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-Fr. Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB

On 7 July last, the Hellier Stradivarius was put up for auction at Christies with a starting price of £5.5 million. It failed to sell. This violin is described as “the finest inlaid violin ever made by… Stradivari”, who kept the instrument for 55 years, before he sold it in 1734 for £40 to Samuel Hellier.

If you think that’s extravagant then you need to hold onto your seat before I tell you that in 2014 the Macdonald Stradivarius, one of only eleven surviving violas crafted by the master, went on sale at Sotheby’s with a price tag of $45 million. Unsurprisingly, it also failed to sell!

Sadly, being so very valuable, these instruments often end up in display cases for safekeeping and are rarely played. If you have a Stradivarius and nobody to play it, it’s just a Stradivarius. Or is it even that? It’s nothing. In the wrong hands, even a Stradivarius can sound like a collection of alley cats screeching.

There is one school of thought, which says that a really good violin will, if not played for a few months, “go to sleep.” It’s difficult to say exactly what this means, but apparently its tone dies, it becomes “less bright” and, to the professional ear, “sounds sleepy.” If played again regularly and frequently for a few weeks it will gradually “wake up” and become its former self.

The Rule of St Benedict is like a finely tuned Stradivarius. It is priceless in its wisdom and the possibilities it offers, but without monks to live the life, it is nothing. In the wrong hands, it too can become like a bunch of screeching alley cats.

The Rule is meant to be lived and lived seriously by a monastic community. It is not something to be admired from a distance for its wisdom, moderation, creativity, understanding and longevity, as often happens. The Rule is nothing at all if there are no monks to bring it to life. It is not a relic of a distant golden age, it is not a reference work to sit on the shelf and gather dust, something to be consulted from time to time as the need arises. The rule is a living document, brought to life in the daily round of a monastic community. If it is not this, then it too will “go to sleep” and with it our monastic life! It is for this reason we read a portion of it together every single day.

So let us play the tune of our monastic life in this community with a rich, bright and powerful tone, bringing the Rule of Benedict to life in this place for the people of our own time as we now renew our monastic profession.

Fr Jaroslaw Kurek OSB

Until the age of twenty-six he was a man given up to the vanities of the world’. The man I want to talk to you about this morning wasn’t the most devout Catholic in his youth, yet this same individual was destined to become one of the most prominent figures in the Church.

His name was Ignatius of Loyola, better known to most of us as the founder of the Jesuits. This year his memorial is not celebrated, as it falls on a Sunday. But his story, with an interesting Benedictine link, and today’s scripture readings inspire me to talk about him.

Why? Because Ignatius is a living example of the two kinds of thinking spoken about in our readings. I say ‘thinking’, because in his autobiography Ignatius shows what a reflective person he was. From the very start of his spiritual life, he kept thinking on things and never stopped this reflection for the rest of his life. Initially he struggled with internal tension, being often interrupted by vain thoughts. Over time these would disappear as he reflected more and more on what was godly.

It was in the course of this protracted process of meditation on the life of Christ that his real turning towards God began. He started thinking to himself: ‘How would it be, if I did this which St Francis did, and this which St Dominic did?’ Francis and Dominic, saints who have their minds set on things that are above. Ignatius, clearly called by God, was preparing for a serious spiritual undertaking in his life.

Now compare his thinking with the thinking of the protagonist in the Gospel parable, compare the directions. You don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that the mind of the man in the Gospel wasn’t focused on these things at all. To use the language of the gospel, he was simply foolish. Foolish ultimately means a misuse of our thinking, of our minds, something so precious when it comes to our interior life, something that is given to us specifically to meet God, in an intimate way.

So what does St Ignatius teach us, the Christians of today? Ignatius offers us one very basic lesson: devote your time and energy to reading about Jesus Christ and thinking on him, and this will make you more and more thoughtful of God; if you do so, you will, gradually, raise your mind toward God, and finally set it firmly on the things that are above.

St Ignatius teaches us this through the example of his own life. After a few years of engaged reflection on the divine things and simultaneous retreat from the vanities of the world, he was finally able to make up his mind. He was ready. Exactly five hundred years ago, in the year 1522, in the Benedictine Abbey of Montserrat, Ignatius of Loyola performed his act of conversion and fully dedicated his life to God.

