Category Archives: Catholic

Peter and Paul; a little of what made them tick goes a long way!

Today the Church celebrates Peter and Paul.

What I’m after today is what made these guys tick?

The red vestments indicate they died violently – but at any point they could have stood back and saved their lives. So, why didn’t they? What motivated them? This is what I’m after…

Jesus asks: Who am I?

First he asks the question rather generally, thus harmlessly; who do people say I am? There’s no threat in asking about what others think.

But then he turns up the heat: he makes it personal; who do you say I am?

Peter answers; you are the Christ… the Son of the living God.

Where did he get that from? Yes, sure, Jesus has worked a few miracles here and there but to get from a few miracles to Son of God? I guarantee you, not one of us here would get from a few miracles to Son of God. We’ve lost the enormity of this claim because we’ve grown up with it. Our familiarity with the Christian story hides us from the enormity of this claim. Thus few have made a real journey from the historical Jesus of Nazareth to Jesus as Lord. Familiarity breeds contempt!

I’d like you to catch it – if you can! The enormity of it; the Son of the living God!

Even the Taoiseach pictured (below) with Meaning of Life host Gay Byrne couldn’t get that far when interviewed on the Meaning of Life recently. Neither could Eamon Dunphy. But that shouldn’t surprise us – it’s an enormous claim.

Of course, that makes perfect sense because the moment I confess that Jesus of Nazareth is Lord (God), that’s the moment when I must logically give Him first place in my life.

I can’t truly believe that Jesus is Lord and then give Him second or third place… He must logically, reasonably take first place.

If you think about it there’s no way flesh and blood can convince anybody that Jesus is Lord (God). I might make a good argument in support of the claim but that’s about all it’ll be – an argument in support of the claim.

Thus even Jesus marvels at Peter’s confession of faith and significantly – and this is critical – He places the source of it beyond flesh and blood, even beyond Himself; “Simon son of Jonah, you are a happy man! Because it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. So I now say…”

This is what made Peter and Paul ‘tick’. It wasn’t just flesh and blood, although flesh and blood played its part, it was God Himself! God infused something of the Divine life into them and supernaturally confirmed the work of flesh and blood.

Now, here’s something that really troubles me about those who’ve left the Church – did they never receive such a Confirmation? Well, what were they doing instead?

Fourteenth Sunday Year A: Resting in God; the joy of Catholicism.

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These things – the mysteries of God – are hidden from the learned and the clever and revealed to mere children.

This is how God operates… He chooses the lowly.

God never chooses the high and mighty – and with good reason.

The high and mighty are filled with… what, what are they filled with? Usually themselves and their own achievements! Thus there’s no time and no room for God. It is that simple.

So Jesus is not arguing against learning but against what it often does to the human heart. It can fill us with self… and the illusion of self-sufficiency.

The bottom line here is that only a heart with room for God can receive God. Another way to say that is to say that we must have a need for God…

Thus Jesus says come to me, all you who labour and are over-burdened – in other words all who have a need – and I will give you rest. There’s probably no better summary of the life and purpose of Jesus Christ: Come to me… and I will give you rest.

The first movement belongs to us; come to me. We must move towards God before God moves towards us – and Gods movement toward us is experienced as ‘rest’ for the human person. (In hindsight the soul will realize that the movement toward God was itself the work of grace but that doesn’t negate the human effort involved)

This “rest” which is actually a little bit of the Divine life entering into our lives here and now is our real security – “a man’s life is not made secure by what he owns…”

Now, this “rest” brings with it an awareness of a responsibility, a “yoke” and a “burden” that Jesus describes as “easy” and “light” (easy and light compared to the alternative which is to make a God (an idol) out of something or someone other than God)

In other words, we don’t get God without also getting a moral order!

Finally, a word about how we might actually “come” to Jesus.

The Eucharist is the God-designed point of contact where God waits for us to come to him… more particularly He has chosen to remain with us in the bread and wine consecrated in the Eucharist.

