Sunday September 27th. to Saturday October 3rd.
Sunday September 27th. to Saturday October 3rd. Reflections on the Readings at Daily Mass.
Sunday September 27th. Twenty Sixth Sunday in Year One.
Readings
Ezekiel 18/25-28 :
Paul’s letter to the Philippians 2/1-11 :
Matthew 21/28-32
Today’s Gospel reading carries on the thoughts
that have been provoked by the Gospel readings over the last two Sundays. Jesus
is once again outwitting his opponents and this he often does by asking them a
question which puts them on the spot.
This is what Jesus does in today’s Gospel
reading. This episode takes place in the Jerusalem Temple and Jesus has just
demonstrated his own Messianic authority in the strange episode of the fig tree
(Matthew 21/18-22) The chief priests and the elders of the people have tried to
trap Jesus into admitting that his Sonship is of such a kind that they are able
to accuse him of blasphemy.
In the previous passage (Matthew 21/23-27) the
Gospel writer has taken us back to beyond John the Baptist’s questions from
prison (Matthew 11/2-15) to the beginning of the Gospel where John has
presented Jesus as the One who will come to baptise with the Holy Spirit and
with fire and who will bring God’s judgement on earth (Matthew 3/11-12) . In
that passage the contrast between heavenly and human authority recalls Jesus’
rebuke to Peter (Matthew 16/23) where Jesus accuses Peter of thinking ‘human’
thoughts instead of ‘Godward’ thoughts. In their response to Jesus’ question
his opponents show that their authority derives from human beings because they
worry about what human beings will think iF they belittle the popular opinion
of John.
In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus is the great divider.
Everyone has to decide from where Jesus derives his authority. Ignorance,
evasion, self-interest are no excuse. To those who seek to avoid Jesus’
authority he gives no answers and shows his authority by refusing.
Now we come to the passage which we read in
today’s Gospel reading. This parable is unique to Matthew’s Gospel and it may
be confusing at first reading. In it we
must recognise that it is the scribes and the high priests who have been asked
to work in the vineyard and they have replied ‘Certainly!’ to God’s call. They
have, however, refused to work the works of justice and mercy to which God was
actually calling them. They have replied only with the outward forms of
religion.
In the parable Jesus places first the
outsiders, the tax-collectors and the non-Jews who have, apparently, been
unwilling to work for the coming of God’s Kingdom or Reign of love. However, it
is they who have listened to John the Baptist and to Jesus and who have
repented and begun to follow Jesus and to work for that coming Kingdom.
So the expectations of Jesus’ hearers are
reversed and it is the most unlikely who have repented and followed Jesus in
the ways of justice and peace to which he has called them.
The short passage from the prophet Ezekiel is
chosen to parallel the teaching of Jesus. It is an introduction to Jesus’ story
which challenges us, as always, to re-consider the way in which we see the
world around us. There are vast numbers of people who have never heard the
Gospel and know nothing of God or, indeed, of any formal religion and there are
also many who have
Abandoned the practice of their Christian
faith, either through apathy or because they have found the Church to be
unwelcoming or its teachings impossible to believe. So often it is these people
who are actually living according to Jesus’ teaching and showing love and
concern for their neighbours by the generosity of their lives. It is they who
having, apparently, said ‘No’, but, nevertheless, get on with living the Gospel
in their lives. Sadly, it seems so often to be true that those who profess the
Christian faith are not half as generous as their non-Christian neighbours.
We so often fail to live up to what we preach.
Every time we pray, every time we are at Mass we say ‘Yes, certainly’ to Jesus’
invitation to follow him in the way in which we live but, so often, our actions
do not match our words.
It is good to remember that traditional
Catholic teaching has always found ways of dealing with this problem. Remember
‘baptism of desire’? This was a wonderful theological way of getting round this
reality by saying that those who live good and generous lives but do not accept
the Christian faith would accept it if they truly understood it! So they were
baptised by ‘desire’ but that is a bit of a cop out because we know that many
of those people who belong to others faiths or none would never accept Baptism,
It is the Holy Spirit at work in their hearts and lives that enables them to
live according to Jesus’ teaching without even knowing of it.
This should be a great source of joy for us
because it makes us realise that God’s purposes are being worked out in so many
who know nothing of him but who are open to the Spirit who is at work in their
hearts.
For us who have faith, we must be always
grateful for this wonderful gift which puts on us the responsibility of giving
thanks to God for the work of the Spirit all around us. Ours it is to make
‘Eucharist’ to give thanks to God in the name of the whole world.
The second reading from the letter to the
Philippians is one of extraordinary beauty and contains within it a hymn which sums up the whole doctrine of the
Incarnation. The extract begins with an invitation to the community to live
‘united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and
a common mind’. ’There must be’ the writer says ‘no competition among you, no
conceit but everybody is to be self-effacing. Always consider the other person
better than yourself so that nobody thinks of their own interests first but
everybody thinks of other people’s interests instead’. What a community that
would be! It is for that sort of community that we must strive so that we set
an example to the world around us of what human life is really all about.
