Fr. Denis Hooper: IN 2014, THE IOWA STATE FAIR IN THE UNITED STATES WAS VISITED BY A POLITICIAN WHO ARRIVED IN A HUGE HELICOPTER AND A VERY LARGE ENTOURAGE. BRASH AND ENERGETIC – HE DIDN’T HAVE MUCH IN COMMON WITH IOWAN FARMERS. THEY WERE DOWN TO EARTH AND HARD-WORKING PEOPLE. BUT IN 2014 THEY WERE IN DESPAIR AND AT THE END OF THEIR TETHER. MANY OF THEM WERE STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE. A COMBINATION OF SUCCESIVE YEARS OF DREADFUL WEATHER, AND THE RISING COSTS OF FARMING WERE PUSHING MANY OF THEM TO EXTREME MEASURES. SOME WERE TOTALLY BROKEN AND HAD TO SELL THEIR FARMS FOR A FRACTION OF WHAT THEY WERE WORTH TO SO-CALLED “VULTURE CAPITALIST FUNDS”. THESE WERE GOOD PEOPLE. IN 2014, THEY FELT THAT NOBODY GAVE ANY HEED TO THEIR PLIGHT.
ENTER OUT OF THE SKY THE ORANGE-HAIRED POLITICIAN AND HIS CRONIES – THEY EXUDED CONFIDENCE AND WEALTH… AND HOPE.
HE BROUGHT WITH HIM A SIMPLE MESSAGE: IT WAS CORRUPT OUTSIDE INFULENCES THAT CAUSED THE PROBLEMS OF THE IOWAN FARMERS: CROOKED POLITICIANS, CHEAP IMMIGRANT LABOUR – TO MENTION JUST A COUPLE ON A LIST OF WHO AND WHAT HE SAID WAS TO BLAME.
AND THE FARMERS OF IOWA LAPPED UP THIS MESSAGE. AT LONG LAST SOMEONE WAS PAYING ATTENTION TO THEM. SOMEONE WAS DIRECTLY ADDRESSING THEIR ISSUES. HE ACKNOWLEGED THEIR PLIGHT AND THEY WERE OFFERED SIMPLE AND PLAIN ANSWERS TO THEIR PROBLEMS.
BUT THE MESSAGE TO THE IOWAN FARMERS WAS BASED ONLY ON THREADS OF TRUTH. THE MESSAGE WAS NOT ACCURATE OR FAIR AND CERTAINLY NOT ANY KIND OF SOLUTION.
TODAY, THE FARMERS OF IOWA SEE AGAIN JUST HOW FICKLE AND FALSE ARE THE MESSAGES SOME POLITICIANS HAVE GIVEN THEM. THEY ARE WORSE OFF NOW THAN THEY HAVE EVER BEEN: THEIR INCOMES ARE DOWN 25% IN THE PAST YEAR.
OVER TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO – AS WE READ AT THE START OF TODAY’S GOSPEL – JESUS IS WITH A LARGE CROWD WHO ARE EXHAUSTED, CONFUSED AND SEEKING DIRECTION. JESUS IS “MOVED WITH PITY” FOR THEM. THEY WERE TROUBLED AND FELT ABANDONED – LIKE SHEEP WITHOUT A SHEPHERD.
JESUS DOESN’T TAKE THE EASY OPTION TO PUT THE BLAME ON ANYONE. HE TAKES ACTION. HE BEGINS A MISSION AND SENDS THE APOSTLES OFF TO HEAL, TO BRING HOPE AND TO PROCLAIM THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
JESUS SEES THESE PEOPLE AS BELOVED SONS AND DAUGHTERS. JESUS KNOWS THEM AND DESIRES TO HEAL THEM.
HE SAYS TO THEM:
“COME TO ME ALL YOU WHO LABOUR AND ARE BURDENED
AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST” (MATTHEW 11:28)
JESUS’ MESSAGE WAS NOT A FALSE PROMISE. HIS MESSAGE WAS NOT SOMETHING THAT WOULD BLOW ANY WHICH WAY THE WIND TOOK IT. HIS MESSAGE TO HIS FLOCK THEN, ENDURES RIGHT DOWN TO THE PRESENT DAY – AND TO ETERNITY. JESUS’ MESSAGE IS SIMPLE: IT IS THE TRUTH ABOUT GOD.
FOR PEOPLE DOWN THE AGES, FROM THE TIME OF THE ABANDONED SHEEP OF JESUS’ TIME TO THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD TODAY – THE MESSAGE OF JESUS HAS LASTED THE TEST OF TIME.
AND WHAT IS THAT MESSAGE? LOVE GOD – AND LOVE YOUR NEIBHOUR AS YOURSELF – LOVE FOR YOUR EMENY. IT’S AS SIMPLE AS THAT – AND EVERYTHING ELSE WE NEED TO LIVE A LIFE OF MEANING. THE LIFE WE WERE MEANT TO LIVE IS FULLY ENCAPSULATED IN THE MESSAGE OF JESUS.
JESUS’ MESSAGE IS RELEVANT FOR ALL PEOPLES IN THE WORLD TODAY – JUST AS IT WAS TWO MILLENIA AGO.
