Week 4 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 3:4-13; Psalm 119:9-14; Mark 6:30-34

In the wilderness sheep wander but people learn. If they have a good teacher, that is. Jesus' response is classic, then, teaching them 'many things'. Another translation has 'at some length', it seems to mean something like 'everything'.

When we are lost in a wilderness we are apt to learn. We have lost our sense of direction, are not sure where we should go, what we should do, where food and shelter are to be found. So we are disposed to learn, docile in an exceptional way in exceptional circumstances.

Teaching and learning are mysterious processes, perhaps we should say one mysterious process. Is it a matter of drawing out what is already inside but has become hidden in some way, forgotten, or is it putting something new into a person, new knowledge, new understanding?

Two great teachers of the Christian tradition, Augustine and Aquinas, say (following Jesus in the gospel) that God is the only real Teacher. Our appreciation of the truth comes about as a result of God's presence and stimulation in the human mind. Human teachers can serve that process but only God teaches us interiorly, can reach inside our minds to assist processes of understanding and knowledge. It is not a kind of magic, though, even with infused knowledge or special gifts of understanding and knowing. We must learn and if something is to become really 'ours' then it must take the shape of our sensation, our perception, our understanding, our language.

Jesus is our righteousness, our peace, our wisdom, our justice. He is the one who can teach us all things, the only one who can do this. He does it, Aquinas says, through the questions he asks his disciples, the signs he gives them to illustrate and support his teaching, and the love he has for them. (We can only teach people we love.) Augustine speaks of Jesus on the cross as 'magister in cathedra', a professor on his chair. Here is the deepest love, the most compelling sign, and the most disturbing question posed by this Teacher as he enacts in his own flesh and blood the truths and values he spent his life teaching.

Moved with compassion for the needy crowd, Jesus began to teach them. The need of the neighbour takes precedence even over the time we might like to spend alone in prayer with God. Solomon is praised in the first reading because he asked for wisdom. In Jesus we believe we have been given the Wisdom of the Father. He is a light to guide us in our knowledge and understanding. He is a Teacher to lead us in our actions and decisions. He is a Doctor of truth and goodness, curing our ignorance and healing our weakness.

Week 4 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Sirach 47:2-11; Psalm 18; Mark 6:14-29

There is a hollow ring to Herod's vow. He piles up oaths, vows and promises: he will not break his word to the daughter of Herodias. But it is a false integrity, at the service of wickedness. He seems decisive, but only when in his cups. In the bigger picture Herod is fearful, perplexed, and split. He seems to be powerful but in fact is lost.

John the Baptist by contrast seems to be powerless but in fact is secure. He is an outsider (his odd way of life in the wilderness) but he knows what justice requires. His integrity is at the service of goodness. He knows how essential it is that vows, oaths, and promises, should be reliable, not the kind of promise a drunken Herod now makes to Salomé but the kind of promise on which marriage is established.

Not that John the Baptist necessarily saw the bigger picture. He is sustained by his faith in God and his confidence that in defending justice he is serving God. His job is to do what he knows to be right and leave the final outcome to God. So it was also with Jeremiah, Stephen, Thomas More, and countless other persecuted believers and martyrs. They entrust themselves to God, do what they know to be right even at the cost of their lives, and leave the final outcome to God.

Week 4 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: 1Kings 2:1-4, 10-12; 1 Chronicles 29:10-12; Mark 6:7-13

A first meaning of Jesus' instruction seems obvious: take nothing for the journey because you are to move freely and quickly. There is an urgency in the work you must do. You need to be unhampered, uncluttered, in order to do it effectively.

Another meaning sees this simplicity, even poverty, as essential for the credibility of a teacher or preacher. The Cynics, philosophers of the ancient world, supported their words with a lifestyle of dramatic simplicity and austerity. In the time of Saint Dominic, the Cathars of southern France lived lives of similar poverty and asceticism. Dominic realised that if Catholic preachers were to have any hope, they would have to embrace similarly poor and penitential ways. The credibility of their message depended on it. And was it not, in any case, simply returning to the simplicity of the first apostolic missions?

