Week 5 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 11.4-13; Psalm 106; Mark 7.24-30

It might seem strange to read that King David's heart was 'entirely with the Lord'. His sins were many and serious - murder and adultery that we know of - and yet he never turned aside to other gods. He comes across as what we might call an honest sinner. He 'owns up' and repents without delay when the prophet Nathan confronts him concerning his sins towards Uriah and Bathsheba. He does not try to blame anybody else which is a more familiar tactic in the scriptures (and in life generally). We are told that in spite of those sins, David followed the Lord 'unreservedly'. We see his devotion, his constant awareness of God's presence and prerogatives, when he spares Saul who is at his mercy and yet he does not kill him because he is the Lord's anointed. For David, the Lord and what is the Lord's must always be respected.

Solomon is no saint either but is in a more serious situation because he allows his sins to lead him away from his relationship with the Lord. The Lord's anger expresses itself in the future destiny of David's dynasty, a response which is however restrained by the memory of David's devotion and the Lord's promise to him.

There is a refreshing honesty also in the Syrophoenician woman whom we meet once again in today's gospel reading. It is an intriguing moment in which Jesus seems tired and cranky, telling her that it is not right to share the children's food with dogs. Her witty response, that even the dogs can eat the scraps that fall from the table, earns her the same reward as those who had revealed their faith to Jesus and so her daughter is healed.

It seems as if the fresh air of honest dealing is fundamental in the relationship with the Lord, the God of Israel, and with Jesus, the Lord Incarnate. Because God is truth as well as love, we might say, the atmosphere of his kingdom, its culture, is honesty, trust, plain dealing. At base, that is what faith means: living in the truth, trusting the one who is the source of all truth, being humble in turning to him for help.

'The prayer of the humble person pierces the clouds and will not rest until it reaches its goal, until the Most High responds (Sirach 35.21).' This text, from the Book of Sirach, describes well the honest prayer of the Syrophoenician woman, of David in his repentance, of Job in his distress, of the widow of Luke 18 in her persistence, of Jesus in his agony, of Monica in her prayers for Augustine ... of ourselves too, perhaps, or at least those of us who can persevere in it.

Week 5 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 10.1-10; Psalm 37; Mark 7.14-23

The wisdom of Solomon and the splendour of his court leave the Queen of Sheba breathless. She seems to be besotted, for in spite of all he already has, she gives him many gifts from her own treasuries. We can imagine the scene from places we can still visit, places like Versailles or Windsor or the Winter Palace in St Petersburg or even the Apostolic Palace at the Vatican. Kings and princes, queens and duchesses, popes and cardinals: they knew how to impress and had the resources to engage the best architects, the finest artists, the most gifted designers of clothes and gardens, the greatest composers of music.

By contrast is what comes from the mouth of Jesus in the gospel reading as he lists the things that originate in the human heart: evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly. We can imagine that while the externals of courtly life were as described in the first reading, the human relations within those splendid walls were often marked, and marred, by what Jesus describes in the gospel reading. We see it often represented in films about the Tudors or life at Versailles or the Borgias.

It is not what appears externally that counts, then, what really counts is what comes from within human beings, from the heart. 'Our heart is given to the things we treasure': Jesus teaches us this, in his Sermon on the Mount. 'My love is my weight', says Saint Augustine, meaning the same thing, that I am given to the things I love. They are my passion, they are the things that may even take my breath away. So what is it that I love?

The important question is not what kind of palace can I construct with which to impress people but what kind of heart can I develop in order to enter into the fulness of human living which Jesus came to teach us: how to love in a way that is truly right and good. 'Set your heart on things that are above', Saint Paul says in his letter to the Colossians, following Jesus once again who tells us to lay up treasure for ourselves in heaven, not on the earth. It means to become rich in the resources of the kingdom of God which are the fruits of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, self-control.

In this way we live with a wisdom superior to that of Solomon, building our house on rock, rich in what really matters, the love of God, which, unlike the great palaces with their pomp and splendour, will never decline or weaken and will never fade away.

