Week 19 Friday (Year 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Week 19 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 12:1-12; Psalm 78; Matthew 18:21-19:1

They just don't get it. It's a phrase we often hear. We hear it about bishops, for example, and other religious superiors in relation to sexual abuse and other kinds of abuse.

They just don't get it. It has taken so long for people to realise the implications of such abuse and the consequences of the way in which such abuse was responded to in the past. It's a bit like within a family the problems that come from alcoholism or drug addiction.

What will it take for the person who is so addicted to get it, to realise the problem? What will it take? Will it take something traumatic, something dramatic, something very serious before a person comes to understand the truth of their situation? In the prophet Ezekiel, we see in the first reading today, he has to do crazy stuff in order to bring something home to the people. They have eyes, but they're not seeing. They have ears, but they're not hearing.

How is he to get through to them? He has to do something crazy. They see the crazy things that he does. Notice how often the phrase, 'while they looked on', is used in the first reading.

He does these crazy things, packing up, moving out, going into exile, digging a hole in the wall, walking off into the darkness, then coming back and saying, 'have you understood what I've done, what it means'? Many of Jesus's parables are crazy scenarios as well. They are exaggerated situations which are meant to shock us, disturb us, make us think 'that's crazy'. And then the mirror and the light shines back on us and we say, okay, maybe not so crazy maybe more normal in our sinful world than we like to think.

So the parable today is crazy. A man is forgiven a debt of thousands and then the next moment refuses to pardon a fellow servant who owes him a pittance. What will it take to get through to someone like that? What will it take to break open a heart that's hardened in that way, that's so focused on its own interests and has no capacity at all to open in compassion to somebody else? Is it only some supreme kind of torture that will be necessary to get through?

We think of ourselves as reasonable, open and honest people. We see the craziness in Ezekiel's behaviour and we see the absurdity of the parable, the situation presented in the parable. But these are a mirror for us, a light shining back on us and shining back on us with questions like these. What are the things I do not see and hear because I do not want to see and hear them? What are the things that disturb and challenge me to the point where I look away, turn my attention to other things and don't want to think about them anymore? What are the things or people to whom my heart is closed so that I could be, if necessary, as brutal, as insensitive as the unjust steward, as indifferent as he is in spite of the many blessings I myself receive?

What will it take for me to get it, to see what I need to see, to hear what I need to hear, to open my heart to the people and in the ways in which I need to open my heart? When will I finally get it? When will I allow the Lord to take away my blindness, to open my ears and to strengthen my heart? When or how will we come to understand how to do forgiveness in a way that is completely truthful about the past, in a way that is truly healing of that past, and in a way that is creative of new possibilities for the future?

That's the most important question coming out of the readings for us today. It can only be by staying with Christ on his journey from Galilee to Judea and on to Jerusalem through his cross to the resurrection. That's the road to forgiveness. That's the road to reconciliation. That's the road to healing and that's the road to new life.

You can listen here to this homily

Week 19 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: Ezekiel 9.1-7; 10.18-22; Psalm 113; Matthew 18.15-20

The gospel reading today is about excommunication, the sad and difficult situation where the Christian community comes to the conclusion that one of its members, for reasons of belief or lifestyle, is no longer in full communion with the Church. It has been much in the news recently with breakaway groups ordaining bishops in Switzerland, Scotland and probably other places also. We find it difficult to think about such things, as we find it difficult to think about the reality of death. For excommunication is a kind of death, a terrible wound in the body of Christ, a real sadness and a profound loss. It means we have failed to maintain the communion to which Christ calls us and for which he prayed in his last great prayer to the Father.

The gospel reading says we are to try everything to maintain that communion: talking privately with a person first of all, talking with them in the presence of one or two other people, and only if it is absolutely necessary bringing a matter to the attention of the whole Church. The conclusion is chilling and we might even wonder 'is it Christian'? Surely we can find a way to stay together, to remain in communion? But truth presses in also, not in order to serve some structure of power or to maintain some artificial conformity. Truth presses in because it is the truth of that communion itself: what if the basis on which we are joined is undone by what a person believes or by how a person behaves? Our communion dies.

