Week 18 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Nahum 2:1, 3; 3:1-3, 6-7; Deuteronomy 3:35-36,39, 41; Matthew 16:24-28

'Paradox' is an over-used word for describing many of the sayings of Jesus. The term 'koan', taken from the training methods of Zen Buddhism, is at times a more fruitful concept to use. The koan is a statement or story whose wisdom cannot be accessed using the ordinary tools of analysis and logic. Reason understood narrowly, the rationalist in us who wants to take apart and control, cannot get at what it is about. But intellect, or understanding, can come to some understanding of what it might be about, a meditative reception and consideration of what is said, a meditation shaped by experience, a contemplation open to expand and to receive.

On the street one day I saw a homeless man sitting in a porch with his few possessions gathered round him, a dog, a sleeping bag, and a varied collection of odds and ends. It included a reading lamp set up at the head of the sleeping bag. Seeing him became a kind of koan for me as I began to wonder why a homeless man, sleeping on the street, would need a reading lamp, how he could ever get it to work, what he might read by its light (the rationalist in me) ... what was he saying to himself or to the rest of us by carrying around such a thing? Perhaps not saying anything in particular ...

But seeing him became a koan for me, curious and at first sight irrational, but setting off a series of meditations on different aspects of the picture he presented, a homeless man with a reading lamp at the head of his sleeping bag: light, sight, night, knowledge, reading, poverty, wisdom. It brought to mind a comment attributed to Oscar Wilde, that only what is incredible is worth believing. For what is incredible to the rationalist mind is not incredible to the wider, deeper, richer intellectual mind.

Jesus in the gospel reading today gives us two incredible sayings to disturb our rational minds -

Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

There are some (reading this) who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.

Let these sayings tease us and provoke us, swish them around in our minds for a while, and open the doors of our understanding to new ways of thinking, perhaps to new realities.

Week 18 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Jeremiah 31.1-7; Jeremiah 31.10-13; 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 man, 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. 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 always knew exactly what he was about and always 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? At first 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, though whether this is 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 yesterday’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, in the West Indies, but long enough to learn that the people there liked what they call piquant. It is a French word that has hung around in that part of the world 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 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 pagans, represented by the woman, will come to the temple – which is now Jesus - and their prayers and sacrifices will be acceptable to the Lord. He quotes this kind of text later in Matthew’s gospel, when he drives the moneychangers out of the Temple and says it is to be a house of prayer for all the peoples.

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, charity is to be exercised and the healing power of the gospel made present.

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. Jesus, remember, does not presume to know that: ‘what do you want me to do for you’ he asks a blind man. The young priests who go out from this community learn what is expected of them from the people who come to them, teaching them the ways in which they expect them to be of service. There must always be this dialogue, between the teacher and the taught, the missionary and the missioned, the helper and the helped. Those we serve help us to realize the gifts with which we have been entrusted. Their need will call us beyond the limits we may have set to what we think we have to offer.

Fergus Kerr OP composed a homily for Torch, the English Dominican website, about this encounter between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. He concludes with this question:

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?

Week 18 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: Jeremiah 30.1-2, 12-15, 18-22; Psalm 102; Matthew 15.1-2, 10-14

Out of the crisis of the Exile comes relief. The Lord acknowledges the pain his providence has inflicted on his people, but now it is time for reconciliation, restoration and renewal. When all is said and done the 'bottom line' is the one that is, literally, the bottom line of today's first reading: 'you shall be my people, and I will be your God'.

The gospel reading reminds us that our relationship with God is always in danger of slipping. Jesus is just as severe in his criticism of the Pharisees - blind guides leading the blind - as the Lord is in his description of the wound he has inflicted on his people.

Job struggled with the mystery of God's purpose in a philosophical way. He submitted his thoughts and feelings to the consideration of his friends but always remaining committed to the truth that he knew. He was not going to let God off the hook but instead called on God to share his own truth with him. Which he did - 'I am God, the one who is, and you are Job, the one who is not'. The words are not exactly those we find in the book of Job, they come rather from God speaking to Catherine of Siena, but they apply just as much to Job's situation as to hers.

It is the mystery at the heart of all dark nights - we know our sins and we know God's goodness, we know suffering and we know consolation, we know our weakness and we know what we desire, we know our longing to love and we know God's love for us. And still, trying to put together all those things we know, the elements of that equation which unites us with God, remains a quandary for us. It cannot be resolved philosophically, it seems. It leads inevitably to the cross of Jesus and his mystery.

