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Commentary on Colossians 3:1-11

Just before today’s passage, Paul had been warning the Colossians against false beliefs and practices. These involved the observance of ‘New Moons’ and ‘Sabbaths’. He tells them not to be misled by people who choose to grovel to angels:

Do not let anyone disqualify you, insisting on self-abasement and worship of angels, initiatory visions, puffed up without cause by a human way of thinking… (Col 2:18)

Such people, he says, have no connection with:

…the head, from whom the whole body, nourished and held together by its ligaments and tendons, grows with a growth that is from God. (Col 2:19)

Their lives are being governed by all kinds of rules and petty regulations which are “simply human commands and teachings”—’Do not pick up this, do not eat that, do not touch something else.’ It is not unusual for some Christians today to become obsessed with these kinds of trivialities and miss the big picture—working with Christ to build the Kingdom of God on earth.

Having warned the Colossians about the futility of all kinds of external, ritualistic observances which it seems they were getting involved in, Paul asks them in today’s reading to focus on just one thing—Christ:

So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.

There are two interlocking elements in today’s reading: the first deals with the believer’s relationship with Christ, and the second speaks of the behaviour which should naturally follow from that relationship.

As to the believers’ position in Christ: they are as dead; they have been raised with Christ; they are already with Christ in heaven (“hidden with Christ”); they have:

…stripped off the old self…and have clothed yourselves with the new self.

The second element speaks of how the believers are to behave as a result: they are to set their heart (or mind) on things above; they are to put to death practices that belong to their earthly nature; and they are to rid themselves of practices that characterise their unredeemed selves. In summary, they are called upon to become, in their daily experiences, what they are in essence through their vocation in Christ.

Hence, their thoughts are to be on things above, not on the things that are on the earth. This is not a literal looking up to ‘heaven’, but rather making sure that the thinking guiding their actions is solidly rooted in all that God stands for. They are not to identify themselves with the ‘world’—that part of our experience which is remote from, or opposed to, God’s way.

And the reason Paul gives is because:

…you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.

They have not literally died, but all links with whatever is opposed to Christ have died in them. They are “hidden with Christ” in the sense that their whole being is totally immersed in the person and the vision of Christ and that brings them into close relationship with God. That is the ideal, of course; it takes a lifetime to make it a reality in practice.

And when Christ in his fullness and glory is revealed and, because we have become fully identified with him, then we too will be revealed together with him in glory. Through union with Christ in baptism, his followers already live the identical life he lives in heaven; we have already risen with him, but this spiritual life is not yet manifest and glorious as it will be at the Parousia.

Our identity with Christ—which includes both Christ’s gift to us of his life and our positive response to his call—must result in a way of life that is totally in harmony with that identity. So Paul now warns the Colossians of the kind of behaviour which should have no part in a Christian’s life:

Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.

He highlights “greed” as a form of idolatry. Perhaps it is the main idol that is worshipped in the prosperous parts of the world today. There exists an obsession with ownership and the power and status that ownership brings, as well as a constant urge to buy, buy, buy things of which we have no need.

On one level, our union with the Risen Christ and our sharing in his death and resurrection through baptism is immediate and total. Yet, at the practical level of life on earth, this union has to be grown into gradually and we do that by ridding ourselves of the kind of behaviour Paul mentions. Paul has said that we are already “dead” in Christ and “hidden with Christ in God”, but on the practical level, that dying and being reborn is something that we have to work on every day, by ‘putting to death’ the old and sinful self.

And then he gives some more examples of the things the Colossians need to die to, behaviour which marked their pre-Christian lives, but which now should be removed from their life: “anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth.” As the French say, ‘Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose’ (meaning, ‘The more things change, the more things stay the same’). All the examples Paul mentions are found every day in our media and played out in people’s lives.

With the abandoning of the old pre-Christian self, there must also be the abandonment of the old ways of doing and relating:

…you have stripped off the old self with its practices.

Just as one takes off dirty clothes and puts on clean ones, so Christians are called upon to renounce their evil ways and live in accordance with the ways of Christ’s Kingdom.

Instead you have:

…clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator.

The human race, which was to have been in the ‘image of God’ (Gen 1:26), lost its way outside and apart from the will of God, and became the slave of sin and sinful urges. This is the ‘old self’ (Greek, anthropos) that must die; the ‘new self’ is reborn in Christ, who is the true image of God and, in his humanity, the true image of what it is to be human.

And, when we have taken on this ‘new self’, this new way of being fully human:

…there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free…

‘Barbarians’ were those who did not speak Greek and hence were deemed uncivilised; Scythians, who came originally from what is now southern Russia, were known especially for their brutality and considered by other peoples as little better than wild animals. In many ways, this understanding of humanity was a huge advance in human relations.

There can then be only one conclusion, that:

…Christ is all and in all!

