Sunday, 4 June 2006
Pentecost Sunday - Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth
In today's first reading (Acts 2:1-11), Luke gives us several clues as to the similarity between the Sinai Pentecost and the Jerusalem Pentecost. For example, the disciples were all gathered in one room, just as the ancient Hebrews had gathered around Sinai. Wind and fire played a big part on Sinai, as in Jerusalem Pentecost. God's law was given to the Hebrews on Sinai. God's own Spirit was given in Jerusalem. The list of nationalities assembled in Jerusalem is meant to teach that God' Spirit is discernible in all cultures and generations.The Church from the beginning was meant to become missionary, without prejudice, to be inclusive, Catholic, not exclusive of any time or place. Not long after the Pentecostal experience in Jerusalem there was another at Joppa where Peter witnessed the Spirit engulfing an entire non-Jewish gathering at Cornelius' house.
How apt are the words of our responsorial psalm 103: 'Lord, send out your Spirit and renew the face of the earth.'
Today's Gospel (John 15:26-27; 16:12-15) provides some of John's deepest insights about what Our Lord had to say to his disciples on the night before he was executed. He promised them the abiding presence of the Spirit, the third person of the one and only 'communitarian' God.
From Pentecost on, it is the Spirit who teaches the Church. It will be always necessary for the Church to be humble and self-sacrificing to allow the Spirit to govern it. Church history gives us many unfortunate examples of the contrary. That same history let us be honest, even as it unfolds today, proves beyond reasonable doubt, that the Spirit alone inspires Church in the vast majority of cases. Without adding anything to the Father's 'word', this greatest witness to the Risen Lord continues to lead all Christians of every generation into Gospel truth.
The 'many things' that Jesus had to say, but did not, because 'they would be too much for you now', are being gradually imparted by the Spirit wherever and whenever. Church people are open enough, adventurous enough, to hear and discern them. And, not only Church people but all people of good will! Throughout her long history the Church has gone on discovering the implications of her universal mission. St Paul thought it would work within his time: today we realise that it has scarcely more than just begun. Our latest most dramatic example of the work of the Spirit surely is the groundswell of public support for reconciliation with our Aboriginal fellow Australians.
The AFL is to be thanked for giving a lead nationally.
Sunday, 11 June 2006
Trinity Sunday - Happy the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
At the risk of over-simplification, the book of Deuteronomy can be summarised as: One God, one people, one sanctuary. The most important teaching of this book is that Israel must always be monotheist, faithful to the one God who had inspired the patriarchs. This same God had visited the Jews in Egypt to lead them out of slavery, through the desert, into their own homeland, Canaan. The whole book is one of the most important for elaborating, what we call salvation history.We may, naturally, be disappointed, in hindsight, that this book encourages 'tunnel vision', because it deals with only promises made by God concerning Canaan. No account is taken of the Universalist promises involving Abraham's descendants eg, 'All the nations will bless you.'
Catholics who hear this text (Deuteronomy 4:32-34, 39-40) proclaimed this weekend can have complete faith that God is immersed in contemporary history, in Suva, in East Timor, indeed wherever the struggle goes on for reconciliation, justice and peace. Secular societies need to be confronted by churches, called to be good people, God's people.
Responsorial Psalm 32 links our two main readings: 'Happy the people the Lord has chosen to be his own.
In very few words, today's Gospel (Matthew 28:16-20) is a superb mix of Old and New Testaments. It may help recall that the ancient book of Daniel had already suggested the existence of a 'trinity' by mentioning as well as God Himself, a 'Son of Man' and a powerful 'Angel'. So it was up to Jesus of Nazareth to re-position God as 'community' calling the human family to communion and with Him and within itself.
Jesus commissioned the apostles to launch an expedition whose aim would be to break down the barriers wherever and whenever uncovered. The new order of universalism would need to be based on Christ's unique commandment of reconciliation. This is a simple definition of a key Catholic concept and theological insight - evangelisation. Jesus knew his disciples, and, they knew him, by sharing everyday life. The same holds true for today's Church. Evangelisation implies interpersonal sharing. To evangelise means to help someone (or some group) to reflect on former experiences until s/he can recognise in the person of Christ, in His death and resurrection, the truth that lights up his own life.
