Four minutes homilies: Recent Episodes
Joseph Pich
Multiplication of the loaves and the fish
From time to time Jesus used to take his apostles to a deserted place to be alone by themselves. There were so many people coming and going that they needed to be on their own, for Jesus to spend time with them and teach them his message without interruptions. When they arrived to the solitary place, they found a great crowd of people waiting for them. They had seen where they were going by boat and hurried through the land to be there when they arrived. You can imagine the disappointment of the apostles who were looking forward to spending few days alone with Jesus.
The Gospel says that Jesus, seeing the people had compassion on them. Saint Mark says that they were like sheep without a shepherd. He healed the sick, listened to their problems, consoled the afflicted and gave them good advice. Jesus is always ready to spend time with us, no matter what the cost, even if we are far away from him. He has a human heart, the same as ours, and he feels in his heart our problems and troubles. After the whole day with them, the apostles asked him to dismiss the crowd, to be able to be on their own. Jesus told them that they must be fed first. They were far away from civilization and because the people had come in such a hurry, they had forgotten to bring food. Jesus not only looked after their souls, but also their bodies. Jesus is not a man with his head in the clouds; he knows what we need. Whenever we complain, he knows what we are going through. He’s been there. He is like us, in all but sin.
“Give them something to eat.” Their response was predictable: we don’t have any food, we don’t have money, and the shops are far away; we have only five pieces of bread and two fish, not enough for us. It is easy to complain. The apostles wanted the people to go away to be able to stay alone with Jesus. Jesus is telling them: do something. He is telling us the same whenever we complain: do something; you can fix the problem. Jesus tells them: “That’s enough. Bring the bread and the fish to me.” Jesus doesn’t need anything to perform his miracles. But he wants to use our talents, our will, our time, for us to think we are helping him. He wants to use what we’ve got, as long as we give it to him, as long as we don’t hide it, or keep it to ourselves. We should give Jesus our bread and our fish.
We have in front of our altar two fish and four pieces of bread. It is a copy of a mosaic from the church close to Capernaum, from the fourth century, where the actual miracle took place. People ask why there are only four pieces of bread. Because the fifth one it is the Eucharist, which comes on the altar during Mass and becomes the same Jesus that was there two thousand years ago. The same Jesus who performed the miracle. If we believe that Jesus is here, he will perform the miracle again and again in our lives. He can change our human nature into his divinity; he can multiply whatever we have.
The miracle happened in a very natural way: nothing fancy. Jesus put the food in two baskets, blessed it and gave it to the people. And the food kept coming out from the same basket. He didn’t attract the attention of the people, to witness his power. It was a beautiful meal. They had the best sandwich of bread and fish ever. The bread was just baked and the fish was recently caught. Afterwards they wanted to make him king, but he ran away. Jesus always gives us the best.
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Walking on water
After a busy day, attending the crowd, healing the sick, comforting the troubled and feeding them, Jesus goes on to pray. While he dismisses the people, the apostles sail to the other side of the lake. None of his apostles accompany him. They wanted to get away from the crowd. They were very tired, and they knew Jesus was going to pray for the whole night. Jesus wanted to spend time alone with his Father God. We too; after a busy day, we need to pray to recover our serenity. Even though we are tired, we need to find the time to pray. The busier we are, the more we need to pray. In one of John Paul II trips to the Philippines, after a very busy day, the nuns went to the chapel at midnight to prepare the Mass for the following day, and they found the Pope praying, prostrated on the floor.
From the top of the mountain Jesus sees the boat battling against the wind and the waves. He could see them well. It was full moon, close to the Pasch. These storms are normal on the lake, dangerous for fishing boats. The Fathers of the Church see in this boat an image of the Church, which is always battling against temptations, persecutions, heresies and infidelities. We often complain about the problems in the Church, but there have been always crisis, many times worse than the one we are going through now; and the Church always comes back alive. Jesus is always watching us from the mountain. He let the apostles struggle for a while. He does the same with us. It is good for us to go through difficulties and obstacles, for us to become stronger. It looks like he doesn’t care about us, but he is always watching over us.
At the fourth watch, at three in the morning, Jesus came walking on the water of the lake. He is ready to help us whenever we need it. One author says that after praying, Jesus was so inflamed with love, that he didn’t realise he was walking on water. On the other hand I think he wanted to play a trick on them. It made a deep impression on them; all four evangelists mention this event. He looked like a ghost. The white tunic, illuminated by the moon, contrasted with the black background of the water. It must have been very scary. They all cried out; these big men were as afraid as little girls. He had to calm them: “It is I, don’t be afraid.” He always reminds us of this reality, whenever we are afraid: I am always with you. We cannot hide from God. We cannot find a place where God is not.
Peter asked Jesus to walk on water: “If it is you.” He was still afraid, not trusting. “Come.” Peter jumped into the water. What did he feel on his feet? Was the surface soft? When he stopped looking at Jesus and realised he was walking on water, he began to sink. When we look at the wind, at the waves, the currents, the problems, the difficulties, we become pessimistic first and then we begin to sink, like Peter. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, specially when we are walking on eggshells. This is what it takes to become a contemplative soul: to keep our eyes on the Lord. Where do I fix my eyes? What am I looking for?
Peter cried out: “Lord, save me!” Jesus pulled him out, coming towards him and grasping him with his own hand. He could have commanded him to come out or jump. But he is always ready to pull us out of whatever muddy waters we find ourselves in. He complained: “Oh man of little faith why did you doubt?” How many times Jesus is telling us the same thing: I am with you always. Why don’t you trust me? I can do everything for you.
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Parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value
Today Jesus in the Gospel presents us two parables about the kingdom of heaven: the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value. Both are very similar; they show us the supreme value of God’s kingdom and what we should do to reach it. But they have some differences: the treasure points towards an abundance of gifts, and the pearl indicates more it’s beauty. We are all attracted to gems and pearls. They sparkle in many different ways, we admire their beautiful colours and we would like to have them, no matter what the cost. We use them to show our affection for our loved ones. People risk their lives to get them and others go to jail for stealing them. We too should risk our lives to go to heaven and achieve it by the struggle we constantly have with ourselves.
There is nothing like heaven. Our heart longs for an everlasting life full of goodness and beauty. Peter Kreeft mentions Saint Augustine’s little thought experiment: “Imagine God appeared to you and said: ‘I’ll make a deal with you if you wish. I’ll give you anything and everything you ask: pleasure, power, honor, wealth, freedom, even peace of mind and good conscience. Nothing will be a sin; nothing will be forbidden; and nothing will be impossible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. Only... you shall never see my face.’ Did you notice that unspeakable chill in you deepest heart at those last words?” Heaven is to see the face of God. To see the face of a person is to recognise his identity, to acknowledge his feelings, to admire his worth. It is difficult to do so these days with people wearing masks.
What is heaven for you? For some people it is something nice but far away, somewhere they’d like to go, like the Bahamas, or something they’ll consider when they are close to dying. Many people prefer this earth to eternity. They say: better the devil I know; at least here I can touch things; I don’t know what is going to happen when I die. But eternity is too big to swap for this earth; it is too risky. Pascal’s wager says that it is not fifty, fifty. It is all or nothing; all is all, nothing is nothing. If God doesn’t exist you have a finite loss; if He exists, you have infinite gains. You win more than you lose.
Another difference between these two parables is that the treasure is something we come across almost by chance, and the pearl is the result of a lengthy search. Faith, vocation, true wisdom, desire for Heaven, are things which sometimes are discovered suddenly and unexpectedly, and sometimes after much searching. If God wants to give them to us, we should be eternally grateful. If He wants us to keep searching, it is good for us. We all love a treasure hunt, looking for something we don’t know what it is or where it is hidden. As long as we keep on looking for it, eventually, we will find it. God as a good Father wants us to enjoy the treasure he has prepared for us. He has an infinite number of goodies and sweets, tailored made to our own personal taste.
Both men in the two parables have the same attitude and reach the same outcome. They sell everything to buy the field and the pearl; they manage to get it against all the odds, and both come away full of joy and happiness. To obtain the treasure it is necessary to sell everything we possess; otherwise we won’t get what we want. It is the only way to be happy. A good question for us today: What is God asking me to sell now to become closer to heaven? Saint Josemaria used to say that we should walk on this earth with our feet stepping firmly on the ground and with our eyes fixed on heaven.
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Parable of the weeds
These Sundays the parables in the Gospel try to explain the kingdom of heaven: it is impossible. To do so we need an infinite number of parables. We should be very keen to know more about our homeland. The more we know about our goal the more we quicken our pace. It is important for us to fix our eyes on heaven, to look forward to our destination. Jesus has prepared a place for us and we really want to get there. When you plan a trip you look first where is the place you are going and then you figure out how to get there. We know where we are going and we know the way: Jesus is the way, the only way. We need to make sure we don’t get distracted, side tracked, lost or bogged down.
Today we have the parable of the weeds. It is easy to understand it. We find weeds everywhere. They upset gardeners and annoy us during our daily lives. They say a weed is a plant out of place. We come across problems all the time. Things normally go wrong or they turn in a different way to how we planned them. We complain about others, about evil in the world and we forget that our hearts are full of weeds. It is easier to see the weeds in our neighbor’s garden. Jesus explains the parable very well. It underlines the drama of our existence. Good and evil, angels and devils: this is what happens behind the scenes. There are not good and bad people; there is good and evil in our hearts, both combined together. And it is up to us to foster the good and shrink evil. At the end of the day evil is a lack of goodness.
The servants complain to the master about who has sown the weeds. He answers that the enemy has done it while we were asleep. We need to be vigilant. While we are lazing around the devil is at work. People complain to God asking why does he allow evil to exist? The same happened to Saint Teresa of Avila. She asked God the same question. He answered: I created you. The devil never stops; he is always at work, while we complain. The good news is that God is on our side and he is Almighty.
There are three temptations, self-deceptions, that hide evil from us. First indifference: ignore it, do nothing, let me live my life, it is not my business, I don’t care; we should care, we Christians are the good seed. Second arrogance: we are the good ones, we know better, they know nothing, they are ignorant, we know what is right; if we are close to God it is because of him. Third violence: uproot evil, belittle the opposition, ridicule them, abuse them through the social media, spread false news. The best way is what John Paul II did: spread goodness, go around the world talking about God, throw the good seed everywhere. It is more effective to plant than to root out, to sow than to burn.
Evil will always be with us. It shouldn’t worry us. God is patient, we should be patient, God is merciful, we should be too. Why does God allow weeds to grow along with the wheat? There are a number of reasons. First for the weeds to become wheat. God can do it. We have our own experience. There is always time for conversion, till the last moment. Some big saints were big sinners. Second for us to become better. In times of persecution we Christians become stronger. Third, God is the only one who can bring good out of evil. God uses evil people for his plans, for us to see that he is in control.
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Parable of the sower
Today Jesus talks to us with a parable. Why? Because we find difficult to understand his message. He needs to use images, comparisons, material things for us to reach the spiritual ones. We are body and soul, and through our body we reach the soul. The kingdom of heaven is so rich that Jesus needs to use different earthly images for us to understand things better, to grasp some of its aspects. Man before he learned how to write, he began to paint. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Jesus’ parables are ingrained in our culture. When we talk about the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, people understand what we are talking about. We remember parables better than abstract concepts. In our society, where screens surround us, images are very important.
Today Jesus proposes to us the parable of the sower. It is something alien to us. Most of us haven’t seen anybody sowing seeds. These days we use machines for that. In the good old days it was done by hand, throwing the seed as they walked. Jesus is the sower. He throws his seed to us, his graces, his power, and it is up to us to pick them up, to place them in the right soil, to make them fruitful. He respects our freedom; he doesn’t impose himself. He let us be the one to accept his seed, to make it part of our lives, to look after it. He expects from us an attitude of receiving and nurturing. We should be very grateful to his generosity: he always throws an abundance of seed. We shouldn’t squander it.
It is very important for the sower to use the right seed. There are big companies always trying to improve the seeds, to yield more fruit, to be resistant to diseases, to withstand frosts, to be able to use less water. Jesus’ seed is the best one. You cannot find a better one. And it is free. It is his word in the Scriptures, his living water in Baptism, the bread of life in the Eucharist, the good wine of Cana, the oil of healing, the absolution in confession, the mustard seed that grows to a big tree, the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great value, the net that catches many fish, the two coins of the widow. His seed has the potential of always being fruitful. It is up to us to make it happen.
We are the soil. Our heart is the good soil. But we need to prepare it beforehand. It cannot be either too hard or too soft; just right. Our heart sometimes is very hard; we don’t share Jesus’ feelings. We need to soften it, to make it more capable of receiving Jesus’ seed. Maybe we need to go more often to confession, receive communion regularly, make acts of contrition, to apologize or ask for mercy. Maybe it is too soft and crumbles very easily; at the first difficulty it collapses. It needs to withstand strong winds. We need to face obstacles with stronger determination. If our heart is rocky ground, we need to dig the stones out. What are the stones in my life that don’t allow me to see God? If there are thorns, we should pull them out. What are the thorns in my heart that choke the seed?
It is not enough to have good soil. We should keep an eye for the right conditions for the seed to grow. The soil should be deep enough for the roots to grow and the plants to establish themselves. We have to plant the seed at the right time, spread fertiliser, water it sufficiently, spray the bugs, prune when it is necessary. It is a little seed that needs to be nurtured, to be planted in the right place, covered from the winds, with enough sun to grow. We cannot fall asleep and leave the plants alone.
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To become like children
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.” God loves children. Jesus complains to his apostles: “Let the children come to me.” It is easy for children to believe in miracles and angels. When we grow up we lose our capacity for the spiritual things. This is why Jesus reminds us that unless we become like children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We need to recover the ability to connect with the supernatural, the faith to believe in the other life. Eternity has a small door and we need to diminish to find it and to go through. Our ego is too big to fit in. What are children like? I’ll point out four characteristics that I like in them: humility, simplicity, sincerity and actuality. All these virtues are very important for our spiritual life.
Humility. Children are little and they know it. They don’t need to pretend, to show off. Their small stature is always before them. They look up to you, try to climb up things, fall down, mess up, dirty nappies, cry for help. They are helpless. They want to grow up, to become bigger, to dream; they are curious, have a huge capacity to wonder, they hope. All these things help us to see God as a Father and trust in him. We are weak and we need God.
Simplicity. People love children because they are transparent: what you see is what you get. They don’t know how to deceive. You can read their minds by looking at their faces. They are innocent, naive, authentic. Whatever they think, they say it. You know where you stand with them. They cry when they are hurt and laugh if they are happy. We spend our whole life hiding our feelings, trying not to say what we think, to pretend we are somebody else. We are very good at deceiving. We can have a number of different lives. We act differently in front of different people. God knows us inside out, perfectly, and he loves us in the way we are. We don’t need to pretend with him. The first thing he tells us when we approach him is: get rid of your fancy dress. We can relax with him.
Sincerity. Little children don’t know how to lie. They haven’t learned yet the art of deceiving. They say that the difference between computers and people is that computers cannot lie. Children are easy to catch: they invent unbelievable lies. Mum knows when her children lie; she was there at the first lie and she knows when we lie: we don’t look at her face, we move our ears, we twitch our nose, we frown. What’s the point of trying to deceive God?
Actuality. I don’t know how to name this virtue: the art of living in the present time. Children do it naturally. They just play. They don’t care about the past; it doesn’t exist. They don’t think about the future; it is in their parents hands. They move from a smiling to crying in seconds. They can laugh with tears still running down their cheeks. Scripture says that God plays with the children of men. All we need to do is play with him. We don’t need to worry about the past: we have been to confession. Our future is in God’s hands, who is a good loving Father.
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Love of God
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” It is a very strong statement. Why is Jesus saying this? Because we have been created to love God above everything. This is our inner make up, our only way to be happy in the long run. We have to put God first, we need to centre ourselves around him. The Bible reminds us a few times of this, that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” Is this possible? Look at the saints. They did it, with the help of God. They gave their lives to God. Can you love a person more than to give your life for him or for her? Looking at the history of the Church we see many people have dedicated their lives to God. Unless we give ourselves to God, he is not going to give himself to us.
How much do I love God? How much are we ready to do for Him? Are we ready not to offend Him? Are we ready to do His will? Love is different from emotions and feelings. It is a matter of the will. We can choose who we want to love. It can be an attraction at the beginning, but afterwards there is a decision from the will. We love God with our intellect and will. We cannot love what we don’t know. The more we know God, the more we love Him. The more we discover who God is, the more we will fall in love with Him. There is nobody like God.
How do I love God? How do you love others? The same way we love people, we love God. We have only one heart. Some people think that we have two hearts, one to love God and another to love others. We can also think that to love a person we need to see that particular person. People love characters in their imagination, girls fall in love with actors they will never meet. We love our loved ones dedicating time to them, spending time with them, doing things for them, offering them gifts, telling them that they matter to us, giving ourselves to them, making sacrifices for them. It is the same with God.
Human love depends on another person. This person can let us down, become crazy, get tired of us, can find somebody else better than us. Divine love depends only on you; the ball is in your court. God is always willing. He is very patient, He is always there for us, ready to forgive and forget. We won’t find anybody else like Him. And yet we always keep looking for somebody else.
Do I know how to love? We think we do, but maybe we only know how to love ourselves. Love is an art that has to be learnt and practiced. With God we have to give first. We think that because He has everything, He is supposed to give us whatever we need. But as a good father, He doesn’t want to spoil us; He wants us to grow strong and mature. Therefore He expects us to give first. When we are generous with Him, He is much more generous with us. He always gives us what we need. And we cannot forget that true love requires time and dedication.
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Body and Soul
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” “Be not afraid” is the verse in the Bible most googled by people. We are afraid of the future, of the unknown, of whatever could happen to us. These are the first words that came out of the mouth of John Paul II when he was elected Pope. He was a man who feared no one: he survived nazism and comunism; he was an orphan and had no close relatives. Jesus is telling us the same today: don‘t be afraid because I am with you always. Just be afraid only of whatever can kill your soul: sin. What are we afraid of? They say that you know a person when you know what he or she is afraid of.
Our soul can be wounded, sometimes grievously. The good news is that our soul is immortal and it can be revived by confession. We believe that we have a soul. Some people deny it. We cannot identify the soul in the body, but we can experience our spiritual powers. Some people emphasise the unity of body and soul, that we are one; others look at the two different realities than can only be separated by death. We are normally more concerned about our body than our soul. Our body is more visible, we are constantly aware of it unless we are sleeping. We can let our soul sleep, but we cannot stop looking after our body.
Why is the world so afraid of a little virus called coronavirus? Because it cannot control it. It is a little thing we cannot see and it could attack us any time. But we are not scared of other viruses that are more dangerous and they can cause more damage: temptations, addictions, vices, evil deeds, the seven capital sins. These are the things that we need to be afraid of, and protect ourselves against.
We wear masks not to infect others, but we gossip, we criticise others, we talk about people behind their backs: we are throwing other kinds of viruses at people. We keep a social distance, but we watch a lot of rubbish on television and YouTube. We sanitise our hands, but we are not going often to confession to sanitise our souls. We keep all the rules and regulations for the lockdown decreed by the government, but we are not doing what God wants us to do. We are more concern about our body than our soul. Our body is recyclable, but our soul is going to exist for ever. We cannot change much of our body, our height or the colour of our eyes, but we can do a lot to make our soul more beautiful. Look what the saints have done with their souls. We ought to be in a hurry because we have only few years to go.
We should pray about the things that separate us from God, and how we can protect ourselves against those viruses. The coronavirus will come and go. These spiritual viruses are with us all the time. We stop our nation for a virus that can kill our body, but we don’t think much about our souls. We can pray about the things that help us to kill these spiritual viruses and protect us from them. What gives me peace or what makes me angry? What helps me to become closer to others or what separates me from them? What moves me to be generous or what induces me to be selfish? In summary, what are the good and the bad spiritual viruses.
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The harvest is plentiful
Today in the Gospel we read that “at the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus is moved by compassion and he feels the need to help us when we are anxious and depressed. It is great to see that Jesus knows our troubles and he is ready to find a way to solve our problems. Most of them are created by our own imagination, pride or selfishness. Instead of feeling down and full of self-pity, we should go to Jesus asking for help. He is the only one who can fix them completely.
Then he says to us: “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; so ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” There is plenty of work to be done in the harvest of the Lord. There is no unemployment. These days governments find it difficult to create jobs for everyone. The job market is constantly changing, and it is not easy for universities to figure out what’s going to happen in the future. They say that people are being prepared now for jobs that are not going to exist in the future. Nevertheless the harvest of the Lord is always there, every generation a new one, and there is always work for the apostle. The reward is excellent: a hundred percent here and eternal life afterwards. You cannot find better return in any other business.
Jesus is telling us today that he needs people to give him a hand, to make this world better. He does it in a subtle way: pray to the Lord that he sends workers. Looking around we realise that there is a need for people to give their lives to God. He doesn’t need us; he can do everything by himself, but he wants us to cooperate with his work of salvation. He wants us to think that we are doing something useful. Like a father when he allows his toddler son to help him in the garden. He is more than a nuisance, but he thinks he is helping dad big time. The same happens with us when we give God a hand.
We see that nowadays not many people are ready to give their lives to Jesus. Maybe they can do something for God for a while, for few years, but their whole life? Young people are afraid of commitment: How do I know what the future is going to be? Maybe I’ll change my mind. They think that their lives are precious. We need to compare our lives with God: Who am I in front of an Almighty God? What Jesus is telling us today is that all we need to do is to ask. How often do we pray for vocations, for priests and religious life? Sometimes we complain about the lack of good priests, but we don’t pray enough for them. We have the shepherds that we deserve.
Why there are only few labourers in the Lord’s harvest? Why is not God sending more people if there is so much evil in the world? Because Jesus normally uses few people to reach big crowds. He chose only twelve apostles at the beginning, to be the foundations of his Church. You don’t need much yeast to bring up the dough. Today it is a good day to think if we are ready to give our lives to God; if we want to give him a hand. This readiness should be the disposition of every Christian.
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Corpus Christi
Today we are going to take Jesus to the streets. We are going to walk with him, to take a stroll with him, to accompany him around the streets of the church. And we are going to play music, use incense and bring him flowers. We wish to bring the flowers of our good deeds. During the day we gather little flowers that we find along the way and we manage to put together a nice bouquet. Little flowers that nobody notices, but not unnoticed for the gaze of a careful eye. We burn the incense of our good desires, which go up to the presence of the Almighty God, through the smoke that keeps climbing. And we play our best music, bringing our thoughts to him, expressing with the lyrics what we have in our hearts.
On Holy Thursday we have also a Eucharistic procession inside the church, to the altar of repose. We accompany Jesus to the garden of olives, to his agony at Getsemane. It is a sad procession, with the apostles falling asleep, only Judas awake. Today we relive the mystery of Holy Thursday in the light of the resurrection, just a few days later. Then it was Via Crucis, the way of the Cross, through the streets of Jerusalem; today is Via Lucis, the way to the light, bright as the sun shines at midday. We couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist properly on Holy Thursday because Jesus was going to die for us. After his resurrection he went up to heaven but stayed with us in the tabernacle. And today we are congratulating him for his presence. We are grateful that he has decided to stay with us.
It is a magnificent feast. It is like a king that goes out to meet his people. We play music, we sing songs, we rejoice in his presence. We accompany him with our best clothes, with our best wishes, and with our presence we acknowledge his kingship, his rule over us, and we are happy to be citizens of such a kingdom, a kingdom of peace and justice, a kingdom of truth and life. We sing alleluia, hosanna, God save the king, may his kingdom last forever. It is going to last for eternity.
We made a carpet of flowers for him to walk on softly. In Europe there is a long tradition of making carpets of flowers through the streets of the villages for today’s feast. Beautiful carpets, where people go to admire the amazing colours and forms before the procession. Every house makes its own, through the narrow streets, with a bit of competition, placing nice bunting on the balconies and decorating the windows. Also in the big cities they use magnificent monstrances carried by people, or pushed on wheels, with all sorts of precious stones, surrounded by silver and gold, crafted by the best jewelers.
We carry him under the canopy, to cover his divinity, hidden behind a piece of bread, white as snow, concealed from our eyes without faith. Normally he hides inside the tabernacle, cold in winter, hot in summer. But today he wants to see the full light of the day, look into our souls, heal our wounded bodies, pierce our mortal flesh. From the vantage point of the monstrance, he can gaze above our heads, looking into our future, forgiving our sinful past. And like on his way to Calvary, we meet his mother, who is waiting on the foot path, while we are passing by, with a desire to have a glimpse of his countenance, this time full of joy, when she sees us walking with her son.
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Holy Trinity
We are talking today about the summit of our Christian faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. When we walk through other mysteries, we need to walk on tiptoe; now we need to postrate ourselves in front of the majesty of God, touch the floor with our forehead and keep silence. This is holy ground. We cannot see God and live. But God has opened his intimate life to us. He has given us access to his inner life. Open the door slowly and glance with awe.
We say that God is incomprehensible. And it is true. We cannot fit God into this coconut we all have on top of our shoulders. But we can try to go deeper. Saint Josemaria used to say that sometimes God gave him some insights about Him, and he became happy; but other times he couldn’t see much, it looked like he had hit a wall, and he was happier, thinking that God is much bigger than anything we can imagine. We need to plunge ourselves into this mystery, knowing that we will never be able to touch bottom, but nevertheless we can go deeper and deeper. Saint Catherine of Siena says that “the Holy Trinity is like a deep sea, where the more you seek, the more you find, and the more you find, the more you seek.” We should be ambitious. We shouldn’t be happy in the way we are. We need to go deeper. Look at the love saints have for God. How they immersed themselves in God. You cannot find deeper or truer love than theirs.
We use our time in many endeavours, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, watching movies, following our favourite tv series, reading the news, surfing social media, hobbies, topics of interest. We are looking for happiness and trying to fill our hearts with all sorts of things. We cannot be happy drinking from the pot holes. We need to quench our thirst with the true living water. We come from God and we go back to God. We are created to know and to love Him.
There are four classical ways to reach the Holy Trinity. The first one is through created things. In the same way we can discover God in creation, in the beauty of nature, we can also find traces of the Trinity as well, even though in a more hidden way. Theologians talk about groups of three things: air, water and earth; gas, steam and fire; rain, slate and snow; spring, lake and sea; frost, snow-flakes, and ice; father, mother and child. You can try to find more. The second is the reality of the indwelling of the Trinity on the soul of the just man. If our soul is in friendship with God, He is there with us, making his abode in the depths of our spirit. We can find him inside of ourselves. We don’t need to look outside to find love. He is with us all the time. We need to become more inward looking. It happens to us like Saint Augustine: “You were within me and I was looking outside of me.”
The third place is Sacred Scripture. God revealed to us this mystery in the New Testament, with the arrival of Jesus Christ. Before, God emphasised in the Old Testament the oneness of God, to avoid the belief in many gods. When we were ready, he opened his inner life to us. Through the Bible we can find the three persons of the Trinity. The fourth is the liturgy, the public action of the Church, specially the Eucharist. When we participate in the Mass, we are attending the heavenly liturgy, that liturgy celebrated by the Holy Trinity in heaven. Let us hide behind our Mother Mary.
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Pentecost
With Pentecost we come to the end of Easter. We have been preparing ourselves for a while to receive the Holy Spirit. Once a year we have the opportunity to get to know the third person of the Holy Trinity better, who Saint Josemaria calls the Great Unknown. He is still unknown and we would like to become closer to him. It is easy for us to see God as a Father. Easier to see God as a man when we look at Jesus as our brother. But it is not easy to see God as a dove, our spouse, who is Love. It is good to desire his coming. We should foster it. The more we desire something, the more God will give it to us. We can say Come Holy Spirit, Veni Sancti Spiritus. We desire his coming, his presence.
The Greek philosophers talk about the four classical elements that constitute the universe: air, fire, water and earth. Three of them are representations of the Holy Spirit. We are the fourth one, the earth. We come from dust and we will become dust again. We are normally very earthy and we would like to become more spiritual. Original sin has made us more inclined to the earth. Our eyes normally look down more, rather than up. Material things are very important to us. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to transform us, to help us to become more spiritual.
Air. On the day of Pentecost a strong wind shook the whole house. It was the sign of the Holy Spirit coming. But Holy Scripture normally represents the Holy Spirit as a soft breeze. We can feel it but we don’t see it. He prefers to pass unnoticed, to disappear, to be in the background, to work from within. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our soul. We need air to breathe; we don’t realise how important it is until we cannot breathe if we are under water. We need the breath of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, for us to live a spiritual life. The bishop when he consecrates the holy oil during the Chrism Mass, breathes air into it. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe his holy air into our lungs, so that they become filled with his power, like the sails of a ship. We ask the Holy Spirit also to send a strong wind to remove all the dead leaves from our soul.
Fire. On the day of Pentecost tongues of fire rested on the heads of the apostles. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. We ask for the same thing today: Burn us, Holy Spirit, purify us. We say with Saint Josemaria: “Remove that filthy crust of sensual corruption which covers my heart, so that I can feel and readily follow the touches of the Paraclete on my soul.” Like a log when the fire burns it, it transforms the wood into light and warmth. We too want to be transformed into love by the third person who is Love. We want to become glowing embers who look like rubies. Instead of becoming ashes, we want to become like God.
Water is part of life. We cannot live without it. It is not as essential as air, but very close. Water quenches our thirst, washes our body and refreshes our spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does to us. But first we need to realise that we are thirsty, that our soul is dirty and we need his love. We need to approach that well of living water that Jesus promises the Samaritan woman, to collect that pure, fresh, transparent water, that leaps into eternal life. To fetch water from a well we require a bucket. No bucket, no water. The well is too deep. Today we ask the Holy Spirit to lend us his bucket to reach for God’s grace.
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The Ascension
Saint Bernardine of Siena tells the story of a young fellow who went to the Holy Land and tried to follow Jesus’ footsteps. He began in Nazareth, then Bethlehem, Cana of Galilee, Caparnaum and Jerusalem. He followed Jesus’ life from the beginning till the end. He arrived eventually to the place of the ascension. There is now a circular church that used to have an open roof to see the sky, with a rock in the middle, with the last footprints of Jesus before going up to heaven. Then he began to cry: “I followed you during all these months through all the places you have been and I have become much closer to you. Now where do I go?” He had a heart attack and died. He must have gone straight up to heaven. We are doing the same. Every year we follow Jesus through his life, death and resurrection, like a cycle, every year a bit closer, and eventually one day we will jump up to heaven.
Today it is a sad day. Our Lord is going up to heaven and he is leaving us behind. Why? We are not ready. We still have few things to do. Our mission is not finished. We would like to go with him, but first he is going to check the place he has prepared for us. And he is going to come back and take us to himself. But nevertheless we will miss him, his face, his speach, his affection, everything about him. The more we love him, the more we miss him. It is very human. Imagine how the apostles felt after three years with him. That’s why we are never completely happy here. We are created for heaven, to be with Jesus. Today is a day where we can fix our eyes on heaven, like the apostles. Today we foster our desires for heaven.
But why did he have to go? Could not have he stayed both with us and go to heaven? He is God, he could have done it. He could have stayed in one place, in Jerusalem, Rome, or our home town. But then we would have had only five minutes in our life time to talk to him. 7 billion people is a lot of people to go through. Instead he did something better. He stayed with us in the Eucharist, in the tabernacle, in a piece of bread, for us to eat him, for us to come to see him and spend time with him. He is here waiting for us, 24/7. There is a vigil lamp telling us that he is here. What’s a tabernacle? A box into which we place God. In Hebrew it means a tent, a dwelling place. The tabernacle is normally the centre of the church, where we try to give Jesus our best.
But Jesus wants to go back with his Father God. We understand this. His glorious body deserves the glory of heaven. Hopefully one day we too will have a glorious body like Jesus. Saint Ambrose says that God came down from heaven and a man went up. Before we knew Jesus as man; today we see Jesus as God. Our faith grows looking at his divinity. Saint Bernard talks about the three steps of Jesus coming down: incarnation, crucifixion and death; and three steps going up: resurrection, ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father. We too would like to be with God for ever. Everything is possible in heaven.
Today Jesus is flying up to heaven. When Jesus performed his miracles, he tried not to show off, to make them as natural as possible, not to draw attention to himself. Even when he multiplied the loaves and the fish, he just blessed them and began to distribute them; he didn’t act like a magician. But today he is doing something special. Till now he has appeared and disappeared. Today he wants his apostles to know that he is leaving definitely. That’s why he is flying away. If you want to, if you are quick, you could go up with him. But I prefer to stay with Mary, our Mother.
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The Will of God
Today we hear in the Gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How much do I love God? How much am I ready to do anything for him? It is as simple as that. Love is not feelings but uniting our will to the will of God. Marriage is to become one, in body and soul, in will and spirit. You love somebody when you are ready to do his or her will. When two people marry, they give themselves to the other person in a way that they don’t belong to themselves anymore. From then on they need to think what the other person wants them to do. The problem is when one or both don’t give themselves completely to the other, when they keep a single attitude. They end up living two separate lives. Our union with God, says Saint John of the Cross, resides in the union of our will with His, and is measured entirely by that union. The more we unite ourselves to God’s will, the more we become him, until we reach a moment when there is only one will, His.
God has given us a free will to be able to love him. Love cannot be compulsory. People complain about evil in the world, why God allows bad things to happen. It is because he has made us free. He has run the risk and the adventure of our freedom. In marriage there is normally an infatuation at the beginning, when you are attracted to a person and you fall in love. But afterwards marital love requires an act of the will: I love this person because I want to, because he or she is my spouse, independently of my feelings. Sometimes we feel it, many times we don’t feel it, and other times maybe we feel the opposite.
Imagine you have two workers. One is a hard worker, but he does his own thing. The other is a bit lazy, but he does what you want him to do. Which one do you prefer? The one who does your will; the other is useless. It is the same with God. We can be very busy but doing our own thing. Saint Augustine has a beautiful expression: bene curris sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. God prefers that we follow his will, rather than spend the whole day in church.
God has designed the path he wants us to follow. It is there to be walked. Do you remember those old drawings in the magazines, where all you had to do was to draw the line between the dots? Then a nice figure appeared. The Holy Spirit has punched the dots. All we need to do is unite the dots every day, just the dot in front of us, without knowing what thedrawing is going to look like. You cannot see what you are doing looking forward; you can onlysee it looking backwards. The only way to see what the figure looks like is from the air, from above, from an eagle or a drone view, through God’s eyes.
What’s important is the attitude we have in front of God’s will. It is easy to follow him when his will is the same as ours. It is harder when there are two different wills, his will and our will. There are different stages in conforming our will to his will. We start with resignation, a negative word; we move to desire to love his will; once we manage to accept his will, we begin to love it. And we end up abandoning ourselves in his hands. Like a baby is left in his mother’s arms. A baby doesn’t have a will. It is a pure instinct of letting himself be loved.
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Way, Truth and Life
Jesus was telling his disciples: I have to go and prepare a place for you, then I’ll come back and take you to myself; and you know the way. Thomas, a down to earth man, complained: Master, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way? Thanks to Thomas’ logic, we have these beautiful words from Our Lord: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is the one, he is a must, we cannot bypass him, he is compulsory. He should be our center, our summit, our soul, our love, our soulmate, our everything. A good question to ask ourselves: What is the place of Jesus in my life? When you look at a photo of a group of people, you can identify the relationship between each of them, depending where every person is placed in the photo. The one in the middle is normally the most important one. If I take a photo of important people in my life, Where do I place Jesus? At the back? Or maybe our photo is just a selfie.
Saint Augustine says that the way leads us to the truth, and the truth to life. Jesus is the way, the only way. There are as many different paths, as there are people, but only one way. Our life can go only in one direction. If we want to reach heaven, we need to follow Jesus. We come from God and we go back to God. We are here only for few years, wandering around, like a shooting star in the middle of the sky, that comes and goes. We were created without our consent; but it is up to us to reach our final destination. There is a famous saying in the spiritual life: God who created without you, won’t save you without you.
It is so easy to get lost. We see it all around us. So many people losing their way. There are many things in our lives that are trying to pull us away from the path, to distract us, to bog us down, to turn us around. This is one of the reasons why Jesus came to earth: to lead us, to show us the way. He is a short cut, the direct line, the straight path, a free way. He is our true GPS. We trust our gadgets to lead us where we want to go, but sometimes they let us down: our battery is flat, we run out of data, or we go through a spot where there is no coverage. But we don’t trust Jesus, the only real GPS, who never fails, the only one who can get us to our most important destination in life, heaven. If we look for him, he will find us, and once we find him, we will have no other freedom than to love him. We won’t let him go. We’ll keep our eyes on him and we won’t get lost.
If we follow the way, we will find the truth. Jesus always leads us to the truth. Sometimes we don’t follow the way because we cannot handle the truth. We don’t like what the truth is going to reveal to us, what the truth brings about. We live in a relativistic society that doesn’t care much about the truth. People fashion the truth according to what they think or how they live. Either you change the way you live according to what you believe, or you change your beliefs. This is the problem with the truth: it is going to have an influence on our lives. It is hard, but it will make us free. It will free us from the things we are attached to, from the things we are enslaved by, from the things we would like to be free of. The truth will make us free.
That’s why the truth lead us to life. Once we live according to the truth of our nature, we will begin to live an authentic Christian life, and we are happy because that’s what God created us for. If we live the life God has prepared for us, we are in our way to heaven.
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The Good Shepherd
Every fourth Sunday of Easter we have the Gospel of the good shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who leads his flock to good pastures, who knows his sheep one by one and calls us by our name. It gives us a lot of confidence to know that we have a great shepherd to lead us to heaven. All we need to do is to follow him. The early Christians loved this depiction of Jesus. In fact the oldest image we have of Jesus is a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders, in the catacomb of Saint Calixtus, in Rome. Have you ever tried to carry a sheep on yours shoulders? It is not easy.
We also call Jesus the Lamb of God. In every Mass the priest shows us the host saying: Behold the Lamb of God. He is the lamb of sacrifice. In the Old Testament the Jews used to offer animals as sacrifices to God. Now they are not needed anymore, because Jesus gave his life for us once and for all. We Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we try to be like him, sheep and shepherd.
To be a shepherd means to give your life for the sheep. It is nice to be the boss, but it demands sacrifice, responsibility to forget about yourself, to do the best for others; in one word, to lay down your life for them. It means not to have your own life. We cannot be the hired shepherd, who doesn’t know his flock, who doesn’t care about his sheep; shepherds who only think about themselves, who are there just for profit, who don’t know how to serve. Service is a beautiful word that has almost disappeared from the dictionary. We talk about rights, but we forget about responsibilities. We don’t like to talk about duties.
We are also sheep, a good one, who follows the whistles of the shepherd. Not the lost sheep of the parable. It is easy to get lost. We like wandering around, playing with fire, doing our own thing, following the inspirations of our pride and selfishness. And when we are lost, then we complain. We want the freedom of doing whatever we want, and when we are in trouble we ask for help. Jesus tells us to be a sheep, not a wolf. Sometimes we prefer to be a wolf, fighting with everyone, biting whoever comes our way, barking all the time. A wolf is more exciting, but a sheep is a gentle, peaceful, smiling animal. It doesn’t complain and lets you do whatever you want. It is a big difference between to kill a sheep and a pig. A sheep dies without complaining; a pig doesn’t go down without waking the whole neighbourhood. There are two kinds of people: people who create problems and people who solve them. A mother is always helping. Spoiled kids are always creating trouble.
We call this Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday. Today we pray for vocations, asking Our Lord to send us good shepherds. We are fulfilling Jesus advice: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We pray that the Lord will send us shepherds, specially from our own parish. Jesus knows that we need vocations. All we need to do is pray for them.
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Emmaus
The road to Emmaus resembles our own journey. We are pilgrims. We can identify ourselves with these two disciples, who went back to their village, after Jesus’ death. It was all over. In fact, we only know the name of one of them, Cleophas; we can easily be the other one. We had placed our desires and ideals on that man whom we thought was the Messiah. We followed him for three years, expecting him to save Israel from the Romans. And they killed him; the most horrible death on the cross. We saw him dying and we are going back to our former life, all hope lost; we tried for a while, but it didn’t work out. We are going away from Jerusalem, away from God, the wrong way, against the traffic. You see sometimes on freeways a big red sign: wrong way; go back. Go back to your God.
Jesus comes out to meet us. He runs up to us, and he is walking with us, next to us, on our right hand side. But because of our discouragement, our self centredness, we don’t recognise him. A question, I’ve been thinking about: Are we sad because we don’t see, or because we are sad, we don’t see? I think normally sadness comes from blindness. It happens to us many times, when we fail to discover Jesus who is passing by our lives. He is passing by every day. He could have come with his glorified body, showing us his five wounds, but he came as traveler, as a pilgrim, like each one of us. He is a man. He comes to meet us in our journey. God comes down to our level, to follow us and to seek us out. We expect him to come with special effects, fire works, beautiful music and big miracles. And he passes by unnoticed, through the normal circumstances of our lives. Saint Teresa of Avila used to say that God is among the cooking pots.
And Jesus begins to walk and talk with us. He listens to what we have in our hearts, to our discouragement, to our lack of hope. And he begins to explain to us what the Scriptures had to say about him. He give us the other side of the story. He always has good news to share with us. And we need to listen to what Jesus has to say, specially when we are down. Jesus gives us an example of how to help people we come across in our lives. We run up to them, we meet them at their own level, we accompany them on their journey, listen to what they have to say, what they have in their hearts, share their emotions, understand their problems, and speak to them of what is in our hearts. We don’t need to impose our ideas or our opinions onto them. Just open our hearts to them, explain to them our own life journey. We take them with us to Emmaus, through our words, our affection, our example, and introduce them to Jesus.
When the two disciples of Emmaus arrived in their village, they asked Jesus to stay with them: stay with us because it is getting dark. We need to say the same to Jesus: stay with us because without you there is no light, without you there is no hope. You are our way, the truth and the life. Sitting at the table they recognise him at the breaking of the bread. It took them a long time to recognise him. The breaking of the bread was the beginning of the meal. Jesus broke the bread in a particular way. This was the name the early Christians used for the Eucharist: the breaking of the bread. It is a good question for us: Do we recognise Jesus at the Holy Mass? Do we believe that Jesus is in the tabernacle waiting for us? We see bread but it is Jesus. We need more faith.
When they recognised him, he disappeared. It happens to us: Jesus comes and goes. We need to keep searching. The Gospel says: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?” They realised then of the warmth of walking with Jesus. We can get used to him, to the security of our faith, to the trus
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Thomas
When Jesus came to meet the apostles after the resurrection Thomas was not there. Where was he? We don’t know. Did he go shopping? Did he go fishing? Maybe he was still running away. All we know is that he wasn’t there. We need to be there when Jesus comes. No excuses. We cannot miss our Lord. We need Him. He comes when he likes and we need to be ready, waiting.
When Thomas came back the apostles told him, with a hint of jealousy: “Who do you think came while you were running around?” He didn’t know. They told him: “We have seen the Lord!” This is our Christian message, a great act of faith, witness to his resurrection. He couldn’t believe it. When they insisted, he became upset and proud, and he denied it: “Impossible!” And he declared more angrily: “I want not only to see his wounds, but to touch them and put my fingers in them.” Fair enough; we recognise the risen Christ through his wounds, but his statement was a bit too much. Thomas is a modern man, sceptical and empirical: “Unless I see and touch, I don’t believe.” Thanks to his unbelief our faith grows. The doubting Thomas increases our faith.
Today, eight days later, Thomas was there when Jesus appeared again. This time Thomas had learned the lesson and he is there. The first thing Jesus says is: “Peace be with you!” Be at peace. I have risen, it is all over, I have overcome death, be not afraid. The same angels say when they appear to men. These were the first words Saint John Paul II said when he was elected Pope: “Be not afraid!” We are afraid and angry because we are not at peace with ourselves.
When Thomas saw Jesus, he hid straight away behind the other apostles thinking: I hope he didn’t hear the silly thing I said the other day. He was ashamed now, all his arrogance gone. But Jesus hears everything; we cannot hide anything from him. He went directly to Thomas, walking through the people around him. He took his right hand, and, even though Thomas tried to resist, with the strong force of his glorious body, Jesus placed Thomas’s hand into his wounds saying: “Do not be faithless but believing.” Thomas could only say: “My Lord and my God!” A good act of faith in front of the Eucharist. Then Jesus praised all of us when we feel our lack of faith, and we are envious of Thomas: “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet believe.”
When Jesus left, Thomas kept staring at his hand. Tradition says that his hand became red, a reminder of his lack of faith. Thomas never forgot this encounter with Our Lord, the first one of a line of saints to find refuge in Jesus’ wounds. Later on, Thomas would had shown his hand to the early Christians, when they asked him about this scene, showing off with pride and a bit of arrogance: I am the only one who touched Jesus’ wounds. It is not completely true because the holy women anointed them with oil, when they buried Jesus’ body. When I read this Gospel, I would like to ask Thomas what he felt when he put his fingers into Jesus’ side. You could say that he felt the depth of Jesus’ love for him.
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Easter Sunday
Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early on Sunday morning and found it empty. She was the first one to discover the empty tomb. It is very important for us the empty tomb. It shows that Jesus rose from the dead. It is empty because Jesus overcame death. It is an icon of the resurrection. Mary ran back and told Peter and John about the tomb. Both ran to the tomb to check it out. Saint John arrived first; he was younger and ran faster. Saint Jerome says that celibacy gives us wings. But he did not go in, out of deference for Peter. Peter was already regarded as the leader of the apostles.
The Gospel says that John “saw and believed.” What did he see? It is a traditional question. He saw the linen on the ground. John knew Jesus so well that he realised Jesus had risen. He was there on Friday night when they laid him in the tomb. And looking at how things were now around the tomb, he could figure out that Jesus walked away by himself. You can go to a room in your house and say: “I know who’s been here. I know what has happened.” The dirty dishes are in the sink, her clothes are all over the room, he’s been in the pantry because the chocolate has disappeared.
The Jews accused the apostles of stealing Jesus’ body. The Gospel says that the linen clothes were “lying there.” This expression in the Greek version seems to indicate that the clothes were flattened, as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose, as if he had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being unrolled. One can understand how this would amaze a witness, how unforgettable the scene would be. If you steal a body, you take it with its clothes; you don’t leave the linen behind.
The napkin which had been wrapped around his head was “rolled up in a place by itself.” The napkin was not on top of the clothes, but placed on one side. It was still rolled up but, unlike the clothes, it still had a certain volume, like a container or a cocoon, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments. Jesus’ body must have risen in a heavenly manner, that is, in a way which transcended the laws of nature. It was not only a matter of the body being reanimated as happened, for example, in the case of Lazarus, who had to be unbound before he could walk. Jesus rose from his death and left the linen there, untouched, sliding out of them.
This remind us of the Holy Shroud, the famous relic in Turin. It is supposed to be the linen Peter and John found on the floor of the empty tomb. It has always attracted veneration. John Paul II said that “the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI had a lot of devotion to Holy Saturday because he was baptised on this day. He went to see the Holy Shroud and said: “this sacred Cloth can nourish and foster faith and reinvigorate Christian devotion because it spurs us to go to the Face of Christ, to the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ, to contemplate the Paschal Mystery, the heart of the Christian message.” People go to see the shroud to contemplate Jesus’ face. This is our deepest human desire: to see God, to contemplate the face of Jesus, to be eternally happy through the vision of the divine glory, although millions of people are unaware of this aspiration. Happy Easter to you all.
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Good Friday
After the homily we are going to bring the crucifix veiled, Jesus crucified hiding behind a purple cloth. Purple used to be a royal colour, because it was the most expensive colorant to produce. Herod covered Jesus with a purple robe, to mock him. This is why we use this colour. We cover the crucifix because we don’t know if he is still alive; we don’t want to see him dying for us. The unveiling signifies the death of Jesus. Before it was hidden; now we know.
We are going to unveil him slowly, each limb with music, to remember his wounds. We are going to sing “Behold, behold, the wood of the cross.” Slowly, for us to make sure we see him, we look at him, we contemplate him. Slowly to see each one of his five wounds engraved in his flesh. I recommend you to look into his eyes. We are normally afraid of looking at him. Why? Because this is what we have done to him. Jesus, with his body, is telling us: this is me. We need to face Jesus, Jesus as a man. Can you hold his sight? Can you look at him straight?
Then we are going to venerate him. One by one, through a long queue, with time to spare. We need time to repent, to atone for our sins. We are quick to sin, but we are slow to say sorry. Contrition normally drags its feet. We are not going to use three crucifixes to go faster; otherwise, it would look like Calvary, with the two thieves on both sides of Jesus. I wouldn’t like to kiss the bad thief. We are going to kiss him, to soften his suffering, to try to make up for our sins. Sometimes children don’t want to kiss him; they are rightly afraid because they can see beyond us. Can we kiss him after inflicting him so much suffering, so much pain? It looks a bit like Judas’ kiss. We need to cry in front of him, a cry of repentance.
The crucifix shows us his five wounds, wide open in front of us. We can find refuge in them. Saints have a lot of devotion to Jesus’ wounds. They remind us of our own scars, those wounds that haven’t been healed, that are part of our brokenness. We complain about them, but we don’t allow Jesus to heal them. Jesus is proud of his wounds; he shows them as medals, a proof of what he has gone through. In the army, when you get wounded, they decorate you with a medal. Our scars show that we have fought, and that we have been wounded. We should be proud of them; they are like medals. If we look at them as proof of what we have suffered, we can begin to heal. Instead of complaining about them, we can begin to understand why God allowed those things to happen, see them as medals and give thanks for them.
When Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross, it was placed in the arms of our mother. His blood stained her clothes, but she didn’t care, because she wanted to hold him for the last time, his body still warm. She wanted that moment to last for ever, and kiss him for the last time, remembering when she had him in her arms when he was a baby, crying for her milk.
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Holy Thursday
Today is an important day for the Church. We priests celebrate two Masses. In the morning all priests of the Diocese go to the Cathedral to concelebrate with the bishop what we call the Chrism Mass. Two things happen during this Mass. First we priests renew our commitments, to place Jesus first in our lives, to obey our bishop, and to look after the People of God. Secondly during this Mass the bishop consecrates the three oils we use for Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders and Anointing of the sick. It is called the Chrism Mass because Chrism is the name of one of the holy oils. At the end of the Mass we collect our oils to keep them in the parish. Every year we burn the old ones and we replace them with the new oils. It is like what happens to us during these days of Holy Week: we die to ourselves and we rise again with Christ.
In the evening we have the Mass of Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Triduum, where we commemorate three things that happened at the Last Supper: the washing of the feet, the institution of the Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood. The Eucharist is the important one. Jesus had to go to heaven, but he wanted to stay with us, because he loves us and we need him. He could do it because he is God. Therefore he left us this sacrament, for the priest to be able to consecrate the bread and the wine, for us to be nourished by his body and blood, and for Jesus to be able to remain with us in the tabernacle. If all the sacraments are important, this one is the most important one; in the others we receive grace from Jesus, in the Mass we receive Jesus himself.
In the washing of the feet we remember Jesus washing his apostles feet. We normally wash twelve men’s feet, easier for us to identify them with the twelve apostles. But what we truly remember is how Jesus lowered himself to the form of a servant to wash our feet. The washing of the feet was reserved to slaves. God is coming down to us to the point of performing a menial task. Our feet need plenty of washing, because when we walk we get dirty. Peter said to Jesus when he came to wash him: Master, wash my hands and head as well. We too are like Saint Peter: we need a thorough washing. Jesus even washed Judas’ feet. He is ready to wash any sinners’ feet, ours too.
The last thing we commemorate today is the beginning of the priesthood. Jesus established priests for his Church to renew the sacrifice of Calvary throughout the centuries. The main reason for our priesthood is the Mass. We also need priests for the other sacraments, specially Confession, to become better, holier and closer to Jesus. Today is a special day when we pray for priests, specially the ones in our own parish. The more we pray for our priests, the holier they become. It is a good selfish prayer. We get the priests we deserve. When we complain about our priests, we should blame ourselves: we don’t pray enough for them.
At the end of the Mass we reserve the Blessed Sacrament on the altar of repose. We keep enough hosts to give Communion on Good Friday because it is a day when we won’t have Mass, because Jesus is dead. The tradition is to spend a bit of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. We keep Jesus company on this night, when he was alone in the garden of Gethsemane.
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Palm Sunday
Why did Jesus enter in Jerusalem on a donkey? He could have come on a horse or on a camel, more elegant animals, sitting higher to be able to be seen and have a better view. But he wanted to fulfill the Scriptures. They said that the Messiah had to come riding on a donkey. Why did the Scriptures prophesied on a donkey and not another animal? Because the donkey is a humble, docile and hardworking beast, more suitable as an example for us, unlike a horse who prefers showing off and pretending. They say a donkey is a symbol of peace, humility and the simple life. A horse is a symbol of war, pride and luxury.
One of the Psalms says that we are like a donkey before God. Jesus has decided to ride on us. We are just a donkey. Many times we think that we are a horse and we become silly, proud and rebellious. We cannot forget that even though we are carrying Jesus, we are just a donkey. When we pretend that we are a horse, the ride becomes bumpy, and Jesus finds it difficult to stay on top. Don’t be a stubborn, grumpy old donkey, only thinking how to find revenge with a kick. Be a young one, with long ears ready for the Master’s command, a quick step ready to work in his service. The Lord wants to ride us, to reach heaven together. The best way for us to enter into heaven is being docile to his call.
Eventually you allow him to ride on you and you experience the shouts of the multitude and the cries of joy to the prophet who is coming to the holy city. People lay their garments for you to walk softly. You enjoy treading on people’s clothes. You feel important, thinking that people are welcoming you. You look around, acknowledging people’s praises and almost crash against a pole in the middle of the road. A simple gesture from Jesus makes your head bow low and fix your eyes on the way. No more frivolous thoughts or wandering looks. All around you is not for you; just for Jesus.
Jesus is a good rider. He lets you ride at your pace, he doesn’t kick with his legs. He brings peace with himself. His yoke is easy and his burden light. But you need to cooperate. All he wants from you is to follow his path. It looks easy but it is not. Common experience tells us that it is one of the most difficult things. It is all right when both our path and his path coincide. But when his path differs from ours, when begins to climb up hill, when the path gets bumpy and rough, we prefer to go down hill. When are we going to be convinced that his way is the best way?
When Jesus sees Jerusalem he begins to cry. You don’t know what to do. You never have seen him crying. He is weeping because of what is going to happen to the holy city, its future destruction at the hands of the Romans. It is amazing, Jesus just sad for a heap of stones. He is like us; we humans worry about things and gadgets. Jesus is a man and has good memories of the temple. And all because it didn’t follow the paths of the Lord. You want to apply the lesson to your own life. You don’t want Jesus to weep for you and for your children.
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The Annunciation
In the fullness of time, when everything was ready, God sent the Angel Gabriel to Nazareth, to a young beautiful girl, to ask her a question. If we could choose an important moment of history to be present, this should be one of those. We know this scene from Mary herself. Scholars of Sacred Scripture say that the words of the Gospel came from Our Lady’s mouth, because these words have Aramaic roots, and Saint Luke wrote the Gospel in Greek. It is a divine dialogue between Our Lady and the Archangel Gabriel, not easy to understand from our humanity. To begin to comprehend what happened there, we need to become smaller, a bit more pure and humble.
It is important to realise who the two protagonists were: a human being and an angelic spirit. A girl named Mary, around 14 or 15 years old, extremely beautiful, and even though she looks very young, she shows an unusual maturity. The other one is an Archangel named Gabriel, one of the three we know from Scripture. His name means Fortitudo Dei, Strength of God. He is involved with the events of the Incarnation, God becoming flesh. He appeared as a messenger from God to Daniel, Zechariah and our Mother. To differentiate him from the other two Archangels, we represent him carrying a lily, a symbol of purity and fertility.
The town where this event took place is Nazareth, a little village in the middle of nowhere, 150 kilometres north of Jerusalem, with 50 houses around a spring. It wasn’t a famous place to live. Nathanael asked Jesus, when he found out where he came from: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” There was a saying at that time: if God punishes you, he will give you a wife from Nazareth. The Oriental tradition places the Annunciation near thevillage spring. We normally place it in her house, because the Gospel gives the impression that the angel came into her room. Her house didn’t look like all the classical paintings. It was half house and half cave. But it was clean and tidy, well kept and comfortable.
While the angel comes in to deliver his message, popular devotion represents Mary immersed in prayer. Saint Josemaria writes: “Mary is recollected in prayer. She is using all her senses and her faculties to speak to God. It is in prayer that she comes to know the divine Will. And with prayer she makes it the life of her life. Do not forget the example of the Virgin Mary.” If an angel came to tell us something, would he find us recollected in prayer? We need to pray to get to know the will of God. Sometimes we don't pray because we don't want to know His will; other times because we are lazy; other times because we are too busy with material things, and we don't have time to give to God.
While she prays she looks so beautiful. The more she prays, the more beautiful she looks. It is as while praying, God wants to lift a bit the veil which covers her beauty, for us to be proud of our Mother. When she talks with God, her face shines, like Moses when he conversed with God. There is no way any that image of our Lady can portray her properly. Saint Josemaria writes: “What must the cheerful way that Jesus looked upon people have been like? It must have been the same look that shone from the eyes of his Mother.”
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Lent 5 A Lazarus
“Lord, him whom you love is ill.” The same can be said of us. We are sick to death by sin, and we need Jesus to either cure us or resurrect us from death. He loves us with divine love and he is ready to come to help us at very short notice. But, can it be said the other way around? Can others say to Jesus: your friend, the one who thinks about you, who wants to spend time with you, who visits you and likes to receive you frequently, is in need of you? Jesus loved to stop over at Bethany, the house of his friends, to spend time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Saint Josemaria used to call the tabernacle, Bethany. Do we like to stop over at a church and spend time with our friend? Can we tell Jesus: Lord, I love you and I am ill?
“If you have been here my brother would have not died.” It is a very strong statement. It is like saying: you are responsible for the death of our loved one. How many times we blame God for our sufferings, our illnesses, our accidents? We ask, where was God then? Martha and Mary could talk to Jesus in this way, because they were very close to him. If we could see their faces at the time, they would have shown a smile among their tears. It was not blaming him, but showing their pain for the death of their brother. Do I have the same confidence in Jesus, to tell him what is in my heart? Jesus, I am sick of everything.
“Take away the stone.” But Jesus, he’s been there for four days already; he is really dead. For the Jews four days was the sign of real death. “Take away the stone.” But Jesus, his body is corrupt and he stinks. “Take away the stone.” I have been in that cave for many years now and it is impossible for me to move. Trust me, take away what separates you from me, a stone, a wall, a barrier, whatever it is. Jesus is telling us to take away what is between us and him. We are slow to follow his command and we have many excuses not to remove the obstacle from our path. If you don’t remove it, you cannot come out.
“Lazarus, come out!” It was a strong voice, loud enough for the dead ears of Lazarus to hear from inside the tomb. It goes through the rock. It is the voice of Jesus, manly, well balanced, deep and harmonious, a voice impossible to resist. It is the word of God. The same one that still resounds from the beginning of time. The voice we hear at Mass: this is my body, a body that died for us and rose from the dead. Lazarus came out like a robot, a zombie, an automatic response, against his will. He was sleeping peacefully, more in the other life than here, and didn’t want to come back. An imperative command to come out. His voice is irresistible: Come out of yourself!
“Unbind him and let him go.” It must have been an amazing scene. They were all paralysed and terrified. Nobody could move, not even run away. They were all tied to the ground looking at him like a ghost, like a mummy. When we take away the stone, he lets us free. There is always something that enslaves us, either a little thread or a chain. Something that doesn’t allow us to fly, to follow the path God wants us to walk. Unbind the ropes that tie you to earth and go, run towards eternity.
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Saint Joseph
We don’t know much about about Saint Joseph. His life is shrouded in silence. There is a book entitled “Joseph the Silent”, trying to interpret his silences, reading between the lines of his quiet life. We haven’t got anything left from him, not a relic, not a piece of furniture made by him, not the place where he is buried. In the Gospel he doesn’t say anything, not a single word. We always see him in the background, behind Mary, as a shadow, a bit passive. We don’t even know when he died. This is why it is not easy to talk about him.
We say that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was bestowed by God with the best qualities possible in a human being, to be able to fulfill her divine motherhood. God normally gives us the graces we need to carry out our mission. We can also say that after Mary, Joseph. He too had a difficult task, to be the putative father of Jesus, and God gave him what he needed. If it is difficult for us to acknowledge what God did for Mary, it is harder for us to recognise who Joseph was, clouded in the silence of his humility. He could have done whatever he wanted in life. He could have become the Roman Caesar if he tried to; he had the talents to do so. What did he do? He spent his life cutting pieces of timber. He came, he fulfilled his mission, did what God wanted him to do and disappeared. And here we are, twenty centuries afterwards, talking about him, trying to decipher his life. We ask Joseph to help us to know him better, to be able to become closer to him, to learn from him.
He was an ordinary man, a worker, who earned his living working with his hands. He provided for his family and protected the life of his wife and child. We can relate to him. We are trying to do the same, live our lives, working, looking after our families, striving to provide for them and give our children a good start in life, like the lives of most human beings. Joseph lived in a village in the middle of nowhere, with no electricity or any of the modern comforts. He was essentially a worker. This is why we have the feast day of Joseph the Worker on the first of May. He spent his life working, like each one of us; we always depict him at his workshop, labouring as a carpenter.
In the midst of this normal, ordinary, you could say boring life, he had the best two treasures a human being could ever have: Mary and Jesus. You can imagine the life at Nazareth among what we called the Holy Family or the Trinity on earth. No other family can be compared to this. It is the model of all Christian families. This is the life we should try to live, because they are close to us and we can live with them. Saint Joseph is our best teacher because he is more like us. We feel at ease with him; his silent life doesn’t threaten us. We can place ourselves easily in his shoes.
Saint Teresa of Avila had Saint Joseph as her favourite saint. She placed her first convent under his patronage. She says that Saint Joseph never let her down; whatever she asked of him he delivered. The Carmelite nuns still have an image of the Saint who used to talk to her, with his mouth still open. Today we can ask Saint Joseph to talk to us, to show us how to find Mary and Jesus in our lives.
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The blind man
Last Sunday we looked at one of the four natural elements, water, indispensable for human life. It is very much part of the beginning of our Christian life, when we are baptised. Without water there can be neither natural nor supernatural life. This Sunday we consider another crucial element, light, without which life cannot grow either. It is part of the rite of Baptism, when we bring to the newly baptised person a lighted candle, symbolising a cleaned soul, full of light. Christ is the light who came to dispel darkness. On the Easter vigil we are reminded of this reality, when we bring the Easter candle into the darkness of the church, and little by little, by lighting the candles people are carrying in their hands, the whole church becomes illuminated.
Today in the Gospel we come across a man blind from birth. It is hard for us to realise what it is to be blind. Try to close your eyes and keep them closed for a lengthy period of time; you won’t last too long. Blindness from the beginning is a harder reality: you cannot dream with images. Once they tried to explain to a blind man what the colour red was; and after much explanation, trying to compare it with a hot instrument, he said that it must be similar to the sound of a trumpet. Colours don’t have much to do with sounds; imagine spiritual things. We are blind from birth to them, because of original sin, and we need Jesus to cure our blindness, to be able to see him.
Jesus made clay with his saliva, placed mud on the blind man’s eyes and told him to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Why did he do that? He could have touched his eyes and cured him straight away. It is a reminder that we are made of clay, that our feet can easily break. The pool of Siloam was outside the walls of the city. He could have gone to the nearby fountain and washed his eyes, but it wouldn’t had worked. Jesus wanted him to walk with faith and show others his trust in God. He could go with mud on his eyes because he was blind and knew the way by heart. We also need to show others that we trust in Jesus. God’s saliva cured him, but it had to be mixed with our clay, with our humanity.
We miss something when we don’t have it. We don’t normally realise that we are blind to the spiritual world. Once we cannot see, we notice our eyes, as when they hurt or we need glasses. We have two of them because they are very important. We have also two ears, to listen better; but only one mouth not to speak too much. We know we are blind because we realise that the saints can see things we don’t see. We would like to see what they see. Better, we would like to see with Jesus eyes. Saint Teresa of Avila wanted to know the colour of Jesus’ eyes when he appeared to her; she says that when she tried, the apparition disappeared altogether.
Today we ask Jesus to cure our spiritual blindness. First we need to acknowledge that our soul has eyes and that they are closed. Then we have to allow him to put mud in them, and walk with a dirty face for a while, showing others our blindness, till we reach the waters of the Sacrament of Confession. And we need to do this not once, or twice, but a thousand times. Slowly we are going to start seeing; first some shadows, then some sparks of light. The more we clean them, the more light we are going to see. We cannot see the full light from the beginning: it would destroy our eyes completely. And slowly we are going to discover the wonders of the spiritual life.
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The Samaritan Woman
Today we meet a different Jesus, less attractive, more human, more like us. After two days journey from Jerusalem, he is tired, dirty and thirsty. He is all alone, sitting at the edge of Jacob’s well. His disciples had gone to the nearby village to get some food and water. Nobody stayed with him; they were too hungry or too thirsty to keep him company. Jesus couldn’t go on and had to sit down to rest. Or may be he was there waiting for the Samaritan woman and for each one of us. How many times we leave Jesus alone, entertaining ourselves, or giving in our silly little pleasures. And we forget about others.
It is noon, the sun is up in the sky, the time of the day when everything is quiet and silent, but for the sound of the cicadas. Jesus looks at the fresh water at the bottom of the well with an impossible desire. And a woman comes alone carrying a jar on her head, moving her body in a provocative way. She comes at this hour to avoid other women who didn’t like her, because she stole their husbands. She is beautiful and Jesus is full of dust. Two different attitudes in life: a frivolous woman with a bucket, and a dirty, thirsty God. We are more inclined to notice her than to look at Jesus.
She ignores Jesus; Jews and Samaritans didn’t talk to each other. And a woman alone didn’t talk to a man. Her situation in life was very messy. But Jesus overcoming his tiredness and her messiness, begins to talk to her. We are all represented in this woman, in her sinfulness, in her desire to draw water and find happiness. Jesus gives us an example of how to reach souls, even the ones that are far away from him. He begins to talk to her about what is important to her, about the water she comes to draw from the well. We normally talk about what is important to us and we find it difficult to know what is important to others.
Jesus asks her: “Give me a drink.” God thirsty and without a bucket to draw water. He says the same from the cross: “I thirst.” You can find these words in every chapel of Mother Teresa’s nuns. Even though he doesn’t need anything, God always begins asking for things. He is thirsty for our love; he expects us to give ourselves to him, to place him at the centre of our lives. Better: he is telling us what is really happening to us, that we are thirsty of him. We are like the deer in the Psalm that is longing for streams of pure, clear water. And we keep coming back every day to draw water from an earthly well, that will never fill us up. Our heart is a bucket full of cracks, impossible to contain the muddy water we are trying to get from the pot holes in the road.
Only God can give us this clean, fresh water. This is what he tells the Samaritan woman: “I am the only one who can give you a living water, a water that when you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again.” A living water, alive, full of energy, with enough nourishment that leads to eternal life. Then, you won’t have to come back again to this well; you won’t have to look for impossible ways to quench yours thirst. It is the water that flew from his side on the cross, when the centurion pierced his heart. It is the grace that flows from the Mass every time we come to drink from his open wound. If only you knew the gift of God!
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The Transfiguration of Jesus
Last Sunday we went with Jesus down to the desert. This week he is asking us to accompany him up Mount Thabor. We went down through penance and repentance; now, purified and cleansed, we climb up to the heights of the spiritual life, with the new wings sacrifice and mortification have given to us. Even though it is only 300 metres above the plain, it looks higher than it is, because it stands alone surrounded by flat terrain. There is a magnificent view and a beautiful church on top. It is only an hour of climbing, but the road goes straight up. The higher you go the more you see.
You feel closer to God when you reach the summit. It is part of our Lenten exercise, to climb up the mountain of our sinfulness, towards God, leaving material things behind. You cannot carry much weight if you want to follow Jesus and keep his pace. The closer you become to the top, the more light you find yourself surrounded by. Saints love going up to the mountains to meet their creator. They have received many graces up there. The air is thinner, the light is purer, solitude welcomes you, silence envelops you, and here you feel that God is listening to you. Above the sounds and distractions of society, you find a better connection with God.
Jesus took with him his three beloved apostles, Peter, John and James, to accompany him; the first Pope, the first apostle martyred and the last to die. He took them on other special occasions. But especially they witnessed both his transfiguration and the agony in the garden. The highs and the lows of his earthly existence. Both in beautiful natural surroundings, a mountain and a garden. They were the only ones to attend both amazing events. Would Jesus take us with him? Are we part of the group of his close friends? Are we ready to withstand the highs and the lows of the Christian life?
Why did Jesus transfigure himself in front of them? To show them his divinity, just before he was going to show them his horrible passion and death. He does the same with us. If he takes us with him high on the spiritual life, he is going to asks us also to go through suffering and penance. It is the story of every saint. That’s is why there are only few saints; we like the mystical experiences, but we run away from the cross. In both events the three beloved disciples fell sleep; they let Jesus down. We too fall asleep when Jesus asks us to accompany him. But if three of Jesus’ best apostles couldn’t keep their eyes open, we mustn’t feel too bad when we do the same.
When they arrived at the summit Jesus began to pray. This scene in the Gospel has been depicted traditionally as an icon of contemplation. Before we discover Jesus’ divinity, we need to spend time in prayer, contemplating his humanity. Only when we manage to be in deep concentration, detached from any earthly attachment, sitting above our miseries, can we discover the true face of Christ. It must have been an amazing experience, when they woke up and found themselves in front of the real Jesus. They never forgot that vision. Jesus does the same with us. When he asks us to share the sufferings of his cross, he also sends to us a bit of honey, a spark of heaven, a glimpse of his beautiful face.
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Lent 1 Temptations
Jesus goes to the desert led by the spirit to be tempted. He allows himself to be tested, to share our normal ordinary existence. By doing this, Jesus has entered the drama of human experience. We accompany him, to learn from him, to share his strength. Jesus fought and defended himself as a man, with the same weapons we have. We go to the desert with Jesus, like the desert fathers, to become stronger and be ready to fight the evil one. In the desert there are no distractions, no virtual reality, no place to hide. We can see the devil coming with all his false devices, and we can defeat him more easily. We draw him out from the city and we bring him to our home turf. Here we are just the three of us, and our enemy is outnumbered: we are two against one.
This Lent we are going to spend 40 days with Jesus praying and fasting. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert. Moses and Elijah spent 40 days of penance and prayer before they met God. 40 is the number of testing, discovering of who you are and prayer in the Bible. We need time to get to know ourselves and get ready. After 40 days of prayer and fasting, Jesus is weak, and the devil takes advantage of this moment to tempt him with strong temptations. Traditionally we call our three enemies, the devil, the world and the flesh. The world are others and the flesh is ours. They could attack us one, two or three together. The worst one is us. We are our biggest enemy.
Why was Jesus tempted? It is a mystery. Maybe the devil wanted to know who Jesus was, how strong he was, a bit of a testing match. We witness a battle between God and the devil. We are not in the middle. We can choose sides. Hopefully we are in God's side, in the right one, the winning one. In the history of humanity at the end God always wins, even though many times it looks like the devil has the upper hand. God uses the attacks and machinations of the evil one to bring his plans to completion. It must be frustrating for him to see all his work undone. He becomes more experienced with time, but he can never defeat God. In the crucifixion, Satan thinking that killing Jesus was going to win, served God’s plan for our redemption.
Why God allows us to be tempted? Temptations in themselves are indifferent; they are good if we win, they are bad if we lose. Sometimes we win, other times we lose. They help us to grow in love and virtue. We ask God to get rid of them because we don’t want trouble. To become stronger: difficulties help us to grow. To show him that we love Him: we put Him first. To become more humble: we need his help. We realise how weak we are. They help us to increase our merits.
Get to know ourselves. We normally get tempted the same way. Be sincere. Oscar Wilde was running away from temptation very slowly, for it to catch him. I know that if I go to bed late... Once I begin to speak about this topic... If I go out with this person... Once I start eating peanuts I cannot stop. We know that we will never tempted above our strength. We have all the weapons to fight temptations. We need to use the right ones, like in computer games. The Bible: Jesus uses it against the devil. Pope Francis says that we should use the Bible as we use our cell phone: carry it with us, read it frequently, go back home to pick it up. The best weapon against the devil is Our Lady.
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Ash Wednesday
“Return to me”, the Lord is telling us on the first reading of today’s Mass. It means that we have been wandering off, we have lost our direction and we need to stop and come back. We have been going rather in the opposite direction, towards our own ego, our selfishness and our pride. Return to me, turn around, do a “u” turn. It is hard to do it; it demands a small conversion, to recognise that we have been wrong and we need to put God back at the centre of our lives. Return “to me”, abandon the desires of your heart, that don’t make you happy, and return to your God, to your Creator, your Father, to what constitutes the meaning of your life.