Jesus is the paradigm for all human thinking and acting and relating. It is the central theme of the whole letter. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He is the Word of God to be listened to and followed:

Let anyone with ears listen! (Matt 11:15)

All lesser ‘gods’ need to be abandoned, and we all certainly have our lesser gods. What are mine?

Christ is our Lord and he is also our Brother and his Father is the Father of every single person. Hence, the new creation will not be divided into races and religions and cultures and social classes in the way the present creation has been since the Fall. Christ transcends all barriers and unifies people from all cultures, races and nations. Such distinctions are no longer significant; Christ alone matters.

Again, that is the ideal, but in the more than 2,000 years since these words were written, we have still such a long way to go. And, far from being the model of unity we are called to be, Christians themselves are deeply divided, contemptuous and unaccepting of each other. Charles Schulz’s character, Charlie Brown, put it very well many years ago: “I love mankind; it’s people I can’t stand.” In church, we profess a great love for all mankind. What happens with all those people we bump into in the street?

Clearly this reading gives much room for personal and community reflection. It is as relevant to us, wherever we are today, as it was for the Christians of Colossae and Laodicea.

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Monica was of Berber descent. She was born in 332 AD at Tagaste (located in modern-day Souk Ahras, Algeria). Her parents brought her up as Christian and married her to an older, pagan man named Patricius. He was a man of great energy, but also had a violent temper and was sexually promiscuous. However, their son Augustine reports that, although domestic abuse was common at the time, because of Monica’s submission to her husband, he never beat her. Her almsgiving and habit of prayer irritated him yet led him to respect her. It was said that by her sweetness and patience, she was able to exercise a good influence among other abused wives and mothers. They knew she suffered as they did and so were moved by her example.

Monica was very devout and attended church daily, which helped her cultivate the virtue of patience. She would say to other women who had difficult marriages:

“If you can master your tongue, not only do you run less risk of being beaten, but perhaps you may even, one day, make your husband better.”

And in fact, she won over her mother-in-law in a short time. She also converted her pagan husband to Christianity and calmed his violent tendencies.

Monica and Patricius bore three children: Augustine the eldest, Navigius the second, and a daughter, Perpetua. Augustine made her happy because of his successes as a scholar and teacher, but she was also ashamed of his debauched lifestyle. Augustine lived for 10 years with his mistress and also became a Manichaean. Although Monica asked a bishop to convince Augustine of his errors, he was not able to change the young man. He told the mother to keep praying for her son. He told her, “It is impossible that the son of so many tears should perish.”

When Patricius died, Monica went to Italy to join her son. He had been in Rome, but when she arrived he had already gone to Milan so she followed him there. Through St Ambrose, bishop of Milan, she had the joy of seeing Augustine, aged 28, converted after 17 years of her prayers. Mother and son spent six months at Cassiacum, after which Augustine was baptised in the church of St John the Baptist in Milan. They then decided to return to Africa, stopping at Civita Vecchia and Ostia. It was here that Monica died. The year was 387 and she was 56 years old. Her last words to her son were:

“There was indeed one thing for which I wished to tarry a little in this life and that was that I might see you a Christian before I died. My God hath answered this more than abundantly, so that I see you now his servant spurning all earthly happiness. What more have I to do here?”

After her death, her son wrote extensively of her virtues and his life with her in his Confessions. Her relics were later removed from Ostia to the Church of Sant’Agostino in Rome.

As part of the 1969 revision of the Roman Catholic calendar of saints, Monica’s feast was moved to August 27, the day before the feast of her son Saint Augustine. Saint Monica is the Patron Saint of patience, wives, mothers, and victims of abuse.

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Commentary on Sirach 3:2-6,12-14; Colossians 3:12-21; Luke 2:41-52

It is customary to celebrate the feast of the Holy Family on the Sunday immediately following our celebrations of the birth of Jesus at Christmas. It is a time when we can reflect on the quality of our own family life in the light of the Church’s (if not the world’s) ‘First Family’.

For a large part of his life, Jesus was part of a family. We always imagine that this must have been an extremely happy family. Yet, like every other family, it must have had from time to time its ups and downs, its joys and sorrows, its problems and difficulties. There may have been problems about supplying the family’s needs on occasion. Surely someone fell sick at one time or another and was a source of anxiety for the rest of the family. As well, this was in an age when medical resources were few and relatively little was known about health and hygiene.

During Jesus’ public life, Mary appears a number of times and she witnessed his death on the cross. But we do not know anything about Joseph (although his name is mentioned during Jesus’ visit to Nazareth, see Luke 4:22). Given the short life expectancy of those days, it is very possible that, by the time Jesus was in his 30s and starting his public life, Joseph had already died. If so, it must have been a painful experience for mother and son. There is no reason to think that the Holy Family was spared any of the pains or denied any of the joys of ordinary families.

