Author: Simon Sleeman

Fr. John O’Callaghan: If you had skin cancer and some Shaman told you to take a shower, seven times, to be cured, how would you respond? You might feel grossly insulted and forever refuse contact with that person. Well, according to our first reading, that is the kind of suggestion the commander of the Syrian army got from the Elisha, the prophet of Israel. Naaman was insulted but, strange thing is, the mighty man did accede to the suggestion when his servants tactfully explained that if he had been asked to do something difficult he would have made sure to achieve it. Instead he humbly obeyed an instruction from a foreign prophet. By so doing he opened an opportunity for the word of the prophet, the word of God, to prove true. He was cured and we’re told that he went on to recognise that it is the God of Israel who is the one and only true God. This story tells of a movement not only from sickness to health, but ultimately from ignorance and misconception of God to knowledge and genuine faith. One could call it education; after all that word’s Latin etymology, ‘ex duxere’, means ‘to lead out of’ ignorance to knowledge.

And this Old Testament scene is set before us to prepare us for today’s gospel. As usual Jesus fulfills the Old Testament and goes beyond it. We learn of ten lepers, like cancer patients, who, recognising their need, solicit Jesus for a cure, which he gives. They have enough faith to call him ‘Master’ and follow the law of Moses, and go to show themselves to the priests. However one of them, seeing himself healed also understands that in fact Jesus has been God’s agent, that the cure was ultimately the work of God; so he acknowledges and thanks God profusely at the feet of Jesus. To recognise Christ, to acknowledge God and to thank him, that is what we are shown today, as a model for us all. 

The first stage of faith is humility, accepting the reality that we are not self-sufficient, invulnerable and so superior that we don’t need other people. As St Paul reminds us ‘what have you that you have not received?’ Suffering can help us become humble. 

The next is that God has power in the world and he showed it in Jesus Christ and his multiple miracles. We recognise that after creation, God did not retire, he did not say ‘Now the machine can go on running in the way it’s been set up’. No, God remains the Creator and is able to intervene one way or another. He is active in the world today through his Holy Spirit. That is why we pray for his help. Anyone who does not recognise this has a different idea of God. 

Isaac Newton, a founder of modern science, wrote that ‘the wonderful arrangement and harmony of the universe can only have come into being through an omniscient and all-powerful Being’, adding: ‘that is, and remains, my most important finding’. Newton’s perception went deeper, behind the marvels of the universe to recognise the overarching reality of God. 

The great artists also write of this. Oscar Wilde, towards the end of his imprisonment in Reading Gaol, expressed it thus: ‘ I tremble with pleasure when I think that on my leaving prison the laburnum and the lilac will be blooming in the gardens…..there is not a single colour hidden away in the chalice of a flower to which my nature does not answer. ….behind all this beauty, there is a spirit hidden …. And it is with this spirit that I desire to come into harmony’.

One can sleep-walk through life; staying on the surface of things. But the person of faith remains open to the reality of God, humbly acknowledges  Him in Christ and is grateful for His gifts. That is what it is to be “e-ducated”.
Christ told the leper ‘Your faith has saved you’. Our faith in Christ must bring us the whole way so as ‘to receive what no eye has seen and no ear has heard, what the mind of man cannot visualise; all that God has prepared for those that love him’.

Fr. Lino Moreira: Jesus was surely very pleased with what was being asked of him: “Increase our faith” (Lk 17:5). Such a request showed that the apostles understood that faith is a gift, and that it didn’t lie within their power to make it grow. That is why Jesus compares faith to a seed. Whoever receives a seed has neither created it nor endowed it with the potential to sprout and grow – that is the work of God alone. And Jesus goes on to explain that even a small amount of faith has the power to achieve the unimaginable: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you” (Lk 17:6).

When does anyone receive the gift of faith? Thomas Aquinas answers this question by saying: “The theological virtues [faith, hope and charity] are infused into the soul by the grace of God, and this infusion takes place primarily in Baptism (Summa Theologiae, Part III, Question 63, Article 1).” So, when we were baptised, God planted the seed of faith in our hearts. But faith, like any other seed, needs to be nurtured to grow – first the shoot, then the stalk, then the full grain.