That is where this quandary is at its most intense. That is where we see human sin and divine love exposed to our gaze as never before and as nowhere else. It is what comes from inside that matters, he says in today's gospel. From the heart exposed by human sin on Calvary comes the assurance of divine love, even in our darkest night, even in spite of our most serious sins, even when all seems lost. The Lord hears the groaning of the imprisoned and releases those doomed to die. But he does that not by helping them to avoid death but by bringing them beyond it to new life, to the kingdom of his beloved Son.

Week 18 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Jeremiah 28.1-17; Psalm 119.29,43,79,80,95,102; Matthew 14.22-36

Sometimes the only thing people see in this event is Jesus walking on the sea as if it is some kind of trick, a piece of magic to impress people. (Sometimes it is the same with the sign given at Cana, as if that too were just a magical trick.) But that means missing so much of what this very rich text contains. Because what Matthew gives us is a theophany or more precisely a ‘Christophany’. Those terms mean a revelation of the power and presence of God, a revelation of the power and presence of God in Christ. In fact this moment belongs with the baptism, the transfiguration and the resurrection appearances as one of the key moments in which the glory of Christ is revealed to his disciples.

Looking back, there are so many echoes in this text of the great theophanies of the Old Testament. There is a mountain and roaring waters and wind. There is fear as nature is churned up by the presence of God. Those called to be close to God (Moses, Elijah, Isaiah, for example) experience perplexity and terror in the presence of the glory of the Lord. Psalm 77 speaks of the power and presence of God in a way that is strikingly echoed in Matthew 14:

Your ways, O God, are holy. / What God is great as our God?

You are the God who works wonders. / You showed your power among the peoples.

Your strong arm redeemed your people, / The sons of Jacob and Joseph.

The waters saw you, O God, / The waters saw you and trembled;

The depths were moved with terror. / The clouds poured down rain,

The skies sent forth their voice; / Your arrows flashed to and fro.

Your thunder rolled round the sky, / Your flashes lighted up the world.

The earth was moved and trembled / When your way led through the sea,

Your path through the mighty waters / And no one saw your footprints.

Your guided your people like a flock / By the hand of Moses and Aaron.

If there are echoes from the Old Testament in this event there are also premonitions of what is yet to be revealed about Jesus – the transfiguration, on another mountain, also provoking fear, and especially the appearances of the risen Lord. In those appearances we also find the disciples, the boat, the lake, difficulty on the lake, the appearance of Jesus and their wondering whether it is a ghost, his words of reassurance: take heart, do not be afraid, it is I, ego eimi in Greek, the divine name of Exodus 3, ‘do not be afraid for I AM’.

There is something satisfying, for us, in this way of God showing his presence and his power. To shake the building, to unsettle creation, to come with noise and fire and wind and smoke … this seems like how a proper god will reveal himself. But we believe that the Christophany, the revelation of the power of God in Christ, comes to its fulfillment on another mountain, the mountain of Calvary, where our God reveals his power in powerlessness, weakness and failure. We are happier with a God who would throw his weight around, who would fill us with fear. We find it much more difficult to understand a God who is love because we know less about love than we do about fear. But this is our faith, that the power and wisdom of God are revealed in the weakness and foolishness of the cross, that it is there that God’s power is most clearly seen and it is seen to be the power of love alone.

In this moment, Peter is like Thomas later, he wants some kind of proof or evidence that it really is Jesus. When Jesus asks him why he doubted is he referring to Peter’s loss of confidence on the water (his inability to do ‘the trick’) or, more likely, is he asking him why he doubted that Jesus would be present to the Church in its hour of difficulty. This event, this story, is an encouragement to the Church, to Christians at all times, to trust that Christ is nearby and his hand is always ready to reach out to save us. Peter then does not need to consult a book about prayer to know what he should say. He does not need to track down a wise man or woman to teach him how to pray. In situations of real need we know exactly what to pray for and we simply ask for it.

The gospel reading thus re-assures us that Christ is with us, always, in personal or shared difficulty, and we are not to be afraid. The hand of Christ is held out to us at all times. It is there in the Word of God nourishing us from day to day. It is there in the sacraments of the Church when we are fed and strengthened by the life of Christ. And it is there in each other, each of us a ‘Christ’ to the other, our neighbour, not far away, someone we ought to be able to turn to and say ‘help me, I’m sinking’. Each of us has been conformed to Christ in his dying and his rising and so we bear the Word and the Spirit for one another, as compassionate companions in the calms and in the storms of life.