FOR THE DECIPLES WHOM JESUS SENT OUT TO PREACH HIS MESSAGE THAT DAY, ALMOST OF THEM WOULD PAY THE ULTIMATE PRICE FOR TEACHING THIS MESSAGE. THEY WOULD LOSE THEIR LIVES BECAUSE OF JESUS’ MESSAGE.
MANY PEOPLE TODAY ARE STILL PREPARED TO PAY THIS PRICE. ARE WE?
PETER, WHO GAVE HIS LIFE FOR CHRIST AND HIS MESSAGE TELLS US IN A WAY THAT CAN BE UNDERSTOOD BY THE LOST SHEEP OF ISRAEL, THE FARMERS OF IOWA AND ALL OF US TODAY.
ST PETER ECHOES THE WORDS OF THE PROPHET ISAIAH WHEN HE TELLS US:
“ALL FLESH IS AS GRASS
AND ALL THE GLORY OF HUMANKIND AS THE FLOWER OF THE GRASS
THE GRASS WITHERS
AND IT’S FLOWER FALLS AWAY
BUT THE WORD OF GOD ENDURES FOREVER”(1 PETER 1:24)
Abbot Christopher Dillon: It is a safe enough observation, I think, to say that our number one consideration is life and the quality of our life. Well, we are celebrating today the feast of life as God’s most precious gift to us, God being absolute life and the source of all life. Experience tells us that essential to the maintenance of life, as we know it, is food; and the first reading recounts the Hebrews’ experience of receiving that food in the desert. Then, the words from the Gospel of John that we have heard just now have Jesus speaking of his body and blood as providing the essential food sustenance for life. And then, logically, St Paul’s words to the Corinthians speak of the bread and wine which form the matter of the eucharist which we are celebrating as a communion in the body and blood of Christ.
It is strange combination of simple images to convey the much more complex proposition which is Jesus’ teaching; for it is his words which are the bread of life, teaching us how to live as we should.
Behind it all is the enormous truth that God, the quintessence of life and source of all life, is self-giving love in action. This God, who gives himself to us in the person of Jesus Christ who is the very image of God, his and our Father, gives us further his life-giving, life-maintaining, presence in this ritual which we call the Mass.
Jesus, having spoken about all this to his followers, when he spoke of himself as “the living bread”, used the occasion of the Last Supper to make it all happen. As you remember, after the meal, he blessed and broke the bread and passed it around, saying, ‘Take this and eat it of it; this is my body, which is given for you”; and the same with the cup of wine, “Take this and drink of it , for this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the covenant which will be poured out for you.”
That this should have been Jesus’ parting gift to the disciples says much about its meaning for him and his intention for us. Two days after his first ritual sharing of his body and blood at the Last Supper, he repeated it with the two disciples in the inn at Emmaus, to demonstrate how the ritual made him present to them and so it is for us today, at every celebration of the Eucharist. Jesus wanted then and wants now not to leave us orphans but to nurture us by his presence; and it is by means of this particular sacramental ritual that he achieves this continuous miracle.
This remains Jesus’ ultimate gift to us, ultimate in every sense, in all its mysterious wonder, summing up all that has gone before, in his human life, his teaching, his suffering and his resurrection; all of it for us, as the pledge of his love and the promise of our future life with him, to mould us and to form us to be truly human, realising the divine image in which we were called into being.
Our task is to embrace all this in loving trust and to live our lives accordingly in self-giving love. In joyful love and gratitude, let us embrace this gift of his sacramental presence with ever deeper appreciation and live by it!
Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman: It is a cruel irony that the first detonation of a nuclear weapon by the United States on July 16th 1945, as part of the Manhattan Project, was code named ‘Trinity.’ Oppenheimer, who assigned the name ‘Trinity’ to this death-dealing operation says that he was influenced by the poetry of John Donne [1572-1631] Donne seemed to claim that unless the Trinity used its almighty power to overcome and subdue us we would never come to heel and behave towards God in a mannerly fashion.
Batter my heart, three-person’d God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.
Take me to you, imprison me, for I,
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
Unless God’s love is weaponised into a nuclear explosion on our planet, we won’t pay any attention. Less than a month later, on the 9th of August, 1945, a plutonium bomb, resulting from the Trinity experiment, was dropped on Nagasaki in Japan killing 75,000 people instantly. The world certainly sat up and took notice. We now had unheard of power in our hands. Today’s Feast reminds us of an alternative power, an alternative energy, the power of love which we can, each one of us, switch on or off, whenever we wish, at will.
Going back to the beginning of the world as we know it, the explosion which was the creation of the universe at the beginning of time – sometimes described as ‘the big bang’ – was a Divine, life-giving experiment, also with the code name Trinity. The Trinity brand is imprinted on all things that exist, and every last particle, is in relation with every other. We are relational beings and love is our connection.
Ever since it has been revealed to us that the God who created this marvellous universe is a three-personed unity which we call The Trinity, whose feast day we celebrate today, the greatest brains of humanity have tried to explain what this might mean.Theologians have built geometries and theological constructs to work it out, or so they think. Diagrams were sketched and maps were drawn. Augustine spent sixteen years writing his De Trinitate starting in the year 400.