This passage of Matthew's gospel is about the difficulty of staying together and it reflects how, even in the early Church, it was realized very quickly that there would be problems in staying together. Sometimes people will do things, or will come to believe things, that even the Church cannot see as compatible with the life of the gospel. Of course we hesitate to use the word ‘excommunication’ but in human relations it is sometimes, sadly, the reality. Even having done our best, we do not see how some can be contained within the life of the community. Some ways of living and some convictions are not compatible, as far as we can see, with life in the Church. More often than not it is people themselves who make the decision to separate from the Church because they no longer share its beliefs or are no longer convinced about the goodness of its teaching. Much more rarely the Church itself makes this decision about a person or a group of people.

We can never be happy about the exclusion of a brother or a sister. It is a death and death is terrible, the last enemy of human flourishing, a final failure. But within the context of Christian hope, exclusion can never be the last word about a person or about our relationship with them. They remain always children of the heavenly Father called to be brothers and sisters of Jesus. I like to think that the two or three gathered in Christ’s name at the end of this gospel reading are the same two or three who have earlier confronted the erring brother or sister. They are praying, and prayer is the characteristic act of the virtue of hope. What is on their minds as they pray must be that same brother or sister whom the Church has decided it must relate to as if he were a pagan or a tax-collector. And there is Christ in the midst of them.

Therefore outside the Church there is no outside, because the prayers of the Church, like the anxiety of loving parents, follow her children everywhere. Even when we cannot see how unity and reconciliation might come about, we must continue to hope for those things, to pray for those things, and to work for those things. All the commandments are summed up, Saint Paul says, in this saying: 'you shall love your neighbour as yourself'. We know that our neighbour is everyone, those who are living and those who are dead, those who are sick and those who are well, those who are in joyful communion with us and those who are in sad separation from us. We reach the limits of our capacities but we know that the Lord, who was crucified for our reconciliation, stretches his arms across the widest horizons of this creation in order to gather in all the scattered children of God.

Week 19 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: 1 Kings 19:9a, 11-13a; Psalm 85; Romans 9:1-5; Matthew 14:22-33

No Christmas would be complete these days without at least one Indiana Jones film being shown on TV. In the first of them, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the climax comes when the German soldiers gather round to examine the contents of the lost ark of the covenant which they have supposedly dug up in the Egyptian desert. In typical Hollywood fashion God makes his presence felt through an impressive storm, earthquake and fire which mercilessly destroy those who dare to gaze upon the glory of the Lord.

It is reminiscent of the moment in the life of the prophet Elijah recounted in today's first reading. Despondent and depressed he flees to the desert and takes refuge in a cave where he is visited by an impressive storm, earthquake and fire. Elijah is told however that the Lord is not in any of these. Instead he recognises God in the sound of a gentle breeze or, as it is more properly translated, in ‘the sound of fine silence’.

This paradoxical phrase links up with a long tradition of reflection on the Bible which explains the variety of ways in which we can speak about God and name God. As creator of all things God can be named from his works. God is the ‘cause’ responsible for all that is and the ‘artist’ whose works we see all around us. These works speak positively about the power and majesty, goodness and beauty of their source. They reflect something of God and are validly understood as images of God.

But God is not any of the things we see around us nor is God just another thing alongside the things we see and experience. The reality and the presence of God are much more mysterious than that. What is called ‘negative theology’ teaches us that in naming God we must also deny everything of God. In other words while God is the creating cause of everything that is, God is not a mountain or a river or a star or an angel or anything else that can be named.

On the one hand we can use everything as a name for God because everything reflects something of the glory of God who is its cause. On the other hand we must deny everything of God and say that God is not any one of these things which God has made but is greater than any and all of them.

The Bible and philosophy together teach us that some names seem more suitable for God, names like being, goodness and wisdom. But even these names are used of God in a way that surpasses our ordinary knowledge and use of them. God is good, powerful and beautiful not simply in the way we experience and understand these names but in a way that is special to God.

