1 August 2021

Exodus 16: 2-4, 12-15              Ephesians 4:1-17, 20-24              Mark 6:24-35

Many of you, I’m sure, are familiar with Diana Ross’s popular song, ‘Do you know where you’re going to’. It is the theme song of the 1975 movie, Mahogany, in which Ross plays a character who struggles for fame and fortune, only to find that these have not brought her contentment or peace of heart. So she questions herself about her life and where it is going. The refrain of the song goes like this:

‘Do you know where you’re going to? Do you like the things that life is showing you?
Where are you going to? Do you know?

These words challenge us to ask ourselves if we have found what we are looking for in life. Have we found answers to the deepest desires of our hearts? These are the questions addressed in today’s readings.

Our first reading, taken from the Book of Exodus, tells the story of how the initial euphoria of the Israelites on being freed from servitude in Egypt evaporates when they face the inhospitable conditions of life in the wilderness. Predictably, they rail against their leaders, Moses and Aaron, and long to return to the ‘fleshpots of Egypt’. In response, the Lord sends them manna and quails to sustain them on their journey. In the words of today’ responsorial psalm: ‘The Lord gave them bread from heaven’. Still the people continued to complain about their circumstances, failing to appreciate the Lord’s loving concern for them, and to trust him.

Today’s gospel passage, from John, recalls the experience of the Israelites. Following his miraculous feeding of the five thousand with five barley loaves and two fish, Jesus was forced to escape the crowd who wanted to make him king, but on their terms. They set out to look for Jesus again and find him in Capernaum, puzzled as to how he got there.  Jesus, aware that they are seeking him for the wrong reason, says:  ‘I tell you most solemnly, you are not looking for me because you have seen the signs but because you had all the bread you wanted to eat’ (Jn 6:26). He challenges them to look beyond their physical hunger to the deeper hunger of the human spirit: ‘Do not work for food that cannot last, but work for food that endures to eternal life’ (Jn 6:27).  Then, in an astounding statement, he says that he, the Son of Man, is the one who can satisfy their deepest hunger:  ‘I am the bread of life’ (Jn 6:34).  This is the first of seven great ‘I am’ statements in John’s Gospel, in which Jesus reveals his true identity as the Son of God. The words, ‘I am’, echo God’s name as revealed to Moses (Ex 3:14).

When Jesus says that he is ‘the Bread of Life’, he is saying that he is the answer to the deepest longing of the human heart. Besides our physical  hunger which is easily satisfied, we have other more profound hungers like  the need to feel accepted, to feel wanted, to be loved and to love – hungers that may not be easily satisfied. But deeper even than these hungers,  we have a hunger which only God can satisfy, as St Augustine, after many years of fruitless search, discovered for himself: ‘You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless till they rest in thee’. It is this hunger for God that Christ promises to satisfy: ‘The one who comes to me will never be hungry; the one who believes in me will never thirst’ (Jn 6:35).

In our second reading today, from his Letter to the Ephesians, St Paul exhorts us not to let ourselves be led astray by the illusory desires of our hearts but to focus our lives on Christ so that we can ‘put on the new self that has been created in God’s way, in the goodness and holiness of the truth’ (Eph 4:24). The illusory desires Paul is referring to are the desires that captivated the hearts of the pagans – the desires for fame, prestige, wealth and power. These are like junk food that kills instead of nourishing. Only Christ, the true bread of life, nourishes and transforms us, enabling us to live in a new way, in God’s way.

In today’s Eucharist, Jesus is inviting us to let him into our lives fully and unconditionally, to let him be as close to us as the bread we eat. He will nourish and sustain us on the journey of life, and fulfill the deepest longing of our hearts. As ‘the bread of life’ he wants to give himself totally to us. Then we, in turn,  will learn to give ourselves to our brothers and sisters. In this way we, too, become bread broken for a world hungry for that Love which is God’s way of being. And this is our mission. So, let us pray in the words of Ivan Nicoletto, OSB:

‘May we be always hungry and thirsty for Love.
May our hearts and minds be soft and receptive to God’s abundant life.
May our bodies have open doors and windows to welcome the approaching, unknown future.
May we welcome, bless and share this Universe, this earth, this time, as a lavish banquet of grace God is setting’

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily for this Sunday from Fr Tom Casey of the SMA Media Centre, Ndola, ZAMBIA.

25 July 2021

2 Kings 4: 42-44              Ephesians 4:1-6              Mark 6:1-15

Christ, the Bread of Life broken for the life of the world

There is famous mosaic on the floor of the ‘Church of the Multiplication’ at Tagbha in Israel that commemorates the event recounted in today’s gospel. The mosaic depicts two fish with a basket of loaves between them. We notice that there are only four loaves in the basket and wonder where is the fifth? Is it Jesus himself, the bread come down from heaven to be the life of the world? Or is it the Eucharistic community, fed by Christ and called, in turn, to be food and sustenance for a hungry world? All our readings today resonate with Eucharistic themes and give us a deeper appreciation of this great sacrament, the pulsating heart of the Church’s life.