These were mostly men, using their heads. Let us skip the head work and get down to the heart work. There are people in this world who spend at least two hours a day in conversation with the makers of the universe who, they believe, are dwelling deep in their hearts. I think of the Carmelite order of contemplatives who have sixteen communities at this time in Ireland. I am influenced especially by a young French Carmelite who called herself Elizabeth of the Trinity especially to emphasize today’s particular feast. She was seven years younger than Thérèse of Lisieux. Although less well known than the little flower, she was canonized by Pope Francis in 2016, ten years ago. She died at the age of 26 in the year 1906 and her feast Day is on November the 8th
Elizabeth promised to spend the eternity she now enjoys helping any of us to find the three persons of the Trinity in our hearts. She has taught me, more than anyone else, that the God of love is an immensity, an abyss, an ocean, into which we can plunge at every moment, without endangering our own personal identity or interrupting the rhythm and integrity of our way of life here on earth. God is the tsunami of love that sweeps each one of our surf boards to heights where we can enjoy the company of the extravagant Trinitarian Three . . . . ‘I would like to whisper this secret to those I love, she writes, that they too might cling to the great silence within until it reveals its song.’
Holy Family mosaic at All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral in Cairo, Egypt.
The question of immigration has become increasingly charged both at home and abroad in recent years, and World Refugee Day later this month offers a timely moment for reflection. The Irish government has announced that Ukrainian refugees will no longer receive housing supports, and is also considering financial incentives to encourage Ukrainians to return home. This is striking, given that the human cost of Russian aggression has not diminished. In response to domestic pressures, the government appears to be asking people to return to a country still at war.
Over in the United States, over 60,000 people are being held without charge by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), with the question of immigration becoming central to US politics. Meanwhile, across Europe, anti-migrant rhetoric is driving politics and causing turbulence – notwithstanding the demographic collapse in birth rates. For example, in Greece this year the government has closed over 5% of schools in the country and similar closures are imminent across the rest of Europe.
Here I don’t propose to set out a case for immigration reform, to condemn some, or to exonerate others, but rather on the basis of Ireland’s own history of emigration and – more recently – immigration to discern three broad principles:
“People have the right to migrate to sustain their lives and the lives of their families;”
“A country has the right to regulate its borders and to control immigration,” since this concerns the common good, and;
“A country must regulate its borders with justice and mercy.”
The Church has long spoken out on immigration and there are good reasons why she teaches what she does. For this, an examination of some pontifical documents is helpful.
The Encyclical Rerum Novarum (Of New Things) by Leo XIII, 1891
Leo XIII’s encyclical was the “first social encyclical.” Grafting itself onto a tradition hundreds of years old, it signals a new beginning and a singular development of the Church’s teaching in the area of social matters. This encyclical marked the beginning of what we could call the Church’s “social doctrine.” It’s not that the Church ignored social problems before Leo XIII; rather, with this encyclical, the Church began to speak, from Gospel values, her large doctrinal history, and her wealth of experience, to the social issues and ills of the day.
To summarise the document would be too much, so I wish only to point out that, even if it does not do so explicitly, Rerum Novarum laid the basis for the principles of subsidiarity and solidarity. These two principles are cornerstones of the Church’s social teaching and are integral to the later establishment of the EU.
Subsidiarity means that action should be taken at the lowest level possible. If, for instance, a family can provide for its children just fine, there is no reason for the state to intervene. If the lower-level falters, then the higher level of authority can come to assist, but the preference is that the lowest level look after its concerns. Solidarity encourages all to work together, since we are all the Body of Christ. This phrase most often refers to the mystical body of the church and also applies to the whole of society.
The Apostolic Constitution Exsul Familia Nazarethana (The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth) by Pope Pius XII, 1952
This little remembered document speaks about the historical undertakings of religious communities to provide spiritual care for immigrants. Pius XII provided a summary of his interventions in recent years and also speaks of the benefits of immigration.
“For this reason, on June 1, 1951 in a radio address on the fiftieth anniversary of the Encyclical Rerum Novarum, we did speak of the right of people to migrate, which right is founded in the very nature of land. “If the two parties, those who agree to leave their native land and those who agree to admit the newcomers, remain anxious to eliminate as far as possible all obstacles to the birth and growth of real confidence between the country of emigration and that of immigration, all those affected by such transference of people and places will profit by the transaction”… In this way, the nations which give and those which receive will both contribute to the increased welfare of man and the progress of human culture.” He goes on “the sovereignty of the State, although it must be respected, cannot be exaggerated to the point that access to this land is, for inadequate or unjustified reasons, denied to needy and decent people from other nations, provided of course, that the public wealth, considered very carefully, does not forbid this.”
The Encyclical Pacem in Terris (Peace on Earth) by Saint John XXIII, 1963
In this encyclical, John XXIII explicitly said that “every human being has the right to freedom of movement and of residence within the confines of his own State. When there are just reasons in favor of it, he must be permitted to emigrate to other countries and take up residence there. The fact that he is a citizen of a particular State does not deprive him of membership in the human family, nor of citizenship in that universal society, the common, world-wide fellowship of men.”
The Pope speaks of a right to movement and to immigration, but always when there are just reasons for doing so. This is very similar to the right to Freedom of Movement which is one of the fundamental rights set out in EU law. The Catechism of the Catholic Church is direct: “the political community has a duty to honor the family, to assist it, and to ensure especially… the right to private property, to free enterprise, to obtain work and housing, and the right to emigrate” (2211).
