Author: Simon Sleeman

Abbot  Columba Mc Cann: Here’s a thought I came across on the internet a few days ago:  “One day you are going to meet someone in your life, that is going to change everything. They are going to change the way you think about the world, the way you view yourself, and the way you look at everyone else around you.”

Certainly for the woman at the well, to meet Jesus was a life-changing event. Here she is, going to collect water at the well in the middle of the day.  This Jewish stranger probably realises that something is wrong.  The heat of midday is not the time for trudging around carrying water; the women do that in the evening.  Does he realise that she is something of an outcast in her own village?  He seems to speak in riddles, promising her living water that will well up to eternal life.  What on earth does he mean?  By the end of the story we might have a clue.  

In the full story, which we don’t hear today, Jesus gently probes the question of her family life, and it turns out that she has been divorced four times, and the man she is now living with is not her husband.  Her life has not gone according to plan.  She has been rejected multiple times.  It’s not surprising that she has given up on marriage.  She has broken the rules, rules which Jesus himself underlined elsewhere about fidelity in marriage, even to the consternation of his disciples.  She has broken principles that Jesus himself believes are important.

But look at his response:  not a word of blame or condemnation.  It appears that he knows her through and through.  He knows what it is like to be her. Far from condemning her, he starts to speak about himself.  He reveals that he in fact is the long-awaited Messiah.  In St John’s gospel, the first person to whom Jesus reveals his identity in this way is this adulterous Samaritan woman.  He sees all that has gone wrong but, as Messiah, he loves her.  This is the living water that lasts for ever.  It’s his love.  Another name for this is the Holy Spirit.

St Paul speaks eloquently of it:  Neither death nor life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height, or depth, or any created thing can come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus Our Lord.

For this woman the fact that she is a Samaritan and he a Jew, supposed to be sworn enemies over the centuries, will not get in the way of that love; the fact that her family life is way off the normal bounds of morality will not get in the way of that love; if anything it draws his love closer.  Many men have rejected her.  Jesus doesn’t.  His love is like living water, and nothing will get in the way of it, including societal norms.

What might it be like for any of us to be in touch with that love and living from it?  We could draw on a beautiful poetic image from the Old Testament;  it’s like a tree planted near the water’s edge, that thrusts its roots down to where it is always moist.   This tree has no worries when the weather gets hot and dry, with the soil dusty and barren; it is continually watered deep down, and will bear fruit in due course.  

The last book of the Bible, again writing in poetic terms, sees this flow of love, this river of life, flowing from the throne of God for all eternity, with amazing trees planted on either side, bearing fruit every single month, and with leaves that are healing and medicinal. 

I suggest that all of us thirst for something like that.  We don’t need to wait until the next life to begin to experience it. As we come to the altar table today already we can open our hands, open our mouths and say, like the Samaritan woman, ‘Sir, please give me this living water.’ And he will not refuse anyone who comes to him.

Fr. Fintan Lyons: Many years ago in a north Co. Dublin fairly rural parish, the attendance at Mass one St Patrick’s Day was noticeably reduced, and was commented on by parishioners –  in a village anything different tended to be noticed. We realised soon enough that it was because some had gone off early to the parade in Dublin city, with consequences for our local observance of a religious feast – a low mass in Latin with some Patrician hymns in Irish, and little else to honour our Patron Saint.  As one with pastoral responsibility, I wondered what effects this development could have on parish life; the new black and white televised parade was opening a wider world to us, one where the religious ethos would have to find its place.

It seemed a bit sudden, but the fact was that early 1960s Ireland was struggling to build up its economy, so a parade with colourful floats and an emphasis on industry had become prominent –  compared certainly with the Free State’s observance of the day less than three decades earlier –  a military parade, bands playing Patrician hymns, and ending with Mass in Latin, attended by government ministers. 

Change the scene to today’s Ireland and the Saint Patrick’s Day Festival now shaped by the mid-nineties government official plan ‘to project, internationally, an accurate image of Ireland as a creative, professional and sophisticated country with wide appeal.’   

