More

Commentary on Ecclesiastes 1:2,2:21-23; Colossians 3:1-5.9-11; Luke 12:13-21

Our attitude to material things is the subject of today’s readings. It is about the things that we really regard important in our lives. They also suggest that what we ARE is of far greater importance than what we HAVE.

The Gospel begins by introducing a man who wants Jesus to act as a mediator in a property dispute. “Master, tell my brother to give me a share of our inheritance.” It was quite common to bring such disputes to a rabbi to be solved. But Jesus has no interest whatever in dealing with this problem because it represents a point of view that is totally at variance with his own. Instead, Jesus gives a warning: “Be on your guard against avarice of any kind, for a person’s life is not made secure by what he owns, even when he has more than he needs.”

It is possible that the man making the request was actually one of Jesus’ followers. In which case, he needs to learn very quickly that such problems have nothing whatever to do with the following of Jesus, with being a Christian.

A different agenda
It was quite irrelevant for Jesus that the man should get a fair share of an inheritance, especially if the man can satisfy his daily needs without it. This, of course, is not the way “normal” people think. They would be prepared to hire lawyers and go through expensive court cases in order to get money that they believed was due to them, whether they needed it or not. We have frequently seen families torn apart in bitter disputes over the allocation of moneys.

So many dream some day of being rich, to be able to buy all the things they would love to have, to be able to travel, to have no worries. There is a belief, which we see contradicted every single day, that once we have financial security, all our problems will be solved: housing, children’s education, cars and other desirable luxuries, retirement and old age. Wealth, it is believed, is a sign of “success” though it is not quite clear where the “success” really lies. It also brings “respect” and “status”. To drive up in a luxury car to a big hotel or exclusive club, hand the keys over to a hotel attendant, sit down at an expensive dinner table and knowingly peruse the wine list and, while waiting for the dinner to be served, make a few calls on the mobile phone, get nods of recognition from other successful people who can also afford to dine at this place…and so on.

Quite honestly, for many of us Christians these priorities often take precedence over our following of Christ. Sincere young people want to establish their careers first – and, once set up, then maybe consider being a “good” Catholic.

Another approach
Today’s readings ask us to consider another approach altogether. It is important to emphasise that Jesus is not saying, “You must give up all these things and lead a life of bleak misery for my sake.” On the contrary, Jesus is offering a much more secure way to happiness and a life of real enjoyment rather than the way that most people insist on believing in even though it is seen to fail again and again. Against the greed that obsesses many people Jesus, offers an opposite alternative to security and happiness – sharing.

How many can identify with the rich man in the parable that Jesus tells today? In his own eyes, this man had been really “successful”. He had just made a “killing” not on the stock exchange but in a particularly good harvest. It was so good he would have to pull down his barns and build even bigger ones. And then he could sit back and say to himself. “My soul, you have plenty of good things laid by for many years to come; take things easy, eat, drink, have a good time.” He had worked very hard all these years and this was what he deserved.

It is worth observing, however, that no other people are mentioned in the story. He himself was the absolute centre of everything – nothing else mattered, no one else mattered. The world and all its goods were there purely and simply for him to take hold of and keep for himself. And now there was nothing else to do but to enjoy it all.

“Fool! This very night the demand will be made for your soul; and this hoard of yours, whose will it be then?”

“How much did he leave?” someone asked of a trillionaire who had just died. “Every cent,” was the answer. Or as Ecclesiastes today puts it: “Vanity of vanities!… A man who has laboured wisely, skilfully and successfully must leave what is his own to someone who has not toiled for it at all…What of all his laborious days, his cares of office, his restless nights?”

“So it is,” continues Jesus, “when a man stores up treasure for himself in place of making himself rich in the sight of God.” Jesus is not opposed to being prosperous, if there is no inequality, but he suggests that true and enduring wealth lies elsewhere. The rich and the poor both share the same common fate – they die. But to whom much was given, much is expected.

A better alternative
We get some hints of a better alternative in the Second Reading, which is from the Letter to the Colossians. “You must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is…Let your thought be on heavenly things, not on the things that are on the earth…” Not very practical advice, I hear you saying. But Paul is not telling us to close our eyes to mundane realities and, hoping for the best, keep looking heavenwards. Rather he is urging us to identify our understanding of life, our values, with those of God, which have been communicated to us by the life and words of Jesus.