The Catechism recognises that states have a legitimate right and a real responsibility to regulate borders in service of the common good. This isn’t a concession to politics. It’s basic Catholic social thought. Pope Leo XIV put it simply in saying that“I think every country has a right to determine who and how and when people enter.” He went on to say that migrants’ dignity as human beings must be respected.
A nation fails its own obligations when enforcement becomes an end in itself, when procedural violations are treated as more serious than human dignity, when people who came out of genuine necessity have no path to make things right, when families are torn apart without serious justification, or when a permanent underclass of working people is simply left in legal limbo because it’s economically convenient. The question isn’t only whether laws are enforced. It’s how they’re enforced and whether personal dignity is honoured in the process. It’s important that families are kept together not as a favour but as a moral priority. Similarly special attention should be paid to the most vulnerable; children, refugees and people who didn’t choose their circumstances. The human person is not a problem to be managed, and their dignity has to be upheld.
The right to migrate is real, and it flows from the dignity of the human person. The Catechism says that wealthier nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome those who can’t find safety at home (CCC 2241). Gaudium et Spes(65) grounds this in the universal right to seek the conditions for a dignified life.
The Church asks something genuinely difficult of us: to hold two things at once that our political culture wants to treat as opposites. Human dignity must be protected and social order must be preserved. Ignore either one and you risk injustice. Hold both together and something better becomes possible.
Leo XIV, speaking last year on World Refugee Day, said the “link between migration and hope is clearly evident in many contemporary experiences of migration. Many migrants, refugees and displaced persons are privileged witnesses of hope. Indeed, they demonstrate this daily through their resilience and trust in God, as they face adversity while seeking a future in which they glimpse that integral human development and happiness are possible.”
The Pope went on to say that “migrants and refugees remind the Church of her pilgrim dimension, perpetually journeying towards her final homeland.” Ireland’s history of migration to the UK, North America and in our own day to Australia has ingrained the value of international travel and the possibility of seeking a different life away from this island. Having benefitted to such an extent from the hospitality of others, it is paradoxical and embarrassing that this country is struggling to offer hospitality to people arriving here.
Our response must return us to the Gospel, where Christ identifies himself with the stranger, the hungry, the displaced and the vulnerable. World Refugee Day is not only an occasion for political reflection, but for an examination of consciencewhich asks whether our homes, our parishes, our monasteries and our nation still have room for those who knock at the door in need. The migrant and the refugee remind us that we too are pilgrims, dependent on mercy, journeying towards a homeland not made by human hands. To welcome them with justice and compassion is not simply an act of generosity, but rather a way of recognising Christ himself on the road.
Holy Family of Nazareth, pray for us.
William Fennelly OSB
+ World Refugee Day is celebrated annually on 20th June.
Fr. Lino Moreira: In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul says that God showed the full extent of his power by raising Jesus from the dead and enthroning him at his right hand in the heavens (cf. Eph 1:20). According to the Acts of the Apostles, this enthronement of Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah and Son of God, took place forty days after his resurrection, when he was lifted up before the eyes of his disciples and a cloud took him out of their sight (cf. Acts 1:9).
Some, however, dismiss this mystery of the Lord’s ascension into heaven as mere fiction. Their argument is usually twofold: first, they point out that the Earth is round, and therefore ‘being lifted up’ simply means moving away from our planet in whatever direction the observer perceives as ‘up’; second, they emphasise that even if it were possible for someone to travel to the farthest reaches of the universe, they would not be able to find a physical place where Jesus is literally sitting at the right hand of God’s throne, surrounded by a court of angels and saints.
No one, of course, can take issue with any of this, but the Bible is not primarily concerned with science and often relies on imagery and symbolism to convey spiritual truths that can only be partially grasped by human intelligence. Every word of Scripture carries a deeper meaning. In his reflection on the Lord’s ascension into heaven, one of the greatest fourteenth-century mystics, the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing, helps us to see something of what lies beneath the surface of the New Testament account. This is what he says: “Since it was the case that Christ was to ascend in body, it was more appropriate that it should be upwards and from below; but if it were not for this appropriateness, he would no more need to go upwards than downwards, for the main and shortest road to heaven is travelled by loving desire and not by footsteps” (Chapter LX).
When people still believed that the Earth was flat and that Paradise lay somewhere above the stars, this insightful author evidently understood that, at his ascension, the man Jesus was not transported to a different cosmic location; rather, he entered into communion of life and power with the living God, to whom he had always been united by love. Admittedly, instead of saying that Jesus entered the mystery of God, Luke reports that he was lifted up in the presence of his disciples, and a cloud took him out their sight; but here the cloud symbolises God’s presence and action. As for the New Testament assertion that Jesus is seated at God’s right hand – an echo of Psalm 110 – it means that the glorified Jesus shares God’s dominion over all creation and, like his divine Father, is everywhere without being bound by the constraints of time and space.
This, in fact, is what Jesus says about himself in today’s gospel: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:18, 20). As is typical of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus addresses not only his immediate audience but the entire church. The promise he makes to the Eleven after his resurrection extends to all believers throughout the centuries. He says he will be with them until the end of time because, as the glorified Messiah, he can now be as close to them as only God can be.