There is a danger in this of course: 'my guru is more ascetic than your guru'. Monastic communities were not always free of this kind of rivalry, as if asceticism were some kind of end in itself. What's the poverty for? what's the simplicity about?

The only acceptable answer in a Christian context is that it is in order to come closer to Christ, to imitate him more completely in how we live and work. The apostles are being formed for their mission. Christ instructs them not just through his words but through his lifestyle. Like him, they are to preach repentance, cast out demons, and anoint people with oil in order to heal them.

We may think that these things can still be done from a position of wealth and power. But the teaching and practice of Jesus, and the experience of the Church, says the opposite. A moment's reflection confirms that our own most convincing teachers of the gospel impressed us by their simplicity, their sincerity, their non-attachment to wealth or power. Their freedom in the service of truth enabled them to teach, and reconcile, and heal, as they did.

Christian simplicity needs to be physical and material, not just an idea or a notion. On the other hand it is never an end in itself. It serves the preaching of the Word, prepares the way for the power of the Word to show itself, and follows inevitably on our repentance and our acceptance of the Word.

We know from the other gospels that this experience of simplicity and its effectiveness filled the apostles with joy.

Week 4 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 2 Samuel 24:2, 9-17; Psalm 32; Mark 6:1-6

Jesus comes to his own country, literally to his 'fatherland', to what belongs to his father. The word is used twice in this short gospel passage (vv.1,4). And perhaps this is the root of the problem in his own country: what he has come to is not, truly, his fatherland. They think they know him, that he belongs to them, that they have made him. They say they know his mother, his brothers, his sisters. Notice that they do not mention his father. Is this because they do not know who his father is? In a deeper sense, of course, that is precisely the problem: they do not know who his Father is. They do not know where he has come from, his origin, his nature. He does not belong to them in the way they think he does. In Luke's gospel, as an adolescent, he says to his mother, 'did you not know that I must be about my father's business, in my father's house, in my (true) fatherland?'

They know he is a carpenter, a tekton. They know what his job is, therefore, what he is meant to produce. So where do these mighty works come from? He is a craftsman, skilled with his hands, not a teacher. Whence comes the wisdom that shines in his words as in his actions? One of their own, yet they do not know him. They are unsettled, tripped up by him (the literal meaning of  'scandalised'). A familiar face, and yet he is a stranger to them. He is a craftsman, yes, a poet, author, and master, but they fail to put two and two together. Who is the author of these mighty works he does, works that renew, heal and re-create broken humanity? It cannot be him, they say, because we know who he is, and where he belongs, and what is to be expected of him.

Jesus has come to reveal his Father to them. That means he has come to introduce them to their true homeland (their true fatherland). He is present with them as the witness of the Father, teaching them marvellous things, and as the Father's instrument in a work of re-creation. In the chapters just before this one we have seen his power over all the levels of creation. His own people fail to see that he is indeed a tekton, a craftsman and more, the one through whom all things were made. It is too much to expect that they would understand so much, so quickly. The Church took a long time to realise all it has about the nature and person of Jesus. And we continue to explore His mystery centuries later.

The sad thing is that his own country, his own kin, his own house, has the power to disempower him, to block the marvellous teaching and the wonderful works. We might be tempted to think, 'well that was them and we are we and he belongs to us in a different way'. That would be to make him a citizen of our fatherland rather than agreeing to follow him into his Fatherland. We must keep alert to the temptation of thinking that now it is we (and we alone) who are his own country, his own kin, his own house. It seems like a sure road to misunderstanding him, a way of failing to grasp his teaching, in fact a way of tripping ourselves up because of him and, in the process, placing the obstacle of faithlessness in the path of his saving power.

Week 4 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Hebrews 13:15-17, 20-21; Psalm 22; Mark 6:30-34

We have been reading the Letter to the Hebrews, a text of extraordinary richness. One of its main themes is the 'once for all - ness' of the sacrifice of Christ. In place of the sin-offerings of the temple, offered each day, for the priest himself as well as for others, not guaranteed to be effective, there is the sacrifice Jesus offered once, for all, as the perfect high priest, able to sympathise with sinners in their weakness although he is himself without sin, a sacrifice that achieves the eternal perfection of all whom he is sanctifying.