“You must kill everything in you that belongs only to an earthly (that is, a God-less, materialistic mentality),” Paul says. And then he goes on to list some “earthly” activities: degradation of women (fornication), abuse of our sexuality (impurity), self-indulgent desires (guilty passion), evil ambitions (it doesn’t matter what you do as long as it makes money) and, especially, greed “which is the same thing as worshipping a false god”. And finally, lying, which can take many forms as it includes every kind of deceit, pretending to be what we are not, denying the truth in ourselves and in the world around us.

In following Christ’s way, we are to “strip off old behaviour and the old self”. In Christ, we have put on a new self, which shares the same vision of life and the same value system and the same goals as those that Jesus proposes. It involves “progress towards true knowledge”, a knowledge that is not found in university courses but in a deep insight and understanding of what life is really about. It involves being ever more “renewed in the image of the creator”, of whom Jesus is the perfect model. To grow more and more like Jesus is to grow more and more into the image of God, by whom and for whom we were created.

In the kind of society that is the Kingdom, we do not need the security of an inheritance or winning the lottery. Our security comes from being part of a loving and caring community taking care of each member’s needs. But even in the Church, which is the visible sign of that Kingdom, this kind of society, with some exceptions, has not yet been put in place. We still tend to believe that, if we do not look after No. 1, no one else will.

The society that is the Kingdom involves a life of total immersion in and involvement with other people and our environment. The old divisions which are the curse of so much living must fall away. “There is no room for distinction between Greek and Jew, Chinese, European, Filipino or Vietnamese; between the circumcised and the uncircumcised, between Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists; between barbarian and Scythian, slave and free…there is only one Christ – he is everything and he is in everything.”

Here is where that security that people long for lies. Real security is not in the future. Genuine security is in the here and now. And it is this security that is the real wealth we dream of. Material plenty by itself does not guarantee it. This security is there for the asking but most of us cannot see. “Lord, that we may see.”

More

Commentary on Genesis 18:20-32; Colossians 2:12-14; Luke 11:1-13

It was the custom for a Jewish rabbi or teacher to teach his followers a simple prayer they could regularly use. The disciples of Jesus make a similar request of their rabbi. And they use as an argument that John the Baptist had done so for his disciples. It would indeed be interesting to know what kind of prayer John the Baptist did teach, but it will have to remain something that is forever hidden from us.

In response, Jesus does more than they ask, for he teaches them what to pray for, how to pray and what results they can expect from their prayer.

It might be worth noting that Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray and not a prayer to say. In response Jesus says to them:

When you pray, say…

There then follows what we know as the “Lord’s Prayer”. The version in today’s Gospel passage is from Luke and is shorter than the version we have in Matthew. As such it may indeed be the earlier version and closer to what Jesus actually said. (We know that many parts of Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels come from a common source which each adapted to their own particular needs.)

For centuries now we have been reciting the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew’s version). We do so before Communion at every Eucharist and, for instance, when we say the Rosary. Yet as it is presented here by Jesus, it is less a prayer to be recited than a list of things around which our prayer should be centred. In a way, each phrase can stand on its own and be a topic for prayer in its own right. Let us have a look at the contents of this prayer.

Father
It begins by addressing God as “Father.” We do not address him as Lord, or Master, or Judge. We do not even call him, the Source of all being, Creator, but by the much more personal term, Father. And St Paul reminds us that this title is meant to be understood on the warmest and most intimate level. He tells us to call God Abba (‘Papa’)—a title used affectionately by young children all over the world. And thus, we too are to address him in this way.

But by each one of us together calling him “Father” there is a further implication, namely, that we are all his children and thus also brothers and sisters of each other—members of one great family. And this is no pious imagining, but a fact. Unless we accept this as fact, it will be difficult for us to call God “Father.” He is always “our Father”, never ‘my’ Father alone. And that ‘our’ is totally inclusive, not allowing of even one exception.

As we will see, the Lord’s Prayer is much more than just a prayer of petition; it is also a statement of who we are and what we are—to God and to each other. And we confirm or condemn ourselves every time we pray it.

May your name be revered as holy
For the Jews, a name was not simply a label indicating identity; it denoted the whole person. When Moses spoke to God in the burning bush, he needed to know God’s name in order to know who he was. So here we are praying that God himself and not just his name be revered by all. It is not just a prayer for people to avoid irreverent language. In a sense, too, who can make God’s name or God himself “holy?” His holiness in no way depends on us. What we are rather asking for is that God’s holiness be acknowledged by us, not only by our words, but by the way we live. In other words, it is a prayer that God’s holiness be reflected in our own lives and in the lives of every single person.