Paradoxically, then, by departing from this world, Jesus took the final step towards becoming Emmanuel, God with us (cf. Mt 1:23). It is no longer possible to encounter him in his mortal flesh on the roads of Palestine or anywhere else in the world, but we can find him ever present within our innermost being and among those gathered in his name. We can recognise him above all in the Eucharist, where he speaks to us through the words of Scripture and gives himself to us under the signs of bread and wine. He is our brother, accompanying us on our pilgrimage through life. If we are not too self-absorbed, we will be able to hear his voice gently guiding us along the way until he finally welcomes us into his kingdom, where he lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit for ever and ever.
Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman: In this heady time after Easter we are full of talk about Resurrection and everlasting life; most of our official prayers are about joining Jesus in his risen state and remaining with Him for ever. Another big topic of conversation is the journey to the far side of the moon which happened very recently. Artemis II carried the first astronauts to travel to the Moon in more than half a century. These came back to Earth last Friday week after a record10-day journey that took them the farthest distance from the Earth ever reached. I have to say that I keep asking myself what is the point of it all, especially when it costs four billion dollars a pop?
Getting beyond the time/space orbit of our natural biological lives requires a rigorous training programme. To become an astronaut, you often spend months lying in a tilted bed with your feet 6 degrees higher than your head without ever standing or sitting up.— this gives a physical reaction akin to weightlessness. “Human beings on the way to Mars, for instance, have to become halfway between a fish and a bird,” the experts say.
The largest human-made object launched beyond earth’s gravitational pull is The International Space Station (ISS). It is about the size of a football field, and contains living quarters about the size of a six-bedroom house. Two years ago a pair of American astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, were launched up there for what was meant to be an 8 day mission. However, because of technical problems, they were left there for eight months. They came back to earth in March of last year. What would your weightlessness do up there floating around six bedrooms for eight months?
We say in both the Apostles and the Nicaean creeds, as you will say in a few minutes time: ‘I believe in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting.’ But the truth is that we weren’t really made for long-term capability. Half the beauty of a sunset on this planet is that it doesn’t last. We can only put up with short-term entertainment. ‘Beatific Vision for all eternity is a no-no for those who find a three hour movie too long and too tedious. What can it mean to be blissfully happy for all of eternity? Think of any pleasure you really enjoy and then imagine it going on forever. The ice-cream that you crave on a summer’s day – if it’s stuck in your gob for a fortnight it kinda loses its flavour.
There are over 8 billion persons in the universe as we speak. The 15th November, 2022, was the “Day of Eight Billion.” From that day onwards our human family comprises that number all expecting to be resurrected when their time comes. Calculations which have become possible in our day also suggest that since human persons have emerged on earth there have been about 117 billion bodies formed. Do we think these are kept in some deep-freeze in the sky? Nothing of the material body in which I now stand is going to endure for eternity. Every single particle of me has been renewed during each ten years of my life. I have none of the limbs, joints or bones I started out with.
Anyone who wants to become anything in this life has to undergo rigorous training whether to be an athlete or an astronaut. When we say that Easter means resurrection, we mean that resurrection has already happened; our task is to be plug into that fact.Resurrection is divine energy, divine power and divine love meeting with and transforming each one of us as human persons. Resurrected living is a form of love. In ourselves, in our bodies, in our lives, it shows itself as being in full flow. We are and we act from the true centre of ourselves which is the Holy Spirit of Divine Love. We have to train ourselves for such a life style, and one that goes on forever. Here is the best description I have found: Your personal identity, established in and through an embodied history, is raised up into a trans-physical reality. This means fuelling ourselves with the love of God, becoming lovers of that calibre. We have to begin living that way as of now, no matter what age we are, or what situation we are in.
Fr. Simon Sleeman: ‘If’ you love me and keep my commandments I shall ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, the Spirit of truth…
When I began looking at the readings for today, sometime ago,it was that ‘if’, right at the start, that stopped me, in my tracks. I found it hard to move past it. I wondered why?
Maybe it was because those little words provide the meaning while the big ones look after themselves. The little ones that drive the big words into action; if’, ‘no’, ‘to’ ‘in’, ‘go’.If you lose them you lose the lot. ‘If’…. you love me and keep my commandments …I will….
Maybe it was because my Motheroften quoted Rudyard Kipling’s poem ,‘If’ to us when we were children, the last lines of which are .
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
A mother talking…
‘If you love me and keep my commandments I shall ask the Father and he will give you another Advocate to be with you…that Spirit of truth…’ Jesus talking.
‘If’ ….and it seems to be one of those BIG ‘Ifs’…implies there are conditions – implies there is something required of me,…‘ if you can fill the unforgiving minute’…then….
There are conditions to enter the large world of God and have it enter us. ‘If’ you love me and keep… then’…God protecting himself from us; protecting himself from our pride and our futile, but constant attempts to be god.
‘If’ ….the gauntlet thrown down, the invitation received, the challenge set, …a huge entry point to the divine opening before us, life on the line… the Trinity of God, beckoning….to us to participate in their life of love.
‘On the whole’, Annie Dillard says, ‘I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions.’ But even the biologists among you will know the need for conditions if a seed is to germinate and grow- oxygen, warmth, water….
