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In our Gospel today we see Jesus leaving Jericho and taking the dangerous road to Jerusalem where scourging, crucifixion, death and resurrection, by which the world is saved, await Him.  Yet no thought of reasonable triage prevents him, like the Good Samaritan, from tending to the blind Bar Timaeus who sits on the side of the road calling for mercy. Mercy and joy Jesus gives him by restoring to him his sight.

Our story today is  indeed of Mercy and Joy, and Wisdom and Might.

We too call upon the Lord for mercy  –  in threefold form ? make manifest His on –going  work of creation within us.

Bartimaeus’ attempts to call upon the Lord were met with opposition from those around him who scolded him and told him to keep quiet.

But other voices spoke to him saying, Courage, get up, He is calling you.

  We might ask what are the voices which prevent us calling on the Lord?  There is the voice of our ancient enemy, the Satan, the accuser of our race who may use our own thoughts or the words of others to paralyze us with too much shame, and so that we fail to discern the presence of the gracious Lord.

  And whence come the voices who tell us, Courage, get up,  He is calling you?  They are the voices of those who themselves have tasted the goodness of the Lord, of our friends on earth and in Heaven.  They are the voices of all those who from our infancy have looked on us with Love and wished us well, who still abide with us and know the Lord is near.

Up with us then at last to allow the Lord restore our sight,  the delight of our hearts, that we may exult in His presence with the joy of  his gift of life, now and forever, Amen

There’s an old joke about a confused American tourist, driving around a remote area of the West of Ireland, hopelessly lost among the by-ways and boreens. This was before Google Maps and Sat Navs and he had no idea where he was or how he would get to the village he was supposed to be staying in for the night. Totally confused and frustrated, he saw an old man walking along the road with his sheepdog and pulled up beside him and rolled down the window and asked him how he would get to his destination. The old man paused for a few moments, rubbed his chin and began to shake his head. Eventually he answered: “Well the first thing I’d do is that I wouldn’t start from here”!

As I looked at today’s Gospel, and at the first sentence, this silly story came to mind. Today’s Gospel begins with James and John, coming forward and asking Jesus for seats one on his right and one on his left, in his glory. A pretty bold and pushy demand… As I considered what to say about the Gospel, the response of the farmer to the tourist in that old joke came to mind: “Well the first thing I’d do is that I wouldn’t start from here…”

You see, if the Lectionary had started the reading just a few lines earlier in the Gospel, we would understand the context much better. Because in the verses just before today’s reading, Jesus tries to prepare his disciples for what was to come when they reached Jerusalem. It was disturbingly direct: ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’

And how did James and John react? They totally ignored all the appalling bits about their teacher and leader being arrested, condemned, mocked, spat upon, flogged and killed, and immediately jumped to the happy ending, asking for the best seats in the house after the resurrection. If I were ever in the awful situation of telling my closest friends that I knew I was about to be murdered, I’d hope that their first words wouldn’t be a demand to be the main beneficiaries of my will… The request of the sons of Zebedee was completely bone-headed and obtuse and it’s easy to caricature them and ridicule them, as I’m doing right now. But maybe we aren’t actually all that different. Jesus had just announced something so awful that perhaps they simply couldn’t take it in. It’s easy to imagine the stunned and silent horror of the disciples when they heard Jesus foretelling what was to come, and so in their panic they simply broke the awkward silence with the first thing that came in to their heads. They changed the subject. An Irish person nowadays might react by asking if anyone would like a nice cup of tea instead! But it’s the same dynamic: it’s easier to change the subject than to deal with shocking and difficult news.

This is true in the general sense, of the bits and pieces of daily life, but it’s also true in the particular sense of being a follower of Jesus. We might laugh at James and John for ignoring all the coming suffering and jumping straight to the resurrection, with their outlandish request to be allowed reign alongside the Christ in glory. But we Christians aren’t always keen to focus on the challenges and the suffering that are part of being disciples either. We don’t always want to truly walk the way of the Cross. We are often just as guilty as James and John of treating Jesus like a kind of fairy-godfather, whose principal function is to give us what we want. But the Son of God is not a genie in a bottle who appears when summoned to grant us three wishes. To us, as to James and John, Jesus asks the challenging question: ‘Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?’