God has willed (in the same way that He willed Christmas) that the presence of Jesus Christ on earth be perpetuated (continued) in the bread and wine of the Eucharist so that effectively Christ never really left us!

Thus we “come” to Him by being present to Him in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. That’s the reason the consecrated bread which we call the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in the Tabernacle – that we might “come” to Him.

The experience of “rest” which he promises is experienced only to the degree that we are truly present to Him.

This is the reason we must practice religion.

This is the reason the Church insists that Sunday Mass is the absolute minimum.

This is the reason the Church encourages adoration of the Eucharistic species – that you and I might “come” to Him and know His “rest”

Corpus Christi and Fatima; the centrality of Mass in God’s design.

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Corpus Christi: the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ. The whole mystery of God – from Christmas to Easter and beyond – packaged and given to us to be opened… plundered.

This is how God becomes ‘concrete’ in time, how he becomes personal, how he enters our lives…

This then is the big one!

But unfortunately for us (and it will be unfortunate!) in our day we’ve lost the importance of Mass. So, during the week I gave some thought to how I might register the cosmic significance of the Mass – even that’s understating it! Eventually I settled on using the events in Fatima to stress the centrality of the Mass in God’s design.

There’s a little known detail about Fatima that is so instructive in this regard. Shortly before the appearances of Our Lady in Fatima in 1917 an angel appeared to the three children. But the angel didn’t come empty handed.

The angel carried a host and a chalice in his hands… blood spilled from the host into the chalice. The children instantly recognized the host and the chalice as the central elements of the Mass.

Let’s stop at this point to reflect.

Why didn’t the angel bring a can of coke and a packet of crisps? Why not a glass of beer and a steak burger from the BBQ?

Then the angel did something even more instructive. Leaving the host and the chalice suspended in mid-air, the angel prostrated himself (bowed down before) the suspended host and chalice, taught the children to do the same, on their knees with their foreheads touching the ground and taught them a prayer.

Let’s stop again.

Why didn’t the angel say they should surf the waves on a Sunday morning and find God there? Or climb a mountain? Or go for a walk or a 10 kilometre run?

Why? Because God has chosen the way in which he gives himself – in bread and wine, the Mass!

Let’s look at the prayer, it’s equally instructive.

Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I adore you profoundly. I offer you the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for all the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which you are offended. Through the infinite merits of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary I beg the conversion of poor sinners.

“Holy Trinity” (last Sunday); “Body and Blood… present in all the tabernacles” (today, Corpus Christi); “Sacred Heart” (next Friday) – there’s reason to these things, order!

Of all the prayers the angel could have taught, why this prayer?

The immediate purpose of Fatima was to prevent World War II – Our Lady told the children in 1917 that if people didn’t stop offending God a more terrible war would break out…

There’s a basic spiritual principle to be extracted here – the rejection of God (in other words the acceptance of sin) always ends in the figure of a crucified humanity. The rule of sin always leads to ruin.

I’ll finish with a question; according to the events that occurred in Fatima how important is the Mass?

The Holy Trinity: Everything we need to know about the future of the world can be found in the figure of Christ crucified.

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“The three persons of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are pictured at a table with a space vacant at the front for the believer; for you and me.” Fr. Billy Swan

Today’s Gospel (John 3:16-18) moves from the personal and the private to the public… from the salvation of the person to the salvation of the world, and back again to the personal and the private.

In our day there is a determined effort to confine religion and therefore the person of Jesus Christ to the private.

The wisdom of the day suggests that there should be no place for religion and therefore no place for the person of Jesus Christ in education, in health systems… anywhere in public life.

It’s absolutely impossible to reconcile this privatization of religion and the message of today’s Gospel which clearly states that the person of Jesus Christ is the key to personal salvation but also to the salvation of the world.

Now, I need to explain the meaning of salvation precisely because when we think about salvation we’ve already privatized it and we never think of salvation as having anything to do with the future of the world – here and now.

So what does salvation mean? It means nothing more than human well-being individually and collectively. Happiness. It means the well-being of the world – the old missioners would have said the temporal and eternal well-being of humankind.