The writer then quotes this beautiful hymn
which was probably not written by Paul but was, rather, something that the
Philippians already knew or that Paul may have taught them on his first visit
to them. There may be various influences on the structure and content of the
hymn but the link with the personified
figure of Divine Wisdom in the Hebrew Scriptures is very clear. Scholars
believe that it is possible that this hymn was written first in Aramaic and then
translated into Greek for Greek speaking Jews and that Paul may have learnt it in
the later thirties soon after his conversion. Though the theology underlying
the words is open to discussion, the general meaning is very clear and is probably
best summed up in the words ‘emptied himself’. The One who is equal with God
has taken the condition of a slave and accepted death but God has raised him up
to the Lord of all.
The whole hymn is a summing up of our life in
Christ since we are so united with him in Baptism that we too die with him and
are raised up with him to share in the Divine life.
These words are worth reading and re-reading
slowly and thoughtfully since they sum up the whole mystery of Christ and of
our life in him.
As always, the reading from the Letter to the
Philippians is not meant to relate to the other readings since we read through
these letters week by week but today’s extract does, in fact, tie in with
Jesus’ parable. The life in Christ that is described at the beginning of
today’s reading and of which the hymn also sings is the result of living in
communion with Christ. It is the life of the Church. But it is also the life of
those who hear the Word of God and act upon it by changing their way of life
and putting it into practice. We are called to ‘empty ourselves of all that is
selfish and mean and to take on the life of love as it is described at the
beginning of today’s reading from the Letter to the Philippians. But we have
also to recognise all those who, though they know nothing of the Gospel,
nevertheless, hear the Word of God, the Spirit who speaks to their hearts and
consciences and live by that word. It is with all these who might seem to have
said ‘No’ to the invitation but who, in fact have been touched by the Spirit
and answered ‘yes’, it is with these that we must work to build up the Reign of
God’s justice and love in our world.
Monday September 28th. Monday in Week twenty Six in Year Two.
Optional Memory of Saint Wenceslaus martyr and
also saint Laurence Ruiz and others, martyrs.
Readings
Job 1/6-22
: Luke 9/46-50
During this week we read from the book known as
Job. Various dates between the fifth and the second centuries B.C.E. have been
suggested for this book but owing to the universal nature of the subject matter
the date and the historical background are of little importance and Job himself
is not an historical character.
The main subject of the book is the perennial
problem of innocent suffering. Although no final solution is given the book
offers the most thorough treatment of the subject in the Hebrew Scriptures. The
traditional view that suffering is the result of sin is rejected since Job is
in no doubt about his innocence. The purpose of Job’s suffering is more to be
found in his disinterested piety which is vindicated in the book’s epilogue.
Already the patience of Job was proverbial in New Testament times (James 5/11)
and is still something to which people allude when they speak of someone having
‘the patience of Job’.
Between the prologue to the
book which deals with Job’s trials and the epilogue which tells of his
restoration there is a long poetic dialogue which treats of the profound problem
of suffering in the life of someone who is acknowledged to be good. In the
course of the work Job defends his integrity against the charges of his three
friends who believe that they are defending God. The work ends with an affirmation of Job’s
innocence in which he challenges God and, eventually, God responds to Job and
Job gives his final reactions.
In the extract which we read today the scene is
set for Job’s sufferings. God is depicted as an Oriental monarch surrounded by
his servants who report back to him. One of these is Satan, the Tempter, who is
given permission to put Job to the test and to see if he will remain faithful
to God when suffering comes upon him.
Job’s reaction to the loss of his family and
all his possessions is with the famous words, ‘The Lord has given, the Lord has
taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord’.
Satan who in this case is not the Devil but a
servant of God who tempts people on God’s behalf is a concept that we find
unacceptable since it is unthinkable that a loving God should hand us over to
someone to tempt and try us. What is important for us is Job’s reaction to his
loss. We must pray that we may be more accepting when suffering and misfortune
come our way since they are part of the human condition, something shared by
Jesus.
In the Gospel reading we are faced with two
different situations. The first is, once again, a reversal of human wisdom and
thinking. Jesus takes the little child as a reminder to his disciples and to us
that among us the least is the greatest and that to welcome a little child is
to welcome Jesus himself. How far do we realise this order of things both in
our Christian communities and in the world around us. Anyone seeing our
community gatherings might well believe that the most important person there,
the greatest, is the one who is vested and who takes a dominant position in the
assembly and not the little child playing about under the pew and annoying the
grown-ups. How can we rectify this way of seeing things? In the world around
us, of course, what can we do to alleviate the sufferings of millions of
children all over the world and even in our own society? We cannot ignore this
if what Jesus says is true.
The second point in Jesus’ teaching is equally
important for us. Anyone who is not against us is for us, Jesus tells his
disciples and us. In other words, wherever we see people of every faith and
none doing the work of the Kingdom, making our world a better place, we must
acknowledge that they are ‘for us’ or ‘with us’ in the building up of that
Kingdom which should also be our primary concern.
Let’s pray that we may have the eyes of faith
to see those who are of little importance in the world and to recognise how
important they in God’s sight and let’s be always on the watch to see where the
kingdom is being established and give thanks for that.
Memory of Saint Wenceslaus, martyr (c.907-929)
Wenceslaus was born about the year 907 C.E.
shortly after Christianity had arrived in Bohemia and when the country was
still partly pagan. His grandmother Ludmilla who was a Christian brought
Wenceslaus up in the Christian faith knowing that one day he would rule.