Week 5 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 8:22-23, 27-30; Psalm 84: Mark 7:1-13

Ephesians 6:2 says that the commandment about honouring our parents is the first commandment to have a promise attached: ‘honour your father and your mother that your days may be long and that it may go well with you in the land which the Lord your God gives you’ (Deuteronomy 5:16; Exodus 20:12). The matter is taken very seriously in the Old Testament: ‘every one of you shall revere his mother and his father’ (Leviticus 19:3); to strike or even curse one’s parents is an offence punishable by death (Exodus 21:15, 17; Leviticus 20:9; Deuteronomy 27:16).

Jesus refers to this commandment in controversy with the Pharisees and scribes who, he says, have effectively rejected the commandment of God by introducing a ‘get out clause’ into their own laws: if somebody dedicated property for religious purposes then this freed him from his obligations to his parents. But this is corruption, says Jesus, all the worse for posing as piety: ‘you reject the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition’ (Matthew 7:10; Mark 15:1-9). We need to be careful that we do not end up doing something similar, giving more importance to human traditions than to God’s commandments.

At the same time Jesus makes it clear that faith in him is more fundamental even than our relationship with our parents. We are not to ‘prefer’ them to him if we are to be worthy of him (Matthew 10:32-40; Mark 10:28-31; Luke 9:57-62; 14:25-35). Blood is thicker than water, we say. The Book of Leviticus identifies this as the reason why cursing one’s parents is a capital offence: if you curse your parents ‘your own blood is upon you’ (Leviticus 20:9). But Jesus teaches that there is something thicker than blood. ‘Who are my mother and my brothers’, he asks when told that they are at the edge of the crowd seeking him (Matthew 12:46-50). Those who hear the word of God and do it, he replies. The woman who praises Mary – ‘blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts you sucked’ (Luke 11:27-28) – gets the same reply: ‘blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it’. This is the strongest bond of all, our becoming brothers and sisters of Christ, our adoption as children of the Father, our shared life in the Spirit.

It is sometimes assumed that this commandment is for children. Ephesians 6:2 even adds the word ‘children’ at the beginning. But the original commandment does not contain the word ‘children’ and experience shows that people have more difficulty with it as they grow up. Children tend to observe it naturally (while testing the boundaries), since mother and father are the source of so many good things for them. For most children their parents fill the horizon and are as reliable as the sunrise. Adult children find it more difficult to respect their parents as they come to realise how limited and flawed they are. Just as children can be a disappointment to their parents, it seems that the opposite is also often the case, at least for a time. This is when we need to remember this commandment.

Under this commandment belong other requirements of the virtue of ‘piety’. This was the pagan world’s version of the commandment, a part of justice whereby we show honour and gratitude to those who have done for us things we can never do for them: our parents, our teachers, the communities which helped bring us to maturity (the patria, or fatherland). The pagan virtue of religion itself is the natural debt of honour and gratitude we owe to God. Of course as Christians we believe that Jesus has brought us into a radically new level of intimacy with God through the theological virtues of faith, hope and love.

The exchange between the adolescent Jesus and his human parents in the Temple at Jerusalem may seem shocking: ‘how is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ (Luke 2:49). But it serves to introduce the meaning of his mission, in which the old commandment remains in force while being taken up into the new commandment, to be given new power there. In Christ we are asked not only to honour our father and our mother, we are to love them.

This reflection was first published in Saint Martin Magazine

Week 05 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 8:1-7, 9-13; Psalm 132; Mark 6:53-56

Ten days ago we heard about David’s plan to build a house for the Lord, a suitable dwelling for the Ark of the Covenant. But through the prophet Nathan, David learned that he would not be the one to build a temple for the Lord. In the first place, it was the Lord who was constructing a house for David, not the other way round. The dynasty of David, his royal house, would last forever and the temple in Jerusalem, when it did come to be built, was constructed by Solomon, David’s son.

