Weekly Reflections from The Archdiocese

GROUNDBREAKING 

Political warfare made to look like religious righteousness is especially hideous.

Occasionally, contemporary events bring home to us, with clarity, a Gospel truth. On the 5th. Sunday of Lent, (17th. March) we read St. John’s account (8:1-11) of ‘The Woman Caught In The Act of Adultery’. Recently the media reported a 15-year-old girl in the Muslim Maldives islands being sentenced to a public flogging of 100 lashes for ‘fornication’. The report revealed that the girl had been repeatedly raped by her stepfather and another man. There were no reports of civil action against the men who abused her.

The men who detained the woman caught in adultery in John’s Gospel were repugnantly self-righteous. They carried with them the stones they intended to use to kill the adulterer ‘in the name of God’. The intended entrapment of Jesus was a bonus, but you cannot entrap the truth. Truth is powerful. It can reach through sophisticated prevarications to a person’s core. “Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone at her,” was Jesus’ truthful response (John 8:7) to the attempted entrapment.

Jesus did not deny the woman’s adulterous guilt. He demanded that her accusers acknowledge their own guilt in parallel situations. His message is clear. We can only condemn others after we’ve first eradicated everything in our lives worthy of condemnation. Who knows what we’ll discover in our own lives once we stop concentrating on other people’s misdeeds? We could actually be led to repentance instead of insisting that others repent.

Just as it cannot be entrapped, truth does not resort to entrapment. Jesus’ words were received in silence. It says something about the core goodness in human nature, specifically in this Gospel extract relating to the scribes and Pharisees that they heard, accepted and acted upon the truth, on this occasion. The consequence was groundbreaking as it reverberated under the impact of so many stones being dropped. It was an audible sound.

Had today, 17th March, not been a Sunday, the Church would have been celebrating the Feast of St. Patrick. His missionary life, too, was groundbreaking.

What St. Patrick brought to Christianity is sometimes trivialized with stories about shamrocks and snakes. How many thank St. Patrick each time we experience the healing calm of God’s forgiveness through private confession and private penance in the Sacrament of Reconciliation?

In the late fifth century, going against all contemporary church regulations and practices, St. Patrick instructed his priest monks to give private penances to members of their monasteries when they came for spiritual direction. Up to that time, all confessional penances had to be carried out in public. The severity of the penance made public much about the penitent.

According to Church law, this meant that after someone performed his or her public penance, they could never again receive Church forgiveness for their sins. This regulation led many, like St. Augustine, to delay their baptism until late in life, keeping open their once-in-a-lifetime confessional forgiveness.

Without Patrick’s innovation of personal penances, peoples’ growth in faith could easily have been choked. Thankfully, common sense prevailed. No one seems to have seriously challenged Patrick’s drastic change in Church practice and regulation. It worked, so it was kept. This Sunday’s first reading reflects the frame of mind all true followers of God should either have or acquire. Through his prophet Isaiah, God says:

“Remember not the events of the past,
the things of long ago consider not;
see, I am doing something new!
Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
In the desert I make a way, in the wasteland, rivers.
Wild beasts honour me, jackals and ostriches,
for I put water in the desert and rivers in the wasteland
for my chosen people to drink, the people whom I formed for myself,
that they might announce my praise.” (Isaiah 43.16)

Today we are living in historic times. A Pope resigns and there’s a clear anticipation that his successor as Bishop of Rome has to be a man of deep faith, a man capable of innovation as well as a pastor of compassion and firm management. To those who voluntarily ‘take up their cross and follow’, God extends on-going formation in true love. Jesus learnt, as he lived here on earth, how Isaiah’s prophecy was being fulfilled. Jesus’ “Kingdom of God” preaching ministry resulted in his death … and Resurrection.

Isaiah’s prophecy also underlines the words of St. Paul in this Sunday’s 2nd. Reading (Philippians 3:8)

“For his (Christ’s) sake I have accepted the loss of all things
and I consider them so much rubbish,
that I may gain Christ and be found in him,
not having any righteousness of my own based on the law
but that which comes through faith in Christ,
the righteousness from God,
depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection
and the sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death,
if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”

St. Patrick believed that God continues to be at work in the present in the same way that God had worked in the past. The authors of our Readings for this Sunday, were they to be among us now, would probably tell the Church to develop new methods of ministry, as the old ones aren’t working. Jesus sends his Holy Spirit to lead God’s people down uncharted paths, inviting them to open formerly unopened doors, often because the doorways themselves were either unknown or overlooked.