When the priest today places the ashes on our forehead, he will remind us of the famous words of the Scripture: “Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a reminder that without God we are nothing; without God all that remains is this pile of dirt that we see in this little dish. The wind is going to blow away the dust of our bodies. We shall return to the earth where we came from. We get the ashes on our forehead, to make sure our thoughts are in the right place. The Church wants to inscribe on our minds what it is important in life. Memento mori. Remember, we come from God and we are going back to him.
In the book The Alchemist the boy asks him: “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” And the old man answers: “Because, wherever our heart is, there is also our treasure.” Ubi thesaurus cor; your heart is in your treasure. If we want to know what our treasure is, we should listen to the beating of our hearts. It is not familiar music, because we don’t normally listen to it. It is normally hidden from our senses. We need to listen carefully. Pope Francis says that “our heart always points in some direction: it is like a compass seeking its bearings. We can also compare it to a magnet: it needs to attach itself to something.” It is always seeking something and it is good for us to know what it is.
Pope Francis in one of his homilies for Ash Wednesday, proposes three steps for Lent: “Almsgiving, prayer, fasting. What are they for? Almsgiving, prayer and fasting bring us back to the three realities that do not fade away. Prayer reunites us to God; charity, to our neighbour; fasting, to ourselves. God, my neighbour, my life: these are the realities that do not fade away and in which we must invest. Lent, therefore, invites us to focus, first of all on the Almighty, in prayer, which frees us from that horizontal and mundane life where we find time for self but forget God. It then invites us to focus on others, with the charity that frees us from the vanity of acquiring and of thinking that things are only good if they are good for me. Finally, Lent invites us to look inside our hearts, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart. Prayer, charity, fasting: three investments for a treasure that endures.”
In this journey through Lent, where do we fix our eyes, our gaze? What should we focus on? The Church has the answer: on Christ crucified. It is very simple: Jesus is on the cross and if we want to find him, we need to climb up to the cross.
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Yes meansYes
“Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No.” This was the motto of a boys’ school, to teach the kids to be sincere. They used to ask me, why do we have to say the truth, if with a lie we can get away with things. I used to tell them that Jesus is the Truth and if we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to be truthful. Let what you say reflect what you think. Let your mind express itself. Gulliver in one of his travels comes across an island populated by horses, and tries to explain to them what human beings are. The horses cannot understand creatures that are able to lie: How can they think one thing and say a different one? Scientists say that the difference between computers and human beings is that computers cannot lie; they are programmed to come out with what is right. The day they learn how to deceive others, they will be like us; then we will be in trouble, completely at their mercy.
Society needs the truth to function properly. We live in a relativistic world where people are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in their truth. As long as I am happy in the way I live, I change the truth to suit my life. The internet is full of fake news. We like to access web sites that say things we agree with. The protagonist of the movie “A Few Good Men” has a famous line: “You cannot handle the truth”. It is true: we don’t want to handle it, to live by it, to live our lives according to the Truth, with a capital T. Martyrs used to lay down their lives for what they believed in. We are not ready to do so. We are only ready to die for what give us most pleasure, money, drugs, sex, alcohol or food.
First we need to be sincere with God. It is silly to try to deceive God, because He knows everything. But we don’t want to face him, to acknowledge his presence. We live ignoring him, as if he doesn’t exist; we only go to Him when we are in trouble. How can we love Him if we are afraid of him? Maybe we contact Him once a day, out of duty, just in case, when we pray before going to bed. We need to force ourselves to spend time with Him in silent prayer, to try to see things through His eyes, to look at Him with loving eyes. Somebody said that we should look at Jesus’ eyes at least once a day. Sooner or later we are going to face Him.
In the temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a famous inscription: Nosce te ipsum; know yourself. One of the most difficult things in life is to know ourselves. Because we live inside of ourselves, because we don’t like how we are, we create a different image of ourselves. I’d like to have another inscription: Ama te ipsum: love yourself; love yourself in the way God created you. God doesn’t love a virtual you; he loves you in the way you are. Unless we accept ourselves in the way we are we cannot be sincere with ourselves. How can we love ourselves? How can we get to know ourselves? Open your interior to somebody you love, to somebody who can help you, like in spiritual direction; we all need a sounding board to check who we are and how we are.
Lastly, sincerity with others. It is very important in human relations. If people know that we are not sincere, they cannot trust us. It is not easy to live with a person who is constantly lying to you. Once we start lying, it is not easy to stop. The truth is harder, but will set you free. How can we stop lying? Try to catch the lie before it goes out; bite it. Slowly you can win the battle.
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Salt and Light
Jesus reminds us today in the Gospel that we Christians are salt and light; salt of the earth and light of the world. Both are related to two senses, seeing and tasting. Without light we cannot see. Without salt the food becomes insipid. Jesus doesn’t say what we should be, but what we are; we are because of our Baptism. Not because we are better, or because we have done well, but because of his will, because he wants it. Christopher West always reminds us: You are a gift, be what you are.
We are precious in the eyes of God, like Gollum with his ring. In the old world salt was very valuable. The Jews made their offerings to God seasoned with salt, to make it pleasant for him. The Greeks considered salt to be divine. The Roman soldiers were some times paid with salt. In the times where there were no fridges, to make the food last, it had to be covered with salt. The human body contains almost a kilo of salt. Comparing us with salt, Jesus is telling us how valuable we are in his eyes.
What does it mean to be salt? It is white and pure; we should live a clean life, different from other people’s tasteless lives. It gives flavour to the food; we should make the world more pleasant, more lovable. It sterilises the wounds, stopping infections; we should preserve society from the effects of sin. It melts the ice when the roads are covered with it; we should melt the coldness of humanity with the warmth of the love of God. It preserves the food from decay; we should be like preservatives, to stop society from disintegrating, keeping things fresh and healthy. It produces thirst, the desire to drink; we should foster our thirst for God, that only his love can quench. But if the salt becomes tasteless what can you do with it? Throw it away. If it becomes contaminated, it becomes useless. When the salt in the underground water comes to the surface, the field becomes barren. It is possible for us to lose our way, our truth and our light.
Light is very important for us. Without the light of the sun it is impossible to live. Our eyes are our most valuable sense. The same happens in the spiritual life: God is the light. The first thing he did when he created the world was to separate light from darkness. When we see God, we see light. The devil is the prince of darkness. Hell is pitch black. When we baptise a baby we light a candle, to signify that his soul is full of light. Jesus came to dispel darkness.
We are the light of the world, not our light, but his light. We need to let his light to shine on us. We need to learn how to reflect his light, not ours. Like the moon, that reflects the light of the sun. We compare Mary with the moon. We should be like a lighthouse: to show people where the rocks are, where the danger is. Jesus is the beacon; we are the lighthouse. We can be a beautiful lighthouse, close to the sea, on the forefront, but if our beacon is out, we are useless. To give light we have to have it. Many times instead of salt we are vinegar; instead of giving light, we give darkness. We ask Mary our mother to remind us what we are: children of the light, pure mineral salt.
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Presentation of Our Lord
Today Jesus is brought for the first time to his temple, to fulfil the duties prescribed by the Jewish Law. He comes in his mother’s arms; he is too little to be able to walk. Joseph brings a pair of pigeons. They were a poor family and couldn’t afford a lamb. A poet says that because God couldn’t find poverty in heaven, he came to find it on earth. After all these centuries waiting for the Messiah, when he arrived, there was no party to welcome him. Only two people recognised him. God normally comes unnoticed; he likes to hide and disappear. We are the ones who need to look for him. We complain that he doesn’t appear to us. He doesn’t like to impose himself; he prefers to respect our freedom. He gives us enough signs for us to notice his presence.
How did Simeon discover Jesus? What did he see? We don’t know; but we know that Simeon in spite of being very old, he had a very young heart. He was looking forward to see the Messiah. And thanks to his hope in his faith he was going to meet him, his heart was full of love, and he had the right vision. His eyes discovered him among the multitude of babies brought by their parents to be rescued. Old people are normally grumpy, complaining about the past and making life unbearable to people around them. Simeon was the opposite; he was a sweet gentle man, of good humour, optimistic, full of life with bright dark eyes. He was looking forward to meeting God. We must have the same attitude. Every day that passes, we are one day closer to meeting him. Our Lord is coming. All we need to do is wait for him, standing up, walking towards him. Every night, before going to bed, when the priest prays the divine office, he repeats Simeon’s words: Nunc dimitis; let me go now in peace to encounter your presence.
We are jealous of Simeon: he took baby Jesus in his arms. Mary let him have the baby. Not many people managed to do so. We too ask her for this privilege. But she will ask us to wash our hands, comb our hair and clean our shoes. Maybe we need to go to confession first, forgive a grudge or to apologise to somebody about something we find difficult to recognise.
Simeon didn’t bring good news to the young couple. Till now all the announcements of the angels were full of joy and hope. After a month of silence, some of the questions they had about the future of this child were answered by Simeon: he was going to be a sign of contradiction. This baby was going to bring mixed feelings, suffering and joy, cross and glory, all at the same time. From now on, people won’t be able to remain indifferent at his passing. You either have to be with him or against him. To follow him is great, but it is going to bring together two extremes: a joy rooted on a wooden cross.
Simeon said something softly, in a low voice, only for Mary to hear: “A sword will pierce through your own soul.” She had sensed it already when the angel asked her to be the mother of God. It is something every mother finds out when they have a baby. Life brings sorrow; love fosters suffering. She began to experience the cross before her son. It was a prophecy that was going to find its consummation at Calvary. In the same way Jesus’ breast was pierced by a lance, opening his heart for us, Mary’s soul was going to be penetrated by a sword, for us to see her motherly love for us.
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The Beatitudes
One of the most beautiful places in the Holy Land is where the church of the Beatitudes is located. It is built on a grassy hill with an amazing view of the lake of Gennesaret. It is one of those places that hasn’t changed much. It is situated on the northwest side of the lake, three kilometers from Capernaum. The area is called Tabgha, meaning seven springs, still flowing down towards the lake. There are two other churches in proximity, on the site of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, and the primacy of Peter. The church is built in an octagon, in remembrance of the eight beatitudes. You can walk around the outside of the church on a covered veranda, contemplating the lake and the surrounding countryside. You are tempted to keep circling the church watching the panorama and praying about the Beatitudes.
The Prophets of old used to preach from the top of the hill for people to be able to hearthem. We see here a classic depiction of Jesus inscribed in our minds, preaching the Gospel to the crowds, sitting down while people remain at his feet, listening to him, completely absorbed in his words. Pope Francis stresses the importance of “how the proclamation of this message happened: Jesus, seeing the crowds that followed Him, climbs up the gentle slope that surrounds the Lake of Galilee; He sits down and, addressing His disciples, proclaims the Beatitudes. Therefore, the message is directed to the disciples, however, the crowds are on the horizons, namely, the whole of humanity. It’s a message for the whole of humanity.” It is the attitude we must have for entering the kingdom of heaven.
It is not easy to preach about the Beatitudes, to give a meaningful commentary about them. We priests try to avoid them. Why? Maybe because you need to be very close to Jesus to be able to explain them well. Thank God they speak for themselves. You only need to read them and pray about them, listen to their voice. Once they left Jesus lips, they have a life of their own. Their sound keeps moving through time, amplifying their waves among the history of men.
They are simple and profound. They speak to us in many different ways. They are very practical, proposing ideas for our own lives. We can try to live them now, today, during the course of the day. They push us to make small resolutions that will bring us closer to God and to others. This is why it is so difficult and so easy to talk about them: they become very personal, suggesting down to earth ideas, like bubbles of soap, popping out from the tube, that resonate specifically to each one of us. This is why we don’t like to read them very often; too many desires come to our minds, with dangerous changes in our way of life. We prefer to close the book and leave it for tomorrow.
Maybe I have been a bit negative in my outlook today. The Beatitudes are very demanding and I am getting old. Time makes things more difficult. It is easy to become discouraged. We tried them and we failed. We didn’t find them wanting, but we found ourselves failing. We need to keep trying, hoping that one day God will lift us up, whenever He wants to.
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Follow me
Jesus begins what we call his public life calling twelve men to follow him, to accompany him, to share his life. We call them apostles, the one who is sent out. They are going to hear his message and to be entrusted with the task of passing it on to others. Most of them were fishermen, rough guys, not very smart; one of them betrayed him and the leader of them denied him three times. At the end, all of them but John ran away from his passion at Calvary. Their weaknesses give us hope. We too begin a new year in our lives and we have an opportunity to make a renewed commitment to follow Jesus a bit closer. Last year we ran away from the cross. Hopefully this year we can keep him company.
”Follow me.” This is what Jesus told them, how he called them. He is asking them to follow him, to walk behind him, to try to place their feet in his footprints. This means to imitate him, to become more like him, to keep his pace. To follow a perfect man. It was love at first sight. They were all attracted to him. There is nobody like Jesus. We can try to find the perfect person, but we will never find him. Only Jesus can fill all our expectations; he is the one we have been looking for. And this is what he is reminding us today: “You have been created to love me; only in me can you find happiness; that’s why I am asking you to follow me.” Every year, every day, every hour, he is telling us the same. Because we don’t listen, because we stray from the path, because we get distracted, because we follow him from a distance, he is never tired of repeating the same: “Follow me.” It is the best for us.
“Follow me.” Follow my footsteps, follow my direction, follow my pace. It is not easy. We go either too fast or too slow. We can be doing too many things, with plenty of activity, but we are not concentrating on what’s important. We don’t have our priorities right. Saint Augustine says: bene curris, sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. Or maybe our laziness is in command, we procrastinate, we become indifferent, and we are going at a tortoise pace. Jesus’ pace is the right one for us. He knows us well. If we go too fast, we overtake him; if we go too slowly, we miss him. For us to know the way is to follow him. We all would like to know what is ahead of us and plan accordingly. But God wants us to fix our eyes on Him and not to worry about what lies ahead of us. We should trust Him as a good loving father. We only need to look at Him to know we are on the right path.
Is it a command or a request? It is a gift. It is a hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, a bright diamond, a big star shining in the night sky. If we know where we are coming from and where we are going to, it is easier to recognise the value of our treasure. It is a big grace, an amazing offering, that God presents to us. Many are called but only few are chosen. Here we are. And we follow him dragging our feet.
We are chosen for two tasks: to be with him and to be sent to others. To get to know Jesus Christ and to introduce him to others. The more we know him the better we can present him to our friends and relatives. We need to discover him, to recognise who he is to be able to show him to others. A treasure cannot be hidden. A great treasure becomes greater when it is shared.
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The Lamb of God
John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus passing by, he pointed him out to his disciples with these words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” This second time John recognized Jesus. The first time was when Our Lady met her cousin Elizabeth; he didn’t remember it. This time John wanted to show his disciples who the Messiah was. He wanted his two best men to follow Jesus, to offer them to him. John and Andrew took the hint, followed Jesus and became his apostles. Do I point Jesus to others? Do I give Jesus the best of me?
Why did John use this expression? It is a representation foreign to us. It doesn’t make sense to us to see God as a lamb. But for the Jews it was something very familiar, coming from their own tradition. Isaiah had compared the sufferings of the Messiah with a lamb going to the slaughter. The blood of the paschal lamb was painted on the door of the Israelites to protect their firstborn against the angel passing by. It became a promise and a figure of Christ, the true Lamb. Every year the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed in the Temple recalling their liberation from the Egyptians and their covenant with God. In the book of Revelation Jesus appears victorious and glorious as the slain lamb, surrounded by angels and saints.
Three characteristics of the lamb can be applied to Jesus. First, the humble and meek condition of a lamb, who goes about in a simple and trusting way. In the same way a lamb goes to the slaughter without saying anything, as a gentle animal going to its fate, Jesus during his Passion kept silence; he let them do whatever they wanted, without rebelling against the will of his Father God. Second, the spotless whiteness, and the soft and pleasant touch of the wool of a lamb. It reminds us of the purity and innocence of Jesus in front of his accusers, who with amazing violence and force, expressed their hatred in their treatment of Jesus. Third, the offering and satisfaction produced by the lambs sacrificed in the temple of Jerusalem. It is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, who came to give himself up for each one of us. Now no more lambs have to die anymore. Jesus died once and for all.
Every time the priest during Mass lifts the host in front of us before Communion saying “Behold the Lamb of God”, we are reminded of this reality. The priest presents Jesus to us in a very graphical way; he shows him to us, he points him out, like John the Baptist. Once a priest told me that sometimes he felt like Pontius Pilate, introducing Christ to the crowd: “Here is the man.” Ecce Homo. He feared that the crowd could answer again: “Crucify him.” We don’t want him to rule over us, we don’t want his kingdom. The priest should try to hide his face behind the host, to disappear, and let Jesus shine: he is the one; what are you going to do with him? It is a good moment to make an act of faith. Do I believe that behind the appearances of bread is hidden the Son of God? If I believe that, my life has to change accordingly.
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He is the only one who can take all our iniquities, imperfections, shortcomings, frustrations, away. We can leave them behind for ever. He’s got the power. All we need to do is to believe in him and let his mercy rain on us; apply his forgiveness through Confession to that baggage all human beings carry with us. Today is a good moment to unload the weight of that rubbish that makes us bent over, weighed down, unhappy.
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Baptism of Jesus
With the Baptism of Jesus, Christmas time comes to an end. It is a pity because we love Christmas and we have to wait for another year; but we are beginning a new year, with all the excitement that this brings about. Today Jesus begins his public life, a life where he manifests his divinity and gives us the good news of the Gospel. And he starts in the same way we begin our Christian life: washing away with water our original sin.
Jesus is God, sinless; he didn’t need to be baptised, but he wanted to go through John’s baptism, to purify the waters and give them the power to cleanse us. John the Baptist didn’t want to baptise him; he wanted to be baptised by Jesus and we understand him. They almost had a fight, but John was sympathetic to Jesus’ request. The early Church was a bit ashamed of this baptism, finding difficult to understand it, because Baptism is meant for the salvation of sinners. Eventually they realised that Jesus, like in his death on the Cross, took with him on his shoulders all our sins, our iniquities, our infidelities, and buried them in the waters of the Jordan River. In the same way the waters of a river wash down everything in its path, the same happens to us when we are baptised.
Do you remember your Baptism? Most of us were baptised when we were babies and we don’t remember anything. Some of you maybe have videos of the moment and maybe you can see yourself crying because the water was too cold and you were sleeping peacefully beforehand. But it is a good moment today to think about what happened to us at that moment. If we could see the change in the soul of the baby, the moment the water is poured onto his head, we would be amazed and greatly surprised. It is an automatic transformation, from a soul closed to any grace from a God, pitch black, surrounded by darkness, to a completely clean surface, full of light and shining, everything bright and white. Suddenly the sky is open and God appears like the sun in all it’s splendour, telling us that we are his children, taking us into his strong arms. Almost similar to what happened during the Baptism of Jesus, when the heavens opened and the voice from above declared: “This is my beloved son.”
We are baptised in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Today we have the great manifestation of the Holy Trinity. We see in action the workings of the three divine persons, fully present. The Father represented in the voice, Jesus, the Son being baptised, and the dove, the Holy Spirit. It is the first time in the New Testament, that we have a graphic image of them, acting before our senses in an exterior manner. It is a good representation of what happens to our soul when we are baptised, when we are in a state of grace, when we share friendship with God, that the whole Trinity comes to our soul and abides in us.
Baptism means to immerse. Today we can have our immersion, we can plunge ourselves into the immensity of God. We can die a bit to ourselves, to become a new creature, ready for this new year which begins for us, full of hope and promises. We come out of the water like the Phoenix, renewed and transformed. In the same way the water of the River Jordan touched Jesus’ skin, today we allow Jesus’ grace to touch our soul, washing away all our imperfections.
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Epiphany
The three wise men saw the star and followed it. This is the story of their lives, of their encounter with God, of their place in history. It is an amazing one; by following a star, they met a baby, and they discovered the Messiah. Humanly speaking it was crazy. Why did a passing star provoke that reaction on the Magi? How do you follow a star? Where or when is it going to stop? These are questions that belong to our lives. We too discovered a star, we are following it, and hopefully it will lead us to Jesus. It is crazy, but it is a divine adventure.
How do we discover the star? Good question. It is not easy. The three wise men dedicated their lives to astronomy, to the study of the sky, looking for clues to their own existence. Man has always looked at space to try to understand where we come from and where we are going to. We too need to spend time discerning the signs, the sparks, the footprints, God has placed in our way, to discover his will for us, to find our path, to hoist our sails towards the right wind. It is a work of prayer, contemplation, silence and reflection.
It is not enough to discover the star, but we need to follow it. Many people see the star but they don’t do anything about it. Others begin to walk, but they get discouraged; they stop and they go back. It is not easy to persevere on an unknown quest. We don’t know how long it is going to take, where it is going to finish, if it is really the right path, or we lost our way; perhaps we even missed an important crossroads. Sometimes the road goes through a desert, through a rough terrain, across wild plains, deep gorges, dense jungles. Other times there are robbers waiting for us, to attack us when we are distracted; there are beasts ready to devour us, unexpected rivers in flood, precipices that stop us from going ahead, fires raging from the bush threatening our path, sand storms, plagues of locusts and lightning strikes. From time to time, the star disappears behind the clouds and we think she is not there anymore.
As Pope Francis says, “Jesus allows himself to be found by those who seek him.” We know that we are not alone, that he travels with us, even though we don’t see him. To seek him we need to leave behind whatever slows us down; to travel light, we cannot carry much weight, to be able to keep pace with the star; and to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon, without getting distracted with the marvellous things we come across in our way. The devil is trying to slow us down, to get us stuck in the mud, to deviate us from the right direction, to turn us back to where we came from. If we persevere, we will find him. Whatever happens, the star is always up there.
We arrive at the crib empty handed. We came naked from our mother’s womb and we leave without anything. Pope Francis’ grandmother used to say that the shroud we are going to be buried in won’t have any pockets. What can we give to baby Jesus when we arrive in his presence? We haven’t got much. All we can do is to offer ourselves. It is easy; a baby brings out the best in us.
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Mary Mother of God
We begin our year with Mary our mother, and we celebrate her most important feast: Mary, mother of God, her divine maternity. We used to celebrate today the feast of the name of Jesus, Emmanuel. But the Church with wisdom swapped the feast, because when we have a baby, we have a mother. There is no baby without a mother. He is so defenceless, that Mary these days is the important one. We normally represent Jesus sitting on Mary’s lap, seat of wisdom, throne of glory. Baby Jesus became conscious of himself, when he realised another was looking after him. His first identity came from his mother, who gave him all the love and affection she had in her heart. She fed him with milk, kept him warm under woollen clothes, chaged his nappies, sang lullabies to put him to sleep, rocked the cradle, taught him to talk, held him whe he began to walk.
Today we celebrate this feast because nine months ago Mary said yes to God’s plans for her. It was the beginning of the incarnation, God becoming man, taking our human flesh, coming to us in the same way all of us enter this world. It was the beginning of our salvation, the work of our redemption. And all started when a young girl answered to God’s call. It reminds us of the importance of following God’s plans for us, without being afraid of their consequences. We don’t realise how God in a way, conditions his designs to our affirmative decisions.
The dogma was defined in the year 431 during the Council of Ephesus. It was necessary because some people were calling her just the mother of Jesus. But the logic is clear: if she is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, therefore she is the mother of God. Not of his divinity, but of the person of Jesus Christ. It was an important definition, because it has a lot of consequences for us. It places us close to Mary and close to Jesus. She is our mother, the mother of Jesus and my mother, the mother of all human beings. Therefore Jesus is our elder brother and we all are sons and daughters of God.
The closer we are to Mary, the closer we are to Jesus. To access Jesus as a baby, we need to go through his mother. We cannot bypass her. She is our short cut. It is a pity Protestants have some apprehension about the mother of God. The devil hates her, because he knows her power, coming directly from her Son. It was foretold at the beginning, when the serpent attacked Eve, and the coming of a new Eve was prophesied. He knows that he cannot do much against her, and tries with all his might to separate us from the help of our mother.
Saint Josemaria was very proud of his love for Mary. You could almost feel it. He used to say that if anybody wanted to imitate him, it should be his devotion to her. He wrote a strong statement about her: “We go to Jesus, and we return to him, through Mary.” Once somebody asked him if he would write this again, thinking that it was a bit too strong, and it could be criticised by people who didn’t share his love for her. Saint Josemaria said yes, defending what he had written, but then he stopped, thought for a moment and said: “I would write now: Mary, the only way.”
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Holy Family
Once we have a baby, we have a family. The Church uses three different Gospels for this feast day, the presentation and finding of the child Jesus in the temple, and today the flight to Egypt. In them we see the Holy Family together in three very different settings, today flying away from Herod who wants to kill the baby. We see Joseph sleeping peacefully, after the coming of the three wise men. Pope Francis has a lot of devotion to the sleeping Joseph. He’s got a statue of him on his desk. Joseph is peacefully dreaming about what to do with the gold left by the Magi, either to buy a faster donkey or to refurbish the old kitchen at home. It wasn’t to be; the gold is for the trip. He can still do with the old donkey.
We are getting used to the angel appearing to Joseph in his dreams. We are also normally used to seeing Joseph getting up in the middle of the night, taking the mother and the child and running away from Herod’s soldiers. But let us take for one moment the place of Joseph. If an angel of the Lord appears to me in a dream and asks me the same as Joseph, my first reaction when I wake up would be of rebellion: that was a nightmare! Or maybe it is the devil. My second reaction would be to challenge God: Why do we have to move? Can you get rid of Herod? Is this baby truly the Son of God? But of course, Joseph is not me, and did what God wanted him to do, without complaining, without asking questions, waking up straight away, without waiting for the morning to say good bye to the people in Nazareth, just in case Herod’s soldiers were at the door.
The Holy Family went to Egypt to fulfill the Scripture. But it could have been written differently. There are places in Egypt that today still hold the tradition of the passing of Jesus through their land. Joseph gives us an example of docility and trusting in God’s will. We all have the experience of many things that happen to us that we don’t like, that we don’t understand, that we complain about. We rebel and we ask: Why me? The question should be: Why not me? Some things we’ll understand later on; other things we need to wait till eternity. We should be patient. Eventually everything will make sense.
Again we are used to seeing the flight to Egypt in traditional paintings as something beautiful and romantic. It wasn’t like that. They didn’t book a flight on the internet. It was hard, in the middle of the night, looking back to see if they were followed, going to a new country with a different language, with hieroglyphic handwriting, as refugees. Joseph had to begin again, find a job, build a new house, make new friends. They even didn’t know how long they had to be there.
After few years of hard work, the Holy Family were settled. They built a beautiful house, Joseph had plenty of work and Mary made good friends. Jesus began to talk with an Egyptian accent. Joseph was again dreaming about a well deserved holiday at the beach, at the mouth of the Nile, when again an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him to go back home. And he went back without complaining. Then he spent his years surrounded by the most amazing treasures you can have in your life: Jesus and Mary. God’s plans for us are always the best for us. When we get older we realise that he knows best. And the opposite; when we do our own thing, things go wrong and we get frustrated. Joseph died accompanied by his two greatest loves. Let us follow in Joseph footsteps.
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Christmas
During this Advent, in our quest for Jesus, we have been following the example of John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. They have led us to him. We have arrived at our destination. We have reached the center of our lives and the focus is a baby. Now we realise that baby Jesus is all that matters. These days of Christmas are days of calm and serene contemplation of baby Jesus. All we need to do is to look at him, to plunge into the mystery of God becoming man, admiring the mingling of humanity and divinity. Just that, to look at him, and nothing else. Trying to enter deeper and deeper, into the infinite abyss of God’s love for us, a bottomless pit of his majesty and power. And all this is concentrated in a little tiny baby.
Why did he have to come to us? He didn’t. But he wanted not only to live with us, but to become one of us, and go through the same things we are going through, except sin. And he is now as we were when we were born, just a baby. A baby that cannot open his eyes, doesn’t have teeth, he cannot utter a word, and he’s got his little hands closed. All he does is eat, sleep, cry and dirty nappies. He is completely useless, a hundred percent dependent on his mother. All he can take is his mother’s milk. A God so defenceless, that if you leave him alone, he would die. At this moment he cannot even smile. His face is red and he doesn’t have much hair. If we could open his eyelids, we would see his beautiful brown eyes.
And this baby is what we need to contemplate, even though he cannot look back at us; he is sleeping. It is a one way gaze, trying to learn from his professorial chair, from his cathedra, from his open book, the book of his life, his first lessons of his life on earth. He could have come to us as a grown up man, but he wanted to start from the beginning, because we are slow learners. We need hours of patient contemplation in front of the statue or a painting of him in the manger, suffering cold, or in his mother’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Two simple, important lessons we learn straight away: poverty and humility. He came like us, with nothing, and when he goes, his only possession is going to be the wood of the cross. And what about humility? Can you find a better example than God coming to us as a baby?
And now in front of this baby, what do we do? We don’t need to do much. What do mother’s do with their babies? They look after them, giving them attention, love, tenderness. Many of us we don’t know how to look after a baby, but we can give him plenty of love. Some people don’t know how to love. This baby can teach us how to do it, just hold him in your arms, being careful not to drop him. We drop him many times a day. We can also offer ourselves to him. A baby brings out the best in us. In front of him we cannot say no. We need to be ourselves. The first thing he tells us when we get closer to him: get rid of your fancy clothes; be yourself. We cannot pretend, show off or try to deceive him.
But maybe the best thing we can do is to sit down in a corner of the cave, out of the way, hidden in the shadows, and contemplate how Mary looks after Jesus. It is an amazingly beautiful scene. She tends him knowing that he is God and man. She teaches us how to deal with his humanity and his divinity. You cannot become tired of looking at the mother and the child. Many artists tried to catch a glimpse of it. It is all in our imagination.
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Fourth Sunday of Advent
What happened to Saint Joseph? He was the last one to find out about the good news. They came to congratulate him and he was puzzled. He was supposed to know as a husband and a father, but he was left confused and bewildered. Mary kept silent. She let God follow his plans. She looked at his worried face. A few times he tried to ask her a question, but he changed his mind. God normally allows his loved ones to experience trials.
Joseph didn’t judge her, he couldn’t; she is so good and so pure. And now that she is expecting, she looks more beautiful, more feminine; she is glowing. She looks so innocent and full of God. But why did she keep the secret to herself? Why is she not talking to him, about such an important matter that concern them both? She must have her reasons.
What can he do? He cannot blame her, he knows it is not her fault. For sure, she must be doing what God wants her to do. Then, he must take the blame; he has to get out of the way, leaving God in command. He can assume the responsibility for the pregnancy, he can take the blame, look in the eyes of the world as the guilty one. But, he doesn’t want to leave her; he can’t. That’s the hardest thing for him. He can take the blame, but he cannot abandon her. He loves her so much! He has put his heart in her hands. They had decided to live a life of consecration to God and he was very happy to be with her and look after her. He was over the moon and was looking forward to bring her to his home. And now this unexpected pregnancy. This has thrown overboard all his plans. And she is acting as if nothing has happened.
Joseph gives us a great example of how not to judge. Qui iudicat Dominus est. Who judges? He is the Lord. It is not our task to do it. We don’t have all the facts, we don’t know all the circumstances. Even though we think we know, because it has happened before, because it is very clear, because there is no other explanation; but Joseph gives us an example of how sometimes we can make mistakes, and we can assume things that are not true. All of us, we have made erroneous judgments in the past. Whenever we want to judge, whenever we think we know all the facts, we should think about Joseph.
Joseph goes to bed without having solved the problem. It doesn’t allow him to sleep. He keeps going over and over it in his mind, but eventually he gets tired and falls asleep. And an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, most likely Saint Gabriel, who is very involved in this business, and tells him the whole truth. Imagine Joseph’s joy on hearing this news. He woke up straight away and went to Mary’s house. She looked at him, at his radiant face, and realised immediately that he was now in the loop. We need to dream big. The devil wants us to get discouraged, to drag our feet through the mud, to paralyse us, to drug us with little compensations. He knows that God’s plans for us have big consequences, and he tries to play them down. Like Joseph, he confuses us and tries to get us to blame others. All we need to do, like Joseph, is to be faithful to God’s plans for us, even though many times we do not know where they are taking us. We need to be patient and sleep well.
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Third Sunday of Advent A
“Be patient, brothers and sisters, until the coming of the Lord. See how the farmer waits for the precious fruit of the earth, being patient with it until it receives the early and the late rains. You too must be patient.” Today’s second reading from the letter of Saint James encourages us to be patient. We are waiting for the Lord and we don’t know when he is coming. We know he is going to be born on Christmas’ day, but we don’t know when he is coming for us, to pick us up, to take us to the place he has prepared for each one of us. He is very keen to show it to us, but we are not ready, because we are still here.
Patience is a virtue we don’t talk about much. It is not a glamorous virtue, a talent to be proud of, but we all need it. We all know people we find difficult to put up with: at work, at home, among our relatives or friends, at church, on the street, waiting in a queue, driving the car, or being put on hold when we make a phone call. We get upset, frustrated, we lose interior peace or we become anxious. In all these circumstances we fail to identify the virtue we need to keep cool, to maintain our serenity and to have inner joy. And it is called patience.
It is important to discover how patient God is with us. Just like the parents of small children. This is what they learned when they had their first baby. It changed their lives completely because it has become a twenty four seven job. They grow immensely in this virtue thanks to their love they feel for their children. Love can be crazy and makes parents do things we are not ready to do for other people. A baby is cute and brings out the best in us. But to do the same with old people demands Christian charity. The knowledge of how much our parents have done for us, help us to do what we can for them, when they are in need during their old age.
The same with God. When we look at him as a Father, we realise that everything that has happened in our lives has a meaning. Either he allowed things to happen, used our silly stubbornness to bring out some good in us, or to plan things in a way that events that appear awful, will help us in the long run. We, like little children, are not aware of it, even when we rebel or throw tantrums. When we look back at our lives, we can begin to understand what God has been doing and we become patient and grateful for God’s actions. His plan is a long term plan. We are impatient and we want things here and now. When we see how patient God is with us, we can learn to be patient with others. God is working with each one of us and we need to wait for the other life to understand things completely.
For this virtue it is important to go to our mother Mary. Mothers are schools of patience. You can see how women change when they have a baby; they grow and mature, even physically. Contemplating Mary looking at baby Jesus, we can learn and develop our patience with others.
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Second Sunday of Advent
Today the Church presents to us John the Baptist as a model to follow. He was the Precursor, the one who comes first. His mission was to open the ways of the Lord, to give witness to the light, to prepare men’s hearts so that Christ may enter. Our mission is to follow in his footsteps. He came two thousand years ago; now it is our turn. How do we do that, if we have lost our way and our life is in complete darkness? We need first find the way, and make sure our soul is full of light. This is what we need to do these days. It is our task for this Advent. John the Baptist leads the way and gives us an example.
It is not easy to be a Precursor, to open the way, to go before foretelling the coming of another, becoming a bridge between two different sides. The Pope is called Pontifex, a bridge builder. We Christians are called to build bridges between people, to be forerunners of Christ in the world, torches that shine amid the darkness of this mad society of ours. John leads us to eternity and then other people can follow our path. It is not easy to find the narrow gate that opens to paradise.
What did John do? He went into the desert, to find silence, solitude and simplicity. He ate locust and wild honey and was dressed in camel hair. We too need to seek a wilderness around ourselves, where we can speak in silence, the language of God; to find solitude, to spend time with God alone; and to live the simple life of John the Baptist. What is the desert for me? In this time of Advent we need to find that space where we can develop our spiritual life, to be able to see things with different eyes, through God’s eyes. We eat locust, things we don’t want to eat; we dress rough, with the garments of modesty; and look for honey, the sweetness of God.
John the Baptist was tough. You wouldn’t like to meet him alone in the desert. His body looked like it was made of roots of trees; his skin was hard and burnt; his hair was meshed like a wild beast; his voice had the sounds of thunder; his eyes burned with prophetic fire. You couldn’t hold his gaze. Only Jesus managed to do so, when John didn’t want to baptise him. They almost had a wrestling match. To follow him we need the gift of fortitude, not to be afraid of the elements, to be able to defend the truth, even though we can lose our head as he did. Fortitude is the only gift of the Holy Spirit that it is related to a cardinal virtue.
John the Baptist is the only saint that we celebrate twice, his birth and his martyrdom. We normally celebrate the dies natalis of the saints, the day when they were born to eternal life, when they died. But Saint John, before he was born, he was sanctified in his mother’s womb, when his mother Elizabeth met Jesus’ mother; both were pregnant at that time. This is how both babies met, and John leapt in the womb with the infusion of the Holy Spirit. We, on the contrary, were born in sin and we need to wait till we die, to enter back into the bosom of God. We are now waiting with great expectation the birth of Jesus, who is still in his mother’s womb. We should follow in his mother’s footsteps to be there at his birth.
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First Sunday of Advent
Watch out, the Lord is coming, the Lord is very near. This is what the liturgy is reminding us these days: to be awake, to be vigilant, to be ready. In a crescendo manner, putting pressure with the passing of days, the prayers of the Mass are telling us slowly that he is coming: he is on his way, he is getting there, only a few days to go, he is almost here, he is knocking at the door, he is already opening the door. When he comes, we need to be with our mobile phones on, our camera open, ready for a selfie. He cannot finds us playing games, sending messages or surfing our favourites sites. Otherwise he will keep going, without stopping in our hearts.
We are celebrating the three comings of our Lord. He came two thousand years ago as a man. He is going to come again at the end of time as a judge. He is coming now as a baby. But he is also constantly coming to meet us personally, in our hearts and minds. Christmas is a reminder of this reality. Jesus not only will come to pick us up when our time is up, but he wants us to experience his presence now in our daily lives.
We need to tell him that we are waiting for him, that we want to be with him. People in love do this all the time. We know we need him, but we forget, we become distracted, we get side tracked. We need to be reminded of this reality. This is what advent means, “Parusia” in Greek, “Adventus” in Latin: presence, arrival, coming. “Marannatha” in Hebrew or “Veni Domini Iesu”, in Latin, meaning “Come Lord Jesus.” Maranatha is two words in Hebrew and is found only once in the New Testament, at the end of the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. At the very end of the Bible, in the last words of the book of Revelation, Saint John says: Come Lord Jesus. It is a cry that we all should repeat often these days, fostering a desire, waiting in expectation for his coming.
The Prophet Isaiah reminds us what we need to do: “Make straight a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” We need to build a road, a freeway, to make it easy for us to reach him. We should flatten the mountains and fill the valleys. We need to prepare the surface of our lives to reach him better and faster. The mountains are our addictions, those things that we give too much importance to, that try to take over and easily are out of control. What are those things? Work, finances, family, entertainment, social media, hobbies, sport. What we call wealth, honour, power and pleasure. We need to put a measure on them, to restrict them, to bring them down to their proper place. We should be sincere and seek to acknowledge the lack of balance. And fill the valleys; give importance to what’s important: God and others. Look after our relationship with God and with people around us: our prayer life, spending time with our loved ones, helping people in need, reaching out to the poor and the disabled. Both, mountains and valleys, are correlated, they don’t exist one without the other. We need to fix them both at the same time. We should have our priorities right, and Advent gives us an opportunity to do so.
We tend to have two attitudes, a passive one, waiting for the Lord, or an active one which is better still: coming out to reach him. Like the sensible virgins, who came out of themselves, to greet the bridegroom, when they heard the voice that he was coming, we too, need to have our lamps ready, with plenty of oil, burning brightly, illuminating our highway that lead us to his presence.
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The Good Thief
Three crosses, two thieves and three different expressions of suffering. Jesus wanted to be crucified surrounded by sinners, sharing his throne of glory with them. Many saints would have liked to have been there, to change places with one of them, with a holy envy. Three crosses; as Saint Augustine says, one gives salvation, the other receives it and the other despises it. Two thieves; we are represented by these two criminals, and we all deserved to be there. We should be there, but we are still running away from the cross. These two thieves represent two attitudes in front of the cross, two ways of life that can be summarised in every human being: for or against God, with Him or without Him. Three sufferings, one redemptive, another purifying, and the third useless. Which one is mine? Am I with Jesus, accompanying him in his redemption? Or maybe, I am the good thief, waiting for the end of my life to jump into paradise. I hope we are not the bad thief, wasting our lives in useless frustration.
What did the good thief see to believe? It is a very good question, almost impossible to answer. The two thieves were crucified on both sides of Jesus, suffering the same penalty for their crimes. One, whom we call Gestas, was abusing Jesus, asking him, in frustration and pain, to save all of them at the same time, in a very selfish manner. Dismas, the one on his right, rebuked him, telling him that they were there for a just reason, to pay for their actions, a right punishment. But Jesus was innocent and he shouldn’t be there. And he made the best petition a man can make to God: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” We need to repeat these words over and over again, especially when we are suffering.
There were other people at Calvary, and they witnessed the same thing, but only Dismas made this petition. Maybe because he looked at things from the cross, from a higher ground; or maybe because he was suffering the same fate as Jesus, wearing the same shoes. When we suffer we see things with different eyes. What he saw was a man dying in silence, not only accepting his cross, but coming out of himself to meet his suffering, welcoming the pain with open arms, with a reason for his torture, savoring every minute of it. But the Roman centurion also present, only believed after Jesus died, when he felt the earthquake and experienced the darkening of the sky.
“Today you will be with me in paradise.” What did Dismas feel when he heard these words? “Today”, not tomorrow, but now, after few minutes of suffering, opening the door to a new beginning, with a meaning to your crucifixion, with a happy ending, like a successful operation healing your wounds. “With me”, you are coming with me; we are going together, crossing the threshold of this life to eternity hand in hand, lighting for you the way forward. “Into paradise”, the place you long for, what you have been created for, what your heart believes, with all the people you love.
The good thief gives us plenty of hope. We can easily place ourselves in his shoes. We can turn our bad thief into a good one and at the same time steal heaven. But we don’t need to wait till our last moments. We can begin now to repeat his petition many times, from the cross of our suffering.
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Eschatological discourse
When we reach November, at the end of the liturgical year, we have these Gospels about the end of times, about the distant future. They are always a bit frightening and we don’t know what to do about them or how to react. We want to read them quickly, and pass soon into Advent, to be able to look forward to Christmas. Why does the Church want us to look at these events, when we don’t know when they are going to happen, and most likely they won’t happen in our lifetime? They tell us about our future and teach us lessons for our own lives.
It is very human the desire to know about the future, to plan things accordingly. We would like to have more control of our lives, to foresee situations and be prepared for them. But God tells us what we need to know at every given moment. Curiosity killed the cat. We are in God’s hands and he knows what’s going on. We need to leave things in his hands and let him be the boss. We are just little children.
There are three future things which are foreshadowed in this Gospel: the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The first one happened in the year 70, when the Romans circled the holy city and destroyed the temple of Jerusalem, to quash a rebellion. The Jews never recovered. Now, all they have is the wailing wall, were they can pray for the future temple to be built. Once Jesus came, there was no need for God to dwell in a particular place. We shouldn’t worry too much about the destruction of material things, because everything will pass away, but we should worry about the destruction or corruption of our soul, the actual temple of the Holy Spirit.
The end of the world is something that has been prophesied many times by many people, and so far all of them have been mistaken. We shouldn’t worry about that, or have the attitude of some of the early Christians who stopped working because they thought it was imminent. This reality brings to our consideration that whatever we do here has an end. Eventually everything will disappear. We all have a desire to leave behind things that will last for ever and this is impossible. The only things that last forever are in the other life, when a new heaven and a new earth will be renewed. This thought will help us to fix our eyes more in what is behind the veil between time and eternity.
The second coming of Our Lord is less frightening. After all the signs and amazing events of the end of time, the appearance of Jesus among the clouds will be a happy ending of our universe, which began with the Big Bang when God created it. We will be happy to see Our Lord coming back to judge the living and the dead. This future event reminds us of our personal encounter with him at the end of our earthly existence. We need to get ready and the proof that we are not is that we are still here. We ask our Mother to be there when Our Lord comes to pick us up, as we pray every time we say the Hail Mary: pray for us now and at the hour of our death, amen.
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Resurrection of the dead
Today in the Gospel the Sadducees tried to have a go at Jesus with a silly argument, defending their denial of the resurrection, and thanks to them we have from him a good statement about the resurrection of the body. Jesus uses sometimes our pride and selfishness for our own good, to give us a lesson. Whether we like it or not, at the end of time we will be reunited to our bodies. It will be either a glorious body or a damned one. It is a reminder that our bodies are important. They make us who we are. They are not just a cage were our souls are imprisoned. They are created by God together with our soul and they are destined to be together for ever in the other life. This reality has three important consequences.
Firstly, our bodies are good. Love your body, look after it, give thanks to God for the body he has given you. There is a vision which separates the body from the soul, a kind of dualism, with two extremes: one that says that our bodies are bad and what it is important is our spiritual side; another extreme says that I am only my body and I can do whatever I want with my body. What we do with our bodies affects our soul; we cannot isolate one from the other. If you take drugs you get addicted. If you cut off your leg you cannot walk properly anymore. If you have sex with many different people, your heart becomes divided. If you eat as much as you want, you become fat and sloppy. Our emotions, our feelings, our character, are related to our body. What affects our body, affects our soul. It is not easy to see it, because it is impossible to separate in this life our body from our soul. Only death can do it. We cannot point out where our soul is in our body, because it exists throughout our being.
Secondly, our body has dignity. Saint Paul says that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We must treat our bodies with respect, honour it, celebrate it, bury it. During the funeral rites we sprinkle holy water and we incense the dead body. We place our ashes in a place of remembrance. We go there to pray for our loved ones. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Atheists throw the ashes into the sea, for the fish to eat them. For them everything is finished. For us it is a time of waiting. We venerate the relics of the saints. They remind us of their presence.
Thirdly, we are our bodies. Without our bodies we are nobody. Our bodies make us who we are. We are male or female because of our bodies, not because of our minds. Our soul in a way has sex, it is either a soul of a male or of a female body. Our bodies give us our identity, our place in space, our relational dimension. We cannot get out of our bodies, we see things from within, we need to carry it with us all the time, like a turtle its shell.
People deny these important and undeniable realities, manly to do whatever they want, to justify their own vices or passions. They have come out with the gender theory, which destroys our Christian anthropology. During the 20th century we had a struggle between common good and private property. Now it is between sex and gender. As Christopher West repeats all the time, talking about the Theology of the body from John Paul II: “You are irreplaceable, indispensable and unrepeatable; be what you are.”
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All Souls
In the month of November we remember our brothers and sisters who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith. We don’t know where they are. All we know is that they are already in eternity for ever. Some of them still have to undergo a kind of purification, because they are not completely cleaned to enjoy God’s presence. They are happy because they know they are on their way to heaven, but they earnestly desire to be transformed to be able to withstand God’s love. They don’t want to enter heaven yet. They need the right garment. It is like going to a formal party dressed in shorts and tee shirt, while all women are wearing long dresses and the men dinner suits. If you are going there, you would need to change your clothes.
We can help them to shorten their stay in purgatory. They cannot help themselves, but we can give them a hand. We have the keys to liberate them from their long imprisonment. Once two monks debated among themselves this question: What is more important, to pray for the living, or for the dead? One of them always prayed for the living and the other for the dead. The one praying for the living said: “the dead are already saved; the living can go either way.” The other monk answered: “you are right, but imagine you come across two beggars, one young and the other old. To whom would you give your money?” He answered: “To the old one because the young one can get a job.” “You are right. It is the same with souls. The living have the necessary graces to go to heaven. The dead cannot help themselves.” Therefore it is more pleasing to God that we pray for the souls in purgatory.
Let us be generous with our prayers and sacrifices. Not many people remember them. How often do we think about them? Out of sight, out of mind. Protestants don’t believe in purgatory. They don’t have the tradition of praying for the dead and therefore nobody is praying for them. Even though Purgatory is not a place but a state of being, it is getting full and we need to help God to empty it. If we pray now for the holy souls, when we die people will remember us. Then we will be very grateful to them, to be able to jump from one place to the other. Once talking with an old lady, she commented: “Father, when you are getting old, this is all that matters.”
Saint Josemaria used to call the holy souls in purgatory “my good friends”. Let us foster in our hearts a friendship with them, a relationship that will last forever and will help us to fix our eyes on the other life, the real life of the future. Let us finish the month of November with a renewed acquaintance with them.
They are very powerful in front of God. It is one of the best devotions. God listens to them, who are crying day and night. They cannot help themselves, but they can offer their sufferings for us. Any soul we help to reach heaven is going to intercede for us till we die. There will be a multitude of souls welcoming us when we reach the other life. We will ask our guardian angel who they are, and he will tell us that these are our friends the holy souls in purgatory.
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All Saints
Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.
The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.
What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.
Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.
We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of Jesus Christ. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”
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Zacchaeus
There were three big obstacles that prevented Zacchaeus from seeing Jesus. They seemed insurmountable, but because he wanted with all his might to see Jesus, he overcame them all, one after the other. We all have some hurdles that make it difficult for us to discover God. And we need to jump over them one by one. Every man has a desire deep in his heart to see God, a hunger for the happiness that only an infinite being can fulfill. We are restless until we find our creator, and we wish to attain the end that we are being created for.
Zacchaeus was so short he couldn’t see Jesus over the crowds around him. Short people normally have a strong will and they have to learn how to push hard, because they have to stand up for themselves; they have to fight to be able to jump and reach their desires. Our smallness is always in front of us. We cannot forget about it, even though we daydream or try to live in a virtual reality; sooner or later we have to come down to our true level and confront our nothingness. Our artificial life on the internet, cannot be our real life. Without God it is easy to have a low self esteem, hate ourselves, long for attention, and try to hide behind all sort of addictions, that only serve to dig our hole deeper and eventually destroy ourselves. We forget what theologians call the love of predilection: God loves us not because we are good, but we are good because he loves us. His love comes first, independently of how we behave or what we think or what we do. We are his creatures and he made us. And we Christians are also his children. Therefore we need to concentrate more on his love for us and not get bogged down if we find it difficult to see something good in ourselves.
The crowd was big. Everybody wanted to see the famous prophet. And because they envied and hated Zacchaeus for his riches, they didn’t allow him to see Jesus on purpose. They could see him running along the line of people as Jesus was passing by, and they lifted up their bodies higher for him to see nothing. The biggest obstacle for Zacchaeus to see Jesus was his riches. They didn’t allow him to see Jesus. They were in the way. Once he concentrated in Jesus, he was saved. Our second biggest obstacle is in the world, the multitude of things, people and events that surround us. They can be in the way because we keep looking at them. We don’t see the wood for the trees. As Saint Thomas Aquinas puts it, wealth, honours, power or pleasure, we think they bring us happiness. And over and over again we are mistaken. The happiness of a human soul can only be in an infinite being.
Lastly Zacchaeus had to overcome shame, human respect, peer pressure and a desire for prestige and fame. The last thing he had to do was to climb a tree in front of everybody. Even though he was dressed in expensive clothes, he disregarded what people thought of him and climbed like a monkey. This showed Jesus that he really wanted to see him. There is always a tree for us to climb and see Jesus. We need to find that tree and show Jesus that we are interested in him.
Jesus told Zacchaeus to come down: I want to come to your house. He gave half of his property to the poor, making room for Jesus. He is telling us the same thing: come down from your addictions and let me enter into your life. There are a few things we need to give away.
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Parable of the Pharisee and tax collector
We normally see ourselves as the tax collector. We don’t think the example of the Pharisee is for us. And we are mistaken. We walk into a church with the attitude that it belongs to us. We place ourselves in front of the tabernacle with the right to be there. We talk to God listening to ourselves, reading a list of favours we have done to him, expecting him to acknowledge our achievements. We are arrogant and proud, and we fail to see ourselves as we are. We should rather see ourselves at the back of the church, with our eyes downcast and beating our breast with our fist, trying to bring sorrow out of a dry piece of flesh. This should be our attitude in front of God the Father Almighty.
In our modern society we have taken God out of the picture, or, if we still believe in Him, we have brought Him down to our level. Through the pendulum law, we have gone from a God of fire and brimstone, to an old fluffy sweet man, with a white long beard and a face of a teddy bear. The balance is always difficult to achieve, and the pendulum keeps swinging. We can never imagine how God is.
Today through this parable Jesus teaches us that prayer should flow from a humble heart. And he does it by opposing two figures very familiar to the Jews of his time. The goodie, the master of the law, the teacher of morals and obligations, and a baddie, a public sinner, who steals the money from normal people and gives it to the Roman oppressors. The righteous man and the thief are the best examples to be opposed to each other, and to bring the audience to a contrary reaction. Both go to the temple to pray, but only one is justified. We know who goes back pleased in God’s eyes.
What Jesus wants us to do today is to look into our hearts, where nobody else can peek: into the depths of our intentions, our desires and our longings, to what really moves us and what we really worship. He is taking us on a wild journey; he wants us to accompany Him, to come down with us, to drag our feet through a rough surface, and to look at something we don’t normally want to look at: the depths of our soul. What is there? What sort of stuff do I keep inside? Can I make room for him? Today is a good day for a spring cleaning, for a garage sale, to allow Jesus to come in, leave the windows wide open, turn on all the lights and discover what’s inside.
At the beginning of the Mass, during the penitential rite, we make an act of sorrow, like the tax collector, hitting our breast three times, trying to break it open, to see what’s inside, as Saint Augustine says, “to bring to light what is concealed in the breast, and by this act to cleanse your hidden sins.” Or as Saint Jerome declares, “We strike our breast because the breast is the seat of evil thoughts: we wish to dispel these thoughts, we wish to purify our hearts.” We should hear the sounds of our chest, resounding deep, striking hard without the fear of a broken rib. We need to break the bones of our chest, to let our heart be seen, like open heart surgery, for Jesus to come in, and fix our arteries; maybe to have few bypasses, or better yet, to have a heart transplant, like Saint Catherine of Siena, when Jesus gave her a new heart, his heart.
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Parable of the unjust judge
Even though this parable focuses mainly on the reactions of the unjust judge, on his lack of fear of God and his indifference about justice, it should be better called the parable of the persevering widow, because she is the real protagonist, the one who wins at the end and is vindicated. She is our model in front of injustices and the indifference of human beings. She teaches us how to react when we find ourselves in hopeless situations or in great trouble: persevere in prayer.
The first reading of the Mass talks about Moses watching Joshua fighting against Amalek. While his arms were outstretched, the Israelites were winning; when he grew tired and let his arms go down, they began to lose. What a responsibility for Moses! People’s lives were at stake. We too experience the same. When we stop praying, the devil has the upper hand; when we persevere in our prayer, the faith of the Church strengthens. People’s souls are somehow connected to our prayer. This teaches us the lesson that we should always have our arms stretched out, in prayer, that we Christians are called to sustain the world with our spiritual life, that we cannot give up and lower our defences. We have the responsibility of supporting others with our struggle, with our sacrifices and with our personal witness.
The Gospel says specifically that Jesus taught us this parable to teach us how to pray always and not to lose heart. How can we pray without ceasing, as Saint Paul recommends us? In principle it is not possible, because we are not angels. Saint Augustine says that prayer is an exercise of desire. We are created for God and we are restless until we find him. We all have in our hearts a desire for eternity, for the infinite, a longing for our Creator, even though many times we cannot articulate this pain. Prayer finds the embers of this feeling in our hearts and blows them to enkindle them, to eventually create a huge fire that burns the whole forest of our sins. Saint Augustine comments that desire is your prayer; and if your desire is without ceasing, your prayer will also be without ceasing.
The Eastern tradition have the famous Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Through repetition and breathing, it can become a part of your life, without realising you are praying, like the beating of the heart. In the Western Church we have the Rosary, a prayer that can be said anywhere, anytime. Many saints give us an example of their immersion in God.
Modern society tells us that it is possible to concentrate on one thing all the time: our mobile phones. They are always in our hands, beeping, receiving messages, taking photos, talking, checking, clicking. They want constant attention, like babies. Big companies design strategies to keep us hooked to the little screen, and try to sell us data for us to keep the gadget happy. We look for hot spots where we can rest and spend time with our handset. Can we do the same for God? Can we give Him more time, more attention? Prayer allows us to connect with God. It is free and we don’t need a fast expensive gadget. It is always on in our hearts. And it connects us with eternity, infinity and beyond.
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Ten lepers
You could say that leprosy was the worst sickness. They used to call lepers “living dead”. Your body died slowly, in front of you, in front of others. You were thrown out of society, you became a castaway; some of them literally were being sent to an island, like Molokai. You had to walk round sounding a bell like an animal, crying out: impure, stained. They were like zombies. It was considered a punishment from God; he had touched your flesh with his finger and the corruption from the grave was beginning to get you. In a way it was a graphic way to have your death in front of your eyes. We are one of those ten lepers. We don’t normally see it, but our soul stinks. We are missing some limbs and we cannot walk; we lost our fingers to be able to touch; our eyes are gone, and we cannot see. We are blind, deaf and paralysed to spiritual realities. We all need to realise that we need healing from God. The more we recognise our leprosy, our real illness, the more we will look for him. How can we be healed if we don’t acknowledge our sickness?
A new leper joined the shameful community and told them about the miraculous prophet. They abandoned their caves and set out to look for him. Hopeless sick people are always hopeful of new treatments. It is possible to be cleansed of our leprosy and our flesh restored, like Naaman the Syrian, whose flesh became as tender as the skin of a little child. We normally don’t believe that we can be cured of our vices or addictions. And we give up. We stop looking for him.
We don’t know how long these lepers looked for Jesus. We don’t know how long we too need to look for him. But if we don’t look for him, we won’t find him and we won’t be healed. If we look for him, eventually we will come across him, like the lepers did, because at the end he is the one looking for us.
From a distance the ten lepers cried out: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! A good act of faith. He told them to present themselves to the priests, to certify their cure. He could have touched them but demanded from them a little faith. They were disappointed; they thought he was going to heal them there instantly, but they didn’t know what to do and went to see the priests without much conviction. Like us, many times we do things without knowing really what to do. Go to the priest! He is telling us the same: Go to confession! Have faith in me. I can cure you. Go! While they were on their way, they were cured. We don’t know if it was instantly or gradually. But It must have been an amazing sight. Ten men dancing and embracing each other. The Samaritan told them they had to go back to thank Jesus. They said that Jesus told them to present themselves to the priests. They wanted to see their families as soon as possible. How quick we are to forget what God has done for us!
Only one came back to give thanks. It was a Samaritan, an outcast. Jesus complained: Where are the nine? It is one of the big disappointments of our Lord. This question keeps sounding through the timeline of history. He keeps asking this question to us: Where are you? We can be the nine or the one. Let us not disappoint Jesus. He has healed us many times and we haven’t returned to give him thanks.
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Increase our faith
Today we go to Jesus like the apostles and we ask him to increase our faith. Like them we have witnessed miracles, we have experienced things beyond our power, we have seen God’s grace, but we feel that our faith weak. We cannot do what Jesus is asking us to do, because Jesus normally asks for faith before he gives us a hand. After the transfiguration, coming down from the mountain, Jesus met the apostles trying to cast away a dumb spirit from a boy. They couldn’t because they didn’t have enough faith. His father came up to Jesus asking for help. Jesus told him that everything is possible for the one who believes. That man, sensing his lack of faith, realising that the cure of his son was dependent on him, gave us a great prayer: “I believe, but help my unbelief!”
Four men brought their friend to Jesus to be healed. He was complaining all the way, telling them that it was a waste of time. He couldn’t do much because he was paralysed. His friends were very stubborn. When they arrived at the house, it was packed with people. They weren’t discouraged and they dug a hole in the roof of the house, against the will of the owner. They lowered him through the hole right in front of Jesus. The people inside could see four faces looking down through the hole in the roof. The Gospel says that Jesus seeing their faith, healed him.
Jesus didn’t normally praise people. But he was impressed with the faith of the Roman Centurion, who trusted his word. His faith was shown when he told Jesus that just his word could heal his servant. We repeat his words during every Mass, just before Communion. We should say them with the conviction of the Centurion. Jesus commented: “I haven’t found this faith in Israel.” What would Jesus say about our faith? Would he praise us?
Jesus put clay on a blind man’s eyes and asked him to wash them on the pool of Siloe. He could have touched his eyes and healed them, but he demanded faith from the man. The blind man could have asked Jesus if he could wash his eyes in a nearby fountain. But he walked with clay on his eyes and recovered his sight. The man with a withered hand had tried millions of times to move it but with no avail. When Jesus asked him to stretch it out, it was healed. He could have refused to move it another time, but his hand wouldn’t had been healed.
What does Jesus need to do with us? What infirmity do we have that has to be cleaned? We can cry out like Bartimeus, the blind beggar at the side of the road of Jericho, from the top of his voice: Son of David, have pity of me! Or like the woman who suffered a flow of blood for twelve years and was healed when she touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. We have to do the same. We must go to the fountain of faith, to the springs of salvation, where the water gushes out pure and clear. We know where to find it, specially when Jesus comes to the altar after the consecration, and we only need to ask: increase our faith. There is plenty of it, and just a little bit, like a mustard seed, is enough for us.
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Parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus
We are both the men in the parable, whether we like or not, the rich man and the poor man Lazarus, with both their weakness and their strengths, with their aspirations and desires. Both lived parallel lives, clearly related to each other but completely opposite, in this life and the next in eternity, crossing each other at life’s intersections; the first will be last and the last will be first.
The rich man has no name. Possessions don’t give you real identity, don’t tell you who you are, don’t give you roots or indicate where you come from. In front of God we are the same, things have no value, they have no meaning. We are born naked and we are going to return naked, with nothing to hang on to, only with what we have given away. It is not important what you have, or what you have achieved, but who you are or what you have become. Things don’t make you who you are, but what you make of them. In front of God we are little children, with just toys in our hands.
We are the rich man. We live a life of our own, without realising that in front of us, there are so many people in need, both materially and spiritually. We normally have the door of our hearts closed. We live a life of self centredness, self conscious, navel gazing. We fail to be aware of the poverty that surrounds us. Lazarus’s sores are licked by the dogs, without us hearing their barking. Jesus tries to turn us around, to turn us inside out, to be aware of all the poor Lazarus’s outside our door. Pope Francis says that Lazarus “represents the silent cry of the poor of all times.” They are constantly knocking on our lives. The Pope reminds us that “to ignore the poor is to scorn God.” We need to see Jesus in the needy, disadvantaged, marginalised, ostracised. In every homeless person we can find him, even though they are dirty, smelly, and ungrateful.
Lazarus, on the other hand, has a name. Poverty is real and has real effects on people’s lives; you can identify it straight away. Some authors say that Lazarus was a real person in Jesus’ time, a well known poor man, perhaps sitting at the temple door, even helped sometimes by Jesus and his apostles. Judas would have given him some money reluctantly. We are also the poor Lazarus, at the side of the road of life, our sores in need of dressing, begging for God’s help. Lazarus precisely means God helps. Rich people don’t need God, they think they have everything figured out, only desiring more money. Rich countries abandon God, not feeling the need for God anymore. Cathedrals were built by the poor and the lame. Nowadays rich countries build structures for people, stadiums, arenas, courts for sports and games. God is absent from these buildings. When they are empty they have no soul.
We have to make sure that in this life we are poor in spirit, in need of help, another Lazarus; then in the next life we are going to be spiritually rich, to share the life of the angels and saints. The austerity of this life is transformed into the abundance of God.
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Parable of the unjust steward
This is a parable about stewardship. We have been given a bit of God’s harvest and Jesus is asking us today to examine ourselves how we are looking after it. We are at his service and we could be a bit easygoing, complacent or indifferent. It doesn’t matter if we are in charge of a big field, or we are only responsible for a small part of God’s vineyard. The important thing is to look after it well, and give a good account of our stewardship. The master commended the dishonest steward for acting prudently. Saint Augustine says that Jesus proposed this parable not to praise the dishonest servant, but to have an eye on the future. We should have the servant’s determination to secure our eternal reward. We cannot forget that we are passing by and eternity is all that matters.
The servant was a smart forward thinking man. I can imagine him well dressed, smooth and articulate. Jesus complains that “the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” We know many people who put a lot of time and effort into their worldly affairs. They make unbelievable sacrifices to acquire more wealth, power or fame. We should have a similar ambition, to put the same amount of effortinto the service of God. Saint Josemaria says: “What zeal men put into their earthly affairs! When you and I put the same zeal into the affairs of our soul, then we’ll have a living and working faith.”
“The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.” If we compare the things of this world with the events of the other life, we realise that our sacrifices are nothing compared with the reward promised. But because we cannot see the promised land, we have nothing to compare it to. Everything we have is a gift from God, and we are his stewards, who sooner or later will have to render an account to him.
What is behind this parable is a common, human vice: laziness. We are not good stewards of God’s gifts because we are lazy. It is a hidden defect that we don’t talk much about, but affects all of us; we are lazy in one way or another. We do what we shouldn’t do and we don’t do what we should be doing. We could be very active but not in what’s important.
“No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” They say that we can only have one Lord; we cannot be schizophrenics. We need to choose the boss we want to love. “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Mammon is a Hebrew word for riches or wealth. We cannot allow money to become our god, or let the objective of our life become the accumulation of the greatest number of goods and the highest level of comfort. The Prophet Amos thunders against the exploitation of the poor in the First Reading of today’s Mass. We cannot forget the poor. We may be unjust with our own goods, but we must be honest with other people’s money.
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Our Lady of Sorrows
Standing at the foot of the Cross is our mother. She is standing, not crying or fainting; she is there supporting her son with her presence. Silent tears run down her cheeks. And Saint John is also there, the celibate apostle, the one Jesus loved. Other women are there too. Women are stronger than men. Many artists tried to capture this moment but with different results. It is almost impossible to represent in a painting what happened at Calvary. Where are the other apostles? Where are the big guys? They said they were going to die for him. They ran away from the cross. We too are still running away from the cross. When are we going to stop running away? Today is a good day.
We can ask Saint John to help us to be at the foot of the cross, not to be afraid of the cross. We ask him to grasp our hand tightly and help us to remain there at this critical moment in human history. We are between him and Mary, hiding our face in our mother’s robes. We don’t want to see what’s happening. We can only hear.
The passion of Jesus is the passion of Mary. It is impossible to know what is happening through Mary’s heart. We can only imagine. Spiritual sufferings are more acute than physical ones. Why do we bring to our consideration something that happened 20 centuries ago? Because it is still affecting us. In eternity everything is present. We are the cause of their suffering, mother and son, united in their sorrow. The more we look at what happened at Calvary, the more we will try to avoid our sins. The more we love Jesus and Mary, the more we will avoid what is offending them. Our sins affect the people we love, the same way our love for them empowers them.
Jesus says: “Woman, behold your son.” It is not a detached expression calling his mother “woman”. He is reminding us that when Adam saw Eve for the first time, he called her “woman”, bones of my bones. Eve was the first woman. Mary is the second woman. The first one let us down because of sin. The second one was the cause of our redemption, of our healing. The Fathers of the Church loved this parallelism between Eve and Mary. Jesus called first his mother “woman” at Cana; at the beginning. Now it is the end. Then he changed water into wine; now the wine is becoming blood, Eucharistic wine. She still remembers that moment. For Jesus has to die for us; for her, to become our mother. She gave birth to him at Bethlehem without pain; now we are born at Calvary in a bloody and painful manner. We have caused her so much blood, so much suffering. This is what we are considering today, Mater Dolorosa, Sorrowful Mother, to foster our love for her: how much pain we have delivered to her, for her to deliver us. The more we suffer, the more we love. We contemplate her sorrows for us to react, to change our lives, to have a deep conversion. We cannot remain indifferent in front of her sufferings, specially knowing that she is there because she wants to be there, the fruit of her love for her son and for us.
“Behold your mother.” Now Jesus talks to us. First he asks his mother to look after us. Some people say that he wasn’t planning to give us his mother, but when he saw from the cross our feebleness, he decided to give her to us. Now he asks us to look after her. He gave us his treasure, his masterpiece. We are represented by Saint John. Nothing is left for him but the wood of the cross.
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Parables of the lost sheep and the coin
Sinners were attracted to Jesus and the Pharisees complained. Sinners followed Jesus because they saw an opportunity to leave their sinful life behind. That’s why we too are attracted to Jesus. We need him; without him we are nothing. The more we see ourselves as sinners, the more we feel Jesus’ attraction. Like a magnet; the closer it is to the iron, the more difficult it is to separate the two. Our world has lost a sense of sin, the natural pull from God. Our society moves around itself without a gravitational force to keep it steady, like a moon without an earth, to keep it from being destroyed by the sun. The lack of God is like a black hole that sucks everything into a void.
This grumbling of the Pharisees, gave an opportunity for Jesus to give us these parables of God’s mercy. In this broken world of ours, the consideration of a Merciful God is very important. When John Paul II was asked what impressed him most about God, he answered: “His infinite mercy.” God said to Saint Catherine of Siena: “Mercy is my darling attribute, and to that end, and for the incomprehensible love I felt towards man, I sent the Word, my only Son; I illustrated this by the representation of a bridge reaching from heaven to earth, uniting the human and divine natures.”
If you could describe Pope Francis’ summary of his pontificate with one word it is “Mercy”. He declared in 2015 a Holy Year of Mercy. He wrote a book titled: “The name of God is mercy”. He says with boldness that “mercy is the first attribute of God.” He wants to remind the modern man living in a field hospital, surrounded by casualties, that “there are no situations we cannot get out of, we are not condemned to sink into quicksand. God does not want anyone to be lost. His mercy is infinitely greater than our sins.” Saint Therese found a weakness in God the Father: “He has one great infirmity. He is blind. And so ignorant of arithmetic that He cannot even add up.”
Jesus gives us two parables that are very similar. Both depict the same actions: loosing, searching, finding and rejoicing. This is our own story, constantly getting lost, God going out searching for us, finding us if we allow him to, bringing us back to him, rejoicing in our encounter with the angels and saints, and lifting us up to a higher level than before. Every time he finds us, instead of punishing us, he rewards us by bringing us a bit closer to himself. God uses our sins to lift us up, to enrich us, to cover our nakedness with his graces.
But both parables emphasise different aspects. In the lost sheep Jesus appears as a Good Shepherd, ready to place us on his shoulders. It is the earliest image we have of Jesus in the catacombs. It shows God’s love for us, ready to leave the other 99 in search of us. Jesus never gives up, always persistent in his search for us, and rejoicing when we come back. Give him the joy of finding you. It’s only if you don’t want to be found, that he won’t be able to bring you back to the flock. The parable of the lost coin shows that every soul is important, that we are unique in God’s eyes, because as in every coin there is normally the face of a ruler, we have the imprint of his image in our soul engraved at Baptism. Make sure you keep it bright and shining.
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Conditions for following Jesus
Today in the Gospel Jesus gets very serious. He looks at the people following him and he realises that many of them were there for human reasons. They were following him because they wanted to experience miracles, because they were fed with tasty bread and fish, because that man spoke very well, because he had a go at the Pharisees, or he defended the poor and he could become a political power. The same thing happens with us: we are here because we feel good, because it is the right thing to do or because of what others are going to say about us. Jesus uses a very strong expression to bring his message across: to love him we need to hate everything else. Some scriptural authors tried to soften the expression, but Jesus wanted to emphasise a point: we are either with him or against him.
What he says today is about him and about us. Other religions put across their main message in different ways. Most religious leaders, Buddha, Mohammad, or Luther, gave us some ideas to follow, some doctrine to upheld, but none of them commanded us to love them. Only Jesus demands a complete love for him. His claim is very strong, one that doesn’t allow half measures: unless you love me more than anything else, you cannot be my disciple. Either he is right or he is a mad man. Either he is the Son of God or he is a fool.
In the light of what he says we have to make a choice. If he is right, everything else takes to second place. And of course, he is right. We are created for him and we have experienced that it is in only following him that we are truly happy, that he is the only one who can fill all the desires of our souls. We know it in the depth of our hearts. To put him first, we need to acknowledge what is taking the place of Jesus in our lives. We need to be sincere. There are other things in our lives that don’t belong to Jesus and we should slowly, through a good examination of conscience, find out what they are and bring them to Jesus, or if necessary, get rid of them. We should react against what is holding us back, against what is not allowing us to become closer to him.
We have the example of the saints that managed to win their war against themselves. Saint Francis of Assisi was dependent on his father; he gave everything back to him, even his clothes, and was naked in front of everyone. Saint Thomas of Aquinas had to fight against his family who didn’t want him to become a Dominican; they locked him in a castle for a year and he had to escape. Saint Catherine of Siena didn’t want to marry the husband her mother had prepared for her; she cut her beautiful hair off and the husband to be didn’t want to marry a bald girl. Saint Anthony when his parents died sold all his possessions and went to the desert; he was attached to his riches and thanks to his generosity he became the father of the desert fathers. Saint Maximilian Kolbe changed places with another man who was going to be killed at Auschwitz; he gave his life for him, like Jesus did for us.
We don’t need to go to these extremes, but we have things in our lives that don’t belong to Jesus. We can ask Mary our Mother to help us to give them back to him.
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Parable of the first places
Jesus was having a meal with his apostles. We see often Jesus in the Gospels sitting at the table. It is important to spend time with others, and meals are great occasions to do so. People nowadays spend their time with their phones, just watching screens. These were moments when Jesus took advantage to pass on to them his message; he used these opportunities to teach them a lesson, in this instance, humility. Jesus was very observant, as holy people are, not self-centered, but completely aware of other people’s needs. It is important to have the right open attitude to look and to listen, to be able to help others when they need it. Self-centred people are hardly able to be of use to others because of their own selfishness.