The Books of the Kings open with an account of the death of David and the succession of Solomon. He asked for wisdom above all other gifts, enabling him to rule in such a way that peace broke out and the kingdom rested from warfare. It was now time to build the Temple and Solomon gathered the best craftsmen and artists to work on this great building which was to be the place of the presence of God. It was to house the Ark of the Covenant, the Tent of Meeting, the tablets of stone containing the Ten Commandments, and the other treasures that sealed the covenant between the Lord and the people of Israel.

The Temple was to be the place of prayer, the meeting place between the people and God. It was to be the place of sacrifice and the centre in which the great liturgies of Israel were celebrated. We have been hearing about the planning and building the Temple, and today’s reading tells us about the liturgy during which the Temple was dedicated. The first great act of this liturgy was to bring the Ark of the Covenant from Mount Zion, the City of David, to the Temple and to enthrone it in the Holy of Holies, under the protecting wings of the Cherubim. Inside the Ark are the stones containing the Ten Commandments, at once the revelation of God’s wisdom for his people and the contract of their relationship with God. As the Ark is placed in its new dwelling the dark cloud in which God dwells came to settle around it, filling the Holy of Holies. This mysterious cloud both revealed and hid the presence of the Lord. It was the sign that the glory of God had come to dwell in the midst of God’s people.

There is a paradox at the heart of faith which is at once strong and certain in its grasp of truth, and at the same time obscure and mysterious. Faith, as Saint Paul says, means ‘seeing in a glass darkly’. This paradox is expressed very powerfully by the dark cloud in which God dwells. The presence of God is certain – who could doubt the presence of a dark cloud? But the nature of God, what that cloud contains, the ‘face’ of God, remains hidden. No one can see God and live, the Bible tells us, and in another text ‘truly you are a God who hides yourself’.

And yet this hidden God revealed himself to Moses and to David. At least he revealed his will for his people which gives us some understanding of what God himself is like. We are to be righteous as God is righteous and holy as God is holy. The ‘shekinah’, which was the clouded space above the Ark and between the Cherubim was regarded as the holiest place in creation. But it was simply an empty space: the people could be sure that God was there even though God’s glory was revealed simply as a dark cloud.

By contrast today’s gospel reading tells us that people ‘recognised Jesus immediately’ and flocked to him for healing. Many New Testament texts teach us that Jesus is the ‘new Temple’, the new place of the presence of God, the new meeting place between God and the people. At the moment of Jesus’ death the curtain in the Temple was torn in two. What does it mean? That holiest place is opened up to our gaze. The cloud disperses to reveal the face of God. And what do we see? We see Jesus, the human face of God. We see Jesus dying on the cross, the definitive revelation of God’s love. We see the blood poured out and the Spirit breathed forth, by which a new and everlasting covenant is established with humanity.

The only Son, who comes to us from the Father’s heart, has now revealed God to us. This Son of David establishes in his own blood the Kingdom that will last forever.

Week 05 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 58:7-10; Psalm 112; 1 Corinthians 2:1-5; Matthew 5:13-16

With a range of imagery the Bible speaks about a choice presented by the Word of God to those who hear it.

According to the Book of Deuteronomy the choice to observe the commandments of God or not to observe them is a choice between life and death, between a blessing and a curse. For much of the 'wisdom literature' the choice is between walking in the way of wisdom or descending the path of foolishness, depending on how we relate to others and to God.

In his preaching Jesus speaks more starkly of this choice. It is between a narrow gate opening onto a hard road and an easy and broad road which leads, however, to perdition (Matt 7:13-14). Paul contrasts life according to the Spirit and life according to the flesh, while John is fond of the imagery of light and darkness.

This Sunday's readings give us a physical and very concrete image for the choice we face between two contrasting ways of living: the clenched fist and the open hand.

Think of the difference between being confronted with a clenched fist and being offered an open hand. The clenched fist signifies threat, rejection, arrogance, exclusion, refusal, anger and violence. The open hand means friendship, help, peace, sharing, communication and connection.

Isaiah encourages his listeners to 'do away with the yoke, the clenched fist, the wicked word', and to do it by 'sharing your bread with the hungry and clothing the man you see to be naked'. Psalm 111 continues the theme: 'the good man takes pity and lends … is generous, merciful and just … open-handed he gives to the poor.'