Jesus and St Paul and St Patrick — help us to see new ways of looking at and judging human relations, new ways of ministering in communion with, as well as to, others. From Paul’s letters, the Gospels and from the practice of St. Patrick, we learn that the discovery of the ‘new’ has never stopped, even after Jesus’ death and resurrection. If it had stopped, only Jews could be Christians today, and confession would still be a once-in-a-lifetime event. Could it be that young people today are not attracted to a Church that emphasizes more the preservation of past customs and antiquated procedures than the development of a living faith in Jesus of Nazareth?

Jesus always laid emphasis on the sacred and irreplaceable value of each individual. While on earth, Jesus would never have countenanced subordinating an individual’s value to protect the good name of an institution, even were that institution to be his embryonic Church on earth. The will of the Ascended Lord is no different.

Assembled for worship we pray, “I confess to almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters… ” A more accurate reflection of our mindset might be, “I confess (with no shortage of excuses) to almighty God and I accuse you my brothers and sisters… ” When St Patrick opened the door for private penance he showed a pathway to those Jesus addressed: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28) The Lord placed no limit on the number of occasions when we might call upon him for forgiveness. The only requirement is that we be genuinely contrite with a will to amend our ways. A contrite person has no interest in casting stones!

“Let the one among you who is without sin cast the first stone … ”

The Light of Life

For humans, life without light is unimaginable. People in developed nations take 24/7 illumination for granted. We are accustomed to light coming from the sun/moon or from a manufactured source. There is another light source that originates within us. This light is incalculably powerful because it is the presence, within us, of God, the Holy Spirit. Others can sometimes see God’s presence in us more easily than we can see Him present in ourselves. Unlike sun/moon or manufactured light, this interior light neither burns nor dazzles nor mesmerizes. Its speciality is revealing to us ‘The Truth’.

This interior light can only be effective within us when we have made an enduring choice, a commitment, to seek ‘The Truth’. In other words, to seek God, who is ‘The Truth’, in a deliberate and positive way. Jesus answered the questioning Thomas, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14.6)

Take Saul the Pharisee and leading persecutor of the early Christians, for example. Saul believed passionately that he was doing God’s work in hunting down the early followers of Jesus of Nazareth. His ‘Damascus Road’ experience was as dramatic as his life. It convinced Saul of the error of his ways. His three-day blindness was lifted when Ananias, a disciple of Jesus who lived in Damascus, imposed hands on him. (Acts 9: 10-12)

Saul, who became St. Paul, was gifted with a revelation of ‘The Truth’ about the person and mission of Jesus of Nazareth. The depth and immediacy of this revelation completely changed Saul’s life and the lives of countless others through the centuries. The depth and immediacy of this revelation also says much about Saul’s personal total commitment to God as a Pharisee. Without Saul’s honest, but mistaken, commitment, ‘The Truth-Light’ would not have flooded his life. It also tells us how God personalizes, tailors if you like, His revelation to best address each individual.
Our potential to be illuminated from within by this, let’s call it ‘Truth-Light’, tells us that this light source is within us from even before we are conceived. “Before I formed you in the womb,” God says, “I knew you …” (Jeremiah 1:5) The Biblical meaning of ‘knew’ here indicates God knowing us and loving us through and through unconditionally. If God is present to us before we have matter and form in our mother’s womb, then ‘Truth-Light’ is present.

This ‘Truth Light’ within us has been partially and cleverly obscured by the wiles of Satan since our first parents turned away from God to follow the Evil One’s seduction. Pope Benedict highlighted this on Ash Wednesday 2013 when he said: “The tempter (Satan) is sly: he doesn’t push us directly toward evil, but toward a false good, making us believe that power and that which satisfies our basic needs are the true realities. In this way, God becomes secondary; He is reduced to a means, becomes unreal, no longer counts, disappears.”

