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Commentary on Amos 6:1a,4-7, 1Timothy 6:11-16 and Luke 16:19-31

To some people, the story in today’s Gospel may seem quite unfair. A successful man, indicated by the prosperity of his surroundings, is buried in hell. A snivelling beggar, who may have never done a day’s work in his life, ends up in Abraham’s bosom. Is this Christian teaching?

To understand this story properly may involve a radical change in the way we – and the society we belong to – normally thinks. And, importantly for those who wish to be truly Christian, it will involve learning some of the values of Jesus, of the Gospel.

We live in a world which praises achievement and has little time for failure. It starts right in kindergarten with the very first school report. We live in a society, which says people deserve everything they are able to work for and acquire. The materially successful (and in our society is there any other kind of success?) are sometimes heard to say that, if anyone else did what they did, they could be billionaires too. The emphasis is not on what people are but what they can do and on what they can acquire with what they do. Sadly, how they get it or what the consequences may be for others is sometimes not regarded as of great importance.

Another distortion
For us Christians, often as deeply infected with these ideas as anyone, there is another distortion as well. Our way of living our faith can be very individualistic and self-centred. The emphasis is on personal salvation (“saving my soul”) and that is achieved by being a morally good person. Morally-good means avoiding actions which are ethically wrong, such as, failing to worship God in the “official” way, committing violent actions against others, behaving in a sexually immoral way (we coyly use the word “impure”), stealing things from people, gossiping maliciously about others, being jealous, envious, angry, resentful and so on. Seldom in confession do people say: “I was not a loving person” but that they broke rules and disappointed themselves. Seldom do people confess the harm that their sins caused in others. I have never heard a person confess to cheating on taxes, although this is one of the chief ways in which people fail to express solidarity for the less well-off in their community.

As long as I am not aware of doing any of these things, or at least, not doing them in a serious way (“mortal” sin), then I am a “good” person and, if I am a Catholic, then I am “quite a good” Catholic (no need to exaggerate!).

However, this is not really the picture that the Gospel today describes. If we were to base our judgements on the above image of the “good Catholic”, then there was really nothing much wrong with the rich man. All he did was to enjoy his wealth and his good food, his big house, his fashionable and expensive clothes. He did not seem to do any harm to the poor man. He did not drive him away or use abusive language towards him. The rich man was, in fact, quite “charitable”. The poor man was welcome to any of the (surplus) food that fell from the table.

The rich man (and some of us) might ask why the poor man did not just get up and see a doctor about those ulcers on his leg and then go and do a proper day’s work. We have no idea how the rich man became rich. Perhaps he was born into a rich family and inherited his wealth; perhaps it was the result of working long hours over many years. Why should such a man be punished? And, even more strangely, why should the beggar be rewarded?

Why love the poor
Someone has said that God loves the poor, not because they are good, but simply because they are poor – where “poor” means deprived of what is necessary to live a fully human life.

Can we say also that God does not love the rich, not because they are bad, but simply because they are rich? Does one hear cries of “Unfair!”? “What’s wrong with being rich? Everyone wants to be rich and prosperous.” “Just look at the number of people buying lottery tickets every week!” “The rich are people too; they have souls.” “I thought God loves everyone without exception.”…and so on.

But is it so unfair? Who is really being unfair? What does “rich” really mean? Indeed that rich man in the parable may have worked very hard to get his money, perhaps he was a good family man who loved his wife and was a good father to his children. Perhaps he went faithfully to the synagogue every Sabbath and observed all the regulations of the Sabbath day. He may have been seen as a very pillar of his community. Yet, as long as that poor man lay uncared for at his feet, the rich man was totally condemned.

Because he did not know what justice means. He did not know what love means. He did not know what a truly human society means. He did not know what religion means.

And perhaps there are thousands of us just like him in the Catholic Church here and all over the world.

Of course, one may say to oneself: “Jesus is not talking about me. I could not be regarded as rich. I am just a tax-paying fixed salary earner.” No, but is such a person looking anxiously to move in the direction of wealth? Does such a person dream of striking it big on the national lottery? Does one dream of finding a short cut to making a killing on the stock exchange some day?

Relativity of wealth
As an individual in our society, I may not (yet) be regarded as rich and we all belong to a society which is regarded as prosperous today. But, like most other rich communities, we are living in a society where wealth is very unevenly divided. There are many social problems in our midst affecting both rich and poor. Every social problem is a form of deprivation, a denial of full human living and hence poverty in Gospel terms.

How aware am I of these problems? How aware am I that I am somehow responsible for their elimination? What, in practice, am I contributing to the removal of these problems? Being a personally “good Catholic” is hardly enough.

Again, a lot of our community’s wealth comes from buying and selling to countries of the Third or developing world, where millions continue to live in poverty. Would we dare to say that there is no exploitation going on in our trading practices – perhaps by the very company I work for or companies whose goods I buy? How come our society continues to grow in prosperity while theirs goes deeper and deeper in debt? Is it really only a question of mismanagement or corruption or “laziness” on their part?

The rich countries sit at their groaning table in purple and silk, with champagne and caviar, while the poor, covered in the wounds of deprivation and exploitation, are shut out. We constantly pat ourselves on the back and look forward to the day when our material standard of living reaches that of the richest countries. Is that what we really want to aim at?

Excuses too late
The rich man made the excuse (when it was too late) that he did not realise what was going on. His brothers (also rich?) did not realise either. Let them be warned, he pleaded. Even in hell, the rich man could still only think of his own family and not of all the others to whom he was responsible.