The task of cultivating faith requires, first of all, constant and earnest prayer. We must make our own the plea once voiced by the apostles: “Increase our faith” (Lk 17:5). Indeed, at the conclusion of Morning Prayer, the Church makes this very petition every time she prays: “Increase in us, Lord, your gift of faith, so that the praise we offer you may ever yield its fruit from heaven” (Tuesday, Week IV). 

Yet simply uttering these or similar words is not enough unless they come from a humble heart. Therefore, Jesus speaks about humility in today’s gospel (cf. Lk 17:6-10). He typically illustrates his teaching with an example drawn from everyday life in his own time: a servant, he explains, after spending the day ploughing the field or tending the sheep, is told to prepare his master’s dinner and wait on him before attending to his own needs. The servant does all this without expecting any gratitude from his master, to whom he owes total availability and obedience.

In relation to God, we are in a similar situation. As God’s servants, we can never stand before him with a spirit of entitlement, as though he owed us something for whatever good works we believe we have performed in his name. God owes us nothing, but we owe him everything – for he is the source of all we have and all we are.

We live in a world that constantly urges us to seek rewards, claim our rights and demand recognition. But the gospel challenges such expectations and calls us to a radically different way of thinking. In speaking of our service to God, Jesus tells us that after we have done all that is commanded of us, we should say: “We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty” (Lk 17:10). It is in this humility – this realisation that we can never fully repay the debt of love we owe to God – that faith begins to grow.

Paradoxically, we are called to serve God without seeking recompense, so that he may be generous to us. God wants to lavish his many gifts upon us, and above all, he wishes to dwell within us. As Jesus said: ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him’ (Jn 14:23). This intimacy with the Father and the Son, through the work of the Holy Spirit, is not merely a promise for the future. It is a living reality in the present for those who faithfully seek to do God’s will without expecting anything in return.

Fr. Senan Furlong: In 1893, a young man destined to become a celebrated composer, heard a folk song that would leave a lasting impression on him. Something about its haunting melody captivated him and years later, he would compose five variations on its theme. The man was Ralph Vaughan Williams, and the folk song was Dives and Lazarus. In his later years, Vaughan Williams recalled that when he first encountered the song, he felt a deep sense of recognition: “Here is something, which I have known all my life, only I didn’t know it! …something entirely new, yet absolutely familiar.”

When we encounter the parables of Jesus, we often experience something similar but the other way around: absolutely familiar, yet entirely new. Today’s gospel parable, traditionally known as Dives and Lazarus, is no exception. It a story ever ancient and ever new, a vivid portrait of the divide between wealth and want. A rich man, traditionally called Dives (which mean “rich” in Latin), lives in luxury, dressed in fine clothes, dining lavishly, secured behind walls of privilege. But those walls do more than protect, they blind. They seal him off from the world’s pain and, over time, make him indifferent to it. Just beyond his gate lies Lazarus, a poor man, covered in sores, longing for scraps from the rich man’s table—someone the rich man must have spotted every day, and yet never truly saw.

Then both men die and the tables are turned. Lazarus is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham, a place of comfort and eternal peace. The rich man, however, finds himself in a place of torment, pleading for relief, for even a drop of water. God turns the world upside down: 

He casts down the might from their thrones and lifts up the lowly; He fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. 

Today’s Gospel parable leaves us with many questions. But, let us listen for just five, like the five variations of that haunting folk melody, Dives and Lazarus.

The first: What’s in a name? In all of Jesus’ parables, only one character is ever given a name, and it is Lazarus. Not the sower, not the good Samaritan, not even the father of the prodigal son. Only Lazarus. His name means: God has helped. He is named; he is not forgotten by God. The rich man remains nameless, defined, not by who he is, but by what he has. In the end, he has become no one, because he built his identity on things that do not last. Today’s Gospel reminds us that our identity does not come from possessions, status or success but from the One who knows us by name. “I have called you by your name,” declares the Lord, “and you are mine.”

The second: Who is at my gate?
There are “Lazaruses” at our gates every day—people we see, yet choose not to see. The ones we walk past, avoid or quietly ignore. Lazarus might be a stranger or maybe a member of my own family or my own community; he may sit next to me in class. Sometimes Lazarus isn’t even someone else but rather a part of myself that is wounded, neglected, waiting to be healed. To ask, “Who is at my gate?” is to begin to open our eyes. And when we see, we may open our hearts too and begin to love.