Jesus noticed that people were choosing the best places at the table and related this parable. It was a practical lesson, where his apostles could see exactly what he was trying to teach them. It is a normal thing to try to pick out the best places when you watch a movie, attend a sport match or listen to a music concert. Beneath this attitude there is our constant pride, that we cannot get rid of. They say that pride dies twenty four hours after we die. The first sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, was pride: they placed themselves before God. If you think you are humble, it means that you are proud, and the opposite. But better we don’t become complicated.
In the good old days when you read those beautiful books on Moral Theology, the spiritual authors used to describe the spiritual edifice, how our relationship with God could be drawn on a piece of paper. Each one of them had their own theories, where to place the three doors of faith, hope and charity; the windows of the four cardinal virtues, the rooms of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and so on. But all of them agreed about the foundations of the building: humility. Without this virtue, the whole relationship with God, our spiritual structure, sooner or later, will crumble and collapse.
We need to acknowledge that we are proud, that we normally place ourselves before God and others. It is not easy to acknowledge our nothingness. The best way is to compare ourselves with God: He is everything and we are nothing. Everything good we have comes from him. We only have our good desires and our sins. If we see God as a father, it is easier to see ourselves as little children.
A young man went to a holy man and asked him how to be humble: “Find somebody lower than yourself and do something for him.” He went and found a beggar and invited him for a meal. He felt good and went back to the holy man: “Am I humble now?” “No, find another man lower than yourself and do something for him again.” The young man got upset and asked: “How many times do I have to do it? 100 times?” “Till you don’t find anybody lower than yourself.” Somebody said that Jesus took the last place on earth and nobody can take it from him. He died on the wood of the cross, a place reserved for criminals. If we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to keep lowering ourselves. The lower we go the closer we become to him. I like very much a description of the Virgin Mary by Bishop Alvaro: “Convinced of her littleness, nothing distracts her from God.” If somebody could be proud is her. God bestowed on her as many virtues and privileges that a human being can hold. People with many talents normally sit on a pedestal, high up, above us, and they look down on us. Our Mother, on the contrary, is so accessible, so motherly, ready to give us a hand. Nothing separates her from God.
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The narrow gate
Today in the Gospel we see a fellow coming up to Jesus and asking an important question: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” We are still asking this question nowadays. How many are going to be saved? Is anybody in hell? It is based in a truth of our faith: we all need salvation. Few years ago we had a debate about this topic when we had to change the words of the consecration during Mass, to better translate the original. We used to say that the blood of Christ was poured out for all and now we say for many. Some people weren’t happy with the change. We know that we all have the necessary graces to be saved. Saint Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved.” The truth of predestination is a difficult one.
Jesus didn’t answer directly. He just told us: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” He threw the problem back at us: the ball is in your court; it is up to us. The narrow gate is a good comparison, a graphic image. Jesus in Saint Matthew’s Gospel tells us a bit more about this gate: “The gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” In this life there are only two roads that reach the other end: one goes down and it is wide and easy to follow; the other goes up, and it is narrow and difficult to find.
This tells us that heaven is won by force, getting up, struggling every day a bit, constantly beginning and beginning again. Do you think that plodding along, getting by, having an easy life is going to lead us to heaven? Today is a good day to change gears, to fire another cylinder, to take our faith more seriously. Jesus died on the cross for us. What are we doing for him? It is always difficult to know how much effort we need to put in without becoming obsessed, burned up or fanatical. It is not easy to find the balance. Saints are good at that. It is a matter of love. God is not going to ask something we cannot do. Pride can make us do silly things. It depends a bit on how we are. If we are a bit soft, we need to quicken our pace; if we are tough, we need to slow down. We are normally soft with ourselves and tough with others.
This narrow gate opens wide into a beautiful heavenly banquet. Jesus loves talking about this wedding feast, where he is the bridegroom and we are the bride. He himself tells us what we have to do to get through the gate: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” We are all invited, but only a few enter. Few doesn’t mean not too many, but it is a reminder that more should enter than actually do. It is the question of how many people are in hell. The saints answer that one is one too many. The good Lord talks to us about hell: “There will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” We need to talk about hell, even though people don’t want to hear, to warn them about its existence. When we fix our eyes in heaven, the road up is not too difficult. It is full of joy. The amazing reward, spurs us on. Look at how the martyrs endured their torments almost with a smiling face. They could see the finishing line.
Jesus ends the Gospel today with a paradox: “For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” Imagine a race where the last wins; everyone would try to run backwards. Many people who are at the top of society will be last. And maybe the guy who is begging for money at the traffic lights will be ahead of us. We shouldn’t envy the famous: they have a more difficult road to travel. We should be happy with our own journey, the one God has prepared for us. It
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Set the earth on fire
Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” In the Bible, fire is often used to describe God’s burning love for men. This divine love is what made the Word become man: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. Jesus voluntarily gave up his life on the Cross: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends”. We experience personally his love in the Eucharist, when we meet him in the bread of life. Saint Teresa of Jesus was travelling through Spain to set up a new convent. It was January, very cold, and it was raining. She was travelling in a cart, the roads were full of mud, and she was feeling sick. She complained to Jesus. He told her: “Teresa don’t worry about the cold; I am the real heat.”
Out of the three theological virtues, only charity remains in the other life. Faith is the door, hope helps us to go through, but love is what we find on the other side. Love remains for ever. Our love of God is a reflection of the love he has for us. When we die we are going to experience fully the fire of the love of God. Here on earth we are not ready to withstand it. This is why God doesn’t normally appears to us. We might disappear. We need a transformation, a renovation actualised through grace and our struggle. Benedict XVI says that the same fire of the love of God, consumes people in hell, purifies people in purgatory, and inflames people in heaven.
For a fire to last it has to be looked after, otherwise it is extinguished. It needs fuel to be added constantly. The same happens with any human love. If you take the other person for granted, if you don’t respect each other, the flame normally dies. For us to maintain our love of God, we need every day to burn a bit of our selfishness, a bit of our pride, of our vanity, of our sensuality. Our little fire has to grow, until it becomes a tremendous bush fire, that burns everything that is in its path. This is why the coming of Jesus is a cause of dissension. During his own life on earth, Christ was a source of contradictions. This fire of his love is infinite, all powerful. You cannot be indifferent in front of it. This fire has an important quality: it cannot be contained, it spreads everywhere. We can check the purity of our love by seeing how it inflames others. This is what the saints have done: set others ablaze.
We are constantly reminded that God is love, that his fire is everlastingly maintained. He has loved us first; we are here because of his love for us. The Lord wants us to respond, to have the fire of his love in our hearts, to be fully aflame. He loves each one of us with a personal love; we are all unique in his eyes. Because our soul is immortal, in a way, God cannot forget about us; he has never ceased to love us, to help us, to protect us. God loves us with an unconditional love, with no strings attached.
The Cure of Ars used to say that “to be holy, you need to be mad.” Saint Josemaria said of himself: “I am mad, from the love of God.” Jesus’ relatives called him mad when they didn’t understand him. On Pentecost day, people thought the apostles were drunk, after being filled with the Holy Spirit. When Saint Paul explained his conversion to king Agrippa, Festus called him mad. Saint Francis was called “the mad man of Assisi.” The holier you are, the more people will think you are ready to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital. We say that love is crazy, that out of love people do amazing things. We cannot forget that God is crazy for us. We should think about what helps us to love him more. If we feel cold in front of God, we can ask Mary our Mother, to kindle the embers of our
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The Assumption
Today we celebrate the feast day of the Assumption of our Mother to heaven. What can we say about what happened on that day? We haven’t got much information. Saint John witnessed it and didn’t tell us anything. John, you told us all about the life of Jesus, with plenty of details, but you didn’t want to tell us about our Lady leaving earth. She is our Mother too, and we would have liked to know more about her. But you preferred to be silent. We needed to know about how Jesus gave his life for us, but we didn’t need to know how our Mother flew up to heaven. It is better for our imagination; we can let it free. It took the Church a long time to declare the dogma, in 1950. Now we can let our imagination fly and accompany her up to heaven.
The apocryphal gospels, those books written by the early Christians to try to fill the gaps, say that the apostles came back to say good bye to our Mother. They say that they came back each in his own cloud, first Saint Peter and then Saint Paul. Maybe John didn’t tell us this because nobody would have believed him. Saint James was already dead and Saint Thomas, as always, arrived late, because he came back all the way from India. We understand why they wanted to be back. We too want to be there to say good bye to our mother.
There is a debate about what happened, if our Lady died or not, before she went up to heaven. She would have liked to follow her Son, and die with him on the cross. But Jesus didn’t want her to endure his horrible death. No son wants his mother to suffer. I don’t think Jesus wanted his mother to die either. God wanted her, body and soul in heaven, without her beautiful body experiencing corruption. That’s why she fell asleep. You could call it a sweet death. That’s how saints normally pass away, falling asleep, in a simple and beautiful manner. You die in the way you live. There is a feast in the East called the Dormition of our Lady, dating from the sixth century. According to tradition she fell asleep and they placed her in a tomb. When Saint Thomas arrived, he wanted to see her, and they found out that the tomb was empty. That is why we don’t have any relics from her body.
How did she fly to heaven? God has his ways of moving people. Most likely it was a transport of love. When love is very intense, it can do things that reason cannot understand. Love is crazy, endures all things, achieves all things. Love can travel through space and time. There is no better means of transport than going through the people we love. Love fired the engines of her soul and lifted her up all the way to heaven.
Tradition says that our Lady’s beauty, which was veiled here on earth so as not to blind human beings, not to drive them crazy, was revealed on her way to heaven, showing her in all her splendour, dazzling angels and saints in all its wonder. They never have seen anybody like that, not even in paradise. The book of Revelation tries to describe her, precisely with the words of Saint John: “A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” I don’t think it is possible to find a better description of our Mother’s countenance. At last Saint John opened his soul and told us a bit about her Assumption.
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Waiting for the Lord
“Gird your loins and light your lamps”, Jesus is telling us today. Fasten your seat belt and start the engine, would be a modern way of saying the same. These are the two attitudes the Gospel is asking us to have. First, be ready for the journey, and then turn on the lights outside, to welcome the guest who is coming. The same expression from the parable of the foolish virgins: the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. Come out of yourself and welcome him. He has dropped us here and he is coming to pick us up. We are a rough diamond and he expects us to become a beautiful precious stone. This is the attitude we should have: waiting for the Lord.
In our society we don’t like waiting. We want things here and now. Drive throughs, 24/7, fast food, shopping online, drones dropping our goodies. We don’t like waiting for the Lord our whole life. We want to be in control, plan our future, foresee coming situations, have everything assured. We would like to know when the Lord is coming. And today in the Gospel Jesus is telling us that he “is coming at an hour we do not expect.” It is easy to be ready for one day or for a week; it is not easy to be ready every day. When we are young and when we are old; when we are healthy and when we are sick; when the sun is shining and when a storm is raging.
Waiting doesn’t mean a passive attitude. On the contrary, our waiting for the Lord demands a very active disposition, standing up, listening, looking towards the horizon. It means to examine our conscience to see if our luggage is ready, to discover what is missing or what we have forgotten. It means to fine tune our engine, to polish the rough edges, to get rid of excess baggage, to check if the lights are working, if we have put the rubbish out, if there is enough food for the journey. It is a daily disposition of being ready for him, to follow him, to be aware of his presence.
When our Lord comes to pick us up, we need to be standing, walking towards him, our eyes fixed on our destination, eternity, to see if we can see his face. We need to be ready to open the door, because the handle is in our side. He can knock on our door at any time and he must not find us sleeping, dozing in a slumber, or away shopping. We cannot just spend our time watching movies, listening to music, playing computer games, surfing the social media, following our sport’s team. We cannot give up, sit on the side of the road and take a siesta.
Two practical things for us to be ready: first to examine our conscience, to know where we have to struggle, what we have to do to improve every day. Love is always asking the person we love what we need to change. We should ask Our Lord what he wants us to do today, to look at God’s agenda. Second thing is to be patient. It takes a long time to grow, to mature, every day a little bit, baby steps, just one thing at the time. We cannot normally tackle big things. God is very patient with us. We don’t know when he is coming, but we still have time. He’ll come when we less expect it, like a thief in the night. But if we are prepared, we’ll see him coming, just as holy people can sense when they are going to die, because they are longing for him.
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Parable of the rich fool
Today in the Gospel Jesus gives us the parable of the rich fool. This is how he calls him. We are the person in this parable. We are him because we normally act like this man. Jesus calls us fools because we are silly, because we won’t learn. We keep thinking that we are going to make a difference, that we are going to do something important, that will engrave our names in the golden book of history. We are wasting our time. We come naked from God and we go back to Him the same way. We cannot take anything with us. We would like to leave something behind, but all the things that we are doing here will disappear like a puff of smoke. We are thinking constantly about the things here on earth, forgetting that we are destined for eternity. Today’s readings remind us of this reality.
The first reading begins with this expression: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” They say that the literal Hebrew translation is more like this: Bubble of bubbles, everything is a bubble. A bubble looks beautiful when it blows around, transparent, effortless in its movements; we would like to hold it, but when we touch it, it pops up and disappears. It is a great comparison for what our society has to offer: an empty bubble which is going to burst sooner rather than later. Anything we look for on the net is just an electric spark stored in the cloud, that has a very limited life.
In the second reading Saint Paul tells us: “Seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” At the beginning of the Preface of the Mass, the priest is telling us the same, trying to direct our eyes towards heaven, to what is above our heads, saying: “Lift up your hearts!” And we answer earnestly: “We lift them up to the Lord!” In the Gospel acclamation we are reminded of one of the beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” How could our hearts be blessed if they are attached to earthly things? Is my heart in material treasures or in spiritual ones? They say there are three kinds of currencies: paper, crypto and spiritual. Which one are we using most? There is only one which can be stored in heaven.
We are the man of the parable, saving money for the future, thinking about our retirement, making plans without knowing what is going to happen. We are gathering things in cupboards that are going to be emptied at the end of oir lives. It is amazing how much stuff we have in our homes. We are only earthly vessels, made of clay or of glass, easily to break and shatter. And we have a secure place to store things in heaven, a safe box “where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” South Africa teaches us that nothing is secured, that if it can be moved, it will be stolen.
From the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, we have this description of his conversion: “When Ignatius reflected on worldly thoughts, he felt intense pleasure; but when he gave them up out of weariness, he felt dry and depressed. Yet when he thought of living the rigorous sort of life he knew the saints had lived, he not only experienced pleasure when he actually thought about it, but even after he dismissed these thoughts, he still experienced great joy. Yet he did not pay attention to this, nor did he appreciate it until one day, in a moment of insight, he began to marvel at the difference. Then he understood his experience: thoughts of one kind left him sad, the others full of joy.” Things of this world are not fulfilling. We are made for more.
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Teach us to pray
Have you ever been jealous of someone else’s ability to pray? I’ve been a few times, when I have witnessed holy people praying. The same happened to Jesus’ disciples. They have seen him praying early in the morning, spending the whole night in prayer, immersing himself in his relationship with his Father God. They found it very difficult to imitate him. They couldn’t wake up in the morning, they fell asleep during the night, or they got distracted looking at rich people putting money into the treasury of the temple. They really wanted to learn how to pray properly; they were attracted to Jesus’ prayer life.
One of Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray, just as John taught his disciples. There was a bit of rivalry between Jesus and John’s disciples. They were the two most popular prophets at that time. The disciple took advantage of this fact to make this important request. He went to the source of prayer, to the best teacher, to the professor’s chair. We too ask Jesus to teach us how to talk with him, how to relate to him, how to connect with him. It is a petition made directly to him. All the saints learned from him. We go to him with the same holy envy of this disciple.
It is a deeper petition than we think. If we learn how to pray, how to access Jesus’ heart, we will be very powerful in love. It is what people in love want to achieve with the person they love: how to get through, how to reach the other’s heart, how to unlock the mysteries of their love. We forget that human love is a reflection of divine love. We too want to get closer to Jesus and we don’t know how to do it.
We need to acknowledge that we don’t know how to pray. We are still at the beginning of our prayer life. We are like little children who are learning how to talk; only their mothers understand them. We just babble. We don’t really understand what we are doing ourselves. Prayer needs time and practice, like everything else that is worthwhile. Like learning to play the piano or a new language. A lot of time, the more the merrier. We need to waste time with Jesus, to spend time with him, to wait for him to teach us.
What was Jesus’ lesson? The Our Father. It is the prayer of the children of God. Jesus taught us to pray like children. What are the main characteristics of children’s prayer: they ask with faith and perseverance. Once I asked a boy who was leaving the chapel: What did you tell Jesus? He answered me: I asked for something. This is the language of children: asking for things. They are little, they have nothing and they need everything. The same applies to us in front of God. He has all the riches we need. And all we need to do is to ask. He has told us so: “Ask and it will be given to you.” Children ask with confidence, knowing that their parents can give them what they want. God can give us what we need and he knows what we need. This trust leads to perseverance. They say that the average petition of a child to achieve what he wants is by asking four times. We need to be persistent with our petitions. Sometimes God waits to make sure that we want and need what we ask for. The more we ask the more we desire it. The delay increases our desires. The best way to achieve what we want is through Mary. She knows how to ask her son.
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Martha and Mary
Bethany is only two miles from Jerusalem. Jesus used to stay there when he came to the holy city, to find a peaceful place where he could rest and spend time with his friends. Beth means home, an appropriate name for a place where Jesus felt at ease. Jesus used to love to go to Bethany, to spend time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. As a human being he needed friends. He loved his friends and tried to drop in and stay with them. We too are social beings, and we need friends, people who can support us and share things with us. A friend is a treasure. We need to look after them and give them time. We normally spread our faith to our friends. Christianity began and grew mainly through friendship.
Saint Josemaría used to call the tabernacle Bethany, where Jesus could find a place to rest in his wanderings among humans. We too need a tabernacle, where we can find a refuge, a place to leave our troubles alongside Jesus. Our heart also should be like Bethany, a place to spend time with Jesus, where we can offer him hospitality. We are waiting for him to come to visit us, whenever he wants to, always ready for his visit. Our feelings are always variable, but Jesus’ presence gives us stability.
Jesus is our friend. He will always be there, wherever we go. We move, we change, we go through different stages in life, but Jesus is always there if we let him be. He should be our best friend, not just one among many. We can ask ourselves, do we welcome Jesus into our humble abode, like in Bethany. What sort of friendship do we have with Jesus? I never forget the answer a girl gave me when I asked her if Jesus was her best friend: “father, Jesus is much more than my best friend.”
Martha was the eldest and when Jesus arrived she wanted to have everything ready for him. Jesus came with his apostles and there were lots of things to worry about. Mary the younger in the family was a bit of a dreamer. While Martha was taking care of the meal, setting the table, Mary was at Jesus’ feet, drinking in his words. Martha couldn’t follow what Jesus was saying, coming in and out of the kitchen. She could only pick up few phrases here and there. Slowly she became upset, looking at her sister doing nothing, and sending her some looks like darts, to see if she could give her a hand. It reached a moment when she exploded and instead of talking to her sister, she complained to Jesus: Could you tell my lazy sister to give me a hand, please? Jesus, smiling at her, reminded her not to get distracted with too many things, that there is only one important thing: Jesus. No matter what we do, Jesus has to have a central place in our lives.
Traditionally Martha is the icon of the active life and Mary the contemplative one. We distinguish them, we even oppose one to the other, but they should be together in our lives. We should be a bit of Martha and a bit of Mary. There was always a tension between both sisters, and it is a healthy tension, because one cannot take over the other. The balance is always difficult to achieve, but we need to try to reach what Saint Josemaría calls unity of life. We cannot be schizophrenics, to have a double life. We need to unite work and prayer, a material and spiritual life, the inside and the outside.
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The Good Samaritan
It all started with a question a lawyer asked, to catch Jesus, to see how wise he was. He wasn’t sincerely interested in the answer. As a good lawyer he wanted to score a point. But it was a good question, maybe the most important question in our lives: What do I have to do to go to heaven? Or in a more personal way: God, are you happy with me? Jesus took advantage of this pretentious lawyer to remind us of the law inscribed in our hearts: we are created to love God and our neighbor. This is the way for us to be happy and to make it to heaven. If we are not happy, it means that we are not loving God enough. The more we love God, the happier we are. We don’t normally look at things in this way. This should have been the question the lawyer asked: What can I do to love God more? The media tries to convince us that to follow a religion means a list of negative things. But the summary of the law of God is a positive thing: to love God and other people. The do’s and don’t’s spring from this great reality. We should avoid anything that goes against our love for God, whatever can offend him.
Then the lawyer asked a second question, not happy with the result of his first one: Who is my neighbour? It was a debatable question among the doctors of the law. It had become a bit legalistic, sometimes trying to get away from true charity. It was a question of who was really my neighbour: my relatives, or my friends too, or even anybody? The more people become my neighbour, the more people I have to love. It is a good question for us too, one that we need to ask ourselves from time to time. Who is my neighbour? Who are the people God has placed close to me? We normally try to exclude some people, especially the people we don’t like.
Thanks to this question Jesus gave us a great parable, very much part of our Christian make up. Only Jesus can bring something beautiful from a silly lawyer. This is the heart of the Gospel, where we are recognised as true Christians. The expression “Good Samaritan” is part of our language, somebody who does something for others without expecting anything back in return. Are we truly a Good Samaritan? We are normally very utilitarian, constantly thinking about what people can do for us. What can I get from this situation? We need to change our outlook. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, What can I do for others without getting anything back?
We criticise the priest and the Levite who pass by to the other side of the road. But, what would happen to us if one night we find someone lying on the road. Would we stop? We will have plenty of excuses to keep going. It could be a set up to robb us, he must be drunk, I am in a hurry, I have enough problems of my own. Recently I was talking with a parishioner who had an accident at night and nobody was stopping to help her. She had to stand in the middle of the road to stop a car.
Who is the real Samaritan for us? It is Jesus. We are robbed of our dignity and left half dead when we sin. We fall down and our soul half dies. Jesus comes with oil and wine, with the Sacraments, and heals our wounds. We need first to recognise what it is that is robbing us of our heavenly treasures, and secondly how we can let Jesus heal us, to bring us back to the eternal inn.
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72 Disciples
Today our Lord is sending us ahead of him. That’s the reason why we are here on earth. We are here for a purpose. We didn’t choose to be here. He chose us before the beginning of the world. This is our time here. We only have few years to go. Let us take advantage of the time we have and don’t get distracted or side tracked. Last week Jesus told us to follow him. Now he tells us: Go! His command is imperative. We need to discover what he wants us to do. We need to discover our mission mainly through prayer, but we need to be open to other suggestions, not to be afraid of what he is going to tell us. Our main purpose for us here is to find our way to heaven and bring with us the people God has placed close to us. We cannot leave anybody behind.
Jesus, aside from sending us ahead of him, also gives us some instructions on our way. Firstly, very important: pray. “The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few; so ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers for his harvest.” There is plenty of work in the harvest of the Lord. There are always jobs to be done; no unemployment. The salary is very high: 100% and eternal life. God knows that there is a scarcity of hands on the plough. It is his problem, not ours. We shouldn’t worry. All we need to do is pray. It is as simple as that. Secondly: things are going to be difficult. “I am sending you like lambs among wolves.” It is a great comparison. Sometimes we feel like this. He is telling us that he knows that the environment is not Christian, but he is with us. It is not going to be easy, but we have his power. God is with us in spite of everything. Sometimes it is as if the devil is winning.
The third one is very wise: travel light. “Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals.” Don’t let things slow you down. People walking the Camino to Santiago learn that you don’t need to take many things with you. Society is trying to create more necessities for us, to get us to spend more and to bog us down with inessentials. Whatever you buy you need to carry with you. Eventually you will be stuck on the road. The fourth instruction gives us a sense of urgency. “And greet no one along the way.” But Jesus, I have a friend in this village, I want to say hello. You cannot. But if he finds out I went through his town, I’ll be in big trouble. No way. Why? There is no time. We only have few years to go. We need to get rid of whatever is distracting us from God, whatever is separating us from others.
The 72 came back full of joy and enthusiasm: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.” The power of God. If we are good instruments in his hands we will be amazed at his grace. But Jesus tried to redirect their energy towards what it is important: “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” There are two books in eternity: the book of good deeds and the book of bad deeds. We need to make sure our names are written in the right one. Heaven is what matters.
If Jesus had 72 true disciples here on earth now, he could change the world again. We can be one of them. It is up to us. Mary, Queen of the apostles, our Queen and Mother, helps us to decide accordingly.
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Saint Peter and Saint Paul
Today we celebrate a double feast, the two most important apostles, saint Peter and saint Paul. We have two other feasts for each saint, the conversion of saint Paul and the chair of saint Peter. Why do we put them together in one feast? Because some people wanted to separate them, to oppose one against the other, to create a conflict. The devil loves confussion and disunity to do his work. Peter preached to the Jews and Paul to the gentiles. At the beginning of the Church there was a danger of schism, a separation between both groups, mainly from the Jews, demanding the gentiles to follow Jewish customs. Both apostles managed to keep the Church together.
If you go to saint Peter’s basilica in Rome, in front of the facade you will see two big marble statues, much bigger than a life size, five metres tall, saint Peter with the keys and saint Paul with the book and the sword. Even though it is a church built on top of saint Peter’s tomb, the popes wanted to emphasise the collaboration between both, as the two foundational stones on where Jesus’ Church is built. Saint Peter with his keys opens the doors of heaven for us, and saint Paul teaches the faith with his book, and defends and enlarges the Christian community with his sword.
These are the traditional symbols of these two saints. Saint Peter keeps two keys in his hand, one silver plated and the other gold plated. The golden one aludes to the power in heaven; the silver one signifies the authority on earth. You can see both keys in the pope’s coat of arms. Saint Paul holds in his right hand a long sword for two reasons: first, he was beheaded by a sword, the instrument of his martyrdom, and secondly, the sword signifies the Word of God, of which Paul was a tireless preacher. We say that Sacred Scripture is a double edged sword, that penetrates our souls and cuts through our excuses and sins. A double edged sword is very dangerous: you can injure others, but also hurt yourself. It has a doubled effect.
Saint Peter is the first apostle and saint Paul is the one who did most for the Church, to expand and develop it. Both were martyred in Rome. We have another basilica in Rome dedicated to saint Paul, the second largest church after saint Peter’s, outside the walls of the city. There you can see a unique series of portraits in mosaic of all the popes from Peter to the present holder of the office. It is customary for the church to shine a spotlight on the portrait of the present pope.
The first reading of the Mass comes from the Acts of the apostles were saint Peter heals a man paralytic from birth. The second reading is from the letter of saint Paul to the Galatians, where he explains that after his conversion, he went to Jerusalem to talk to Peter. The Gospel narrates the scene where Jesus asked Peter, after the second miraculous catch of fish, if he loved him more than the others. Both apostles loved Jesus so much to the point of giving up their lives for him.
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Corpus Christi
Today we celebrate the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist. We look at the amazing miracle that happens every day, when the priest pronounces the words of consecration during the Mass, and transforms the substances of bread and wine into the body and blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ. We will never be able to comprehend totally the mystery we are contemplating.
I’d like to look at this reality from the point of view of the trascendentals, four ways we share of a certain resemblance with God, which reflects his infinite perfection. The first one is truth: everything that it is, has to be true. It is very important for us to know what the Eucharist is. Most of the indifference we find today in Catholics around the Eucharist is due to ignorance. We cannot value what we don’t know. How can we come more often to visit him, if we think that the host is a symbol? How can we adore Jesus in the tabernacle, if we think that he is not there? There, in the tabernacle, hidden to our eyes is the truth itself.
The second one is goodness: whatever it is, has some element of goodness, for the fact of being. If Jesus is here, this church should be the most important place of our entire existence. It has to have an influence on our lives. His presence cannot leave us the same. This is why all saints have drawn from the Eucharist the energy that moved them forward, to perform the amazing feats they have accomplished. All actions towards the poor and the needy, should be based upon hours of adoration in front of the Blessed Sacrament, recognising Jesus in the tabernacle, welcoming Jesus in the homeless.
The third one is beauty: to be beautiful, first we need to exist. We try to surround the Eucharist with the most expensive and beautiful things we have, showing to the Lord that we believe in his physical presence. The churches, the altars, the reredos, all the things we use for the Mass, the vestmens, the linen and the sacred vesels, express the love we have for him, even though whatever we offer to him will never be good enough for his majesty. It is true that he doesn’t need all we do for him, but we are human beings, and we normally express our love to our loved ones with gold and precious stones. Jesus was very happy when a woman used the whole jar of an expensive perfume to anoint his body.
The fourth one is unity. Very much related to being, anything that it is, either conserves its unity or disappears. Jesus is the head of the Church and all of us are members of his body. Therefore we are all united in the Eucharist. Where Jesus is, there is the Church, and we are all with him. This is why when we go to communion, we enter into the most intimate posible union: we eat him, his body becomes part of ours. When Saint Monica was dying, she asked her son Saint Augustine to remember her at the table of the Lord. In every Mass we remember the living and the dead. We are all seated together to renew the passion, death and resurrection of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
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Holy Trinity
Nowadays sciences have grown exponentially. The desire to know our world, to comprehend the laws of nature, has pushed our knowledge to limits never experienced before. We have an intellectual curiosity that has filled the internet with almost an infinite amount of information. AI is using all this data to challenge us, to produce better outcomes, to simulate our brains. It is developing capabilities unknown to us. But we forget that we are created for God, that our end is to know and love God for all eternity. And this endeavour should begin here.
All the great things here on earth are only sparks of the divine nature. Everything created has some resemblance of God its author. If we are in awe with the universe, imagine who he is who created it. God has allowed us to know him and develop a relationship with him. It is a pity we spend so much time doing other things, waisting our lives in things that are not important. They say that thirty percent of the data used in the internet is wasted watching pornography. Sex is the god of our times. Porn only makes us depressed and anxious, because it is a passing pleasure that can never make us happy. The devil has caught us with this virtual addiction and we need to become free. It destroys lives, relationships and marriages. We are made for more. When are we going to wake up? The search for true happiness, for God dwelling in our souls, can help us to cut this chain and make us free.
We are so caught up in the things of this world that we forget the world to come. People only believe what they can experience with their senses and they don’t realise that we can access eternity from here. We forget that we have a direct line to God. He is at our finger tips, more accessible than our mobile phones, without the problems of low battery or lack of coverage. We forget that we have the Holy Trinity in our soul unless we push him away. Saint Augustine used to say that he is inside of us, but we are looking for him outside.
Today’s feast day is a reminder of this mystery. We can enter into the inner life of God, and contemplate the relationship between the three persons of the Holy Trinity. We are invited to participate in the constant, infinite, amazing, fluid life of love among the Father, the Son and and the Holy Spirit. We are called to differentiate the three persons, even though they are only one God and it is a very difficult task. Every year we have a new opportunity to go deeper and try to get inspiration from God. We all have an inner desire to see more.
We are children of the Father, brothers and sisters of Jesus, spouses of the Paraclete. We have three kinds of relationships with God, to access the divinity from three different angles, to help us to enter into the mystery the Holy Trinity. We ask Mary, daughter of God the Father, mother of God the Son, spouse of the Holy Spirit, to give us a hand.
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Pentecost
Today the Holy Spirit is coming to us. We want him to remain with us. But, How do we know that he is with us? Where do we find him? There are signs to check his presence among us. He is very discreet, trying to pass unnoticed, but there are some clues that reveal his action in our souls. The first one is goodness. A person with the Holy Spirit tries to do good. You notice when a person has a good heart, when he wants the good of the other, that in spite of his or her brokenness, loves in a selfless way. There is something in that person that reveals the fire of the Holy Spirit, impossible to hide.
The second sign is a consequence of the first: joy; a radiant and contagious happiness. This is something you notice in a person and you feel attracted to it. It comes out through the phores of the skin, a smiling face, a fresh laughing and constant good humour. A person you want to be around, that moves the conversation and enlightens the atmosphere of any gathering. The Holy Spirit is not in a negative, bickering, blaming, cynical attitude. By their fruits you will know them. Children can see through this; there are attracted to a cheerful person.
The joy of the Holy Spirit explodes outwards. It cannot be contained. It is like a volcano erupting. It comes out when you less expect it. This is why the third sign is witness. It is the example of the saints that produce large following, some of them through the centuries. We are moved mainly not by what they said, but for what they have achieved. Their lives inspire us to imitate them, to try to do great things for God. We read their biographies to learn from them, to find ways to do what God wants us to do.
The fourth sign it is an interior disposition: a desire for God. The more we discover him, the more we want him. It is a longing that grows with time, like a slow burning, simmering stew in a pot. We want to learn, to know about God, to try to comprehend his essence. We find fulfilling the searching through the net of reasons and truths about his existence, through podcasts, talks and interviews. We are never happy with what knowledge we have of him; we always want more. The more we know, the more we love.
This brings us to the fifth expression of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our soul: Love. This is one of his proper names. What we are created for. What we long for deep in our hearts. The source of all happiness. A Love that never ends, that is always growing, moving, changing, filling us up. It is the Love waiting for us in heaven. This Love gives us a different kind of knowledge. Something deeper, more personal, relational. We know and love with both, our hearts and intellects. And both are dependent on each other. The more we love, the more we know. The biblical text uses the verb “to know” to explain intimacy between husband and wife, because love always wants to know the person we love. Love desires to be united with the person we love, yearns for unity, something we will only achieve completely in the next life.
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Ascension
The Acts of the Apostles say that when Jesus was lifted up “a cloud took him from their sight.” It means that they couldn’t see him anymore because he was obscured by a cloud. It doesn’t mean that he is not there anymore. He is still there behind the cloud until the end of time. The book of Revelation says that Jesus will come sitting on a cloud to judge the living and the dead. He is not too far away from us, even though we cannot see him. He is just behind the cloud, watching us. Like the sun when it disappears during the storm. It is always up there shining, stable, making the earth orbit around it. We know God is always there, even though our lives are going through a dark patch. He is always in control.
While they were looking intently at the sky as he was ascending, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky?” Jesus had to send two angels to tell them that he was gone for good, that he was not coming back in the near future. They were now in charge; it was their turn. After three years giving them the Gospel, now it was their task to pass it on to the next generation. And they did do it, giving themselves, leaving their lives behind, dying for Christ like he did for us.
Now it is our turn. We have a big responsibility in our own hands. Baptism empowers us to bring the Gospel to people around us, manly as witnesses of Christ resurrection. People nowadays see Jesus as a good man, who said beautiful things, but they place him at the level of other religious figures. There is a big, crucial difference between Jesus and them. They say: follow my teachings. Jesus says: love me and become like me. He is the only one who claims he is the Son of God. He is either mad or he really is God. We believe with faith in his divinity, and this belief has an influence in our lives. We cannot be indifferent to his claim. We need to study and test if what he says is true.
The apostles gave us a great example: “they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.” It is the joy of the good news, knowing that you have a treasure in your hands, that the truth is with you and you can help other people to be free of their addictions, miseries, shortcomings and darkness. This is a sign that the Holy Spirit is with us. There is something inside of us that pushes us to spread the fire burning in our hearts.
The angels finished their message saying: “This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven.” He hasn’t left us orphans. He is coming back! Every day a bit closer. He is waiting for us to finish our mission and then to pick us up and take us to the place he has prepared for us. It is going to be a big surprise, something we have never dreamed of. No worries if you are getting tired. We have the whole eternity to rest, relax and enjoy our relationship with God and the people we love.
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Peace
When John Paul II was elected Pope and came out on the balcony above Saint Peter’s square, to salute the crowd, he began his speech saying: Be not afraid. I didn’t understand at that time why he said that. I was young and I wasn’t afraid of the future. Life was open to me. Later on I understood his words. In our modern society we are afraid of the future. We spend a lot of money on insurance, keep our money in the bank, our jewelry in the safe, and spend money in security. We live in a society full of tension, a peaceless environment, because we have thrown God out of the window.
Today in the Gospel Our Lord offers us his peace. He is the vine; we are the branches. As long as we are united to the vine, we get the sap. But, we don’t want it. We prefer another kind of peace, the false peace the world offers to us. We normally look for peace in places where it is not. We think that money will bring us peace. It is proven that when you win the lotto your life becomes hell. Multimillionaires are never happy: they want more money. We think that entertainment, shopping, alcohol, drugs, sex, will make us happy; it is the opposite. Many times they complicate our lives.
Peace doesn’t come from a life without problems. We think that if we can get rid of our problems, our life will become easier. There is no life without suffering. It has to do with how we face our challenges, how we maintain our interior peace in the midst of our daily struggles. What are the things that take away my peace? How do I recover my peace? We normally regain our peace when we pray and try to see things through God’s eyes. Without peace we cannot love God. If we are anxious, worried, depressed, down, it is impossible to pray. The love of God brings us serenity, tranquility, peace of mind, good humour, smiling faces. Many times, we spend our time in prayer recovering our peace. Prayer is an exercise of letting things go and accepting the will of God for us.
Saint Catherine of Siena says that “without war there is no peace.” If you are lazy, if you don’t struggle, if you give up, it is impossible to find peace. We all have the experience of reaching joy after winning a battle. To be at peace you need to get rid of your enemies. If you want to find out who your main enemy is, look at yourself in the mirror every morning. Don’t forget your features. Engrave them into your memory. I am my biggest enemy.
Saints experience peace in spite of many trials and tribulations. In the midst of furious storms, they maintain an interior tranquility. People go to them looking for consolation. Blessed Alvaro was a man at peace with himself. I can testify about this. You could feel it close to him. Peace is something sought by everyone, even though we don’t acknowledge it. It is a rare commodity, difficult to find, a precious diamond. It takes a long time to reach, to come across. You need to keep digging. We Christians should be sowers of joy and peace. We cannot give what we haven’t got. Peace is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. In every Mass we ask for it: Grant us peace!
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The New Commandment
The New Commandment is still new. It is always going to be new. It is new every day for each one of us. We all need to struggle in two areas that begin with CH: charity and chastity. It has to do with our bodies and people’s bodies. We are not pure spirits, we are not angels. We have bodies and we bump into each other, for good or for bad. We rub against each other, polishing our characters on the way. We are attracted or repelled by others. We are not a hundred dollar note that everybody likes.
There is story about Jesus while going around with his apostles, a beautiful woman approached him. She asked him for the gift of love: “Everybody loves me because I am beautiful, but I don’t love anyone.” Jesus asked her: “Are you ready to climb up the mountain?” She answered: “I want to be happy.” Jesus transformed her beauty into ugliness. She became short, fat and ugly. Now she had to give herself. We are created to love, either we know it or not, either we like it or not. It is engraved in our nature. The more we love the happier we are. The more we long to be loved, the more miserable we become. The more we give ourselves, the more we forget about our problems. Hell is to be alone with yourself for ever.
Jesus gives us the measure of our love: “As I have loved you.” What? This is impossible. God cannot asks us something impossible. God is not cruel. He will help us to do it, if we want it. It is not easy, but it is not impossible. His love is infinite but we are limited. It is an infinite love of a limited creature.
Once an abbot of a Monastery was worried about the lack of charity among the brothers. He went to see a holy man to see what he could do to change it. The holy man told him that one of his brothers was Jesus. He said that it was impossible, but the holy man reassured him. Going back to the Monastery, he began to think who it could be. The librarian? No, he spends the whole day reading books. The cook? He is eating all the time. The porter? He usually gossips about what happens outside. The tailor? He can hardly cut a straight line. The barber? He is drinking beer while shaving your beard. When the abbot arrived to the Monastery, got together all the brothers and told them what the holy man had told him: he said that one of you is Jesus; I don’t think so, but I tell you this just in case. All the brothers began to think who could be Jesus, and the whole atmosphere of the house changed. This is the secret: to try to see Jesus in every person.
Pope Francis once said: “Find someone who has never spoken ill of another person, someone who has never judged another, and they would qualify for immediate canonisation.”Inside the Vatican Pope Francis has placed an icon of the Virgin Mary holding a finger to her lips, entitled Our Lady of Silence. Just to remind people working there that they shouldn’t gossip. Saint Phillip Neri gave a woman a penance to take a feather pillow, go to highest tower in the town and scatter the feathers. She came back saying that she did it. He asked her: now go, and get all the feathers back. She answered: it’s impossible.
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The Good Shepherd
The main task of the Good Shepherd is to bring us to good pastures. What are the good pastures for us? We have the wrong idea where to find them or what they are. We think that they are wealth, honours, health, entertainment, food, beauty, pleasurable things, love, gadgets, adventure, travelling; all sort of different things, depending on our age and circumstances. If we don’t agree what our good pastures are, how are we going to follow the Good Shepherd to where he is trying to lead us? This is the real problem in our lives. We are not a hundred percent convinced that Jesus is leading us to an amazing place, without any strings attached.
All the saints are very clear about this. They know where the good pasture is: heaven. And who is the one leading us there: Jesus Christ. Therefore, they trust Jesus with their lives, they follow him without hesitation. If heaven exist, all our lives have to be measured by this reality. The devil is trying to distract us from our destination and make sure we fix our eyes on things here on earth, without realising that all things here break down eventually, they pass away and can never satisfy us completely. When are we going to wake up to this reality?
When Saint Therese of Liseux was very small, she used to go to her mum, kiss her and say: “I’d like you to die.” When she was reprehended, she answered with big puzzling eyes: “But you say that to go to heaven you need to die.” This is children’s logic. Death is the gate of heaven, and how we try with all our might to avoid it and delay it. We should be more familiar with our sister death, that will make us the favour of bringing us to eternal life. This is how the saints looked at life and death, from the other side of the curtain, that separates us from eternity. We don’t realise how thin that curtain is; a simple stroke can tear it.
God has placed into our hearts a desire for eternity, a longing for a place where we can be with God and the people we love for ever. Psalm 42 describes this longing very nicely: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God?” He has done this for us not to be lost, distracted, bogged down, sidetracked. We come from God and we go back to God. It is so easy to lose our way. This is why we have a restless heart, never happy with the passing things of this world, with a desire for infinity, eternity and immensity. Our Good Shepherd helps us to walk with our eyes fixed on heaven.
The best we can do for others is helping them to reach these eternal pastures. This is the true, essential, definitive reality of our lives. Whoever is saved, wins; whoever is not, loses. We cannot forget that at the end of the day, we are here to reach heaven and to bring with us the people God has placed close to us. We cannot leave anybody behind. The best way to show our love for them is to make the path of heaven easier for them. Let us follow our Good Shepherd a bit more closely.
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Second miraculous catch of fish
Peter said: “I am going fishing.” The other apostles agreed: “We are going with you.” That night they caught nothing. It was a good idea to have a break, make a bit of money and get some food, but they spent the whole night casting the net and all they caught was an old boot and a broken amphora. Last time they went fishing was the first miraculous catch of fish. They thought they could pull it off again. They started with a lot of enthusiasm, but as the hours went by, the conversation died down, and tiredness crept in. At dawn they were going back home empty handed.
There was a man on the shore waiting for them. They couldn’t see him well because the sun was rising behind him. Out of the blue he asked them if they had caught anything to eat. It is the worst question to ask a fisherman. They answered clenching their teeth: “No!” It is the same question he is asking us now: Have you caught any man? Are you bringing me souls? When Jesus called the apostles to follow him, he told them that they were going to catch men.
The man on the shore told them to drop the net on the right hand side of the boat. They did it, once more, out of custom, without the energy to contradict him, or to proof him wrong once they got to the beach. Who was he to teach lessons to professional fishermen? The net began to fill up and to pull the boat down. They couldn’t haul it in; there were too many fish. While everybody was trying to pull up the net, John looked at the man on the beach, with his dark eyes, staring at him, trying to figure him out. Who is he? There was something familiar in that man. He murmured to Peter: “It is the Lord!” John was the first one to discover him with his clean eyes and pure heart. Saint Josemaria says that “love is fair sighted.” Loving eyes can see and recognize loved ones from a distance.
When Peter heard that it was Jesus, he jumped into the water, straight away, without thinking what he was doing. He was always so prompt, so direct, predictable. Why didn’t he wait till they reached the shore with the boat? It was only few metres away. He didn’t need to get wet and splash all over the place. But he wanted to be first, specially after his denial. His sorrow couldn’t wait. He needed to have a quiet word with Jesus alone.
When they arrived at the beach, Jesus already had a good fire going. He knew that they were cold, tired and hungry. Peter was also wet. They sat by the warmth of the coals and they cooked the natural fresh fish, that melted like butter in their mouths. Nothing can beat fish just caught, still kicking. He also had some hot bread to dip in the fish sauce. The Gospel doesn’t say it, but Jesus had brought some dry white wine, to wash down the food. Nobody said anything, because they were busy munching the fish, their mouth full of food. They had a hundred and fifty three fishes to go through, and they were all big ones. Divided by eight, it took nineteen each. Before Jesus talked to them, he made sure their bodies were warm and fed. After the whole night fishing, now they felt ready for a siesta. Jesus does the same with us. First he looks after our bodies and when we are ready, feeds our souls. But we need to obey him: throw the net on the right hand side of our boat.
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Thomas
Jesus’ disciples were afraid of the Jews and locked the doors where they were staying. Jesus came through the walls, stood in the midst of them and said: Peace be with you. He came with his glorious body and they found difficult to recognise him. This is the kind of body we are going to have at the end of time, when our soul will be reunited to our body. We are body and soul, and to be truly human we need our body back. Our society adores the body and has forgotten the soul. It tries with all its might to keep the body young and immortal, but it is a useless and frustrating exercise, because you cannot stop the inevitable. Where is the soul? All over the body. It is so entangle with the body that you cannot separate. We only see the body and we can deny the soul. But we know that our soul is more important because it is immortal.
Some people hate their bodies. They are not happy in the way they are and would like to be different, taller, thinner, have blue eyes, blond hair, more beautiful. We compare ourselves with others, specially through social media. No worries. Our present body is provisional, recycable. An amazing, glorious body, is waiting for us in the next life. Here we are too concern about a body, which is going to be transformed into something new.
There are a lot of theories about what sort of body we are going to have. What we know is that it is going to be the same body we have now, same identity, but with all our lost capabilities restored, our missing limbs back, with all its integrity. They say it is going to be of perfect quality, the best age, our body at its peak, like the day of a wedding. You won’t need social media in the other life to depict a perfect body.
Theologians have come out with four qualities of our glorified bodies: impassibility, subtlety, agility and clarity. There are big words, but they express simple concepts. Impassibility means that our bodies are going to be immortal, imperishable, without getting old, with no suffering, no sickness, and without the inclination to sin. Subtlety means that our bodies are going to be spiritual, with the possibility of going through matter, in full control of our faculties, with quickness of thought, sharp intellect, and great memory.
Agility will make our bodies very powerful, that will obey the soul with great ease and speed of movement, without any difficulty of going from here to there. Clarity is very much connected to the name glorious, free from deformity and filled with beauty; it will be surrounded by brightness of splendour, radiance of light and full of whiteness. Are you upset with your body? No worries, you are going to have a body you have never seen, and you have never dreamed. It will be the envy of all your friends on social media now.
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Easter Sunday
While the men were sleeping, women went to Jesus’s tomb. Women are always more on top of things. They didn’t have time to finish anointing Jesus’s body on Friday night. They waited till Sunday, because on Saturday it was forbidden to work. We must be like them, awake, here on the most important day of the year, waiting for Jesus to rise from the dead. We believe that he is going to rise, because he does so every year. We are celebrating his resurrection. The women’s love and generosity made them first to come to the tomb. Not their personal qualities or talents, but their feminine genius. If you love God and you are generous with Him, you’ll be first too.
The apostles must have asked these women where they were going at this early hour of the morning. They answered: “To anoint Jesus’s body.” The apostles must have pointed out the obstacles, with clear male logic: “Don’t you realise that there are soldiers guarding the tomb? And there’s a big stone covering the tomb. Who is going to move it? Are you going to bribe the guards?” The women answered as a matter of fact: “We don’t know, but we are going.” God likes us to go ahead in spite of the difficulties. If we do our best God will help us. We shouldn’t leave everything to God. If you are praying to win the lottery, you need to buy a ticket.
These women were real apostles, meaning emissaries, the ones who are sent off, the first ones to find out that Jesus had risen. Mary Magdalene ran to tell the apostles about Jesus’ resurrection. That is why we call her the apostle of apostles. We Christians are also apostles by our Baptism. We need to show with our lives that we believe that we are witnesses to his resurrection. Some angels told them that he had risen: “He is not here for he has risen.” Angel means messenger. We forget that we have a guardian angel. Many things that happen in our lives, near misses, great ideas, remembering things, come from our guardian angels.
The resurrection of Jesus is very important for our faith, crucial. That is why atheists try to deny the resurrection. Saint Paul says: “If Christ had not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” If Christ didn't rise from the dead he would have been a nice guy but not the Son of God. That is why Easter is so important. That is why we celebrate the day of the Lord on Sundays. He has risen and he is walking with us. The spiritual life is being aware of his presence. The devil thought that killing Jesus was going to finish everything. Imagine his surprise at Jesus’ resurrection, his frustration. At the same moment when he thought he had won, he lost everything. These are the best movie endings, when what the baddie does thinking it is the best, actually is the cause of his destruction. Like “The Lord of the Rings”, when Frodo at the crucial moment cannot bring himself to throw the ring into the fire of Moria, and Gollum comes to his rescue without realizing it, by biting off his finger and falling down into the molten lava. Only God can bring good out of evil. Only man can bring evil out of goodness.
Tradition says that Jesus appeared first to his Mother. It was so obvious that the Gospels don’t talk about it. You can imagine the embrace of mother and son without words. A long embrace. It is all over, like a happy ending of an action movie.
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Holy Thursday
One of the most beautiful ceremonies we perform today is the washing of the feet. The Church wants us to witness again what happened at the last supper, not to forget the example of the Master. Saint John begins this chapter in is his Gospel saying that Jesus “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” John is the beloved apostle who had the best access to Jesus’ heart. The washing of the feet is a straight manifestation of the message of the Gospel. It helps us to peek into Jesus’ heart and discover immensurable riches.
John is the only evangelist that writes about what happened. The other authors of the Gospels, either forgot about it, or they thought it was not a good idea to mention it. For the apostles this action was a scandal, to witness their rabbi washing their feet, something only reserved for slaves. It would be for us like discovering our bishop begging on the streets, collecting rubbish or washing public toilets. Something improper to his dignity. This is why Peter asked not to have his feet washed. He couldn’t admit that the Lord lowered himself to such an undignified level, the feet signifying the lowest part of the body. We can imagine years later, Peter understood the meaning of Jesus’ action, embarrassed and contrite by his human reaction. We too, many times, feel that we have let people down, thinking too much about our own dignity and worth.
For us priests this ceremony is a very moving moment during the Holy Week. We take off our chasuble, feeling a bit naked in front of everyone, putting on an apron, taking a towel, and kneeling down to wash people’s feet. We feel like Jesus hiding his divinity and taking our humanity. After the washing some priests kiss people’s feet, mind you they are clean, thinking that Jesus did the same even though is not mentioned by John. Jesus loves us so much that he is ready to show it physically.
We normally choose 12 men to imitate what Jesus did. Some parishes find twelve poor people and also feed them. Once in the parish where I was working, the priest decided to put hot water in a thermo flask, to keep it warm. He forgot that the element was right under the basin and the thermo is very good at keeping the water hot. The following day he was complaining how the men jerked their feet when he poored down the water. He couldn’t see the steam coming out. The ankle is a very sensitive part of the body. The following year we had problems getting men to commit themselves. We called it the burning of the feet.
When Jesus finished washing their feet, he sat down and told them: “You also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.” Washing people’s feet is an expression of the extent of the level we have to lower ourselves, to help our brothers and sisters. We should do what Jesus did. He did it physically for us to have a graphic example. We normally do it morally.
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Good Friday
After the homily we are going to bring the crucifix veiled, Jesus crucified hiding behind a purple cloth. Purple used to be a royal colour, because it was the most expensive colorant to produce. Herod covered Jesus with a purple robe, to mock him. This is why we use this colour. We cover the crucifix because we don’t know if he is still alive; we don’t want to see him dying for us. The unveiling signifies the death of Jesus. Before it was hidden; now we know.
We are going to unveil him slowly, each limb with music, to remember his wounds. We are going to sing “Behold, behold, the wood of the cross.” Slowly, for us to make sure we see him, we look at him, we contemplate him. Slowly to see each one of his five wounds engraved in his flesh. I recommend you to look into his eyes. We are normally afraid of looking at him. Why? Because this is what we have done to him. Jesus, with his body, is telling us: this is me. We need to face Jesus, Jesus as a man. Can you hold his sight? Can you look at him straight?
Then we are going to venerate him. One by one, through a long queue, with time to spare. We need time to repent, to atone for our sins. We are quick to sin, but we are slow to say sorry. Contrition normally drags its feet. We are not going to use three crucifixes to go faster; otherwise, it would look like Calvary, with the two thieves on both sides of Jesus. I wouldn’t like to kiss the bad thief. We are going to kiss him, to soften his suffering, to try to make up for our sins. Sometimes children don’t want to kiss him; they are rightly afraid because they can see beyond us. Can we kiss him after inflicting him so much suffering, so much pain? It looks a bit like Judas’ kiss. We need to cry in front of him, a cry of repentance.
The crucifix shows us his five wounds, wide open in front of us. We can find refuge in them. Saints have a lot of devotion to Jesus’ wounds. They remind us of our own scars, those wounds that haven’t been healed, that are part of our brokenness. We complain about them, but we don’t allow Jesus to heal them. Jesus is proud of his wounds; he shows them as medals, a proof of what he has gone through. In the army, when you get wounded, they decorate you with a medal. Our scars show that we have fought, and that we have been wounded. We should be proud of them; they are like medals. If we look at them as proof of what we have suffered, we can begin to heal. Instead of complaining about them, we can begin to understand why God allowed those things to happen, see them as medals and give thanks for them.
When Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross, it was placed in the arms of our mother. His blood stained her clothes, but she didn’t care, because she wanted to hold him for the last time, his body still warm. She wanted that moment to last for ever, and kiss him for the last time, remembering when she had him in her arms when he was a baby, crying for her milk.
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Palm Sunday
Today we read the Passion from Saint Luke’s Gospel. Every evangelist gives his particular vision of the event. When we witness or hear about something that happened, we all have different recollections. Luke presents five specific details that are absent in the other three Gospels. The first one is about the night in the garden of olives. He uses the word “agony”, a word we use when somebody is dying, representing the last moments of a person’s life, the difficult struggle between life and death. Two other details from this scene are the sweating of blood produced by Jesus’ extreme stress, and the angel sent by God to console him, to avoid his premature death. God always sends us the help we need to go through our personal challenges.
The second difference is related to Peter’s denials. After the third negation, the cock crowed and Jesus looked at Peter. There must have been a connection between the room where Jesus was and the place outside where Peter was warming himself at the fire. Their eyes met and they understood each other; no words were necessary; their faces said everything. Jesus had foretold what was going to happen, but Peter didn’t pay attention to it. Whenever we deny Jesus, or we stop acknowledging his presence, we need to look at him straight away, because he is constantly looking at us. Then we can weep like Peter and come back to him with a contrite heart.
The third one is the narration of Pilate sending Jesus to Herod, because he found out that he was a Galilean and Herod was in charged of that region. Luke says that “Herod and Pilate became friends with each other that very day, for before this they had been at enmity with each other.” Jesus in a way brought them together. Maybe today we can renew a friendship that has gone astray, or try to reach somebody who we consider our enemy.
The fourth is the beautiful sentence Jesus said from the cross: “Father, forgive them because they do not know what they are doing.” It can be applied to us, because most of the time we don’t realise the implications of our actions, or we do not foresee the evil that is going to come from what we do, for ourselves and for others. Jesus from the cross, pleads to his Father for all of us. From his throne of mercy, from his suffering and death, he thinks about us; his Father is not going to deny him anything.
The last one is about the good thief, the one who stole heaven at the last moment. He uttered a moving prayer from his cross: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” A great request for us to repeat over and over again. And Jesus answered him with determination: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Today, not tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, you will be with me, together, in my kingdom. This is why Luke’s Gospel is called the Gospel of Mercy, the Gospel of Hope.
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Lent 5 C The adulterous woman
Saint Augustine defines the meeting between Jesus and the adulterous woman with this great expression: Misera et Misericordia, Misery and Mercy, the wretched woman and the merciful Jesus, the sinner and God, sin and grace. Pope Francis calls his Apostolic Letter at the conclusion of the Jubilee of Mercy, Misericordia et Misera. He turns them around, emphasizing love and forgiveness above sin and justice: “the misery of sin was clothed with the mercy of love.” There they meet, one in front of each other, Mercy and Misery, Jesus and the adulterous woman. It’s a beautiful scene, a meeting between humanity and divinity, our sinfulness and God’s healing power.
When he tells the Pharisees, “let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her”, you can hear the stones hitting the ground, beginning with the older ones, perhaps the same ones that sinned with her. They all leave when they read what Jesus is writing on the ground: “Where is the man who sinned with her? Is there any man here without sin?” Jesus has no stones to throw at her, even though he is the only one who has the right to do so. We hear the same words when we come to meet Jesus: Let the stones slip through your fingers. Why do you keep those grudges in your heart? Those stones are too heavy. We are the same as the Pharisees.
There they are, all alone, Jesus and the beautiful woman, with her dark hair falling over her shoulders, covering her nakedness, concealing her sins. The sun is shining high on the sky, God’s light who makes old things new, who reveals all hidden things. He continues writing on the ground. Now he writes for her, “Where are they?” She is looking at him with curiosity, trying to figure him out: “Who is this man?” She thought she knew who men were. Jesus lifts his eyes and looks at her for the first time, with tenderness and compassion; their eyes meet. His eyes are not the same as of the other men. It is a great moment to see both looking at each other at the same time. Misericordia and Misera meet, a man-God and a woman-sinner. Even though in real life this is not possible, because we have only one set of eyes, it is possible to do it now, and penetrate deeply in both gazes, she is us, He is God’s own. It is the same gaze we experience when we come to Mass and the penitential rite begins. We are there in front of him occupying the place of the adulterous woman, with more reasons to be stoned to death: “I confess to Almighty God and to you here present that I have gravely sinned.” We need to look at Jesus in the eye.
Jesus asks her, after a long silence, looking around: “Has no one condemned you?” Her voice sounds for the first time, a singing voice, full of contrition: “No one, Lord.” She calls him Lord: “Now I know who you are. I have seen through your eyes and discovered the depths of your mercy. I thought I never could see that in a human being.” Jesus allowed her to look inside his heart, at the same time that he was healing hers. We can take the place of Jesus: we have so many things to forgive and forget.
She waits with expectation Jesus’ answer, even though she knows what he is going to say. With a consoling smile, he says: “Go, and do not sin again.” Two commands in one sentence. Go, you can go now, look at the future, don’t worry about your past, forget what lies behind and run forward. We hear the same words when we go to confession: “Go in peace! Run!” There is a famous saying: every saint has a past and every sinner has a future. And his second command: “Don’t be silly!”
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Lent 4 C The Prodigal Son
In chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel, Jesus proposes three parables of mercy: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. His Gospel has earned the title of Gospel of Mercy. To receive his mercy, first we need to recognise we are lost. Nowadays with GPS, it is very difficult to get lost, unless we run out of data or we lose our internet access. The most famous parable of all is the return of the prodigal son, the summary of the Gospel, very dear to our Christian faith, a reflection of God’s heart.
Henri Nouwen, a Dutch priest, went to Saint Petersburg to see the painting “The return of the prodigal son” at the Hermitage Museum, painted by Rembrandt at the end of his life. He spent the whole day in front of the painting, looking at how it changed with the light of the sun moving around. Afterwards he wrote a book in which he sees himself as the three characters portrayed, the prodigal son, the father waiting and the arrogant elder son. We can do the same ourselves, even though we don’t have the opportunity to spend the whole day in front of this famous work of art.
You can hardly see the prodigal son in Rembrandt’s painting, because he has almost disappeared into his father’s embrace. He is showing his back to us, completely hidden in his father’s arms. It is easy for us to play the role of the prodigal son because we need to do it very often. We know by heart the way back to our father’s heart. It is already a furrow in the ground, so many times we have traveled this way, the grass has disappeared. We can do it blind folded. Our contrition should be faster than our offences. As the blood comes out straight away when we get injured, the same way our apology should spring out: I’m sorry father.
The father is the central figure of Rembrandt’s painting. You can see his rapidly aged face caused by his suffering, but now with a gentle joy after recovering his lost son. He embraces the boy with his strong arms, not wanting to let him go. Once he has recovered his younger son, the apple of his eyes, he is not going to lose him again. This parable should be called ‘the father waiting’, ‘the father embracing’ or rather ‘the father celebrating’. He is the main character of the scene. Playing the part of the father reminds us of the responsibility of forgiving everyone. When we still have grudges against others, it means that we haven’t forgiven them from our heart. Instead of the father waiting, we are the father still hiding grudges. What worse thing that people can do other than to take half of our property?
The eldest son doesn’t want to appear in the painting. He keeps his distance in the background, looking at the scene with disdain, trying to disappear, only being there because Rembrandt painted him there. He wants to run away. He doesn’t want anything to do with this ‘son of yours’, this is how he calls his younger brother. He hasn’t forgiven him for taking half of his inheritance. Now his father is giving him more, starting with the fatted calf, a ring on his finger and new shoes. From our position of power, wealth or virtue, we can look at the prodigal sons of this world in the same way, forgetting that they are truly our brothers and sisters. What would Jesus do in my situation?
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Lent 3 C Barren fig tree
Today Jesus gives us the parable of the barren fig tree. Why was it barren? We don’t know why. In spite of all the care and concern of the gardener, the tree remained barren, esterile. It was maybe a proud tree that wanted to just produce leaves, to show off, a beautiful manifestation of its magnificence. Or perhaps it was its selfishness, to keep the produce for itself, not to lose its healthy look. It reminds us of our modern man, too concerned about his body image, going to the gym to look at himself in the mirrors that surround him. We are the fig tree in this parable and we hardly produce what God wants us to produce. Our pride, vanity and selfishness get in the way.
The fig tree is a biblical tree, the third one mentioned in the Bible, after the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Adam and Eve sew garments from its leaves when they realised they were naked. At least they could use its leaves. It is a tree that produces two crops a year and its figs can be dried for further consumption. It is a symbol of prosperity, well-being and security. We have the potential of being like the fig tree, producing what God wants us to produce. You know the tree by its fruits. A good tree produces good fruit, but if it is barren, it is better to be used for firewood than occupying space for nothing.
The landlord, God the Father, wants to cut it down. He’s got a point: another tree could produce more. Why take up space in the garden for no purpose? Trees were created for others, to provide shade, to give shelter to animals, to allow birds to build their nests, to produce fruits to eat, or flowers to pollinate. Jesus convinces his father to try again, to be patient for another year. It was easy for him: his Father always listens to him. We are still here. This means that Jesus has given us another year to produce. Let him look after you. He is going to dig around you, spread manure, water and sing a song. But you need to cooperate with him, to get rid of the obstacles, and go to the sacraments, confession and communion, to receive the fertilizer we all yearn for.
What is it that doesn’t allow us to produce? We need to be sincere with ourselves, to answer this question correctly. It is easy to find excuses: the sun is too hot, the wind too cold, the water too salty, the ground too rocky. If we are not producing good, beautiful fruit, it is our fault. Because the seed is good, God’s grace is abundant and Jesus is the best gardener. Lent is a good time to examine ourselves and find the way to produce what God wants us to produce.
Priests love gardening because plants are very rewarding. If you look after them, they grow. If you create the necessary conditions they always do well. Souls, you never know; they are free. With the same care, one goes one way, another a different way; one goes up, the other down; one becomes an angel, the other a little devil. We are free, and we can either produce or become sterile. Parents can decide to have children, or be selfish and close down the fountain of life. We can offer to God what he wants us to do, or we can keep our lives for ourselves, and stop our fruits to reach eternity.
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Lent 2 Transfiguration
Today we are going to ask five questions about the transfiguration. First of all, Where did it happen? Tradition places this event at Mount Tabor, 300 metres above the plain. It looks taller than it is. Now there is a winding road that goes to the top; they use shuttle buses to take you up there. Pope Francis says that these days of Lent we need to climb up, becoming closer to God, leave material things behind. We carry what we need. When you do the Camino of Santiago they recommend you to carry only 8 kilos. Saints love the mountains, you feel closer to God and it is easier to pray. You are alone, free from distractions, fresh air and magnificent view. We feel closer to heaven. Benedict XVI says that “the mountain is the place of ascent—not only outward, but also inward ascent; it is a liberation from the burden of everyday life, a breathing in of the pure air of creation; it offers a view of the broad expanse of creation and its beauty; it gives one an inner peak to stand on and an intuitive sense of the Creator.”
Second, When did it happen? After Jesus’ announcement in Caesarea Philippi to his disciples, that he was to undergo suffering in Jerusalem, that he was going to die at the hands of the chief priests, the elders and the Scribes. The Apostles had been saddened and dismayed by this announcement. They didn’t understand why he had to go through this event, knowing that it was going to happen.
Third, Who did Jesus choose to accompany him? Peter, John and James. The three beloved apostles, the ones Jesus showed more affection. Peter was the first Pope, James the first to die martyr and John the last apostle to die. It is a good question we can ask ourselves, if Jesus would have chosen us to accompany him, if he is going to share a bit of his cross with us. Are we ready to go up the mountain with him? Are we willing to witness his transfiguration and his agony in the garden?
Fourth, Why did he show them his divinity? Jesus took them to Mount Tabor and Getsemane. They were going to be witness of his agony in the garden. He wanted to spare them of the scandal of the Cross. Jesus showed them his two natures, both in natural settings, one at the top of a mountain, the other in a garden. Afterwards only one of them accompanied Jesus at Calvary. Jesus was right to show them his divinity, but it didn’t help them to trust him.
And fifth, What did it happen? Jesus appeared as he is, all white, full of light. It was the real Jesus. Benedict XVI comments that “the Transfiguration is a prayer event; it displays visibly what happens when Jesus talks with his Father: the profound interpenetration of his being with God, which then becomes pure light. In his oneness with the Father, Jesus is himself light from light.” The light came from within, he was light, unlike us, where the light comes from outside, illuminating us. The closer we become to Jesus, the more we share his light, like the moon reflects the light of the sun. The moon doesn’t have any light itself. It’s the same with us. We can only reflect Jesus’ divinity.
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Lent 1 Temptations
Today we accompany Jesus to the desert to be tempted. For us temptations are part of our daily lives. They say that every temptation can be reduced to one: to believe that we can fulfill the desires of our hearts by ourselves, with our own strength. It was the first temptation of Adam and Eve: to be like gods, knowing good and evil. It is the temptation of the child who thinks he has already grown up and doesn’t need his parents. We think that God is not a good Father, he doesn’t care about us and he is only interested in punishing us. We don’t think that God is helping us and we try to go our own way.
This temptation is reflected in the modern man who thinks he can make himself as he wants and find his fulfillment by walking his own path. Sooner or later we realise that this doesn’t work and become depressed and frustrated. Christian tradition talks about the three trascendentals, beauty, goodness and truth, related to our desires to feel, to wish and to think. When we follow these three realities, eventually we find God, our Creator. It is in our nature, in our gens, to look for these three precious stones and find our delight in them. The three of them point towards God. They are related to each other. We are all attracted to them, but there is always one we feel closer. Which one? Follow it and you will become closer God.
The first temptation is to adapt the truth to our lives. Either we live according to what is right, or we end up changing the truth to conform our behaviour. Our mind is always geared to the knowledge of the truth and even if we try to adapt it to our liking, there is always inside of us a doubt we cannot suppress, a desire for what is right and objective. No matter how much dirt we throw to cover it, spreading lies and fake news, the truth always comes out with all its splendour. Sooner or later the truth will win and can makes free.
The second temptation is to think that in spite of our brokenness and sinfulness, we can make ourselves good, if we are true to ourselves, being genuine and authentic. But goodness is universal, and cannot be reduced to our own subjectivity. We fail to see the need of a saviour, Jesus Christ, who came to die for us, that we may live with him. Jesus is a model for real goodness. Our soul is always attracted to what is truly good, and despises whatever is fake and pretentious.
The third temptation is to swap beauty for ugliness. We see this in our society where they try to sell us ugliness as art, lack of skill as originality, laziness as something genuine. Anything that it is, has some beauty, but the heart can discover what is beautiful and wholesome among the rubish that surrounds us. I like to finish quoting Pope Francis: “May the Virgin Mary, Mother of Him who crushed the head of the serpent, help us in this time of Lent to be vigilant in thr face of temptations, not to submit ourselves to an idol of this world, to follow Jesus in the fight against evil, and for us also to be winners as Jesus.”
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Ash Wednesday
“If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” The Gospel acclamation of today’s Mass centers on our struggle for the weeks ahead. We begin an intense liturgical time during which God through the Church will give us special graces to undergo a new conversion. We need to hear his voice and let our hearts become softer like a sponge, to absorb as much as we can from the power of God. During the year, our hearts have been hardened by the obstacles found on the way, blackened with the dust of the road, damaged with so many wounds inflicted on our soul. We need to stop and have a spring cleaning, repair the damage, and recover our youthful, tender heart.
Saint John Paul II used to say that because we are in statu viatoris, travelers on the way to our homeland, we find ourselves in statu conversionis, in need of conversion, constant improvement. This means that we are in a state of permanent conversion, in the need of beginning and beginning again all the time. It can seem tiresome, always the same, but it keeps us going, knowing that at the end of the road, our Father God is waiting with his arms outstretched. Looking at him, fixing our eyes on him, helps us to endure whatever obstacles we find in our way.
We are climbing the mountain of holiness and from time to time we stop at the lookouts to admire the panorama. The higher we go it gets better, it looks more beautiful, breathtaking. But we cannot stay there for too long; we need to keep going. Lent is a time when we recommence the path and begin to climb up again. When you organise activities with children, they keep asking the same question, when they have finished whatever they were doing: What’s next? You need to think ahead, plan the next move, otherwise you are going to be overtaken by them. Now is the time to ask Jesus: What’s next? What do you want me to improve during this Lent?
We know that while travelling here on earth, we can lose our way, deviate from our course, get lost, side track, bogged down. The wind, the waves, the currents, can affect the direction of the ship, and we have to make the necessary readjustments, in order to reach ourdestination. The sooner the better, otherwise it is going to take us longer to come back to the right path. The first Australian saint, Mary MacKillop, who travelled all around this enormous country on horseback, used to say: “We are just travellers here.” We are passing by. Don’t get too attached to the things of this world.
Once I saw an exhibition in Sydney called “Trailblazers”. It was an account of how different people did something nobody had done before. There were videos, photos, samples of their first achievement. There were crazy people, adventurers, innovators, who made new tracks through wild country, places unknown to humanity. They wanted to do something special, to inscribe their names in the golden book of history. We are all trailblazers in life. We all have our own way, and we are the only ones who can walk it. I remember a quotation from the exhibition: “An aviator's life may be full of ups and downs, but the only hard thing about flying is the ground.”
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Two Parables
Today in the Gospel Jesus gives us two parables, more like two comparisons or examples, very practical for our Christian lives. The first one is about the blind leading the blind. We all have the image of a line of blind people falling into a cliff, one after the other, oblivious of what is going to happen to them. It helps us to ask the question: What or who are we following? Is my life taking me to a safe haven? We should check from time to time our compass, to make sure we are not following a wrong path, a road that ends in a cul-de-sac, or a precipice. The one we need to follow, the person who can direct us through the maze of our modern life, is Jesus Christ.
How important our eyes are! Try to close your eyes for a while. How long would you last? We have two eyes to see. With one eye only we lose perspective, relief; it’s all flat. The more eyes the better. They say that in heaven we are going to have infinite number of eyes. Other people’s eyes can help us to see the things we fail to see. We should listen to the advice from people around us, especially from people that love us.
Holiness gives us better eyes. Holy people can see further, higher, longer; they can even see through. Once a blind man asked a priest to show him Saint Peter’s basilica. How can you show a building to a blind man? He tried his best, closing his eyes and beginning to explain it. He realised then that he had discovered a different basilica. Blind people have a sixth sense. Our spiritual life can help us a bit to see things through God’s eyes. In our technological society we have lost the ability to contemplate things with perspective. Now we see everything through flat, artificial screens. The big internet companies show us what they want us to see.
Jesus warns us not to get obsessed with the speck in people’s eyes, but to discover the log in our own eyes. We are very subjective and we look at our things differently. We normally see our imperfections reflected in others, projecting our defects on to them. An examination of conscience can help us to see things better. Like the blind man in the Gospel, we ask Jesus to let us see. Many times we don’t want to see; out of sight, out of mind. The first step to change this is to see. If we don’t see, we don’t move. Confession helps us to see things better. We all have the experience of the clear mind a good confession brings. To be more objective we should be open to correction, ready to apologise, and try to always say the truth. If we have the habit of lying, we reach a moment when we don’t know where the truth is.