May it also be so in our lives, ad maiorem Dei gloriam; may each of us become rich toward God for his greater glory.

The monastic community will begin its annual retreat in the evening of Sunday 31^st July.

Our retreat director is Bishop Erik Varden OCSO, former Abbot of Mount Saint Bernard Cistercian Abbey in England and now Bishop-Prelate of the Territorial Prelature of Trondheim in Norway.

Please note that Matins and Lauds will begin at 7am on Monday 1st to Friday 5th August.

There will be no Compline in the Abbey Church from Sunday 31st July to Thursday 4th August.

Please pray for us during this time of our community retreat, as we pray for you.

-Fr. Martin Browne OSB

There is a touch of comedy about the scene in today’s first reading, as Abraham negotiates with God. God is angry with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and is planning to destroy them. Emboldened by his obvious favour in God’s eyes, Abraham dares to try to talk God down from his rage. ‘Surely you wouldn’t wipe them all out if there are 50 decent men there? You wouldn’t want to destroy the decent men as well as the criminals now, would you?’ And then he delivers the killer blow. ‘Far be that from you! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do what is just?’ – a passive aggressive way of saying: ‘I don’t want to tell you how to do your job, but really, that kind of thing just isn’t what a good God is supposed to do!’ It was a ‘courageous’ ploy… Trying to corner an angry all-powerful deity with clever arguments like this could have resulted in Abraham’s own immediate destruction by a thunderbolt or fire or some other weapon of divine wrath. But he got away with it. ‘If I find at Sodom fifty righteous in the city, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.’

 

And so, he continued bargaining: ‘What if there are only 45? How about 40? And if there are only 30? What about 20? And even if there are only 10?’ There’s a touch of Mrs Doyle, the housekeeper in the TY series, Fr Ted in his repeated and insistent deprecations – ‘Ah, go on, go on, go on!’ Again and again, he ups the stakes, and again and again the Lord God concedes that he won’t destroy the city for the sake of 50, or 45, or 40, or 30, or 20, or even just 10 just men. ‘For the sake of ten I will not destroy it.’

 

Thus ends the reading we heard this morning. If you opened your Bible and read on from where the reading ends, you would discover that in the end, not even ten could be found, and so, after allowing Lot and his family to escape, the Lord God did in fact destroy the city… So, what’s the point of us reading this rather bizarre and fantastic story at Mass? Well, when we listen to it alongside the Gospel we’ve just heard, there’s surely something in it about having the courage and the confidence to ask God for things. We heard in the Gospel: ‘Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.’ Jesus literally tells us to ask God for what we need.

 

Despite the offence that human activity often causes, and the wrath that human sinfulness surely warrants, the God of Abraham, the Father of the Lord Jesus, hears the cries of those who call on him and shows mercy to them. For that is God’s nature. As Abraham so cheekily pointed out, far be it from God to slay the righteous with the wicked. It is God’s nature to act with tenderness towards his people, for he is a loving Father, and that’s what loving Fathers do. Loving Fathers don’t give their children snakes when they ask for fish and they don’t give them scorpions when they ask for eggs. They give them what they need and what will nourish and sustain them.

 

For many people, prayer can tend to be only about asking God for things. We’re doing fine on our own when things are going well and often forget about God, but when a problem arrives, we remember God and turn to him. Even for some people who pray regularly, their praying can involve long lists of petitions and intentions. It would be easy to look down on this kind of prayer as a bit childish. Certainly, a deep relationship with God needs regular attention and a good deal of listening as well as asking if we are not to reduce God to being some kind of fairy godmother or genie. But if today’s readings tell us anything, they assure us that there’s nothing childish or immature about asking God to be present and to make himself known when we are in need. Abraham was brave enough to ask when the Lord was full of wrath, and was listened to. Jesus, whose own relationship with the Father was the most intimate of all, taught us to do the same. To ask, and to ask again. And again and again, assuring us that ‘everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds’.

