Abbot Homily Sunday 5th May 2013

Homily: Abbot Mark   (1 Cor 13, Mt. 25)

                         Divine Service (Knights Templar)   

 Sunday, 5 May 2013

The Christian vocation is strikingly summed up for us in St Matthew’s gospel when Jesus told the parable of the Last Judgement.  (Mt 25.34-40)

How we are welcomed then will depend on how we live now.  There is no beating about the bush as regards how we should behave in our lives.  In true parable style, Jesus’ message is given in strikingly black and white terms.  We need to be told, so Jesus does not pull his punches.  We also know that God is love, that he is gentle and full of compassion, that he does not break the broken reed.  As we grow in love we come to know our selfish tendencies as well.

In the first reading from chapter 13 of the first letter to the Corinthians, we see St Paul spelling out some of the warmer but still difficult messages that come from our Lord’s own life and teaching.  It could be said that the passages for Matthew and Paul are two sides of the one coin.  This coin will gain us entry through the pearly gates of heaven.

We may use all the fine words of eloquence and create a wonderful impression on our hearers, as St Paul himself says in this letter to the Corinthians, but if we do not live what we say then our lives will be empty and meaningless.  If we do use them as a pattern for our lives then the world will be a wonderful place to be in.  Our relationships will be happy ones and our friendships will be rich and rewarding.

It’s not surprising that this chapter from I Corinthians is often used at Weddings.  Its words are warm and inspiring, direct and practical and speak in everyday language.  When the newly married are still in the first flush of their love for each other, the magic of love flows equally from one to the other.  It is in the later periods when their personalities are developing that life can become difficult.  If one or other of them does not recognise the changing landscape of their relationship, there will be many crises.  It may fall on one of them to keep up the loving because the other is finding it hard to cope.  This is when love is tested.  Christ himself encountered much misunderstanding and even hostility in his life.  But it was through suffering that he himself learnt obedience as Scripture itself tells us.  He grew in his own understanding of his life and vocation.  He remained faithful to God’s will for him.  He died but then rose to a new life.  In a committed married life that is also what happens.  The vocation of married life is a mirror for all our lives as we go to God.  Like Christ’s own life, ours is tried and tested so that it may become stronger and reveal the greater depths that lie within us.  When we are the weak partners in a marriage, or in any friendship, we are the ones who need the love and support of our partners or friends.

The love of the family is the source and bedrock of society.  Love within the family will grow when it goes out to help and support the extended family and beyond that again to society at large.  Even in needy parts of the world this is a recognised phenomenon.  Our world has become a village in which the concerns and needs of others become ours.  There is a native proverb that says it takes a village to raise a child.  In today’s world wide communications everyone becomes our near neighbour.

Many have commented that in today’s world there is a growing selfishness, where there is little or no place for sympathy for others.  We are in a recession and wealth is concentrated in the hands of the well off.  The Christian conscience makes love a force that turns from an initial inward-looking love to an outgoing force that helps the needy.

When we love others their lives grow.  When we cast our love into the waters of life, it spreads like the ripples from a pebble thrown into a lake.  When others do the same many small miracles happen which help to change our world.

The message Christ gives us is that we must learn to die to our self –to our selfishness – in order that we may rise up to a new and better life.  That life is Christ’s risen from the dead.  It remains risen when we maintain our spirit of compassion for one another in our sorrows and our joys.

When we do approach the pearly gates it won’t be to join a long queue to have our records checked. Those who have lived in the spirit of the gospel will walk through without realising that the gates are there.  They will be going simply where their hearts are leading them.

Growing into Christ

21 Sunday, Year A, 2011         (11.00 am)   

Today we have the gospel passage of Peter’s profession of faith in who he believed Jesus was.  This section of the gospel is normally seen only as applying to Peter and his successors and of their importance in safeguarding the role and power of the Holy See and its care of the Church universal. 

Peter certainly meant what he said in his reply to Jesus’ question as to who the disciples thought he was.  And yet subsequent events showed that Peter did not really/fully understand what he was actually saying in this magnificent profession of faith.  Jesus himself told Peter that it was his Father in heaven who revealed the truth of what he had boldly stated.

