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29th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on

Today's Mass Readings (Inc. Matthew 11:25-30) for Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna: ‘I am gentle and humble in heart’.

And

Monday, Fifth Week of Easter (Inc. John 14:21-26

Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna

And

Monday, Fifth Week of Easter (Inc. John 14:21-26)

Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna

Gospel (Except USA) Matthew 11:25-30 You have hidden these things from the wise and revealed them to little children.

Jesus exclaimed, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. ‘Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. Shoulder my yoke and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.’

Gospel (USA) Matthew 11:25-30 You have hidden these things from the wise and the learned and have revealed them to the childlike.

At that time Jesus responded: “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike. Yes, Father, such has been your gracious will. All things have been handed over to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wishes to reveal him.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light.”

Reflections (3)

(i) Feast of Saint Catherine of Sienna

Born in 1347, Catherine entered the Dominican Third Order at the age of eighteen and spent the next three years in seclusion, prayer, and austerity. Gradually, a group of followers gathered around her, men and women, priests and religious. An active public apostolate grew out of her contemplative life, working with the sick, the poor, prisoners and plague victims. In 1378, the Great Schism began, splitting the allegiance of Christendom between two, then three, popes. She spent the last two years of her life in Rome in prayer, pleading on behalf of the cause of Pope Urban VI and the unity of the Church. She offered herself as a victim for the Church in its agony. She died surrounded by her followers and was canonized in 1461. A contemplative, her life of prayer expressed itself in the loving service of those in need. A mystic, she involved herself as a peacemaker and a reconciler in the great affairs of church and state of the day. In the words of today’s first reading she lived her life in the light, in God who is light, and brought the light of God’s reconciling love to her broken church and world. Today’s gospel reading gives us an insight into the prayer of Jesus, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth..’. Jesus’ communion with God in prayer directs him to those who labour and are overburdened, inviting them to come to him and receive the gift of rest, the revival of their drooping spirits. This two fold dynamic of prayerful communion with God and loving service of the broken and needy that shaped the life of Jesus also shaped the life of Catherine. It is to shape all of our lives.

And/Or

(ii) Saint Catherine of Siena

Catherine was a mystic, and like other great mystics, she enjoyed an intimate relationship with Christ. In the gospel reading, Jesus declares that ‘no one knows the Son except the Father’. Yet, Jesus also declares in that gospel reading that the Father reveals these things to mere children. The Father reveals the Son to those who become like little children, those who, like Catherine, are deeply aware of their dependence on God and are completely open to all that God can give us. We are all called to know the Son as the Father does; in that sense, we are all called to be mystics to some degree. The Lord’s invitation, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are overburdened’, is addressed to all of us. He calls out to all of us to come to him, to come to know and love him as he knows and loves us. Catherine’s mysticism did not withdraw her from the world; she was deeply involved in what was happening in Europe and in the church in her time. After a profound mystical experience she had a sense of Christ calling her to serve the wider world and universal church. She commenced her role as a public figure, dictating hundreds of letters to popes, monarchs and other letters of note. When the Lord calls us to himself it is not to take us out of the world but to send us into the world afire with the flame of his love.  

And/Or

(iii) Saint Catherine of Siena

Catherine was one of the great mystics of the church. She was born in 1347 and died in 1380, at the age of thirty three. At a young age, she decided to give herself to the Lord, and she resisted the attempts of her family to find her a good husband. Rather than joining a religious order, she became a Dominican tertiary. After a three year period of prayer and seclusion she set about serving her neighbours, distributing alms to the poor, ministering to the sick and to prisoners. After a profound mystical experience she had a sense of Christ calling her to serve the wider world and universal church. She commenced her role as a public figure, dictating hundreds of letters to popes, monarchs and other letters of note. She also wrote her great work, the Dialogues, describing the contents of her mystical conversations with Christ. Catherine’s mysticism did not withdraw her from the world; she was deeply involved in what was happening in Europe and in the church in her time. She persuaded Pope Gregory XI to return to Rome from Avignon. She insisted that the Pope’s place was beside the bones of the martyrs. Shortly after his return, Pope Gregory died. He was succeeded by Pope Urban VI who turned out to be a disastrous Pope. The cardinals regretted their decision and elected a second Pope but could not persuade Pope Urban to retire. The church now had two Popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon, a situation that was to last for several decades. Catherine remained faithful to Urban, in spite of his faults, because he had been duly elected. She was convinced that the wound in the body of Christ could only be healed by great sacrifice. She prayed that she might atone for the sins of the church, and shortly afterwards collapsed and died. Catherine stood out as a beacon of light in a dark time. That is the calling of each one of us. We are all called to be mystics to some degree. The Lord’s invitation, ‘Come to me, all who labour and are overburdened’, is addressed to us all. He calls out to all of us to come to him, to know and love him as he knows and loves us. In calling us to himself he also sends us into the world afire with the flame of his love.

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Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 14:21-26 The Advocate, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything.

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Anybody who receives my commandments and keeps them will be one who loves me; and anybody who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I shall love him and show myself to him.’

Judas – this was not Judas Iscariot – said to him, ‘Lord, what is all this about? Do you intend to show yourself to us and not to the world?’ Jesus replied:

‘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. Those who do not love me do not keep my words. And my word is not my own: it is the word of the one who sent me. I have said these things to you while still with you; but the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you.’

Gospel (USA) John 14:21-26 The Advocate whom the Father will send will teach you everything.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. Whoever loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” Judas, not the Iscariot, said to him, “Master, then what happened that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words; yet the word you hear is not mine but that of the Father who sent me. “I have told you this while I am with you. The Advocate, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name – he will teach you everything and remind you of all that I told you.”

Reflections (7)

(i) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

The verb ‘to love’ occurs frequently in today’s gospel reading. It speaks of our love for Jesus, Jesus’ love for us, and God the Father’s love for us. God the Father expresses his love for us by giving us the Son. Jesus expresses his love for us by laying down his life for us, and by making known to us all he has learnt from the Father. We express our love for Jesus by keeping his word, by living according to his teaching, which, in John’s gospel, is summed up as ‘love one another as I have loved you’. The gospel reading also makes reference to the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. As the Father expresses his love for us by giving us the Son; the Father and Son together express their love for us by giving us the Holy Spirit. The role of the Holy Spirit, according to our reading, is to be our teacher, to keep bringing to our minds the teaching, the word, of Jesus. The Holy Spirit helps us to keep Jesus’ word, especially his command to ‘love one another as I have loved you’. In that short gospel reading, there is a whole vision of the Christian life, of God’s relationship with us as Father, Son and Spirit, and of our relationship with each other.

And/Or

(ii) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

We are only a little under three weeks now from the feast of Pentecost, which we celebrate on Sunday two weeks. It is hard to believe we are already more than half way through the seven week season of Easter. As we get closer to the feast of Pentecost, we will begin to hear more references to the Holy Spirit in the readings that are proclaimed at Mass. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus says to his disciples, ‘the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you’. It is the evening before Jesus is put to death; his disciples are aware that Jesus is taking his leave of them. In that highly charged hour Jesus assures them that his leaving them, his death, will not be the end of his relationship with them. He will send the Holy Spirit from the Father who will remind them of all Jesus said to them. Jesus’ relationship with them will endure in and through the Holy Spirit. Jesus is present to all of us, within all of us, in and through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit brings Jesus to us today and brings us to Jesus. That is why we need to keep on praying, ‘Come Holy Spirit, fill my heart’. We keep asking the Spirit we have already received to keep on filling us more and more, filling our thoughts, words, deeds, filling our very being, so that our relationship with the Lord will continue to deepen.

And/Or

(iii) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

We are in the season of Easter which will continue until the feast of Pentecost on next Sunday two weeks. As we draw gradually closer to the feast of Pentecost, we hear an increasing reference to the Holy Spirit in the liturgy. This morning Jesus promises that the Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to teach his disciples everything and to remind them of all that Jesus has said. One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to lead us into a deeper understanding of all that Jesus did and said. In that sense, the Holy Spirit leads us to Jesus, just as Jesus leads us to the Father. It is the Holy Spirit who helps us to hear what Jesus said as a word addressed to us today; the Holy Spirit brings Jesus close to us, makes him present and brings his word to life for us. That is why as we sit to listen to the Lord’s word it is good to invoke the coming of the Holy Spirit, and to invite the Spirit to bring that word alive for us. The Holy Spirit helps us to listen fruitfully to the Lord’s word; the Holy Spirit enables us also to make a heartfelt response to that word, both in prayer and in how we live. We very much need the Holy Spirit; that is why the church encourages us to pray, ‘Come Holy Spirit’ especially in the during these weeks as we prepare for the feast of Pentecost.

And/Or

(iv) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

I often pay attention to the questions people ask in the gospels. They can be very revealing. Sometimes it is easy to make these questions our own. We find one such question in today’s gospel reading. Judas, not Judas Iscariot, asks Jesus, ‘Lord, what is all this about?’ It is a question that comes out of a failure to understand just what Jesus is saying. The meaning of Jesus’ words is not always self-evident. We can easily find ourselves asking the same question as Judas, ‘What is all this about?’ It is a good question. It can set us on a search for a fuller understanding of Jesus’ message. In response to Judas’ question, Jesus promises to send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who ‘will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’. Jesus has been the teacher of his disciples. Now, in the setting of the last supper, on the eve of his death, he promises his disciples that he will continue to teach them beyond his death in and through the Holy Spirit. That promise is made to all of us. The disciples in the upper room at the last supper represent us all. As we find ourselves asking, ‘What is all this about?’ we are not left to our own devices. The Lord is always offering us the gift of the Holy Spirit as our teacher, to help us to understand more deeply all the Lord has said and done. Paul declares in his first letter to the Corinthians that ‘no one understands what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God’.

And/Or

(v) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

There has always been a human tendency to worship something less than God. A movement, an ideology, an institution, an individual can acquire an almost divine status that demands and, sometimes, receives a quality of allegiance that is due to God alone. Idolatry is the fundamental sin which is the root of other sins. The very attractiveness of some reality can be the catalyst for relating to it as god-like. In today’s first reading, some people of Lycaonia came to the conclusion that Paul and Barnabas were gods because they had cured a cripple. They wanted to treat them as they did their other gods, offering sacrifice to them. Paul had to restrain them in no uncertain terms, ‘What do you think you are doing? We are only human beings like you’. Paul wanted them to worship the living God who had been revealed in the person of Jesus, God’s Son. The Lycaonians zeal to worship Paul and Barnabas was unenlightened. They needed instruction on the folly of what they were doing. In the gospel reading, Jesus acknowledges our continuing need for instruction, for enlightenment. He declares to his disciples on the night of the last supper that beyond the time of his death and resurrection, his heavenly Father will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to ‘teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you’. It is the Holy Spirit who keeps leading us to a deeper appreciation of Jesus and to a closer following of him. Just as the Spirit leads us to Jesus, Jesus leads us to the Father, the living and true God.

And/Or

(vi) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

When Paul is speaking to a pagan audience in today’s first reading, he tells them that the living God did not leave them without evidence of himself in the good things he did for them, such as abundant rain, the growth of crops, sufficient food. It can be helpful for us to recognize the presence of the living God in the good things in our own lives, especially in these times when we have so many not so good things to come to terms with. Even in the midst of struggle and loss, good things can be found, and all such good things are little reminders of the presence of the living God. The really good thing in our lives that the living God has given us is God’s own Son, Jesus. In the gospel reading, Jesus makes the extraordinary statement that if we love him, he and his heavenly Father will come to us and make their home with us. It is quite something to reflect on how Jesus and God the Father want to make their home with each one of us. This is a time when many people cannot get to church, which we think of as God’s house, God’s home. Yet, Jesus is reminding us that each one of us can become a church, in the sense that God and his Son can make their home in us. We can each become the house of God, the home of God. It is through the Holy Spirit that Jesus and God the Father make their home in us. At the end of the gospel reading, Jesus says that God the Father will send us the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to remind us of all Jesus said to us. In one of his letters, Paul refers to the baptized as temples of the Holy Spirit. It is good to ask ourselves in these days, ‘Do I think of myself as a home for God and Jesus, as a temple of the Holy Spirit?’ ‘When I do think of myself in this way, what impact does it have on me?’ Elsewhere in John’s gospel, Jesus suggests that this awareness can bring us a peace the world cannot give.

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(vii) Monday, Fifth Week of Easter

In this gospel of John, Jesus often speaks not so much about loving the neighbour but loving him. The focus is more on our own loving relationship with the Lord. It is clear from today’s gospel reading that by loving him Jesus does not mean a certain kind of feeling but a certain way of life. As he says, ‘if anyone loves me, they will keep my word’. We show our love for Jesus by keeping his word, by listening to his word and then living out that word in our lives. Elsewhere in the gospel of John, Jesus declares that keeping his word entails loving one another as he loves us. Love of neighbour is not absent from this gospel of John. However, it is understood as the expression of our love for Jesus. We show our love for Jesus by keeping his word and his word calls us to love one another as he loves us. The Lord’s love for us comes first, then our love for the Lord in return, which then finds expression in loving others as the Lord has loved us. It is clear from today’s gospel reading as well that this loving way of life, this keeping of the Lord’s word, is not just down to our own efforts alone. We will need the help of the Holy Spirit, or the Advocate. According to Jesus in today’s gospel reading, the role of the Holy Spirit is to remind us of all Jesus has said to us, to keep bringing to our minds the word of Jesus, especially his call to love one another as he has loved us. The Holy Spirit not only reminds us of this word of Jesus that we are to keep, but empowers us to live it out in our lives. The Holy Spirit is the recreating power of the risen Lord in our lives enabling us to love as we have been loved.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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28th April >> Fr. Martin's Homilies / Reflections on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 15:1-8) for the Fifth Sunday of Easter (B): ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’.

Fifth Sunday of Easter (B)

Gospel (Except USA) John 15:1-8 I am the vine, you are the branches.

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more. You are pruned already, by means of the word that I have spoken to you. Make your home in me, as I make mine in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, but must remain part of the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me, with me in him, bears fruit in plenty; for cut off from me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me is like a branch that has been thrown away – he withers; these branches are collected and thrown on the fire, and they are burnt. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, you may ask what you will and you shall get it. It is to the glory of my Father that you should bear much fruit, and then you will be my disciples.’

Gospel (USA) John 15:1–8 Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit.

Jesus said to his disciples: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine grower. He takes away every branch in me that does not bear fruit, and every one that does he prunes so that it bears more fruit. You are already pruned because of the word that I spoke to you. Remain in me, as I remain in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit on its own unless it remains on the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in me and I in him will bear much fruit, because without me you can do nothing. Anyone who does not remain in me will be thrown out like a branch and wither; people will gather them and throw them into a fire and they will be burned. If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask for whatever you want and it will be done for you. By this is my Father glorified, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.”

Homilies ()

(i) Fifth Sunday of Easter

When I was ordained priest, it was the custom to produce for your first Mass a little prayer card that could be given out to people. The newly ordained priest would normally put a verse from the Bible that was significant for him on the card. On my own card, I placed a verse from today’s gospel reading, ‘Cut off from me you can do nothing’. At the time the verse said to me that it was only through my own personal communion with the Lord that I could do anything worthwhile as a priest, and that, therefore, my own relationship with the Lord was the most important relationship to work on. I still often return to that verse today.

Jesus was speaking to his disciples, to all of us today who are trying to be his disciples. The primary reference for Jesus’ words is not the sacrament of ordination but of baptism. When Jesus says, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’, he is addressing all the baptized. He is speaking about the very deep communion that he wants to have with each one of us, in virtue of our baptism. When you look at a fully grown vine, it can be hard to know where the stem ends and where the branches begin. Jesus was very familiar with vines; there were plenty of them in Galilee. He saw in the intimate relationship between the stem of the vine and its branches an image of the relationship he wanted to have with each of us and wanted each of us to have with him. He doesn’t say, ‘I am the vine and now you must become the branches’, but rather, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches’. The Lord has already entered into a deeply personal relationship with each of us through his life, death, resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit into our lives. He has taken the initiative to enter into this relationship with us and he will never take back his initiative. Our calling is to remain in that relationship which he has initiated with us. In the gospel reading, he calls on us to remain in him, as branches need to remain on the vine. Another way Jesus expresses this call in the gospel reading is, ‘Make your home in me, as I make mine in you’. The Lord has chosen to make his home in us, through the Holy Spirit, and now he calls on us to make our home in him.

What Jesus is doing in today’s gospel reading is reminding us that what is essential in our faith is nurturing our relationship with him, so that we can live off the sap that flows from him, just as the branches of the vine live off the sap that flows from the roots of the vine up into the stem. We might be tempted to think that a close union with Jesus is only for saints and mystics. It is a privilege that is granted to us all. Jesus knew that only our close communion with him would make it possible for us to live with his life, which is a life of loving service of others. This is the fruit that Jesus speaks about in the gospel reading. ‘Whoever remains in me, with me in them, bears fruit in plenty’. Only a branch untied to the vine can produce grapes and only if we are united to the Lord through faith can our lives bear the fruit of the Lord’s love. Many of the children in our schools have recently celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation. As part of their preparation, they learned a short passage from the letter of Saint Paul to the Galatians where he says, ‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’. This is the fruit that Jesus speaks about in the gospel reading. Paul speaks of it as the fruit of the Spirit; Jesus speaks of it as the fruit of our communion with him. They are saying the same thing, because it is through the Spirit that the Lord lives in us and we live in him. In the words of Saint John in the second reading, ‘We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us’.

Today’s first reading gives us a picture of what this fruit of the Spirit, the fruit of love, looks like in practice. Saul had been one of the church’s fiercest persecutors. When he became a member of the church after the Lord’s appearance to him on the road to Damascus, it is not surprising that many in the church were suspicious of him, indeed, afraid of him. It was Barnabas, a leading member of the church, who opened the door for Saul, explaining to the doubters that the Lord had appeared to Saul or Paul and had spoken to him and that Paul had been preaching the gospel ever since. Barnabas believed in Paul when others doubted him and he created a space for Paul to exercise the mission the Lord had given him. One of the ways we show our love for others is by creating the space for them to shine, allowing them to become the person God is calling them to be. Such humble service is the fruit of our communion with the Lord.

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(ii) Fifth Sunday of Easter

Doors create openings in buildings. They open up a building so that we can enter it. If this church had no doors, we would not have been able to gather inside it. In that sense, doors create movement; they allow people to move from outside to inside or from inside to outside, or from one space to another space within a building. The people we meet in life can sometimes serve a similar purpose to the doors in our buildings. They can create openings for us. They encourage us to move from one space in our lives to another space. They open up a new horizon for us and point us towards it. We can probably all think of people who have played that kind of a role in our lives. We look back to them with gratitude. Perhaps at a crucial moment in our lives, they opened a door for us into some new and more life-giving space. Parents certainly open up all kinds of doors for their children. Many of us will have no difficulty recognizing that we would not be where we are in life today, if it were not for the sacrifices made for us by our parents. One of the qualities of a good friendship is the mutual opening up of doors for one another. Good friend can open each other up to new places, new people, new and worthwhile realities of all kinds. Much as we might value our independence, we know in our heart of hearts how dependant we are on others for so much.

The first reading this morning is a very good example of how one person creates an opening for another. At the beginning of his Christian life, Paul was very dependant on others to get started on his missionary work. According to our first reading, when he first went to Jerusalem after his conversion, the disciples were very slow to have anything to do with him. They related to him only as the one who, up until recently, had been persecuting them. It was Barnabas who created an opening for Paul into the young church in Jerusalem. Barnabas was a respected church leader, and his strong recommendation for Paul was enough to calm everyone down and allow Paul to find a place within the Jerusalem community. There must have been more than one Barnabas in the early church, people who opened doors for other believers to use their gifts in the service of the Lord and the church.

One of the greatest gifts a person can have is the gift of facilitating the gifts of others. That particular gift is one that requires a certain degree of humility. In creating an opening for Paul, Barnabas was making way for someone who was, in many ways, more gifted than he himself was. Barnabas was opening a door for someone who would go on to become a much more significant member of the early church than Barnabas himself was. He may well have realized that this would be the case. Yet, his focus was not on himself, but on the Lord and on the work of the Lord. We may often find ourselves in a position to create an opening for someone who is more gifted than we are, who has more to bring to the task in hand than we do. Stepping back so that others may flourish is one aspect of our baptismal calling. Our church is dedicated to John the Baptist. He was a Barnabas figure. If Barnabas made way for Paul, John the Baptist made way for Jesus. John’s calling was to serve as a door for Jesus, to create an opening for him. According to the fourth gospel, on one occasion, John the Baptist said, ‘He (Jesus) must increase, but I must decrease’. That saying captures something of that humble attitude which is required of those who are being called upon to create openings for others.

The only person in early Christianity who said of himself, ‘I am the door’ was Jesus. He didn’t simply open a door for others; he was the door. He was the door to God, the door to God’s life, to God’s love and truth. As the door, he calls on all of us to pass through him, so that we might find God. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus uses another image of himself, the vine. If as the door, Jesus calls on us to pass through him towards God, as the vine, he calls on us to remain in him so that we might draw God’s life from him. That is what he means when he says, ‘whoever remains in me… bears fruit in plenty’. In and through our union with Jesus, our lives bear God’s fruit, the fruit of God’s life, what Paul calls the fruit of the Holy Spirit, ‘love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’. Our remaining in the Lord, as branches in the vine, opens us up to that quality of life that God desires for us, a life which is a reflection of God’s own life. If, looking back, we find ourselves giving thanks for all those people who opened doors for us, we have to be all the more grateful to the one who as the door and as the vine opens us up to God and to the life of God.

And/Or

(iii) Fifth Sunday of Easter

I am not much of a gardener. It takes me all my time to keep a few house plants alive. When it comes to the garden, I wouldn’t be great at knowing when to prune or how much to prune. My instinct would probably be never to prune and, as a result, shrubs start growing into each other and the quality of the rose blooms decreases over time. Fortunately, I now have somebody who comes in and does some of that pruning for me. It can be hard to prune what looks perfectly healthy. Whatever about clipping off parts of plants that are clearly dead, I find it hard to bring myself to trim off something that is still living. Yet a good gardener knows when to prune what is healthy to make it even healthier.

In the gospels Jesus often draws on nature to express his message. He was a keen observer of the land of Galilee and of the people who worked that land, the sower who sows his seed in the ground; the fig tree that might not give any figs for several years; the tiny mustard seed that produces a big shrub where the birds of the air make their home; the field of wheat that is also full of weeds. In this morning’s gospel reading he speaks of the vine and the vinedresser. Vineyards were plentiful in Galilee in the time of Jesus, and they remain an essential part of that landscape today. Jesus observed the work of the vinedresser. In the gospel reading this morning, he says that every branch of the vine that bears fruit the vinedresser prunes to make it bear even more fruit. He could see that the vinedresser had no qualms about pruning fruit bearing branches, if it was clear that such pruning would mean that the branches would bear even more fruit.

When Jesus looked out at the vineyard and the work of the vinedresser it spoke to him about God his Father, about the relationship between himself and his followers and the relationship among his followers. Jesus saw himself as the vine, his Father as the vinedresser and his disciples as the branches on the vine. He recognized from the work of the vinedresser that some form of pruning is often necessary if our lives as his disciples are to bear all the fruit that they are capable of bearing. Perhaps he thought of his own passion and death as a kind of pruning which would result in rich new fruit not only for himself but for all of us. In another image drawn from nature that Jesus used, he was the single grain that in falling into the ground and dying would bear much fruit. We know from our own experience that change, growth and new life in our lives do not happen in a vacuum. Times of new growth are often preceded by some kind of pruning experience, times of struggle, times when we feel unsettled, times of loss. Conversion, growth and change often come out of something that is a little bit unbalanced in our lives, something that has not worked out the way we thought it should, something we discover in ourselves that is not as pure or as generous or as wholesome as we might imagine ourselves to be. It is often in moments like that when we find ourselves unsettled, off balance, disturbed that we begin to search for something more. We become sensitive to what might give us more life; we make decisions to head out in a new, life giving direction, decisions that we would never have made when all seemed well. When our hearts are troubling us about something we can be more open to hearing God’s voice. When we find ourselves being painfully pruned in some way or another, we can actually be on the threshold of new life, a deepening of our relationship with the Lord, a way of life that bears richer fruit, the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

It is normal for a vine to be pruned. There is nothing exceptional about the work of pruning. It is part and parcel of the life of a healthy vine, because there is always some part of the vine that needs pruning. Similarly with our own lives, there is always a sense in which something in us needs to be pruned if we are to become all that God is calling us to be. Sometimes what needs to be pruned in our lives is a tendency towards self-interest or individualism that draws life away from the vine as a whole. The image of the vine is a very communal image of the church; it suggests that we are completely interconnected and interdependent. We have to place the strength of the entire vine before our own individual advantage. Even more fundamentally than our dependence on each other, the image of the vine stresses our dependence on the Lord. ‘Cut off from me you can do nothing’, Jesus says. That is why in the gospel reading the language of pruning gives way to the language of remaining or abiding. The branch must remain united to the vine to bear fruit. Our remaining in Jesus, our adhering closely to him, is the core of our lives as Christians.

And/Or

(iv) Fifth Sunday of Easter

We live in an age that tends to put a high value on independence. We like to feel that we have our destiny in our own hands. One of the aspects of reaching old age that can trouble us is the prospect of losing our independence. We want to be as independent as possible for as long as possible. Yet, we are also aware that independence is a relative thing. We know that we depend on each other in all kinds of ways all through life. We are totally dependant on others at the beginning of life, and, probably, for many of us, at the end of life as well. In between the beginning and end of life, we never escape fully from that dependency on others. In the living of our lives, there will always be a certain degree of tension between our need to assert our independence of others and our recognition that we are dependent on others.

The gospel’s perspective on that basic tension in human life tends to put more emphasis on our dependence than on our independence. In this respect, as in others, the gospel message is at odds with the culture in which we live. The gospel strongly proclaims our ultimate dependence on God, and also our dependence on each other, because one of the primary ways that God is present to us is through each other. The first Christians had a stronger sense than we do of their dependence on one another, if they were to become all that God was calling them to be. St. Paul’s vision of the church as the body of Christ speaks of a community of believers who are mutually interdependent. As Paul says, ‘the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”, nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you”’. Paul himself, the great missionary, was aware of his dependence on others in the church. In today’s first reading Luke describes a moment in Paul’s early life as a Christian when he was very dependent on one person in particular, Barnabas. Paul had only recently changed from being one of the most zealous persecutors of the church to being one of its most enthusiastic missionaries. He very much wanted to join the community of disciples in Jerusalem but, given his former reputation, they were all afraid of him and kept him at a distance. It took Barnabas to convince everyone that Paul was a changed person. Paul would go on to be a much more significant person in the early church than Barnabas. Yet, he was completely dependent on Barnabas to create that initial opening for him. Paul was aware that his dependence on Barnabas, and on others in the course of his life, was an expression of his dependence on the Lord who came to him through others.

Jesus’ image of the vine in the gospel reading, like Paul’s image of the body, suggests how we as believers are dependent on each other and, ultimately, on the Lord, if we are to live as the Lord’s disciples. Jesus states, ‘a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself’. We cannot live fruitful lives as Christians by going it alone. We need the community of believers if we are to become all that our baptism calls us to be. We need to be connected in some way into the community of faith, what we call the church. It is only in communion with other believers that our lives can bear the fruit of the Spirit. It is in and through other believers that the Lord can nurture our faith so that it shapes more and more of our lives. That community of believers that we need to be in communion with will often be a mixed bag. In another image that Jesus uses, it will be a mixture of wheat and weeds, as indeed each one of us is. Yet, it is there that we find the Lord in a privileged way and it is through our connection with the church that we are connected to him. That connection with the Lord is vital because if we are to live our baptism to the full; it is on him that we are ultimately dependent. We need the Lord if our lives are to bear the fruit of the Spirit. As Jesus states in the gospel reading, ‘cut off from me you can do nothing’.

If we are dependent on the Lord, there is a sense in which he is also dependant on us. In the gospel reading Jesus says, ‘Whoever remains in me... bears fruit in plenty’. We would all consider fruit to be healthy food; it is an important source of nourishment. Lives that bear fruit in plenty are lives that nurture others, that are life-giving for others. The Lord depends on us to feed each other with his love and his presence. He needs us to give concrete expression to his love for others. We can only do this, if we are connected to the vine, if we are in union with the Lord and his disciples.

And/Or

(v) Fifth Sunday of Easter

We are fortunate to have beds of roses to the front of the church. When the roses are in full bloom there is a lovely fragrance to the front of the church. Some weeks ago, I saw a couple of people pruning the roses. They were being cut right back. It is the pruning which brings on the new growth and ensures lovely roses in the flowering season, with their accompanying fragrance.

I was reminded of all that by a saying of Jesus in today’s gospel reading. ‘Every branch in me that bears no fruit he cuts away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes to make it bear even more’. I believe that vines need strong pruning if they are to give good grapes. The pruning is done on the branches that are fruit bearing, just as the pruning of the roses is done on branches that left to themselves would produce a blossom. Pruning of the vine makes for a richer and fuller fruit. That image of pruning the vine might help to understand some of what is happening in the church at the moment. In that gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’. Jesus was talking to his disciples. The ‘you’ in ‘you are the branches’ embraces disciples of every age, including all of us gathered here at this Eucharist. The branches on the vine are the community of disciples, the church in every age. According to the image Jesus uses, God the Father prunes the branches that are bearing fruit to make them bear even more fruit. Pruning always involves loss. What is pruned is lost to the tree or the plant. There has been a great deal of loss in the church in recent times, especially in the Western world. There has been a loss of influence, a loss of reputation, a loss of credibility, a loss of numbers, especially among a younger generation, a loss of vocations to the priesthood and religious life. Perhaps some of this loss could be understood as God’s work of pruning so as to make the church bear more fruit. Today’s gospel reading encourages us to believe that this cutting away may be serving a good purpose. Through these painful experiences of loss, we can be confident that the Lord is causing new forms of life to emerge in the church. Sometimes, people speak of the church as if it were only a human organization. It is a human organization, but it is more than that. God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit, is also at work there, causing new life to spring forth in the very places where death seems to be dominant. This conviction, which is based on God’s word to us, does not leave us complacent. However, it should prevent us from getting discouraged.