 

Sadly, I’m sure all of us have at some time prayed earnestly and wholeheartedly and repeatedly for intentions where the outcome was not what we had hoped for. The assurance that everyone who asks receives can seem very hollow indeed to someone suffering from a terminal illness, or to someone standing by the coffin of a loved one. Was God deaf to their prayers? Is he fickle and capricious? Does he even exist? I think we have to take Christ’s word for it when he says that everyone who asks receives. They might not receive exactly what they asked for, in the way they asked for it, but surely, they will receive from him. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are [God’s] ways higher than [our] ways…’ We may not be able to corner or manoeuvre God like Abraham did, but he looks upon us with love, is present to us, and hears our prayers. Trusting that he will answer, in his way and in his time, is a leap of faith. Today’s Gospel encourages us to take that risk and to make that leap.

 

Even when apparently absent or deaf, God is surely present and listening. There is some comfort, I think, in remembering that Jesus’s own prayer in Gethsemane that ‘this cup pass’ him by seemed not to have been heard. But he even though he could not avoid the Cross, ultimately, he triumphed. His prayer was answered, but not quite in the way he might have hoped as he suffered and sweated in his agony. As Pope Francis writes:

Holy Saturday is not the final chapter, because on the third day, Sunday, is the Resurrection. … On the second-last day, there is temptation, when the devil makes us think he has won… But the evil one is never lord of the last day: God is the Lord of the last day. Because that belongs to God alone, and it is the day when all human longings for salvation will be fulfilled. Let us learn this humble patience, to await the Lord’s grace, to await the final day. Very often, the second-last day is very hard, because human sufferings are hard. But the Lord is there. And on the last day, he solves everything.

-Fr. Lino Moreira OSB

Martha welcomed Jesus into her house (cf. Lk 10:38), but she failed as a hostess, because – as Saint Luke puts it – she was distracted with much serving (cf. Lk 10:40) and therefore had no time to listen. It would seem, then, that the very epitome of a true disciple was Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his word (cf. Lk 10:39). Mary’s attitude, however, should not be misconstrued as a call to passivity, for the Bible gives us Abraham as the perfect example of a host who was every bit as active as Martha, and yet, instead of being reproved, was rewarded by the Lord with the promise of a son.

The secret of Abraham’s success was that he worshipped and listened before he started to act. As the biblical author carefully notes: Abraham looked up and saw three men standing in front of him. When he saw them, he ran from the tent entrance to meet them, and bowed down to the ground (Gn 18:2). He then offered them hospitality, and didn’t move until they replied: “Do as you have said” (Gn 18:5).

Martha, for her part, didn’t begin by worshipping and inquiring, but immediately plunged into action, trying to provide what she thought was good hospitality. On account of her misguided self-confidence, she soon lost her inner peace, and ended up addressing harsh words to Jesus: “Lord, – she cried – do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me” (Lk 10:40). Martha was so worked up that she could not see the real cause of her frustration and resentment; therefore Jesus replied: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and troubled about many things, but there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her” (Lk 10:41).

We are meant to take this gentle reproach as a warning to avoid Martha’s mistake and to follow Mary’s example. In other words, if we truly wish to serve the Lord, if we aspire to love him with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our strength (cf. Dt 6:5), then we need to listen to his word at all times, as attentively as we possibly can, and with a genuine desire to do his will.

There is nothing more personal than this constant dialogue with the Lord, where he calls each one by their name and confirms them in the mission they were born to fulfil. One he may encourage to play a very active role in the Church or in the world, and another he may ask to remain at his feet, worshipping his divine nature, which he shares with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. The latter is indeed what the author of The Cloud of Unknowing thought Mary was doing: “As she was listening to his word – writes the 14^th century mystic – she was contemplating with all the love of her heart the supreme wisdom of his Godhead shrouded in the dark words of his manhood” (The Cloud of Unknowing, XVII).

Such exegesis became standard in the Middle Ages, but to look at Mary simply as typifying what later came to be called the contemplative life – which is the kind of life hermits, for instance, are supposed to lead – is to read too much into Saint Luke’s gospel. There Mary is presented as a model for all disciples, who like her should sit at the Lord’s feet and listen to his word (cf. Lk 10:39). So we are all invited to choose the good portion, and we are all promised that it will not be taken away from us; for the Lord will never refuse to speak to those who seek to hear his voice in the innermost depths of their heart, and life eternal is to partake in the unceasing dialogue of love between the three persons of the Most Holy Trinity.