May your kingdom come
We should understand the Kingdom of God as a world in which everything that God stands for becomes a reality in the lives of people everywhere—a world that is built on truth, love, compassion, justice, freedom, human dignity and peace. We know it is God’s will that such a world should be the shared experience of all, but it depends a great deal on our response and co-operation. Some elements of the Kingdom can be found in many places and in many communities, but we are only too aware that, for the world at large, the Kingdom is still far from being a reality and much of the blame lies with us. So in saying this invocation we are not only calling on God’s help, but reminding ourselves of working with God to make the Kingdom a reality.

Give us each day our daily bread
In the second half of the prayer we pray more directly for our own needs. And we begin with present needs. Notice that we ask for today’s bread, food—today’s material needs. Is that what we normally pray for? Or are our anxieties reaching far out into the future? Yet in praying this way we express our trust in a caring God. It is also the acceptance of a challenge by all of us to see that every person has their needs for today supplied. There is no need for worry and anxiety about the future.

Forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us
Here we pray in repentance for our past sinful actions, but our prayer is conditional, linking us once again to all those around us. We pray that God will forgive us all that we have done wrong, because we already have forgiven all those who we feel have done wrong to us. Again it is a prayer that throws us back on ourselves. We are praying to share God’s most beautiful quality—his readiness to forgive not just “seventy time seven times”, but indefinitely.

Do not bring us to the time of trial.
Finally, we pray for protection from future trials that might overwhelm us. Trials where we might fail and betray our following of him.

We probably will have to admit that we seldom do justice to this prayer. It not only puts us in touch with God, but also in touch with ourselves. While we can, of course, continue to recite the Lord’s Prayer, it would be useful at times to take it sometimes very slowly, one petition at a time and even stopping altogether when one petition is particularly meaningful to us.

Two more points
Jesus, however, does not stop with teaching his disciples how to pray. He makes two points. First, he tells a parable about a man wanting some bread in the middle of the night. Naturally, his neighbour is reluctant to get up and give him some. But the man keeps badgering. Jesus says:

I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything out of friendship, at least because of his persistence he [the neighbour] will get up and give him whatever he needs.

The message is clear enough. When we really want something from God, we must keep asking:

Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. (Matt 7:7)

Second, he reminds them that they are dealing with a loving and compassionate Father. Even human fathers will not give stones when asked for bread or scorpions when asked for eggs. Jesus concludes:

…how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

A contradiction?
At first sight, there seems to be a slight contradiction here. If our Father cares for us so much, why do we have to ask so insistently? We continue to pray not because God has to be reminded of our wants. Jesus said on another occasion:

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. (Matt 6:7)

God does not need to be persuaded, to have his arm twisted to give us what we need. But he certainly does not always give us what we want, for our wants are often short-sighted and self-centred. The way we pray and what we ask for can be extremely revealing of where we are in our relationship with God, with people and with the world around us. Persevering prayer can help us become more aware of what we should really be asking for. It helps to purify our prayer, make clear our values and hopes, and lead us to ask for what is really in our very best interests. And those things we can be absolutely sure God wants us to have.

More

Commentary on Genesis 18:1-10; Colossians 1:24-28; Luke 10:38-42

One theme of today’s readings is hospitality. Hospitality is a very important element of life in the Middle East. This is not surprising, given the hostile terrain of large stretches of waterless desert and hot sun. Such hospitality for us has become a victim of modern urban living. We only open our doors to our own family or people we know well. Our houses are constantly locked, even when we are at home. There are peepholes, cameras and alarms. Strangers are no longer be trusted. One wonders if this is a step forward in our so-called civilised, cultured, developed and sophisticated society?

Hospitality in Scripture
The two main readings today deal with aspects of hospitality. In the First Reading from the Book of Genesis, we see Abraham. He is still a nomad, living in a tent, constantly on the move following the needs of his flocks of sheep and cattle. We are told that three men, strangers, come by. Although there are three, Abraham speaks in the singular to just one, whom he addresses as “Lord”. He also bows deeply before him.

Reading between the lines we see that this is God himself with two angels under the guise of passing travellers. It is the way God constantly enters unexpectedly into our lives and often remains unrecognised. We see this happening on a number of occasions in the post-Resurrection stories of the Gospel. How important, then, to treat every stranger we meet with deep respect!

Abraham insists that the visitors stay. He puts them sitting in the shade of a tree (probably he is encamped near an oasis) and orders water for them to wash their hot and dusty feet. He tells his wife to prepare special food for them and he entertains his visitors while they eat.

This act of kindness and respect to the stranger does not go unrewarded. The leading visitor says:

I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah shall have a son.