God the Father is the vinedresser who cares for the branches on the vine, sometimes by cutting some of the dead branches away and at other times by pruning perfectly healthy ones. If God the Father is the vinedresser, Jesus, our risen Lord, declares himself to be the vine. ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’. In some ways, it is very difficult to distinguish between the vine and its branches. Where does the vine end and the branches begin? Surely the branches are themselves the vine. There is certainly a very close relationship between the vine and its branches. When Jesus refers to himself as the vine and to us as the branches, he is giving us an image of the very intimate relationship that he desires to have with us, his disciples. The Lord is intimately involved with his church. He is in communion with us. That is a given. What Jesus calls for in the gospel reading is that we be in communion with him, that we make our home in him, abide in him. The image of the vine and the branches Jesus uses also expresses our dependence on him. We need to be in a deeply personal communion with Jesus so as to live off the sap that reaches us from him. We need to live in close contact with him, if we, the church, are to be fruitful in the way he wants us to be. It is only in and through our communion with Jesus that we as church can bear his fruit, the fruit of the Spirit. The primary fruit of the Spirit is love, a love that in the words of today’s second reading, is something real and active, a love that brings life to others, just as Jesus’s love has brought life to us all. We need to nurture a vital contact with him, to ensure that we, as church, are a truly life-giving and life-enhancing presence in our world.

The image of the vine and the branches also expresses our dependence on each other as members of the church. More fundamentally, we are dependent on one another as human beings. Because as human beings we depend on one another, others have the right to expect something from us. They have the right to be loved in a life-giving way, to be treated in accordance with their God-given dignity. That is true at every moment of our life, from its first beginnings at conception to its natural end at death. Indeed, there is no form of human life more dependent on our life-giving love than the unborn child.

And/Or

(vi) Fifth Sunday of Easter

Vines are plentiful throughout the Mediterranean world, including in parts of the land where Jesus lived and worked. Wine was a staple drink in Jesus’ culture. It was wine that Jesus took at the last supper, along with bread, declaring them to be his body and his blood. At every Mass we give thanks for the wine we offer to God, fruit of the vine and work of human hands. The vine has been a Christian symbol since the earliest days of the church. There is much about vines, grapes and wine that can speak to us about the Lord’s relationship with us and ours with him.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus goes so far as to identify himself with a vine, declaring, ‘I am the true vine’, and he then identifies his disciples, all of us, with the branches of the vine. It is difficult to distinguish clearly between the vine and the branches. We would normally think of the branches as the vine itself. We would almost expect Jesus to say, ‘I am the stem of the vine and you are the branches of the vine’, but he doesn’t. He says, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’. Jesus is drawing our attention to the intimate relationship he desires to have with us all. Jesus seems to image the sap of his risen life flowing through us all. In the gospel reading, he calls on us to remain in him, to abide in him, as he remains or abides in us. When we think of our relationship with Jesus, we often think in terms of following Jesus. This is a valid way of speaking about that relationship. However, in this gospel reading, Jesus doesn’t speak of following him but of remaining or abiding in him. It is as if Jesus is saying to us, ‘I have joined myself to you, through my life, death, resurrection and sending of the Holy Spirit. Now I am asking you to nurture that loving communion I have created with you.’. Jesus is reminding us here of what is essential. We are all aware that Christianity is a way of life, which shows itself in good works of all kinds. Jesus often speaks in those terms. At the end of the parable of the good Samaritan, he says to his listeners, to all of us, ‘Go and do likewise’. ‘Be a good Samaritan to others’. Yet, in today’s gospel reading, Jesus is reminding us of something more fundamental, our need to nurture a vital contact with him, to relate to him as intimately as he relates to us.

Today’s gospel reading invites us to ask ourselves, ‘What are we doing to nurture our relationship with Jesus?’ The Lord is always seeking to abide in us and calling out to us to abide in him, but we can allow that relationship to wither. In the language of the gospel reading, we can cut ourselves off from the Lord. We need to keep choosing to be in relationship with the Lord. A few chapters earlier in this gospel of John, some of Jesus’ disciples choose not to be in relationship with him because they found his teaching too difficult. The text says, ‘many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him’. On that occasion Jesus turned to those who remained and asked them, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered on behalf of the others, ‘Lord, to whom can we go. You have the words of eternal life’. Some of Jesus’ disciples chose to walk away from him, while others chose to remain in the relationship Jesus had created with them. In these times, that element of personal choice has become more important when it comes to our relationship with the Lord. There are so many factors in our environment that work against that relationship that we have to be more deliberate in our choice of the Lord. He has chosen us first out of love, and he needs us and wants us to keep choosing him. The question Jesus addressed to his disciples hangs in the air for us all, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’

The way of life that we associate with the following of Jesus is the fruit of our vital and personal relationship with Jesus. That is one aspect of the message of Jesus in today’s gospel reading. Jesus says, ‘as a branch cannot bear fruit all by itself, but must remain part of the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me’. If we allow the sap of the Lord’s love to flow from him to us, then our lives will bear the rich fruit of love, the fruit of the Spirit. It is our vital relationship with the Lord that sustains a life of love, a love that in the words of the second reading is ‘not to be just words or mere talk, but something real and active’. It is the kind of love that Barnabas displayed towards Saul or Paul in the first reading. Some members of the church had written off Saul because of his persecuting past. Barnabas, however, stood by him and created openings for the Lord to work through him. This is the kind of enabling, encouraging, love that flows from our remaining in the Lord.

And/Or

(vii) Fifth Sunday of Easter

When I was ordained priest, it was the custom to produce for your first Mass a little prayer card that could be given out to people. The newly ordained priest would normally put a verse from the Bible on the card that was significant for him. On my own card, I placed a verse from today’s gospel reading, ‘Cut off from me you can do nothing’. At the time the verse said to me that it was only through my own personal communion with the Lord that I could do anything worthwhile as a priest, and that, therefore, my own relationship with the Lord was the most important relationship to work on. I still often return to that verse today.

Jesus, of course, was speaking to his disciples, to all of us today who are trying to be his disciples. The primary reference for Jesus’ words is not the sacrament of ordination but of baptism. When Jesus says, ‘I am the vine, you are the branches’, he is addressing each one of us. He is speaking about the very deep communion or relationship that he wants to have with each one of us, in virtue of our baptism. When you look at a fully grown vine, it can be hard to know where the stem ends and where the branches begin. Jesus was very familiar with vines; there were plenty of them in Galilee. He saw in the intimate relationship between the stem of the vine and its branches an image of the relationship he had with each of us and wanted each of us to have with him. He doesn’t say, ‘I am the vine and now you must become the branches’, but rather, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches’. The Lord has already entered into a deeply personal relationship with each one of us through his life, death, resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit into our lives. He has taken the initiative to enter into this relationship with us and he will never take back his initiative. Our calling is to remain in that relationship which he has initiated with us. In the gospel reading, he calls on us to remain in him, as branches need to remain on the vine or, in another translation, to abide in him. Another way Jesus expresses this call in the gospel reading is, ‘Make your home in me, as I make mind in you’. The Lord has chosen to make his home in us, through the Holy Spirit, and now he calls on us to make our home in him.

What Jesus is doing in today’s gospel reading is reminding us of what is essential in our faith, nurturing our relationship with him so that we can live off the sap that flows from him, just as the branches of the vine live off the sap that flows from the stem of the vine. We might be tempted to think that a close union with Jesus is only for saints and mystics. It is a privilege that is granted to us all. Jesus knew that only our close communion with him would make it possible for us to live with his life, which is a life of loving service of others. This is the fruit that Jesus speaks about in the gospel reading. ‘Whoever remains in me, with me in them, bears fruit in plenty’. Only a branch untied to the vine can produce grapes and only if we are united to the Lord through faith can our lives bear the fruit of love. Many of the children in our schools have recently celebrated the Sacrament of Confirmation. As part of their preparation, they learned a short passage from the letter of Saint Paul to the Galatians where he says, ‘the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control’. This is the fruit that Jesus speaks about in the gospel reading. Paul speaks of it as the fruit of the Spirit; Jesus speaks of it as the fruit of our communion with him. They are saying the same thing, because it is through the Spirit that the Lord lives in us. In the words of Saint John in the second reading, ‘We know that he lives in us by the Spirit that he has given us’.

Today’s first reading gives us a picture of what this fruit, the fruit of the Spirit, looks like in practice. Saul had been one of the church’s fiercest persecutors. When he became a member of the church through his encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, it is not surprising that many in the church were still suspicious of him, indeed, afraid of him. It was Barnabas, one of the leading members of the church, who opened the door for Saul, explaining to the doubters that the Lord had appeared to Saul or Paul and had spoken to him and that Paul had been boldly preaching the gospel ever since. Barnabas believed in Paul when others doubted him and he created a space for Paul to exercise the mission the Lord had given him. Sometimes we show love best by creating the space for others to shine, allowing them to become all God is calling them to be. Such humble service is the fruit of our vital union with the Lord.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

27th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 14:7-14) for Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter: ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’.

Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 14:7-14 To have seen me is to have seen the father.

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘If you know me, you know my Father too. From this moment you know him and have seen him.’

Philip said, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied.’ ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip,’ said Jesus to him, ‘and you still do not know me?

‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father, so how can you say, “Let us see the Father”? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak as from myself: it is the Father, living in me, who is doing this work. You must believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; believe it on the evidence of this work, if for no other reason. I tell you most solemnly, whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask for in my name I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask for anything in my name, I will do it.’

Gospel (USA) John 14:7-14 Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.

Jesus said to his disciples: “If you know me, then you will also know my Father. From now on you do know him and have seen him.” Philip said to Jesus, “Master, show us the Father, and that will be enough for us.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you for so long a time and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on my own. The Father who dwells in me is doing his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me, or else, believe because of the works themselves. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes in me will do the works that I do, and will do greater ones than these, because I am going to the Father. And whatever you ask in my name, I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything of me in my name, I will do it.”

Reflections (9)

(i) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

It is easy to identify with the request of Philip to Jesus in today’s gospel reading, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. It was Saint Augustine who said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We have come from God and we are made for God. It is only when we see God, face to face, that we will be fully satisfied, because only God can satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts of our heart. We will see God face to face only beyond this earthly life. Saint Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘Now we see as in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face’. Yet, Jesus says to Philip in the gospel reading, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. No one has revealed God more fully to us than Jesus. To see Jesus is to see God, the Father. We may not see Jesus in the way that Philip, Thomas and the other eye witnesses saw him, but we do see Jesus with the eyes of faith. Jesus, now risen Lord, comes to us through his word, through the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, through one another. There is a real sense in which we can see the Lord in the here and now, even if seeing him ‘face to face’ is only possible beyond this earthly life. In so far as we keep turning towards the Lord who is always coming towards us, that deep hunger and thirst in our hearts will begin to be satisfied, that restlessness in our hearts will begin to be calmed. That is why in one of the other gospels, Jesus calls on us, ‘Come to me, all you labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest’. Here and now, the Lord, the good shepherd, can lead us to restful waters to revive our drooping spirits, giving us a foretaste of the eternal rest that is our ultimate destiny.

And/Or

(ii) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

Perhaps we can easily identify with Philip’s request to Jesus at the beginning of this morning’s gospel reading, ‘Let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. Philip speaks out of the awareness that ultimate satisfaction is to be found in seeing God, in being in communion with God. We often live with a sense of dissatisfaction. We are aware of desires and longings in us that are not fully satisfied. There are moments when we can feel wonderfully happy, happier than we could ever have imagined, when, like Peter on the mount of transfiguration, we say, ‘it is good for us to be here’. Sooner or later we are made aware of some unfulfilled longing in us; we sense an unease, a restlessness, a kind of emptiness that is never fully filled. That is because we are made for something which this world cannot fully give us. Saint Augustine said our hearts are restless until they rest in God. That is why there is so much truth in Philip’s prayer to Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. We cannot but be struck by Jesus’ response to Philip, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus is saying that to see him with the eyes of faith, to enter into communion with him, is to see the Father. Already here and now in this earthly life, we can begin to experience that for which we ultimately long in and through our relationship with Jesus.

And/Or

(iii) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

Jesus makes a very striking statement in this morning’s gospel reading, ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works because I am going to the Father’. How could we perform even greater works than Jesus, we might well ask? Jesus is speaking to his disciples on the night before he died, the night of the last supper. He wants to reassure them that even though he is going to be taken from them, he is not leaving them. He will be raised from the dead and he will come back to them. He will come back to them especially through the sending of the Advocate, the Holy Spirit. The work he has been doing he will continue to do in the lives of the disciples in and through the Holy Spirit. His risen Spirit will allow him to do even greater works in and through his disciples, in and through all of us, than he could have done prior to his death. We are now his body in the world. The risen Lord can work powerfully and wonderfully through each one of us if we are open to the presence and movement of his Spirit in our lives. The Lord can reach people through us he could never have reached during his earthly life. We should never underestimate the greater works the Lord can do through each one of us.

And/Or

(iv) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

You often hear parents say to children, ‘you are never satisfied’. There is a sense in which that is probably true of all of us. We are never satisfied. Saint Augustine said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. In this morning’s gospel reading, Philip expresses the same sentiment. He says to Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father, and then we shall be satisfied’. He understood that it is only in seeing God that all the longings of his heart would be satisfied. Jesus replies to Philip’s words with the statement, ‘To have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus reveals the Father; he is the way to the Father. We won’t see God the Father in this life, but God has sent us his Son. Although we cannot see Jesus in the way Philip and the other disciples saw him, we can see him with the eyes of faith in this life. We can see him in his Word, in the Eucharist, in the other Sacraments, in each other. Such ‘seeing’ of the Lord won’t fully satisfy us but it gives us a glimpse of what awaits us.

And/Or

(v) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus makes an extraordinary promise: ‘Whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father’. Jesus tells his disciples that after his death and resurrection they will go on to do even greater works than he has been doing. We might well ask, ‘How could we, Jesus’ disciples, do greater works than he has done?’ Jesus seems to be suggesting that what he has been doing during his public ministry is but the beginning of what he will go on to do as risen Lord working through his disciples. It is in and through us, his disciples, that the Lord reaches people he could never have reached while working in Judea and Galilee. The Lord wants to work through all of the members of his body, the church, all of us who are his disciples. He has great works that he wants to accomplish through us. Perhaps we don’t take ourselves as seriously as the Lord takes us. Perhaps we underestimate just how much the Lord can do through us if we are open to him and responsive to the movement of his Spirit in our lives.

And/Or

(vi) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

It can be interesting to try and identify with the questions and the requests of the disciples in the gospels. In this morning’s gospel reading we find Philip making a request of Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. What is it that really satisfies us? We can so easily go looking for satisfaction in the wrong places. We have huge longings in our hearts and we mistakenly think that something or someone can satisfy them. We pursue what we think will satisfy those longings only to be bitterly disappointed. Philip had the insight to recognize that only God can satisfy our deepest longings. ‘Let us see the Father...’. He turned to Jesus trusting that Jesus could enable them to see God. Jesus’ answer to Philip’s request was very simple and very profound, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. The first letter of John declares that beyond this life, ‘we shall see God as he is’. That is our ultimate destiny, to see God who is Love and in so doing to become like God, as loving as God. In John’s gospel Jesus declares that we can anticipate that vision of God in this life by seeing himself. In seeing Jesus with the eyes of faith and in responding to him as the revelation of God’s love we are given a foretaste of that ultimate destiny that awaits us when we see God as he is and all our deepest longings are fully and finally satisfied.

And/Or

(vii) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

Across the four gospels several people are portrayed as approaching Jesus and asking for something, either for themselves or for others. Very often they ask for some form of healing. In this morning’s gospel reading, one of Jesus’ own disciples, Philip, asks for something quite different. He says to Jesus, ‘Lord, let us see the Father and then we shall be satisfied’. He asks to see God, and he expresses his conviction that in seeing God all his deepest hungers and thirsts will be satisfied. We believe that we are destined to see God directly, face to face, in the next life, and that when we are worthy to see God in this way we will indeed finally be satisfied. Our restlessness will cease. Jesus’ reply to Philip is thought-provoking. He doesn’t tell Philip that he can only see the Father beyond this life. Rather, he says to him, ‘to have seen me is to have seen the Father’. Jesus is saying to Philip and to all of us that here and now we can anticipate our final destiny in so far as we can now see Jesus who is the revelation of God, the face of God. We cannot see Jesus in the way Philip saw him, with our physical eyes. Yet, we can see him with the eyes of faith. We can see him with such eyes in his word, in the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, and in each other. In so far as we see him in these ways and respond to him we too will experience something of that satisfaction and fulfilment for which Philip longed.

And/Or

(viii) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

Jesus makes a statement in this morning’s gospel reading that seems extraordinary, ‘whoever believes in me will perform the same works as I do myself, he will perform even greater works, because I am going to the Father’. We might wonder how believers could perform even greater works than Jesus himself performed. Jesus suggests an answer to that question in saying, ‘because I am going to the Father’. In going to the Father, Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit on his disciples, on disciples of every generation. In and through the Holy Spirit at work in the lives of his followers, Jesus continues to do the works he did before his death and, indeed, is able to do even greater works. This is not a reference to greater miracles but to a much greater scope for mission. During his earthly ministry Jesus’ mission was limited to Galilee, Samaria, Judea and adjoining areas. However in returning to the Father and sending his Spirit upon his disciples, the risen Lord is able to continue his mission through his disciples in a much wider geographical area. The pouring out of the Spirit after the death and resurrection of Jesus will empower his disciples’ mission in the world. The Lord wants to continue his mission through us. As the Father sent him, so he sends us and he gives us his Holy Spirit to empower us to continue his mission. This is our calling, our privilege and, also, our responsibility.

And/Or

(ix) Saturday, Fourth Week of Easter

At the end of today’s gospel reading, Jesus says something that can seem strange to our ears. He declares that whoever believes in him will do even greater works than he has done. It is tempting to ask, ‘How could this be possible?’ ‘How could Jesus’ disciples do greater works than Jesus himself?’ Jesus often speaks in the gospels in ways that leave us perplexed and wondering what he means. Jesus was speaking to his disciples in the context of the last supper. He was assuring them that his leaving on the following afternoon, his ‘going to the Father’, his death, would not be the disaster it seemed to be. His ‘going to the Father’ entails not only his death but his resurrection, his glorification. It will result in the sending of the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Holy Spirit to the disciples will enable the risen Lord to continue to do his work in and through them. As risen Lord, he will do even greater works through his disciples, in the power of the Spirit, than he could have done during his earthly life. His earthly ministry was confined to a particular place and time. His ministry as risen Lord will be in every generation and throughout the world. Yet, he can only do his greater works through disciples who believe in him and who remain in his love. ‘Whoever believes in me… will perform even greater works’ As believers, we can be tempted to discouragement in these times. Today’s gospel reading assures us that the Lord’s good work continues. The risen Lord is as active today, more active, than he was during his public ministry. We are all invited to be part of his great work, which no earthly power can halt.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

26th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 14:1-6) for Friday, Fourth Week of Easter: 'There are many rooms in my Father’s house’.

Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 14:1-6 I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

Jesus said to his disciples:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me. There are many rooms in my Father’s house; if there were not, I should have told you. I am going now to prepare a place for you, and after I have gone and prepared you a place, I shall return to take you with me; so that where I am you may be too. You know the way to the place where I am going.’

Thomas said, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus said:

‘I am the Way, the Truth and the Life. No one can come to the Father except through me.’

Gospel (USA) John 14:1-6 I am the way and the truth and the life.

Jesus said to his disciples: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going you know the way.” Thomas said to him, “Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Reflections (14)

(i) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

Many of us will be familiar with this gospel reading from funeral Masses at which we will have been present. The image of eternal life as the many roomed house or home of God the Father to which Jesus will bring us when he comes to us at death is a very reassuring one. Yet, as we listen to what Jesus goes on to say in this gospel of John it is clear that we don’t have to wait until after death to be at home with Jesus in God’s house. Jesus will go on to invite his disciples, all of us, to make our home in him now, as he makes his home in us. He says this in the context of speaking of himself as the vine and his disciples as the branches. He invites us to remain, to make our home, in his love just as he makes his home in God the Father’s love. Through our faith in Jesus, we can begin to enjoy in the here and now something of that intimate communion with Jesus and God the Father that is our ultimate destiny. That image of the vine and the branches speaks powerfully of the communion between the Lord and ourselves. Jesus doesn’t say, ‘I am the vine and you must become the branches’ but ‘I am the vine and you are the branches’. The Lord has taken the initiative to be in communion with us. He has made his home among us and within us. Our task is to keep remaining in the communion the Lord has formed with us. There are many dwelling places in the Lord’s heart for us all. There is a place there for each one of us. The Lord is always drawing us to that place, to his heart. In this gospel of John, he goes on to say, ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself’. We just have to let ourselves be drawn by him, keep responding to the drawing power of his love.

And/Or

(ii) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

This morning’s gospel reading is one of the better known passages from John’s gospel because it is read so often at Funeral Masses. These are words of reassurance that Jesus spoke to his disciples in the context of the last supper, on the evening before his crucifixion, the evening of his betrayal. His disciples needed reassurance. Jesus has announced that one of those at table will betray him; he has been talking about his departure from this world. The tone of the evening is ominous. Jesus senses that his disciples are troubled and fearful. He calls on them to trust in God and to trust in himself. Sometimes when times are bleak we have to trust in God and in Jesus that all will be well. Jesus goes on to explain why this trust in God is appropriate. Although Jesus is going away and leaving them, he promises to return to them, to come again and to take them to the Father’s house with its many dwelling places. This has been interpreted as referring to Jesus coming to his disciples at the hour of their death, and this is a valid interpretation. However, Jesus will first return to them after he rises from the dead and he will remain with them through the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. In that sense, the many dwelling places of the Father’s house or household can already be experienced in this earthly life. The community of disciples, the church, is the house or household of God the Father. Within that household, with its many dwelling places, we are all sons and daughters of God, brothers and sisters of Jesus and of each other. In and through this household of faith, the church, we already enjoy a foretaste of eternal life. Dwelling in the house of the Father is not postponed until after death. These are the reassuring words that Jesus speaks to his disciples and to all of us, his disciples today.

And/Or

(iii) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

This morning’s gospel reading is very familiar to us because we often hear it read at funeral Masses. It has brought and continues to bring consolation to people who are grieving the loss of loved ones. Jesus speaks of eternal life as his Father’s house with many rooms or dwelling places and he promises to take his disciples with him to that house of his Father so that where he, Jesus, is they may be also. This promise of dwelling with Jesus in the house of his Father does not only apply to life after death. In this gospel according to John, Jesus invites his disciples, and all of us, to dwell in him here and now, just as he is dwelling in the Father. There is a sense in which God the Father’s house with its many dwelling places is a present reality for all of us, in and through the church. The church is sometimes spoken of in the New Testament as a household. Here and now we are members of God’s household. We have the privilege of dwelling with Jesus in his Father’s house as his sons and daughters and as brothers and sisters of Jesus. To that extent, there is great continuity between our life now as believers and are life in heaven when our faith gives way to vision. Our present dwelling in and with Jesus in God’s household is a wonderful privilege. It also entails a calling. Jesus wants to dwell in us, as we dwell in him. He wants his love to dwell in us so that we are clearly recognizable as his brothers and sisters and as sons and daughters of his Father and ours.

And/Or

(iv) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

Thomas is one of the twelve apostles who features in the gospel of John a couple of times. We associate him with that scene in John’s gospel where he refuses to believe the other disciples who announce to him that they had seen Jesus. He is clearly not afraid to speak his mind. He is portrayed in a somewhat similar way in this morning’s gospel reading. When Jesus says to his disciples, ‘You know the way to the place where I am going’, Thomas pipes up, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way?’ Jesus had just declared that he was going to his Father’s house, where there were many rooms. On the night before he dies Jesus declares that he is on his way to the Father, from whom he came. He declares that the journey he is about to travel is a journey that is open to all his disciples, ‘I shall return to take you with me’. His ultimate destination is also our ultimate destination, and the way to that destination is Jesus himself. ‘I am the way’. One of the earliest terms for Christians was ‘followers of the Way’. We are those who take Jesus as our Way. In taking Jesus as our way, we will find truth and life, we will find God, both in this life and in eternity. Every day we try to orientate ourselves towards Jesus, we keep taking him as our way.

And/Or

(v) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

The gospel reading we have just heard is often chosen as one of the readings for the funeral liturgy. It is easy to understand why that is so. Jesus is speaking to his disciples on the eve of his own death. He assures his troubled disciples that in going from them in death, he is only going to his Father’s house; he is journeying back towards the one from whom he came into the world. Jesus also assures his disciples that the journey he is about to make is one that they too will make one day. Jesus will return to take his disciples to the Father’s house, so that they can be with him there. Jesus promises all of us that he will take us to the Father at the end of our lives. Jesus came among us to show us the Father, to reveal God to us. The purpose of his mission was and is to bring God to us and to bring us to God; at the end of our lives he will bring us finally and fully to God. Jesus’ description of his Father’s house as many roomed suggests the great hospitality of that house. Heaven, it seems, is not a confined space for a selected few; it is an open space for the many, just as Jesus himself did not come for the few, for the elect, but for all. Jesus is the Way to the Father for all who turn to him in faith. That is why he said, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself’. We pray this morning that we would always take him as our Way so that at the end of our lives we would join him in his Father’s house.

And/Or

(vi) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

This morning’s gospel reading is set in the context of Jesus’ words to his disciples on the night before he died. He had been speaking about his going away. Understandably, his disciples are distressed by this prospect. Jesus seeks to reassure them that his going away, his going to the Father, is a journey that he is travelling for them, for all of us. In going to the Father, he is opening up a way for all of us to make the same journey. As he says in the gospel reading, he is going to prepare a place for us and then to come and take us to that place, to the many roomed house of his Father. Jesus is the Way; he is the way to the Father for all his disciples. As John the Baptist prepared a way for Jesus, so Jesus has prepared a way, opened up a way, for all of us. That is why his leaving this world and going to the Father is good news; his departure is the gateway to new life, not just for him but for us all. Furthermore, in going to the Father, he will send the Holy Spirit, and through the Spirit he will remain with us and within us, until that day when we go where he has gone, and join him in the house of the Father.

And/Or

(vii) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

Many of us find departures difficulty, especially when the person departing from us is significant for us in some way. The words Jesus speaks in this morning’s gospel reading are set by the evangelist within the context of the last supper on the evening before Jesus was crucified. Jesus is about to leave his disciples. Yet, in leaving them he also assures them that he is not abandoning them. He will in fact come back to them. That is the promise of Jesus to the disciples in the gospel reading we have just heard, ‘I shall return to take you with me’. That promise is generally heard as a promise that at the end of our earthly lives Jesus will come and take us to the many roomed house of his Father, which is why this reading is so often chosen for the funeral liturgy. However, Jesus goes on to assure his disciples that we don’t have to wait to the end of our lives to experience his coming. He will come to us in and through the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit. Through the Spirit, the Lord comes to us here and now, today, and his coming through the Spirit is a foretaste, an anticipation, of his coming to us at the end of our lives. That is why Saint Paul refers to the Spirit as the first fruit of the final harvest, eternal life.

And/Or

(viii) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

The context of this morning’s gospel reading is the evening before Jesus is crucified. Jesus’ disciples are troubled because they are aware that Jesus is heading into danger; they sense that this may be their last night together. In that difficult moment Jesus turns to his disciples and says to them, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me’. At this very difficult moment of transition and loss, Jesus invites his disciples to keep trusting in God and in himself. Jesus wants them to trust in him and in God because the pain of loss they will experience when he is taken from them will not have the last word. Indeed they will experience a new relationship with Jesus beyond his crucifixion and death; ‘I shall return to take you with me’. God will bring something new and worthwhile out of the pain and loss they are about to suffer. When we find ourselves in difficult moments of transition and loss we too are invited to trust in Jesus and in God. God will always work to bring new life out of the pain relating to the losses we suffer, and that is why we can trust God at such difficult times.

And/Or

(ix) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

The gospel reading we have just heard is one that is often read at funeral Masses. It is easy to see why. As Jesus takes his leave of his disciples on the night before he dies, he assures us that there are many ‘rooms’ or ‘dwelling places’ in his Father’s house and he promises them that, although he is soon to leave them, he will come again and take them to his Father’s house of many dwelling places, so that where he is they will be too. He is promising his disciples that in leaving them he is not breaking his communion. That is his promise to us this morning also. Jesus remains in communion with us, and his communion with us will be brought to perfection beyond this earthly life. He desires to take us to the heavenly home of his Father, but in the meantime he wants to make his home in us and he calls on us to make his home in him. A few verses later Jesus will say to his disciples, ‘Make your home in me as I make mine in you’. One of the primary ways that Jesus makes his home in us and we make our home in him is in the Eucharist. It is not by accident that we refer to the Eucharist as holy communion; it is a moment when the Lord enters into communion with us in a special way and we enter into communion with him, as a community of faith. In that sense, the Eucharist looks ahead to that more complete moment of communion in the Father’s heavenly home.

And/Or

(x) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

This morning’s gospel reading is a reading you will hear many times when a funeral takes place. It is one of the most frequently chosen gospel readings for funeral Masses. On the night before his own death, in the context of the last supper that Jesus had with his disciples before his crucifixion, Jesus speaks about the many roomed house of God his Father towards which he is journeying. He is reminding his troubled disciples that the Roman cross will not be his final destination. Beyond that shameful death there is the heavenly house of God his Father where he will be received with great honour and glory. Even on the night before his own death, Jesus is not only thinking of himself; he is thinking of others, of his own followers. He assures them that the heavenly house of God his Father is not only his own ultimate destination but it is also the final destination of his disciples. At the end of their earthly lives he promises to come to them and take them to that heavenly house so that where he is they may be too. Where Jesus is going, his disciples will follow; to that extent, he is the goal of their journey. This is a very reassuring message for all of us. That is why Jesus begins what he has to say with those very reassuring words, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled’. As well as declaring himself to be the goal of our earthly journey Jesus also declares himself to the way to that goal, ‘I am the way’. He is our present way and our future hope. 

