Category Archives: Catholic

Advent: Tuning your heart to the arrival of the Christ-child

An interesting choice of Gospel, Mark 13:33-37. We can interpret it’s use here on the First Sunday of Advent to suggest that we use the four weeks of Advent like servants waiting for their Master to return, the waiting being the four weeks of Advent and the return of the Master being the arrival of the Christ-child on Christmas night.

So depending on how we use the next four weeks we’ll be awake or possibly even asleep when the Master of the house returns, the return being the arrival of the Christ-child in the crib on Christmas night.

As the child is placed in the crib on Christmas night, simultaneously, the same child should be arriving in our hearts – that’s what being awake means. The physical gesture of placing the figure of the infant King in the crib on Christmas night ought to be matched simultaneously by the same King arriving within our hearts. The mismatch here between what’s happening on the outside and what’s happening on the inside is the source of all boredom with religion.

So I want to suggest some ways in which we might stay awake.

There’s Mass here Monday – Friday at 7.30am and 10.00am. How about attending Mass for the four weeks of Advent? You’ll notice that I’m not proposing anything new. Nothing new in that; same old, same old. We don’t need anything new, we just need to see what’s there in a new way (which is why Pope Francis is so successful). We just need to come to it differently.

Generally Mass will not stand alone. Prayer is to Mass what weekday training nights are to the Wexford hurling team, or Kilkenny, or Tipperary. As a rule where there is no prayer there will be no Mass. Where there is, it’s usually little more than a habit waiting to be broken. So for each day of Advent try to associate a time of prayer and reflection with Mass – before or after but definitely at some point during the day (we’ll provide some material to help you). If you can’t do both, do one.

This will mean effort and discipline but there is no other way, push the boundaries out, it’s the only way to grow spiritually. If we do it well, we’ll make definite progress and our hearts will be more tuned to the arrival of the Christ-child on Christmas night.

Spiritual naivety!

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Spiritually naive! There's no such thing as the Church dying. There's only the kingdom of God being taken from a people who've failed to produce its fruit and being given to a people who will produce something!

Spiritually naive! Only from our perspective does it look like the Church is dying. From God’s perspective there’s only God taking the kingdom from a people who’ve failed to produce its fruit and giving it to another people who will produce something.

Thirty-third Sunday: Making a profit for God

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Basic theme: If we prove to God that we can be trusted with his interests in this life, indeed with this life itself, then he’ll trust us with the next life.

Our life’s work then is to use everything we’ve got in such a way that God gets the benefit.

In other words life is not about us. Not a single detail of our lives is really about us!

So, to the parable, Matthew 25:14-30

The man entrusting his property is God.

He entrusts his property to servants; we’re the servants. His property is everything we’ve got, this life we’ve been entrusted with, which is not really ours but his; to be used for God’s benefit.

He then goes abroad; that’s how many perceive God, as being abroad!

“Now a long time after” he returns to go through his accounts; “a long time after” is our length

“Now a long time after the master of those servants came back and went through his accounts with them”

of years, long enough to lose our way! Going through his accounts is our final judgement.

To one he’d given five talents, to another two, to a third one. Two of the three make a profit, the guy with five makes five more, the guy with two makes two more but the guy with one gives back the one.

It’s the guy who made nothing that I’m interested in; what he had was taken from him and given to the guys who’d already proved they could make a return.

This is a common theme in the teaching of Jesus.

Spiritually naive! There’s no such thing as the Church dying. There’s only the kingdom of God being taken from a people who’ve failed to produce its fruit and being given to a people who will produce something.

Spiritually there is no such thing as the Church dying, there is only the kingdom of God (what else can the Church be about?) being taken from a people who’ve failed to produce its fruit and being given to others who will produce something.

Notice too that this is good business sense and once again Jesus is using something we all understand – good business sense – and using it to teach us about God.

Finally, notice that the guy doesn’t do anything wrong, he keeps his talent safe, afraid to trade, and gives back what he’d received but without gaining anything for God.

His offence? He fails to become God’s missionary!

What on earth do you think life is for?