To want to see God, know God and name God is a natural human desire. But it can very easily become a desire to ‘have’ God in a way in which God cannot be had and held. The Bible warned that no person could see God and live: a warning against trying to possess, comprehend or control the divine mystery. Whatever we say about God must be carefully qualified until we arrive at a moment which is fittingly described as ‘the sound of fine silence’.

God bursts all bonds, even the bonds of those images, concepts, names and experiences which human beings identify as ‘divine’ or ‘theological’. The adventure of seeking the names of God is like stepping out to walk on water. Very soon we realise that far from being able to hold and control God by knowing and naming God, it is God who sees, knows and names us.

It strengthens our faith to think a bit more deeply about the ways in which we can legitimately speak about God. It brings home to us something of the wonder and magnificence of God. It is important that we not speak about God in a way that is too easy or familiar. In time of real need, however, we all fall back on the name which is above all other names. As we begin to sink we call on Jesus and with Saint Peter we know who we mean as we cry out ‘Lord, save us’.

You will find here another homily for today.

Week 19 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: Joshua 24:14-29;Psalm 16; Matthew 19:13-15

Human beings are not angels. Much as we might like to be, it becomes very clear in many circumstances that we are not pure spirits but belong rather to the animal kingdom. There are basic animal activities that we do every day - eating and sleeping, digesting and aging - as well as activities like reproduction and others like study which go along with our being rational animals, rational yes but still animals.

The need to re-affirm our commitments could be seen as one of those activities that the rational animal needs to engage in. If we had angelic minds then our decisions and commitments would be once off. There would be no ‘changing our minds’ any more than there would be growing tired or getting distracted, losing interest or simply forgetting.

So from time to time throughout the scriptures there are moments in which the covenant is renewed. Sometimes the initiative for this comes from the people, through their leaders, usually in response to hard times coming their way. They link difficulties with sin, the need for repentance and renewal with starting over again. The first reading today records one such moment of covenant renewal when the people had settled in the land, the conquest was effectively complete, and they could now get down to the business of being God’s faithful people in the land that He had promised their fathers ages before.

So will you serve the Lord, Joshua asks. Yes, we will. The answer is as enthusiastic as that of the disciples to Jesus’ question some days ago, ‘do you understand all these things’? yes, we do. Magari, as the Italians say, ‘if only’. Joshua asks them a second time. It is another aspect of being a human animal that we need to confirm our attention and our commitment even in the moment of making it, if it is to register with us. Thomas Aquinas is supposed to have said that it is impossible to pray the Our Father without getting distracted. Which could be a reason for saying it three times each time we say it: perhaps then we will succeed in giving attention to each of its phrases!

But it is not only that which urges Joshua to ask them a second time. He is saying: ‘do you understand what you are taking on’? ‘do you realise the implications of this commitment’? They say that they do and that they want to live in the way that the Lord asks them to live in order to enter into the life that is promised by the covenant.

So a stone is set up. Here is another thing we do as human animals: mark not only territory, as many animals do, but mark important moments in our personal or group history. There are statues and other monuments, plaques and treaties, seals and symbols, rings and special clothes – all kinds of ways in which we mark the sealing of covenants, the making of agreements, the pledging of hearts, the making of commitments. It may seem quaint, even crude, to think of a stone hearing the words being exchanged between Joshua and the people. It expresses the same instinct as people carving their initials in a tree, remembering the lamppost under which they first kissed, cherishing gifts and other items that are otherwise valueless, but become charged with ‘sentimental’ value because they were present at such key moments in a person’s life and may even function as symbolic of those key moments.

We might even dismiss it as childish. But Jesus in today’s gospel is once again defending the children. Do not prevent them from coming to me, he says, because the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these. Be careful in your rejection of children and their ways. There is something about them, and about their experience of life so far, which it is crucial for us to remember. Something in their enthusiasm and spontaneity which we have all experienced when we were young and which we try to recover in our moments of recommitment and renewal.

‘Charm back the luxury of a child’s soul’, prays Patrick Kavanagh. Help us to live our lives more generously in fidelity to the commitments we have made and the relationships we have established. God understands our human weakness, that we are not angelic creatures, which is another reason why His grace is made available to us in the sacraments, each day offered to us, in that order of signs in which he has placed himself, for our healing and forgiveness, for our nourishment and strength.

