“The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many”. So says Jesus in our gospel today, speaking to his disciples, and therefore, to us. It is  a sharp rebuke to his apostles for squabbling over who is to have places of favor on either side of Jesus, in his “glory”, a term which they think applies to Jesus becoming king of Israel, when he comes to Jerusalem and overthrows their  Roman overlords. However, the joke is on them, because, for Jesus, his “glory” actually refers to his crucifixion and death. We know who will be crucified on his right and his left then, and they will be two common thieves, and not James and John. Jesus’ subtle references to his “cup” and to his “baptism” are biblical expressions for suffering, which, again, the apostles fail to understand, otherwise they would never have so quickly have responded “Yes we can drink your cup and receive your baptism”. 

It never occurs to James and John that Jesus is spelling out his own mission, which is one not of glory, as they understand it, but of suffering and death, before resurrection, all in the service of the human race. Jesus also hints to them about their own mission to come, which will also be one of service and witness to others, through suffering and martyrdom, though they don’t get it at the time. Later, after Jesus’ Resurrection and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, they will finally understand. James will become the first apostle to be martyred, beheaded by King Herod (Acts 12:2), and John will find himself exiled to the island of Patmos at the end of his life (Revelation 1: 9), where he will die, cut off from family and friends.… Read more...

Story of Catholics in heaven behind a wall because “they like to pretend that they are the only ones here.” I chose Catholics to be behind the wall, but it could have been any Christian denomination really. We all have these blind spots, it’s why the task of forming Christian unity still drags on without resolution so far. I chose Catholics because, in the past, and perhaps still now, many Catholics did believe they were the only ones who would get into heaven. In fact, one priest in 1933, Fr Feeney, did give a homily in which he said that only Catholics would be saved. The Vatican wrote to him to put him straight and warn him not to say such things in the future, because such teaching was not in accord with official Catholic doctrine. 

In fact, St Paul does mention a “dividing wall”, a wall of hostility between Jews and non-Jews, Gentiles. In fact, such a wall actually did exist in the temple in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. The historian Josephus describes it as a stone wall approximately 6 feet high separating the outer court of the Gentiles from the inner court of the Jews. On this wall were signs prohibiting any foreigner, i.e. non-Jew from going further under the pain of death. Most Jews tended to be exclusive and elitist towards pagans, and believed they were superior to them because the Jews had the Law of Moses which laid down the necessity of being circumcised and obeying the many dietary restrictions, and observing feasts of the new moon each month, as well as various sacrifices and the Sabbath. Unless you kept all of these rules, you could not be a true Jew and be saved.

It was Paul’s mission after his conversion to Christianity, to try to convert his fellow-Jews to welcoming pagan converts to Christ as brothers and sisters in the Lord without forcing them to embrace the whole of the Jewish Law.… Read more...

Our gospel today gives us a description of what are called, in Catholic tradition, the corporal works of mercy. These are a list of good works, especially to the poor and needy, which Catholics are called on to practice in their lives. As I said in my last two homilies, acts of mercy and kindness form part of the “oil” that we should have plenty of always in our “lamps”. In the gospel parable from two weeks ago, the five wise bridesmaids had plenty of this type of oil, the foolish ones didn’t. As a result, these latter were denied, in the parable, entrance into the marriage feast, which I said represented life in heaven.

In the gospel parable, from last week, Jesus warns that those who have gifts or talents are required to exercise them for others’ sake, and not hide them away. Again, Jesus does not mince words and says that those who bury their gifts, will be dispatched to hell for all eternity, whereas those who are regularly exercising their talents on behalf of others, will get to enter into the kingdom of heaven, described in the gospel last week, as “the joy of the master”.

Now we come, in our gospel today, with the coup de resistance, the crowning glory of all Jesus’ moral teaching. To put these lessons into parables, as Jesus is so wont to do, rather than strict doctrinal teachings, allows us to explore what Jesus is getting at, and allows our sanctified imagination to look at what Jesus is saying more freely and deeply. To begin with, is this teaching just for Jesus’ disciples, and doesn’t concern anyone else? Although the parable in our text is directed to the disciples, this is an added “gloss” and is not found in the Bible text per se.… Read more...

In the announcements at the beginning of Mass, you would have heard information about a “Marketplace of Opportunity” which will be taking place in the parish after the 10.30am Mass on December 3^rd. This is a fancy way of saying that we will be looking for volunteers to undertake various ministries in the parish. The announcement began by asking: “Are you feeling called to offer your talents to the service of the church?”. The word “talents” echoes the theme of our gospel today. In Jesus’ time, a “talent” was a sum of silver or gold, amounting to the equivalent of about $28,000 US today. You can see how valuable even one talent would be, let along two or five talents. So don’t feel sorry for the guy in the gospel parable who is given only one talent. It doesn’t seem, on the surface to be very much money to invest, compared with the other servants. But in fact, it is still a substantial sum to do business with. The servant with the one talent isn’t being careful or thrifty. He is being selfish and lazy.

 In time, the talent went from being just a unit of currency to becoming the term applied to a person’s gifts.  So, we talk about a talent for music, or for administration, or for art, and so on. At the Marketplace of Opportunity, we are looking to you, our parishioners, to consider using your talents or gifts to help our parish community realize its mission in the Church to evangelize the world.  Now, when it comes to a discussion of putting our gifts or talents at the service of the parish, there are a few common misconceptions that many Catholics fall into. One is to believe that they don’t have any spiritual gifts, another is to say that, even if they have one or two such gifts, they are not important in the general scheme of things, compared to others’ much more valuable talents, and the third is to say that it doesn’t matter if they don’t exercise their gifts anyway, because the Church’s mission will get done anyway, without them.… Read more...

What a friend we have in Jesus, brothers and sisters. As our psalm tells us today, he is good to all and has compassion over all his creatures, he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, he is near to all who call on him.”  Listen, brothers and sisters, if we  have a different picture of God, then we will have to make a choice, either go with our own picture of God, or go with the one given to us by God’s own word. I have heard it said so often “the God of the Old Testament is an angry God, the God of the New Testament is a loving God.” But that is to make God schizophrenic or to suggest that between the Old and the New Testament, he somehow had a personality transplant. No, it is the same God in both Testaments, one who is both just and kind. 

This comes across in our gospel parable today. 

You know, a great spiritual teacher and author, once wrote that the parables of Jesus often contrast the rich and the poor, the powerful and the powerless, the one on top, and the one who is the underdog. If we want to step into God’s shoes and see the world as God does, then we have to put ourselves in the position of the underdog and see it through their eyes. And so, in today’s parable, we must put ourselves in the place of the workers who have been standing around all day, waiting for someone to come along and give them some work, so they can feed themselves and their families. In one town to the north of London, England, which had a very Irish population, I have seen men lined up in the town square, waiting for some construction manager to come along and hire them for a day’s work on some building site.… Read more...