Author: Simon Sleeman

Fr. Jarek Kurek: “I Hate and I Love, Therefore I Am” is the title of the first major work by Canadian Anne Carson, the recently announced winner of the 2026 Nobel Prize in Literature.

This reworking of the philosopher’s famous statement, “I think, therefore I am,” marked the beginning of our poet’s journey towards understanding of human desire and love.

Initially, drawing inspiration mostly from her favourite ancient Greeks, she couldn’t help but see the ambivalent nature of love, its inherent ‘bittersweet’ character. Almost everyone has experienced it: it starts so beautifully, feels so pleasant, and then, sadly, it all ends in pain, bringing a great deal of suffering. And regardless, we still look for it…

Some 20 years later, however, Carson was to discover a different, superior understanding of love by reading closely some Christian writings from the Middle Ages. It was a French mystic, Marguerite Porete, who, supposedly addressing her book to ‘the simple souls’, showed her how to go beyond hate and love, pleasure and pain, laying bare for her the mystery of supreme, divine love.

Now, why not imitate this distinguished writer for the sake of our own spiritual growth? Why not, after hearing today’s Gospel, look into that mysterious book that captured Carson’s attention and thus learn more about love from that 13th-century laywoman?

For Marguerite Porete, loving God with all our heart means that our thoughts should always be truly in God; with our soul, that we should speak nothing but the truth until death; with all our strength, that we should accomplish all our works purely for God; and loving our neighbours as ourselves means that we should neither do, nor think, nor say anything towards them that we would not wish them to do, think, or say towards us.

No doubt, this is a tall order for many of us. But is that all? Is that all that can be done? 

Not for Marguerite. And perhaps not for anyone who has a gentle heart and is filled with noble courage within.

‘Do not be afraid to come higher,’ suggests the mystic, especially since doing more than is merely commanded or expected will please anyone you truly love. It will, no doubt, require going beyond yourself, indeed losing yourself, following the example we have in Jesus Christ himself. It will mean making your work of love go beyond what is ordinary, but this extraordinary dimension of it will allow you to experience what Marguerite calls ‘the boiling desire of love’. Even more, before long, it will allow you to have another experience: that of ‘the touch of the pure delight of love’, the source of spiritual joy and charm.

A true wonder might be at work. Having overcome the commonly assumed ways of thinking, we can all be transformed into divine love, thus becoming God’s work of love in the world. Needless to say, this requires a humble realisation: an awareness of our own spiritual poverty and of the fact that this divine seed of love, planted in us, is God’s gift, for which we need to praise Him. 

Ultimately, it is also up to His divine will to will and bring it to fruition; we are no longer supposed to will or desire anything. At this stage, it is God who works in us. We gradually become nothing, and yet all—in God, and God in us.

Fr. William Fennelly OSB: There’s a story told about a cardinal who returns from a meeting in Rome to his own country and at a press conference he gets asked: “Your Eminence, what do you think of the Roman night clubs?”He was taken aback and replied: “I don’t know. I don’t go to night clubs.” The next day the newspaper headline ran: “Cardinal denies visiting local night clubs.”

In one sense, what the headline stated was true; but it was certainly untruthful in terms of what it implied. Facts were manipulated.

There has been a great deal of discussion in recent years about the impact of social media in manipulating people through the manipulation of facts. And, for our part, we can collude with this manipulation by seeking out news sources simply because they support our opinions, even if at some level we suspect that the ethical standards of the journalism within are questionable.

There is nothing particularly new in matters such as fake news and the manipulation of facts. Indeed, today’s Gospel gives us a good example:by using a clever question to try to entrap Jesus into saying things that could then be manipulated and used against him.

We are told that the Pharisees wish to entangle Jesus by his words. That the Pharisees (the defenders of jewish law) joined with their traditional opponents, the Herodians (the defenders of power), indicates how desperately both of these groups who hated each other so much felt threatened by and wanted to eliminate Jesus.

They ask Jesus: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not?” In itself this is a legitimate question. It raises important moral, political, and religious issues. But it was a question difficult to answer without personal cost given the troubled political circumstances of the time.