It would be no use warning them, Abraham said. They would not listen every if someone rose from the dead. Ironic words indeed. Jesus has risen from the dead more than 2,000 years, and how many of us have taken in the message of the Gospel about wealth and poverty? Sadly, not a great many, it must be said.

The table with food
One final point. Central to the story is the table laden with food. This is both the symbol of the Kingdom and also points to our Eucharistic table, which we dare to approach every Sunday. If we saw our Sunday Mass in terms of today’s Gospel, we might be more hesitant. We might be less smug about sharing the food of the Lord’s table.

The rich man made no move whatever to share what he had at the table. He could have done so at either of two levels. First, he could have seen to it that the poor man had enough to eat and he might even have gone further and “donated” medical treatment. This is the level of “charity”, the level most of us feel good about doing. But it is not yet the Gospel.

In the second level, neither of the men can be regarded as rich or poor. They sit down together at the same table and they give and receive and share on a footing of equal dignity the meal and the food. It is quite irrelevant whether one of them is more intelligent, more active, more enterprising, more healthy. What is important is that each cares deeply for the other and sees that the needs of each are taken care of with the resources available. Strangely enough, the poor are usually much better at that than the rich. Which makes one wonder, who in the world are the really rich, enriched and enriching?

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Commentary on Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

Each of the readings today makes a separate, but related, point:

• A warning from the prophet Amos on swindling and cheating in business;
• An exhortation to pray for those in authority;
• How to make use of our material goods.

A world of injustice
During the 8th century BC, the prophet Amos arrived in the prosperous kingdom of Israel. Behind the glitter of political and religious life, he saw a world of injustice and exploitation of the poor. He wrote his denunciations long before the time of Christ but they sound perfectly familiar to anyone living in any prosperous city of our own day. Cheating on weights and measures, tampering with scales (calculators and computers!), inflating the value of goods and deflating the value of money, buying up the poor for money (“Every man has his price”), finding someone gullible enough to buy what is basically trash… Practically every year in nearly every country corruption among the rich and politically powerful is reported. And, for the most part, it involves far greater sums of money and a higher level of criminality than the procession of petty criminals that pass through our courts daily and who are portrayed with such disdain and condescension in our media.

In over 2,000 years of “civilisation” and “religion”, hardly anything has changed. In spite of social welfare, the poor and the needy continue to be exploited and trampled on. The very existence of social welfare is the result of social imbalances in the distribution of a community’s wealth. And yet some are even critical of the existence of social welfare. “Let them work hard like the rest of us!” One is reminded of the late Bishop Helder Camara of Recife in Brazil. He was an outspoken critic of injustice in his society. He used to say: “When I give money to the poor, they call me a saint; when I ask why they are poor, they call me a Communist.”

We are all familiar with the dramatic crimes involving robberies and shootouts on our streets by “gangsters” and “thugs”. But far more money is disappearing – immorally and illegally – in plush air-conditioned offices by those oh-so-respectable wearing expensive suits and tooling around in luxury cars.

Serious imbalances
Such an abuse of the use of money and property results in serious imbalances both in our own society and in societies elsewhere. The world is divided now into North (rich) and South (poor), between a First and a Third (and even a Fourth) World.

So many are driven to get rich. What’s wrong with being rich? people ask. Catholics can be, and sometimes are, very rich. But, is it possible that no one can really become rich without (many) others being made or kept poor? To be defined as rich in our society means having more, much more, than the average person.

But, some may argue, what do purely social and economic matters have to do with the Church and religion? What business has the Church meddling in the market place? Ask Amos that question. Ask Jesus that question. “It is harder for a rich man to enter God’s Kingdom than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.” It is not just because the man is rich but because to be regarded as rich he must have goods which are denied in justice to others. We cannot say we love God, if we do not love our brothers. Such a person cannot be in the Kingdom… “Depart from me… I do not know you.” To be actively unjust to others is to deny love to them. It is not enough to say, as the Apostle James reminds us, “I’m really sorry for your trouble but I will pray for you at Mass on Sunday.”

In so far as economic matters touch on moral issues – justice, the dignity of the individual, basic human rights – then they certainly concern the Christian and the church community. To be an agent – actively or passively – of injustice is to deny love to another.

Luck of the draw
In our capitalist society built on competitiveness, we seem to accept that there are (some) winners and (many) losers. We can even attribute it to “the luck of the draw”. In which case, we basically accept the situation as “normal”. Many of us Christians have a deep (if largely unconscious) need to become more aware of just what Christian love and compassion actually entails. It can never be accepted as “normal” for people to live in inadequate housing, to have to work in intolerable conditions, to have to work twelve or more hours a day seven days a week just to make ends meet, to have to endure hunger, malnutrition over long periods, to have to sell their bodies in prostitution or near slavery…

Nor, while people live in such conditions, can it be accepted as “normal” that others live in comfort and luxury, especially if the source of their wealth comes from the exploitation of those who are living below the level of human dignity. No aware Christian can accept such a situation or, still less, be a contributor to such imbalances. Unfortunately, many of us are, wittingly or unwittingly, contributors. We show it by our own frenetic participation in trying to climb to the top and pushing our children to the top.