This means that we can have all the economic policies we want, all the education policies, all the health policies… but if they’re not founded on God they’ll eventually turn and bite us!

The world is set on a path that says we don’t need God; we’ll do it our way, yet “God sent his son into the world… so that through him the world might be saved.” I trust you can see the contradiction?

So what’ll happen? This is what I think will happen; the world will persist on this path, the world is not for turning (there are very good reasons for that; historical reasons) and only from a point of collapse will the world return to God.

That’s what a generation will see and experience; a collapse. But let’s go deeper; spiritually it’ll look like the Evil One has taken everything from God and when it looks like Evil has triumphed God will act.

Go deeper again; in other words it’ll look like the period of time between Christ’s death and resurrection when even the disciples thought everything was lost.

Go deeper still; in other words what happened to Christ (what we celebrate every Easter) is what’ll happen to humanity.

The rejection of God always leads to the figure of a crucified humanity, to the point where everything seems lost. But God will not abandon his creation.

The future of the world is there before us in the figure of Christ crucified. Everything we need to know about the future can be found there.

Pentecost: Without the Holy Spirit religion easily becomes a kind of tyranny!

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Pentecost is important – and with good reason. it’s ranked as a Solemnity.

Indeed, much can be understood in terms of the Holy Spirit’s presence or absence, or perhaps more accurately to the degree that the Holy Spirit is present in a person’s life.

In the First Reading (Acts 2:1-11) the Holy Spirit is portrayed as fire (a heart on fire for the mission of the Church) and wind (a blustery wind for the mission of the Church).

In today’s Gospel (John 20:19-23) the Holy Spirit is portrayed as the breath of the risen Jesus. Think about the meaning of breath – it’s our life. So the breath of the risen Jesus is the very life of God and when he breathes on them he is giving them his own life, the life he shares with God.

The purpose of religion is to reach this point – the point where it’s possible for us to share the Divine Life, the point where God can breathe his supernatural life into our natural life, the Divine into the human. I use supernatural deliberately because we’ve almost lost the experience of grace as a supernatural reality – thus everything’s mundane! The early Church Fathers described this process as Divinization.

Some weeks ago I spotted a number of people towards the back of the Church… they had completely disengaged and were deep in conversation. There’s no great mystery as to why we disengage at Mass or why we’re bored at Mass. It’s because a spirit other than the Holy Spirit dominates our lives – often it’s nothing more than our own spirit.

Hearts on fire for the mission of the Church – Jesus Christ!

Where the Holy Spirit is absent (or just simply in short supply) religion is the most boring thing on earth!

Where the Holy Spirit is absent prayer is boring – worse, it’s sheer torture! A person in whom the Holy Spirit is absent finds prayer torturous, they resist, object; they want to run a mile! And with good reason; one spirit is fighting the other…

Finally, in our time religion is almost a bad word! Religion cut loose from the Holy Spirit causes huge problems (think of Ireland in the past). Religion without the Holy Spirit easily becomes tyranny. If you ask a person in whom the Holy Spirit is absent to practice religion they’ll experience it as a kind of tyranny!

Without the Holy Spirit religion easily becomes a kind of tyranny where there is little or no charity, little or no generosity, no joy, no gentleness, no peace, no faithfulness, no patience, no modesty, no kindness, no self-control, no goodness and no chastity!

The Holy Spirit changes everything. Come, Holy Spirit. Veni, Sancte Spiritus.

The Ascension; the authority of absolute victory.

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Can Catholicism ever be a private matter?

Which is to ask can belief in Jesus Christ be a private matter – ever?

Think about it – this figure enters human history and overcomes death. The claims associated with Jesus of Nazareth demand serious investigation by every human being on the planet.

The feasts we celebrate during the Easter season – Resurrection, Ascension and Pentecost – are seismic.

Today we’ve reached Christ’s Ascension which gives purpose and direction to the Resurrection. Otherwise he’d still be roaming the earth in his resurrected body – eternally wandering with no home to go to! Home is important.