Leaving the family
It must have been a painful time—as it can be for any family—when Jesus, already about 30 years old, left his family for the work his Father had given him to do. But warning of this had come much earlier, as described in today’s Gospel.

The family had gone to Jerusalem, according to their regular custom, to celebrate the Passover with thousands of other pilgrims. We are told that Jesus was just 12 years old, the age when he was regarded as entering adulthood and at which point he would be required to observe all the requirements of the Mosaic Law. This partly explains his behaviour on this occasion.

As the caravan of pilgrims (very likely the people of Nazareth went together with relatives and neighbours) was on its way home, Mary and Joseph suddenly realise that Jesus is not with them. Being in a group of neighbours and relatives, they would not at first have experienced any alarm if he was not in their immediate company. Like any other “normal” boy, he would be spending much of his time with the other boys in the group.

But then—perhaps he did not turn up for a meal or in the evening time—the parents began to become anxious. When they went looking for him, there was no sign anywhere among family members and friends, so:

…they returned to Jerusalem to search for him.

Only people who have lost a son or daughter or sibling in this way will be able to appreciate the anxiety such a situation would engender. What was worse, the city of Jerusalem was filled with strangers and anything could happen to a young boy on his own. Finally, the parents went to the Temple and were amazed to find their boy calmly sitting with the religious teachers and having a discussion with them—and he was impressing them with his intelligence and the answers he was giving to their questions.

Mary, however, was not quite so appreciative:

Child, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for you.

Jesus replied:

Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?

What did he mean talking like that? Mary had mentioned Jesus’ ‘father’, but Jesus had spoken about ‘my Father’—they did not yet fully grasp what he was talking about.

From now on
They all then went back together to Nazareth where peaceful family life resumed as it had been. But this interlude was a presage of things to come. Their Son had a very special mission which went far beyond his life in Nazareth. Only later would the Mother understand. For now:

…his mother treasured all these things in her heart.

From now on, Jesus would belong to a new family, the family of the world, and especially of those who were committed to follow his Way. His mother, brothers and sisters would from now on be those who became his disciples, those who heard the Word of God and kept it. They would, of course, also include Mary his mother, for no one kept and heard God’s Word better than she.

Most people, in one way or another, leave their family environment. While the family must always have top priority in our concerns, it is not an absolute priority. All of us, and especially Christians, are called to follow the example of Jesus and align ourselves with the family of the world. For, with one Father, we are all brothers and sisters to each other and are called to care for each other.

One of the problems with some modern families is that they see the surrounding society as being there simply to satisfy their wants and ambitions. It is this attitude which can put unbearable pressures on young people.

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Commentary on 1 John 1:5—2:2; Psalm 123; Matthew 2:13-18

The Gospel reading begins with Joseph taking Mary and the Child into Egypt after a warning from an angel. They are told to stay there until they get further instructions. In fact, they stayed there until the death of Herod, after which they felt it was safe for them to return to their home in Nazareth.

In the meantime, Herod realised that the Magi were not going to come back to him, as he had requested. He now felt the threat to his throne more than ever before. So he ordered the wholesale killing of every male child of two years or under in the village of Bethlehem and in the surrounding area. He was taking no chances.

Sadly, as we know from history, his behaviour was completely in character. He executed his wife Mariamne and two of his sons because he believed they were a threat to his throne. The historian Josephus records a number of examples of Herod’s readiness to protect his power against threats, real or imagined. Says Josephus:

“Herod never stopped avenging and punishing those who had chosen to be of the party of his enemies.”

Another writer, speaking of the massacre of the infants said it was:

“…quite in keeping with the character of Herod, who did not hesitate to put to death any who might be a threat to his power.”

For such a man, the elimination of a handful of villagers’ children would mean nothing.

For us, of course, the event has significance. Because these children died in the place of Jesus, they are regarded as martyrs. Of course, Jesus himself would one day die for them—and for all of us.

The First Reading from the First Letter of John seems less directed at the innocent children whom we are remembering today, than at ourselves, who are far from innocent.

It begins with the statement:

…God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.

Would that we could say the same of ourselves! Perhaps we can identify more with the words which follow:

If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true…

If asked, I will acknowledge that I am a Christian—but what kind of Christian?

The writer goes on to make an interesting observation:

…but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

One might expect him to say that, if we walk in the light, we will have fellowship with Jesus—but no, we have fellowship with one another.

And that, of course, is a central theme of this Letter. There can be no union with Christ if we do not have union with each other. In fact, it is through union with brothers and sisters that we form our union with Christ—there is no other way.

John goes on to urge us to be honest about our failings. To claim we are totally free from sin is to deceive ourselves, and truth is not in us. Acknowledgement of our shortcomings is part of the truth:

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

Not to worry, though:

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world.

All we need to do is to surrender ourselves completely to his compassionate mercy, and with his help, live in fellowship with all our brothers and sisters.