To pay taxes to Caesar was in effect to support the Romans who had conquered Israel and who were keeping Israel in a form of captivity by installing a puppet regime supported by the Herodians. If Jesus spoke in favour of paying the tax, the Pharisees, much opposed to Roman occupation and in favour of strict Jewish observance, could then charge Jesus with being disloyal to his own Jewish people and their hopes of national independence, as well as being unfaithful to Jewish practice which forbade the fashioning of graven images in the likeness of any created thing – Roman coins had images of Caesar on them. On the other hand, if Jesus opposed paying the tax, the Herodians could then accuse Jesus of instigating revolt against the ruling powers.

The Pharisees and Herodians are trying to manipulate Jesus into saying something that can be used against him. But Jesus meets cleverness with cleverness. He asks them to show him the money they use for the Temple tax. The fact that they have Roman coins to hand suggests that they tolerate, at least to some extent, objects with graven images on them; and it might also suggest that they pay taxes to Caesar, or at least that they collaborate to some degree with the system. This is a clever move on Jesus’s part.

But Jesus’s response ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’  is even more clever. It is not merely an evasive answer to avoid being trapped by his enemies. It also subtly raises some profound issues. In any case, Jesus’s answer in no way succumbs to the manipulation of his listeners in response to their attempt to manipulate him. Jesus both defends himself and challenges them to reflect on important matters.

Jesus asks whose image is on the coin. Jesus’s opponent replied: ‘Caesar’s’. On the one hand, as a coin imprinted with the image and likeness of the emperor, it in some sense belongs to the emperor; but simply by virtue of being a human being, Caesar (like every other human being) is made in the image and likeness of God, and thus even Caesar is subject to the One True God in that sense he belongs to God. So Jesus’s question about whose image is on the coin is more complex than it at first appears, and thus so is Jesus’ statement: ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s’.

As Christians we are called to be men and women of truthfulness in general and to have conviction in the truth revealed in Christ Jesus and lived out in the Church. In this we are both called to be people who act according to the dynamics and principles of truthfulness, which are at odds with manipulation, and we are called to have conviction in the power of truth itself.

St Thomas Aquinas began most of his theological and philosophical enquiries by canvassing opposing views to his own and showing not only that these positions could be countered but that sometimes they could also be learned from. He was able both to correct and to learn because he trusted in the power of truth. Manipulation was not needed; manipulation did not even enter into the picture. And in this St Thomas was true to Jesus Christ, Who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Lord, open our hearts and our minds that we may be people of truth; and that in being witnesses to your truth we may trust in the power of the truth that we proclaim. Amen.

Abbot Christopher Dillon: Jesus, we are told, frequently used parables to communicate his teaching, a parable being a story with a moral message. The gospel passage which we have just heard contains two parables, the second being almost an after- thought tacked on at the end; although it is just as important as the first one.

The wedding feast in the main parable sets the scene of the whole story, recalling the notion of Heaven as an unending wedding banquet which God has laid on for us all for all eternity. A wedding banquet may not be everyone’s idea of heaven, even for an hour, let alone for all eternity; but the point is that Heaven is the goal of our existence which God has planned for us all, beginning with God’s Chosen People. These people, the people of Israel and their leaders, have been visited repeatedly throughout history by messengers from God, the prophets, to prepare them for this great future, only for each approach to be ignored or brushed off and rejected sometimes with murderous violence. Jesus, himself, the very Son of God, is being rejected in his turn, even as he is speaking to them, and he knows that he will be killed, in due course, symbolising the definitive rejection of God’s plan by his Chosen People. This story of the general rejection by the Jewish people of God’s plan is as tragic as it is remarkable, remarkable because it seems to present God as a failure. But the seeming failure turns out to be the occasion for a much larger and wider success in that the wedding party is consequently opened to all humankind. Somehow, we all become chosen, every single human being.

But then the second parable comes into play: the seemingly small matter of the man who is not wearing the proper gear for the wedding and so finds himself thrown outside. This is to tell us that the fact that we have been included in the general invitation does not give us an absolutely free pass; in one sense at least, terms and conditions apply. Being appropriately dressed means being clothed with the right way of thinking and behaving, that is being a good Christian, or at least being a good human being. 