At the age of only eighteen Wenceslaus
inherited the Dukedom and, from the start, proved himself a good ruler. He
worked hard to improve the religious and educational state of his people. This
implied greater contact with other nations and Wenceslaus brought back priests
who had been exiled and invited missionaries from other countries to come and
help him in bringing the Christian faith to the people. He built new churches,
passed new laws to protect the poor and sought to outlaw violence from his
country.
Wenceslaus also recognised the German Emperor,
Henry the Fowler, as the successor of Charlemagne and his overlord. This made
him enemies amongst his nobles and with the help of his brother Boleslav,
Wenceslaus was assassinated by them in 929 when he was only twenty two years of
age.
Boleslav later repented and Wenceslaus’ remains
were re-interred in the Cathedral of Saint Vitus in Prague. Wenceslaus is the
patron saint of Bohemia and we pray today for the Slavic nations who still
venerate him. He has also become the patron of Czech independence.
It is good to know something of the king of
whom we sing every Christmas. The carol composed by the great Anglican
hymnographer, John Mason Neale (1818-1866) is entirely imaginative though based
upon Wenceslaus’ well authenticated love of the poor.
There are proper readings for Wenceslaus
though, almost certainly, those of the day will be used. The proper readings
are :
First Letter of Peter 3/14-17 which is about being ready to suffer
for the sake of Christ,
Matthew 10/34-39 which again is about being
ready to suffer and the divisions that following Christ can bring even within
families reminding us of Wenceslaus’ murder by his brother.
Memory of Saint Laurence Ruiz (1600-1637) and
his companions, martyrs.
Laurence Ruiz was born in Manila in the
Philippines to Christian parents about the year 1600. He married and had three
children and was a very committed Catholic Christian.
It was at this time that the great European
powers were colonising the Far East and for this reason Japan had closed its
borders for fear of the same thing happening to them. They had expelled all
foreign missionaries who were suspected of being agents of the colonising
powers and had forbidden all European religions. Many Christians in Japan had
been put to death or forced into exile.
Laurence joined a secret missionary team of
Dominicans who had decided to set sail for Japan to support the isolated
Christians there. A storm blew their ship aground on the small island of
Okinawa off the coast of mainland Japan and Laurence and his companions were
arrested and taken to Nagasaki where they were tortured and put to death.
Nagasaki had been the site of a large Christian
community and over 50,000 Catholic Christians had been put to death there or
driven from their homes. Some of these
hid on the small islands surrounding Nagasaki and were only re-discovered at
the end of the nineteenth century. They had maintained their Christian faith
but having had no contact with the wider Church, over the years their beliefs
had become very confused. In spite of great danger, however, they had remained
faithful to what they had learnt from the original European missionaries and
are an amazing example of survival and perseverance.
Laurence is the first Filipino martyr to be
declared a saint and he and his companions are the patron saints of Japan, the
Philippines and Taiwan.
We pray for all the Christian churches of these
countries and their coming together in a union of love and fellowship. We pray
too for all those who seek to take the Gospel to those who know nothing of it
that they may be sensitive to the cultures and beliefs that they find and seek
to build upon this rather than destroy it or worse still, impose an alien
culture on that which they have found already in existence.
There are proper readings for Laurence Ruiz and
his companions but, almost certainly, the readings for the day will be used. Since
these martyrs were only canonised in 1987 and their feast introduced into the
Calendar much later, there are no reading in the current Lectionary.
Tuesday September 29th. Feast of the
Archangels Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.
There seems little reason to doubt that Jesus,
truly a man of his time and culture, believed in the existence of angels as did
most of his Jewish contemporaries though
the powerful Jewish aristocracy, the Sadducees who were all for purifying the
Jewish faith accepted neither angels nor spirits or even life after death.
Throughout the Hebrew Scriptures we find
reference to angels and they are always seen as messengers of God in the world
or inhabitants of the heavenly court. Given the Jewish respect even for the
sacred name of God which they would not pronounce, it would seem that angels
were a way of speaking about God’s interventions in human affairs, often being
called the ‘angel of the Lord’.
In ancient Hebrew texts angels are often
described in ways that have obviously been borrowed from the imagery of the
religions of the surrounding countries. Thus Seraphim (Isaiah 6/2-7) sometimes
thought to be serpentine in form though, in fact, they had human attributes and
with their six wings they covered their faces, their genitalia (feet) and with
the other pair they flew. An anatomical impossibility they were the heavenly
guardians of God’s court. The Cherubim (Ezekiel 28/14) were again almost
certainly borrowed from the religious imagery of the surrounding countries.
They were composite creatures with the physical characteristics of animals and
humans and usually winged and were often guardians of the royal throne.
The archangels appear in the book Tobit where
there are said to be seven who stand in the presence of God and the names of
the three that are mentioned specifically in the Scriptures all have meaning
and might well be seen as attributes of God.
Michael means the one ‘who is like God’ and
appears in the book Daniel on two occasions (Daniel 10/13 sqq. and 12/1) as the
helper of the Chosen People, in the Letter of Jude in a strange allusion to the
struggle with the devil for the body of Moses (Jude 9) and again the Revelation
to John in the struggle with the dragon.(Apoc. 12/7-9).
