30th Sunday of Year B

Jericho is at a crossroads - it is a crossroads in Jesus journey that will lead him up to Jerusalem. It is a last meeting place before the half-day’s journey to Jerusalem on foot.

Beggars, like Bartimaeus, always go to where there is a heightened human interaction, and especially, we feel, at places of worship, to play on perhaps, our religious sensibilities, to play the guilt trip and guilt - tripping us in to giving if we do not want to appear hypocritical.

There is a unique – a once in a lifetime – opportunity too for Bartimaeus - and so he is at a crossroads in his life. Jesus is passing by, it is now or never.

Bartimaeus’ heightened sense of hearing makes him keenly aware – it is in hearing that ultimately he uses his other faculties – his sense of speech in crying out to Jesus in prayer, then - oblivious to the crowd, listening for Jesus’ response, then, jumping up - using his arms to throw aside the cloak, using his legs to walk to Jesus. While he is blind, he sees Jesus with the eyes of faith – ‘Son of David’.

He shouts: above the crowd, to be heard, he is persistent, and because he pleads for pity, he is the model of prayer for us, to persevere above discouragement and peer pressure to be people who pray ‘without ceasing’.

The crowd also change their attitude once they hear Jesus’ invitation extended to Bartimaeus – and become a congregation, a community – encouraging him – and then he too becomes a follower – one of them, and joins them as a fellow disciple on the journey.

The words of Jesus: What do you want me to do for you? How do they apply to you and me today?

Where are we blind – through pride – or too proud to change? What have we overlooked? Why do we refuse to change for the better? Why is it so hard for us to get rid of long ingrained bad habits? Why are we so quick to see the faults in others and so slow – with our ‘blind spots’ to see the work we have to do in order to become the best version of ourselves?

We have seen a number of personal encounters in Mark in the last few Sundays - with the rich young man, and with the disciples James and John looking to sit on the right and left of Jesus in His kingdom. Whereas they were blind in a spiritual sense either through avarice or ambition, Bartimaeus’ blindness is on the physical plane.

What do you want me to do for you?

Bartimaeus throws off his cloak.

What does this cloak symbolise? Comfort, security, all his worldly possessions, a hindrance?  Whatever it may be – some things likewise prevent me from total surrender to God’s will for me.

Let me see again. So this was man who lost his sight and wants it restored. Why does Jesus ask the question when it is so obvious what the man needs? The man must verbalise his needs – as must we in prayer.

Let me see again.

May we see again with renewed minds and hearts and persistent prayer asking the Lord what needs to be done, what changes must be made in our lives. May we enter his kingdom whole and entire, lacking nothing.

‘Immediately’ his sight returns. In Mark there is a sense of urgency as the word ‘immediately’ is used 40 times. Let us change now. Let us be unimpeded followers.

Mission Sunday

‘What is it you want me to do for you?’

This is one of the 200 questions – often rhetorical – that Jesus poses to His disciples in the Gospel. This question in fact echoes down the ages and into the heart of every follower of Christ. It is a question worth pondering today. In fact the question remains the same but our answers as well as our requests often change throughout our lives.  As children we have childish concerns, as adolescents we have confusion and uncertainty with identity and purpose, as young adults we have fears as we embark on a career path, and a choice of state in life, as married adults we have concerns about finances and child-rearing, as older people we ask 'who will look after me in my old age?', 'will I have enough to ensure proper care?', and so on. These are some of the understandable common and important life questions we all have.

‘What is it you want me to do for you?’

‘Master we want you to do us a favour.’

What the disciples are in fact looking for is future security but also status. The latter is a purely worldly concern, and in fact is something that we have to take care doesn’t lurk in our hearts. The desire for notice, being the centre of attention,  of celebrity and notoriety – are all deep down vain quests and attempts to achieve immortality.  It is vanity and pride that we feel that we are somehow deserving of a special favour. This can be accompanied - in worldly terms - by a certain glitter, glamour, wealth, comfort with buzz words like ‘fabulous’, ‘gorgeous’ in fashion and celebrity magazines.  It appeals to our baser instincts of competitiveness and a drive to get ahead of the posse. It is about assuming a particular kind of power and influence. It is short-lived, vain, empty and useless.