And/Or

(xi) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says of himself, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. It is an extraordinary claim and one that has spoken powerfully to believers down through the ages. One way of understanding that saying of Jesus is that Jesus is the way because he is the truth and the life. He is the truth in that he reveals God fully; he has shown us the full truth about God. He is the life because he is full of the life of God and he gives God’s life to all who believe in him. It is because Jesus reveals God fully and is full of God’s life that he is the way to God. It is through Jesus that we reach God; it is through Jesus that God reaches us. We are all trying to find our way in life. We often find ourselves asking, ‘What is the right path to take in this situation?’ As believers, we try to find the way, to take the path, that brings us closer to God, that leads to a deepening in our relationship with God. In the gospel reading, Jesus is saying that he is the way that brings us closer to God, that leads us to a deeper relationship with God. It is in trying to take Jesus as our way that we will find our way in life, that we will take the right path in life. As followers of Jesus, we are not without a roadmap. He is our roadmap. He is our way. Every day he calls on us to take him as our way. When we take Jesus as our way, we will find God’s truth and receive God’s life.

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(xii) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

When someone you love deeply is seriously ill and is not going to get better, it is a real way of the cross. You feel helpless before the physical decline of the person who has meant so much to you for so long. You sense that all you can do is to travel this difficult journey with your loved one, doing all you can to make that journey a little easier. At the last supper, the disciples were aware that Jesus who had come to mean so much to them was soon to die, and there was nothing they could do about it. That is the setting of today’s gospel reading. In that highly charged moment, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust in me’. It is a word that Jesus speaks to all those who are being called to let go of those they love because of illness. It is not easy to trust in God at such times. When Jesus calls on his disciples to trust, he also gives them a reason to trust. He assures them that in dying he will be going to the many roomed house of God his Father; he will be returning home to God his Father. Jesus also assures them that where he is going is where he will bring all who trust in him when they come to the end of their earthly lives. ‘I will return to take you with me’, he says, ‘so that where I am, you may be too’. Jesus has passed through death to a new and fuller life for all of us. Where he has gone, he wants us to follow. The decline associated with approaching death is the prelude to a great fullness of life in God our Father’s heavenly home. These words of Jesus to his disciples on the night before his own death give hope and comfort to all us all as we face into the death of our loved ones and our own death.

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(xiii) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s first reading, Paul declares that when God raised Jesus from the dead, he appeared for many days to those who had accompanied him from Galilee to Jerusalem. It was those appearances of the risen Lord to his followers that transformed them from a despondent and fearful group to the joyful and courageous preachers of the gospel throughout the world of the Roman Empire. Paul was one of those to whom the risen Lord appeared and he became, as a result, the greatest apostle to the pagans in the early church. It was because Jesus was raised from the dead and appeared to his followers that the movement he began during his public ministry became a world-wide church. In today’s gospel reading, in the setting of the last supper, Jesus speaks of his life beyond his cruel death as a journey to God his Father’s house, with its many dwelling places. Jesus was declaring that his death was not the end of his life, but an opening to a new life with God his Father in heaven, and with his followers on earth. Having gone to his Father’s heavenly house, he appeared to his disciples on earth and promised that he would be with them to the end of time. He also assures us in that gospel reading that his destination beyond death, his Father’s heavenly house with its many dwelling places, is also our destination beyond our death. As he says to his disciples, ‘After I have gone and prepared a place for you, I will return to take you with me, so that where I am you may be too’. Jesus and God the Father are the ultimate goal of our lives. Jesus also declares in that reading that he is the way to that goal, ‘I am the way’. Jesus is both our present way and our future destiny. He journeys with us, showing us the way, until we reach our final communion with him beyond death.

And/Or

(xiv) Friday, Fourth Week of Easter

Whenever we face into a difficult experience, we need people to stand by us. Their supportive and loving presence can make all the difference to us at such times. What we cannot get through on our own, we sense that we will be able to get through with the help of others who have our well-being at heart. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus is speaking in the setting of the last supper. He is aware that not only himself but his disciples are facing into a very difficult experience. Rather than focusing on his own concerns, he addresses himself to the anxieties and distress of his disciples. He calls on them, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me’. Just as Jesus showed great awareness of the distress of his disciples at this difficult time, the risen Lord is aware of us when we face into our own way of the cross. He calls on us to keep trusting in God and in himself. He will always try to speak a word to us that brings light into our darkness, if we are attentive to him. In the gospel reading, Jesus brings light into the darkness of his disciples by assuring them that his own death is but the final step on his journey towards his Father’s house with its many dwelling places. It is an image of heaven as God’s welcoming and hospitable home. ‘Many dwelling places’ suggests an open, spacious, home, with a place for all who are open to God’s loving presence. Jesus brings further light into the darkness of the disciples by promising them that at the end of their earthly lives he will come to them and take them to that same many roomed house of God the Father, so that where he, Jesus, is, they may be too. It is no wonder that this gospel reading has spoken to believers down the ages as they grieve the loss of loved ones. The Lord who brought comfort to his troubled disciples, seeks to bring comfort to us all in our own valleys of darkness and he wants to work through each one of us to bring comfort to others in their times of struggle and distress.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

25th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. Mark 16:15-20) for the Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist: ‘Proclaim the good news to all creation’.

Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelsit

Gospel (Except USA) Mark 16:15-20 Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News.

Jesus showed himself to the Eleven and said to them: ‘Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation. He who believes and is baptised will be saved; he who does not believe will be condemned. These are the signs that will be associated with believers: in my name they will cast out devils; they will have the gift of tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and be unharmed should they drink deadly poison; they will lay their hands on the sick, who will recover.’

And so the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven: there at the right hand of God he took his place, while they, going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it.

Gospel (USA) Mark 16:15-20 Proclaim the Gospel to every creature.

Jesus appeared to the Eleven and said to them: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”

Then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them, was taken up into heaven and took his seat at the right hand of God. But they went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

Reflection (5)

(i) Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Mark was the first to write a gospel. According to early tradition, Mark was a disciple of Peter, which accounts for the first reading being from the first letter of Peter. At the end of the reading, Peter sends greetings from ‘your sister in Babylon’, which is code for the church in Rome, the capital of an earlier oppressive empire standing for the capital of the current oppressive empire. Mark’s gospel was the primary written source for the gospels of Matthew and Luke. In the early centuries the church seems to have found Matthew’s gospel in particular more helpful for the life of faith because of the large amount of the teaching of Jesus it contains, relative to Mark. As a result, Mark’s gospel was overshadowed somewhat in the early centuries by its larger relations, especially Matthew. Yet, without Mark’s gospel the church would not have had the gospels of Matthew or Luke in the form they have come down to us. In time, Mark’s gospel came to be appreciated on its own terms, and not just as a poorer version of Matthew’s gospel. It is now recognized for the wonderful literary and theological masterpiece it is. Mark portrays Jesus above all as the suffering Son of Man who came not to be served but to serve, and to lay down his life in the service of all. Mark’s portrait of what it means to be a disciple mirrors his portrait of Jesus. As disciples we are called to walk in the way of Jesus’ self-emptying service of God and God’s people, even when that means travelling the way of the cross. Mark is often unsparing in his portrayal of the failure of the disciples to take on board this teaching of Jesus about who he is and what it means to be his disciple. Jesus struggles to open their eyes. As the gospel progresses, their failure become more pronounced, until, at the end, ‘they all deserted him and fled’. Yet at the beginning of the final chapter of this gospel the young man in the empty tomb calls on the faithful women to tell the other disciples that Jesus is going ahead of them to Galilee where they will see him. The risen Lord remains faithful to his failed disciples, and his faithfulness finally allows them to see clearly and to go out afresh to preach the gospel. This faithfulness of the Lord is well expressed in today’s gospel reading, ‘the Lord working with them, confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it’. This message of Mark’s gospel that the Lord continues to work with us, in spite of our failings, is one the church needs to hear today. The risen one who was taken up into heaven continues to work with us whenever we try to proclaim the gospel by our words and especially by our lives.

And/Or

(ii) Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Mark has a special place among the evangelists because he was the first person to write a gospel. Up until the time Mark wrote, there was no continuous written account of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. So we can be grateful to Mark for his written gospel. Others followed his example, leaving us with four gospels altogether. However, Mark was the pioneer; he was the first to break this new ground. His gospel is the shortest of the four, but, nonetheless, it is a very powerful telling of the Jesus story. More than the other evangelists, Mark highlights that Jesus’ preaching and living of the gospel challenged the status quo and brought great hostility down on his head, resulting in his crucifixion. Mark also emphasizes that being a disciple of this Jesus, living by his values, will often mean travelling the same way of the cross. Mark reminds us that living the gospel, following in the way of Jesus, is not easy; it makes demands on us; it stretches us. However, Mark also assures us that in our efforts to live the gospel, the Lord is with us to strengthen us and support us. As is said at the end of today’s gospel reading, the disciples, ‘going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them’.

And/Or

(iii) Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Mark wrote the first of the four gospels. Even Mark’s gospel is placed second in the New Testament, almost all scholars agree that it was the earliest gospel to be written. It is generally dated to around about the year 70. Very ancient tradition suggests that Mark’s gospel was written in Rome and that Mark was a disciple of Peter. That is why a reading from the first letter of Peter is read on Mark’s feast day. This was a letter that was written from Rome. The conclusion of the letter, which is the conclusion of today’s first reading, sends greetings from ‘your sister in Babylon’. ‘Babylon’ is often a code for Rome in the New Testament. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem at the beginning of the sixth century BC, resulting in the Babylonian exile, and the Romans destroyed Jerusalem in the year 70 AD. ‘Your sister in Babylon’ is the church in Rome. 1 Peter appears to have been written from the church in Rome sometime after the year 70. The letter also concludes with a greeting from ‘my son Mark’. The author, Peter, is probably referring to Mark as his spiritual son, his follower in the faith. One of the features of Mark’s gospel is its very negative portrayal of Jesus’ first disciples, including Peter, those who were closest to him. This gospel emphasizes their failure. They fail to understand who Jesus is and what he says; eventually, they all desert him and Peter denies him. Yet, Mark’s portrayal of the failure of the disciples serves as a foil for his portrayal of Jesus’ faithfulness to them, in spite of all their weaknesses. In this morning’s gospel reading, the risen Lord keeps faith with them, sending them out to proclaim the gospel to the whole world. Mark is assuring all of us, his disciples today, that the risen Lord keeps faith with us, even when we let him down in various ways. The Lord’s faithfulness to us prompts us to keep faith with each other, especially with those who are close to us.

And/Or

(iv) Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Mark has the great distinction of being the first to write a gospel, the story of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Before Mark came to write, much of the tradition about Jesus circulated within the early church in oral form; there were also some written traditions about Jesus. However, Mark was the first person to put this material together into a narrative of the life of Jesus. In that sense, he was a pioneer; he broke new ground. The other evangelists took their lead from Mark. We would love to know more about this very important figure in the early church. Unfortunately, we know very little. There is a very early tradition in the church, which first surfaced in the early part of the second century, according to which Mark was a companion of Peter. Mark never knew Jesus personally; he was not an eyewitness. However, he knew those who met Jesus and, in particular, he knew Peter. That is why the first reading for the feast of Mark is always from the first letter of Peter. At the end of that reading, Peter makes reference to ‘my son Mark’. We are probably to understand ‘my son’ as ‘my spiritual son’. The Mark that Peter refers to may well be the author of the first gospel. That same early tradition places Mark in the church of Rome, the city where Peter was crucified, the city where the church experienced the first real persecution lead by the Roman state. Mark may have written his gospel for the church in Rome in the aftermath of that cataclysmic event. The gospel was perhaps intended as a word of encouragement to the church, assuring them that just as they had travelled and were still travelling the way of the cross, Jesus had travelled that way before them. As risen Lord he was present among them, just as he had been present with the disciples in the boat as the storm raged at sea. As risen Lord he was also working with them. In the words of today’s gospel reading, the Lord was ‘working with them (the disciples) and confirming the word by the signs that accompanied it’. That fundamental message of Mark’s gospel remains a word of encouragement to the church, the community of the Lord’s disciples, today as we battle with our own storms.

And/Or

(v) Feast of Saint Mark, Evangelist

Mark was the first person to write an account of the pubic ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. Up until then, the story of Jesus’ live had been passed primarily by word of mouth. Mark, in a way, produced a new kind of literature, what became known as a gospel. He was a pioneer, someone who blazed a trail, soon to be followed by the evangelists we know as Matthew, Luke and John. He highlighted in his gospel the failure of the disciples. They are portrayed as failing to understand Jesus’ teaching, especially when he speaks of himself as the Son of Man who must be rejected, suffer and die. They then fail him completely when he enters into his passion and death; all of them deserted him. Yet, in Mark’s gospel the risen Jesus remains faithful to his disciples. At the empty tomb on the first Easter morning, the women are told by the young man to tell the disciples to go to Galilee where Jesus will meet them, not to reprimand them but to renew their discipleship. In this morning’s gospel reading we are told that the disciples were preaching everywhere in response to the risen Lord’s call, and that the Lord was working with them. Mark’s gospel assures us that even when we are unfaithful to the Lord, he remains faithful to us; even when we fail, he continues to call us to become all he wants us to be. Even when we turn from his presence, he remains present to us and will work with us as we strive to proclaim the gospel by our lives.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

24th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 12:44-50) for Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter: ‘What the Father has told me is what I speak’.

Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 12:44-50 I, the light, have come into the world.

Jesus declared publicly:

‘Whoever believes in me believes not in me but in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me, sees the one who sent me. I, the light, have come into the world, so that whoever believes in me need not stay in the dark any more. If anyone hears my words and does not keep them faithfully, it is not I who shall condemn him, since I have come not to condemn the world, but to save the world. He who rejects me and refuses my words has his judge already: the word itself that I have spoken will be his judge on the last day. For what I have spoken does not come from myself; no, what I was to say, what I had to speak, was commanded by the Father who sent me, and I know that his commands mean eternal life. And therefore what the Father has told me is what I speak.’

Gospel (USA) John 12:44-50 I came into the world as light.

Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me believes not only in me but also in the one who sent me, and whoever sees me sees the one who sent me. I came into the world as light, so that everyone who believes in me might not remain in darkness. And if anyone hears my words and does not observe them, I do not condemn him, for I did not come to condemn the world but to save the world. Whoever rejects me and does not accept my words has something to judge him: the word that I spoke, it will condemn him on the last day, because I did not speak on my own, but the Father who sent me commanded me what to say and speak. And I know that his commandment is eternal life. So what I say, I say as the Father told me.”

Reflections (6)

(i) Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus refers to ‘the Father who sent me’. In the fourth gospel Jesus is the ‘sent one’. One of the most memorable verses of this gospel declares, ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him’. Jesus personalizes this statement in today’s gospel reading, ‘I have come not to condemn the world but to save the world’. As Jesus says elsewhere in this gospel of John, ‘I came that they may have life and have it to the full’. This is why God sent his Son into the world. There is another sending in today’s first reading. The church in Antioch, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, sent two of their leading members, Barnabas and Saul, on mission to places where the gospel had not been preached, resulting in the expansion of the gospel westwards. This was a costly sending, because Barnabas and Saul had been central to the life of the church in Antioch. God’s sending of his Son into the world was also costly because it entailed a giving of his Son over to death, death on a cross. Yet, both the sending of Jesus and the sending of Barnabas and Saul were life-giving for those to whom they were sent. This is supremely true of the sending of Jesus, without which there would have been no sending of Barnabas or Saul. The church in every age is called to send, to let go of precious resources so that others may flourish. That dynamic of sending and letting go to others is vital today as parishes learn to journey together, sharing resources, perhaps becoming poor so that others may become rich, but, in the process, discovering that all are enriched.

And/Or

(ii) Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s first reading, the Holy Spirit prompts the church in Antioch to send two of their leading and most gifted members on mission, Paul and Barnabas. There might have been those in the church of Antioch at the time who said, ‘no, we can’t let two such key people leave. They are needed here’. As communities, as individuals, there is a natural temptation to hold on to what we have. We resist deliberately making ourselves poorer. Yet, that is what the Holy Spirit was asking the church in Antioch to do, to make itself poorer, to let go of two of its greatest assets, so that those who had never heard the gospel might be brought to Christ. The ways of the Holy Spirit today in the church are probably not very different from the ways of the Holy Spirit at the beginning of the church. The Spirit prompts us to take the way of Jesus, which is the way of self-emptying so that others might have life. In his second letter to the Corinthians, Paul declared, ‘you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ who, though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’.

And/Or

(iii) Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus speaks of the one who sent him. Frequently in John’s gospel, Jesus speaks of God as the one who sent him. God sent his Son out of love for the world. God’s sending of his Son was an act of generosity on God’s part, involving a real giving. The gospel of John also speaks of God as one who gave his Son. In the first reading this morning, the church of Antioch send two of their most gifted members to parts of the Roman Empire where Christ had not yet been preached. The sending off of Barnabas and Paul by the church of Antioch involved a real giving on their part. They were sacrificing two of their most valuable assets for the sake of others whose need was greater. Over the centuries the local church has sent and given some of its most gifted members to proclaim the gospel far from home. That is the nature of the church and the nature of our lives as Christians. We give away what is most precious to us so that others can benefit from our resources. Each local church, each parish, is called not just to serve itself, but to serve other parishes, other local churches, whether next door or far away. As God gave his Son to us, we are called to give his Son to each other by sharing our most precious resources.

And/Or

(iv) Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s first reading, which follows on from yesterday’s first reading, Barnabas and Saul are now both leading members of the church in Antioch. In that reading, the church of Antioch is portrayed as doing something very generous. Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, they release Paul and Barnabas, two of their most important members, for mission work far beyond Antioch. The Spirit moved the church in Antioch to let go of two of its greatest assets so that the gospel could be preached in places where it had never been preached before. The church in Antioch was being prompted by the Spirit to empty itself, to become poorer, so that others might become spiritually rich. This was how Paul went on in one of his letters to describe the coming of Jesus among us, ‘though he was rich, for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’. The Spirit will always work in our lives to reproduce in us that same pattern. The Spirit will always be moving us as individuals and as communities of faith to give of ourselves, to empty ourselves, so that other people’s relationship with the Lord will be the richer.

And/Or

(v) Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

The Acts of the Apostles tells the story of the spread of the gospel from Jerusalem outwards into the Roman Empire. Today’s first reading is the moment when the gospel makes the first significant spread westwards from the land of Israel, to the island of Cyprus. It was the generosity of a church in Syria, to the north of Israel, that made this possible. The church of Antioch, in response to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, set aside two of their own leading members for this mission, Barnabas and Saul. They allowed themselves to become poorer so that others would be enriched. This was the pattern of Jesus’ own life. Paul in one of his subsequent letters will say of Jesus that ‘though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich’. Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, so that we all might have life and have it to the full. This is to be the pattern of our own lives too. We all have some gift or grace that we can give away so that others might live more fully in some way. When we let go in this way, after the example of the church in Antioch, we not only make others more alive but we become more alive ourselves, the Spirit grows more fully within us. In the gospel reading, Jesus says that he came as light into the world so that others might not stay in the dark any more. Whenever the pattern of Jesus’ life becomes the pattern of our lives, then his light continues to shine through us.

And/Or

(vi) Wednesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks as one who is open and responsive to what God his Father wants, ‘what the Father has told me is what I speak’. He is able to speak what God has told him because he listens to God. In the first reading, the early church is portrayed as doing what the Holy Spirit wants. They are able to do what the Holy Spirit wants because they listen to the Holy Spirit. The church in Antioch recognize that the Holy Spirit is asking them to send two of their leading members on mission, Barnabas and Saul. Even though it was a sacrifice for the church to give away such important members to the mission field, they did so in response to the prompting of the Holy Spirit. In every age the church is called to be responsive to the Holy Spirit in the way that Jesus was responsive to God the Father. The call on the churches of Asia Minor in the Book of Revelation is addressed to the churches in every age and place, ‘Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches’. The prayer of listening is a vital form of the prayer for the church is every age and for every member of the church. The Lord continues to speak to each of us today through the Holy Spirit. A good way to begin our prayer is by saying the prayer of the young Samuel in the Jewish Scriptures, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening’.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

23rd April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 10:22-30) for Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter: ‘The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice’.

Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 10:22-30 The Father and I are one.

It was the time when the feast of Dedication was being celebrated in Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple walking up and down in the Portico of Solomon. The Jews gathered round him and said, ‘How much longer are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.’ Jesus replied:

‘I have told you, but you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name are my witness; but you do not believe, because you are no sheep of mine. The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice; I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life; they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from me. The Father who gave them to me is greater than anyone, and no one can steal from the Father. The Father and I are one.’

Gospel (USA) John 10:22-30 The Father and I are one.

The feast of the Dedication was taking place in Jerusalem. It was winter. And Jesus walked about in the temple area on the Portico of Solomon. So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long are you going to keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered them, “I told you and you do not believe. The works I do in my Father’s name testify to me. But you do not believe, because you are not among my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can take them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one can take them out of the Father’s hand. The Father and I are one.”

Reflections (14)

(i) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

The first reading describes a significant moment in the life of the early church, the preaching of the gospel to pagans for the first time, in the city of Antioch. Up until that moment, all the disciples of Jesus were Jews. The leaders of the church in Jerusalem had to discern whether this new development in Antioch was the work of the Holy Spirit, or just a human aberration. As part of their discerning, they sent one of their members, Barnabas, to look carefully at what was happening in Antioch. He was sent because he was known to be a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. A person filled with the Holy Spirit was likely to discern whether or not this novelty was the work of the Spirit. Barnabas immediately recognized that God was at work here. He not only gave them all every encouragement, he set out for Tarsus to bring Paul to Antioch, because he could see that this new development in Antioch was ripe for Paul’s gifts. Paul and Barnabas went on to spend twelve months together in that church. According to the reading, it was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called ‘Christians’. People began to see that this movement wasn’t just a particular branch of Judaism. The Lord is always doing something new among us, and we all need to discern the ways the Lord is leading the church, especially in these times. To do that well, we need a listening ear, an ear and an eye that is open to the surprising ways of the Spirit. As Jesus says in the gospel reading, those ‘who belong to me listen to my voice’. People like Barnabas, who are in tune with the working of the Spirit among us, are an invaluable asset as we try to discern where the Lord is leading us. The Lord will always provide such people at times of transition, like the present time. Indeed, he invites each of us to become such a person.

And/Or

(ii) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

The phenomenon of theft is much more common than it used to be. We are much more security conscious than we were in the past. We generally think of the phenomenon of stealing in relation to things, to objects of various kinds. We also know that people can be stolen. We refer to this as kidnapping or people trafficking. When this happens people are being treated as objects or things. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus declares that on one will ever steal one of his followers from him or from his heavenly Father. Jesus seems to be saying there that if we continue to seek to follow him, he will hold onto us. He is speaking here as the good Shepherd who is prepared to lay down his life so that the members of his flock can have life and have it to the full. There are no lengths to which the Lord will not go to hold onto us, to keep us in relationship with him. There are forces in the world that seek to undermine that relationship and even destroy it. Jesus was very aware of that reality. That is why he taught us to pray, ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’. Yet this morning’s gospel assures us that the Lord’s hold on us is stronger than the forces which seek to remove us from him. All he asks is that we keep listening to his voice and keep trying to follow him. If we do that we can be sure that we will never lose the firm hold of the good Shepherd.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus speaks as the shepherd who looks after each member of his flock and keeps them all united to himself. He says that ‘they will never be lost and no one will ever steal them from me’. He is declaring there that if we do our best to keep following him, if we keep on trying to listen to his voice, he will keep us faithful to himself. He will not allow the forces that are hostile to our relationship with him to get the better of us. Just as shepherd will not allow any of his flock to be stolen, because he is so protective of them, the Lord will not allow us to fall away from him, because he is so protective of us, as long as we want to remain a member of his flock and do not deliberately walk away from him. The gospel reading suggests that just as a shepherd holds his flock together, it is the Lord who holds the church together, the community of his followers. His investment in us will always be greater than our investment in him. We are being reminded that the life of the church and the quality of our own personal relationship with the Lord is not all down to us. Yes, we have a role to play; we have to listen to his voice and endeavour to go where he leads. Yet, his work on our behalf is always more significant than our work on his behalf.

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In the gospel reading Jesus declares that no one will steal his disciples from him. It is a very reassuring promise for all of us. Jesus is speaking as the good shepherd who defends the members of his flock in times of danger, who stands up against the thieves and robbers who intend to do harm to the flock. He is the good shepherd who is prepared to put his life on the line for his flock. Indeed he has already done so, laying down his life so that we may have life and have it to the full. We seek to follow the Lord in the knowledge that he will stop at nothing to ensure that we remain members of his flock, people who belong to his new family, the community of believers we call the church. Saint Paul had that same conviction which he expressed in his letter to the Romans when he said, ‘If God is for us, who is against us?’ God is for us in and through Jesus our good shepherd. The Lord will not allow anything or anyone to come between himself and ourselves. We have a part to play, of course. We need to listen to his voice and to keep him in view so that we can take our lead from him. Yet, the Lord’s part in our relationship with him is always so much greater than ours. Therein lies our confidence, especially in times of struggle and failure.

And/Or

(v) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Barnabas who appears in this morning’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is one of the most attractive characters in the New Testament. Barnabas was a nick name; it meant ‘Son of Encouragement’. He had a reputation for encouraging people. That is very evident from that reading we have heard this morning. When something new was happening in the city of Antioch, when pagans were coming to believe in Jesus as well as Jews, Barnabas was sent down from Jerusalem to look at what was happening. He like what he saw and gave them all great encouragement, urging them all to remain faithful to the Lord. He immediately went off to Tarsus to look for Saul, or Paul, who had recently come to faith in Christ and Barnabas encouraged him to go to Antioch and support this new development there. Paul went on to become a leading member of the church in Antioch. Barnabas was what we would call today, an enabler. That is part of the calling of each one of us. We are called to encourage one another in the faith, to help one another to grow in our relationship with the Lord, to enable one another to be faithful. That ministry of mutual encouragement was very important in the early church and is just as important today.

And/Or

(vi) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Barnabas features prominently in today’s first reading. He is described there as a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and with faith. He was a leader of the church in Jerusalem and he approved very much of what he saw happening in the church of Antioch where the gospel was being preached not only to Jews but to pagans as well. He was also someone who had the insight to see that this new and exciting development in the church of Antioch was the perfect place for the recently converted Saul to exercise his gifts. Barnabas introduced Saul to the church in Antioch and Saul went on to become a leading member of that church, and the church became an important spiritual home for Saul. Barnabas was one of those people who made way for others, who have the generosity of spirit to see that that a certain situation could benefit from the gifts of someone else. Today we might call such a person a facilitator or an enabler of others. We all have a role to play in calling forth the gifts of others by recognizing situations that would be ideally suited to them and by creating space for them in which to work. The Lord may not be calling on us to take on some particular work but he may be calling on us to encourage someone else to take it on, as Barnabas encouraged Paul.

And/Or

(vii) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus tells the Jews that the works he does in his Father’s name are his witness; what he does bears witness to his identity as the one sent from God. We bear witness to Jesus by what we say, but above all by what we do, by our works. In the first reading we have a good example of someone who bears witness to Jesus by his works. In Antioch Barnabas witnessed the new development of a community of believers consisting of both Jews and Gentiles. He then travelled all the way to Tarsus to encourage Paul to come to Antioch and to work among the believers there. Barnabas saw that the new development in Antioch was a great opportunity for Paul to use his gifts and he obviously saw that the church in Antioch could greatly benefit from Paul’s gifts. Barnabas linked a person and a place to the mutual benefit of both. This work of Barnabas allowed the risen Lord to continue his work. We all have opportunities from time to time to create openings for people that allow the Lord’s work to be done. Creating such openings for others is just one example of the many good works we can do that bear witness to the Lord.

And/Or

(viii) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Many of us are concerned about break-ins at the moment. We are anxious lest someone might steal from us. We take various security precautions to prevent that from happening. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus makes reference to stealing. He declares that no one will ever steal his followers from him. It is as if Jesus is saying that he has such a strong grip on his followers that no one will ever take them from him against his will. When you reflect on that saying of Jesus, it is indeed very reassuring. Jesus will do all in his power to keep us united with himself and to prevent us from being taken away from him or falling away from him. Yet, there is something that we must do as well. In the gospel reading, Jesus also declares, ‘The sheep that belong to me listen to my voice’. We need to pay attention, in some way, to the Lord. We try to hear what he may be saying to us; we seek to follow where he is leading us. If we do that, the gospel reading suggests that we can be assured that the Lord will do the rest. The Lord’s contribution to the relationship between us and him is much more significant than ours. Our ultimate salvation is much more the Lord’s doing than ours. Therein lies our confidence and hope.

And/Or

(ix) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Barnabas features in this morning’s first reading. According the Acts of the Apostles, the name Barnabas means ‘son of encouragement’. It was a kind of a nickname given to him because he had a reputation for giving encouragement to others. He was an enabler; he brought out the best in others. We see that gift of Barnabas at work in this morning’s reading. Following on his conversion, Paul had returned to Tarsus, his home city. Barnabas could see that the emergence of a new kind of the church in Antioch, a mixed church of Jews and Gentiles, was crying out for someone like Paul, a Jew who had become the apostle to the Gentiles. Barnabas brought Paul from Tarsus to Antioch. Paul went on to make an important contribution to the life of the church in Antioch, and the church there, in turn, was a great support to Paul in his future missionary work. We all have the potential to be a Barnabas, to open doors for others so that the Lord can work powerfully through them. It takes a certain amount of humility to make way for the gifts of others. John the Baptist was such a person; he made way for Jesus, just as Barnabas made way for Paul. As parishioners of the parish of St John the Baptist, we might think of ourselves as having a special calling to enable, to encourage, using our own gifts while also making way for the gifts of others.