This promise is made in spite of the fact that Sarah is well past childbearing age. Although Abraham’s official wife, she had up to this borne him no son. When we welcome God into our lives, he will always come back, but not in the same way and in ways which may surprise us.

Abuse of hospitality
It is worth noting that this account comes immediately before the story of Sodom. That story is the very opposite—a story of the abuse of hospitality. There we meet the same three men who have taken shelter in the house of Lot, a relative of Abraham. Sodom is portrayed as a city steeped in sinfulness.

An example is how the people of the city ask Lot to allow them, in effect, to gang rape his three visitors. Such acts were abhorrent to the Jews. In that time and culture, it was regarded as the utmost degradation for a man to be abused in this way. Roman soldiers sometimes humiliated their prisoners of war in this manner.

The idea of permitting this outrage to recipients of a host’s hospitality was beyond conception to Lot. Only the most wicked could even think of such a thing. The degree of abhorrence is indicated by Lot offering the people his daughters instead. Though this compromise certainly horrifies us, it was judged better in that culture to have his own daughters violated than allow his guests to be touched. What better could Lot have done?

When we realise who these three men really are, we understand how truly wicked the people of Sodom were. In violating the strangers, they would have been violating God.

Hospitality to Jesus
The Gospel also speaks of hospitality, but from a very different perspective. This time the visitor is Jesus himself and apparently no stranger to the house. Jesus, we know, had no home of his own:

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. (Matt 8:20)

It is part of Jesus’ message of total freedom and detachment.

At the same time, Jesus preached for his disciples a fellowship of true brothers and sisters, whose doors would always be open to each other. When the Christian, for Christ’s sake, leaves home, father, mother, brothers, sisters and property, he/she finds a hundredfold homes, mothers, brothers, sisters and all he/she needs. Jesus was totally at the service of others by being continually on the move, going from place to place. In return, people saw to his personal needs. There is no evidence that Jesus ever had to sleep in the open air or did not have enough to eat. The house of Martha, Mary and Lazarus seems to have been a place where Jesus could go to when things got too difficult for him in nearby Jerusalem.

Sympathies with Martha
In our very action-oriented society we may tend to sympathise with Martha slaving away in the kitchen while Mary seems to just sit looking dreamily into Jesus’ eyes. The situation may look less than ideal, but we must remember that the purpose of the story is to help us get our priorities right. It is significant that this story immediately follows the story of the Good Samaritan. Both are found only in Luke and their being back to back is not a coincidence. They complement each other.

The former story began with the abstract concept of ‘loving one’s neighbour as oneself’. The story reveals that a real neighbour is one who shows compassion in deed for a brother/sister in need. The point is made dramatically by making the despised Samaritan the real neighbour while two apparently religious people, although aware of the problem, do absolutely nothing for one of their own. Jesus punctures the idea that a real neighbour is someone of one’s own race or religion.

More

Commentary on Deuteronomy 30:10-14; Colossians 1:15-20; Luke 10:25-37

The core of the Christian message is:

• faith as total trust in God and his message that comes through Christ in the New Testament;
• love as the driving power of all our actions and relationships.

We cannot have one without the other. As the Apostle James says in his Letter:

…faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead. (James 2:17)

Some people tend to be very concerned about orthodoxy, about thinking and saying the right thing in conformity with the Church’s teaching, but there can be no orthodoxy without orthopraxis, as the example of the Pharisees makes clear. Faith which does not express itself in love is Pharisaism. Christian faith truly lived results in a bonding with people everywhere. It is a living out of the prayer, “Our Father”.

Four people
Today we have one of the most famous Gospel stories, the “Good Samaritan”. There are four people in the story:

• A Jewish priest, a man of deep religious convictions, serving in the Temple at Jerusalem.
• A Levite, also a religious person with Temple connections.
• A Samaritan, a traveller apparently on business. Samaritans were regarded by devout Jews as outsiders, heretics, people not to be seen in company with.
• An unknown man, beaten up by robbers on the roadside. He is presumably a Jew to give the story its full impact, but not necessarily so. In a sense it is totally irrelevant what labels are attached to the man. All that matters is that he is a fellow-human being in great need of help.

In such a situation the response expected by the Gospel is clear:

• forget about your status in society (“A person of my standing cannot be expected to help in such a situation…”);
• forget what people might say about you;
• forget about personal fears and desires which turn you in on yourself;
• forget about your religious ‘obligations’.