Lateran Basilica: Quenching our thirst for God.

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The Pope’s Cathedral, St. John Lateran, Rome, Apse Mosaics

Every year on November 09th the Church celebrates the dedication of the pope’s cathedral.

It gives us the opportunity to reflect briefly on what the church is, or at least what it should be. What we should be. What we are, however dim our reflection might be!

Typical of the scriptures generally, the first reading, Ezekiel 47:1-2,8-9,12 uses an image we can all understand; the image of water and in this case the image of a river flowing from the Temple to the sea.

Enniscorthy is built on a river. Every town the length and breath of Ireland is built around a water supply.

Apply the image to the Church. The growing river symbolizes our growing relationship with God. If we don’t connect to God here (in this building) then we’ll die of thirst, this church will die out. We’ve nothing to pass on that the atheist can’t pass on! Much of the present crisis in the church is to be found here.

The river flows to the sea and fulfills itself there. The sea symbolizes the fullness of God (heaven). So too with us, we should be flowing towards God and if we are we’ll produce fruit

The River Tiber and St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome

symbolized by the fertility of the river bank; “along the river… will grow every kind of fruit tree with leaves that never wither and fruit that never fails… And their fruit will be good to eat and the leaves medicinal.”

The second reading, 1 Cor 3:9-11,16-17 tells us that the church is not about buildings but about people, a people, a people becoming the body of Christ.

In the Gospel, John 2:13-22 Jesus makes it very clear that the church is to be a house of prayer, the place of encounter with the Divine. In my twenty odd years of priesthood I think there’s been a growing tendency to turn it into everything but a house of prayer!

Finally, Jesus reference to the sanctuary of his body confirms the true meaning and destiny of the church.

All Souls: The mystery revealed to “mere children”

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Matthew 11:25-30

Jesus is saying that “these things” meaning the mystery of God remains a mystery to the “learned and the clever” but not to “mere children” – to “children” it’s revealed.

Now the first thing I should say is that this is not an argument against learning; it’s about the human heart.

Once again Jesus uses something that we can all understand, in this case a child, and he uses it to teach us about God.

Think of the child-parent relationship. A child spends so much time with his or her parent(s); all day and all night at first, gradually the child is weaned but for years it’ll be there first thing in the morning, many times during the day, then in the evening and last thing at night.

Many of these times correspond to the times when the Church encourages us to pray.

In the child-parent relationship the whole foundation of the child’s future life is laid and as the child matures, provided the child-parent relationship has itself matured, the child will be trusted with virtually everything, even the family secrets! Eventually the child will be trusted with the family business. Remember this is not really about a child-parent relationship but about our relationship with God.

There’s so much in this image of a child; there’s the difference between the child (son or daughter), the servant (employee) and the biblical-historical understanding of a slave, words full of spiritual meaning. It’s the son or the daughter who will inherit, not the employee! The sons place is assured.

And if the child doesn’t want the inheritance or can’t be trusted with it, what’ll happen? It’ll probably be given to someone who can be trusted. Remember the passages where the kingdom is taken from people who fail to produce its fruit and given to others who will produce something?

Only when our relationship with God resembles the very best child-parent relationship will God reveal “these things” to us.

So here in just one image, in that of a child, Jesus teaches us almost everything we need to know about God and our relationship with God.

Thirtieth Sunday Year A: I’d never say I love my mother by loving my sister!

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The religious leaders approach Jesus with a question designed to trap him; “Master, which is the greatest commandment of the law?” This is another way of asking ‘what’s this God thing all about? What’s the most important thing, the bottom line?’

How would you answer it?

Most of us have already asked and answered this question without putting it into words. It’s been a part of our self-talk, part of the conversation we have with ourselves at some point.

Nowadays most people don’t even ask the question partly because the culture has already answered it and the answer is now an unquestioned cultural assumption – if we just love one another; that’s what’s important. There are many variations of it. You’ll often hear it articulated and summarized perfectly as ‘they don’t go to Mass but they’re good people’ or the more theological astute might attempt to say ‘I love God by loving my neighbour’

We’ve flattened the Christian message to just one commandment – variations of “love your neighbour” (but usually without “as yourself” – the inclusion of “as yourself” makes the commandment much more demanding). In flattening the message almost exclusively to “love your neighbour”, God and the love of God has been squeezed out and consequently the church and the sacraments are considered by many to be irrelevant.