Following Jesus is challenging. The rich young man we heard about last week discovered that when Jesus told him to sell all he had. He couldn’t do it, and he went away sad. Today, James and John are told that fidelity to Jesus can lead to suffering and death, and they simply changed the subject. Maybe we need to ask ourselves where we stand. Are we up for the challenge?

In answering the silly and proud demand of James and John, Jesus continued with a lesson on how his followers should live: ‘Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.’ Last Sunday in Rome, and today in all the dioceses of the world, the Pope and bishops launched a two-year process leading up to a Synod – a meeting of the world’s bishops – to discern how better to be a Church that ‘walks together’, a Church characterised by Community, Participation and Mission. They could surely find no better starting point that today’s Gospel: ‘Whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.’ Let us pray in a special way today for this process that is now starting all over the world. Pope Francis says he doesn’t want it to be just ‘a Church convention, a study group or a political gathering, a parliament, but rather a grace-filled event, a process of healing guided by the Spirit’. Let us pray that it may be so – keeping in mind, as Pope Francis said during the week, ‘the joyful conviction that, even as we seek the Lord, he always comes with his love to meet us first’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10: 25), so Jesus tells his disciples, as they witness a rich man, who wanted to know what to do in order to inherit eternal life, turn down the invitation by Jesus to join them.

It’s an absurd picture, of course, which readers down the ages have sought to moderate and interpret in morre convenient ways.  There have been claims about a narrow gate in the Jerusalem city wall, such as could be opened after the main gate was closed for the night, to which gullible pilgrims were conducted, no doubt for a small fee, to see how a camel might squeeze through.  

Of course, such ways of dealing with the text are a bit stretched. Mainly, however, don’t such attempts to make Jesus sound more reasonable simply miss the point? Surely he was joking, teasing, deliberately provoking his disciples, making fun of their literal-mindedness and that of subsequent readers of the story.

A perfectly decent law-abiding man turns sadly away when Jesus tells him to sell everything and follow him. It’s one of the few instances in the gospels when someone refuses his call.  Does it anger or grieve Jesus?  On the contrary, he seems unsurprised, shows his affection for the man and lets him go. He takes the man’s departure as an opportunity to test his disciples.

Hearing him say that being rich inhibits one’s entry into the kingdom of God astonished the disciples, so that they ask one another who, in that case, can be saved.  They might have asked Jesus, but he will answer them anyway.  As it appears, they have the deep-seated assumption in their culture as in our own, that wealth is a proof of divine blessing. It would not be difficult to identify comments in our social media today, and even policies and political decisions in our own divided society, which reflect attitudes that are essentially the same as the disciples reveal here.  No doubt, with rhetoric about the option for the poor, we could not write them off; but in the meritocratic culture we inhabit in the West, secular and increasingly pagan as it becomes, isn’t success measured by income, and don’t the rich seem to have inherited the earth?

Jesus’s penchant for irony appears at the start of the story as he snubs the rich man, who addresses him on his knees, politely, deferentially, as “Good teacher”, and gets the immediate self-deprecating riposte:  “Why are you calling me ‘good’: God alone is good!” This man turns away from Jesus because following Jesus means taking the radical choice of accepting that it’s Jesus who sets the terms. At this level being a follower means having to follow. There is no conditionality or even mutuality. Faith in this sense is not a question of the existence or not existence of God. It is about believing that love without reward is truly valuable. As the old of St Ignatius prayer says “to give and not to count the cost, to fight and not to heed the wounds, to labour and look for no reward save that of knowing we do your holy will”. Your will be done.