Week 18 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3; Psalm 144; Romans 8:35,37-39; Matthew 14:13-21

Some years ago the Christian community of Mosul in Iraq was obliged to make a stark choice: either pay a tax in order to live in an Islamic state, go away with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing, or stay and be killed with the sword. This is not a story from ancient times or from the middle ages, it happened just a few years ago. The vast majority decided to go away with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. The people they were dealing with had already shown that they meant business, having slaughtered their way through Syria and across northern Iraq. For the Christians of Mosul it meant walking up to forty kilometres across the desert, carrying their children, until they found a place of safety, arriving tired, thirsty, hungry and, one can imagine, deeply sad. A whole civilization and culture which had survived so many things across the centuries may now have been destroyed forever.

Suddenly the world seems to be very insecure and full of great political and physical dangers. Not just in Iraq. The normal decencies of civilized living seem to be suspended as people act and react out of fear, humiliation and hatred. Every situation is being exploited by people gripped by fear, hatred and violence. Politicians in different parts of the world are building their power by playing to people's fears, hatreds and humiliations. The normal decencies that used to guide debate and discussion seem to have fallen away as people take to Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the other social media to attack, mock, decry, complain and protest. Some of this is very good and necessary but much of it is done in language that is itself violent, humiliating, dismissive, disrespectful. Fear, hatred, violence seem to be the things dominating world affairs at the moment. And put with all of that the massive question of migration in the world, the normal problems, so to speak, of famine, thirst and disease, and the many other tragedies cutting across people's lives and leaving them permanently wounded ...

A great feeling of impotence and irrelevance might well overtake us as we try to reflect on scripture texts and wonder what the Christian faith can offer in such circumstances. Is God not just Santa Claus for grown ups, the wishful thinking that there is, as today's psalm says, a God of great kindness who is good to all and near to everyone who calls on Him? Against a strengthening chorus of agnosticism and atheism the Church's voice seems feeble, unrealistic, even at times hypocritical. Many good and intelligent young people have decided they do not want to stay with what the Christian faith teaches: it seems to them, at least in the way the Church lives it, unintelligent and morally bankrupt.

Jesus can sometimes be presented as a kind of Santa Claus for grown ups but we must always remember that his engagement with the world ended in failure. He was not able to answer the world's problems. He was not the solution to the world's problems. They are as bad, if not worse, than they were before He came. In the face of fear, hatred and violence, he too was powerless and he died as just one more innocent victim of those forces. Today's gospel reading reminds us of this: 'when Jesus heard of the death of John the Baptist', it begins. This is a turning point in his ministry, a defining moment as we say nowadays. He saw clearly what his destiny too was likely to be. John had died protesting at injustice. Jesus will die preaching the kingdom he had come to establish, the project of his life, it seems, unsuccessful.

The first thing the readings ask of us today is that we listen and look, heedfully and hopefully, to the generosity of God. And that we continue to do this no matter how bleak and dark the circumstances become. 'I will renew with you the everlasting covenant' - so the voice of God, barely heard perhaps, but distinct and certain, whispered in the desert, sounding in the night, patient and persistent in spite of the agitation of fear, the restlessness of hatred, and the screaming fury of violence. Under the shadow of the looming cross, Jesus is moved with pity for the people and goes on doing for them what he has done in more promising times: healing them, feeding them, teaching them.

The outcome is in the hands of God, times and hours known only to the Father. John the Baptist remains faithful in his campaign for justice and accepts death without knowing whether that death will be remembered or how that death might contribute, if at all, to the good of the world. Jesus remains faithful in his mission of preaching the kingdom, engaging with the forces of evil that are attacking the lives of the people. But his engagement with them is not on their ground but on his. His are not the weapons of fear, hatred and violence, for to fight those things with those things is to descend ever further into the abyss.

Paul's extraordinary litany at the end of Romans 8, today's second reading, makes what might seem like an absurd claim, that we are more than conquerors, that we conquer overwhelmingly. Faced with the powerful forces of the world - anguish, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, the sword, death, life, angels, principalities, present things, future things, powers, height, depth, anything at all in creation - any of this, all of this, loses its power, because none of it can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. That whispering voice - 'I will renew with you the everlasting covenant', 'I have loved you with an everlasting love' - penetrates through all these things.