And/Or

(x) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks as the shepherd who will never allow any of his sheep to be stolen from him. Jesus invites us to imagine a shepherd who will stop at nothing to prevent any would-be thief from stealing even one sheep from his flock. It is an image that speaks to us of the Lord’s determination to hold onto us and prevent us from becoming separated from him. It is a consolation to know that the Lord is so devoted to us and so committed to our well-being, and, in particular, our ultimate well-being, our eternal well-being. As Jesus says in that gospel reading, ‘I give them eternal life’. Yet, we are not just passive sheep. When it comes to the Lord’s relationship with us, there is a role for us as well. The Lord will do all he can to hold onto us but we also have our part to play. In that gospel reading, Jesus declares that ‘the sheep who belong to me listen to my voice… they follow me’. The Lord is very attentive to us, but we need to attend to him as well. We try to listen to his voice, especially as it comes to us in the words of the gospels, of the New Testament as a whole, and, indeed, in all of the Scriptures. There are many voices competing for our attention today, but in the midst of them all we need to be attentive to the voice of the Lord so that we can follow him each day. We listen to him, we follow him, in the confidence that his devotion to us and to our ultimate well-being is unconditional.

And/Or

(xi) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

Today’s first reading makes reference to the persecution of the early church. After the execution of Stephen, the church in Jerusalem experienced a time of persecution. As a result, many of the Jewish Christians there had to flee from the city. Yet, Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, highlights that this experience of persecution was actually a blessing for the church. Some of those who fled Jerusalem brought the gospel to places where it had not been preached, including the city of Antioch, where the gospel was preached for the first time to pagans. As a result of the success of this mission, Barnabas came from Jerusalem to Antioch to give encouragement to this new development, and, in his wisdom, he went to Tarsus and brought Saul to Antioch, recognizing that this was a church where someone like Saul or Paul could flourish. Barnabas was proved right. The church of Antioch became Paul’s spiritual home and the base for his missionary journeys. So, according to Luke, great good came from the persecution of the church in Jerusalem. Difficult times for the church can often be moments of renewal, of new and unexpected growth. The Lord works in life-giving ways in what can seem to be desolate places. Resistance, even hostility, to the church’s message can allow the Lord to work in new ways. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks out of an experience of resistance on the part of some to what he says and does. Yet, as Jesus declares there, ‘the Father… is greater than anyone’. God’s work will not ultimately be derailed. This realization can keep us hopeful and energized in difficult times.

And/Or

(xii) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

It is a great gift to be able to recognize the good that the Lord is doing through someone or some group and then to encourage it along. This is what we find Barnabas doing in today’s first reading. News reached the church in Jerusalem that something unexpected was happening. In the city of Antioch, the gospel was being preached to pagans, and they were responding in large numbers. Up until that point, the church had been Jewish Christian; the disciples of Jesus were all Jews. The church in Jerusalem needed to check out this new and unforeseen development, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. The first reading says that when Barnabas got there, ‘he could see for himself that God had given grace, and this pleased him’, and he went on to give encouragement to what was happening. The Lord was moving the young church in a new direction and Barnabas recognized this and supported it. Every so often the Lord prompts the church to take a new step beyond where it has been. He calls on us to break new ground, to grow in new ways, as individual believers and as a community of faith. As such times, we need people like Barnabas who recognize that the Lord is behind this new direction and who encourage us to trust that the Lord is present in what is happening. In the gospel reading, Jesus, speaking as the good shepherd, says ‘the sheep that belong to me listen to my voice’. We are always trying to listen to the Lord’s voice so as to discern where he is leading us, the new directions that he is taking us in. There is always another step that the Lord is calling us to take. He can be speaking to us through new and unforeseen situations, such as the one in which we find ourselves at the moment. We all need something of the vision of Barnabas to see how the Lord is working in such unexpected and unplanned developments.

And/Or

(xiii) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus declares, ‘the sheep that belong to me listen to my voice’. An essential element of following Jesus is listening to his voice. We are to be constantly asking ourselves, ‘What is the Lord saying to us? What is he saying to me?’ This is the action of discernment. We try to discern, in the circumstances of our day to day lives, what the Lord is asking of us, the path he wants us to take. The first reading suggests that Barnabas knew how to listen to the voice of the shepherd. When the gospel was first preached to non-Jews in the city of Antioch, and a new kind of local church began to be formed consisting of both Jews and pagans, the church in Jerusalem decided to send Barnabas to Antioch to investigate this new development. When he got there, according to the reading, ‘he could see for himself that God had given grace’. He discerned that this unexpected development was from God and that the Lord was asking him to support what was happening in Antioch. This Barnabas proceeded to do, urging the whole church to remain faithful to the Lord. Barnabas continued to listen to what the Lord was saying to him. He discerned that Paul who had recently encountered the risen Lord just outside Damascus would be the ideal person to give leadership to the church in Antioch. After all, Paul knew the Lord was calling him to be the apostle to the Gentiles and here was a church with a significant number of Gentile converts. So, Barnabas went to Tarsus and brought Paul with him back to Antioch, where Paul became a significant presence in that church. Barnabas inspires us to keep listening to what the Lord may be saying to us in and through the circumstances of our daily lives. It is said of Barnabas in that reading that he was ‘filled with the Holy Spirit’. It is the Holy Spirit who helps us to discern what the Lord is saying to us. If we really listen to the Lord with the help of the Holy Spirit, the Lord will work through us in ways that build up the church and enrich our world, just as he worked through Barnabas.

And/Or

(xiv) Tuesday, Fourth Week of Easter

The first reading describes a significant moment in the life of the early church, the preaching of the gospel to pagans for the first time, in the city of Antioch. Up until that moment, all the disciples of Jesus were Jews. The leaders of the church in Jerusalem had to discern whether this new development in Antioch was the work of the Holy Spirit, or just a human aberration. As part of their discerning, they sent one of their member, Barnabas, to check out what was happening in Antioch. He was sent because he was known to be a good man, filled with the Holy Spirit and faith. A person filled with the Holy Spirit was likely to discern whether or not this novelty was the work of the Spirit. Barnabas immediately recognized that God was at work here. He not only gave them all every encouragement, he set out for Tarsus to bring Paul to Antioch, because he could see that this new development in Antioch was ripe for Paul’s gifts. Paul and Barnabas went on to spend twelve months together in that church. According to the reading, it was in Antioch that the followers of Jesus were first called ‘Christians’. People began to see that this movement wasn’t just a particular branch of Judaism. The Lord is always doing something new among us, and we all need to discern the ways the Lord is leading the church, especially in these times. To do that well, we need a listening ear, an ear and an eye that is open to the surprising ways of the Spirit. As Jesus says in the gospel reading, those ‘who belong to me listen to my voice’. People like Barnabas who are in tune with the working of the Spirit among us are an invaluable asset as we try to discern where the Lord is leading us. The Lord will always provide such people at times of transition, like the present time. Indeed, he invites each of us to become such a person.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

22nd April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 10:1-10) for Monday, Fourth Week of Easter: ‘I am the gate of the sheepfold’.

Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 10:1-10 I am the gate of the sheepfold.

Jesus said: ‘I tell you most solemnly, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold through the gate, but gets in some other way is a thief and a brigand. The one who enters through the gate is the shepherd of the flock; the gatekeeper lets him in, the sheep hear his voice, one by one he calls his own sheep and leads them out. When he has brought out his flock, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow because they know his voice. They never follow a stranger but run away from him: they do not recognise the voice of strangers.’ Jesus told them this parable but they failed to understand what he meant by telling it to them. So Jesus spoke to them again:

‘I tell you most solemnly, I am the gate of the sheepfold. All others who have come are thieves and brigands; but the sheep took no notice of them. I am the gate. Anyone who enters through me will be safe: he will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full.’

Gospel (USA) John 10:1-10 I am the gate for the sheep.

Jesus said: “Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever does not enter a sheepfold through the gate but climbs over elsewhere is a thief and a robber. But whoever enters through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice, as he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has driven out all his own, he walks ahead of them, and the sheep follow him, because they recognize his voice. But they will not follow a stranger; they will run away from him, because they do not recognize the voice of strangers.” Although Jesus used this figure of speech, they did not realize what he was trying to tell them. So Jesus said again, “Amen, amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep. All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. A thief comes only to steal and slaughter and destroy; I came so that they might have life and have it more abundantly.”

Reflections (11)

(i) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus works with an image that was very familiar to him in the hills of Galilee, that of the sheepfold. The sheepfold was an enclosed area where sheep were kept secure during the night and then, in the morning, were called and led out by their shepherd to pasture. The gate was a very important element in the sheepfold. At nightfall the sheep have to enter through the gate to the protection of the sheepfold. In the morning they have to go out through the gate to pasture. The gate gives access to protection or safety and to sustenance or nourishment. This is the sense of the ‘gate’ that Jesus then applies to himself when he says, ‘I am the gate’. He is both our protector and the one who sustains us. He protects us from the threats to our faith in him, our relationship with him. In the words of the Lord’s Prayer, he delivers us from evil. He also sustains us with the bread of his presence, satisfying the deepest hungers of our heart as our Bread of Life, as well as working to ensure all God’s children have enough physical bread to eat. As the gate, Jesus is our life-protector and our life-giver, or as he says in our gospel reading ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full’. Life to the full is eternal life, the life of God. Jesus has come to lead us to that fullness of life with God where all evil is destroyed and all our deepest hungers are satisfied. He has also come to give us a foretaste of this eternal life here and now. If we keep taking him as our gate, constantly interacting with him through prayer and our daily witness to him, then we will come to experience his protecting and sustaining presence in our daily lives.

And/Or

(ii) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

We hear a lot of talk about gated communities these days. These are housing developments that are behind locked gates. You need a code for the gate to open. Such developments provide a certain security for people. When we think of gates, we often think of closed gates. A gate is there to close off an area. However, when Jesus says in this morning’s gospel reading, ‘I am the gate’, he is not thinking of a closed gate but of an open gate, a gate that opens up a way to some place. This goes back to the image of the sheepfold in the first part of the gospel reading where the gate when opened allows the shepherd access to his sheep and allows the sheep access to pastures beyond the sheepfold and then, after they have been fed, allows them access again to the security of the sheepfold. Jesus is the gate in the sense that he allows access. He is the gate through which we pass to God, and through which God comes to us. Jesus is our way to God; through Jesus we enter into the life of God, eternal life, which is why Jesus says at the end of our gospel reading, ‘I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full’.

And/Or

(iii) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles describes an important moment in the life of the young church, the moment when the gospel was first preached to pagans. We think of Paul as the great apostle to the pagans, the Gentiles, but according to the Acts of the Apostles, the honour of first preaching the gospel to pagans fell to Peter. The sense we get is that Peter was hesitant about preaching the gospel to pagans, especially about entering the home of a pagan to speak about Jesus. After all, Peter was a Jew and Jews did not associate with pagans very much. Yet, according to our reading it was through prayer that Peter was led to make this breakthrough to the pagans. It was while he was praying that he had this vision which brought home to him that the Lord wanted him to share table with pagans. When messengers arrived from the house of the Roman centurion, Cornelius, who was a pagan, it was the Spirit who told Peter to have no hesitation about going with them. Where Peter would not have gone himself, he was led by the Lord and the Spirit. In our own lives too, the Lord will often lead us to take a path we would not take, if left to ourselves; we need to be as open to the Lord’s promptings as Peter was, so that we see as the Lord sees and go where the Lord is calling us.

And/Or

(iv) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s first reading Peter asks the question, ‘Who am I to stand in God’s way?’ When the Holy Spirit came down upon the pagan Cornelius and his household Peter realized that God was doing something in the lives of these pagans and, at the very least, Peter’s role was not to get in the way of what God was doing. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks of himself as the gate. Far from getting in God’s way, Jesus was the gate through whom God came to people and they came to God. Jesus is the open gate onto God. People can go freely in and out through him and experience the life of God. As Jesus says in that gospel reading, ‘I have come that they may have life and have it to the full’. There is a sense in which we all share in that role of Jesus to be the gate. We too are called to be openings for God, people through whom God can enter people’s lives, just as the Spirit of God entered the lives of Cornelius and his household through Peter in the first reading. At the very least, this will mean, in the words of Peter, not standing in God’s way. We have a role to play in each other’s lives but we also have to leave room for God to work. There is a time to be the shepherd and a time to be the gate.

And/Or

(v) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In John’s gospel Jesus often uses the phrase ‘I am’ and then adds some image to it, ‘I am the bread of life’; ‘I am the light of the world’; ‘I am the good shepherd’; ‘I am the resurrection and the life’; ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’; ‘I am the vine’. Most of those images are drawn from day to day life: bread, light, shepherd, way, vine. It was as if Jesus was saying to people that what they encounter in the course of their ordinary lives can reveal something of himself, if looked at in a certain way. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus uses another of these ‘I am’ images drawn from day to day life, when he says, ‘I am the gate’. We tend to think of gates in two ways. A locked gate keeps people out and keeps people in. On the other hand, an open gate creates an opening that allows people to move freely in and out of an area. When Jesus said, ‘I am the gate’, he meant it in that second sense; he is an open gate. He says, ‘anyone who enters through me will be safe; they will go freely in and out and be sure of finding pasture’. He is the gate, the opening, towards fullness of life, towards God, the source of life, life in the here and now and life beyond this earthly life. If Jesus is the gate, our calling is to keep passing through him. At the end of our prayers, we often say, ‘through Christ our Lord’. We not only to pray through him, but we live through him as well. All of our life is to be through him, to the glory of God the Father.

And/Or

(vi) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In John’s gospel Jesus often makes a statement about himself beginning with the two little words ‘I am’. He says, ‘I am the bread of life’; ‘I am the light of the world’; I am the resurrection and the life’; ‘I am the good shepherd’, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. ‘I am the vine’. In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus says ‘I am the gate’. Gates do two things normally, they keep people out and they let people in. They stop people and they let people through. When Jesus says ‘I am the gate’, he is thinking of a gate in this second sense, as letting people in or through. When he says ‘I am the gate’, he immediately says, ‘anyone who enters through me will be safe’. One of the things Jesus is saying is that he is the gateway to God; he is the gateway to the fullness of life that only God can give. ‘I have come’, he says,’ that you may have life and have it to the full’. Jesus is the gate and when we come and go through him we will find that fullness of life that Jesus gives us from God. By saying that he is the gate, Jesus wants us to interact with him, to go in and out through him. He wants us to be constantly keeping in touch with him. We do this through prayer and through the Sacraments, especially the Sacrament of the Eucharist. He promises that if we constantly interact with him, we will find true life, not just at the end of our earthly lives but here and now in the midst of our day to day lives.

And/Or

(vii) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus uses an image drawn from the rural life of Galilee. There is a sheepfold or sheep pen. The sheep enter the sheepfold through the gate at night for protection. In the morning the shepherd enters the sheepfold through the gate and calls the sheep to follow him back out through the gate to pasture. Jesus identifies himself with two elements of that image, firstly with the gate, and then with the shepherd. The sheep go through the gate at night for protection and go through the gate in the morning for pasture. In this way the gate is both life-protecting and life-sustaining. This is the sense in which Jesus applies ‘the gate’ to himself. ‘I am the gate’. If we pass through him, if we interact with him, he both protects us and sustains our life. He protects in that he delivers us from evil, in the words of the Lord’s Prayer, and from the evil one who stands behind all evil. He sustains our life in that he works to give us life to the full, a sharing in God’s own life. God’s life is a life of love. Jesus sustains our life by working to make us as loving as God is loving. To the extent that we love as God loves we already share in God’s life, here and now in this earthly life. Jesus is the gate who both protects and sustains our life. That is why he calls on us to keep entering through him, to keep interacting with him, to keep growing in our relationship with him.

And/Or

(viii) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

Today’s first reading suggests that the Holy Spirit was always one step ahead of the early church. The first Christians were Jews and there was a natural reluctance among them to eat food that was considered unclean in their tradition, and there was an even stronger reluctance to visit the homes of pagans. However, in that reading, Peter has a vision in which he is told to regard no food as unclean. Immediately afterwards, the Spirit prompted Peter to do something he would not have done if left to himself, namely to go to the homw of a pagan so as to witness to the Lord. When Peter went to this home and preached, something happened that Peter never would have expected. The Holy Spirit came down on the members of this pagan household in the same way that the Spirit had come down upon Jesus’ Jewish followers at the first Pentecost. Peter and the rest of the early church were being led by the Holy Spirit in directions they had not expected. The Holy Spirit is one step ahead of the church in every age. We are always trying to keep up with where the Spirit is leading us. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks of himself as the gate and calls on us to enter through him. However, the first reading suggests that Jesus is not a gate in any static or fixed way. Jesus, the gate, like the Spirit, is always ahead of us. We are always having to discern what it means to go through Jesus the gate. We have to keep searching for the gate that Jesus wants us to go through. It is often an unexpected gate, as Peter learned when the Spirit prompted him to go through the gate of a pagan house. We always need to be open to the Lord’s guidance. He often calls on us to go through a gate, that is new. We need to pray, in the words of today’s responsorial psalm, ‘O send forth your light and your truth; let these be my guide’.

And/Or

(ix) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says ‘I am the gate’. We tend to think of gates as fixed in one place. They give access to something, whether it is a building or a field. The gate doesn’t move, but people move through it. Jesus is not a gate in that fixed sense. Earlier in today’s gospel reading, Jesus identifies himself not so much with the gate of the sheepfold but with the shepherd who enters the sheepfold through the gate and then leads the sheep out through the gate to pasture. He goes ahead of the flock and they follow him because they know his voice. Jesus is both the shepherd and the gate. As the shepherd he is always going ahead of us, calling us to follow him. As the gate, he invites us to keep entering through him. Because he is also a shepherd, entering through him as the gate will mean something different at different times in our lives. According to today’s first reading, entering through Jesus, the risen Lord, for the early church meant breaking new ground, preaching the gospel to pagans for the first time. For us too, as followers of Jesus today, entering through Jesus, the gate, will often mean taking a new direction on our faith journey, making a new step we haven’t made before. There is nothing static about our relationship with the Lord. He is always leading us to new pastures, personally and as a community of faith. Like Peter in the first reading, we need to be attentive and sensitive to the Lord’s leading, even when he seems to be leading us to places that some might be wary of.

And/Or

(x) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In the gospel reading, Jesus works with the image of a sheepfold, an area enclosed by four walls with a gate in the front wall. At the end of the day, the sheep enter the sheepfold through the gate for safety and protection. At the beginning of the day, they exit the sheepfold through the gate, following the shepherd, to reach green pasture. The gate is the means to both protection and sustenance for the sheep. Jesus goes on to identify himself with the gate. We are to enter through him to find security and protection and also sustenance and nourishment. When Jesus says at the end of the gospel reading that he has come that we may have life and have it to the full, or life in abundance, he is referring to a quality of life that is fully experience beyond this earthly life but can also begin to be experienced within this earthly life. If we live our lives through Jesus we will find in him a source of true life, we will experience him as one who can both protect us and sustain us. The Lord protects us from the evil that seeks to undermine our relationship with him, and he offers himself to us as the bread of life, who can satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts of our heart. That is why he taught us to pray, ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ and ‘Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil’. We live our lives through Jesus, we enter through him as the gate, by entering into communion with him through prayer and by following in his way every day of our lives. Taking Jesus as our gate will often mean refusing to go through other gates that seem to call out to us but that do not give us access to the abundance of life that Jesus alone can offer us. If we take Jesus as our gate, we ourselves can then become a gateway to Jesus for others, just as Peter in the first reading proved a gateway to the Lord for the pagan household of the centurion, Cornelius.

And/Or

(xi) Monday, Fourth Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus declares that it is only the one who enters the sheepfold through the gate who is to be given access to the sheep. Those who try to get into the sheepfold some other way, such as over the wall when no one is looking, are not to be trusted. Jesus then goes on to identify himself as the gate. Jesus’ flock, his disciples, are to be approached through him. We go towards each other through Jesus. In other words, our relationship with Jesus is the basis of our relationship with each other. Jesus who says of himself in today’s gospel reading, ‘I am the gate’, elsewhere in this gospel of John says of himself, ‘I am the way’. There is a close relationship between the images of the gate and the way. When we go through Jesus, taking him as our way in life, then we are more likely to approach one another in the loving way that the Lord desires. We see that happening in today’s first reading. It was because of Peter’s close relationship with the Lord, nurtured by prayer, that he was able to respond in a loving way to the invitation of the pagan centurion Cornelius to come to his house. A law abiding Jew like Peter would not normally have entered the house of a pagan. However, because Peter had taken Jesus as his gate, as his way, on a daily basis, he knew that the Spirit was moving him to go with this little pagan group to their household. There Peter saw for himself the work of the Holy Spirit in their lives, in response to his preaching of the gospel. Our relationship with the Lord will always move us and inspire us to relate to others, especially those very different from us, in the same accepting and welcoming way as he himself related to people during the course of his earthly ministry.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

21st April >> Fr. Martin's Homilies / Reflections on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 10:11-18) for the Fourth Sunday of Easter (B): ‘I am the good shepherd’,

Fourth Sunday of Easter (B)

Gospel (Except USA) John 10:11-18 The good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep.

Jesus said:

‘I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd is one who lays down his life for his sheep. The hired man, since he is not the shepherd and the sheep do not belong to him, abandons the sheep and runs away as soon as he sees a wolf coming, and then the wolf attacks and scatters the sheep; this is because he is only a hired man and has no concern for the sheep.

‘I am the good shepherd; I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for my sheep. And there are other sheep I have that are not of this fold, and these I have to lead as well. They too will listen to my voice, and there will be only one flock, and one shepherd.

‘The Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own free will, and as it is in my power to lay it down, so it is in my power to take it up again; and this is the command I have been given by my Father.’

Gospel (USA) John 10:11–18 The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

Jesus said: “I am the good shepherd. A good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. A hired man, who is not a shepherd and whose sheep are not his own, sees a wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away, and the wolf catches and scatters them. This is because he works for pay and has no concern for the sheep. I am the good shepherd, and I know mine and mine know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I will lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. These also I must lead, and they will hear my voice, and there will be one flock, one shepherd. This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have power to lay it down, and power to take it up again. This command I have received from my Father.”

Homilies (5)

(i) Fourth Sunday of Easter

I am always fascinated by old stone walls. I find myself wondering what stories the stones would tell if they could speak. According to the gospels as Jesus was entering Jerusalem on a donkey his disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice. When his opponents called on Jesus to order his disciples to stop, Jesus replied, ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out’. If only the stones in our old walls could shout out, what would they say to us about all they have seen?

Jesus was attentive to stones, as he was to so much in his surroundings. On one occasion, he quoted from today’s responsorial psalm, ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the corner stone’. In the first reading Peter in his preaching quotes this very same verse. Jesus noticed that sometimes a stone which is rejected by builders as useless to their needs can become, in the hands of other builders, the most important stone of all, a corner stone. Jesus saw himself as the rejected stone. He was rejected in the most brutal way, put to death by crucifixion. Yet, God raised him from the dead and Jesus went on to become the corner stone of a new spiritual building, the church. To say that Jesus was like the rejected stone may suggest that he was completely passive at the time of his passion and death, the victim of other people’s cruelty. Yet, in today’s gospel reading Jesus speaks about his death in a very different way. He declares he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his flock. He goes on to say that he lays down his life of his own free will; no one takes his life from him. He freely decided to face into his death out of love for all humanity, like the shepherd who, in that culture, often willingly faced death to protect his sheep from wolves and human predators. God sent Jesus into the world to reveal God’s love for all. This was Jesus’ mission and he freely chose to remain faithful to this mission even when it became clear that it would cost him his life. Jesus recognized in the devotion of some shepherds to their sheep his own devotion to all of God’s people. Jesus showed by his life, and especially by his death, just how devoted in love God was to us all. That is why when we look upon Jesus on the cross, we don’t just see an innocent victim of other people’s cruelty and sin. Rather, we see the length and breadth of God’s love, a love that remains faithful to us, even in the face of sin, and that is capable of bringing new life out of death, not just for Jesus but for all those who believe in him.

In his letter to the Galatians Paul declares, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’. Paul knew not only that Jesus gave himself out of love for all, but also that Jesus gave himself for each one of us personally. As I look upon the cross, I am looking upon the good shepherd who gave himself in love for me. Jesus’ love, revealed especially in his death on the cross, is personal to each one of us. That is why in the gospel reading Jesus says that, as a good shepherd, he knows his own. Jesus was aware that shepherds were very familiar with each sheep in their flock. If one went missing, he noticed it and went after it. Similarly, Jesus knows each one of us in a very personal way. Indeed, in the gospel reading, Jesus makes the extraordinary claim that he knows each of us as intimately as God the Father knows him and he knows his Father. Jesus and God the Father know each other intimately because of the depth of their love for each other. Jesus knows each of us intimately because of the depth of his love for us. We only know those we love, and, even then, our loved one can remain something of an enigma to us. Jesus, however, loves us with a perfect love, and, so he knows us fully.

In that reading, Jesus not only says that ‘I know my own’ but he also says, ‘my own know me’. However, in this life we do not know Jesus as fully as he knows us; we do not fully know God present in Jesus. That is because we do not love Jesus or God his Father as fully as God loves us through Jesus. The second reading assures that in eternal life, we will see God as God really is, we will know God and Jesus as they really are. That is because in eternal life, our love will have been purified. We will love God and his Son as fully as they love us. In the words of our second reading, we will be like God, as loving as God is loving. This is our ultimate destiny toward which we are journeying, with our good shepherd leading the way before us. On this Vocations Sunday, we remind ourselves that our primary vocation rooted in our baptism is to follow the lead of our good shepherd by listening to his voice.

And/Or

(ii) Fourth Sunday of Easter

Today is Vocations Sunday. In the past we tended to restrict the term ‘vocation’ to the priesthood and the religious life. Yet, everyone in the church has a vocation, and, today, we are invited to reflect a little on the different ways in which we have each been given a vocation. Each of us is called by God. We all find ourselves standing before the call of God. The theme that the Pope has chosen for this Vocation Sunday is ‘vocation to service’. Each one of us, in different ways, has been given the vocation to service. In his message for this Vocations Sunday the Pope reminds us that Jesus is the perfect model of the ‘servant’. He is the one who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. In the words of the gospel reading this morning, he is the good shepherd who lays down his life for his flock. All that he received from God he gave to others, he gave for others. This is at the heart of our own vocation to service too. All that we have and all that we are we have received from God, and we are called to place what we have received at the service of others.

The Pope in his message for this Vocations Sunday states that service is possible for everyone, through gestures that seem small, but, which are, in reality, great, if they are animated by a sincere love. The ways in which we live out our vocation to service can often be small and hidden. We give something of ourselves in service to someone. What we give may seem insignificant – a listening ear, a word of encouragement, a small gesture of some kind, what the gospel calls in one place a ‘cup of cold water’. We don’t have to think of service in terms only of the big commitment, the huge undertaking, or the absorbing task. The excellent can easily become the enemy of the good. We can undervalue the ways we are already living out our vocation to service, because those ways seem so little, no more than the proverbial drop in the ocean. Yet, the drop in the ocean, or the cup of cold water, can be as precious in the Lord’s eyes as some undertaking that, from a human perspective, seems much more significant. So much of life is lived on the small stage, in the space between myself and one other person or a small number of other people. It is in that relatively small space that most of our vocation to service is to be lived. The way we live out our vocation to service in that space will not make headlines, and may never become known beyond a small circle. Yet, as the Pope says in his message, when interpersonal relationships are inspired by mutual service a new world is created.  

The call to serve goes hand in hand with the call to receive the Lord’s service. It is in receiving the Lord’s service that we are enabled to live out our vocation to the service of others. We can find it difficult to receive the Lord’s service. Like Peter at the last supper we can resist the Lord’s efforts to serve us, ‘you will never wash my feet’. We can go along as if we were self-sufficient and not in need of the Lord’s service. Yet if our service is to be Christ-like it can only flow from allowing ourselves to be served by the Lord. He is the good shepherd who has laid down his life for us, and who goes on giving us the gift of himself. We need to keep on learning how to receive that gift of himself that he makes to us. One of the ways we receive the Lord’s gift of himself to us is by our celebration of the Eucharist. We come to Mass with open hearts to receive the Lord’s service, the Lord’s gift of himself. ‘This is my body. Take and eat’. In taking the Lord’s gift of himself, we allow ourselves to be served by him, and we are thereby enabled to live out our vocation to serve him as he has served us, to serve him in others as he has served us through others.

The call to service is not confined to a certain period in our lives. It does not belong to a certain age category. It is an enduring call throughout out lives. In the course of our lives, we are constantly discovering new ways of responding to that call. Many people discover new and exciting ways of responding to the Lord’s call to service in the latter half of life, or even the last quarter of their earthly lives. There is always a new step to be taken, no matter where we are on life’s journey. In the words of the second reading this morning, there will always be a tension between what we are already and what we are to be in the future, regardless of how young or old we are. We are already the children of God but in the future we shall we like God. We are called to keep on growing into the image of God, into the image and likeness of his Son. This is the call to become more and more the servant that the Lord was and is. There will always be new ways of living the vocation to service, no matter where we are on our life’s journey. We can help each other to live that vocation, by calling forth the service of each other, and receiving it when it is offered. We pray for the grace to recognize ways we might do this.

And/Or

(iii) Fourth Sunday of Easter

When several people are interviewed for a job, the one person who comes through the interview process and is given the job is not always the best candidate for the job. Interviewing is not an exact science. It can happen that one of those turned down for the job might have been the most suitable candidate. Even the most qualified interview panel only has limited vision. There can be more to some of the candidates than meets the eye. In the words of the first reading and responsorial psalm of today’s Mass, one of the rejected candidates may well have proven to be the corner stone, had he or she been given the chance.

