4th Sunday of Easter 21 April 2024 Sermon

4^th Sunday of Easter 21 April 2024 Safety

The recent events in Sydney (stabbing attacks on shoppers, and on Orthodox bishop) remind us of our mortality and vulnerability.

We are not totally safe anywhere. We knew that anyway but these things remind us, and that is good insofar as we then look for ways of making ourselves ‘safer’.

We call Jesus Christ the Saviour, the one who makes us safe.

We can uncover different types of safety and how He can work that for us.

There is physical safety. We have probably all had many close shaves with death or injury. Some of these we would be aware of, others unknown to us because out of our sight or hearing etc.

We believe we have guardian angels who help with these matters. We thank God for whatever He has brought us through.

Physical safety is a good thing to have but cannot be totally guaranteed, as we live in a world which does not obey the commands of the Creator, so things often go wrong.

There is also the point that we must all experience physical death at some point, so it is impossible to be delivered from death forever.

Then there is spiritual safety, whereby we are delivered from the sins which weigh down on our souls, and impede the grace of God from guiding our lives. We see that people can get their lives into a terrible tangle with various vices, sins, lack of hope, alienation etc.

We can be delivered from all that if we bring ourselves to the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ.

He saves us from ourselves, we might say. as we are likely to do all sorts of weird things, but He gives us a better way.

In the physical world we are careful crossing the street; so we can be in the spiritual world, we are careful what decision we make, and we live longer as a result.

The decisions amount to always obeying God, always complying with His holy will, and the rest falls into place.

Come to me you who labour and are overburdened. And I will give you rest.(Mt 11,28-30).

The shepherd gives rest to the sheep. We are safe with Him. If we can imagine ourselves in green pastures with the Lord, then the same peace extends to the way we live our lives. We avoid sin like we would avoid the wolf coming to eat us.

Then there is the state of our surrounding society, so far from the kingdom of God. The society represents danger to us in that it can lead us astray from the Sheepfold, lead us into chaotic places which will yield us death if we do not set ourselves right.

The Good Shepherd can heal the surrounding society too, only that is a much more complex matter.

We have so many twisted values at present that would take a lot of straightening out.

The Saviour saves as many as He can from the chaos, and in the process we should see some improvements in our surrounding world.

We draw comfort from the Good Shepherd; we pray to him at every level, for physical safety, for moral safety in helping us to choose wisely; for repairing the whole society in which we live, at least some way.

Safety comes with an enlightened response from us, as we learn how it all works and can work in the future.

We will be safer in all these ways if we let God operate, and especially if we ask Him.

3rd Sunday of Easter 14 April 2024 Sermon

3^rd Sunday of Easter (B) 14 April 2024 Price of Salvation

We say in every Mass, Lamb of God, who take away the sins of the world. In times before Christ there were many religions in the world, and they usually involved some kind of offering sacrifice to whatever gods they believed in.

This was usually animal sacrifice, sometimes even human!

When God became Man, He abolished all previous sacrifices and made Himself the one necessary and sufficient sacrifice for sin.

The idea of a sacrifice is that the people who have offended their god want somehow to atone for that offence.

They do this by giving something that is valuable to them and hope that the gods will find the offering valuable enough to forget the sin, and all is back to how it should be.

We want to give something to our God, whom we believe to the be the only God that actually exists.

We have offended Him in many and various ways. What can we give Him that is valuable both to Him and to us.

God Himself answered this question for us. He established things so that we could give Him Jesus Christ, His own Son, who would be the sacrificial lamb of all future offerings.

When we come to Mass this is what is happening each time. The sacrifice Jesus made on Calvary is made present again each time the Mass is offered.

Each time we pray that the sacrifice will be acceptable to God the Father, and it always will be acceptable in view of who the Victim is.

The Son is infinitely valuable to God and to us. We give Him; God receives Him. His value is more than enough to atone for the sins of the world, all sin of all time.

The only part of the process that may not be as it should is our degree of sorrow for sin.

If this is inadequate, then that sorrow can be more appropriately felt as we attend each Mass. We can get better at being sorry, more in tune with God's own way of seeing matters.

Jesus takes away the sins of the world – our sins, potentially the sins of everyone who wants to be forgiven.

He takes the sin to the throne of God and there it is dissolved as though it had never happened.

There is an abundance of mercy available. Some of it will fall back on us, enabling us to break free from sinful habits, replacing vice with virtue.

As our sorrow becomes more clearly defined so does the mercy which takes away that sorrow.

Lord, I am not worthy, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

Our souls are made right, able to choose rightly, always to find the best way forward.

Other souls can benefit also from the Lamb’s sacrifice, even if they do not ask for mercy, or even admit their need for it.

The graces generated by the perfect Sacrifice will be offered to all people and for many of them at least there can be a change of heart; they can be converted and healed.

This is our strong prayer at every Mass. That the one true God will be acknowledged by all the nations of the world, and that every knee shall bow before Jesus Christ, the Lamb of sacrifice.

Blessed are those who are called to the supper of the Lamb. What do they eat at that supper? Heavenly food, which changes those who eat of it in faith.

That is what we are doing here, now.

I am not worthy but my soul shall be healed. If I am not worthy I can at least become less unworthy! A little more each time.

2nd Sunday of Easter 7 April 2024 Sermon

 2nd Sunday of Easter 7 April 2024 Forgiving love

Whose sins you retain they are retained (Jn 20,22-23). Just about any sin can be absolved, provided there is a sufficient degree of contrition on the part of the penitent.