The children we remember today did not have to be concerned about these problems. But we might also remember that neither did they have the opportunity to live lives rich in love and fellowship. Let us use this precious opportunity for every day of life that is given to us.

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Commentary on Luke 7:19-23

The disciples of John the Baptist had seen many of the wonderful things that Jesus was doing and came back to tell John about them. John then told two of his disciples to go and ask Jesus if he was the one who was to come, or whether they should continue to look for someone else.

It is not clear in today’s Gospel whether John really wanted to know the answer to this question, or whether it was primarily for his disciples’ benefit. It is reasonable to suppose that some of John’s disciples may not have felt too happy to see their leader being eclipsed by an unknown newcomer. And we know from John’s Gospel that some of the Baptist’s disciples actually transferred their allegiance from him to Jesus (John 1:35 ff).

The question they are told to ask Jesus is: “Are you he who is to come or shall we look for another?” This seems to refer to the return of that fiery reforming prophet, Elijah. This was to happen “before the day of the Lord comes, the great and terrible day” (Mal 3:23). As so often happens in the Gospel, the answer comes indirectly. When John’s disciples reached Jesus, they actually saw him curing many people of their diseases, plagues and evil spirits, and giving sight to people who could not see. Then Jesus says to them:

Go and tell John what you have seen and heard:
the blind receive their sight,
the lame walk,
lepers are cleansed, and
the deaf hear,
the dead are raised up,
the poor have good news preached
to them.

And that is a perfectly clear and unambiguous answer to their question. Why? Because in a well-known Messianic prophecy Isaiah long ago had said:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good tidings to the afflicted; he has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound… (Isa 61:1-2)

Elsewhere Isaiah had also said:

The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy (Isa 35).

All these signs of the coming of the Anointed One, the Messiah, are clearly being realised in Jesus. In fact, at the beginning of his public life, in the synagogue at Nazareth, Jesus had read this passage and then announced that it was being realised before their very eyes. He could not have given a stronger indication of his identity. The answer then is clearly, “Yes. Jesus is the One who is to come” because all these things are happening before their very eyes.

We should also notice what are the signs of the Messiah’s presence. It is not in any manifestation of political power and domination or the destruction of traditional enemies, nor is it found in a complex set of doctrinal beliefs. Instead, it is found in the healing of people who are sick, weak, or have other disabilities, and the restoring of them to wholeness in their individual and social lives and in their relationship with God.

As we prepare to celebrate the birth of the One who comes, let us remember that the work of Jesus to liberate those who are lame, deaf, blind, poor, ostracised – in every sense of those words – still needs to be done and that it is the responsibility of each one of us to make our own contribution. And let us pray to be liberated from our failures to see, hear, speak, or act – failures that prevent us from making that contribution to the building of the Kingdom.

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Commentary on Isaiah 45:6-8,18,21-26

We return again today to the Book of Consolation of Second Isaiah (chaps 40-55). The reading is part of a statement made by Yahweh to King Cyrus of Persia. Cyrus, by his defeat of Babylon where the Israelites were being kept in exile, is seen as an instrument of God to liberate his people. In fact, he is the only non-Israelite who is called the ‘anointed one of God’, titles normally confined to Israelite kings like David. It is the title given also to Jesus (Hebrew: Messiah, Greek: Christos meaning “Anointed”). It is an indication of the way in which the exiles saw Cyrus as their saviour. History tells us that Cyrus was seen as a “father” to his people, and from the Bible, we see that the first thing he did after the conquest of Babylon, was to restore freedom to all those living there in exile (see Ezra 1:1).

Apart from me all is nothing, I am the Lord, unrivalled.

Cyrus – and the people of Israel – are being reminded that the ultimate power comes not from a conquering king, even one seen by some as a god, but from the One God. This power extends from the rising of the sun to its setting in the west, in other words, embraces the whole earth (words we use in the Third Eucharistic Prayer).

I form the light and create darkness

Everything ultimately comes from God, whether it is seen by us at the time as good or bad. The history of Israel is a story of light and darkness, as is the history of mankind throughout the centuries.

Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness…

These Words form one of the beautiful hymns we sing during the Advent season (Rorate, coeli desuper… “Drop down dew, you heavens, from above…”). It is an expression of abundance, and is a poetic way of describing the liberation and ‘saving justice’ that is to come to the exiled Israelites through Cyrus, but ultimately from God himself. By inserting the words ‘Upright One’ and ‘Saviour’, St Jerome has the prophecy point directly to Christ – as we do at this Advent time.

Let the earth open that salvation may spring up

This is a direct reference to what the Persian king, as the agent of Yahweh, is going to bring about – delivery for God’s people and a situation where peace and justice prevail. God’s work, and humanity’s cooperation, are joined in a unique endeavour of bringing us to the goal of all we do for the world.