Were the priest and the Levite on the way to the Temple? If so, they could not risk coming in contact with the injured man who was almost certainly bleeding. Contact with blood would render them ‘unclean’ and keep them out of the Temple and their worshipping of God there. It was clear to them where their priorities lay. It would be like if one were to think:

“I know he’s been attacked and beaten up and urgently need an ambulance. But he’s bleeding and might have some disease. Anyway I am rushing to the last Sunday Mass. It will be a mortal sin if I do not go. And anyway, there is nothing in the Ten Commandments about helping victims of attack.”

Not a question of morals
Again, the Gospel tells us to forget about the moral condition of the one to be helped. It is totally irrelevant how the man got into the situation. Maybe he was stupid to be travelling alone with money on a notoriously dangerous road. So, today it might be a driver who crashed while drunk. It might be someone who is on drugs or who leads a promiscuous lifestyle.

For Jesus none of this counts. In the story, the injured man—a complete stranger—has a higher priority than the needs of any of the other three. The first two are rushing to the Temple to worship God. What they fail to realise is that a child of God and their own brother is right there lying on the road. God could be worshipped right there! Says Jesus our Brother:

Truly I tell you, 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)

The outsider
But only one of the three, the despised outsider, responds to the injured man’s need. He was the one most apparently in a hurry. He applied first aid (oil and wine), found shelter for the man and paid all his expenses—a victim who most probably was a Jew.

The key words in the story are “compassion” and “mercy”. In fact, the verb used to express the feelings of the Samaritan for the victim lying on the road is the same as that used to describe Jesus’ compassion for the crowd, when he see them as “like sheep without a shepherd”. This is not at all the same as pity. Pity suggests looking at the victim from a superior position. Compassion implies fellow-feeling, identifying with the pain and suffering of others; empathy, not just sympathy, being sorry with, not just sorry for.

The neighbour
The story is actually a response to the question: “Who is my neighbour?” As the Jewish lawyer himself says, the neighbour is:

The one who showed him mercy.

Our neighbour is not just the person living next door, nor a fellow-national, nor a fellow-Catholic, but someone who responds unconditionally to the need of a sister or brother. A real neighbour in the Gospel is one who can show real compassion to a total stranger in need, unconditionally and without moral judgement.

“You’re in the gutter and you deserve to be there”, is not being neighbourly.

“Why can’t your own people come and help you?”, is not being neighbourly.

“I have only time for my own family,” is not being neighbourly.

One arm of the most central commandment is:

You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt 12:31)

But the crucial question in carrying out the commandment is “Who is my neighbour?” Each of us has honestly to ask this question. Another way to ask it is, “Who in my life am I willing (or unwilling) to help?” What are my criteria for helping another person? Do family, friends, race, religion, moral goodness, criminal record come into the picture? What about the person who hates me, the terrorist, the drug addict, the alcoholic, the prostitute or the diseased?

This parable touches all our lives deeply. In honestly answering the question, “Who is my neighbour?”, I learn a great deal about the kind of person I am, the kind of neighbour I am. Let’s all be good neighbours!

More

Commentary on Isaiah 66:10-14; Galatians 6:14-18; Luke 10:1-12,17-20

It is always an experience for people who are committed Christians to be living among people for whom God in practice hardly exists, people who seem to have little direction and meaning in their lives beyond having a job, getting money and indulging in some level of enjoyment. For such Christians the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel passage have much meaning:

The harvest is abundant but the laborers are few…

Certainly those words must have seemed so true for the early Christians as they lived in relatively tiny communities in a sea of paganism and religions steeped in superstition and fatalism. At the time, the Church was truly like the tiny mustard seed or the small measure of yeast swallowed up in a large batch of dough.

Today, there are over two billion Christians in the world, representing just under a third of the world’s total population. Those early labourers clearly did not work in vain. The mustard seed grew into a large tree and has provided shelter for billions (a number that was beyond comprehension at the beginning of the Church). The invisible yeast worked its influence on the seemingly inert dough.

How many labourers?
Yet, put another way, two out of three people have not yet accepted the Way of Jesus. Of course, a large proportion of these are committed to other faiths and many of them are deeply religious. But there is still a large proportion which is agnostic or are practical atheists—they live their lives as if God did not exist.

Among so many who do call themselves Christians, how many could be deemed active labours in God’s vineyard? For the harvest is still great. Quite often, by ‘labourers’ we think of priests, or religious brothers and sisters, those who have a ‘vocation’. One hears people expressing regret that today there are so few ‘vocations’. What will the Church do? How will it carry on?

However, it is doubtful that Jesus was thinking of priests and religious when he spoke the words above. In fact, in the world of the New Testament there were no priests or religious as we understand those terms today. In the mind of Jesus—and in the mind of the early evangelists—everyone who was known as a follower of Christ was expected to be a labourer in the harvest field. (Paul, for instance, was an Apostle, a great preacher and evangeliser, but he was not a bishop or a priest, terms which had not yet taken shape. He was a layman and made his living as a tent-maker.)