The third: What creates the chasm?
The great chasm between Lazarus and the rich man in the next life was carved out, day by day, in this life, through countless small acts of indifference and neglect. The rich man is not condemned for being rich. He is condemned because he didn’t care. And that, Jesus warns, is the true danger: not so much cruelty, but complacency; not so much hatred, but indifference. When we build chasms, we cut ourselves off—not just from others, but from God.

The fourth: What is the good news? The good news is: it is not too late. The Gospel always leaves room for repentance, for return, for mercy. God’s heart is never closed, but the call is urgent. This parable is no mere story: it is a warning. We are responsible not only for what we do, but for what we fail to do. Every time we ignore the Lazarus at our gate, we add another brick to the wall between ourselves and the kingdom of God. And yet, even then, God can still break through.

The fifth: What must we do?
At the end of the parable, we are invited to identify not just with the rich man, but with his five brothers. The rich man pleads with Abraham to send someone to warn them. “They have Moses and the prophets,” Abraham replies, “let them listen to them.” We too have Moses and the prophets, the word of God. And more than that, we have the One who has risen from the dead. We already have all we need. So let us pray for the grace to fight the good fight, and learn to see—to recognise the Lazarus at our gate not as a burden or a problem to fix, but as a person: someone with a name and a story and a place in God’s heart. 

Ralph Vaughan Williams took a simple folk tune and transformed it into his lyrical Five Variants of Dives and Lazarus. May we take this parable, and let it transform us: to open our eyes, soften our hearts, and change the way we live. And when we do, we may discover that the one waiting on the other side of the gate is Christ himself.

Fr. Henry O’Shea:

There sits a man

computer in hand

Counting the stars that shine.

Do not disturb,

he’s quite absurd,

His heart-strings on the bottom line.

He sits and he counts

then totals amounts;

He’s rich ‘cause he owns all those stars.

Oh, look! Now all the sky is blank

for the lights he did yank.

He put all his stars in the bank.

Wheeler-dealers have been with us since the human race began to exist. We can posh-up the reality by calling such people transactionalists, astute business-persons, even clever politicians, but that reality remains the same. 

Many commentators suggest that every generation re-writes history in accordance with its own needs, its biases, and indeed, its prejudices. The temptation to subject Sacred Scripture to the same kind of creative spin, is almost irresistible – and more irresistible when unconscious and even more insidious when deliberate.

Today’s gospel about the parable of the unjust steward and his cynical boss is a prime target for such creativity. Can Our Lord really be not only praising, but encouraging, canny business acumen? Can Our Lord be hijacked as an early enthusiast, even an apologist, for ruthless, calculating, head-of the-pack capitalism? Clearly not.

Most biblical scholars agree that every parable has one main point or thrust. The main point in today’s parable is contained in the final verse: ‘You cannot be the slave both of God or of money’. Jesus does indeed praise the unjust steward for his foresight and for his ability to provide for possible dismissal from his job. But, as so often in his reported speech, Jesus uses irony in this discourse. Remember, we are told that Jesus’ audience here includes Pharisees and other currently beautiful people from the power-elite. Most parables have a sting in the tail. 

In fact, Jesus is saying that while foresight and self-securing planning may be fine- or at least morally neutral – in themselves, of greater importance are the areas, or is the area, in which we, in which I, exercise this foresight and planning. In other words, Jesus asks to make up our minds and hearts, asks us to answer the question, ‘Is God your God, or is money, or some other idol, your actual God?’ To where or to what does my answer to this question lead and leave me? Where is my treasure and so, where is my heart?

The prophet, Amos, whom we heard in today’s first reading, is one of the great ranters of the Old Testament. The favourite targets of his rants were – and still are – the powerful, rich, exploitative, take-all, greed-is-good, minority in any society. And we are daily aware of the mind-blowing and ever-increasing gap between this power-minority, or these power-minorities, and the rest of humanity. It was ever so, locally, nationally and internationally, but is now increasingly the case: the bully-boys and bully-girls rule OK. The winners and winneresses still take all.