I once heard Thomas Torrance, a distinguished Protestant theologian, rejecting attacks on Catholic teaching and practice from fellow Presbyterians. He knew, and he told them, that the best modern theology in defence of the uniqueness of the sacrifice of Christ, its 'inalienability', is from Catholic theologians.

And yet in the liturgy and in spirituality we continue to speak of ourselves offering sacrifices: the sacrifice of praise offered each day in the Liturgy of the Hours, for example, the sacrifice of good works, thanksgiving, charity, penance, offer it up, works of reparation, the Mass itself as a sacrifice: so many activities and virtues of the Christian life are thought of as 'sacrificial'. Saint Augustine writes about sacrifice in his work On the City of God. There he says that anything can be a sacrifice, any act designed to unite us to God and any human work done for the sake of God. Of course we offer all these sacrifices, as we offer all our prayers, through Christ our Lord and in union with him. There is no true sacrifice apart from his sacrifice just as there is no true prayer apart from his prayer.

The section of Hebrews we read today speaks about this. The sacrifice of praise means referring everything to God, continually, at all times and in all places. It is to be unending, our only obsession. There is also a sacrifice of obedience implied in what the author says about leaders in the community: defer to them as they carry a responsibility before God for you.

Leaders speak as we see from the gospel reading. They come up with words. The apostles reported all they had done and taught. Jesus' compassion moves him to teach the people at length, to give them knowledge, meaning, wisdom, words. The sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving requires words. But sometimes we are lost for words because our experiences are profound and we are in awe or afraid or overcome. When lost for words with which to offer our praise and thanksgiving we turn to leaders, teachers, pastors, healers - they provide us with words.

According to the Letter to the Hebrews, Jesus is the 'pioneer and perfecter' of our faith, the Leader and Teacher, the Pastor and Healer, the Word who continues to generate words in us so that we can express our desire for Him and give voice to our praise of His glory.

Week 4 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Hebrews 13:1-8; Psalm 27; Mark 6:14-29

So who is the prisoner and who is the free man? Obviously John the Baptist is the free man and Herod is the prisoner. Justice, integrity and truth shape the soul of John the Baptist and make him free. Lust, pride and gluttony shape the soul of Herod and turn him into a fumbling, dangerous fool. John lives in the freedom that comes from being convinced of the truth. Herod believes he can shape reality to suit his own desires and purposes and so lives in permanent slavery. He twists and turns, perplexed by John but wanting to listen to him, dismayed at the girl's request but afraid of seeming weak in front of his guests.

The martyrs often die, in the end, for defending something that others might thing not worth dying for. Refusing Henry VIII's oath of supremacy? Condemning Herod's adultery? Refusing to burn incense to an idol? Why should good people give their lives for things like this? Surely some compromise, some acceptable toleration or interpretation could be found that would spare good people for the world. Choose a lesser evil, some might say. Don't let the best get in the way of the good. 'God will understand.'

But there is for us only this bodily life. This is where we find meaning and purpose, truth and integrity. These are not just ideas that are abstract, detached, and disincarnate. We only experience them embodied, either in the physical body or the social body, the body of the family or the body of the Church, the political body or the body created by our commitments and relationships. The first reading today anticipates so much of later Christian morality. We should act as it directs, we are told, because 'we also are in the body'. The life of faith is lived out in hospitality, care for prisoners, respect for marriage, contentment with what you have, loyalty to good leaders. None of these things can be done in theory only, they must be done in practice. That means they must be done in our bodies, acted out physically.

It remains the case: all the characteristically 'Catholic' issues in ethics are about the right treatment and use of bodies. This is a point on which the Church and modern thought have now diverged significantly. The Church believes not just that human beings have souls but that human beings are bodies. Many people will think that modern thought champions the body whereas Catholicism is 'spiritual' and not in the real world. But the opposite is the truth because the Church 'remembers its leaders', its apostles and teachers and martyrs, other parts of the same body who teach us how to live in that body.