There are three parts to the Ascension; firstly the resurrection itself, secondly the power to judge (every man and woman) and thirdly, sitting at Gods right hand in glory.

From his place at God’s right hand he sends the Holy Spirit (Pentecost) thus fulfilling his promise not to leave us orphans but to come back. Unfortunately, many of us experience God as though we are orphans!

Jesus says that this Spirit will lead us to the truth. What is this truth? It’s not truth as facts, or the truth of particular happenings or events but truth as a person, God, who is absolute Truth. So “the truth will set you free” means that God will set you free. Two things happen when we experience the absolute Truth through the gift of the Holy Spirit. Firstly, we understand that we’ve ‘discovered’ the universal meaning and purpose of life – our universal home. Secondly, we see the glories of this world for what they are – trifles!

How do we get to this point?

The answer is in the Gospel; the eleven go to meet him, to the mountain where Jesus had agreed to meet them. The mountain is significant – the road to God is always likened to climbing a mountain.

On the mountain they meet him. Think of the effort involved in climbing a mountain – that’s what practicing the faith is about. When they climb the mountain they see Christ ascending – when we practice the faith properly we should begin to see things too; they fall down, though some hesitated. Some are still not sure, bewildered, and incredulous; it’s too much for them. It is; it’s seismic!

With absolute authority and power the risen Jesus walks up to them and the words that fall from his mouth are sovereign; “all authority in Heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father…” – it’s the authority of absolute victory.

What’s strikingly obvious about this claim – as with all Jesus’ claims – is that there’s no middle ground, it’s absolute. No surprise there because if the figure of Jesus of Nazareth really is the son of God then it cannot be otherwise. There can’t be a middle ground! There’s nowhere else to go and every detail of human life must be built on him, our response to him cannot be a private affair. It just can’t!

If he is who he says he is and we build human life on something else then it seems reasonable to assume that at some point there’ll be an adjustment!

God’s unconditional love; don’t confuse it with salvation.

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Prayer is the condition attached to getting to know Jesus better.

I don’t like using ‘unconditional’ to describe God’s love – if I use it I always qualify it. Of course that sounds like a condition, doesn’t it?

Here’s the problem:

If God’s love is unconditional then there was no need for Christ’s work of salvation. There was no need for the incarnation, no need for the passion, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ. No need for Pentecost or the Church. Everything is flat-lined and Jesus becomes not the Christ, but a nice guy!

Don’t confuse the message of Christ with psycho-babble!

“God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.” John 3:16

The condition is belief in him.

“If anyone loves me he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we shall come to him and make our home with him.” John 14:23

The condition is keeping his word because we love him.

“As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, but must remain part of the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me.” John 15:4

There’s a condition attached to bearing fruit.

If God’s love is unconditional it doesn’t matter how we live, not a jot! There’s no need for prayer, repentance, conversion – nothing! Ultimately it means there is no such ‘state’ as hell – there can’t be, certainly not if God’s love is unconditional. That’s not basic Bible theology, that’s psycho-babble!

People often think that God’s unconditional love and salvation are the same thing, indistinguishable. That’s what I’ve been doing here, confusing the two! So, let’s get it right.

To say that God’s love is unconditional is to say that God always holds out the possibility of salvation – his mercy – to every man and woman even though they may be living in the depths of depravity.

In other words God’s unconditional love is the very possibility of salvation, it offers humankind the opportunity to be saved but God’s love doesn’t save us without our co-operation. God’s unconditional love requires our free response if it is to fulfill its purpose.

God can’t save me without me and I can’t save me without God!

This seems to be the only reasonable sense in which God’s love can be considered unconditional.

Sixth Sunday of Easter: How terribly discriminatory of Jesus!

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“In a short time the world will no longer see me…”

The short time is his death (Good Friday), resurrection (Easter Sunday) and ascension (next Sunday).

After these events the “world” no longer sees him but Jesus makes a distinction – those who love him do “see” him.