In today’s second reading, Paul writing to Timothy, seems to be saying that the Christian should pray up and shut up, ‘…so that we may be able to live religious and reverent lives in peace and quiet.’ And it is true that at different times in its history, the Church has chosen what might be termed a cosy inner emigration – what might be called an I’m-allright-Jack-and-Jill syndrome. Let’s not rock the boat. That might jeopardise what we have. Above all, our power.

But, if there is a sting in the tail of today’s parable, there is also a sting in Paul’s letter. 

Our acknowledgement and proclamation that there is only one God, one mediator and saviour, his Son Jesus Christ, exposes us to the same sacrifices that this mediator suffered and offered. The consequences of adherence to the truth and its proclamation, however loudly, however discreetly, can and does range from societal ridicule, rejection, discrimination and even to death itself. Look at our own social-media-  messed-up society. Most of us, I, most of the time, settle, consciously or unconsciously, for the fudge of a comfortable mediocrity. Many of us, I,  do not even have the generosity or courage to be really good or the temerity and courage to be really bad.     

They are after the gold…

in their face it shows…

move where the wind blows…

some play for the stealer…

WHEELER AND DEALER

Fr. William Fennelly: In today’s gospel Jesus says, “Now is the judgement of this world; now the ruler of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people unto myself”. In our society, the cross is a ubiquitous symbol. It pops us everywhere. Pious tattooed soccer players repeatedly bless themselves with the cross taking before penalties. It is even a pretty on trend fashion statement whether you are Kim Kardasian or Lady Gaga. One only has to look in the pages of trendy fashion magazines or go to any influencer site to see elaborate “cross inspired jewelry” hanging from the neck, ears, wrists and God knows where else on both male and female models.

The notion that our society is all “crossed up” may or may not be a good thing. Indeed the fact that it is a cross, and not a symbol of another religion that is popping up all over tells us that some Christian memory is still very active in the contemporary subconscious. It certainly doesn’t make us a “Christian nation,” but perhaps it makes us a “Christ haunted” nation. Not sure of what the faith is really about, not sure who Jesus really is, but nonetheless fascinated by some of the concepts of the Christian religion.

In terms of name recognition Jesus is up there with Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce, yet lots know of Jesus but don’t know Jesus. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to know him, to lift high the Holy Cross. The way to lift high the cross is not to rent cranes and to hoist up giant crosses in the public square. The way to lift high the cross to best effect is for each Christian to lift high up the cross in their daily life. As we seek to lift up the cross, we should try to lift it up as Jesus did. The second reading from Philippians makes it clear what lifted up truly means: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness, and being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death–even death on a cross…” (Philippians 2:5-8)

The whole ministry of Jesus, and thus the whole ministry of the church is in the shape of the cross. “Taking up the cross” is one of the most prevalent images in scripture and the tradition for walking in the way of faith and following Jesus. Jesus said that those who want to be his followers were to take up the cross and follow him. Those who seek to save their lives would lose them, but those willing to lose their lives would find them.

Forty days ago we celebrated the Feast of the Transfiguration of Jesus. That feast is strategically placed forty days distant from today’s feast, the Exaltation of the  Cross. The Transfiguration was a moment in some of the disciple’s lives to help them cope with what was coming, to help them deal with the inevitable, to help them find hope when all would seem lost. The Transfiguration was a taste of God’s glory to help them swallow the bitter pill of God’s suffering. At the end of that Transfiguration experience, where so much was going on, everything gleaming with a dazzling white, a cloud that enfolded him with Moses and Elijah, a heavenly voice  could be heard, it came down to one thing, “Jesus alone with them.” It was not just about the overwhelming experience of glory, but it was mostly about what that experience was trying to create within them, to be with Jesus alone. To cling to him more readily, more trustingly, as if everything depended on it. And everything did.

As the cross drew nearer, Jesus knew this aloneness. In the Garden of Gethsemane he felt the pangs of being alone as Apostles slept. Imprisoned, he knew the separation from family and friends, and he felt alone in the presence of Pilate and the crowds before him as they chanted, “Crucify him.” He carried the cross alone, for the most part until Simon helped for a moment. And on his cross, he hung alone. In Matthew, Mark, and Luke’s Gospels he felt alone or abandoned by his Father, abandoned even, in his last hours. In a tomb he was placed, and as a rock was rolled in front of it, he was left all alone. But was he? Was Jesus all alone? The saints throughout the ages would say, “No, he was not alone.”