When Jesus is asked the question he answers it with great care, it’s detailed, largely because it’s a trick question.

There are two commandments and they can’t be flattened into one. The second “resembles” the first but it’s not identical.

The first is to love God (corresponding to the first 3 commandments which are about loving God). The second is to love your neighbour (corresponding to the other 7 commandments which are about loving God and neighbour). It’s significant that Jesus very deliberately retains the original order in his summary.

“On these two commandments” stands the whole mystery of God.

Two wings are required to fly you into the kingdom of God. Try it on one wing and you’ll surely fall out of the sky – that’s if you can get off the ground at all!

God deserves to be loved in his own right. This is where the deep inner joy comes from; this is the source, the foundation. The absence of this explains so much.

I’d never say I love my mother by loving my sister and then forget about my mother! We shouldn’t do it with God either.

Mission Sunday: The answer to confusion is spiritual growth.

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The answer to confusion is spiritual growth.

There’s no panic when we’re standing in the light of God.

The Church is not going to die out. That’s nonsense. The Church of the future will be smaller but it’ll be made up of men and women to whom the Good News has come “not only as words, but as the Holy Spirit and as utter conviction” (Second Reading).

When I was a teenager I’d go to Mass with friends. My parents were delighted that I was going to Mass. What they didn’t realize was that the only reason I was going to Mass was because afterwards I met my girlfriend there! With my friends we’d stand at the back of the Church with much older men. The older men would go absolutely ballistic if Mass was longer than 30 minutes; the shorter the better. After Mass the older men would stand talking at the Church gate while we’d be hanging out. We often hung out for an hour or more and the older men would be still standing at the gate talking. It used to amaze us and we were only chaps!

That’s what’s dying out, only that! It’s dying out because there’s nothing of substance there. Actually we think it’s dying out but in fact what’s happening is that God is sifting. If we’ve been alive at all to the Gospels on recent Sundays we’d know that when we don’t bear fruit, God takes the kingdom from us and gives it to people who will produce its fruit. That’s all that’s happening.

The mission of the Church is not self-serving. The mission of the Church is the salvation of the world. It looks outward. The salvation of the world means nothing more than the well-being of the world. This is both spiritual and material well-being. Indeed, it’s material well-being because it’s first spiritual well-being. The men on the Mission Team years ago would have described it as temporal and eternal well-being. In the great places of Marian apparition our Lady calls this well-being ‘peace’.

If religion is true to Christ, in our case Catholicism, it is by its very nature missionary, it’s moving out towards the world. Anyone who has put a toe in the spiritual world knows this! Only a person who has never entered the kingdom of God thinks that Catholicism should be private. Thinking that Catholicism should be private is the spiritual equivalent of denying the laws of gravity in the physical world! It’s a sure indication that we haven’t entered the kingdom God.

Think of it like this; God reached out of himself in Jesus, Jesus reached out and captures others – disciples – and some are made apostles. What’s doing the capturing can’t be seen – we can see it only in its fruits – and I can’t give it to you, you must receive it from God yourself (although I may have a ‘hand’ in it). It moves outward all the time, capturing… It’s summarized perfectly in Jesus words to Peter; “Follow me and I will make you fishers of men”.

Confused by the Synod? The answer to confusion is spiritual growth.

It is worth noting too the kind of images Jesus uses. A fisherman doesn’t capture every fish in the sea. Some of the fish he catches he’ll throw back… useless! The kingdom of God is not an all-inclusive utopia! There’s a door, a way in. Think of the guy in last Sunday’s Gospel; he gets inside the wedding feast but gets thrown out because he’s not wearing a wedding garment.

The mission of the Church is not about seats and lights; it’s about spiritual growth. In times like ours, when there’s much confusion in the Church, about the Church, about God and Jesus and just about everything else, the answer is always spiritual growth. It’s the mission of the Church and it’ll clear up all our confusion.