Gabriel whose name means ‘man’ or ‘hero of God
is also mentioned in the book Daniel in the interpretations of Daniel’s
visions. (Daniel 8/15 sqq. and 9/21 sqq). Gabriel alos appears in the Gospel of
Luke when it is he who foretells the
birth of John the Baptist to his father Zechariah and to Mary the conception of
Jesus in her womb. (Luke 1/11 sqq and 1/26 sqq).
Raphael, whose name means ‘God heals’ appears
only in the book Tobit where he is said to be one of the seven archangels who
stand in the presence of God. It is he who hears the prayers of the good and presents them to God. He is
also instrumental in the healing of Tobit and in dealing with demon who
torments Sarah, the woman who is to become Tobias’ wife. (Tobit 12/12 and 15).
Until the reform of the Calendar for the
Western Church after the Second Vatican Council this day was known as the feast
of Saint Michael and all Angels or Michaelmass Day as it was called in this
country. It is a date which still appears in many calendars and gives its name
to the academic autumn term in some places.
Gabriel was celebrated on March 24th.
in the West and March 26th in the East before or after the feast of
the Annunciation for obvious reasons.
Raphael was later given a feast on October 24th.
but it was mostly Michaelmass day that was widely observed.
With the revision of the Calendar today’s feast
has been given over to the feast of the three archangels grouped together.
In our day it would seem many people of no
particular faith believe in angels but it would seem they envisage them, rather
like fairies. What can we make of all this though? For many of us belief in
these quasi-mythological creatures is difficult if not impossible.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states
that ‘The existence of the spiritual, non-corporeal beings that Sacred
Scripture usually calls ‘angels’ is a truth of faith. The witness of Scripture
is as clear as the unanimity of tradition’ Para. 328 but the Catechism also
reminds us that ‘In Catholic doctrine there exists an order or ‘hierarchy’ of
truths, since they vary in their relation to the foundation of the Christian
faith’ Para 90.
Given the fact that the witness of Scripture is
not very convincing and this teaching would seem very far down in the
‘hierarchy of truths’ and not very strongly attached to the ‘foundation of the
Christian faith, it would seem quite
legitimate to accept one’s inability to believe in these ‘spiritual
non-corporeal beings’.
Today’s may well be seen as a celebration of
God’s intervention in our lives and God’s concern and care of all his children
and, indeed, for the whole of creation.
Readings
Daniel 7/9-10, 13-14 :
Apocalypse 12/7-12 : John 1/47-51
There are only two readings at Mass, the first
can be either from Daniel or from the book of the Apocalypse.
In the reading from Daniel the court of Heaven
is described like that of a great Oriental monarch with his servants doing his
will. In this way the writer is attempting to speak of that which he cannot
begin to imagine in words that evoke infinite power and majesty. Of course,
later generations of Christians have seen in the picture the writer paints a
picture of Jesus himself, coming into the presence of the Father to receive
authority over the whole created order but this was not something the author
had in mind. In these ways, however, the writer is trying to speak of things
which are totally beyond our comprehension and although angels are part of that
picture there is no reason to think that any of this ought to be taken
literally.
The alternative reading from the Apocalypse,
the Revelation to John, portrays Michael the Archangel as a heavenly warrior
who triumphs over evil. As Christians we, of course, see in this an image of
Jesus himself who has overcome sin and death. He is still at work in us, and in
all those who are of goodwill, continuing the ongoing battle over the evil in
our world to set up the Reign of God’s love.
The Gospel reading has Jesus thinking and
speaking as a Jew of his time. He alludes to the vision of Jacob’s ladder which
refers to the book of Genesis (Genesis 28) where Jacob dreams of a ladder between
earth and the dwelling place of God upon which angels are ascending and
descending. Jacob declares that this is ‘the house of God and the gate of
Heaven’. For us, Jesus is the house or dwelling place of God and he is the gate
of heaven, the gateway to the Kingdom of God.
In all of these readings angels are used to
portray or to speak of that which we cannot fully grasp or understand. To
believe in them as real entities would seem to be to miss the point and to
misunderstand the sacred text. In each case the point being made is that God is
not some distant deity but a God who does intervene in our human affairs and in
our world if we allow it.
Today we are also reminded that we are called
to become like Michael who is ‘like unto God’. We are made in the image and
likeness of God and we must seek to allow that image to become ever clearer as
we open our hearts to the love and the Spirit of God. We are called to become
like Gabriel, ‘heroes for God’ speaking up for the poor and the oppressed and
being God’s spokespersons in the world. We are called to be like Raphael
bringing healing and hope to our troubled and sick world and society.
Today then is for us a day to give thanks for
that love which God has for each and every one of us which the stories of the
angels seek to make more explicit and we are called to reflect these stories in
our lives as we become angels or ministers of God’s love and care in the world
and for one another.
Michaelmass used to be one of those dates in
the Calendar which heralded new beginnings. Let’s make it a day when we start
afresh to God’s angels and ministers in our world.