It is not a question, of course, of advocating total equality. On many levels, people are quite unequal. But, on the level of dignity and rights, no one can claim superiority over another person. Any diminution of human dignity (which demands a certain minimum material standard of living) cannot be tolerated by the conscientious and loving Christian. Some have been given more talents than others (and the Gospel clearly recognises this) but these gifts are to be used not to get more for oneself but to offer more for the building up of the Kingdom community. The greater our gifts, the greater our responsibility to share them with those who have less.

Praying for our leaders
The exhortation, then, in the Second Reading to pray especially for those in authority, in this context, makes sense. Those in authority do need our prayers that the power entrusted to them is used for the well-being of every person in the community. Considering that the presumed writer of this letter (Paul or some other Christian leader) was himself the victim of savage persecution by some authorities, he is not telling us to give our unqualified support to all the policies of our leaders. The Church can never, and and should never, identify itself fully with any civil administration. At best, there should be what Cardinal Jaime Sin of Manila used to call “critical co-operation”. But at worst, it may also required an out and out denunciation of an administrations practices and policies.

Stewardship
And so the Gospel speaks about stewardship. A steward is a person who is made responsible to handle the goods and property of his employer. The steward in the Gospel today was a bad steward because he was wasteful of his master’s property. He was going to be fired so he took steps to guarantee his future employability. And “the master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness”. Jesus obviously told this story not to encourage dishonesty but to draw attention to the foresight of the steward.

“And so I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity.” Jesus’ choice of a “steward” in today’s passage is altogether to the point. We need to be constantly reminded that we are the stewards and never the owners of what we possess. We have no absolute right to anything we have. “I can do what I like with my money and property because it’s mine” is not a statement any committed Christian can make. So the question of a successful life is not “How much did you make?” but “How did you use what you had to creative purposes for the general welfare of all?” That is the way to make the friends Jesus talks about in the Gospel.

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Commentary on Exodus 32:7-11,13-14; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-32 Read Sunday of Week 24 of Ordinary Time (Year C) »

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Commentary on Wisdom 9:13-18; Philemon 9b,12-17; Luke 14:25-33

“Great crowds accompanied Jesus on his way…” Many of our famous personalities today feed off the adulation of the crowds. They may be presidential candidates, pop stars, film personalities or sports champions. They are mobbed when they appear in public and people remain glued to their television screens as they perform. Popularity with the fickle public is an important element of their “success”. Once they begin to lose the crowds they know they are on the way down and out.

During his public life, Jesus had some of the star quality that we recognise in personalities who capture the public’s imagination. In a world that was much simpler than ours, Jesus must have been a kind of sensation in otherwise drab, dreary and sometimes poverty-ridden lives. Stories must have spread around like wildfire about the healings he had performed and there was that extraordinary occasion when no less than 5,000 men (not including women and children) were fed to satiety.

Sensation seekers
In the parable immediately preceding today’s Gospel passage, Jesus spoke of those who had been invited to the banquet of his Kingdom making all kinds of excuses not to come. Instead, said Jesus, people would be called in from all the “streets and lanes, the poor and maimed and blind and lame” to come and fill the unoccupied places. (The implication is that many of Jesus’ own people had rejected his invitation to be his disciples so he would reach out to the despised and sinful pagans.)

It is implied that the crowds following Jesus were sensation seekers. They were out to get something from Jesus, not altogether unlike some of those who today converge in large numbers wherever some modern “miracle” or “apparition” has been reported. And, indeed, how many of us look on God or Jesus as someone to turn to when we want something we cannot get ourselves?

Challenging words
With the people in today’s Gospel Jesus suddenly stops in his tracks. He turns round and says words that were quite shocking to his hearers and sound pretty harsh to us too: “If anyone comes to me without hating father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, yes, and his own life, that person cannot be my follower/disciple.” The Jews, like a number of other ethnic communities, are recognised for their close family ties. What are we to make of such an extraordinary statement? And surely we have an incomprehensible contradiction here. Jesus, who tells us to love our enemies, now tells us to hate our nearest and dearest! Is this the same Jesus who cured the mother-in-law of Peter? The same Jesus who told the story of the Good Samaritan? The same Jesus who enjoyed the hospitality of his good friends, Mary and Martha?

Most radical
Of all the gospels, Luke’s presents the following of Jesus in the most radical terms. In following Jesus, we have to go with him the whole way. We have to accept totally his way of seeing life and then putting that into practice in the way we live. There cannot be, as is the case with practically all of us, a kind of wishy-washy compromise, trying to have our cake and eat it.

I suppose the majority of us follow a lifestyle largely dictated by the surrounding culture and our goals are the goals of that culture and, somewhere on the side, we try to fit in some aspects of Christian living. In most of our modern, urban societies that lifestyle is for the most part competitive, consumerist and materialistic. We would not want our Christianity to get in the way of that. But it is precisely to people like us that Jesus is speaking.

Not to be taken literally
It is quite obvious from the overall context of Luke’s gospel that Jesus could not mean us literally to hate our parents, brothers and sisters. Nor does Jesus literally mean us to hate our own lives. People who feel that way effectively commit suicide. (Hate and the anger and violence that it produces are the product of fear.) On the contrary we are called to have love and compassion for every single person, irrespective of who they are or what their relationship may be to us. True love casts out fear. What Jesus is saying today is putting in another way what we have already seen in discussing other passages, such as, the story of the Good Samaritan and the Lord’s Prayer. Namely, those who are truly disciples of Jesus recognise that, as children of one God, we all belong to one family, that we are all brothers and sisters to each other.

