March 27, 2013

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HOMILY for Wed in Holy Week

Isa 50:4-9; Ps 68; Matt 26:14-24

“The love of money is the root of all evils” (1 Tim 6:10), St Paul says to St Timothy. Over the past few days, we’ve glimpsed that this may have been Judas’ main problem. He was entrusted with the common purse but he’d been embezzling the money, thus betraying the trust of the community. He was entrusted with Christ’s friendship but Judas betrayed that too. He knew where Jesus would go and pray – in Gethsemane – and he revealed that most intimate location to the guards, betraying Christ with the kiss of false friendship. And all for the sake of thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave. But, as these actions show, it was poor Judas who was the slave, chained by his love for money.

But it’s not money, per se, that one loves, is it? After all, those printed pieces of paper and discs of hard metal are not much use in themselves. It’s what money can achieve and acquire for us, and what it stands for that makes money so desireable. For money stands for survival, security, self-esteem. It enables independence, insurance, and influence. It makes life more pleasant and comfortable. And none of these is necessarily a bad thing. Indeed, it’s often the lack of money that is the root of so many of the world’s evils like poverty, starvation, and homelessness! 

However, many of the world’s evils also arise when we desire money and its gains too much, to the detriment of genuine loving relationships and of not sharing what we have more equally. Judas’ sin is not that he needs money, or uses money, or even wants more money. It is betraying his friends, failing to love, turning away from the community and its needs that is his sin. For a greed for money engenders not just independence but isolation, not just security but selfishness. The love of money leaves little time or energy for the genuine love of people, and it is this lack of love that leads to the lack of good, to evil. 

So, ultimately, Judas’ sin is a lack of love, and it is on this basis that he – and every one of us – is judged. As St John of the Cross says: “At the end of our life, we will be judged on love”; not on what we have or do not have, whether we’re rich or poor, but on love. On this basis, we’re all equal. 

The past forty days, then, have invited us all on a movement of love, away from self and towards others; from Judas to Jesus. Hence, our journey culminates with him on the Cross. There, stripped of all possessions and status, completely poor but also most free, the greatest Love dies for his friends – for you, for me, and also for Judas. With Christ, all that we ever desire, all that money stands for is ours, for free!

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March 8, 2013

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HOMILY for Fri in Week 3 of Lent

Hos 14:2-10; Ps 80; Mark 12:28-34

As the crocuses paint the Meadows with spring colour, and the spring flowers behind the altar bud forth, and the gentle rain soaks into the ground, we know that spring is approaching. Hosea uses the image of the return of spring as a sign of God’s love; it is a sign of hope. Ever faithful, no winter of human sin can be an obstacle to God’s love, and God renews his Covenant with Israel, with us, not because of who we are, or because we deserve it, but because of who God is. 

God is a faithful and loving God, a merciful God whose generosity and goodness is like the spring, bringing life and colour where there is pallid cold and death. So, the Lord says: “I will heal their faithlessness; I will love them freely” (Hos 14:4). It is God’s divine initiative to love us and heal us despite what we have done and who we are.

And because God has first loved us, so, we can love him (cf 1 Jn 4:19). For loving God is a work of his grace, relying on his initiative. As Hosea says: “from me [God] comes your fruit” (Hos 14:8b). On our part, we only need to be open to God’s grace and love, like the soil that is receptive to the gentle soaking rain. As God’s grace imperceptibly seeps into our heart and his love warms it, so, what had been cold and dead through sin will gradually show signs of new life. 

First, the tender shoots of understanding that strengthens in the light of the knowledge of God’s goodness to become the strong upright stem of the will, choosing to obey God’s commandments, which finally flowers in charity – active deeds of love for God and neighbour.  Again, as the prophet says: “Whoever is wise, let him understand these things; whoever is discerning, let him know them; for the ways of the Lord are right, and the upright walk in them” (Hos 14:9). 

So, during Lent, let us rejoice and be confident of the faithful love of God, and allow his grace to penetrate our hearts, for this is our springtime, a time of renewal, growth, and being strengthened in the Lord’s love. 