Peter’s words were truly prophetic.  Jesus responded by praising Peter and guaranteeing his position and future role guiding and caring for the Church.  Jesus took this step in spite of Peter’s weakness and forthcoming betrayal of him.  Responsibility and weakness go hand in hand.  Peter spoke truthfully when he said who Jesus was.  However it is obvious that he had not yet fully understood its implications.  That is no different from the rest of us.  We all have to make our basic life commitments.  We know what we want to do but not necessarily what it will all lead to.  That is why once we definitively commit ourselves we need to remain open to all that unfolds for us in the future.  It is not possible to foresee what lies over the horizon.

We normally don’t realise want we are taking on.  We can probably see the positive gains but not realise the difficulty of acquiring them in practice.  Perhaps that is no bad thing or we might be too afraid to do what is the right thing.  Life and the various vocations within it, whether they are to marriage, to the priesthood, the religious life, or careers in nursing, teaching, or whatever, they are all enriching and challenging.   And they all demand ongoing change in us if we live them properly.  God never stops giving us new challenges and gifts.  If we respond to them we will grow more into what we are called to be.  The challenges may not be world shaking.  These may simply be small changes to the way we live with one another, to the way we pray, to responding more readily to the needs of those around us.  These are things that make our world go round and keep us faithful disciples to the Lord.

To be happy in our lives is to be confident in God’s presence and help, whatever the weaknesses we are aware of within our hearts.  In our following of Christ we needn’t necessarily feel more self-confident as life goes on.  But those who follow Christ look to him more than at themselves, knowing their ever-increasing need of God.  It is not unusual to find in the lives of the saints that they think ‘There go I –sinner - without the grace of God’.

Our vocation is to grow in confidence that Christ is with us, not that we are less in need of God.  Our faith therefore is a journey of growth.  That growth is an increase of God in our lives, which frustratingly is not very evident to us as we go about our lives.  I suppose it is others who are the only true witnesses to our nearness to God.  But, whether we know it or not doesn’t really matter in the end.

Peter grew into becoming the upholder and brother of his companions in the faith.  His story of budding faith and movement from faltering to full belief in Christ is a reflection of our own.  

Living Pentecost

Homily  - Pentecost, 2011

• Some people are so gifted that there seems to be no end to the variety and number of their activities. They act so confidently and naturally and succeed in the many things they do.  It’s not surprising therefore that we see the same in Christ.  In him we see a many-sided personality.  In the scriptures we find there many wondering who he is, both among his followers and those who want to destroy him.
  
• All sorts of people were attracted to him because of his teaching and also for his otherworldliness.   He seemed more than the historical person we know him to have been.  
  
• There was something different and hidden about him.  But it wasn’t really a long-kept secret, for Jesus did tell his disciples who he was but they did not understand what he had meant.  That’s not surprising as we often don’t understand each other.  We are not as open to others as we think.  
  
• The love and the care Jesus showed expressed in the pages of the scriptures were his but were more than his.  During the course of the past week in the daily gospel readings at Mass Jesus was seen talking about his intimate relationship with The ‘Father’.
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• He had a wonderfully close and understanding bond with the Father.  Married love or ‘best friend’ relationships could not be closer than this unity Jesus tells us he has with his Father in heaven.  It was so intimate that he spoke as if at times he was the Father or that the Father was like him.
  
• It wasn’t surprising then that in succeeding ages the bishops and theologians in the early Church eventually came to the conclusion that there is indeed something greater in Jesus.  He was not just a superhuman man.  They believed that there is in fact an immensely complex reality present in Christ, in God.  Somehow Jesus and his Father are one and have always been.  They are separate identities - Persons, and yet one because of their great love.  And it is this love that Jesus came to share with us.  Not as something we can take or possess, but share.  The nature of sharing is that you give something of yourself.  When Jesus and the Father give us of themselves it is the Holy Spirit, their Spirit, which comes to us.  That is what we see in the colourful words used in the Acts of the Apostles describing the first Pentecost.  The apostles were transformed.  They were taken out of themselves.  In a way they were like Father and Son going out in love to express their experience.  That is the way of all great experiences.  We want to share it.  We want others to see what we have been given.  
  
• This gift of God’s life contains so much of God that it became another expression of God, the Holy Spirit - another Person.  This Paraclete, this other helper; was one with the Father and the Son.  That is why the risen Jesus would be with us always through the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost.  
  