How do faithful members of the little flock – no longer the great people, honour our patron saint in a mixed Christian and secular society, where for many the word Saint may not have meaning, traditional moral norms are disregarded and the state scrambles to deal with ever-multiplying social problems? A country of diverse ethnicities, a prominent consumer culture, social media influencers affecting attitudes and behaviours? And  a society where icons are esteemed and imitated.

We can learn this, at least, from the way society functions: the importance of icons. Champions in so many sports, big names in music and films, in endurance feats, are hero-worshipped, inspiring, and imitated by, the young and young adults, and rightly so.

Today, St Patrick, so many centuries after his time, could be an icon, as he actually became, several centuries after his death, when so much was written about him and devotion spread in Ireland and western Europe. 

He  had been called by God to build up the church in Ireland; we can call on him to re-build the church in our day. It’s just that he needs to become known accurately as the hero he was, a person worthy of being an icon for today’s generation, whether Gen Z or Alpha or whatever people are. 

Authenticity has an appeal for a generation aware that some who seemed icons have turned out to be very flawed, a generation that has learned not to be naïve, and values authenticity. And authenticity is what is found in Patrick’s honest, humble account of himself in his autobiographical Confession, self-deprecating, yet a revealing account of a spiritual champion.

It’s a short work, the length of one chapter of a typical modern novel. Part of its charm for those who believe is the great number of allusions rather than direct quotations from Scripture that have a pleasing resonance for anyone reasonably familiar with Scripture. For others, at least quite an amazing story. For someone reared in the West of Ireland, one of the comparisons or similes he uses has a particular and deeply spiritual resonance. 

I have a clear childhood memory of fields with stones lying on the muddy ground from cattle crowding against loose-stone walls. One sentence in paragraph 12 of the Confession sums up Patrick’s humility, his calling and his spiritual greatness: 

‘I know for certain, that I was like a stone lying  … in the mire. Then he who is powerful came and in his mercy pulled me out, and lifted me up and placed me on the very top of the wall.’

He continues with a sentence that could sum up his entire story:

‘That is why I must shout aloud in return to the Lord for such great good deeds of his, here and now and forever, which the human mind cannot measure.’

For people today, and especially the young, who find faith and a commitment to be followers of Christ, a step too far, knowing the story of Patrick can make him their icon. May it be so. He says early in his story that as a youth he ignored God and his commandments. But in the hardship, the loneliness, of captivity he came to himself and began to look to God for help. ‘There  I sought him, and there I found him’. There can be a lot of loneliness, a lack of meaning in a way of life of the young today that does not satisfy.

Patrick went through all that and found that God came to his rescue. Towards the end of his life, he prayed that some would come across his writing and learn from him,’ a sinner and unlearned’, how great God’s gift to him had been. Those who come across his story today can also learn how great God’s gift can be to those who are open to receive it.  

The one who goes in the way which Christ has gone, Is much more sure to meet with him, than oneWho travels by-ways:
Perhaps my God, though he be far ahead, May turn and take me by the hand, And more: May banish my decays.

Fr. Henry O’Shea: No matter what we read, whether it be a novel, an article in a newspaper or online, a poem, a catalogue, a school text-book, we always bring our personal baggage and our hang-ups, to that reading. We bring the baggage of our own prejudices, of our own preconceptions, of our understandings and misunderstandings and the baggage of our expectations. The same can be said about what we choose to call up and watch and listen to on our smartphones, iPads, or whatever media we happen to be hooked on. 

The Bible, Sacred Scrupture, is no exception to this rule of bringing our baggage. We can read the Bible simply as literature. We can read it for personal instruction or spiritual benefit. As with any book, we can start on page one with the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament and read right through to the Book of Revelation at the end of the New Testament. And as we read, we discover that the Bible is made up of writings of many different types, from history to law-making to religious preaching, poetry and much more.

In the liturgy of the Mass, we use a book called the Lectionary.  This is a selection of readings from the Old and New Testaments interspersed with chants, nearly always from the Psalms, which are a book of 150 songs or poems from the Old Testament. Then there are verses used as acclamations such as, for example, those before the Gospel. 