So, what have we got here? We have the news that the exclusivity of the Chosen People has been finessed in favour of the whole human race; all of us, after all, sharing the grace of having been made in the image of God. But secondly, we are reminded that this splendid dignity and its glorious future require a wedding garment of good living, ideally Christian living, to guarantee our reception at the heavenly banquet. And this is best achieved in our responding joyfully and gratefully to the realisation that we are cherished and loved, collectively and individually, by the God who extended his choice of people to include us, as he has demonstrated in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Fr. John O’Callaghan: Today’s gospel is a parable about God’s people and their leaders, before and after the coming of Christ. The Old Testament reading depicts a vineyard that is rundown and unproductive. The scene Isaiah evokes is what you might see at this time of year in France– bare hills of ugly stumps and stalks where not long ago grew vines abundant with red or green grapes. The dead stumps are crooked, narrow and easily broken, only good to be thrown on the fire. And Isaiah is saying that this is what God’s people has become, unfruitful and moribund. It is quite an evocative image.

The gospel picks up that image but focuses on those responsible for overlooking  the vineyard so that it produces good fruit. These tenants, we know, stand for the chief priests and Jewish elders. They are the ones who have not given proper leadership to God’s people; it is they who will ultimately hand Jesus over for crucifixion. We are told “They wanted to arrest Jesus [right then] but were afraid of the crowds who looked on him as a prophet.” But they did get Jesus arrested and killed later on! Our parable condemns those leaders for negligent, corrupt and indeed murderous behaviour, saying that “the Kingdom of God will be taken from [them] and given to a people who will produce its fruit’.

So our gospel is about regime change, changing the leadership from those chief priests & scribes to Christ and his teaching; that means changing a list of endless rules and regulations, for something that gets to the heart of human life, so that we might be a true ‘people of God’, a gleaming vineyard producing abundant good fruit. 

Signs of such leadership were very much in evidence over the last week, and in France! Pope Leo set down a few markers: at the United Nations Headquarters for Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO) he identified the very foundation of ‘human rights’; it is biblical and I quote: ‘the future depends (first and foremost) on the  need to respect and promote the inalienable dignity inherent in every man and woman created in God’s image’. Leo went on to apply this to end-of-life care. France has just passed a bill, as you may know, permitting patients to end their lives by injecting themselves with lethal drugs, or having a doctor or nurse do it for them. Instead let Christians help people to live well to a natural end! in the great tradition of Irish hospice care. 

When speaking of Artificial Intelligence Pope Leo joined with many of today’s AI innovators calling for measures to ‘ensure’ that new technologies remain at the service of the human person, supporting education, and relationships rather than becoming instruments of domination and injustice’. Let us take this principle seriously: keep thinking for yourself and edit any AI generated work before you hand it up. If we don’t control technology, it will control us. If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu!

In the ‘Stade de France’ Pope Leo acknowledged the 80,000 ‘ardent young people, packed to capacity, and committed to countless (Christian) initiatives’. Encouraging them, the ‘saints of France’, and I quote, “to take up with responsibility the task of promoting peace – in your hearts, in your relationships, in your families, schools and universities, in your cities and countries and throughout all of Europe.” 

In sum Leo XIV’s teaching was expressing the so-called ‘social doctrine of the church’ as expressed in the many encyclicals published since that of Pope Leo XIII in 1891. Leo’s own ‘Magnifica Humanitas’ is worth a read. 

So it is now over to us: our mission is in the world and for the whole human family. We have examples set before us – none better than Saint Francis of Assisi, whose feast day it is today. He, and the Order he founded, have shown that the touchstone by which we can assess our commitment is the care we take of the least privileged. May we follow his example, both locally and globally, as the true people of God, and thus bear abundant fruit!  

 

Fr, Luke Macnamara OSB: The kingdom of heaven doesn’t appear to be very just! If you work for twelve hours under a scorching sun, you receive the same as those who have worked for only one hour in the cool of the evening! Who would work all day if you could wait around and receive the same pay for a short stint before sundown? The injustice seems to cry out at us — especially since those who worked for only one hour are paid first!

There appears to be a different logic at work in the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ first hearers would have understood this story differently from the way we might hear it today. The landowner hires day labourers in the marketplace. Day labourers were at the bottom rung of society at the time. They had no land or possessions and survived by earning the daily wage of one denarius. If they did not find work, they and their families could go hungry.

The first to be chosen in the marketplace would have been the younger, stronger men. Children, people with disabilities, the elderly, and the sick would have been left waiting in the marketplace. Such people were of little use to a landowner and his estate.