What are we to do?
What kind of work are we expected to do? Where can we find the time above and beyond earning our daily living and being with our families? Are we to try and convert every single person in our society to the Christian faith? Certainly, if we find that no one wants to share our faith-vision and the life that follows from it, then there is something seriously wrong with the way we are seen to live our Christian lives.

On the other hand, it would be quite unrealistic to expect that every single person will find faith in Jesus. Experience over more than 2,000 years tells us that this does not happen. And, while we may experience that our Christian faith provides a precious dimension of meaning which is everything to us, we cannot exclude the possibility that God can and does call others to himself in his own way.

What really matters?
In the Second Reading, Paul, speaking to the Galatians, says that it does not matter if a person is circumcised or not. Paul says:

For neither does circumcision mean anything, nor does uncircumcision, but only a new creation.

Could we say today that going through the ritual of being baptised may not be the most important thing either? Unless I am on the way to becoming a genuinely transformed person—a “new creation”—in the image of Jesus, then my baptism and all my other religious experiences have very little value.

Christianity is not an end in itself. It is simply a very effective, and, we believe, the most effective way, of becoming that altogether new kind of human person that Jesus and Paul speak about. This new person has a deep sense of both God’s utter transcendence and utter immanence, the God who constantly calls us beyond where we are and who, at the same time, deeply penetrates our being and our every experience. This new person strives to live a life of perfect integrity and truth, a life of deep compassion and concern. This new person lives in freedom and peace.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus recommends his disciples not to weigh themselves down with all kinds of bag and baggage. Their security is not in material possessions, in what they have—money, property, investments, credit cards, etc. It is not in their status and standing in the eyes of others. It is not in the power and influence that they can wield. Their security comes from deep within, a security that no one or no circumstance can take away from them.

Peace and prosperity
Two important words that are mentioned in today’s readings are “peace” and “prosperity”. Isaiah, in the First Reading says:

For thus says the Lord:
I will spread prosperity over her like a river,
like an overflowing torrent,
the wealth of nations.

Paul speaks of the peace and mercy that come to all who become a transformed person in Jesus Christ:

Peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule and to the Israel of God.

And, in the Gospel, Jesus tells his disciples:

Into whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this household.’

This peace is not dependent on outside circumstances. It can exist even when we are surrounded by storms. It is the peace Jesus experienced after his prayer in the garden. It is the peace that Paul experiences:

…in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.

So our task as Christians is to be bringers of peace. Of course, we need that peace and inner security within ourselves first of all. It is a peace that a close following of Jesus can bring. It is a peace that our conventional society, wracked as it is with so many externally-caused stresses and fears and ambitions, seldom seems to know.

We are called today to become labourers with Jesus in the harvest that is the society in which we live. It is a society that seems so rich and prosperous, and yet is so impoverished of the security and peace it so frenetically seeks to find. We are called today to labour, so that our society may be gradually transformed into a place where the values of the Gospel, often so little understood even by ourselves, will prevail.

Bringing Jesus
Today’s Gospel says that Jesus sent out his seventy-two disciples:

…to every town and place he intended to visit.

That is an interesting remark. Who comes first to any place? Is it Jesus or me? As a person baptised in Jesus’ name, I am a part of his Body. Where the body is, there, too, is the person. Where I go the then, Jesus also comes to visit. Jesus does not go before us. Nor does he come after us. We come together!

But if I do not go, if I do not reach out, then to some extent Jesus does not go, Jesus does not reach out. I am part of his Body, I am the visible indication of his presence. My voice is his voice. He told his disciples:

Whoever listens to you listens to me…

If I do not speak his message, who will be able to listen to it?

The disciples came back from their mission rejoicing and excited. They discovered they could do the same things that Jesus was doing—so can we. And unless we try, we are not worthy of our baptism, which becomes an empty ritual, like circumcision.

Where to start?
But where do I start? I cannot single-handedly convert the whole of my society! We can, however, follow the example of someone like St Teresa of Calcutta (Mother Teresa). She realised that there were thousands and thousands of the poor, destitute and dying who needed her immediate help. But she started with just one at a time.

It reminds us of the story about the man who was seen picking up beached starfish from the strand and throwing them back into the sea. Someone who was watching said:

“You’re wasting your time. There are thousands of them; throwing back a handful will make no difference.”

And the man replied:

“It will make a difference to each one thrown back.”