In compiling the Lectionary and offering it to us, the Church approaches the text with its own baggage, as we mentioned above. At Mass, the texts we read are always chosen in order to be in some way related to the mystery of Christ. 

Here, the word mystery does not mean a detective mystery or something we cannot understand. Here, mystery means a showing or presentation of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. And, from that showing, there necessarily follow the effects on us and the demands made on us by this life, death and resurrection. As with any text, there is always a danger that speaking about the liturgical readings can become a literary or scholarly exercise, a playing with words, or a forced effort to squeeze some practical moral message out of them. We can lose sight of the fact that in all the readings, it is Jesus, himself the Word of God in flesh and bone, who is speaking the words of life, the words of his life and our lives, to us.

Today’s readings for the first Sunday in Lent are typical of this linking of all three readings to Christ. In one way or another, they deal with time, with history, with life, with death, with faith. And they deal with all of these as seen through the lens or prism of the mystery of Christ. They deal with the past, with the present and with the future.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus, having been baptised in the Jordan, spends forty days in the desert and then, briefly on the parapet of the temple in Jerusalem, being tempted by Satan.  Jesus is being prepared for entry into the land of his mission. That is, Jesus is being prepared for his proclamation of the good news from God. Jesus is being prepared for a journey that will end up with his Crucifixion and Resurrection.

 It is as if Jesus is repeating the wanderings of the people of Israel for forty years in the desert before they entered the promised land. Today’s first reading, from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy, gives a short summary of this journey, a journey here recalled in a context of liturgical, cultic or worshipping thanksgiving for its reality and for its outcome. 

During the forty days of preparation, Jesus is presented as rejecting all the allures, all the seductions of earthly power – even of psychic-magical power. He refuses to turn stones into bread saying, ‘People do not live on bread alone’. He asserts that there is more to life than temporary gratification of physical and psychological needs. He asserts that there is more to life than owning and controlling billions of dollars, euros, yens, yuans or pounds and the political hard power that these can buy. Jesus makes it clear that there is more to life than power to dominate and power to exploit earthly kingdoms, to establish colonies of all kinds, including colonies in our minds. If we need any proof of the dangers and disasters of such a mind-set, we need only look at what is happening all over the world as we speak. 

Today we are invited to set out, accompanied by Jesus and in the company of our tribe of sisters and brothers, on our own forty-day journey to the reality of Easter. Now, we are marching as the new Israel, the new universal people of God. We call this journey Lent, which is an old Anglo-Saxon word for the season of Spring, an idea that contains its own promise. In Latin and in many other languages the season is simply known as the Forty Days.  

Today’s second reading, from the letter of St Paul to the Romans, pulls all three readings of the Mass together. St Paul explains that in Jesus all of our journeys are given a meaning, given a past, given a present and given a future. St Paul tells us that all of us are and can be saved – if we accept and welcome Christ’s invitation and confess with our lips and believe in our hearts – that is, believe in the very core of our being –  if we believe that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead. And in doing so God raised, raises and will raise us, potentially and really, with Christ. 

Of course, at some stage in our physical, bodily, lives, we die and it is foolish to deny this, but believing in our hearts, and proclaiming with our lips, that Jesus is Lord, we enter into the pledge of eternal life. This is a pledge that is made good in the resurrection of that same Jesus, the  Christ. 

But this is not magic, not a conjuring-trick. This is not an automatic, mechanical, exercise. This is not a mere box-ticking of a catalogue of our ascetical and spiritual gymnastics or a list of our good deeds, of givings-up, givings-in and givings-over. 

Our hearts and minds need to participate fully, to expand during the forty years of the Chosen People’s wanderings which can serve an image of our earthly lives. We need consciously to make our own the new life offered and made possible for us at and by our Baptism. This involves right belief and right behaviour. It involves discovering our real, redeemed, selves. It involves setting out at once on the forty-day journey – or the many forty-day journeys – to which Jesus invites us when he tells us in today’s Gospel, ‘You must worship the Lord you God and serve him alone.’               

Yet Lord instruct me to improve my fast. By starving sin and taking such repast, As may my faults control: That I may revel at my door, Not in my parlour, but banqueting the poor. And among those poor, my soul.