Yet Jesus speaks of a different logic — one in which the poor, the lame, the blind, and the weak are also chosen to participate. They are not expected to work a full day, but only to do what they are able to do. And they are all paid one denarius: enough for a person in the first century to live on. In other words, they all receive a living wage.

Jesus challenges the way we behave and the way we decide who is valuable.

Think of the schoolyard, where children line up and are picked by team captains, with the same children often being chosen first and others left until last. Or think of the workplace, where the same people are given the easier clients and opportunities to shine, while others are given the difficult clients and inevitably receive less recognition. Jesus turns this way of thinking upside down.

When we hear this story, we might instinctively place ourselves among the strong — those who have worked the full day and feel aggrieved at those who arrive late. Yet most of Jesus’ first hearers would probably have recognised themselves among the weak — those who could only manage a little and who depended upon the generosity of others.

If we look honestly into our own hearts, we can also recognise how late we sometimes come to God’s work each day. Yet, as the psalmist reminds us, God is close to all who call upon him.

When we reach out to God in prayer, we discover that the Lord is kind and full of compassion, slow to anger and abounding in love. So let us make time each day to call upon the Lord and remember that it is never too late to respond to God’s invitation.

The Lord is near. The Lord seeks to shower his mercy upon all of us.

The landowner did not leave anyone who was seeking work behind in the marketplace, even at the eleventh hour. In the same way, God continues to call each one of us, whatever our circumstances and whatever hour of the day it may be.

Let each of us respond to the Lord’s call and enter more fully into the life of the kingdom of heaven — a kingdom that is already here, among us, here and now.

 

 

Fr. Henry O’Shea:

The olive wreath, the palm of peace,
Let child-like Faith hold fast,
And bid the warring passions cease,
And forgive the bitter past.
John Keble

Can we forgive murder? Do we have the right to forgive murder?

Can we forgive, do we have the right to forgive, the murder which has always been part of human behaviour? Can we forgive, what is happening to innocent children, born and unborn, to men and women, at this very moment, in Gaza, Ukraine, South Sudan, in our own allegedly civilised, and compassionate society: and this just to mention a few of the blots. Is genocide any business of ours?

We might say, changing channels or turning on TikToc or whatever is grabbing me at the moment: these are big murders and happened or are happening far away and out of sight. A few minutes in a news-bulletin.

And what about the smaller murders of our smaller lives? Can we forgive the bully in school, or workplace, or monastery? Can we forgive the boy or girl who is always ready with the killing slag; the monk, relative or colleague who is always ready with the caustic remark, the clever put-down? Can we forgive the slow passive-aggressive holocaust of the silent husband, wife or partner? Can we forgive those who always know better, who are always more competent, always holier? Can we forgive those who make a tyranny of their generosity, who use their talents as weapons for control of others, for uncontrolled greed and accumulation of power? Can we forgive the chronically irresponsible? And what about the chronically indifferent? I’m all right Jack, or Jill.

The love Jesus talked about and lived is a tough love. Not tough as the king in today’s gospel who has the power to forgive a debt or to ruin the life of a debtor – a power this king does not hesitate to use. 

Christ’s love, God’s love, is tough on those who are asked to receive it, tough on those who are asked to practise it.

This tough love is more than a sentimental melting of the heart, which often can be self-indulgent and short-lived; more than a clever calculation of resulting personal benefit. This tough love demands realism about myself and realism about others – a realism which is not the same as a seeking of confirmation of myself or the same as my caustic cynicism about others.  This realistic love does not deny the reality of evil, of hurt, of malice. This realistic requires self-discipline, self-knowledge. It requires what Saint Benedict calls expansion of the heart.

This expansion of the heart renounces, gives up, the luxury of revenge.This expansion of the heart does its best to escape from or, better, never enter the endless belt of recrimination, judgement and the emotional annihilation of others.   

Can we forgive? Have we the right to forgive? Left to our own devices we probably cannot forgive.

Often, we cannot see how we have the right, let alone the obligation, to forgive all the big and small murders we experience and that we commit in our lives.  Often, it is simply too self-satisfying to rejoice in revenge, to enjoy the suffering, the come-uppance, of another. There is certain satisfaction in collecting and burnishing our grudges, in letting the weeds of resentment grow unchecked. 