That's what local churches today need to do when they reveal to secular society the meaning, not the politics, of this life of ours, especially its tensions. Only Jesus Christ, from the midst of the Holy Trinity, is empowered to reveal to us the way of communitarian reconciliation.
Sunday, 18 June 2006
Feast of the Body of Christ - "I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord
The commandments of God were written by Moses, according to one tradition, on slabs of stone. This code of belief and conduct was presented to the Israelites who, as a federation of 12 clans, accepted by unanimous vote that they would adopt the divine law as their rule of life - in perpetuity (Exodus 24:3-8). As was the custom, Moses sprinkled the blood of sacrificed animals on a stone altar, built for the occasion, then the assembled people were also, sprinkled.Moses' words are very important, because Jesus would later use those same words to launch the New Covenant: 'This is the blood of the Covenant the Lord has made with you'. Judaism at its best had, thereafter, the living God at its core. At its worst, the law became 'a god' and the living God was not at home there.
Responsorial Psalm 115 'I will take the cup of salvation, and call on the name of the Lord'.
I should say that God was not at home with Jewish officialdom, which made ritual, and observance of rules such an unbearable burden ordinary people to carry. It was, on the contrary, Jesus' mission to identify and call to renewal all those Jews who had kept faith in God but lost faith in 'the system'. Let's be honest the same can be said of Catholicism in too many times and places down the centuries. So, according to our Gospel (Mark 14:12-16, 22-26), according to Saint Mark, Jesus, on the eve of his death, remembered the first covenant made at Mount Sinai. He intended to gather around Himself for a start, a people of God, a few, a minority who would feel committed to God's work and to whom God would commit Himself.
Paul would later develop the idea, the theology, to describe this minority as the body of Christ, Corpus Christi, in Latin. The Spiritual bloodline of Jesus. The 'Grail'. This body, or family, would no longer be identified with a certain race, but would be a family of believers pardoned of their sins: that is, the Church. Moses, at Sinai, had used animal blood to seal the original covenant. Jesus would offer Himself his own body and blood, to seal the new covenant.
Whenever we celebrate the Eucharist (or Mass), we renew this sacrificed meal in which Jesus offers Himself as the bread of life. By this sacramental encounter with the Risen Lord, we reaffirm our identity as the living Body of Christ.
Sunday, 25 June 2006
12th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Give thanks to the Lord. His love is everlasting
We've been through Easter and Pentecost, together, and the 'high' feasts of Trinity, Body of Christ, Ascension and Sacred Heart. Not only did these liturgies give us a chance to assemble and remember, as do many secular occasions, but they're meant to provide us with personal and collective experience of God and ourselves as family and circle of friends.Today's first reading (Job 38:1, 8-11) from Job starts our annual routine reappraisal of our place in church and neighbourhood. It's called 'Ordinary Time'. What else! So we listen to a God who's down to earth enough to swap ideas with a not particularly religious man, once rich and powerful, now down on his luck. 'Why me? What kind of good are you?' God doesn't show his own wisdom, but he forces humans, like Job, to admit that they don't know anything. We're getting better (science and technology) at knowing WHAT. We still don't know WHY. A cat's or dog's strange eye contact, children at play or just the shape of a leaf are enough to show forth the mystery of creation. The world of the senses is not all of reality.
Job, reduced to sensual poverty in one way and enhanced in another unexpected way, caught a redemptive glimpse of the divine wisdom. All beauty, goodness and truth have their roots there in that ultimate reality.
Celebrate this unfathomable and unmarketable mystery in Sts Peter's and Paul's this weekend.
Psalm 106 helps get us from Job to Jesus. Give thanks to the Lord. His love is everlasting.
Mark, indeed all the gospel writers, wrote to reassure Christians, especially convert Jews, that everything would turn out alright. Today's gospel story (Mark 4:35-41) does the job. Who cares what happened or how! These gospels are bequeathed to us to activate the question 'why?' Jesus, notice, didn't reprimand the disciples for their fear of the storm but for not overcoming their fear.