• This realisation is so compelling that the Church has firmly stated that there are three Persons in the one reality that is God.  This is not a numbers game.  People have used ingenious explanations to try and reconcile the seeming contradiction of God being three but also one.  The gospel tells us not so much that God is out there and needs to be found by us as that God is in our lives and in our hearts.  There it is God who seeks us.  God is the breath we live by.
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• The Holy Spirit gave new life to the apostles in the upper room.  They became energised and courageous enough to proclaim the good news of Christ and his message.  This same Spirit has come to do the same for us making us one in the body of Christ the Church.  This vocation may be in the public arena or quietly in the way we live our ordinary daily lives.
  
• The Spirit’s coming upon us on this feast of Pentecost fills us with God’s life; through the Holy Spirit the presence of the risen Christ remains with us all the days of our lives.
  
• Some priests were holidaying in the north of Italy in the month of August.  They arrived in Milan for their final weekend. On the Sunday they went to the Cathedral to concelebrate Mass.  The colour of the vestments was red.  They asked the sacristan whose feast they were celebrating and he replied: ‘Today is Pentecost.’  (This was a very hot day at the end of August.) to all who would listen.   The sacristan went on to explain that in the Ambrosian Rite used in Milan they wore red vestments for Pentecost, and for the rest of the year.  The Holy Spirit given at Pentecost, he said, is still with us.  Pentecost is not simply the celebration of the anniversary of an historical event.  It is a permanent reality in the Church.

Parting

Nunraw - 'Nun's Walk'

Homily for 6th Sunday of Easter, 2011

This time of year in the liturgy we are living through the resurrection experience of Jesus. We are being shown how that burst of new energy and life was put into his followers.

We are being made more aware, at the same time, of Jesus’ imminent leave-taking. All departing can be difficult. Members of families leave the maternal home to set up a place of their own; loved ones go abroad, perhaps never to be seen again; and, there is the final parting of death.
Whenever we do experience a parting, a change takes place in those who are left behind. Parents must allow their children stand on their own two feet and look to the future. The young ones need to explore the world for themselves, hopefully with the experience and earlier training their parents gave them to guide them. Young married couples must be left to live their new life together and to learn from their own mistakes. In the case of death in a family, there is the responsibility of creating a new centre of focus for the family’s future.

Today in the gospel reading, Christ tells his disciples he must leave them. They had gone through the trauma of his death on the cross but he had come back to them. Now he tells them that he is now really going away for good. They had lost him but had found him again. Now they were going to lose him once and for all. Life is full of uncertainties and sometimes of false hopes. The disciples seem to have had more than their fair share of those. But human hope springs eternal. That is what the disciples have learnt through the Lord’s resurrection and ascension to his Father. We too have to learn that lesson.

We know now that death is a gateway to a fuller life. That all departing is another beginning for those who leave but also for those who are left behind.

The risen Lord had to go back to the Father. He had come from the Father. His return however was different because he took with him his risen human nature. And that difference allowed him to prepare a place so that we could be with him and with the Father.

After Jesus’ ascension his disciples were empowered to take his message of hope, love and service to their hearts. They would now grow in their understanding of their mission. Now they began to really understand what Jesus had taught them. Through their new-found conviction Jesus would speak through their words and live through their lives. They learned themselves as they preached to others. They would preach the message of reconciliation with God and with one another after sin had cut them off from each other. They proclaimed the good news of peace and joy that comes from hearing and putting into practice what Jesus had taught them before his death. The disciples realised that they had to die to self and put their lives at risk if they were to be faithful to the truth that he taught them. That truth is a golden stone that needs to be handed on and lived by if the world is to be saved and to become one in mind and heart.

Being with friends is a heart-warming experience. In taking leave of them we normally plan to meet again. That lessens any sorrow there may be in the parting. Christ’s going to the Father gives that same, but deeper, dimension to our lives. There is a feeling of losing something in the leave-taking but we have the assurance that what we will receive later will be immeasurably greater than what we seem to have lost now.

Jesus himself said that if he did not go the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will not come to us. We might think of it as Jesus’ physical appearance which has to give way so that we can receive the Spirit which in some mysterious way is the risen Lord’s inner presence in us. The life of the risen Jesus dwells in our deepest being. When we are given that then we will truly live with him and speak for him. That is how we will be able to give his message to the world.