We are therefore bound to love our close family members – but not only them. If we find, for instance, the wants of family members are being put before the genuine needs of others, then we are acting unjustly towards members of our wider family. In not recognising those other brothers and sisters, we fail in being disciples of Jesus. “As often as you refused it to the least of my brothers, you refused it to ME.” That immigrant, that homeless person is my brother or sister. That waiter in the cafe, that streetwalker is my sister. I owe them my love and care. I may, in fact, in certain circumstances owe them more love in action that my own family needs.

“My family – right or wrong”, “My country – right or wrong” can never be the slogan of the disciple of Christ. And so, there may be times – and they can be painful experiences – when we would have to reject family members who want us to join them in behaviour that is harmful, unjust or unloving to others. We cannot support family members who cheat in business; we cannot support family members who practise racism or other forms of discrimination. To do so would not be really loving them. On the contrary, we would show our concern for their well-being precisely by opposing any immoral behaviour.

Loving our family
While saying all this, we might also draw attention to another common but unfortunate phenomenon. For there are those who have become totally or partly alienated from their own family. They will do anything for others but nothing for their own flesh and blood. Quite obviously, such behaviour is as much against the Gospel as making one’s family the beginning and end of all living. That is certainly a kind of hate that Jesus is not promoting

To sum up, as true followers of Jesus, we enter a new family where we recognise every person as a brother or sister. Family members are obviously included but so are others. There are times when the needs of others precede family concerns. At the same time, “Charity begins at home”: this is very true and, in our day, there may be little love in the home. But charity does not end at home; it is constantly reaching out. Sometimes we have to challenge the wishes and expectations of our family. A boy wants to be a priest, a girl to be a sister; one decides on a career of service rather than one that wins prestige and money; one refuses to condone immoral behaviour in business or sexual abuse…

A good example
The kind of love Jesus speaks about is described beautifully by Paul in today’s extract from the Letter to Philemon (the shortest of Paul’s letters and the shortest book in the New Testament). He is writing to his friend Philemon asking him to take back a slave who had apparently done something wrong but who, under Paul’s influence, had become a Christian. Paul speaks with the greatest affection of this young man, “whose father I became while wearing these chains [in prison].” The boy, Paul says, is “a part of my own self”. Paul asks Philemon to treat the young man, Onesimus, “not as a slave any more but…a dear brother… Welcome him as you would me.” This is a call for forgiveness. Onesimus may well have done wrong but it is clear that, with his conversion, he is now a changed person who can be trusted and relied on. Even more, as a Christian, he is in a special way a brother to his owner, Philemon.

Hating our own life
We have yet to comment on the phrase “hating our own life”. This is just an extension of the earlier part. Jesus wants our lives to be lived in total truth and love. Our lives are not to be determined and manipulated by attachments, desires, ambitions or fears and anxieties which can become very much part of ourselves. We are to live in total freedom. “None of you can be my disciples unless he gives up all his possessions.” It is the ability to let go, even of health and life itself. Any aspect of a person or any thing that lessens that freedom to follow truth and love is to be “hated” and transcended.

Are we ready for that? That is the meaning of the two parables, which Jesus gives as illustration. “Great crowds” were following Jesus with enthusiasm but were they ready? Did they realise what it really meant? If not, they are like a general who goes out to war totally unprepared to deal with the opposing side. They are like a man who started out to build a house and then ran out of funds or material…he becomes a laughing stock.

If we try to walk on the Way with Jesus without being aware of what is involved, we will not exactly become a laughing stock (there will be so many people with us!). However, we will miss the joy and happiness of a totally fulfilled life that Jesus, despite the apparently negative language of today’s Gospel, is holding out to us.

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Commentary on Sirach 3:19-21,30-31; Hebrews 12:18-19,22-24; Luke 14:1,7-14

The whole passage from which today’s Gospel is taken deals with people eating together. The Kingdom of God—the perfect society, which is the goal of the Christian message—is often pictured as a banquet. As such, it is a meal for everyone, not just a private dinner for two by candlelight. All the dishes on the table are for everyone equally. There is enough and more for every person’s needs. It is an occasion of sharing and joyfulness. And in the New Testament, the meals in which Christians share—and the Eucharist is among them—are meant to be a true sign of that yet-to-be-realised banquet and Kingdom.

That is exactly what we do not find in today’s Gospel. A rather sinister atmosphere is established by the opening sentence:

On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the Sabbath…

While it should have been an occasion of fellowship, instead we are told:

…they were watching him closely.

They were not watching him out of admiration or curiosity (the way a young child might for the first time watch a stranger at the family table). No, they wanted to see if Jesus on this Sabbath day would put a foot wrong so that they could accuse him. He was, in fact, judged before he even opened his mouth.

Accessible to all
For his part, we might notice the impartiality of Jesus. He raised many eyebrows when he was seen eating with tax collectors and sinners. But he was no inverse snob—he also accepted invitations from the rich and powerful. God’s love is for all—the sunshine and the rain fall equally on all. So it is with God’s love of which Jesus is the visible sign.

From this meal situation Jesus gives us two parables. It has been pointed out that in one Jesus speaks directly to the guests and in the other he addresses the host. In this way, Jesus involves them directly in what he is saying. As we watch and listen, we need to hear Jesus speaking to us also. The lessons are still totally relevant for our time and our society.