We church people get a chance, today, to admit and confront our many fears Ð the world's collapsing around us, the church's falling to bits, we're failures because we can't measure up in countless ways. But we, together with Jesus and the disciples are working for the Kingdom, which evolves in perceptively whatever goes on around it. Jesus' disciples admired him greatly, as we admire a champion, hero or, even, celebrity. Yes! As fickle as that! But, on the night he stood up for them against the storm, their eyes were opened. Remember, we need not to care about how or what but WHY. From that dramatic occasion on to Calvary, the disciples enjoyed Jesus not only as teacher and friend but the one to whom they had entrusted their very SELVES. Exciting but Scary!
Sunday, 2 July 2006
13th Sunday of the Year - I will praise You, Lord, for You have rescued me
The book of Wisdom was written in Egypt between 80 and 50 before Christ. The Author was one of the many Jews living in foreign lands deeply under the influence of Greek culture. In the last centuries before Christ, that culture, spread by Alexander the Great, had penetrated the nations of the Middle East. Greeks contributed a new way of looking at the freedom of the individual and the nobility of the human spirit. They promoted scientific research and highly esteemed physical beauty and skills enshrined in, for example, the Olympic Games. The book of Wisdom is the first serious effort to express the faith and wisdom of Israel, not only in Greek but also in a way adapted to Greek attitudes.Today's first reading (Wisdom 1:13-15, 2:23-24) enshrines the basic Wisdom truth: God is nearer to us than we are to ourselves! God is humanity's friend who wants everyone to live life to the full. So, we are urged to look to God with confidence: to think well of God is to fly in the face of all criticisms of Him, like 'Why does God allow suffering and death?' The closer one gets to God, the more convinced one becomes of His concern for human spiritual and material welfare. Secular society is naturally confused about the right to life. It prefers to debate the right to die. The Christian church, emerging from Judaism and respectful of all theologies and philosophies, is the guardian of all God's wisdom about life and death.
Responsorial Psalm 29 links our two main readings: 'I will praise You, Lord, for You have rescued me.'
Today's Gospel selection (Mark 5:23-43) must be kept in context. Herod was plotting against Jesus: John the Baptist had just been executed; the great ordeal was looming on the horizon. Confronted by a most distressing, even senseless, sickness and the equally disturbing death of a young woman, Jesus revolted against these humanly hopeless situations. Miracles were often His way of protesting against the vulnerability, the woundedness, of the human condition. Jesus knew, as did the author of Wisdom, that God wanted people to live life to the full. Sickness and death were not God's doing, nor are they today. In the case of the adult woman, we can discern the trusting attitude we encounter today in so many people who entrust themselves, health and all, to a devotional or popular, Catholicism. This may be superficial or naive, expecting great results, from touching images and religious objects - Jesus' garment in this Gospel incident. But as Jesus did, we should respect such religious expressions of Catholicism. In the same way, we should try, like Jesus to help people discover deeper dimensions of their faith, of their discipleship. Just say that the 'little girl' of the Gospel story personifies Hope. In each of us she lies asleep: she must be woken up regularly, made to get up and walk around. It's only made possible by faith in the One who can make our darkest nights give away to light.
Sunday 9 July 2006
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Our eyes are fixed on the Lord
In the days when Ezekiel wrote, the 500s BC, people really believed that their 'Gods' were confined to specific sanctuaries, some natural, some man-made. Thus, the Jews believed that the god of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, their God, was not to be found outside the Temple in Jerusalem. Jews, therefore, exiled in Babylon, far from that Jerusalem temple, were soon given to despair. Ezekiel had the divine vocation to convince these exiles, so rebellious against Gods abandonment of them that God did dwell, indeed, in the Jerusalem Temple BUT he was no less present among them in distant Babylon (Ezekiel 2:2-5).Of course, we now know that five hundred years after Ezekiel, the Word of God would become flesh and dwell among his disciples Ð Jesus with us. In preparation for that 'Incarnation', it was Ezekiel's task to launch theology that would become the indelible mark of 'true believers' throughout human history. Religious people who resent this closeness of God and keep Him prisoner, they think, in some lofty, inaccessible (except to them!) place are not 'true believers'. The Babylonian exiles were meant to take Ezekiel's message back to Palestine to revitalise religious institutions.