That love, poured into our hearts, will of course move people to work for solutions, for political and economic solutions to the problems that are destroying people's lives. Man does not live on bread alone but he does live on bread. The gift of God is an enabling gift, not a soothing cream to take the sting out of human life, but an empowering gift. 'Give them some food yourselves', Jesus says to the disciples when they come whinging to him. The miracle happens in such a way that it might seem as if the disciples themselves have worked it, it allows the bounty to appear to come from them: there was one basket of scraps for each of the apostles. The gift is within our efforts for this is how grace works, a power which enables our efforts from beginning to end.

Listen heedfully and look hopefully to the generosity of God. He is the creator who wants things to be and who sees them as very good. He is the redeemer who wants our salvation and who renews with us the everlasting covenant. The kingdom does not consist in food and drink, nor does it consist in political and military strategies. The kingdom means righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That Spirit is given when Jesus is glorified and Jesus is glorifed through his failure, his death at the hands of fear, hatred and violence. He is the Victor, our Champion, and Conqueror, not in the terms and categories of the world, but in a new way, in a new world, in a kingdom that is as yet still coming.

Week 18 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Deuteronomy 6.4-13; Psalm 17; Matthew 17.14-20

How do we get into ourselves the things we want never to forget? Memories come to mind, of walking up and down at home, drilling things into the memory by endless repetition, preparing for exams. The people are to do this with the call to love God with all their heart, all their soul and all their strength. But will all their external efforts to remember be effective? They are to repeat these words, say them over and over, walking, sitting, standing, lying down, write them on your hand, on your forehead, on the door, on the gate - it seems to be a projection of God's anxiety that they will inevitably forget him. Which of course they have done more than once already since leaving Egypt, so his anxiety is well-founded.

'Write them on your heart' sounds more promising - the wood of the door will rot, the ink on paper will fade, the skin of hand or forehead will be washed - only if something takes up residence in our heart has it any real hope of remaining fresh for us.

So what we need are not words and instructions about how to hold onto these words. What we need is the love itself to which the words refer. Jeremiah speaks about this when he talks of a new covenant written directly onto human hearts (Jeremiah 31.31). Paul talks about it when it has been brought to completion in the new covenant established on the blood of Christ. Now God's love is poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5.5).

Is it possible to forget God's love once it has been experienced in that way? It seems not. It does not mean that a person will always think of it. It does mean that a person cannot forget it. And even the tiniest quantity of faith is enough to re-activate it, the tiniest quantity of faith makes all things possible.

Why should this be so? It cannot be any 'external' effort to remember or to believe, nor is it any strength of willpower or clarity of intellect. It is because the object of faith is God and even the flimsiest purchase on God is contact with the infinite, eternal and all-powerful Lord.

The point is not to remember this idea or these words. The point is to believe in the truth they carry, for that truth is Truth and so the tiniest morsel of faith gives us access to God himself. It is faith that holds us, God who re-members us, the love of Christ which is the Holy Spirit who dwells in our hearts, nudging them ceaselessly in the direction of their deepest joy.

Many things come to occupy and distract us. In the midst of it all, hold on to that seed of faith no matter how tiny, for it admits us to the kingdom and to the love that rules there.

Week 18 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Numbers 20:1-13; Psalm 95; Matthew 16:13-23

There is normally at least one moment of hesitation in the execution of any serious task. Why did I agree to take this on? Do I really have to do this? The noonday devil, about which the fathers of the desert often speak, was understood by Thomas Aquinas to be about this phenomenon. At the midpoint of any undertaking, or at least some way into it, the chances are it will seem tedious, never-ending, too much, and one might even be tempted to give it up altogether.

We get two such moments in today's readings. The people being led out of Egypt by Moses say, 'we've gone from bad to worse'. We're in a wretched place. Better if we had remained slaves in Egypt. At least we would have figs and grapes, whereas here we don't even have water.

The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know. Better to stay with the slavery that is familiar and somehow comfortable than to continue the journey towards a freedom not yet experienced, still only promised.

Peter's expression of faith is followed immediately by Jesus's first prediction of his passion. Heaven preserve you, Lord, says Peter, or words to that effect. This must not happen. We have reached a satisfactory point in the process, Peter seems to say.

Why look to such a dreadful outcome to the journey? Get behind me, Satan, Jesus says. Whatever kind of devil Peter is at that moment is firmly rejected by Jesus, who has his eye on the Father, and the Father's will, no matter what difficulties, attend his way.

We need to become accustomed to thinking in God's way then, to remain in God's presence at all moments of the journey, particularly those times when things become difficult and people become tetchy and we are tempted even to put God to the test.

