5th Sunday of Lent (B) 17 March 2024 Sermon

 5^th Sunday of Lent 17 March 2024 Transformation

 There will be no need for brother no need to say to brother… (first reading)

 Jesus comes to save us, which is always our greatest need.

 His saving is not just some technical matter, like having a debt removed.

 Deep within them I will plant my law (Jer 31,31-34) 1^st reading, We are being changed by God. All that is negative can be made positive. Malice to goodness, vice to virtue etc

A person may be mostly rotten now, but through mercy and grace become good, not only looking good through external actions, but actually being good.

A good person is one who never sins and always does what is good, with all desires, thoughts, passions etc are in the right place and right amount. Most importantly the will is in conformity with God's will.

1  Cor 13,1-3: even if I give my body to be burnt but have not love…I am a gong booming etc.

This means that without the right interior dispositions the external actions mean very little. What we do for God must be at least some part motivated by love.

Salvation is complete when we want and do the right thing; when we do whatever we do for the glory of God, always asking His help..

Many would say that being good all the time and in every way is too demanding and mostly impossible. Therefore it should not be insisted on.

Granted, weakness is prominent but we can do certain things to be strengthened.

A combination of prayer, sacraments, liturgy, good deeds will do much to advance us in spiritual maturity, whereby we are changed as we go, and what might have been impossible is now seen as reasonably attainable.

When sufficiently immersed in God's love we can see everything in a clearer light and charity prevails.

God plants His goodness in us, so it is not so hard as it sounds. God Himself is good in the fullest sense of the word, and has no wrong thoughts, words or actions.

In His earthly life Jesus always got it right – helped by the fact that He wanted all the right things anyway.

If we trust the real God enough to follow Him into unknown ways we will be vindicated. The difficult part is that we have to trust in the good outcome before we see it, or even before we see signs of it.

Let us work on our weakness and frailties and see what can be changed. A lot of it is just small adjustments, exercising restraint, changing orientation .

Whatever is missing can be found. The Salvation story continues.

We enter the last weeks before Easter, entering them as participants not just spectators or passers-by.

It involves us. We can commit fully or half or none, but we must make a decision.

Jesus invites each of us to respond fully to Him. He sees us individually, not just as a large crowd.

Salvation then can be seen as essentially an act of healing by God. If we have a physical need we go to whatever source of relief there might be.

Think of the spiritual life as going to the place where we can grow in charity. We need charity and all its connections more than we need health or peace or any other item. Simply wanting what God wants, with all our thoughts words and deeds in harmony with that. Then everything else will flow into place. And the whole world will know.

This is what we celebrate insofar as we have it, and strive for what we still need to attain. 

4th Sunday of Lent (B) 10 March 2024 Sermon

4^th Sunday of Lent 10 March 2024 Turning the tide

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (Jn 3,16). Words from today’s Gospel.

We are approaching Easter, when each year we are reminded of the fickleness of human nature as when the crowd turned against Jesus (not to mention Judas’ treachery or that of the Pharisees).  How did we get it so wrong?

Sometimes footballers miss a goal from very close range, and we wonder how they can do it. Well, humanity has been missing shots for goal for thousands of years.

But unlike in football, we still get another shot, even if we have missed a lot of times already.

The reminders of human frailty are not meant to depress us, but to encourage us to do better, as we know we can.

God makes it easier for us by Himself taking on human nature, and showing us how it is done. He does not miss from close range.

If we lived before the Incarnation and we were told that God would become Man, we would probably disbelieve that.

If we were convinced He would come we would probably think it was next to impossible that anyone would reject Him. But lots of people did reject Him.

And if they did reject Him then they would repent later. Not necessarily.

And they would kill Him again if they could. And they certainly still reject, by ignoring or insulting or preventing the Gospel from getting out.

Fortunately, at every point there are those who do believe and go against the tide. We hope we are among that number, and grow stronger in our reliability as disciples.

God has not given up on us. He could have turned the power off a long time ago!