Being in the right place
The first parable was a response to the way the guests took their seats. Jesus had:

…noticed how the guests chose the places of honor…

In many formal dinners, the seating is a very delicate matter. Those regarded as important are put near the host and the rest lower down. Elegantly printed cards may be at each place and indicate exactly your ‘status’ for this occasion. At a wedding dinner, only a few can share the top table with the married couple and their immediate family. Others will find themselves tucked away in a corner feeling the heat of the kitchen!

As Jesus spoke, did some of his fellow guests begin to feel uncomfortable? Were some dissatisfied because others had a higher place than they? Where was Jesus sitting? Do you think he cared very much? If you were there, would you have cared? Do you feel your worth as a person depends on how you are treated on such occasions?

Reversing the procedure
Jesus reverses the normal procedure, saying:

…do not sit down at the place of honor…

You might suffer the indignity of being asked to sit lower down. Rather, he says:

…when you are invited, go and sit down at the lowest place, so that when your host comes, he may say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher’; then you will be honored in the presence of all who sit at the table with you.

It is a risky thing to do, of course. You might be left sitting in your lower place! For some, that could be a social disaster.

Jesus, of course, does not mean for us to behave that way literally. What he does mean is that in the Kingdom of God such things have absolutely no importance. Someone with the spirit of the Kingdom knows that human status, that is, the status conferred by fickle society, does not mean anything at all.

The only status that counts is one’s relationship with God and with other people, irrespective of their classification by race, religion, profession or class. Our real status is measured not by our rank or occupation, but by the level of love and service offered to God through our relationships with those around us. What counts is not how we are looked on by others, but the degree of care and compassion with which we look at them. This calls for a strong inner security, which is independent of arbitrarily conferred status or position, so that one can say easily to another: “Why don’t you go to the top table and sit with the host?”

Those who find their security in their bonds of love with other people know that no status whatever is lost by having to sit near the kitchen. It gives them an opportunity to talk to the cook and the staff. It is put somewhat differently in the Second Reading (from Hebrews) today:

…you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem…and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven…

Who to invite
In the second parable Jesus talks directly to his host, saying:

When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers and sisters or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid.

A look at the media social pages reveals a merry-go-round where the same people eat the same dinners in different venues night after night. On a lower level, most of us do more or less the same. And how many dinners are arranged as a bribe or a gentle form of blackmail? How many principals of ‘good’ schools have the experience of being invited out to expensive eating places only to find in their mail soon after a request for a son or daughter to be accepted into their school. It happens all the time. It is even regarded as ‘normal’ and “everybody does it”.

Jesus has rather different advice:

…when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind.

Invite those people in particular who will be able to give you absolutely nothing in return, who will be able to do absolutely nothing to further your career or your status in the community.

As an image, life can be seen as a ladder or a circle. Many of us live on a ladder, desperately trying to climb to the top. In so doing we often find ourselves climbing on the backs of others and even kicking them to the bottom so that we can reach the top. To be in the first place is deeply ingrained in many of our societies today—whether it is in business, in an examination, or even getting on to a bus. We are by and large a ladder society.

Circular living
The Gospel is proposing that we rather try to work towards creating a circle society. In a circle, there is no top or bottom. All are equal. All are facing each other. All are in a better position to know and respect each other. (How can you respect the person you are climbing over to get to the top of the ladder?) All are in a better position to share what they have with those who have less. Put a round table between these people and everything is ready for a banquet. And, as the story goes, provide each person with a chopstick too long to be used by oneself, but just the right length to offer food to the person opposite and you have the Kingdom in the making.

Is that possible; is it too unrealistic? Certainly it will not be achieved in a day or even a generation. But we could begin in our own homes first of all. And then in the small groups to which we belong. Our parish with its small communities would be a very good place to start.

And right now we are attending a Christian banquet, the Eucharist. What links do we see between sharing together the bread and wine that is the Body and Blood of Jesus and the sharing together of food and conversation that takes place at our own dining tables or the tables of others? Should not our Eucharists have more of the characteristics of good family meals and should not good family meals be, in their own way, a living out of the Eucharist? In the early Christian Church, both the Eucharist and family or group meals were put back to back as part of one single experience.

Is it not about time we started trying to do the same?

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Commentary on Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7.11-13; Luke 13:22-30

There is a worldwide tendency among people who believe in a religion to feel that they are a privileged group, that they carry with them some cast-iron guarantee that their future is absolutely secure. The concept of a ‘chosen people’ is not really confined to the Jews. We find it among Christians, Hindus, Muslims and even among militant Buddhists (perhaps a contradiction in terms?).

It is not for us here to evaluate other religious beliefs. We will confine ourselves to Christians. Even among Christians themselves there are divisions about who is chosen and on the right path. Just listen to some Christian groups speak about others.

Christians have believed for a long time that they and they alone will be, as they put it, ‘saved’. “Outside the Church there is no salvation” was a rallying cry for centuries and, if we are not mistaken, still is for some. Yet it was well before the Second Vatican Council that the American Jesuit, Fr Leonard Feeney, was condemned and excommunicated by the Holy See for denying salvation to non-Christians.

How many will be saved?
Perhaps this was what Jesus’ questioner had in mind when—in today’s Gospel passage—he asked:

Lord, will only a few be saved?

The question reflected the belief of many Jews in Jesus’ time that they and they alone were God’s ‘Chosen People’. For them that meant, on the one hand, that ‘pagans’ and ‘unbelievers’, people who did not observe the Law of Moses, were outcasts to be rejected by God forever. The salvation of God’s People, however, was virtually guaranteed, provided they kept the Law.