Where the clenched fist is ungenerous, unreceptive and closes things down, the open hand is generous, welcoming and vulnerable.

Paul pleads his own openness and vulnerability among the Corinthians. I was with you in fear and trembling, he says, and in my preaching I avoided the complexities of 'philosophy'. 'All I knew among you,' he continues, 'was Jesus as the crucified Christ.'

The crucified Christ opened his hands and arms and heart on the cross to give us the definitive revelation of God. This heart open to the world contains a love beyond all expectation and beyond any natural hope, a love beyond any singing or telling of it. The God who opens wide his hand to satisfy the desires of all who live (Ps 145) has now opened wide his heart to bring to eternal life all whom He has chosen (Eph 1:11).

There may be many reasons why, at times, we choose the way of the clenched fist rather than the open hand: hurt and disappointment, tiredness and indifference, fear and misunderstanding, selfishness and disdain.

Whatever the reasons, the clenched fist always involves turning from our own kin and denying, in effect, that others are of the same kin. The open hand, however, means turning towards others as our kin, fellow human creatures, brothers and sisters, children of the same heavenly Father sharing a common call and a common hope.

Just as the presence of salt and light cannot be hidden and their absence will be noticed, the kindness of the good person cannot be denied and the shock of the clenched fist will stop us in our tracks. The good works of the open-handed shine forth so that people might praise the Father for the holiness they glimpse in His creatures. We have come to know that this is what God is like, causing his sun to rise on bad as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest as on dishonest people (Matt 5:45).

In many parts of the world the sign of peace at Mass is a simple handshake and often its exchange is perfunctory and lazy. But it symbolises something crucial, the difference between two ways of approaching our neighbour and of approaching life.

Are we to turn in and close ourselves away, hardening our heart and clenching our fist? Or are we to follow Christ by opening our hands and our hearts, by reaching out to others in generosity and justice? What is the point in opening our hands in prayer to God if we do not lend a hand of kindness to our brothers and sisters in their need?

This homily first appeared on Torch, the preaching website of the English Dominican Province

Week 5 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 3.9-24; Psalm 90; Mark 8.1-10

Jesus's heart is moved with pity for the people who have been with him for some days. It is how the Lord, our God, is towards us always. God is good, and God is love, and can only be himself in his dealings with us. That means compassionate and merciful, anxious to come to our help. This is how God is revealed to us in how Jesus lived and acted, always seeking to attend to the needs of the people.

We see this compassion of God in a number of ways in the first reading also. What is recorded there is described as the punishment following on sin but really God is simply spelling out for Adam and Eve the consequences of their sin. Each of them tries to blame someone else for what has happened - the man blames the woman, the woman blames the snake, in effect they are blaming God for having made things the way He has. In speaking to them as he does, God is simply presenting them with the truth of their situation now that they have turned away from him.

But even in that moment his compassion and kindness win through. He makes clothes for them, for example. A tender moment, just a detail in the story. Are we to imagine God sitting at a sewing machine or taking out needle and thread to dress them?

Shutting off access to the tree of life may seem simply like punishment, even a kind of vindictiveness on God's part as if he is one of the Greek-style gods, just a human being writ large. But God is not like that. In fact preventing access to the tree of life is also a gesture of kindness on God's part. What if they were to become eternal now, in the condition of sin in which they stand? He acts to save them from confirming their sinful condition and perhaps being forever where they are now.

And a third act of kindness is hinted at in what God says to the serpent. There will be enmity between the woman and the serpent, between her seed and the serpent's seed. It is what has been called the 'proto-evangelium', the first hint of the good news that sometime in the future there will be a showdown between a descendant of the woman and a descendant of the serpent. It has become part of the iconography of Mary, how we represent her, crushing the head of the serpent. For it is her son, Jesus, who is the one who undoes the damage brought about by the serpent. He it is who opens again for us the gates of paradise and gives us access, following him, to the tree of life.