Cyrus is only a forerunner of the real Saviour who will break into our world, a Jew born of Jews, truly one of us and yet sharing the very being of God. And, as Cyrus carried out the work of God, so we too are called to do the work that Jesus initiated. Justice and Salvation still need to be brought to huge numbers of people in our world. This is the building of the Kingdom, and among its chief agents are those who form the Body of the Risen Christ.

To put the work of Cyrus in context, the passage ends by speaking of the uniqueness of our God.

There is no other god besides me, a righteous God and a Saviour

And the call goes out to the whole world:

Turn to me and be saved all the ends of the earth!…To me, every knee shall bow and every tongue shall swear.

These last words will be repeated by Paul in his Letter to the Romans (14:11) and in his Letter to the Philippians (2:10) where he applies it to the Lordship of Jesus.

Taking this beautiful passage as a whole, we are asked to see in Cyrus the work of God being fulfilled in the world by people who do not even know him. This has always been the case, and Christ continues to act through people who do not believe in him and may even reject him. The Church is not by any means the whole of the Kingdom’s reality, but its sacrament and visible sign.

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Commentary on 1 Corinthians 2:1-10; Psalm 36; Luke 14:25-33

The memorial Gospel reading is from Luke. We are told that large crowds were following Jesus. We might say that there were two kinds of people who were attracted by him. The first were those who were in genuine need—those who were sick in one way or another, those who were disabled (the blind, the disabled), those whose lives were governed by forces they could not control, those who were ostracised (like lepers or people with bleeding problems), those who were poor, and those who were rejected as sinners and outcasts, such as tax collectors and prostitutes.

But there was another group who followed Jesus the way ‘groupies’ run after movie or sports stars, just to see them or be near them. Jesus was a ‘superstar’. He had a reputation for performing miraculous cures and people wanted to see them happening. This group really had no interest in what Jesus was teaching. It is to these that Jesus seems to be speaking in today’s reading.

As the crowds gathered round him, he told them:

Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.

Among people for whom the family unit had first priority, these were harsh words and would certainly make them stop in their tracks. Jesus was being perfectly clear—anyone who wanted to be his disciple had to put Jesus before everything and everyone else. There could be no compromise:

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.

Jesus is not asking us to carry his cross—that was an experience unique to him. But he does ask us to carry the crosses that will come into our own lives, crosses which will be the result of our following him.

So he tells the crowds that, if they want to be really with him, they should be clear about what it entails. And then he gives two examples of what he means. If a builder wants to put up a large building, he needs to sit down and calculate if he can bring it to completion. If he fails half way through, he will become a laughing stock to his peers. Similarly, if a king is going to make war on another king, it would be wise to sit down and see if his forces are capable of winning. If not, it might be better to come to terms with his enemy and make a deal.

Jesus concludes by telling the people that no one can be truly a disciple of Jesus unless he or she is ready unconditionally to let go of everything he has. That is the bottom line and how many of us have taken it seriously?

One person who did take it seriously was John of the Cross. Few people will be asked to carry the kind of crosses he bore during life, and most of these crosses came from his own brothers in the religious community. Such experience could have turned him—as it might other people—into a cynical and embittered person full of hate for others. On the contrary, it turned him into a person who saw the futility of hate, and who was renowned for his being filled with the love of God, a love which eagerly shared with others. We might ask him today to help us be that kind of person.

In the First Reading, from the First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul speaks about his preaching and about the nature of true wisdom. When Paul came to Corinth he did not come gifted with any particular eloquence or wisdom of his own. What he did speak about seemed to be the very opposite—the message of Christ Jesus and of him crucified—as a message of salvation for the whole world. He came in fear and trembling because who would want to respond to such an extraordinary message? If it was heard, it was not due to his eloquence, but to the power of the Spirit working through him and them:

My speech and my proclamation were made not with persuasive words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.

There is, in the Gospel message, a deep wisdom. True wisdom is an understanding of what life is about and that is what Jesus came to reveal to us. It is not, as Paul tells us:

…a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are being destroyed.

No, what Paul passes on is God’s wisdom, a mysterious, a hidden wisdom. A wisdom we could not find for ourselves, but needed to have revealed to us. And he adapts a quotation from Isaiah (64:3):

Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it so much as dawned on man what God has prepared for those who love him.

How could anyone have foreseen that God’s infinite love for us would be revealed by his Incarnate Son dying on a cross?

John of the Cross was someone who was steeped in this wisdom and he helped us to understand it by his wonderful poems and books, as well as the example of his life. He knew how the pain of the cross could paradoxically be a source of peace and even joy. Let us ask him to help us have some of his wisdom.

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John (Juan de Yepes Alvarez) was born in 1542 of a noble, but impoverished family in a small community near Avila. His father gave up wealth and status when he married a weaver’s daughter and was disowned by his family. Following the death of his father at an early age, John’s widowed mother kept the poor family together as they went from place to place until they reached Medina del Campo in 1551. There John worked in a hospital for people with incurable diseases and studied humanities at a Jesuit school from 1559-1563.