Oh… but we don’t like conditions or even recognise the need for them.
Conditions, commandments – no thanks – just give me the goodies, skip the conditions….the ‘ifs’…especially the big ‘ifs’…conditions cramp my style…commandments – no thank you….just send me that other Advocate…just one click should do it…Muscle andmemory. I’ll take the love, Yes…. ‘that feeling you feel, when you feel, that what you feel, is a feeling you never felt before – oh that’s it… Yes….now we are talking. Good luck with that…
Carl Jung, the Swiss Psychoanalyst, says that modern human beings no longer fulfil the necessary conditionsto see God – that they don’t see God because they no longer bend low enough…they are not sensible of conditions – we’ve got way above our station…busy building Towers of Babel, chasing our wild dreams and perpetrating outrageous evil.
There is something required of me as a Christian, a follower of Jesus Christ and recipient of the Holy Spirit;a commitment to look beyond the small cramped world of me where our culture would have us hang out – hungry…for stuff. And Jesus seems confident we can do it…
Jesus speaks, ‘If’ … but he also sets the ‘if’ into action.
At this last supper gathering, where he is speaking, of the ‘ifs’….he gets down on his knees and washes the feet of his disciples.
That gesture, that generous response to the BIG ‘if’. This doesn’t seem like much of an invitation but rather a degradation…especially to those who no longer bend low enough to see ….the Spirit of Truth…..beckoning….
Fr. John O’Callaghan: There are some marvelous synonyms for Christ: he is ‘the Bread of life’, ‘the Salt of the earth’, ‘the Light of the world‘; and today, Jesus says of himself ‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life’. He is telling us who he really is, elucidating his identity. But his words nonetheless suffer from misunderstanding.
Thomas gets off to a bad start when he says: ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way!’ He seems to think Jesus is planning a trip and it will be for him to simply follow the same route. But we’ve met Thomas before, ‘doubting Thomas’, who insisted on putting his fingers into the holes made in Jesus’ hands and side before believing in the resurrection. His shallow understanding of what Jesus means by ‘the Way’ shouldn’t surprise us too much. We might even share his incomprehension.
The ‘Way’ of which Jesus is speaking is the Way that leads to God the Father. Jesus is this Way because he brings us to the Father. He is one with the Father and at the same time he is one with us; this makes him an excellent means by which we can access the Father. He has identified himself as the Truth; he brings us into the truth of the One who is the Creator.
But Christ is not just a guide that we learn from and then go off better informed to plough our own furrows. No, one must belong to Christ, belong to the truth and live in the truth. Christ has also identified himself as the Life: through him we receive the life of the Father, eternal life.
Our role in this is to recognise Christ for who he is; to believe. His resurrection from the dead, his miracles, his teachings, and his fulfilment of the prophecies and traditions of Judaism help to recognise him and so enter upon this Way. Out of all the paths we take in life it is absolutely important for us to find this one, the ‘Way’ to God, by uniting ourselves with Christ, through faith.
The Acts of the Apostles recounts the action of the Holy Spirit in the Christian community, gifting it with varied charisms for the building up of the People of God; indeed they were sometimes called ‘followers of the Way’. The First letter of Peter refers to the early Christians as ‘living stones (in all their scintillating variety) making up a spiritual house where God lives’. So, ultimately, we can see that this ‘Way’ leads us into an intimate relationship with God, into the mystery of the Trinity, our incorporation in the divine life. It is actually beyond imagining.
And it shows one thing beyond question: that Christian life is about far more than morality, as some people seem to think of it. It is above all to recognise the love of God towards us, his calling us to a life beyond the one we currently experience, and where all shall be well and all manner of things will be well. That is the first and foremost message of Easter. ‘He is alive’ and we are called to share in that promised life, and to let faith have full impact in our lives. Such a hope can transform us and our world; it impels us to spreading the gospel of hope in word and deed. May we follow our ancestors in the faith who did just that, so that, 2000 years later, there are 2.6 billion Christians in the world today.
Winoc Mertens OSB makes a carving of Saint Joseph the Worker at Glenstal Abbey.
Today’s feast of Saint Joseph the Worker presents us with the image of a saint marked by hard work, quiet dedication, and loving concern for the wellbeing of the Holy Family. It recalls the essential sanctity and dignity of work, and reminds us of the relationship between Joseph, the Church, and the cause of workers.
The feast was established by Pope Pius XII in 1955 to highlight the Christian understanding of work on a day when the Soviet Union promoted communism and military power on International Workers’ Day.
Saint Joseph is proposed as a model of work, and the beautiful image of him mentoring the young Jesus in the craft of carpentry stands out especially today. He exemplifies dedication in providing for one’s family, making of one’s work an offering to God, and of quiet service and integrity. Through his example, even our seemingly mundane tasks at work can become a way of co-operating with God’s plan.
Indeed, work has always formed part of the divine plan. In the creation of the universe, God Himself works and rests, and later He took man and “settled him in the garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it” (Gen 2:15). Work is thus ordained by God and endowed with a profound dignity.
The importance of workers such as farmers, engravers, smiths, and potters stands out in the writings of Ben Sira, who describes their work and praises their crafts, reminding us that:
“all these are skilled with their hands,
each one an expert at his own work;
Without them no city could be lived in,
and wherever they stay, they do not go hungry.”