Let us turn towards Him: Father forgive them they know not what they do.(Lk 23,34)

Many of them repented in the sober light of day. We could say the same for our own sins.

When people neglect to pray they will make bad decisions, driven by passions. If we maintain our own prayer life we will not add our sins to His burden.

Now we stand with those faithful disciples around the Cross, and are ready to be identified with Him

We do not mock, or laugh at Him; we do not wish Him dead but very much alive.

We want to grasp the full extent of what He has done for us; so that at some point either past or future we will come to the motivation to go further in His service.

Once forgiven we move on to the next stage like a St Paul who transferred his zeal to the right side of the argument.

The tide can be turned. We want to help others to have that Pentecost experience: Therefore let all Israel be assured of this: God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah.”  When the people heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the other apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” (Ac 2,36-37).

What can I do to atone for such a sin, but give him equal and better affirmation.

Be good, do good, according to one’s life station. It does not have to be a dramatic change on the surface, but simply take the Gospel more seriously and make it centralto your life.

The story is still happening - we have not reached the last page yet. We can make it a happy ending.

On the last page? The people did turn around most of them, all of them, some of them, What will it be?

Laetare Sunday? What is there to be joyful about? That we get more than one chance, and this is one of them.

3rd Sunday of Lent (B) 3 March 2024 Sermon

 

3^rd Sunday of Lent 3 March  2024 Commandments

Nothing is too much trouble for one we love. A desire to please is paramount.

We would do anything for some figure we admire or venerate such as Mother Teresa, or many others.

We should see God in that light, but it does not always happen.

Think of obedience to God as ‘nothing is too much trouble’, and we will see things more clearly.

Some will take a defiant attitude as questioning what right God has to intervene? He made the whole universe and keeps it in being.

They say we should be able to run the world ourselves without divine interference.

A quick look at the news will remind us of what happens when we leave it to people to run things!

Instead we can regard God's laws as a way of discovering more about God Himself. If we humble ourselves before Him we will learn why it is a good idea to obey Him, and seek Him out as much as possible.

God helps us to love Him as he sets us free from sin, and we come to value what he values and to deplore sin.

Our antipathy to rules is a throwback to original sin, where Adam and Eve try to blame others for their sin, and so it has been ever since. (Gen 3,12-13).

Sometimes the light of realization would break through. The Israelites would go as far as saying that they loved the laws of God (Ps 119, 97) because those laws showed how much God cared for them. Other gods did not do that. (See also Ps 18).

God's laws, we might say, are an acquired taste; they become more appealing as we see their inner wisdom and how everything leads back to God, who is the source of all that is good.

I am the Lord your God, and therefore come the following commands, the Ten Commandments.

These commands flow out of the nature of God, telling us what He is like, what He regards as important.

God wants us to know Him, so He comes in ways that we can digest, such as the sacraments, sacred places, and giving us commandments so we can live with wisdom and harmony.

The ten commandments begin with our response to God. If we love Him all else follows naturally. Any sort of false god means we do not love the real God.

The Commandments are brief in title there are many levels within each one. All the clauses and sub-clauses direct us back to I Am the Lord Every obedience is giving honour to God; every sin an insult to His majesty.

Keep the laws and we will mature in understanding, and the whole society will be better for that.

An initial sacrifice may be required to keep the laws, but great glory will result if we go God's way.

Does a loving God punish? Yes, when He sees it as necessary to call His people back to the right path. Thus today’s episode in the Temple when Jesus takes a whip to the moneychangers. Somebody was doing wrong and worse still, it was in the Lord’s house.

The house of the Lord - firstly the Temple, now churches - require special reverence, such as keeping silence, dressing appropriately, generally keeping a reverential demeanour.

God will not punish us,  however, if we make our own way to Him, to honour Him as He is, in His laws, His word, in whatever way He chooses to reach us.

We take the right path voluntarily, trusting ourselves to His ongoing providence to lead us safely home. Allow yourself to be a stray sheep and let Him collect you (Lk 15,4-7).