This is not to take away the proper application of talent – but it is where we can get callous, stepping on toes, not caring who gets hurt along the way, utilising the phrase ‘tough’ to losers – that is worldly and in fact unchristian. This is why Jesus uses the term ‘so-called rulers’ who ‘lord it over them’.

THIS MUST NOT HAPPEN AMONG YOU

This is the temptation of clergy – that of careerism and ‘getting ahead’, with titles and obeisance. But it is also the temptation that faces us all.

‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many’.

Like the famous quotation ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country, so it with Jesus. He turns our ambitions on their heads, and reminds us that we are called to serve, because it is in giving that we receive. We must be the ones asking the question of Jesus; ‘What is it You want me to do for You?’

********************************************************************
Today is Mission Sunday when we as a Church community are annually reminded of the fact that many men and women throughout the world have devoted and continue to devote their whole lives and livelihood to the great mission of the Church to ‘go make disciples of all nations’.

We thank God that Ireland has been one of the leading missionary countries in the Church to provide priests and nuns, brothers and sisters to mission areas, to schools, colleges, orphanages, hospitals, hospices and clinics – providing material and spiritual assistance to those in greatest need, often in dangerous conditions, in forbidding climates, in disease-ridden places, and many have died away from home and family.

We think of the many missionaries who embarked from Cobh who celebrated Mass for the last time in the Cathedral – many older men in the parish have told me of their experience of getting a half crown for serving Mass as altar boys for an American missionary priest at one of the side altars in the cathedral. We think of missionary martyrs who died as a result of persecution in communist lands, and we remember in prayer those who continue to minister in places with a Muslim majority who can at times be hostile to the faith. We think of parishioners or relations who have spent time on the missions – spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ, baptising and spreading the Faith.

We think of the many millions of punts and Euros contributed down through the years by Irish people. God will never let of an act of generous sacrifice go unnoticed or forgotten.

Finally we think of the importance of prayer for the Missions. I recall one story of a priest in a Chinese Communist prison for a number of years. Each evening he would feel the burden and suffering lift – for a full hour every day he felt a great sense of peace and consolation. It was only after his eventual release from prison and return home that this hour of relief exactly coincided with an hour of prayer his anxious mother prayed for him each day.

SUPPORT the Missions  - the word can sum up our efforts:

Sympathising 

Understanding

Prayer,

Penance

Offerings,

Remembering in your will and

Thanking God

28th Sunday of the Year

Can you recall what was the most important meeting of your life?  Who was the single most significant, inspirational and influential person in your life up to the present moment? What was the most important decision you have ever made? What conversation with another can you recall?

'A man came running up to Jesus.'

The sense of urgency is apparent. For this nameless man a unique opportunity that could easily be lost of he did not take this chance to catch up with Jesus in case He would be gone from sight.

Jesus was on an external journey but the rich young man was in an internal journey of discernment - his whole life journey, especially his moral life is laid before Jesus as one of strict adherence to the Commandments of the Law. While Jesus does not list all 10 of them he does refer to 6 of the 7 commandments that relate to love of neighbour.

Did Jesus deliberately exclude the one that seems to have most relevance to the reason for the man’s sadness at the injunction to ‘go sell all that you own and then come follow me’? Can you think of which commandment is missing?

Jesus looked at the man and loved him. He held him under his gaze causing the man to come to a complete stop. Under that penetrating gaze Jesus scrutinised the heart of this sincere and imperfect young man – and looking into His eyes gently but forcibly invited him to take one more step – a step in faith, a risk, an investment in Christ, a long term investment that would pay dividends in heaven, but which required the abandonment of what he held dearest – his wealth. He went away sad, ‘he couldn’t have his cake and eat it’. He coveted riches.

As Pope John Paul II put it in Veritatis Splendor, n.7

For the young man, the question is not so much about rules to be followed, but about the full meaning of life. This is in fact the aspiration at the heart of every human decision and action, the quiet searching and interior prompting which sets freedom in motion. This question is ultimately an appeal to the absolute Good which attracts us and beckons us; it is the echo of a call from God who is the origin and goal of man's life.

We might easily ask what this curious episode has to do with your life or mine – especially you might say to yourself - I am not rich or young or even a man, so what relevance has this to me? I am none of these things!