(Sirach 38:31-32)
Work also has a distinctively monastic value, as the Benedictine maxim ora et labora suggests. Saint Benedict understood not only the necessity of labour for a monastery to sustain itself, but also as a guard against the spiritual danger of idleness. He therefore prescribed fixed times for work alongside periods of sacred reading, insisting that “when they live by the labour of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did, then they are really monks.” In the spirit of Benedictine moderation, he adds, however: “yet, all things are to be done with moderation on account of the fainthearted.”[1]
Such moderation reminds us that work must be rightly ordered: work is made for man, not man for work. In reflecting on this, we might consider those for whom there is no work or those unable to work, as well as the many whose labour is dangerous, unrewarding, or all-consuming, and all those who are sadly mistreated at work. We recall in a particular way the responsibility incumbent upon Catholics to uphold the dignity of work and defend the rights of workers, in accordance with the Church’s social teaching.
Here John Paul II writes that “the Church considers it her task always to call attention to the dignity and rights of those who work, to condemn situations in which that dignity and those rights are violated, and to help to guide [social] changes so as to ensure authentic progress by man and society.”[2]
This responsibility should also make us attentive to the treatment of workers within the Church itself. As the American Catholic commentator Don Clemmer observes, “the treatment of employees matters for a church with robust social teaching on the dignity of work and the human person,” as “an institution set up to serve people is called to examine its track record as servant of the servants.”[3]
May this feast lead us to reflect more deeply on the example of the holy saint of Nazareth – as a model for our own lives, and as a call to champion the cause of workers around the world.
IT IS AMAZING HOW MANY PEOPLE ARE SURPRISED TO LEARN THAT REAL COWS, MOO-COWS, AND REAL BAA-BAA BLACKSHEEP STILL EXIST. AS A CHILD BACK IN THE DARK AGES I REMEMBER BEING AMAZED AT THE REACTION OF A YOUG AMERICAN COUSIN FROM NEW YORK WHEN HE SAW A REAL COW FOR THE FIRST TIME. HE WAS INTRIGUED TO LEARN THAT MILK DID NOT COME PRIMARILY FROM BOTTLES OR CARTONS ON A SUPERMARKET SHELF
FOR MOST OF US THE WORD SHEEP SUGGESTS WOOLY BRAINLESSNESS ON FOUR LEGS – OR, I IMAGINE FOR MANY OF US, ON TWO LEGS.
FEW OF US WOULD FEEL PARTICULARLY HAPPY TO BE COMPARED TO OR WITH A SHEEP.
THE IDEA OF A SHEPHERD IS LESS THREATENING BUT PROBABLY CALLS TO MIND LITTLE MORE THAN THE CHRISTMAS CRIB OR GREEN WELLIES, OR MORE RECENTLY HERE IN IRELAND, BLOCKADED STREETS AND ROADS.
IMAGINE THE HOLY LAND – MODERN ISRAEL AND PALESTINE – AT THE TIME OF OUR LORD. THERE WAS PRECIOUS LITTLE LAND TO CULTIVATE. LIVESTOCK AND THE SHEPHERDS WHO TENDED THEM WERE IMPORTANT ELEMENTS IN THE ECONOMY. OUR LORD’S LISTENERS WOULD HAVE HAD LITTLE DIFFICULTY IN UNDERSTANDING THE NEED FOR A SHEPHERD WHO IS TRUSTWORTHY, DILIGENT, ALERT AND ATTENTIVE TO THE NEEDS OF HIS FLOCK. THESE LISTENERS WOULD HAVE HAD NO DIFFICULTY UNDERSTANDING OUR LORD WHEN HE SPOKE OF SHEEP RECOGNIZING THE SHEPHERD’S VOICE AND CALLING EACH SHEEP BY NAME. THIS PHENOMENON CAN STILL BE EXPERIENCED IN THE HOLY LAND AND ELSEWHERE TO-DAY.
THOUGH IN SEVERAL PLACES IN THE GOSPELS JESUS DOES DESCRIBE HIMSELF AS A SHEPHERD, IN TO-DAY’S GOSPEL HE PRIMARILY CALLS HIMSELF THE GATE. HOW CAN A PERSON BE A GATE? HERE, AS IN MANY PLACES IN THE BIBLE OUR QUESTION IS NOT SO MUCH ‘HOW CAN THIS BE?’, BUT, ‘WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?’
JESUS DOES NOT SAY THAT HE WILL SHOW ANYONE THE WAY TO THE SHEEPFOLD WHICH IS, PERHAPS, THE CHURCH. NOR DOES HE SAY THAT HE WILL GUARD THE GATE TO THIS SHEEPFOLD. HE SAYS, RATHER, THAT HE ISTHE GATE ITSELF.
A GATE OR DOOR MAKES IT POSSIBLE FOR SOMEONE TO GO IN AND OUT. IT GIVES ENTRY, USUALLY TO THOSE WHO ARE INVITED OR HAVE A RIGHT TO ENTER. IT PROTECTS THOSE WHO ARE INSIDE AND EXCLUDES THOSE WHO DO NOT BELONG, THOSE WHO WOULD DO HARM. AS THE GATE ITSELF/HIMSELF, JESUS IS THE MAKER POSSIBLE FOR ALL, SHEEP AND SHEPHERDS ALIKE, TO GO IN AND OUT.