Wenesday September 30th. Memory of Jerome teacher of the Church
(c.341-420)
Jerome was born in Strido in Aquileia in
Dalmatia around the year 341 C.E.. He was well educated, firstly by his father
and then in Rome. After visiting the Roman churches and, especially, the Catacombs
Jerome accepted the Christian faith and was baptised. He then travelled widely
in Gaul and in Italy and decided to become a monk. After living in community
for some years he became a hermit in the desert of Chalcis in Syria for five
years during which time he learnt Hebrew in order to study the Jewish
Scriptures in their original language. He was then invited to Rome by Pope
Damasus to become his secretary but after Damasus’ death he went to Bethlehem
where he remained for the rest of his life.
In Rome Jerome had gathered together a group of
women, one of whom was Paula, who studied the Scriptures under his guidance.
These women followed Jerome to Bethlehem and while he set up a monastery for
men Paula established a community for women. The two shared a common church for
worship. Jerome gave himself to the study of the Scriptures and with the help
of Paula and others he undertook the monumental task of translating the whole
of the Bible into Latin which was the common language of the day. This version
known as the Vulgate remained the standard text in the Western Church until the
last century.
Jerome also wrote innumerable works on the
Scriptures and on the works of the earlier church teachers and he joined in the
many theological controversies of the time writing many letters which are still
extant. His scholarship was unsurpassed in the early Church.
Although a scholar at heart, Jerome was also
kind and compassionate to the needy and
when in the year 410 C.E. the city of Rome was sacked and many refugees came to the East, he opened
his monastery to them laying aside his studies to serve them. He declared that
‘today we must translate the words of Scripture into deeds and instead of
speaking holy words, we must live them’.
Jerome died in Bethlehem in the year 420 C.E.
at a great age and was buried in the church of the Nativity but his remains
were later removed to the Church of Saint Mary Major in Rome.
Jerome is one of the four great doctors or Teachers
of the Western Church. He is often depicted with a red cardinal’s hat from the
notion that Pope Damasus made him a Cardinal but he is also represented in his
hermit’s cave with a lion at his feet.
We pray today for all Scripture scholars and
their work and for a greater love and knowledge of the Scriptures in the
churches, especially our own.
There are special readings for Jerome but
almost certainly those of the day will be used as follows:
Job 9/1-12, 14-16 :
Luke 9/57-62
In today’s reading Job exalts God’s majesty and
power and accepts that, however innocent he may believe himself to be, it is
not for him to take issue with God who is his judge.
Although Job’s attitude is difficult for us to
accept, we can learn something from it. Whatever ills may come our way, this is
part of the human condition and we cannot blame God. The mystery of evil in our
world is one for which we have no answer and Jesus doesn’t answer this problem
either. What we have to remember is that Jesus shared our human condition and
knew about hardship, suffering, misfortune and pain because he is truly one of
us, like us in all things. What we have to keep in mind always is that God
doesn’t send us pain but shares it with us in Jesus.
Today’s Gospel reading is unique in that
someone volunteers to follow Jesus rather than waiting to be called by him.
Jesus responds to this by reminding the man that if he does follow him he must
share in his homelessness as he goes from one place to another proclaiming the
Good News.
To another person whom he calls, Jesus reminds
the man that following him must take precedence even over the Law. The Law
would have made it an obligation to bury one’s father but if one is to follow
Jesus the Law must be left behind. For the future Jesus would be his Law!
Sometimes following Jesus will mean breaking
the law of the state when it conflicts with Jesus’ teaching or our conscience
but sometimes conscience will also dictate that we break a law of the Church
which, for the most part, are ‘man’-made rather than Divine injunctions as were
the many ramifications of the Jewish Law.
To a third person who asks Jesus if he may bid
farewell to his family at home, Jesus makes allusion to the call of Elisha by
the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 19/19-21) where the prophet allows him to kiss his
father and mother farewell before following him but Jesus’ demand is even
stricter than this.
When Jesus speaks of the plough he is reminding
his hearers of the call of Elisha once again who was ploughing when Elijah
called him. To be fit to proclaim the Kingdom of God, the disciple must leave
everything and not turn back.
Of course, we cannot just up sticks and follow
Jesus as those first disciples were called to do. We can, however, try to make
sure that there is nothing holding us back from following him faithfully. It
may be our attachment to friends or family that would lead us into ways which we
know are not of the Gospel, the pursuit of riches, prestige, possessions and so
on. It may be our own attachment to these or other things that hold us back
from the generosity that Jesus demands of us.
Jesus is a constant challenge to us and to our
way of life and if we want to follow him faithfully he will not let up on us
and the demands that he makes will be unrelenting but they will lead us into
fullness of life and joy and peace.
There are special readings for Saint Jerome
though almost certainly those above will be used. The special ones are as
follows:
Paul’s Second Letter to Timothy 3/14-17 where
the writer insists on the priority of the Scriptures as the source of all sound
teaching and of daily guidance.
Matthew 13/47-52 where Jesus speaks of the
kingdom of Heaven as a dragnet containing all sorts of creatures but as the
scribe, like Jerome, drawing from his store of knowledge things new and old in
his teaching.
Thursday October 1st. Memory of
Therese of the Child Jesus, Carmelite, Teacher of the Church.