The Holy Father continues:

The question which the rich young man puts to Jesus of Nazareth is one which rises from the depths of his heart. It is an essential and unavoidable question for the life of every man, for it is about the moral good which must be done, and about eternal life.  ....

People today need to turn to Christ once again in order to receive from him the answer to their questions about what is good and what is evil. 

 Consequently, "the man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly — and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being — must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter him with all his own self (VS 8).

There may be one key statement in all of this, that directly impinges on each one of us  ‘there is one thing you lack, in order to inherit eternal life’ to let go of the thing or things that prevent you from full freedom to do what God wants.

What is this one thing I lack. I want to get to heaven, but what is blocking my path?

It may be one or more of three things and I call them the three Cs. The first C word is that of Comfort – to do what God wants sometimes may mean giving up some comfort an taking up the C word of the Cross – after all Jesus did say we must deny ourselves. The second C word is that of Convenience – giving in to what others want, not getting our way all the time. The final C word is the hardest of all to give up – in relation to life and what comes our way – in a sense it sums up the rich young man’s dilemma – comfort, convenience but above all, Control.

What do you lack? What is the one thing standing in the way of God’s complete take-over? Is it, after all is said and done, trust? Perhaps the most important 2 words of all in following Jesus which we can utter  every day – until we truly mean it and apply it to every aspect of our lives  - are:

‘I surrender’.

Annual Day for Life 2012

•        The First Reading comes from the Creation Account in Genesis 2-3. This provides an ideal context in which to speak of the beauty and sanctity of human life as part of the gift of God’s creation. In marriage a man and woman become ‘one flesh’ and cooperate in the creative action of God in the marvellous gift of bringing forth new life. In chapter 1 of Genesis, God has already proclaimed that he is author of the life of every person, who is formed in his image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-28). Every human life therefore has a sacred and inviolable character and no one can, in any circumstance, claim the right to directly destroy an innocent human being.

•        The Response to the Psalm is ‘May the Lord bless us all the days of our Life’. As we celebrate our annual Day for Life, we ask the Lord to bless us with a sense of the wonder and preciousness of our life and the life of others, from the first of moment of conception, to natural death.

•        From the moment of conception, every human life is beautiful, every human life is precious and every human life is sacred. From the first moment of conception a new, unique and genetically complete human being comes into existence. From that moment onwards, we did not grow and develop into a human being, but grew and developed as a human being.

•        The Gospel shows Jesus welcoming the little children to him; today we place all children, including those waiting to be born into the loving care of Jesus.

•        Any mother or father who has gazed in wonder at an ultrasound scan of their baby, or heard his or her heart beating for the first time, will know how rapid and beautiful is the development of their baby in the womb. They will know that their baby does not suddenly become a human being at birth. And they will know that the daughter or son now present before them as an infant or teenager is the same human life, the same human child they saw in that first scan.

•        The child in the womb is not a ‘potential’ life, but a human life with potential – a precious and God-given potential that all of us, whether as parents, nurses, midwives, doctors, politicians, lawyers, citizens or voters, are called to respect and protect.

•        International research shows that Ireland, without legislating for abortion, is consistently one of the safest countries in the world for a mother who is expecting a baby.

•        Legislating for abortion denies the humanity and dignity of the child in the womb and violates the most basic human right of all – the right to life.

•        It is never necessary to directly target the life of the baby in the womb to save the life of the mother. Both can be treated as individual persons with an equal right to life.

•        The Irish Government does not have to provide for abortion in Ireland to comply with the ruling of the European Court of Human Rights in the 2010 case known as ‘A,B & C vs Ireland’.

•        On the contrary our Government could chose to protect the life of the unborn baby in the womb, while upholding the equal right to life of the mother, by introducing laws or a Constitutional amendment that would set aside the Supreme Court ruling in the ‘X-case’, which allowed for abortion in a potentially wide range of circumstances.

•        International experience shows that once abortion is legalised, even in apparently very limited situations, it becomes more widespread than was first intended.

•        Many women who have had abortions speak of their deep regret, and research also confirms the harm that abortion can cause women.

•        As a Christian community we must reach out with great compassion and care to those who find themselves faced with difficult circumstances in pregnancy and those who have had an abortion and may now live with the regret.

