It is surely impossible not to be thrilled by the ringing tones of joy in our first reading today. Listen again to the words: “Sing aloud, O daughter Zion; rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem … The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love.”  The whole of that first reading is vibrant with hope for salvation and victory. It is all the more remarkable, because the rest of the prophet Zephaniah from which this is taken, is of a very different tone indeed.  Other prophecies in the short book of Zephaniah warn of the coming Day of the Lord, seen as a day of doom and disaster. The difference is that it will be a day of doom and disaster for all those who have persistently defied the Lord God and persecuted his faithful ones. But for those faithful ones of the Lord, that Day will be one of victory and rejoicing instead. 
The prophets of the Old Testament consistently talk about the Lord saving a “remnant “of his people. These are called the anawim, the poor ones of the Lord. They are the ones who have continued to remain faithful worshippers of God, and consistently sought to please Him with the holiness of their lives and obedience to His will. Often, that means they are overlooked, marginalized, and despised by the world, because they refuse to compromise the Lord’s commands in order to get on in the world. Because they stand up to the world in defense of God’s teachings, they are often persecuted, ridiculed and hated by the world’s elites, the rich and the powerful. I subscribe to a Catholic website, Centre for Family and Human Rights, a non-profit NGO, which fights at the level of the United Nations as a lobby group for Catholic teaching on marriage and family.… Read more...

“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...