– Fr. Abbot Brendan Coffey OSB

These are turbulent times. We have lived through the banking crisis of 2008, the COVID crisis of 2020, the climate crisis of this present age, the war in Ukraine is regrettably ongoing and the Christian community in Nigeria and elsewhere around the world continue to suffer persecution. St Benedict is someone who can speak today into a time of crisis. Although the word PAX is written over the doorway of his great Abbey at Monte Cassino, just as it is written over our archway here, Benedict lived through several global crises in his lifetime.

The last fifteen years of his life on earth were a time of war, destruction and hardship with shortages of food and basic goods. In the year 536 there was a climate crisis caused by volcanic eruptions. This led to global cooling and floods, food shortages and earthquakes. Before his death in 547, there was a pandemic of bubonic plague: the plague of Justinian, which swept through the Byzantine Empire and is estimated to have killed between 30-50 million people. Added to this was the constant threat of invasion by the Lombards from the north. In this time of crisis, St Benedict forged a rule to help his monks live together before God and in peace. St Benedict’s life and the attraction of his Rule, continues to inspire men and women to follow the monastic vocation and to listen to the call of God – why?

The prologue of the Rule opens with the words, ‘Listen, my son, to the precepts of the Master and incline the ear of your heart’. If we wish to learn, then we have to listen. We must listen to the Scriptures, to preachers, teachers, philosophers, to the writers of the past and present, and dedicate our mind and heart to learning, as to God.

The example of the patience of the monks of old, who copied medieval manuscripts is set before us, perhaps years of work knowing that each stroke of the pen would benefit future generations. I am sure some of them were often tired, but they knew they were engaged in an enterprise that was greater than themselves. Patience is not something we are good at today.

St Benedict also reminds us that the discovery of God begins on our knees. He teaches us to pray and offer our work to God, ‘First of all. Every time you begin a good work, you must pray most earnestly to bring it to perfection’ This is wise advice for our age. He also teaches us to use the gifts of creation wisely, with moderation, not over-consuming or acting as though everything belonged to me.

Fortunately, the human spirit has the capacity to rise to the challenges of today, as it did in the past. Consider the response made to Ukraine, the openness to families of refugees. St Benedict writes, ‘“Distribution was made as each had need.” We also retain the capacity to fix our mind and heart on God, preferring nothing whatsoever to Christ.

These few reminders tell us that we must consider the good of every human person. In this way, each can play his or her part using their gifts for the good of others and then be welcomed home to heaven at the end of life like St Benedict, with those words of welcome, ‘Well done good and faithful servant.’

– Fr. Mark Patrick Hederman OSB

Carrauntoohil is the highest mountain in Ireland at 3,407 feet. Jerusalem is 1,200 feet above sea level. And by the time you get down to Jericho, you are 2,200 feet below sea level. So someone going down from Jerusalem to Jericho might be going down Carrauntoohil. Not only is it seriously steep but when Jesus was using this imagery, it was both dangerous and difficult; robbers and bandits peopled the hillside, it was known as the ‘Way of Blood.’

And that is the trajectory of all our lives, whether as individuals or as our world-at-large. We all went downhill at some point. Jerusalem is the password for ‘a place that is at peace.’ Shalom is the greeting: ‘peace be with you.’ Jerusalem is where we all hope to be.

The readings this Sunday take us through the whole history of Judeo-Christianity. The first from Deuteronomy is taken from the speech given by Moses to the Jewish people about to enter the promised land, the place of God’s eternal peace. Moses was God’s spokesperson 13 centuries before Jesus Christ. His was a very splendid view of humanity and the possibility of our being in close relationship with God. The Jews were a chosen people; this became a nationalized  religion. Samaritains, in their reckoning, were outside the pale. Jesus Christ rejected all such ostracization; he will establish a new Jerusalem, a community without borders, divisions, all-too-human sectarian divides. Not colour, not creed, not gender, not nationality, could ever exclude us from the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ. The meaning of the word Ukraine is ‘border’ both historically, etymologically and especially now. We are asked to be ‘neighbours.’