As often happens, Jesus does not answer his enquirer’s question directly. If he does not actually counter with another question, he will speak in parables or images. In any case, his meaning will be quite clear to an open mind. Jesus speaks today about coming in through a narrow door and about a householder who refuses to open the door after he has locked up for the night. The fact that those knocking claim to be companions known to him does not make him change his mind:

I do not know where you come from; go away from me…

These are terrible words to hear!

So, in answer to the person’s question, Jesus does not confirm or deny that only a few will be saved. What he does say is that salvation is not guaranteed for anyone. Saying “We are your Chosen People” will not be good enough. What Jesus is saying is that no one, no matter who they are, has an absolute guarantee of being saved, of being accepted by God. No one is saved by claiming identity with a particular group or by carrying a particular name tag.

Message is for all
Jesus does not at all say that only a few will be ‘saved’. The whole thrust of the Gospel, and especially of the Gospel according to Luke which we are reading, is that Jesus came to bring God’s love and freedom to the whole world. The message of that Gospel is that there is not a single person, not a single people, nation, race, or class, which is excluded from experiencing the love and liberation that God offers.

The primary role of the Christian community has never been simply to guarantee the ‘salvation’ of its own members. It is not the function of the Church to turn all its energies in seeing that its members ‘save their souls’ and sometimes pray for those in ‘outer darkness’.

The role of the Christian community from the beginning until now is first and foremost to proclaim to the whole world the Good News about God’s love for the world, to share the message of the Gospel about what constitutes real living with the whole world. It also hopes that many will respond to its message of life through a conversion of their lives. The Church completely betrays this mandate when it becomes obsessed with its own survival and its own ‘rights and privileges’.

And it is not only a verbal message, the verbal teaching of Jesus, which has to be communicated. Our whole lifestyle, individually and in community as Christians is itself to be a proclamation to all those who hunger for a life of truth, of love, of justice and greater sharing, a life of compassion and mutual support, an end to loneliness and marginalisation, exploitation and manipulation—is that a picture of the Christian community you belong to?

How to be ‘saved’?
How many people will be saved? What does it mean, ‘being saved’? It is not very helpful to toss out the old catechism jargon about those dying “in the state of grace”, “without mortal sin on their souls”. Trying to put it in more realistic terms, to be ‘saved’ means to live and to die in a close loving relationship with God and with others. It is to share the vision of life that Jesus offered to us. It is both simple and difficult to do. Jesus tells us:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

By loving each other in the name and the spirit of Jesus is really all that is necessary to be ‘saved’.

How many, then, will be saved? No one knows, but surely it is God’s will that it should be many. And as the Scripture often says, God’s plans will not be frustrated. It is not for us to judge.

A graced position
But let us come closer to home and look at the second part of Jesus’ teaching today. To belong to the ‘People of God’ (a phrase used by the Second Vatican Council), to belong to the Christian community is, in many ways, a privileged, graced position.

If we really belong to a community which shares and explains the Word of God in a way that helps me to understand the deeper meaning of life, if I find comfort and support—spiritual, emotional, social and material—from that community, then I am blessed indeed. But such a grace also is one of responsibility.

Jesus expresses this in a number of ways. The path to life is through a “narrow door”. In terms of the Gospel, the doorway to life can be summed up in the word—love. In one sense, love is an all-embracing word in both its figurative and literal meanings. Yet, to guide all one’s action only by love is a choice that many are unable to make. Many find it extremely difficult and many simply reject it. They prefer to go by the broader way (which they even call ‘more human’) of hatred, resentment, jealousy, competitiveness and revenge.

How many of us can claim to have succeeded in walking the narrow way of unconditional and unremitting love? Yet, if we fail in love, what kind of Christians are we? Do we deserve the final reward of brothers and sisters, disciples, of Jesus?

Frightening possibility
So what Jesus is saying today is that many who regard themselves as ‘Catholics’ may find the door closed in their face. They will hear the terrible words, “I do not know you”. How can Jesus not recognise someone who was baptised as Catholic and who went regularly to Sunday Mass? Because these people in their turn did not recognise Jesus himself in all those people they may have hated, resented, used, exploited, manipulated, rejected and trampled on:

Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. (Matt 25:45)

When we do come face to face with God—and hopefully we will—we may be surprised at who is not there. We may even be more surprised at those who are there: people we regarded as ‘pagans’ (Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims), animists, agnostics, even atheists, people of other races whom we tended to despise and the ‘dregs of society’. There will be people from east and west, from north and south; they will all come to take their places at the banquet in the Kingdom of God.

These people will be in the Kingdom because, whatever labels we gave them, they were at heart loving, caring and sharing people, people who lived their lives for others as Jesus did. These people Jesus will recognise. Let us make sure that he will be able to recognise each of us, too. What will you do today to make sure that Jesus knows you?

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Commentary on 1 Thessalonians 2:2-8; John 21:15-17

The Gospel reading is from the very end of John’s Gospel. The whole chapter is divided into three parts. In the first, seven of Jesus’ disciples are out fishing and have caught nothing. Then in the early dawn, as light breaks, a stranger on the shore tells them where to drop their nets. When they do so, they make a huge catch of fish and at that point the ‘Beloved Disciple’, the one with the deeper spiritual insight, realises that:

It is the Lord! (John 21:7)

They then bring the catch ashore.

In the second part, after coming ashore the disciples find that a fire has been lit and a meal is ready for them, a meal of bread and fish, a Eucharistic meal. The disciples are somewhat confused. Jesus, on the one hand, does not look familiar and yet they know it is he.

