This gospel passage we are reading today is actually astonishing.

It does not unfold as we might have thought. I doubt that even Jesus could have foreseen the direction his conversation with the scribe would go. For a start, the scribe is a lawyer, an expert in the Jewish Law. From the outset of his ministry, Jesus has been plagued by endless questions about the Jewish Law, and his interpretation of it. These questions come from the various religious and spiritual leaders of Israel, all with university degrees in the Jewish Scriptures, who try to catch Jesus out by showing up his own lack of knowledge of the Law. Jesus, after all, has not been to university or rabbinic school as they have, so he cannot possibly know as much as they. Wrong, so, so wrong. One by one, Jesus turns the tables on them, and shows that he is smarter, more knowledgeable , wiser and shrewder than all of them put together Should  we pay taxes to Caesar, can a man divorce his wife for any cause whatsoever, if a woman marries each of seven brothers, whose wife will she be in heaven, and, today’s gospel, which is the greatest and first commandment? Jesus shows he has the answer, and more, to each of the challenges they put to him. 

But, in today’s gospel, something incredible is happening. 

For here comes a lawyer, who actually is not trying to catch Jesus out. He genuinely wants to know the answer: “Which commandment is the first of all?” That is not as easy a question to answer as we might think. We think there are only ten commandments. In fact there were no less than 613 different commandments in the Jewish Law by Jesus’ time, many of them the result of added interpretation by various rabbis and scholars of the Law throughout the centuries, since God wrote down the original ten on tablets of stone for Moses to give the people.… Read more...

HOMILY FOR THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

Did you know that in the Acts of the Apostles, the disciples of Jesus are known as “followers of the Way” (Acts 9:2; 19:9m 23)? That is the earliest title given to these followers of Jesus, even before they were known as “Christians”. Why? Well, first of all, Jesus described himself, in John 14: 6 as “the Way” as well as “the Truth “and “The Life”. He is the way to the Father, the truth from the Father the very life of the Father.  He is the Way to the Father, for he said “No-one can come to the Father, except through me “(John 14:6).  To follow the way of Jesus, in other words, to become a disciple of Jesus, is to come to have personal relationship with God as His Father, and our Father. So, we see, in our gospel today, that Bartimaeus, “follows Jesus on the way”.  He could have chosen not to, once he received his sight. Jesus left him totally free to choose, as he does with each one of us. “Go”, he says to Bartimaeus, in other words “you are free to go whichever way you choose”. This is very important for those who think that somehow God forces us to become a disciple of Jesus. No, God has left us free will, and he will not interfere with that, or ever take it away from us.

Then, to follow the way of Jesus is to follow the “way of the cross”.  When Jesus and his disciples leave Jericho in our gospel, they are only going one way – to Jerusalem, where Jesus has made it abundantly clear, over and over again, that, there, he is to face persecution, arrest, torture and death, but after three days, he will rise again from death.… Read more...

In my seminary back in England there was a professor of theology called Fr. Charles Acton. The only reason I bring him up is because he was the great-grandson of a certain Lord Acton, a Catholic historian, politician and writer. It was Lord Acton, who in a letter to an Anglican bishop in 1887, coined the famous saying: “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  It is a statement whose truth we see confirmed time and again throughout history, up to and including today. It is the reason why Jesus takes such a strong line with his disciples in our gospel today, when he discovers that they have been arguing about which one of them is the greatest. Ironically, their argument on the topic comes hard on the heels of Jesus’ own declaration that he will not be going into Jerusalem to garner praise and glory for himself, but to lay down his life in service of his fellow men. 

Having restated the essence of discipleship, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all”, Jesus startles his apostles even further, by taking a child and placing him in their midst. Understand that this is not setting up a photo-op, Jesus is not doing a politician’s turn and kissing babies. The child, which meant someone under 12 in those days, i.e. before bar mitzvah, the child had no power, no rights, no influence. Children were just seen pretty much as a nuisance, just another mouth to feed, and detailed to do the most menial of tasks in the household, until they were of an age when they could go out and earn some money for their family. Remember how the apostles tried to turn the children away from bothering Jesus when their parents wanted to bring them to him for a blessing?… Read more...

In order to understand the significance of this episode in our gospel, it is important to know a few facts. This place where Jesus takes his disciples, Caesarea Philippi is located at the northernmost point of Israel. From there, Jesus and his followers would have a wide panorama of the whole country spread out before them. It was a place known in antiquity for being a shrine to various gods, including the god Pan, pictured as half-goat, half-man. Human sacrifice was offered to the gods at this place in ancient times. In Jesus’ time, this location, Caesarea Philippi was renovated by King Philip, and dedicated to Caesar Augustus, who insisted on being treated as a god, and to be referred to by various titles such as Son of God, Redeemer, Savior, all titles that would eventually be attributed to Jesus Christ.

So, in this shrine with so many associations with divinity, Jesus asks the crucial question: “In this place associated with various gods and idols, where do you put me? Am I just one of many gods to be worshipped at this site, or do I have a unique and special status?”  Jesus has already asked his apostles “Who do others say that I am?”  The various answers offered to that question represent good guesses on the part of the crowds, but they fall short of the full truth about Jesus. Jesus is more than John the Baptist, or Elijah or one of the many prophets in Israel’s past. I wonder if we went out now to interview people in the streets and ask them “Who is Jesus to you?”, what answers do you think we would get. Probably answers like “He was a good man” or “He was a great teacher” or “He was someone who had a lot of good ideas at the time”.… Read more...

