11th Sunday after Pentecost 25 Aug 2019 Sermon

11^th Sunday after Pentecost 25.8.19 The necessity of faith

The people that walked in darkness has seen a great light (Is 9,2),  a verse used at Christmas time. And today, the deaf discover hearing (Gospel).

Our sense experience is limited enough for spiritual matters, even when all five senses are operating well.

We see but not perceive, hear but not understand (Mk 4,12). We do not see or hear what is really happening as we are too much immersed in the world.

It needs a special work of grace to enable comprehension on the part of each person.

Some do not hear the word often enough (or ever).

Others hear it time after time, but familiarity with the message can sometimes dull the comprehension. This could be a problem for the loyal Catholics who have been turning up at Mass for decades.

Breakthroughs can be achieved, however. It could be the atheist, the lapsed Catholic, someone holding to a false religion; and sometimes even the practising Catholic.

A moment of realization is reached; Christ is the Saviour of the whole world; and He has come among us. And risen.

Once reached, never let go. It has to become part of our lives, ingrained in our world view, something that we can recall at any time or place. This is what St Paul is urging in the Epistle reading: hold fast to what I have preached to you.

If we had to believe our faith only for a short time, say a week or a month, we would sail through easily.

But having to hold firm over a lifetime means that we have to face a lot of temptations and distractions.

We can forget that this earthly life is only the way, not the destination. It is too easy to try to make this life the endpoint of all our hopes and plans.

Many do exactly that, and relegate their faith life to something that belongs to long ago and far away – a childhood memory, a time when life was simpler. They ‘outgrow’ their faith, thinking they have made a mature decision.

But the faith is still true! As when the angels appeared to the shepherds, as when you received your first Holy Communion, as when the Apostles were filled with the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.

Others again will talk of the faith as though it is just another subject that might or might not be pursued – like learning the guitar, or French – a matter of taste or inclination.

No, Jesus Christ cannot be reduced to an option. He is all there is; the whole universe is under His authority.

Yes, He can be ignored (for a time) but that is never a good idea. It is to negate the whole basis of our existence.

We believe in Him because our lives depend on it (eternal lives). We need Him for eternal life; and we need Him for this life. If we give Him the prominence He deserves from us we will be assured of reaching Heaven on the one hand, and making the best of this life on the other.

It is tragic that on both counts – final salvation and living in the present – so many do not find Him. They have eyes but do not see; ears but do not hear.

We pray ceaselessly for the grace of God to penetrate the fog that lies over the current world.

God is never asleep, never away. He can always be reached.

And He wants, more than we do, that people will grasp His presence.

May He not give up on us, and may He keep pouring forth His grace and mercy to penetrate even the deepest fog.

10th Sunday after Pentecost 18 Aug 2019 Sermon

10^th Sunday after Pentecost 18.8.19 Knowing our place

The fallen angels were expelled from Heaven for not knowing their place before Almighty God.

They thought they were equal or better than God but then found they could not stand before Him.

Each of us faces the same choice: will I acknowledge God's importance, worship and obey Him; or will I assert myself against Him?

We have just enough intelligence to be dangerous. We have God-like qualities, but in much smaller quantities than He has them. So we can solve problems, create things, invent things. Mankind has achieved much in terms of buildings, technology, medicine, transport.

And sometimes we are morally good, in terms of compassion for suffering, helping those in need, rejecting evil in various forms.

But anything we can do God can do better. We should never let our achievements go to our head, as though we did it by ourselves.

This, however, is what people are inclined to do, in every age.

From Adam and Eve thinking they could be like God; to the Tower of Babel where men sought to raise a monument for their own glory; to those who would kill God’s own Son to steal his inheritance (Mt 21,38). All this is human rebellion against God, a futile assertion of human rights against divine.

The Pharisee of today’s Gospel suffers from this problem. He talks to God as a near-equal, as though his goodness is something God should be grateful for.

The Publican gives us the way forward. He acknowledges his sin, and asks only for mercy.

When we fit in with the true order of things, all will go well.

All the trouble in the world can be traced to sin, and all the sin in the world stems from a lack of humility before God, a lack of understanding our true position before Him.

He wants us to share in His creative power, to exercise our free wills in union with His own will

But this must always be, for our part, from a subservient position.

We never dare to tell God what He should be doing; we merely ask that He do certain things, but always deferring to His greater wisdom and goodness.

If we do this long enough we come to grow in love for Him. It is not just that we obey Him, as though grudgingly, but we come to rejoice in our relationship with Him.