For His part, God wants to forgive sins, far more than to have to punish the sins. He would much rather the wicked man repent than die (Ez 33,11).

God loves us, we know. Forgiveness is love taken to its furthest reaches. There is giving and there is for-giving, an extra layer of giving.

Jesus taught that when we have a feast we should invite people who will not return the invitation (Lk 14,13-14), as this is an expression of the sort of thing He Himself does. He gives to people who will not be able to repay Him – which turns out to be the whole human race.

Take that further still – can we still give to those who are not only ungrateful but positively abusive in return. This was Jesus’ experience. He was not just rejected but insulted and treated brutally.

Is that going to exhaust God's patience? No, because Jesus says from the Cross, Father, forgive them, they know not what they do  (Lk 23,34).

Knowing this we then have to respond. Are we going to treat the Son of God like that first generation did?

Or are we going to set out in another direction, cooperating with Divine Mercy, to the point that we are not only forgiven of our sin, but changed within so that we no longer have any attachment to sin?

God has made His position clear, through the Sacred Heart revelation, and more recently Divine Mercy.

These two devotions are both based on the infinite charity and mercy of God, and of how we can position ourselves to be more grateful, humble, and cooperative.

We then become Christ-like, as we extend mercy to those around us; willing to forgive others because we have been forgiven (cf parable of two debtors Lk 7,36-50).

There are two stages to full reconciliation with God: one, forgiveness of sin; two, renewal of character so that we no longer want to sin, or to give it any place in our lives.

It is easy to be forgiven; much harder to work that forgiveness into our own hearts and minds. It usually hurts to change the way we have been doing something, to do it another way - but it is worth it.

Sin can be addictive and therefore hard to give it up just like that. But it can be done with supernatural help.

And if we fall again in the same area, can we still show our face? Of course, yes, because God will forgive any relapse or false turning, provided there is true contrition.

God loves us with infinite love; it is our love for Him that must increase. It will increase when we digest what He has done for us, and how much He has already given.

When we love God it becomes natural to avoid offending Him, and to exert ourselves in trying to please Him.

This is a new freedom we are offered. All my life my desires have been telling me what to do; now I will tell them how they must take their proper place.

The right things to desire will become clear, and they will be the things of God (Col 3,2).

Today there is a concerted desire to ask for Divine Mercy, for ourselves, our loved ones, and people in general.

We do not despair of receiving God's mercy.

Nor do we begrudge that mercy to others (such as the older brother did, Lk 15, 28-30).

We can all make it to the heavenly banquet, full union with God, in this life as in the next. If we keep praying for it.

 

 

 

 

Easter Sunday 31 March 2024 Sermon

Easter Sunday 31 March 2024 Rising with Him 

Everyone loves a story where the underdog somehow turns the tables on the evil oppressor and a new order of things is established.

The story of Jesus Christ is perhaps the inspiration of all such stories, as with Jesus it looked about as unlikely as it could that He would recover from His passion and death.

His enemies crucified Him, made sure He was dead, put Him in a tomb, rolled a stone across the front; and then put guards on the tomb!

Yet He was walking about shortly after; and gathering his disciples, and generally emerging as the winner of the contest. Loser on Friday; winner on Sunday.

Peter: it was impossible that the grave should hold him (cf Acts 2,22,24). 

This is our story as well as His, if we choose to follow Him. His good fortune is ours. His resurrection is promised to us if we maintain a link to Him through faith.

One of Jesus’ prophecies is that the dead shall hear his voice and live (Jn 5,25); His voice alone is enough to wake the dead, either literally dead or figuratively dead in sin. (Jn 5,25). Lazarus, come out (Jn 11, 43) - three words is enough. And similarly did He raise the son of the widow (Lk 7,14); and the young daughter of Jairus (Mk 5,41)

If anyone thinks that God is not listening, look what He can do when the occasion is right.

We are still in the tomb as far as how we feel much of the time. If our faith is weak or vacillating; if we do not trust in God to fulfil His words to us - we will see less result.

And miracles can wear off in their effects on us. The Jews were always asking for miracles and they received a lot of them, but still wanted more.

We need to have a faith which is strong enough to hold up even if nothing appears to be happening. Plenty is either happening or preparing to happen.

We have a lot more evidence than those first disciples.

But our trust is in the Man Himself, rather than appearances.

We can work on our faith, listening, praying, putting beliefs into practice.

We expect to be transformed whenever we encounter the living God, taking every chance to draw closer to Him.

Christ bursts forth from the tomb, life overpowers death, and puts death to the outer darkness.

But the people are still in the grave, in both senses, not yet risen physically, and for many not yet trusting.

We do not fight this alone. There is power in numbers.  We need a lot of people to believe this, for their own sake, and to give power to the Church as we seek to bring Christ to the world.

He is Risen, and you can be too - is the essence of the message.

We overcome the inertia of cynicism, scepticism, sloth and all such negative things, And we feel ourselves rising, free from sin, and generally living according to God's will.

The whole world needs to see this event as central to their lives, not just as an eccentric curiosity.

They cannot chain up the good news (2 Tm 2,9). The good news is bigger than we are but we can help by giving it some momentum.

We cannot stop the biological decline that comes with age, but we can do much to sustain and increase our faith, and in that sense we are more alive each time.

Jesus is risen, not just in body, but in relevance, for every corner of our world.

All praise to Him!