At the end of the meal, Jesus begins to speak with Peter, although he addresses him by his own name, Simon:

Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?

It sounds like a simple question, but in fact it makes Peter very uncomfortable. He has not forgotten the shameful moment during the trial of Jesus when he swore three times that he had never laid eyes on Jesus. And this on top of an earlier boast that, even if all the others betrayed Jesus, Peter never would. He was in effect saying that he did love Jesus more than his other companions.

In this scene it is now a more humble and remorseful Peter. After betraying his Master he had wept bitterly, deeply regretting his cowardice. Earlier on, when they were in the boat and the Beloved Disciple had cried, “It is the Lord!”, Peter immediately dressed himself. Only the innocent can go naked (like our First Parents in the garden before their sin) and Peter was deeply aware of his failings. At the same time, his diving into the water to get to Jesus first was a sign that, sinner though he may have been, he deeply loved his Lord.

Now, in answer to Jesus’ painful question, he simply replies:

Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.

And, of course, Jesus did know. The reconciliation then takes place and Peter is told:

Feed my lambs.

He is fully restored to his role as Peter, as the Rock on which the community will be built and to which he will be responsible.

But Jesus is not yet finished. Twice more he asks Peter if he loves his Master and twice more his leadership of the community is re-affirmed. Peter is all too conscious why he is being asked three times and it hurts:

Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.

And, of course, it was true.

It is not surprising that this passage should be the Gospel reading for today’s feast. Pius X had been chosen as a successor to Peter. He, too, was someone who was deeply committed to the love and service of his Lord and conscious of his responsibility as Shepherd of God’s people.

The First Reading is from the Paul’s First Letter to the Christians of Thessalonica (modern day Thessaloniki) in Macedonia where Paul had preached. In the reading he speaks of the principles which guided him in preaching and teaching the Gospel. It was marked by sincerity and conviction.

At the same time, his aim was not just to please or flatter people, but to give them God’s message straight as it was, even if sometimes it might have been painful or challenging. His purpose was not to seek people’s approval but to give the Christian message as it was.

As well, Paul wants to treat his hearers with gentleness and even affection, like a nursing mother caring for her child. He did not just want to preach an impersonal Gospel message, but to give himself in loving care to the people.

Again, we can see a picture here of Pius X. On the one hand, he was known for his concern that the Christian message be preached without distortion. At the same time, he was a deeply spiritual person, he was an initiator of the renewal of the liturgy and opening the Eucharist to the young. He hungered for a life of simplicity and was not altogether happy living in the splendour of the Vatican. There is much we can learn from him.

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Commentary on Jeremiah 38:4-6,8-10; Hebrews 12:1-4; Luke 12:49-53

Three Statements
Jesus makes three important statements in today’s Gospel. The first is:

I have come to cast fire upon the earth, and how I wish it were already ablaze!

This is not the fire of destruction or the fire that ravages forests every year:

• It is the fire of heat and light.
• It is the fire that cleanses and purifies.
• It is the fire of God’s presence:

-as in the burning bush that Moses saw,

-as in the pillar of fire that accompanied the Israelites in the desert,

-as in the tongues of fire at Pentecost where the bringing of fire was mandated to the disciples, to the Church, to all of us.

As a purifying fire, it can also bring pain and purification, but it ultimately leads to conversion and liberation.

His second statement:

I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what constraint I am under until it is completed!

This does not mean that Jesus is to be re-baptised in the Jordan. The word ‘baptism’ implies total immersion (the way sacramental baptism was carried out in the early church and in some churches today). There is a close link between the catechumen being ‘buried’ in water and rising with Christ and Jesus being ‘baptised’, immersed in his suffering and death on the way to resurrection. Jesus does not look forward to his ‘baptism’ for the pain it brings, but for the salutary effects it produces for all of us.

Jesus’ third statement:

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!

This is a statement with which critics of religion would cynically agree. Religion is seen by some as a major source of division, suffering and war in our world.

But to others it is a very puzzling, even alarming, statement. It seems to contradict the whole message of the Gospel. At the Last Supper. Jesus told his disciples that he was giving them peace, a peace that the world could not give, a peace that no one could take away from them. We call Jesus the Prince of Peace. In the Beatitudes we read:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. (Matt 5:9)

They especially are the ones who do the work of God—and of Jesus. In the letter to the Ephesians, Jesus is called “our peace”, breaking down the walls that divide peoples. And Jesus tells us:

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Painful words
It is especially painful to hear the Gospel speak of families being broken up because of Jesus. But this is less a prophecy or an expression of God’s will than a description of the Church’s very real experience from the time the gospels were being written down to our own day. In many countries, both Christian individuals and Christian communities are seen as a threat to governments, various power groups and other religious groups.

Yet, in the long history of the Church, how many families have suffered because members became Christians? Most of us—especially those who have lived in non-Christian or anti-Christian societies—probably have met someone who was rejected by their family for becoming an active Christian. And, not infrequently, persecution comes even from other Christians, from within the Church itself.

It is significant in the First Reading that Jeremiah is dumped into a cistern, not by outsiders, but by his own people who did not like the message from God that he was bringing. And how many people realise that there have been more martyrs for the faith in our supposedly advanced and civilised ‘modern times’ than in all the preceding centuries of the past!

Non-violence
The Christian message is non-violent. It brings love, compassion, harmony, peace. It brings people together so that there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave or free, male or female. But it also, of its nature, challenges injustice, corruption, discrimination, abuse, dishonesty and all attacks on human dignity. The role of the evangeliser is “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.”