For many, the church is a foreign concept. Church buildings are curious and much visited by tourists but they remain foreign territory. The central purpose of the church is to lift up the cross. To let the light of Christ’s life, death and resurrection shine into the world. The light shines as the church and each Christian walks the way of the cross in the world. The light shines as we show others that we are his disciples. The light shines as when we do not hide it under a basket but let it shine forth in lives of love and humble service. On this day dedicated to the Holy Cross, let us recall the cross that was traced upon us in baptism. The sign under which we live and move and have our being. Let us lift up the cross before others by leading Christian lives.

Fr. Luke Macnamara: In today’s Gospel, we hear that Jesus is surrounded by a great crowd—not only from Judea and Jerusalem, but even from the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon. These were Gentile territories. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus himself never steps outside Israel; that will only happen later in the Acts of the Apostles. But notice this: the nations are already coming to him. Their presence signals something new—something long foretold by the prophets—that the kingdom of God is breaking in, that the end times have begun.

Then Jesus turns, not to the crowd, but to his disciples. He fixes his eyes on them. The beatitudes are not general slogans; they are words spoken to those who already follow him, those who have chosen relationship with him. And what does he tell them? “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Notice the tense: not will be, but is. The kingdom is already here, present in Jesus himself.

The other beatitudes point to transformation: hunger turned to satisfaction, tears turned to joy, rejection turned to honour. But all of this begins with the presence of Christ. He himself is the kingdom among us.

St. Paul, writing to the Colossians, explains how this transformation takes root in us: by sharing in Christ’s death and resurrection. We have stripped off the old self with its ways of sin and death, and we have put on the new self, alive in the image of the Creator. In Christ, barriers of race, class, wealth, or status fall away. He brings unity and freedom wherever he is truly welcomed.

And so the challenge for us today is this: will we allow Christ to work through our poverty, our weakness, and our limitations? If we do, we will find ourselves blessed—not by escaping suffering, but by discovering his kingdom in the midst of it. And once Christ is alive in us, his presence cannot be hidden. It will shine out. It will transform others.

Let us pray, then, that Christ may so transform us that our very lives become a living homily—a proclamation of his resurrection, his kingdom, and his power to make all things new.

Fr. Denis Hooper: There are lots of great stories through the ages of people gate-crashing events. Some people have a lot of neck – and the confidence to convince security officers and others that they are guests at various functions and events – when they are no such thing. They dress impeccably and hold themselves with such confidence that they have you fooled.  There are some well-known stories of people gate-crashing royal weddings, presidential inauguration balls, papal audiences – you name it.

Some years ago our Abbot Brendan was in Rome attending an audience with the late Pope Francis. While they were waiting for the Papal audience they noticed an Abbot that none of them seemed to recognise. Each of the Abbots thought that he must be a new Abbot. Why would he be there unless he was an Abbot?

Well the group of Abbots were taken into the Papal reception rooms to meet the Pope. As quick as lightening the stranger Abbot disappeared. Abbot Brendan out of the corner of his eye spotted a Swiss Army Guard push the impersonator through a hidden panel in a wall which closed behind him immediately. It was as if nothing had happened. Needless to say, they never saw that Abbot again.

Maybe you have seen the video of the Royal Variety Performance where the King and Queen are sitting in the Royal Box at the Royal Albert Theatre. It was just before the performance started and the camera was trained on the Royal Box. 

Then a door opens behind the King and Queen and into the Royal Box enters an overly dressed and glamourous lady. The “lady” is Dame Edna Everidge – need I say anymore! Dame Edna sits down right beside the Royal couple and starts to make herself comfortable.

The King and Queen are amused this time.

Then the door behind the Royal Box opens and a suited man quietly enters and whispers something into Dame Edna’s ear. She seems surprised and the audience assumes – Dame Edna Everidge – has been told to vacate the Royal Box. For once it seems Dame Edna has received her cummupence.

Dame Edna stands up, turns to the Queen and says: “Oh, they’ve found me a better seat”.

Let’s face it, every formal function you attend nowadays has placenames at the tables and maps of where the tables are situated. The names of some table maps can be quite amusing. I was at a wedding where one table was called “The Glen Stallions”; my table was names “Jurassic Park”! 