 

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February 18, 2013

HOMILY for Mon in Week 1 of Lent

Leviticus 19:1-2,11-18, Ps 18; Matt 25:31-46

Yesterday’s Gospel simply says that after going without food for forty days and nights in the wilderness, Jesus was hungry. In this way we see how the Spirit immediately led Jesus after his baptism to a testing, a sacrifice of love, that anticipates the Cross. For the Lord chose to suffer the pangs of hunger, starvation, in order to experience what is a daily reality for so many people down the ages, including our own time. Nearly a third of our global population, and millions even in Britain, experience hunger because of “deep poverty”. 

So, Jesus, who is God-with-us, suffers in solidarity with all who are hungry, and also with all the poor, needy, and oppressed. This is what today’s well-known parable impresses upon us. Indeed, Jesus so identifies himself with the hungry and poor, that when we see them and help them, it is Jesus whom we help and serve. 

This is such an important element of our Christian faith that the Catholic Church is still the largest charitable organization in the world. This Lent, SCIAF, the official aid and international development charity of the Catholic Church in Scotland, wants to help the people of Burundi. Regarded as the third poorest country in the world, SCIAF reckons that 2 in 3 people in Burundi go to bed hungry each night. 90% of the population rely on subsistence farming, so SCIAF aims to help build peace in broken communities, and teach people new ways of farming so that they can grow enough food just to live. We can contribute to this work of justice and mercy by picking up a ‘Wee Box’ after Mass, and, throughout Lent, filling it with change. It’s a small thing for us, but together we can make a big difference to people’s lives. 

But most importantly, whether our acts are big or small, let us act with love. For without love but mere obligation or duty, we may not actually see Christ in the poor and needy, in the people around us, sitting next to us. How can we grow in love, and have our eyes opened so that we recognize Christ in the world? Through prayer, especially in the Eucharist. As Blessed Teresa of Kolkata said: “Jesus made himself the Bread of Life to satisfy our hunger for God and for his love”. So, it is here in the Mass that we are filled with God’s love, that we contemplate Christ Crucified and love him. For it is on the Cross that Christ is poor, hungry, naked, and suffering, and, then, we shall be taught to see the face of our beloved Lord in anyone who is poor, hungry, naked and suffering. And we can love Christ in them, love them because they are human beings, created in God’s image and deeply loved by him. Thus, prayer grounds our Lenten almsgiving so that they become acts of love.

We may not be able to solve the world’s social justice problems, or end world hunger, but with love, our “wee” contributions become something beautiful that we can offer to God this Lent, and indeed, throughout our lives. 

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Filed under: charity love prayer almsgiving Lent SCIAF 
February 16, 2013

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HOMILY for the Saturday after Ash Wed

Isaiah 58:9-14; Ps 85; Luke 5:27-32

It’s striking that right after Levi left everything, rose, and followed Jesus, he should throw a feast. It’s a mark of generosity mirroring the divine generosity which calls all to receive God’s mercy. And it’s a mark of celebration, too, reflecting the joy we have of being forgiven. For the one who follows Jesus is the sinner who has known God’s mercy and forgiveness, and so, has cause to be joyful and to be generous. 

Hence, in this season of Lent, we’re called once more to “taste and see how gracious the Lord is” (Ps 34:8) through repentance. This involves leaving behind those things to which we’ve become too attached, and rising to follow Christ more closely. Like Levi, we follow Christ through acts of generosity, through sharing what we have, and through making room for others in our lives. As Isaiah put it: “Pour yourself out for the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted” (58:10).

Then, as the Preface for Lent says, with the “joy of minds made pure”, we can come to the Lord’s   own feast – not just the banquet of Easter, but also the ultimate feast which our Easter festivities and this Mass anticipates: the Wedding Feast of the Lamb in heaven. So, let us come to him, who desires to heal sinners with his mercy and compassion, who calls us to follow him, and let us enjoy his hospitality. 

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April 4, 2012

HOMILY for Wed in Holy Week

Isa 50:4-9; Ps 68; Matt 26:14-24

Thirty pieces of silver is reckoned in the Old Testament to be the price of a slave, so Judas becomes a slave trader. But the irony is that, in fact, the roles are reversed. 