The Church believes not just that human beings have souls but that human beings are bodies. We see the truth of this very clearly in the flabby shape of Herod disintegrating as a human being because of the things he does in the body, the things he does with the bodies of other people. We see it very clearly also from the other side in the heroic shape of John the Baptist, because of the things he does in the body, preaching and baptising, as well as the things that are done to him in the body. Whenever the Church celebrates its martyrs, it remembers them not just as victims of cruel persecution in what was done to their bodies but as people who remained completely free in what they did with their bodies, in the service of Christ and his people.

Week 4 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Hebrews 12:18-19, 21-24; Psalm 48; Mark 6:7-13

We still refer to Hebrews as a letter although it is not much like a letter. There is no greeting at the beginning. It gets straight down to business. There is some tidying up at the end, a kind of signing off, with a reference to Timothy and greetings from the saints in Italy. The author says 'I have written to you briefly' which does not seem correct if he is referring to the whole document. Perhaps he is talking about the note added at the end. And thankfully he is not correct, for Hebrews is a rich, rich text.

It looks and feels more like a homily than a letter, a conference explaining how Jesus fulfills biblical types and figures. He brings a new covenant, is a different kind of priest, establishes a new liturgy, gives a new law, offers a new sacrifice, renews creation, saves the people, and fulfills profoundly the promises and anticipations we find in the Old Testament.

The passage read at Mass today is a kind of climax to the text. 'What you have come to ...', the point at which you have arrived, the place where you are. If, as some scholars think, it is a homily, then it feels very much like a liturgical homily, a homily given at the Eucharist. The text recalls the theophany of Mount Sinai, and the sealing of the covenant, the ways in which God revealed his presence, power and majesty. There is noise and thunder, flame and storm, darkness and fear. But 'what you have come to' is not Mount Sinai but the Eucharist. You have come to Mass.

Some years ago a colleague decided to take Jesus more or less at his word and set out to cross Ireland taking nothing for the journey. (I imagine he brought rain gear. And he went alone rather than with a companion.) As the day drew to a close he would ask for accommodation at some house near where he was, offering to celebrate Mass in return for bed and breakfast. He had no difficulty finding places to stay and brought the gift of the Eucharist into people's homes.

What we have come to when we gather to celebrate the Eucharist will seem simple and ordinary, it may even be routine. But it is still majestic, awe-inspiring, and tremendous. When my colleague celebrated the Eucharist in a quiet Irish living room, with a few people gathered round the hearth or in the kitchen, what he brought with him into that house was Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, innumerable angels in festal gathering, the assembly of the first-born who are enrolled in heaven, a judge who is God of all, the spirits of just men made perfect, Jesus the mediator of this new covenant, and sprinkled blood (for a covenant must be sealed in blood) that speaks more graciously than the blood of Abel.

So he was not travelling alone after all. In return for the bread they gave him, he was privileged to share with them the bread of heaven. They invited him to cross their threshold and he led them across another threshold, one that ushered them into eternal and infinite spaces, making them participants in the heavenly liturgy, filling their house with the court of heaven. And at the centre of that court the one who sends us and calls us, Jesus, mediator of the new and everlasting covenant sealed in his graciously eloquent blood.

Week 4 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Hebrews 12:1-4; Psalm 22; Mark 5:21-43

'Talitha koum', 'little girl, arise'. It is one of the places in the New Testament where we find Aramaic words. There are a number of these places, especially in the gospels, and particularly in Mark's gospel. It is believed that Aramaic was the mother tongue of Jesus. It is a language still used today, for example by the Christian communities struggling for survival in Iraq.

We can speculate about why these words and phrases survive in the New Testament. There seems to be no scholarly consensus about why they are there, and why they appear at precisely the places where we find them. The following seem like the three most importance occurrences of Aramaic words in Mark's gospel: the passage we read today in which Jesus says 'talitha koum' to the little girl, the passage from Mark 14 which tells of Jesus' agony in the garden and where he prays to his Father as 'Abba', and the words spoken by Jesus from the cross as recorded by Mark, 'Eloi, eloi, lama sabachthani'.