Vested interests—the rich, the powerful inside and outside the Church—will do anything to keep what they have. When the Church preaches and lives the Gospel, conflict is inevitable—even though in no way wished or intended.

So, in one way, religion should never divide. It is only a false Christianity and religion that deliberately creates division (‘them and us’). It is not Christianity or any other religion as such which has brought so much suffering, but certain people who call themselves ‘Christians’ (or Muslims, Hindus or Jews).

At the same time, true Christianity in defending truth, justice, human dignity and freedom will inevitably meet opposition and be attacked. The passage which says that the peacemakers are blessed also says that those who are persecuted in the name of the Gospel are equally blessed. Strangely enough, both go together.

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Commentary on Wisdom 18:6-9; Hebrews 11:1-2,8-19; Luke 12:32-48

Where your treasure is, there will be your heart be also.

We continue today with the theme of last Sunday’s Mass. There we heard a parable Jesus told about a man who made a great deal of money and was very happy with himself:

…I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry. (Luke 12:19)

But God said to him:

You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?
(Luke 12:20)

And, when that man died and went before his God, what had he to offer? All that stuff in his barns? No, all that had to be left behind for others. When my turn comes to face my God and he asks me what I have and I respond: “Well, during my lifetime I managed to deposit quite sizeable sums of money in the bank”, how do you think God will answer? Will he be particularly impressed? He may ask further, “But what have you brought with you?”

Readiness is all
So today’s Gospel passage is a further reminder that we must not be like that man in last week’s Gospel. It tells us, on the contrary, to be truly ready, implying that that man, in spite of all his efforts to build up his financial and material security, was in fact far from ready.

First of all, he pictured a long and bright future before him. Secondly, he regarded the material wealth he had garnered for himself as the sign and the reward of a “successful” life. He also believed that all he possessed belonged exclusively to him. There are an awful lot of people who seem to think the same way—are we among them?

Jesus tells us today to be ready, to be ready when the Master comes. For all our care and precautions, there is absolutely no way we can know when or how the Master will come to call us to himself. Jesus says about the thief:

…he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn…

We have probably all experienced having had something stolen from our house, our car, or even our person. In most cases, if we had known in advance, we could easily have thwarted the thief. Sometimes the theft was simply due to our not having taken the simplest of precautions but, after the theft had taken place, it was too late.

More important than property
Jesus is warning us today about something much more important than the property we own, namely, the quality of our lives. Apparently, some people give top priority to the property they own. One can walk along roads in more affluent areas of a city where many of the houses can hardly be seen. They are hidden behind high walls topped with massive iron spikes. There are cameras monitoring movements 24 hours a day. As far as is humanly possible, nothing will be stolen from those houses. They are prepared for every eventuality—or are they?

Are they, are we, really ready to meet the Master when he comes? It is no use telling the God, “Lord, I have oodles in the bank, I have a lovely house in one of the most trendy suburbs, there is a Tesla for me and a Mercedes for my wife. My son is a prosperous surgeon in the States and my daughter a thriving lawyer in London…” Quite honestly, Jesus is not likely to be terribly impressed or interested in such a litany. The really important things have not yet been said.

Take a different example altogether. His name was John. He was a devout Catholic in China. Like thousands of others, he had remained true to his faith during the dark days of persecution in China and spent long years in prison purely and simply because of his belief in Jesus. Eventually he was released. His body was stooped from the years of ill treatment he had experienced. Then, one day while attending Mass at the shrine of St Francis Xavier in nearby Macau, he collapsed and died just after receiving communion. Anyone who knew John, a man of no wealth whatever, knew that he was ready. His whole life had been lived in the company of Jesus. Jesus was all he had; Jesus was all he wanted.

The friends of Jesus
Elsewhere in the Gospel Jesus makes this very plain. Those are his friends who have gone out of their way to share themselves and what they have (and not just their easily spared surplus) with the neediest of the needy—the hungry, the thirsty, the sick, those in prison—quite clearly only a sample list of those among us who are in need. Those who consistently make this their first priority in life are ready. They are no strangers to Jesus because they fully realise that:

…just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it to me. (Matt 25:40)

Our life, too, as the Second Reading suggests, is like that of Abraham. It is a journey into the unknown and no amount of precautions or insurance can take away all uncertainty:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going.

We would love to have complete control and plans for our future life, but it seldom works out like that. In fact, we, like Abraham, do not know where our life journey will lead us. We do know the final destination but we do not know how or when we will reach it.

A question of quality
The journey that the Scripture speaks about, of course, is not so much about travelling as about the style and quality and direction of our living. It includes every experience we will have and how we respond to each one. It will include the people we come face to face with—either by choice or by accident—and how we respond to them. We can see experiences and people as stepping stones to our own self-advancement, as many seem to do, or we can see them as opportunities to respond in truth and love and service to God entering our daily lives.

Life is a pilgrimage. It keeps moving. Abraham and his family:

…stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents…

We would like to have gilt-edged securities for ourselves but our Christian faith offers us another programme. A life lived in love and service for the Kingdom of God, for a city—a society of justice and peace—designed and built by God. It is in doing this that we amass real wealth not only for ourselves, but for others as well. By living like this, we are ready, at any time, to meet our Lord and Saviour. And when we do meet him we will know that all along we had lived with him in those we loved and served during our pilgrimage.