The tree of life is spoken about in two books of the Bible, the first one, Genesis, and the last one, Revelation. It is what the whole story is about. And it is the cross of the Lord which has become the tree of life for us because it is through the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus that eternal life has been won back for us. Moved with pity at their hunger Jesus performed his miracles of feeding. Moved with pity at our spiritual condition and our profound need of grace and mercy he performed his greatest act of love, the sacrifice of the cross confirmed by the Father in the resurrection.

God is good and God is love. God is working his purpose out in our individual lives and in the history of humanity. And that purpose is our flourishing, our coming to share the eternal life that is promised. God always acts towards us from the basis of mercy and compassion. It is sometimes difficult to see how some of the things that happen in our lives can be squared with that but we believe that they can and that some day it will be clear to us.

In the meantime we have these small signs of God mercy to encourage us and we have the great sign of his compassion to transform us - the cross of the Lord become the tree of life - guiding and leading us home to the kingdom.

Week 5 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 3.1-8; Psalm 31/32; Mark 7:31-37

The Aramaic term used here, Ephphatha, has found its way into the baptismal liturgies of the Church. One of a series of gestures and symbols that bring out the meaning of baptism, the ephphatha means the newly baptised infant has his or her mouth and ears touched to indicate that the Church looks forward to the day when they will hear the Word of God for themselves and profess the faith with their own lips.

The miracles of sensation recorded in the gospels - the blind see, the deaf hear, the dumb speak - are all connected with faith, and so with baptism. It is not just that they come about as a result of faith, they also symbolise faith. Faith means hearing human words bearing God's Word. It means seeing created reality revealing God's reality. It means confessing with our lips what we have come to believe in our hearts.

He has done all things well, the people say of Jesus, he makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak. Through the gift of faith, celebrated in baptism, he continues to do this - enables the deaf to hear God's Word, the dumb to speak God's praise, the blind to see God's presence.

Of course Eve and Adam had their eyes opened in another way, as we are reminded by today's first reading. They wanted to gain wisdom, something the serpent promised would come to them by eating the fruit in disobedience to God's command. They would become like gods, he says, knowing good and evil.

And they do come to know good and evil, but from the perspective of evil. They seek to lay their hands on wisdom and in doing so distort their fuller vision even as it is born.  The mission of Jesus is to enable men and women to receive the wisdom he brings which means seeing good and evil but now from the perspective of good. This is the more comprehensive knowledge, deeper, more radical, stronger and more coherent.

The distorted wisdom gained through the fall of Adam and Eve disturbs all hearing, all seeing, all speaking. The anxiety generated by their realisation of nakedness can be taken to refer to a more extensive unsettling of an earlier equilibrium, an unsettling that leaves them unhappy in their bodies and so not seeing, not hearing, not speaking well.

The line is clear, then, from God's original intention in creating man and woman in His image and likeness. The plan is disturbed by the serpent's cunning and human weakness. Jesus restores the balance, but not without a great struggle. He is the choicest fruit of the Father, good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom.

All who need help in hearing, seeing or speaking can come to him. Ephphatha, he says, be opened, so that we may hear the Word of life, see the truth He brings, speak words of wisdom and compassion learned from Him.

You can listen here to this homily being preached

Week 5 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 2.18-25; Psalm 128; Mark 7.24-30

There is another kind of nakedness which carries this woman in the gospel beyond shame. That is how the original condition of man and woman is described in the first reading: a nakedness in which there is no shame. Besides their physical nakedness, so often represented in art, Adam and Eve would also have been, presumably, open and transparent in their dealings with each other, frank and honest. The only chance we have to see it - sadly - is in their collaboration in disobedience. 

But the Syrophoenician woman in the gospel is forced into another kind of shameless nakedness in approaching Jesus. What drives her to this is her daughter's need. We see it often in the lengths to which mothers especially, and sometimes fathers also, are prepared to go in defence of their children or in pursuit of medical or other care for their children. It is the fierce power of love, spoken of in the Song of Songs 8.6, love strong as death, passion fierce as the grave. 

If she has to present herself raw and exposed, open to ridicule and rejection, she will do it. And she does do it, persevering even through the strange response of Jesus. She was naked, on behalf of her daughter, and was not ashamed. Wherever a person finds themselves driven by a great love, it will be so.