But Christ is not primarily concerned with rights. Instead, or in addition, he tells us that we have a duty to forgive, that we can forgive.  We have a duty to forgive because when we were baptised we were made part of Christ and with that being made part, we were made capable of doing and thinking things that might otherwise appear impossible, naïve, even foolish, to so-called normal thinking. 

We can and must forgive because Christ forgave and showed us what tough love can lead to. Tough love can lead to death, to the death of self-centeredness, greed, exploitation, dismissal of others. But beyond this death we are led to Resurrection.  We can and must forgive because when Christ made us part of himself, he made us part of one another, with power to kill one another and power to give life to each other. St Paul reminds us in today’s second reading: ‘The life and death of each of us has its influence on others…’. 

We can and must forgive because when we look in the mirror who is Christ, we realise how much there is in ourselves that needs to be forgiven. We realise how much there is in ourselves that has already been forgiven.

Our Saviour’s look, so sad and sweet,
Melted the rebel soul;
Go, trace His steps with willing feet,
And let love make thee whole.

John Keble

Fr. Cuthbert Brennan: Most of us don’t enjoy difficult conversations. Most of us would rather avoid them. We hope the problem will disappear. Or we tell someone else instead of the person  concerned. 

Yet today’s Gospel begins with a very simple assumption. 

If we live closely with other people, sooner or later we will hurt one another. And notice that Jesus doesn’t begin with punishment. He begins with relationship. Go and speak to your brother or sister. 

The goal isn’t to win. The goal is to restore. That’s at the heart of this morning’s  gospel. 

Perhaps the hardest three words in the English language are: 

“Can we talk?” 

Many of you have only recently returned to school. All of us here live in a  community of  

some form or another. It’s not difficult to imagine what the subjects of tension in community  

might be.  

Can we talk about……..deodorant? Can we talk about why you’re always late? Can  we talk about why you can’t fill the dishwasher correctly? Can we talk about what  you said about me? 

“Can we talk?” 

Usually it means we’ve done something wrong. Or someone is hurt. Or an awkward  conversation is coming. Most of us would rather avoid it. 

Yet the Christian life isn’t about avoiding those conversations. 

It’s about learning how to have them well.

Jesus isn’t interested in winning arguments. 

He’s interested in restoring relationships. 

God so loved the world that God said “Can we talk?” Through the prophets he  called his people back to himself. Again and again he said to humanity “Can we  talk?” Then finally in Jesus God came face to face with us and asked, “Can we talk?” God came among us in humility and compassion and kindness. But true to form we  got angry, we got defensive and we got violent. God knows all about the cost of  saying “Can we talk?”1 

Jesus is saying that being a member of the church means you have a responsibility. It  is not simply a place where we gather to worship. It is the place where we learn a  new way of being human. Here we slowly discover how to see one another as God  sees us, and to respond to one another as Christ has first responded to us. If your  sheep gets lost you don’t look for an hour and call it quits. You get out there and  find that sheep. And we know from the Gospel of Matthew how Jesus treated  Gentiles and tax collectors.  

Here we learn how to tell the truth without destroying one another, how to forgive  without pretending that wounds don’t matter, and how to seek reconciliation rather  than victory. We practise here what we hope to live everywhere else. If we can learn  

to speak about the little hurts, the small misunderstandings, then perhaps we are  already learning how to build a good marriage, a good community, a good school.  

We often quote the words, 

“Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” as if Jesus were  talking about prayer meetings. Jesus is present, really present where two or three are  

1 Revd Dr Sam Wells, Can we talk?, A sermon preached in Duke University Chapel September 7th, 2008

gathered in the Divine Name, presumably this includes the two who cannot listen to  each other. Even there, perhaps especially there, Jesus is present.  

Christ is reminding us that he is present not only when we pray beautifully together, but when we struggle to tell one another the truth with love. 

His presence changes everything. 

It changes how we speak. 

It changes how we listen. 

It changes how we forgive. 

It changes how we tell the truth. 

Because when Christ is present, 

the goal is no longer to win. 

It is to restore. 

Perhaps sometime this week each of us will find ourselves in a difficult conversation. Before we speak… 

before we defend ourselves… 

before we walk away… 

perhaps we might remember one simple truth. 

Christ is already present. 

He is already in the room.