Many times it will seem that the slavery we know is better than the freedom we don't know. Jesus tamed causes nobody any problem. Jesus free leads us onwards towards the joy and glory of God's holiness. But holiness is testing and uncompromising. So before you jump in too quickly to answer Jesus's question, 'who do you say that I am', think about the implications of your answer and the journey it will require of you, and what you will need if you are to persevere on that journey.

You can listen to this homily being preached here The Gates of Hades Will Not Prevail

Week 18 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Numbers 12:1-13; Psalm 50; Matthew 14:22-36

We are told that Pharaoh's daughter gave Moses that name because she drew him out of the water. Peter is the rock who tries to walk on water and in his turn needs to be pulled out of it. Each of them is in a special friendship with the Lord, the God of Israel, but we see from their lives that the closer their relationship became, the deeper also became their dependence on God.

Moses is the meekest man on earth, we are told, and is defended by God against the criticisms of Miriam and Aaron, defended in a way that strikes terror into our hearts even today as we read about it. What kind of God is this, a terrible and fascinating mystery, who turns Miriam leprous and who alone knows what he had in mind for Aaron until Moses intervened on their behalf, and Miriam was healed and Aaron spared.

Peter is cowardly and wavering, ironically called 'the rock', and, with characteristic impetuosity, wants to be a rock that walks across the waters to Jesus. The fear of the disciples at the calming of the storm is more about the power working in Jesus than it is about wind and waves. Once again the question comes: who is this, what kind of lord, that such terrible and fascinating power should work in him? 'It is I, do not fear', says Jesus. Literally what he says is 'I am', calling himself by the name God revealed to Moses all those centuries before.

Mysterium tremendum et fascinans is a phrase used in philosophy to refer to a general sense of divine mystery, that the divine reality is at once terrifying and fascinating. The God of Israel, master of the waters, creator of all, combines this power with friendship towards the meekest man in the world and towards the most unreliable one. Powerful on one side, attracting to faith and love on the other. To be kept at a distance, and to be embraced.

So it will be for all who seek to walk on the waters towards him. We want to see his power at work in our lives. What will he ask of us, since he asked everything of his friends Moses and Peter? We want to experience the friendship with him which he holds out to us. What will it mean for us, to stay with our Friend all the way, even to Calvary?

We are drawn out of the waters of baptism to a new life with Christ, and this is a profoundly comforting and awe-inspiring reality. Today's readings remind us that the one with whom we wish to live in intimacy, is, in the words of the American poet Mary Oliver, 'tender and luminous and demanding / as he always was - / a thousand times more frightening / than the killer sea'.

Week 18 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Numbers 11:4b-15; Psalm 81; Matthew 14:13-21

Some days ago we were in a happier place. The disciples understood all that Jesus was teaching them (at least they thought they did) and the people in the desert took a break from complaining in order to contemplate the simple wonder of God’s presence with them.

Today we return to what seems like the default position for the years of wandering in the wilderness: the people lament what they have left behind in Egypt, Moses is exasperated, God too complains (in the psalm) that He is not being listened to by the people.

‘Am I their parent’ is Moses’ question to God this time. They are driving him to suicidal thoughts – ‘do me the favour of killing me at once’ is his prayer. They have already effectively killed God along the way, worshiping the Golden Calf, as if it were that dead idol that had liberated them from Egypt.

But the Lord, the God of Israel, is the Living God, and His great desire for His people is that they too might come alive. It is the point of the covenant and its requirements – that they might have life. Their deadweight is a heavy burden for whichever human being the Lord chooses as their leader, in this case Moses. But you are the one who conceived them, he says to God, and you are the one who led them out of Egypt. All this is your idea. We can almost hear him thinking ‘come and lead them (not just feed them) yourself and see what it is like’.

And this is precisely what happened. ‘I myself will shepherd my people’, God says through Ezekiel. Jesus is that presence of God among us to lead and guide and heal and feed. The burden remains, and Jesus too needs to retreat to a place of quiet to process how his mission is unfolding. Now that John the Baptist is dead, who will be next?

But the burden of the people follows him. Here they are, sick and hungry, and he is moved with compassion for them. It seems as if only an infinite compassion can adequately receive the desires and yearnings of human beings, their thirst for life and truth and goodness, their complaints and laments when things are not going well. For those yearnings themselves seem to be infinite, as if we already sense within our desires the deeper yearning which will only be satisfied by God, by sharing in God’s own life.