Week 19 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Joshua 3:7-10a,11,13-17; Psalm 113(114); Matthew 18:21-19:1

It is often said that most of the miracles that take place at Lourdes are never recorded. This is because they are changes within people, in their hearts and minds. We are of course more conscious of things happening in the external world. Where the Red Sea divides or the waters of the Jordan pile up to allow God's people to cross over on dry ground: that seems like a proper miracle, a wonder, an amazing thing, a clear sign of God's power at work.

What about the end of apartheid in South Africa, the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, or a peace agreement achieved in Northern Ireland? These were wonders of another kind, in our lifetime, and involving changes that it was thought we would never see. How could such things come about? How could the obstacles preventing them be dissolved or removed? How could hurt and fear of such depth, seemingly immovable objects, be dissolved and their energy transformed into a new work of justice-making and reconciliation?

Of course there were many human contributions to those events that can be studied and recorded by historians. But in each case there were moments of conversion within individual minds and hearts. People who did not trust, decided to trust. People who could not forgive, agreed to move forward with the ones they could not forgive. People who fronted their political ideas and decisions with what was less than true found the courage to face realities hitherto ignored or denied.

The parable in today's gospel reading tells of a rich man who waives the debt of a servant. But the same servant refuses to do the same for one indebted to him. What can seem reasonable, obvious, sensible, prudent, self-protecting, in one light can, in the light of a greater generosity and a deeper compassion, come to seem irrational, stubborn, vindictive, unjust, stupid.  The light of grace transforms the landscape, somehow changes everything.

There are waters to be divided, tombs to be opened, links to be re-established, mountains to be shifted. Such things happening within people - opening hearts, healing wounds, letting resentments go - are also proper miracles, wonders, amazing things, clear signs of the power of God's grace at work.

We should never lose confidence in the power of that grace to do such things in human hearts and minds. Often we do not see the outcome of such miracles even when they do occur. But those who experience them know, and in their family circle and among their friends it becomes known also. To pray for the gift of conversion where it is needed is far more sensible than simply continuing to torture ourselves with whatever it is that holds us down and that we will not let go.

Week 19 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: Deuteronomy34:1-12; Psalm ; Matthew 18:15-20

It is a constant temptation to ‘cherry pick’ the Bible, picking out the texts and stories that we like. Sometimes we edit the texts and stories for the bits we like, removing anything we find awkward or difficult.

A sentence in today’s gospel reading is a good example. How often have we heard it quoted, ‘where two or three gather in my name, there am I in the midst of them’. It is a beautiful thought. The immediate context is that of praying, asking the Lord for something that we want and for which we ask together. But pull back the focus even further and we see that the full context is the fraught one of church discipline. If a brother sins … firstly have it out with him in private. If that makes no difference bring two or three others with you. And if it still does not work then bring the matter before the church. If the person is still recalcitrant expel him from the community. For where two or three are gathered in my name …

Our first thought might be that ‘Jesus could never have said that’. It must have come from the early Church community, a voice suggests, as it began to struggle with the realities of human nature, as the novelty began to wear off and the real world began to bite within the group of believers. But to listen to that voice may simply be because we have ‘cherry picked’ our way to a particular image of Jesus that omits all the difficult sayings and sharp edges, that keeps only the texts more easily accepted, that fit our picture of a Jesus who thereby becomes just a bit too nice, just a bit unreal.

Some of the issues facing Jesus, and the apostles, as they began to establish the new Israel are those that faced Moses as he sought to build the first Israel. In one case as in the other there are difficulties in the community, in human relations, questions of justice and injustice, the influence of the deadly sins of pride and envy, lust and anger, and all the rest. How is one person to judge all these things? We know that Moses asked for help from God with precisely this problem and was given elders or assistant judges to help him in his leadership of God’s people (Exodus 18). In matters of justice particularly it is better protected where decisions are made by more than one person and wiser where responsibility for them is carried by more than one person.