In the second comparison Jesus points out how the good tree normally produces good fruit. Are we producing the fruit God wants us to produce? Maybe we are generating a lot of leaves, good foliage, but no fruit. We could be people of many words, but few deeds. It is easy to talk, especially when we have so many meetings, but we can be very passive. A good person out of the store of the goodness of his heart produces good fruit. What is important is our interior disposition.
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Magnanimity
Today’s Gospel reading reaches a higher level. Jesus is always lifting us up to a higher level of perfection. It is a reminder of the universal call to holiness. We are all called to become holy; it means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is a central message of the Second Vatican Council. We are not called just to be a good Christian, but to become holy. It is not a matter of saying hundreds of rosaries or being involved in the activities of the parish, but to have a new heart, the heart of Jesus, to let Jesus shine through us. Can I become holy? No, it’s impossible. But God can make us holy. Why? Because he can do impossible things. How? We need to desire it above everything and use the means to receive his grace: Communion and Confession, prayer, follow his will, behave accordingly, love everybody.
And here we come to the first message of today’s Gospel: Love your enemies. How can we do that? If it is hard to love the people we live with, how can we love our enemies. First, we shouldn’t have enemies; we should love everyone. But we are not a 100 Rand note that everybody loves. If people don’t like us it is not our fault. Our Lord is not asking us to like everybody but to love them. In the first reading we see King David respecting the life of his enemy, King Saul, who wanted to kill him. Twice he spared his life and the Lord was pleased with that.
Our Lord is asking us today to be magnanimous, to have a big soul, this is what magna anima means, a big heart where everybody fits in. The Gospel exhorts us to bless those who curse us, to pray for those who persecute us, to do good without expecting anything in return, to be merciful as your heavenly Father is merciful, to pardon everyone, to be generous without measuring and calculating. It means to have Jesus’ heart. It reminds me of Alexander the Great, also called Magnum, like the ice cream. Once a beggar asked him for alms. He ordered to make him Lord of five cities. The beggar answered dumbfounded that he didn’t ask for so much. Alexander responded: You ask as who you are, I give as who I am.
The temptation is to keep our hearts in a safe, with seven locks, not to get hurt. We have all been hurt, when we have given our hearts to someone else. The person who loves you, makes you cry. But then it becomes a heart of stone, a heart that doesn’t feel, insensitive to human suffering. The letter to the Hebrews reminds us: “If you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.” If you have placed your heart in Jesus, it cannot get broken, because it is in the right place. Saints have a tender heart, exposed to everyone, but it is defended because it is full of the real love, God’s love. Jesus gives us the right environment for our hearts to grow and expand.
The second thing Our Lord is asking us today is to offer the other cheek. A man went to a hermit and stole all his meager possessions. He allowed him to take everything. When he was leaving, the hermit ran after him with a basket he had forgotten, asking him to take it with him. It was the last thing the desert father possessed. When the thief saw his beautiful happy face, he returned everything to him, asking him for the happiness and freedom he possessed. We need to be ready to give everything to God. We cannot keep anything back. Everything we have comes from him.
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The Beatitudes
The readings of today’s Mass focus on trust. The first reading from the book of Jeremiah, compares a man who trusts in human beings with the man who trusts in the Lord. The first one is like a bush planted in the desert, dried and barren; the second one is a tree planted on the shore of a river, its roots sucking up water all year around and producing magnificent fruits. The Responsorial Psalm praises whoever leaves things in God’s hands: “Blessed are they who hope in the Lord.” The second reading from the letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians has the famous sentence of how crucial is Jesus’ resurrection for us: “if Christ has not been raised, your faith is vain.” How important it is for us to be witnesses of Jesus rising from the dead, and walking with us all the time, even in moments of trouble or difficulties, when it looks like he is not there.
We live in a society without hope in God. We have forgotten that we are pilgrims, travellers, and hope is a necessary companion to keep us moving. Peter Kreeft says that “we creatures of time are constantly moving into the future, and our eyes are usually facing forward. Hope is like headlights. It is not easy to drive without headlights in the dark.” Lack of hope is the death of a soul, making it difficult to get out of bed in the morning. Hope is represented as an anchor, the last thing you lose, what is helping you to be grounded. Hope is a virtue we don’t talk about very much.
We Christians believe in another life. That is why we are not too concerned about things here on earth and try to look forward to our encounter with God. People without hope in heaven have only eyes for the here and now; they would like to live for ever. There is a big push among multimillionaires to what is called transhumanism, spending a lot of money to try to download your brain into a computer. I wouldn’t like to live inside a hard disk for ever, waiting for somebody to format it. This life is frustrating and we all have in our hearts a longing for a perfect place, where we can live with God and the people we love for ever.
Today the Gospel reminds us of the Beatitudes. They give us hope of eternal life, connecting life on earth with future rewards. Beatitude comes from Latin “beatitudo”, which means “happiness”. They teach us the secret of how to reach happiness. Everybody wants to be happy, but we look it in places where true happiness does not exist, even going through the process of destroying our lives. Drugs give us a perfect example, of how people are trying to get that moment of bliss that can never be achieved, and we cook our brains along the way. We all have the experience of chasing things that we thought they were going to make us happy, and how we were always disappointed in the end.
The Beatitudes are paradoxes, ideas that seem to be going one way, but deep down they offer the opposite. They are difficult to grasp, a bit elusive, and we need to trust in the Lord that they are going to produce the fruits they promise. They reflect famous sayings like “less is more”, or “the more you give, the more you get”. Experience and common sense help us to discover the hidden truth of their wise reward. We all know that happiness goes through a narrow gate, climbing up an incline steep, while the road to perdition is wide and easy, going down like a run away train.
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Miraculous catch of fish
Today in the Gospel we have a beautiful scene full of lessons. We are at the lake of Gennesaret, surrounded by boats and nets. This is how we imagine Jesus, close to the water, on the shores of the lake, among fishermen. The scenery hasn’t changed much from Jesus time. He got into Peter’s boat, which represents the Church. The Pope is the captain leading us to a safe harbour. He is steering the boat and we are under his command. If we get out of the boat, or we try our own way, most likely we won’t reach heaven. We see Jesus in the Pope, the successor of Peter. The Church is a safe place, because Jesus is sailing with us, even though some times he looks like he is asleep. It has sailed for two thousand years and has weathered many storms.
Jesus told Peter to put the boat out a little from the land. Not too far, just a bit, to have some silence and solitude. We are in the world but we are not of the world. We cannot be too caught up with the things of this world. We can see the boat as our own life. Jesus entered in our life without asking permission; before we realised it, he was in. We are happy that he has chosen our boat. We cannot sail alone. If we do so, we are going to get lost. We have to make sure he feels comfortable, and he wants to stay. Let him handle the tiller to direct the rudder, so we have a smooth ride. When we try to control our lives we get into trouble. It is amazing how small the rudder is, compared to the boat, and how important it is.
Once Jesus stopped preaching, he gave Peter a strange command: “Put out into the deep.” Duc in altum. This is an expression John Paul II said many times. You can Goggle it. It was his password, his war cry, his motto. He wanted us to get out of ourselves, to plunge into the abyss, immerse ourselves in God’s life and not to be afraid of the open sea. It is a command Jesus had for all of us, and the Pope reminded us many times of our responsibilities. “And let down your nets for a catch.” Not just for an adventure, but to help God to bring people out from the polluted waters of this world, to the clear, pristine air of God’s grace.
Peter answered Jesus: “We have toiled all night and took nothing.” We all have many excuses: I’ve tried before, I’ve failed many times, it is crazy, you are out of your mind. The deep is challenging, unknown, dark, dangerous, risky. But, at your word I’ll let down the nets. I’ll trust you, I’ll obey you. What did Peter think? I don’t believe you, but to prove you wrong, I’ll let down the nets. We don’t need to be 100 % convinced. God can work with the little faith we have.
It appeared a great shoal of fish. It is the magnificence of God, his abundance and generosity. God always overdoes it. The nets were breaking, so they had to ask another boat to help them and both were filled to a sinking point. They must have caught all the fish from the lake. Can you imagine yourself in that boat, sitting on a bench, not being able to move surrounded by fish jumping up and down? Peter learned the lesson. Jesus hit him with his own weapon.
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Presentation of Our Lord
Today Jesus is brought for the first time to his temple, to fulfil the duties prescribed by the Jewish Law. He comes in his mother’s arms; he is too little to be able to walk. Joseph brings a pair of pigeons. They were a poor family and couldn’t afford a lamb. A poet says that because God couldn’t find poverty in heaven, he came to find it on earth. After all these centuries waiting for the Messiah, when he arrived, there was no party to welcome him. Only two people recognised him. God normally comes unnoticed; he likes to hide and disappear. We are the ones who need to look for him. We complain that he doesn’t appear to us. He doesn’t like to impose himself; he prefers to respect our freedom. He gives us enough signs for us to notice his presence.
How did Simeon discover Jesus? What did he see? We don’t know; but we know that Simeon in spite of being very old, he had a very young heart. He was looking forward to see the Messiah. And thanks to his hope in his faith he was going to meet him, his heart was full of love, and he had the right vision. His eyes discovered him among the multitude of babies brought by their parents to be rescued. Old people are normally grumpy, complaining about the past and making life unbearable to people around them. Simeon was the opposite; he was a sweet gentle man, of good humour, optimistic, full of life with bright dark eyes. He was looking forward to meeting God. We must have the same attitude. Every day that passes, we are one day closer to meeting him. Our Lord is coming. All we need to do is wait for him, standing up, walking towards him. Every night, before going to bed, when the priest prays the divine office, he repeats Simeon’s words: Nunc dimitis; let me go now in peace to encounter your presence.
We are jealous of Simeon: he took baby Jesus in his arms. Mary let him have the baby. Not many people managed to do so. We too ask her for this privilege. But she will ask us to wash our hands, comb our hair and clean our shoes. Maybe we need to go to confession first, forgive a grudge or to apologise to somebody about something we find difficult to recognise.
Simeon didn’t bring good news to the young couple. Till now all the announcements of the angels were full of joy and hope. After a month of silence, some of the questions they had about the future of this child were answered by Simeon: he was going to be a sign of contradiction. This baby was going to bring mixed feelings, suffering and joy, cross and glory, all at the same time. From now on, people won’t be able to remain indifferent at his passing. You either have to be with him or against him. To follow him is great, but it is going to bring together two extremes: a joy rooted on a wooden cross.
Simeon said something softly, in a low voice, only for Mary to hear: “A sword will pierce through your own soul.” She had sensed it already when the angel asked her to be the mother of God. It is something every mother finds out when they have a baby. Life brings sorrow; love fosters suffering. She began to experience the cross before her son. It was a prophecy that was going to find its consummation at Calvary. In the same way Jesus’ breast was pierced by a lance, opening his heart for us, Mary’s soul was going to be penetrated by a sword, for us to see her motherly love for us.
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Beginning of Luke's Gospel
We begin this new year with the Gospel of Saint Luke. He is the only evangelist to give his book a preface, where he describes why he has written the book: to provide an orderly account of the life of Jesus. Luke is the most prolific author of the New Testament: he wrote the longest Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. He was a Greek from Antioch, and he became the fellow worker of Saint Paul, remaining with him till his martyrdom. Some people say that he was one of the 72 disciples. Others say that he could have been one of the two disciples of Emaus, because he is the only one who relates this passage. His symbol is a bull, because he begins his Gospel with a sacrifice.
Saint Luke was a physician, a learned man, who wrote in a clean and cultured Greek, with a richer vocabulary than the other evangelists. In his Gospel he gives us more details about medical conditions; Saint Matthew, being an accountant, talks more about money; Saint John, a fisherman, about boats and nets. Saint Paul mentions Saint Luke in his letters with affection. He was his doctor and may have extended his life. He died when he was 84, a proof that he was a good doctor.
The accounts of the time describe Saint Luke as having a good, serene, elegant character; a mature man with a balanced personality. It reminds us of our own temper. Sometimes with our friends we can be very nice, but when we arrive at home or work, our face changes, becoming like a bulldog. We excuse ourselves saying that this is the way we are. We forget that we can either improve or get worse. Old people with time can become very grumpy. It is good to ask ourselves what makes us angry. Maybe driving, at work, at home, with a particular person, when we don’t get our way. It helps us to get to know ourselves and learn from experience.
In the first reading we saw the priest Ezra reading from the book of the law, to the people who had forgotten it, after so many years of exile in Babylon. He read from early in the morning till midday and people wept. They didn’t know how to read and Ezra had to read aloud, to engrave the law in their hearts. In the Gospel we see Jesus reading from the book of Isaiah when he went back to the synagogue of Nazareth, where he grew up and learned how to read the Scriptures. It could be a good new year resolution for us, to read the Bible every day or listen to a podcast.
Luke's Gospel is called the Gospel of Mary, because he has more references about her. He wrote his Gospel during his two years in Cesarea, accompanying Saint Paul when he was in prison. It is a good example for us of how to make a good use of our time. He managed to go to see Our Lady and interview her. Scripture scholars say that the scene of the Annunciationcontains Our Lady’s words, because, even though Luke wrote in Greek, the text shows its Hebrew roots. She was the only one who knew what happened. Tradition says that he was a painter, and he was the first one to paint Our Lady. There is one painting in Rome, an icon of our Mother in Saint Mary Major, attributed to Saint Luke.
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Wedding at Cana
Jesus’ public life begins with a wedding banquet, with a celebration. It is the beginning of the announcement of the good news. It this setting Jesus chose to manifest himself first as a Messiah. The apostles were happy to begin to follow Jesus to a wedding. They were afraid that they were going to go through the hardships of the disciples of John the Baptist. Jesus begins his public ministry bringing wine to us, something to cheer us up, a very cheerful message, the Gospel of joy. When Jesus comes to our soul, he always brings happiness in the long run. Psychiatrists say that good things happen to you depending on your attitude.
Cana in Galilee was probably what is now Kef Kenna, seven kilometres north east of Nazareth. Being so close, the couple would have been friends of the Holy Family. Because Saint Joseph is not mentioned, it means that he had already died. It is a popular spot to get married or to renew the marriage vows. You can see there some huge stone jars, very old, probably from that time, similar to the ones Jesus used to perform the miracle. There are some shops around where you can buy Jesus’ wine. I bought some wine, I wanted to use for a wedding; it was expensive but not of good quality.
Our biggest celebrations are normally weddings. We all love going to a wedding, where we celebrate married love, the most attractive human love. Weddings in the middle East used to last for few days, depending how rich the families were. In the course of the celebrations, relatives and friends would come to greet the newly-weds; even people passing through could join in. The whole town would be invited to. It was an occasion to eat things that they normally didn’t eat. This is why Jesus compares the kingdom of heaven to a wedding feast. It was a comparison which resonated with them. We are invited too, but we need to dress accordingly. Here on earth we are weaving our garments for heaven, where we are going to meet Jesus the bridegroom.
In the Old Testament God was the bridegroom and Israel the bride. The prophets used to complain that in spite of the fidelity of God to his spouse, she was unfaithful to him. Israel was compared to a harlot, betraying the love God had for her. Jesus presents himself as the bridegroom and his bride is the Church. At the beginning and the end of the Mass, the priest, who represents the Church, kisses the altar, which is the symbol of Christ. It is the bridal kiss of the bride to her spouse. In the parable of the foolish virgins a voice cries during the night: “The bridegroom is coming; come out to meet him!” We need to be ready, with our lights burning, our eyes open, our ears listening, to welcome him.
Cana and Calvary are connected in a mysterious way. They are at the beginning and end of Saint John’s Gospel, and in both we find Mary our Mother, emphasising the role of Mary in our redemption. These are the only two places where John calls her “Mother of Jesus”. Also Jesus in both scenes calls her “woman”, reminding us of the parallel between Eve, our first mother in the flesh, and Mary, our first mother in the spirit. If Eve was the cause of our downfall, Mary is the beginning of our salvation.
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Epiphany
The three wise men saw the star and followed it. This is the story of their lives, of their encounter with God, of their place in history. It is an amazing one; by following a star, they met a baby, and they discovered the Messiah. Humanly speaking it was crazy. Why did a passing star provoke that reaction on the Magi? How do you follow a star? Where or when is it going to stop? These are questions that belong to our lives. We too discovered a star, we are following it, and hopefully it will lead us to Jesus. It is crazy, but it is a divine adventure.
How do we discover the star? Good question. It is not easy. The three wise men dedicated their lives to astronomy, to the study of the sky, looking for clues to their own existence. Man has always looked at space to try to understand where we come from and where we are going to. We too need to spend time discerning the signs, the sparks, the footprints, God has placed in our way, to discover his will for us, to find our path, to hoist our sails towards the right wind. It is a work of prayer, contemplation, silence and reflection.
It is not enough to discover the star, but we need to follow it. Many people see the star but they don’t do anything about it. Others begin to walk, but they get discouraged; they stop and they go back. It is not easy to persevere on an unknown quest. We don’t know how long it is going to take, where it is going to finish, if it is really the right path, or we lost our way; perhaps we even missed an important crossroads. Sometimes the road goes through a desert, through a rough terrain, across wild plains, deep gorges, dense jungles. Other times there are robbers waiting for us, to attack us when we are distracted; there are beasts ready to devour us, unexpected rivers in flood, precipices that stop us from going ahead, fires raging from the bush threatening our path, sand storms, plagues of locusts and lightning strikes. From time to time, the star disappears behind the clouds and we think she is not there anymore.
As Pope Francis says, “Jesus allows himself to be found by those who seek him.” We know that we are not alone, that he travels with us, even though we don’t see him. To seek him we need to leave behind whatever slows us down; to travel light, we cannot carry much weight, to be able to keep pace with the star; and to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon, without getting distracted with the marvellous things we come across in our way. The devil is trying to slow us down, to get us stuck in the mud, to deviate us from the right direction, to turn us back to where we came from. If we persevere, we will find him. Whatever happens, the star is always up there.
We arrive at the crib empty handed. We came naked from our mother’s womb and we leave without anything. Pope Francis’ grandmother used to say that the shroud we are going to be buried in won’t have any pockets. What can we give to baby Jesus when we arrive in his presence? We haven’t got much. All we can do is to offer ourselves. It is easy; a baby brings out the best in us.
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Holy Family C
There were three important feasts for the Jews, the Passover, Pentecost and the Feast ofTabernacles. Many Jews used to go to Jerusalem for one of these feasts. The Holy Family used to go for the Passover, the greatest of the three. Nazareth is just some eighty miles from Jerusalem. For the trip they used to go several families together; the journey took four or five days. Coming back to Nazareth, Jesus stayed in Jerusalem without the permission of his parents. They used to travel in two groups, one of men and another of women, and the children could go with either. Mary and Joseph thought that Jesus was part of the other group. It is easy to think that God is with us, but it is more important to ask ourselves if we are with God.
When they realised Jesus wasn’t there, they returned to Jerusalem. After three days, they found him in the temple. One day leaving Jerusalem, another returning, and on the third day, early in the morning, he was where he should be, at the temple in Jerusalem. For the Jews the temple was everything. It was where God was. Jesus wanted to be closer to his Father God, to spend time where he could feel his presence. Do we try to find the best place to encounter God? Do I know the fastest way to connect with Him? Have I found the best hot spot? It is important to have a desire to be with God, to find the peace and joy that only God can give us.
We can imagine the distress and anxiety of his parents. They were supposed to look after him and they lost him. Why did Jesus do that? He was twelve years old, the age when they were supposed to go to Jerusalem once a year. For us he was still a boy; for their society he was a young man. He wanted to teach them a lesson and to find answers to many of his questions. They found him talking to the religious leaders of the time. We too need to ask questions and find out the meaning of our lives, what we are here for.
Jesus’ mother complained: “Why did you do that?” He answered them, a bit perplexed: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” He must have put on that beautiful smile that his mother loved, just to soften his words. He told them that the temple was his place, that he came to earth to do the will of his Father. This should be our attitude in front of things that separate us from God. We should ask ourselves this question: Is this helping me to become closer to God? If the answer is in the negative, we should get rid of it. This should be the benchmark that measures everything we do.
The Gospel says that they didn’t understand him, but Mary kept all these things in her heart. She was pondering everything, trying to find out what it meant, what God wanted her to do. There are many things in our lives that we don’t understand, and many times we rebel and we get upset with God, because he is not doing what we want him to do. Better the attitude of Mary: to reflect on what all this means. God has a reason for everything and everything is part of his plan, immersed in the great scheme of things. We are just a little speck of dust in his universe. All we need to do is contemplate how God is acting in our lives.
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Christmas
During this Advent, in our quest for Jesus, we have been following the example of John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. They have led us to him. We have arrived at our destination. We have reached the center of our lives and the focus is a baby. Now we realise that baby Jesus is all that matters. These days of Christmas are days of calm and serene contemplation of baby Jesus. All we need to do is to look at him, to plunge into the mystery of God becoming man, admiring the mingling of humanity and divinity. Just that, to look at him, and nothing else. Trying to enter deeper and deeper, into the infinite abyss of God’s love for us, a bottomless pit of his majesty and power. And all this is concentrated in a little tiny baby.
Why did he have to come to us? He didn’t. But he wanted not only to live with us, but to become one of us, and go through the same things we are going through, except sin. And he is now as we were when we were born, just a baby. A baby that cannot open his eyes, doesn’t have teeth, he cannot utter a word, and he’s got his little hands closed. All he does is eat, sleep, cry and dirty nappies. He is completely useless, a hundred percent dependent on his mother. All he can take is his mother’s milk. A God so defenceless, that if you leave him alone, he would die. At this moment he cannot even smile. His face is red and he doesn’t have much hair. If we could open his eyelids, we would see his beautiful brown eyes.
And this baby is what we need to contemplate, even though he cannot look back at us; he is sleeping. It is a one way gaze, trying to learn from his professorial chair, from his cathedra, from his open book, the book of his life, his first lessons of his life on earth. He could have come to us as a grown up man, but he wanted to start from the beginning, because we are slow learners. We need hours of patient contemplation in front of the statue or a painting of him in the manger, suffering cold, or in his mother’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Two simple, important lessons we learn straight away: poverty and humility. He came like us, with nothing, and when he goes, his only possession is going to be the wood of the cross. And what about humility? Can you find a better example than God coming to us as a baby?
And now in front of this baby, what do we do? We don’t need to do much. What do mother’s do with their babies? They look after them, giving them attention, love, tenderness. Many of us we don’t know how to look after a baby, but we can give him plenty of love. Some people don’t know how to love. This baby can teach us how to do it, just hold him in your arms, being careful not to drop him. We drop him many times a day. We can also offer ourselves to him. A baby brings out the best in us. In front of him we cannot say no. We need to be ourselves. The first thing he tells us when we get closer to him: get rid of your fancy clothes; be yourself. We cannot pretend, show off or try to deceive him.
But maybe the best thing we can do is to sit down in a corner of the cave, out of the way, hidden in the shadows, and contemplate how Mary looks after Jesus. It is an amazingly beautiful scene. She tends him knowing that he is God and man. She teaches us how to deal with his humanity and his divinity. You cannot become tired of looking at the mother and the child. Many artists tried to catch a glimpse of it. It is all in our imagination.
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Fourth Sunday of Advent
After the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel left Mary, Saint Luke says that she set out in haste to a town in the hill country of Judah. Mary was in a hurry to fulfill the will of God. Even though God didn’t ask her directly to help her cousin Elizabeth, Mary understood immediately what God wanted her to do, and she didn’t waste time thinking about it. Joseph would have accompanied her, on a trip of three or four days, walking dangerous paths through the mountains, and would have asked her why her sudden change of plans. She couldn’t tell him about her own pregnancy, but she told him that her cousin was expecting. The Fathers of the Church saw in this episode an example of Mary’s entire life: a prompt, joyful obedience, to whatever God asked her. We need to learn from our Mother and be quick to fulfill God’s will. We cannot drag our feet. Once we see what God wants us to do, we should do it.
Another lesson we learn from the Visitation of Mary to her cousin, is her willingness to help others, even though she had to prepare herself for the birth of baby Jesus. She had plenty of excuses to postpone her trip, but knowing that Elizabeth was pregnant in her old age, and that she was already in her sixth month, triggered in her a quick reaction. When the Holy Spirit through many different ways, places on our heads the realisation of other people’s needs, we should follow the path of Mary, and be ready to give a hand. We cannot forget that we are happy when we give ourselves to others. We all have problems, but the best way to solve them is focusing on others. Most of our worries are created in our minds and they disappear when we use our talents for the service of others.
Mary brings Jesus to her cousin Elizabeth. She also brings Jesus to us. We are now in a time of waiting anxiously for Christmas, for the birth of Jesus in our soul. Mary fulfills her role of mediatrix, channel of all graces. The closer we are to Mary, the closer we are to Jesus. Having God in our hearts, we can share our faith with others. Mothers experience the blessing of giving birth to a new life for the world. We can also experience spiritual birth when we bring Jesus to others.
When Mary greeted Elizabeth, her baby leapt in her womb. Two babies met in a very strange way, in their mother’s wombs, and they recognised each other. Saint John couldn’t contain his joy and wanted to get out straight away. Six people were witness to this scene: two babies, two mothers, and two fathers, Zachariah and Saint Joseph. Theologians say that John was sanctified in his mother’s womb, in a way baptised by giving witness to who Jesus is. This is why we celebrate his birth. It is not easy to recognise Jesus passing by our lives, sometimes very hidden behind the cross. We ask today Saint John the Baptist to help us, to witness him and to leap with joy at this encounter.
Elizabeth began to praise our Mother full of the Holy Spirit: “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb.” We say these words every time we say a Hail Mary, many times without realising what we are saying. Let us too be witnesses of Jesus in our lives and bring him to others.
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Third Sunday of Advent
Today we can use rose vestments. Why? To express our joy because the Lord is coming. Today’s Sunday it is called Domenica Gaudete, because this is how its entrance antiphon begins in Latin: Gaudete, rejoice. It comes from Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. The Lord is near.” After two weeks of penance for preparation for Christmas, we take a break, a rest, and we look at the beautiful panorama that the ascent of mount Advent shows us: Jesus is almost upon us. When we climb higher, the air becomes fresher and we can see things more clearly. Today also we light the third candle, the rose candle on the Advent wreath. The first light of sun rise is rose. We try to see everything with rose colored spectacles, a more cheerful way of looking at things. You could almost say that God has this colour on his eyes.
What is the reason of our joy? The Lord is very near. He is closer than we think. We don’t need to walk far away to find him. We are waiting for him, he is walking towards us. If we don’t see him, we need to examine our conscience to see what are the obstacles between us and him. These are normally caused by our own pride and selfishness, two relics of original sin that grow into big bushes and trees, that hide Jesus from us. We need to prune them or cut them down; at least clear the undergrowth. Maybe a bushfire will do. But we need to be sincere and point out what separates us from God. It is not easy because we get attached to this vegetation; some of it has been there for a long time, and we think it is immovable, set in stone. But the presence of God can destroy any castle, crumble any fortification or melt down the most powerful iceberg. The love of God is so powerful, so hot, that nothing, but our will can resist.
Patrick Murphy, an Irish guy, died and went to his judgment. Because of a tsunami, there was a long queue of people to be judged. He could hear what Jesus was telling others. “I was hungry and you fed me; come inside. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; come inside. I was sick and you visited me; come inside. I was naked and you clothed me; come inside.” He realised that he never did these things: “I was always in the pub drinking Guinness and cracking jokes.” He was afraid when he faced Jesus. Jesus looked at the computer and said: Patrick, I was sad and you told me jokes, I was down and you made me laugh; come inside.
They say that the quotation in the Bible people search most is “Be not afraid!” You can find it in more than three hundred verses. This is what Jesus told the apostles, what angels say when they appear to men. These are the first words John Paul II said when he was elected Pope. We are afraid of ourselves, afraid of the future, of the unknown, afraid of failing, of something bad that could happen to us. Fear takes our joy out of us, paralyses us, it doesn’t allow us to trust God, to abandon things in his hands.
The closer we are to God, the more interior joy we have. It is a natural reaction of our make up: we are created for him. Therefore it is a logical conclusion of our search for happiness. We are constantly looking for him in the wrong places, and we find difficult to recognise our mistake. Why is that? Because those things are means or results of happiness, not the real thing. And because we are very earthly, and spiritual things normally don’t attract us. Today is a day to place our heart in the right place, close to Mary our Mother, cause of our joy, who is carrying the creator of the universe, the maker of all the things we like, the one who knows what we like and loves us with divine love.
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Second Sunday of Advent
Today we follow Saint John the Baptist in our way to Bethlehem. He is going to lead us to baby Jesus. But his path is not going to be easy for us because it goes through the most difficult terrain, the desert. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit to retire into the wilderness. There he devoted himself to prayer and to live a penitencial life, where he could meet God without distractions from other people. Origen says that “he went into the desert, where the air was more pure, the heavens more open, and God more familiar, that till the time of his preaching was come, he might employ himself in prayer in the company of angels.”
During this time of Advent we need to follow John the Baptist to find our hermitage in the wildernes; a place where we can encounter the three s’s of the spiritual life: silence, solitude and simplicity. We are called to disengage our hearts from the ties of this world and to fix our eyes into what’s important. We are too caught up in the things of this earth and we need some distance to have the right perspective. By holy retirement, the fascination of its enchantments disappears. We have the experience that to seek happiness in the world is like looking for flowers among thistles; their beautiful colours only prick and wound our hands.
The most difficult sound is silence. We are surprised when we can hear nothing. It troubles us, surprises us, we stop to hear the absence of sound. It happens when we are surrounded by nature, far away from society, and we can only hear the sound of the wind. The most expensive head phones to buy are the ones which can cancel every noise. We need to shut down one by one the noises that separate us from God. Some of them are very difficult to identify. They are like ringing in our ears, not knowing where they come from, or what produces them.
Solitude is related to silence but it is not the same. It is difficult to handle when we are not use to it. Farmers and people working in the bush love it. We are not used to being alone, not having anyone to talk to, without being able to rub shoulders with others. We are afraid of loneliness, having fear of being left out, looking to be among people in a shopping center for example. To have quality time with God we need solitude, recollection and time to be alone with him.
The last s we learn from Saint John is simplicity. Saint Jerome says that “he lived in the desert, and disdained to behold other things with eyes which coveted to see Christ. His raiment was coarse, his food locusts and wild honey; all of which are conducive to virtue and continence.” We don’t need much to live with. We create for ourselves thousands of necessities and we complicate our lives. Detachment from things gives is the true freedom to follow Jesus more closely.
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First Sunday of Advent
Today we begin a new liturgical year. It is a new beginning, where we walk again through the life of our Lord Jesus Christ. Why do we need to tread on his footsteps every year? Because once is not enough. We human beings need to be reminded of important things over and over again, because we forget or because it takes us a long time to grasp its full meaning. That’s why companies need to keep advertising their brand names, with a logo to remember their products. The liturgical year is like a spiral where we run around our Saviour, every lap a bit closer to him. Or like a meteorite circling around the sun, being attracted by its gravitational force, until one day it will be sucked into its fiery core. Hopefully one day we will be ready to jump into the immensity of God.
It is a reminder of our travelling nature. We are pilgrims on this earth. We come from God and we go back to him. We would like to find our home here, but we are not made for this world. We keep trying to build our permanent nest here. We would like to stop time, thinking that here below things won’t change or they are going to last for ever. We are constantly changing, in the making, getting better or getting worse. We are born as babies and eventually we will become old and frail. Our bodies reminds us of our fleeting nature, our growing and diminishing.
Advent means coming. It is a reminder that we are going and Jesus is coming to pick us up. We need to be ready to go to the place God has prepared for us. We are travellers, pilgrims, wanderers. We are people from a different world, displaced, refugees, migrants from a foreign land. Our time here is a preparation for eternity, our final destination. That’s why we need to travel light, with a quick pace, with our eyes fixed on our goal, not to miss it.
In the Middle Ages people used to go on a pilgrimage, either east, towards the Holy Land, or west, to Saint James’ tomb, a very long trip that lasted months or even years. It was a way to fulfill a promise, for penitential reasons or to find the meaning of one’s life. Nowadays around two hundred thousand people every year follow the Camino of Santiago, for many different reasons. All of them come back changed, by the mere fact of spending few days just walking. We have lost the sense of walking; we now drive or fly. We talk more about being fulfilled, developing our carees, achieving our personal goals. These pilgrimages remind us of our human condition, the important journey all of us are embarked on. What is important is not what we do, or what we possess, but that we keep walking towards our final destination. The way shows us who we are.
Mary, Miriam in Hebrew, means star of the sea. In the same way sailors used to orient themselves during the night on high seas by looking at the stars, we can look at our Mother, the bright star that leads us during the journey of our lives, through the treacherous passages of our trip, back to a safe and secure haven, in Jesus Christ.
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Pontius Pilate
Today the Gospel brings to us the conversation between Pilate and Jesus about his kingship. Pilate was the governor of Judaea for ten years, the time of Jesus’ passion and death. His name appears in the Creed to place Jesus in a particular time of history. Tradition says that he became a Christian and died a martyr. We don’t like kings in our present time. We either see them as oppressive or irrelevant. In our individualistic world, we are critical of authority. We don’t want to be told who we are, we prefer to choose who we want to be, and decide what is right and wrong for ourselves. We Christians belong to Jesus‘ kingdom because he wanted us to be baptised, but we need to choose him.
Jesus said to Pilate that his kingdom is not of this world. What sort of kingdom are we talking about? The Preface for today’s Mass gives us some of its qualities: a kingdom of Truth and Life, a kingdom of Holiness and Grace, a kingdom of Justice, Love and Peace. He rules from the cross. He was crowned with thorns, dressed in a purple rag, and given a reed for a scepter. His throne is a piece of timber, his jewels are three nails, his chalice full of vinegar. His soldiers, the apostles, have deserted him, running away, leaving him alone. Normally kings send their armies to war to die for them; Jesus on the contrary, died for each one of us.
Because it is a kingdom not of this world, it will last for ever. All human kingdoms and empires, all cultures and nations, all big companies and corporations, have or will pass away. Jesus’ reign will reach eternity, his rule is everlasting. Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega, God from God, light from light, true God from true God. He is Lord of lords, King of kings, Emperor of emperors. His kingdom is supreme, over all peoples, universal, embracing everything, eternal, it will last for ever. It is spiritual, over angels and men. And Jesus is asking us if we want to be part of it.
There are only two kingdoms: either his kingdom or our kingdom. His kingdom frees us from the things that enslave us. Our kingdom is ruled by tyrants. It is the tyranny of fear, guilt, hurt, resentment, envy, shame and insecurity. Fear paralyses us. Guilt makes us walk backwards. Hurt and resentment lead us to avoid people. Envy produces sadness in front of the good of others. Shame pushes us to hide in the cave of our pride. Insecurity leads us to hate ourselves. What are the real tyrants that are ruling now our lives? What are our addictions? Jesus is the only one who can free us from these tyrannies, and gives us the freedom and the glory of the children of God.
In the Cathedral of Seville, there is a royal chapel where Saint Fernando is buried. An image of Our Lady presides over the chapel, sitting on her throne, with the child Jesus on her lap. Her title is Queen of Kings. On top of the image there is an inscription, engraved in silver that says: Per me reges regnant. Kings rule through me. She is the Queen Mother, Regina Pacis, Queen of Peace. We pray for peace in our country. We pray for peace in our hearts.
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Second coming
We are now to the end of the liturgical year where we get these apocalyptic Gospels, which talk about the end of times. Apocalypse means unveiling, to lift the veil and to reveal what is going to happen, what is behind the curtain that separates us from eternity. We know that Jesus is going to come back one day, every day a bit closer, to end our time and to begin his everlasting Kingdom. Next Sunday we close the liturgical year with the feast of Christ the King. In the creed we say every Sunday: “He will come again in his glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” We use the word Epiphany, appearing, or Parusia, coming, the second Advent. It is a Christian and Muslim belief.
The early Christians thought it was going to happen during their life time. So much so that Saint Paul had to tell them to keep working and not become lazy, just waiting for everything to disappear. For us it is not as important as for them, because after two thousand years, we are still waiting. Personally I think that first we need to colonise the whole universe. A lot of people have predicted this event and have failed. In every generation we have prophets of doom. We have a desire to know the future, what is going to happen, but we Christians know that our future is in God’s hands, and he tells us what we need to know. Prior to his coming there will be amazing signs, the Antichrist and natural disasters. Everything will be destroyed; there will be a new heaven and a new earth. We shouldn’t be too concerned about our planet because one day it will disappear.
We talk about the three comings of Our Lord: the Incarnation, when the Word became flesh; our personal meeting with God, when we die; and the second coming of Jesus. The first one was hidden to the public eyes, our personal one is unexpected, and the third one will be amazing. November is a month when we bring to our consideration our departure, events that we don’t normally think about, the last things, eternal truths, the other life.
Jesus said that he had to go and prepare a place for us. He is coming back to pick us up, to take us to his place, to be with him and with the people we love for ever. We don’t normally think about the hour of our departure. It is the only thing that is going to happen to us for sure, every day a bit closer, and it is what gives meaning to our lives. We think that it is very far away from us. The thought of death brings to the fore what is really important in life, and makes all the artificial things disappear.
Jesus in the Gospel is constantly reminding us to be ready, to watch out, to be on guard. He says that he will come like a thief in the middle of the night, unexpectedly, for us to render an account of the talents he gave us. We are not ready because we are still here. This November we have another opportunity to prepare ourselves to face our personal encounter with Jesus Christ. For others it is the end; for us it is the beginning. Jesus dying for us has taken away the sting of death, and opened the gates of heaven. We can say with joy like the early Christians: Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.
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The widow’s mite
Today the readings of the Mass present to us two widows. In the first reading a widow from Elijah’s time and in the Gospel a widow going to the temple. Widows had a hard life, with no husband to look after them, and it was especially tough if they didn’t have grown up children. Both were generous, giving out of their poverty the last resources they had. And both got much more than what they expected. Elijah’s widow was going to die with her son and received food for the whole year. The widow in the temple was praised by Jesus for just two copper coins. Maybe she found a fortune when she went back home.
Jesus sat with his disciples in the temple opposite the treasury, looking at the people bringing their donations, some of them putting in a lot of money. It was a big show, watching the rich Jews carrying big bags of gold and silver coins, dropping them into the treasure, hearing the metal sound of the coins going down the hole. The temple treasury was situated in a highly visible location, to encourage people to be generous. We love showing off, drawing attention to our good deeds. But nobody noticed a poor widow dressed in black, who dropped in only two little copper coins, without making any sound. Only Jesus knew of her generosity, because he can look into the depths of our hearts. When she was leaving without drawing attention to herself, Jesus called his disciples and gave them a graphic lesson, pointing out to them her heroic deed.
The rich gave to God their left overs; the poor widow gave everything she had. Jesus was moved by her generosity, and told his disciples that she had put in more than all of them together. The rich had their reward on earth; the poor widow had her’s waiting in heaven. Saint Josemaria says: “Didn’t you see the light in Jesus’ eyes as the poor widow left her little alms in the temple? Give him what you can: the merit is not in whether it is big or small, but in the intention with which you give it.”
We win Jesus’ heart through our generosity. There is an old saying that God is won over by the last coin. The Kingdom of God is priceless but at the same time it costs whatever you have down to the last penny. If the bottle of wine is not full, the air turns the wine into vinegar. We came to this world naked, without anything, and we are going to leave in the same way. You cannot take anything with you unless you give it to God. What you give to God you’ll find it in the other life; if you keep it you lose it.
God always asks first. It puzzles us, thinking that he has everything and he should be the one offering his graces to us, instead of being the one always asking things from us. He wants to give himself to us, but first we need to make room for him. The more we give, the more we get. Mother Teresa used to say: “You have to give till it hurts. Then you’ll be happy.” We cannot outdo God in generosity. Once a beggar asked Alexander the Great for alms. He commanded to make him Lord of five cities. The beggar was dumbstruck: “I didn’t ask for so much.” Alexander answered: “You ask as you are; I give as I am.” He was great, great was his generosity. We are like little children who carry in their pockets their treasures: a piece of glass, a stone, a broken figurine. Even though we don’t have much in comparison with what God has to offer, we are attached to our little coins. Give them to Jesus as the poor widow did.
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Love of neighbour
We are travellers, pilgrims on this earth. We come from God and we are going back to him. Today Jesus in the Gospel tells us what are the two most important commandments for us to follow, to reach the kingdom of heaven: to love God above everything and others as we love ourselves. They are the summary of our Christian faith. Today we can check if we are following them. They are not easy to fulfill. We normally love ourselves first, then others, for what they can do for us, and then God, just in case he exists. We should try to turn things around. Once we have our priorities right, we know we are on the right path, going back to our Father’s house.
Can we love our neighbor as we love ourselves? Is this possible? Of course it is possible. God doesn’t ask us to do anything that is impossible. It is a selfless love, the love everybody would like to experience. It is the love of a mother who loves her children more than herself. Because they were very close to her, part of her life. She carried them for nine months. There are other similar kinds of selfless love. A soldier who gives his life for his country, or a martyr who dies for Christ. We have the example of Saint Maximilian Kolbe, who changed places with another man in a concentration camp to die instead of him. A little girl told her uncle, a priest just ordained, her hidden secret: I love you more than I love myself. People sometimes risk their lives to save their property, their pets, the things they love.
Both commandments are related. The more you love God, the more you love others. God pushes us towards our neighbour. We can even say that we love others with the love God gives us. Our love of God helps us to see others as parts of ourselves, as our brothers and sisters. It works both ways. The more you love your neighbour, the more you love God, and the other way round. They are two sides of the same coin. We have the example of the saints, who give us lessons in how to love others.
Nosce te ipsum, know thyself; it was a maxim inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi. There should have been another one: Ame te ipsum, love thyself. We see in our society nowadays many people who hate themselves. They don’t like what people see in them and would like to be different. Social media often fosters jealousy, when people show only an ideal image of themselves. If you hate yourself, you normally hate others. How can you love your neighbour as yourself, if you don’t like yourself? But what do we have to do to learn how to love ourselves? Look at God who is Love and loves us more than anybody else. God has created us the way we are and loves us from the beginning: he wants us to exist. Our self love comes from the love he has for us. A baby becomes conscious of himself when he is aware of the love his mother has for him and becomes his own person.
We need to discover the love God has for us. Once we are aware of God’s love, we can easily give ourselves to others. Bishop Barron often repeats the idea that love is to seek the best of the other. We forget that we have been created to love more than being loved. We are happy when we love others in the way they want to be loved. But how do we experience God’s love, if he is not doing what we ask of him, and makes us suffer? This week we read during Mass a famous saying from the letter of Saint Paul to the Romans: everything works for the best for those who love God. We use a Latin expression: Omnia in bonum. When we love God above everything, we know that what happens to us is the best for us, that he is in control.
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All Saints
Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.
The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.
What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.
Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.
We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of Jesus Christ. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”
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Bartimeus
Today we come across Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, a blind man, outside the city of Jericho. They say that Jericho is the oldest city in the world still functioning. Timaeus must have been a well known person. His son was begging for money at the road side. We are like Bartimaeus, blinded to the spiritual things, sitting on the road side of life, waiting for Jesus to pass by, begging for help. He heard a multitude coming out of the city and asked what was happening. Blind people rely completely on their hearing. We too also need to hear Jesus passing by, distinguishing his footsteps among the cacophony of sound that is surrounding us. When they told him that it was Jesus the prophet, he began to cry out at the top of his voice: “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me.”
It is similar to the famous Jesus’ prayer, used mainly in Eastern Christianity, which through a constant repetition, becomes like breathing, a ceaseless prayer. It contains in a nutshell all that we need to ask: Jesus, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner. During Mass we use a similar expression: Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. Bartimeaus was shouting aloud, so much so that many rebuked him, telling him to be quiet. They couldn’t hear what Jesus was saying. But he cried out all the more, knowing that this was the opportunity of his life. We too need to repeat this prayer with persistance, against the secular environment which is surrounding us, and the people trying to shut us down. Our perseverance is a sign that Jesus is hearing us.
Eventually the Lord called Bartimaeus. He jumped up full of hope, leaving his cloak behind, the piece of cloth that kept him warm him up during the winter nights. We should be ready to jump too, when we hear our name: “Take courage, Jesus is calling you.” But also we should let go of our cloak, our attachments, getting out of our comfort zone, leaving our sinful life behind us. It sounds a bit like a gamble, but we need to trust Jesus, burning our boats, leaving our old self behind.
Jesus asked Bartimaeus a strange question: What do you want me to do for you? Jesus knew that he was blind and he wanted to recover his sight. God knows what we need, but he wants us to ask for it. It happens the same with parents; they know what their children need but they want them to say it. Do we really know what we need? Most of the time we ask for things we don’t need. We long for promising careers, more wealth, better health, to become famous, to be honoured. Deep down we all want to be happy. God always knows what we need. We should let him decide: Lord, give me what I need!
Bartimaeus, opening wide his eyes, looking at the horizon, asked what all of us should ask: Lord, let me see. Domine ut videam. This is a cry Saint Josemaria said for many years, when he sensed that God was asking him for something he didn’t know. It made him very docile to God’s will. We also want to see with the eyes of the faith. We want to discover the world of spiritual riches hidden to our earthly eyes. The first thing Bartimaeus saw, when he recovered his sight, was Jesus’ face: the amazing countenance of the Son of Man, the most perfect image of God. The Gospel says that he followed him on the way. Once you discover the face of Jesus, you don’t want to leave him. Lord, let us see your face!
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The sons of Zebedee
The readings in the past few Sundays come from chapter 10 of Mark’s Gospel. We see Jesus going towards Jerusalem, walking with his disciples, talking to them, taking advantage of this walk by forming them. Jesus is also walking with us and we need to be aware of his presence. We are accompanying him towards the heavenly Jerusalem. They sat down to rest and the sons of Zebedee took advantage of this moment to ask something they wanted to ask. In Matthew’s Gospel it is their mother, Salome, who asks. James and John, who Jesus nicknamed Boanerges, sons of thunder, were with Peter the three beloved apostles. They had a special place in Jesus’ heart. We too could be part of this group of Jesus’ close friends.
They asked for the best two positions of power in his kingdom. This is what it means to sit at the right and the left hand side of the king. Suddenly everybody stopped talking, listening with big ears to what Jesus had to say. Thanks to their special friendship with Jesus, they could snatch the two top spots. Not too long ago they were discussing among themselves who would be the greatest in Jesus’ kingdom. We all would like to be famous. We think that we are better than we are, and we feel underestimated. It is amazing what people do to get noticed by others, to get more clicks, to appear on the news: go on a diet to lose weight, exercise in the gym to get fit, undergo beauty operations, inject ink under the skin for tattoos, pierce their body parts, dyeing their hair, editing their photos for Instagram.
Jesus answered them with a question: Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink? Can you follow me through the same things I am going to go through? They didn’t know what was going to happen to Jesus. They thought he was going to be a new leader for Israel, who was going to bring honour and glory to the Jews. We know what happened and we know also that he wants us to follow him carrying our own cross. At the end, at Calvary on his right and left hand side were two thieves. For our sins we too have the right to be there. We hope we can follow the path of the good thief.
They answered both at the same time, lifting their heads up, their eyes full of pride: we can! Jesus liked their disposition, their big heart, their ambition. But he wanted to bring them down to reality: it is up to my Father to give away these places. The same happens to us. We think that we can, that if we want, we can follow Jesus. But we have the experience that on our own we can’t; we are falling down over and over again all the time. But with him, everything is possible.
Once Jesus denied the two top spots to the sons of Zebedee, the others got upset with them for trying to jump the queue. Jesus took advantage of this opportunity to give them a lesson: whoever wants to be first, must be last. This is the Christian path. It is not a matter of power and control, but of serving and giving our lives for others. To follow our Master who came not to be served but to serve.
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The rich young man
Today in the Gospel we meet a fellow who we call the rich young man. We don’t know his name. All we know is that he is rich and he must be young, because he runs towards Jesus. He was in a hurry as young people always are. He must have been a good looking guy. All of us would like to be young, rich and beautiful. If we are young in our spiritual life, we can run towards God. Once we grow older, we begin to drag our feet. Some scholars think that he could be Saint Mark, who ran away three times from the Lord, here, when he was following Jesus at the garden of olives and during the first apostolic trip of Saint Paul. It gives us hope, we that have run away so many times from Jesus.
The fellow asked the most important question in life: What do I have to do to make it to heaven? It is a question we need to ask Jesus from time to time in our prayer: Am I on the right path? Imagine one morning, when you look at your sleepy face in the mirror, you see Jesus’ face. What would his expression be? Smiling, pensive, sad, worried, upset, happy? A spiritual author says that we need to face Jesus at least once a day, just to look at him in the eyes. People nowadays don’t want to ask this question. All they ask is: What do I have to do to become successful, famous, fulfilled, cool, sexy, rich? We should ask about the meaning of our lives now, not when we are almost dead. It is an important question because the answer conditions our present and future happiness.
Jesus answered him: fulfill the commandments. He responded: I do. He was a good guy. The Gospel says that then Jesus looked at him and loved him. When you look at Jesus, you see yourself as you are, and you experience God’s love. Jesus saw he was ready, had a good heart, and asked him for everything: sell all that you have and follow me. That’s the way Jesus loves us, asking something of us. The more he loves, the more he asks for. It is a dangerous question to ask Jesus: What do you want from me? It is very dangerous if we give him a blank cheque, a free credit card. We are afraid he is going to take it. Deep down it is a silly fear, a lack of generosity. We need to be convinced that whatever God is asking of us now is the best for us.
He went away sad because he had many possessions. The sadness of not being generous with God. The contrary of the joy of giving. Jesus hits the nail on the head. When we ask Jesus, he tells us straight away. That’s why we are often afraid to pray; we don’t want to face Jesus. There is always something we are attached to, an obstacle to our happiness, something that separates us from God. Why are we waiting to give it to him? Young people nowadays don’t want to talk about commitment; they are afraid of giving themselves. Why this fear? Too many options, fear of changing their minds, looking for a tangible sign, too much pressure to succeed. It is not easy to compete with the role models we see in social media, where everyone looks perfect.
I imagine the rich man years later, not so young, sitting on the veranda of his farm, looking at his possessions, while Christianity was all over the known world and thinking: I could have been one of the first ones. The real Jesus asked me for everything and I swapped it for few acres of land.
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Matrimony
In the first reading we see that at the beginning God created Adam, the only human being. Adam didn’t need anybody else because he was with God. But God thought he needed a companion to begin to generate other human beings. And then, transforming Adam, he created Eve, and marriage began. In the book of Genesis God reminds us that in marriage men and women become one flesh. From the beginning we were created to become one with our spouse and bring children to the world. Human love is beautiful and great, but we cannot forget that it is a reflection of divine love, the real love we are created to experience here on earth, and for ever in heaven. To go through this life we need the support of friends and relatives, and specially in marriage, the help of a spouse.
Marriage is designed to become one, body and soul. It is easy to become one, physically, but it is not easy to become one spiritually. Sometimes it takes the whole life to achieve this goal. In marriage spouses give themselves to each other. It means that you don’t belong to yourself, but you belong to the other person. From then on you need to think in plural, asking this question: What my spouse wants me to do? When both spouses think in this way, marriage is great. The problem appears when one or both are still thinking in the singular, when they think what the other can do for me. This should be the goal for everybody who loves another person and wants to get married.
In the Gospel Jesus reminds us that marriage is till death do us part. What God has united, men cannot break it. Society doesn’t think in this way. When you know that marriage is for life, you work to protect your marriage, to defend it against all its enemies. Modern life has many enemies against the unity of matrimony. Why is marriage for life? When people want to get married they think it is for life, but many times they change their minds afterwards. We should have two marriages, A for life, and B temporarily. But people don’t want to have option B when they get married. Marriage is for life because of two reasons: for the children and for the good of the spouses. Children need a stable environment to grow up happily. It is good for the spouses because they help each other, specially during old age.
Nowadays we have forgotten that sex is creating children. We emphasise a lot what is good for spouses, but we have left the children behind, and this makes marriages break up. Both are the two ends of marriage, and both are interrelated. They are the two sides of the coin. Children will enrich their marital relationship, and the love of the spouses will benefit their children.
The other quality that is very much threatened in marriage today is fidelity. It is one of the most difficult things to live nowadays. It is too easy to be unfaithful. Lack of fidelity breaks marriages. We think we can play with fire, but sooner or later we get burned. Let us pray for our marriages, the foundation stone of our families.
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Temptations
Today in the Gospel Jesus warns us of what makes us sin, causes us to lose heaven and sends us to eternal damnation. The devils hate hell, the place God has created for them, and try with all their might for us to follow their fate. We must not be naive about the possibility of losing our soul. We don’t see temptations but we do feel them all the time. We do what we shouldn’t be doing and we know it. There are things that are not good for us and make us lose our happiness.
We don’t like temptations but in themselves they are indifferent. They are good if we win, they are bad for us if we fall. Jesus allowed himself to be tempted, to give us an example of how to fight and to resist them. We pray every day in the Our Father: “And lead us not into temptation.” We don’t pray to get rid of temptations, but not to fall into the traps that the devil places constantly in our way.
If God allows them, it means that deep down they are good for us. They test our virtue, we show God that we love him, that we put him first above other things. They help us to mature, to become stronger, to get to know ourselves, not to trust in our own strength but to rely more on God’s help. It is a bad sign if we are not tempted; it means that we are lost and the devil isn’t interested in us. Trees grow stronger in open conditions, when they are exposed to the high winds. Soldiers get more experience and climb higher in their careers in time of war. Planes have to take off against the wind. We are tested in times of trial.
We know that God won’t allow the devil to tempt us above our strength. We always have the necessary graces to win, to resist temptations, to come out successfully. Saint Paul asked three times to get rid of a thorn he had in his flesh, and three times God answered: “My grace is good enough for you.” The question we need to ask ourselves is a simple one: What do I really want?
There is a famous story about Oscar Wilde walking very slowly on the street. Somebody asked him why he was walking so slowly. He answered with a smile: “I am flying away from my temptation and I want it to catch me.” What do you do when a big threatening dog comes towards you? Run away and climb a tree. There is a tale of a lion who was sick and invited the other animals to visit him in his cave. The fox didn’t want to go in. They asked her why was she so reluctant to see him. She answered: “I see animals going in but not one is coming out.” The lion found an easy way to find food during the time of sickness. Sometimes the best way to resist temptations is to run away from them, not to try to see how strong we are. We need to be sincere and recognise both, our weaknesses and the power of God.
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Arguing along the way
We normally imagine Jesus walking with his apostles through out the Holy Land, going from one place to another, meeting people, performing miracles. When you walk in a large group, there are people in front, some at the centre and others right at the back. Different conversations develop and you can hear a bit from here and there. You change groups and catch up with different people. Jesus could hear a heated discussion behind him. When they reached Capernaum and sat down for a rest, Jesus asked them: “What were you discussing along the way?” They remained silent, embarrassed. It was a normal conversation that had become heated, and they said things they didn’t want Jesus to hear about. It happens to us. Many times we say things we regret afterwards. It reflects what we have in our minds. It is good to make sure we keep our minds clean, empty of vain thoughts and silly things. Pride always causes us trouble.
They were discussing who was the greatest, who was going to be the most important man in Jesus’ kingdom. There was a bit of competition among them, a normal attitude in a group of men. It was childish, like kids discussing whose dad is stronger, or who earns more money. Jesus took advantage of this opportunity to teach them a lesson in humility. He could have become discouraged, looking at the limitations of his apostles, but he knew them well. He chose them in spite of their shortcomings. The same thing happens to us. Jesus knows us well and loves us with our imperfections. We are as silly and immature as the apostles were.
Jesus is a good teacher. He wanted to give them a graphic lesson. He took one of the children who were running around the house and placed him in their midst. The boy suddenly became shy being the center of attention. Jesus embraced him and calmed him down. We can see the face of the child and the smile of his mother, proud of being chosen by the prophet. It reminds me of a powerful photo of John Paul II hugging a child with AIDS in the USA. We envy the child Jesus chose, which tradition says became Saint Martial. With the child in his arms, showing us a graphic image, Jesus said these mysterious words: “Unless you become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
These are very strong words, with no way of interpreting them otherwise. He didn’t say “it will better for you”, or “I recommend it to you”, or “try this way”. He said “you will never”. He meant that to enter through the door of heaven you need to become small. To enter through the door of the Basílica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, you need to bow your head. You could say that purgatory is a way of diminishing, of getting rid of all the add ons that pride has managed to build on top. Jesus complemented these words with these ones: “If anyone wishes to be first, he shall be the last of all and the servant of all.” Imagine a race where the winner is the last one.
I remember some words from the book of Proverbs, written on the front of an altar close to the tabernacle: “My delight is to play with the children of men.” God loves playing with us and we need to learn to play with him. Many time his game is not of our liking. The only way to do it is being what we are on front of him: his children.
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Our Lady of Sorrows
Standing at the foot of the Cross is our mother. She is standing, not crying or fainting; she is there supporting her son with her presence. Silent tears run down her cheeks. And Saint John is also there, the celibate apostle, the one Jesus loved. Other women are there too. Women are stronger than men. Many artists tried to capture this moment but with different results. It is almost impossible to represent in a painting what happened at Calvary. Where are the other apostles? Where are the big guys? They said they were going to die for him. They ran away from the cross. We too are still running away from the cross. When are we going to stop running away? Today is a good day.
We can ask Saint John to help us to be at the foot of the cross, not to be afraid of the cross. We ask him to grasp our hand tightly and help us to remain there at this critical moment in human history. We are between him and Mary, hiding our face in our mother’s robes. We don’t want to see what’s happening. We can only hear.
The passion of Jesus is the passion of Mary. It is impossible to know what is happening through Mary’s heart. We can only imagine. Spiritual sufferings are more acute than physical ones. Why do we bring to our consideration something that happened 20 centuries ago? Because it is still affecting us. In eternity everything is present. We are the cause of their suffering, mother and son, united in their sorrow. The more we look at what happened at Calvary, the more we will try to avoid our sins. The more we love Jesus and Mary, the more we will avoid what is offending them. Our sins affect the people we love, the same way our love for them empowers them.
Jesus says: “Woman, behold your son.” It is not a detached expression calling his mother “woman”. He is reminding us that when Adam saw Eve for the first time, he called her “woman”, bones of my bones. Eve was the first woman. Mary is the second woman. The first one let us down because of sin. The second one was the cause of our redemption, of our healing. The Fathers of the Church loved this parallelism between Eve and Mary. Jesus called first his mother “woman” at Cana; at the beginning. Now it is the end. Then he changed water into wine; now the wine is becoming blood, Eucharistic wine. She still remembers that moment. For Jesus has to die for us; for her, to become our mother. She gave birth to him at Bethlehem without pain; now we are born at Calvary in a bloody and painful manner. We have caused her so much blood, so much suffering. This is what we are considering today, Mater Dolorosa, Sorrowful Mother, to foster our love for her: how much pain we have delivered to her, for her to deliver us. The more we suffer, the more we love. We contemplate her sorrows for us to react, to change our lives, to have a deep conversion. We cannot remain indifferent in front of her sufferings, specially knowing that she is there because she wants to be there, the fruit of her love for her son and for us.
“Behold your mother.” Now Jesus talks to us. First he asks his mother to look after us. Some people say that he wasn’t planning to give us his mother, but when he saw from the cross our feebleness, he decided to give her to us. Now he asks us to look after her. He gave us his treasure, his masterpiece. We are represented by Saint John. Nothing is left for him but the wood of the cross.
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Who do people say that I am?
In today’s Gospel as usual Jesus is walking with his disciples. Suddenly he turns around and asks them a question: “Who do people say that I am?” He wanted to know what people said about him, the gossip around town. “They said in reply, John the Baptist, others Elijah, still others one of the prophets.” People didn’t know who Jesus really was and they had all sort of opinions about him, mainly that he was a kind of a prophet. It is a bit like what happens nowadays. What people would say today about Jesus? A good guy, a guru, a religious leader, a political rebel, a terrorist. Only good Christians would say that he is the Son of God.
Then Jesus asked them a personal question: “But who do you say that I am?” It was a loaded question because they were still trying to figure out who Jesus was. They remained silent, not wanting to commit themselves, looking at each other to see who was going to respond. It is a real question for all of us. From time to time Jesus turns around and asks us directly: Who am I to you? It is a good question to ask ourselves during our prayer. People in love are always asking this question, checking how they stand in front of their lover. Who is Jesus for me? It is a question every human being should ask him or herself. The response is very revealing and has important consequences.
It is a similar question Saint Paul asked, when he fell from the horse, going to Damascus to apprehend Christians: “Who are you, sir?” This time it is the other way around, Paul asking Jesus. “The reply came, I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” I am the one you are following from afar, the one you sometimes deny, betray, mock, ridicule, ignore. From time to time Our Lord pushes us away from the high horse of our pride, selfishness, laziness, vanity, to wake us up, to bring us back to what’s important in life. He gives us the grace to recognize him, to know him better, to realise that he should be the centre of our lives.
What is the place of Jesus in my life? We know that he should be the one, that he is a must, he is the only way. What does Saint Paul say of Jesus, after his encounter with him? “For me to live is Christ.” “Live your life in him, be rooted in him and build upon him.” “It is no longer I, but Christ who lives in me.” At the end of the Eucharistic prayer, the priest lifts up Jesus and says: through him, with him and in him. With Psalm 26 we say: “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Jesus appeared to Saint Thomas Aquinas and told him: “Thomas, you have spoken well of me, what do you want?” He answered “All I want is you.“
Once Jesus appeared to Saint Catherine of Siena and asked her two questions in one: “Do you know who you are and who I am?” Both questions are interrelated. The more we know Jesus, the more we know ourselves. You cannot love what you don’t know. They say that if you live alone on a desert island for a long time, you lose the sense of your own identity. Jesus is the one who makes us more human, who gives us security, who is the foundation of our true happiness, peace and joy.
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Be opened
In the first reading of today’s Mass Isaiah prophesied that when the Messiah arrives, the blind will see, the deaf will hear and the tongues of the mute will be made loose. This is what happens in today’s Gospel, Jesus helping a deaf and mute man to hear and to talk. Normally the deaf don’t talk because they cannot hear themselves. The Gospel uses the Hebrew expression, Ephatha, “Be opened”, an imperative command, that mandates the body to obey the power of God. This expression is so peculiar of the Hebrew language, that they didn’t want to translate it.
This is what happens during the baptismal rite, when the priest says the Ephatha prayer, touching the ears and the mouth of the baby saying “may Jesus soon touch your ears to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith.” Sometimes the priest cannot touch the lips of the baby, because he has a dummy. This is what we are asking today from Jesus, as if we are still babies, to unblock our ears to listen to his voice, and to unbind our tongue not to be afraid to defend our faith.
In the same way our bodily senses help us to connect with the outside world, our spiritual senses allows us to touch the things of the other life. Somebody said that in heaven we are going to have infinite ways of reaching God. Saint Paul talks about the good aroma of Christ that attracts us to him. Psalm 23 reminds us to “Taste and see the goodness of the Lord.” Saint Thomas the apostle when he placed his fingers in Jesus’ wounds, he touched and believed. Five wounds, five senses. To perform the miracle Jesus introduced “his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.” We are body and soul. We need to feel the effects of the spiritual things, that’s why the sacraments have matter and form.
Hearing and seeing are the most important senses for us. We rely a lot on our eyes, but from the point of view of the faith, our ears are crucial. We have the Latin expression: Fides ex audito, the faith comes through the ear. Even though through our eyes we can grasp things quickly, people say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but through slowly listening to an argument we can reach deeper into things. When Saint Paul came back from his vision in heaven, he said: Audivi arcana verba, “I heard mysteries, which man is not allow to utter.” God speaks directly to our heart. He doesn’t need the internet. Those words are engraved into our being. We should adapt our ear to be able to hear God’s voice. Some people have the ability to hear sounds of a pitch, higher than normal. Dogs bark when an ambulance goes by. Christians can see and hear things others can’t. Elijah discovered God in a soft breeze, like a whistle.
The other spiritual sense we need to develop is our contemplative look. We need to ask him like the blind man: “Lord, let me see.” It is very human: if we don’t see, we don’t move. We ask Jesus today to open our eyes and to clean our ears, to see his beautiful face, to listen to his harmonious voice, to be able to touch his loving heart.
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True purity
Today Jesus in the Gospel talks about the importance of having a clean heart. This is the right condition to approach God and to have a good and happy life. It also helps us to have healthy and fulfilling relationships. Our heart is the centre of our desires, dreams and actions. You can measure the worth of a person through his or her heart. From a pure heart, plenty of good things can develop. On the contrary, all sort of evil things come from a heart which is not in the right place.
“Blessed are the pure of heart, they shall see God.” Today we ask God to purify our hearts to be able to see him, to contemplate things through his eyes. Christians should try to look at things from God’s perspective. A simple, transparent, childlike heart helps us to do so. This is why we love children. Holy Scripture says that their angels are constantly seeing the face of God. And Chesterton comments that angels can fly because they take themselves lightly.
A clean heart helps us to love ourselves and others with true love. People who are always upset, deep down they are not happy with themselves, because their hearts are made of stone; they are banging themselves constantly against a hard rock. A clean heart is soft, and enjoys the happiness of a pure love. Everybody wants to be loved by such a heart, by a selfless love. Our love of God helps us to love others as we love ourselves. Our society doesn’t understand that when we take God out of the picture, we become savages, animals, or like Hobbes says, a wolf against another wolf.
How do we keep our hearts clean? It is a good question. Looking at the things that come in and come out. It is easier to control what we absorb from outside, because our heart is crazy and we cannot predict what is coming out. But if we manage to make sure that our input is sound, most likely we will be able purify our heart and maintain our heart’s purity. It is not easy in our over sexualised society to do so, because we are constantly bombarded all the time with images, sounds and messages that want to distract us from God. But the more obstacles, the more help from God. We need to make sure we keep these things at bay, specially social media and entertainment.
Two more things. First silence. Pascal says that all the problems of the world would be solved if we manage to sit down for one hour in silence. A famous atheist blogger discovered God, when he spent one month off the net. We need to find spaces of solitude and recollection, practical ways to keep screens under control, like not having a tv in our bedroom, or leaving our phone or tablet in the lounge when we go to bed. The other thing is to make sure we cleanse our heart regularly, examining our conscience, not making excuses about our limitations, making acts of contrition when we sin, and going to confession more often. When our heart is dirty, we cannot see our way forward and we sit down on the floor feeling sorry for ourselves. When we accuse ourselves of having sinned in front of a priest, God gives us the grace to fight against our addictions.
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Hard teaching
Today we finish chapter 6 of Saint John’s Gospel with a sad ending. I prefer movies with happy endings. Life is hard, and we priest constantly touch human weaknesses. People bring to us their pile of rubbish and leave it with us. We try to take that manure and leave it at Jesus feet, for him to fertilise the soil. Movies help us to escape, to dream of another world, to hope of heaven, to know that there is a place where there is always a happy ending, where the good guy after killing all the baddies, walks away into the sunset, hand in hand with the most beautiful girl.
Jesus knew that the Eucharist was going to be a hard teaching. It produced debate, arguments, scandal and eventually people leaving him. As a result of that, the Gospel says that “many of his disciples returned to their former way of life and no longer accompanied him.” If we don’t believe in the real presence of the Eucharist, we go back to our former sinful life. We cannot remain indifferent in front of this amazing reality: either we stop following him or we become more attached to him. There is a lot of debate nowadays about giving Holy Communion to politicians who defend abortion. Jesus has come to comfort the afflicted, but also to afflict the comfortable.
Jesus looks at the disappearing crowd until he is left alone with the twelve. He turns around and asks them with a voice of disappointment: “Do you also want to leave?” We can see their sad faces looking at the multitude leaving in the distance, their hope of a great human success evaporating. They are thinking to themselves: “Why did he had to be so hard, so strong in his teaching? He could have softened his ideas a bit.” It is the same attitude in the world today, of so many in the Church. Jesus is continually asking us this question: Where are you going? Are you leaving me alone?
Simon Peter answers for us: “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” He puts in words what is in our minds: We haven’t found anybody else. Jesus is amazing. But we need more faith to believe in his teaching, to act accordingly, to behave in a way that we know that Jesus is present in the tabernacle. Every time we come here in front of him, we need to love him with the same question: To whom shall we go?
A famous Catholic apologist, recounts how he became a defender of the faith. He wasn’t happy with his life, didn’t like his job as a salesman, his marriage was in crisis and didn’t know what to do. He decided to spend one hour in front of the Blessed Sacrament every day for a month, in a nearby church at lunch time. He says that this changed his life. He decided to quit his job and try to sell the faith to the disappointed. Where do we go when we are in crisis, when things are not making us happy, when we are all over the place? Back to Jesus, back to the tabernacle. Here is where we find meaning in our lives, where we recover our peace, where we find true joy.
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The Assumption
Once a year we are allow to look at heaven through a peephole. Today our mother asks us to accompany her and to have a quick look to our destination, at least with our imagination. It is important for us to fix our eyes on heaven, to connect with eternity, because we are too concern about the things here on earth. Social media makes us to lose perspective of what’s really important and we forget that everything here is going to disappear one day. If we go back to read the news from last year, we‘d realise how relative current events are. The more our mind is up there, on the things that last for ever, the better.
Once a holy monk asked for the grace to see heaven. So he did persevere, that eventually he was allowed to go up to heaven for a few seconds. When he came back, he couldn’t recognise the monks in his monastery; two centuries had passed. We wouldn’t like to come back and not have anybody familiar to us. We are not ready for heaven, otherwise our whole attitude to life would change. We forget that in heaven there is no time, everything is happening at once. You are at the centre of a spinning wheel, where you can tap into the present, the past or the future. Everything is in the present time, because time doesn’t exist. It is difficult for us to imagine a place with no passing of time.
How can we be more orientated towards heaven? We can look at the things here on earth as sparks of heaven. They really are. Anything good here has nothing to do with the things there, but they can be reminders of what is to come. Do the pleasures of this life help me to remember heaven or do they incline me to hell? We can look at them either as pathways leading us to eternal life, or things that bog us down and distract us from the right path.
Saints enjoy very much the good things here on earth because they look at them with the perspective of eternity, with a measure that helps them to find the right balance. When they listen to music, it reminds them of the heavenly music, the one created by angels and sang by the saints. We normally depict angels with instruments, portraying them adoring the divine majesty. I like to see my guardian angel playing the drums, even though I don’t like heavy metal. When saints look at screens, they realise that are only screens, just a digital spark that goes through a computer chip. They know the real thing is behind the thin veil that separates us from the other side, like a tapestry, that can be seen from two sides. We are looking at the wrong side here and it’s difficult to figure out what is the main theme of the tapestry. We need to wait patiently to see the amazing forms and colours that God is weaving if we could only cooperate with him more.
When saints touch the smooth and soft surfaces of fabric, when they smell the beautiful scents of a kitchen, they are getting ready to taste the heavenly banquet promised to us by our Lord Jesus Christ. And they know that our five senses we have here to experience the physical world, and our way to learn the footprints of our creator, are nothing compared with the infinite number of spiritual senses, that we are going to come across, when Jesus tells us, accompanied by his smiling mother: “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” This is what our mother is going check today, when she enters her heavenly kingdom as our Mother and Queen.
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The bread of life
We continue reading today chapter 6 from Saint John’s Gospel. It is the third Sunday on a row and we have two more Sundays to go. Jesus slowly goes deeper in his explanation of the Eucharist. We can look at this mystery from different angles, manly as the Mass, the sacrifice of the Cross, as communion, nourishment for the soul, and his presence in the tabernacle. Today I’d like to focus on the Mass. It is two thousand years old; we always go back to the first Mass at Calvary. This is what the Mass is: a renewal of the sacrifice of the Cross.
We don’t love what we don’t know. Why do so many Catholics not go to Mass? Because they don’t know what the Mass is. Maybe because nobody has told them. There are many good books about the Mass. When was the last time we read one of those? Today I’d like to pick one sentence from the Mass, to see how rich it is. Dominus vobiscum. The Lord be with you. We have heard it many times and we answer automatically: And with your spirit.
If I ask you how many times the priest says it, I bet you wouldn’t be able to tell me. It appears four times, and each time the priest states a different reality. The translation from the Latin is difficult. The Latin expression doesn’t use the verb, therefore it can mean the Lord is here, a statement of his real presence, or the Lord be here, our desire of him to be among us, two different realities in one expression.
The first time the priest uses these words is at the beginning of the Mass, as a form of salutation. The priest greets not only the congregation, but the whole Church. We are all present there, even though there is nobody in that particular church. We are all touched by every Mass, the whole creation, the entire universe. The priest states the presence of Christ among the congregation: “Where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am with them.”It is a real presence, not only a desire. Jesus is here among us. Our response is a desire to be with him: And with your spirit. The second time the priest uses this expression is before the reading of the Gospel, announcing that Jesus is here in his Word; he is the Logos. Jesus is going to talk to us through the Scriptures. This is why in solemn Masses we bring the book of the Gospels in procession. After reading the Gospel the priest kisses the book saying: Through the words of the Gospel may our sins be wiped away.