At the climax of the story Simon Peter, perhaps self-importantly, or self-pityingly, or perhaps only in bewilderment (again it is for us as readers to decide), reminds Jesus that he and the other disciples “left everything and followed you”, Jesus responds with a somewhat surreal picture.  Since they have left : lost :  so much, the disciples will receive everything back : “one hundredfold now in this time houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and fields”: albeit “with persecutions”. He slips in parenthetically this wry and sobering reference to the inevitability of martyrdom. For the rest of the promise, however, who wants houses, brothers and sisters, and so on, multiplied in their hundreds? What’s with this business of promising everyone a housing estate in heaven? I think what he’s saying is love without expectation of reward and beyond that you enter the realm of God’s grace, His gift it’s a realm beyond the law and mere commerce which were the two realms that the young man was so good at.

 

 

 

 

 

HE CERTAINLY LOOKED THE PART. HIS ROMAN COLLAR WAS DAZZLING WHITE BENEATH HIS SPOTLESSLY NEW VESTMENTS . AND THIS NEWLY-ORDAINED PRIEST PREPARED TO SAY HIS FIRST MASS IN A DUBLIN INNER CITY CHURCH.

THE GOSPEL THAT DAY WAS THE SAME GOSPEL WE HAVE JUST READ. OH BUT HE HAD DONE HIS RESEARCH FOR THIS HOMILY. HE HAD LOST TRACK OF THE NUMBER OF BOOKS HE MADE REFERENCE TO.

AFTER THE MASS TWO OLD LADIES WERE SITTING AT THE BACK OF THE CHURCH. ONE SAID TO THE OTHER: “ISN’T THAT A BEAUTIFUL PRIEST MARY WITH ALL THE LOVELY ACUTRAMENTS AND ALL. WHAT DID YOU THINK OF HIS SERMON MARY?

“WELL”, MARY REPLIED “I WISH I KNEW AS LITTLE ABOUT MARRIAGE AS HE DOES”

WHEN I JOINED THE COMMUNITY HERE AT GLENSTAL ONE OF THE OLDER MONKS SAID TO ME “YOU HAVE JOINED THIS COMMUNITY FOR VARIOUS REASONS – BUT IF YOU ARE TO LAST THE COURSE YOU WILL NEED DIFFERENT REASONS”.

I IMAGINE THE SAME COULD BE SAID ABOUT MARRIAGE. THE EXILERATING JOY OF LOVE WHICH BRINGS PEOPLE TOGETHER IN THE FIRST PLACE – IS REPLACED BY A DIFFERENT KIND OF LOVE WHICH EVOLVES THROUGHOUT THE LIFETIME OF A MARRIAGE.

JESUS ASKED PILATE: “WHAT IS TRUTH?”

HE COULD HAVE ASKED THE SAME QUESTION REGARDING LOVE.

FROM THE DAWN OF HUMANKIND LOVE HAS BEEN EXPRESSED IN ART, IN IN LITERATURE, IN POETRY, IN DRAMA, IN NOVELS, IN MUSIC.

ROMEO AND JULIET – SHEAKSPEARE’S TREMENDOUS STORY OF YOUNG AND PASSIONATE LOVE WHERE BEFORE THE END OF THE PLAY BOTH OF THEM ARE DEAD.

LOVE STORY WAS ONE OF THE MOST POPULAR BOOKS OF THE 1970’S.

IT BEGAN WITH THE FOLLOWING LINE:

“WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT A 25 YEAR-OLD GIRL WHO HAS DIED?”

THE FILM WAS AS SUCCESSFUL AS THE BOOK. ONE OF THE QUOTES FROM LOVE STORY WHICH WAS TAKEN UP AS ONE OF THE CATCH-PHRASES OF THE 1970’S IS:

“LOVE MEANS NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU ARE SORRY”. 

I AM ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT ST. BENEDICT WOULD NOT HAVE AGREED WITH THAT STATEMENT!

