2nsd 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 he 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!

 

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).

2nd Sunday of Lent 25 Feb 2024 Sermon

2^nd  Sunday of Lent 25 February 2024 The Transfiguration

The Transfiguration was meant to strengthen the apostles for the sufferings they would endure on Good Friday. If they could recall the glory of Christ, which they had seen for themselves, they would not have panicked on seeing the Crucifixion. That was the logical reasoning.

The apostles, however, did not remain constant under pressure, though they did become strong enough at Pentecost a few weeks later.

With the same idea the Transfiguration is offered to us and the whole Church.

We do not always react by the laws of logic. We believe in God, and we believe He can work miracles to rescue us from trouble, but when we are in the heat of battle we can lose that belief.

We have so many miracles we could call upon, yet somehow they lose their power over us.

We need a reference point to which we can always return, and that is Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever (Heb 13,8).   We need not just the miracles but the One who can work the miracles!

How can we be strong enough that we will never lose what we have gained? Overall victory is assured but we want to win the battles too.

We keep records, at least in our heads; we remember what we have seen, and then we bring it out when needed. This is one reason why we have liturgy, the constant re-enactment of a whole host of miracles, centred on Jesus Christ, what He can do and is doing for us.

Under Josehp the Patriarch the Egyptians had enough to withstand the famine (Gen 41,49). So we put away in storage all our reasons for believing, and we bring them out when our world appears to be falling apart.

We face many ordeals, and we can buckle under the pressure, but we have these reserves to call upon. We not only survive, but flourish.

People in general are not outstanding in faith, so it is easy to operate at that level, and accept that as normal.

But that is not how it is meant by God. He wants us to have a lively active trust in Him, as a matter of course.  And He wants to see the whole Church, buzzing with faith and other virtues.

We can always correct past lapses and grow in strength. If we ran away on Good Friday we will not run away next time, or the one after that.

The Transfiguration could be seen as a kind of pivotal miracle, around which all others place themselves. It is a certain reference point which never diminishes.

Think of a time of your life when your faith was at its strongest. Such times are rare and can be a long time apart; but they don’t get any less true with the passing of time.

We might allow the passing of time to erode our beliefs. Memories can fade.

We face some sad experiences along the way. Loved ones die; we have other misfortunes and setbacks. And then there is the world and all its tragedies and troubles.

Who can believe under such pressure, but then again who can fail to believe, given the miracles we have?

In our faith we get used to seeing beyond appearances. We learn to see the complexities of situations and are not easily swayed, especially not to sin.

The main temptation we face is to give up our faith as just too hard, and try to make our own way through life, with maybe some reference to God, but mostly not.

So many do this and it brings all sorts of disorder, and still plenty of fear, which is what they were trying to avoid.

In Christ we have order, peace, certainty – we have all we need to see off various problems and to make progress to eternity.

1st Sunday of Lent (B) 18 February 2024 Sermon

 1^st Sunday of Lent 18 Feb 2024 Temptations

Lent is a time of waging war on Sin. Jesus was tempted by the devil to settle for a lesser goal, to be distracted from higher and better things.

This is how the devil tempts us, to take lesser gods and expend all our desires on them.

It helps if we have a clear concept of life’s having a start and a finish. We say life is short but then live like it goes forever, ignoring what happens after death.

Many have a vague idea about life after death, but do not see the urgency of getting this life into order. They become absorbed in this life, but do not know what it is for!

We live in a world which is ordered by God. He hears our prayers and He interacts    strongly, without taking away our free will.

People think God is remote. No, indeed. He is aware of everything. He knows if a sparrow falls from the sky (Mt 10,29). He knows what we need, but often awaits our asking for it.

He wants us to have a lively and continuous conversation with Him, learning as we go, growing in love and trust towards Him.

In the coming of Christ to the world, God reconciles humanity with divinity, and this gives humanity the best exposure it has ever had to true goodness, with all its flow-on effects. Such as peace, happy families, fulfilling lives etc.

He gives us many blessings from which we can learn, and then become grateful.

We learn to obey God and to see why that is necessary, and the best thing to do.

Choosing our own course may seem the obvious way forward but, as we see, it leads to more and more trouble.

We live as disciples of Christ with the knowledge that He is nearby, and never forgetting there will be a day of reckoning.

Instead we read the signs and repent. Like Nineveh, like the Prodigal Son, like Mary Magdalene, and thousands  since, who have come to the Saviour and found new life.

Reading the signs we have direction and the way to complete the path.

God knows our human frailty so He does not ask more of us than we can bear.

However, we will find that our capacity to make sacrifices will increase, and then we will be loaded with more responsibility (cf Mt 25,28, give the one who has ten talents even more). He will also give us many consolations on the way.

We must not be too attached to the temporary blessings of this life. They are like refreshment points along the way, but not themselves the end of the journey.

We give up things in Lent to acknowledge that we want the heavenly food instead. We do not live on bread along but on every word that comes from the mouth of God (Mt 4,4).

We learn to live in two worlds at once, this world and the heavenly world. We live by the laws of the heavenly world, at the same time being responsible citizens here on earth; doing all we have to do, but inwardly longing for our true home in Heaven (Ph 3,20).

Whenever we came to faith and baptism, that was getting on course. Everything after that is staying on course – to Heaven.

We make it hard for ourselves whenever we choose to sin. Sin is like being on a journey and then suddenly going sideways or backwards. It does not make any sense, but the temptations are strong, because previous sin clouds our minds and weakens our wills.

A strong dose of clarity from Heaven will enable us to resume the straight path!