Dear Friends in Christ,
Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist, her voice shaking with anger, told world leaders at the UN in New York, ‘You have stolen my childhood with your empty words. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction and all you can talk about is the money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth – how dare you.’ Many things make us angry, and some anger is right, fit and proper. Sometimes we know we are wrong to be angry; much more often we think we are right. We think the fault lies with others – they have made us angry. Or else certain situations provoke us to anger – and because these are bad situations, we feel that we have the right to express our anger. Jesus teaches with extraordinary clarity that ‘everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the council, and whoever says: “You fool!” shall be liable to the hell of fire.’
Must we take Jesus seriously? Jesus’ radical teaching on anger sees it as the root of murder. Angry feelings, if they are nursed and not dealt with, become hatred. The fruit of hatred can sometimes be actual murder. Jesus warns us to avoid the possibility of such appalling fruit of our anger by dealing ruthlessly with the initial feelings of anger. He does not say that we cannot feel anger, express anger or even act on it. What he says it that we do not have the right to hang on to it, nurse it and vent it. Instead we must learn to let go of our anger so that we can imitate him better.
There were, of course, occasions when Jesus himself knew righteous anger and expressed it – but his anger never led him to sin. When he was betrayed, insulted, ridiculed, tortured and crucified, he had full right to feel angry. However, Jesus let go of his feelings of anger and forgave his oppressors: ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do. Jesus shows us a new way of living. As his disciples we must emulate him. Whenever we are angry, we must acknowledge our anger and then let it go by calling on the Lord’s grace. Christ’s Spirit will give us the power to fulfil his commandment to live as he did.
‘Oh, they are salt of the earth,’ we often say when we are referring to a person who is straightforward, honest and without guile. Another common saying in the same vein is ‘what you see is what you get’. In today’s reading, Jesus’ description of his disciples as ‘the salt of the earth’ would have struck a chord and meant something very specific to his listeners.
Those who heard Jesus speak would have understood the meaning and tradition behind the idea of being ‘salt of the earth’. In the same way as salt prevents decay and corruption, so the witness of Spirit-led Christians protects society from decay and corruption. It also adds much needed flavour to society. And, drawing on the idea that too much salt in our food can make us thirsty. St. Augustine once wrote: ‘O Heavenly Father, you have put salt into our mouths that we may thirst for you.’ The work of the Holy Spirit id to create within us a thirst for the things of God: for union with God, communion with him and for grace to live a life which is holy and pleasing to him. When Jesus said ‘I thirst’ from the cross, his thirst wasn’t just physical, it was spiritual – God thirsts that we come into his presence as we long to come into him.
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.
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 reveals and convinces that there is only one King for all the nations, and that is Christ Jesus our Lord. 
During this holy season of Advent, we turn to the great witnesses of faith: to St. John the Baptist, to Abraham, our father in faith, who believed against hope, to Mary our Mother who often walked her pilgrimage in the night of faith, and many others. 
The season of Advent is a wonderful, God given opportunity to discover the gift of repentance and the grace of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. When was your last confession? Some people go more regularly than others. The Church invites us to make a sacramental confession at least once a year, but many have not known the grace of this sacrament for a considerable number of years. To anyone in this situation God’s hand of mercy and compassion is extended. Because our confession of sin is mediated through the priest in the confessional it does require special grace and some courage to open up our lives in this way. It is important to understand, however, that we are not confessing to the priest: we are laying down our burden before God. If a priest has received faculties to hear confessions (and this is not automatically granted by the bishop) we hope and pray that ne has the necessary pastoral wisdom and maturity to facilitate this sacrament so that the penitent comes to know in a deeply personal way the mercy, forgiveness and compassion of God. 
The Advent season has its roots in the pagan festival of the winter solstice. The word ‘solstice’ is derived from the Latin word 
people of a philosophical bent have questioned the value of prayer, and especially intercessory prayer. It is said, for example, that the German poet Goethe never prayed because he argued that the world was set on its course anyway. Of course, god knows what we are going to ask him in advance of our asking. But the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that God ‘is the Lord of the universe, whose order he established, and which remains wholly subject to him and at this disposal. He is mater of history, governing hearts and events in keeping with his will….’ (para 269). God did not create the world and then leave it to its own devices! He has assured us through the Scriptures that he will change events as a result of our prayers. The world is not just a machine ticking over like a watch. It is more a unity, directed by an infinite mind which we call God. So, we must keep praying, as Paul says, ‘at all times’, that is when things are good and when things are bad. 
Of course, prayer can be frustrating. Sometimes our prayers never seem to be answered. But God may be leading us to the virtue of perseverance, in Greek 
Our understanding of kingship or queenship is very much rooted in the idea of privilege and of ruling our subjects. Jesus, however, bore witness to an altogether different kind of kingship. He is the Servant King. He is the King of the kingdom of love, service and sacrifice. We are his subjects – we swear a loyalty to our King. What is wonderful about the kingdom is that rather than us just serving the King, the King also serves his people. Jesus turned upside down our understanding of what it means to be great, what it means to be regal. We are called to witness to the fruits, gifts and values not of the kingdom of this world but of the kingdom of Christ.
Today it is the Sadducees who confront the Lord. The Sadducees were an elite aristocratic group – a kind of club of socially aspirational and religiously conservative men. They rejected most of the Old Testament, accepting only the Pentateuch (the first five books) as divinely inspired. Unlike the Pharisees, they did not believe in the afterlife, the spirit world or the resurrection of the body.
Typically, the Lord refuses to answer the questions head on. He rather points to the fact that marriage is a human institution which comes to an end with death, ‘till death do us part’. That is not to say that those who are married are not reunited after death – surely they are – but they are united in a different way and in a different relationship before God. Beyond the confines of this world there is no need for marriage because both man and wife are joined together in their love and worship of God – in the same was as the angels are.