The third time is at the beginning of the Preface. It is a reminder that we are beginning the Eucharistic Prayer, when Jesus is coming to the altar. Lift up your hearts, the Lord is coming. At this moment the priest disappears, and it is now Jesus who is pronouncing the words of the consecration: this is my body. God is telling us like Moses in front of the burning bush: take off your shoes, you are entering holy ground. The last time is at the final blessing.After taking communion, we have Jesus with us. If at the beginning of the Mass we have been brought together, to acknowledge the presence of Jesus among us, now we are sent. We are going to bring Jesus with us to the world.
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Give us this bread
On these Sundays, the Gospels are interrelated; they follow each other. Last week we saw the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish. We are now in chapter 6 of Saint John’s Gospel, where Jesus is going to touch the most difficult topic of his teaching: the Eucharist. It was very hard not only because of the topic itself, but also because of the traditions of the Jews, where they couldn’t eat some types of animals and they had to drain the blood from them. Jesus takes advantage of the miracle to explain this important reality, trusting that after seeing his power, they would listen to him. Precisely, this is a miracle geared to the Eucharist, related to bread and nourishment.
We read on our first reading from the book of Exodus, how God rained down bread from heaven, during the wandering of the Israelites through the desert. They grumbled against God, telling Moses how they had plenty of bread in Egypt, and now they were going to die of starvation. When they woke up in the morning, the ground was covered with something like dew and they asked: What is this?, which in Hebrew is pronounced Manna. We too should ask the same question when we come to Mass and the priest shows us the Eucharist: Who is it? What is the power of this bread?
The Gospel begins with the crowd looking for Jesus. After the miracle Jesus left because they wanted to make him king and he moved to the other side of the lake, to Capernaum. Jesus keeps moving to different sides of the lake, when he wants to get away from the people. We too are looking for Jesus and he keeps moving away from us. The truth is always elusive, difficult to grasp. When the multitude caught up with Jesus, he told them that they were looking not for him, but for the beautiful food they had the day before. We too, many times are looking not for Jesus in himself, but for what he can do for us, for the things that we think can make us happy. We forget that he in himself is the only one who can satisfy us.
The Jews asked Jesus for a sign, the same one Moses gave to their ancestors, the bread from heaven. Jesus told them that his Father was the one who gave them manna. So they said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” It is a great petition. We too ask him for bread, but not the same bread the Jews were asking, an earthly bread, but one that lasts for ever, that lifts us up, nourishes and heals us.
Jesus said to them for the first time: “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me will never hunger, and whoever believes in me will never thirst.” We don’t need the earthly bread anymore. This bread can never fill us up; we are always hungry, looking for food, thirsty, drinking from potholes even. Jesus is the bread we need, the real bread, the true bread of life, the living water that splashes us into eternal life. Today we make the same petition the Jews asked Jesus: Give us this bread always, help us to come more often to your table, to the Mass, help us to realise that we need you. How rarely we acknowledge the need of the Eucharist, and we fail to come often to receive him which is a pity.
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A boy with food
Last week we saw Jesus arriving at a lonely place to spend time with his apostles and instead found a great multitude of people. He had compassion on them and began to teach them many things. When Jesus finished talking to them the apostles hoped that he was going to send them away. But instead, Jesus told them to feed the whole crowd first. After looking after their souls, now he looked after their bodies. Jesus gives us a good example. Our souls are more important than our bodies. Our bodies are recyclable; our souls are eternal. We normally think too much about our bodies. We assume that the body is the container for the soul, but it is the other way around: the soul contains the body.
The apostles had a problem: they had to feed a big crowd without resources. Phillip said they had only 200 denaries in the money box, not enough to give them a morsel each. Andrew found a boy with some food. We too come across problems in our daily lives. Some of them difficult ones. We use our talents to find solutions. We can ask God to help us but we cannot expect God to fix all our problems. Once a man was asking God to win the lottery; an angel appeared to him and told him to at least buy a ticket.
Many people among the crowd had a bit of food when the apostles tried to solve the problem, but only one boy offered them his lunch. These people thought that if they kept their food, at least they would have had enough for themselves. It was useless to offer what they had for a huge number of people. We don’t know the name of this boy. We only know that he gave his lunch to Jesus. The boy knew that his lunch wasn’t much, but he gave it to Jesus regardless. Without it maybe Jesus wouldn’t had performed the miracle.
Why did Jesus ask for some food if he could have performed the miracle out of nothing? Because he wants us to cooperate with him. Jesus wants to use our little humanity to perform his miracles. Even though we are nothing compared to God, and he doesn’t need us, he wants us to feel useful. It is like when a father asks his little son to give him a hand with whatever he is doing.
This is the only miracle described by the four evangelists. They were so impressed that they all wanted to tell the world about it. Food was very important in ancient times. I imagine the boy looking with curiosity at what Jesus was going to do with his five sandwiches of bread and fish. He put them in a basket, where people couldn’t see them, blessed them, and began to give them to the people. You could see the eyes of the boy, open wide without blinking, counting; they became big like plates, when more than five appeared. There were thousands of them! He ran back home shouting, to tell his mum: My bread! My fish! He brought her some samples, beautiful bread, just baked; fresh fish, still moving.
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Come away by yourselves
Last week we saw Jesus sending the apostles two by two to preach the Gospel, to announce the kingdom of heaven. Today we see them coming back, excited by all the good things that happened to them, the people they healed and the devils they cast out. They couldn’t stop talking about their adventures. They were all talking at the same time. Jesus realised that they needed a break. You can imagine the atmosphere of Jesus group, people coming and going all the time. We can see here the intensity of Jesus’ ministry. Such was his dedication to the souls that Saint Mark twice mentions that his disciples did not even have time to eat. The same should happens to us: we don’t have time to rest. Saint Josemaria says that “whoever gives himself to work for Christ, cannot expect to have a free moment, for even to rest is not to do nothing: it is to relax, with activities that require less effort.” We too are busy, fulfilling our duties, doing God’s work.
Benedict XVI likes to remember his favourite anecdote about John Paul II: “When the Pope was in Munich on his first trip to Germany, I saw what an incredible itinerary he had, that he was continuously busy from first thing in the morning till last thing at night. Then I thought to myself: This really shouldn’t be done! You have to introduce a little rest. I then ensured him there would be a nice lunch break. He had only just gone at lunchtime when he called me, saying I should come up quickly. When I came up, he had just prayed with his breviary. I said: ‘Holy Father, you simply must rest now!’ ‘I can rest in eternity,’ he said.”
We are busy doing many things, but sometimes we don’t do what we are supposed to be doing. We tend to be lazy and we spend our time doing the things we enjoy. Business’s collapse when people don’t do what it is important, but busy themselves in doing the things they like. We should tackle the difficult jobs first in the morning and leave the easy ones for when we are tired. We need to have our priorities right.
Jesus realised that the apostles needed to have a rest. From time to time Jesus used to take them away to have a break, to wind down, to be together by themselves and to pass his message to them. We too need a rest. Saint Augustine says that “a cord cannot endure constant tension, and an archer needs to loosen the ends of a bow if he wants to be able to draw it again later on.” We cannot forget that we have a limited amount of energy, and we all need to recover. God, after creating the universe, he rested on the seventh day to give us an example.
When they arrived at the place where they were going, they met a great multitude of people. We can imagine the disappointment of the apostles, looking forward to a few days with Jesus alone, when they encountered this big crowd. They knew what was going to happen. The Gospel says that Jesus’ “heart was moved with pity for them, for they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.” It is beautiful to see Jesus reaction, how Jesus’ heart felt the need of his people. The apostles learned a good practical lesson they never forgot. All the readings of today’s Mass are centred on Jesus the Good Shepherd. He is the one who says to us: “Come to me, all you who labour and are overburdened, and I will give you rest.” Only with him we can find true rest.
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Two by two apostles
Last week Saint Paul told us about the thorn in our flesh, a reminder of our fallen nature. This week in his letter to the Ephesians he tells us about our dignity: “He chose us in him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and without blemish before him.” There is always the danger of falling into one extreme or the other: to think that either we are hopeless or we are another god. Our Christian faith help us to keep the balance: we are inclined to evil, but God can help us to become holy. We are all called to holiness and if we don’t achieve it, it is because deep down we don’t want to, or we want to follow our own devices or desires.
Pope Leo the Great reminds us of this reality: “Christian, remember your dignity, and now that you share in God’s own nature, do not return by sin to your former base condition. Bear in mind who is your head and of whose body you are a member. Do not forget that you have been rescued from the power of darkness and brought into the light of God’s kingdom. Through the sacrament of baptism you have become a temple of the Holy Spirit. Do not drive away so great a guest by evil conduct and become again a slave to the devil, for your liberty was bought by the blood of Christ.” Through our Baptism we have become a new creation, we belong to God. He reminds us all the time: “You are mine, you belong to me.”
In today’s Gospel we see Jesus sending his apostles two by two, to preach the Gospel, heal the people and cast out devils. The same thing he has done with us. He has placed us in this world, appointed us apostles through our Baptism and sent us to share our faith with others. The Gospel of today is a reminder of our responsibility to bring others to Christ. It is a good moment today to ask ourselves how we are fulfilling this task: Do we think in our daily lives in these terms? Are we aware that through our example we are giving witness to our faith?
Jesus gave specific instructions to his apostles: “He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick.” Why is this? Because there is no time. We have to be on the move. We come from God and we are going back to God. We are pilgrims, travelers, we are passing by. When you look at Jesus in the Gospel, he is always moving from one place to the other. He never stays in one place for too long. He wants to reach as many people as possible, to share the good news with the crowds, with every person. The same should happen to us.
Nothing should separate us or distract us from our mission. We need to feel the sense of urgency the Gospel give us. We were born naked and we cannot take anything with us. Nothing should slow us down. We cannot go to heaven alone. We need to bring with us the people God has placed close to us. Let us pray to see how we can become better apostles, to discover the obstacles or the barriers that don’t let us see what God wants us to do now.
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Thorn in my flesh
Today, in the second reading, from the second letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians, the Apostle talks about a thorn in his flesh. After talking about his vision of heaven, he says that God gave him a thorn not to become proud. Even though he managed to have a glimpse of eternity, he couldn’t forget about his human nature. He says of himself: “it kept me from being too elated.” It happens to us too. We have in our hearts a desire for an everlasting happiness, but we touch every day our limitations, our daily shortcomings. We go from knowing that we are called to holiness, to our experience that only God can make us holy.
We call it original sin. You can call it what you want, but we all have the experience of our fallen nature. We do what we don’t want to do, and we don’t do what we ought to do. We are lazy, proud, selfish, too concerned about ourselves, full of insecurities, anxious, easy to lose our temper, prone to react wrongly. Saint Paul calls it a thorn in his flesh. We can relate to that. We don’t know the specific affliction the Apostle is talking about. Some people say it was a physical malady, others the tribulations caused by the continuous persecutions to the Church, and some say a temptation, especially lust. Lust makes us humble because we touch in our own flesh our feeble nature.
There are two areas where human beings, normally fall down, and both begin with “ch”: charity and chastity. It is a common experience that we all have to struggle in these two virtues, against ourselves and against others, or to put it another way, integrating our sexuality and loving others as Christ did. We are going to bear these two thorns till the end of our lives. We need to be patient. As long as we are aware of them and we ask for God’s help, we are on the right path. Better the devil you know.
Saint Paul asked God three times to get rid of his thorn. How many times we have asked God to ease the pressure of our sins, to put a chain on the devil? We too would like to have no temptations, not to have to struggle against our limitations. We think that we would have a better life if we had control of our flesh. But God answered the Apostle three times: “My grace is enough for you.” God is telling us: “You have sufficient power from me to resist any temptation.” We know that, but we keep falling down. Why is it? Why is it so difficult to live without sin?
The answer comes also from on High: “Power is made perfect in weakness.” Precisely, God’s action is manifested when we experience our weaknesses, and we touch his omnipotence. God Almighty can lift our fallen human nature to amazing heights, even to become a bit like him, because his only begotten Son became man, for us to become like him. That thorn we feel in our flesh, so deeply ingrained, impossible to extract, can become the rocket which propels us towards holiness. Then we can say with Saint Paul: “When I am weak, then I am strong.”
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Sick woman
We can imagine the scene. We have seen it on the tv news from the Middle East, a religious leader surrounded by men, people trying to touch him, to get some power from him. The apostles were shielding Jesus, pushing people away. They say that when people try to touch a person in this way, the arms and hands are scratched, specially by women with their fingernails. It must have been hard for her to touch Jesus. She was a weak person, losing blood all the time. The Fathers of the Church see this woman as the Gentiles, who through faith were saved. We are represented by this woman, sick and in need of healing, losing our blood through our sins.
We don’t know how many times she tried to touch Jesus. She persevered, over and over again, without getting discouraged. She knew that Jesus was her last hope. She had spent all her money on physicians and only got worse. It is a veiled criticism of doctors. The apostles pushed her away time after time. She tried from different angles, for the apostles not to recognise her. She gives us an example of perseverance, of stubbornness. We need to begin and begin again all the time. We need to try to touch Jesus through the Eucharist, through the sacrament of confession, through our prayer. We need to find the way, the button to push. He is there and we need more faith to reach his mantle.
Eventually she only managed to touch the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. But this was enough; she was immediately healed. Jesus is so powerful that even his garments give away grace, energy and power. Imagine his flesh when we go to Communion. Many people were touching him, but only she was healed. Why? Because she touched him with real faith, knowing that Jesus was very holy. Saint Ambrose says that we should touch Jesus not with our fingers, but with our faith, knowing that he is the Son of God. If our faith is weak, we don’t have anything to touch him with. We need to ask him to increase our faith, so that we can be strong, so that we can reach the depths of his heart.
Blessed Bishop Alvaro used to bring this Gospel to his prayer just before Mass. She touched him, we eat him; she touched his garment, we eat his flesh; she was losing blood, we drink his blood. We need to approach him from behind, with fear and reverence. We only need to take what we need; don’t be greedy. We are touching the infinite power of God, be careful, we can blow up easily. It is a bit like touching an electric cable, or putting our hand into the lion’s mouth. Our sins are like insulators; they don’t allow us to experience his power.
Jesus stopped and asked: “Who has touched me?” The apostles were puzzled: “Everybody is touching you.” Jesus answered: “Power has gone out of me.” Why did he have this reaction if he knew what had happened? It was for us to know the miracle. If he hadn’t asked this question, we would never had known. A lot of things happened around Jesus that we don’t know. Most of the important things occur in the center of people’s souls. They will never appear on the news. All of us can talk about the little miracles that happened to us.
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Calming of the storm
I love this Gospel. We can see ourselves in the boat with Jesus, surrounded by a beautiful lake. It is still there; these natural elements don’t change. But it can become ugly. It is our experience of life. The sea in the Bible represents man depending on God’s mercy; anything could happen, we are not in control. We all have experienced good days and bad days. Why couldn’t life be good and beautiful? Because we are passing by; this is not our homeland. We are crossing the lake of life from one shore to the other, from the beginning to eternity. We don’t know how long it is going to take; we cannot see the other side. In any moment a storm can break out and we need to be ready. We cannot grow complacent and let the boat take its course. The devil is surrounding us like a roaring lion.
But we cannot forget that Jesus is in our boat. Or even better, we are with him. Even though many times he looks like he is asleep, he is always with us unless we push him out of our boat. We allow him to stay when the sun is shining and the birds are singing. But many times, when the storm comes, the wind blows and the waves beat against the hull of our boat, we push him away without thinking. No matter what happens, we cannot afford to sail without Jesus.
This scene in the Gospel of today is the only one where we see Jesus sleeping. He was so tired that he fell asleep and the storm didn’t wake him up. The apostles were so afraid that they woke him up. They didn’t allow him to rest. Saint Therese of Liseux has a beautiful quotation about letting Jesus keep resting: “Far from experiencing any consolation, complete aridity - desolation, almost - was my lot. Jesus was asleep in my little boat as usual. How rarely souls let Him sleep peacefully within them. Their agitation and all their requests have so tired out the Good Master that He is only too glad to enjoy the rest I offer Him. I do not suppose He will wake up until my eternal retreat, but instead of making me sad, it makes me very happy.” We are too quick to wake him up, to complain about what’s happening to us. Every storm in our lives has a meaning; we need to pray to find the clues. We either collapse mentally or we grow.
Jesus stood up and calmed the storm in one go. He complained about us, not letting him rest, and about our lack of faith, our lack of trust in him. With one word he can calm any storm in our lives. He knows what we are going through, and normally lets things happen. We need to trust in him, knowing that he is in our little boat with us. Once a man crossed the Niagara Falls walking on a cable pushing a wheel barrow. When he arrived at the other side people cheered him. He asked them if he should do it again. All encouraged him. He asked if anybody wanted to travel on the wheel barrow. You could hear a pin drop. We find it difficult to trust others.
The Gospel says that the apostles were very impressed with Jesus, saying: Who is this guy? Even the wind and the waves obey him. The four Gospels include this scene; it made a big impression on them. We know who he is and what he can do. We go to Mary our mother, Refuge of Sinners, Ark of the Covenant.
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The mustard seed
Today Jesus tries to explain the kingdom of heaven through two parables, using a comparison about seeds. He loves using natural images from the fields, from the human experience of farmers of that time. Unlike us, seeds were very important to them. We don’t normally buy seeds and plant them in the ground, unless you have a vegetable garden. But for those people seeds were the future. They had to plan how they were going to eat during the months ahead. We have supermarkets; all we need is money.
Seeds tell us about how things grow. It is a mysterious process that escapes our control. It shows us the power of nature; things grow in the most amazing places. It is the same with God’s things. He has his plans and has the power to produce fruit whenever he wants, wherever he wills. You learn a lot reading the history of the Church. How things are born small, grow to an amazing size and then they disappear. It is a circle that comes and goes. It is easy for us human beings to become proud of the achievements of God. We think that we are doing something, and all we do is to be a spanner in the works. Once pride comes in, God runs away. It is very important for us not to think that we are indispensable, that we are at the same level as God. We are just little children being more of a nuisance than any help.
Sometimes we doubt that God is in control. We can hardly notice the seeds sprouting, we don’t see the fruits, the actions of God in society. On the contrary, we touch more the machinations of the evil one, the hand of the devil clearly present among us. From our point of view we see only a flat terrain. John Paul II used to talk about the new evangelisation, a new spring in the Church. He could see it from his vantage point. We cannot see it with our large egos.
Pope Francis commenting on this parable says that “Jesus compares the Kingdom of God to a small grain of mustard seed. It is a very small grain, but it grows to become the largest of all plants in the garden: unpredictable growth, surprising. It is not easy for us to enter into this logic of the unpredictable nature of God and to accept it in our own lives. But today the Lord exhorts us to have an attitude of faith that goes beyond our projects, our calculations, our forecasts. God is always the God of surprises, the Lord always surprises us. It is an invitation to open ourselves more generously to God’s plans.”
God normally works in this way, like the mustard seed. Things always begin small, with few people, sometimes with just a holy person, with a slow gradual process, quietly growing under the soil, with time to mature. God’s kingdom keeps growing. How did the Franciscans begin? Through a voice to a young man: rebuild my Church. It is something amazing, to look at the hand of God working through history. You cannot see it at a particular moment, but you notice it in the long run.
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Jesus’ relatives
It was very difficult for Jesus’ relatives to understand him, to figure out what had happened to him. For thirty years he had been the carpenter’s son, a good worker, a bit introverted, maybe shy, never married and liking going out on his own to pray in solitary places. Suddenly Jesus began his public life, preaching the Gospel, performing miracles and surrounding himself with twelve men, called apostles, going around villages and towns, with crowds following him. Why didn’t he show his talents before? Why didn’t he use them with his relatives and friends? They thought that either he had become mad, lost his mind, or an evil spirit had possessed him.
It happens to us when we take our faith seriously, when we have a conversion, when suddenly we find out what God wants from us. Our life takes on a new course, a bright star has been lighted and we see things with different eyes. People around us who haven’t seen our new light are left behind and don’t understand our new outlook. They think we have become fanatical, self-possessed or even a bit weird. They try to help us, to change our mind, to bring us back to reality. But we know where they are; we have been there before. And we know they cannot see what we see, they are not ready to experience what we are going through. We don’t want to change back and we would like them to discover what we see now. Sometimes by pushing our faith on them, we can make things worse. All we can do is give them a good example, to show them the strength of our faith, the promises of our hope and the warmth of our love.
Jesus’ relatives thought he was mad, and they were right; he was crazy for us. We cannot help being moved, realizing what Jesus did for love of us. Many saints, following Christ’s example, have been taken for madmen, because they were mad with love, mad with love for Jesus Christ. The Cure of Ars used to say: “To be holy, you need to be mad.” To follow Jesus you need to be out of your mind. Saint Francis was called the mad man of Assisi. Love is crazy and whoever is in love does crazy things. It is amazing what the saints have done for the love of God.
The other accusation against Jesus is that he was possessed by the devil. Jesus defends himself with a simple logic: if someone expels the devil this means that he is stronger than the devil. We are not to be afraid of the devil. Jesus uses his power to free us from the enslavement to Satan, which means “enemy”. His dominion has come to an end: the prince of this world is about to be cast out. Jesus’ victory over the power of darkness, shows that the light has already entered the world.
“Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Saint Thomas Aquinas says that by saying this, Jesus gave preference to the eternal generation over the temporal one. Our Lady has an outstanding position in both. She was his mother on earth by generation, and his mother in heaven by obeying her Son above everything else. But Jesus obeyed her first, by being the best Son ever.
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Corpus Christi
It took time for the early Christians to grow in their awareness of the real presence of Our Lord in the Eucharist. At the beginning of Christianity they didn’t have tabernacles; they just celebrated the Mass normally in their own homes. They didn’t have churches because of the persecutions. After Mass sometimes they kept the Blessed Sacrament for the sick and the people who couldn’t come. Slowly they began to realise that Jesus was there and they began to keep it in a secure place. Eventually they gave the Lord the best room of the house. They started to acknowledge his presence and keep him company, spending time with him in prayer.
Saint Juliana of Liege, in what is now Belgium, had a great veneration for the Eucharist. When she was 16, she saw a vision of the Church as the moon in its full splendour, crossed diametrically by a dark stripe. She understood that the opaque line represented the absence of a liturgical feast in honour of the Body and Blood of Christ. At that time the only feast about the Eucharist was Holy Thursday, when the institution of the Mass was celebrated. It was wedged into Holy Week. The Bishop of her diocese was the first one to celebrate Corpus Christi in his diocese. Then a priest of that diocese became a Pope and he instituted the feast for the whole Church. It is good to have a friend who becomes Pope. Urban IV asked Saint Bonaventure and Saint Thomas Aquinas to write the prayers for the Mass. When Saint Thomas read his work first, Saint Bonaventure wept and tore his manuscript into small pieces. These are the beautiful prayers of today’s Mass.
Benedict XVI says that the three pillars of Saint John Paul II were the Cross, Our Lady and the Eucharist. For a stool to stand up it needs at least three legs. What are the three legs, the three pillars of our spiritual life? Saint John Paul II explains his feelings about the Eucharist: “I have always been convinced that the chapel is a place of special inspiration. What a privilege to be able to live and work in the shadow of His Presence. It is not always necessary to enter physically into the chapel in order to enter spiritually into the presence of the Blessed Sacrament.” What is the place of the Eucharist in my life? We can ask Saint John Paul II to help us to try to come here more often. We need more faith in his real presence.
If we believe that Jesus is in the tabernacle, we will spend more time with him, we will try to drop into our nearby church as often as we can. In the book The Hobbit, when Bilbo is lost in the caves, he meets Gollum, and Gollum tries to eat him. Bilbo proposes a game of riddles to save his life. When Bilbo couldn’t guess the last riddle, and Gollum was getting closer to eating him, Bilbo cries out in desperation: “Time, give me more time.” This was the answer to the riddle and saved his life. This is the answer to all our problems. Jesus is telling us the same thing: “Time, give me more time.” We need more time in front of the Blessed Sacrament.
Saint John Paul II is buried in Saint Peter’s basilica between the chapel of the Pieta of Michael Angelo and the chapel of the Blessed Sacrament, emphasising his two main loves: Mary and Jesus. We should bury ourselves too between these two pillars.
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Holy Trinity
When Jesus came, he revealed to us the mystery of the Holy Trinity. It was his most important secret, his gift to us, which had been guarded for many centuries. In the Old Testament God didn’t want to show us this truth about himself, because he was afraid the Israelites would worship multiple gods. They did it regardless. The first time we hear about the Trinity is in the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel mentioned the three persons. The second time was at the Baptism of Jesus, when we hear the voice of the Father and we see the white dove hovering over Jesus. The last time was when Jesus commanded us to baptise in the name of the Father, and on the Son and on the Holy Spirit. It is interesting to note that Jesus says in the name of the three persons as singular, not in the names as plural. One God, three persons.
They say that one is the symbol of unity. But to avoid uniformity, you need two. To avoid our modern pandemic of individualism and of selfishness, we need to be open to the other. Once you have two, you overcome these temptations, but other problems arise, fruit of relationships. The same happened with Adam and Eve, when the serpent managed to drive a wedge between them. With two, you can have trouble, opposition, war. You need two to fight. That’s why three is better, one can be a mediator and the struggle becomes more balanced, more diverse. Once we have three, we have a family. Two is a couple. When a baby arrives, it becomes a society. Our Lord says that when two or three are gathered in his name, he’ll be among us. Here we have the Trinity. All human relations are reflection of God’s inner life.
The Trinity shows us God as a family. He has opened his inner life to us, to be able to gaze into what’s happening within their trinitarian relationship. God has allowed our human nature to peep through a keyhole into his divinity. In the famous Rublev icon, we see the three angels who visited Abraham, representing the Holy Trinity, around a four- sided table. There is a place open for us at the front of this heavenly table, almost with our name on it. The figures are arranged in a way that the lines of their bodies form a full circle, waiting for us to sit, and close the circle. It is a relationship that flows inward and outward. We are called to participate in the trinitarian life, but only a few manage to do so. It is the most important task we can achieve in this life, the beginning of a heavenly life on earth.
We are very outward looking. We try to find happiness outside ourselves. In our secular culture is not easy to hear about God, to connect with him. Technology has brought us further and further from God. We can examine ourselves if we manage to find God on our smartphones. We are looking for him in the wrong places.
We forget that God is inside of us. “You must seek me in yourself”, Jesus told Saint Teresa. This is how Saint Elizabeth of the Trinity reminds us of this reality: “God in me, I in Him. Let that be our motto. How good is this presence of God within us, in the inner sanctuary of our souls. There we always find Him even though we may have no sensible feeling of His presence. But He is there, all the same. It is there that I love to seek Him. Let us try never to leave Him alone.”
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Pentecost
A young man was walking down the street and came across a shop with a sign that said: Happiness. He came in and saw that angels were serving the customers. He was very surprised and asked one of the angels: “What do you sell here?” He answered: “Anything that brings happiness to humans.” The young man got excited and began to ask a list of things: “Give me the end of wars, communication between husbands and wives, wealth for the poor, health to the sick, understanding between the in laws...” The angel stopped him very respectfully saying: “We don’t sell fruits here; we only have seeds.”
The fruits of the Holy Spirit grow from the seeds God placed in our souls when we were born. They are there ready to be planted at the right time. They began to grow when we were baptised. At Baptism those seeds were introduced to good soil and watered with living water. They developed in the soul of the baby, growing under the soil, without noise or exterior sign, like those bulbs that produce beautiful flowers every spring.
All we need to do is to look after them, to maintain them and make sure they grow and develop. We need to water them with the grace of the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, fertilise them with our prayer life, and spray the bugs and get rid of the snails regularly through good confessions. We should build a fence to protect them from the wind, with a life of solitude and recollection, and keep the plants from being exposed to too much sun, from the social media and tv to avoid anything that can scorch them. Some of these fruits take a long time to grow. Some fruit trees takes seven years to begin to produce. They come during different seasons, some at the beginning of life, others in middle age, others at the end, especially when we need them.
We can compare our soul to the garden of Eden, where God used to take a stroll with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening. If we look after our garden, God will be more keen to walk with us. Every year is getting better. The trees grow taller and the bushes develop. It is not easy to know when and how to prune them. They are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, given by him to fulfill our mission, unmerited. We also have an orchard where we grow fruit trees. There the Holy Spirit has planted twelve different trees, that produce his famous twelve fruits, each one of them different and specific. We need all of them, because together they can develop a balanced diet.
When we read the list of the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit, we are immediately attracted to them and we want them to be part of our lives and the lives of the people we love. It is good for us to read this list, to foster our desire to acquire them: Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Generosity, Gentleness, Faithfulness, Modesty, Self Control and Chastity. They go against the bad tendencies we all have in our hearts, those twelve vices the devil tries to develop with cunning persistence. Inside of us two different kinds of plants grow, weeds and flowers. What we need to do is to uproot the weeds that choke the flowers. Hopefully we can pick a nice bouquet of them to give to our mother.
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Love one another
Today in the Gospel Jesus lifts the level of his message to an impossible height: love one another as I have loved you. God loves us with divine love, without measure; his love is infinite. He even gave his life for us. But how can we love others with his love, if we are not God? Precisely, when we love God, he lends us his love. God is love and any love is a participation in his love. We cannot love others as he does, but we can love others with his love.
To love one another is the summary of the Christian message. They used to say of the early Christians: look how much they love each other. It is a sign of our love for God. Saint Augustine says that if we do not love our neighbor that we can see, how can we love God that we cannot see. All the saints show a special love for others. They are very attractive to us. We can love somebody out there, an imaginary friend, an actress that we will never see, a beautiful photoshop image, an Instagram character. But your brother, your sister, your boss, your spouse, your client, your colleague, they are the ones we need to love. And our love for God pushes us towards them, without excuses.
We normally love ourselves first, then others, normally for what they can do for us, and then we love God, just in case he exists. We need to turn things around, to turn our socks inside out. This is the Christian transformation. The love of God sets our priorities right, makes the pieces of the puzzle fit together, shows the full picture. After Peter’s denial, Jesus asked him: Do you love me more than these? Yes Lord. Then you can look after my sheep. Once you love me with your whole heart, then you can love others with true love.
But how can I love people I don’t like? Saint Therese has a beautiful story. There was a grumpy old nun in her convent that everybody tried to avoid. She, overcoming her natural antipathy, tried her best to love her. So much so that one day this nun approached her and asked her what did she find in her: “Whenever we meet you give me such a gracious smile.” Saint Therese said to herself: “What attracted me? It was Jesus hidden in the depths of her soul, Jesus who makes attractive even what is most bitter.” We are brothers and sisters, and love comes from the will: we can love whoever we want. At the beginning it is an attraction, we feel that we connect better with some people than others. but with time it is a choice.
Two practical things: try not to get upset and not to judge. Bring into your prayer the people or the things that make you angry. We normally don’t have our priorities right, or we put other things before God. We get upset because things go wrong, people let us down. When we let Jesus be the boss, we are normally more content with the outcome. If our expectations are very high, we are ready for a crash. When we try to control everything, something always will go wrong. Try not to judge. Pope Francis says: “Before you judge look at yourself in the mirror.” We don’t have the task of judging; nobody has appointed us a judge of others. The one who judges is the Lord who knows everything.
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The Vine and the Branches
Jesus loves to talk in parables. He finds us a bit slow to grasp things and tries to find comparisons for us to understand better and deeper the things of God. It is not easy for him to talk about the other life. A vineyard was very precious in the ancient world. People risked their lives to possess them. For us it is just a business. But for them it was their livelihood. It produced wine, grapes and raisins, fruit and drink for the whole year, when many times water was scarce and polluted. A vineyard was an asset for life.
The Old Testament already used this image. Psalm 80 speaks of the uprooting of the vine in Egypt and its establishment in another land: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove away the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground; it took root and filled the land.” In the book of Isaiah God complains that despite the care he has lavished on it, his vineyard has yielded only wild grapes. Jesus uses this image of the vineyard in his parable of the murderous tenants to explain how the Jews rejected Jesus. Here the comparison is different, more personal. Jesus is the true vine, because the old vine, the chosen people, has been succeeded by the new vine, the Church.
This parable has to do with producing fruit, the fruit God wants us to produce. Two very simple questions we need to ask ourselves: Am I producing anything worthwhile? Am I producing the fruit God wants me to yield? We need to be sincere. It is easy to fool ourselves. Of course, we are doing something, working, earning some money, but maybe it is not what God wants from us. It could be just wild grapes. We all feel we are not producing enough, a small percentage of what we should. We need to examine ourselves to see how we can increase our output.
This parable tells us the secret of how to be fruitful. It is very simple: to be united to the vine, united to Jesus; the more we are in union, the more fruit. It all has to do with words synonymous of union: immersion, intimacy, identification, indwelling. Interesting, all these words begin with the word “in”, which gives the impression of us being introduced into Jesus Christ, centering ourselves around him. Saint Paul talks about becoming Jesus Christ, the same Christ, Ipse Christus. How can this happen? It has to do with letting Christ live in us, letting Jesus be our boss. Do we allow Jesus to come into our lives? It is a bit like letting Jesus into our own car. But we can just place him at the back, or in the passenger seat, or maybe even in the boot. We should let him be in control, actually driving our car.
Every winter the vines are pruned. You need to know how to do it. The next crop depends on a good pruning. The vines that are pruned look naked, devoid of any branches. It is a completely different sight, the vines in winter, bare and brown, and in full bloom during summer, lush and green. We too need to be pruned, to suffer our own cross, to experience obstacles and difficulties, to produce more. If we don’t allow Jesus to prune us, or if we rebel against his will, we are not going to produce what God wants from us.
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The Good Shepherd
Today we look at Jesus as the Good Shepherd. It is a beautiful image that comes from the Old Testament. King David was a shepherd before he became a king, and Jesus called himself the son of David, because he was a direct descendant. The Gospels give us plenty of details about who the Good Shepherd is. Jesus says of himself: “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.” We go to heaven through Jesus Christ. We cannot bypass him. He is the way, the gate and the sheepfold.
Jesus is the true gate. As long as we go in and out through him, we are safe. Life is like a big room with many doors to be opened, to be tried, to find happiness. We can choose any one, but we don’t know where they will lead. Some are better than others. We need to be careful not to go through a door that can lead us astray. Some of the doors are beautiful, even attractive, mysterious, but we know where they could lead us. We have learnt by experience, we have tried some and we have found them lacking. We Christians are lucky: we know which one is the only true gate: Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can lead us to green pastures. He knows where they are and he knows the good ones. We all want to be happy, but we look for happiness often in the wrong places. We need to be aware that some pastures are poisonous, some grasses are venomous like snakes, some food is not good for our spiritual health. Good pastures are difficult to find. Sometimes we have to cross deserts to reach them. We need to trust Jesus and follow him to come across those oasis that are difficult to find.
Jesus also says that we need to hear his voice. It is the best way not to go astray. It is so easy to get lost, to become the famous lost sheep of the parable. If we keep hearing his voice, we follow his footsteps, as we speed along, and this means we are on the right path. When we get distracted, when we are curious, or we want to play with fire, one of his whistles can bring us back to the path. It is normally a good confession, a timely book, a good movie, a deep conversation with a friend. Jesus has a beautiful voice, easy to hear.
He knows us one by one, by our names. For him we are not a number; we are unique, irreplaceable, one of a kind. When we look at the other sheep, we can think that we are all the same, that we cannot be distinguished from one another. Sheep always go together to defend themselves. But for Jesus we have a distinctive shape, our personality, our character. He is ready to leave the other ninety-nine and go out looking for us. He is calling us, shouting our name, trying to find us in the forest, and he keeps looking until he finds us. Then he places us on his shoulders and bring us back to the sheepfold. If we hide from his calls, then he cannot find us. It is up to us to go back to him.
Other shepherds are not interested in us. They look after the sheep for money. They are not going to defend us against the wolves. They are not going ahead of us, but behind, throwing stones at us. They don’t know our names, they don’t care about the green pastures, they sleep at night. If we get lost, they don’t come looking for us. Jesus is the opposite; he is the true good shepherd. He really wants us to reach the eternal sheepfold.
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Serenity
The apostles were afraid and locked themselves into the upper room for fear of the Jews. Their leader had been killed and now his opponents were going for his minions. In spite of some news about Jesus’ resurrection, they were huddled in fear behind locked doors, all together not knowing what to do. We too are afraid of the future, worried about what could happen, insecure about our qualities, with fear of failure, self-centred in our sins, and we lock up ourselves just like an oyster. We become anxious and paralysed. And Jesus going through the walls appeared in the midst of them like a magic trick, with his glorious body. Maybe we cannot break away, but Jesus can, if we let him in. The power of God can break any wall, obstacle, or defence we place in front of him. He is the only one who can set us free.
The first thing Jesus says: “Peace be with you.” Be at peace, Shalom. Without peace we cannot pray, we cannot serve God. When we are too concerned about something, when there is something that occupies our mind, we cannot connect with God, we are not able to listen to his voice. When we are angry, when we feel insecure, we cannot see God as a Father. On the contrary: we can be upset with him. When we have lost control of ourselves, when we are all over the place, we need to go back to Jesus and allow him to come in and say: Peace be with you! Many times we are not ready for that.
Saint John XXIII wrote the Ten Commandments of Serenity. He begins each of them with these words: just for today. It is a reminder of how important is the present time. Forget about the past: we have gone to confession. No worries about the future: it is in God’s hands. Think about just for today. Focus your mind in the here and now. Children are the only ones who live in the present. Young people live in the future, looking forward about something; old people live in the past, regretting or blaming themselves for something. God has everything in his presence.
Saint John XXIII says that when he was elected Pope, at the beginning he couldn’t sleep because of the problems of the Church. One night he received an interior inspiration: “Who governs the Church? You or the Holy Spirit?” From then on he slept very well, so much so that he had to set an alarm to wake himself up from his afternoon nap. If we look after the things of God, He will look after us. We need to take it for granted that He is always in control.
Saints put all their attention into whatever they were doing at that moment, 100% focused in that particular task. That’s why when you were in the presence of John Paul II, you thought that time had stopped or at least slowed down, and you could explain two minutes in two hours. This time of Easter we need to look at Jesus as the Risen Christ, who comes to us with Easter Joy and says: be serene, be tranquil, no worries; sleep and be merry. I’ll worry for you. Look at the sleeping Saint Joseph. While he was sleeping peacefully, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him all he had to do. God tells us what we need to know in due time. We would like to know the future, but it is in God’s hands. Be patient; everything will be revealed if we are at peace.
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Thomas On Sunday morning the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, and Jesus came in through the wall. He stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his wounds, all opened in front of them. He didn’t want to hide them. There they were, naked without shame. They were healed, but still open, light shining through them. Jesus was smiling, proud of them, showing them like medals. His hands, palms first, and his feet, bare without shoes, for them to see the holes of the nails. He even opened his garments to show the big wound in his side. Once Saint Josemaria asked the sculptor who was carving an image of Jesus risen from the dead, to emphasised his wounds on the marble, saying: I need to see them. This is how we normally represent Jesus after the resurrection, coming to us with his full body on display.
Why did Jesus show his wounds to the apostles after the resurrection? Four reasons that I can think off. First to show them it was Jesus himself: it is me! I am the same, but different. They were also the proof of his crucifixion. He couldn’t come back to them with no marks; they would have thought he was a ghost. They say that martyrs keep the marks of their torture in their glorified bodies. This is how we represent them, Saint Lucy showing us her eyes on a platter, Saint Sebastian with arrows all through his body, Saint Lawrence holding his grill, Saint Catherine of Alexandria with her spiked wheel. When our Lord appeared to Saint Teresa of Avila as the risen Lord, she said he was the devil. They asked her: How did you know it? She said: He had no wounds.
Secondly, to show them how much he loved them: these are the proofs of my love for you, you can see the signs. They will be with me forever, as a permanent testimony of me being crazy about you. Like those mothers who have gone through a Caesarean section to have their babies, show their scars years later to their kids, a proof of how they came into the world.
Thirdly, please, don’t do it again. This is your doing; look at what you have done to me. Every time you sin you are widening my wounds. We feel bad when we see his wounds. We would have liked them to disappear: out of sight, out of mind. We prefer those sweet images of Jesus, peaceful and smiling. We don’t like to see his wounds, a reminder of all our iniquities.
Fourthly, he opened these wounds in his flesh for us to find refuge. He could have left the nails there, but he wanted them to be free, with open access. We have five doors, five entrances to his humanity. Five places, one specially very close to his heart, where we can find love, atonement and consolation. We have a long tradition of saints showing us how to heal our own scars, going through Jesus’ ones. If he went through his sufferings being innocent, what about us? We are the guilty ones. He became broken to repair our brokenness. As the prophet Isaiah says: “Through his wounds we have been healed.” Going through his wounds, our ones become a source of pride, medals that show a bit of own sufferings for him, a way to give something back.
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Holy Thursday
Today is an important day for the Church. We priests celebrate two Masses. In the morning all priests of the Diocese go to the Cathedral to concelebrate with the bishop what we call the Chrism Mass. Two things happen during this Mass. First we priests renew our commitments, to place Jesus first in our lives, to obey our bishop, and to look after the People of God. Secondly during this Mass the bishop consecrates the three oils we use for Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders and Anointing of the sick. It is called the Chrism Mass because Chrism is the name of one of the holy oils. At the end of the Mass we collect our oils to keep them in the parish. Every year we burn the old ones and we replace them with the new oils. It is like what happens to us during these days of Holy Week: we die to ourselves and we rise again with Christ.
In the evening we have the Mass of Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Triduum, where we commemorate three things that happened at the Last Supper: the washing of the feet, the institution of the Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood. The Eucharist is the important one. Jesus had to go to heaven, but he wanted to stay with us, because he loves us and we need him. He could do it because he is God. Therefore he left us this sacrament, for the priest to be able to consecrate the bread and the wine, for us to be nourished by his body and blood, and for Jesus to be able to remain with us in the tabernacle. If all the sacraments are important, this one is the most important one; in the others we receive grace from Jesus, in the Mass we receive Jesus himself.
In the washing of the feet we remember Jesus washing his apostles feet. We normally wash twelve men’s feet, easier for us to identify them with the twelve apostles. But what we truly remember is how Jesus lowered himself to the form of a servant to wash our feet. The washing of the feet was reserved to slaves. God is coming down to us to the point of performing a menial task. Our feet need plenty of washing, because when we walk we get dirty. Peter said to Jesus when he came to wash him: Master, wash my hands and head as well. We too are like Saint Peter: we need a thorough washing. Jesus even washed Judas’ feet. He is ready to wash any sinners’ feet, ours too.
The last thing we commemorate today is the beginning of the priesthood. Jesus established priests for his Church to renew the sacrifice of Calvary throughout the centuries. The main reason for our priesthood is the Mass. We also need priests for the other sacraments, specially Confession, to become better, holier and closer to Jesus. Today is a special day when we pray for priests, specially the ones in our own parish. The more we pray for our priests, the holier they become. It is a good selfish prayer. We get the priests we deserve. When we complain about our priests, we should blame ourselves: we don’t pray enough for them.
At the end of the Mass we reserve the Blessed Sacrament on the altar of repose. We keep enough hosts to give Communion on Good Friday because it is a day when we won’t have Mass, because Jesus is dead. The tradition is to spend a bit of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. We keep Jesus company on this night, when he was alone in the garden of Gethsemane.
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Easter Sunday
Saint John arrived first at the tomb because he was younger and could run faster. Saint Jerome says that the wings of celibacy allowed John arrive first. But he did not go in, out of deference to Peter. This is an indication that Peter was already regarded as the leader of the Apostles. “He saw and believed.” What did he see? The linen on the ground. John knew Jesus well and he could say his body wasn’t stolen. You can go to a room in your house and say: I know who’s been here. The dishes are all on the sink, her clothes are all over her room, he’s been in the kitchen because all the chocolate is gone.
“The linen clothes lying there.” The Greek participle translated as ‘lying there’ seems to indicate that the clothes were flattened, deflated, as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose and disappeared, as if it had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being unrolled, passing right through them, just as later he entered the Cenacle or upper room when the doors where shut. This would explain the clothes being ‘fallen’, ‘flat’, ‘lying’, which is how the Greek literally translates them, after Jesus’ body, which had filled them, left them. One can readily understand how this would amaze a withness, how unforgettable the scene would be. You don’t steal a body and leave what’s around him there.
“The napkin rolled up in a place by itself.” The first point to note is that the napkin, which had been wrapped round the head, was not on top of the clothes, but placed on one side. The second, even more surprising thing is that, like the clothes, it was still rolled up but, unlike the clothes, it still had a certain volume, like a container, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments: this is what the Greek participle, here translated as ‘rolled’, seems to indicate. From these details concerning the empty tomb one deduces that Jesus’ body must have risen in a heavenly manner, that is, in a way which transcended the laws of nature. It was not only a matter of the body being reanimated as happened, for example, in the case of Lazarus, who had to be unbound before he could walk.
We remember now the Holy Shroud, the famous relic in Turin. John Paul II said that “the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI had a lot of devotion to Holy Saturday because he was baptised on this day: “this sacred Cloth can nourish and foster faith and reinvigorate Christian devotion because it spurs us to go to the Face of Christ, to the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ, to contemplate the Paschal Mystery, the heart of the Christian message.” People go to see the shroud to contemplate Jesus’ face. To see God, to contemplate the face of Jesus Christ, to be eternally happy through the vision of the divine glory, is the human being’s deepest desire, although millions of people are unaware of this aspiration.
The evangelists talk about the empty tomb. It means that Jesus is alive. It is very important for our faith. It is the icon of the resurrection. Tradition says that Jesus appeared first to His Mother. It was so obvious that the evangelists didn’t even to bother to mention it.
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Palm Sunday Today we begin Holy Week. Palm Sunday is the gate. We enter into the most holy week of the year. We need to walk slowly; we are on Holy ground. Put off your shoes and walk on tiptoes. Hit the brakes and try to follow Jesus’ footsteps. We should try to keep to Jesus’ pace, not too slow, and not too fast, not to miss him, not to overtake him; just the right speed. Once a year the Church gives us an opportunity to become closer to Jesus and touch in a special way his humanity, that brings us closer to his divinity. Every year is like a spiral that brings us closer to the centre, one day sucked in by God.
We have covered all the crucifixes with purple cloths. Why? It is not to avoid seeing Jesus on the Cross, but to lift our senses to spiritual things and build within us a longing for Easter Sunday. Even though these are beautiful pieces of art that help us to become closer to Jesus, they are not the real thing, just sparks of God. There is much more up in heaven. No worries, on Good Friday we are going to uncover them.
Today is a day of joy. Jesus enters his holy city amid the shouts of the crowd. In every Mass we use the words the people shouted today when they acclaimed him: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna means “save us”. It was used like the expression: Long live the King. Jesus comes as a king. Today we let Jesus to enter our hearts and we allow him to be the king of our lives. We are shouting for joy, acclaiming him. He is knocking on our door. The handle to open the door of our hearts is always on the side of the door.
Today’s feast is a paradox. What is a paradox? A paradox is something contradictory. It looks one way, but also goes in the opposite direction. Today is a day of joy, but it opens to us the Passion and death of Jesus Christ. It’s the beginning of a horrible week. But no worries. It has a happy ending. Eventually Jesus will rise from the dead. Today the people acclaim him; tomorrow they will condemn him to death. Today they shout Hosanna; tomorrow they shout crucify him. Today they call him King of Israel; tomorrow: We have no King but Caesar. Today they use palms; tomorrow they are going to scourge him. Today they are waving olive branches; tomorrow they are going to place thorns on his head. Today they are placing garments on the floor as a carpet; tomorrow they are going to strip off his garments. Today they give him a donkey to ride; tomorrow the wood of the Cross. We do the same with Jesus. Today we tell him that we love him; tomorrow we leave him alone. Today we promise him many things; tomorrow all our promises remain unfulfilled.
Let us not be afraid and begin the road to Calvary, where so many people stay behind, starting with most of the apostles, some running away, denying him, or betraying him. It is a long and winding road, full of surprises and treacherous potholes. This is why we need to go hand in hand with Mary, not to get lost, not to run backwards, but to manage to go around the landmines that the devil places in our path.
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Lent 5 B The grain of wheat
In today’s Gospel some Greeks went to Phillip and told him that they wanted to see Jesus. We too ask the same; we long to see his face. We follow the responsorial psalm: “Create a clean heart in me, O God.” We need a pure heart to be able to see him, clear eyes without any obstacles. How can we see Jesus? He tells us his secret today in the Gospel in three sentences: to die, to lose your life and to serve him. It goes against our culture, which recommends the opposite, trying to keep on living at any cost, to always win and not to serve anybody but ourselves.
The first sentence is very clear: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” How many grains normally produce an ear of wheat? I googled it: from 45 to 50. If we don’t die to ourselves we are only one; if we are buried in the ground we can multiple by fifty. This means that we need to bury our pride, our selfishness and our sensuality deep in the soil. It is the manure that fertilises the wheat, and eventually produces the flour that will be baked into the delicious warm bread we like. From our sinfulness God can bring about beautiful pastry. But for this we need to disappear into the dough mixed with the yeast.
The second sentence follows the same demanding tone: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” It is a paradox, that common sense has summarized in a proverb: no pain, no gain. If we want to win eternal life, we need to offer our lives to God. This is what the cross is all about. We don’t want to hear about the cross; we run away from it. We can look at what we call crosses in our lives and change our attitude. Three stages: accepting, looking for and loving. Just look at the things that upset you. If you change the way you react to difficulties, they won’t upset you anymore.
The third sentence from Jesus is a bit easier to follow: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” Saint Josemaria says that to follow Christ, “We must accompany him so closely that we come to live with him.” He distinguishes four stages in this identification with Christ: “Seeking him, finding him, getting to know him and loving him.” If we seek him, we will find him and we won’t have any problem of loving him.
How do we follow Jesus? Where do we find him? In the word and in the bread, in the Scriptures and the Eucharist. During the Mass, we have two parts, what we call the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. We come to be nourished at both tables. I knew a priest in New Zealand who had two tables in his church, but they looked a bit weird, like two altars. Certainly they emphasised these two ways of finding Jesus. We normally hear the Word of God from the lectern and we witness the coming of Jesus on the altar. Once we have nourished our intellect with his word, we can come to the table of the Lord to receive him in communion.
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Lent 4 B Nicodemus
Today in the Gospel we see Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, the upper class of the political elite, a teacher of Israel, an intellectual, an educated man, a ruler of the Jews. He was a lover of truth, searching for what is right, humble, and, unlike others, he acknowledged that Jesus performed miracles, therefore God was with him. We too should be like him trying to find the truth in our lives, knowing that Jesus is the Way. It is so easy in our society to be biased, to spread half truths, to foster misinformation, to cloud the net with false news. Nevertheless the truth always wins, always comes out, eventually it manages to find the light. That is why we should fight for what is right and acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers.
Nicodemus went to see Jesus by night for fear of the Jews. He spent the whole night with Jesus. We too would like to spend hours with Jesus, talking to him, but we don’t need to go at night. We can go any time we want; he is waiting for us 24/7. We too have human concerns and we are worry what people will think about us. We forget that all of us are going to die and we are going to face God. A man who recovered from an almost certain death, commented: “Before I had human respect. Now I have lost it. Now I talk about God to everyone. I saw judgment so close that I am not ashamed of anything.” Let us get rid of the silly fear of spreading the good news to other people.
Saint John in his Gospel only gives us a summary of that long conversation. We would like to know more, but the Gospels can only give us a few ideas. The main one is the declaration of God’s love for us: “God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son.” We have heard many times that God is love, but it is not easy to live it, or experienced it personally. God not only gave us his most precious treasure, but he let him be with us in the Eucharist. The deeper we go in our spiritual life, the more we experience God’s love. Somebody said that the devil knows our name but he calls us by our sins; God knows our sins but he calls us by our name. We are his children and for him we are like his only begotten Son, a unique child.
The second idea of that conversation is also very important: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Moses showed the serpent to the Jews to cure the ones who were bitten by the snakes God sent to punish their unbelief. God gave us his Son and all we did was to kill him. We lifted him up on to the cross, not to be healed of our physical ailments, but to have life eternal. Therefore we need to do the same, lifting him up to the pinnacle of our lives, making him our centre and summit, root and source.
After the crucifixion, when everybody had run away, Nicodemus was there, asking Pilate for the body of Jesus to bury him. He had the courage and the honour to be close to Jesus in his last moments. We too must follow Nicodemus to be with Jesus till the last moments of our lives.
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Lent 3 B Cleansing of the Temple
In today’s Gospel Jesus is going to the Temple to pray, but he is going to do something completely different. It was the feast of the Passover, the most important day for the Jews and the temple was overflowing with people. They had to offer a sacrifice of an ox or a sheep, if they were wealthy, or two pigeons if they were not. Also they had to pay a half shekel, the Temple money. Other coins in circulation were considered impure because they bore the image of pagan rulers. There was a lot of business activity, the of selling of animals and the changing money. The priests of the Temple benefited from these commercial transactions. Jesus couldn’t bear the sight of his Father’s house converted into a shopping mall. He made a whip with cords and drove them out of the Temple all by himself. It must have been an amazing scene. Try to do the same in your shopping center; in no time you’ll be tackled by the security guards.
They couldn’t stop him. He was filled with holy anger. Oxen and sheep running around, pigeons flying away happily to be free, coins dropping everywhere. Men running away from the famous prophet, afraid of his miraculous powers. The authorities of the Temple looked at the pandemonium without doing anything; they couldn’t stop him because he was right. They only asked him about his authority to do so. Jesus told them about the temple of his body, the future place for all of us to worship. They didn’t understand what he was talking about.
Jesus gives us an example of how to react when confronted by sin, that separates us from God. We could think his actions are over the top, that there is no need to take such extreme measures. It depends of how we look at our salvation, of how keen are we to reach heaven. We are normally more concerned about our body than our soul. Jesus didn’t care much about what people thought about him and did what he had to do. He helps us to open our eyes and follow his example.
We can look at ourselves and discover how many oxen, sheep and pigeons we have in our soul, too many money changers. What would Jesus do if we let him in, into the temple of our soul? We are afraid of him, hiding our vices under all sort of excuses. This time of Lent is an opportunity to open our soul and discover our lust, pride, envy, greed, anger, gluttony or sloth, what we call the seven deadly sins, those sins that are present in our soul in one form or another. If we fail to identify them, Jesus won’t be able to drive them away. We can also go through the Ten Commandments or the Seven Works of Mercy.
The Gospel says that when his disciples saw Jesus driving everyone away from the temple, they remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” We ask the Lord to have the same zeal, the same holy anger, to drive away what separates us from God, not only for us, but also for others. Not to be afraid to help others to see what oxen and sheep they have in their souls, whatever is there that Jesus doesn’t like. We cannot forget that Jesus is coming, and we don’t want him to find anything in our soul that is not pleasing to him. And if we ask what right does he have to enter into our souls, he would tell us that he has created them in his image and likeness.
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Lent 2 Transfiguration of Jesus
The transfiguration is an Icon of contemplation. We need to climb the mountain to become part of this body of elite souls who are contemplatives. Not many people are ready to climb up through the path of sacrifice and docility to God’s will. You need to leave many things behind and travel light. Most of us carry too much baggage, and we are constantly bogged down, pushed backwards by the heavy weight. Our struggle is to let things go, to shed whatever is not helping us to become closer to God. Once you reach the summit, you see things differently. It is an amazing panorama. You can contemplate Jesus in his glory. Contemplation is a gift from God. If we don’t pray, Jesus cannot show us his divinity.
The three beloved apostles fell sleep. They were tired after the climb. They too are going to fall asleep at the agony of Gethsemane. Waking up they found Jesus transfigured in front of them. Jesus lifted the veil that hid his divinity and showed himself as he is. He is always like this. When we talk about a sunset, we talk in a figurative way: the sun never sets. We are the ones rotating. If the sun were always up, we would die of heat exposure. It is the same with Jesus’ divinity. Jesus doesn’t want to dazzle us. Otherwise we will have to veil our faces like Moses after talking to God. The Israelites couldn’t stand looking at him.
The three apostles never forgot this experience. It was an amazing mystical experience. Talking to people, I come across many spiritual experiences, ways of God showing his face, even though normally He is silent. Some people are always looking for miracles. We don’t need them. We have enough proofs of the existence of God to keep us going. If God showed us his face, we could lose our freedom.
The experience is full of light, whiteness and purity. White expels all the colours; black keeps them in. We need to expel all our impurities. This is how our soul should look, pure and clean, white and transparent, for us to be able to see God. A painter was looking for a beautiful girl as a model to paint Our Lady. When he found one she said she would come back tomorrow: she wanted to go to confession first. We need to keep going for reconciliation, to wash our soul many times. I had a friend who had a machine to polish stones. It took a long time for the sand to grind them and make them shine. It was a beautiful change, from the boring, grey, dull image of the river stones, to the bright, polished, smooth surface of many different colours.
Peter couldn’t contain himself and declared: “It is well that we are here.” He wanted to stop time and stay there forever. We too would like to be there, but we need to wait for eternity. We climb up to meet God and bring him to others. We need to go up and down all the time. We cannot stay up there. We climb up through prayer. Once we get the power of God, we can come down to bring it to others. Peter, you cannot stay up here. We cannot stop time. We need to keep going up and down. Begin and begin again every day. Our love of God has to be lived every day. Once you stop climbing, you begin to fall down.
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Lent 1 Temptations of Jesus
Every Lent we try to accompany Jesus into the desert. We don’t like it, but it is the best way for us to return to God, to have a small conversion. We go down from Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, below sea level. Jesus wanted to stoop down to our human level, surrounded by a very rough terrain. It is a place of open spaces, silence, constant blowing of the wind, harsh conditions and a brown landscape. We are going there to spend time with Jesus alone, without anything that could distract us from him. He spent forty days of penance to prepare himself for his public life. We need to prepare ourselves for the temptations we are going to face this year. Close to Jesus, strengthened by our penance, we can overcome any temptation.
After forty days of fasting, Jesus was weak. The devil took advantage of this moment to tempt him, to discover who he was. He does the same with us. He knows our weaknesses and always comes in the same way. We need to be sincere and learn from our mistakes. God allows us to be tempted, for us to show him that we love him more than ourselves, to become stronger in our virtue and to be humble. It helps us to realise that we, like little children, need his power, and we cannot do it alone. We are in the desert with Jesus, and we need to be very close to him.
The first temptation is to convert stones into bread, to fix our problems, to make our lives more comfortable and smooth, with no obstacles and traumas. God is not a butler in our service or a plumber to fix our leaks. It is the other way around; we are at his service. It is the temptation of pleasures, food and entertainment. The Roman Caesars used to give people bread and circuses, to keep them entertained. The devil does the same with our soul, to lull us to asleep and suppress our desire for God. The desert, fasting and abstinence, rekindle our thirst for God. The internet could be a technological drug that keeps us stoned, addicted to screens. Silence, solitude and recollection, will bring us back to life.
The second temptation is to jump from the pinnacle of the temple and let the angels save us. It is the allure of fame, prestige and glory. Vanity makes us think that one day we’ll be famous. If I get a million hits when I upload my silly video on YouTube, I’ll be very happy. I’m counting very carefully my likes and dislikes in my Facebook page. I have so many people following me, so many groups in WhatsApp; I’m an influencer. My moods change depending on what’s happening on my smartphone. Lent is a good time to take a break from whatever is trying to feed our pride. Maybe it is a time to delete the app that’s taking too much time in our lives, or put some order into our use of our little gadgets.
The third temptation is to worship the rulers of this world. We think that money and power are going to make us happy. We like to control people, to have a job that make us somebody, to look at our bank account and be pleased by what we see. We forget that we come from God and that we go back to him, sooner than we think. We cannot take anything with us when we go. This is what the Church reminds us at the beginning of Lent, when the priest places the ashes on our forehead saying: “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”
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Ash Wednesday
Today we begin Lent, a special time to grow, a time for a small conversion. Our Mother the Church opens the flood gates of its abundant graces, to shower what we need in our parched soul. It is a time to look towards how we are growing in our love of God. Maybe we have been slowing down, stopped or even went backwards. It happens in the lives of saints too; sometimes it looks like they are growing fast, and other times they are not moving. Why is that? Is it God’s will or our lack of struggle? Saint Teresa of Avila talks about the four things that slowed her down, from when she became a nun at twenty years old, till she was almost forty and decided to take her holiness seriously. A statue of Jesus suffering his passion moved her to tears.
The first one is carelessness about sin. It is a complacency or complicity with sin, finding easy excuses for our imperfections. We even look towards other people to reassure us in our lack of struggle. We reduce the gravity of sin. It is impossible not to sin, but at least we should be aware of the sins we can recognise, the sins we consent to. Making a decision never to commit even a small sin, is a turning point in our spiritual life.
The second one is not avoiding the near occasions of sin. It is a sadness of not being allowed to play with certain things. If we play with fire, we are going to get burned. It means avoiding peoples, places or situations we know are not good for us. The devil always goes the same way. He knows how to get at us. We need to be sincere and recognise that we are weak and we need the power of God. At the end of the day it is a matter of choosing between the love of God and our self love.
The third is self-reliance. We begin our spiritual life with a strong determination, but sooner or later we become discouraged. We fall down over and over again, and either we abandon our way or we conform with an easy pace. Relying only on ourselves we go nowhere. Voluntarism hides our pride. Thinking that we can do it deceives us. We forgot that we cannot go alone. We need God. Only He can make us saints. We should trust more in his love and mercy than in our own efforts. Humility and simplicity are essential to follow the right path. God uses our docility in spiritual direction, to destroy our self assurance.
And the fourth is not valuing the graces we have received from God. We complain a lot about God not helping us, but we waste a lot of the graces we receive from him. We think we know what we need, and we forget that God knows better. Therefore we should be more aware of the help God is sending us constantly. Saints have a sixth sense to notice the graces from God. We, on the contrary, are rough, and we fail to sense God’s help. Babies have a tender skin and can sense the mosquito straight away. We don’t notice the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in our soul. Saints develop a quick promptness to answer the call from God to prayer or to action.
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The curing of a leper
The first reading of the Mass tells us about Jewish customs and leprosy. Because it was a contagious disease, the Law declared that lepers were impure and they had to leave society. They lived together and had to show that they were lepers, sounding a bell or shouting “unclean.” Leprosy was seen as a punishment from God. The healing of the disease was regarded as one of the blessings of the coming of the Messiah. More than the physical suffering, the hardest thing was the social exclusion. You can suffer as long as you have people around you. When they were cured they had to present themselves to the priests to certify their healing. Nowadays coronavirus is seen a bit like leprosy. You don’t need to sound a bell, but you must isolate yourself. It is sad that we have left old people die alone.
We are all lepers; we are all sinners. You cannot hide leprosy; it is in your face. Slowly it disfigures your body making it a horrible image of your former self. The same happens with our soul in the state of sin, a much more radical reality, because our soul is the dwelling place of God and it is immortal. If people could see our sins we would go to confession every day, in the same way we look at ourselves into the mirror every morning, have a shower and spend a lot of time and money grooming our bodies. We are ashamed of our sins, but we find difficult to bring them to the priest, to Jesus, to heal them.
In the Gospel we see a leper coming up to Jesus and kneeling down in front of him. It was illegal for him to be there, in a town full of people. He recognised who Jesus was and forced himself to get closer to Jesus even though it was forbidden. He had such a strong desire to be healed that he despised social regulations. We too need that determination; nothing can stop us in our quest to clean our sinful nature. The devil is going to suggest all sort of excuses for us not to go to Jesus.
The leper told Jesus: “If you wish, you can make me clean.” What a great line! With these words the leper won over Jesus. He is telling him that he is there to do his will. We need to learn how to touch Jesus’ heart. The more we know him the better we can get through. Every person has a button that can be pushed to open his or her heart. We learn these lessons in our personal prayer, in our encounter with the Lord.
Jesus moved with pity, stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Jesus did the forbidden thing: to touch leprosy. Jesus is ready to touch our wounds. We are ashamed of them, but we should allow Jesus to gently dress them. It reminds me of Saint Francis of Assisi who was very afraid of lepers. Once he came across a leper in the bush who begged him for alms, with what was left of his hand outstretched. Francis was just going to drop a coin, with a disgusting face, but he controlled his feelings, and took his hand and kissed it. The leper disappeared: it was Jesus Christ. When Jesus touched the leper, he was cured immediately. In the Gospel other miracles occur gradually. But here all his limbs were instantly restored. It must have been an amazing scene, a bit magical. He even got back his beautiful blue eyes and could see Jesus’ face, just in front of him, smiling, all the people around them amazed.
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Peter’s mother in law
After leaving the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus went to Peter’s house with Andrew, James and John, to dine together. We can imagine those meals with Jesus. Peter’s mother in law was sick and she couldn’t wait on them. Maybe she was upset with her son in law for joining Jesus and leaving his wife behind. Jesus healed her, won her over and convinced her to serve them. The news spread quickly and people began to bring their sick ones, their friends, maybe their mothers in law, for Jesus to heal them. The Gospel says that the whole town gathered at his door. It was a big throng. Jesus began his public ministry healing at the sick and casting out demons. It is a good sign of a real prophet.
We too need Jesus healing. We should recognise that we are sick and in need of help. Some are physical illnesses, but more frequently our problems are spiritual ones. We are blind, deaf, lame, paralysed and crippled in our spiritual life. Two things are important to be able to be healed. First to be well diagnosed, to recognise our true sickness, and secondly, to get the proper treatment. We find it difficult to acknowledge that we are gravely ill and sometimes we wait until it is too late. Also many times we lack the faith to go to the divine doctor. Jesus is the only one who can solve our problems and many times we go to him as the last resort.
After a full day’s work, Jesus rose very early before dawn and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. He needed to spend time with his Father God, to be alone with the Alone. It is not just an example for us, but Jesus as a man felt the need to charge his spiritual batteries. We too need to do the same, even though we don’t feel the same urge. Somehow we are more incline to seek after material things and we forget about the needs of our soul. That is why we become anxious, upset, depressed, unsettled; we become addicted to things or we lose the perspective of what it is important. Precisely our prayer life helps us to focus our priorities and to feed the famine of our soul. We don’t normally realise how important it is because our spiritual hunger is not self evident.
When Simon and those who were with him woke up, they couldn’t find Jesus. They looked for him everywhere. They weren’t used to his early routine. When at last they found him they complained: “Everyone is looking for you.” It is a great statement. It is true for all of us, even though many times we don’t recognise this truth. We are all looking for happiness, and only in Jesus we can find true joy. We are created for God, we need God; it is inscribed in our DNA.
Jesus replied to them: “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” We can be selfish wanting to keep Jesus for ourselves. We can live in a bubble, isolating ourselves from the dangers outside. Pope Francis reminds us that we need to get out, mix with others and smell like the sheep as the shepherds do. Jesus has come to save every human being, to heal us from our inclination to sin, and he counts on all of us. Let us follow Jesus wherever he goes.
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The unclean spirit
Today we see Jesus teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus centred his public ministry in this town, at the shores of the lake of Gennesaret. He didn’t want to stay in Nazareth; a prophet is not well liked in his home town. Apart from Jerusalem, there is no other place like Capernaum that contains more memories of Jesus in the Gospels. The ruins are well preserved because the place was deserted until the Franciscans bought the land at the beginning of the twentieth century and spent almost 100 years excavaiting it. You can see now the ruins of the synagogue and a church built over the house of Saint Peter.
Even though he wasn’t a rabbi, they allowed him to teach in the synagogue. He was becoming a famous prophet and everybody wanted to hear him. The Gospel says that “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” Rabbis taught based on the authority of famous rabbis, and you could trace their lineage back to Moses; and of course, Moses got it directly from God. But Jesus spoke with his own authority, without the need to quote anybody else to bolster what he said. He defended the truth with his own testimony.
There was a man in the synagogue possessed with a demon. We don’t know if he was allowed to enter or they placed him there to cause trouble. We priests know of lunatics coming to churches and causing havoc. You need to be very careful not to upset them and try to be gentle but firm to get them out. Somehow mad people are attracted to sacred places. It is the first time that Jesus faced an unclean spirit, in Hebrew, Beelzebub. The man cried out: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” It was a tense situation, all eyes are fixed on Jesus, to see how he was going to react. His power was tested. The possessed man recognised him: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” On the contrary most contemporaries of Jesus missed who he was. It wasn’t easy for them. It is not easy for us either. How can we recognise Jesus passing by? He is coming to us every day, many times hidden in unforeseen situations.
Jesus knew how to deal with him and treated him with authority: “Quiet! Come out of him!” The unclean spirit didn’t go out without a fight: he convulsed the man with a loud cry. It must have been very dramatic. Exorcists learn from Jesus how to expel demons. They study the scriptures to follow Jesus’ practice and try to use his power. People are fascinated with exorcists. It is a good theme for a horror movie. We shouldn’t be afraid of the devil. Once I heard an exorcist saying that the best exorcism is a good confession.
Devils have easy control of people. They try to slave them through sin. We too are possessed by sin. It is a kind of slavery, that we need to be free off. Even though we are prone to evil, sin doesn’t make us happy. Jesus has the power and the authority to help us. We need to recognise our addictions and let Jesus to free us from them. With our will and his power, we can become holy.
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The calling of the first apostles
In the Gospels of these first Sundays we are at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, when he calls the apostles. Today we see Jesus calling the first four, Simon and Andrew, John and James. Last Sunday we saw the first meeting of Jesus with John and Andrew. Today Jesus is formally calling them, together with their brothers to follow him. He found them where they were, working as fishermen, in their own natural habitat, among boats and nets. Jesus is also calling us where we are, in the midst of society, among our relatives and friends, working to make our environment a better place.
Why is Jesus calling them? He doesn’t need people, he is God and he can do whatever he wants. But he prefers to work with us; he thinks that is better for us to give him a hand, for us to feel we are cooperating with him. We are fulfilled when we see that we are making a difference. Saint Josemaria give us a nice comparison, to explain our desire to help God, one he witnessed himself: “We saw a boat approaching the shore. Some men jumped out. They began to haul in the net that trailed behind the boat. It was laden with fishes, all shining like silver. Their feet sank into the sand as they pulled away with amazing strength. Then all of a sudden a little boy appeared. He came up to the rope, seized it with his tiny hands and began to tug away with evident clumsiness. The tough fishermen must have felt their hearts soften, for they allowed the child to join in, without chasing him away, even though he was more of a hindrance than a help. I thought of you and of myself.” God does the same thing with us. We are more of a nuisance, but God’s heart is moved when we try to pull the rope with him.
Why isn’t Jesus calling more people? He is, but some people don’t want to give him a hand, others don’t listen to his voice, and others begin to help him, but they get discouraged or disappointed, and abandon the task. He tells us to pray more: “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest to send more labourers to his harvest.” But don’t worry; God normally uses a few people for us to see that it is him doing the job. We should be very grateful to see that he is working with us, that he allows us to give him a hand.
Why did Jesus call mainly fishermen? He centred his ministry around the lake of Gennesaret, but there were other people around there with different professions. He must have found that fishermen have virtues suitable for fishing men: patience, constancy, perseverance, endurance and hard working habits. Maybe he wanted his 12 apostles to come from the same place, to know each other prior to their calling, to have a group already bonded. We don’t know; all we can do is to beat around the bush, but at the end of the day God does what he wants, and he knows what he is doing.
All the apostles left everything to be able to follow Jesus. Today we see John and Andrew leaving the boat and their father behind. I imagine Zebedee, their father, looking at them from the boat, not agreeing with the decision of his sons. This is the condition of a true apostle. It is not the matter of how much we have or what we have, but if we want to follow Jesus closer, we need to leave things behind. To increase our speed we need to travel light.
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Two disciples of John
Today, our second Sunday of ordinary time, we begin another year with the Gospel of John telling us how he met Jesus for the first time. In the first reading of the Mass, God is calling Samuel, but he doesn’t know what to do. Eli tells him how to answer: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” This should be our response to discover what God wants us to do this year. The Responsorial Psalm has the same attitude of generosity: “Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.” We try to begin this year with the desire to do God’s will. We realised that last year we were a bit selfish, too centred on ourselves, doing our own thing, and we now renew our resolution to be more docile to what God wants us to do.
John the Baptist was sitting down on the shores of the River Jordan with his two best disciples, John and Andrew. Looking at Jesus passing by, he pointed him out to them with these words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” This expression was very familiar to the Jews: He is the chosen one, the Messiah. The priest repeats these words every Mass before Communion, lifting up the host for us to see him, reminding us who he is we are going to receive. Both disciples understood John’s intention and followed Jesus. John offered to God his two most beloved followers. He knew Jesus had to grow and he had to diminish. It is not easy to give away our prestige, to fade away in history when are very famous. We should offer to God our best, doing things just for him. Many times we are stingy, we give God left overs, just in case. Remember the sacrifice of Cain and Abel. God was pleased with Abel, who gave him the prime of his flock. The smoke of Cain’s fire didn’t go up to the sky.