 

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Fr. Anthony Keane. In today’s Gospel from Luke chapter 6, dearest Brothers and Sisters, we see Our Loving Lord  trying to teach us the ineffable way of Life in a series of sketches and brush strokes with a speed and vitality which matches the urgency of the task.

For Christ is the Wisdom of creation, Logos and Sophia,  quicker to move than any motion, pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty, mirror of God’s active power and image of His goodness.  She is unchanging, she renews the world, and, generation after generation, passing into holy souls, makes them into God’s friends and prophets.

The time is indeed short: let us not waste it then with misery and servility.  For we are stars.  Let us then allow that divinity within us shine out with that joy we were made with at the beginning of our creation. By God’s grace let us allow the joy of our God-given, elementary, lapidary  existence shine. By God’s grace we are stars.     It is of us that the prophet Baruch speaks:                                                God sends the light and it goes, He recalls it and trembling it obeys,  the stars shine joyfully at their posts; when He calls them they answer ‘Here we are’;  they shine to delight their Creator.

Fr. John O’Callagahan. “Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you! Pray for them, be compassionate, as your Father is compassionate!” This is counter-cultural to say the least and questionnably possible at all, especially when the wrongs go on and on, or where there is deep injustice.  We can all think of examples, harrowing ones that we mightn’t even want to name. It is these injustices, and the suffering they entail, which are the topic of Jesus’ words today. 

There is a variety of possible responses, from ‘burying the anger’ and perhaps letting it seethe under the surface of our lives; to retaliating in a more or less thought out fashion; to at least in some cases reporting it to the police; not a bad option, as it might at least prevent other people from getting hurt. But what do these responses produce? Among other things more human fall-out, private humiliations going public, a cycle of retaliation, perhaps even prison. It might deliver what some people want: revenge, a certain pleasure in seeing the offender suffer. 

In the Old Testament, in the story of Adam and Eve, the eldest son Cain killed his brother Abel; then further down the family tree, the young Lamech declared, and I quote, ‘sevenfold vengeance for Cain, but seventy times seven for Lamech!’ Things went, literally, to hell! With time the Old Testament prophets would try and limit the ever expanding circle of violence and reduce it to a simple tit-for-tat retaliation: ‘you take my eye out, I’ll take one of yours out, only one!’. It was rough justice but at least it didn’t increase the damage by, for instance, a multiple of seven. 

When Christ came he turned the practice of retribution on its head and called us to forgive, seventy times seven times. He came to bring something much more than retaliation,  and more than judgement, something that replaces the impotence of legalism. 

In the Our Father he explicitly taught us to pray ‘forgive us this day our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us’. Let us be careful to understand this properly: it is not because I forgive people who have offended me that God forgives me. No, it is because God forgives me my offences, and freely establishes and restores my relationship with him, that I in my turn can forgive others. The more we recognise our own faults and offences the easier it is to forgive others. It is when we recognise ourselves as in daily receipt of God’s love (in whatever form) that we are able, impelled and even relieved, to forgive others. We ‘pass on’ the generosity we receive, even seventy times seven times. 

It seems to me that forgiveness is a special gift of Christians to the world. The reality of ‘perpetual retribution’ is not restricted to ancient times; hell can be found today in places where there is no forgiveness. And neither Jews nor  Muslims preach that God is love nor demand such a practice of forgiveness among themselves. But Christians are called to overcome revenge with forgiveness, by passing on the love we receive from God. It may be easier to relate to each other simply in terms of rights and duties, keeping up a steady equilibrium, calculated friendship, but that is not the Christian way.  Let anyone who goes against love and forgiveness, against Christian compassion, not dare to say that he or she has been born of God. And by forgiveness we can also show the world something true about God, and to what dignity he has called us. For this let us pray for the help of the Holy Spirit!

 

Fr. Simon Sleeman.  They say, writing a sermon is like building a chicken coop in a high wind – you grab any flying board and nail it down… quick. This week I grabbed a few boards.