There is slim to no chance nowadays that you will ever go to the wrong table and embarrass yourself by being told you are not supposed to be there.

In the time of Jesus, there was no paper and so, no placenames or table maps. Although if there was paper it would have been amusing to know what names they might have given to their tables. 

You get the message of today’s Gospel: it is about humility, generosity and the reversal of worldly values.

I don’t know if any of you watched the meteor storm that was clearly visible in our skies a couple of weeks ago. It got me thinking about the incomprehensible vastness of the universe.

Trying to contemplate the universe reminds us of our smallness in it and calls us to live not with arrogance but with reverence, respect and responsibility for the world we live in.

The universe is a vast web of relationships – galaxies, stars, planets, ecosystems and living beings – all interdependent.

Do you know that there are two billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy and that there are two trillion galaxies in the universe. Here is a fact that will amaze you: there are more stars in the Universe than grains of sand on earth.

The Universe gives without expectation.

The banquet Jesus describes can be seen as a metaphor of the universal feast of existence. The invitation is extended not just to the powerful but to all creation – echoing how the universe sustains even the smallest particles of life.

Just as the Universe does not revolve around one individual, we are called to live our lives knowing that we are not at the centre of the universe.

The Creator of the Universe is generous to us – He gives us a life-giving pattern. 

True greatness is measured not by power or status but by our willingness to serve, echoing the humility we need to understand the incredible beauty we see every time we cast our eyes to the sky.

And on that note I think it is time for me to move on and so: “beam me up Scotty”

 

Fr. Henry O’Shea:

My eyes are spent with weeping; my stomach churns; 

my bile is poured out to the ground 

because of the destruction of the daughter of my people, 

because infants and babies faint in the streets of the city. Lamentations 2:11

Even people who are not well versed in Scripture, are aware that the prophet Jeremiah was not a fun person. And, indeed, in Jewish tradition he is called the ‘Weeping Prophet’ – as evidenced by our opening quotation from the book of Lamentations, which some scholars believe was also written by Jeremiah.. 

In today’s first reading we hear of Jeremiah being literally stuck in the mud. Having offended the political and military establishment, he is thrown into a drained cistern to wallow in the slime. But, so-called stick-in-the-muds are not always wrong. 

Interesting how nothing changes under the sun. It seems to be a universal and eternal practice that those who point out uncomfortable truths or prospects or those who dispute currently unfashionable opinions are sidelined, are ‘othered’, sometimes even eliminated. Think of our media with their various agendas and distortions. Think of the varied understandings and uses of the terms ‘facts’, ‘true facts’, ‘alternative facts’. Fake news.  

Jeremiah’s king, Zedekiah, is not the first political, religious or, indeed, family leader to claim helplessness. Claiming helplessness while hanging on until they recognise what is of greater advantage to themselves and seize the opportunity. 

Those who prefer their Jesus to be gentle, meek, mild, amenable, undemanding, may be unsettled by the Jesus of today’s gospel. He makes it very clear that he has not come to bring peace on earth but, rather, fire and division. Does this mean that he favours war? Does this mean that he dismisses peace? The answer is no on both counts – even if many times in the last two millennia, Christians have used this gospel passage to justify war, persecution, exploitation and exclusion.

The sword that Jesus brings is the sword of his living word that, we are told in the Letter to the Hebrews, is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword. It penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart. The warfare Jesus is talking about is a battle for minds and hearts, a battle within minds and hearts. And, as Jesus notes, that battle can even be within families. Within and between one’s own mind and heart.

Jesus has little time for a peace that is the comfortable, or better, the ‘comfy’ peace of material security, well-regulated predictability with the occasional thrill thrown in to reassure ourselves that we have what is often a self-deceiving freedom. Bad things happen, but happen, we pray O Lord, to other people and if possible in other far-away places. We all have our Munichs and Alaskas. We all have our Gazas and our Omaghs.

The author of today’s second reading provides a perspective, that is in and beyond time, but also now and the future, for those singed by the fire of Christ. Uncompromisingly, we are told that our only true horizon exists and consists in Jesus, who leads us in our faith and brings it to perfection. Jesus has gone before us and stays with us on and in this focus on finality. He has gone before us in the battle for minds and hearts by enduing the cross. Enduring the cross for a joy that was still in the future. He stays with us encouraging and supporting us, making everything possible for us, in our battle, sometimes fierce, sometimes half-hearted, our battle with the distractions, the waverings, the false promises of sin. 