John and Andrew were following Jesus from a distance, a bit embarrassed to bother the Lord. Suddenly he turned around and said: “What do you seek?” What do I seek? Happiness. We all seek happiness. “Come and see.” Jesus is inviting all of us to an intimate, personal relationship with him. Come and see. Pope Benedict XVI used to tell us: Christianity is not just a set of rules, a lofty idea, but a relationship with a person who changes our lives. Jesus is an experience, an encounter, a person; there is nobody like Jesus. How can you explain love, beauty, inner joy or peace? You have to experience them to know what they are. It is the same with Jesus.
John says that they stayed with Jesus the rest of the day. He even remembers the time of his encounter with Jesus many years later: the tenth hour, around four o’clock in the afternoon. We all remember moments when we have experienced the supernatural, when we have touch somehow the divine. We would like these moments to happen more often, or for longer periods. But we all have had enough proofs of his existence to keep us going, to know that Jesus is walking with us.
Afterwards Andrew brought his brother Simon to Jesus. We cannot keep a treasure hidden in the ground. Jesus uses other people to bring us to him. Once we experienced his countenance, his gentle touch, we want people around us, the people we love, to share the same feelings. Thanks to Andrew, Simon became Peter, the rock.
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Epiphany
Pope Francis in one of his homilies talks about the three actions the Magi undertook to reach the baby Jesus: seeing, setting out and bringing. Those three actions can guide our journey towards the Lord this year. We need the three of them. One or two are not enough. We need to see, we need to move and we need to bring ourselves. If we don’t see, we don’t move; if we don’t move, we cannot give ourselves.
The first thing is to see the star. We ask the Lord to see, like the blind man in the Gospel, when Jesus asked him what he wanted: “Lord let me see.” Maybe we need to learn how to look, how to open our eyes, be more humble. There could be an obstacle in front of us, and we should remove it. What is it that doesn’t allow me to see the star? Maybe we don’t even look at the sky, we don’t spend time in prayer. How are we going to see it if we don’t look? Other people saw the star but only the three wise men followed it. They found excuses not to follow the star. Maybe we have seen the star, we know what God wants us to do, but we are not ready. We lack generosity, spirit of detachment, or we are afraid of risking our lives. At the end of the day we need faith to trust in God. He is going to fulfill his promises; he is not going to let us down.
The second action is to set out, to go, to begin to walk, to try. We need to get out of our comfort zone. It is not going to be an easy journey. We don’t know where we are going, how long it is going to last, when is the star going to stop, what obstacles we are going to find on the way. We could lose the star, change our minds, find another way. Herod was afraid of the star. Maybe we are afraid too. The priests in Jerusalem pointed out the way but they didn’t follow it. We could show others the star, explain what they have to do, but we don’t follow it ourselves. Maybe other people will try to discourage us to follow the star. They could tell us not to be fanatical, take it easy, relax. To begin is easy; to keep going is more difficult; to reach the end is what’s important.
Our last endeavour is to bring something. When we travel we normally buy gifts to bring them back home. We cannot arrive in front of baby Jesus empty handed. The Magi brought gold, incense and myrrh. We can bring the same gifts, the gold of our own lives, in spite of being made simply of clay. Our lives turn into gold when we offer them to God. We can also bring incense, the perfume of our Christian lives, the virtues that we strive to produce; each one of them is a grain of incense, that together produces a unique scent. And myrrh, the sacrifices God is asking of us. They mixed myrrh in the drink they gave to Jesus on the cross; they also used myrrh when they buried Jesus’ body. It is a gift that reminded Jesus of his passion. It was at the beginning of his life and at the end. We too have a beginning; we need to follow Jesus till the end.
The Gospel says that when the three wise men arrived, “going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother.” We normally represent baby Jesus on his mother’s lap; she is holding the creator of the universe. She is the seat of wisdom, the throne of glory. Mary, Miriam, means star of the sea. In the same way the sailors at sea, used to direct themselves at night looking at the stars, Mary points us the way to her son. During the storms and crises that we find in our lives, Mary is the star that brings us to a safe haven.
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Holy Family B
The first Sunday after Christmas we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. Once we have a baby, we have a family. Before we had a couple, Mary and Joseph, just married. Now we have three persons, and this constitutes a family. It reminds us of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, of which the family is a reflection. Marriage, the love of husband and wife, is geared to having children. In our society we talk about love and we forget about children. Some couples don’t want to have children. They say: “father, we are not ready.” We are never ready for children. “But father, how can we bring children to this mad world of ours.” Precisely, we need good children to make it better. When I ask couples how many children do they want to have, they answer: “two, a boy and a girl; we want to give them the best.” The best thing you can give to your children is a brother or a sister. “But we cannot afford more.” And then I ask: How many cars do you have? How many TVs? How many cell phones?
Some couples just live together without getting married. The commitment is not there, and they are just testing the ground. Marriage is not a testing exercise, but a covenant for life. The first question I ask when couples come to baptise their baby is: “Are you married?” With embarrassing look they say: “father, not yet.” I tell them: “you are beginning to build your house with the roof instead of the foundations.” You get married to have children, not the other way around, to have children to get married.
Today, the feast of the Holy Family it is a good reminder of how important the family is for our happiness, for society and for the Church. The most important thing we have, after God, our life and our faith, is our family. It is more important than your wealth, your career, you job, your future, your gadgets, your pets or your prestige. I remind people when they come to bury a relative: now you realise how important your loved one was. We take people for granted, and at the end of the day other people are what we need most, to support and support us, to go through life together to reach heaven. We are social beings and we need family and friends for us to grow and mature.
We live in a society where the family is not supported, not defended as it should be, and it is attacked on all fronts. When the family disintegrates, society crumbles. Most of the problems of our society come from a lack of strong families. Today we pray for the families in our country, and we commit ourselves to do what we can to help our own families and the families around us.
The lack of vocations we are experiencing in the Church is because there are few good Christian families. Our families are too small to produce children ready to give themselves to God. If the parents are generous, the children follow their example. To have large families demands a lot of generosity and dedication. A child is not just a toy to be bought and played with. It demands a lot of time and suffering, and we tend not to be ready to accept that, especially fathers. Today we ask the Holy Family to help us to foster young couples to want to have more children.
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Christmas
The life of Jesus is an open book from the beginning to the end, from his birth at Bethlehem until his death on the cross. We can learn from every page, from every sentence. He teaches us graphic lessons through his words and his actions; everything in his life has a meaning for us. Today we contemplate him as a baby, his first professorial chair.
The first lesson we learn is simple: silence. God became man shrouded in silence. During a wintry night, in an unknown town lost in the middle of nowhere, in a cave surrounded by a mule and and ox, the King of kings was born, hidden from the eyes of the powerful and the learned. The Jews had been waiting for him for centuries and they missed him. Only a few shepherds went to adore him, warned by the angels. The most marvellous works of God, his incarnation, his birth and his resurrection, were surrounded by silence, hidden from the naked eye. The ways of the Lord are different from ours. We expect to find him in big miracles, apparitions, revelations; in the fire, storm, hurricane, or earthquakes, like Elijah, but he comes through a soft breeze. Silence is the language of God. He speaks in a very low voice, almost imperceptible, and we need a special gadget, a hearing aid, to tune to his wavelength: faith. They say that the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they can only be felt with the heart. The mysteries of God are immersed in silence, and only faith can see through. Noise is the common language of the devil.
The second lesson is clear: humility. God coming to us as a baby. He could have come as a grown up man, but he wanted to come to us in the same defenceless and humiliating way that we all come into this world. To access him we need to reach down to his level. The first thing he says when we approach him is: get rid of your fancy dress, the outfit you have weaved with your pride. In front of the baby we cannot talk about our talents, achievements, or our wealth. We need to go down on our knees and become as little as him.
The third lesson is poverty. He was the only one who could choose his birth and he chose a poor family to be born into. Not even the place where he was delivered was his. He came with nothing, and he left with nothing, only the wood of the cross as his dying bed. It is the same with us: we came naked and we cannot take anything with us when we go. He is looking for a place in our hearts, and it is full of things.
Where there is a baby, there is a mother. We depict Mary with baby Jesus sitting on her lap, looking after him, showing him for our contemplation. We call her Sedes Sapientiae, seat of wisdom, throne of grace. She brings to us the infinite well of knowledge and grace. Let us take advantage of these days of Christmas to spend time looking at the beautiful baby, and learn from him as many lessons as we can. And don’t forget to give our Mother a hand.
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Fourth Sunday of Advent B
The three most important events in history are the conception, birth and death of Jesus Christ. Today we witness the first one, what we call the incarnation, the taking of the flesh, God becoming man. It happened in a most natural, quiet and discreet way. God began his human existence, like each one of us, as a little, tiny embryo. All started with an angel appearing to a girl. We can be there with our imagination and witness the scene. Every time we pray the angelus, we are reminding Mary of one of her most treasured memories. From eternity she can tap into any moment of history, like the inside of a gigantic wheel, and go back to the past, remain in the present or forward to the future. She is with us now.
The Annunciation happened in a lost corner of the Roman Empire, hidden from the eyes of men, involved in silence. This is the language of God. We normally forget that God talks to us heart to heart. The most important things happen in the center of our souls. Sometimes we complain: Why is God not talking to me now? We are the ones not listening to him, or not tuning in to the same frequency. Mother Teresa used to remind us that nature, trees, flowers and grass, grow in silence. The stars, the moon and the sun, move in the most complete silence. Most of the universe is wrapped in silence. Unless we shut down all the noise surrounding us we cannot hear the voice of God.
The village where this happened is called Nazareth, a small place of around 100 residents, situated at the foot of a hill, houses built in front of caves. So insignificant that Nathaniel asked if any thing good could come, had ever come out of Nazareth. There was a saying that if God punished you, he would give you a wife from Nazareth. God chose to land in a town lost in the middle of nowhere. Nothing to do with famous paintings of great artists depicting the event. The oriental tradition places the scene at the fountain of the village. We prefer to contemplate it at Mary’s house, because the Gospel gives the impression of the angel coming in, while she is recollected in prayer. If an angel comes to you to deliver a message, how is he going to find you? Watching tv, listening to music, surfing the net.
We know the name of the angel: Gabriel. He is one of the three archangels named in the Bible, in charge of the messages around Jesus. His name means God’s strength, fortitude of God. He is a big guy. If angels are impressive, he is specially remarkable: he is an archangel. The first thing he says to Mary is don’t be afraid. He tries to make her at ease. We witness a dialogue between him and the future mother of God. They say angels talk singing, flapping their wings in unison. The voice of our mother matches his tone, sounding clear and pristine.
Mary is so beautiful that we miss the conversation, distracted in contemplation. We only realised that the angel asked a question, when there is silence. He is waiting for her answer. And her yes or no will affect us deeply. We wait with great expectation for her lips to move, the whole of creation is in awe without knowing it. We witness her yes rejoicing at her docility to the will of God, ashamed that we are not generous enough to do the same, and say the same yes, which will enable us to follow her path towards God.
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Third Sunday of Advent B
Today in our second reading, from the letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians, we read: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.” They say that this letter is the earliest New Testament text we have. These words are placed at the very end of the letter, as final words of encouragement. If Saint Paul tends to go over the top, here he pushes us further. For him the coming of Jesus changed everything.
This is a summary of our spiritual life: rejoice, pray and give thanks. The three of them go together. “Always” is the adverb that connects them, that unites them. If this constancy is not maintained, all three go up like smoke, like fireworks. It is a triangle, with three sides complementing each other; two alone won’t work. They are in tension, in a difficult balance, ready to blow up. If one side is defective, not maintained, the three of them break up into pieces. When we rejoice, we pray, and we give thanks.
Rejoice always. It is easy to smile when life goes our way, but how can we be happy in front of contradictions, obstacles, accidents, and problems? Because God is in control. A French convert used to say: Christians, your only obligation is to be happy. If we are not happy, there is something wrong with our faith. There is nothing wrong with our Church. We are the problem. We need to stop blaming others and look at the blessings God has bestowed on us, at the beautiful things that surround us. A sad saint is a contradiction, like a square circle, an old baby, a dwarf giant; it cannot exist.
Pray without ceasing. How can we do that? It doesn’t mean to be the whole day in a church, kneeling down, murmuring prayers. Not even the monks can do it. It is like the beating of the heart, like breathing. We are not aware of it, but it is happening. It becomes unconscious, part of our lives, a second nature. It is a constant presence of God, an awareness that God is always with us. It is a gift from God if we try our best. In the Eastern tradition, you can find the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. It is said breathing in and breathing out. If we say it many times, the prayer works his way into our being, determining every aspect of our lives. Then we can access that deep place of our soul, where God is hidden, and live with him. Jesus told us the parable of the unjust judge, to remind us that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart.” It doesn’t mean that God is an evil judge, but that we need to follow the example of the persistent widow, who prayed day and night. We pray till we reach our heavenly home.
In all circumstances give thanks. Everything we have comes from God. What is ours is our will and our sins. Everything else is a blessing, if we look at things through God’s eyes. God can even bring good out of evil. He uses the actions of the devil for his own plans. It must be frustrating for the evil one to see God using him for a good purpose. As Saint Paul tells the Romans “everything works for the best for those who love him.”
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Second Sunday of Advent
On the second Sunday of Advent the Church presents to us Saint John the Baptist as a preparation for Christmas. He began to follow his vocation within his mother’s womb. Benedict XVI says that you find your goodness following the plan God has prepared for you. Nowadays people are afraid of discovering God’s plan for them. They think that their lives are too precious to use them for something else but themselves. They forget that unless you give your life, you lose it. When you follow God’s plan, you find your truth, and the truth sets you free. Your life becomes a witness to the truth. Living in a relativistic society, your life becomes a beacon of the truth.
What can we learn from John the Baptist? Many things, but I think his most important virtue and the foundation of all the others was his humility. Jesus praised him saying that there was nobody like him. Humanly speaking he was tops. To open the way of Jesus, he had to have the best talents, the best qualities to resemble his Master. He could have done whatever he wanted with his life, even becoming the Roman emperor, but he fulfilled his mission and disappeared. He even told his disciples when they complained that everybody was following Jesus, that he had to decrease and Jesus must increase. He also said that he wasn’t worthy to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. We, on the contrary, are too concerned about our own qualities, and we place them at the service of self, thinking how we can become famous or noteworthy.
Another virtue that shines in John the Baptist is generosity. He gave Jesus his two best disciples. When Jesus was passing by, he pointed out who Jesus was: “Behold the lamb of God.” John and Andrew didn’t think twice and followed Jesus. They became part of Jesus’ beloved apostles. His attitude is completely contrary to the norm in our society where we are encouraged to think only about ourselves. We have never had so much wealth in the history of humanity, and we have never been so selfish.
Saint John the Baptist gives us another great example to the people of our generation: fortitude. He denounced Herod, knowing that he could lose his head, and told him that he should not take his brother’s wife. We on the contrary are afraid what people will think of us and we don’t say what we need to be said because of fear of being belittled or being canceled out. Social media creates an anonymous culture where you can say nasty things without being accountable. We throw the stone and hide the hand that actually throws it. We need to think twice before we post anything, always trying to point out the truth yet acting charitably.
Let us follow the example of Saint John the Baptist to help open the way of the Lord for our relatives and friends. Jesus has sent us ahead of him in much the same way. But to do so we need to share some of his virtues, his talents, so that people can discover a bit of Jesus in us. Today we ask John the Baptist to help us to develop what we need in our lives to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
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First Sunday of Advent
The Advent wreath is a Christian tradition that symbolises the passage of the four weeks of Advent. It is a reminder that time passes, every Sunday a new candle, and we need to be ready for when Our Lord is born in our soul on Christmas Day. The lighting of a candle can be accompanied by a Scripture reading, some prayers and reflections. By the lighting of the candles on each subsequent Sunday, the light increases, until, by the last Sunday of Advent, all four candles are lit. The traditional way to light the candles is clockwise, following the normal passage of time. Some Advent wreaths include a fifth candle in the middle, the Christ candle, which is lit at Christmas Eve. It shows in a graphic way the centrality of Jesus in our lives.
The wreath is made of evergreen leaves or branches, which symbolise the hope of eternal life and the continuous life of Christ, since neither ever die. It also represents God’s unchanging love for us. The green colour is the most pleasing to the eye, symbol of hope. The circular form of the wreath symbolises the eternity of God and the immortality of the soul, since a circle has no ending. It also represents God’s infinite love for us. In a circle neither the beginning nor the end can be found. God’s love is always flowing without interruption. It gives an impression of a never ending life of grace for us.
The four candles have different interpretations, each one emphasising different aspects of Christian life. One specifically symbolizes the Christian concepts of hope, peace, joy and love. Another interpretation states that the first candle is the Prophecy candle, representing the prophets who predicted the coming of Jesus; the second is the Bethlehem candle, representing the journey of Joseph and Mary; the third represents the Shepherds’ candle and their joy; and the fourth is the Angels’ candle, representing peace. Other visions centre onthose looking forward to the coming of Christ: the prophets, John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. Some spiritual authors foster some acts of virtue for every week, specially directed to the people we live with: patience, forgiveness, acts of service and a smiling attitude.
The colour of the candles also has meaning. The traditional two colours are violet and rose, corresponding with the colors of the liturgical vestments for the Sundays of Advent. The third Sunday the priest is allowed to use a rose chasuble; it is called Gaudete Sunday, corresponding to the first words of the Latin entrance antiphon, meaning rejoice. Christ’s candle is always white, the colour that encompasses all of them.
The candles are lit reflecting Christ as the light of the world, who came to dispel darkness. It reminds us that when we baptise a baby, we bring a lighted candle close to the neofite, to signify his soul full of light and cleanliness. Getting closer to Christmas more candles are lit and therefore produce more light. Every day that passes, we are getting closer to the coming light. The closer we come to Jesus the more we see. As Psalm 35 says, “In your light, God, we see light.” While the candles are lit we are safe. We cannot allow the flame to be extinguished, otherwise we will be in total darkness, the absence of Jesus, the colour of the evil one.
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Christ the King We arrive today at the end of the liturgical year. In the Church we have, in a sense, two years, the normal year, which follows the feast days of Jesus, Mary, angels and saints, and the year that follows the liturgical seasons, Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. We finish the ordinary time with this beautiful feast day of Christ the King. The Gospel of today’s Mass brings to our consideration three main ideas: there will be a judgement at the end of time, Christ identifies himself with everyone in need, and evil people will experience eternal punishment and the good eternal reward.
In the Bible Jesus is depicted as a judge on a throne, who will come to judge the living and the dead. We believe that time will come to an end with the last judgement, when everyone will be punished or rewarded. It will be very interesting to watch the movie of our lives in front of everyone. Everything will be uncovered, all the secrets revealed. We will know all the things we wanted to know, the why, the when and the wherefore. But thanks be to God, the things we have confessed will be deleted, the hard disk will be formatted. Those things will be left alone in God’s mind. There was an old woman who used to go to the priest telling him that Jesus appeared to her, and she could talk with him. He didn’t know what to believe. One day he told her to ask Jesus about his own personal sins, to see if they were forgiven. Next time she told him that she had asked Jesus about his sins. “What did he say?” “He has forgotten them.”
We talk about the last Judgement to distinguish it from the particular judgement, which everyone will undergo immediately after death. The sentence pronounced at the end of time will be a confirmation of this one. People who had near death experiences talk about how they relive their entire lives in a flash of a second, in the presence of a superior being, with a good sense of humour. Those experiences normally change their lives for the best. We all feel empty handed in front of Jesus when we have to give an account of our lives. We are not ready because we are still here. Saint Josemaria says that for us Jesus won’t be a judge in the harsh sense of the word, but he will simply be Jesus.
That’s why we need to see Jesus in every person we come across, especially in people in need. People who annoy us, who bother us, who make our lives more difficult, are in need of our affection, our thoughts and our care. The homeless, the old, the poor, the people who are ungrateful, are Jesus passing by, hidden behind a distasteful crust. We do not know how much we love God; but we can know how much we love our neighbor. We are normally self centred and we need to make an effort to look around us.
The modern mind finds it very difficult to believe in eternal punishment. You don’t hear these days much about hell, fire and brimstone. Why is this? Because we all want everybody to be saved, we believe in humanity, and God has created us to be with Him in heaven. But if there is no punishment, there is no justice, and there is no reward. After this life we wouldn’t like to go to a natural paradise if God is not there. We are naughty little children, and we need to be admonished by our Father God that there is a hell.
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Parable of the talents
At the end of the year, the Church brings to our consideration the parable of the talents. It is not easy for us to grasp what a talent is. A talent was not a coin but a measure of value, a unit of account, worth about fifty kilos of silver. It was a lot of wealth. With a talent, a family could live for 30 years. It is so much that it doesn’t matter if it is five, two or one. All we need to do is to produce a double amount. From here we have the expression talented people.
We don’t like this parable, we don’t like being tested. We don’t like exams. We don’t like having to produce or reach a certain quota. The elements of the parable are clear. We are the servants. The talents are the qualities, gifts, virtues, God has bestowed on us. The master is God. The journey of the master signifies the duration of our lives. His unexpected return means our death. The settling of accounts is our judgement. Heaven is the banquet that we have been invited to, if we produce our share.
This parable has to do with spiritual economics, with investment, risk and return. God is the banker, the one who has lent us everything. We complain about banks and we depict bankers dressed with suits, fat and smoking cigars. We give them our money and they charge us to look after it, while they make money with our money. But God is a different kind of banker: we haven’t given him anything. It is the other way around: all we have comes from him. We are completely in debt to him, at his disposal. We belong to him. And we think that we own our lives. We are the stewards of God’s property. What he is asking from us is to produce, to give back to him the interest on his loan. Not for him, but for us. He is going to give us back what we produce and a reward for our good investment, much more valuable than anything we possess: the infinite gift of heaven. It is a good deal, the best one. And we are still doubting what to do.
These talents God has given us have a special quality. They follow the law of the spiritual gifts: unless we invest them, we lose them. If you don’t risk, you cannot double; it is all or nothing. If you don’t work with your talents you lose them. Money that is not invested loses its value. If we don’t invest our lives, we are going to waste them. People who risk a lot can be successful. Saints risk everything and gain everything. It is a paradox: the more you give, the more you get. If you don’t use it, you lose it; if you keep it, it disappears. Unless the grain of wheat is buried and dies, it doesn’t produce. It is like a voucher that has to be used by a certain time. Or like air time in your phone, that if you don’t use it, it disappears once the month is finished. Unless the grain of wheat is buried in the ground, it doesn’t produce the ear.
This parable brings to our consideration two main ideas: we are stewards of the talents God has given us and therefore we have to give account of them when we die. It is not my time, but God’s time; it is not my life, but His life. We know we are going to die, but we don’t think about it, or we live as if it is never going to happen.
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Parable of the foolish virgins
It is difficult for us to understand this parable because we are not familiar with the customs of Jewish weddings. The bridegroom would go to the bride’s house to fetch her and take her to his home. The bride would be accompanied by her maiden friends with their lamps on, to light the way. To be waiting for the bridegroom with lamps and no oil was silly. It is like going to a birthday party with no gift, a dinner with no wine, or to a church with no money for the collection.
We are waiting for the Lord who is coming to meet us, with the lamp of faith in our hand, lighted with the oil of charity, and holding it up high, to be able to see when the bridegroom is coming, awake with hope. No faith, no lamp. We need the lamp; if we don’t have the lamp, we don’t have a place to contain the oil. But the lamp is not enough. It has to be lighted, and for that we need oil; no oil, no light. Love is the all purpose oil that lubricates everything. A lamp without oil illuminates nothing. Faith without love is useless. The devil believes in God but has no love. Hope is what keeps us awake, waiting for the Lord that is coming. When we are asleep, the light eventually goes off.
There is a famous painting, “Jesus, the light of the world”, depicting Jesus holding a lighted lamp, in the midst of darkness, knocking on a door. The flame lights the beautiful face of Jesus and you can see that he is very keen to open the door. But the door has no handle. He is knocking at our door and the lock is on our side. We are the only ones who can open that door. We have the key which is the right shape to go through the keyhole. We don’t know when he is coming; what we do know is that he is coming. Sooner or later he is going to knock at the door of our life. If we are asleep we are in for a surprise.
This parable teaches us not only to be waiting for the Lord, but also to be ready for when he comes. Christian life doesn’t mean just to be part of the Church, like to having a card that shows we are members. To be baptised, to have received our first communion, having been confirmed, is not good enough. We need to be an active member, a Christian who is alive, who adds to the life of the Church, who gives light to others. An Irish man was on his dead bed surrounded by his family. He asked his wife: Mary, are you here? Yes honey. To his daughter: Rose, are you here? Yes dad. To his son: Patrick, are you here? Yes dad. Then, opening his eyes said: who is looking after the shop? The Church is in our hands and we need to feel the responsibility of looking after it. Two questions Jesus is going to ask us when he comes: Do you have oil? Did you give light to others?
It is not enough to have the lamp, to believe, but we need also the oil. It is a small thing but it is very important. How sometimes small things make a big difference. If there is no oil, there is no light. We cannot be in darkness when Jesus comes to pick us up, otherwise we are not going to see him coming. How do we get this oil? Through the sacraments, mainly communion and confession, our prayer life, our charity, our good deeds, the things we do for others. Our love of God and the love for others are the olives where we can squeeze the oil for our lamps. We need to make sure we have enough oil to keep the lamp burning until he comes. Be awake and waiting.
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All Saints
Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.
The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.
What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.
Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.
We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of JesusChrist. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”
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The first Commandment
Chapter twenty two of Matthew’s Gospel is question time. We saw last week about the tribute to Caesar, then a question about the resurrection of the dead and today about the greatest commandment. It is a lawyer who asks to test him. He wanted to know how much Jesus knew about the law. Be careful with lawyers. Don’t forget Jesus is the one who made the law. The Pharisees loved to fulfill the law but had 613 commandments. There were endless arguments about their importance, because some of them were not easy to live by. Jesus gives us a simple answer: love God above everything and others as yourself.
It is a simple commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” It is the core of the Gospel in a nutshell, it’s a summary. It is very demanding, not easy to put it into practice. If you do it, you’ll become holy. We heard this many times and we would like to do it. But, is it possible? It is; God cannot ask us something we cannot fulfill. The saints have done it. We can do it, but do we want to do it? We are created to love God. It is the only way for us to be happy.
The Old Testament says that Moses was very much loved by God. He talked to Him as a man talks to his friend. After conversing with God he had to cover his face because it shone like a powerful light. The Israelites couldn’t look at his face. Moses wanted to see God’s face. But man cannot see the face of God and live, so God in his merciful love promised to place Moses in a cleft of a rock. “There I will station you while my glory passes by, and cover you with my right hand till I have gone past. So, when I take my hand away, then you shall follow me with your eyes, but my face you cannot see.” Thus God allowed Moses to see his back. We cannot imagine what he saw. We too want to see God. But our love for Him is not strong enough.
At the end of our lives we are going to be measured by our love of God. Jesus, our judge, is going to hold a scale with two plates: one with our sins, and on the other with our love for him. We already have our sins; the plate is full of them. We need to make sure our love is heavier. Look at big sinners who became great saints: Mary Magdalene or Saint Augustine. They eventually loved God above everything. They give us plenty of hope. We are small sinners, but we can become small saints. Don’t worry too much about your sins; make sure we keep growing in our love of God. There is a secret: we love him with his love; therefore ask Him for this gift.
How much do I love God? It depends of how much I am ready to do for him. Are we ready not to offend him? How do we grow in our love of God? In the same way we love people: doing things for them, trying not to offend them, thinking about them. Our mind goes to the people we love. We have five main languages of love. Acts of service: we need to serve God, doing things for him alone. Words of praise: we adore God mainly going to Mass. Quality time: we should spend more time with him in prayer. Physical touch: the best way to touch Him is to receive Him in Communion. Offering gifts: we should be generous with Him, giving Him whatever He is asking from us now.
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Giving to Caesar
The Pharisees wanted to catch Jesus. They planned a clever trap. How silly! Sometimes we think that we can fool God. Other times we get upset with Him. We blame Him for things that are our own doing. We bring God down to our level to wrestle with Him. If we knew the infinite difference between us and God, we wouldn’t dare to mention even his name. When we place God in the proper context, we realise our nothingness. Thanks to Jesus, the Son of God who became man, we can become closer to Him.
It was a good trap, a catch twenty two. There was no way out. Whatever Jesus said, it would had upset one side. Even though both sides were against each other, they both hated Jesus, and they were allied against him. The Herodians were pro Romans, supporting Herod who was a puppet of the authorities; the Pharisees were Jewish nationalists. If Jesus had said no to paying taxes, the Herodians would have told the Romans. If he had said the opposite, the Pharisees would have had something against him in front of the people, to discredit him.
It was a brilliant answer from Jesus, a good come back, one of his most famous one liners, like the one with the adulterous woman. This allowed him to walk the thin middle line, avoiding both extremes. So many times in our faith we take sides, either or, black or white, and we fail to keep the balance. Heresies normally emphasise one side of the question, falling down through the gap. The truth is trying to keep both together, showing the mystery in all its splendour: grace and freedom, man and God, one and three, virgin and mother, body and soul, sinner and saint.
What Jesus is telling us today, through the trap that was put to him, is that we need to give to Caesar what is his due, but no more, because to God we must give everything. God and Caesar are on two quite different levels. We need to provide for the common good, help society in the way we can, but we cannot forget that we are passing by, that we come from God and we are going back to Him. Everything we have comes from Him and we need to recognise this reality in our own lives.
Jesus asked the Pharisees to show him a coin, not to keep it, but to ask them what was the image on the metal: the face of Augustus. It is a good reminder of what it is inscribed on our bodies: the image of God. Our bodies carry the most lovable face of Jesus Christ. We need to preserve His image, make it shine, portray it in the best possible way. It doesn’t belong to us, it’s not ours; don’t try to appropriate it; give His image back to Him. They say that Saint Francis of Assisi was the most perfect image of Jesus Christ. We can all be a special image of Jesus in our own way. Blessed Carlo Acutis used to say: “we are all originals, don’t become a photocopy.” We try to copy the people the media presents to us as role models. If we could meet them, we would realise their lack of virtue and holiness. We Christians, because of our Baptism, we have a special character inscribed in our soul, that enables us to become what we are: an image and likeness of God. You are the only one who can make it so.
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Parable of the marriage feast
God has invited us to a wedding banquet in the kingdom of heaven. We are all invited; he wants all us to be saved, to be with him. No one is left out of his invitation. But He respects our freedom; it’s only an invitation, it is not compulsory to accept, even though it is for our own good. It is a wedding banquet. For the Jews it was the highest degree of happiness. It lasted for few days. For us a wedding reception is also a big celebration, but only lasts for few hours, where everything has to be perfect and normally it costs a lot of money. We all love going to weddings.
But this is a special wedding. It is the wedding of Christ and his Church. Christ is the bridegroom and we are his bride. He is not only inviting us to his wedding as guests, but as his bride. He is proposing a union with us, a union more intimate than the marriage union. Marriage is only for this earth, where we need to generate children. Jesus says that in heaven we won’t get married. The union that Jesus is proposing to us is an everlasting union, a union for the whole of eternity. He wants us to be so united with him, that we become more like him. Now here on earth Jesus is already offering us his engagement ring. This engagement normally lasts for the years we live here. But for the saints, the wedding banquet begins here. If we want to, we can also have it here.
But most of us don’t want to go to his wedding. It is silly but we don’t know much about it; we are not sure. We invent plenty of excuses not to go: “I have a business to attend, I just bought a new gadget, I am watching tv, listening to music, resting in my bed, doing my own thing.” Every time we don’t follow his will, every time we sin, we are telling him that we don’t accept his engagement ring, or we are throwing the ring back in his face, breaking the engagement. We fail to see the beautiful, precious stone in the ring. It has more power than the ring of “The Lord of the Rings”. It is the ring that opens for us the gates of paradise.
It is impossible for us to imagine what heaven is like. That’s why we reject the invitation. This rejection can be so blatant that it merits eternal punishment. Both, the no to God and the existence of hell puzzle us. I’ve heard a man saying that he doesn’t believe in a God that created hell. We are the ones who have created it with our evil deeds. God on the contrary wants to be with us for ever. People in hell don’t want to leave, they won’t ask God for forgiveness. We should better concentrate in our yes to God and to the amazing place he has prepared for us.
One of the guests at the wedding banquet is thrown out because doesn’t have the proper dress. Saint Gregory the Great says that the wedding garment is the theological virtue of charity, our love of God. It is the only virtue that perdures in heaven. If we are not dressed with this garment, we are going to be thrown out from the banquet hall into the outer darkness. We have our whole life to weave our wedding dress. We cannot do it in one go; it is a long life task. We do it every day, one step at a time, one thread a day. Sometimes we are like Penelope, who weaved during the day and unraveled it at night. We need to renew our love of God every day.
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Parable of the wicked tenants
Today’s readings talk about how much God has done for us and our failure to correspond to his love. The first reading from the book of Isaiah is a song exulting the vineyard. An orchard with vines was very precious in the Mediterranean area. It produced grapes, fruit for the time, wine, a good healthy drink with no bugs, and dried fruit, raisins, for the months ahead. It required a lot of work to keep the vines healthy, and to learn the art of winemaking. The parable of the wicked tenants highlights our responsibility in looking after the vineyard of the Lord and the duty to produce a good spiritual wine in due time. It is also a reminder of our history of salvation.
God first entrusted his vineyard to the chosen people. He gave them what they needed, a promised land, a land of milk and honey; he dig a trench around it, making sure they lived in peace and prosperity, getting rid of all the enemies surrounding them; and built a watch tower in the middle of it, giving them prophets and kings to lead them. But they were unfaithful to him and adored the neighbor’s gods. God tried everything with them and forgave them when they repented. But they kept rebelling against him and in the end He sent them his only Son as the last resort. They seized him, threw him out of Jerusalem and killed him.
Today is good day to examine ourselves. How are we taking care of the vineyard, of the piece of the kingdom God has entrusted to us? It is not ours, but we should take care of it as if it was ours, our personal responsibility. We should make sure we yield the fruit God is expecting from us, not our personal product; it should be something for others, not just for ourselves. It will be a pity if we were to hear the admonition of Jesus at the end of the parable, directed to the Jews: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”
What sort of fruit are we producing? Are we only collecting wild, sour grapes? Is our life worthwhile, full of beautiful sweet grapes? God has been so good to us. He has given us all we need to look after his vineyard. And we, like the chosen people, are often ungrateful, we are lazy, we don’t put the time and dedication our job deserves, and we let the vineyard to go waste. Instead of looking after what God has given us, we look over our neighbor’s fence and we envy him his vineyard. We think that his grass is greener. At the end we fail to produce the wine God is expectimg from us.
A friend of mine, a winemaker, told me about this famous winemaker who makes only five hundred bottles a year, mixing with art good vintages, and sells them in the US for a thousand dollars a bottle, a wine only for the rich and glamorous. He makes half a million dollars. I asked him if it is a good wine. He said: “It must be a good wine, but I don’t know if it is worth a thousand dollars. I cannot afford the test it.” This is the wine we need to produce, a wine worth a million dollars, worthy for the table of the Lord, a wine to be tasted for eternity, that will last for ever.
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Parable of the two sons
Last Sunday, today and next Sunday we have the parables of the vineyard. Israel is described in the Old Testament as the vineyard of the Lord. It represents the care God has for his people. A vineyard demands a lot of work to produce the right wine. The first miracle Jesus performed was to convert water into wine. Wine is compared to the grace God gives us to make us happier, to become more like him. Saint John of Cross says that “The cellar is the highest degree of love to which the soul may attain in this life.” We cannot forget that which becomes the blood of Christ during the Mass is wine.
God allows us to help him to produce a good vintage. He sends us into his vineyard. It is important to consider that the vineyard is our own inheritance. The wine we are producing is for our eternal life: this is the wine that we are going to drink for all eternity, and we need to make sure it is of the best quality. A king once asked his son to build a castle. He gave him a lot of money for the project. The son, who was a greedy man, kept most of the money and built a cheap castle. When he finished, he gave the keys of the castle to his father. The king gave the keys back to his son saying: “This is precisely your inheritance.” We should be very interested in working in the vineyard of the Lord, working hard and well, because we are directly interested in producing our best.
When God asks us to work in his vineyard, sometimes we say yes, sometimes we say no; sometimes we go, sometimes we don’t go. We are sinners and many times our first reaction is negative. But afterwards we change our minds. We shouldn’t be too concerned about our first intention, many times a product of our selfishness or pride, but make sure we change our minds and we do what God wants us to do. What’s important is the end result. The parable of today was proposed to the Jews who rejected to work in the vineyard of the Lord and therefore God gave his vineyard to all of us. We should be grateful that we are allowed to make wine, a marvelous privilege, a wine that is going to last for ever.
When we obey, we conform our will to God’s will. God prefers our obedience rather than heroic acts which maybe product of our selfishness. Saint Teresa of Avila was jealous of a famous nun who was doing a lot of penance. Her spiritual director didn’t allow her to imitate this nun. When she complained to Jesus, he told her that he preferred her obedience rather than the penance of this nun. We can do a lot of good things out of pride, but obedience always brings about humility.
The second reading of today’s Mass, from the letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul proposes the example of Jesus, who humbled himself and became obedient unto death and death on the cross. The crucifixion was considered the most degrading form of execution. It was reserved for the worst criminals. Jesus gives us a lesson in obedience, following the will of his Father, to give his life for us in a most cruel way. When we find it difficult to do what God wants us to do, we can look at Jesus dying on the cross.
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Labourers in the vineyard
We can relate to this parable in South Africa. So many people looking for work. Often you see them at roundabouts, with a sign announcing their skills: electrician, plumber, carpenter, painter. All waiting for somebody to hire them for the day. We can pray for these people that they find work to feed their families. And pray for the corruption to go away, greedy people who only look after themselves.
We all feel uneasy with this parable, sympathising with the workers that worked for the whole day and got the same wages as the ones who worked only for an hour. It is not fair. Children use this expression when they see something that lacks equality. But parents treat different children differently. The same with God. We are all the same in God’s eyes, with the same dignity, but God gives different graces to all of us. Why? Because we are all unique, and we all show different perfections and qualities of God. Variety brings forth many more gifts. Imagine if all of us were the same; life would be boring, all cracking the same jokes, inventing the same stories, composing the same music. Opposites attract each other, different skills balance societies, the more choices the more richness. At the end God gives the same reward to everyone: heaven. In paradise everybody will be filled with gifts, as much as they can hold. But if you compare them, some will contain more than others; the containers all have different capacities.
What is going to happen with people becoming Christians at the end of their lives, Catholics going to confession after many years just before they died, babies dying just born, fetuses being aborted in their mother’s womb? We all agree that they should go to heaven, in spite of their brief or non existent Christian lives. What about the good thief who stole heaven at the last moment? Jesus promised him: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” We cannot limit God’s mercy, goodness and generosity. Precisely as Jesus asks us in the parable: “Are you envious because I am generous?”
In the first reading from the book of Isaiah the Lord says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” How can we dare to pass judgment on the Lord? How can we try to fit God in our mind, to measure him with our imperfect and limited human standards? We cannot cage him in our small world. It is like trying to fit all the data of the servers in the cloud on a single floppy disk. The Lord continues: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” We are a bit like babies trying to read the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. We human beings see things with our eyes directed towards earth, only seeing the flat surface of the ground with no spatial perspective.
Jesus finishes his parable saying: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” In heaven our society will be up side down: the poor will at the top and the multimillionaires will be the rubbish collectors, the famous and influencers will be forgotten and the real good deeds will come to the light. Imagine a race where this saying is fulfilled: everybody would run backwards. This is what we need to do: instead of running towards our own ego, we need to run towards God. We should be first in our love of God and last in our pride.
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Parable of the unforgiving servant
The parable of the unforgiving servant is at the heart of the Gospel. It is an example for us to learn how to forgive and forget. We know by experience that it is not easy. Until we forgive the other person from the heart, we won’t be able to forget. If the grudge keeps coming back to our mind, it is a sign that we haven’t managed to forgive. It is only a desire, an intention, something we would like to do, but we don’t have the heart to do it. Jesus gave us this parable to learn how to find true forgiveness.
This parable puts things into perspective in a very graphic way. The difference between what the servant has been forgiven and what he should forgive to his friend is colossal; it must have blown the minds of the listeners. For us it is difficult to grasp the ammount of money, because the Gospel uses the local currency of the time and we are not familiar with it. It is the difference between millions of dollars and few hundred dollars. It doesn’t make sense that the servant didn’t forgive the debt of his friend, specially just after a big debt was canceled. It is so ridiculous that it highlights the selfish attitude of the unforgiving servant, and at the same time our own pettiness.
This parable helps us to understand a bit better the difference that exist between us and God. God forgives us everything, but we keep track of little petty things. When we go to God with our complaints, pointing out the offences we have suffered from our brothers and sisters, the first thing he asks is: “Do you want me to show my list? Do you really want to see it? It is so long that it is rolled up as a toilet paper. And I have a whole warehouse full of them.” Once we see how ridiculous our small list of grievances is, compared with the infinite list of our offences to God, we can forget about our little grudges and learn how to forgive.
Once I saw a cartoon where God was displayed as an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud, looking a bit sleepy. There was a small angel flying around asking God: “What do you do all the time? Aren’t you bored?” And God responded: “What do I do? I forgive.” This is what God does with us all the time. We are little children, being naughty, trying to push the boundaries, trying to get away with things. And God, who is a good loving Father, is always ready to forgive and forget. He says that once he forgives, he buries our sins in the deepest black hole in the universe, and they disappear from his eyes, sucked in by the dark matter. God’s delete button is for ever; you cannot retrieve the files from his hard disk. God doesn’t keep grudges and he doesn’t remember once he has forgiven us. He has a very short term memory. We need to learn from him if we are to be good sons and daughters of his. He loves when we make up with his children.
If the unforgiving servant had forgiven the little debt of his friend, he would had become the forgiving servant, even though the parable would had disappeared. But It would had started a chain of forgiveness that would have reached down to our own time. We can start this chain ourselves, beginning to pray about the grudges we keep in our hearts and trying to heal them, comparing them with all the offences we have caused to our Father God, and learning from Him how to delete them from our minds.
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Fraternal correction
Today Jesus talks to us in the Gospel about fraternal correction. We are all brothers and sisters in the faith and we need to help each other. Last week we saw Jesus correcting Peter. You could say that during his life with us he actually spent three years correcting his apostles, forming them, passing the Gospel on to them, preparing them for their mission. From a human perspective he didn’t do a good job: at the end only one followed him to the cross. One betrayed him, another denied him and the others ran away.
The early Christians practiced fraternal correction; they corrected each other, they said things to each other face to face. They didn’t talk about others behind their backs. Others said of them: “See how they love one another.” People wanted to become Christians when they experienced their Christian charity. It is the best example we can give of our faith. We should love everybody, but specially our brothers and sisters in the faith. We want them to be better, to become closer to God.
Both to correct and to be corrected is hard. Our pride gets in the way. It is important not to correct when we are upset or frustrated. It is going to lose its effect. We should correct when we are serene, out of love, thinking beforehand what we are going to say and how we are going to express ourselves. We should only do it when we are close to the person we want to help. It is a good remedy against gossiping or back biting. It is very rewarding to know that the people that love us are not going to stab us in the back. We can be very honest with them.
We should be also open to correction ourselves. It is something you see in the Saints; they are very grateful when they are helped. It is not easy to be told about the mistakes we have made, but it is good for us, specially when it comes from people we know who love us. We should be grateful when our spouse, our parents, brothers and sisters, our friends, tells us things openly, face to face. I remember talking to the Managing Director of a company who was complaining: “Nobody corrects me, they are all afraid of me; they want to please me.” It happens to parish priests too. We all need to be told how can we change or improve. If nobody tells us how is it possible? Nobody is perfect. Some couples they have a moment every week when they can tell each other one thing they don’t like about the other spouse. This is what it means to be vulnerable.
It is very difficult to get to know ourselves. It is one of the most difficult things, because we are always on the inside looking out. We cannot see ourselves from outside, only through a photo or a video. The first time you record your voice it sounds strange. We all want to take a selfie to see us through the eyes of others. Look at the Holy King David. God had to send Nathan the prophet to tell him of his sin: he took somebody else’s wife and put him in a position where he was certain to be killed in battle; he didn’t realize what he had done until Nathan told him. We normally place our imperfections behind us so as not to see them. We don’t like to be aware of them or to be reminded of them. We always put our good deeds in front of us. We always think that we are better than we are. They say it is a good business that buys people by their real price and sells them at the value they think they have. We all like putting people down to place ourselves above them. Fraternal correction helps us to correct these bad tendencies.
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Take up his Cross
Last week Jesus told Peter that he was the rock on which he was going to build his Church. Today he calls him Satan. What happened? Last week Peter called Jesus the Christ, the anointed one; today he tries to discourage him from suffering and dying on the cross. Last week he was inspired by God; today he looks at things as we humans normally do. Jesus took advantage of this moment to talk about one of the most difficult paradoxes of our faith: to be happy we need to carry our cross. Nobody wants to hear about the cross, but Jesus is on the cross, and the cross is the symbol of our Christian life.
How can we explain this? That the cross is a blessing. This idea goes against the basic core of our present society: that is, seek pleasure at any cost. People kill themselves with drugs or alcohol; they destroy their families committing adultery; they gamble their wealth away; they compromise their body, eating too much or consuming food not good for them; they risk their lives driving too fast; they harm their health working too hard and later on they spend their money trying to fix it. And all of this for the sake of pleasure. We all want to be happy, but many times we look for happiness in the wrong places.
Saint John of the Cross once told his brother Francis a secret: “I will tell you something that happened to me with our Lord. We had a crucifix in the monastery, and one day, when I was standing before it, it seemed to me that it would be better placed in the church. I wanted it to be venerated not only by the friars but also by those outside. And I carried out this intention. When I had placed it in the church, I stood before it in prayer. Then Jesus said to me: ‘Brother John, ask me what you would like me to give to you for the service you have done to me.’ Then I said to him: Lord, I want from you sufferings which I might bear for you, and that I should be despised and accounted for nothing.” Not long afterwards he was taken prisoner against his will and locked in a small cell for nine months, with almost no food. From there we have the Saint we know.
While we look for pleasurable things, saints look for the cross. Why? Because they know that God is trying to bless them with the cross. Saints want at any cost to do what God wants them to do. And sometimes the will of God is hard for us. Why? Because He wants us to grow, to mature, to conform ourselves to the image of Christ. Parents know that for their kids to become better, many times they have to suffer. Suffering goes with human life; it is part of human existence. Pain is the other side of the coin of love. Who loves you makes you suffer. It comes from original sin. We either accept it and love it, or we rebel and become bitter.
Michael Angelo used to look at a block of marble and say: ‘I can see the statue inside; I am going to free it.’ Then he began to hit it with a hammer and a chisel. We are the same. The image of Christ is hidden in our nature. God can see it and He is trying to bring it out. But the process is painful. God has to chisel away many pieces that are not Jesus in our lives. Then he has to polish us and he normally uses people around us for his purposes. As long as we love the will of God, we let him do his work of sanctification.
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Upon this rock
Jesus today in the Gospel is asking questions to his apostles: What do people say about me? There was a lot of gossip about who Jesus was. The apostles were keen to tell him all the conspiracy theories going around. Then Jesus confronted them asking a direct question: Who am I for you? They were all silent. It is a good question for all of us. Who is Jesus for me? What is the place of Jesus in my life? It is a question every human being should ask him or herself. The answer is important. It determines how we live our lives and eventually our future eternity. While the apostles ponder the question Peter answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Holy Spirit answered the question through Peter for all of us: Jesus should be our priority, the centre of our lives, the apple of our eye. As Pope Benedict XVI used to say, Christianity is a not just a set of rules, but a relationship with a person who changes our lives.
Answering the question, Peter shows his primacy and Jesus confirms it: you are the rock where I am going to build my Church. Jesus took advantage of this important question to establish his Church on solid foundations, on the rock of Peter. Without the Church, we cannot place Jesus at the centre of our lives. It is not possible to love Jesus and not to love the Church, because Jesus is her spouse. He left us his Church for us to have a beacon to follow, for us to have a straight path to heaven, a sure way not to go astray. We need to base our lives on Jesus, and he is seated on the cathedra of Saint Peter.
Jesus changed Peter’s name from Simon to Cephas; it means stone in Aramaic. Peter comes from Petros in Greek and Petra in Latin, which means the same. The changing of the name was very important in the Old Testament: it was a way to determine the mission and role of a person. Jesus meant renaming Peter, to found his Church on solid ground: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the underworld will not prevail against it.” These words are written on a mosaic inside Saint Peter’s basilica, around the cupola, in big letters, three meters tall, for people to read them from the ground. And they have been fulfilled. After twenty centuries the Church is still alive and kicking. We constantly hear that the Church is finished, and we see how the boat of Saint Peter keeps weathering storms, while the enemies of the Church disappear.
We call the Church One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. Saint Pius X used to add another note: Persecuted. We complain when Christians suffer persecution and we should defend them against discrimination. But it is a good sign when the media criticise us: we are on the right path. Jesus warned us that, like him, we were going to suffer trials and tribulations. But we shouldn’t worry too much about it; the Church is build on solid ground. Jesus is watching us through the office of the Pope who is the Vicar of Christ, the visible Christ on earth, or like Saint Catherine of Siena used to say, the sweet Christ on earth.
There is an old proverb in Latin that says: Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia, ibi Deus. Where there is Peter, there is the Church, there is God. We want to be with Peter, because with him is the Church, with him is God; and without him, God is not there. We can be very good, but if we separate ourselves from Peter, from the Church, we will wither away. We have the experience of history. Today we can pray for the Pope, to lead us through these unprecedented times, and to feel on our shoulders a bit the weight of Church.
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The Assumption
Today is a day of joy, of great celebration, with a big welcoming feast happening in eternity. At last Jesus brings his mother with him, body and soul, up to heaven. During his Ascension, he went up to heaven by his own power. Today he lends his rockets to his mother, for her to be able to be with him together for ever. Jesus couldn’t wait for her any longer. He loves her so much that when we were distracted, he took her from us. We understand him and we ask Jesus to help us to love our own mothers each day more and more, until one day, hopefully, we will be able to be with them in heaven, together again.
The Assumption of our Mother to heaven is the last dogma approved by the Church, maybe because it is the last chapter of her life on earth. Pius XII solemnly defined this truth in 1950: “The Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed, body and soul, to the glory of heaven.” He managed to mention in this short statement the other three Marian dogmas, Motherhood, Virginity and Immaculate Conception. In 1952 South Africa was the first country to declare Our Lady of the Assumption patroness of this land. The first Cathedral in Cape Town was dedicated to the Holy Family of the Flight into Egypt, to remember the first and the only time Jesus came to Africa. Today’s feast we could call it the flight to heaven, or the return of Mary to her heavenly home.
There is great joy in heaven today, but for us it is a bit of a sad day. We are already missing her. We would have liked Jesus to leave his mother on earth with us. But we know that if Jesus is with us in the Eucharist, we can assume that she is there too, keeping company with her son, while we are oblivious of his presence. She is trying to remind us of her Son’s actual physical presence in the tabernacle. We miss her because Mary is our mother. We are very proud of her. We have two mothers, one earthly and another heavenly. We need them both, one for our natural life and the other for our spiritual one.
God wanted his mother to be with him at the same time as Virgin and Mother. Only she can be both, to sanctify these two states of life, to be an example for all of us, married or celibate. Nowadays, both, virginity and motherhood, are being mocked, ridiculiced, deconstructed. Our society has a negative outlook of both these qualities of our Mother. They go together, for good or for bad. When we praise motherhood, virginity shines. And the other way around; when one is denigrated, the other flounders.
Our Mother is waiting for us in heaven. Jesus went to prepare a place for us and Mary went to check it out. Mothers know what their children like, what sort of colours, music, or pictures we prefer. We can take the opportunity of this feast to fix our eyes in heaven, to even try to accompany her with our spirit. It is dangerous to see heaven; we certainly wouldn’t want to come back to earth, or we would try to die sooner. Saints who have been there, they cry when they come back. They are different people. I remember during the Sydney Olympic Games, there was a controversy about who were going to get the best places. I saw a sign outside a Protestant church saying: “Heaven. Good seats still available.” Both, Jesus and his Mother, are coming to pick us up, to take us to our place in the front row.
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Walking on water
After a busy day, attending the crowd, healing the sick, comforting the troubled and feeding them, Jesus goes on to pray. While he dismisses the people, the apostles sail to the other side of the lake. None of his apostles accompany him. They wanted to get away from the crowd. They were very tired, and they knew Jesus was going to pray for the whole night. Jesus wanted to spend time alone with his Father God. We too; after a busy day, we need to pray to recover our serenity. Even though we are tired, we need to find the time to pray. The busier we are, the more we need to pray. In one of John Paul II trips to the Philippines, after a very busy day, the nuns went to the chapel at midnight to prepare the Mass for the following day, and they found the Pope praying, prostrated on the floor.
From the top of the mountain Jesus sees the boat battling against the wind and the waves. He could see them well. It was full moon, close to the Pasch. These storms are normal on the lake, dangerous for fishing boats. The Fathers of the Church see in this boat an image of the Church, which is always battling against temptations, persecutions, heresies and infidelities. We often complain about the problems in the Church, but there have been always crisis, many times worse than the one we are going through now; and the Church always comes back alive. Jesus is always watching us from the mountain. He let the apostles struggle for a while. He does the same with us. It is good for us to go through difficulties and obstacles, for us to become stronger. It looks like he doesn’t care about us, but he is always watching over us.
At the fourth watch, at three in the morning, Jesus came walking on the water of the lake. He is ready to help us whenever we need it. One author says that after praying, Jesus was so inflamed with love, that he didn’t realise he was walking on water. On the other hand I think he wanted to play a trick on them. It made a deep impression on them; all four evangelists mention this event. He looked like a ghost. The white tunic, illuminated by the moon, contrasted with the black background of the water. It must have been very scary. They all cried out; these big men were as afraid as little girls. He had to calm them: “It is I, don’t be afraid.” He always reminds us of this reality, whenever we are afraid: I am always with you. We cannot hide from God. We cannot find a place where God is not.
Peter asked Jesus to walk on water: “If it is you.” He was still afraid, not trusting. “Come.” Peter jumped into the water. What did he feel on his feet? Was the surface soft? When he stopped looking at Jesus and realised he was walking on water, he began to sink. When we look at the wind, at the waves, the currents, the problems, the difficulties, we become pessimistic first and then we begin to sink, like Peter. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, specially when we are walking on eggshells. This is what it takes to become a contemplative soul: to keep our eyes on the Lord. Where do I fix my eyes? What am I looking for?
Peter cried out: “Lord, save me!” Jesus pulled him out, coming towards him and grasping him with his own hand. He could have commanded him to come out or jump. But he is always ready to pull us out of whatever muddy waters we find ourselves in. He complained: “Oh man of little faith why did you doubt?” How many times Jesus is telling us the same thing: I am with you always. Why don’t you trust me? I can do everything for you.
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Multiplication of the loaves and the fish
From time to time Jesus used to take his apostles to a deserted place to be alone by themselves. There were so many people coming and going that they needed to be on their own, for Jesus to spend time with them and teach them his message without interruptions. When they arrived to the solitary place, they found a great crowd of people waiting for them. They had seen where they were going by boat and hurried through the land to be there when they arrived. You can imagine the disappointment of the apostles who were looking forward to spending few days alone with Jesus.
The Gospel says that Jesus, seeing the people had compassion on them. Saint Mark says that they were like sheep without a shepherd. He healed the sick, listened to their problems, consoled the afflicted and gave them good advice. Jesus is always ready to spend time with us, no matter what the cost, even if we are far away from him. He has a human heart, the same as ours, and he feels in his heart our problems and troubles. After the whole day with them, the apostles asked him to dismiss the crowd, to be able to be on their own. Jesus told them that they must be fed first. They were far away from civilization and because the people had come in such a hurry, they had forgotten to bring food. Jesus not only looked after their souls, but also their bodies. Jesus is not a man with his head in the clouds; he knows what we need. Whenever we complain, he knows what we are going through. He’s been there. He is like us, in all but sin.
“Give them something to eat.” Their response was predictable: we don’t have any food, we don’t have money, and the shops are far away; we have only five pieces of bread and two fish, not enough for us. It is easy to complain. The apostles wanted the people to go away to be able to stay alone with Jesus. Jesus is telling them: do something. He is telling us the same whenever we complain: do something; you can fix the problem. Jesus tells them: “That’s enough. Bring the bread and the fish to me.” Jesus doesn’t need anything to perform his miracles. But he wants to use our talents, our will, our time, for us to think we are helping him. He wants to use what we’ve got, as long as we give it to him, as long as we don’t hide it, or keep it to ourselves. We should give Jesus our bread and our fish.
We have in front of our altar two fish and four pieces of bread. It is a copy of a mosaic from the church close to Capernaum, from the fourth century, where the actual miracle took place. People ask why there are only four pieces of bread. Because the fifth one it is the Eucharist, which comes on the altar during Mass and becomes the same Jesus that was there two thousand years ago. The same Jesus who performed the miracle. If we believe that Jesus is here, he will perform the miracle again and again in our lives. He can change our human nature into his divinity; he can multiply whatever we have.
The miracle happened in a very natural way: nothing fancy. Jesus put the food in two baskets, blessed it and gave it to the people. And the food kept coming out from the same basket. He didn’t attract the attention of the people, to witness his power. It was a beautiful meal. They had the best sandwich of bread and fish ever. The bread was just baked and the fish was recently caught. Afterwards they wanted to make him king, but he ran away. Jesus always gives us the best.
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Parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value
Today Jesus in the Gospel presents us two parables about the kingdom of heaven: the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value. Both are very similar; they show us the supreme value of God’s kingdom and what we should do to reach it. But they have some differences: the treasure points towards an abundance of gifts, and the pearl indicates more it’s beauty. We are all attracted to gems and pearls. They sparkle in many different ways, we admire their beautiful colours and we would like to have them, no matter what the cost. We use them to show our affection for our loved ones. People risk their lives to get them and others go to jail for stealing them. We too should risk our lives to go to heaven and achieve it by the struggle we constantly have with ourselves.
There is nothing like heaven. Our heart longs for an everlasting life full of goodness and beauty. Peter Kreeft mentions Saint Augustine’s little thought experiment: “Imagine God appeared to you and said: ‘I’ll make a deal with you if you wish. I’ll give you anything and everything you ask: pleasure, power, honor, wealth, freedom, even peace of mind and good conscience. Nothing will be a sin; nothing will be forbidden; and nothing will be impossible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. Only... you shall never see my face.’ Did you notice that unspeakable chill in you deepest heart at those last words?” Heaven is to see the face of God. To see the face of a person is to recognise his identity, to acknowledge his feelings, to admire his worth. It is difficult to do so these days with people wearing masks.
What is heaven for you? For some people it is something nice but far away, somewhere they’d like to go, like the Bahamas, or something they’ll consider when they are close to dying. Many people prefer this earth to eternity. They say: better the devil I know; at least here I can touch things; I don’t know what is going to happen when I die. But eternity is too big to swap for this earth; it is too risky. Pascal’s wager says that it is not fifty, fifty. It is all or nothing; all is all, nothing is nothing. If God doesn’t exist you have a finite loss; if He exists, you have infinite gains. You win more than you lose.
Another difference between these two parables is that the treasure is something we come across almost by chance, and the pearl is the result of a lengthy search. Faith, vocation, true wisdom, desire for Heaven, are things which sometimes are discovered suddenly and unexpectedly, and sometimes after much searching. If God wants to give them to us, we should be eternally grateful. If He wants us to keep searching, it is good for us. We all love a treasure hunt, looking for something we don’t know what it is or where it is hidden. As long as we keep on looking for it, eventually, we will find it. God as a good Father wants us to enjoy the treasure he has prepared for us. He has an infinite number of goodies and sweets, tailored made to our own personal taste.
Both men in the two parables have the same attitude and reach the same outcome. They sell everything to buy the field and the pearl; they manage to get it against all the odds, and both come away full of joy and happiness. To obtain the treasure it is necessary to sell everything we possess; otherwise we won’t get what we want. It is the only way to be happy. A good question for us today: What is God asking me to sell now to become closer to heaven? Saint Josemaria used to say that we should walk on this earth with our feet stepping firmly on the ground and with our eyes fixed on heaven.
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Parable of the weeds
These Sundays the parables in the Gospel try to explain the kingdom of heaven: it is impossible. To do so we need an infinite number of parables. We should be very keen to know more about our homeland. The more we know about our goal the more we quicken our pace. It is important for us to fix our eyes on heaven, to look forward to our destination. Jesus has prepared a place for us and we really want to get there. When you plan a trip you look first where is the place you are going and then you figure out how to get there. We know where we are going and we know the way: Jesus is the way, the only way. We need to make sure we don’t get distracted, side tracked, lost or bogged down.
Today we have the parable of the weeds. It is easy to understand it. We find weeds everywhere. They upset gardeners and annoy us during our daily lives. They say a weed is a plant out of place. We come across problems all the time. Things normally go wrong or they turn in a different way to how we planned them. We complain about others, about evil in the world and we forget that our hearts are full of weeds. It is easier to see the weeds in our neighbor’s garden. Jesus explains the parable very well. It underlines the drama of our existence. Good and evil, angels and devils: this is what happens behind the scenes. There are not good and bad people; there is good and evil in our hearts, both combined together. And it is up to us to foster the good and shrink evil. At the end of the day evil is a lack of goodness.
The servants complain to the master about who has sown the weeds. He answers that the enemy has done it while we were asleep. We need to be vigilant. While we are lazing around the devil is at work. People complain to God asking why does he allow evil to exist? The same happened to Saint Teresa of Avila. She asked God the same question. He answered: I created you. The devil never stops; he is always at work, while we complain. The good news is that God is on our side and he is Almighty.
There are three temptations, self-deceptions, that hide evil from us. First indifference: ignore it, do nothing, let me live my life, it is not my business, I don’t care; we should care, we Christians are the good seed. Second arrogance: we are the good ones, we know better, they know nothing, they are ignorant, we know what is right; if we are close to God it is because of him. Third violence: uproot evil, belittle the opposition, ridicule them, abuse them through the social media, spread false news. The best way is what John Paul II did: spread goodness, go around the world talking about God, throw the good seed everywhere. It is more effective to plant than to root out, to sow than to burn.
Evil will always be with us. It shouldn’t worry us. God is patient, we should be patient, God is merciful, we should be too. Why does God allow weeds to grow along with the wheat? There are a number of reasons. First for the weeds to become wheat. God can do it. We have our own experience. There is always time for conversion, till the last moment. Some big saints were big sinners. Second for us to become better. In times of persecution we Christians become stronger. Third, God is the only one who can bring good out of evil. God uses evil people for his plans, for us to see that he is in control.
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Parable of the sower
Today Jesus talks to us with a parable. Why? Because we find difficult to understand his message. He needs to use images, comparisons, material things for us to reach the spiritual ones. We are body and soul, and through our body we reach the soul. The kingdom of heaven is so rich that Jesus needs to use different earthly images for us to understand things better, to grasp some of its aspects. Man before he learned how to write, he began to paint. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Jesus’ parables are ingrained in our culture. When we talk about the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, people understand what we are talking about. We remember parables better than abstract concepts. In our society, where screens surround us, images are very important.
Today Jesus proposes to us the parable of the sower. It is something alien to us. Most of us haven’t seen anybody sowing seeds. These days we use machines for that. In the good old days it was done by hand, throwing the seed as they walked. Jesus is the sower. He throws his seed to us, his graces, his power, and it is up to us to pick them up, to place them in the right soil, to make them fruitful. He respects our freedom; he doesn’t impose himself. He let us be the one to accept his seed, to make it part of our lives, to look after it. He expects from us an attitude of receiving and nurturing. We should be very grateful to his generosity: he always throws an abundance of seed. We shouldn’t squander it.
It is very important for the sower to use the right seed. There are big companies always trying to improve the seeds, to yield more fruit, to be resistant to diseases, to withstand frosts, to be able to use less water. Jesus’ seed is the best one. You cannot find a better one. And it is free. It is his word in the Scriptures, his living water in Baptism, the bread of life in the Eucharist, the good wine of Cana, the oil of healing, the absolution in confession, the mustard seed that grows to a big tree, the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great value, the net that catches many fish, the two coins of the widow. His seed has the potential of always being fruitful. It is up to us to make it happen.
We are the soil. Our heart is the good soil. But we need to prepare it beforehand. It cannot be either too hard or too soft; just right. Our heart sometimes is very hard; we don’t share Jesus’ feelings. We need to soften it, to make it more capable of receiving Jesus’ seed. Maybe we need to go more often to confession, receive communion regularly, make acts of contrition, to apologize or ask for mercy. Maybe it is too soft and crumbles very easily; at the first difficulty it collapses. It needs to withstand strong winds. We need to face obstacles with stronger determination. If our heart is rocky ground, we need to dig the stones out. What are the stones in my life that don’t allow me to see God? If there are thorns, we should pull them out. What are the thorns in my heart that choke the seed?
It is not enough to have good soil. We should keep an eye for the right conditions for the seed to grow. The soil should be deep enough for the roots to grow and the plants to establish themselves. We have to plant the seed at the right time, spread fertiliser, water it sufficiently, spray the bugs, prune when it is necessary. It is a little seed that needs to be nurtured, to be planted in the right place, covered from the winds, with enough sun to grow. We cannot fall asleep and leave the plants alone.
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To become like children
“I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.” God loves children. Jesus complains to his apostles: “Let the children come to me.” It is easy for children to believe in miracles and angels. When we grow up we lose our capacity for the spiritual things. This is why Jesus reminds us that unless we become like children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We need to recover the ability to connect with the supernatural, the faith to believe in the other life. Eternity has a small door and we need to diminish to find it and to go through. Our ego is too big to fit in. What are children like? I’ll point out four characteristics that I like in them: humility, simplicity, sincerity and actuality. All these virtues are very important for our spiritual life.
Humility. Children are little and they know it. They don’t need to pretend, to show off. Their small stature is always before them. They look up to you, try to climb up things, fall down, mess up, dirty nappies, cry for help. They are helpless. They want to grow up, to become bigger, to dream; they are curious, have a huge capacity to wonder, they hope. All these things help us to see God as a Father and trust in him. We are weak and we need God.
Simplicity. People love children because they are transparent: what you see is what you get. They don’t know how to deceive. You can read their minds by looking at their faces. They are innocent, naive, authentic. Whatever they think, they say it. You know where you stand with them. They cry when they are hurt and laugh if they are happy. We spend our whole life hiding our feelings, trying not to say what we think, to pretend we are somebody else. We are very good at deceiving. We can have a number of different lives. We act differently in front of different people. God knows us inside out, perfectly, and he loves us in the way we are. We don’t need to pretend with him. The first thing he tells us when we approach him is: get rid of your fancy dress. We can relax with him.
Sincerity. Little children don’t know how to lie. They haven’t learned yet the art of deceiving. They say that the difference between computers and people is that computers cannot lie. Children are easy to catch: they invent unbelievable lies. Mum knows when her children lie; she was there at the first lie and she knows when we lie: we don’t look at her face, we move our ears, we twitch our nose, we frown. What’s the point of trying to deceive God?
Actuality. I don’t know how to name this virtue: the art of living in the present time. Children do it naturally. They just play. They don’t care about the past; it doesn’t exist. They don’t think about the future; it is in their parents hands. They move from a smiling to crying in seconds. They can laugh with tears still running down their cheeks. Scripture says that God plays with the children of men. All we need to do is play with him. We don’t need to worry about the past: we have been to confession. Our future is in God’s hands, who is a good loving Father.
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Love of God
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” It is a very strong statement. Why is Jesus saying this? Because we have been created to love God above everything. This is our inner make up, our only way to be happy in the long run. We have to put God first, we need to centre ourselves around him. The Bible reminds us a few times of this, that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” Is this possible? Look at the saints. They did it, with the help of God. They gave their lives to God. Can you love a person more than to give your life for him or for her? Looking at the history of the Church we see many people have dedicated their lives to God. Unless we give ourselves to God, he is not going to give himself to us.
How much do I love God? How much are we ready to do for Him? Are we ready not to offend Him? Are we ready to do His will? Love is different from emotions and feelings. It is a matter of the will. We can choose who we want to love. It can be an attraction at the beginning, but afterwards there is a decision from the will. We love God with our intellect and will. We cannot love what we don’t know. The more we know God, the more we love Him. The more we discover who God is, the more we will fall in love with Him. There is nobody like God.
How do I love God? How do you love others? The same way we love people, we love God. We have only one heart. Some people think that we have two hearts, one to love God and another to love others. We can also think that to love a person we need to see that particular person. People love characters in their imagination, girls fall in love with actors they will never meet. We love our loved ones dedicating time to them, spending time with them, doing things for them, offering them gifts, telling them that they matter to us, giving ourselves to them, making sacrifices for them. It is the same with God.
Human love depends on another person. This person can let us down, become crazy, get tired of us, can find somebody else better than us. Divine love depends only on you; the ball is in your court. God is always willing. He is very patient, He is always there for us, ready to forgive and forget. We won’t find anybody else like Him. And yet we always keep looking for somebody else.
Do I know how to love? We think we do, but maybe we only know how to love ourselves. Love is an art that has to be learnt and practiced. With God we have to give first. We think that because He has everything, He is supposed to give us whatever we need. But as a good father, He doesn’t want to spoil us; He wants us to grow strong and mature. Therefore He expects us to give first. When we are generous with Him, He is much more generous with us. He always gives us what we need. And we cannot forget that true love requires time and dedication.
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Body and Soul
“Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” “Be not afraid” is the verse in the Bible most googled by people. We are afraid of the future, of the unknown, of whatever could happen to us. These are the first words that came out of the mouth of John Paul II when he was elected Pope. He was a man who feared no one: he survived nazism and comunism; he was an orphan and had no close relatives. Jesus is telling us the same today: don‘t be afraid because I am with you always. Just be afraid only of whatever can kill your soul: sin. What are we afraid of? They say that you know a person when you know what he or she is afraid of.
Our soul can be wounded, sometimes grievously. The good news is that our soul is immortal and it can be revived by confession. We believe that we have a soul. Some people deny it. We cannot identify the soul in the body, but we can experience our spiritual powers. Some people emphasise the unity of body and soul, that we are one; others look at the two different realities than can only be separated by death. We are normally more concerned about our body than our soul. Our body is more visible, we are constantly aware of it unless we are sleeping. We can let our soul sleep, but we cannot stop looking after our body.
Why is the world so afraid of a little virus called coronavirus? Because it cannot control it. It is a little thing we cannot see and it could attack us any time. But we are not scared of other viruses that are more dangerous and they can cause more damage: temptations, addictions, vices, evil deeds, the seven capital sins. These are the things that we need to be afraid of, and protect ourselves against.
We wear masks not to infect others, but we gossip, we criticise others, we talk about people behind their backs: we are throwing other kinds of viruses at people. We keep a social distance, but we watch a lot of rubbish on television and YouTube. We sanitise our hands, but we are not going often to confession to sanitise our souls. We keep all the rules and regulations for the lockdown decreed by the government, but we are not doing what God wants us to do. We are more concern about our body than our soul. Our body is recyclable, but our soul is going to exist for ever. We cannot change much of our body, our height or the colour of our eyes, but we can do a lot to make our soul more beautiful. Look what the saints have done with their souls. We ought to be in a hurry because we have only few years to go.
We should pray about the things that separate us from God, and how we can protect ourselves against those viruses. The coronavirus will come and go. These spiritual viruses are with us all the time. We stop our nation for a virus that can kill our body, but we don’t think much about our souls. We can pray about the things that help us to kill these spiritual viruses and protect us from them. What gives me peace or what makes me angry? What helps me to become closer to others or what separates me from them? What moves me to be generous or what induces me to be selfish? In summary, what are the good and the bad spiritual viruses.
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The harvest is plentiful
Today in the Gospel we read that “at the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus is moved by compassion and he feels the need to help us when we are anxious and depressed. It is great to see that Jesus knows our troubles and he is ready to find a way to solve our problems. Most of them are created by our own imagination, pride or selfishness. Instead of feeling down and full of self-pity, we should go to Jesus asking for help. He is the only one who can fix them completely.
Then he says to us: “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; so ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” There is plenty of work to be done in the harvest of the Lord. There is no unemployment. These days governments find it difficult to create jobs for everyone. The job market is constantly changing, and it is not easy for universities to figure out what’s going to happen in the future. They say that people are being prepared now for jobs that are not going to exist in the future. Nevertheless the harvest of the Lord is always there, every generation a new one, and there is always work for the apostle. The reward is excellent: a hundred percent here and eternal life afterwards. You cannot find better return in any other business.
Jesus is telling us today that he needs people to give him a hand, to make this world better. He does it in a subtle way: pray to the Lord that he sends workers. Looking around we realise that there is a need for people to give their lives to God. He doesn’t need us; he can do everything by himself, but he wants us to cooperate with his work of salvation. He wants us to think that we are doing something useful. Like a father when he allows his toddler son to help him in the garden. He is more than a nuisance, but he thinks he is helping dad big time. The same happens with us when we give God a hand.