Responsorial Psalm 122 links our two main readings: 'Our eyes are fixed on the Lord', pleading for a fair go (mercy) 'I will praise You, Lord, for You have rescued me'. This Gospel passage (Mark 6:1-6) shows Jesus offering an alternative to the model of religion on display in Palestine at that time. Over the preceding 800 years the Jewish prophets had regularly called their leadership to ditch over-emphasis on worship and choose merciful service towards the widow and orphan. Were I making up this point of view, I could well be struck off the list of priests commissioned to preach!
The same kind of advice was being offered right across the known world according to Karen Armstrong in her The Great Transformation, by sages in China and India and Greece Ð all during the 800 years BCE. Later, during Mohammed's compilation, albeit verbal, of the Quran in late 600s AD, the Prophet will demand that his followers take almsgiving as seriously as prayer! How are we to faithfully preach today's gospel from Mark? Are we to scrap it in rich Parishes and explain it away in poor Parishes? Was Jesus a revolutionary? I think He was an 'evolutionary' bringing out the 'best practice' of prayer and almsgiving hinted at by the prophets, ignored by the clerics, practiced by people like Mary and Joseph.
Sunday 20 August, 2006
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time - Practice good, seek peace, pursue it
When Palestine had settled down to become some kind of peaceful society (thanks mainly, to king Solomon) a new kind of literature emerged. Thoughtful Jewish writers took advantage of the lull between struggles to develop what we now call wisdom literature. These religious 'philosophers' reflected on human behaviour, how people could live together in harmony, the moral consensus, the role of wealth, the different fates of the good and the bad.As an aside, there is a great hunger in our own times for such philosophical writings and discussions. Many people are looking for more than a trip along the super-highway of information.
Our first reading (Proverbs 9:1-6) comes from what was written about the 2nd Century before Christ. (Keep your eyes open for Jesus' own use of the new' style in his 'banquet parables'.) All people are called to change their lives; yet, the one thing we all love to avoid is change. The book of Proverbs talks about Wisdom. Jesus himself is Wisdom, the very personification of God. This Old Testament book presents God as always present in out lives. He gives Himself and nourishes us. We're invited to open our hands to accept whatever He offers, learning to trust it will all be for the good. Each day He gives us whatever, spiritually; we need to solve our human problems, individually and collectively.
John would later develop this theology in both his version of the Gospel and in the Book of Revelation. Today's Gospel extract (John 6:51-58) ends Christ's discourse about the 'bread of life'. He had tried, ever so hard, to break gradually to his audience the good news about the 'bread of life'. Surely, at least, parents among them would have understood the deep meaning of what Our Lord had to say about self-sacrifice. When parents offer bread to their children, they really offer themselves. Especially in times and places where bread is made at home or bought with saved money with great difficulty, parents are sacrificing themselves for the family.
Indeed, Jesus introduced 'family' into his discourse about the Eucharist, as is clearly demonstrated in today's Gospel emphasis on the Father. John, alone, conveys this deep spiritual insight. The eating and drinking of Christ's flesh and blood is a graphic expression about sharing divine life with the Father through him. Another member of the Family, the Spirit, achieves all these sacramental wonders. So, the Family of God, the Trinity, is not just a dogma for us; it is a living relationship enshrined forever within Eucharist celebration and sharing.
We've heard many times the modem health adage: 'We are what we eat'. Never have those words meant more than in John's teaching, at great length, about eating and drinking the Body and Blood of the Lord.
Sunday 3 September, 2006
22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time - The just will live in the presence of the Lord
When Deuteronomy (meaning Second book of the Law) was edited in the seventh century BC, more than 500 years had passed since Moses' encounter with God. The prosperous era of David and Solomon had come and gone. The twelve tribes had divided into northern (Israel) and southern (Judah) kingdoms. But, the north had fallen to invaders and a similar fate threatened the south. Never was a reminder of support, from Moses and the Law, needed more.By God's grace the text of Deuteronomy, left forgotten in the Temple during a long period of religious indifference, was discovered in 622 BC and became the source of king Josiah's reform. Jews of that time needed an explanation for the disasters, which had overtaken them since the heady days of David and Solomon. God had promised them the world. Now they were on the eve of destruction. What had gone wrong? The priests editing Deuteronomy wrote what Moses would say and do in the current state of affairs.