Following on from these earlier moments in which God fed His people – the manna and quails in the wilderness, the miraculous feedings in the gospel – and right down to our own day, we have the ongoing nourishment of God’s people in the Eucharist. This feeding on Jesus, the Bread of Life and the Living Bread, in turn anticipates the Supper of the Lamb. That supper is the heavenly wedding banquet in which all hunger, all thirst, all longing, all need, all wanting, and all yearning will be satisfied.

We already participate sacramentally in that food which contains every delight (omne delectamentum in se habentem) until the day when we enter into full communion with the source of all good things, the One who carries the people – and their unfortunate human leaders – through every difficulty. Then we will listen perfectly to Him as He already listens perfectly to us.

Week 18 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Ecclesiastes 1:2, 2:21-23; Psalm 90; Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11; Luke12:13-21

Ecclesiastes, the preacher Qoheleth, speaks in the first reading about a common experience of bad luck. He is the famous pessimist of the Bible, for whom the glass is always half empty. What a vanity life is, he says, all that working and anxiety to make some money and guarantee some security. And how often does it happen that what is earned and built up by one person is, in the end, enjoyed by others. All our toil and anxiety, worry and grief: what does it achieve? Nothing really, it seems, as we die and the world continues on its way as before.

Jesus tells a parable along these lines, about a man who made far more than he could ever use, planned a wonderful retirement on the strength of what he had accumulated, and died before he could enjoy any of it.

But Jesus is not a pessimist. He endorses Qoheleth’s observation about what can happen but moves the reflection to another level. Such experiences of bad luck raise this question, he says, ‘in what then does your life consist’ if it clearly does not consist in accumulating possessions?

Some might choose to stay with Qoheleth and ask ‘why should human life have any meaning’? But Jesus is not an absurdist either. The alternative source of meaning he proposes is ‘being rich towards God’. The meaning and value of a human life are found in relation to God. Only when we see our lives theologically do we see them rightly. We can fill in what the phrase ‘rich towards God’ means from how we have seen Jesus living his life and from his teaching:  trust in God, prayer, attending to the needs of God’s children, ‘faith, hope and charity’ as it came to be summarised later. As regards material possessions, being rich towards God excludes greed and requires generosity, a readiness to share what we have.

Today’s second reading links neatly with the other two. Paul says that greed can even become a kind of idolatry. Depending on how we value possessions we might effectively be turning our relationship with material wealth into the relationship that is proper only with God. Our life is then based on a lie because human beings do not have value from what they own and can control, they have value in relation to God, from whom they come by creation and to whom they are destined to return by salvation.

Paul writes after the fuller revelation of who Jesus is. Your life, what is it, your true life? He can now say ‘it is hidden with Christ in God’. ‘Being rich towards God’ is itself given new depths of meaning through the paschal mystery of Christ. Paul goes even further: ‘Christ is your life’, he says. He writes elsewhere that it is no longer Paul who lives but Christ who lives in him (Galatians 2:20).

So any thought about saving our life, or finding meaning or value in our life, or giving security to our life, has to be referred to Christ. He not only teaches us that the work of love is not vanity, he shows that it is not vanity in his resurrection from the dead. The labour of his love bears fruit. His toil and grief under the sun is the sure foundation for a truthful living of human life.

Week 18 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Exodus 16:2-4,12-15; Psalm 78; Ephesians 4:17,20-24; John 6:24-35

'Let them eat cake' is a saying attributed to Marie Antoinette, the queen of France, at the time of the French Revolution. As with many revolutions, it was about wealth and poverty, power and exclusion, privilege and disadvantage. 

The reading from the Letter to the Ephesians calls us to a spiritual revolution, a change of mind in the first place, but which will also involve giving up an older way of life in order to put on a 'new self created in God's way'. The reading from the Book of Exodus is helpful in reminding us of just how difficult it is to change, even when something far better is promised. The devil we know is better than the devil we do not know, perhaps sometimes even better than the uncertainty that accompanies times of transition. Slavery in Egypt with meat and bread may be more immediately desirable than wandering in the wilderness without either, which is all that Moses seems able to manage for the moment.

The Lord seeks to draw them into a place of freedom and responsibility but there are these practical difficulties. So he arranges for meat and bread to be miraculously provided, quails and manna. It meets their physical needs and stops their complaining, at least for now. But there is a long way to go, and much turbulence to be experienced, as the relationship of God and the people continues.

Fast forward to the gospel reading and it seems as if the people are in a similar place, needing a new Moses to interpret for them what is happening and to nudge, even cajole, them towards a deeper understanding of what the spiritual revolution involves, what the new life created in God's way means.