We see in God the fulness of all that is good and loveable; all that is beautiful.

As we love His works on earth we come to love Him who made those works.

Our own creativity and ingenuity will be more likely to come to the fore if we are in right relationship with God.

Our intellects and wills have been damaged by sin. Coming back to God through repentance will repair a lot of the damage that has been done.

We will think more clearly and love more strongly. We will have all our priorities in the right balance.

Most of all we will have the right understanding of ourselves as standing before God.

We will be humble, grateful, respectful of others, on all points seeking to advance God's view of the world.

This will make us ready for Heaven and more useful on earth.

We cannot get by without God, or in opposition to Him. It is His universe and we are in it only by His generosity.

Instead, every knee must bow before Him and every tongue confess (Ph 2,10-11). The humble shall be exalted.

9th Sunday after Pentecost 11 Aug 2019 Sermon

9^th Sunday after Pentecost 11.8.19 Punishment

If the people will not repent there will be trouble. This message, in various words, forms the essence of many prophecies, of biblical and more recent times.

God reserves the right to punish His people, if they will not listen to His word and act on it.

In the Epistle today we are reminded that God punished the Jews of Moses’ time; and in the Gospel, more than a thousand years later, Our Lord foresees another punishment for the Jews of His time.

And our time is similarly addressed in terms of punishments - which have happened, such as World War II (prophesied at Fatima) - and which might still happen if the people do not repent.

It seems that people do not like repenting, in any age. The allure of sin is strong.

And there are ways of avoiding the issue.

1) In an age that trusts too much to science, events such as cyclones, floods, fires, earthquakes are considered merely ‘natural’ events which cannot be avoided; they have nothing to do with ‘religion’, it is said.

If there had never been sin we would still have Eden-like conditions. Nature would obey Man and would never harm him. As it is Nature rebels because Man rebels against God.

Even more so the destruction caused by man against man is the direct result of alienation from God. People without God will certainly seek to harm each other.

2) Then, there are people who say that God would not punish anyone. He is too forgiving for that.

But punishment is not the same as refusing mercy.

The Lord punishes to direct His children back to the path whereby they can receive mercy.

He will forgive anyone who is sincerely contrite.

The idea of punishment is to lead the guilty party to a clearer understanding of what is happening.

Why cannot God just keep forgiving? Because there has to be an attitude change in us, a real sorrow for our sin.

He teaches us the value of restraint, honesty, self-sacrifice – all the things which are better for us than gluttony, self-indulgence, theft, and all the wrong things.

God blasts away the false gods, and replaces them with His true self, and order is restored.

This is all to give us something better than we had before. He is preparing us for Heaven.

3) What sort of God would punish? A loving and wise God, who can see all the details near and far, who can work for the best interests of His people.

4) What about good people, those trying to do the right thing? Why should they suffer? Well, no one is totally good, and we all need purifying of some sort; but even if we were totally innocent, we can still grow in love of God, and help atone for the sins of others.

As we come to love God more we are moved by a desire for right order to prevail; that God be honoured for who He is.

At first we do not want pain, but we come to see the larger view and are prepared again by God's grace to take our part.

We are happy to take some of the pain of this earth, in rebellion against its Creator and Saviour. We do this to help settle that rebellion, and remove the need for further punishment, which simple obedience will achieve.

Nothing compares with God, and the possession of Him is paramount. It all comes back to this point.

Once we grasp this, sin loses its hold on us. Then the happy prophecies can unfold such as: The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; and a little child shall lead them. (Is 11,6).

8th Sunday after Pentecost 4 Aug 2019 Sermon

8^th Sunday after Pentecost 4.8.19 Confidence

The steward is praised for his ability to use what he had to advance his own cause. To apply this in a spiritual light, we have a lot which we can use to our own advantage spiritually.

We have the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the sacraments, sacramentals, the Liturgy, the intercession of the saints, the workings of grace. We have all these things going for us, yet we still can think we are all alone and unaided.

At any time we can invoke God's presence and He will come to our aid, enabling us to conquer any sort of opposition or obstacle.

We will be strong enough and wise enough to find the best way forward.

We can take this opportunity to ask for an increase in our confidence – to be more confident of God's help; and of our own ability to work with that help.

When fear restricts us we miss many opportunities for good. They say that evil flourishes when good men do nothing. Well, there is a lot of ‘nothing’ going on in our Church.