Today's reading (Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-8) provides a dose of that 'nostalgia'. Moses would remind Jews of the excellence of the Sinai laws. No other nation on earth could boast of such a code of conduct towards God and amongst themselves. These laws -would affect their very lives, deep in the heart. Because these law came from a living God (not a dead pagan deity) who had chosen to be so close to his people as to amaze outsiders and, even, the Jews themselves.
The verses of responsorial psalm (Psalm 14), 'The just will live in the presence of the Lord' provide some beautiful examples of the Jewish code of conduct.
By the way, the person who lived by the Mosaic Law was called just or right in his dealings with God and people, i.e. 'he who does no wrong to his brother, who casts no slur on his neighbour'. (After a few weeks of strong talk from John, now we're back to Mark's version of the Gospel.)
Moses had stated that nothing was to be added to his law. However, the Pharisees and scribes had added many observances, to which they seem more attached than to God. Jesus knew the Mosaic Law more than anyone. He continued the ancient role of prophet by denouncing all hypocrisy, easily satisfied by appearance not substance. He demanded a change of heart and mind, the only way to what is God's revealed spirituality. Jewish religious education had, for hundreds of years, compiled a list of bad things, called unclean which had to be avoided at all costs. Ordinary Jews, the men and women in the street, could not avoid unclean things since these were part of everyday living. Only religious rituals prescribed by priests could cleanse people. This burden was unbearable!
Jesus did away with all these rituals, for him, nothing was unclean in all God's creation - touching the sick, a corpse or a bloodstained object does not offend God. God is not bothered if we eat this or that. Jesus taught that sin is always from the heart and never something we do unintentionally.
Sunday 10 September 2006
23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time - Praise the Lord, my soul
Before we deal with today's first reading (Isaiah 35:4-7) from Isaiah, let us reflect a little on the phenomenon of Jewish prophetism! The prophets strike us as men of exceptional quality. They had outstanding faith and also exemplified a more highly developed human personality. Perhaps it's not irrelevant to note that the great century of Jewish prophetism, the Sixth Century BC was also, the century that produced other great religious leaders. You could say that God was obviously at work in many different places, within many different cultures, in this pivotal century of human history. We Christians claim, however, that God was never so powerfully and intimately at work, all at once, than among His chosen people, the Jews, especially in Judah, where Jerusalem was located.At the time of writing the first 39 chapters of the book of Isaiah, the northerners (Israel) had been carted off into exile as a punishment for political, intrigue against Assyria. Isaiah's message to the exiles promised a miraculous return home, using vivid imagery, which could describe, equally, the Hebrews' victorious march out of the desert into the Promised Land, 500 years earlier!
All this might seem simply a history lesson. Thanks to Jesus, it's much, much more. As we shall see in today's Gospel, His mission, like Isaiah's was to lead people, from spiritual blindness and deafness, into an exciting, challenging world where God opens the eyes and ears of the heart.
And, for this divine intervention, we have today's response in the words of Psalm 145: 'Praise the Lord, my soul.'
As we hear about Jesus' miracles as in today's Gospel, we should recall that Satan had already tempted Jesus, in the desert, to buy popularity by performing wonders at the launch of his public ministry and mission. Jesus, as we know, refused. Whenever He did perform a miracle, Jesus linked a physical cure with the need for an inner change of mind and heart. The healing of impaired senses, like hearing, sight and speech, was always a sign of deeper healing we now call salvation. Jesus often took aside people for healing because He wanted to emphasis that the crown was incapable of spiritual hearing, sight or speech. Isaiah had already predicted that prisoners of war, returning from captivity would be healed of despair and depression to the extent of shouting out with joy because God had saved them.
In today's Gospel passage, we find Jesus, in now Jewish territory, on the Lebanon border, enabling a dumb man to speak. In contrast, most Jewish people, despite having inherited God's blessings, were so spiritually dumb, they couldn't spread God's good news, only parrot the legalisms taught by religious authorities. That was the spiritual sickness Jesus diagnosed among his contemporaries. Jews of the time thought saliva was breath, somehow solidified. By putting his saliva on the man's tongue, Jesus indicated his breath, His spirit, would be humanity's healer down the ages.
Read this Sunday's reflection or reflections from other Sundays by Father Maguire