Sometimes what we might be inclined to think little of can turn out to be very valuable. I occasionally watch the Antiques Road show on BBC, and I am always amused when someone discovers that something or other that had been lying around in the attic for years is revealed to be worth a fortune. The look of shock and amazement on people’s faces is a sight to behold. In the 1940s a shepherd boy stumbled into a series of caves above the level of the Dead Sea in Israel and discovered jars of scrolls which went back to the time of Jesus and before his time. The discovery of these scrolls has had enormous implications for our understanding of the world into which Jesus was born. These very ordinary caves that no one had paid any attention to for hundreds of years turned out to contain a very extraordinary treasure.

Real quality can often be found in unpromising places. The gospels suggest that Jesus had the capacity to see quality where others saw little of consequence. On one occasion, to take an example, he saw a poor widow put two small copper coins into the temple treasury. Most people would hardly have noticed this woman. However Jesus not only noticed her, but, he called over his disciples and drew their attention to her. Jesus pointed to her as the disciples’ teacher. Even though, in comparison to what the wealthy were giving, what she gave was tiny, Jesus singled her out as someone who, in reality, gave everything, all she had to live on. He saw her as a type of himself who was soon to give all he had on the cross. She was an image of the good shepherd in today’s gospel reading who lays down his life for the flock. Many people of the time would have dismissed her, as someone of little consequence. However, Jesus saw her as more of a corner stone than a stone to be rejected; he saw the real value in her that most others would have missed. In the gospel reading, Jesus, the good shepherd says of himself: ‘I know my own and my own know me’. The good shepherd sees more deeply than other people see.

Today is Vocations Sunday. What is our vocation as people who have been baptized into Christ and who are members of Christ’s body? One way of talking about our shared vocation is to say that we are called to see as Jesus sees. We could say that a Christian is someone whose calling is to see life as Jesus sees it, to see people as Jesus sees them. What distinguished Jesus’ was of seeing people was its generosity. He often saw more than others saw. Taking up the image of today’s first reading and psalm, where others saw a stone to be rejected or ignored, he saw a corner stone. Where others saw people of no significance, he saw them same people as having much to teach the rest of us. Whenever we see people with the Lord’s eyes and relate to them accordingly, we help them to become all that God wants them to be, like the cripple in today’s first reading who, through Peter’s presence to him, came to stand up perfectly healthy. The reverse is equally true. We can have a crippling effect on people when the stance we take towards them is lacking in generosity, is overly critical or dismissive. If are calling is to see life as the Lord sees it, then we have to become familiar with how the Lord sees it. We need to keep listening to the Lord’s word, to listen to the voice of the shepherd, in the words of this evening’s gospel reading. Our aspect of our shared baptismal vocation is to listen to the voice of the Shepherd, so that we can see with the eyes of the Shepherd.

Jesus’ generous way of seeing people was only a reflection of how God sees us. Saint John, in today’s second reading articulates how God sees us. ‘Think of the love that the Father has lavished on us by letting us be called God’s children’, he says. God sees us as his children, as his sons and daughters, and, accordingly, as people with a wonderful destiny. Our destiny, according to that same reading, is to see God as God really is. That is as our ultimate vocation, to see God as God really is, and, thereby to become like God. Our vocation here and now is to see as Jesus sees, to see the signs of God in others – and in ourselves – even when those signs of God are not all that obvious.

And/Or

(iv) Fourth Sunday of Easter

When people go to Rome, one of the places they often visit is the Catacombs, the earliest Christian cemeteries in existence. The earliest Christian art is to be found in the catacombs. The images are very simple and unadorned compared to the Christian art that would emerge in later centuries. Yet the art is very striking just because of its simplicity and its directness. One of the images of Jesus that you find in the catacombs is that of the Good Shepherd. I have a print of the image of Jesus the Good Shepherd from the Catacomb of San Callistus. It consists of a young beardless man with a sheep draped around his shoulders holding a bucket of water in his right hand. Clearly the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd that we find in today’s gospel reading spoke to Christians from the earliest days of the church.

Perhaps one of the reasons why the image appealed to Christians from the very earliest years of the church is because it conveyed something of the personal nature of the relationship between Jesus and his followers. That image from the Catacombs conveys a sense of the close personal connection that the shepherd has with the sheep. The shepherd has gone looking for the one sheep that was wandered off and having found it is taking the sheep home on his shoulders back to the flock. There is a connection between the shepherd and this one sheep. That is what Jesus conveys in today’s gospel reading. He declares that he knows his own and his own know him, just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father. It is an extraordinary statement to make. Jesus is saying that the very personal relationship that he has with his heavenly Father is the model for the very personal relationship that he has with each one of us. Jesus knows us as intimately as the Father knows him, and he wants us to know him as intimately as he knows the Father. There is a great deal to ponder there. When it comes to the Lord we are not just one of a crowd, lost in a sea of faces. In a way that we will never fully understand, the Lord knows each one of us by name. He relates to us in a personal way and he invites us to relate to him in a personal way. He wishes to enter into a personal relationship with each one of us. I am often struck by a line in Saint Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia, where he says, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’. We can each make our own those words of Saint Paul. When Jesus says in today’s gospel reading that, as the good shepherd, ‘I lay down my life for my sheep’, he is saying that he lays down his life for each one of us individually.

The Lord who knows us by name, who gave himself in love for each one of us, also calls us by name. Today is Vocations Sunday. The Lord has a calling that is personal to each one of us. He calls us in our uniqueness with our very particular temperament, our unique identity, the background that is specific to each one of us. No one of us is like anyone else. Parents know how distinct and unique each of their children is. They will all have been given the same love; they grow up in basically the same environment. Yet, from a very early age, their uniqueness becomes very evident. The family is a microcosm of the church as a whole. From the time of our baptism, we are each called to be the Lord’s disciples, to follow the good Shepherd. However, the way we do that will be unique to each one of us. The particular way in which the Lord works through us is unique to each one of us. I can do something for the Lord that only I can do. Each person in this church can do something for the Lord that only he or she can do. Each one of us has a unique contribution to make to the work of the Lord in the world, to the life of the church, and that contribution is just as important as anyone else’s contribution. We each have a unique vocation and each vocation is equally significant. Each one of us is vitally important to the Lord. When we each respond to our unique vocation, we give a lift to everyone else. When any one of us fails to respond to that vocation, we are all a little bit impoverished.

The first reading declares that the stone that was rejected by the builders proved to be the keystone. There is a clear reference there to Jesus himself, the rejected one. We can all feel at times like the rejected stone, for whatever reason. Yet, we are never rejected in the Lord’s eyes. He continues to call us in the way that is unique to us. He sees us as the keystone for some aspect of his work. He recognizes the potential for good that is within us all. On this Vocations Sunday we commit ourselves anew to hearing and responding to the call of the good shepherd.

And/Or

(v) Fourth Sunday of Easter

Although it is not possible at the moment, but when people go on pilgrimage to Rome, one of the places they often visit is the catacombs, the earliest Christian cemeteries in existence. The earliest Christian art is to be found there. The images are very simple and unadorned compared to the Christian art that would emerge in later centuries. Yet the art in the catacombs is very striking just because of its simplicity and its directness. One of the images of Jesus that you find in the catacombs is of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the earliest of which has been dated to the second century. Jesus is portrayed as a young beardless man with a sheep draped around his shoulders. Clearly the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd that we find in today’s gospel reading spoke to Christians from the earliest days of the church.

Perhaps one of the reasons why the image appealed to Christians from earliest times is because it conveyed something of the personal nature of the relationship between Jesus and his followers. That image from the catacombs conveys a sense of the close personal connection that the shepherd has with his individual sheep. The shepherd had gone looking for the one sheep that had wandered off and, having found it, is now taking the sheep on his shoulders back to the flock. It is that personal bond between himself and his individual followers that Jesus conveys in today’s gospel reading. He declares that he knows his own and his own know him, just as the Father knows him and he knows the Father. It is an extraordinary statement to make. Jesus is saying that the relationship that he has with each one of us is as intimate as the very personal relationship that he has with his heavenly Father. Jesus knows us as intimately as the Father knows him. When it comes to the Lord we are not just one of a crowd, lost in a sea of faces. In a way that we will never fully understand, the Lord knows each one of us by name. We only really know those we love. It is because the Lord loves each of us so completely that he knows each of us so fully. I am often struck by a line in Saint Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia, where he says, ‘I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me’. We can each make our own those words of Saint Paul. When Jesus speaks in today’s gospel reading as the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep, he is saying that in love he lays down his life for each one of us individually.

The Lord who gave himself in love for each one of us on the cross, and who, as risen Lord, continues to give himself in love to each of us daily, also calls each of us by name. Today is Vocations Sunday. The Lord has a calling that is personal to each one of us. He calls us in our uniqueness, in a way that takes account of our particular temperament, our unique identity, the background that is specific to each one of us. No one of us is like anyone else. Parents know how distinct and unique each of their children are. They will all have been given the same love; they grow up in basically the same environment. Yet, from a very early age, their uniqueness becomes very evident. That unique identity begins at conception and starts to be formed during the nine months the child is in their mother’s womb. The family is a microcosm of the church; it has been called the domestic church. Within the family of the church, the Lord’s call to follow him, the call of the good shepherd, begins while we are in the womb. The prophet Jeremiah heard the Lord say to him, ‘Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I set you apart’. The particular way the Lord calls us and works through us will be unique to each one of us. I can do something for the Lord that only I can do. Each one of us has a unique contribution to make to the work of the Lord in the church and in the world, and that contribution is just as important as anyone else’s contribution. We each have a unique vocation and each vocation is equally significant. When we each respond to our own unique vocation, we are supporting others in their response to the unique call of the good shepherd to them.

The first reading declares that the stone that was rejected by the builders proved to be the keystone. There is a clear reference there to Jesus himself. He was the rejected one who became the keystone of a new family, the church. There is a sense in which the Lord sees each of us as the keystone for some aspect of his mission. We are all key to the Lord’s work, and he calls each of us by name from the first moment of our conception to share in that work. On this Vocations Sunday we commit ourselves anew to hearing and responding to the call of the good shepherd.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

20th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:60-69) for Saturday, Third Week of Easter: ‘Lord, who shall we go to?’.

Saturday, Third Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:60-69 Who shall we go to? You are the Holy One of God.

After hearing his doctrine many of the followers of Jesus said, ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’ Jesus was aware that his followers were complaining about it and said, ‘Does this upset you? What if you should see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before?

‘It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.

‘But there are some of you who do not believe.’ For Jesus knew from the outset those who did not believe, and who it was that would betray him. He went on, ‘This is why I told you that no one could come to me unless the Father allows him.’ After this, many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him.

Then Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ Simon Peter answered, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God.’

Gospel (USA) John 6:60-69 To whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.

Many of the disciples of Jesus who were listening said, “This saying is hard; who can accept it?” Since Jesus knew that his disciples were murmuring about this, he said to them, “Does this shock you? What if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before? It is the Spirit that gives life, while the flesh is of no avail. The words I have spoken to you are Spirit and life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” Jesus knew from the beginning the ones who would not believe and the one who would betray him. And he said, “For this reason I have told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by my Father.”

As a result of this, many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer walked with him. Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

Reflections (7)

(i) Saturday, Third Week of Easter

We don’t often think of churches, communities of believers, in the land where Jesus lived and worked, what today’s first reading refers to as ‘Judea, Galilee and Samaria’. Jesus was from Galilee and spent most of his public ministry in Galilee, but he also entered Samaria and his ministry concluded in Judea, although he may also have travelled to Judea from Galilee in the course of his ministry, as the fourth gospel suggests. The first reading declares that the churches in these areas were ‘building themselves up, living in the fear of the Lord, and filled with the consolation of the Holy Spirit’. This is the wonderful fruit of Jesus’ ministry. Today’s gospel reading, from the fourth gospel, is set in Galilee and, in contrast, it highlights a moment of crisis for the original group of disciples that Jesus had gathered about himself. Jesus had been revealing himself as the Bread of Life and declaring that ‘those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life’. Some of the disciples declare, ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’ The evangelist goes on to state, ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. This is a very different picture to the vibrant church in Galilee given to us in the first reading. There is often an ebb and flow to the life of the church in a region. When the tide seems to be going out, we shouldn’t get discouraged. The risen Lord is with us in the lean times as much as in the times of flourishing. In crisis times, it is important that some believers hold firm. This is what we find happening in the gospel reading. When many of Jesus’ disciples left, he turns to the twelve and asks them, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ It is one of those questions of Jesus that hangs in the air for us all. Where do we stand when it seems easier to join the stampede heading for the exit? We are all invited to make our own Peter’s response to Jesus’ question, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life’.

And/Or

(ii) Saturday, Third Week of Easter

This morning’s gospel reading begins with some of Jesus’ followers deciding that they would no longer follow him. They cannot accept the teaching he has been giving about his identity as the Bread of Life and on the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood. ‘This is intolerable language’, they say. It seems that not everyone who started to follow Jesus remained his follower. It is a reminder to us that we cannot take our faith, our relationship with the Lord, for granted. The fact that we have been the Lord’s disciple in the past does not guarantee that we will remain his disciple into the future. Indeed, every day we have to renew our response to the Lord’s call. We have to keep on consciously deciding for him, choosing him. Faith is a gift but it also involves a decision on our part. That is why at the end of this morning’s gospel reading Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too’? Jesus was asking them, ‘Do you want to join the others who have decided to follow me no longer?’ He was putting it up to the twelve to decide for him, to choose him as he had chosen them. The Lord puts the same question to us, ‘Do you want to go away too?’ He waits for our response. We can do no better than to make our own the response of Peter, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life’. Every time we come to Mass we are making our own Peter’s great act of faith. In choosing to come to Mass we are choosing the Lord as the Bread of Life; we are renewing our baptism. We are then sent from the Eucharist to live out that choice of the Lord in our daily lives, allowing that choice for the Lord to shape all the small and large choices that we make in the course of our day.

And/Or

(iii) Saturday, Third Week of Easter

In the course of John’s gospel Jesus is often portrayed as asking very probing questions. We find one such question in this morning’s gospel reading. Jesus asks the Twelve, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ In the previous verses many of Jesus’ followers are depicted as leaving Jesus because of his words about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Their leaving Jesus is the occasion for Jesus to place the twelve before a moment of decision, ‘do you want to go away too?’ Jesus was probing, looking for them to make a personal decision as to whether they would stay with him or leave him like so many others. The risen Lord looks for a similar personal decision from us, asking us, ‘do you want to go away too?’ In the culture in which we live not everyone has chosen to respond in faith to the Lord’s presence and call. As a result, we each have to make a more personal and more deliberate decision for the Lord than was needed in the past, the kind of decision the Lord looks for in today’s gospel reading. As we strive to make that decision we can do no better than to make our own the response of Peter to Jesus’ question, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe; we know that you are the Holy One of God’.

And/Or

(iv) Saturday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading there is a sharp dichotomy between how some of Jesus’ followers assessed his teaching on the Eucharist and Jesus himself assessed his teaching. Some of his followers declared, ‘This is intolerable language’, whereas Jesus himself asserted, ‘the words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life’. The life-giving words of Jesus will be dismissed as intolerable language by some in every generation. Even though Jesus was aware that his teaching would lose him some of his followers, he did not dilute his teaching. Indeed, when many of his disciples left him, Jesus turned to the twelve, his closest associates, and asked them, ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ He was prepared to risk losing his core following, rather than compromise his teaching. He would be faithful to God’s vision for human living, regardless of the cost to himself. Those who wanted to accept his vision, and to live by the teaching it expressed, would have to make a conscious decision to do so. That is true for us who seek to be the Lord’s followers today. Remaining faithful to the values of the gospel will often mean standing our ground when many others are leaving. The response of many in the gospel reading to Jesus’ teaching, ‘This is intolerable language’, stands over and against the response of Peter, ‘You have the message of eternal life’. It is Peter’s response we ae invited to make our own.

And/Or

(v) Saturday, Third Week of Easter (not preached)

Today’s gospel reading captures a moment of crisis for the followers of Jesus. Some of those who have already responded to the call of Jesus to follow him, to become his disciples, are now struggling to accept the claims he has been making for himself, in particular his claim to be the Bread of Life that has come down from heaven. In response, Jesus wonders aloud what they will make of his further claim to ‘ascend to where he was before’, to return to the Father who sent him through his forthcoming death and resurrection. Arising from this exchange, the evangelist tells us that ‘many of his disciples left him and stopped going with him’. Jesus could not and would not hold onto disciples against their will. There will always be people who will leave the community of disciples, for a variety of reasons. We have all become aware of that phenomenon in more recent years especially. We can all feel impoverished when those who have been part of our community of faith no longer wish to remain so. At this moment of crisis, Jesus took what might seem to us to be a risk. He asked those left behind, ‘What about you? Do you want to go away too?’ Jesus wanted them to stay but he needed them to want to stay too. The question ‘Do you want to go away too?’ is addressed to us one of us and we each have to make our own personal response to it. It would be hard to find a more appropriate response to Jesus’ question than the response of Peter, which we are invited to make our own at every Eucharist, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe, we know that you are the Holy One of God’.

And/Or

(vi) Saturday, Third Week of Easter

There is a striking image of the churches in the land where Jesus lived and worked at the beginning of today’s second reading. It is said that ‘the churches throughout Judaea, Galilee and Samaria were left in peace, building themselves up, living in the fear of the Lord, and filled with the consolation of the Holy Spirit’. The ‘fear’ referred to is a reverential awe at all the Lord was doing among them and through them. The members of the church were building themselves up. The ministry of encouragement, of building up, seems to have been a very important one in the early church. The earliest Christian document we possess is Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians, written about twenty years after the death and resurrection of Jesus. Towards the end of that letter, Paul calls on the members of the church to ‘encourage one another with these words’ and then again ‘encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing’. This is a ministry we all share, because it is rooted in our baptism. Of course, we can sometimes be a source of discouragement to one another in regard to faith in the Lord. It was surely discouraging for Jesus and the other disciples when, in the words of today’s gospel reading, ‘many of his disciples left him, and stopped going with him’. Jesus risked being discouraged further by asking the Twelve, ‘what about you, do you want to go away to?’ It must have been a source of great encouragement to Jesus and to the other eleven disciples when Peter, speaking on behalf of all, said, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life’. At a discouraging moment for the group of Jesus’ disciples, Peter was an encouraging presence. The ministry of mutual encouragement is all the more important when there are grounds for discouragement, such as in these times. The Lord is always the great encourager, and he continues to empower us to encourage one another in faith, and to build up one another in the Lord.

And/Or

(vii) Saturday, Third Week of Easter

There are several stories in the gospels about Jesus calling people to follow him and their responding to his call immediately. In today’s gospel reading, however, we find the opposite happening. Disciples who have been with Jesus for some time left him and stopped going with him. They objected to Jesus’ insistence on the need for his disciples to eat his body and drink his blood. ‘This is intolerable language. How could anyone accept it?’ They rejected Jesus’ teaching on the Eucharist. It must have been discouraging for the remaining disciples to see other disciples leaving Jesus. We all feel a little sad when people no longer gather for the Eucharist in the same numbers as in the past. We miss the presence of younger people especially. Perhaps sensing the impact of the loss of some disciples on the remaining disciples, Jesus turns to the twelve and asks them ‘What about you, do you want to go away too?’ It is a question that is addressed to each one of us, especially when our faith feels undermined by the actions of others. Jesus must have been very heartened by the response of Peter on behalf of the others, ‘Lord, who shall we go to? You have the message of eternal life, and we believe, we know that you are the Holy One of God’. We are all invited to make our own that response of Peter when we too may be tempted to leave the community gathered around the Lord in the Eucharist. Our presence is all the more important when others have left. The willingness of any one of us to remain is an encouragement to everyone else. Like the early churches at the beginning of today’s first reading, we need to build each other up by remaining in communion with the Lord and his disciples and living out of this communion in our day to day lives.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

19th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:52-59) for Friday, Third Week of Easter: ‘Whoever eats me will draw life from me’.

Friday, Third Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:52-59 My flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.

The Jews started arguing with one another: ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ they said. Jesus replied:

‘I tell you most solemnly, if you do not eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you will not have life in you. Anyone who does eat my flesh and drink my blood has eternal life, and I shall raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in him. As I, who am sent by the living Father, myself draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life from me. This is the bread come down from heaven; not like the bread our ancestors ate: they are dead, but anyone who eats this bread will live for ever.’

He taught this doctrine at Capernaum, in the synagogue.

Gospel (USA) John 6:52-59 My Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink.

The Jews quarreled among themselves, saying, “How can this man give us his Flesh to eat?” Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink his Blood, you do not have life within you. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him on the last day. For my Flesh is true food, and my Blood is true drink. Whoever eats my Flesh and drinks my Blood remains in me and I in him. Just as the living Father sent me and I have life because of the Father, so also the one who feeds on me will have life because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven. Unlike your ancestors who ate and still died, whoever eats this bread will live forever.” These things he said while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Reflections (14)

(i) Friday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus declares ‘whoever eats me will draw life from me’. The Lord comes to us in the Eucharist so that we can live more fully with his life, which is a life of love. He gives himself to us in the Eucharist so that he can live in us, and continue his life of loving service today through us. The first reading is the story of how the risen Lord came to Paul. He didn’t come to Paul initially in the Eucharist but through an appearance to Paul. From that moment on, Paul began to live with the Lord’s own life, a life of loving service of others. Up until that moment, Paul had been violently persecuting the church, which he saw as a threat to his Jewish faith. As a result of the Lord’s appearance to him, he came to see that in persecuting the followers of Jesus he was persecuting Jesus himself who was God’s Son. From being the great persecutor of the church, Paul became the great preacher of the gospel to Jews and, especially, pagans. He went from being a violent person to being a peacemaker and reconciler. The Lord began to live in Paul. Some years later, in his letter to the Galatians, Paul could say, ‘It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’. The Lord was now living his life of loving service in and through Paul. The Lord does not appear to us in the same dramatic fashion as he appeared to Paul, but the same Lord comes to us in a very personal way at every Eucharist, so that he can live his life of loving service of others in and through each one of us today.

And/Or

(ii) Friday, Third Week of Easter

We can often find ourselves initially resisting a request that someone makes of us or some declaration that they make to us. We can resist for various reasons. At some level it does not make sense to us, or it appears to make too great a demand on us. In both of our readings this morning we have an example of such resistance. After Saul had his transforming encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, he was taken in his blind state to a house of one of the members of the church in Damascus. Another member of the church there, Ananias had a vision of the Lord in which the Lord asked him to go to Saul and to heal Saul’s blindness. However, Ananias resisted what the Lord asked of him because he knew Saul’s reputation as a persecutor of the church and he didn’t trust Saul. Yet, the Lord insisted and eventually Ananias did as he was asked. In the gospel reading, the crowd resist what Jesus had just said about giving his flesh for the life of the world as bread to be eaten. Yet, is spite of this resistance, the Lord insisted all the more on the need, not only to eat his flesh, but to drink his blood also. There is a clear reference here to the Eucharist as the moment when we enter into communion with the body and blood of the Lord. On this occasion Jesus did not break through the resistance of those to whom he spoke. Even some of his own disciples would walk away because of this teaching on the Eucharist. Yet, we are asked to take these words of Jesus into our own hearts, extraordinary as they are, tempted as we are to ask the question, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ The Lord wants us to receive him in faith in the Eucharist, so that we can draw life from him, and become channels of his life to others.

And/Or

(iii) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The question that the Jews ask at the beginning of today’s gospel reading must have been a question that was on the lips of very many people in the time of Jesus and of the early church. How can this man, Jesus, give us his flesh to eat? In response to that question Jesus goes on to speak not only of eating his flesh but of drinking his blood. It is very striking language, and it would have been scandalous to many people at the time. This language is very familiar to us from the Eucharist, ‘the body of Christ’, ‘the blood of Christ’. It has been the language of the church since its very earliest days. In one of the earliest documents in the New Testament, the first letter to the Corinthians, Paul says, ‘the cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion with the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a communion with the body of Christ?’ It was the Lord’s wish that in the Eucharist we would enter into communion with his body and his blood. Such communion, if entered into in faith, is an opportunity to draw life from the Lord. As Jesus says in the gospel reading, ‘whoever eats me will draw life from me’. We come as beggars to the Eucharist, recognizing that we need to draw from the Lord’s risen life so that we can be fully alive in the way God wants us to be.

And/Or

(iv) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The first reading tells one of the great stories that we find in the New Testament, the story of the conversion of Saint Paul. He was persecuting the church, believing that this was what God wanted him to do. He was trying to protect God’s people from a very strange message that was being preached by some Jews about a crucified criminal being the long-awaited Messiah. He was being the good Pharisee that he believed God wanted him to be. Then out of the blue, the risen Lord stopped him in his tracks. In one of his letters he wrote, ‘Christ Jesus took hold of me’. It was as if a heavenly light helped him to see everything in a new way. His meeting with Jesus convinced him that Jesus was alive, risen from the dead. He now knew that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah; he was the Son of God. From that moment he knew that Jesus was calling to announce this message to all, especially to the pagans. It was as if the risen Lord was creating him anew; his energies and gifts were being channelled in a new direction; he had become a new creation. Later on, writing to the church in Corinth, he would say, ‘if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation’. Christ is always working to create us anew. What he did for Paul in a very dramatic way, he can do for all of us in smaller ways. This morning we ask the Lord to channel our energies and our gifts in ways that serve his purpose in the world.

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(v) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The language of Jesus in today’s gospel reading must have sounded very offensive to many people. The realism of his talk about eating his flesh and drinking his blood is shocking in many ways. It is the language of the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we consume Christ in a very personal way. In taking him into ourselves in this very intimate way, we are taking in all that he stands for, all that he lived and died for. We are taking in his loving commitment to God and to humanity. In receiving Jesus in the Eucharist, we are inviting him to live out in us his life towards God and towards others. As Jesus says in the gospel reading, ‘whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood lives in me and I live in them’. The Lord comes to us in the Eucharist to draw us to himself so that he can live in us and through us. We receive his body and blood in the Eucharist so that we may become more fully his body in the world. That is why the Eucharist is at the heart of our lives as disciples of the Lord. The Eucharist was very much at the heart of the life of Sister Gonzaga. Through her own faithful celebration of the Eucharist the Lord came to live in her and the Lord came to others, especially to young people, through her. She drew life from the Lord in the Eucharist, in the words of today’s gospel reading, and that empowered her to give life to others, to give the Lord to others, especially to young people who always had a very special place in her heart. We remember this morning these young girls who are soon to make their first Holy Communion.

And/Or

(vi) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The question the Jews ask in this morning’s gospel reading - ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’- is an understandable one. The language Jesus had used about eating his flesh was shocking. After the question Jesus went on to speak not only of eating his flesh but of drinking his blood, which would have sounded even more shocking. Yet, it is language which expresses the depth of communion which Jesus wants to create between himself and his disciples. In fact, Jesus wants our relationship with him to be as close as his relationship with God the Father. As he says in our gospel reading, ‘as I draw life from the Father, so whoever eats me will draw life form me’. Just as Jesus was always in communion with his Father so he wants us to be always in communion with him. The Eucharist is a very special expression of our communion with him and of his with us, but our communion with him is to extend beyond the Eucharist. In the language of John’s gospel, we are to remain in him, as he remains in us. We remain in him by remaining in his word, by keeping his word and allowing his word to shape our lives. Our communion with the Lord in the Eucharist calls us to this ongoing form of communion.

And/Or

(vii) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The story of Paul’s transformation is one of the founding stories of our Christian faith. Here was a Pharisee who, on his own admission, was a zealous persecutor of the church. Yet, the Lord managed to break through to him and completely turn his life around, so that the zealous persecutor became the equally zealous preacher of the gospel to the Gentiles. As a Pharisee, Paul could never have envisaged the way he would spend the last thirty years of his life, but the Lord was able to envisage it. Paul’s story reminds us that the Lord’s plans for us may be a great deal bolder than what we might have in mind for ourselves. The Lord took Paul by surprise, and he can take any of us by surprise. Our calling is to allow the Lord’s vision and purpose for our lives to become more of a reality. In receiving the Lord in the Eucharist we are opening ourselves up to the Lord’s vision and purpose for our lives. As Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, ‘whoever eats me will draw life from me’. In receiving the Lord in the Eucharist we give him the opportunity to shape us in the way he wants to. Paul met the Lord on the road to Damascus; we meet the Lord in the Eucharist. In coming to us there he directs us to take the path he wants us to take, just as he directed Paul.

And/Or

(viii) Friday, Third Week of Easter

Many questions are asked by people in the course of the gospels. Some are asked by Jesus; others are asked by those who meet with Jesus. In this morning’s gospel reading, the Jews ask the question, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ Far from pulling back in response to that dismissive question, Jesus goes on to speak of the need not only to eat his flesh but to drink his blood as well. The language of eating the flesh, the body, of Jesus and drinking the blood of Jesus is shocking. Yet, it is the language of John’s gospel. Jesus, who gave his life for us on the cross, gives himself to us as our food and our drink in the Eucharist. Jesus goes on to state that he gives himself to us as food and drink so that we might draw life from him. ‘Whoever eats me will draw life from me’. The life which flowed from the side of Jesus as he hung from the cross, symbolized by the blood and water, is conveyed personally to each of us when we eat his body and drink his blood. We come to the Eucharist to draw life from the Lord, as branches draw life from the vine. We are then sent from the Eucharist to live with his life, to live his life.