The first – from Mass last Sunday – where we prayed that, “our lives would joyfully bear fruit”. That was the last prayer we said before leaving the church.  Our lives bearing fruit – joyfully. I wondered at that  – still bearing fruit when we are old, still full of sap still green. A possibility.

The prophet Jeremiah, the second board, told me how I might do that – live fruitfully, joyfully but also how I might fail.Jeremiah was a big man, he centres an epoch – that big – he was outspoken, fearless – poor, he mourned (he was the weeping prophet) he was hated, a walking beatitude, he never flinched from setting the human agenda – a life well lived, bearing fruit.

‘Cursed are those’ he barks,  ‘who trust in humans’, who think they can make it on their own – gratifying their every desire.This cursing wasn’t mere profanity – cursing the car that won’t start or the person who cut in front of you – cursing was noble, religious, powered speech. The cursed…rootless, tumbleweed in the desert, blown around by every whim or breeze, fad or fashion. Fruitless.

A few years, wandering on our own, blown about in the desert, a few years of affluence and abundance – anxiety flares, depression soars, suicides…rootless, joyless, fruitless..Rootless… I accumulate – just one click, just one clip, just one sip  – another…. pair of shoes, another book – so much paraphernalia needed to anchor me. The serpent cursed, crawling on its belly.

Jeremiah  mellows and says… aloud … ‘Blessed’ are those who trust in God – again blessing, like cursing, wasn’t just some form of gentle encouragement – the blessed, were strong trees, deep rooted – fruit bearing.

Jeremiah rings out in our ears this morning and Jesus too, telling us, we can climb out of the ocean of self, onto dry ground, put down roots and bear fruit.   

‘Don’t wander off’  they plead, opting to live in the ocean of self, worshipping the idols your culture wants you to do, nay, needs you to do. If you do,  you will soon fatigue and need artificial aids to keep afloat- pieces of drift wood, life jackets.

Can we still ourselves and hear their urgent, now seemingly long distance call, amidst the noise, the bustle, the news. As we count and compile – our spirits shrivel – Jeremiah calls, cries, clamours –  turn, repent. Turn to the truth. Trust in God, that is the truth.

There is more than the our survival at risk here; the survival of our planet is at stake, the world hanging by a thread, for the ‘cursed’ endanger the world’s health and its sanity.

So rootage is what I am after – rootage as I pray, rootage as I work, shop, change a tyre, rootage as I get sick, have surgery and convalesce, rootage as I accumulate birthdays and anniversaries. God the great continent of reality in which I live and to whom I must answer.  It is with God we must deal if we are to become human, living fruitful joy-filled lives.

Rooted in God, in Christ, I rise from the dead – Rooted in Christ, ‘I put down roots and I put out leaves’. Amen

Fr. Luke MacNamara. Today we commemorate St Brigid, one of Ireland’s three principal patrons. Here in Munster, our St Ita, is often called the Brigid of Munster, which is an invitation to compare these two women. 

Brigid came from Faughan in Louth and founded a monastery, at Kildare. Ita came from Waterford and founded her monastery at Killeedy. When the King of Leinster refused to give Brigid land for her monastery, she asked for as much as her cloak would cover, and the king agreed. When Brigid lay down the cloak 4 sisters each took a corner and ran, with the cloak extending in every direction to cover all of Leinster. The king then agreed to give her the best land in Kildare. Somewhat differently, the King of Munster offered Ita all the best land in Limerick but she would only accept four acres by a small river at Kileedy.

The prayer of both Brigid and Ita was profoundly Trinitarian. They repeatedly invoked the Trinity in their daily prayers and especially when difficult situations arose. The prayer of St Paul in the letter to the Ephesians, they would have made their own: 

“This is what I pray, kneeling before the Father: May the Father give you the power through his Spirit for your hidden self to grow strong, so that Christ may live in your hearts through faith, and then, planted in love and built on love, until, knowing the love of Christ, you are filled with the utter fullness of God.” 

The life of both women is drawn into the mutual love of the Trinity. The knowledge and daily experience of God’s love is the bedrock of their vocation. Strengthened by that love they become like Christ, and devote their whole lives in prayer to the Father and service to many. Their biographies contain tales of mysterious fires which attest to the presence of the Spirit in their monastic life and service.