Therese was born in 1873 in Lisieux in Normandy
where she grew up. The youngest daughter in a wealthy and religious
middle-class family. She received a great deal of attention from her doting
parents and after hre mother’s death she was brought up by her elder sister
Pauline. When Therese was only nine, Pauline left home to join the local
Carmelite convent and Therese herself began to long for the same life of prayer
and poverty. Quite exceptionally, Therese was allowed to join the Convent at the
age of only fifteen and there she was given the name by which we know her,
Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face. She did not have an easy life since
the other sisters wanted to make sure that she was not treated differently
because of her youth and having sisters in the community did not make life any
easier. Although still young Therese was given the task of helping with the
young novices who joined the community and she proved herself an excellent
guide. Her approach was extremely simple. It was to live the most ordinary life
with love and to do every task, however humble, with love and joy.
The convent was ill ventilated and overcrowded
with the sisters living cheek by jowl so that it was a breeding ground for
Tuberculosis and Therese succumbed to what was then a deadly disease at the age
of only twenty four in 1897..
Therese’s sister who had become Prioress of the
community ordered her to write down her life story which she did. This was
intended originally for the sisters only but, somehow, it became circulated and
in no time it became religious best-seller. Sadly, because the sisters did not
think what Therese wrote was of a sufficiently pious style, they edited it so that
might sound more religious but in spite of that it still had enormous success
and helped innumerable people to live in the simple way which Therese had
taught and lived. In her ‘story of a soul’ as it is entitled, Therese showed
that the Gospel could be lived without great and heroic deeds in the simple
tasks of daily life. The original text was published in the 1950’s and showed
what a great disservice her sisters had done her in tampering with Therese’s
words in which she is seen in all her simplicity and openness as a real human
being and an attractive one.
Therese’s message is one for us because it is
true to the Gospel. It is just to get with our life and to do everything with
love and joy.
Therese was canonised in 1925 and has become
one of the most popular of all modern saints because of the simplicity of her
message. Because of her great concern for and correspondence with missionaries,
she was declared patron of the missions
in 1927 and a patron of France in 1947.
We pray today for all Carmelite sisters and for
all those who take the Gospel to far away places that they have the simplicity
of approach that was Therese’s. We pray too for the people and churches of
France of which she is a patron.
Although there special readings for Therese,
almost certainly those of the day will be used as follows:
Readings
Job 19/21-27
: Luke 10/1-12
Today’s reading from Job shows him at his
worst. The network of human relationships which make up a human life has been
ripped apart and Job is ostracised and on the verge of non-existence. He is
reduced to bare survival, physical existence and nothing more. He cries out to his friends and declares that
it is the hand of God that has struck him. As the hand of God is the instrument
of creation and salvation so it can bring destruction.
Job is utterly alone, abandoned by family and
friends and, apparently, by God. Then
from these depths Job makes the leap of faith. If God will not speak now then
he must speak in the future. It is to the future that Job appeals. He must soon
die but he wants his testimony recorded against the day when his case will come
up for judgement. The record must be as permanent and as indestructible as
possible. It must be chiselled into the rock.
Sadly, the words that Job wishes to be recorded
have suffered textual corruption and the translation is much debated. The
Hebrew word translated by ‘avenger’ is more correctly translated by
‘vindicator’ and it means the next of kin whose obligation it was to rescue
from poverty, redeem from slavery or avenge a death. Presumably, in this
instance, God must be intended but it is not clear. Does Job hope that the act of vindication
will be before or after his death? The former seems unlikely given what has
gone before and so, it would seem, that
Job expects to have in or from the
underworld, a vision of God pronouncing his vindication. Because the belief of
Israel was in a ‘living God’ this seems to provide a connection with Job’s
survival of consciousness after death. The divine vitality is such that it will
enable Job, even in the underworld, to have a momentary knowledge or vision of
what happens on earth.
The last two verses are not clear but what can
be drawn from them is ‘from my flesh I shall behold God, my eyes shall see no
stranger. My emotions are consumed within me’.. The sight of God, emphasised
three times is what Job really craves.
Although the ancient writers like Saint Jerome
read into this text the idea of the actual resurrection of the body this is not
being faithful to the text and we must resist that interpretation. All we can
draw from the text is Job’s ongoing trust in God and his hope that he will be
vouchsafed both vindication and some sight of God. For us, it is possible to
see in the isolation and state in which Job now finds himself towards the end
an image of Jesus in his sufferings. Much more than that, however, we can see
the countless millions of those who were reduced and are still being reduced to
this state in concentration camps and places of torture and imprisonment. Lest
we take the high moral ground we must not forget Guantanamo Bay and other
similar places in many countries where human beings are reduced by isolation
and deprivation so that they can become almost on-human. Of course, we must
also add to these the hundreds of camps for those who are refugees and are also
forced to live in conditions that are barely human remembering especially the
thousands of children among them, many with no father or mother or anyone to
care for them.
We must, surely, do all that we can to rid the
world of such atrocities and take our part in the struggle to eliminate torture
and deprivation and all forms of punishment which dehumanise.
In the Gospel reading today, Luke alone of all
the Gospel writers, has Jesus sending out the seventy (or in some manuscripts seventy two). The
other Gospels have only Jesus sending out the Twelve (Mark 6/6-11, Matthew
10/5-15 and Luke 9/1-6). The fact that Luke includes this episode would seem to
indicate that he believes it to be of great importance and that he saw the
missionary charge and the journey depicted here as of some particular
significance..
They are sent out by Jesus and they return to
him as we shall in Saturday’s reading. They go as Jesus’ representatives and as
representatives of the One who sent him as we see on their return.