On 24 February, 1563, he joined the Carmelite Order and took the name Juan de Santo Matia (John of St Mathias). In the following year, he made his first profession as a Carmelite, and went on to study philosophy and theology at the Colegio de San Andres in Salamanca. He had as one of his teachers, Fray Luis de Leon, who was an expert in biblical studies and who would influence John’s own later writing. John was ordained priest in 1567, but then felt drawn to the solitary and contemplative life of the Carthusians.

In the meantime, he met Teresa of Avila in Medina del Campo, and was persuaded by her to join the reform of the Order, which she had initiated for the Carmelite Sisters, and for which she had been authorised to include two houses of friars. John strongly supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer.

The following year, on 28 November, 1568, he started this reformation at Duruelo together with Fr Antonio de Jesús de Heredia. John, still in his 20s, continued to work as a helper of Teresa until 1577, founding monasteries around Spain and taking an active part in their government.

In 1571, he became rector of a Carmelite study house attached to the university in Alcala. From 1572 to 1577, he was confessor to the Carmel at Avila, the mother house of Teresa’s reform.

The followers of John and Teresa differentiated themselves from the non-reformed communities by calling themselves the “Discalced”, i.e. barefoot, while the non-reformed were “calced” Carmelites. (Today the Discalced carry the letters ‘OCD’ after their name while the Calced use ‘O. Carm.’)

Many traditional Carmelites felt threatened by the reform, and on the night of 3-4 December, 1577, John was taken and put in prison by the unreformed Carmelites, following a general ‘chapter’ (i.e. a meeting) in Piacenza, which rejected the reform and refused to allow houses to follow it.

John was detained in Toledo under appalling conditions, which included a lashing in the presence of the community at least once a week, and being locked in a cell six feet by 10 feet. There was only one tiny window high up near the ceiling. Yet in that unbearable dark, cold and desolation, his love and faith burnt like a bright flame. It was here that he composed the bulk of his most famous poem, Spiritual Canticle.

After nine months, on 15 August, 1578, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and slipping past the guard. Taking with him the poetry he had written in prison, he got out through a window using a rope made of bed blankets. Having no idea where he was, he let a dog lead him to where there were people. He hid from his pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the sisters. From that time onward, his life was devoted to sharing and explaining his experience of God’s love. Soon after his escape, the Discalced friars were separated from the Calced.

Coming back to a normal life, he continued the task of reformation and the founding of new Discalced friaries in partnership with Teresa. In 1579, John set up a college at Baeza of which he was rector for three years. From 1582, the year of Teresa’s death, he was prior at Granada, and from 1588, at Segovia. In the last years of his life, he was the object of harsh treatment from Nicolas Doria, the Discalced Carmelites’ vicar-general. He was removed from all his responsibilities and banished to Ubeda, in the province of Andalusia, in the south of Spain, where he died on 14 December, 1591.

His writings were first published in 1618, and he was canonised by Pope Benedict XIII in 1726. In 1926, he was declared a Doctor of the Church by Pope Pius XI. Pope Paul VI moved his feast from 24 November to 14 December, the anniversary of his death.

Although physically a small man, John, as poet and mystic, was in every other way a giant. He combined in one person poetic sensitivity and eloquence, with the disciplined thinking of a philosopher and theologian. He left books on prayer and the spiritual life that are enduring classics. They include: Ascent of Mount Carmel, Dark Night of the Soul, A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul, and The Bridegroom Christ.

He is considered one of the leading poets in Spanish literature. Although his complete poems add up to less than 2,500 verses, two of them—the Spiritual Canticle and Dark Night of the Soul—are considered by many to be among the best poetry ever written in Spanish.

John’s life of poverty and persecution could have produced an embittered person. Instead it gave birth to a mystic full of warmth and compassion. He would ask:

Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?

and

Where there is no love, put love, and you will find love.

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Commentary on Zephaniah 3:14-18; Philippians 4:4-7; Luke 3:10-18

The Advent season is basically a penitential period. As such, the colour of the vestments, as in Lent, is purple or violet. It is a time when we are invited through fasting or some other form of self-denial to prepare ourselves to celebrate Christmas by a genuine experience of repentance and renewal. However, in Advent as in Lent, the Church cannot refrain from “jumping the gun”, so to speak, by anticipating, if only briefly, the coming mood of celebration.

So this Sunday is often referred to as ‘Gaudete Sunday’ from the first word of the Entrance Antiphon in the Latin original, Gaudete (meaning ‘Rejoice!’). And indeed today’s Mass text is suffused with expressions of joy and jubilation. Even the colour of the vestments can be modified from penitential purple to a pinkish colour (officially termed “rose”).

The Entrance Antiphon proclaims:

Rejoice in the Lord always…

And the First Reading from the prophet Zephaniah exhorts:

Sing aloud, O daughter Zion;
shout, O Israel!
Rejoice and exult with all your heart…

If we sing our opening hymn, it should reflect this same mood.