Both exhibited the generous and selfless love of which Jesus speaks in the sermon on the plain. They showed greatest generosity to those unable to repay them, the destitute, the poor and those on the margins of Gaelic society. Brigid gave away her mother’s butter, her family’s property, her father’s sword and Ita’s monastery fed the neighbouring people in times of famine. 

Both embodied the compassion of the heavenly Father. Both had sisters who failed in their vows of chastity and yet they pardoned and readmitted them even at the risk of scandal. They both embodied the command of Jesus, “Be merciful as the Father is merciful”.

Much is made today of the prominence of Brigid, her authority as Abbess, the reach of her influence. What is most remembered in the lives of both Brigid and Ita is how, at personal risk and cost, they fearlessly exercised the Lord’s commandment: “Love one another as I have loved you”. Power and influence decline and fall. True selfless love endures forever. These two women, one who we commemorate today and Ita who we commemorated only 2 weeks ago, are models of this selfless and fearless love that knows no cost and that is nourished through a life of Trinitarian prayer. This is their truest and enduring legacy to us. May these brave mothers of the Gael inspire us to love and to pray, and may they also intercede and watch over us and all the new Irish who come to live among us.

Fr. Lino Moreira According to the Law of Moses, if a woman gave birth to a child she became unclean on account of her bleeding. If the child was a boy she was excluded from taking part in worship for forty days (cf. Lv 12:1-4), at the end of which sacrifices of atonement had to be offered (cf. Lv 12:6-7). Saint Luke relates that for her purification after the birth of Jesus, Mary availed herself of a concession made to the poor and offered only ‘a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons’ (Lk 2:24, cf. Lv 12:8). 

The evangelist also quotes another law namely: ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated holy to the Lord’ (Lk 2:23, cf. Ex 13:2). But, surprisingly, instead of mentioning that Mary and Joseph paid the prescribed five shekels for the redemption of their firstborn (cf. Nb 3:46-48; 18:15-16) he writes: they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord (Lk 2:22). This means that, in the temple at Jerusalem, the place where God met his people, Jesus was offered to his heavenly Father. He was not redeemed and restored to his earthly parents, but rather he was completely given over to God, to whom he unreservedly belonged. And in this way, the oracle of the prophet Malachi was fulfilled: ‘Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come’ (Ml 3:1).

When Jesus – the Lord Christ (cf. Lk 2:26) – entered the temple for the first time, he was greeted by Simeon and Anna as representatives of faithful Israel. Filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, Simeon praised God, saying: ‘Now, Lord, you are letting your servant go in peace according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples; a light of revelation for the gentiles and glory for your people Israel’ (Lk 2:29-32). 

In these verses, sung daily by the Church at night prayer, Jesus is identified with the mysterious figure of the Suffering Servant, whom the prophet Isaiah calls a light to the nations (cf. Is 42:6; 49:6). Indeed, the son of Mary and Joseph was chosen from all eternity to bring the light of God to the Gentiles and to fulfil the promise that the Lord had made to his chosen people in the days of their exile: ‘I will grant salvation to Zion, to Israel my glory’ (Is 46:13). But in order to carry out his universal mission as God’s Servant, and gather Jews and Gentiles alike into a single people of descendants of Abraham by faith, Jesus had to be made perfect through suffering (cf. Hb 2:10) and offer his own life on the cross as a sacrifice of atonement for sins (cf. Hb 2:17; Is 53:10).

Simeon did not elaborate on this last point, but he hinted at the reality of the cross when he said to Mary, the mother of Jesus: ‘This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too’ (Lk 2:34-35).

All through his earthly life Jesus had to face the antagonism of those who did not recognise him as the Messiah. Such relentless opposition culminated in his death on the cross, whereby he became the clearest sign of God’s love for the entire creation. That sign can never be blotted out or destroyed, but it will continue to be opposed, contradicted and even despised throughout the centuries. The light of God’s love shining from the cross is so radically at odds with human self-love that many perceive it as the greatest obstacle to their happiness and prosperity. And yet it is only by looking at the cross of Christ that we can uncover the mysteries of God’s wisdom, and that we can learn to imitate God’s love for the work of his hands. We were created in God’s image and likeness, and we can only be truly ourselves and live to the full if we become love as God is love (cf. 1 Jn 4:16).