How terribly discriminatory of Jesus!

So how is it that some “see” him and others don’t?

He promised to come back, to show himself, to enter into our lives and he achieves this through the gift of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost Sunday).

Have you ever noticed how it’s impossible to get inside another person’s life, how the other person is always totally other. This is not so with God, God is Spirit and thus able to enter our bodies and provided we co-operate the Spirit then draws us deeper and deeper into God. “On that day you will understand that I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.”

But we must co-operate. He says there are some, those whom he calls “the world” that can never receive him. Jesus, you’ll get yourself in trouble speaking about secular society like that!

In other words there are conditions attached to receiving Jesus Christ – shock, horror – that’ll send a few over the edge! It troubles me when I hear religious people speak of God’s unconditional love. It indicates they know little about the spiritual life. If by unconditional they mean God’s love is always offered, always available, that’s fine, no problem there. But God’s love is of little use to us if it’s always offered, always available but always out there and remote. We need him within. But if they mean by unconditional that there are no conditions to receiving Jesus Christ, that’s nonsense. Rubbish! Of course there are conditions, otherwise everybody would know Jesus Christ!

Jesus clearly states two such conditions in today’s Gospel. Indeed the whole teaching is prefaced by the conditions.

1. If you love me – for many that means a radical reorientation of life.
2. If you love me you will keep my commandments – the experience of receiving Jesus Christ through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit is simultaneously experienced as a call to a moral standard that simply cannot be detached from the person of Jesus Christ.

“If you love me you will keep my commandments, (and then) I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate…”

A word of caution: this is not instant, it requires spiritual growth over many years.

God hung among thieves!

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“To be connected with the Church is to be associated with scoundrels, warmongers, fakes, child-molesters, murderers, adulterers, and hypocrites of every description. It also, at the same time, identifies you with saints and the finest persons of heroic soul within every time, country, race and gender. To be a member of the Church is to carry the mantle of both the worst and the finest heroism of soul … because the Church always looks exactly as it looked at the original crucifixion, God hung among thieves”

Fr. Ronald Rolheiser

Fifth Sunday of Easter: Jesus Christ, the joy of Catholicism

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St. John Vianney: When we pray properly sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.

It’s sometime before his suffering, death, resurrection and ascension.

Thus when he says he’s going away he’s talking about a future event.

It’s most interesting though to observe the meaning he gives to his going away. His going away is not his death, but his death, resurrection and ascension, and in going away he’s not abandoning us.

Thus in the teaching of Jesus Christ death is not the final end event, but part of something much greater. We need to begin to think in this way. For the believer life opens upwardly to the splendour of God. For the unbeliever life (ultimately) must narrow downwardly to the grave!

He is going away (death, resurrection and ascension) “to prepare a place for you…” This is personal.

Have you ever noticed that you can’t really walk in another person’s shoes, that no matter how close you might be to another person, that person is always separate, uniquely other? There’s a sense in which in the end there’s only God and you in the universe!

Jesus promises that after he’s gone (death, resurrection and ascension) he’ll come back to take you with him. It’s so personal.

We tend to think of this returning as death but that misses so much of the picture – most of all it misses the joy at the heart of our religion.

The returning to take us with him is the gift of the Holy Spirit (Pentecost) through whom God enters into our lives, not in the future, but now. We’re taken up into the Divine life. We’re given a “place” in the Divine life. This is what Jesus means when he speaks of “rooms in my Father’s house” – it’s a share in God’s life. Try to imagine what happens when the Divine life begins to enter our lives; a transformation begins. Thus we find the Saints saying things like; “When we pray properly, sorrows disappear like snow before the sun.” St. John Vianney. The all powerful God mingles his life with ours – pure joy!

This is what makes the Catholic. Without Him religion falls flat. In fact, I’ll go much further and say; this is the joy of life, never mind Catholicism!

We don’t inherit the kingdom because we’re good people. We inherit the kingdom because God has given us a place (or room) in his Divine life and God by his very nature can’t be held captive by death.