Click on the link below to check out Joseph Ratzinger’s prophecy about the future of the Catholic Church written more than 40 years ago – long before he would become Benedict XVI:

http://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/the-vatican/detail/articolo/papa-el-papa-pope-benedetto-xvi-benedict-xvi-benedicto-xvi-22434/

Twenty-seventh Sunday: Life is a tenancy; it’s not ours to do with as we please.

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Here in Matthew 21:33-43 Jesus summarizes the history of salvation, the history of Gods efforts to rule the human heart. He starts by going back long before he was born of Mary (more than 1500 years before the incarnation). Remarkably in a single parable Jesus summarizes the whole Old Testament and his own life too!

There was a man, a landowner, (the landowner is God – this is a description Jesus loves to use) who planted a vineyard. The vineyard is the faith of the Jewish people, the Jewish religion. He fenced it round (it’s got clear boundaries and what’s inside belongs to God). He digs a wine-press in it and built a tower (it’s ready to produce a harvest, it’s all set-up). Finally he leased it to tenants (the Jewish people and their leaders) and then went abroad (God is in heaven!) But in the vineyard everything is ready to produce new wine. It’s easy to apply the same parable to the Church.

When vintage time draws near God sends some servants to the tenants to collect his produce. These are the great figures that we read about in the Old Testament but when they arrive (when each is born into history) there’s not much produce to collect – they find the people’s religion hasn’t been producing much! Worse still, the tenants are demanding to do as they please with the vineyard, with what doesn’t belong to them!

This happens repeatedly over many generations until finally the vineyard owner (God) sends his own son – the son being Jesus Christ.

But when the tenants see the son, what do they think? They’re moving even further from God, they think; if we can get rid of the Son then we can take over his inheritance. Then we’ll be free to do as we please with the vineyard… we can redefine everything! Isn’t this the struggle that we’re seeing every night on our TV and radio talk shows? Isn’t this really the cry of secularism?

There are some things I’d like you to note.

The human condition is probably best understood as a tenancy, a stewardship. Everything we have is entrusted to us, even life itself. Life truly belongs to God and is entrusted to us only as tenants that we might deliver his produce to him at harvest time. This changes everything.

It means that life is not ours to do with as we please. From this starting point we can begin to glimpse the spiritual foundation of the Church’s moral law, particularly the more contentious teachings. Abortion is morally wrong because life is not ours to do with as we please. So too Euthanasia, likewise human sexuality is not ours to do with as we please. Consider reviewing Humanae Vitae from this starting point, so too the redefinition of marriage. In fact, this starting point changes everything.

Here too we stumble across the Christian understanding of life; my life is not about what I get out of it, it’s about what God gets out of it! Here all the spiritual riches of heaven are hidden.

Finally the question is asked what’ll God eventually do with the tenants? “He will bring those wretches to a wretched end…” and take the vineyard from them and give it to a people who will produce its fruit, comes the reply.

Now here’s a whole new way to interpret life in the Church. Perhaps in our ignorant spiritual bliss we fail to see that it’s not so much that people are leaving the Church or that the Church is dying but that God is taking the kingdom from us and giving it to a people who will produce its fruit. For every crisis in the Church (and perhaps in the State too) is in fact the failure to produce the appropriate fruit in due season.

Besides, what would you do with a vineyard that continually fails to produce a harvest?

Twenty-sixth Sunday: The compassion of God didn’t leave sinners where they were

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God is at work because tax collectors (extortionists) and prostitutes are changing their way of life.

Matthew 21:28-32

Jesus compares the people he’s speaking to – the Jewish religious leaders – to a son who says he’ll go and work in his father’s vineyard but then doesn’t go. Jesus accuses them of partaking in religion but in a way that doesn’t lead them into the kingdom of God (the kingdom of God is nothing more than God ruling your heart).

So here Jesus reveals the purpose of religion; that our hearts are ruled by God. This is the most important detail about every person’s existence; that each enters the kingdom of God.