As to confidence in God we have the power of prayer and the sacraments to make Him present to us. We have thousands of years of miracles and wonders, with God showing His ability and His will to advance His plans for us.

As to confidence in ourselves, as the Psalm puts it: With my God I can scale any wall (Ps 17 (18),29).

If we are Moses going before Pharaoh, or David confronting Goliath, or John the Baptist correcting Herod – at different times we have to do difficult things, even dangerous things.

God is at our side always.

He can work miracles directly to clear the way for us; or He can work through us, putting the miracle inside us, as it were.

This is His usual preferred method.

So we participate in His work. We solve our own problems with God's help and in union with Him all the way.

Many will try to sort it out themselves, a kind of rugged individualism which is really pride.

We find many stories where God has used people who may not have seemed adequate for the role: Abraham, Moses, Gideon, David, Esther, the Apostles, St Paul etc.

God values humility, the recognition that we cannot get anywhere without Him. Once we do recognize that we can make great progress.

When someone dies young people will say, What a waste  - they had the world at their feet; they could have achieved so much.

Just so, when someone lives the full measure of years but never connects with the will of God  - what a waste of potential.

We have so much at our disposal in terms of grace; we can receive it; we can make it go to work.

The Epistle tells us we are sons of God, not just servants.

We have a share in God’s royal dignity. We can do so much, if only we stay anchored in His will.

We can be easily distracted or waylaid, lacking confidence in God, and in ourselves.

The steward shows us the way. Use what we have, and see it multiply.

Who knows what graces the Holy Spirit might yet release in us if we let Him?

You have to be in it to win it, the saying goes. We have to be engaged in the search for God to find Him fully. If we are receptive to His initiatives, anything can happen (cf the Incarnation!)

For some things God waits on us to ask, and if we leave things undone He might leave them undone too, until we work out that He wants our engagement.

God wants us to call on Him for help, while being prepared to act ourselves, trusting in Him to supply what we cannot.

In this mode of operating, we can make our way to eternal life.

7th Sunday after Pentecost 28 Jul 2019 Sermon

7^th Sunday after Pentecost 28.7.19 False prophets

There will be wolves in sheep’s clothing, Our Lord tells us (Mt 7,15). He warns us against false prophets.

We can take ‘prophet’ to mean anyone who speaks with authority on a matter of faith or morals. The higher the rank of the person making the statement the more risk there is of damage, if the statement is wrong.

False prophets tend to err on the side of being too cheerful in their messages; too much inclined to say Yea when they should say Nay, to tell people what they want to hear, instead of what they need to hear.

Thus they bring people to a false sense of security and cause much harm accordingly.

The people will not repent if they think what they are doing is fine with God.

This is our problem with much of the Church today. People no longer confess, or even conceal what, a few years ago, they would have known was a mortal sin.

The false prophet will tell you that the Church is behind the times, and needs to update. Or that Catholics need to embrace the world, instead of condemning it, etc

False prophets make themselves very popular because they are telling people what they want to hear: For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings. 2 Tim 4,3).

A true prophet will not worry whether or not he is pleasing the audience. He will simply say what God wants to be said. This will ultimately please those who respond to it, inasmuch as it will bring them into union with God.

The true prophet is likely to be unpopular, even to the point of losing his life (eg John the Baptist, Our Lord Himself, and countless other martyrs.)

Many in the Church are trying to restore true teaching, the proper fear of the Lord, and the reality of all that has been obscured in recent years. This is not to scare people but to save them.

It is so easy under temptation to take the path of least resistance, the easy way out; especially if there is someone on hand to tell you there is no problem with such a course.

But with a little effort one can take the harder road.

We want to restore pride of place to God Himself; to try to please Him, not ourselves or others.

Church teaching is available if we really want to know. We just have to be aware that we cannot necessarily trust every individual, or every publication for advice.

We have the whole of 2000 years of saints, popes, councils, catechisms to call upon; we are not confined to the most recent publications or utterances.

Out of our history there emerges a discernible body of teaching, which is consistent with itself, over time and at every point.

St Paul and others were aware how savagely this teaching would be attacked in the years to come (cf Acts 20.29). We have to be aware of this battle for truth, and to make ourselves strong enough to hold firm, lest we with ‘itching ears’ go after some harmful novelty.

We take our place in defending the faith, holding to it, living by it; where we can, explaining it.

We pray for those who are currently in error; and for a widespread return of confused and misled people to the security of the truth, God's truth.