Fr. John O’Callaghan.Today’s Mass started with a procession – and pride of place was given to the Gospel book. Encased in silver, it was reverently carried high up and placed on the altar and, later, it was brought to this ambo, honoured with candles and incense. We stood for it and the choir sang alleluia. After its proclamation we acknowledged it as Gospel, the Good News of the Lord, saying “Thanks be to God!”. This speaks volumns!  We recognise Jesus’s word being communicated to us; and as Jesus came from God we understand God has communicated with us. And similarly, after each of the preceding two readings, the reader announced it as “The Word of the Lord” and we acknowledged this with “Thanks be to God!”.  We acknowledge that God reveals himself through through human speech. God breaks the silence and reveals himself in many ways, through the marvels of nature, through marvellous people, but he also reveals Himself through the medium of words. This is the theme of today’s readings. 

In the first one we heard the priest Ezra reading the Law of Moses to people assembled in Jerusalem.  He was reading the Ten Commandments given on Mount Sinai. That was an exceptional  and foundational moment of communication between God and the human race. It is said that God even wrote out the Commandments. It could not have been expressed in a clearer and more profound way that God really did enter into communication with us and taught us how to live. We don’t have to believe that the words were actually chisseled out on stone tablets by God; that was a manner of speaking; it is most likely a simple metaphor but we do believe God to be their ultimate source and that he revealed his teaching through Moses. 

This is actually a very important point about biblical literature and it distinguishes Catholics from, for example, fundamentalists: what we read in the Bible must be interpreted in the same spirit in which it was written. The account of creation, for instance, as happening over six days does not mean that the universe just popped up, after six times twenty-four hours! The serpent in the Garden of Eden did not actually speak to Eve in Hebrew, and nor are we being asked to believe that God got hold of a hammer and chisel. We recognise poetic language can communicate deeper truths than words taken literally. The word of God uses many literary genres, and it doesn’t come flowing unalloyed, like water through a pipe, from the mouth of God, as some people say; no, it comes mediated by human beings! That is what makes interpreting scripture hard: the truth in it is not always easily recognizable. 

Today’s gospel is also an instance of God communicating with us and we heard a very telling example. Jesus is in the synagogue; he unrolls the scroll of Isaiah and finds the passage which is widely recognised as the summit and quintessence of the prophetic tradition and he applies it to himself, saying: “This text is being fulfilled today, even as you listen”. Jesus is saying that he himself is the one to ‘give freedom to captives and make the blind see’. He did that, in a literal sense to many people, sick in mind or body, but he also did it on a far deeper level for us all. He destroyed the finality of death and opened the way to eternal life, when he rose from the dead. It is in this way that Jesus fulfilled the scriptures, on a deeper level. The whole Bible can be read and interpreted from this perspective and thereby gives convincing testimony to Christ as fulfilment of the scriptures and traditions of Israel, so that we may believe intelligently. 

The word of God is not just understood, as the Jewish scribes saw it, as a guide for living but as a truth test, an authenticity test for Jesus as Messiah and coming from God. God revealed Himself progressively through his words, spoken by Moses and the prophets. These words culminated in the incarnation, the coming into the world, of God’s own self, most appropriatly known as ‘the Word of God’. “The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us.” Jesus Christ the man is God’s greatest self-expression. It is through him that we can get to know better than ever the truth about God.  

When dealing with such heady matters it is reassuring to know that our own interpretations of the word of God are subject to correction. We are part of a church community where, as the Second Letter of Peter says: “the interpretation of scriptural prophecy is never a matter for the individual. For no prophecy ever came from human initiative. When people spoke for God it was the Holy Spirit that moved them.”  May our listening to the word of the Lord brings us, slowly but surely, to a greater knowledge and love of God!