Luke gives no indication as to where they are
sent and some scholars have questioned whether such a journey actually happened
during Jesus’ ministry. Is Luke using this to emphasise the continuity between
the mission of Jesus and that of the Church which speaks in Jesus’ name?
Even if that is not true it is obvious that
Luke is showing, as he will again in the Acts of the Apostles, that Jesus wants
others besides the Twelve to be his witnesses as the Church continues to
advance in space and time. The fact that the seventy are not called Apostles or
given any specific title may be an indication that Luke wants this to be an
implicit challenge to all who hear his Gospel, that they too must speak in the
Lord’s name.
The message to be proclaimed is clear ‘the
Kingdom of God has come near!’ This underlines the urgency of the message
entrusted to those whom Jesus sends as does the fact that ‘the harvest is
plentiful’. If enough workers do not collect it in time the crop will be
ruined. Those whom God calls to collaborate with him must both work and pray if
his harvest is to be reaped. There is
much to do but Jesus assures those who follow him that God will not be
thwarted, either by human hostility and uncooperativeness or by Satan as we
shall read later. This is a cause for confidence but much more important is
that God has placed in the book of life the names of all those who work with
him, about which we shall read on Saturday.
It is important once again to be clear as to
what the seventy were proclaiming, the Kingdom of God. This seems to be a
message which the Church so often forgets. We are not meant to be promoting the
Church but alerting people to the proximity of the Kingdom of God. For that, it
is necessary to have more workers and that means working with all those of
every faith and none who are of goodwill to recognise and to build up the Reign
of justice and peace in our world.
How can we do more about this? How can we make
the Church less obsessed with itself and increasing its numbers and more
enthusiastic about bringing the Kingdom of God to fruition?
There are special readings for Therese of
Lisieux, though, almost certainly those
of the day will be used. Those for Therese are:
Isaiah 66/10-14 which speaks of Jerusalem but
may be applied to the care and love that God has for each individual, a love of
which Therese was so acutely aware.
Matthew 18/1-5 in which Jesus shows his love
for children and teaches us that, unless we become childlike we cannot enter
the Kingdom of Heaven, reminding us of Therese’s childlike simplicity in her
approach to God.
Friday October 2nd. Memory of the Guardian Angels.
The belief that God assigns to each human
person an angel to guard them in body and soul was surprisingly common in the
pagan world as well as among the Jews though there is no specific mention of
this in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the New Testament this popular belief is
reflected in the Acts of the Apostles
where we read ‘They said “It is his angel”’ (Acts 12/15) and, in the case of
children by Jesus himself where he says ‘in Heaven their angels continually see
the face of my Father’ (Matthew 18/10). But although there is mention of such
angels in ‘The Shepherd of Hermas’ in
the second century C.E. there is a great variety of opinions among the early
writers and teachers of the Church. Saint Ambrose (c.339-397) believed that the
righteous were deprived of guardian spirits in order that they might have a
greater struggle against evil and so attain greater glory! Saint Jerome
(c.342-431) and Saint Basil (330-379) both assert that sin drives the angels away.
It was not until Honorius of Arles (+1151) that the belief was clearly defined.
He held that each soul, as soon as it was introduced into the body, was
entrusted to a particular angel. Saint Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) believed
that angels of a lower order were given this task.
The function of Guardian Angels is seen to be
the protection of the person of whom they are the angel and to present their
prayers to God.
The feast was being celebrated in Portugal in
1513 and it was extended to the whole Western Roman Church in 1670 by Pope
Clement XIth. to be celebrated on this day.
From all this it is easy to see that belief in
Guardian Angels came comparatively late into our Church’s teaching and, as
such, it cannot be something which we are bound to accept and believe. If the
teaching is found helpful then, of course, carry on believing it but don’t be
afraid to discard it if seems too unlikely for belief.
This is, of course another way of speaking of
God’s loving care and concern for each and every one of us and, of course, God
has given us our conscience which serves to protect us and guide us if we
listen to it.
Although there are special readings for today,
almost certainly those of the day will be used and these are those appointed:
Readings
Job 38/1, 12-21, 40/3-5 :
Luke 10/13-16
In the reading from Job today it is God who
speaks. From the heart of the tempest, in an almost mocking way, God reminds
Job of the wonders of creation and his presumption in imagining that he could
understand any of this.
Today we know more about the universe and our
own earth than human beings have ever known before and we are repeatedly
offered the opportunity to marvel at these things in the wonderful documentary
programmes that we can see on Television. Perhaps, because of this, we have
become a little blasé and take them for granted.
Job’s reaction is one that we might well
imitate. It is to be silent. In our prayer it is sometimes helpful to be
silent. Not to say anything but to be in awe at the wonder with which we are
surrounded and the One who is the source and origin of all this and to say
nothing.
At the end of yesterday’s Gospel reading Jesus
closed his words to the Seventy with the condemnation of those who would not
listen to them. ‘On that day’, that is the day of divine judgement, it will go
harder with those places than with Sodom. The wickedness of Sodom was
proverbial, not for the things with which we usually associate it but for its
failure to extend hospitality to God’s messengers. Its consequent destruction
became a warning for successive generations and is appropriate here.