In Chapter 4 of his Rule, St Benedict admonishes monks not to make a false peace. Jesus goes before us and stays with us in our efforts not to settle for mindless, self-centered, imagined peace. 

The same book of Lamentations with which we began also tells:    

Because of the loving devotion of the Lord 

       we are not consumed,

for His mercies never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is his faithfulness!

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in Him.”

      The Lord is good to those who wait for Him,

to the soul who seeks Him. Lamentations 3:22-26

Fr. John O’Callaghan: “Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.” 

There are several feasts in the Church’s year where the Blessed Virgin Mary features greatly: like the Annunciation of the Lord (on 25th March); the Nativity of Jesus Christ (nine months later) and today’s feast of Mary’s Assumption into heaven. The foundation of them all, their sine qua non, is what Elizabeth said in today’s gospel: “Blessed is she that believed!” That belief allowed the conception of Christ and the whole sequel.

Belief was her role in what was ultimately the saving work of Christ. Mary was there as ‘the servant of the Lord’, to serve his project. Belief allowed her “to concieve first of all in her heart, before even in her womb,” as St Augustine said. And she continued to believe through the pregnancy, the birth, and Jesus’ youth, during the ups and downs of his mission and, against all the odds, at his crucifixion and into the mystery of his resurrection. She, his perfect disciple, has that to teach us, to believe in God carrying out, fulfilling, his mysterious plan throughout the vicissitudes of life so that, in the end, all may be well. Mary’s assumption into glory, which we celebrate today, is God’s work come full circle for her.

Time and eternity coincide in Mary. Her life, like that of all humanity, is evoked dramatically in our first reading, from the Apocalypse: ‘A woman in labour, crying out in the pangs of birth;….a huge red dragon with seven heads and ten horns – it stopped in front of the woman as she was having the child, so that he could eat it as soon as it was born from its mother’. This scene recalls that scene in the Garden of Eden where Eve, mother of us all, is promised that childbirth would occur in pain. The dragon which evokes Satan, sometimes called the devil, the serpent, represents the more or less explicit presence and power of evil, hostility to God and to his people. And the biblical author may well intend us to also perceive in the woman, Mary, the new Eve, who is giving birth to the Messiah, surrounded by hostile powers, and the imperial power of Rome. 

It is into such an ambiguous world of good and evil that the Messiah was to be born and in which Mary was to make her pilgrim way, and we ours. As her path must have challenged and shaped her faith, so does our experience challenge and, hopefully, mature our faith. Like her, we must rise to the challenge. 

In our own times the sheer monstruous suffering in the world tests our faith. It alone seems to prove there is no God. Alternatively we can take the matter of God’s invisibility. For those able to see with the eyes of faith, that is his very greatness; but for anyone who cannot or will not make the leap, it makes God somehow refutable. Faith is always under threat but it is also our individual struggle with ourselves, and with God. It is not easy, and faith is not a light that scatters all our darkness; it is a lamp which guides our steps in the night and suffices for the journey.

We know that personal suffering cannot be eliminated, yet suffering can assume a meaning, can be an act of love, and an entrustment into the hands of God who does not abandon us. To those who suffer God’s response is his accompanying presence; he shares our path. Even death is illumined and can be experienced as the ultimate call to faith. ‘Come!’ is spoken by the Father, to whom we can abandon ourselves in the confidence that he will keep us steadfast even in our final passage. 

Mary’s true greatness is to be found in that enduring trust in God, holding faith through the profound and perplexing challenges of her life. Her belief that the scriptures were being fulfilled called for radical renewal, evolution of her faith, deepening of it and she upheld it right to the end, to the cross itself. She is the perfect icon of faith. She exemplifies the long history of faith of the Old Testament, with its account of so many faithful  women. So Mary is our inspiration throughout the vicissitudes of life, both individually and collectively as the Christian people of God. 

And a life beyond this one, to which she has gone, is part of the Christian way of looking at things. She is one who put her trust in God and now she is gone to God, to glory. May she help us to entrust ourselves fully to Him, believe in his love,  especially in times of difficulty,  until the dawn of the undying day which is Christ himself!