What is common to all three is death. In all three moments Jesus is confronted with death. They are all times when faith or trust in God is put to its most extreme test, when Jesus engages with death, the final and ultimate enemy, the last weapon in the arsenal of the kingdom of Satan. And death seems like the victory of that kingdom. Having shown that he has power over illness and  demons, over sin and the forces of nature, what about death? What can the Messiah do in the face of death? He proclaims that the kingdom of God is at hand, a kingdom that is about life, the fulness of life, eternal life. How does he fare in the battle with death? Will his kingdom be able for that?

We have been reading the letter to the Hebrews for the past few weeks and hear this morning about the cloud of witnesses who bear witness to faith, gathered round Jesus who is the 'leader and perfecter' of our faith. Chief among these witnesses is Abraham who believed even in the face of death. He believed that God was able even to raise the dead and so Isaac was given back to him, saved from the jaws of death, as a symbol of God's power to raise the dead.

With Jesus this raising of the dead really begins. We can imagine that the Aramaic words survive because these encounters with death are the most intense, emotionally, of Jesus' ministry. We know from his reaction to the death of Lazarus how profoundly moved he was at the power of death. It is easy to see that Gethsemane and Golgotha are the most emotional moments for him personally, the times of deepest struggle: will he remain faithful even in this deepening darkness? We can imagine that he was angry at the reaction of the crowd when he arrived at the house of Jairus.

Here is a common factor, then, in what seem like the most significant uses of Aramaic words in Mark's gospel: they are recorded where Christ clashed with death. They are used in times of high emotion. As if for the witnesses who record these encounters the experience was also deeply emotional, so that actual words and phrases, in the Lord's mother tongue, were seared into their hearts, minds and memories.

It is a speculation, a meditation, but it is at least interesting. And perhaps a lot more than interesting, because it raises the key question: how does faith fare in the face of death? My faith? Your faith? The faithfulness of Jesus? Our trust in him? Do we continue then to believe, to hope, that with God all things are possible?

Week 4 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Hebrews 11,32-40; Psalm 30/31; Mark 5:1-20

Today we read one of the strangest stories in the gospels, about the demoniac called Legion from whom many demons were cast out. Jesus sent the demons into a herd of pigs that promptly ran over a cliff into the sea and drowned. It is one of a series of stories, brought together in Mark's gospel, which shows the power of Jesus over creation.

First there is the calming of a storm at sea. Those who witnessed it were filled with awe, saying to one another 'who is this that even wind and sea obey him?' (4:41). Nature, and especially the waters, are in his hands, he who is the Divine Wisdom through whom all things were made.

Next follows today's episode in which we see that Jesus has power over two other levels of creation, demons and animals (5:1-20). All who heard of it marveled, we are told, and the man who had been cured became a preacher and a witness to Jesus, proclaiming in pagan territory (the Decapolis) how much Jesus had done for him.

Then we read the double story of the daughter of Jairus, raised from the dead, and the woman with a haemhorrage (5:21-43) who surreptitiously touches the garments of Jesus but he knew that power had gone out from him and asks who it is that has touched him. Again we see the power of Jesus over the creation: he can even heal the sick and raise the dead. For a third time people are filled with amazement.

Dumb nature, demons, animals, the forces of sickness and even death: all of it falls under the power of Jesus. It provides a striking run up to what comes in chapter 6, the rejection of Jesus at Nazareth. It seems that there is one force in creation over which Jesus does not exercise absolute control. That force is human freedom. He can present himself to it, appeal to it, offer good things to it, but he does not force it, does not replace it, does not oblige it to act against what it chooses to do.

Free human acts are as much the creation of God as anything else that has being (although God is not responsible for the evil there is in evil human acts). By the Spirit, God makes us do freely what is good - this is how Thomas Aquinas paradoxically expresses it. Human freedom is not displaced by God's power but rather fully established by that power. This is what grace does in healing our freedom. But there is still the possibility of rejecting the gift of God, of saying 'I prefer my own way', 'I choose the good as I see it rather than as you have presented it to me'. And this is what we mean by sin.