Although the translation we use has ‘Alas for
you’, the better translation would be ‘Woe to you!’ Chorazin appears nowhere
else in the Gospels and there seems no apparent reason for it being mentioned
here but Bethsaida has been the place of Jesus’ ministry. Tyre and Sidon are towns
on the Phoenician sea coast and were not places visited during Jesus’ ministry
which is exactly why they are mentioned here.
The inhabitants of these pagan cities, Jesus says , would have put on
the traditional signs of repentance had
the Gospel been preached to them, much as Nineveh did when Jonah preached to
them (Jonah 3/6). Unlike Matthew, Luke doesn’t mention the failure to repent
(Matthew 11/21) which incurs Jesus’ anger but in Matthew’s Gospel it is
‘because they did not repent’ (Matthew 11/21) .
Luke has placed Jesus in Capernaum before (Luke
4/31 and 7/1) and from Luke 4/23 we may
infer that the things Jesus had done there were well known in Nazareth and
were, perhaps, a source of local boasting.
The language of Capernaum wanting ‘to be exalted high as heaven’ and
‘thrown down to hell’ reflects that used against the Babylonian King by Isaiah
(Isaiah 4/11, 13-15). ‘Hell’ is better translated by ‘Hades’ which was the
Greek place of the dead, the nether world of the shades, equivalent to the
Jewish ‘Sheol’.
Despite all this, Jesus tells the Seventy that
they must still proclaim the Gospel, even when they have been rejected and
those, he says, who reject them do, in fact, reject him.
This is another reminder to us that when the
proclamation of the Kingdom seems to fall on deaf ears, we must not lose heart
but still persevere, aware that, astonishingly, when we proclaim the Gospel it
is Jesus who proclaims it through us.
The proper readings for the Guardian Angels
which will almost certainly not be used
are the following:
Exodus 23/20-23
in which the Chosen people are told that they would have an angel to guard
them on their journey and to be their guide.
Matthew 18/1-5, 10 in which Jesus speaks of the
angels of the little children are continually in the presence of God.
In both of these readings it is easy to see
that this is a way of speaking of God’s guidance and care.
Saturday October 3rd. Saturday in Week twenty Six in Year Two.
Readings
Job 42/1-3, 5-8, 12-17 :
Luke 10/17-24
Today we read our final extract from Job where
Job recognises the wisdom of God and that he can never grasp or comprehend this
mystery. He ends by saying that he must repent in dust and ashes for his folly.
However, the story ends with Job being better
off than he was at the beginning with God’s blessings being poured upon him for
his faithfulness throughout his ordeals.
Unfortunately, although we can marvel with Job
at the all-otherness of God and our total inability ot understand the mystery
of God, we know that things don’t always, indeed, seldom work out as well in
real life.
There is, even now, among many Christians the
notion that if we are good God will reward us, even with material things. This is
the so-called ‘Gospel of Prosperity’ and it is a travesty of Jesus’ teaching
and his life. Things did not end well for Jesus, they ended with the Cross and
he does not promise us an easy ride if we are good. On the contrary, Jesus
tells us that if we would be his disciples then we must expect to suffer just
as he has suffered. It is always the way of the Cross that Jesus offers us but
he also teaches us that it is the only way to fullness of life.
This, of course, is not to say that our lives
as Jesus’ followers will be plagued with misfortune and sufferings but if we
want to follow him then we must take up our Cross and deny ourselves for love’s
sake. This is a joyful and fulfilling thing. When major troubles do come, like
the present Pandemic, we must not immediately think that they are a punishment
although they are all too often the result of human folly or wickedness. They
are, though, part of what it means to be human, something that God shares with
us in Jesus.
The Gospel reading brings the episode of the
Seventy to a close with their return from their journeying. After rebuking the
Seventy for their pride in what they felt had been a successful proclamation of
the Gospel, Jesus tells them that their real cause for rejoicing ought to be
that their names are written in the Book of Life, that they are the Kingdom of
God.
In typically Jewish fashion Jesus then prays.
Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus praises or blesses God for his wonderful
works not in the learned and the clever but in ‘mere children’. From that act
of thanksgiving, characteristic of Jewish prayer and reflected for us in the
Eucharist, Jesus moves into an ecstatic moment of praise for his own
relationship with the Father. It is the Father who has entrusted him with this
work and with these disciples. Only he, the Son, truly knows the Father just as
it is only the Father who truly knows the Son. But he, the Son, reveals these
mysteries to those whom he chooses . The whole work that Jesus has come to do,
in a few words, is caught up into the very being of God so that we get the
sense that God is totally involved in the proclamation of the Gospel and not
watching from afar in Heaven. God the Father is intimately involved in all that
Jesus is doing.
We must pause here to remember that Jesus is
also talking about us, the Church and God is totally involved in all that we,
the Church, are doing in proclaiming the Gospel today. This is an awesome
thought because it is so easy for us to forget this aspect of what it means to
be Church.
Finally, Jesus tells his disciples and us how
blessed we are because, in him, they and we have seen and heard things that the
prophets and kings longed to see and hear. This is the wonder of our following
Jesus, that he reveals to us the mysteries of God’s being and God’s action in
the world and involves us in that work of God. Our only reaction to all this
must be to fall silent in awe and wonder and to give thanks as we make
Eucharist.
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