The hero of Christ’s parable in our Gospel story is deliberately chosen by Jesus as an identifiable pariah: a Samaritain, as such, represents all those who have been left out of any previous  dreams about the human race. Samaritains were despised and hated ‘outsiders’ who worshipped falsely and desecrated true religion.

‘Who is my neighbour?’ the wise guy in the parable will catch us out. Christ’s answer is as much a challenge for us today as it was to the Jewish lawyer of his time on earth.

Saint Paul, who provides us with the extraordinary text of the Second reading, was himself a Jew and a Pharisee to boot. He saw that great cosmic dimension of Jesus Christ, trying to lift us out of all such identification and particularity. No matter who you are, Paul tells us in today’s Epistle, walk tall and aim high  as high as Carrauntoohil. Jesus Christ, who invented this story, is God come on earth as a human person to offer God’s love to every single human being that ever lived, or ever will live on this planet. He is not some well-meaning philosopher, some benign social reformer, ‘he is   the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.  In him all things were created . . . and in him all things hold together.’ ‘God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him,  and through him to reconcile us to himself.’ We have all been called to the new Jerusalem, to this place of peace and of love. Do not imagine that you have been left out. You are both the one who went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and the one who was looked after by the Good Samaritain.

 

– Fr. Denis Hooper OSB

Steve Jobs who passed away in the early two-thousands was the Chief Executive of the Apple Corporation – one of the most successful companies in the world. He had a unique approach to selling Apple products. He told his sales executives that they were not to try and sell the Apple computers – rather they were to sell “a dream”. A very clever approach to marketing.

The problem with dreams is that they seldom live up to expectations.  When our dreams are realised they so often seem to be a letdown – they aren’t quite what we expected. The singer Peggy Lee released a song in the nineteen sixties titled “Is That All There Is?”

The song is about when her dreams actually  became realities – all the milestones of her life – they were always a disappointment:

“is that all there is, is that all there is?

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing”

Closer to home, Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries and an occasional attendee at vespers here had a similar sentiment when she sang “and oh my dreams. It’s never quite what it seems never quite what it seems”

In today’s gospel, Jesus sends out seventy two desciples to bring his word to the Jewish world of Judea – half a million people.

The number seventy two – biblical scholars tell us – represents the number of nations in the world then. Scholars also tell us that the reason the number seventy two is used – in anticipation of Jesus’ message one day reaching the whole world.

There are one hundred and ninety five nations in the world today – compared to seventy two. The population of the entire world at the time of jesus was three hundred million. Today the population of the world is just short of eight billion. “the harvest is plenty but the labourers are few”

I am not so sure that seventy-two desciples would have been enough to cover the enitre region of Judea at the time of Christ let alone cover all nations in the world today: “the harvest is plenty but the labourers are few”

The fact that Jesus sends his disciples out in pairs is interesting: “where two or more are gathered in my name, I am with them”

It is evident from this that Jesus does not want his followers being “loners” or for them to go on solo runs. Look what happened to the two disciples who did go on solo runs: Judas his betrayer and Peter his denier

Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness is for everyone to discover – and always in the context of the world we live in. Jesus’ message is more powerful when it is communicated and listened to along with others: “Our Father” not “My Father”

The seventy two disciples were christ’s representatives to the whole world – as indeed Christians are his representatives in the whole world today. Jesus gives the disciples a list of rules to abide by when they are on their Mission – which basically says that they should offer everyone the chance to hear the word of God.

And if they refuse God’s word then so be it. The disciples are to move on. Jesus wants his disciples to be like him in the way they represent him – in the way they live their lives. And we are called in the same way: to live lives that others can see – we are today’s representatives of Christ. It doesn’t matter what our station in life is – as christians we seek to live the reality of Christ.

If we fail to live out the reality that Christ offers us we will never be able to persuade others to do the same. And they will reject us outright. And rightly so as we are only offering them a dream.

Steve Jobs offered people “the dream”. We Christians don’t offer the dream; we offer the reality – and that reality must be evident in how we live our lives – following the example Jesus gave us.

So, at every opportunity we Christians are called to live our lives Christ’s reality. Often we fail to live up to the example Christ has given us. But we must call on Christ, we must call on one another for the grace we need to be Christ’s representatives – every single day of our lives.