And/Or

(ix) Friday, Third Week of Easter

Syria has been in the news for some time because of the unrest there and Damascus, the capital, has been mentioned more than once. This morning’s first reading is set in Damascus and its vicinity. The story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus has captured the imagination of many people in the course of the centuries, including the imagination of many artists. As a result of his meeting with the risen Lord outside Damascus Saul the violent persecutor of the church became the great apostle to the Gentiles. Yet, according to Luke in the reading we have just heard, in the immediate aftermath of his meeting with the Lord, Paul was first struck blind and had to be led by the hand into the city of Damascus. The self-assured Pharisee suddenly found himself completely dependent on others. He was dependent on Ananias, a member of the church of Damascus, to receive back his sight, be baptized and received into the church. Before he began his missionary career the Lord gave Paul this profound experience of his dependence on others, and, ultimately, on the Lord. We can only work for the Lord and serve the Lord to the extent that we are aware of and acknowledge our total dependence on him. As Jesus says in John’s gospel, ‘apart from me you can do nothing’.

And/Or

(x) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The first reading this morning is Luke’s dramatic account of the call of Paul. As a result of the risen Lord’s appearance to him, Paul was transformed from a zealous persecutor of the church to an equally zealous proclaimer of the gospel to the Gentiles. After this encounter with the risen Lord, Paul continued to see himself as a Jew, but he now recognized that the Lord Jesus was the face of the God of Israel. He saw in his relationship with the risen Lord the completion of his Jewish faith. Because of his meeting with the Lord, he went from being a violent persecutor of the church to absorbing the violence of others for the sake of the gospel. He no longer sought to impose his religious views on others by violence but he now sought to persuade them by his preaching. His zeal was now tempered by love. As he says in his second letter to the Corinthians, ‘the love of Christ urges us on’. It is his loving communion with Christ that now drives him. As he says in his letter to the Galatians, ‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me’. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus invites each of us into that same communion of love with himself that Paul enjoyed. He calls us to eat his flesh and to drink his blood. This is a call to Eucharistic communion with the Lord. From this communion of love we are sent out, as Paul was sent, to proclaim the love of the Lord by our lives, to allow the love of Christ to urge us on and flow through us.

And/Or

(xi) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The question that people ask in today’s gospel reading is a perfectly understandable one, ‘How can this man give us his flesh to eat?’ The notion of eating’s someone’s flesh is abhorrent. Yet, Jesus does not qualify what he says but, rather, he goes on to say something even more shocking. He not only calls on people to eat his flesh but to drink his blood. It is evident that Jesus is not speaking literally. His way of speaking reflects what he said at the last supper where, having taken, blessed and broken bread, he gave it to his disciples and said, ‘This is my body’. Then, having taken and blessed wine, he gave it to his disciples and said, ‘This is my blood’. Jesus identified himself, body and blood, flesh and blood, with the elements of bread and wine. He went on to instruct his disciples at the Last Supper to ‘do this in memory of me’. Ever since, the church has repeated the actions and words of Jesus at the last supper. In today’s first reading we have the dramatic story of the call of Paul. Paul will later declare in his first letter to the Corinthians, ‘The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a communion in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a communion in the body of Christ?’ This was the faith of the early church and of the church ever since. The Lord wishes to enter into communion with us in a very profound way so that, in the words of the gospel reading, we can draw life from him. The Eucharist is a celebration of life. We are then sent out from the Eucharist to nurture and protect life in all its forms.

And/Or

(xii) Friday, Third Week of Easter

There is a wonderful painting of the scene in today’s first reading, the call of Paul, in a church in Rome by the artist Caravaggio. The artist does not depict the risen Lord, only the impact of the risen Lord on Paul. Paul is lying on the ground with his arms raised towards the heavens as light falls on him from above. A large horse stands behind the prone Paul, occupying the centre of the painting. The painting conveys a sense of this powerful figure, Paul, now rendered helpless before the risen Lord. In his weakness, he is ready to be redirected by the Lord. The helplessness and weakness of Paul is conveyed in the first reading by the blind Paul having to be led by the hand into the city of Damascus, a city he had expected to be riding into confidently and authoritatively. Yet, the Lord had wonderful plans for this almost helpless figure. As the Lord said to Ananias, ‘this man is my chosen instrument to bring my name before pagans and pagan kings and before the people of Israel’. It was as if Paul had to become like a little child, needing to be led, before the Lord could work through him with great power. Indeed, Jesus said that unless we become like little children we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. Sometimes, it is our very weakness that gives the Lord scope to work through us most fully. When we are overconfident and too sure of our own ability and success we can block the Lord from working in our lives and working through us. In the gospel reading, Jesus declares, ‘whoever eats me draws life from me’. When we come before the Lord in our weakness, in our need, aware of the spiritual hunger within us, we will draw life from him, and, then, like Paul we too will become the Lord’s chosen instruments to bring his presence to others.

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(xiii) Friday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks of the importance of eating his flesh and drinking his blood so as to draw life from him. Yet, in these Covid times, it hasn’t been possible for believers to receive the Eucharist. We have had to live without the Eucharist and this has been a great loss for many Catholics. Yet, the Lord finds other ways of coming to us when we cannot receive the Eucharist. In today’s first reading, the Lord came to Saint Paul in a very striking way. There came a light from heaven all round him and, as a result, he fell to the ground and he heard the Lord say to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ That kind of dramatic experience of the Lord’s coming is not an everyday event. Normally, the Lord comes to us in much more ordinary ways. Do you remember the story of Elijah on the holy mountain of Sinai? He had a sense of the Lord coming to him in the sound of a gentle breeze. The Lord can come to us through the refreshing beauty of nature. Everything is so fresh in nature at the moment as it comes to life again after the winter. The Lord can also come to us through other people, just as the Lord came to Paul through Ananias who entered Saul’s house in today’s first reading. The Lord who came to Paul through Ananias had earlier come to Ananias through a vision. Ananias heard the Lord speak to him, directing him to where Saul lived. The Lord continues to speak to us, to come to us, through his word today. The word of the Lord remains a living word for each one of us today. In these Covid times when we cannot receive the Eucharist, it is good to be alert to the many other ways that the Lord comes to us. These days when we are deprived of the Eucharist can sharpen our awareness of the many other ways the Lord is always coming to us.

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(xiv) Friday, Third Week of Easter

The story of Paul’s conversion in the first reading has captivated artists down the centuries. One of my favourite depictions of this scene is by an artist called Caravaggio. It shows Paul prostrate on the ground beside his horse, looking upwards with a light shining upon him. According to the reading, when the risen Lord appeared to Paul, ‘there came a light from heaven all around him’. The effect of his light was to make Paul temporarily blind, ‘Even with his eyes wide open, he could see nothing at all’. His physical blindness perhaps suggests his spiritual blindness up to this moment. He had been violently persecuting the first followers of Jesus, and in persecuting them he was persecuting God’s Son, Jesus, now risen Lord. This was what Paul came to realize when the risen Lord appeared to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?’ Yet, the Lord had great plans for this persecutor of the church, but first he had to endure a period of blindness, during which this proud man was completely dependent on others, ‘they had to lead him into Damascus by the hand’. It was only when a member of the church of Damascus, Ananias, laid his hands on Paul in prayer that his sight was restored. The Lord appeared directly to Paul but he also came to Paul through a member of the church he was persecuting. That is how the Lord generally comes to us, in and through the members of the church, the community of faith. That is why we gather as a community of faith, in various settings, especially in the setting of the Eucharist. In the gospel reading, Jesus declares that he comes to us in the Eucharist so that we can draw life from him. We gather to celebrate the Eucharist so that we can draw life from the Lord. Paul once persecuted the Lord, but after his experience near Damascus, he went on to draw life from the Lord as he gather with other members of the church at the Eucharist. Even when we have turned against the Lord, he continues to call us to draw life from him.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

18th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:44-51) for Thursday, Third Week of Easter: ‘I am the living bread which has come down from heaven’.

Thursday, Third Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:44-51 I am the living bread which has come down from heaven.

Jesus said to the crowd:

‘No one can come to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me, and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets: They will all be taught by God, and to hear the teaching of the Father, and learn from it, is to come to me. Not that anybody has seen the Father, except the one who comes from God: he has seen the Father. I tell you most solemnly, everybody who believes has eternal life.

‘I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and they are dead; but this is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that a man may eat it and not die. I am the living bread which has come down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live for ever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.’

Gospel (USA) John 6:44-51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven.

Jesus said to the crowds: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draw him, and I will raise him on the last day. It is written in the prophets:

They shall all be taught by God.

Everyone who listens to my Father and learns from him comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except the one who is from God; he has seen the Father. Amen, amen, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but they died; this is the bread that comes down from heaven so that one may eat it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my Flesh for the life of the world.”

Reflections (12)

(i) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

It is impossible to hear the reference to Gaza in today’s first reading without thinking of the horrific human catastrophe that has been unfolding in the Gaza strip today. The reading describes an event that took place in the very early church on the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. An Ethiopian, an official at the court of the queen of Ethiopia, was on his way home having gone on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He may have been a pagan who was attracted to the Jewish faith. The reading suggests he was someone who had a searching spirit. He was seeking after the truth. He was sitting in his chariot, reading aloud a passage from the prophet Isaiah and struggling to understand what it meant. When Philip, a leader in the early church, approached him, the Ethiopian asked, ‘Tell me, is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ His question was the opening Philip needed to preach the gospel to him. Having heard the gospel, the Ethiopian was moved to ask Philip to baptize him. In the gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘No one comes to me unless he is drawn by the Father who sent me’. The Ethiopian was drawn by God the Father to Jesus, without him realizing it initially. God tends to draw us to Jesus through others. On this occasion, God drew the Ethiopian to his Son through Philip. God is constantly drawing people to Jesus and he does so by working through those who already believe in Jesus. God wants to work through each one of us to draw others to his Son, our risen Lord. God needs us to witness to our faith in some way, if others are to be drawn to the Lord. There are people among us searching for the one who says of himself in today’s gospel reading, ‘I am the bread of life’, the one who can satisfy our deepest spiritual hunger. We can all be a Philip for those who are searching. If we are to play that vital role in someone’s life, we need to be constantly seeking the Lord for ourselves.

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(ii) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

When we hear in this morning’s first reading of the road from Jerusalem to Gaza it is hard not to think of the strained and tension-filled relationship between Jerusalem and Gaza today. Yet, the story we have just heard relating to that road is a good news story. The Ethiopian on that road is a seeker. He is reading the Jewish Scriptures, a section of the prophet Isaiah. When Philip, one of the deacons of the church joins him, he invites Philip to join him in his search and to throw light on what he is reading. The probing question he asks Philip about the text gives Philip an opening to speak to him about Jesus. Philip’s proclaiming of the gospel moved the Ethiopian to ask for baptism. When Philip left him, the Ethiopian went on his journey rejoicing. The Ethiopian was searching, but he needed help from someone who was a little further down the road of faith that he himself was. The story is a reminder to us that we need each other on the journey of faith. We all have something to receive from someone else. In the gospel reading, Jesus declares that no one can come to him unless he is drawn by God the Father. Our coming to Jesus is always in response to the Father drawing us to his Son. Yet, the Father draws us to his Son in and through each other, just as God drew the Ethiopian to Jesus in and through Philip. Sometimes we may find ourselves in the role of the Ethiopian, seeking the Lord, needing someone like a Philip to guide and lead us. At other times we may find ourselves in the role of Philip, helping someone to take a new step on their journey towards Jesus. If the Father is to draw us to his Son, we need to be ready both to receive from the faith of others and to give to others from our own faith.

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(iii) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

This morning’s first reading is one of many wonderful stories in the Acts of the Apostles, the story of how an Ethiopian eunuch who served at the court of the queen of Ethiopia came to Christ. The Holy Spirit had a major role to play in bringing the Ethiopian to Jesus, but Philip the evangelist and the Ethiopian himself had their roles to play as well. It was the Holy Spirit who prompted Philip to meet the Ethiopian. It was presumably the Spirit who prompted the Ethiopian to read the passage of Scripture that so intrigued him. The Ethiopian asked Philip to explain the Scripture he was reading and Philip responded to his request. A little later the Ethiopian asked Philip to baptize him and Philip responded to that request too. Even though the Spirit was at work in all of this process, there was a genuine human element at work too. Without the desire of the Ethiopian and the responsiveness of Philip, the work of the Holy Spirit would not have come to pass. The passage reminds us that we need the Holy Spirit to come to Christ and to grow in our relationship with him, but the Spirit, in turn, needs our contribution, our own good desires and our willingness to respond to the call of others.

And/Or

(iv) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

There is an interesting sequence across the two readings this morning. In the first reading we have an Ethiopian returning home from his pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He stops to read the Scriptures and he is very touched by a passage from the prophet Isaiah. It leads him to ask questions which eventually results in his receiving baptism into the church at the hands of Philip. Then in the gospel reading Jesus speaks of the bread that he will give as his flesh for the life of the world, a clear reference to the Eucharist. We have the three elements of word, baptism and eucharist in our two readings. Each one of them is at the core of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. In our own lives, the sequence is not so much word, baptism, eucharist as baptism, word, eucharist. Most of us were baptized as infants; we were then introduced to Jesus through the stories in the gospels, perhaps through the Acts of the Apostles and the letters of Paul, and the great texts of the Jewish Scriptures, such as the prophet Isaiah. That in turn led on to our receiving the Eucharist. For us who have been baptized, the connection between word and Eucharist remains very close. At every Mass we first have the Liturgy of the Word, and then the Liturgy of the Eucharist. The word nourishes our faith, and it is out of that nourished faith that we come to the Eucharist. The bread of the word prepares us for the bread of the Eucharist. The bread of the word is a necessary first course, as it were, that prepares us to receive the Eucharist well.

And/Or

(v) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

If we look across the two readings this morning we find an interesting sequence. We begin with an Ethiopian, who was clearly drawn to Judaism in some way. He is coming from Jerusalem and is reading from the text of the prophet Isaiah, without really understanding what he is reading. He is a seeker after truth, after God. On his search he meets with a companion who helps him to find an answer to some of his questions, who throws light on the word of God that has so intrigued him. Having been touched by God’s word, he is ready for baptism. Philip, who helped to open up God’s word for him, goes on to baptize him. The proclamation of the word leads to baptism and then in the gospel reading Jesus speaks in language that is clearly Eucharistic, ‘the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world’. As the search for God leads to the hearing of the word and as the hearing of the word leads to baptism, so baptism leads us to the Eucharist. The sequence for us has been a little different, because it began with baptism. We then received the Eucharist at a relatively early age. We can easily miss out on that earlier stage that we find in our readings, the stage of engaging with the Scriptures, questioning them and searching for answers to our questions. That stage is more appropriate to adulthood. When we engage in it, it helps us to appreciate more fully both the sacrament of baptism and of the Eucharist.

And/Or

(vi) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading, Jesus makes the striking statement, ‘everybody who believes in me has eternal life’. He does not say, ‘will have eternal life’, but he says, ‘has eternal life’. We would normally think of eternal life as beginning after our earthly life is completed, but this morning’s gospel reading suggests that eternal life is somehow accessible to us here and now, during this earthly life. Eternal life in the gospel of John is understood as a life of communion with Jesus, the source of true life. Such a life of communion with the Lord can be experienced here and now by all those who believe in him, who come to him in faith and who try to keep his word. In so far as we are in communion with the Lord in this life we already experience something of the eternal life that awaits us. Communion with the Lord is the gateway to eternal life here and now and beyond this life. We traditionally use the term ‘holy communion’ to refer to the Eucharist. We recognize that in and through the Eucharist we enter into communion with the Lord, and with each other, in a special way. Because it is a time of communion with the Lord, the church has always understood the Eucharist as the anticipation of eternal life. In this moment of communion, heaven comes to earth and eternal life breaks into this earthly life.

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(vii) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

In this morning’s first reading we have a striking example of faith seeking understanding. An Ethiopian officer at the court of the Queen of Ethiopia was on his way from Jerusalem to Gaza. Coming as he was from Jerusalem, he was clearly drawn to the Jewish faith. On his way to Gaza, he sat in his chariot to read from the Jewish Scriptures, the book of Isaiah. He did not understand what he was reading. When one of the early preachers of the gospel, Philip, approached the Ethiopian, he asked Philip to explain to him what he was reading, ‘Tell me, is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ Here indeed was faith seeking understanding. Philip’s teaching led to the Ethiopian requesting baptism. When it comes to our faith, there is a great deal to understand. Ultimately, the object of our faith is beyond full human understanding, at least in this life. Yet, the journey of seeking to understand our faith is one we are all invited to set out on. In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus calls on the crowd to hear the teaching of the Father, and to learn from it. Jesus suggests that God is always teaching us and encouraging us to be learners. A little later in that same gospel of John, Jesus declares that, after his death and resurrection, he will send us the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, who will guide us into all the truth. As our faith seeks understanding, we are assured of the guidance of the Spirit, without whom true understanding is not possible.

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(viii) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus declares both ‘everybody who believes has eternal life’ and ‘anyone who eats this bread will live for ever’. It appears that eating Jesus the bread of life is an image for believing in Jesus. However, when Jesus goes on to say, ‘the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world’, the term ‘bread’ begins to acquire a Eucharistic meaning. Jesus will go on to speak about the need to eat his flesh and drink his blood, which has even clearer Eucharistic overtones. Yet, eating the bread that is Jesus, in the sense of believing in Jesus, comes before eating his flesh or his body in the Eucharist. The Eucharist, like all the sacraments, presupposes faith. We first come to Jesus in faith before we come to him in the Eucharist. We find a similar pattern in the first reading. The faith of the Ethiopian is first nurtured by Philip through his proclamation of the word before the Ethiopian comes to celebrate the Sacrament of Baptism. The Sacrament of Baptism, like the Sacrament of the Eucharist, also presupposes faith. In the case of infants, it is the faith of the parents and family and the faith of the believing community that is presupposed. The first reading reminds us that an encounter with the Lord in his word is often prior to an encounter with him in the Sacraments. The word of the Lord nurtures our faith in preparation for our encounter with him in the Sacraments.

And/Or

(ix) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

There are a number of similarities between the story of the Ethiopian in today’s first reading, from the Acts of the Apostles. and the story of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus in Luke’s first volume, his gospel. The two disciples were journeying away from Jerusalem when the risen Lord joined them in the form of a stranger and opened the Scriptures for them. The Ethiopian eunuch was journeying away from Jerusalem when Philip, one of the missionaries of the early church, joined them and opened up the Scriptures for him. The opening up of the Scriptures for the two disciples led them to the recognition of the Lord in the breaking of bread, the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The opening up of the Scriptures for the Ethiopian led him to the Sacrament of baptism. In both cases, the hearing of the Word led to a deeper encounter with the Lord in the Sacrament. Afterwards, both the two disciples and the Ethiopian went on their way rejoicing. That sequence of word leading to sacrament has always been central to the church’s life. It is present again in today’s gospel reading. In that reading, Jesus declares that we first need ‘to hear the teaching of the Father and learn from it’ before we can come to him as the bread of life who gives us his flesh, his body, for the life of the world. Listening to God’s word prepares us, disposes us, to recognize and receive the Lord who comes to us in the Sacraments. Today’s first reading suggests that such listening to God’s word will often entail a struggle to understand it. The Ethiopian was full of questions as he listened to God’s word. The story of the Ethiopian shows that such questions are not an obstacle on our journey towards the Lord but can serve that journey well.

And/Or

(x) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

The portrayal of the Ethiopian in today’s gospel reading suggests that he was engaged in a spiritual search. He had been on pilgrimage to Jerusalem. People who go on pilgrimage are often seeking to know God more fully. On his way home from the pilgrimage, he continued to engage in his spiritual quest, reading from the prophet Isaiah. It is notable that the text says that Philip heard him reading Isaiah the prophet. The Ethiopian was not reading silently to himself; he was reading aloud. This was how people usually read the Scriptures at that time, even when they were alone. His reading of the passage gave rise to a question for him that he sought an answer to from Philip, ‘Tell me, is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ When Philip then proclaimed the gospel to him, the Ethiopian took a further initiative on his spiritual quest, again in the form of a question, ‘Look, there is some water here; is there anything to stop me being baptized?’ Having been baptized by Philip, the Ethiopian went on his way rejoicing. Even though the Lord drew near to the Ethiopian through Philip, the Ethiopian himself was drawing near to the Lord, through his reading of the Scriptures, his questioning spirit, and his request for baptism. In the gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me’. God the Father is always drawing us to his Son, as he drew the Ethiopian to Jesus through Philip. Yet, we ourselves need to take our own steps towards the Lord, the kind of steps the Ethiopian took, if the drawing of the Father is to bear fruit in our lives. Even though God’s quest for us is the more fundamental one, we need to be engaged in our own quest for God. The story of the Ethiopian shows that if we seek the Lord we will find him, because the Lord is always seeking us. These anxious days, when some have more time and space than they might usually have, can be a good moment to enter more fully into our search for the Lord who is always seeking us.

And/Or

(xi) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading Jesus declares that our coming to Jesus is in response to the drawing of the Father, ‘no one can come to me unless they are drawn by the Father who sent me’. God the Father draws all people to his Son and our coming to Jesus is in response to the drawing of the Father. Our coming to believe in Jesus is always in response to the initiative of God the Father towards us. God is always drawing us towards his Son and if we come to Jesus, God’s Son, it is because we have responded to the drawing of God the Father. God will seek to draw us to his Son in a variety of ways. In today’s first reading, an Ethiopian court official comes to faith in Jesus. God the Father draws him to his Son firstly through the Scriptures, the Word of God. As he read from the prophet Isaiah, questions rose in his heart and mind. ‘To whom is the prophet referring, himself or someone else?’ His questions arising from his reflective reading of the Scriptures were the means through which God was drawing him to his Son. God continued to draw the Ethiopian to Jesus through the ministry of Philip, who was able to engage with the Ethiopian’s questions in a helpful way. This led to the Ethiopian asking Philip on coming upon some water, ‘Is there anything to stop me being baptized?’ God the Father brought him to the point where he asked for baptism. He was immersed into the risen life of Jesus. Even those of us who have been baptized and who have come to believe in Jesus are being drawn more closely to Jesus by God the Father. God continues to draw us to his Son through the Word of God and through the ministry of other people of faith, like Philip. God never stops drawing us to his Son. In response, he looks to us for something of the same openness to being drawn displayed by the Ethiopian in our first reading.

And/Or

(xii) Thursday, Third Week of Easter

In the gospel reading, Jesus declares that all who come to him have been drawn to him by the Father, ‘No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me’. God is always drawing us towards his Son, who says of himself in the gospel reading, ‘I am the bread of life’. God draws us towards his Son as the one who can satisfy the deepest spiritual hunger of our heart. God often draws us to his Son in and through other people of faith. In the first reading, God initially draws the Ethiopian to his Son through the Scriptures. When the Ethiopian reflects on a passage from Isaiah, he begins to ask questions, ‘Is the prophet referring to himself or someone else?’ He needed the help of a person of faith to answer this question, the help of the deacon Philip. God who began to draw the Ethiopian to his Son through the Scriptures now draws him fully to his Son through the spiritual accompaniment of Philip, the preacher of the gospel. Philip’s ministry to the Ethiopian led the Ethiopian to take an initiative of his own, ‘Look, there is some water here; is there anything to stop me being baptized?’ It is as if the final step of God drawing the Ethiopian to his Son was through the medium of creation, water. Having allowed God to work through him to bring the Ethiopian to Jesus, Philip moved on from him, and the Ethiopian continued on his way rejoicing. God will find many ways of bringing us to his Son, if we allow ourselves to be drawn.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

17th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:35-40) for Wednesday, Third Week of Easter.: ‘I am the bread of life’.

Wednesday, Third Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:35-40 It is my Father's will that whoever sees the Son should have eternal life.

Jesus said to the crowd:

‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst. But, as I have told you, you can see me and still you do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I shall not turn him away; because I have come from heaven, not to do my own will, but to do the will of the one who sent me. Now the will of him who sent me is that I should lose nothing of all that he has given to me, and that I should raise it up on the last day. Yes, it is my Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and that I shall raise him up on the last day.’

Gospel (USA) John 6:35-40 This is the will of my Father, that all who see the Son may have eternal life.

Jesus said to the crowds, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst. But I told you that although you have seen me, you do not believe. Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and I will not reject anyone who comes to me, because I came down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of the one who sent me. And this is the will of the one who sent me, that I should not lose anything of what he gave me, but that I should raise it on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him may have eternal life, and I shall raise him on the last day.”

Reflections (5)

(i) Wednesday, Third Week of Easter

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus tried to preach the gospel to a Samaritan village, but the Samaritans rejected him. Now, in Luke’s second volume, the Acts of the Apostles, the risen Lord preaches the gospel again to the Samaritans through Philip, as described in our first reading. On this occasion the Samaritans ‘united in welcoming the message Philip preached’. The Samaritans’ rejection of Jesus did not mean the Lord’s rejection of them. The Lord never takes our ‘no’ to him as final. He continues to offer himself and the gift of his gospel to us, in the hope that our ‘no’ will become a ‘yes’. In today’s gospel reading Jesus declares, ‘Whoever comes to me, I shall not turn away’. Even though we may have turned away from him in the past, he does not turn away from us. If we come to him, even having initially turned away from him, he will not turn us away because, as he declares in the gospel reading, it is his Father’s will that ‘whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life’. There is a time for every matter under heaven, according to the Book of Ecclesiastes. According to Luke, the public ministry of Jesus wasn’t the time for the Samaritans to respond to the gospel (contrary to the gospel of John!) but the preaching of Philip in the period after Pentecost was the time for them to welcome the gospel message. Like the father in the parable of the prodigal son, the Lord knows how to wait on us. He is prepared to wait on our timing, just as he waited on the timing of Paul of Tarsus. According to our first reading, Paul initially ‘worked for the total destruction of the church’. However, after the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus, Paul went on to become the great apostle to the pagans in response to the Lord’s call. The great persecutor of the church has left us wonderful letters to his churches which have nurtured the faith of the Lord’s disciples for the past two thousand years. The story of the Samaritans and the story of Paul reminds us that the Lord’s time is always ‘today’.

And/Or

(ii) Wednesday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s first reading, Philip preaches the gospel in Samaria and the people there unite in welcoming the message Philip preached. In Luke’s first volume, Jesus had attempted to preach the gospel to a Samaritan village but they rejected Jesus because he was heading for Jerusalem. Now the risen Lord, through Philip, preaches the gospel to the Samaritans and this time they welcome the gospel. The Lord continues to offer the gospel even to those who have rejected it. Even though we may turn from the Lord at times, he never turns from us. This is in keeping with what Jesus says in today’s gospel reading, ‘Whoever comes to me I shall never turn away’. Easter celebrates the faithfulness of God to his Son Jesus, and the faithfulness of Jesus to all of us. The Lord’s faithfulness encourages us to keep turning back to him, to keep coming to him, even after we have turned away from him. Even when we fail to respond to his coming, he remains for us the bread of life and he continues to promise that if we come to him we will never hunger and if we believe in him we will never thirst.

And/Or

(iii) Wednesday, Third Week of Easter

There is a striking statement in today’s first reading, ‘Saul then worked for the total destruction of the church’. In the immediate aftermath of the martyrdom of Stephen, Saul, the zealous Pharisee, set himself the task of destroying this heretical Jewish movement. It was this same Saul who went on to become the greatest missionary in the early church, bringing the gospel to major cities in modern day Turkey and Greece. In the gospel reading, Jesus declares that he came to do his Father’s will, which is that all who see the Son and believe in him shall have eternal life. Saul or Paul, while in the very act of persecuting the church, came to see the Son and believe in him and received the gift of eternal life. Paul saw the Son because the risen Lord appeared to him just outside Damascus. We have not seen the Son in the way Paul did; the risen Lord has not appeared to us as he appeared to Paul. Yet, we see him with the eyes of faith. We recognize him in the Eucharist as ‘the bread of life’, in the language of today’s gospel reading. It is Paul who in his letters teaches us that through baptism we have become members of the Lord’s body, temples of his Spirit, sons and daughters of God, sharing in Jesus’ own relationship with God. Although Paul had seen the risen Lord in a unique sense, he didn’t consider the members of the church to whom he wrote, including ourselves, to be any less privileged than himself. It is Paul, the former persecutor of the church, who reminds us in his letters that the bread that we break and the cup that we bless in the Eucharist is a communion with the body and blood of Christ. Our union with Christ through baptism is thereby strengthened in the Eucharist. It is Paul who teaches us in his letters that this communion with the Lord that we enjoy in this life will not be broken by death, because our ultimate destiny is ‘to be with the Lord forever’, as he says. We can be grateful to this former persecutor of the church for opening us for up the riches of our Christian identity and destiny.

And/Or

(iv) Wednesday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says, ‘whoever comes to me I shall not turn away’. It is a statement that reveals the welcoming nature of the Lord’s presence. Those who come to him will find a welcome from him. The opening invitation of Jesus in this gospel is ‘Come and see’. He invites people to come to him and he promises those who do so that he will never turn them away. In this he is being true to God’s will which is, according to the gospel reading, that all who see the Son and believe in him shall have eternal life’. It is as the source of life, as the one who can satisfy our deepest hungers and thirsts, that Jesus invites people to come to him, while assuring them that they will never be turned away if they do come. It is said of Saul in the first reading that he worked for the total destruction of the church. Saul sought to destroy all who responded to the welcoming invitation of Jesus. There will always be forces in our world that are hostile to our coming to Jesus. Yet, the later experience of Saul suggests that not only does the Lord welcome those who come to him but he seeks out those who are hostile to him. Saul eventually came to Jesus because Jesus went after him. The Lord who welcomes us when we come to him also seeks us out when we walk away from him. When we don’t come to him, he comes after us, not in anger but in love. He is always driven by God the Father’s will that all should see the Son and believe in him and so have eternal life.