'You follow me because your bellies are full', Jesus says, 'and not because you have understood the sign this feeding is'. Of course human beings need physical food to sustain their animal life but they need other kinds of food if they are to come alive, and stay alive, in other ways. The spiritual revolution requires taking to heart what Moses says later, in explaining that the people can learn through the experience of physical hunger that human beings do not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 8.3).

As in the wilderness, so in Capernaum. But now Jesus speaks to them of another kind of bread, the bread of the spiritual revolution, the wisdom of God which was given to the people of Israel in the law and which is now dwelling among those hearing him in the person of Jesus. For he is that wisdom and word of God made flesh, as he himself puts it here, 'I am the bread of life'.  He contrasts the life that is transitory with a life that is enduring, even eternal. He contrasts the bread whose purpose is to keep death at bay, with the bread whose purpose is to initiate life, the life of the spiritual revolution, and to sustain that life forever. The wisdom writings of the Old Testament already spoke of this 'bread of life' - Lady Wisdom, an itinerant teacher, going around the streets and towns, inviting people to the banquet she has prepared. It is food and drink not just for the body but for the mind, and heart, and soul.

Ephesians speaks of this reality. You have 'learned Christ', it says, finding the truth in him. So you must leave Egypt behind, the old way, where you are held captive by illusory desires. You must embrace the revolution by changing your mind, nourishing your thoughts and imagination, your desires and memories, with food that is wholesome. This food - the word of God, the bread of life - will nourish these spiritual depths in you and will plant in you the seed of eternal life.

'Let them eat Jesus' is thus the strange cry of the spiritual revolution. Not only physically, in the sacrament of the Eucharist, but in mind and heart also. In his commentary on the passage of Ephesians we read today,  Thomas Aquinas describes beautifully the life of the new self after the revolution: it means holiness in the heart, he says, truth on the lips, justice in our works.

Week 18 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Numbers 20:1-13; Psalm 94; Matthew 16:13-23

There is normally at least one moment of hesitation in the execution of any serious task. Why did I agree to take this on? Do I really have to do this? The 'noonday devil' about which the Fathers of the Desert speak was understood by Thomas Aquinas to be about this phenomenon: at the mid-point of any undertaking, some way into it, the chances are it will become tedious, never-ending, too much, and one might even be tempted to give it up altogether.

We get two such moments in today's readings. The people being led out of Egypt by Moses say 'we have gone from bad to worse, we are in a wretched place, better if we had remained slaves in Egypt: at least we would have figs and grapes whereas here we don't even have water'. The devil you know is better than the devil you don't know: better to stay with the slavery that is familiar and somehow comfortable than to continue the journey towards a freedom not yet experienced, still only promised.

Peter's expression of faith is followed immediately by Jesus' first prediction of his passion. 'Heaven preserve you, Lord', says Peter, or words to that effect, 'this must not happen'. We have reached a satisfactory point in the process, Peter seems to say, why look to such a dreadful outcome to the journey. 'Get behind me Satan', Jesus says - whatever kind of devil Peter is at that moment is firmly rejected by Jesus who has his eye on the Father and the Father's will no matter what difficulties attend his way.

We need to become accustomed to thinking in God's way, then, to remain in God's presence at all moments of the journey, particularly those times when things become difficult and people become tetchy and we are tempted even to put God to the test. Many times it will seem that the slavery we know is better than the freedom we don't know. 'Jesus tamed' causes nobody any problem. 'Jesus free' leads us onward towards the joy and glory of God's holiness.

But holiness is testing and uncompromising. So before you jump in too quickly to answer Jesus' question, 'who do you say I am?', think about the implications of your answer, and the journey it will require of you, and what you will need if you are to persevere on that journey.

Week 18 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: Numbers 13:1-3a,24 - 14:1,26-30,34-35; Psalm 105(106); Matthew 15:21-28

One of the most difficult parts of the Bible to read is the Book of Joshua with its accounts of genocide perpetrated by the invading Hebrews against the people of the land of Canaan. All happening, so we read, with the blessing of God and at his insistence. Whether it happened in exactly the way it says is not as important as the moral and spiritual violence it nevertheless glorifies. God remains strange, beyond our normal categories.

