4th Sunday after Pentecost 20 Jun 2021 Sermon

 

4^th Sunday after Pentecost 20.6.21 Miracles

God works many kinds of miracles, sometimes to help someone - as in making a blind man to see or a hungry person to be fed. Other times the miracle seems mainly to demonstrate His power over nature. He can do anything He likes, and that should impress us.

It does impress people but only for a while, and then they are likely to slip back into old ways.

We have to remember that the God who made the whole universe, who has worked countless miracles up to this point, is still with us, and has not lost His power or His relevance.

This is a good Person to be on the same side as! Everyone in the world should know Him by now, but as we see there are many distractions, and somehow memory is short. Yesterday’s miracle is yesterday’s news, and not as important (to wayward humanity).

God can work any miracles, but usually He works by setting laws in place and most things run according to those. The sun always rises in the east, but God could make it rise in the west.

Miracles, however, are not only about nature. God works miracles in people too, such as in miraculous conversions of sinners (St Paul, Zacchaeus, St Mary Magdalen, St Augustine …countless others).

He can influence the way we think; He can put ideas into our heads; speak to us through signs and coincidences; chance words or experiences.

When we pray for something to happen - such as world peace, or healing a troubled marriage, or converting a sinner – we are calling on God to intervene, and that is the essence of any miracle; God intervenes in His own creation.

Moving the will of another person does require something like a miracle, certainly at least God’s help in our everyday affairs.

Many would see God as distant and remote, but we find He is right in amongst us and exerting all sorts of influence for good.

It is not just once in a while, but everyday and everywhere that God can be found in His actions. Then I was by Him, as a master workman: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him (Pr 8,30).

He is asking us to see Him in this light - ask and you shall receive. He wants us to work with Him in seeking His will and putting it into practice.

He makes Himself known but not everyone wants to know Him. Many are too much immersed in their sin to be able to discern God's presence and activity.

Others will reject any appeal to miracles as outside the laws of science, and therefore impossible.

Especially will they reject a punitive intervention by God. He is not like that, they will say.

For us, the believers, if we give God the attention He deserves we will see more good things happening.

It needs our cooperation to bring on the miracles and to apply their message.

Peter had to put out the nets before the fish would come. Usually someone has to do something to introduce the miracle. The sick man’s friends lowered him through the roof. They brought their need to Our Lord’s attention (Mk 2,4). This is what we are doing with all our various prayers. Lord, do something good here; we need Your help!

Our everyday obedience and fidelity to detail, is ‘bringing the sick of the world’ to the Master and asking Him to heal.

We ask for miracles if they be needed, or just ordinary things to keep happening. We know God is behind the whole process, and we approach Him with confidence. His will be done!

3rd Sunday after Pentecost 13 Jun 2021 Sermon

 3^rd Sunday after Pentecost  13.6.21 The Lost sheep

In this month of the Sacred Heart we are especially glad to honour Our Lord under that title, and to ask for His merciful attention to all who need that mercy.

The Lord seeks out the lost, and so do we under His guidance and power.

He has a real love for the lost, being able to see these people as His own children.

It is much like a parent still looking out for the child who has taken wrong turnings and is in great trouble at present (eg prodigal son).

The parent still loves the wayward child, whereas the general public might have contempt for that same ‘child’.

The lost can include some very unpopular people, such as murderers, rapists, dictators, fraudsters, sex abusers…

The first reaction to such people can be to want to ‘string them up’ like a lynching party. There is a real desire to inflict hurt of some kind on the offending person.

But the Sacred Heart sees all these people as lost children, who still could recover the right way if they would respond to His mercy.

Whether they respond or not the love is still there; God never ceases to love His children.

Regardless of our feelings we ask that God forgive freely. We will not try to direct where He can or cannot be merciful.

We cannot separate mercy into categories of deserving or undeserving. Mercy is by definition undeserved. If we deserved mercy it would not be mercy, but justice.

Mercy is when we have no other answer than the saving death of Christ. We take refuge in Him entrusting ourselves to His mercy, which we know He is willing to give.

God is always willing to forgive; the sinners are not always ready to ask for that forgiveness.

Many would fight vigorously against any acknowledgement of God, or their obligations to Him.

Others would like to be forgiven, but are not prepared to take serious steps towards conversion of heart.

To receive mercy from God we have to be at least partially sorry for our sins.

Our prayer can help us be sorry on our own behalf, and we hope to generate some grace which will move the hearts of others towards sorrow.

The more people asking with real fervour, and backed up with penance, the more the likelihood of conversion of heart in hardened sinners.

Our Lord promises us, through the Sacred Heart, that any efforts we make to extend His mercy will bear fruit. Sinners will find in My Heart the source and infinite ocean of mercy.
Lukewarm souls shall become fervent. Fervent souls shall quickly mount to high perfection.
I will give to priests the gift of touching the most hardened hearts.

We seek to change the atmosphere; to offer blessing for curse, to believe in goodness even when there is very little in evidence.

God does not need our prayers to excite His mercy; He has the disposition of mercy, anyway, being always ready to forgive.

What He does need from us is the same disposition (if not in intensity, at least along the same lines).

He entrusts the wretched of the world to us; He waits on what we will do.

Did not Our Lady say at Fatima that many go to hell simply because no one will pray for them? Therefore if we pray we will save souls from hell, and there is no better use of our time than that!

Let us overcome our own distaste for sinners, particularly some types of sinners, and keep up a storm of prayer and penance.

The time is probably short for the human race, so we must make haste to help; and in any case there are always people dying, and many of those would be in a bad way, spiritually. They need our prayer; and we gladly comply.

Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

2nd Sunday after Pentecost 6 Jun 2021 Sermon

 

2^nd Sunday after Pentecost 6.6.21 Our need for the Eucharist

The people invited to the banquet find various excuses not to come. They see their own concerns as more important than anything the banquet could do for them.

This parallels very closely the attitude of many Catholics to the great banquet of the Eucharist.

They think firstly that they have too much else to do to be spending their time at Mass; and secondly that they do not need anything that the Eucharist could do for them. They can get by well enough on their own good intentions (they say!).

It is easy to dismiss what we do not know or do not understand.

The Eucharist is a mysterious reality and certainly does take some effort to understand on our part; but lack of understanding does not mean we can simply do without the Eucharist.

The Eucharist is Jesus Christ present before us – present in His saving sacrifice on the Cross; present in His glorious Resurrection; present as food for our spiritual nourishment.

If we dismiss the Eucharist we dismiss Him.

The Eucharist is directly from Heaven. At each Mass the bread and wine become the Body and Blood of the Lord, by the miraculous action of God Himself.

He makes Himself present in this special way.

It is an interaction between Heaven and earth, something therefore beyond the normal ways we transact things.

He comes not to feed us physically, because the small host would not do that. Nor does the heavenly bread taste anything special to us, because it is not our senses He is trying to reach.

Where He does feed us is the soul, that place where we learn to love - to love God and decide to be faithful to Him.

This is our greatest need, but not generally understood by the human race.

It is more important that we love God than that we have enough to eat, or status in the community, or pleasure in the senses, or any merely earthly consideration.

God feeds us with the ability to know, love and serve Him; with the ability to love others and forgive those who offend us, and to keep all the other commands.

When we can do these things we have truly ‘feasted’ on the Lord. We have tasted and seen that the Lord is good (Ps 33(34),8)

The Eucharist is an intimate and intense encounter with the Lord, in which we take on some of His qualities.

We become more like Him in His charity, wisdom, mercy and all the other good qualities.

We are never as good as He is but we can become more like Him all the same.

Eat this food and you will be more able to love your annoying neighbour, to overcome years of bad habits, to believe in God more fully, to ride through personal problems with more assurance.

In short, the Eucharist, being God Himself, does a complete repair job on us – if we let it take its full effect.

We must not let repetition dull the effects of this encounter with the divine. Take each Communion as though it were your first or your last, and we have then a sense of the drama at stake.

We cannot get by just on our own will power or sunny personalities. There are too many sins and pitfalls for us to think we are good enough by ourselves.

We need this heavenly food, and so we take it gratefully.

What about the majority of the human race who do not see this importance? We must demonstrate to them by our lives that the Eucharist is essential.

And otherwise we pray, catechize, and evangelise about the goodness of God and how He seeks to bless us.

 

 

Trinity Sunday 30 May 2021 Sermon

Trinity Sunday 30.5.21 Worship

Today we focus on God Himself, rejoicing in His perfections, and giving thanks that we are included in His plans.

We often pray to God for what we need, but we remind ourselves that prayer should not always be asking for things. We should take time to thank God, and even more fundamentally still, to praise Him.

The Scriptures abound in references to praising God…Forever I will sing the praises of the Lord; Praise God in His holy temple…I will exalt You and praise Your name…

We do praise God in the liturgical prayers of the Mass and the Divine Office; and many other prayers. Glory to God in the highest…

We need also to make that praise our own personal practice, as we meditate on the goodness of God, and make it a habit to reaffirm that goodness.

God does not need our praise but we need to give it!

In giving praise to God we are letting our souls soar aloft and we find our true place before God. My soul glorifies the Lord, and my spirit exalts in God my Saviour.

In Heaven they praise God without ceasing… Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus!

This might sound rather demanding to us, like being in church all day long – but in Heaven they can perceive the goodness of God, whereas here we are weighed down with doubt and fear etc. It would be no effort for those in Heaven. The praise would come forth spontaneously.

We know the joy of experiencing some form of beauty beyond the norm. Be it music, or art, or nature, or anything which draws us out of ourselves. In Heaven we see that God is more beautiful than anything He has made, more desirable than any earthly reality could be.

It is harder to praise God on earth when we have not experienced the full sight of His glory. But we can go some distance with faith and hope; the rest will come in eternity.

The praise we offer will itself lift our spirits to higher things.

Today, Trinity Sunday, we search into the inner mysteries of God's nature. What is He like? How much do we know about God? We feel very inadequate to answer such questions.

He is so much greater than we are, and it is hard for a lesser being to understand a greater.

We do the best we can with the help of God Himself, and what He has revealed to us.

Fortunately, it is not only our brains working on it; we have supernatural help. Nor is it only an intellectual matter.

By loving God we come to understand Him better. Keeping His commands, seeking to please Him, we get a sense of what God is about.

And always part of this is Praise, simple devotion to God, acknowledging His goodness even if we do not feel especially happy at every moment.

God reveals Himself to us as a Trinity of Persons, three distinct identities but so closely bound to each other that they make one God, not three.

He knows we will find this difficult to grasp but invites us to share His inner life, and at least begin to understand.

God wants us to relate to Him as He relates to Himself in the activity of the three Persons.

There is a mutual giving and receiving inside the Blessed Trinity, and we are lifted up to be part of that!

It is an honour so great that we might miss it, and many do; but it is there waiting for us whenever we do make a conscious response.

Let us take every chance to glorify God – today and all days. He does not need it, but He deserves it. And we - for once not asking for something - will benefit anyway from contemplating His goodness and glory.