 

-Fr. Henry O’Shea OSB

If you listen you will hear, from east to west,
Growing sounds of discontent and deep unrest.
It is just the progress-driven plough of God,

At a first reading of today’s gospel, with its four brief altercations, Jesus can seem to be cavalier, even bad-tempered, in his dismissal of what he appears to regard as petty human reactions and concerns.

In his determination to make his way to Jerusalem – as the time draws near for him to be taken up to heaven, St Luke tells us – he seems to have no time for what his disciples consider a fitting retribution on unwelcoming Samaritans. Just a quick flash of fire from heaven and a little incineration to teach them a lesson. Jesus rebukes the disciples and keeps on walking.

Possibly intuiting that one person who addresses him is really looking for a certain kind of security, Jesus tells him that the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. He probably shocked another interlocutor by telling him that his duty is not to bury his father – a sacred duty for an observant Jew – but, rather to spread the news of the kingdom of God. In another exchange, Jesus is equally shocking when he tells a person that if he wants to follow him, he has to forget his family – again, unthinkable for an observant Jew – and not turn back.

It is not difficult to do an ‘Ah, yes, but..’ rationalisation of these rather abrupt and certainly sobering exchanges. Can it really be the case that Jesus sees no place for taking revenge on one’s enemies? Can it be that he regards the most basic of human reactions and behaviour as of little importance? Can it be that he allows no scope for change of mind, for doubts about oneself and one’s purpose and one’s way in and way of life? It is only to the first of these questions, the question concerning revenge, that one can give a resounding yes. Revenge is not on. But the other questions need to be teased out.

Given the apparently uncompromising tone of Jesus’s last statement about the plough and turning back, it may come as a surprise that today’s reading are really about freedom or liberty. This freedom is proclaimed succinctly in the first line of today’s second reading from the letter to the Galatians: ‘When Christ freed us, he meant us to remain free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.’

What does this freedom, this liberty, mean? How does it compare to or with what we commonly believe to be freedom – if we have ever really thought about it?

Everyone needs to ask her- or himself: Do I understand freedom as a wearingly terrible-twos or adolescent laissez-faire that denies any boundaries – except those imposed by criminal and civil law, the infringement of which could lead to trouble? Beyond these tiresome constraints, am I free to think, do, say, want, strive for, enjoy, destroy, accumulate, whatever I like? Does freedom, does liberty, as I understand – and even try to exercise – it, include accountability, responsibility?  Does choice, do my very own choices, reign supreme.

Is personal choice my king, as a certain kind of marketing would have me believe?

And so we end back with the ‘Ah yes…but..’ and a potentially endless circle of assertion and counter-assertion.

It is part of the classical discourse on freedom, in disciplines ranging from political science to moral theology and beyond, to distinguish between freedom/liberty from and freedom/liberty to. In effect, this is a distinction St Paul makes in our second reading. He tells us that Christ has saved us from the yoke, from the choking burden, of slavery. This slavery is the kind that comes from giving free rein to self-indulgence. I can choose to be tyrannised by my own desires for power, possessions, pleasure. And in some cases, the kinkier the better. I need to be freed from that kind of enslaving liberty.

The alternative St Paul presents is that of a serving love. A freedom that allows itself to be open to and led by the Spirit becomes part of my way of thinking, my way of being, my way of acting. It is expressed in love of others, which is at one and the same time, a loving doing that, when practised, increases my capacity to love others and to love myself as I ought. St Paul gives us a very practical, if obvious, negative example when he says, ‘If you go snapping at each other and tearing each other to pieces, you had better watch or you will destroy the whole community.’

One might ask if there is a difference between the attitude and behaviour of the prophets Elijah and Elisha in today’s first reading from the book of Kings and Jesus’ dictum about turning back from the plough.

Both stories deal with freely-taken decisions to commit. Elijah, having already invited Elisha by draping him in his cloak, is almost churlish in his apparent rejection of Elisha, ‘Go, go back; for have I done anything to you?’ We are not told that Elisha did in fact go back to kiss his mother and father before chasing after Elijah. But we are told that he slaughtered his twelve yoke of oxen and used his plough as firewood to cook the oxen with which he fed his workers. Such a dramatic, such a drastic, action by a rich man in an agricultural society, indicates a radical decision to leave all, to break with the past and follow a new way of being. ‘Elisha then rose, and followed Elijah and became his servant’.