Today's first reading from the Book of Numbers tells of the apprehensions of the Hebrews after their reconnaissance of the promised land. 'They are giants and we are grasshoppers', they say, and they once again give themselves up to wailing. Enough, says God. For the forty days of the reconnaissance they will now wander forty years in the wilderness so that the generation that left Egypt will not now enter the promised land. The generation that finally enters it will be the one born during those years of wandering, and they will be the ones to carry out the destruction of the cities of Canaan ordered by God.

A high point of the campaign of conquest is when Joshua hangs the king of Ai on a tree and leaves his body hanging there until the evening. It has to evoke for us the strangest of parallels, when another king is hung on a tree and his body only taken down in the evening. That second king we believe to be the Lord, the God of Israel, who now suffers in exactly the way the enemies of the people suffered many centuries before. Beyond strange.

What kind of tension is there also in the gospel, as the Jewish rabbi form Nazareth meets the Canaanite woman from Tyre and Sidon? Who is now the giant and who the grasshopper? Jesus compares her rather to a dog but, in no way fazed by this, she engages in the banter and in the process she effectively invites him into her land. Even the dogs get the scraps from the table, she says, at which Jesus expresses admiration for her faith and heals her daughter. He is a giant in power, of course, but she is a giant in faith.

Is it some kind of reconciliation of Hebrew and Canaanite? Is it that faith is the infallible instrument that penetrates through to the heart of God so that he cannot resist it? Enough of weeping and wailing, wherever it comes from. Put faith instead, whoever you are, and then you are immediately in communion with him and he with you. The old nationalist boundaries dissolve, all man-made boundaries dissolve, before universal human need on one side and the universal power of faith on the other.

Can we say that Jesus is being led further into his own kingdom by the faith of this Canaanite woman? For by the end he cannot say, as he did before he met her, that he has been sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Read on in Matthew's gospel and we hear that he cured all who came to him, with no distinctions, and 'they praised the God of Israel'. A local, tribal god? No, the Lord, the Creator of all things and the Redeemer of all people.

Week 18 Sunday (Year A) - 4 August 2002

Readings: Isaiah 55:1-3; Psalm 144; Romans 8:35,37-39; Matthew 14:13-21

I would like to thank Father Jerzy for kindly inviting me to concelebrate Mass with him this evening and for inviting me to speak with you. I am sorry that I cannot speak to you in Polish. We do, however, share a common faith. Faith is a gift from God and this Sunday's readings remind us that God is generous with his gifts. He attends to the needs of his people and, indeed, to the needs of all his creatures.

The Psalm says that 'the eyes of all creatures look to him' and 'he gives them their food in due time, opening wide his hand, to grant the desires of all that lives'. The prophet Isaiah speaks of this too: freely and generously, 'without money', God offers water, corn, wine, milk and bread - all good things so that his people might live in the joy of their relationship with him.

The Gospel reading teaches us that these promises of the Old Testament are fulfilled in the life, teaching and activities of Jesus Christ. He is Emmanuel, God-with-us, and he attends to the needs of his people even when he wants to be alone. He feeds them super-abundantly: they all ate as much as they wanted and there was more left over than they had at the beginning. The scraps remaining filled twelves baskets, we are told.

We see Christ, then, responding to the physical, material needs of the people. But he always attends to them as human beings who need not only physical things but spiritual gifts also. We remember what Jesus said when he was tempted by Satan: 'the human being does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God' (Matthew 4).

What does this mean? It means that as well as food and shelter and health we need spiritual things: wisdom and understanding, faith and prayer, forgiveness and friendship and love. Without these things we are not fully alive as human beings. If we do not find these things - truth and goodness and beauty - it is a kind of starvation. Our spirits die even if our bodies remain alive.

Of course there are difficulties and we must not become romantic and unrealistic. This feeding of the people took place after Jesus had received the news of John the Baptist's death. The context of this event is the news of a death and no doubt Jesus is thinking about the possibility of his own death. The shadow of the cross is never far away in the Gospels. Nor is it ever far away in our lives.

More than anything else it is the death and resurrection of Jesus which makes the generous love of God visible in the world and in its history. We are called to follow his way and to share in the mystery of his death and resurrection. The greatest of God's gifts is his Son who lived among us, who died so that sins might be forgiven and who rose from the dead so that we might have life in all its fulness.

Saint Paul gives us great encouragement in the second reading. Nothing can come between us and the love of Christ, he says. Nothing from within ourselves, nothing from other people, nothing from spiritual forces, nothing in the past, nothing in the future, no absence and no power - 'can ever come between us and the love of God made visibl in Christ Jesus our Lord'.

This homily was preached at Sunday evening Mass in a church in northern Poland