On the other hand Jesus compares the tax collectors and prostitutes to a son who says to his father; “no, I will not go and work in your vineyard” but afterwards thinks better of it and goes, and the proof is clear for the Jewish religious leaders to see – the very public sinners were changing their lives; Zacchaeus declares to Jesus that he’ll pay back those he’s cheated four times the amount (Luke 19:8) and the woman “who had a bad name” sat weeping at his feet before kissing and anointing them with oil (Luke 7:36-38).

Jesus says this alone should have been enough to convince the Jewish leaders that God was working through him and indeed through John.

Here Jesus gives us the ultimate test to establish if God is present or not in a person’s life – “you will be able to tell them (true disciples) by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16). Where God is present certain types of behaviour follow, where God is not present other types of behaviour follow. But who decides what’s in and what’s out?

The present generation has great difficulty with some of this and wants to change it – much of it a sure sign of living outside the kingdom. Changing this is the spiritual equivalent of changing the laws of physics! It’s impossible.

When a man (or woman) begins to enter Gods kingdom (remember the definition – God ruling our hearts) he discovers the reality of sin, he doesn’t need convincing, more importantly his own sin begins to bother him, and if he continues to make his way into Gods kingdom he will change and be changed. It’s actually entry into the kingdom of God that decides what’s in and what’s out. The more you enter the more the Catechism makes sense.

This is what happened to the tax collectors and prostitutes. The compassion of God didn’t leave them where they were – and it didn’t want to leave the religious leaders where they were either. Too often today people understand the compassion of God to mean the acceptance of sin!

The compassion of God is grace or graces that change us inside (interior) and as we are changed inside we are changed outside (exterior) – our behaviour changes from the inside out. It’s precisely because we’re becoming a new person that our lifestyle choices change.

The religious leaders should have known this, they should have known that wherever the kingdom of God is present, there you find repentance and conversion. That they didn’t recognize this means that they had not entered the kingdom of God themselves.

This is a problem that persists to this day – too many speak of religion and God from a position outside the kingdom of God. The result is the blind leading the blind!

Twenty-fifth Sunday: God is generous, tolerant, merciful… but always with a purpose.

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Philippians 1:20-24,27

Matthew 20:1-16

The landowner is God. He goes out to hire workers for his vineyard. The vineyard is Gods domain, where God rules, his territory.

The workers are called into the vineyard and do the work required of them but when they realize that those who worked only one hour are paid the same wage as those who worked a full day they start to complain.

Here’s where it gets messy! We need to remember that the purpose of this parable is to teach us about God and his kingdom.

Obviously it means God is very generous… but God is generous for a purpose. Likewise God is tolerant but tolerant for a purpose, merciful for a purpose.

Tolerance is not the paramount value in God’s kingdom, no more than generosity or mercy. Conversion is the paramount value, entering into God’s employment and becoming the person God intended you to be is the paramount value.

It’s not ‘when’ you start working for God that’s important but that you do actually start. It’s not ‘when’ you enter Gods domain (as in early or late in life) but that you do actually enter.

Our typical response is to throw a tantrum. it’s not fair, we say. It’s articulated in various forms that all run something like ‘he can spend his life having a good time (which usually means living a life of sin) and then at the last hour convert and receive the same wage!’ Or sometimes it goes, ‘I’ve worked hard all my life, always tried to be faithful and what do I get?’

It’s often said with envy… that’s the give-away indicating how little we know of Gods kingdom. If we knew this much (as in a pinch of salt between your fingers) of Gods domain we’d also now that nothing compares to living in Gods grace (in a state of grace as the old theologians used to say), certainly not a life of self-indulgence. Have a read of the second reading to capture something of what it means to Paul to live in God’s grace and its absolute dominance over everything the world has to offer. It really is startling.

Finally, let’s equate those working in the vineyard with those who practice religion and we’ll notice something important.

The workers in the vineyard are just doing a job for a wage, they have not assumed their employers heart, they have not become like their employer, they have failed to push on to the next level… a common enough problem among those who practice religion!

The problem with the practice of religion is that it’s only a tool and like every tool it’s only as good as the man or woman using it!