There is an invitation in the First Reading when it tells us:

The Lord, your God, is in your midst,
a warrior who gives victory;
he will rejoice over you with gladness;
he will renew you in his love;
he will exult over you with loud singing
as on a day of festival.

The response to the Psalm taken from Isaiah tells us to:

Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion,
for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. (Is 12:6)

In the Second Reading, Paul extends an invitation to the Christians of Philippi:

Rejoice in the Lord always…Rejoice….The Lord is near.

The Gospel is more low-key, but there also it tells us that:

…the people were filled with expectation…

A basic mood
Joy should, in fact, be the basic mood of the Christian. It should not be something artificial or forced, but something that bubbles up naturally from our sharing Christ’s vision of life. Joy should be the normal experience of the Christian, but there are quite a few who unfortunately do not have that experience or conviction.

At times one gets the impression that it is not the experience of many Christians, who somehow have come to believe that religion is a serious business, that one is not living a good Christian life unless it is full of sacrifices, that Christianity means giving up many of the pleasures that are available to non-Christians. They seem to think that being a Christian means living a half life as the price for a better one to come.

Karl Marx saw religion as the “opium of the people”, meaning the poorer classes. Religion, he believed, worked as a kind of anaesthetic or opiate, devised by the rich and privileged, which helped the poor accept the miseries and injustices of the present life on the understanding that there was something much better on the far side of the grave.

All this is a great pity because the whole purpose of Jesus’ coming was to bring freedom, joy and peace to people not only in the future, but here and now. No one is meant to be more free than the Christian who follows Christ not in pain, but in joy and enthusiasm. I am not a Catholic because I have to be; I am a Catholic because I could not imagine myself being anything else. We share the words of Peter to Jesus:

Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. (John 6:68)

There is a saying, attributed to St Francis de Sales (among others):

A sad saint is a sorry saint…

A sad Christian is a contradiction in terms. That is not to say that there are not in any Christian life—as in any normal person’s life—times of pain, of sickness, of failure, or great loss. Grieving and letting go are important parts of life, and these experiences are, in a sense, temporary setbacks.

Every experience, if we can only realise it, is touched by God and has its meaning. Once that meaning is found and accepted, inner joy and peace can return. And the joy we are talking about is not something external. It has little to do with the high jinks we see during a party or after our team wins a big match. Much of that can be a kind of temporary escape from lives that are experienced as boring, oppressive and unfree.

Christian joy or happiness is deep down in the heart and is not incompatible with physical and emotional pain or difficult external circumstances. It is, as Jesus says, something that no one can take away from us. And as Jesuit Fr Tony de Mello says in his book Awareness:

“We have everything we need here and now to be happy.”

The problem is that we identify our happiness with people or things we don’t have and often can’t have.

What are we to do?
Today’s Gospel speaks of the expected coming of Jesus. This coming is being proclaimed by John the Baptist as he preaches by the waters of the River Jordan. After having heard what John had to say, his hearers asked a very sensible question: “Teacher, what should we do?” It is a question we might well ask ourselves as we prepare for the coming of Jesus this Christmas. Repentance calls for a change in behaviour and not just regret for the past.

Luke describes three kinds of people who are listening to John the Baptist: the crowd in general, tax collectors, and soldiers. John answers each of them according to their way of life. To the ordinary people, he tells them to share what they have—their clothes and food—with those who are in need. If they are really sorry for their sins, that is, if they really want to change their lives, they will become brothers and sisters to others—even total strangers. We might consider what we could share with others this Christmas.

Tax collectors had a rather bad reputation in Jesus’ time. The Romans used to farm out the right to collect taxes to private individuals. These would pay a lump sum to the government and were then left to their own devices to get back that money—and make a profit besides. Needless to say, such a system led to a good deal of extortion. There were no anti-corruption agencies in those days! John tells them to be just in what they collected.

Soldiers, too, were not very popular. The advice John gives sounds just as relevant today as it did then:

Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusation, and be satisfied with your wages.

Was John the Messiah?
After hearing such wise and sensible teaching, the people were beginning to wonder if John was not actually the Messiah himself. As mentioned earlier, there was a great mood of expectation that the Messiah’s appearance was imminent.

John, however, immediately disabuses them. He is certainly not the Messiah, the Saviour King that is to come. The real Messiah will be much greater. John will not even be worthy to untie the laces of his sandals—the work of a slave for his master.

John only baptises with water, but the Messiah will baptise with the Holy Spirit and fire. That fire purifies what is good and destroys what is evil. It is a sign of God’s power and God’s loving presence. (Remember the pillar of fire that accompanied the Jews at night in the desert? Remember also the fire of the Spirit coming down on the disciples after the resurrection?)