•        We ask everyone to pray the ‘Choose Life: prayer for the unborn child in the womb’ during this special month of prayer from the Day for Life to the Feast of All the Saints of Ireland on 6^th November.

•        We ask everyone to read the special Day for Life message, to visit the special ‘Choose Life 2012’ web site and to watch the videos there. We ask you to consider signing up to the dedicated 'Choose Life 2012’ Twitter account to receive regular messages on the theme of respect for human life and you are also encourage, as active citizens, to raise these issue with our elected representatives.

26th Sunday of the Year

The difficult, and at times, harsh, readings today boil down to an ultimate choice – eternal life and the means to get there. The readings do give us a positive teaching that no generous life goes unrewarded, but also that no persistent selfish sinful way of life goes unpunished. We are given rather stark images of amputation and organ removal rather than to commit sins with them.

Any reasonable minded person can see that these drastic measures in Jesus’ teaching are not to be taken literally – yet the Gospel in its entirety contains passages like this one that do not sit easily with us.

 It would not be the complete Gospel without this passage which we find deeply troubling and disturbing – regarding potential resorting to amputation and the like to avoid sinning with our limbs and organs! So what are we to make of the difficulty? We might say to ourselves – this is terrible thinking, and ‘old school’.  But we cannot ‘pick and choose in Christ’ (St Paul).

Jesus was teaching for effect. Stark images and imagery make a deep impression on us. If we think of the best teachers at school who made a subject interesting and memorable it was their passion and their powers of persuasion. Their conviction was convincing. But they also used memorable stories and life lessons to hammer home their point.

There is a disturbing truth therefore in Jesus’ sayings today and that is the awfulness of sin and sin’s potential to exclude us from eternal happiness with God in heaven. Scandal and occasions of sin are to be ‘avoided like the plague’.

Firstly, ‘scandal’.

The term ‘scandal’ is used rather more generally today than its original meaning as a stumbling block (’skandalon’ in Greek). It was to perform a nasty piece of work to trip somebody up in their progress. It was an act of cruelty committed out of resentment and envy to take someone down a peg or two.

 Scandal is the deliberate intention to place a building block in someone’s way, to trip them up and to cause them to fall. It involves malicious intent. It is better not to have been born at all than to live a life where we lead others into sin and possible damnation. The heart that desires to perform scandal to cause others to sin is truly evil. We seem to have lost the sense that we can speak , act and even dress ‘scandalously’. It is worth thinking about.

Occasions of sin are where we must be careful and have to avoid the deliberate decision to place ourselves ‘in harm’s way’. It may be the work of others to trip us up but like a minefield we must be on our guard and aware of the potential dangers to ourselves and keep away from all dangers to fall into sin – with our eyes for example – lust and covetousness and evil desires – and with our limbs – such as thievery or violence. We know our capacity to sin, we know our weaknesses and our potential to make wrong choices in life, to compromise our principles, to rationalise and make excuses for ourselves with sayings like ’just this once’ or ‘one more drink won’t do me any harm’ or ‘this rule does not apply to me’. We deliberate and we fall down.

Repentance is needed. The remedy to such self-delusion and selfishness is implied in the line regarding generosity – receiving a prophet’s reward for the offer of a cup of cold water. We must therefore turn from selfishness and be generous with our resources – this does not go unnoticed by the Lord who is quite ready to reward us for our acts of kindness, especially to those who represent Him.

Therefore while the thrust of the readings is on the dangers on the moral and spiritual plane - even spiritual jealousy and resentment at others’ success and others getting ahead - we are called to greater generosity of spirit just as God is generous with His Spirit.

23rd Sunday of Year B

The Lord made the deaf hear, the blind see, the dumb speak, the lame walk freely


These miraculous signs foretold in Isaiah which are a graphic reality in the Gospel passage today - and the rendered cures are due to the presence of God’s healing love. He is not dispassionate or indifferent, or biding his time, playing with us. He is with us all the time – and He acts in HIS time, at an hour when we do not expect, and the longed-for miracle we seek comes. This should elicit faith, wonder, and above all grateful praise.

These physical signs or manifestations point to a deeper reality – the senses symbolize the spiritual within. Those who are truly blind are the proud and willfully stubborn, those who refuse admit the truth about themselves in the light of GOD or in the light of others’ helpful insights or advice. The stubborn refusal to change one’s ways where necessary is dangerous to one’s health and wellbeing, both physically and also for one’s salvation.

