts we carry until those we serve help us to realize them. Their need will call us beyond the limits we may have set to what we think we have to offer.

I must acknowledge that Fergus Kerr’s homily on the Torch website helped me in thinking about this gospel. And I conclude with a quote from him:

Isn’t this wonderful little story an invitation to reflect on the possibilities of liberation that pagans may hope to find in Christianity, and the necessity, if they are not to be disappointed, that we Christians discover possibilities in ourselves that call us beyond our inherited boundaries?

The Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary -- 15 August

Readings: Revelation 11:19; 12:1-6, 10; Ps 44 (45); 1 Corinthians 15:20-26; Luke 1:39-56

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in fantasy literature, in magic, stories of imagined worlds, other levels of living, other possibilities for human beings. From Harry Potter to science fiction, from Lord of the Rings to The Matrix, from The Chronicles of Narnia to stories about vampires, from Dr Who to many other films, television shows, and novels.

In one sense we can think of the assumption of Mary as nourishing this human desire, this thirst for another level of life that goes above and beyond routine, daily experience, above and beyond what is immediately available to something more mysterious, more interesting.

The first reading, from the Book of Revelation, presents us with a symbolic and dramatic story, apt to nourish the artistic and poetic imagination. The child just born is Christ, his mother is Mary or also the Church, the community of the followers of Christ, destined to travel a difficult road in this world, a road rich with possibility but also dangerous, filled with obstacles. It is a fantasy, certainly, but a true fantasy if we can put it like that. It gives us an accurate diagnosis of the fortunes of the Christian believer in the world. It speaks of the promise which is our treasure as well as the difficulties of the way.

In the second reading Saint Paul teaches us that the new life, the life of the Resurrection, already given to Jesus in the moment of his rising from the dead - that this new creation, this new world, is not just for Christ but has been won by him for us. The great grace of the Christian faith is precisely this: to accept the promise of a level of living, of a possibility, that goes above and beyond even our imagination. Once again it is the assumption of Mary that gives us the guarantee of this, that the new creation is not just for Christ but is also for all who belong to him, in the first place to Mary, but eventually for all his people.

In the gospel we hear the great prayer of Mary, the Magnificat, praising God for his many gifts. Mary, an historical and particular individual, a unique individual, is full of grace. It is also a symbol of the Church, of us also who are with her in the Church. We can say that Mary is the Church in its perfection. She symbolises this perfection and realises it. And she does this not just as an 'idea' or 'symbol' but as the historical, flesh and blood, particular human individual that she was and is.

Already in this world we can see the first signs of this new creation, sparks we might say of the glory that is to come. Wherever there is compassion, or work for justice, care of the poor, unexpected generosity, faithful love, the initiative and creativity of charity - in all of this we see the presence of the Holy Spirit, the Gift of God, the Source of all God's graces.

The clear revelation of all this is yet to come. For now our thirst continues since we must continue our pilgrimage in this world. But we do so in the hope of the Resurrection. We do so strengthened and encouraged by the grace and the prayers of Mary, already assumed into heaven.

You will find here another homily for the Feast of the Assumption of the BVM

Week 19 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 16:1-15, 60, 63; Psalm 12; Matthew 19:3-12

Jesus speaks of marriage past, present and future. How it was meant to be 'from the beginning' is his first response to the Pharisees' question about divorce. In the intention of the Creator divorce is not envisaged, but rather that a man and his wife should be together in an inseparable union. In the intention of any couple getting married, unless there is some deception being perpetrated, divorce is not envisaged, but rather that the couple, from the significant beginning of their relationship which we call 'falling in love', will be together in an inseparable union. That intention and that union are blessed in the Catholic Church to become a sacrament, a sign and a realisation of the presence of the Kingdom of God.

But experience shows .... is the next comment from the Pharisees, not in so many words but in effect. Moses allowed men (sic) to divorce their wives. He did, Jesus replied, because of the hardness of heart that can creep in to destroy relationships and break marriages. But that is not how God intended it. There should not be divorce, Jesus says, it is equivalent to adultery.

Now it is the disciples' turn to appeal to experience. If you take that line, they say to Jesus, not in so many words but in effect, then it is not expedient to marry. As the Pharisees present Jesus with past experience, the disciples present him with present experience, and together they say something like 'human nature being what it is, your ideal is not going to work in some cases'.

Jesus echoes his own radicalisation of the law in the Sermon on the Mount: 'I say to you'. And the requirements of God's law become more difficult, more demanding, because what is asked must come from within, from the heart, arising from love of the good and not from fear of consequences. This is the ethic of the kingdom, the future reality which Jesus is inaugurating in the present. There are those who can already live according to these demands, he says, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. But they are those whom love, the Spirit of God who is love, has made able to receive this teaching.

What if our morality is not something we can generate out of our own natural resources but a gift to be received? And what if we live between the past of which the Pharisees speak, the present of which the disciples speak, and the future of which Jesus speaks? It would make faithful marriage also an eschatological sign, a sacrament making present in the Church, the life of the world to come.

Hardness of heart is a permanent threat, always lurking at our door, ready to poison and distort our commitments and our relationships. It is only the Spirit of God, the Spirit of love, who will soften our hearts and keep them gentle. And so keep them capable of faithful love. Not all can accept this word, Jesus says, his teaching about marriage, and for some it is actually better that they not marry. But whoever can accept this ought to accept it.

Traditionally this has been applied in the Church to the vocation to celibacy. But considering the changes concerning marriage that are happening in the world around the Church, it seems that we must find also in these words of Jesus an encouragement of those called to marriage, understood as it has been from the beginning. If we are to receive this teaching, and live in accordance with it, then whatever our particular vocation in the Church, we need the Spirit of love to come to dwell in us. Only by the power of that Spirit will our commitments and promises share the strength and fidelity of the everlasting covenant which the Lord has made with his people, the covenant of which our promises and commitments are sacramental and charismatic signs.