We see that nowadays not many people are ready to give their lives to Jesus. Maybe they can do something for God for a while, for few years, but their whole life? Young people are afraid of commitment: How do I know what the future is going to be? Maybe I’ll change my mind. They think that their lives are precious. We need to compare our lives with God: Who am I in front of an Almighty God? What Jesus is telling us today is that all we need to do is to ask. How often do we pray for vocations, for priests and religious life? Sometimes we complain about the lack of good priests, but we don’t pray enough for them. We have the shepherds that we deserve.
Why there are only few labourers in the Lord’s harvest? Why is not God sending more people if there is so much evil in the world? Because Jesus normally uses few people to reach big crowds. He chose only twelve apostles at the beginning, to be the foundations of his Church. You don’t need much yeast to bring up the dough. Today it is a good day to think if we are ready to give our lives to God; if we want to give him a hand. This readiness should be the disposition of every Christian.
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Corpus Christi
Today we are going to take Jesus to the streets. We are going to walk with him, to take a stroll with him, to accompany him around the streets of the church. And we are going to play music, use incense and bring him flowers. We wish to bring the flowers of our good deeds. During the day we gather little flowers that we find along the way and we manage to put together a nice bouquet. Little flowers that nobody notices, but not unnoticed for the gaze of a careful eye. We burn the incense of our good desires, which go up to the presence of the Almighty God, through the smoke that keeps climbing. And we play our best music, bringing our thoughts to him, expressing with the lyrics what we have in our hearts.
On Holy Thursday we have also a Eucharistic procession inside the church, to the altar of repose. We accompany Jesus to the garden of olives, to his agony at Getsemane. It is a sad procession, with the apostles falling asleep, only Judas awake. Today we relive the mystery of Holy Thursday in the light of the resurrection, just a few days later. Then it was Via Crucis, the way of the Cross, through the streets of Jerusalem; today is Via Lucis, the way to the light, bright as the sun shines at midday. We couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist properly on Holy Thursday because Jesus was going to die for us. After his resurrection he went up to heaven but stayed with us in the tabernacle. And today we are congratulating him for his presence. We are grateful that he has decided to stay with us.
It is a magnificent feast. It is like a king that goes out to meet his people. We play music, we sing songs, we rejoice in his presence. We accompany him with our best clothes, with our best wishes, and with our presence we acknowledge his kingship, his rule over us, and we are happy to be citizens of such a kingdom, a kingdom of peace and justice, a kingdom of truth and life. We sing alleluia, hosanna, God save the king, may his kingdom last forever. It is going to last for eternity.
We made a carpet of flowers for him to walk on softly. In Europe there is a long tradition of making carpets of flowers through the streets of the villages for today’s feast. Beautiful carpets, where people go to admire the amazing colours and forms before the procession. Every house makes its own, through the narrow streets, with a bit of competition, placing nice bunting on the balconies and decorating the windows. Also in the big cities they use magnificent monstrances carried by people, or pushed on wheels, with all sorts of precious stones, surrounded by silver and gold, crafted by the best jewelers.
We carry him under the canopy, to cover his divinity, hidden behind a piece of bread, white as snow, concealed from our eyes without faith. Normally he hides inside the tabernacle, cold in winter, hot in summer. But today he wants to see the full light of the day, look into our souls, heal our wounded bodies, pierce our mortal flesh. From the vantage point of the monstrance, he can gaze above our heads, looking into our future, forgiving our sinful past. And like on his way to Calvary, we meet his mother, who is waiting on the foot path, while we are passing by, with a desire to have a glimpse of his countenance, this time full of joy, when she sees us walking with her son.
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Holy Trinity
We are talking today about the summit of our Christian faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. When we walk through other mysteries, we need to walk on tiptoe; now we need to postrate ourselves in front of the majesty of God, touch the floor with our forehead and keep silence. This is holy ground. We cannot see God and live. But God has opened his intimate life to us. He has given us access to his inner life. Open the door slowly and glance with awe.
We say that God is incomprehensible. And it is true. We cannot fit God into this coconut we all have on top of our shoulders. But we can try to go deeper. Saint Josemaria used to say that sometimes God gave him some insights about Him, and he became happy; but other times he couldn’t see much, it looked like he had hit a wall, and he was happier, thinking that God is much bigger than anything we can imagine. We need to plunge ourselves into this mystery, knowing that we will never be able to touch bottom, but nevertheless we can go deeper and deeper. Saint Catherine of Siena says that “the Holy Trinity is like a deep sea, where the more you seek, the more you find, and the more you find, the more you seek.”We should be ambitious. We shouldn’t be happy in the way we are. We need to go deeper. Look at the love saints have for God. How they immersed themselves in God. You cannot find deeper or truer love than theirs.
We use our time in many endeavours, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, watching movies, following our favourite tv series, reading the news, surfing social media, hobbies, topics of interest. We are looking for happiness and trying to fill our hearts with all sorts of things. We cannot be happy drinking from the pot holes. We need to quench our thirst with the true living water. We come from God and we go back to God. We are created to know and to love Him.
There are four classical ways to reach the Holy Trinity. The first one is through created things. In the same way we can discover God in creation, in the beauty of nature, we can also find traces of the Trinity as well, even though in a more hidden way. Theologians talk about groups of three things: air, water and earth; gas, steam and fire; rain, slate and snow; spring, lake and sea; frost, snow-flakes, and ice; father, mother and child. You can try to find more. The second is the reality of the indwelling of the Trinity on the soul of the just man. If our soul is in friendship with God, He is there with us, making his abode in the depths of our spirit. We can find him inside of ourselves. We don’t need to look outside to find love. He is with us all the time. We need to become more inward looking. It happens to us like Saint Augustine: “You were within me and I was looking outside of me.”
The third place is Sacred Scripture. God revealed to us this mystery in the New Testament, with the arrival of Jesus Christ. Before, God emphasised in the Old Testament the oneness of God, to avoid the belief in many gods. When we were ready, he opened his inner life to us. Through the Bible we can find the three persons of the Trinity. The fourth is the liturgy, the public action of the Church, specially the Eucharist. When we participate in the Mass, we are attending the heavenly liturgy, that liturgy celebrated by the Holy Trinity in heaven. Let us hide behind our Mother Mary.
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Pentecost
With Pentecost we come to the end of Easter. We have been preparing ourselves for a while to receive the Holy Spirit. Once a year we have the opportunity to get to know the third person of the Holy Trinity better, who Saint Josemaria calls the Great Unknown. He is still unknown and we would like to become closer to him. It is easy for us to see God as a Father. Easier to see God as a man when we look at Jesus as our brother. But it is not easy to see God as a dove, our spouse, who is Love. It is good to desire his coming. We should foster it. The more we desire something, the more God will give it to us. We can say Come Holy Spirit, Veni Sancti Spiritus. We desire his coming, his presence.
The Greek philosophers talk about the four classical elements that constitute the universe: air, fire, water and earth. Three of them are representations of the Holy Spirit. We are the fourth one, the earth. We come from dust and we will become dust again. We are normally very earthy and we would like to become more spiritual. Original sin has made us more inclined to the earth. Our eyes normally look down more, rather than up. Material things are very important to us. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to transform us, to help us to become more spiritual.
Air. On the day of Pentecost a strong wind shook the whole house. It was the sign of the Holy Spirit coming. But Holy Scripture normally represents the Holy Spirit as a soft breeze. We can feel it but we don’t see it. He prefers to pass unnoticed, to disappear, to be in the background, to work from within. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our soul. We need air to breathe; we don’t realise how important it is until we cannot breathe if we are under water. We need the breath of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, for us to live a spiritual life. The bishop when he consecrates the holy oil during the Chrism Mass, breathes air into it. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe his holy air into our lungs, so that they become filled with his power, like the sails of a ship. We ask the Holy Spirit also to send a strong wind to remove all the dead leaves from our soul.
Fire. On the day of Pentecost tongues of fire rested on the heads of the apostles. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. We ask for the same thing today: Burn us, Holy Spirit, purify us. We say with Saint Josemaria: “Remove that filthy crust of sensual corruption which covers my heart, so that I can feel and readily follow the touches of the Paraclete on my soul.”Like a log when the fire burns it, it transforms the wood into light and warmth. We too want to be transformed into love by the third person who is Love. We want to become glowing embers who look like rubies. Instead of becoming ashes, we want to become like God.
Water is part of life. We cannot live without it. It is not as essential as air, but very close. Water quenches our thirst, washes our body and refreshes our spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does to us. But first we need to realise that we are thirsty, that our soul is dirty and we need his love. We need to approach that well of living water that Jesus promises the Samaritan woman, to collect that pure, fresh, transparent water, that leaps into eternal life. To fetch water from a well we require a bucket. No bucket, no water. The well is too deep. Today we ask the Holy Spirit to lend us his bucket to reach for God’s grace.
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Ascension
Saint Bernardine of Siena tells the story of a young fellow who went to the Holy Land and tried to follow Jesus’ footsteps. He began in Nazareth, then Bethlehem, Cana of Galilee, Caparnaum and Jerusalem. He followed Jesus’ life from the beginning till the end. He arrived eventually to the place of the ascension. There is now a circular church that used to have an open roof to see the sky, with a rock in the middle, with the last footprints of Jesus before going up to heaven. Then he began to cry: “I followed you during all these months through all the places you have been and I have become much closer to you. Now where do I go?” He had a heart attack and died. He must have gone straight up to heaven. We are doing the same. Every year we follow Jesus through his life, death and resurrection, like a cycle, every year a bit closer, and eventually one day we will jump up to heaven.
Today it is a sad day. Our Lord is going up to heaven and he is leaving us behind. Why? We are not ready. We still have few things to do. Our mission is not finished. We would like to go with him, but first he is going to check the place he has prepared for us. And he is going to come back and take us to himself. But nevertheless we will miss him, his face, his speach, his affection, everything about him. The more we love him, the more we miss him. It is very human. Imagine how the apostles felt after three years with him. That’s why we are never completely happy here. We are created for heaven, to be with Jesus. Today is a day where we can fix our eyes on heaven, like the apostles. Today we foster our desires for heaven.
But why did he have to go? Could not have he stayed both with us and go to heaven? He is God, he could have done it. He could have stayed in one place, in Jerusalem, Rome, or our home town. But then we would have had only five minutes in our life time to talk to him. 7 billion people is a lot of people to go through. Instead he did something better. He stayed with us in the Eucharist, in the tabernacle, in a piece of bread, for us to eat him, for us to come to see him and spend time with him. He is here waiting for us, 24/7. There is a vigil lamp telling us that he is here. What’s a tabernacle? A box into which we place God. In Hebrew it means a tent, a dwelling place. The tabernacle is normally the centre of the church, where we try to give Jesus our best.
But Jesus wants to go back with his Father God. We understand this. His glorious body deserves the glory of heaven. Hopefully one day we too will have a glorious body like Jesus. Saint Ambrose says that God came down from heaven and a man went up. Before we knew Jesus as man; today we see Jesus as God. Our faith grows looking at his divinity. Saint Bernard talks about the three steps of Jesus coming down: incarnation, crucifixion and death; and three steps going up: resurrection, ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father. We too would like to be with God for ever. Everything is possible in heaven.
Today Jesus is flying up to heaven. When Jesus performed his miracles, he tried not to show off, to make them as natural as possible, not to draw attention to himself. Even when he multiplied the loaves and the fish, he just blessed them and began to distribute them; he didn’t act like a magician. But today he is doing something special. Till now he has appeared and disappeared. Today he wants his apostles to know that he is leaving definitely. That’s why he is flying away. If you want to, if you are quick, you could go up with him. But I prefer to stay with Mary, our Mother.
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The Will of God
Today we hear in the Gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How much do I love God? How much am I ready to do anything for him? It is as simple as that. Love is not feelings but uniting our will to the will of God. Marriage is to become one, in body and soul, in will and spirit. You love somebody when you are ready to do his or her will. When two people marry, they give themselves to the other person in a way that they don’t belong to themselves anymore. From then on they need to think what the other person wants them to do. The problem is when one or both don’t give themselves completely to the other, when they keep a single attitude. They end up living two separate lives. Our union with God, says Saint John of the Cross, resides in the union of our will with His, and is measured entirely by that union. The more we unite ourselves to God’s will, the more we become him, until we reach a moment when there is only one will, His.
God has given us a free will to be able to love him. Love cannot be compulsory. People complain about evil in the world, why God allows bad things to happen. It is because he has made us free. He has run the risk and the adventure of our freedom. In marriage there is normally an infatuation at the beginning, when you are attracted to a person and you fall in love. But afterwards marital love requires an act of the will: I love this person because I want to, because he or she is my spouse, independently of my feelings. Sometimes we feel it, many times we don’t feel it, and other times maybe we feel the opposite.
Imagine you have two workers. One is a hard worker, but he does his own thing. The other is a bit lazy, but he does what you want him to do. Which one do you prefer? The one who does your will; the other is useless. It is the same with God. We can be very busy but doing our own thing. Saint Augustine has a beautiful expression: bene curris sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. God prefers that we follow his will, rather than spend the whole day in church.
God has designed the path he wants us to follow. It is there to be walked. Do you remember those old drawings in the magazines, where all you had to do was to draw the line between the dots? Then a nice figure appeared. The Holy Spirit has punched the dots. All we need to do is unite the dots every day, just the dot in front of us, without knowing what thedrawing is going to look like. You cannot see what you are doing looking forward; you can only see it looking backwards. The only way to see what the figure looks like is from the air, from above, from an eagle or a drone view, through God’s eyes.
What’s important is the attitude we have in front of God’s will. It is easy to follow him when his will is the same as ours. It is harder when there are two different wills, his will and our will. There are different stages in conforming our will to his will. We start with resignation, a negative word; we move to desire to love his will; once we manage to accept his will, we begin to love it. And we end up abandoning ourselves in his hands. Like a baby is left in his mother’s arms. A baby doesn’t have a will. It is a pure instinct of letting himself be loved.
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Way, Truth and Life
Jesus was telling his disciples: I have to go and prepare a place for you, then I’ll come back and take you to myself; and you know the way. Thomas, a down to earth man, complained: Master, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way? Thanks to Thomas’ logic, we have these beautiful words from Our Lord: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is the one, he is a must, we cannot bypass him, he is compulsory. He should be our center, our summit, our soul, our love, our soulmate, our everything. A good question to ask ourselves: What is the place of Jesus in my life? When you look at a photo of a group of people, you can identify the relationship between each of them, depending where every person is placed in the photo. The one in the middle is normally the most important one. If I take a photo of important people in my life, Where do I place Jesus? At the back? Or maybe our photo is just a selfie.
Saint Augustine says that the way leads us to the truth, and the truth to life. Jesus is the way, the only way. There are as many different paths, as there are people, but only one way. Our life can go only in one direction. If we want to reach heaven, we need to follow Jesus. We come from God and we go back to God. We are here only for few years, wandering around, like a shooting star in the middle of the sky, that comes and goes. We were created without our consent; but it is up to us to reach our final destination. There is a famous saying in the spiritual life: God who created without you, won’t save you without you.
It is so easy to get lost. We see it all around us. So many people losing their way. There are many things in our lives that are trying to pull us away from the path, to distract us, to bog us down, to turn us around. This is one of the reasons why Jesus came to earth: to lead us, to show us the way. He is a short cut, the direct line, the straight path, a free way. He is our true GPS. We trust our gadgets to lead us where we want to go, but sometimes they let us down: our battery is flat, we run out of data, or we go through a spot where there is no coverage. But we don’t trust Jesus, the only real GPS, who never fails, the only one who can get us to our most important destination in life, heaven. If we look for him, he will find us, and once we find him, we will have no other freedom than to love him. We won’t let him go. We’ll keep our eyes on him and we won’t get lost.
If we follow the way, we will find the truth. Jesus always leads us to the truth. Sometimes we don’t follow the way because we cannot handle the truth. We don’t like what the truth is going to reveal to us, what the truth brings about. We live in a relativistic society that doesn’t care much about the truth. People fashion the truth according to what they think or how they live. Either you change the way you live according to what you believe, or you change your beliefs. This is the problem with the truth: it is going to have an influence on our lives. It is hard, but it will make us free. It will free us from the things we are attached to, from the things we are enslaved by, from the things we would like to be free of. The truth will make us free.
That’s why the truth lead us to life. Once we live according to the truth of our nature, we will begin to live an authentic Christian life, and we are happy because that’s what God created us for. If we live the life God has prepared for us, we are in our way to heaven.
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The Good Shepherd
Every fourth Sunday of Easter we have the Gospel of the good shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who leads his flock to good pastures, who knows his sheep one by one and calls us by our name. It gives us a lot of confidence to know that we have a great shepherd to lead us to heaven. All we need to do is to follow him. The early Christians loved this depiction of Jesus. In fact the oldest image we have of Jesus is a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders, in the catacomb of Saint Calixtus, in Rome. Have you ever tried to carry a sheep on yours shoulders? It is not easy.
We also call Jesus the Lamb of God. In every Mass the priest shows us the host saying: Behold the Lamb of God. He is the lamb of sacrifice. In the Old Testament the Jews used to offer animals as sacrifices to God. Now they are not needed anymore, because Jesus gave his life for us once and for all. We Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we try to be like him, sheep and shepherd.
To be a shepherd means to give your life for the sheep. It is nice to be the boss, but it demands sacrifice, responsibility to forget about yourself, to do the best for others; in one word, to lay down your life for them. It means not to have your own life. We cannot be the hired shepherd, who doesn’t know his flock, who doesn’t care about his sheep; shepherds who only think about themselves, who are there just for profit, who don’t know how to serve. Service is a beautiful word that has almost disappeared from the dictionary. We talk about rights, but we forget about responsibilities. We don’t like to talk about duties.
We are also sheep, a good one, who follows the whistles of the shepherd. Not the lost sheep of the parable. It is easy to get lost. We like wandering around, playing with fire, doing our own thing, following the inspirations of our pride and selfishness. And when we are lost, then we complain. We want the freedom of doing whatever we want, and when we are in trouble we ask for help. Jesus tells us to be a sheep, not a wolf. Sometimes we prefer to be a wolf, fighting with everyone, biting whoever comes our way, barking all the time. A wolf is more exciting, but a sheep is a gentle, peaceful, smiling animal. It doesn’t complain and lets you do whatever you want. It is a big difference between to kill a sheep and a pig. A sheep dies without complaining; a pig doesn’t go down without waking the whole neighbourhood. There are two kinds of people: people who create problems and people who solve them. A mother is always helping. Spoiled kids are always creating trouble.
We call this Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday. Today we pray for vocations, asking Our Lord to send us good shepherds. We are fulfilling Jesus advice: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We pray that the Lord will send us shepherds, specially from our own parish. Jesus knows that we need vocations. All we need to do is pray for them.
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Emmaus
The road to Emmaus resembles our own journey. We are pilgrims. We can identify ourselves with these two disciples, who went back to their village, after Jesus’ death. It was all over. In fact, we only know the name of one of them, Cleophas; we can easily be the other one. We had placed our desires and ideals on that man whom we thought was the Messiah. We followed him for three years, expecting him to save Israel from the Romans. And they killed him; the most horrible death on the cross. We saw him dying and we are going back to our former life, all hope lost; we tried for a while, but it didn’t work out. We are going away from Jerusalem, away from God, the wrong way, against the traffic. You see sometimes on freeways a big red sign: wrong way; go back. Go back to your God.
Jesus comes out to meet us. He runs up to us, and he is walking with us, next to us, on our right hand side. But because of our discouragement, our self centredness, we don’t recognise him. A question, I’ve been thinking about: Are we sad because we don’t see, or because we are sad, we don’t see? I think normally sadness comes from blindness. It happens to us many times, when we fail to discover Jesus who is passing by our lives. He is passing by every day. He could have come with his glorified body, showing us his five wounds, but he came as traveler, as a pilgrim, like each one of us. He is a man. He comes to meet us in our journey. God comes down to our level, to follow us and to seek us out. We expect him to come with special effects, fire works, beautiful music and big miracles. And he passes by unnoticed, through the normal circumstances of our lives. Saint Teresa of Avila used to say that God is among the cooking pots.
And Jesus begins to walk and talk with us. He listens to what we have in our hearts, to our discouragement, to our lack of hope. And he begins to explain to us what the Scriptures had to say about him. He give us the other side of the story. He always has good news to share with us. And we need to listen to what Jesus has to say, specially when we are down. Jesus gives us an example of how to help people we come across in our lives. We run up to them, we meet them at their own level, we accompany them on their journey, listen to what they have to say, what they have in their hearts, share their emotions, understand their problems, and speak to them of what is in our hearts. We don’t need to impose our ideas or our opinions onto them. Just open our hearts to them, explain to them our own life journey. We take them with us to Emmaus, through our words, our affection, our example, and introduce them to Jesus.
When the two disciples of Emmaus arrived in their village, they asked Jesus to stay with them: stay with us because it is getting dark. We need to say the same to Jesus: stay with us because without you there is no light, without you there is no hope. You are our way, the truth and the life. Sitting at the table they recognise him at the breaking of the bread. It took them a long time to recognise him. The breaking of the bread was the beginning of the meal. Jesus broke the bread in a particular way. This was the name the early Christians used for the Eucharist: the breaking of the bread. It is a good question for us: Do we recognise Jesus at the Holy Mass? Do we believe that Jesus is in the tabernacle waiting for us? We see bread but it is Jesus. We need more faith.
When they recognised him, he disappeared. It happens to us: Jesus comes and goes. We need to keep searching. The Gospel says: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?” They realised then of the warmth of walking with Jesus. We can get used to him, to the security of our faith, to the trus
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Thomas
When Jesus came to meet the apostles after the resurrection Thomas was not there. Where was he? We don’t know. Did he go shopping? Did he go fishing? Maybe he was still running away. All we know is that he wasn’t there. We need to be there when Jesus comes. No excuses. We cannot miss our Lord. We need Him. He comes when he likes and we need to be ready, waiting.
When Thomas came back the apostles told him, with a hint of jealousy: “Who do you think came while you were running around?” He didn’t know. They told him: “We have seen the Lord!” This is our Christian message, a great act of faith, witness to his resurrection. He couldn’t believe it. When they insisted, he became upset and proud, and he denied it: “Impossible!” And he declared more angrily: “I want not only to see his wounds, but to touch them and put my fingers in them.” Fair enough; we recognise the risen Christ through his wounds, but his statement was a bit too much. Thomas is a modern man, sceptical and empirical: “Unless I see and touch, I don’t believe.” Thanks to his unbelief our faith grows. The doubting Thomas increases our faith.
Today, eight days later, Thomas was there when Jesus appeared again. This time Thomas had learned the lesson and he is there. The first thing Jesus says is: “Peace be with you!” Be at peace. I have risen, it is all over, I have overcome death, be not afraid. The same angels say when they appear to men. These were the first words Saint John Paul II said when he was elected Pope: “Be not afraid!” We are afraid and angry because we are not at peace with ourselves.
When Thomas saw Jesus, he hid straight away behind the other apostles thinking: I hope he didn’t hear the silly thing I said the other day. He was ashamed now, all his arrogance gone. But Jesus hears everything; we cannot hide anything from him. He went directly to Thomas, walking through the people around him. He took his right hand, and, even though Thomas tried to resist, with the strong force of his glorious body, Jesus placed Thomas’s hand into his wounds saying: “Do not be faithless but believing.” Thomas could only say: “My Lord and my God!” A good act of faith in front of the Eucharist. Then Jesus praised all of us when we feel our lack of faith, and we are envious of Thomas: “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet believe.”
When Jesus left, Thomas kept staring at his hand. Tradition says that his hand became red, a reminder of his lack of faith. Thomas never forgot this encounter with Our Lord, the first one of a line of saints to find refuge in Jesus’ wounds. Later on, Thomas would had shown his hand to the early Christians, when they asked him about this scene, showing off with pride and a bit of arrogance: I am the only one who touched Jesus’ wounds. It is not completely true because the holy women anointed them with oil, when they buried Jesus’ body. When I read this Gospel, I would like to ask Thomas what he felt when he put his fingers into Jesus’ side. You could say that he felt the depth of Jesus’ love for him.
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Easter Sunday
Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early on Sunday morning and found it empty. She was the first one to discover the empty tomb. It is very important for us the empty tomb. It shows that Jesus rose from the dead. It is empty because Jesus overcame death. It is an icon of the resurrection. Mary ran back and told Peter and John about the tomb. Both ran to the tomb to check it out. Saint John arrived first; he was younger and ran faster. Saint Jerome says that celibacy gives us wings. But he did not go in, out of deference for Peter. Peter was already regarded as the leader of the apostles.
The Gospel says that John “saw and believed.” What did he see? It is a traditional question. He saw the linen on the ground. John knew Jesus so well that he realised Jesus had risen. He was there on Friday night when they laid him in the tomb. And looking at how things were now around the tomb, he could figured out that Jesus walked away by himself. You can go to a room in your house and say: “I know who’s been here. I know what has happened.” The dirty dishes are in the sink, her clothes are all over the room, he’s been in the pantry because the chocolate has disappeared.
The Jews accused the apostles of stealing Jesus’ body. The Gospel says that the linen clothes were “lying there.” This expression in the Greek version seems to indicate that the clothes were flattened, as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose, as if he had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being unrolled. One can understand how this would amaze a witness, how unforgettable the scene would be. If you steal a body, you take it with its clothes; you don’t leave the linen behind.
The napkin which had been wrapped around his head was “rolled up in a place by itself.” The napkin was not on top of the clothes, but placed on one side. It was still rolled up but, unlike the clothes, it still had a certain volume, like a container or a cocoon, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments. Jesus’ body must have risen in a heavenly manner, that is, in a way which transcended the laws of nature. It was not only a matter of the body being reanimated as happened, for example, in the case of Lazarus, who had to be unbound before he could walk. Jesus rose from his death and left the linen there, untouched, sliding out of them.
This remind us of the Holy Shroud, the famous relic in Turin. It is supposed to be the linen Peter and John found on the floor of the empty tomb. It has always attracted veneration. John Paul II said that “the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI had a lot of devotion to Holy Saturday because he was baptised on this day. He went to see the Holy Shroud and said: “this sacred Cloth can nourish and foster faith and reinvigorate Christian devotion because it spurs us to go to the Face of Christ, to the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ, to contemplate the Paschal Mystery, the heart of the Christian message.” People go to see the shroud to contemplate Jesus’ face. This is our deepest human desire: to see God, to contemplate the face of Jesus, to be eternally happy through the vision of the divine glory, although millions of people are unaware of this aspiration. Happy Easter to you all.
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Good Friday
After the homily we are going to bring the crucifix veiled, Jesus crucified hiding behind a purple cloth. Purple used to be a royal colour, because it was the most expensive colorant to produce. Herod covered Jesus with a purple robe, to mock him. This is why we use this colour. We cover the crucifix because we don’t know if he is still alive; we don’t want to see him dying for us. The unveiling signifies the death of Jesus. Before it was hidden; now we know.
We are going to unveil him slowly, each limb with music, to remember his wounds. We are going to sing “Behold, behold, the wood of the cross.” Slowly, for us to make sure we see him, we look at him, we contemplate him. Slowly to see each one of his five wounds engraved in his flesh. I recommend you to look into his eyes. We are normally afraid of looking at him. Why? Because this is what we have done to him. Jesus, with his body, is telling us: this is me. We need to face Jesus, Jesus as a man. Can you hold his sight? Can you look at him straight?
Then we are going to venerate him. One by one, through a long queue, with time to spare. We need time to repent, to atone for our sins. We are quick to sin, but we are slow to say sorry. Contrition normally drags its feet. We are not going to use three crucifixes to go faster; otherwise, it would look like Calvary, with the two thieves on both sides of Jesus. I wouldn’t like to kiss the bad thief. We are going to kiss him, to soften his suffering, to try to make up for our sins. Sometimes children don’t want to kiss him; they are rightly afraid because they can see beyond us. Can we kiss him after inflicting him so much suffering, so much pain? It looks a bit like Judas’ kiss. We need to cry in front of him, a cry of repentance.
The crucifix shows us his five wounds, wide open in front of us. We can find refuge in them. Saints have a lot of devotion to Jesus’ wounds. They remind us of our own scars, those wounds that haven’t been healed, that are part of our brokenness. We complain about them, but we don’t allow Jesus to heal them. Jesus is proud of his wounds; he shows them as medals, a proof of what he has gone through. In the army, when you get wounded, they decorate you with a medal. Our scars show that we have fought, and that we have been wounded. We should be proud of them; they are like medals. If we look at them as proof of what we have suffered, we can begin to heal. Instead of complaining about them, we can begin to understand why God allowed those things to happen, see them as medals and give thanks for them.
When Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross, it was placed in the arms of our mother. His blood stained her clothes, but she didn’t care, because she wanted to hold him for the last time, his body still warm. She wanted that moment to last for ever, and kiss him for the last time, remembering when she had him in her arms when he was a baby, crying for her milk.
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Palm Sunday
Why did Jesus enter in Jerusalem on a donkey? He could have come on a horse or on a camel, more elegant animals, sitting higher to be able to be seen and have a better view. But he wanted to fulfill the Scriptures. They said that the Messiah had to come riding on a donkey. Why did the Scriptures prophesied on a donkey and not another animal? Because the donkey is a humble, docile and hardworking beast, more suitable as an example for us, unlike a horse who prefers showing off and pretending. They say a donkey is a symbol of peace, humility and the simple life. A horse is a symbol of war, pride and luxury.
One of the Psalms says that we are like a donkey before God. Jesus has decided to ride on us. We are just a donkey. Many times we think that we are a horse and we become silly, proud and rebellious. We cannot forget that even though we are carrying Jesus, we are just a donkey. When we pretend that we are a horse, the ride becomes bumpy, and Jesus finds it difficult to stay on top. Don’t be a stubborn, grumpy old donkey, only thinking how to find revenge with a kick. Be a young one, with long ears ready for the Master’s command, a quick step ready to work in his service. The Lord wants to ride us, to reach heaven together. The best way for us to enter into heaven is being docile to his call.
Eventually you allow him to ride on you and you experience the shouts of the multitude and the cries of joy to the prophet who is coming to the holy city. People lay their garments for you to walk softly. You enjoy treading on people’s clothes. You feel important, thinking that people are welcoming you. You look around, acknowledging people’s praises and almost crash against a pole in the middle of the road. A simple gesture from Jesus makes your head bow low and fix your eyes on the way. No more frivolous thoughts or wandering looks. All around you is not for you; just for Jesus.
Jesus is a good rider. He lets you ride at your pace, he doesn’t kick with his legs. He brings peace with himself. His yoke is easy and his burden light. But you need to cooperate. All he wants from you is to follow his path. It looks easy but it is not. Common experience tells us that it is one of the most difficult things. It is all right when both our path and his path coincide. But when his path differs from ours, when begins to climb up hill, when the path gets bumpy and rough, we prefer to go down hill. When are we going to be convinced that his way is the best way?
When Jesus sees Jerusalem he begins to cry. You don’t know what to do. You never have seen him crying. He is weeping because of what is going to happen to the holy city, its future destruction at the hands of the Romans. It is amazing, Jesus just sad for a heap of stones. He is like us; we humans worry about things and gadgets. Jesus is a man and has good memories of the temple. And all because it didn’t follow the paths of the Lord. You want to apply the lesson to your own life. You don’t want Jesus to weep for you and for your children.
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Lent 5 A Lazarus
“Lord, him whom you love is ill.” The same can be said of us. We are sick to death by sin, and we need Jesus to either cure us or resurrect us from death. He loves us with divine love and he is ready to come to help us at very short notice. But, can it be said the other way around? Can others say to Jesus: your friend, the one who thinks about you, who wants to spend time with you, who visits you and likes to receive you frequently, is in need of you? Jesus loved to stop over at Bethany, the house of his friends, to spend time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Saint Josemaria used to call the tabernacle, Bethany. Do we like to stop over at a church and spend time with our friend? Can we tell Jesus: Lord, I love you and I am ill?
“If you have been here my brother would have not died.” It is a very strong statement. It is like saying: you are responsible for the death of our loved one. How many times we blame God for our sufferings, our illnesses, our accidents? We ask, where was God then? Martha and Mary could talk to Jesus in this way, because they were very close to him. If we could see their faces at the time, they would have shown a smile among their tears. It was not blaming him, but showing their pain for the death of their brother. Do I have the same confidence in Jesus, to tell him what is in my heart? Jesus, I am sick of everything.
“Take away the stone.” But Jesus, he’s been there for four days already; he is really dead. For the Jews four days was the sign of real death. “Take away the stone.” But Jesus, his body is corrupt and he stinks. “Take away the stone.” I have been in that cave for many years now and it is impossible for me to move. Trust me, take away what separates you from me, a stone, a wall, a barrier, whatever it is. Jesus is telling us to take away what is between us and him. We are slow to follow his command and we have many excuses not to remove the obstacle from our path. If you don’t remove it, you cannot come out.
“Lazarus, come out!” It was a strong voice, loud enough for the dead ears of Lazarus to hear from inside the tomb. It goes through the rock. It is the voice of Jesus, manly, well balanced, deep and harmonious, a voice impossible to resist. It is the word of God. The same one that still resounds from the beginning of time. The voice we hear at Mass: this is my body, a body that died for us and rose from the dead. Lazarus came out like a robot, a zombie, an automatic response, against his will. He was sleeping peacefully, more in the other life than here, and didn’t want to come back. An imperative command to come out. His voice is irresistible: Come out of yourself!
“Unbind him and let him go.” It must have been an amazing scene. They were all paralysed and terrified. Nobody could move, not even run away. They were all tied to the ground looking at him like a ghost, like a mummy. When we take away the stone, he lets us free. There is always something that enslaves us, either a little thread or a chain. Something that doesn’t allow us to fly, to follow the path God wants us to walk. Unbind the ropes that tie you to earth and go, run towards eternity.
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Lent 4 A The blind man
Last Sunday we looked at one of the four natural elements, water, indispensable for human life. It is very much part of the beginning of our Christian life, when we are baptised. Without water there can be neither natural nor supernatural life. This Sunday we consider another crucial element, light, without which life cannot grow either. It is part of the rite of Baptism, when we bring to the newly baptised person a lighted candle, symbolising a cleaned soul, full of light. Christ is the light who came to dispel darkness. On the Easter vigil we are reminded of this reality, when we bring the Easter candle into the darkness of the church, and little by little, by lighting the candles people are carrying in their hands, the whole church becomes illuminated.
Today in the Gospel we come across a man blind from birth. It is hard for us to realise what it is to be blind. Try to close your eyes and keep them closed for a lengthy period of time; you won’t last too long. Blindness from the beginning is a harder reality: you cannot dream with images. Once they tried to explain to a blind man what the colour red was; and after much explanation, trying to compare it with a hot instrument, he said that it must be similar to the sound of a trumpet. Colours don’t have much to do with sounds; imagine spiritual things. We are blind from birth to them, because of original sin, and we need Jesus to cure our blindness, to be able to see him.
Jesus made clay with his saliva, placed mud on the blind man’s eyes and told him to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Why did he do that? He could have touched his eyes and cured him straight away. It is a reminder that we are made of clay, that our feet can easily break. The pool of Siloam was outside the walls of the city. He could have gone to the nearby fountain and washed his eyes, but it wouldn’t had worked. Jesus wanted him to walk with faith and show others his trust in God. He could go with mud on his eyes because he was blind and knew the way by heart. We also need to show others that we trust in Jesus. God’s saliva cured him, but it had to be mixed with our clay, with our humanity.
We miss something when we don’t have it. We don’t normally realise that we are blind to the spiritual world. Once we cannot see, we notice our eyes, as when they hurt or we need glasses. We have two of them because they are very important. We have also two ears, to listen better; but only one mouth not to speak too much. We know we are blind because we realise that the saints can see things we don’t see. We would like to see what they see. Better, we would like to see with Jesus eyes. Saint Teresa of Avila wanted to know the colour of Jesus’ eyes when he appeared to her; she says that when she tried, the apparition disappeared altogether.
Today we ask Jesus to cure our spiritual blindness. First we need to acknowledge that our soul has eyes and that they are closed. Then we have to allow him to put mud in them, and walk with a dirty face for a while, showing others our blindness, till we reach the waters of the Sacrament of Confession. And we need to do this not once, or twice, but a thousand times. Slowly we are going to start seeing; first some shadows, then some sparks of light. The more we clean them, the more light we are going to see. We cannot see the full light from the beginning: it would destroy our eyes completely. And slowly we are going to discover the wonders of the spiritual life.
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Lent 3 A Samaritan woman
Today we meet a different Jesus, less attractive, more human, more like us. After two days journey from Jerusalem, he is tired, dirty and thirsty. He is all alone, sitting at the edge of Jacob’s well. His disciples had gone to the nearby village to get some food and water. Nobody stayed with him; they were too hungry or too thirsty to keep him company. Jesus couldn’t go on and had to sit down to rest. Or may be he was there waiting for the Samaritan woman and for each one of us. How many times we leave Jesus alone, entertaining ourselves, or giving in our silly little pleasures. And we forget about others.
It is noon, the sun is up in the sky, the time of the day when everything is quiet and silent, but for the sound of the cicadas. Jesus looks at the fresh water at the bottom of the well with an impossible desire. And a woman comes alone carrying a jar on her head, moving her body in a provocative way. She comes at this hour to avoid other women who didn’t like her, because she stole their husbands. She is beautiful and Jesus is full of dust. Two different attitudes in life: a frivolous woman with a bucket, and a dirty, thirsty God. We are more inclined to notice her than to look at Jesus.
She ignores Jesus; Jews and Samaritans didn’t talk to each other. And a woman alone didn’t talk to a man. Her situation in life was very messy. But Jesus overcoming his tiredness and her messiness, begins to talk to her. We are all represented in this woman, in her sinfulness, in her desire to draw water and find happiness. Jesus gives us an example of how to reach souls, even the ones that are far away from him. He begins to talk to her about what is important to her, about the water she comes to draw from the well. We normally talk about what is important to us and we find it difficult to know what is important to others.
Jesus asks her: “Give me a drink.” God thirsty and without a bucket to draw water. He says the same from the cross: “I thirst.” You can find these words in every chapel of Mother Teresa’s nuns. Even though he doesn’t need anything, God always begins asking for things. He is thirsty for our love; he expects us to give ourselves to him, to place him at the centre of our lives. Better: he is telling us what is really happening to us, that we are thirsty of him. We are like the deer in the Psalm that is longing for streams of pure, clear water. And we keep coming back every day to draw water from an earthly well, that will never fill us up. Our heart is a bucket full of cracks, impossible to contain the muddy water we are trying to get from the pot holes in the road.
Only God can give us this clean, fresh water. This is what he tells the Samaritan woman: “I am the only one who can give you a living water, a water that when you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again.” A living water, alive, full of energy, with enough nourishment that leads to eternal life. Then, you won’t have to come back again to this well; you won’t have to look for impossible ways to quench yours thirst. It is the water that flew from his side on the cross, when the centurion pierced his heart. It is the grace that flows from the Mass every time we come to drink from his open wound. If only you knew the gift of God!
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Lent 2 The Transfiguration of Jesus
Last Sunday we went with Jesus down to the desert. This week he is asking us to accompany him up Mount Thabor. We went down through penance and repentance; now, purified and cleansed, we climb up to the heights of the spiritual life, with the new wings sacrifice and mortification have given to us. Even though it is only 300 metres above the plain, it looks higher than it is, because it stands alone surrounded by flat terrain. There is a magnificent view and a beautiful church on top. It is only an hour of climbing, but the road goes straight up. The higher you go the more you see.
You feel closer to God when you reach the summit. It is part of our Lenten exercise, to climb up the mountain of our sinfulness, towards God, leaving material things behind. You cannot carry much weight if you want to follow Jesus and keep his pace. The closer you become to the top, the more light you find yourself surrounded by. Saints love going up to the mountains to meet their creator. They have received many graces up there. The air is thinner, the light is purer, solitude welcomes you, silence envelops you, and here you feel that God is listening to you. Above the sounds and distractions of society, you find a better connection with God.
Jesus took with him his three beloved apostles, Peter, John and James, to accompany him; the first Pope, the first apostle martyred and the last to die. He took them on other special occasions. But especially they witnessed both his transfiguration and the agony in the garden. The highs and the lows of his earthly existence. Both in beautiful natural surroundings, a mountain and a garden. They were the only ones to attend both amazing events. Would Jesus take us with him? Are we part of the group of his close friends? Are we ready to withstand the highs and the lows of the Christian life?
Why did Jesus transfigure himself in front of them? To show them his divinity, just before he was going to show them his horrible passion and death. He does the same with us. If he takes us with him high on the spiritual life, he is going to asks us also to go through suffering and penance. It is the story of every saint. That’s is why there are only few saints; we like the mystical experiences, but we run away from the cross. In both events the three beloved disciples fell sleep; they let Jesus down. We too fall asleep when Jesus asks us to accompany him. But if three of Jesus’ best apostles couldn’t keep their eyes open, we mustn’t feel too bad when we do the same.
When they arrived at the summit Jesus began to pray. This scene in the Gospel has been depicted traditionally as an icon of contemplation. Before we discover Jesus’ divinity, we need to spend time in prayer, contemplating his humanity. Only when we manage to be in deep concentration, detached from any earthly attachment, sitting above our miseries, can we discover the true face of Christ. It must have been an amazing experience, when they woke up and found themselves in front of the real Jesus. They never forgot that vision. Jesus does the same with us. When he asks us to share the sufferings of his cross, he also sends to us a bit of honey, a spark of heaven, a glimpse of his beautiful face.
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Lent 1 Temptations
Jesus goes to the desert led by the spirit to be tempted. He allows himself to be tested, to share our normal ordinary existence. By doing this, Jesus has entered the drama of human experience. We accompany him, to learn from him, to share his strength. Jesus fought and defended himself as a man, with the same weapons we have. We go to the desert with Jesus, like the desert fathers, to become stronger and be ready to fight the evil one. In the desert there are no distractions, no virtual reality, no place to hide. We can see the devil coming with all his false devices, and we can defeat him more easily. We draw him out from the city and we bring him to our home turf. Here we are just the three of us, and our enemy is outnumbered: we are two against one.
This Lent we are going to spend 40 days with Jesus praying and fasting. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert. Moses and Elijah spent 40 days of penance and prayer before they met God. 40 is the number of testing, discovering of who you are and prayer in the Bible. We need time to get to know ourselves and get ready. After 40 days of prayer and fasting, Jesus is weak, and the devil takes advantage of this moment to tempt him with strong temptations. Traditionally we call our three enemies, the devil, the world and the flesh. The world are others and the flesh is ours. They could attack us one, two or three together. The worst one is us. We are our biggest enemy.
Why was Jesus tempted? It is a mystery. Maybe the devil wanted to know who Jesus was, how strong he was, a bit of a testing match. We witness a battle between God and the devil. We are not in the middle. We can choose sides. Hopefully we are in God's side, in the right one, the winning one. In the history of humanity at the end God always wins, even though many times it looks like the devil has the upper hand. God uses the attacks and machinations of the evil one to bring his plans to completion. It must be frustrating for him to see all his work undone. He becomes more experienced with time, but he can never defeat God. In the crucifixion, Satan thinking that killing Jesus was going to win, served God’s plan for our redemption.
Why God allows us to be tempted? Temptations in themselves are indifferent; they are good if we win, they are bad if we lose. Sometimes we win, other times we lose. They help us to grow in love and virtue. We ask God to get rid of them because we don’t want trouble. To become stronger: difficulties help us to grow. To show him that we love Him: we put Him first. To become more humble: we need his help. We realise how weak we are. They help us to increase our merits.
Get to know ourselves. We normally get tempted the same way. Be sincere. Oscar Wilde was running away from temptation very slowly, for it to catch him. I know that if I go to bed late... Once I begin to speak about this topic... If I go out with this person... Once I start eating peanuts I cannot stop. We know that we will never tempted above our strength. We have all the weapons to fight temptations. We need to use the right ones, like in computer games. The Bible: Jesus uses it against the devil. Pope Francis says that we should use the Bible as we use our cell phone: carry it with us, read it frequently, go back home to pick it up. The best weapon against the devil is Our Lady.
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Ash Wednesday
“Return to me”, the Lord is telling us on the first reading of today’s Mass. It means that we have been wandering off, we have lost our direction and we need to stop and come back. We have been going rather in the opposite direction, towards our own ego, our selfishness and our pride. Return to me, turn around, do a “u” turn. It is hard to do it; it demands a small conversion, to recognise that we have been wrong and we need to put God back at the centre of our lives. Return “to me”, abandon the desires of your heart, that don’t make you happy, and return to your God, to your Creator, your Father, to what constitutes the meaning of your life.
When the priest today places the ashes on our forehead, he will remind us of the famous words of the Scripture: “Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a reminder that without God we are nothing; without God all that remains is this pile of dirt that we see in this little dish. The wind is going to blow away the dust of our bodies. We shall return to the earth where we came from. We get the ashes on our forehead, to make sure our thoughts are in the right place. The Church wants to inscribe on our minds what it is important in life. Memento mori. Remember, we come from God and we are going back to him.
In the book The Alchemist the boy asks him: “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” And the old man answers: “Because, wherever our heart is, there is also our treasure.” Ubi thesaurus cor; your heart is in your treasure. If we want to know what our treasure is, we should listen to the beating of our hearts. It is not familiar music, because we don’t normally listen to it. It is normally hidden from our senses. We need to listen carefully. Pope Francis says that “our heart always points in some direction: it is like a compass seeking its bearings. We can also compare it to a magnet: it needs to attach itself to something.” It is always seeking something and it is good for us to know what it is.
Pope Francis in one of his homilies for Ash Wednesday, proposes three steps for Lent: “Almsgiving, prayer, fasting. What are they for? Almsgiving, prayer and fasting bring us back to the three realities that do not fade away. Prayer reunites us to God; charity, to our neighbour; fasting, to ourselves. God, my neighbour, my life: these are the realities that do not fade away and in which we must invest. Lent, therefore, invites us to focus, first of all on the Almighty, in prayer, which frees us from that horizontal and mundane life where we find time for self but forget God. It then invites us to focus on others, with the charity that frees us from the vanity of acquiring and of thinking that things are only good if they are good for me. Finally, Lent invites us to look inside our hearts, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart. Prayer, charity, fasting: three investments for a treasure that endures.”
In this journey through Lent, where do we fix our eyes, our gaze? What should we focus on? The Church has the answer: on Christ crucified. It is very simple: Jesus is on the cross and if we want to find him, we need to climb up to the cross.
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Love your enemies
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This was the old law. It is a bit harsh for us: if you steal something, you loose your hand; if you kill, you are killed. It was good then, to stop successive acts of revenge. Justice was made, the deed repaid; no need to further action. They say that an eye for an eye eventually would leave the whole world blind. But Jesus came to lift the level of charity; he asked us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies. It was a big change. How can we do that? We shouldn’t have enemies, but we all have people that annoy us. What did Jesus do? Even though he was innocent, he died for all of us. There is no offence that we can’t forgive and forget.
This is the true Christian spirit: we are all brothers and sisters. We should love everybody without exception. This is the heart of the Gospel. We need to look at others as Jesus sees them. Have a big heart that includes everyone. Look at the saints, how they treated others; people were attracted to their way of life. When somebody cuts in on us driving on the road, we get upset; if we recognise the person, we smile instead and we wave to him or her. If we know the person jumping the queue, we are more lenient. We need to ask Jesus to help us to change our glasses, or to see things through his eyes.
There was an Abbot in a monastery who was worried about the lack of charity among his brothers. He went to see a holy man to find a solution. The holy man told him: “You have Jesus among your brothers.” He responded that it was impossible. The holy man reassured him. Going back to the monastery he began to think: “The cook? No, he is too fat, always eating. The librarian? He doesn’t stop reading books. The porter? He is always gossiping about the news. The bell ringer? He is never on time to mark the hours. The gardener? He forgets to water the flowers. The tailor? He can hardly get the size right. The organist? He falls asleep on the keyboard.” And he went through all the friars to see who could be Jesus. When he arrived at the monastery, he got together all the brothers and told them about the holy man: “He says that one of you is Jesus. I don’t think so, but I tell you this just in case.” They all began to think about who could Jesus be. Then the whole atmosphere of the monastery changed. They treated each other differently. Saint Paul says that some of the people around us could be angels. Sometimes Jesus appeared to saints in a different human form, a leper to Saint Francis, a poor man to Saint Martin, a little boy to Saint Christopher.
The Italians say that when someone does something against you tie a thread on your finger: not to forget, to have it always in your face. We cannot keep bearing all our grudges throughout our life. It is a dead weight. Eventually they will stop us from living. We need to learn how to forgive, forget and let them go.
We all have things that upset us. It is part of human life. We should bring those things to our prayer, to our conversation with God and deal with them. Otherwise when we get upset all the things inside of us come out and we hurt people. Why do they upset us? How can we change our attitude? A young couple used to get upset using the same toothpaste. Instead of uniting them, it was the opposite. One liked to roll it up and the other just to press it. Eventually they bought two different tubes. The argument was over. Deep down, it is our pride that causes the upset. We need to recognise this and move on.
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Yes mean Yes
“Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No.” This was the motto of a boys’ school, to teach the kids to be sincere. They used to ask me, why do we have to say the truth, if with a lie we can get away with things. I used to tell them that Jesus is the Truth and if we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to be truthful. Let what you say reflect what you think. Let your mind express itself. Gulliver in one of his travels comes across an island populated by horses, and tries to explain to them what human beings are. The horses cannot understand creatures that are able to lie: How can they think one thing and say a different one? Scientists say that the difference between computers and human beings is that computers cannot lie; they are programmed to come out with what is right. The day they learn how to deceive others, they will be like us; then we will be in trouble, completely at their mercy.
Society needs the truth to function properly. We live in a relativistic world where people are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in their truth. As long as I am happy in the way I live, I change the truth to suit my life. The internet is full of fake news. We like to access web sites that say things we agree with. The protagonist of the movie “A Few Good Men” has a famous line: “You cannot handle the truth”. It is true: we don’t want to handle it, to live by it, to live our lives according to the Truth, with a capital T. Martyrs used to lay down their lives for what they believed in. We are not ready to do so. We are only ready to die for what give us most pleasure, money, drugs, sex, alcohol or food.
First we need to be sincere with God. It is silly to try to deceive God, because He knows everything. But we don’t want to face him, to acknowledge his presence. We live ignoring him, as if he doesn’t exist; we only go to Him when we are in trouble. How can we love Him if we are afraid of him? Maybe we contact Him once a day, out of duty, just in case, when we pray before going to bed. We need to force ourselves to spend time with Him in silent prayer, to try to see things through His eyes, to look at Him with loving eyes. Somebody said that we should look at Jesus’ eyes at least once a day. Sooner or later we are going to face Him.
In the temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a famous inscription: Nosce te ipsum; know yourself. One of the most difficult things in life is to know ourselves. Because we live inside of ourselves, because we don’t like how we are, we create a different image of ourselves. I’d like to have another inscription: Ama te ipsum: love yourself; love yourself in the way God created you. God doesn’t love a virtual you; he loves you in the way you are. Unless we accept ourselves in the way we are we cannot be sincere with ourselves. How can we love ourselves? How can we get to know ourselves? Open your interior to somebody you love, to somebody who can help you, like in spiritual direction; we all need a sounding board to check who we are and how we are.
Lastly, sincerity with others. It is very important in human relations. If people know that we are not sincere, they cannot trust us. It is not easy to live with a person who is constantly lying to you. Once we start lying, it is not easy to stop. The truth is harder, but will set you free. How can we stop lying? Try to catch the lie before it goes out; bite it. Slowly you can win the battle.
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Salt and Light
Jesus reminds us today in the Gospel that we Christians are salt and light; salt of the earth and light of the world. Both are related to two senses, seeing and tasting. Without light we cannot see. Without salt the food becomes insipid. Jesus doesn’t say what we should be, but what we are; we are because of our Baptism. Not because we are better, or because we have done well, but because of his will, because he wants it. Christopher West always reminds us: You are a gift, be what you are.
We are precious in the eyes of God, like Gollum with his ring. In the old world salt was very valuable. The Jews made their offerings to God seasoned with salt, to make it pleasant for him. The Greeks considered salt to be divine. The Roman soldiers were some times paid with salt. In the times where there were no fridges, to make the food last, it had to be covered with salt. The human body contains almost a kilo of salt. Comparing us with salt, Jesus is telling us how valuable we are in his eyes.
What does it mean to be salt? It is white and pure; we should live a clean life, different from other people’s tasteless lives. It gives flavour to the food; we should make the world more pleasant, more lovable. It sterilises the wounds, stopping infections; we should preserve society from the effects of sin. It melts the ice when the roads are covered with it; we should melt the coldness of humanity with the warmth of the love of God. It preserves the food from decay; we should be like preservatives, to stop society from disintegrating, keeping things fresh and healthy. It produces thirst, the desire to drink; we should foster our thirst for God, that only his love can quench. But if the salt becomes tasteless what can you do with it? Throw it away. If it becomes contaminated, it becomes useless. When the salt in the underground water comes to the surface, the field becomes barren. It is possible for us to lose our way, our truth and our light.
Light is very important for us. Without the light of the sun it is impossible to live. Our eyes are our most valuable sense. The same happens in the spiritual life: God is the light. The first thing he did when he created the world was to separate light from darkness. When we see God, we see light. The devil is the prince of darkness. Hell is pitch black. When we baptise a baby we light a candle, to signify that his soul is full of light. Jesus came to dispel darkness.
We are the light of the world, not our light, but his light. We need to let his light to shine on us. We need to learn how to reflect his light, not ours. Like the moon, that reflects the light of the sun. We compare Mary with the moon. We should be like a lighthouse: to show people where the rocks are, where the danger is. Jesus is the beacon; we are the lighthouse. We can be a beautiful lighthouse, close to the sea, on the forefront, but if our beacon is out, we are useless. To give light we have to have it. Many times instead of salt we are vinegar; instead of giving light, we give darkness. We ask Mary our mother to remind us what we are: children of the light, pure mineral salt.
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Beatitudes
One of the most beautiful places in the Holy Land is where the church of the Beatitudes is located. It is built on a grassy hill with an amazing view of the lake of Gennesaret. It is one of those places that hasn’t changed much. It is situated on the north west side of the lake, three kilometres from Capernaum. The area is callled Tabgha, meaning seven springs, still flowing down towards the lake. There are two other churches in proximity, on the site of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, and the primacy of Peter. The church is built in an octagon, in remembrance of the eight beatitudes. You can walk around the outside of the church on a covered veranda, contemplating the lake and the surrounding countryside. You are tempted to keep circling the church watching the panorama and praying about the Beatitudes.
The prophets of old used to preach from the top of the hill for people to be able to hearthem. We see here a classic depiction of Jesus inscribed in our minds, preaching the Gospel to the crowds, sitting down while people remain at his feet, listening to him, completely absorbed in his words. Pope Francis stresses the importance of “how the proclamation of this message happened: Jesus, seeing the crowds that followed Him, climbs up the gentle slope that surrounds the Lake of Galilee; He sits down and, addressing His disciples, proclaims the Beatitudes. Therefore, the message is directed to the disciples, however, the crowds are on the horizons, namely, the whole of humanity. It’s a message for the whole of humanity.” It is the attitude we must have for entering the kingdom of heaven.
It is not easy to preach about the Beatitudes, to give a meaningful commentary about them. We priests try to avoid them. Why? Maybe because you need to be very close to Jesus to be able to explain them well. Thank God they speak for themselves. You only need to read them and pray about them, listen to their voice. Once they left Jesus lips, they have a life of their own. Their sound keeps moving through time, amplifying their waves among the history of men.
They are simple and profound. They speak to us in many different ways. They are very practical, proposing ideas for our own lives. We can try to live them now, today, during the course of the day. They push us to make small resolutions that will bring us closer to God and to others. This is why it is so difficult and so easy to talk about them: they become very personal, suggesting down to earth ideas, like bubbles of soap, popping out from the tube, that resonate specifically to each one of us. This is why we don’t like to read them very often; too many desires come to our minds, with dangerous changes in our way of life. We prefer to close the book and leave it for tomorrow.
Maybe I have been a bit negative in my outlook today. The Beatitudes are very demanding and I am getting old. Time makes things more difficult. It is easy to become discouraged. We tried them and we failed. We didn’t find them wanting, but we found ourselves failing. We need to keep trying, hoping that one day God will lift us up, whenever He wants to.
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Follow me
Jesus begins what we call his public life calling twelve men to follow him, to accompany him, to share his life. We call them apostles, the one who is sent out. They are going to hear his message and to be entrusted with the task of passing it on to others. Most of them were fishermen, rough guys, not very smart; one of them betrayed him and the leader of them denied him three times. At the end, all of them but John ran away from his passion at Calvary. Their weaknesses give us hope. We too begin a new year in our lives and we have an opportunity to make a renewed commitment to follow Jesus a bit closer. Last year we ran away from the cross. Hopefully this year we can keep him company.
”Follow me.” This is what Jesus told them, how he called them. He is asking them to follow him, to walk behind him, to try to place their feet in his footprints. This means to imitate him, to become more like him, to keep his pace. To follow a perfect man. It was love at first sight. They were all attracted to him. There is nobody like Jesus. We can try to find the perfect person, but we will never find him. Only Jesus can fill all our expectations; he is the one we have been looking for. And this is what he is reminding us today: “You have been created to love me; only in me can you find happiness; that’s why I am asking you to follow me.” Every year, every day, every hour, he is telling us the same. Because we don’t listen, because we stray from the path, because we get distracted, because we follow him from a distance, he is never tired of repeating the same: “Follow me.” It is the best for us.
“Follow me.” Follow my footsteps, follow my direction, follow my pace. It is not easy. We go either too fast or too slow. We can be doing too many things, with plenty of activity, but we are not concentrating on what’s important. We don’t have our priorities right. Saint Augustine says: bene curris, sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. Or maybe our laziness is in command, we procrastinate, we become indifferent, and we are going at a tortoise pace. Jesus’ pace is the right one for us. He knows us well. If we go too fast, we overtake him; if we go too slowly, we miss him. For us to know the way is to follow him. We all would like to know what is ahead of us and plan accordingly. But God wants us to fix our eyes on Him and not to worry about what lies ahead of us. We should trust Him as a good loving father. We only need to look at Him to know we are on the right path.
Is it a command or a request? It is a gift. It is a hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, a bright diamond, a big star shining in the night sky. If we know where we are coming from and where we are going to, it is easier to recognise the value of our treasure. It is a big grace, an amazing offering, that God presents to us. Many are called but only few are chosen. Here we are. And we follow him dragging our feet.
We are chosen for two tasks: to be with him and to be sent to others. To get to know Jesus Christ and to introduce him to others. The more we know him the better we can present him to our friends and relatives. We need to discover him, to recognise who he is to be able to show him to others. A treasure cannot be hidden. A great treasure becomes greater when it is shared.
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Lamb of God
John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus passing by, he pointed him out to his disciples with these words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” This second time John recognized Jesus. The first time was when Our Lady met her cousin Elizabeth; he didn’t remember it. This time John wanted to show his disciples who the Messiah was. He wanted his two best men to follow Jesus, to offer them to him. John and Andrew took the hint, followed Jesus and became his apostles. Do I point Jesus to others? Do I give Jesus the best of me?
Why did John use this expression? It is a representation foreign to us. It doesn’t make sense to us to see God as a lamb. But for the Jews it was something very familiar, coming from their own tradition. Isaiah had compared the sufferings of the Messiah with a lamb going to the slaughter. The blood of the paschal lamb was painted on the door of the Israelites to protect their firstborn against the angel passing by. It became a promise and a figure of Christ, the true Lamb. Every year the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed in the Temple recalling their liberation from the Egyptians and their covenant with God. In the book of Revelation Jesus appears victorious and glorious as the slain lamb, surrounded by angels and saints.
Three characteristics of the lamb can be applied to Jesus. First, the humble and meek condition of a lamb, who goes about in a simple and trusting way. In the same way a lamb goes to the slaughter without saying anything, as a gentle animal going to its fate, Jesus during his Passion kept silence; he let them do whatever they wanted, without rebelling against the will of his Father God. Second, the spotless whiteness, and the soft and pleasant touch of the wool of a lamb. It reminds us of the purity and innocence of Jesus in front of his accusers, who with amazing violence and force, expressed their hatred in their treatment of Jesus. Third, the offering and satisfaction produced by the lambs sacrificed in the temple of Jerusalem. It is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, who came to give himself up for each one of us. Now no more lambs have to die anymore. Jesus died once and for all.
Every time the priest during Mass lifts the host in front of us before Communion saying “Behold the Lamb of God”, we are reminded of this reality. The priest presents Jesus to us in a very graphical way; he shows him to us, he points him out, like John the Baptist. Once a priest told me that sometimes he felt like Pontius Pilate, introducing Christ to the crowd: “Here is the man.” Ecce Homo. He feared that the crowd could answer again: “Crucify him.” We don’t want him to rule over us, we don’t want his kingdom. The priest should try to hide his face behind the host, to disappear, and let Jesus shine: he is the one; what are you going to do with him? It is a good moment to make an act of faith. Do I believe that behind the appearances of bread is hidden the Son of God? If I believe that, my life has to change accordingly.
“Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He is the only one who can take all our iniquities, imperfections, shortcomings, frustrations, away. We can leave them behind for ever. He’s got the power. All we need to do is to believe in him and let his mercy rain on us; apply his forgiveness through Confession to that baggage all human beings carry with us. Today is a good moment to unload the weight of that rubbish that makes us bent over, weighed down, unhappy.
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Epiphany
The three wise men saw the star and followed it. This is the story of their lives, of their encounter with God, of their place in history. It is an amazing one; by following a star, they met a baby, and they discovered the Messiah. Humanly speaking it was crazy. Why did a passing star provoke that reaction on the Magi? How do you follow a star? Where or when is it going to stop? These are questions that belong to our lives. We too discovered a star, we are following it, and hopefully it will lead us to Jesus. It is crazy, but it is a divine adventure.
How do we discover the star? Good question. It is not easy. The three wise men dedicated their lives to astronomy, to the study of the sky, looking for clues to their own existence. Man has always looked at space to try to understand where we come from and where we are going to. We too need to spend time discerning the signs, the sparks, the footprints, God has placed in our way, to discover his will for us, to find our path, to hoist our sails towards the right wind. It is a work of prayer, contemplation, silence and reflection.
It is not enough to discover the star, but we need to follow it. Many people see the star but they don’t do anything about it. Others begin to walk, but they get discouraged; they stop and they go back. It is not easy to persevere on an unknown quest. We don’t know how long it is going to take, where it is going to finish, if it is really the right path, or we lost our way; perhaps we even missed an important crossroads. Sometimes the road goes through a desert, through a rough terrain, across wild plains, deep gorges, dense jungles. Other times there are robbers waiting for us, to attack us when we are distracted; there are beasts ready to devour us, unexpected rivers in flood, precipices that stop us from going ahead, fires raging from the bush threatening our path, sand storms, plagues of locusts and lightning strikes. From time to time, the star disappears behind the clouds and we think she is not there anymore.
As Pope Francis says, “Jesus allows himself to be found by those who seek him.” We know that we are not alone, that he travels with us, even though we don’t see him. To seek him we need to leave behind whatever slows us down; to travel light, we cannot carry much weight, to be able to keep pace with the star; and to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon, without getting distracted with the marvellous things we come across in our way. The devil is trying to slow us down, to get us stuck in the mud, to deviate us from the right direction, to turn us back to where we came from. If we persevere, we will find him. Whatever happens, the star is always up there.
We arrive at the crib empty handed. We came naked from our mother’s womb and we leave without anything. Pope Francis’ grandmother used to say that the shroud we are going to be buried in won’t have any pockets. What can we give to baby Jesus when we arrive in his presence? We haven’t got much. All we can do is to offer ourselves. It is easy; a baby brings out the best in us.
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Holy Family A
Once we have a baby, we have a family. The Church uses three different Gospels for this feast day, the presentation and finding of the child Jesus in the temple, and today the flight to Egypt. In them we see the Holy Family together in three very different settings, today flying away from Herod who wants to kill the baby. We see Joseph sleeping peacefully, after the coming of the three wise men. Pope Francis has a lot of devotion to the sleeping Joseph. He’s got a statue of him on his desk. Joseph is peacefully dreaming about what to do with the gold left by the Magi, either to buy a faster donkey or to refurbish the old kitchen at home. It wasn’t to be; the gold is for the trip. He can still do with the old donkey.
We are getting used to the angel appearing to Joseph in his dreams. We are also normally used to seeing Joseph getting up in the middle of the night, taking the mother and the child and running away from Herod’s soldiers. But let us take for one moment the place of Joseph. If an angel of the Lord appears to me in a dream and asks me the same as Joseph, my first reaction when I wake up would be of rebellion: that was a nightmare! Or maybe it is the devil. My second reaction would be to challenge God: Why do we have to move? Can you get rid of Herod? Is this baby truly the Son of God? But of course, Joseph is not me, and did what God wanted him to do, without complaining, without asking questions, waking up straight away, without waiting for the morning to say good bye to the people in Nazareth, just in case Herod’s soldiers were at the door.
The Holy Family went to Egypt to fulfill the Scripture. But it could have been written differently. There are places in Egypt that today still hold the tradition of the passing of Jesus through their land. Joseph gives us an example of docility and trusting in God’s will. We all have the experience of many things that happen to us that we don’t like, that we don’t understand, that we complain about. We rebel and we ask: Why me? The question should be: Why not me? Some things we’ll understand later on; other things we need to wait till eternity. We should be patient. Eventually everything will make sense.
Again we are used to seeing the flight to Egypt in traditional paintings as something beautiful and romantic. It wasn’t like that. They didn’t book a flight on the internet. It was hard, in the middle of the night, looking back to see if they were followed, going to a new country with a different language, with hieroglyphic handwriting, as refugees. Joseph had to begin again, find a job, build a new house, make new friends. They even didn’t know how long they had to be there.
After few years of hard work, the Holy Family were settled. They built a beautiful house, Joseph had plenty of work and Mary made good friends. Jesus began to talk with an Egyptian accent. Joseph was again dreaming about a well deserved holiday at the beach, at the mouth of the Nile, when again an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him to go back home. And he went back without complaining. Then he spent his years surrounded by the most amazing treasures you can have in your life: Jesus and Mary. God’s plans for us are always the best for us. When we get older we realise that he knows best. And the opposite; when we do our own thing, things go wrong and we get frustrated. Joseph died accompanied by his two greatest loves. Let us follow in Joseph footsteps.
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Christmas
During this Advent, in our quest for Jesus, we have been following the example of John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. They have led us to him. We have arrived at our destination. We have reached the center of our lives and the focus is a baby. Now we realise that baby Jesus is all that matters. These days of Christmas are days of calm and serene contemplation of baby Jesus. All we need to do is to look at him, to plunge into the mystery of God becoming man, admiring the mingling of humanity and divinity. Just that, to look at him, and nothing else. Trying to enter deeper and deeper, into the infinite abyss of God’s love for us, a bottomless pit of his majesty and power. And all this is concentrated in a little tiny baby.
Why did he have to come to us? He didn’t. But he wanted not only to live with us, but to become one of us, and go through the same things we are going through, except sin. And he is now as we were when we were born, just a baby. A baby that cannot open his eyes, doesn’t have teeth, he cannot utter a word, and he’s got his little hands closed. All he does is eat, sleep, cry and dirty nappies. He is completely useless, a hundred percent dependent on his mother. All he can take is his mother’s milk. A God so defenceless, that if you leave him alone, he would die. At this moment he cannot even smile. His face is red and he doesn’t have much hair. If we could open his eyelids, we would see his beautiful brown eyes.
And this baby is what we need to contemplate, even though he cannot look back at us; he is sleeping. It is a one way gaze, trying to learn from his professorial chair, from his cathedra, from his open book, the book of his life, his first lessons of his life on earth. He could have come to us as a grown up man, but he wanted to start from the beginning, because we are slow learners. We need hours of patient contemplation in front of the statue or a painting of him in the manger, suffering cold, or in his mother’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Two simple, important lessons we learn straight away: poverty and humility. He came like us, with nothing, and when he goes, his only possession is going to be the wood of the cross. And what about humility? Can you find a better example than God coming to us as a baby?
And now in front of this baby, what do we do? We don’t need to do much. What do mother’s do with their babies? They look after them, giving them attention, love, tenderness. Many of us we don’t know how to look after a baby, but we can give him plenty of love. Some people don’t know how to love. This baby can teach us how to do it, just hold him in your arms, being careful not to drop him. We drop him many times a day. We can also offer ourselves to him. A baby brings out the best in us. In front of him we cannot say no. We need to be ourselves. The first thing he tells us when we get closer to him: get rid of your fancy clothes; be yourself. We cannot pretend, show off or try to deceive him.
But maybe the best thing we can do is to sit down in a corner of the cave, out of the way, hidden in the shadows, and contemplate how Mary looks after Jesus. It is an amazingly beautiful scene. She tends him knowing that he is God and man. She teaches us how to deal with his humanity and his divinity. You cannot become tired of looking at the mother and the child. Many artists tried to catch a glimpse of it. It is all in our imagination.
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Fourth Sunday of Advent A
What happened to Saint Joseph? He was the last one to find out about the good news. They came to congratulate him and he was puzzled. He was supposed to know as a husband and a father, but he was left confused and bewildered. Mary kept silent. She looked at his worried face. A few times he tried to ask her a question, but she didn’t answer. God normally allows his loved ones to experience trials.
Joseph didn’t judge her, he couldn’t; she is so good and so pure. And now that she is expecting, she looks more beautiful, more feminine; she is glowing. She looks so innocent and full of God. But why did she keep the secret to herself? Why is she not talking to him, about such an important matter that concern them both? She must have her reasons.
What can he do? He cannot blame her, he knows it is not her fault. For sure, she must be doing what God wants her to do. Then, he must take the blame; he has to get out of the way, leaving God in command. He can assume the responsibility for the pregnancy, he can take the blame, look in the eyes of the world as the guilty one. But, he doesn’t want to leave her; he can’t. That’s the hardest thing for him. He can take the blame, but he cannot abandon her. He loves her so much! He has put his heart in her hands. They had decided to live a life of consecration to God and he was very happy to be with her and look after her. He was over the moon and was looking forward to bring her to his home. And now this unexpected pregnancy. This has thrown overboard all his plans. And she is acting as if nothing has happened.
Joseph gives us a great example of how not to judge. Qui iudicat Dominus est. Who judges? He is the Lord. It is not our task to do it. We don’t have all the facts, we don’t know all the circumstances. Even though we think we know, because it has happened before, because it is very clear, because there is no other explanation; but Joseph gives us an example of how sometimes we can make mistakes, and we can assume things that are not true. All of us, we have made erroneous judgments in the past. Whenever we want to judge, whenever we think we know all the facts, we should think about Joseph.
Joseph goes to bed without having solved the problem. It doesn’t allow him to sleep. He keeps going over and over it in his mind, but eventually he gets tired and falls asleep. And an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, most likely Saint Gabriel, who is very involved in this business, and tells him the whole truth. Imagine Joseph’s joy on hearing this news. He woke up straight away and went to Mary’s house. She looked at him, at his radiant face, and realised immediately that he was now in the loop. We need to dream big. The devil wants us to get discouraged, to drag our feet through the mud, to paralyse us, to drug us with little compensations. He knows that God’s plans for us have big consequences, and he tries to play them down. Like Joseph, he confuses us and tries to get us to blame others. All we need to do, like Joseph, is to be faithful to God’s plans for us, even though many times we do not know where they are taking us. We need to be patient and sleep well.
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Third Sunday of Advent
Today we can use rose vestments. Why? To express our joy because the Lord is coming. Today’s Sunday it is called Domenica Gaudete, because this is how its entrance antiphon begins in Latin: Gaudete, rejoice. It comes from Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. The Lord is near.” After two weeks of penance for preparation for Christmas, we take a break, a rest, and we look at the beautiful panorama that the ascent of mount Advent shows us: Jesus is almost upon us. When we climb higher, the air becomes fresher and we can see things more clearly. Today also we light the third candle, the rose candle on the Advent wreath. The first light of sun rise is rose. We try to see everything with rose colored spectacles, a more cheerful way of looking at things. You could almost say that God has this colour on his eyes.
What is the reason of our joy? The Lord is very near. He is closer than we think. We don’t need to walk far away to find him. We are waiting for him, he is walking towards us. If we don’t see him, we need to examine our conscience to see what are the obstacles between us and him. These are normally caused by our own pride and selfishness, two relics of original sin that grow into big bushes and trees, that hide Jesus from us. We need to prune them or cut them down; at least clear the undergrowth. Maybe a bushfire will do. But we need to be sincere and point out what separates us from God. It is not easy because we get attached to this vegetation; some of it has been there for a long time, and we think it is immovable, set in stone. But the presence of God can destroy any castle, crumble any fortification or melt down the most powerful iceberg. The love of God is so powerful, so hot, that nothing, but our will can resist.
Patrick Murphy, an Irish guy, died and went to his judgment. Because of a tsunami, there was a long queue of people to be judged. He could hear what Jesus was telling others. “I was hungry and you fed me; come inside. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; come inside. I was sick and you visited me; come inside. I was naked and you clothed me; come inside.” He realised that he never did these things: “I was always in the pub drinking Guinness and cracking jokes.” He was afraid when he faced Jesus. Jesus looked at the computer and said: Patrick, I was sad and you told me jokes, I was down and you made me laugh; come inside.