And/Or

(v) Wednesday, Third Week of Easter

We sometimes find ourselves asking, ‘What is God’s will for my life?’ We often struggle to answer that question. Today’s gospel reading is clear about God’s will for humanity in a general sense, ‘It is my Father’s will that whoever sees the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life’. God, who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, wills that all humanity would come to believe in his Son and, so, find life. Indeed, the verses following on from our reading state that the Father draws people to the Son. Jesus declares, ‘no one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me’. God not only wills that people come to the Son but draws them there. Because Jesus has come to do the will of the one who sent him, he states in our reading that ‘whoever comes to me I shall never drive away’. Jesus is not in the business of driving people away from him, because this is not God’s business. Elsewhere in John’s gospel Jesus declares, ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself’. Not only does the Father draw people to his Son, but Jesus, the risen Lord, draws people to himself. There is a kind of divine gravitational pull towards Jesus, the Bread of Life, who alone can satisfy the basic hungers and thirsts of the human heart. The gospel reading invites us to ask the question, ‘Can we allow ourselves to be drawn?’ In the first reading, the Samaritans are drawn to the Lord through Philip’s preaching of the gospel. In Luke’s first volume, his gospel, the Samaritans refused to be drawn to Jesus, rejecting Jesus’ request for hospitality in their villages, because he was a Jew, heading for Jerusalem. However, the Lord continued to draw them to himself and the time came when they were ready to be drawn. Even though we may resist the drawing power of the Lord, he does not give up on us. He continues to draw us to himself, waiting for the time when we are ready to come to him so that we may have life to the full.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

16th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:30-35) for Tuesday, Third Week of Easter: ‘I am the bread of life'.

Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:30-35 It is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven.

The people said to Jesus, ‘What sign will you give to show us that we should believe in you? What work will you do? Our fathers had manna to eat in the desert; as scripture says: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ Jesus answered:

‘I tell you most solemnly, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven, it is my Father who gives you the bread from heaven, the true bread; for the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’

‘Sir,’ they said ‘give us that bread always.’ Jesus answered:

‘I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never be hungry; he who believes in me will never thirst.’

Gospel (USA) John 6:30-35 It was not Moses, but my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.

The crowd said to Jesus: “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you? What can you do? Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written:

He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”

So Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave the bread from heaven; my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

So they said to Jesus, “Sir, give us this bread always.” Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.”

Reflections (12)

(i) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

More than once in the gospels, people come to Jesus asking him to perform a sign before they will take him seriously. In today’s gospel reading people ask Jesus, ‘What sign will you give to show us that we should believe in you? What work will you do?’ This is immediately after Jesus had done the work of feeding a large crowd with five barley loaves and two fish. Here was a work that was a sign for those with eyes to see. This work pointed beyond itself to Jesus’ true identity. His feeding of the crowd with bread and fish was a sign that Jesus was ‘the bread of life’ in the language of today’s gospel reading. The real significance of Jesus’ miraculous work of the crowd lay in what it has to say about who Jesus is for all those who believe in him. The crowd who were fed would become hungry again, however, Jesus remains the bread of life for all who come to him, not just during his public ministry, but for all future generations who will come to him as risen Lord. Jesus is our Bread of Life today. The promise he makes in today’s gospel reading is made to each one of us, ‘those who come to me will never be hungry; those who believe in me will never thirst’. The risen Lord promises to satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts in our heart, the hunger and thirst for love, for forgiveness, for justice, for peace, for communion, for life to the full. There is a sense in which those deeper hungers and thirsts will only be fully satisfied at the heavenly banquet in the kingdom of God. However, Jesus’ promises pertains not just to the ultimate future but also to the present. Here and now, in our own place and time, he is bread of life for all who believe in him and for all who come to him. We encounter the Lord as Bread of Life in a special way at the Eucharist, yet the Lord’s invitation to come to him as Bread of Life is not limited to the Eucharist. He is our daily bread of life, in every place and time.

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(ii) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

In this morning’s first reading, Stephen is stoned to death by those who found his preaching offensive. Luke who wrote the Acts of the Apostles portrays Stephen’s way of dying in a manner that would call to mind how Jesus died. As Jesus on the cross prayed, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’, Stephen prays to the risen Jesus, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’. As Jesus on the cross prayed, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’, Stephen prays to the risen Jesus, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’. In other words, Luke presents Stephen as having the same relationship with Jesus that Jesus has with his heavenly Father. We are all called to have the same relationship with Jesus that Jesus has with his Father. Jesus’ intimate relationship with God his Father is to be the model of our relationship with Jesus. In the gospel reading this morning from the gospel of John, Jesus invites us into this intimate relationship with himself. He offers himself to us as the bread of life and calls on us to come to him, to believe in him, so that our deepest hunger will be satisfied and our deepest thirst quenched. We spend our lives responding to this invitation. The coming to him that believing in him involves is a constant coming; it is the journey of a lifetime, a journey into an ever deeper and more intimate relationship with the Lord. A little on in John’s gospel Jesus expresses the nature of this journey in another form when he calls on us to abide in his love, just as he abides in his Father’s love.

And/Or

(iii) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

We have become very aware in recent times of the persecution of Christians in parts of the Middle East and in other parts of the world. It appears that Christians have no future in territories that are currently controlled by ISIS in particular. Huge numbers of believers have been put to death, simply because they profess the name of Jesus. It has been said that there are more Christian martyrs in these years than at any time in the church’s history. Today’s first reading from the Acts of the Apostles is Luke’s account of the death of the first Christian martyr, Stephen. According to Luke, Stephen’s way of dying reflected how Jesus died. As Jesus entrusted his spirit to God, Stephen entrusted his spirit to the risen Lord. As Jesus died with a prayer asking God to forgive those responsible for his death, Stephen died asking the risen Lord not to hold the sin of his executioners against them. Jesus and Stephen died as they lived. They show us not simply how to die but how to live. We too are to live, entrusting ourselves to the Lord and revealing his love and mercy to those we meet, including those who sin against us. If we are to live in this way, we need the Lord’s help. We need to keep on receiving the Lord into our lives as Bread of life, in the words of Jesus in this morning’s gospel reading.

And/Or

(iv) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

The children who make their first Holy Communion are familiar with the term ‘bread of life’ that Jesus uses with reference to himself in this morning’s gospel reading. They understand that what they receive is bread, but it is not ordinary bread; it is the bread of life. When Jesus says, ‘I am the bread of life’, it is the first of seven ‘I am’ expressions that Jesus uses with reference to himself in the fourth gospel. He will go on to say, ‘I am the light of the world’, ’I am the gate’, ‘I am the good shepherd’,  ‘I am the resurrection and the life’, ‘I am the vine’, ‘I am the way, the truth and the life’. The fact that the fourth evangelist has Jesus speak of himself in this way seven times is not by accident. The number seven in the biblical world is always a symbol of completion or fullness. Each time Jesus uses any of these seven expressions with reference to himself in this gospel, he is identifying himself as God’s life-giving presence in human form. More specifically, in declaring himself to be the Bread of Life, he is saying that he alone can satisfy the deepest hungers of the human heart. That is why Jesus’ invitation to us in this gospel of John is the simple invitation, ‘Come’, ‘Come and see, ‘Come and eat’. We spend our earthly lives trying to respond to that life-giving invitation.

And/Or

(v) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

Chapter 6 of John’s gospel from which we are reading all this week is very much a Eucharistic chapter. Unlike the other three gospels, John’s gospel has no account of the actual institution of the Eucharist, but it does have this wonderful chapter, which is unique to this gospel and which is full of Eucharistic themes. In this morning’s gospel Jesus contrasts the bread with which the people of Israel were fed by Moses on their way through the wilderness en route to the promised land with the true bread, the bread of God, which is given not just to the people of Israel but to the world. What is this true bread, this bread of God? Jesus goes on to identify himself as this bread, ‘I am the bread of life’, he says. Jesus gives himself to us as the bread of life on our own journey towards the promised land of heaven. Jesus is our fundamental resource on our pilgrimage through life. He nourishes us spiritually in the Eucharist, but in other ways as well, such as in and through his word. His word is in its own way bread of life. He nourishes us with his Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Our calling is, in the words of the gospel reading, to come to him and to receive.

And/Or

(vi) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

This morning’s first reading gives us the account of the death of Stephen the first martyr. This reading contains the first reference to Saul in the Acts of the Apostles. He is present at the death of Stephen and entirely approves of the killing. Saul would go on to become the great apostle to the Gentiles. Perhaps the courageous witness of Stephen left some kind of impression on Saul and sowed a seed which would later bear much fruit. God may have touched Saul in some way through the witness of Stephen. We need each other’s witness. Our faith is strengthened by the witness of others, just as it is weakened by the lack of witness of others. One aspect of Stephen’s witness was his willingness to forgive his enemies. His final words were, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’. Stephen’s willingness to forgive his executioners echoed Jesus’ own willingness to forgive those who crucified him. In this way, both Jesus and Stephen revealed something of God’s willingness to forgive each of us. Stephen’s death revealed something of God. If we witness to our faith in such a way that we reveal something of God, then God will certainly touch the lives of others through us.

And/Or

(vii) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading, the people ask Jesus what sign he will give to show them that they should believe in him, in spite of the fact that he had just fed them with bread and fish in the wilderness. Jesus does not answer their question. He does not meet their demand. We cannot make demands on Jesus which have to be met before we believe in him. Our relationship with him does not work in that way. The crowd were trying to bargain with Jesus; do one more sign and we will believe in you. We cannot bargain with the Lord in that way. Instead of granting the crowd’s request, Jesus declares himself to be the bread of life and promises that those who come to him will never be hungry. They are being challenged to take Jesus at his word. This is the essence of believing in Jesus according to the gospel of John. We are to take Jesus at his word and to respond to him accordingly. This morning we are being asked to recognize Jesus as the bread of life, the one who can satisfy our deepest hungers, and, on the basis of that recognition, to come to him and to keep on coming to him.

And/Or

(viii) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

The first reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles describes the martyrdom of Stephen, the first recorded Christian martyr. Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, describes the death of Stephen in a very similar way to how he had described the death of Jesus in his first volume, the gospel. Just as Jesus prayed to God, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’, so Stephen prays to the risen Lord, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’. Just as Jesus prayed to God, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’, so Stephen prays to the risen Lord, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’. It is as if Luke is saying that the fundamental attitudes of Jesus are to be reproduced in that of his followers. The risen Lord seeks to continue living out his life in and through his followers, and that includes us all. Because the Lord wants to live out his life in us, he invites us to come to him as our bread of life, in the words of this morning’s gospel reading – ‘I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry’. Our coming to the Lord in faith, and our receiving nourishment from him, creates an opening for him to live out his life in us, so that, in some way, we can continue to give flesh to his fundamental outlook and attitudes.

And/Or

(ix) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

The first reading this morning from the Acts of the Apostles describes the martyrdom of Stephen, the first recorded Christian martyr. Luke, who wrote the Acts of the Apostles, describes the death of Stephen in a very similar way to how he had described the death of Jesus in his first volume, the gospel. Just as Jesus prayed to God, ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do’, so Stephen prays to the risen Lord, ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’. Just as Jesus prayed to God, ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’, so Stephen prays to the risen Lord, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’. It is as if Luke is saying that the fundamental attitudes of Jesus are to be reproduced in that of his followers. The risen Lord continues to live out his life in and through his followers, and that includes us all. If the Lord is to live out his life in us, we need to come to him as our bread of life, in the words of this morning’s gospel reading. ‘I am the bread of life, whoever comes to me will never be hungry’. It is only in coming to the Lord in faith, and receiving nourishment from him, that we will be able to reproduce, in some way, his life, his presence, his fundamental attitudes.

And/Or

(x) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

In the gospel reading this morning the people of Jesus come to him looking for a sign so that they can believe in him. Jesus refuses to give them a sign. Instead he points to himself. He is the sign; he is the sacrament of God’s presence. He points to himself as the bread of life, as the one who can satisfy the deepest hunger and thirst in our lives. ‘Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, whoever believes in me will never thirst’. We all hunger and thirst for love, for forgiveness, for light in our darkness, for new life in our various dyings, for strength in our weakness. Jesus points to himself as the one who can satisfy such hunger and thirst. We do not have to go looking for the spectacular sign, the unusual phenomenon. The Lord is all we need because he alone is the bread of life. He is present to us as bread of life in his word and in the Eucharist. He calls on us, as he called on people in the gospel reading, to come to him, to believe in him. If we do that and begin to taste and see that the Lord is good, we won’t find ourselves looking for signs of one kind or another; we won’t need them.

And/Or

(xi) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading we find one of the great ‘I am’ statements attributed to Jesus in the fourth gospel. ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry; whoever believes in me will never thirst’. The image of bread corresponds to that of hunger, but the reference to thirst is perhaps surprising in this context. The language of ‘bread’, ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst’ is clearly symbolic. Jesus is declaring that he alone can satisfy the deepest hunger and thirst of the human heart. In the next chapter of John’s gospel Jesus will say, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink’. The language of eating and drinking in this gospel are often symbolic of believing. Jesus is declaring that all who come to him and believe in him will find that their deepest spiritual hunger and thirst will be satisfied. He is stating that he is as essential to our spiritual lives as food and drink is to our physical lives. We are always aware of our physical hunger and thirst; we cannot ignore it. We try to eat and drink on a regular basis. The deeper, spiritual, hunger and thirst in our lives, while just as real, does not always reach the same level of awareness in us. We can much more easily neglect it. If we do so, there will be something seriously out of joint within us. Today’s gospel reading invites us to attend to that deeper hunger and thirst and to recognize Jesus as the one who alone can satisfy it fully.

And/Or

(xii) Tuesday, Third Week of Easter

In Luke’s gospel, Jesus dies with two prayers on his lips, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing’ and ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit’. In Luke’s second volume, Stephen dies with similar prayers on his lips, ‘Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’ and ‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them’. Whereas Jesus prays to God the Father, Stephen prays to the risen Lord.  Luke makes clear that these prayers of Stephen were inspired by the Spirit, ‘Stephen, filled with the Holy Spirit…’ Jesus’ prayers to God were also inspired by the Spirit who had shaped his whole life. These are Spirit-filled prayers which we are all invited to make our own. The response to today’s responsorial psalm encourages us to do just that, as it places a version of the prayer of Jesus and Stephen on our lips, ‘Into your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit’. It is a wonderful prayer to pray at the end of our lives, as Jesus and Stephen did. However, it is also a prayer we can pray throughout our lives. I often find myself praying, ‘Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit’. It is a prayer of trust which is worth praying at any time. We trust those we consider reliable. The Lord is totally reliable. In the words of today’s responsorial psalm, he is a rock of refuge for us, a mighty stronghold to save us. In the gospel reading, Jesus gives us another reason to entrust ourselves to him throughout our lives and not just as the end of our lives. Jesus speaks of himself as the bread of life who can satisfy our deepest hunger and quench our deepest thirst. Here is someone who is, indeed, worthy of our complete trust. Every day we are invited to entrust ourselves into his reliable hands so that we can draw strength from him we need to run the race and keep the faith, in the language of Paul.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

15th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies for Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:22-29) for Monday, Third Week of Easter: ‘Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures to eternal life’.

Monday, Third Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:22-29 Do not work for food that cannot last, but for food that endures to eternal life.

After Jesus had fed the five thousand, his disciples saw him walking on the water. Next day, the crowd that had stayed on the other side saw that only one boat had been there, and that Jesus had not got into the boat with his disciples, but that the disciples had set off by themselves. Other boats, however, had put in from Tiberias, near the place where the bread had been eaten. When the people saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into those boats and crossed to Capernaum to look for Jesus. When they found him on the other side, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered:

‘I tell you most solemnly, you are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat. Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life, the kind of food the Son of Man is offering you, for on him the Father, God himself, has set his seal.’

Then they said to him, ‘What must we do if we are to do the works that God wants?’ Jesus gave them this answer, ‘This is working for God: you must believe in the one he has sent.’

Gospel (USA) John 6:22-29 Do not work for food that perishes but for food that endures for eternal life.

[After Jesus had fed the five thousand men, his disciples saw him walking on the sea.] The next day, the crowd that remained across the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not gone along with his disciples in the boat, but only his disciples had left. Other boats came from Tiberias near the place where they had eaten the bread when the Lord gave thanks. When the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into boats and came to Capernaum looking for Jesus. And when they found him across the sea they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered them and said, “Amen, amen, I say to you, you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate the loaves and were filled. Do not work for food that perishes but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him the Father, God, has set his seal.” So they said to him, “What can we do to accomplish the works of God?” Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in the one he sent.”

Reflections (10)

(i) Monday, Third Week of Easter

There are several stories in the gospels of people who go looking for Jesus. In the gospel of John, Nicodemus went looking for Jesus at night. In the gospel of Luke, Zacchaeus goes looking for Jesus in broad daylight, even climbing a sycamore tree to see him. In today’s gospel reading, the people who had been fed by Jesus in the wilderness go looking for him, getting into boats and crossing the Sea of Galilee to find him. When those who look for Jesus eventually find him, they often discover that they get more than they had bargained for. Nicodemus heard Jesus say to him that he needed to be born of water and the Spirit. Zacchaeus heard Jesus invite himself to his home and go on to declare that salvation had come to this house. The people in today’s gospel reading heard Jesus say to them that they were looking for him for the wrong reasons. Having been feed with bread in the wilderness, they wanted more of the same. However, Jesus offers himself to them as someone who can satisfy not just their material hunger, but the deep, spiritual, hunger within them. He can give them not just physical food that cannot last, but food that endures to eternal life. He can offer himself to them as the Bread of Life, as one who responds to the deepest yearnings of their heart, for truth, for a love that endures, for a life over which death has no power. Believing in him as the one sent by God will open them up to receive all that he wants to give them. We are all invited to turn towards the Lord as the Bread of Life in trusting faith. We come before him because we know he has a fullness from which he wants us to receive, so that our deepest hungers and thirsts can be satisfied. The Eucharist is a privileged moment when we come before the Lord as the Bread of Life and open our hearts to all he can offer us.

And/Or

(ii) Monday, Third Week of Easter

In the gospel reading this morning, the people come to Jesus looking for more of the bread they ate when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish. In response, Jesus challenges them to work, not for food that cannot last, but for food that endures to eternal life. In a sense, Jesus is calling on them to get their priorities right, to put most energy into what is ultimately important. Yes, Jesus fed their physical hunger in the wilderness, but more importantly he wants to feed their spiritual hunger, their longing for true life, the life that endures forever, eternal life. Jesus is concerned when people are physically hungry, when their basic physical needs are not being met, but he always leads us beyond the level of the physical, the material, to more ultimate realities. Jesus takes seriously the horizon of this world in which we live and work, but he also shows us another horizon, a horizon that is not of this world. He wants to lead us towards that other horizon; he wants us to be where he now is, so that we can see his glory. If that is to happen, we must believe in him, as he said to the crowds in today’s gospel reading, ‘this is…’ To believe in him is to relate to him as he relates to us, to remain in him as he remains in us.

And/Or

(iii) Monday, Third Week of Easter

There tends to be a restlessness in all of us. That restlessness drives us to make contact with other people; it often leads us to set out on a journey of one kind or another, whether it is a physical journey, or an inner journey. There is something of the searcher, the seeker, in us all. At the deepest level of our being, we are searching for God. It was Saint Augustine who said that our hearts are restless until they rest in God. In the gospel reading this morning, the people of Galilee set out to look for Jesus. He had fed the multitude in the wilderness; this had made a great impression on them. Jesus was pleased that they came looking for him, but he wanted to refine their search. They looked for him as the giver of bread; Jesus wanted them to look for him as the giver of food that endures to eternal life. As Christians, we are all searching for Jesus in some sense. The gospel reading invites us to pay attention to why we are searching for him. What are we looking to him for? What do we expect from him? Perhaps, like the people of Galilee, our expectations are too small. What Jesus can offer us, more than anything else, is eternal life, a sharing in God’s own life. This sharing in God’s life begins here and now for those who turn to Jesus in faith, and comes to fullness in the life beyond death.

And/Or

(iv) Monday, Third Week of Easter

In this morning’s gospel reading the crowd, who had been fed by Jesus in the wilderness, go looking for him. To look for Jesus, to search for him, is a good thing. Yet, Jesus suggests to the crowd that they are searching for him for the wrong reasons. They want more of the bread that Jesus provided in the wilderness. They are searching for the material bread that Jesus had given them earlier, rather than for Jesus himself. Yes, Jesus gave them bread in the wilderness to eat, but, more importantly, he himself is the Bread of Life who can satisfy their deepest hunger, their spiritual hunger. In this morning’s gospel, Jesus calls on us to search for him for who he is rather than for what he can give us. The temptation is always to relate to people for what they might be able to give to us rather than relating to them for who they are. We are called to love others for themselves rather than for what we can get from them. What is true of our relationship with others is true to a greater extent of our relationship with Jesus. Rather than seeking the consolations of the Lord we are to seek the Lord of consolation. In the words of this morning’s gospel reading, we are to believe in the one that God has sent.

And/Or

(v) Monday, Third Week of Easter

In the gospel reading this morning, the people come to Jesus looking for more of the bread they ate when Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish. In response, Jesus challenges them to work, not for food that cannot last, but for food that endures to eternal life. Yes, Jesus fed them in the wilderness, but he has something more to give them, not just physical bread but a deeper and more enduring form of nourishment. As well as physical hungers, we also have deeper hungers within us, spiritual hungers and thirsts. In this morning’s gospel reading Jesus identifies himself as the one who can satisfy these deeper hungers in our hearts, the hunger for God, for a love that is faithful, for a life that endures beyond this life. The Lord will go on in that same chapter of John’s gospel to speak of himself as the bread of life. If we are to experience him as the bread of life, as the one who can satisfy our deepest hungers, we must believe in him, give ourselves to him in trust and faith. When the crowds ask Jesus, ‘What must we do to do the works God wants?’ Jesus replies that this is only one work God wants, to believe in the one God has sent. That is our fundamental calling, to come to the Lord in faith; all else follows from that. Our presence at the Eucharist is one of the primary ways we come to the Lord in faith and open ourselves to his presence as the bread of life.

And/Or

(vi) Monday, Third Week of Easter

At some level we are all seekers or searchers. We never stand still; we are always looking for more. At the heart of that search for more is a search for God, a search for the Lord who is God with us. At the beginning of today’s gospel reading we find the people of Galilee searching for Jesus. They got into boats by the shore of the Sea of Galilee after Jesus and his disciples and crossed to Capernaum looking for him. When they found Jesus, he addresses them and declares that they are looking for him for the wrong reasons. They want more of the bread that he multiplied in the wilderness. Jesus challenges them to look for him not as the provider of food that cannot last but as the provider of food that endures to eternal life. We can all look for Jesus for the wrong reasons. What we want from him does not always correspond to what he wants for us. What we want from him can be far too limited. He wants to give us what endures and we look for what perishes. We struggle to bring our prayers of petition into line with what the Lord wants to give us. Saint Paul says in his letter to the Romans that we do not know how to pray as we ought. He immediately goes on to say, ‘the Spirit helps us in our weakness’. This Easter season, we ask the Holy Spirit to shape our longing, our desires, so that they correspond more to the Lord’s desire for us.

And/Or

(vii) Monday, Third Week of Easter

In the gospel reading this morning Jesus makes a distinction between food that cannot last and food that endures to eternal life. He had just fed the people in the wilderness with bread and fish; he was very aware that people’s physical hunger needed to be satisfied. As the people continued to look for more of this physical food, Jesus called on them to look for food that endures to eternal life, food that satisfies the deepest hunger in our lives. Jesus has come not just to give people physical food but to give them the spiritual food of God’s presence, God’s life and God’s Spirit. The gospel reminds us that, while the physical and material is vital because we are physical and material beings, our searching must not stop at the physical and the material. There is a great deal more to life than the satisfaction of our physical needs. We have deeper, spiritual hungers and thirsts as well that we need to attend to if we are to live a truly balanced life and be at peace within ourselves. In the gospel reading Jesus offers himself to us as the one who offers us the food that endures to eternal life. He can satisfy the deepest hungers and thirsts in our hearts. Our seeking must ultimately be directed towards him; it cannot stop at or be satisfied with anything less.

And/Or

(viii) Monday, Third Week of Easter

It is probably true to say that we are all searching for something. We are all seekers. In today’s gospel reading, the crowd who had been fed by Jesus in the wilderness go to great lengths to seek him out. When they find him, Jesus reveals to them what it is that motivates their seeking. They are looking for more of the bread that Jesus had given them the day before. He tells them, ‘you are looking for me because you had all the bread you wanted to eat’. Jesus challenges them to look for something more enduring. He calls on them to work not just for food that cannot last, the food which satisfies their physical hunger, but to work for food that endures to eternal life, the food that can satisfy their deeper, spiritual, hunger. Jesus was concerned about people’s physical needs, their physical hungers. That is why he took action to feed the crowd in the wilderness when he saw that they were hungry. However, he was just as concerned, if not more concerned, with people’s spiritual hungers. He presents himself to the crowd as someone who can satisfy not just their physical hunger but their spiritual hunger. He wants the crowd and all of us to pay attention to that deeper, spiritual hunger, by believing in him as the one sent by the Father so that we may have life and have ii to the full. This deeper hunger is more easily neglected than our physical hunger. It is also true that just as we can eat poor quality food in an effort to satisfy our physical hunger, we can try to satisfy our spiritual hunger on poor quality fare. In today’s gospel reading, Jesus presents himself as the only one who can truly satisfy the deeper, spiritual, hunger in our lives.

And/Or

(ix) Monday, Third Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus speaks of two kinds of food, food that cannot last and food that endures to eternal life. He challenges the crowd to reflect on their priorities. Are they working for food that cannot last or for food that endures to eternal life? Jesus takes seriously food that cannot last. Jesus fed the hungry multitude in the wilderness with five loaves and two fish. The basis physical needs of people were very important for him. He fed the hungry, healed the sick; he called on the rich to share with the poor. These basic human physical needs had to be met first. However, having fed the physical hunger of the crowd, some of that crowd now want Jesus to give them more of the same. In response to this preoccupation with Jesus as the provider of physical bread, Jesus speaks of the food that endures to eternal life which he is offering. He is calling on those who have gone looking for him to attend to the deeper hunger in their lives, their spiritual hunger. Jesus presents himself as the one who can satisfy this spiritual hunger. That is why he equates working for the food that endures to eternal life with believing in him. Believing in him is the one work that is required if that deeper hunger in our lives is to be satisfied, the hunger for a love that is unconditional, for forgiveness, for truth, for justice, for peace, ultimately, our hunger for God. We cannot ignore our physical hunger; when we are hungry, we eat. We can ignore those deeper hungers which Jesus alone can satisfy. This is why he draws attention so strongly in today’s gospel to the importance of working for the food that endures to eternal life.

And/Or

(x) Monday, Third Week of Easter

In times of conflict and war, truth is often the first casualty. The aggressor in particular will often bend the truth to try and justify what they are attempting to do. The Jewish religious leaders who were hostile to Jesus were equally hostile to his followers who were proclaiming that God had raised Jesus from the dead. In today’s first reading, we hear of their antagonism to Stephen, a gifted preacher. They procured people to falsify what Stephen had said, ‘We heard him using blasphemous language against Moses and against God… This man is always making speeches against this Holy Place and the Law. We heard him say that Jesus the Nazarene is going to destroy this Place’. Although such accusations were essentially false, they would be a significant factor in the eventual death of Stephen by stoning. Jesus once said of himself, ‘I am the truth’. He revealed to us the truth about God, about what it is to be human, about creation. His followers are to be people of truth, who live by the truth that Jesus proclaimed and lived. Because he is the truth, he can satisfy the deep hunger in our hearts for truth. In the gospel reading, Jesus challenges the crowd to come to him not just as someone who can satisfy their physical hunger, which he had recently done, but as someone who can satisfy their deeper hungers, their hunger for truth, for a love that is faithful, for a life that is eternal. ‘Do not work for food that cannot last, but for food that endures to eternal life’. Jesus offers himself to them, and to us all, as one who can satisfy the deepest hungers of our heart. Such hungers will only be fully satisfied at the banquet of eternal life, but in so far as we keep coming to the Lord and opening our hearts to him, our deepest hungers will begin to be satisfied in the course of our earthly lives.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

[frmartinshomiliesandreflections]

14th April >> Fr. Martin's Homilies / Reflections on Today's Mass Readings (Inc. Luke 24:35-48)for the Third Sunday of Easter, Year B: ‘He then opened their minds to understand the Scriptures’.

Third Sunday of Easter (B)

Gospel (Except USA) Luke 24:35-48 It is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead.

The disciples told their story of what had happened on the road and how they had recognised Jesus at the breaking of bread. They were still talking about all this when Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, ‘Peace be with you!’ In a state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost. But he said, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts? Look at my hands and feet; yes, it is I indeed. Touch me and see for yourselves; a ghost has no flesh and bones as you can see I have.’ And as he said this he showed them his hands and feet. Their joy was so great that they still could not believe it, and they stood there dumbfounded; so he said to them, ‘Have you anything here to eat?’ And they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he took and ate before their eyes.

Then he told them, ‘This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms has to be fulfilled.’ He then opened their minds to understand the scriptures, and he said to them, ‘So you see how it is written that the Christ would suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that, in his name, repentance for the forgiveness of sins would be preached to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to this.’

Gospel (USA) Luke 24:35–48 Thus it was written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.

The two disciples recounted what had taken place on the way, and how Jesus was made known to them in the breaking of bread. While they were still speaking about this, he stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.” And as he said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While they were still incredulous for joy and were amazed, he asked them, “Have you anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of baked fish; he took it and ate it in front of them.

He said to them, “These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and in the prophets and psalms must be fulfilled.” Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. And he said to them, “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.”

Homilies (6)

(i) Third Sunday of Easter

Catholics of a certain generation associate fish with fasting from meat. Fish was often eaten on a Friday. It had a certain penitential association. It was considered a poorer relative of meat. That attitude has changed. Lots of people do not eat meat, and the benefits of eating fish have been highlighted.