I can be so blind to my own faults, and stubbornly want complete control of my destiny and future where diet and exercise is concerned that I feel I can unaided and unsupervised lose weight and change in my own good time and effortlessly. How many people also, for example, refuse to heed the warning signs on cigarette packets, oblivious or taking their chances that they can avoid the statistics – or be on the right side of them? How many people turn a blind eye to the obvious effects of alcohol abuse, or long term effects of compulsions and addictions or other harmful habits? How come so many people seem to think they can escape unharmed?

Deafness to advice, criticism meant in the right spirit, to the truth about myself and condition seen objectively by a dentist, doctor, counselor, therapist, confessor or true friend?

Being mute – in a spiritual way – means being deliberately silent when speech (and action) is necessary in the face of injustice and lies. This is called ‘guilty silence’. How often have I perhaps failed to stand up for the weak, vulnerable and innocent and have hidden somehow anonymously in the mob – form bullying at school to cyber-bullying, or in domestic life or the workplace? Have I hidden, or hidden from the truth?

Being paralysed – in a spiritual way – means failure to act, for any number of reasons: laziness, fear to overcome my faults and take the necessary steps (at last) and no longer procrastinating.

Where is healing and by implication, change, needed in my life? What am I afraid to change? What is preventing me from being ‘the best version of myself’ – the version God wants, the version that is often highest benefit to others?

The stark use of Jesus’ fingers and spittle point to perhaps the indispensable directness and radicalness of change – the pointed and probing analysis that we find uncomfortable with any physician, but all the more necessary and remedial (as in remedy) that Christ the Divine Healer wants for my wellbeing and completeness and ultimately my happiness in this life and the next. We must allow ourselves to be touched by Christ in this way. We must be open – in order to ‘be opened’. May it happen soon!

22nd Sunday

 

I was once told you could tell the quality of a restaurant or a hotel by the state of the public gents’ and ladies toilets. It is indeed a comfort now to see lists on notice boards in a prominent place in bathrooms/restrooms detailing the regular checking of the state of the toilets by staff, usually on the hour.

Similarly it is and gratifying to see that even hotel restaurant staffs are reminded of the importance of washing their hands. We see deli staff put on fresh gloves as they serve us. We are all aware of the 10 vectors of infection – the 10 fingers. We now know the reason for the importance of such cleanliness because of our advanced knowledge of bacteria and the manner in which food and utensils and work-tops can become contaminated as sources of infection and food poisoning. An occasional outbreak of Salmonella in the news puts us all on our guard. Hygiene is economically important for a solid business reputation and customer base. Liquid gels in hospitals and commercially available hand gels are recent welcome additions to increased awareness of public hygiene.

Washing – personal hygiene, brushing teeth, nail scrubbing, how often we do it, the order in which we do it, the time spent in the bathroom bathing and showering and so on - we are all creatures of ingrained habit in how we wash.

For the Pharisees in the Gospel today washing was about much more than hygiene – it was a complicated system of the elders of ritual cleanness and uncleanness - and therefore was a publicly accountable measure of one’s worthiness before God. This external 'cleanness’ was mistaken for virtue.

But as Jesus counters from the Scriptures: ‘this people honours me with their lips, their hearts are far from me.’

Jesus wants therefore to set us free – in the 21^st century - from undue nit-picking, legalism and seeing the wood for the trees and micro-managing ourselves. The law doesn’t save. The following of God from the heart is what matters. The scrupulous following of the 613 laws and rules, and many more besides – became a burden and beyond all reason for the Jews and the Pharisees.

Jesus wants us to keep things simple – and in fact he mentions 12 things that may stem from the heart.  

Jesus wants to set us free form worry about external things like pots and pans and surface things – it is the heart is what matters.

But we must avoid complacency on the other hand and realise that we must be vigilant – to be, in the words of the Second Reading from St James this Sunday, - ‘uncontaminated by the world.’ This means that to be a Christian we must be mindful of matters of  the heart – but not in the romantic sense. When we look at the list of sins that emerge form the heart we realise that often the external world does in fact become the battleground fpr the senses and the wayward heart. We must be discerning.

We must be Chrsitians from the inside out, but mindful of the outside influences aswell.