Today, I too can start with just one person.

To be a labourer in the harvest is for the happiness of others to be as important as your own. It is to experience inner peace and to be a bringer of peace to others. How life would be changed if we all tried to do that! What a difference it would make!

More

Commentary on: 1 Kings 19:16b,19-21; Galatians 5:1,13-18; Luke 9:51-62

For some people, commitment and freedom seem quite incompatible. Yet today’s readings call for total commitment lived in total freedom. One cannot, in fact, have one without the other. Today’s Mass speaks of what it means to be fully a disciple of Jesus. This is much, much more than just being what is often understood as a “good Catholic”.

Today’s passage opens with a very important moment in the life of Jesus. “As the time drew near for him to be taken up into heaven, Jesus resolutely took the road for Jerusalem.” These opening words of today’s Gospel indicate that we are moving into the second phase of Jesus’ public life and the second half of this gospel. For Luke, Jerusalem is the focal point of Jesus’ life. It is the centre from which Jesus’ great redemptive work unfolds. It is there that the disciples will form a new community to continue the work of Jesus and from Jerusalem it will spread to every corner of the world.

Jesus sets his face “resolutely” for Jerusalem because he goes there ready to undergo whatever is necessary for his work to be completed. Right away, he sets an example and a challenge for our commitment to join in his work and to be ready to take whatever comes in our doing of it.

There is an irony when some Samaritans would not receive Jesus and his companions because they were going to Jerusalem. Their reason was, apparently, religious bigotry yet Jesus was going to Jerusalem precisely to put an end to such divisions, to knock down all the barriers dividing people and to bring peace and reconciliation. (This is beautifully put in the Letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 2.) There is a further irony because it is to Samaria that the early Christians will flee when persecution begins in Jerusalem and it is there that the infant Church will begin its expansion to the four corners of the earth.

A question of response

We come now to what is really the core of today’s Mass theme – our response to Jesus calling us to join him. As Jesus makes his way to Jerusalem (and all that that will mean for him), a number of people express a desire to join him. Obviously – like many of us – they do not fully understand just precisely what “going to Jerusalem” really means for Jesus and those who go with him. We can look with profit at these three people because one or more of them represents me.

The first one courageously and generously says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” He has a lot of enthusiasm but may not be aware of the realities facing him. Jesus pulls him up short. Even the wild animals have a place to live, he tells the man, but the “Son of Man” has nowhere to call his own. He has no house, no property, no money. He had only Himself to offer.

One needs to be aware of what is expected of a disciple. One must be ready to let go of people and things, of all strings and attachments, of all external securities and props. Am I ready for this? Or do I set up my securities first and then, carrying them with me, decide to follow him?

The second man also wants to follow Jesus. He makes what seems a reasonable request: “Let me go and bury my father first.” The reply of Jesus sounds harsh: “Let the dead bury their own dead; your duty is to go and spread the news of the kingdom of God.” We should not conclude from this request that the man’s father was already dead. He may have been saying that he would follow Jesus only after he had fulfilled his filial duties to his father.

Jesus, of course, is not saying that we should not love and respect members of our family. But he is asking where our priorities in life really are. He is saying that, if we wish to be his disciple, we cannot make our own arrangements first and then, only when we are ready, go and follow him. The demands of the Kingdom, the world of truth, compassion, justice, freedom and peace, which we are called to build, comes first of all.

How many of us first plan our careers carefully and only then ask how we can be good Christians, when it obviously should be the other way round?

The third man says he wants to follow Jesus but wants to say goodbye to his family and friends first. It is not unlike the previous case. I want to make all my own arrangements first. I want to have some fun in life. But to be a disciple of Jesus, I cannot hesitate. The call is NOW, today and the response must also be now, today.

Example of Elisha

We see such a dramatic response in the call of Elisha who was to succeed Elijah as prophet. Elisha also wanted to bid farewell to his parents. “Go, go,” said Elijah. But then Elisha thought better of it. He took his two oxen and slaughtered them. He took his plough and used it to make a fire for cooking the ox meat which he gave to all his men. All these things were his means of livelihood. Empty-handed but totally free he then followed Elijah.

We are not meant to take all these images with absolute literalness but they are intended to help us reflect on the various things – material, emotional, intellectual – which prevent us from an unconditional following of Jesus. We have so many desires and attachments in life. We have so many fears and anxieties. We regret or feel nostalgic for so much of the past and worry so much about the future. All of these can have a crippling effect on our lives. Much of the time we are only living half a life or we are living other people’s lives and not our own.