There are lots of references to fish and fishing in the gospels, because some of Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen. Jesus himself fed the multitude in the wilderness with bread and fish. In today’s gospel reading, when the risen Lord asked his disciples, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he ate before their eyes. When Jesus eats in the gospels, he can either be the host or the guest. In our gospel reading, the risen Lord makes himself a guest of his disciples by asking them if they had anything to eat. He placed himself as a needy person in their debt. Perhaps this was the Lord’s way of trying to reassure his disciples that all was well between him and them. When he stood among them and offered them the gift of his peace, they were ‘in a state of alarm and fright’, thinking he was a ghost. Jesus had to ask them why they were so agitated, and why were so many doubts rising in their hearts. When he went on to show them his hands and his feet, the gospel readings says that ‘they stood dumbfounded’, and that ‘their joy was so great, they could not believe it’. There is a powerful depiction here of the impact of the risen Lord’s appearance to his disciples – alarm, fright, agitation, doubt, disbelief, dumfounded. The poor disciples didn’t know where they were. The ordinariness of eating a little bit of grilled fish might just calm them down.

There was something both extraordinary and ordinary about the appearance of the risen Lord to his disciples. It was extraordinary because how could someone who had been so brutally put to death by the Romans come back to life? It was also extraordinary because how could the Lord offer the gift of his peace, the gift of reconciliation, to the disciples who had failed him so badly during the hour of his passion and death, with one of them betraying him, another denying him, and all of them deserting him. How could anything good come out of the crucifixion of Jesus and the abject failure of his followers? The good news of Easter is that God brought wonderful new life out of the tragedy of Jesus’ death and the tragedy of the disciples’ failure. Jesus was not dead; he was alive with the life of heaven, over which death has no power. The disciples were not dead either; the Lord still had a mission for them. They were to proclaim the good news of Easter to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem, the good news that God’s merciful love is stronger than death and human failure, and all that is needed is for people to repent, to turn trustingly towards this merciful love present in the risen Lord. In the verses after our gospel reading, Jesus promises to empower his disciples for this mission by sending them the Holy Spirit. This extraordinary good news of Easter remains good news for us today. Just as death no longer has power over the risen Lord, death no longer has power over those who believe in him. Our ultimate destiny is to share in the Lord’s own risen life. Also, just as the disciples’ failure did not mean a definitive break in their relationship with the Lord, so our own failings and sins need not separate us from the Lord’s love. He continues to stand among us saying, ‘Peace be with you’. He remains faithful to us, even after we have turned away from him. All he asks is that we keep on turning back to him in trusting faith, acknowledging our failings and opening ourselves up to the Spirit of his merciful love. The Lord’s gift of his peace continues to transform us into his missionaries.

If there was something extraordinary about the appearances of the risen Lord to his disciples, there was also something very ordinary about it. What could be more ordinary than sharing a simple meal of fish? What could be more ordinary than conversing with someone on the road home, as happened when the Lord met the two disciples on the road to Emmaus? The risen Lord often stands among us in and through the ordinary circumstances of our day to day lives. According to today’s gospel reading, it was while the two disciples from Emmaus were telling their story to the other disciples of what had happened on the road and around their table that the risen Lord stood among them. We all have a story to tell about our relationship with the Lord. Whenever we find a space to share something of that story, we are creating an opening for the risen Lord to stand among us. Also, whenever we respond generously to those who asks the question the risen Lord asked, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ the risen Lord stands among us. Easter invites us to leave our minds and hearts open to the many ways the risen Lord is present to us in the common happenings of daily life.

And/Or

(ii) Third Sunday of Easter

Most of us if we look back over our lives will find something or other that we very much regret. We will almost certainly be able to identify times when we failed to live up to the values that we try to live by. We might remember speaking or acting in ways that hurt or damaged others. We might be aware of not doing something that we could have done and, that in our heart of hearts, wanted to do. Sometimes these experiences of personal failure can leave us very burdened. We can find it hard to move on from them; they trouble us and we struggle to be free of them. They can weight heavily on us and drain us of energy. We can find ourselves going back in memory to them over and over again.

The first disciples of Jesus must have felt like this in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion. They had not exactly covered themselves in glory during the time of Jesus’ final journey. They had all deserted the one who had given them so much of himself. Their mood in the aftermath of Good Friday can only have been one of deep regret. They must have felt that their relationship with Jesus was over, and, deservedly so. In all of the gospels, however, the first words that the risen Jesus speaks to his disciples when he appears to them is ‘Peace be with you’. This morning’s gospel reading states: ‘He stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you”’. These are words of reconciliation that sought to assure the disciples of the Lord’s forgiveness. For those first disciples, the initial experience of the risen Lord took the form of a profound experience of forgiveness. This was the risen Lord’s gift to them. The gift of forgiveness can be difficult to receive at times. We wonder if we are really forgiven. According to the gospel reading, when Jesus said ‘Peace be with you’, they responded with alarm and fright and thought that they might be seeing a ghost. The risen Jesus then questioned them, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?’ It took the disciples a while to realize that they were forgiven.

It is only after the disciples had come to receive this gift of forgiveness that they could be sent out as messengers of the Lord’s forgiveness to others. According to our gospel reading, the risen Lord, having assured them that they were forgiven, went on to commission them to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins to all the nations. It is forgiven sinners who are entrusted with the task of proclaiming the good news of God’s forgiving love to all. This is what we find Peter doing in today’s first reading. He declares to the people of Jerusalem that, although they had handed Jesus over to Pilate, God’s forgiveness was available to those who turn to God by believing in Jesus. The church has been faithful to the mission entrusted to the disciples, proclaiming down the centuries the good news that God’s forgiveness is stronger than human sin. In raising his Son from the dead, God was declaring that even when we reject God’s Son, God does not reject us. The risen Jesus reveals a faithful, forgiving God. Today’s second reading states this clearly: ‘If anyone does sin, we have our advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, who is just’.

Before we can receive the Easter gift of God’s forgiveness that comes to us through the risen Lord, we must first acknowledge our need of that gift. In the words of today’s second reading, we need ‘to admit the truth’. The truth is that we are always in need of the gift of God’s forgiveness. Recognizing our need and, in the light of that, asking God for that gift is what we call repentance. Peter in the first reading calls on the people of Jerusalem to repent and turn to God so that their sins may be wiped out. The risen Lord in the gospel reading sends out his disciples to preach repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Within the Catholic tradition, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is a privileged opportunity to admit the truth, to acknowledge our need of God’s forgiveness and to ask directly for it. In that sacrament that the risen Lord says to us, ‘Peace be with you’. The words of absolution include the prayer, ‘through the ministry of the church may God grant you pardon and peace’.

The first disciples, having received the gift of the Lord’s forgiveness, were sent out as heralds of that forgiveness to others. In a similar way, we who receive the same gift are sent out on the same mission. As forgiven sinners we proclaim with our lives the presence of a forgiving and faithful God. We extent to others the gift we have received from the Lord. This will not always come easy to us. Who was it who said, ‘to err is human, to forgive is divine’? If that is true, we need divine help to do what is divine. In the verses that immediately follow where today’s gospel ends, the risen Jesus promises his disciples that he would send the Holy Spirit upon them. It is only in the power of the Holy Spirit that they would be able to engage in the task that Jesus was entrusting to them. We need the same Spirit if we are to forgive as we have been forgiven. In the weeks ahead that precede the feast of Pentecost, we might pray the prayer, ‘Come Holy Spirit, fill my heart and enkindle in me the fire of your love’. We could pray this prayer especially during those times when we find ourselves struggling to pass on to others the gift of forgiveness that we continue to receive from the Lord.

And/Or

(iii) Third Sunday of Easter

We began a prayer meeting via Zoom for the season of Lent and we are continuing it into the season of Easter. It is based on the gospel reading for the following Sunday. There are times of silence to reflect on the reading, and then an opportunity for people to share how the word of God is speaking to them. Most of us have found that sharing to be very powerful. The Lord is not only speaking to us through the gospel reading, but also through the breaking of the word by those present. As people tell their story of how the Lord is speaking to them through the reading, they are sharing the Lord himself with the others in the group. It is good to have opportunities to share our faith story with others and to hear others share their faith story with us. We can be helped to experience the Lord’s presence by hearing others share the story of how the Lord has spoken to them through his word. We all have a personal story to tell, and included in that story is our faith story, the story of how the Lord relates to us.

That is what we find happening in today’s gospel reading. Two disciples had a wonderful experience of the risen Lord while they were making their sad journey home from Jerusalem to Emmaus in the aftermath of Jesus’ crucifixion. They were joined by a stranger. However, when this stranger broke the word of God with them, their hearts began to burn. They didn’t want to let go of their travel companion. When they reached their home village, they asked him to stay with them. It was at table in their home as the stranger took bread, broke it and gave it to them that they finally recognized him as Jesus, whose death they had just been mourning. They ran back to the city which they had been glad to leave earlier in the day. They had a story to tell, the story of the Lord’s coming to them in Word and Eucharist. They needed to tell this story to the other disciples and that is how our gospel reading begins, ‘The disciples told their story of what had happened on the road and how they had recognized him in the breaking of bread’.

It is striking that, according to the gospel reading, it was while the two disciples were telling their faith story and the others were engaging with it that the risen Lord appeared to the whole group in person. The two disciples’ sharing of their faith story with others created a space for the risen Lord to come and stand among them all. Whenever we have the freedom and the courage to share something of our faith story with others, we too will be creating an opening for the risen Lord to stand among us and touch our lives. Yet, the gospel reading also acknowledges the struggle we sometimes have to really believe that the Lord is risen and that he is standing among us. According to the gospel reading, when the risen Lord stood among the disciples, offering them the gift of his peace, they were in a ‘state of alarm and fright, they thought they were seeing a ghost’. Jesus had to ask them, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts’. Alarm, fright, agitation, doubt – these were the initial responses of the disciples to the presence of the risen Lord in their midst. The gospel reading goes on to say that even after the risen Lord showed them his hands and his feet, his wounds that spoke of his love for them and for all, ‘their joy was so great that they could not believe it’. Even when fear and doubt gave way to joy, they still could not believe that the Jesus was powerfully alive in their midst. We have no difficulty believing that Jesus was crucified. Many of us have crucifixes or crosses in our homes or on our persons. However, we can struggle to believe that Jesus is risen, that he stands among us as risen Lord. It is sometimes not as easy to believe in the risen Jesus as in the crucified Jesus. In that regard, we are no different to the first disciples. Today’s gospel reading suggests that Easter faith often grows in the midst of doubt and questions. Believing in the risen Lord is a journey that different people travel at different paces. Yet, what matters is our attitude, our openness to the various ways that the risen Lord may choose to come to us and touch our lives.

The first disciples had good reason to believe that if Jesus did come back to them after his crucifixion it would have been to reprimand them for deserting him in the hour of his passion and death. Yet, in all of the Easter stories of the gospels, there is no reprimand. The coming of the risen Lord to the disciples was for them a profound experience of forgiveness, ‘Peace be with you’. It was also a moment of mission, as the risen Lord sent them out to proclaim to others the forgiveness they had received. The risen Lord comes to us too to assure us that we are loved and forgiven and to send us out as ambassadors of his forgiving, reconciling, love to others.  

And/Or

(iv) Third Sunday of Easter

After we have been through a difficult experience, we can often find ourselves emotionally raw. We can be somewhat vulnerable and brittle, anxious and uneasy. Things that we might normally take in our stride can get us down.

That must have been the kind of space the disciples found themselves in after the crucifixion of Jesus. The person for whom they had left everything to follow had been cruelly put to death. The journey that started out near the Sea of Galilee with such hope and expectation had come to a devastating end on the hill called Golgotha, just outside the city of Jerusalem. In those last dark days and hours, the disciples had not exactly covered themselves in glory. They discovered to their shame and regret that they were only prepared to follow Jesus up to a point, and, certainly not along the way of the cross. In the wake of Good Friday, the disciples were dealing with a great sense of loss and a real sense of shame and guilt; they were also fearful. They worried lest what had happened to Jesus might also happen to them.

It was into that space of loss, shame, guilt and fear that the risen Jesus came. The first words Jesus spoke, according to our gospel reading this morning, were ‘Peace be with you’. We hear that greeting every time we celebrate Mass, just before we are invited to come and receive the Lord in Holy Communion. If the disciples had known in advance that the risen Lord was coming to them and that he would speak to them, they probably would not have anticipated that his first words to them would be ‘Peace be with you’. They might well have imagined that his first words to them would be words of rebuke, or words expressing sadness and disappointment at their failure to stand by him when he needed them. Yet, the words of Jesus did not reflect their failure in any way; rather, they reflected the Lord’s faithful love for them in spite of their failure. In saying, ‘Peace be with you’, the Lord is saying, ‘I am at peace with you and I invite you to be at peace with me and at peace with one another’. The Lord is constantly saying ‘Peace be with you’ to all of us. He says those words to us in a very powerful way in and through the Sacrament of Reconciliation and the Sacrament of the Eucharist. He can speak those words to us at any time, from within the silence of our hearts. We can find it difficult to say ‘Peace be with you’ to those who have disappointed us or hurt us or let us down badly. However, the Lord is not like us in that respect. In John’s gospel Jesus is portrayed as saying, ‘My own peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives’. Jesus does not relate to us as the world does, as other people relate to us or as we relate to others.

According to this morning’s gospel reading, when the risen Jesus stood among his disciples and said, ‘Peace be with you’, they were in a ‘state of alarm and fright’, so much so that Jesus asked them, ‘Why are you so agitated, and why are these doubts rising in your hearts?’ Something wonderful was happening for them; their shattered hopes were being rebuilt in a way they could never have conceived of, and, yet, there they were alarmed, frightened, agitated and full of doubt. We might find ourselves identifying rather easily with those disciples. Sometimes we too can find it difficult to accept the Lord’s gift of his peace, the gift of his reconciling love. We back away from that gift, for one reason or another. Maybe we find it hard to believe that we could be so graced; we consider that we are not deserving of such a gift. We can allow our own fears and doubts to drown out the Lord’s word of ‘peace’ to us. At the very moment when the Lord is drawing attention to what is best in us, we can be absorbed by what is worst in us.

In order to cut through his disciples’ fears and doubts the risen Lord showed them his hands and his feet – his wounds. These were the wounds of love; he had suffered for them, and for all; he had died that they, and all of us, might have life to the full. In showing them his wounds, the Lord finally broke through to them. Luke says, ‘their joy was so great that they could not believe it’. The Lord’s wounds can break through to all of us when his other approaches to us fail. Perhaps that is why Good Friday continues to speak to so many people. Our own sharing of our wounds, the sharing of our pain, can also build bridges to others. When we are at their most vulnerable, we often draw others to ourselves. When members of our family become ill, we are drawn to gather around them in a supportive, loving way. In attending to them, we are attending to the Lord. The Lord continues to reach out to us through the wounds of others, because such wounds are, in a very real sense, his own wounds.

And/Or

(v) Third Sunday of Easter

Paul Verlaine was a nineteenth century French poet. His early life was somewhat on the wild side. He was imprisoned for a time for having shot at his companion, a fellow poet. While he was in prison he had something of a conversion. His poems written while in prison are very moving. In one of his poems he addresses the risen Lord, ‘Lord... Beneath this troubled canopy where my heart has been digging out its tomb and where I feel the heavens flow towards me I ask you, by what road you’d have me come’. He is asking the Lord to show him the road on which he could come to him. Later in the same poem, the Lord says to him, ‘It is not you who must come to me; it is I who have chosen to come to you. Look at my hands stretched out to you. Here, eat; be nourished. Let your mind be opened to understand’. Verlaine came to understand that, rather than having to find the right road along which to come to the Lord, it was the Lord who was coming to him. He realized that the gap between himself and the Lord would be bridged by the Lord rather than by himself.

Verlaine’s uncertain mood in prison must have been similar to how the disciples felt after Good Friday. They had broken their relationship with Jesus by abandoning him when he needed them most. They had created a gap between themselves and the Lord; they must have felt that this gap was unbridgeable. There was no road they could take to undo what had been done. Yet, on that first Easter Sunday they discovered that the gap they had created between themselves and the Lord was bridged by the Lord. They could not come to him, but he came to them. This morning’s gospel reading suggests that when the Lord came to them, they found it almost impossible to believe. When he appeared among them, and said to them, ‘Peace be with you’, their reaction was one of alarm and fright. They were agitated and full of doubt. They thought he could not be real; theypresumed they were seeing a ghost. How could someone whom they had betrayed, denied, abandoned be standing among them now, offering them the gift of his peace, the gift of his reconciling love.

We are in the season of Easter, which is seven weeks long. The church gives us this lengthy period of Easter to help us reflect on the various dimensions of the meaning of Easter. Easter has many messages which are vitally important to us, the Lord’s followers, today. One of the messages the feast of Easter proclaims is the Lord’s faithfulness to us, in spite of our unfaithfulness to him. Because of our various failures and weaknesses, we can sometimes find ourselves wondering, like Verlaine in his prison, by what road we can come to the Lord from whom we have turned away. In response to that anxiety, the Lord says to us, ‘it is not you who must come to me; it is I who have chosen to come to you’. We can find that good news hard to believe at times. As was the case with the disciples in today’s gospel reading, doubts can rise in our hearts. Having failed to love the Lord in various ways, we doubt that he could love us in this all forgiving way. Yet, this is at the heart of the message of Easter. Easter invites us to open ourselves to the coming of the risen Lord who loves us in our weakness and frailty and empowers us to go forth renewed.

According to this morning’s gospel reading, the risen Lord broke through the self-doubt of his disciples in three ways. He firstly showed them his wounds. These weren’t just any old wounds. They were the wounds of that greater love which led Jesus to lay down his life for all. He continues to show us his wounds today, to bring home to us the depth of his love for us and the extent of his faithfulness to us. The Lord then opened the Scriptures for his disciples to help them to see that what happened to him, including his passion and death, was already contained within the Jewish Scriptures. The risen Lord continues to speak to us today through the Scriptures. He is present to us in his word, the word of the Lord. Finally, the risen Lord then shared a simple meal with his disciples to convince them that he wanted to be in communion with them in spite of their failures. The Lord continues to call us to his table today. It is above all at the table of the Eucharist that he enters into communion with us and invites us to enter into communion with him. It is in the Eucharist that we can really appreciate that the Lord has chosen to come to us in our brokenness and weakness. It is from the Eucharist that he sends us out in the power of his presence to be his witnesses in the world.

And/Or

(vi) Third Sunday of Easter

Catholics of a certain generation associate fish with fasting from meat. Fish was often eaten on a Friday. It had a certain penitential association. It was considered a poorer relative of meat. That attitude has changed. Lots of people do not eat meat, and the benefits of eating fish have been highlighted.

There are lots of references to fish and fishing in the gospels, because some of Jesus’ first disciples were fishermen. Jesus himself fed the multitude in the wilderness with bread and fish. In today’s gospel reading, when the risen Lord asked his disciples, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ they offered him a piece of grilled fish, which he ate before their eyes. When Jesus eats in the gospels, he can either be the host or the guest. In our gospel reading, the risen Lord makes himself a guest of his disciples by asking them if they had anything to eat. He placed himself as a needy person in their debt. Perhaps this was the Lord’s way of trying to reassure his disciples that all was well between him and them. When he stood among them and offered them the gift of his peace, they were ‘in a state of alarm and fright’, thinking he was a ghost. Jesus had to ask them why they were so agitated, and why were so many doubts rising in their hearts. When he went on to show them his hands and his feet, the gospel readings says that ‘they stood dumbfounded’, and that ‘their joy was so great, they could not believe it’. There is a powerful depiction here of the impact of the risen Lord’s appearance to his disciples – alarm, fright, agitation, doubt, disbelief, dumfounded. The poor disciples didn’t know where they were. The ordinariness of eating a little bit of grilled fish might just calm them down.

There was something both extraordinary and ordinary about the appearance of the risen Lord to his disciples. It was extraordinary because how could someone who had been so brutally put to death by the Romans come back to life? It was also extraordinary because how could the Lord offer the gift of his peace, the gift of reconciliation, to the disciples who had failed him so badly during the hour of his passion and death, with one of them betraying him, another denying him, and all of them deserting him. How could anything good come out of the crucifixion of Jesus and the abject failure of his followers? The good news of Easter is that God brought wonderful new life out of the tragedy of Jesus’ death and the tragedy of the disciples’ failure. Jesus was not dead; he was alive with the life of heaven, over which death has no power. The disciples were not dead either; the Lord still had a mission for them. They were to proclaim the good news of Easter to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem, the good news that God’s merciful love is stronger than death and human failure, and all that is needed is for people to repent, to turn trustingly towards this merciful love present in the risen Lord. In the following verses Jesus promises to empower his disciples for this mission by sending them the Holy Spirit. This extraordinary good news of Easter remains good news for us today. Just as death no longer has dominion over the risen Lord, death no longer has dominion over those who believe in him. Our ultimate destiny is to share in the Lord’s own risen life. Also, just as the disciples’ failure did not mean a definitive break in their relationship with the Lord, so our own failings and sins need not separate us from the Lord’s love. He continues to stand among us saying, ‘Peace be with you’. He remains faithful to us, even after we have turned away from him. All he asks is that we keep on turning back to him in trusting faith, acknowledging our failings and opening ourselves up to the Spirit of his merciful love. The Lord’s gift of his peace continues to release us from our failings and transform us into his missionaries.

If there was something extraordinary about the appearances of the risen Lord to his disciples, there was also something very ordinary about it. What could be more ordinary than sharing a simple meal of fish? What could be more ordinary than conversing with someone on the road home, as happened on the road to Emmaus? The risen Lord often stands among us in and through the ordinary circumstances of our day to day lives. According to today’s gospel reading, it was while the two disciples from Emmaus were telling their story to the other disciples of what had happened on the road and around their table that the risen Lord stood among them. We all have a story to tell about our relationship with the Lord. Whenever we find a space to share something of that story, we are creating an opening for the risen Lord to stand among us. Also, whenever we respond generously to those who asks the question the risen Lord asked, ‘Have you anything to eat?’ the risen Lord stands among us. Easter invites us to leave our minds and hearts open to the many ways the risen Lord is present to us in the common happenings of daily life.

Fr. Martin Hogan.

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13th April >> Fr. Martin's Reflections / Homilies for Today's Mass Readings (Inc. John 6:16-21) on Saturday, Second Week of Easter: ‘It is I! Do not be afraid’.

Saturday, Second Week of Easter

Gospel (Except USA) John 6:16-21 They saw Jesus walking on the lake.

In the evening the disciples went down to the shore of the lake and got into a boat to make for Capernaum on the other side of the lake. It was getting dark by now and Jesus had still not rejoined them. The wind was strong, and the sea was getting rough. They had rowed three or four miles when they saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming towards the boat. This frightened them, but he said, ‘It is I. Do not be afraid.’ They were for taking him into the boat, but in no time it reached the shore at the place they were making for.

Gospel (USA) John 6:16-21 They saw Jesus, walking on the sea.

When it was evening, the disciples of Jesus went down to the sea, embarked in a boat, and went across the sea to Capernaum. It had already grown dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they began to be afraid. But he said to them, “It is I. Do not be afraid.” They wanted to take him into the boat, but the boat immediately arrived at the shore to which they were heading.

Reflections (5)

(i) Saturday, Second Week of Easter

According to the verse before our gospel reading (John 6:15), Jesus had withdrawn to the mountain by himself, in response to the crowd wanting to make him king. The suggestion is that Jesus needed to be in communion with God in prayer. Jesus’ prayer did not remove him from the struggles of his disciples. It was while he was at prayer that he became aware of the disciples in the boat on the Sea of Galilee struggling with a strong wind and a rough sea. He immediately came to them, speaking a reassuring word, ‘It is I. Do not be afraid’. The literal translation would be ‘I am. Do not be afraid’. In this fourth gospel, the words ‘I am’ on the lips of Jesus suggest the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush. Jesus comes to his disciples as God in human form. Once the disciples show a willingness to take Jesus into the boat with them, they reach the shore. The prayer of Jesus created a space for him to be present to his disciples in a very troubling moment. The first reading puts before us a troubling moment in the life of the church, conflict between Greek speaking and Aramaic speaking Jewish Christian widows regarding the distribution of food. This conflict in the church required the Twelve to clarify for themselves and for the other members of the church what their priorities were to be, ‘We will continue to devote ourselves to prayer and to the service of the word’. The clarity with which the apostles could identify their priorities amid competing claims on their time is admirable. They understood, as Jesus did, that prayerful attentiveness to God’s word would allow their lives to be shaped by God’s purpose and would best serve the life of the believing community. Today’s readings remind us that prayerful attentiveness to God’s word needs to be at the heart of the church’s life, and of our own lives as individual disciples.

And/Or

(ii) Saturday, Second Week of Easter

At the end of yesterday’s gospel reading, we heard that Jesus, having fed the multitude in the wilderness, withdrew to the mountain by himself. The evangelist, John, suggests that Jesus needed to be alone with God the Father who had sent him into the world. While Jesus was alone, the disciples set out to cross the sea of Galilee without Jesus. In his absence they found themselves struggling with a strong wind and a rough sea. Even after evening had given way to night they had rowed only three to four miles. They seemed lost without Jesus. It was then that they discovered that Jesus’ withdrawal to pray did not remove him from them. They saw him coming towards them, speaking words of reassurance, ‘It is I. Do not be afraid’. Almost immediately, they arrived at the destination that they had just been struggling to reach. The gospel reading is suggesting that the Lord who lives forever to intercede for us is always coming towards us. If we are to reach our destination, we cannot do it on our own. We need the Lord’s help. A little later in this same gospel, Jesus will say to his disciples, ‘those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing’. On our own journey, our journey of faith, we depend on the Lord to reach the goal of our life’s journey. We depend on him especially when the wind is against us and the waters of life get stormy. Today’s gospel reading assures us that the Lord comes to us in those difficult and threatening moments. If we are open to his coming and receptive to his presence we will move on through the storms that come our way and reach the shore.

And/Or

(iii) Saturday, Second Week of Easter

The first reading from the Acts of the Apostles shows some tension in the church of Jerusalem. Something of a storm was brewing in this young church, which became the mother church, because it was from the church in Jerusalem that the other churches were founded. The Hellenists, Greek speaking believers, were complaining about the Hebrews, Aramaic speaking believers, because the Hellenists felt that their widows were not being as well provided for as the widows of the Hebrews. The leaders of the Jerusalem church, the Twelve, realized that this problem would not be resolved unless they drew other members of the church into this ministry of providing for all the widows and the other vulnerable people in the church. The Twelve could not do everything; they had to prioritize. They declared to the other members of the church that as the leaders they should be devoting themselves to prayer and to the service of God’s word. As a result, they invited the members of the church to choose people of wisdom and of the Spirit who could attend to this important work of providing for the most vulnerable. Seven suitable people were chosen, allowing the Twelve to focus on what was important in their calling. Here at the very early days of the church we have a good example of how the church must function in every age. No one group within the church can do everything. There is a need for different groups of people to take responsibility for different ministries. This is how the Spirit continues to shape the life of the church. There will always be the kind of tensions or storms within the church that we find in today’s first reading. However, such stormy moments can be times of grace, opportunities for the Spirit in work in new ways in the church. In today’s gospel reading, the Lord came to his disciples as they were struggling with a strong wind and a rough sea and brought them to a safe haven. The Lord is always with his church in the various storms that will assail it. His presence at the heart of the storm can help to ensure that moments of crisis in the church can also be times of new life.

And/Or

(iv) Saturday, Second Week of Easter

There is a sense in which we are always trying to get to the other side, like the disciples in the boat who were trying to reach the other side of the Sea of Galilee. We often feel the call to move beyond where we are, to reach for a different shore. However, once we set out for that other side, we often find ourselves struggling, like the disciples. In the gospel reading, darkness came over the disciples in the boat, and they found themselves facing into a strong wind and having to sail through a sea that was getting rougher. Whenever we take on some new enterprise, or go in a new direction of some kind, we will sometimes find ourselves battling with the equivalent of a strong wind and a rough sea, perhaps with a kind of darkness coming over us. It was at that moment when they were battling with the elements in the darkness that the disciples saw Jesus coming towards the boat, saying to them, ‘It is I. Do not be afraid’. The Lord comes to us all in our moments of struggle, when we sense our vulnerability, our frailty, when a darkness of spirit threatens to engulf us. That may have been the experience of many during these Covid times. The Lord is there with us at those moments in all his risen power, calling on us not to be afraid but to trust in his presence. Once the risen Lord spoke to the disciples, they seem to have reached the shore they were making for immediately. The Lord’s presence to us and our awareness of his presence always makes the journey to the other side, the far shore, seem that bit shorter. Like Saint Paul, we can find ourselves saying, ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me’.

And/Or

(v) Saturday, Second Week of Easter

In today’s gospel reading, the disciples in the boat keenly feel the absence of the Lord as they struggle with a strong wind and a rough sea. In the words of the gospel, ‘It was getting dark by now and Jesus had still not rejoined them. As a community of faith and as individual believers we can keenly feel the Lord’s absence, especially when we sense that our human resources are not sufficient to get us through some storm or other, some moment of disturbing crisis. We find such a disturbing moment in the life of the early church in the first reading, as conflict arose between two language groups, Aramaic speaking and Greek speaking Jewish Christians. Yet, the Lord was not really absent from the disciples in the boat. He was aware of their struggle and he came towards the boat, proclaiming a reassuring word, ‘It is I! Do not be afraid’. When the disciples were open to taking the Lord into the boat, it quickly reached the shore they were making for. In times of personal or communal crisis we can be assured that the Lord is present to us, even though he may seem to be absent. He comes to us in all his risen power to raise us up above our fears. The first letter of John declares that ‘perfect love drives out fear’. The presence of the risen Lord is the presence of perfect love, of the God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son. If we take the Lord into the boat, into our personal and communal life, we will reach the shore towards which he is leading us. The presence of the risen Lord to the early church in the first reading ensured that its moment of crisis was a moment of new growth. The risen Lord will always bring us through the storm if we turn to him. In the words of today’s psalm, his love will be upon us if we place our hope in him.

Fr. Martin Hogan.