Satan cannot destroy the ‘Truth Light’ within us but he can dazzle/mesmerize us with the false lights of this world thereby countering what the ‘Truth Light’ would have us realize. Our life, in this world, is a continuous choice between ‘Truth Light’ and false light.
‘Truth Light’ is uniquely attractive. It has a wholeness, honesty, integrity that draws us even when The Way is hard. These personal moments of invitation from God invite us to truly open our hearts. If we do and are sincere, then God reveals to us His ‘Truth Light’, in a personal way, inviting us to become our true and holy self.

Moses features in the First Reading for this Third Sunday of Lent (Exodus 3). God reveals himself through the firelight of a burning bush that is not consumed by the flames. Middle Eastern shepherds moved their sheep in the early dawn and late afternoon. That way they avoided the punishing heat of the direct sun. The light of a burning bush would be highly visible. God makes his ‘Truth Light’ visible to us in the way best suited to attract our attention.

Moses, a Jew by birth, knew his people’s history through his real mother being engaged by his foster-mother to nurture him. (Exodus 2:7-10) Despite having grown up in the Court of the Egyptian Pharaoh, Moses’ spiritual perceptivity matured from his earliest years. Encountering ‘Truth Light’ is an enriching and loving experience. It carries no fear but there may well be mystery for we move at God’s pace not our own. ‘Truth Light’ grows in us as our faith in God becomes more grounded. That said, our initial encounter with ‘Truth Light’ might have begun before we were capable of recognizing its presence.

God constantly seeks to share our life indicating his presence in a variety of ways. If we choose to welcome God, faith begins to grow quietly within us. At various milestones along life’s path, Divine providence presents us with opportunities to engage our interiorly nurtured faith with its own ‘burning bush’ in the form of people, communities and sets of successive circumstances.

Our modern world is seriously flooded with manufactured light that distorts ‘Truth Light’. These distortions also damage the likeness of God with which we are born. A person of any age group can become a victim of a trauma leaving a lifetime of interior and, sometimes, exterior scarring. Moses’ early grounding in his Jewish faith protected him from the lavish excesses of Pharaoh’s court.

Because the ‘Truth Light’ is interior is has the power to protect, heal and restore, to make strong and deepen commitment. Jesus tells the crowd in Mark 4:21 “For everything that is hidden will eventually be brought into the open, and every secret will be brought to light.”
We may be daunted, at times, by the tasks God asks. God’s answer to Moses, centuries ago, stands us in good stead.
“But when I go to the Israelites,” (Moses asks God)
“and say to them,
‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ if they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what am I to tell them?”
God replied, “I am who am.” Then he added, “This is what you shall tell the Israelites: “I AM sent me to you.”
(Exodus 3:13-15)

Living by ‘Truth Light’ amidst the deceptions of this world is no walk in the park or the wilderness. The author of the Letter to the Hebrews also makes this clear in 10:32ff:
“Remember those earlier days after you had received the light, when you endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated.
You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions. So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded.”

Living by the ‘Truth-Light’, today, is costly. If that’s not our experience as The Baptised, the Body of Christ on Earth, then maybe that’s the tell-tale inviting us to question which light we are following.

Motivation

Motivation is the firing-pin for the choices we make. What motivated Jesus to invite Peter, James and John to climb the mountain with him on the occasion we know as ‘The Transfiguration’? The simple answer is we do not know. Jesus gave no explanation. This Sunday we read St.Luke’s account of Jesus’ Transfiguration (9:28-36).

There were benefits to Peter, James and John resulting from their presence at The Transfiguration. Did their presence bring benefits to Jesus, too, and if so what might these be?

Jesus, aged 12, by staying behind at the Jerusalem Temple, had demonstrated his commitment to his heavenly Father (Luke 2:51). Years later and now an adult, Jesus stood on the bank of the River Jordan (Luke 3:21). Though not dissimilar in appearance to other male Jews of similar age; to those ‘with eyes to see’ Jesus was different. He was his own man, able to engage others by his quietness and directness.

Jews responded to John-the-Baptiser’s preaching by accepting his ‘baptism of water’ as a sign of contrition for their failures in living by The Covenant. Jesus’ choice to step into the River Jordan that day came from a very different motivation. His action, the outward expression of a total conviction, was the result of his preceding years. By it, Jesus declared to his heavenly Father his willingness to take on himself the sin of the whole world, past, present and future. He offered himself as the unique, living sacrifice who alone was capable of taking away the sin of the world. Each time we approach Holy Communion we acclaim Jesus’ uniqueness with the triple acclamation: “Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.”

His redemptive act would stretch, without interruption, from that moment, through our age, to the end of the world. The proof is found in the words of his heavenly Father recorded by Matthew (3:17); Mark (1:11); and Luke (3:22). The acceptance of Jesus’ free choice is confirmed by his heavenly Father and the presence of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ private, formative years, were ended. His public ministry had commenced. Jesus knew that, ‘His hour had come.”

It is important for us to appreciate that at no time in his earthly journey was Jesus acting out a prepared script to which he was privy. Jesus is truly human as much as he is truly God. Being truly human, he has to experience day by day the unfolding events of his life, just as do you and I. True, his vision is not impaired, as is ours, by personal sin. He had an innate and unsullied awareness of The Truth and equally of the presence of Evil. But Jesus’ daily life was as much a revelation to him as is ours to us. Were that not the case then the validity of Jesus’ humanity is questionable. Humans are limited to the present with some sense of history and hope for the unknown of the future. The only certain time we have is ‘this moment’.

Our limited knowledge about ourselves means people look to one another for affirmation. At the same time, there’s a risk allowing someone to be privy to our deepest self. A genuine declaration of love leaves the declarant extremely vulnerable. Where there is a positive, reciprocal response, the declarant is deeply affirmed. Such a depth of declared, reciprocated affirmation paves the way for the development of a bond, a union for life. Jesus was still discovering, day by day, the depth and detail of his vocation. That mountain top declaration, revelation, by God his heavenly Father was a two-way-street for Jesus. It reinforced what had been heard at his Baptism. But there was more. Jesus would also be affirmed by Peter’s declaration, “Rabbi, It is good for us to be here …” (Mark 9:2) and the unspoken but still real affirmation of James and John evidenced by their holding of the silence that Jesus requested about what he had allowed them to witness.

Jesus needed, as do we all, to learn the truth of his Baptismal vocation. For Jesus, his growing awareness of the Calvary which awaited him required both heavenly and earthly affirmation. The former was constant; the latter, unpredictable. By their presence at The Transfiguration, Peter, James and John affirmed Jesus.

Did Jesus, like us, experience moments of human wonder about the depth of his communion with God, his heavenly Father? In his pain-racked isolation on Calvary’s Cross Jesus was heard to cry out: ‘Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?’ which is translated, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46). This would not have been the first time he had voiced these words which form the opening part of Psalm 22, a psalm that ends on a triumphant note.

Peter, James and John’s privileged insight into this person who had engaged them with his genuine friendliness and who spoke with a ring of authority which could only emanate from the Truth, did not save them from themselves. Later, these three were to be found asleep-on-duty in the Garden of Gethsemane. The three, with the others Jesus had chosen, would abandon Jesus in the same Garden. Peter would publicly disown Jesus three times.

Yet Jesus had said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) From their hiding places would Jesus’ apostles have remembered his words as they watched his agony of death unfold?

Each of us is born with specific gifts or talents that form part of our unique personality. Intuitively and from very early years, people demonstrate fluency for languages, a musical ability, skills in treating animals etc. Equally, our talent may be in drawing from others the hidden depths of their ability to care of which they were unaware until faced with our disability, autism, lack of sight etc.

If our abilities have always been part of who we are, we rarely regard them as exceptional. That’s why we may need someone outside of ourselves to identify them for us. What others see in us as exceptional, we may see as normal. In the understanding of the fullness of his unique vocation, Jesus needed others.

Perhaps in 2013, as we listen again to the Gospel of The Transfiguration we can approach it from a different angle. To what ‘mountain top’ might Jesus be inviting us? Through another’s affirmation of our God-given gifts and talents perhaps we’ll discover how to affirm those who, for whatever reason, are finding it hard to appreciate God’s nearness to them at this point in their pilgrimage to him. It’s worth bearing in mind that Jesus, immediately after his Resurrection, reinstated the very people who had slept-on-duty, abandoned and even denied knowing him. What Jesus did for them, he will do lovingly for us, too, so long as we allow him.

Temptation!

The one subject we know too well is temptation! Every person born experiences temptation throughout life as an inescapable companion. Sometimes temptation takes a back seat, but never quite disappears. At other times temptation is like a torrent raging through our emotions and appetites. Years ago we were advised to avoid temptation. The truth is it’s not avoidable; it has to be fought.

The battle line for Jesus was drawn quickly after his Baptism. Luke (4:1-13) is the Gospel for our First Sunday of Lent this year. If you have wondered why Jesus was tempted, the great theologian St. Thomas Aquinas provides an insight:
“It was very necessary, and on two counts:
First, as a remedy for our sins,
and secondly, as a model for us in our behaviour.”
(Conference 6 on ‘The Creed’)

Temptation is the weapon of our lifetime adversary, Satan. As this Sunday’s Gospel extract shows, our adversary is an extremely skilled sniper. Satan shows how well he knows us by his patience, choice of place and circumstance, time and the very precise area of our character that he targets. It clearly demonstrates that we, while on earth, are in his territory. (1 John 5:19)

Can temptation be classified as part of the cross that Jesus calls us to carry? (Matthew 16:24) Yes! Unless we deliberately place ourselves in temptation’s way, then it is something done to us and not of our choosing. People may not have regarded temptation as a form of ‘carrying their cross in the following of Christ’, but it is. From the moment he accepted his vocation at his Baptism in the River Jordan by John (Luke 3:22) everything in Jesus’ daily life can be classified as part of his redemptive suffering, including the temptation he suffered.

Temptation, as used by Satan, is a precise weapon. The empty wilderness of Judea with its intense, moisture sapping, heat of the day and the equally intense penetrating cold of the night would test the hardiest. Jesus appears to have been led to this experience by the Holy Spirit. It’s as if the gloves are ‘off’ and battle is truly joined. The Gospel accounts vary but it may be helpful to remember that Jesus’ experience of temptation and our own have a significant difference.

When faced by temptation we recognise that, to some degree, we have brought the affliction upon our-self by our sin. Our outrage at being tempted is lessened by the uncomfortable sense of being personally responsible for the suffering, to some extent. By contrast, Jesus is without sin. Satan’s affront in tempting Jesus is doubly painful for him. The pain Jesus experiences is greater as he is the innocent victim and also that he chooses to experience, in himself, the accumulative effect of all human sin.

Training is essential for all athletes. What the Olympics and Paralympics didn’t show were the years of painful, determined training without which no medal could have been won in London 2012. Jesus’ so-called hidden years in Nazareth were his essential training. To have any hope of standing fast against temptation, we need a daily workout under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. A combination of Sacramental life, prayer and fasting is considered essential. The Sacraments of Reconciliation and the Eucharist are the core of our training. The purging of self–centeredness through the liberating grace of God’s forgiveness restores vision and hope. The nourishment of The Eucharist builds up that vital relationship with Jesus.

Lent, along with Advent, is a time for limbering up. Lent invites us to accompany Jesus in the final stages of his self-sacrificing vocation to redeem us. Six weeks may seem an eternity but delay starting and it’s Holy Week, if not Easter Sunday! Non-implemented good intentions do us no good whatsoever.

Athletes take advice about training from those competent to give it. The Baptised need to seek advice from a spiritual director, someone we trust and who is established on his or her own spiritual journey with Christ. Choosing our own workout programme may not be the best way forward. Where we may lay emphasis (for example, in the ‘doing-without’ area) may not be where we need to concentrate our efforts. Time needs to be set aside for a proper consultation. The GP who has the prescription half-written before we’ve sat down doesn’t impress us!

Those addicted to Facebook and Twitter might consider donating fifteen minutes a day to pray-as-you-go.org. This Jesuit sponsored help to pray the Scriptures has a worldwide following. Why not try it?

For sure, without a dedicated training routine Jesus would not have been prepared for Satan wiliness. Our lack of preparation shows clearly when we face up to how often temptation flattens us with just a little fingertip!