Abbot Christopher Dillon: “The way you think is not God’s way but man’s.” Just hear that again, “not God’s way, but man’s”; how else could Peter, as a man, have thought? The critical lesson that is being presented here by Jesus is seriously problematic, particularly in our man-centred, scientific, success-oriented culture. Mankind has made and continues to make exponential progress, or advance, in every field of life, however we think of “progress” and “advance”. But no matter how far we get, Jesus reminds us, whatever else they may be, our goals of progress and success are not in line with God’s way of thinking. Logically, then, when we turn our minds to the things of God and to prayer, are we to suspend our way of thinking, however that may be possible?

For the Jewish prophet, Jeremiah, way back in the 600s B.C., this conflict brought him insult and derision from his people, when he tried to deliver what he understood to be God’s message. The pathos in his words, as a man who was known as a gentle man of peace, is palpable. Six hundred years later, St Paul seems to be saying something similar, when he writes to the Jews in Rome, “Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you, but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind.” What are we to make of it all? 

The world around us is wracked by the struggle for power and control, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa or America; and it offers us some sense of what man’s way of thinking can lead to and it is clearly does not make for a happy environment. After the horrors of two world wars, the great powers appear to be bent on promoting more of the same, which, perhaps, re-affirms the point that Jesus’ words are making. If this is really what man’s way of thinking leads to, then we might just be persuaded to examine God’s alternative way of thinking which Jesus is proposing, when he says, “If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let his renounce himself, and take up his cross and follow me. Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it, but anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” It all seems to hang on that phrase, “for my sake”, for Jesus’ sake, which is what the martyrs of Christian history gave their lives for. This is the “new mind” of which Paul is writing. 

In contemporary terms, we would call this standing up for Christian principles, which is exactly what Pope Leo seems to mean when he speaks of the primacy of valuing the dignity of every human being, a dignity which the Pope relates intimately to respect for the environment. In a way, it means being courageous enough to stand up and be counted, when it matters; to maintain a determined and persistent support for truth and goodness, particularly when the general trend is pushing the other way. That is, indeed, a cross which can be heavy and costly, as the prophet, Jeremiah attested for us, just now; and it is the cross every day, until the Son of Man comes in the glory of his Father to relieve and reward you.

There is a challenge here, then, for each of us to address, and that is to consider what “this new mind”, as St Paul puts it, is saying to us, so that we discern ‘what it is that God wants, what is the perfect thing to do.” 

All of you who have just come back here to school should keep that in mind, as you work your way through the year. The success that you are pursuing here is not just about exams; it is about each of you as a person; it is about discovering that ‘new mind”, coming to know what is the perfect thing to do, now and every day. And that is true for every one of the rest of us, along with you.

Fr. Fintan Lyons: The gospel passage we have heard has, at its centre, the exchanges between Jesus and Peter, about who Jesus is, and then who Peter is to become. It’s easy to do what we tend to do, move quickly through the text to its centre paying little attention to the first words: ‘Now when Jesus  came into the district of Caesarea Philippi…’. 

The sequence of events in Matthew’s account indicates that Jesus and the disciples travelled some distance northward by boat after the miraculous feeding of a crowd, before undertaking a trek across towards the Golan heights to reach the district of Caesarea Philippi, far north of the sea of Galilee, the furthest north Jesus ever went. Afterwards, he would turn south towards Jerusalem, and speak on the way about his forthcoming passion and death there. The significance of where they had  arrived can be missed.

They were in the ‘district of Caesarea Philippi’ – it doesn’t say they entered the city, which was the exemplar of Roman power, built over the ruins of Greek and earlier pagan cultic sites, the principal building being the Temple of Augustus, the divinised Roman Emperor, indicating that the Roman empire was now dominant and there to stay. 

Pope Leo, in his homily at the inaugural Mass of his pontificate with the Cardinals in May last year, said they went into the city with its gleaming marble palaces. He said that in such a setting the question of who Jesus was would be answered by judging him to be a completely insignificant person, at best someone with an unusual and striking way of speaking and acting. Pope Leo went on to talk about how Jesus is seen today. 