They say that the quotation in the Bible people search most is “Be not afraid!” You can find it in more than three hundred verses. This is what Jesus told the apostles, what angels say when they appear to men. These are the first words John Paul II said when he was elected Pope. We are afraid of ourselves, afraid of the future, of the unknown, afraid of failing, of something bad that could happen to us. Fear takes our joy out of us, paralyses us, it doesn’t allow us to trust God, to abandon things in his hands.
The closer we are to God, the more interior joy we have. It is a natural reaction of our make up: we are created for him. Therefore it is a logical conclusion of our search for happiness. We are constantly looking for him in the wrong places, and we find difficult to recognise our mistake. Why is that? Because those things are means or results of happiness, not the real thing. And because we are very earthly, and spiritual things normally don’t attract us. Today is a day to place our heart in the right place, close to Mary our Mother, cause of our joy, who is carrying the creator of the universe, the maker of all the things we like, the one who knows what we like and loves us with divine love.
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Second Sunday of Advent
Today the Church presents to us John the Baptist as a model to follow. He was the Precursor, the one who comes first. His mission was to open the ways of the Lord, to give witness to the light, to prepare men’s hearts so that Christ may enter. Our mission is to follow in his footsteps. He came two thousand years ago; now it is our turn. How do we do that, if we have lost our way and our life is in complete darkness? We need first find the way, and make sure our soul is full of light. This is what we need to do these days. It is our task for this Advent. John the Baptist leads the way and gives us an example.
It is not easy to be a Precursor, to open the way, to go before foretelling the coming of another, becoming a bridge between two different sides. The Pope is called Pontifex, a bridge builder. We Christians are called to build bridges between people, to be forerunners of Christ in the world, torches that shine amid the darkness of this mad society of ours. John leads us to eternity and then other people can follow our path. It is not easy to find the narrow gate that opens to paradise.
What did John do? He went into the desert, to find silence, solitude and simplicity. He ate locust and wild honey and was dressed in camel hair. We too need to seek a wilderness around ourselves, where we can speak in silence, the language of God; to find solitude, to spend time with God alone; and to live the simple life of John the Baptist. What is the desert for me? In this time of Advent we need to find that space where we can develop our spiritual life, to be able to see things with different eyes, through God’s eyes. We eat locust, things we don’t want to eat; we dress rough, with the garments of modesty; and look for honey, the sweetness of God.
John the Baptist was tough. You wouldn’t like to meet him alone in the desert. His body looked like it was made of roots of trees; his skin was hard and burnt; his hair was meshed like a wild beast; his voice had the sounds of thunder; his eyes burned with prophetic fire. You couldn’t hold his gaze. Only Jesus managed to do so, when John didn’t want to baptise him. They almost had a wrestling match. To follow him we need the gift of fortitude, not to be afraid of the elements, to be able to defend the truth, even though we can lose our head as he did. Fortitude is the only gift of the Holy Spirit that it is related to a cardinal virtue.
John the Baptist is the only saint that we celebrate twice, his birth and his martyrdom. We normally celebrate the dies natalis of the saints, the day when they were born to eternal life, when they died. But Saint John, before he was born, he was sanctified in his mother’s womb, when his mother Elizabeth met Jesus’ mother; both were pregnant at that time. This is how both babies met, and John leapt in the womb with the infusion of the Holy Spirit. We, on the contrary, were born in sin and we need to wait till we die, to enter back into the bosom of God. We are now waiting with great expectation the birth of Jesus, who is still in his mother’s womb. We should follow in his mother’s footsteps to be there at his birth.
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First Sunday of Advent
Watch out, the Lord is coming, the Lord is very near. This is what the liturgy is reminding us these days: to be awake, to be vigilant, to be ready. In a crescendo manner, putting pressure with the passing of days, the prayers of the Mass are telling us slowly that he is coming: he is on his way, he is getting there, only a few days to go, he is almost here, he is knocking at the door, he is already opening the door. When he comes, we need to be with our mobile phones on, our camera open, ready for a selfie. He cannot finds us playing games, sending messages or surfing our favourites sites. Otherwise he will keep going, without stopping in our hearts.
We are celebrating the three comings of our Lord. He came two thousand years ago as a man. He is going to come again at the end of time as a judge. He is coming now as a baby. But he is also constantly coming to meet us personally, in our hearts and minds. Christmas is a reminder of this reality. Jesus not only will come to pick us up when our time is up, but he wants us to experience his presence now in our daily lives.
We need to tell him that we are waiting for him, that we want to be with him. People in love do this all the time. We know we need him, but we forget, we become distracted, we get side tracked. We need to be reminded of this reality. This is what advent means, “Parusia” in Greek, “Adventus” in Latin: presence, arrival, coming. “Marannatha” in Hebrew or “Veni Domini Iesu”, in Latin, meaning “Come Lord Jesus.” Maranatha is two words in Hebrew and is found only once in the New Testament, at the end of the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. At the very end of the Bible, in the last words of the book of Revelation, Saint John says: Come Lord Jesus. It is a cry that we all should repeat often these days, fostering a desire, waiting in expectation for his coming.
The Prophet Isaiah reminds us what we need to do: “Make straight a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” We need to build a road, a freeway, to make it easy for us to reach him. We should flatten the mountains and fill the valleys. We need to prepare the surface of our lives to reach him better and faster. The mountains are our addictions, those things that we give too much importance to, that try to take over and easily are out of control. What are those things? Work, finances, family, entertainment, social media, hobbies, sport. What we call wealth, honour, power and pleasure. We need to put a measure on them, to restrict them, to bring them down to their proper place. We should be sincere and seek to acknowledge the lack of balance. And fill the valleys; give importance to what’s important: God and others. Look after our relationship with God and with people around us: our prayer life, spending time with our loved ones, helping people in need, reaching out to the poor and the disabled. Both, mountains and valleys, are correlated, they don’t exist one without the other. We need to fix them both at the same time. We should have our priorities right, and Advent gives us an opportunity to do so.
We tend to have two attitudes, a passive one, waiting for the Lord, or an active one which is better still: coming out to reach him. Like the sensible virgins, who came out of themselves, to greet the bridegroom, when they heard the voice that he was coming, we too, need to have our lamps ready, with plenty of oil, burning brightly, illuminating our highway that lead us to his presence.
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The Good Thief
Three crosses, two thieves and three different expressions of suffering. Jesus wanted to be crucified surrounded by sinners, sharing his throne of glory with them. Many saints would have liked to have been there, to change places with one of them, with a holy envy. Three crosses; as Saint Augustine says, one gives salvation, the other receives it and the other despises it. Two thieves; we are represented by these two criminals, and we all deserved to be there. We should be there, but we are still running away from the cross. These two thieves represent two attitudes in front of the cross, two ways of life that can be summarised in every human being: for or against God, with Him or without Him. Three sufferings, one redemptive, another purifying, and the third useless. Which one is mine? Am I with Jesus, accompanying him in his redemption? Or maybe, I am the good thief, waiting for the end of my life to jump into paradise. I hope we are not the bad thief, wasting our lives in useless frustration.
What did the good thief see to believe? It is a very good question, almost impossible to answer. The two thieves were crucified on both sides of Jesus, suffering the same penalty for their crimes. One, whom we call Gestas, was abusing Jesus, asking him, in frustration and pain, to save all of them at the same time, in a very selfish manner. Dimas, the one on his right, rebuked him, telling him that they were there for a just reason, to pay for their actions, a right punishment. But Jesus was innocent and he shouldn’t be there. And he made the best petition a man can make to God: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” We need to repeat these words over and over again, especially when we are suffering.
There were other people at Calvary, and they witnessed the same thing, but only Dimas made this petition. Maybe because he looked at things from the cross, from a higher ground; or maybe because he was suffering the same fate as Jesus, wearing the same shoes. When we suffer we see things with different eyes. What he saw was a man dying in silence, not only accepting his cross, but coming out of himself to meet his suffering, welcoming the pain with open arms, with a reason for his torture, savoring every minute of it. But the Roman centurion also present, only believed after Jesus died, when he felt the earthquake and experienced the darkening of the sky.
“Today you will be with me in paradise.” What did Dimas feel when he heard these words? “Today”, not tomorrow, but now, after few minutes of suffering, opening the door to a new beginning, with a meaning to your crucifixion, with a happy ending, like a successful operation healing your wounds. “With me”, you are coming with me; we are going together, crossing the threshold of this life to eternity hand in hand, lighting for you the way forward. “Into paradise”, the place you long for, what you have been created for, what your heart believes, with all the people you love.
The good thief gives us plenty of hope. We can easily place ourselves in his shoes. We can turn our bad thief into a good one and at the same time steal heaven. But we don’t need to wait till our last moments. We can begin now to repeat his petition many times, from the cross of our suffering.
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Eschatological discourse
When we reach November, at the end of the liturgical year, we have these Gospels about the end of times, about the distant future. They are always a bit frightening and we don’t know what to do about them or how to react. We want to read them quickly, and pass soon into Advent, to be able to look forward to Christmas. Why does the Church wants us to look at these events, when we don’t know when they are going to happen, and most likely they won’t happen in our lifetime? They tell us about our future and teach us lessons for our own lives.
It is very human the desire to know about the future, to plan things accordingly. We would like to have more control of our lives, to foresee situations and be prepared for them. But God tells us what we need to know at every given moment. Curiosity killed the cat. We are in God’s hands and he knows what’s going on. We need to leave things in his hands and let him be the boss. We are just little children.
There are three future things which are foreshadowed in this Gospel: the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The first one happened in the year 70, when the Romans circled the holy city and destroyed the temple of Jerusalem, to quash a rebellion. The Jews never recovered. Now, all they have is the wailing wall, were they can pray for the future temple to be built. Once Jesus came, there was no need for God to dwell in a particular place. We shouldn’t worry too much about the destruction of material things, because everything will pass away, but we should worry about the destruction or corruption of our soul, the actual temple of the Holy Spirit.
The end of the world is something that has been prophesied many times by many people, and so far all of them have been mistaken. We shouldn’t worry about that, or have the attitude of some of the early Christians who stopped working because they thought it was imminent. This reality brings to our consideration that whatever we do here has an end. Eventually everything will disappear. We all have a desire to leave behind things that will last for ever and this is impossible. The only things that last forever are in the other life, when a new heaven and a new earth will be renewed. This thought will help us to fix our eyes more in what is behind the veil between time and eternity.
The second coming of Our Lord is less frightening. After all the signs and amazing events of the end of time, the appearance of Jesus among the clouds will be a happy ending of our universe, which began with the Big Bang when God created it. We will be happy to see Our Lord coming back to judge the living and the dead. This future event reminds us of our personal encounter with him at the end of our earthly existence. We need to get ready and the proof that we are not is that we are still here. We ask our Mother to be there when Our Lord comes to pick us up, as we pray every time we say the Hail Mary: pray for us now and at the hour of our death, amen.
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Resurrection of the dead
Today in the Gospel the Sadducees tried to have a go at Jesus with a silly argument,defending their denial of the resurrection, and thanks to them we have from him a good statement about the resurrection of the body. Jesus uses sometimes our pride and selfishness for our own good, to give us a lesson. Whether we like it or not, at the end of time we will be reunited to our bodies. It will be either a glorious body or a damned one. It is a reminder that our bodies are important. They make us who we are. They are not just a cage were our souls are imprisoned. They are created by God together with our soul and they are destined to be together for ever in the other life. This reality has three important consequences.
Firstly, our bodies are good. Love your body, look after it, give thanks to God for the body he has given you. There is a vision which separates the body from the soul, a kind of dualism, with two extremes: one that says that our bodies are bad and what it is important is our spiritual side; another extreme says that I am only my body and I can do whatever I want with my body. What we do with our bodies affects our soul; we cannot isolate one from the other. If you take drugs you get addicted. If you cut off your leg you cannot walk properly anymore. If you have sex with many different people, your heart becomes divided. If you eat as much as you want, you become fat and sloppy. Our emotions, our feelings, our character, are related to our body. What affects our body, affects our soul. It is not easy to see it, because it is impossible to separate in this life our body from our soul. Only death can do it. We cannot point out where our soul is in our body, because it exists throughout our being.
Secondly, our body has dignity. Saint Paul says that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We must treat our bodies with respect, honour it, celebrate it, bury it. During the funeral rites we sprinkle holy water and we incense the dead body. We place our ashes in a place of remembrance. We go there to pray for our loved ones. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Atheists throw the ashes into the sea, for the fish to eat them. For them everything is finished. For us it is a time of waiting. We venerate the relics of the saints. They remind us of their presence.
Thirdly, we are our bodies. Without our bodies we are nobody. Our bodies make us who we are. We are male or female because of our bodies, not because of our minds. Our soul in a way has sex, it is either a soul of a male or of a female body. Our bodies give us our identity, our place in space, our relational dimension. We cannot get out of our bodies, we see things from within, we need to carry it with us all the time, like a turtle its shell.
People deny these important and undeniable realities, manly to do whatever they want, to justify their own vices or passions. They have come out with the gender theory, which destroys our Christian anthropology. During the 20th century we had a struggle between common good and private property. Now it is between sex and gender. As Christopher West repeats all the time, talking about the Theology of the body from John Paul II: “You are irreplaceable, indispensable and unrepeatable; be what you are.”
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All Saints
Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.
The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.
What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.
Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.
We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of JesusChrist. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”
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Zacchaeus
There were three big obstacles that prevented Zacchaeus from seeing Jesus. They seemed insurmountable, but because he wanted with all his might to see Jesus, he overcame them all, one after the other. We all have some hurdles that make it difficult for us to discover God. And we need to jump over them one by one. Every man has a desire deep in his heart to see God, a hunger for the happiness that only an infinite being can fulfill. We are restless until we find our creator, and we wish to attain the end that we are being created for.
Zacchaeus was so short he couldn’t see Jesus over the crowds around him. Short people normally have a strong will and they have to learn how to push hard, because they have to stand up for themselves; they have to fight to be able to jump and reach their desires. Our smallness is always in front of us. We cannot forget about it, even though we daydream or try to live in a virtual reality; sooner or later we have to come down to our true level and confront our nothingness. Our artificial life on the internet, cannot be our real life. Without God it is easy to have a low self esteem, hate ourselves, long for attention, and try to hide behind all sort of addictions, that only serve to dig our hole deeper and eventually destroy ourselves. We forget what theologians call the love of predilection: God loves us not because we are good, but we are good because he loves us. His love comes first, independently of how we behave or what we think or what we do. We are his creatures and he made us. And we Christians are also his children. Therefore we need to concentrate more on his love for us and not get bogged down if we find it difficult to see something good in ourselves.
The crowd was big. Everybody wanted to see the famous prophet. And because they envied and hated Zacchaeus for his riches, they didn’t allow him to see Jesus on purpose. They could see him running along the line of people as Jesus was passing by, and they lifted up their bodies higher for him to see nothing. The biggest obstacle for Zacchaeus to see Jesus was his riches. They didn’t allow him to see Jesus. They were in the way. Once he concentrated in Jesus, he was saved. Our second biggest obstacle is in the world, the multitude of things, people and events that surround us. They can be in the way because we keep looking at them. We don’t see the wood for the trees. As Saint Thomas Aquinas puts it, wealth, honours, power or pleasure, we think they bring us happiness. And over and over again we are mistaken. The happiness of a human soul can only be in an infinite being.
Lastly Zacchaeus had to overcome shame, human respect, peer pressure and a desire for prestige and fame. The last thing he had to do was to climb a tree in front of everybody. Even though he was dressed in expensive clothes, he disregarded what people thought of him and climbed like a monkey. This showed Jesus that he really wanted to see him. There is always a tree for us to climb and see Jesus. We need to find that tree and show Jesus that we are interested in him.
Jesus told Zacchaeus to come down: I want to come to your house. He gave half of his property to the poor, making room for Jesus. He is telling us the same thing: come down from your addictions and let me enter into your life. There are a few things we need to give away.
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Parable of the Pharisee and tax collector
We normally see ourselves as the tax collector. We don’t think the example of the Pharisee is for us. And we are mistaken. We walk into a church with the attitude that it belongs to us. We place ourselves in front of the tabernacle with the right to be there. We talk to God listening to ourselves, reading a list of favours we have done to him, expecting him to acknowledge our achievements. We are arrogant and proud, and we fail to see ourselves as we are. We should rather see ourselves at the back of the church, with our eyes downcast and beating our breast with our fist, trying to bring sorrow out of a dry piece of flesh. This should be our attitude in front of God the Father Almighty.
In our modern society we have taken God out of the picture, or, if we still believe in Him, we have brought Him down to our level. Through the pendulum law, we have gone from a God of fire and brimstone, to an old fluffy sweet man, with a white long beard and a face of a teddy bear. The balance is always difficult to achieve, and the pendulum keeps swinging. We can never imagine how God is.
Today through this parable Jesus teaches us that prayer should flow from a humble heart. And he does it by opposing two figures very familiar to the Jews of his time. The goodie, the master of the law, the teacher of morals and obligations, and a baddie, a public sinner, who steals the money from normal people and gives it to the Roman oppressors. The righteous man and the thief are the best examples to be opposed to each other, and to bring the audience to a contrary reaction. Both go to the temple to pray, but only one is justified. We know who goes back pleased in God’s eyes.
What Jesus wants us to do today is to look into our hearts, where nobody else can peek: into the depths of our intentions, our desires and our longings, to what really moves us and what we really worship. He is taking us on a wild journey; he wants us to accompany Him, to come down with us, to drag our feet through a rough surface, and to look at something we don’t normally want to look at: the depths of our soul. What is there? What sort of stuff do I keep inside? Can I make room for him? Today is a good day for a spring cleaning, for a garage sale, to allow Jesus to come in, leave the windows wide open, turn on all the lights and discover what’s inside.
At the beginning of the Mass, during the penitential rite, we make an act of sorrow, like the tax collector, hitting our breast three times, trying to break it open, to see what’s inside, as Sain Augustine says, “to bring to light what is concealed in the breast, and by this act to cleanse your hidden sins.” Or as Saint Jerome declares, “We strike our breast because the breast is the seat of evil thoughts: we wish to dispel these thoughts, we wish to purify our hearts.” We should hear the sounds of our chest, resounding deep, striking hard without the fear of a broken rib. We need to break the bones of our chest, to let our heart be seen, like open heart surgery, for Jesus to come in, and fix our arteries; maybe to have few bypasses, or better yet, to have a heart transplant, like Saint Catherine of Siena, when Jesus gave her a new heart, his heart.
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Parable of the unjust judge
Even though this parable focuses mainly on the reactions of the unjust judge, on his lack of fear of God and his indifference about justice, it should be better called the parable of the persevering widow, because she is the real protagonist, the one who wins at the end and is vindicated. She is our model in front of injustices and the indifference of human beings. She teaches us how to react when we find ourselves in hopeless situations or in great trouble: persevere in prayer.
The first reading of the Mass talks about Moses watching Joshua fighting against Amalek. While his arms were outstretched, the Israelites were winning; when he grew tired and let his arms go down, they began to lose. What a responsibility for Moses! People’s lives were at stake. We too experience the same. When we stop praying, the devil has the upper hand; when we persevere in our prayer, the faith of the Church strengthens. People’s souls are somehow connected to our prayer. This teaches us the lesson that we should always have our arms stretched out, in prayer, that we Christians are called to sustain the world with our spiritual life, that we cannot give up and lower our defences. We have the responsibility of supporting others with our struggle, with our sacrifices and with our personal witness.
The Gospel says specifically that Jesus taught us this parable to teach us how to pray always and not to lose heart. How can we pray without ceasing, as Saint Paul recommends us? In principle it is not possible, because we are not angels. Saint Augustine says that prayer is an exercise of desire. We are created for God and we are restless until we find him. We all have in our hearts a desire for eternity, for the infinite, a longing for our Creator, even though many times we cannot articulate this pain. Prayer finds the embers of this feeling in our hearts and blows them to enkindle them, to eventually create a huge fire that burns the whole forest of our sins. Saint Augustine comments that desire is your prayer; and if your desire is without ceasing, your prayer will also be without ceasing.
The Eastern tradition have the famous Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Through repetition and breathing, it can become a part of your life, without realising you are praying, like the beating of the heart. In the Western Church we have the Rosary, a prayer that can be said anywhere, anytime. Many saints give us an example of their immersion in God.
Modern society tells us that it is possible to concentrate on one thing all the time: our mobile phones. They are always in our hands, beeping, receiving messages, taking photos, talking, checking, clicking. They want constant attention, like babies. Big companies design strategies to keep us hooked to the little screen, and try to sell us data for us to keep the gadget happy. We look for hot spots where we can rest and spend time with our handset. Can we do the same for God? Can we give Him more time, more attention? Prayer allows us to connect with God. It is free and we don’t need a fast expensive gadget. It is always on in our hearts. And it connects us with eternity, infinity and beyond.
Increase our faith
Today we go to Jesus like the apostles and we ask him to increase our faith. Like them we have witnessed miracles, we have experienced things beyond our power, we have seen God’s grace, but we feel that our faith weak. We cannot do what Jesus is asking us to do, because Jesus normally asks for faith before he gives us a hand. After the transfiguration, coming down from the mountain, Jesus met the apostles trying to cast away a dumb spirit from a boy. They couldn’t because they didn’t have enough faith. His father came up to Jesus asking for help. Jesus told him that everything is possible for the one who believes. That man, sensing his lack of faith, realising that the cure of his son was dependent on him, gave us a great prayer: “I believe, but help my unbelief!”
Four men brought their friend to Jesus to be healed. He was complaining all the way, telling them that it was a waste of time. He couldn’t do much because he was paralysed. His friends were very stubborn. When they arrived at the house, it was packed with people. They weren’t discouraged and they dug a hole in the roof of the house, against the will of the owner. They lowered him through the hole right in front of Jesus. The people inside could see four faces looking down through the hole in the roof. The Gospel says that Jesus seeing their faith, healed him.
Jesus didn’t normally praise people. But he was impressed with the faith of the Roman Centurion, who trusted his word. His faith was shown when he told Jesus that just his word could heal his servant. We repeat his words during every Mass, just before Communion. We should say them with the conviction of the Centurion. Jesus commented: “I haven’t found this faith in Israel.” What would Jesus say about our faith? Would he praise us?
Jesus put clay on a blind man’s eyes and asked him to wash them on the pool of Siloe. He could have touched his eyes and healed them, but he demanded faith from the man. The blind man could have asked Jesus if he could wash his eyes in a nearby fountain. But he walked with clay on his eyes and recovered his sight. The man with a withered hand had tried millions of times to move it but with no avail. When Jesus asked him to stretch it out, it was healed. He could have refused to move it another time, but his hand wouldn’t had been healed.
What does Jesus need to do with us? What infirmity do we have that has to be cleaned? We can cry out like Bartimeus, the blind beggar at the side of the road of Jericho, from the top of his voice: Son of David, have pity of me! Or like the woman who suffered a flow of blood for twelve years and was healed when she touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. We have to do the same. We must go to the fountain of faith, to the springs of salvation, where the water gushes out pure and clear. We know where to find it, specially when Jesus comes to the altar after the consecration, and we only need to ask: increase our faith. There is plenty of it, and just a little bit, like a mustard seed, is enough for us.
Ten lepers
You could say that leprosy was the worst sickness. They used to call lepers “living dead”. Your body died slowly, in front of you, in front of others. You were thrown out of society, you became a castaway; some of them literally were being sent to an island, like Molokai. You had to walk round sounding a bell like an animal, crying out: impure, stained. They were like zombies. It was considered a punishment from God; he had touched your flesh with his finger and the corruption from the grave was beginning to get you. In a way it was a graphic way to have your death in front of your eyes. We are one of those ten lepers. We don’t normally see it, but our soul stinks. We are missing some limbs and we cannot walk; we lost our fingers to be able to touch; our eyes are gone, and we cannot see. We are blind, deaf and paralysed to spiritual realities. We all need to realise that we need healing from God. The more we recognise our leprosy, our real illness, the more we will look for him. How can we be healed if we don’t acknowledge our sickness?
A new leper joined the shameful community and told them about the miraculous prophet. They abandoned their caves and set out to look for him. Hopeless sick people are always hopeful of new treatments. It is possible to be cleansed of our leprosy and our flesh restored, like Naaman the Syrian, whose flesh became as tender as the skin of a little child. We normally don’t believe that we can be cured of our vices or addictions. And we give up. We stop looking for him.
We don’t know how long these lepers looked for Jesus. We don’t know how long we too need to look for him. But if we don’t look for him, we won’t find him and we won’t be healed. If we look for him, eventually we will come across him, like the lepers did, because at the end he is the one looking for us.
From a distance the ten lepers cried out: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! A good act of faith. He told them to present themselves to the priests, to certify their cure. He could have touched them but demanded from them a little faith. They were disappointed; they thought he was going to heal them there instantly, but they didn’t know what to do and went to see the priests without much conviction. Like us, many times we do things without knowing really what to do. Go to the priest! He is telling us the same: Go to confession! Have faith in me. I can cure you. Go! While they were on their way, they were cured. We don’t know if it was instantly or gradually. But I t must have been an amazing sight. Ten men dancing and embracing each other. The Samaritan told them they had to go back to thank Jesus. They said that Jesus told them to present themselves to the priests. They wanted to see their families as soon as possible. How quick we are to forget what God has done for us!
Only one came back to give thanks. It was a Samaritan, an outcast. Jesus complained: Where are the nine? It is one of the big disappointments of our Lord. This question keeps sounding through the timeline of history. He keeps asking this question to us: Where are you? We can be the nine or the one. Let us not disappoint Jesus. He has healed us many times and we haven’t returned to give him thanks.
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Parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus
We are the both the men in the parable, whether we like or not, the rich man and the poor man Lazarus, with both their weakness and their strengths, with their aspirations and desires. Both lived parallel lives, clearly related to each other but completely opposite, in this life and the next in eternity, crossing each other at life’s intersections; the first will be last and the last will be first.
The rich man has no name. Possessions don’t give you real identity, don’t tell you who you are, don’t give you roots or indicate where you come from. In front of God we are the same, things have no value, they have no meaning. We are born naked and we are going to return naked, with nothing to hang on to, only with what we have given away. It is not important what you have, or what you have achieved, but who you are or what you have become. Things don’t make you who you are, but what you make of them. In front of God we are little children, with just toys in our hands.
We are the rich man. We live a life of our own, without realising that in front of us, there are so many people in need, both materially and spiritually. We normally have the door of our hearts closed. We live a life of self centredness, self conscious, navel gazing. We fail to be aware of the poverty that surrounds us. Lazarus’s sores are licked by the dogs, without us hearing their barking. Jesus tries to turn us around, to turn us inside out, to be aware of all the poor Lazarus’s outside our door. Pope Francis says that Lazarus “represents the silent cry of the poor of all times.” They are constantly knocking on our lives. The Pope reminds us that “to ignore the poor is to scorn God.” We need to see Jesus in the needy, disadvantaged, marginalised, ostracised. In every homeless person we can find him, even though they are dirty, smelly, and ungrateful.
Lazarus, on the other hand, has a name. Poverty is real and has real effects on people’s lives; you can identify it straight away. Some authors say that Lazarus was a real person in Jesus’ time, a well known poor man, perhaps sitting at the temple door, even helped sometimes by Jesus and his apostles. Judas would have given him some money reluctantly. We are also the poor Lazarus, at the side of the road of life, our sores in need of dressing, begging for God’s help. Lazarus precisely means God helps. Rich people don’t need God, they think they have everything figured out, only desiring more money. Rich countries abandon God, not feeling the need for God anymore. Cathedrals were built by the poor and the lame. Nowadays rich countries build structures for people, stadiums, arenas, courts for sports and games. God is absent from these buildings. When they are empty they have no soul.
We have to make sure that in this life we are poor in spirit, in need of help, another Lazarus; then in the next life we are going to be spiritually rich, to share the life of the angels and saints. The austerity of this life is transformed into the abundance of God.
Parable of tthe unjust steward
This is a parable about stewardship. We have been given a bit of God’s harvest and Jesus is asking us today to examine ourselves how we are looking after it. We are at his service and we could be a bit easygoing, complacent or indifferent. It doesn’t matter if we are in charge of a big field, or we are only responsible for a small part of God’s vineyard. The important thing is to look after it well, and give a good account of our stewardship. The master commended the dishonest steward for acting prudently. Saint Augustine says that Jesus proposed this parable not to praise the dishonest servant, but to have an eye on the future. We should have the servant’s determination to secure our eternal reward. We cannot forget that we are passing by and eternity is all that matters.
The servant was a smart forward thinking man. I can imagine him well dressed, smooth and articulate. Jesus complains that “the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” We know many people who put a lot of time and effort into their worldly affairs. They make unbelievable sacrifices to acquire more wealth, power or fame. We should have a similar ambition, to put the same amount of effort into the service of God. Saint Josemaria says: “What zeal men put into their earthly affairs! When you and I put the same zeal into the affairs of our soul, then we’ll have a living and working faith.”
“The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.” If we compare the things of this world with the events of the other life, we realise that our sacrifices are nothing compared with the reward promised. But because we cannot see the promised land, we have nothing to compare it to. Everything we have is a gift from God, and we are his stewards, who sooner or later will have to render an account to him.
What is behind this parable is a common, human vice: laziness. We are not good stewards of God’s gifts because we are lazy. It is a hidden defect that we don’t talk much about, but affects all of us; we are lazy in one way or another. We do what we shouldn’t do and we don’t do what we should be doing. We could be very active but not in what’s important.
“No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” They say that we can only have one Lord; we cannot be schizophrenics. We need to choose the boss we want to love. “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Mammon is a Hebrew word for riches or wealth. We cannot allow money to become our god, or let the objective of our life become the accumulation of the greatest number of goods and the highest level of comfort. The Prophet Amos thunders against the exploitation of the poor in the First Reading of today’s Mass. We cannot forget the poor. We may be unjust with our own goods, but we must be honest with other people’s money.
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Our Lady of Sorrows
Standing at the foot of the Cross is our mother. She is standing, not crying or fainting; she is there supporting her son with her presence. Silent tears run down her cheeks. And Saint John is also there, the celibate apostle, the one Jesus loved. Other women are there too. Women are stronger than men. Many artists tried to capture this moment but with different results. It is almost impossible to represent in a painting what happened at Calvary. Where are the other apostles? Where are the big guys? They said they were going to die for him. They ran away from the cross. We too are still running away from the cross. When are we going to stop running away? Today is a good day.
We can ask Saint John to help us to be at the foot of the cross, not to be afraid of the cross. We ask him to grasp our hand tightly and help us to remain there at this critical moment in human history. We are between him and Mary, hiding our face in our mother’s robes. We don’t want to see what’s happening. We can only hear.
The passion of Jesus is the passion of Mary. It is impossible to know what is happening through Mary’s heart. We can only imagine. Spiritual sufferings are more acute than physical ones. Why do we bring to our consideration something that happened 20 centuries ago? Because it is still affecting us. In eternity everything is present. We are the cause of their suffering, mother and son, united in their sorrow. The more we look at what happened at Calvary, the more we will try to avoid our sins. The more we love Jesus and Mary, the more we will avoid what is offending them. Our sins affect the people we love, the same way our love for them empowers them.
Jesus says: “Woman, behold your son.” It is not a detached expression calling his mother “woman”. He is reminding us that when Adam saw Eve for the first time, he called her “woman”, bones of my bones. Eve was the first woman. Mary is the second woman. The first one let us down because of sin. The second one was the cause of our redemption, of our healing. The Fathers of the Church loved this parallelism between Eve and Mary. Jesus called first his mother “woman” at Cana; at the beginning. Now it is the end. Then he changed water into wine; now the wine is becoming blood, Eucharistic wine. She still remembers that moment. For Jesus has to die for us; for her, to become our mother. She gave birth to him at Bethlehem without pain; now we are born at Calvary in a bloody and painful manner. We have caused her so much blood, so much suffering. This is what we are considering today, Mater Dolorosa, Sorrowful Mother, to foster our love for her: how much pain we have delivered to her, for her to deliver us. The more we suffer, the more we love. We contemplate her sorrows for us to react, to change our lives, to have a deep conversion. We cannot remain indifferent in front of her sufferings, specially knowing that she is there because she wants to be there, the fruit of her love for her son and for us.
“Behold your mother.” Now Jesus talks to us. First he asks his mother to look after us. Some people say that he wasn’t planning to give us his mother, but when he saw from the cross our feebleness, he decided to give her to us. Now he asks us to look after her. He gave us his treasure, his masterpiece. We are represented by Saint John. Nothing is left for him but the wood of the cross.
Parables of the lost sheep and the coin
Sinners were attracted to Jesus and the Pharisees complained. Sinners followed Jesus because they saw an opportunity to leave their sinful life behind. That’s why we too are attracted to Jesus. We need him; without him we are nothing. The more we see ourselves as sinners, the more we feel Jesus’ attraction. Like a magnet; the closer it is to the iron, the more difficult it is to separate the two. Our world has lost a sense of sin, the natural pull from God. Our society moves around itself without a gravitational force to keep it steady, like a moon without an earth, to keep it from being destroyed by the sun. The lack of God is like a black hole that sucks everything into a void.
This grumbling of the Pharisees, gave an opportunity for Jesus to give us these parables of God’s mercy. In this broken world of ours, the consideration of a Merciful God is very important. When John Paul II was asked what impressed him most about God, he answered: “His infinite mercy.” God said to Saint Catherine of Siena: “Mercy is my darling attribute, and to that end, and for the incomprehensible love I felt towards man, I sent the Word, my only Son; I illustrated this by the representation of a bridge reaching from heaven to earth, uniting the human and divine natures.”
If you could describe Pope Francis’ summary of his pontificate with one word it is “Mercy”. He declared in 2015 a Holy Year of Mercy. He wrote a book titled: “The name of God is mercy”. He says with boldness that “mercy is the first attribute of God.” He wants to remind the modern man living in a field hospital, surrounded by casualties, that “there are no situations we cannot get out of, we are not condemned to sink into quicksand. God does not want anyone to be lost. His mercy is infinitely greater than our sins.” Saint Therese found a weakness in God the Father: “He has one great infirmity. He is blind. And so ignorant of arithmetic that He cannot even add up.”
Jesus gives us two parables that are very similar. Both depict the same actions: loosing, searching, finding and rejoicing. This is our own story, constantly getting lost, God going out searching for us, finding us if we allow him to, bringing us back to him, rejoicing in our encounter with the angels and saints, and lifting us up to a higher level than before. Every time he finds us, instead of punishing us, he rewards us by bringing us a bit closer to himself. God uses our sins to lift us up, to enrich us, to cover our nakedness with his graces.
But both parables emphasise different aspects. In the lost sheep Jesus appears as a Good Shepherd, ready to place us on his shoulders. It is the earliest image we have of Jesus in the catacombs. It shows God’s love for us, ready to leave the other 99 in search of us. Jesus never gives up, always persistent in his search for us, and rejoicing when we come back. Give him the joy of finding you. It’s only if you don’t want to be found, that he won’t be able to bring you back to the flock. The parable of the lost coin shows that every soul is important, that we are unique in God’s eyes, because as in every coin there is normally the face of a ruler, we have the imprint of his image in our soul engraved at Baptism. Make sure you keep it bright and shining.
Conditions for following Jesus
Today in the Gospel Jesus gets very serious. He looks at the people following him and he realises that many of them were there for human reasons. They were following him because they wanted to experience miracles, because they were fed with tasty bread and fish, because that man spoke very well, because he had a go at the Pharisees, or he defended the poor and he could become a political power. The same thing happens with us: we are here because we feel good, because it is the right thing to do or because of what others are going to say about us. Jesus uses a very strong expression to bring his message across: to love him we need to hate everything else. Some scriptural authors tried to soften the expression, but Jesus wanted to emphasise a point: we are either with him or against him.
What he says today is about him and about us. Other religions put across their main message in different ways. Most religious leaders, Buddha, Mohammad, or Luther, gave us some ideas to follow, some doctrine to upheld, but none of them commanded us to love them. Only Jesus demands a complete love for him. His claim is very strong, one that doesn’t allow half measures: unless you love me more than anything else, you cannot be my disciple. Either he is right or he is a mad man. Either he is the Son of God or he is a fool.
In the light of what he says we have to make a choice. If he is right, everything else takes to second place. And of course, he is right. We are created for him and we have experienced that it is in only following him that we are truly happy, that he is the only one who can fill all the desires of our souls. We know it in the depth of our hearts. To put him first, we need to acknowledge what is taking the place of Jesus in our lives. We need to be sincere. There are other things in our lives that don’t belong to Jesus and we should slowly, through a good examination of conscience, find out what they are and bring them to Jesus, or if necessary, get rid of them. We should react against what is holding us back, against what is not allowing us to become closer to him.
We have the example of the saints that managed to win their war against themselves. Saint Francis of Assisi was dependent on his father; he gave everything back to him, even his clothes, and was naked in front of everyone. Saint Thomas of Aquinas had to fight against his family who didn’t want him to become a Dominican; they locked him in a castle for a year and he had to escape. Saint Catherine of Siena didn’t want to marry the husband her mother had prepared for her; she cut her beautiful hair off and the husband to be didn’t want to marry a bald girl. Saint Anthony when his parents died sold all his possessions and went to the desert; he was attached to his riches and thanks to his generosity he became the father of the desert fathers. Saint Maximilian Kolbe changed places with another man who was going to be killed at Auschwitz; he gave his life for him, like Jesus did for us.
We don’t need to go to these extremes, but we have things in our lives that don’t belong to Jesus. We can ask Mary our Mother to help us to give them back to him.
Parable of the first places
Jesus was having a meal with his apostles. We see often Jesus in the Gospels sitting at the table. It is important to spend time with others, and meals are great occasions to do so. People nowadays spend their time with their phones, just watching screens. These were moments when Jesus took advantage to pass on to them his message; he used these opportunities to teach them a lesson, in this instance, humility. Jesus was very observant, as holy people are, not self-centered, but completely aware of other people’s needs. It is important to have the right open attitude to look and to listen, to be able to help others when they need it. Self-centred people are hardly able to be of use to others because of their own selfishness.
Jesus noticed that people were choosing the best places at the table and related this parable. It was a practical lesson, where his apostles could see exactly what he was trying to teach them. It is a normal thing to try to pick out the best places when you watch a movie, attend a sport match or listen to a music concert. Beneath this attitude there is our constant pride, that we cannot get rid of. They say that pride dies twenty four hours after we die. The first sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, was pride: they placed themselves before God. If you think you are humble, it means that you are proud, and the opposite. But better we don’t become complicated.
In the good old days when you read those beautiful books on Moral Theology, the spiritual authors used to describe the spiritual edifice, how our relationship with God could be drawn on a piece of paper. Each one of them had their own theories, where to place the three doors of faith, hope and charity; the windows of the four cardinal virtues, the rooms of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and so on But all of them agreed about the foundations of the building: humility. Without this virtue, the whole relationship with God, our spiritual structure, sooner or later, will crumble and collapse.
We need to acknowledge that we are proud, that we normally place ourselves before God and others. It is not easy to acknowledge our nothingness. The best way is to compare ourselves with God: He is everything and we are nothing. Everything good we have comes from him. We only have our good desires and our sins. If we see God as a father, it is easier to see ourselves as little children.
A young man went to a holy man and asked him how to be humble: “Find somebody lower than yourself and do something for him.” He went and found a beggar and invited him for a meal. He felt good and went back to the holy man: “Am I humble now?” “No, find another man lower than yourself and do something for him again.” The young man got upset and asked: “How many times do I have to do it? 100 times?” “Till you don’t find anybody lower than yourself.” Somebody said that Jesus took the last place on earth and nobody can take it from him. He died on the wood of the cross, a place reserved for criminals. If we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to keep lowering ourselves. The lower we go the closer we become to him. I like very much a description of the Virgin Mary by Bishop Alvaro: “Convinced of her littleness, nothing distracts her from God.” If somebody could be proud is her. God bestowed on her as many virtues and privileges that a human being can hold. People with many talents normally sit on a pedestal, high up, above us, and they look down on us. Our Mother, on the contrary, is so accessible, so motherly, ready to give us a hand. Nothing separates her from God.
The narrow gate
Today in the Gospel we see a fellow coming up to Jesus and asking an important question: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” We are still asking this question nowadays. How many are going to be saved? Is anybody in hell? It is based in a truth of our faith: we all need salvation. Few years ago we had a debate about this topic when we had to change the words of the consecration during Mass, to better translate the original. We used to say that the blood of Christ was poured out for all and now we say for many. Some people weren’t happy with the change. We know that we all have the necessary graces to be saved. Saint Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved.” The truth of predestination is a difficult one.
Jesus didn’t answer directly. He just told us: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” He threw the problem back at us: the ball is in your court; it is up to us. The narrow gate is a good comparison, a graphic image. Jesus in Saint Matthew’s Gospel tells us a bit more about this gate: “The gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” In this life there are only two roads that reach the other end: one goes down and it is wide and easy to follow; the other goes up, and it is narrow and difficult to find.
This tells us that heaven is won by force, getting up, struggling every day a bit, constantly beginning and beginning again. Do you think that plodding along, getting by, having an easy life is going to lead us to heaven? Today is a good day to change gears, to fire another cylinder, to take our faith more seriously. Jesus died on the cross for us. What are we doing for him? It is always difficult to know how much effort we need to put in without becoming obsessed, burned up or fanatical. It is not easy to find the balance. Saints are good at that. It is a matter of love. God is not going to ask something we cannot do. Pride can make us do silly things. It depends a bit on how we are. If we are a bit soft, we need to quicken our pace; if we are tough, we need to slow down. We are normally soft with ourselves and tough with others.
This narrow gate opens wide into a beautiful heavenly banquet. Jesus loves talking about this wedding feast, where he is the bridegroom and we are the bride. He himself tells us what we have to do to get through the gate: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” We are all invited, but only a few enter. Few doesn’t mean not too many, but it is a reminder that more should enter than actually do. It is the question of how many people are in hell. The saints answer that one is one too many. The good Lord talks to us about hell: “There will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” We need to talk about hell, even though people don’t want to hear, to warn them about its existence. When we fix our eyes in heaven, the road up is not too difficult. It is full of joy. The amazing reward, spurs us on. Look at how the martyrs endured their torments almost with a smiling face. They could see the finishing line.
Jesus ends the Gospel today with a paradox: “For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” Imagine a race where the last wins; everyone would try to run backwards. Many people who are at the top of society will be last. And maybe the guy who is begging for money at the traffic lights will be ahead of us. We shouldn’t envy the famous: they have a more difficult road to travel. We should be happy with our own journey, the one God has prepared for us. It’s the
The Assumption
Today we celebrate the feast day of the Assumption of our Mother to heaven. What can we say about what happened on that day? We haven’t got much information. Saint John witnessed it and didn’t tell us anything. John, you told us all about the life of Jesus, with plenty of details, but you didn’t want to tell us about our Lady leaving earth. She is our Mother too, and we would have liked to know more about her. But you preferred to be silent. We needed to know about how Jesus gave his life for us, but we didn’t need to know how our Mother flew up to heaven. It is better for our imagination; we can let it free. It took the Church a long time to declare the dogma, in 1950. Now we can let our imagination fly and accompany her up to heaven.
The apocryphal gospels, those books written by the early Christians to try to fill the gaps, say that the apostles came back to say good bye to our Mother. They say that they came back each in his own cloud, first Saint Peter and then Saint Paul. Maybe John didn’t tell us this because nobody would have believed him. Saint James was already dead and Saint Thomas, as always, arrived late, because he came back all the way from India. We understand why they wanted to be back. We too want to be there to say good bye to our mother.
There is a debate about what happened, if our Lady died or not, before she went up to heaven. She would have liked to follow her Son, and die with him on the cross. But Jesus didn’t want her to endure his horrible death. No son wants his mother to suffer. I don’t think Jesus wanted his mother to die either. God wanted her, body and soul in heaven, without her beautiful body experiencing corruption. That’s why she fell asleep. You could call it a sweet death. That’s how saints normally pass away, falling asleep, in a simple and beautiful manner. You die in the way you live. There is a feast in the East called the Dormition of our Lady, dating from the sixth century. According to tradition she fell asleep and they placed her in a tomb. When Saint Thomas arrived, he wanted to see her, and they found out that the tomb was empty. That is why we don’t have any relics from her body.
How did she fly to heaven? God has his ways of moving people. Most likely it was a transport of love. When love is very intense, it can do things that reason cannot understand. Love is crazy, endures all things, achieves all things. Love can travel through space and time. There is no better means of transport than going through the people we love. Love fired the engines of her soul and lifted her up all the way to heaven.
Tradition says that our Lady’s beauty, which was veiled here on earth so as not to blind human beings, not to drive them crazy, was revealed on her way to heaven, showing her in all her splendour, dazzling angels and saints in all its wonder. They never have seen anybody like that, not even in paradise. The book of Revelation tries to describe her, precisely with the words of Saint John: “A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” I don’t think it is possible to find a better description of our Mother’s countenance. At last Saint John opened his soul and told us a bit about her Assumption.
Set the earth on fire
Jesus says to us in today’s Gospel: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing.” In the Bible, fire is often used to describe God’s burning love for men. This divine love is what made the Word become man: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”. Jesus voluntarily gave up his life on the Cross: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lays down his life for his friends”. We experience personally his love in the Eucharist, when we meet him in the bread of life. Saint Teresa of Jesus was travelling through Spain to set up a new convent. It was January, very cold, and it was raining. She was travelling in a cart, the roads were full of mud, and she was feeling sick. She complained to Jesus. He told her: “Teresa don’t worry about the cold; I am the real heat.”
Out of the three theological virtues, only charity remains in the other life. Faith is the door, hope helps us to go through, but love is what we find on the other side. Love remains for ever. Our love of God is a reflection of the love he has for us. When we die we are going to experience fully the fire of the love of God. Here on earth we are not ready to withstand it. This is why God doesn’t normally appears to us. We might disappear. We need a transformation, a renovation actualised through grace and our struggle. Benedict XVI says that the same fire of the love of God, consumes people in hell, purifies people in purgatory, and inflames people in heaven.
For a fire to last it has to be looked after, otherwise it is extinguished. It needs fuel to be added constantly. The same happens with any human love. If you take the other person for granted, if you don’t respect each other, the flame normally dies. For us to maintain our love of God, we need every day to burn a bit of our selfishness, a bit of our pride, of our vanity, of our sensuality. Our little fire has to grow, until it becomes a tremendous bush fire, that burns everything that is in its path. This is why the coming of Jesus is a cause of dissension. During his own life on earth, Christ was a source of contradictions. This fire of his love is infinite, all powerful. You cannot be indifferent in front of it. This fire has an important quality: it cannot be contained, it spreads everywhere. We can check the purity of our love by seeing how it inflames others. This is what the saints have done: set others ablaze.
We are constantly reminded that God is love, that his fire is everlastingly maintained. He has loved us first; we are here because of his love for us. The Lord wants us to respond, to have the fire of his love in our hearts, to be fully aflame. He loves each one of us with a personal love; we are all unique in his eyes. Because our soul is immortal, in a way, God cannot forget about us; he has never ceased to love us, to help us, to protect us. God loves us with an unconditional love, with no strings attached.
The Cure of Ars used to say that “to be holy, you need to be mad.” Saint Josemaria said of himself: “I am mad, from the love of God.” Jesus’ relatives called him mad when they didn’t understand him. On Pentecost day, people thought the apostles were drunk, after being filled with the Holy Spirit. When Saint Paul explained his conversion to king Agrippa, Festus called him mad. Saint Francis was called “the mad man of Assisi.” The holier you are, the more people will think you are ready to be locked up in a psychiatric hospital. We say that love is crazy, that out of love people do amazing things. We cannot forget that God is crazy for us. We should think about what helps us to love him more. If we feel cold in front of God, we can ask Mary our Mother, to kindle the embers of our
Waiting for the Lord
“Gird your loins and light your lamps”, Jesus is telling us today. Fasten your seat belt and start the engine, would be a modern way of saying the same. These are the two attitudes the Gospel is asking us to have. First, be ready for the journey, and then turn on the lights outside, to welcome the guest who is coming. The same expression from the parable of the foolish virgins: the bridegroom is coming, go out to meet him. Come out of yourself and welcome him. He has dropped us here and he is coming to pick us up. We are a rough diamond and he expects us to become a beautiful precious stone. This is the attitude we should have: waiting for the Lord.
In our society we don’t like waiting. We want things here and now. Drive throughs, 24/7, fast food, shopping online, drones dropping our goodies. We don’t like waiting for the Lord our whole life. We want to be in control, plan our future, foresee coming situations, have everything assured. We would like to know when the Lord is coming. And today in the Gospel Jesus is telling us that he “is coming at an hour we do not expect.” It is easy to be ready for one day or for a week; it is not easy to be ready every day. When we are young and when we are old; when we are healthy and when we are sick; when the sun is shining and when a storm is raging.
Waiting doesn’t mean a passive attitude. On the contrary, our waiting for the Lord demands a very active disposition, standing up, listening, looking towards the horizon. It means to examine our conscience to see if our luggage is ready, to discover what is missing or what we have forgotten. It means to fine tune our engine, to polish the rough edges, to get rid of excess baggage, to check if the lights are working, if we have put the rubbish out, if there is enough food for the journey. It is a daily disposition of being ready for him, to follow him, to be aware of his presence.
When our Lord comes to pick us up, we need to be standing, walking towards him, our eyes fixed on our destination, eternity, to see if we can see his face. We need to be ready to open the door, because the handle is in our side. He can knock on our door at any time and he must not find us sleeping, dozing in a slumber, or away shopping. We cannot just spend our time watching movies, listening to music, playing computer games, surfing the social media, following our sport’s team. We cannot give up, sit on the side of the road and take a siesta.
Two practical things for us to be ready: first to examine our conscience, to know where we have to struggle, what we have to do to improve every day. Love is always asking the person we love what we need to change. We should ask Our Lord what he wants us to do today, to look at God’s agenda. Second thing is to be patient. It takes a long time to grow, to mature, every day a little bit, baby steps, just one thing at the time. We cannot normally tackle big things. God is very patient with us. We don’t know when he is coming, but we still have time. He’ll come when we less expect it, like a thief in the night. But if we are prepared, we’ll see him coming, just as holy people can sense when they are going to die, because they are longing for him.
Parable of the rich fool
Today in the Gospel Jesus gives us the parable of the rich fool. This is how he calls him. We are the person in this parable. We are him because we normally act like this man. Jesus calls us fools because we are silly, because we won’t learn. We keep thinking that we are going to make a difference, that we are going to do something important, that will engrave our name in the golden book of history. We are wasting our time. We come naked from God and we go back to Him the same way. We cannot take anything with us. We would like to leave something behind, but all the things that we are doing here will disappear like a puff of smoke. We are thinking constantly about the things here on earth, forgetting that we are destined for eternity. Today’s readings remind us of this reality.
The first reading begins with this expression: “Vanity of vanities! All things are vanity!” They say that the literal Hebrew translation is more like this: Bubble of bubbles, everything is a bubble. A bubble looks beautiful when it blows around, transparent, effortless in its movements; we would like to hold it, but when we touch it, it pops up and disappears. It is a great comparison for what our society has to offer: an empty bubble which is going to burst sooner rather than later. Anything we look for on the net is just an electric spark stored in the cloud, that has a very limited life.
In the second reading Saint Paul tells us: “Seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.” At the beginning of the Preface of the Mass, the priest is telling us the same, trying to direct our eyes towards heaven, to what is above our heads, saying: “Lift up your hearts!” And we answer earnestly: “We lift them up to the Lord!” In the Gospel acclamation we are reminded of one of the beatitudes: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” How could our hearts be blessed if they are attached to earthly things? Is my heart in material treasures or in spiritual ones? They say there are three kinds of currencies: paper, crypto and spiritual. Which one are we using most? There is only one which can be stored in heaven.
We are the man of the parable, saving money for the future, thinking about our retirement, making plans without knowing what is going to happen. We are gathering things in cupboards that are going to be emptied at the end of oir lives. It is amazing how much stuff we have in our homes. We are only earthly vessels, made of clay or of glass, easily to break and shatter. And we have a secure place to store things in heaven, a safe box “where no thief approaches and no moth destroys.” South Africa teaches us that nothing is secured, that if it can be moved, it will be stolen.
From the life of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, we have this description of his conversion: “When Ignatius reflected on worldly thoughts, he felt intense pleasure; but when he gave them up out of weariness, he felt dry and depressed. Yet when he thought of living the rigorous sort of life he knew the saints had lived, he not only experienced pleasure when he actually thought about it, but even after he dismissed these thoughts, he still experienced great joy. Yet he did not pay attention to this, nor did he appreciate it until one day, in a moment of insight, he began to marvel at the difference. Then he understood his experience: thoughts of one kind left him sad, the others full of joy.” Things of this world are not fulfilling. We are made for more.
Teach us to pray
Have you ever been jealous of someone else’s ability to pray? I’ve been a few times, when I have witnessed holy people praying. The same happened to Jesus’ disciples. They have seen him praying early in the morning, spending the whole night in prayer, immersing himself in his relationship with his Father God. They found very it difficult to imitate him. They couldn’t wake up in the morning, they fell asleep during the night, or they got distracted looking at rich people putting money into the treasury of the temple. They really wanted to learn how to pray properly, they were attracted to Jesus’ prayer life.
One of Jesus’ disciples asked him to teach them how to pray just as John taught his disciples. There was a bit of rivalry between Jesus and John’s disciples. They were the two most popular prophets at that time. The disciple took advantage of this fact to make this important request. He went to the source of prayer, to the best teacher, to the professor’s chair. We too ask Jesus to teach us how to talk with him, how to relate to him, how to connect with him. It is a petition made directly to him. All the saints learned from him. We go to him with the same holy envy of this disciple.
It is a deeper petition than we think. If we learn how to pray, how to access Jesus’ heart, we will be very powerful in love. It is what people in love want to achieve with the person they love: how to get through, how to reach the other’s heart, how to unlock the mysteries of their love. We forget that human love is a reflection of divine love. We too want to get closer to Jesus and we don’t know how to do it.
We need to acknowledge that we don’t know how to pray. We are still at the beginning of our prayer life. We are like little children who are learning how to talk; only their mothers understand them. We just babble. We don’t really understand what we are doing ourselves. Prayer needs time and practice, like everything else that is worthwhile. Like learning to play the piano or a new language. A lot of time, the more the merrier. We need to waste time with Jesus, to spend time with him, to wait for him to teach us.
What was Jesus’ lesson? The Our Father. It is the prayer of the children of God. Jesus taught us to pray like children. What are the main characteristics of children’s prayer: they ask with faith and perseverance. Once I asked a boy who was leaving the chapel: What did you tell Jesus? He answered me: I asked for something. This is the language of children: asking for things. They are little, they have nothing and they need everything. The same applies to us in front of God. He has all the riches we need. And all we need to do is to ask. He has told us so: “Ask and it will be given to you.” Children ask with confidence, knowing that their parents can give them what they want. God can give us what we need and he knows what we need. This trust leads to perseverance. They say that the average petition of a child to achieve what he wants is by asking four times. We need to be persistent with our petitions. Sometimes God waits to make sure that we want and need what we ask for. The more we ask the more we desire it. The delay increases our desires. The best way to achieve what we want is through Mary. She knows how to ask her son.
Martha and Mary
Bethany is only two miles from Jerusalem. Jesus used to stay there when he came to the holy city, to find a peaceful place where he could rest and spend time with his friends. Beth means home, an appropriate name for a place where Jesus felt at ease. Jesus used to love to go to Bethany, to spend time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. As a human being he needed friends. He loved his friends and tried to drop in and stay with them. We too are social beings, and we need friends, people who can support us and share things with us. A friend is a treasure. We need to look after them and give them time. We normally spread our faith to our friends. Christianity began and grew mainly through friendship.
Saint Josemaría used to call the tabernacle Bethany, where Jesus could find a place to rest in his wanderings among humans. We too need a tabernacle, where we can find a refuge, a place to leave our troubles alongside Jesus. Our heart also should be like Bethany, a place to spend time with Jesus, where we can offer him hospitality. We are waiting for him to come to visit us, whenever he wants to, always ready for his visit. Our feelings are always variable, but Jesus’ presence gives us stability.
Jesus is our friend. He will always be there, wherever we go. We move, we change, we go through different stages in life, but Jesus is always there if we let him be. He should be our best friend, not just one among many. We can ask ourselves, do we welcome Jesus into our humble abode, like in Bethany. What sort of friendship do we have with Jesus? I never forget the answer a girl gave me when I asked her if Jesus was her best friend: “father, Jesus is much more than my best friend.”
Martha was the eldest and when Jesus arrived she wanted to have everything ready for him. Jesus came with his apostles and there were lots of things to worry about. Mary the younger in the family was a bit of a dreamer. While Martha was taking care of the meal, setting the table, Mary was at Jesus’ feet, drinking in his words. Martha couldn’t follow what Jesus was saying, coming in and out of the kitchen. She could only pick up few phrases here and there. Slowly she became upset, looking at her sister doing nothing, and sending her some looks like darts, to see if she could give her a hand. It reached a moment when she exploded and instead of talking to her sister, she complained to Jesus: Could you tell my lazy sister to give me a hand, please? Jesus, smiling at her, reminded her not to get distracted with too many things, that there is only one important thing: Jesus. No matter what we do, Jesus has to have a central place in our lives.
Traditionally Martha is the icon of the active life and Mary the contemplative one. We distinguish them, we even oppose one to the other, but they should be together in our lives. We should be a bit of Martha and a bit of Mary. There was always a tension between both sisters, and it is a healthy tension, because one cannot take over the other. The balance is always difficult to achieve, but we need to try to reach what Saint Josemaría calls unity of life. We cannot be schizophrenics, to have a double life. We need to unite work and prayer, a material and spiritual life, the inside and the outside.
The Good Samaritan
It all started with a question a lawyer asked, to catch Jesus, to see how wise he was. He wasn’t sincerely interested in the answer. As a good lawyer he wanted to score a point. But it was a good question, maybe the most important question in our lives: What do I have to do to go to heaven? Or in a more personal way: God, are you happy with me? Jesus took advantage of this pretentious lawyer to remind us of the law inscribed in our hearts: we are created to love God and our neighbor. This is the way for us to be happy and to make it to heaven. If we are not happy, it means that we are not loving God enough. The more we love God, the happier we are. We don’t normally look at things in this way. This should have been the question the lawyer asked: What can I do to love God more? The media tries to convince us that to follow a religion means a list of negative things. But the summary of the law of God is a positive thing: to love God and other people. The do’s and don’t’s spring from this great reality. We should avoid anything that goes against our love for God, whatever can offend him.
Then the lawyer asked a second question, not happy with the result of his first one: Who is my neighbour? It was a debatable question among the doctors of the law. It had become a bit legalistic, sometimes trying to get away from true charity. It was a question of who was really my neighbour: my relatives, or my friends too, or even anybody? The more people become my neighbour, the more people I have to love. It is a good question for us too, one that we need to ask ourselves from time to time. Who is my neighbour? Who are the people God has placed close to me? We normally try to exclude some people, especially the people we don’t like.
Thanks to this question Jesus gave us a great parable, very much part of our Christian make up. Only Jesus can bring something beautiful from a silly lawyer. This is the heart of the Gospel, where we are recognised as true Christians. The expression “Good Samaritan” is part of our language, somebody who does something for others without expecting anything back in return. Are we truly a Good Samaritan? We are normally very utilitarian, constantly thinking about what people can do for us. What can I get from this situation? We need to change our outlook. Instead, we need to ask ourselves, What can I do for others without getting anything back?
We criticise the priest and the Levite who pass by to the other side of the road. But, what would happen to us if one night we find someone lying on the road. Would we stop? We will have plenty of excuses to keep going. It could be a set up to robb us, he must be drunk, I am in a hurry, I have enough problems of my own. Recently I was talking with a parishioner who had an accident at night and nobody was stopping to help her. She had to stand in the middle of the road to stop a car.
Who is the real Samaritan for us? It is Jesus. We are robbed of our dignity and left half dead when we sin. We fall down and our soul half dies. Jesus comes with oil and wine, with the Sacraments, and heals our wounds. We need first to recognise what it is that is robbing us of our heavenly treasures, and secondly how we can let Jesus heal us, to bring us back to the eternal inn.
72 Disciples
Today our Lord is sending us ahead of him. That’s the reason why we are here on earth. We are here for a purpose. We didn’t choose to be here. He chose us before the beginning of the world. This is our time here. We only have few years to go. Let us take advantage of the time we have and don’t get distracted or side tracked. Last week Jesus told us to follow him. Now he tells us: Go! His command is imperative. We need to discover what he wants us to do. We need to discover our mission mainly through prayer, but we need to be open to other suggestions, not to be afraid of what he is going to tell us. Our main purpose for us here is to find our way to heaven and bring with us the people God has placed close to us. We cannot leave anybody behind.
Jesus, aside from sending us ahead of him, also gives us some instructions on our way. Firstly, very important: pray. “The harvest is plentiful but the labourers are few; so ask the Lord of the harvest to send out labourers for his harvest.” There is plenty of work in the harvest of the Lord. There are always jobs to be done; no unemployment. The salary is very high: 100% and eternal life. God knows that there is a scarcity of hands on the plough. It is his problem, not ours. We shouldn’t worry. All we need to do is pray. It is as simple as that. Secondly: things are going to be difficult. “I am sending you like lambs among wolves.” It is a great comparison. Sometimes we feel like this. He is telling us that he knows that the environment is not Christian, but he is with us. It is not going to be easy, but we have his power. God is with us in spite of everything. Sometimes it is as if the devil is winning.
The third one is very wise: travel light. “Carry no money bag, no sack, no sandals.” Don’t let things slow you down. People walking the Camino to Santiago learn that you don’t need to take many things with you. Society is trying to create more necessities for us, to get us to spend more and to bog us down with inessentials. Whatever you buy you need to carry with you. Eventually you will be stuck on the road. The fourth instruction gives us a sense of urgency. “And greet no one along the way.” But Jesus, I have a friend in this village, I want to say hello. You cannot. But if he finds out I went through his town, I’ll be in big trouble. No way. Why? There is no time. We only have few years to go. We need to get rid of whatever is distracting us from God, whatever is separating us from others.
The 72 came back full of joy and enthusiasm: “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name.” The power of God. If we are good instruments in his hands we will be amazed at his grace. But Jesus tried to redirect their energy towards what it is important: “Do not rejoice because the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” There are two books in eternity: the book of good deeds and the book of bad deeds. We need to make sure our names are written in the right one. Heaven is what matters.
If Jesus had 72 true disciples here on earth now, he could change the world again. We can be one of them. It is up to us. Mary, Queen of the apostles, our Queen and Mother, helps us to decide accordingly.
Follow me
Today in the Gospel Jesus is passing by, walking with his apostles, like he always does, and he meets three different people that react differently according to the different demands Jesus places on them. It reminds us of ourselves, on how we react in the presence of Jesus in our lives. We too meet Jesus passing by daily, and we are confronted with different challenges that Jesus places in front of us, some of our own doing, others directly from him.
The first one is a young fellow, full of good desires: “I will follow wherever you go.” He is ready, if it is necessary, to follow him till the ends of the earth. Jesus tries to curb his desires, to remind him that to follow Jesus is not easy. It is a beautiful and attractive road, but full of obstacles and sometimes it is hard work. We need to keep our good desires alive. Holiness demands holy desires. Our Lord rewards our good intentions with his grace. The devil wants us to be convinced that we cannot become holy, that we should give up, sit down on the road and become cynical.
To the second man Jesus asks him to follow him. He tells Jesus to wait till his father was dead. Jesus answers him that there is no time for procrastination. Jesus passes by when he wants to and sometimes he doesn’t come back. We should follow God’s time. We are used to our own timetable, to plan our own lives thinking we are in control. We find it difficult to let him be the boss, to leave things in his hands. Nowadays when Jesus asks people to follow him, they normally answer with a question: My whole life? It is a pity. It is the best invitation for a great life and people turn him down.
The third one tells Jesus that he is going to follow him, but he wants first to say goodbye to his family, to leave everything under control. Jesus answers him that we cannot look back once we start following him. He puts the example of ploughing; when you start, you have to look straight ahead, otherwise the line becomes crooked. We cannot look both ways, ahead and back. We only have eyes on one side of our head. We need to keep going looking at the future, looking towards eternity. We need to trust God, leaving everything in his hands.
We don’t know what happened to the three amigos. The Gospel gives the impression that they just went away sad, like the rich young man. We don’t even know their names. They disappeared into oblivion. They are never mentioned again. When Jesus wants us to offer our lives to him, he uses this expression: follow me. What does it mean to follow Jesus? It means that your life is not about you, but about him. You cannot follow yourself. It is an action that demands someone else. If you try to follow yourself, most likely you’ll get lost. To follow Jesus involves three actions: get up, leave everything behind and accompany him. It is three decisions that create one momentum that is continuous: to stand up we need to leave what we are doing, and begin to run towards him. We cannot walk with him unless we unburden ourselves, unless we leave behind whatever enslaves us. Sometimes it is easy to stand up and throw away the old man, but it is not easy to keep up with God’s pace. It means to keep shedding the weight that slows us down.
Corpus Christi
Today we are going to take Jesus to the streets. We are going to walk with him, to take a stroll with him, to accompany him around the streets of the church. And we are going to play music, use incense and bring him flowers. We wish to bring the flowers of our good deeds. During the day we gather little flowers that we find along the way and we manage to put together a nice bouquet. Little flowers that nobody notices, but not unnoticed for the gaze of a careful eye. We burn the incense of our good desires, which go up to the presence of the Almighty God, through the smoke that keeps climbing. And we play our best music, bringing our thoughts to him, expressing with the lyrics what we have in our hearts.
On Holy Thursday we have also a Eucharistic procession inside the church, to the altar of repose. We accompany Jesus to the garden of olives, to his agony at Getsemane. It is a sad procession, with the apostles falling asleep, only Judas awake. Today we relive the mystery of Holy Thursday in the light of the resurrection, just a few days later. Then it was Via Crucis, the way of the Cross, through the streets of Jerusalem; today is Via Lucis, the way to the light, bright as the sun shines at midday. We couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist properly on Holy Thursday because Jesus was going to die for us. After his resurrection he went up to heaven but stayed with us in the tabernacle. And today we are congratulating him for his presence. We are grateful that he has decided to stay with us.
It is a magnificent feast. It is like a king that goes out to meet his people. We play music, we sing songs, we rejoice in his presence. We accompany him with our best clothes, with our best wishes, and with our presence we acknowledge his kingship, his rule over us, and we are happy to be citizens of such a kingdom, a kingdom of peace and justice, a kingdom of truth and life. We sing alleluia, hosanna, God save the king, may his kingdom last forever. It is going to last for eternity.
We made a carpet of flowers for him to walk on softly. In Europe there is a long tradition of making carpets of flowers through the streets of the villages for today’s feast. Beautiful carpets, where people go to admire the amazing colours and forms before the procession. Every house makes its own, through the narrow streets, with a bit of competition, placing nice bunting on the balconies and decorating the windows. Also in the big cities they use magnificent monstrances carried by people, or pushed on wheels, with all sorts of precious stones, surrounded by silver and gold, crafted by the best jewelers.
We carry him under the canopy, to cover his divinity, hidden behind a piece of bread, white as snow, concealed from our eyes without faith. Normally he hides inside the tabernacle, cold in winter, hot in summer. But today he wants to see the full light of the day, look into our souls, heal our wounded bodies, pierce our mortal flesh. From the vantage point of the monstrance, he can gaze above our heads, looking into our future, forgiving our sinful past. And like on his way to Calvary, we meet his mother, who is waiting on the foot path, while we are passing by, with a desire to have a glimpse of his countenance, this time full of joy, when she sees us walking with her son.
Holy Trinity
We are talking today about the summit of our Christian faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. When we walk through other mysteries, we need to walk on tiptoe; now we need to postrate ourselves in front of the majesty of God, touch the floor with our forehead and keep silence. This is holy ground. We cannot see God and live. But God has opened his intimate life to us. He has given us access to his inner life. Open the door slowly and glance with awe.
We say that God is incomprehensible. And it is true. We cannot fit God into this coconut we all have on top of our shoulders. But we can try to go deeper. Saint Josemaria used to say that sometimes God gave him some insights about Him, and he became happy; but other times he couldn’t see much, it looked like he had hit a wall, and he was happier, thinking that God is much bigger than anything we can imagine. We need to plunge ourselves into this mystery, knowing that we will never be able to touch bottom, but nevertheless we can go deeper and deeper. Saint Catherine of Siena says that “the Holy Trinity is like a deep sea, where the more you seek, the more you find, and the more you find, the more you seek.”We should be ambitious. We shouldn’t be happy in the way we are. We need to go deeper. Look at the love saints have for God. How they immersed themselves in God. You cannot find deeper or truer love than theirs.
We use our time in many endeavours, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, watching movies, following our favourite tv series, reading the news, surfing social media, hobbies, topics of interest. We are looking for happiness and trying to fill our hearts with all sorts of things. We cannot be happy drinking from the pot holes. We need to quench our thirst with the true living water. We come from God and we go back to God. We are created to know and to love Him.
There are four classical ways to reach the Holy Trinity. The first one is through created things. In the same way we can discover God in creation, in the beauty of nature, we can also find traces of the Trinity as well, even though in a more hidden way. Theologians talk about groups of three things: air, water and earth; gas, steam and fire; rain, slate and snow; spring, lake and sea; frost, snow-flakes, and ice; father, mother and child. You can try to find more. The second is the reality of the indwelling of the Trinity on the soul of the just man. If our soul is in friendship with God, He is there with us, making his abode in the depths of our spirit. We can find him inside of ourselves. We don’t need to look outside to find love. He is with us all the time. We need to become more inward looking. It happens to us like Saint Augustine: “You were within me and I was looking outside of me.”
The third place is Sacred Scripture. God revealed to us this mystery in the New Testament, with the arrival of Jesus Christ. Before, God emphasised in the Old Testament the oneness of God, to avoid the belief in many gods. When we were ready, he opened his inner life to us. Through the Bible we can find the three persons of the Trinity. The fourth is the liturgy, the public action of the Church, specially the Eucharist. When we participate in the Mass, we are attending the heavenly liturgy, that liturgy celebrated by the Holy Trinity in heaven. Let us hide behind our Mother Mary.
Pentecost
With Pentecost we come to the end of Easter. We have been preparing ourselves for a while to receive the Holy Spirit. Once a year we have the opportunity to get to know the third person of the Holy Trinity better, who Saint Josemaria calls the Great Unknown. He is still unknown and we would like to become closer to him. It is easy for us to see God as a Father. Easier to see God as a man when we look at Jesus as our brother. But it is not easy to see God as a dove, our spouse, who is Love. It is good to desire his coming. We should foster it. The more we desire something, the more God will give it to us. We can say Come Holy Spirit, Veni Sancti Spiritus. We desire his coming, his presence.
The Greek philosophers talk about the four classical elements that constitute the universe: air, fire, water and earth. Three of them are representations of the Holy Spirit. We are the fourth one, the earth. We come from dust and we will become dust again. We are normally very earthy and we would like to become more spiritual. Original sin has made us more inclined to the earth. Our eyes normally look down more, rather than up. Material things are very important to us. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to transform us, to help us to become more spiritual.
Air. On the day of Pentecost a strong wind shook the whole house. It was the sign of the Holy Spirit coming. But Holy Scripture normally represents the Holy Spirit as a soft breeze. We can feel it but we don’t see it. He prefers to pass unnoticed, to disappear, to be in the background, to work from within. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our soul. We need air to breathe; we don’t realise how important it is until we cannot breathe if we are under water. We need the breath of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, for us to live a spiritual life. The bishop when he consecrates the holy oil during the Chrism Mass, breathes air into it. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe his holy air into our lungs, so that they become filled with his power, like the sails of a ship. We ask the Holy Spirit also to send a strong wind to remove all the dead leaves from our soul.
Fire. On the day of Pentecost tongues of fire rested on the heads of the apostles. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. We ask for the same thing today: Burn us, Holy Spirit, purify us. We say with Saint Josemaria: “Remove that filthy crust of sensual corruption which covers my heart, so that I can feel and readily follow the touches of the Paraclete on my soul.”Like a log when the fire burns it, it transforms the wood into light and warmth. We too want to be transformed into love by the third person who is Love. We want to become glowing embers who look like rubies. Instead of becoming ashes, we want to become like God.
Water is part of life. We cannot live without it. It is not as essential as air, but very close. Water quenches our thirst, washes our body and refreshes our spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does to us. But first we need to realise that we are thirsty, that our soul is dirty and we need his love. We need to approach that well of living water that Jesus promises the Samaritan woman, to collect that pure, fresh, transparent water, that leaps into eternal life. To fetch water from a well we require a bucket. No bucket, no water. The well is too deep. Today we ask the Holy Spirit to lend us his bucket to reach for God’s grace.