BUT WHAT IS LOVE? THERE IS THE IDEAL LOVE AND THERE IS ALSO THE REALISTIC LOVE. WE MUST AT ALL COSTS PRESERVE THE SUPREME IDEALISM OF LOVE. IT IS SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL, ENDURING AND EVERLASTING. NOBODY GETTING MARRIED CAN THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE. HAVE WE NOT ALL AT LEAST HAD A GLIMPSE OF THIS LOVE IN OUR LIVES?

JESUS DESCRIBES THE FATHER IN TERMS OF THIS IDEALISTIC LOVE. AS THE FIRST READING SUGGESTS WE ARE MADE IN THE IMAGE OF GOD AND OUR LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER IS THE MOST PERFECT IMAGE OF GOD WE HAVE. AND WE MUST NEVER DIMINISH OR TARNISH THIS LOVE.

BUT WE ARE ALSO FLESH AND BLOOD AND WE MAKE MISTAKES. WE CAN CREATE DEVASTATING FANTASIES FOR OURSELVES. WE FALL IN LOVE, WE GET MARRIED; WE SWEAR VOWS OF ETERNAL LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER. BUT WE CAN END UP CREATING FOR OURSELVES A HELL ON EARTH.

BUT THE OTHER SIDE OF THE COIN IS THAT MANY, MANY COUPLES HAVE LIVED TOGETHER LOVINGLY AND SUCCESSFULLY FOR THE ENTIRETY OF THEIR MARRIED LIVES.

A GROUP OF MIDDLE-AGED WOMEN WERE AT A SEMINAR ON HOW TO LIVE IN A LOVING RELATIONSHIP WITH THEIR HUSBANDS. THEY WERE ASKED: “HOW MANY OF YOU LOVE YOUR HUSBAND?” THEY ALL RAISED THEIR HANDS.

THEN THEY WERE ASKED: “WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME YOU TOLD YOUR HUSBAND YOU LOVED HIM?” THERE WERE VARIOUS ANSWERS RANGING FROM – THAT MORNING TO WELL… THEY COULDN’T REMEMBER WHEN.

THEY WERE TOLD TO TAKE THEIR PHONES AND TO TEXT THEIR HUSBANDS THE FOLLOWING WORDS – “I LOVE YOU SWEETHEART”

HERE ARE SOME OF THE REPLIES THEY RECEIVED FROM THEIR HUSBANDS:

“WHO IS THIS?”

“DID YOU CRASH THE CAR?”

“JUST TELL ME HOW MUCH YOU NEED?”

“I THOUGHT WE AGREED YOU WOULDN’T DRINK DURING THE DAY”

THIS IS MORE THE REALITY OF WHAT LOVING RELATIONSHIPS REALLY ARE ALL ABOUT. ACCEPTING THE OTHER IN THEIR ENTIRITY, WARTS AND ALL.

BUT THERE IS ALSO THE REALITY THAT IF SOME COUPLES REMAINED TOGETHER THEY WOULD HAVE DESTROYED EACH OTHER COMPLETELY – NOT TO MENTION THEIR CHILDREN.

THERE IS ALWAYS THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE LOVE WHICH WE KNOW IS GODLIKE AND GOD-GIVEN – AND THE HUMILITY WE NEED TO ACCEPT THE FUNDAMENTAL REALITY OF WHO AND WHAT WE ARE

GOD BLESSES EACH LOVING MARRIAGE. GOD GIVES MARRIED COUPLES THE GRACE AND THE RESOURCES FOR THAT LOVE TO FLOURISH – FOREVER.

AT THE RECEPTION TO CELEBRATE 50 YEARS OF HAPPILY MARRIED LIFE, THE COUPLE WAS ASKED WHAT THEIR SECRET WAS FOR THEIR LONG AND LOVING RELATIONSHIP. TO WHICH THEY ANSWERED TOGETHER:

“TWO WORDS – YES DEAR”.

THERE IS A LESSON FOR ALL OF US IN THESE WISE WORDS – WHETHER WE ARE MARRIED OR NOT.