On the front of our bulletin this weekend, you will find a reference to something called “The Life in the Spirit Seminars”. I want to urge you to read it, especially the bit that says: “The (seminars) are designed to bring each participant to a new and deeper relationship with Jesus. Its powerful spiritual experience helps believers to live their lives with joy and hope in a world that is so often opposed to the Spirit”. Then go on to read the address given by Pope Francis, also on the front page of the bulletin. Because the pope specifically mentions the Seminars, which, he says “make it possible for people to encounter the living Jesus, in his word and his Spirit, and at the same time to experience his Church as a welcoming environment, a place of grace, reconciliation and rebirth”. The Seminars, he continues, “are often an engaging and transformative experience that becomes a turning point in people’s lives.”  Sound good? Sound like something you might like to have happen to you. Of course it is! That is why Pope Francis encourages us to make these Seminars more widely available.

Well, guess what, brothers and sisters, we are going to make the Life in the Spirit Seminars available in our parishes of St Philip’s and St Clare’s. This Fall, my community of Lift Jesus Higher are putting on the seminars in our parishes, and everyone is invited to take part, free of charge. The seminars will run each Thursday evening from October 3^rd to November 14^th. So, if you want an “engaging and transformative experience” through a life-changing encounter with God’s Holy Spirit, this is for you! Last weekend, a group of us from the parishes went to a retreat centre in Plantagenet and enjoyed a powerful experience of the Spirit.… Read more...

I remember Cardinal Hume, the bishop who ordained me, telling us priests once, about a trip he made to Ethiopia, which was going through a severe famine crisis. While he was wandering through a refugee camp there, he met a young boy who took his hand in one of his hands, and with the other hand, rubbed his stomach, indicating his two basic needs: food for his stomach, love for his heart.

 Our readings today show God providing for both of these needs in his people. The prophet Elisha shows great compassion and generosity for the hundred people under his charge in our first reading, being willing to share with them the small amount of barley and grain that he has been given, but also through his faith in the word of God, seeing that small amount of food multiplied to feed all of those people. This is just one of many “feeding” miracles in the Bible. Elijah multiplies a poor widow’s meagre amount of meal and oil so she and her son don’t starve to death in a time of famine. God also miraculously provides food and drink for Elijah himself during a long walk to the mountain of Horeb, where he is due to meet with God himself at a time of persecution from the king and queen of his country, Israel. And, of course, there is the great miracle of the provision of manna for Israel during their forty day’s journeys from Egypt to the Promised Land. Tucked into that one miracle feeding story are a couple more where God provides meat on a couple of occasions to feed nearly a million people.

The psalm today extends that provision also to all of creation. “The eyes of all looks to you and you give them their food in due season.… Read more...

I remember some years back when I, with my community of Lift Jesus Higher, used to go round Vanier, where I was living at the time, doing what was called “prayer walking”.  We would go round, in groups of three or four, walking round the streets of Vanier and offering up prayers of blessing on the residents, and shoppers, and schools and other institutions as we passed them by. Once we passed by a woman who was working on her front garden. She asked us what we were doing, and we introduced ourselves and explained that we were praying blessings down on the area and its people. She seemed initially approving of the idea, and said she was herself a Catholic and so, encouraged, we offered to pray a blessing over here. To our great surprise and disappointment, she snapped “NO!”.

It wasn’t the only time it happened. Once I and another person were knocking on people’s doors, doing the evangelizing that the recent Popes had been calling us Catholics to do. One couple, whose door we knocked at, actually let us in, instead of closing the door in our faces, so we went in, introduced ourselves and shared the gospel with them. I noticed that the woman had an injured leg, so I offered to pray with her for healing. But again, she refused the prayer, saying things like she didn’t want to bother God, that he had more important things to bother with than her problems, and, despite our assurances that God actually wanted to heal her, kept saying “No”. The funny things is that, while we were talking, her neighbor came in, and the woman immediately said we should pray with her as she had a number of personal problems. So, she wanted her neighbor to be blessed, but not herself. … Read more...

Alcatraz and note in cell “If you meet me and forget me, you have lost nothing. If you meet with Jesus Christ, and forget him, you have lost everything”.

Many people, who were baptized and confirmed Christians have lost contact with Jesus over the years. They no longer go to church or pray or attend the sacraments. In a real sense, they have “forgotten” about Jesus. He plays no active part in their lives. Interestingly enough, that is not true of those in jail. There are so many prisoners who I have met who have discovered, or rediscovered their Christian faith in prison. I suppose a main reason is that faith is all they have to sustain them during their time in jail. Perhaps for many of us, we are living pretty comfortable lives, and so don’t feel that we really need Jesus, or God, or any kind of faith. That is why God allows, not sends but allows, trials and tribulations to come upon us to break through our indifference and stubbornness.

It must hurt and distress Jesus that so many in our Western world these days are indifferent to him, feel no need to have anything to do with him day by day. I’m sure his experience in his home town of Nazareth in our gospel today must have dealt him a hard blow.  This is certainly not a case of “Local Boy Makes Good”, but rather “Local Boy comes home and is totally ignored.”  This leads to Jesus’ rather rueful words “A Prophet is not without honour, except in his hometown, and among his own kin, and in his own house”. For Jesus, this is certainly a case of “Familiarity Breeds Contempt”.  The psalm today concludes with a reference to the “scorn and contempt” experienced by the poor and humble at the hands of the rich and arrogant elite of society.… Read more...