And our role is not unlike that of John the Baptist. For it is also our task as Christians—whether lay persons, religious or priests—to bring people to genuine conversion, a conversion that brings them face to face with Jesus and God, and also a conversion that brings a real joy and happiness into their lives.

Our role as ‘precursors’
Parents, especially Christian parents, have this role. They gradually form their children to have the Christian spirit and outlook on life. A Christian family will be one of real joy. The family will be a place to which each member returns with joyful anticipation and expectancy—in other words, a real home.

Teachers, too, are like John the Baptist. A Christian teacher is always aware of being Christian in the presence of students, irrespective of the subject being taught. After the student has long graduated, he may not remember a word from those lessons, he may never in his later career have used the knowledge he was given, but he will remember the personality of his teacher. Some teachers are remembered with affection forever—others are best forgotten.

Whatever we are—parents, teachers, civil servants, employers, business people, self-employed—we need to remember that we are God’s instruments. We are not making people do what we say or forcing them to behave in a certain way, still less to be just like us. Our aim is, like John the Baptist, to lead people to the feet of Jesus that they may know him personally as Saviour, Lord, Brother and Friend. Our role is, like John the Baptist, to step aside once the introductions are over and leave Jesus to do his work.

At the same time, Jesus does need our co-operation. Jesus works through every parent and every teacher and everyone who has a call to form people. Peter and Andrew began as John the Baptist’s disciples until they met Jesus. Then they left John and walked with Jesus. In turn, they brought other people to know and experience Jesus. That is the pattern and meaning of evangelisation—of bringing the Gospel to others.

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Commentary on Isaiah 35:1-10

The First Reading expresses the excitement and anticipation of God’s coming in our midst. The passage comes from a longer passage (chaps 34-35) which speaks of the ultimate triumph of Jerusalem. It is sometimes known as the ‘Little Apocalypse’. It describes the final terrible battles, which will be waged by Yahweh against the nations in general, but against Edom in particular. This is followed by the prediction of a final judgement when Jerusalem will be re-established in all its glory.

Why was Edom picked out especially as the object of God’s anger? “The land of Edom” extended from the head of the Gulf of Akabah, to the south shore of the Dead Sea. It is a wild and rugged region, traversed by fruitful valleys. At the time of the Exodus, the Edomites refused permission to the Israelites to pass through their land, and ever afterwards maintained an attitude of hostility toward them. After being conquered by David and later by Amaziah, they regained again their independence, and in later years, made war against Israel. The Edomites took part with the Chaldeans when Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, and afterwards they invaded and held possession of the south of Palestine as far as Hebron.

Clearly, all this did not endear them to the people of Judah and Jerusalem. Some feel the present desolate condition of that land is a standing testimony to the inspiration of the prophets’ warnings. After an existence as a people for more than 1,700 hundred years, the Edomites have utterly disappeared, and even their language is forgotten forever. In the capital, Petra (also known as Sela), “where kings kept their court, and where nobles assembled, there no man dwells; it is given by lot to birds, and beasts, and reptiles”.

Today’s reading is in sharp contrast to the destruction of Edom described in chapter 34. Instead, there comes a description of the blessings which are in store for Jerusalem. It is similar to the description of the return from exile in Babylon found later in chapters 40-55 (Second Isaiah).

In contrast to the desolateness of Edom, the barren areas of the land will bloom and all shall see the glory of God:

The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad;
the desert shall rejoice and blossom;
like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly
and rejoice with joy and shouting

Words of encouragement are to be given, perhaps by the prophets:

Strengthen the weak hands
and make firm the feeble knees.

Not only will life return to nature but all kinds of disabilities will be removed from people’s lives – the eyes of the blind opened, the ears of the deaf unstopped, the lame leaping like deer, the tongue of the speechless singing for joy. We find such a prophecy constantly confirmed by the works of Jesus and foretold by him at the beginning of his public life (Luke 4:18) using a similar prophecy from Isaiah (61:1).

And so too, today’s Gospel is a graphic example, describing the total healing – in body and spirit – of a man who was paralysed. The former wilderness, too, will be transformed by an abundance of water – something that people in the Middle East can probably appreciate much more than we can. And, with the coming of water, the whole land bursts forth into new life, a land is transformed. All this we see now as a symbol of the spiritual richness that Jesus would bring into our lives.

And so the passage concludes with:

A highway shall be there,
and it shall be called the Holy Way

The “unclean” will not travel on it; they will go their own way, on the broad road that leads to their own destruction. Rather, the highway:

…shall be for God’s people;
no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.

Again, Jesus is that Way. As long as we are on that Way we have nothing to fear.

Finally the:

…ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing.

Instead of the baggage the ordinary travellers carried on their heads, these will come with everlasting joy on their heads. Joy and gladness will be theirs and:

…sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

This is what we look forward to in our coming Christmas celebration. The birth of the Child is the beginning of all that is foretold here. May we be part of it.