He brought me forth into freedom,

he saved me because he loved me…

my God who lightens my darkness.

Ps 18 (17): 20.29a

And this is what Jesus is demanding:

a radical burn-my-bridges decision to follow him, to allow myself to be transformed by the Spirit;

a radical burn-my-bridges decision to recognise and love my past, with all its shortcomings;

a radical burn-my-bridges decision to acknowledge and love my present with its concrete opportunities to stick in there and in loving service let my heart expand;

a radical burn-my-bridges  decision to look with love-filled hope to future glory – however grim the immediate outlook might seem.

It is just the progress-driven plough of God,
Tearing up the well-worn custom-bounded sod;
Shaping out each old tradition-trodden track
Into furrows, fertile furrows, rich and black.
Oh, what harvests they will yield
When they widen to a field.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850-1919)

 

 

 

– Fr. Lino Moreira OSB

Every single day, from the time of the apostles until now, the Church never ceases to repeat the words and gestures of Jesus at the Last Supper in joyful obedience to his commandment: “Do this in remembrance of me” (1 Co 11: 24.25). According to Saint Paul, the Lord Jesus said, after breaking the bread: “This is my body which is for you” (1 Co 11: 24). And then, holding the cup in his hand, he declared: This cup is the new covenant of my blood (1 Co 11: 24). What was ordinary bread was thus turned into the body of Christ offered upon the altar of the cross for the redemption of the world; and what was simply wine became the blood of the true Paschal Lamb, a blood which sealed forever the new covenant between God and his people. And this miracle of making a reality in the here and now of the one single sacrifice for sins that Jesus offered (cf. Heb 10:12) as High Priest of the order of Melchizedec (cf. Heb 5:10) continues whenever an assembly of believers comes together to celebrate the Eucharist. In fact, our daily Mass is also called the Memorial of the Lord’s Passion for the very reason that it brings into the present of our concrete lives the sacrifice of reconciliation whereby we have been saved. As Saint Paul reminds us today: as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes (1 Co 11: 28).

So what we vividly experience at every Eucharist is that – for our sake and for our sake only – the Lord Jesus became a grain of wheat that fell into the earth to die (cf. Jn 12:4). Is there anything we can do in return for so much love? Jesus answered this question when he said at the Last Supper: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another” (Jn 13:34). We are invited then to emulate the one who came into the world not to be served, but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many (cf. Mt 20:28) – and in today’s third reading Saint Luke shows us how we should respond to this extraordinary invitation. So let us now turn our attention to the gospel account, albeit very briefly.

Jesus said to the twelve apostles, who were worried about the hungry crowds:  – “You give them something to eat” (Lk 9:13). On hearing these words, the disciples immediately thought that five loaves and two fish were hardly enough for themselves, let alone for a crowd of about five thousand men. Jesus then revealed himself as the one who can feed the whole of God’s creation: taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And all ate and had their fill. What was left over was gathered up, twelve baskets of broken pieces (Lk 9:16-17).

The first lesson to be learned from this miracle is that the Son of God will always put more than enough into our hands to satisfy our needs and the needs of others; if only we are willing to share our material possessions. But we should also note that in order to feed the five thousand at Bethsaida Jesus performed the act of breaking bread, which he would repeat at the Last Supper, saying: “This is my body given for you” (Lk 22:19). Therefore another lesson to be learned from today’s gospel is that to imitate Christ – to emulate his love for us – is not merely a question of sharing what we possess, but much more a matter of giving ourselves to others just as he gives himself to us in the form of bread and wine every time we celebrate the Eucharist. Saint Teresa of Calcutta is reported to have said: “The hunger for love is much more difficult to remove than the hunger for bread.” But she never lost hope, and neither do we, because Jesus gave us both the power and the means to satisfy all forms of hunger, he who said of himself: “I am the bread of life. No one who comes to me will ever hunger; no one who believes in me will ever thirst” (Jn 6:35).