Nevertheless Moses died alone. There is a deep poignancy in the account of his death which we hear in today’s first reading. From Mount Nebo he is allowed to survey the whole of the promised land but is not allowed to cross over. He dies, buried in a tomb whose location is quickly forgotten (how could it happen: perhaps like Elijah he was taken up into heaven?), and his spirit passed to Joshua. No death in the Old Testament can compare, no eulogy comes close. There has been no prophet like Moses, nobody whose works compare with what he did.

Until now, that is. Now Jesus, the carpenter’s son from Nazareth, has been revealed as ‘the prophet like Moses’ (Deuteronomy 18) and as a prophet even greater than Moses. Many texts in the gospels show this. Returning to today’s gospel reading, for example, and the comparison between the first Moses and the new Moses, it is immediately clear that Jesus makes claims that would have sounded exaggerated even on the lips of Moses. Where two or three are gathered ‘in my name’, he says, there am I in the midst of them. We cannot imagine Moses, the guardian of the holiness of God’s name, making any such statement. Likewise we cannot imagine Moses describing the authority and power delegated to the people in the way Jesus does: ‘whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’. God and God’s people have been brought closer than ever through the teaching and work of Jesus, into a sharing of life beyond anything Moses could have imagined.

On the face of it today’s gospel reading speaks of the authority of the community. But through it we also see the face of Jesus more clearly. He is the one who delegates this authority to them – ‘who is this’,  we might say, ‘who not only forgives sins himself but feels entitled to delegate this power to a human community’? He is the one who encourages his followers to pray to God ‘in his name’. ‘What need have we of further witnesses’, we might be tempted to say, ‘when we hear such blasphemy from his own lips’?

Rather than cherry picking the treasury of the Bible it is far better to engage with the texts as the Church presents them to us in the liturgy each day. There is always something to be seen, something to be learned, even if it is not immediately obvious. Often what is to be seen and learned is gained not just by looking at the text, or part of it, but by remembering the context and by struggling with its difficult aspects. And often so much more is learned where the Bible text is thought about and prayed over by two or three gathered in His name. For each of us has received His Spirit who teaches us everything and leads us into the fulness of the truth Jesus came to reveal.

Week 19 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Deuteronomy 31:1-8; Deuteronomy 32:3-4,7-9,12 ; Matthew 18:1-5, 10, 12-14

I do not know anything about the behaviour of sheep but wonder whether a lamb is more likely to stray than an adult sheep? It often happens with animals, including the human animal, that the young ones can easily go wandering. They do not understand danger and need to be guided, and sometimes restrained, by the adults who do know where dangers lie.

If this is true also of sheep it might explain why, in Matthew’s gospel, we find the parable of the lost sheep coming immediately after Jesus’ praise of children, an association of ideas. In Luke’s gospel it comes just before the parable of the prodigal son, as another example of ‘almost unbelievable (and foolish) compassion’, a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep where they are in order to go searching for one stray.

If the Lord’s care for His people is at least as strong and tender as that of human parents – and we believe it to be infinitely stronger and infinitely more tender – then it is not difficult to believe that He keeps all His flock in view and that He does this at all times. It is what Moses says to the people in the moment in which he takes leave of them – do not fear, the Lord is with you. It is what he says to Joshua a moment later – fear not for the Lord is with you. It is how God had defined Himself when He revealed His name to Moses – I am who I am, I am the One who will be with you.

The Lord is with His people at all times just as He attends to His creation at all times. It is not just the leaders of the people that win his attention but each individual member of it, even the ones we would regard as the least, the ones we would overlook (the child) or allow to wander off (cut our losses to be happy with ninety-nine sheep).

The characteristic of the child to which Jesus points is humility, precisely the characteristic that could lead to it being overlooked and even to getting lost. Jesus teaches us that the heavenly Father is not susceptible to such inattention but His care reaches everywhere and to everyone. He had spoken of it earlier in Matthew’s gospel, ‘every hair on your head has been counted’ (Matthew 10:30).

The Father’s care and attention reach even the ones we are inclined to ignore. Held in this way in God’s gaze, these little ones are great, perhaps even the greatest, radiant in the joyful early morning sunlight of the Father’s love.