As we’ve heard on previous days, Judas had an inordinate love for money. And it is greed, or an unchecked desire for material comforts and pleasure that can enslave us. The greed for more money, and more stuff, can cause us to look for ever more opportunities to enrich ourselves, to spend more hours at work, and so, neglect our families and friends. It is a betrayal of sorts, and certainly a kind of enslavement. 

And, in fact, the man whom Judas has just sold is the most free. As Jesus says elsewhere, “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (Jn 10:18). And he demonstrates this freedom in what takes place next in St Matthew’s Gospel: he gives his Body and Blood to his disciples, and institutes the Eucharist. Jesus’ radical freedom is this freedom to love, to give himself totally for the good of another. With his own life, Jesus pays the price for our freedom from the slavery of sin and death. 

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March 31, 2012

HOMILY for Sat in Week 5 of Lent

Ezekiel 37:21-28; Jer 31:10-13; John 11:45-56 - preached at a Day of Renewal at the Gillis Centre, Edinburgh.

The chief priests and Pharisees are afraid. They’re afraid of drawing the unfavourable attention of the Roman forces. They’re afraid of losing everything they hold dear: the Temple and their nation. So, St Augustine said, “there is no cause for fear save the loss of what we love, when we possess it, or the failure to obtain what we hope for”. But, if we pay attention to St Augustine, we notice that we can only lose something we already possess; it is the loss of that something which we love, that induces fear. 

But did the Jewish authorities actually possess the Temple? Was there really a Jewish nation? Or, were these not already lost to the power of Rome? Ezekiel says that the sons of Israel had been scattered, and the people were divided and defiled by idolatrous practices. So, in fact, the Temple was already lost; defiled and in need of purification, as Jesus’ prophetic act of cleansing the Temple at the beginning of St John’s Gospel indicated. And the nation, too, was already lost; dispersed in many nations, and subject to foreign powers. Thus the chief priests and Pharisees had nothing to fear from this perspective, because, in fact, they had nothing to lose.

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March 29, 2012

HOMILY for Thu in Week 5 of Lent

Genesis 17:3-9; Psalm 104; John 8:51-59 – preached at a Mass with Baptism in St Albert’s Chaplaincy

NB: Names have been changed for the sake of the privacy of the family

Three things happen to Abraham in today’s First Reading. Firstly, God chooses him, and makes a covenant with him. The tendency is to think of a covenant as a contract, but contracts usually exchange property, goods, and services, not people. But what we have here is something personal and relational. For a covenant is an exchange of love between people. Marriage is a covenant, and so too is baptism, which is an exchange of love between God and his child. God says to us, the spiritual children of Abraham, that he will be our God; he gives himself to us. In exchange, we give ourselves to him in love, and so, we create a family bond with God. Relationship, love, and faith or trust, are all hallmarks of any family. Just as you, Laura and Mike, will help Rose to grow in your family, to form relationships with her grandparents, aunts, and uncles, and to increase in love and trust, so, too, you will need to help Rose to grow in love for God, introduce her to him through your own example, so that she too may have faith and trust in him; so that she will have a living relationship with him. 

Secondly, Abraham is given a new name by God. The gift of a name is a sign of a new state of life or vocation. Abram had been called by God to be the father of his people, and because he entered into a covenant with God, he was given a new name, a family name, you might say, to indicate this. So, too, Rose Elizabeth has been given names – family names, of course, but also names drawn from the wider family of the Church, from the saints. For, in baptism, she will share the universal Christian calling, which is to become a saint through openness to God’s grace. In particular, I am delighted that she is called Rose, which is the name of the first saint of the Americas, the Dominican St Rose of Lima. 

Finally, Abraham is given a royal dignity and the promise of land, a kingdom. So, too, Rose will be anointed just as the kings of Israel were anointed, just as Christ, the Anointed One was. And so, she will become another Christ, an anointed one, who shares in Christ’s royal, prophetic, and priestly dignity. But, moreover, through baptism, Rose will be adopted into God’s own family. So, she will have the dignity of a child of God, a divine dignity, as God enters into a covenant with her, and gives himself to her entirely so that, through grace, the Holy Trinity dwells within her soul, making her a temple of God’s holy presence, filled with his love. And this is the promise that he makes to her today. That she will inherit, not just any kingdom, but the kingdom of God. She will inherit eternal life with God. 