More significant, however, in the whole incident is not the city, but the massive bulk of Mount Hermon behind it, with an ancient spring which was one of the sources of the Jordan, emerging from the mouth of a cave said to be the gateway to the underworld. Pagan rites had involved throwing infants as sacrificial victims into its depths to worship the Greek god Pan, half goat, half man. This was the backdrop to the city, and apparently a frightening place associated with demonic, even obscene rites, with no Jewish population in Jesus’ day. Approach to it would violate Jewish purity laws. Why then did he go to this remote place?  Remember his saying earlier in Matthew’s gospel: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.’ (Mt 15.25)

We know the answer. It was the appropriate dramatic setting for the dialogue which began ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ He was obviously a real man, but the question was meant to cause his disciples to reflect on what they recognised was his mysterious identity. And Peter seems to have understood, at least partially: ‘You are the Messiah’, the one long  awaited to overthrow the Roman dominance.

Peter was rewarded in a way which he did not, could not, really understand. He was to be the rock on which the new kingdom would be built, but it was to be a spiritual edifice. The gates of the underworld – symbolised by where they were standing – would not prevail against it.

We can speculate about Jesus’s movement and motivation, but the fact is that the unusual location for the enormously important exchange between him and the disciples, and Peter in particular, must be highly significant.

Sadly, that location marked also the beginning of Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem and his prediction of his passion on the way, and Peter’s protest against his prediction, leading to – ‘Get behind me Satan’, showing that Peter had much to learn about Jesus and about his own calling, with stages such as ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man’, ‘I know not the man’,  ‘Lord, you know that I love you’. As it turned out, it was for him the work of a lifetime.

 I believe that for us, knowing Jesus and ourselves – our calling – is also the work of a lifetime.

Fr. John O’Callaghan: Today’s readings concern immigration, immigration into the kingdom of God! The  readings all highlight the porous nature of the borders of that kingdom but also points to a few requirements for entry.

Tyre and Sidon were pagan cities, part of the gentile world and largely avoided by Jesus. And we are told that the woman who approached him was of Canaanite origin. That means she was of the people ousted from those Canaanite lands when the Israelites moved in. They were worshipers of the main rival to Israel’s God, namely Baal, the god who controlled the rain and fertility of the land. She couldn’t have had worse credentials! However she had “great faith”, Christ says, not only in approaching him but also in holding him to what he said about the house-dogs! She had enough faith to recognise that this ‘son of David’ could cure her daughter. St Augustine says that  ‘Every saint has a shady past’, and this woman surely had, but it was not the whole the story. Christ would make the most of the faith she had. 

The prophet Isaiah speaks about such outsiders. His words unambiguously proclaim, in the name of God: “my house will be a house of prayer for all peoples!’ Jewish prophecy had moved beyond religious exclusivism and opened up a universal perspective: it was a harbinger of the salvation offered to all in Christianity. Christianity is not exclusivist, not the privilege only of a specific race or ethnicity. Christians are a motely collection of all types, but they have to have a pass, a passport, like the Canaanite woman. The one which Isaiah identifies is:  ‘to care for justice and act with integrity’. Such basic human values give access to the kingdom. And there are many ‘holy pagans’, perhaps unknown to themselves, working undercover for justice in the most troubled spots of the world today. ‘Blessed are the peacemakers; they shall be recognised as children of God’. 

Thirdly, Paul’s letter to the Romans echoes the same universal message: God’s purpose, as he writes, is to ‘show mercy to all mankind’. The ‘open borders’ policy was made explicit in Paul’s mission to the gentile world, beyond ‘the pale’ of old Israel. Did he not arrive in Athens and soon praise the Greeks’ recognition of ‘the  unknown God’?  In our own times the philosopher Edith Stein counselled to “Accept nothing as the truth if it lacks love; and accept nothing as love which lacks truth“. These twin values she found united in Christianity and they brought her to baptism and to be revered today as St Benedicta of the Cross. 

So, back to immigration! The borders of the kingdom of God are porous and God’s invitation extends to all. But one must rise to it by at least faith or hope or love. In our society where ultimate hope can be replaced with a superficial, short-term optimism, let us retain the deeper hope that there is meaning in life and it is worth the journey to a kingdom beyond this one. And let us show that friendship and love can endure; that our relationships are called to something more than a transient utility for a more or less selfish purpose. Love is possible. Finally, let us keep alive the faith that makes for a God-centered life, a life has ultimate meaning and can even overcome suffering and death, as we saw in the case of the woman from Tyre. We have no reason to despair, as revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus.