Month: January 2019

Dear Friends in Christ

3rd Sunday of the year 2019 , 

The Gentiles, like Luke himself, had believed in Christ on the testimony of others, not because they were eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life, ministry and resurrection. To build up their faith, Luke wrote down an orderly account of the events and encounters of Jesus’ earthly life and ministry ‘just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word’. Luke’s Gospel shows the continuity between God’s promises made through the prophets and their fulfilment. Jesus, reading from the prophet Isaiah the promise that God would send one who would free his people from oppression and imprisonment, and restore their freedom and liberty, announced: ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’. His words electrified his audience. They had heard this promise many times before. But now Jesus, in front of their own eyes, was saying: ‘I am fulfilling this great promise of God. I am the Spirit-bearer foretold by Isaiah and, I am bringing in a new age of freedom and divine favour, restoring men and women to health, and casting out demons’. It’s not surprising that ‘the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him’. It’s also unsurprising that they could not accept him and ‘rose up and put him out of the city’.

Jesus now stands before us. He still proclaims the Good News, making us see with new eyes that we are loved and forgiven, and leading us into his Father’s presence as beloved sons and daughters. He restores to us our inheritance as God’s children, freeing us from oppression and liberating us from whatever imprisons us. Do we believe this and go to Jesus to receive his grace and life? Or do we not believe that he can do all things for us and so reject him? Jesus stands before us as he stood before his fellow townspeople and challenges us to come to him for healing and freedom. The choice, however, always remains ours.

Lord Jesus, you restore all things. You break the power of evil. You heal our sins. Help me to come to you with complete faith and confidence. Teach me to fix my eyes on you.

Dear Friends in Christ, 

2nd sunday of the year 2019

In a village in Galilee we encounter John’s ‘sign theology’. As he puts it so simply and beautifully: ‘This, the first of the signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee’. The question as always with these signs is: ‘What does this sign mean?’ Like all the signs the meaning is profound and many-faceted. St. Thomas More said that the Scriptures are such that a mouse could put his tiny foot in them and an elephant wade in their deep waters! What are you – a mouse of an elephant? Don’t answer that!

The changing of water into wine is many people’s favourite miracle. A wedding in first-century Palestine was a joyful occasion with plenty of food and wine, and lasted a whole week. Quite some party, that is for sure! Running out of wine was clearly socially embarrassing for the couple but a sign perhaps of how much people were enjoying themselves. The water that was changed into wine was not ordinary water – it was water that had been blessed for the ceremonial washing. This special water was not changed into vin ordinaire, as the French say, but top-notch wine. Scholars inform us that as a result of this miracle there were now six jars each holding up to 25 gallons of quality wine! What a miracle!! Indeed, it dumbfounded the guests.

Believer or unbeliever, we all understand the message a superabundance of wine gives – in conveys joy and celebration. In Israel an abundance of wine was a prophetic turn of speech for the ushering in of the new Messianic Age. There is also a passage in the non-canonical 2 Baruch 29, which echoes this sentiment: ‘on each vine there shall be a thousand branches, and each branch shall bear a thousand clusters, and each grape, produce a cor [120 gallons of wine]…because these are they who have come to the consummation of time.’

For John the miracle was a sign of the Messianic Age, the passing from the old to the new. The wedding feast was a sign of the heavenly banquet to which we are all invited by virtue of our baptism. The bridegroom as this wedding is Jesus. The joy of the heavenly banquet would come after the ‘hour’ of Jesus’ suffering: the cross, his death, his glory.

Dear Friends in Christ, 

baptism of the lord 2019

Today the season of Christmastide draws to a close. It reaches a wonderful climax in a definitive event in the Lord’s life: his baptism in the Jordan. Jesus’ baptism was a remarkable event because the baptism offered by John the Baptist was for repentance. The immersion in the waters of the Jordan was a sign of conversion, or a person changing direction in life. John’s message was addressed to tax collectors, soldiers and ordinary men and women. It was a message of moral reform, of preparing for the coming of the Messiah. Jesus’ baptism is a baptism of solidarity with sinners and began his public life and in this moment God is revealed as Blessed Trinity.

The Trinity is unique to Christian faith. We are united to Muslims and Jews because we share a common belief in One God, but at this point our faith departs sharply from these two others faiths because we believe that God is three Persons in One God – The Holy Blessed Trinity. God is Father, God is Son and God is Holy Spirit. Jesus’ baptism was the manifestation, of Jesus as Messiah of Israel and the Son of God. The unveiling of Jesus’ nature and mission brought forth from the Father a tender and heart-warming affirmation: You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.’

Jesus’ baptism was the acceptance and inauguration of his mission as God’s Suffering Servant. He allowed himself to be numbered among sinners – he is truly ‘the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ In today’s Gospel we are seeing unfolding before our very eyes the ‘fulfilling of all righteousness.’ We are witnesses of Jesus consenting to submit himself entirely to his Father’s will, which was his death on the cross for the forgiveness of our sins.

The coming down of the Spirit of Jesus’ baptism looked forward to the coming down of the Holy Spirit on us – a prelude, if you like, to the new creation. We commit ourselves to entering more deeply into the mystery of our baptism, praying about it, seeking to understand it and growing in our appreciation of this wonderful grace.

Dear Friends in Christ, 

epiphany of the lord 2019

The great feast of the Epiphany marks the manifestation of Jesus as Messiah of Israel and Saviour of the world. The Magi, the three kings or wise men whom tradition has named Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar, come to worship and adore, thus representing the acceptance of the ‘Good News’ by the pagan nations.

Their coming to Bethlehem in order to pay homage to the King of the Jews is significant because it shows that they seek in Israel, in the messianic light of the Star of David, the one who will be the King of the nations. The Jewish nation remains God’s special and chosen people. The pagan nations can discover Jesus only by turning towards the Jewish people and receiving from them the Messianic promise latent in the Hebrew Scriptures but revealed fully in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.

Mission is at the very heart of the feast of the Epiphany because it reveals how those who do not know Christ can be moved compelled and convinced by the gospel (as the Magi were) to bow down and worship. In fact, every effort we make at mission – sharing our faith and giving witness by deeds – is nothing less than an epiphany. Why? Because when we so this God’s world is manifested and fulfilled in the world.

On this most holy feast-day we can re-cover and re-discover a sense of our own mission to make Christ known, not only to the nations but to those we live and work among. If we ask him, the Holy Spirit will imbue us

 with a new confidence to witness to Christ. Whatever is good, whatever is pure, whatever is beautiful and whatever is true in other cultures and natures is of Christ and in Christ. The message of Christ won over the Magi and it will win over pagan nations and those who resist the gospel – not by force or power but by the grace of the Holy Spirit, who revel as and convinces that there is only one King for all the nations, and that is Christ Jesus our Lord.

Holy Family 2018

The opening sentence of Leo Tolstoy’s masterpiece Anna Karenina is a striking one: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ We can be sure that the Holy Family was a happy family, but like all happy families their happiness was forged through trial and suffering and the ups and downs of domestic daily living. Today we cross the threshold into the tranquillity and holiness of Holy Family. Here we find the hearth at which Jesus lived his hidden years. Here we find the first domestic Church, a loving family devoted to God and to each other.

The Scriptures only speak of the birth of Jesus, the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt and the discovery of Jesus in the Temple. To learn more we seek the wisdom and guidance of the Spirit. The Spirit leads us to understand that because the triune God is a communion of love, the family is its living reflection. St. Pope John Paul II said: ‘Our God in his deepest mystery is not solitude, but a family, for he has within himself fatherhood, sonship and the essence of the family, which is love. That love, in the divine family is the Holy Spirit.’ The family is, then, a school of prayer, a school of service, a school of discipline, a school of formation, but most of all a school of love.

We thank God the Father for the Holy Family’s witness of love, we rejoice in the Son for the healing grace of salvation, and we give praise to the Holy Spirit whose love is poured out upon us so we can love and serve God in our families. The importance of the family has been the bulwark of Christian teaching since the beginning. It is the womb from which vocations are born, be that to the married or priestly of religious life. Jesus spent his hidden years deeply rooted in the day to day life of his family in Nazareth – here he learnt to love, serve and pray. Thank God for the family you were born into; each family member is a blessing and grace from God.