This is the greatest gift anyone can receive because union with God is the only thing that will satisfy the longings of the human heart. By bringing Rose here today, you, Laura and Mike, who have already co-operated with God in giving her the precious gift of life, are also rightly thinking of her deepest happiness, and so, labouring with God to plant the seed of eternal life. May what God has begun this day be brought to perfection through our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the working of all his saints – by which I mean not just those in heaven, but also us in the Church who all share in God’s covenant of love. 

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March 28, 2012

HOMILY for Wed in Week 5 of Lent

Dan 3:14-20. 24f. 28; Dan 3:52-56; John 8:31-42

The First Reading on these first days of Passiontide have tended to by typological, that is, they are Old Testament incidents that point to the life of Christ, and specifically, the events of the Easter Triduum. So on Monday (although we didn’t have it this year because it was the Annunciation), we had the trial of Susanna. She was a righteous and innocent woman who was falsely accused and tried by the authorities. So, she prefigures the trial and condemnation of Christ. Yesterday, we heard of the bronze serpent raised up in the desert by Moses, and any who looked at it was healed and saved from death. This prefigures the Cross, on which Christ is lifted up for our salvation. And today, the sequence of typological readings concludes with the trial and rescue of the three young men in the furnace.

For this incident prefigures the Resurrection, and more specifically, its saving effect on us. So, the three young men stand for those who have faith in God, and because of their faith, they are saved from the fires of death by Christ, who appears in the story as a fourth man who looked like “a son of the gods”. In the third and fourth centuries, this scene was often depicted in the Roman catacombs or carved on the marble coffins of Christians, as a sign of their faith in Christ and their hope in the Resurrection. A number of the Fathers of the Church also thought that the three young men, having resisted the unjust command of the king, and been consigned to death for their resolute witness to their faith, were symbols of the martyrs. And in their sufferings, Christ, the king of Martyrs, is with them to comfort them, and, ultimately, to rescue them. 

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March 27, 2012

HOMILY for Tue in Week 5 of Lent

Numbers 21:4-9; Ps 101; John 8:21-30

When Moses first encountered the living God in the burning bush, he asked God: ‘If the people of Israel should ask what is the name of the God of their fathers, what shall I say?’ And God said to Moses: “Say this to the people of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you” (cf Ex 3:13f). So, God makes himself known to his people as “I AM”, which in Greek is ‘Ego eimi’. 

So, in today’s Gospel, when the people of Israel again ask, ‘Who are you?’, the Lord replies, not through Moses, but for himself: “Ego eimi”, or, in our translation, “I AM He”. Jesus says: “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM He…” But Jesus is not just making an assertion that he is God. He is revealing who he is, just as he once revealed himself to Moses, and this revelation will be seen and recognized as such when he is lifted up on the Cross. Why?

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March 25, 2012

MY FRIEND INDEED!

HOMILY for the 5th Sunday of Lent (B)

Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ps 50; Heb 5:7-9; John 12:20-33

Today’s Gospel begins with friendship, with something quite familiar, as some Greeks approach their friend Philip, and with his friend Andrew, they ask to be introduced to Jesus. And so, like those Greeks, perhaps we can approach Jesus in this Gospel through the lens of friendship, which is an important theme in St John’s Gospel.

The key sentence on friendship from St John’s Gospel is this: ”Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (15:13). So, a friend is one who loves by giving himself to others, and, ultimately, the greatest gift a friend can give is his own life. Hence, the philosopher Roger Scruton notes that “friendship is a form of generosity”, of giving. The fundamental idea of friendship as rooted in self-gift is found in Jesus’ image of the grain. Hence, Jesus proclaims that his “purpose” is to give himself, even his life, for the good of others. Thus, he is speaking about love, but a particular kind of love which he only makes explicit later on in the Gospel, namely friendship. So, Jesus, by dying for our sakes is the Friend of humanity. And Samuel Crossman puts it beautifully in his famous hymn: “But O! my Friend, my Friend indeed, Who at my need His life did spend”.

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