And that is why Paul in today’s passage from Galatians emphasises freedom so much. “When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free.” Some of the Galatian Christians were converted Jews and it seems they were being urged to go back to some of their old Jewish religious customs. The irony is that they, like many people today, were really afraid of being fully free.

Real freedom

I am a fully free person NOT when I defy authorities and take drugs or when I blow clouds of tobacco smoke into other people’s faces or turn up my music to ear-shattering levels, when I drive my car aggressively with no respect for others on the road…I am a free person when I can really care for my neighbour, when his needs become my needs, when I see him or her as truly a brother or sister.

To be free, as Paul warns us, is not an excuse for self-indulgence although there are those who seem to think that freedom is expressed by unlimited and unimpeded self-indulgence. To be free is not to escape from the realities of living but to face up to them. To be fully free is to take total responsibilities for one’s own life and not put the blame for personal difficulties on other people (scapegoating). It means not clinging to external securities like money, property, status, success, achievements and the like.

And, strangely enough, the free person does exactly what he wants because what he passionately wants is a world of truth, and caring, and sharing, and inner security and peace. Of course, he does not always get these things from others because they do not share his vision but he sees that as their problem rather than his.

And so we find this freedom in people such as Jesus, in Elisha, in Paul. They said an unconditional ‘Yes’ and did not look back. Can I not do the same?

More

Commentaries Zechariah 12:10-11; Galatians 3:26-29; Luke 9:18-24 Read Sunday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time (Year C) »

More

Commentary on Acts 26:19-23; Psalm 116; John 10:11-16

Not surprisingly, the Gospel reading is from chapter 10 of John where Jesus speaks of himself as the Good Shepherd. “I am the Good Shepherd” is one of seven ‘I AM’ statements that Jesus makes about himself in John’s Gospel. There is a divine connotation in the ‘I AM’ which is the name of God as given to Moses when Yahweh spoke to him from the burning bush (“I AM who I AM.”). In so speaking, Jesus is saying that it is the divine in him which is the source of his being a Good Shepherd.

He then goes on to enumerate some of the qualities of a good shepherd. First, he is not like a someone who is simply hired to take care of a flock of sheep. At the first sign of danger, for instance, the approach of a wolf, the hired man takes to his heels. He thinks only of his own well-being. The wolf then comes and scatters the sheep and probably attacks one to eat it. This is because the hired man is only ‘doing a job he is paid for’ and has no personal interest in the sheep.

The good shepherd behaves very differently. To an outsider all sheep look more or less the same, but the shepherd who is with his sheep every day knows each and every one of them and they know him in the same way as Jesus knows his Father and his Father knows him. And, as a Good Shepherd, Jesus is ready to lay down his life for his sheep—and he will.

The good shepherd, too, is not only concerned about his own sheep. He is anxious that other sheep should belong to his fold, will listen to his voice so that there will be just one fold and one shepherd.

Boniface, too, was a very good shepherd. He travelled far and wide taking care of his sheep. He worked very hard for other sheep to belong to his fold, the fold of Christ’s Church. And, like his Master, he eventually gave his life for his sheep.

The First Reading is from near the end of the Acts of the Apostles. Paul has been arrested and the Jewish leaders want him handed over to them for trial. But Paul, who was a Roman citizen, appealed to Caesar, that is, that he be tried by a Roman court. This request was granted by Festus, the local governor. Soon after this, King Agrippa and his wife Bernice arrived in Caesara where Festus was. Paul was then invited to present his case in the presence of the king. In the course of it, he gives for the third time an account of his experience at Damascus and how that changed his life.

In today’s reading we have the conclusion of Paul’s speech to Agrippa. First, he says he has only been carrying out the instructions he received on that day at Damascus. Since then, he says, he has been going to Damascus, Jerusalem and many other places calling on people to change their lives, to turn to God and to show this clearly by the way they behave. And it is only for this, he claims, that he is being persecuted by the leaders of his people. He has only been communicating the teaching of Moses and the prophets that:

…the Messiah must suffer and that, by being the first to rise from the dead, he would proclaim light both to our people and to the gentiles.

While his opponents would have agreed with him on that, they were not ready to accept that Jesus was the Messiah.

Again, we see Boniface reflected in this reading. For he, too, was tireless in proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus. He, too, ran into opposition and eventually, like his Master, would give his life as a martyr.

More

Commentary on Sirach 36:1,5-6,10-17 Read Wednesday of Week 8 of Ordinary Time – Reading »

More

Commentary on Sirach 36:1,5-6,10-17 Read FIRST READING (Sirach 36:1,5-6,10-17) »