The power of sin may sometimes seem trivial compared with storms at sea, demonic possession, illness, and death. At other times we see very clearly the power of sin to destroy human lives. It is always radically destructive, even when we do not immediately see its consequences. The human animal, created to worship and to love the Creator, also has the capacity to reject God's loving purpose. We cannot frustrate it or prevent it coming about. But we can do great damage to ourselves, to others, and to God's creation, when we assert our power independently of God's wisdom. Then it is we who have become demonic, disfigured creatures, who must call out to the Son of the Most High, asking for his help if we are once again to worship and to believe.

Week 4 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20; Psalm 95; 1 Corinthians 7:32-35; Mark 1:21-28

'If only God would do x', 'if only God would do y'. Sometimes we think like this, and sometimes we hear people speaking like this: 'If only God would reveal Himself in some unambiguous, undeniable, powerful way', 'if only God would act in some great deed that would establish His presence and His concern so that all who saw it, or heard of it, would be convinced, freed forever from the distractions of doubt and questioning'.

Of course, human beings are awkward, and the first reading today reminds us of their prayer not to hear the Lord's voice and not to see the great fire! Humankind cannot bear very much reality, as T.S.Eliot put it, in particular, it seems, the reality of God ('no one can see God and live', we are told).

Of course there is excitement wherever a new prophet appears, a teacher or spiritual guru or wonder worker, who seems to have an authority and power beyond the ordinary. These are people we want - and at the same time don't want. In any case, most of them turn out to have feet of clay. As soon as they begin to be venerated by some, they begin to be pulled down by others. Even the work of Teresa of Calcutta, for example, which seems like straightforward (unambiguous, undeniable) love for the poor, has been criticised and attacked: what was her motivation? did she help the poor to break free of their poverty?

An old philosophical axiom says 'things are received according to the condition of the receiver'. God might well be shouting at us in creation and in the history of salvation, but that is no guarantee that He will be heard by us, or, if heard, that He will be understood by us and win our obedience.

So God answers the prayer of His people, raising up a prophet like Moses who will stand, on their behalf, before the great fire and who will hear, on their behalf, the Lord's voice. This prophet, Jesus of Nazareth, is powerful and authoritative enough to win people's attention, at least at the beginning of his mission. 'He brings something new', they say. (Human beings like new things.) They are right and wrong in thinking it is new. He does teach with authority, unlike the scribes, and His authority is seen in His power over the forces of evil. The demonic side of human experience is more tuned in to His significance; those places where we are mad, disturbed, and vulnerable, recognise Him more quickly. The saner part of ourselves is, for the moment impressed, but (rightly) apprehensive. The demons recognise His holiness and His power to destroy them. They obey Him, the people say, and it raises the question of their own obedience: will they go on listening? will they remain impressed? will they be able to turn from their distractions to be united with Him? will they be able, finally, to see the great fire and hear the Lord's voice or will they continue to hold back, to keep options open, to struggle with what faith requires?

God has revealed Himself unambiguously, undeniably, powerfully. God has acted in a great deed that confirms His presence and His concern. This revelation of God and this great deed of God, are one and the same, Jesus of Nazareth. This is the authority He has, that Word and Deed are one in Him. But humankind cannot bear very much reality and there are many interesting, or at least stimulating, distractions that keep us from hearing His voice and seeing His fire. We will be impressed with Him from time to time, this prophet like Moses, but at other times we will prefer to shut out that voice and turn away from that fire. We will fear that He has come to destroy us, to take away our possibilities for living. In fact He has come to dwell in our minds by His teaching and to abide in our hearts in the fire of His Spirit. He has come, in the words of St John's gospel, that we might have life, life in all its fulness. What is it that carries us beyond occasional admiration at Him, to sharing His life, the life of the Holy One of God?

You can listen here to this homily being preached.