THE THIEVES AND BRIGANDS OF WHOM OUR LORD SPEAKS ARE THOSE WHO TRY TO GAIN ACCESS TO THE SHEEP AND THE SHEEPFOLD BY BY-PASSING HIM, JESUS THE GATE.
THIEVES AND BRIGANDS ARE THOSE WHO TRY TO GAIN ACCESS BY THE FALSE ENTRANCES OF FAKE VALUES, EASY ANSWERS, SELFISHNESS, COWARDICE, LUST FOR POWER, ARROGATED AND ARROGANT AUTHORITY AND FUNCTIONS, ENTITLEMENT, ILLUSIONS AND DELUSIONS OF ALL KINDS, EMPTY PROMISES, INVENTED SALVATION. THESE FALSE SHEPHERDS CAN ONLY STEAL, KILL AND DESTROY. THEY DO NOT FEED THE LORD’S LAMBS, THEY DO NOT FEED THE LORD’S SHEEP – THEY SIMPLY SHEAR THEM AND DEPART. AND ONE CAN EVEN DO UNIVERSITY COURSES NOW ON THIS AND, INDEED, OBTAIN ACADEMIC DEGREES IN IT.
THE SHEEP OF JESUS’ FLOCK HAVE AN EAR FOR THE VOICE OF A SHEPHERD WHO PREACHES NOT HIMSELF BUT THE DEAD AND RISEN CHRIST. THIS SHEPHERD’S VOICE RINGS TRUE – REAL VALUES, GENUINE, IF DEMANDING, ANSWERS; SELFLESSNESS, COURAGE, REALISM, WELL-FOUNDED HOPE, TRUE LOVE, DISINTERESTED AVAILABLITY – REMEMBERING THAT THE WORD ‘DISINTERESTED’ MEANS NOT ON THE MAKE AND ‘UNINTERESTED’ MEANS ONE COULDN’T CARE LESS.
THE TRUE SHEPHERD DOES NOT BULLY. THE TRUE SHEPHERD DOES NOT BELIEVE IN VIOLENCE, SUPERIOR FORCE, OR THAT THE UNIVERSE IS DIVIDED INTO WINNER AND LOSERS. AND ONE DOES NOT HAVE TO HAVE NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO BE A BULLY. LOOK AT ANY KINDERGARTEN, ANT SCHOOL, ANY WORKPLACE.
THE TRUE SHEPHERD LEADS THE TRUE SHEEP THROUGH THE GATE WHICH IS CHRIST, TO THE SECURITY OF CHRIST’S LOVE, TO THE FREEDOM OF ONE’S BEST SELF, TO THE NOURISHMENT AND CHALLENGING PEACE OF A LIFE WITH REAL PURPOSE – TO SURE PASTURE.
WHO ARE THE TRUE SHEEP?
IN TO-DAY’S FIRST READING WE HEARD ST.PETER SPEAKING IN A LOUD VOICE ABOUT JESUS THE LORD, THE CHRIST, OF WHO THIS CHRIST WAS AND WHAT HAD BEEN DONE TO HIM. PETER’S HEARERS ASKED HIM WHAT THEY SHOULD, WHAT THEY COULD DO HAVING HEARD THIS. HE SAID THEY SHOULD DO TWO THINGS. THEY SHOULD REPENT AND SHOULD BE BAPTISED IN JESUS’S NAME. IN RETURN, THEY WOULD BE GIVEN THE HOLY SPIRIT.
TRUE SHEEP REPENT. THAT IS: THEY LOOK ON THE FACE OF JESUS AND LISTEN TO HIS WORD. THEN THEY LOOK AT THEIR OWN LIVES AND NOT ONLY ADMIT THEIR SINS AND ARE SORRY FOR THEM, BUT, MORE IMPORTANTLY THEY ACCEPT A WHOLE NEW WAY OF BEING HUMAN. THEY ACCEPT A WHOLE NEW WAY OF LOOKING AT THINGS AND A WHOLE NEW WAY OF BEHAVING. CHANGE OF MIND AND HEART LEADS TO CHANGE OF SEEING AND DOING.
BY BEING BAPTISED, THE TRUE SHEEP ARE TAKEN SYMBOLICALLY AND REALLY INTO CHRIST RISEN FROM THE DEAD. THIS CHRIST NOW BECOMES THE TRUE GATE FOR THEM. IT IS ONLY BY GOING THROUGH THIS GATE THAT THEIR SINS AND WHAT FOLLOWS FROM THEM CAN BE TAKEN AWAY.
THIS GATE ALONE OPENS TO THE POSSIBILITY OF A TRULY NEW VISION AND A NEW BEHAVIOUR. BY GOING THROUGH THIS GATE, THE SHEEP ARE GIVEN THE HOLY SPIRIT AND FROM HIM RECEIVE THE STRENGTH AND GUIDANCE TO PERSEVERE IN THIS CHANGE OF MIND AND HEART AND ACTION – DESPITE BACKSLIDING AND OCCASIONAL DEAFNESS TO THE TRUE SHEPHERD’S VOICE.