In this way she actually becomes a sign pointing forward to Jesus himself, to his nakedness on the cross. He is driven by a great love for the ones who have been entrusted to him by the Father, a love strong as death, a passion fierce as the grave. In such situations there is no time for false modesty, only open and transparent communication and action.

The Irish spiritual writer Eugene Boylan calls Jesus our 'tremendous lover'. And he is, shameless on the cross as he conquers sin and evil and death. Others tried to force on him another kind of shame but in his nakedness he restores paradise and establishes the promise of a return to its lost innocence. We see this power working already in the fierce and passionate love of the mother for her daughter. It drives her to present herself in the way she did: she made herself completely vulnerable but she was not ashamed. Later he too will make himself completely vulnerable and will not be ashamed.

 

Week 5 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Genesis 1:1-19; Psalm 104; Mark 6:53-56

For many philosophers and religious thinkers the beginning of the world is imagined as either a re-arrangement of some raw material already there, or an out-flowing from God's own substance. The Bible offers a third view: creation began simply and solely in the wise love of God.

Today, the view of modern scientists about the beginning of the world seems to be edging closer to religious ideas. Physicists speak about the 'big bang', about infinity, and about a 'singularity' of which nothing can be said scientifically. Christianity speaks about the 'mystery’ of creation, about a moment in which all things began (including our space/time, so it is not really a 'moment') and about a unique change (which is not strictly speaking a change at all) from nothing to something, to something very beautiful.

We read in the Bible that creation came about through the word of God. God simply said 'Let there be light' and so it was. The word of God, on which creation depends, originated in the heart and mind of God. God is an artist whose wisdom and intelligence are reflected in whatever God creates.

The people of Israel believed that from the very beginning, the word or wisdom of God was involved in creation. They went further: they believed that the Law given to Moses brought the wisdom of God into the hearts of those who hear it and fulfil its demands with generosity and love. It is in your mouth, in your heart, for your observance (Deuteronomy 30).

Christian faith goes further again. The word of God became flesh in Jesus Christ. This man, our brother, is the Word and Wisdom of God present within creation and history. Jesus is the firstborn of all creation, all things were created in him, through him and for him, and he holds all things in unity (Colossians 1). This is a remarkable belief, that Jesus, sent by the Father, makes present within creation the wise love which is the source and sustaining power of creation itself.

For Christians, the word of God is not simply some cold and rational intelligence. The word of God is a Word breathing love. So creation should be seen not only as an act of power but also as an act of mercy. God, taking pity on what is not anything at all, calls everything into being.

This is a restoration more wonderful than that of the man who had fallen into the hands of robbers, and it is more wonderful than the calling forth of Lazarus from the dead. The act of creation, by which God makes things to be and maintains them in being, is a work of compassion, a free and generous act of love. The compassion of Jesus towards the sick is the compassion of the Creator made flesh.

The word of God is in God. The word of God is within creation holding it in being. The word of God is in the scriptures which contain God's law and the promise of God's Spirit. The word of God became flesh and we have come to know him, Jesus Christ. The word of God is in human understanding, particularly when we understand something of God as creator and redeemer.

This places the human being in a unique position in regard to creation. Not only do we receive it from God but we are asked to care for it, to understand its nature and to guide it towards fulfilment. Since we are the image and likeness of God our creator, the word of God in us makes us creative creatures who experience but who also share the wise love of God.

Week 5 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 137; 1 Corinthians 15:1-22; Luke 5:1-11

There is nothing wrong about feeling unworthy in the presence of God. In fact it seems like a healthy reaction. Which of us, faced with the glory of God’s perfect love, would feel able to stand? Isaiah experienced that glory in a vision he had in the Temple at Jerusalem, and felt unworthy. Peter experienced it in his encounter with Jesus, and felt sinful. They fell to their knees, dismayed by their poverty.

That Peter reacted to Jesus as Isaiah did in the Temple reminds us of something central to the New Testament. God’s dwelling is not now a religious building in a particular place: God’s dwelling is Jesus Christ. The glory experienced by Isaiah is hidden within Jesus. Our dealings with God, and God’s dealings with us, take place now through the body of Jesus Christ. It is because we have been made members of that body through baptism that we have access to the Father when we pray in the name of the Son. But Peter has not yet learned all this. For the moment all he knows is that the power of God is working through Jesus and he is not worthy to stand in its presence.

Saint Catherine of Siena, a great mystic of the 14^th century, quotes God saying to her ‘I am He who is and you are she who is not’. Saint Paul puts it like this in the second reading today: ‘by grace I am what I am’. If he worked harder than any of the other apostles, it was ‘not I but the grace of God that is with me’. This is a lesson that is learned only with great difficulty. Isaiah has a burning coal placed against his lips: thus purified he can speak the Word of God to the people. Peter has many trials and difficulties to undergo in following Christ. Paul too gained his wisdom through much suffering. And of course Jesus himself, although he was Son, learned obedience through what he suffered.

Like Peter we are invited to ‘put out into the deep’, to be courageous and generous in our efforts at following Christ. We will fail often, and perhaps seriously, as Peter did. But we are in good company, for so many have walked this path before us, the path to our true identity: ‘by grace I am what I am’.

Week 05 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Kings 12.26-32; 13.33-34; Psalm105; Mark 8.1-10

Which is more powerful, the reality of what is unreal or the unreality of what is real? Strange question. Students of religion and of cultural traditions generally are accustomed to dealing with myth and its power. Let us say that a myth is not real in a literal sense but that it carries a truth about human life and experience that is very real. Often that truth is more effectively communicated through myth than if it were to be simply articulated in words. Think of Adam and Eve, Hamlet, and the Prodigal Son as 'myths', taking the term in a general sense. Think of their power, their reality, the truth they convey.

Worrying though is what seems to be a sense of unreality attached to what is real. For example, as I write these words (mid February 2022) it is as if the world is waiting for some kind of video game to begin as it looks towards Ukraine and Russia. Have we become so habituated to scenes of war, violence, and death, along with the many other forms of virtual reality that flicker on our screens, that our sense of what is really real has become numbed?

'Poor human bodies, howsoever stricken' were the concern of Jesus all through his public ministry. To heal the sick, to calm the agitated, to exorcise demons, to teach the ignorant, to feed the hungry, to raise the dead - to attend to whatever can cause pain and suffering to human beings: this was his occupation.

In today's gospel we see him in action. Is it myth, this feeding of four thousand people with seven loaves and a few small fish? It is certainly carrying a deep truth for us, and its power continues to touch people, turning hearts, minds and actions to the care of the hungry, to the fact that we share a common humanity with common needs and desires.

The first reading today seems like the kind of reality unfolding before our eyes in Russia. Jeroboam looks with envy at Rehoboam, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah are falling away from each other, the kingdom Solomon inherited from the political and military genius of David does not last even into a third generation. The realities of power, political and military, fed by the realities of fear, anxiety, envy, humiliation, desire for possession and control - all of this is underway in the human race from the beginning: Cain and Abel, Jeroboam and Rehoboam, Russia (and China?) and Ukraine (and the US? the West?). Ukraine is the latest theatre in which, it is feared, the realities of war will be played out. It is of greater concern than wars that have been underway for years - Yemen, Syria - because it seems as if it will bring the super-powers into more open and direct conflict with each than has been the case for decades.

And all for what? It will be the latest chapter in blood-drenched histories that will destroy many lives. Far from resolving anything it will simply deepen the sadness and anger which gives energy to those histories. Only by numbing themselves to the reality of war can human beings engage in it. Only by numbing its soldiers to the reality can human beings engage in it, through  intoxication of some kind, dehumanising the enemy, stoking the fires of anxiety, humiliation, fear, envy, feeding some myth.

On the other hand is the work of Jesus, recalled in the gospel and in the life of the Church. He establishes an alternative arrangement in human relationships in which there is no longer any enemy and in which what seems incredible and impossible becomes possible: fear, anxiety and humiliation are all acknowledged and understood, envy and desire are managed and calmed, the madness of war is recognised and human beings are invited to sit at a common table and resolve their differences peacefully.

Is it a fantasy compared with what people like to call 'the real world'? Or is that real world the fantasy, offering the illusion of solutions, a fantastic monster eating young men and women, whose appetite is all too real and infinitely extended the more it is satisfied? Put alongside it the kingdom of Christ where everybody is fed, all needs met, every desire satisfied, and still there is so much left over.

Fantasy? Reality? Which kingdom deserves our energy, our loyalty, our endurance? Which kingdom should we strive to build in our thoughts, words and actions, and in our relationships today?

 

Week 5 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Job 7:1-4,6-7; Psalm 147; 1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-23; Mark 1:29-39

Some years ago the actor Stephen Fry caused a fuss by describing God as 'evil, monstruous and capricious'. It is difficult to see how anybody could read the first chapters of the Bible and not think that. Perhaps not evil, but certainly capricious, awkward, odd, unpredictable, cranky, monstruous.

I wonder has Stephen Fry read the Book of Job? I suppose he has. I wonder whether the people who react to him, saying that he is being insulting etc., have read the Book of Job? It testifies to a strong strand in the Hebrew traditions of completely frank prayer: just tell God how you are thinking and feeling, pull no punches, straight and direct. (He knows anyway!) In particular tell God - honestly, straightforwardly - what you are thinking and feeling about Him. If you are having naughty (or potentially sacrilegious or blasphemous) thoughts or feelings about God, then talk to God about them. It is the easiest way to deal with them.

Job's friends are aghast at what he says, believing him to be sacrilegious and blasphemous in the way he is talking about God. He is speaking the truth he has experienced, and because he does not see how the parts of the equation hang together, he is not going to pretend that he does see how those parts hang together.

God does answer Job's complaining prayer. At least he half answers it. Job does get the face to face meeting with God that he asked for. He is led into a deeper experience of God: 'I had heard of you with my ears, but now my eye sees you'. That's something. What Job does not get from God is a philosophical or conceptual explanation of why the things that have happened to him have happened to him. He is not given the solution to the so-called problem of evil. Perhaps it is because that problem is constructed on a radical misconception, an understanding of God that is itself idolatrous and blasphemous (so no wonder people reject such a 'god').

God's answer to Job's questioning is not a philosophical or theological argument. God's answer to Job's questioning is called 'Jesus'. Sending the Son to dwell among us, to take on our flesh, to enter into all that we can gather under the name of 'flesh' - this is God's final answer to Job. We see that answer at work in today's gospel reading. It is the last part of the first chapter of Mark's Gospel which gives us 'a day in the life of Jesus the Christ'. We have seen Jesus engaging with precisely those things that lead people to think of God as capricious, monstruous and even evil: suffering and illness, sin and death, madness and demonic possession, leprosy and fear. Jesus is touching all that, literally, and allowing it to touch him. God, whatever the term means, has pitched his tent in this world, entering into its tangled and bloody history, engaging with its ambiguous and unreliable relationships, taking it all on in order to heal and restore a humanity which will easily reject this hand that is feeding it, easily jump to (wrong) conclusions.

Jesus comes to lead humanity deeper into the mystery of God, a darkness in which to ponder and understand more about sin and suffering, death and evil, creation, life and love. There are many inns along the way at which we will stop from time to time. They invite us to rest in conceptions of God that are partial and, to that extent, idolatrous. We must keep moving, as we see Jesus in today's gospel moving from town to town. He calls us follow him along a way and that way, if we persevere in it, leads to a clearing in which, in the bright darkness in which God dwells, if we are present in sincerity and truth (no matter what our thoughts or feelings about God), we will find the One for whom everyone is looking.

Stephen Fry is perfectly right. We must not worship as divine what is evil, monstruous and capricious. If this is how God seems then we must wait. Some people wait for a long time, waiting for God to reveal himself in a fresh way. We will know it is from God when we know that there is nothing contrived or forced about it, when we know that its beauty is real, when our hearts tell us that we are in the presence of  a goodness infinitely greater than our desire.