Our first reading, taken from the second book of Kings, tells us the story of how Elisha, during a time of destitution and famine, feeds 100 men with twenty-five barley loaves and some ears of corn. Today’s gospel passage, taken from the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel echoes while surpassing the miracle of Elisha’s. It recounts the familiar story of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, common to all four gospels. John, the only evangelist who has no account of the institution of the Eucharist, models his story of how Jesus feeds the five thousand on what happens in every Eucharist. Jesus takes the bread offered by a young boy, gives thanks for what has been offered, and shares the food with all present.  In the second reading, taken from his letter to the Ephesians, Paul, writing from prison, reminds the community at Ephesus that they have received one Spirit and form one body. Hence, he exhorts them: ‘Do all you can to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the peace that binds you together’ (Ephesians 4:5). This unity in the Spirit is the fruit of the Eucharist, our partaking of the Body of the Lord.

‘Eucharist’ comes from a Greek word and means ‘thankgsiving’. In the Eucharist, we give thanks for Christ present as the food that nourishes and strengthens us. The Eucharist renews the deepest springs of our humanity, unites us to one another, and enables us to become sources of nourishment for others. The Eucharist is Christ’s communion with us. It is, at the same time, our communion with one another. Christ loves us so much that he wants to be with us and wants us to be with him. Love tends towards union. When we love someone we want to be with them always. We never want to be separated with them.

Christ desires to be with us in the most complete way possible. This is what happens in the Eucharist. He comes to us. He enters into us. He takes possession of our hearts and minds and bodies. He becomes one with us. And he wants to make us one with him. The moment of communion in Mass, when we eat the body of Christ and drink his blood, is the greatest moment of intimacy that can exist between God and us. However, we cannot be in communion with the Lord without being in communion with one another. This recognition of the oneness of all who partake of the Body and Blood of Christ is expressed in several ways in the Mass: in the common acknowledgement that we are sinners, the common responses, the songs of praise, the Gloria, the Creed, the acclamation of faith, and the Great Amen (At the end of the Eucharistic Prayer, just before the Our Father). We act as one body because we are made one body in Christ. St. Augustine used to say to his Congregation as he held up the Body of Christ: “See what you are and become what you see.”

Every Eucharist ends with a sending out on mission: “Go in Peace to love and serve the Lord”.  We have to bring the Eucharistic Christ to the world. Just as Christ has become our Food, giving himself completely to us, so too we must give ourselves for the sake of the world. We are challenged in this mission to live the love we have experienced. We have to become sources of nourishment for the world as Christ has become a source of nourishment for us. There is a contemporary hymn, based on a prayer attributed to St Theresa of Avila, which expresses this challenge quite beautifully:

‘Christ has no body now but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours.
Yours are the eyes through which
Christ’s compassion must look out on the world.
Yours are the feet with which
He is to go about doing good.
Yours are the hands with which
He is to bless us now.’

We become the body of Christ when we receive Christ, the Bread of life, in Communion, and our mission is to be, in turn, the body of Christ for others.

Michael McCabe SMA, Cork, July 2021

18 July 2021

Jeremiah 23.1- 6               Ephesians 2.13-18               Mark 6.30-34

I knew a mother who cared for a son for nearly 40 years. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and by his early teenage years he was almost totally incapacitated. Though he had not been expected to live for very long, through her absolute devotion to him, he lived far longer than anyone expected, even the medical people. Until her own death, some years before her son, she stayed at his side, day and night.

To live is an unselfish way is never easy. It’s far easier when we do our own thing, when we happen to be in good mood and it causes a minimum of inconvenience and disruption. But when the ction is not of our own choosing, when we don’t feel in the mood and it is sprung on us at awkward moments. In such cases we have to forget ourselves and set aside our own feelings and plans. A real sacrifice is involved.  Isn’t it a great test of a person when, at the drop of a hat, they put aside their own plans to help another person?

It’s a consolation for us to know that Jesus too had to cope with interruptions. He too had his plans upset.  Today’s gospel tell us that his disciples were in such demand when he sent them out to preach and heal that they had scarcely time to eat. They had seen this in the case of Jesus himself when he and the disciples could not even have a meal. So his relatives set out to take charge of him because they were convinced he was out of his mind.

In today’s gospel Jesus decides to take the apostles apart to a quiet place for a break. This time he wasn’t thinking of himself but of his apostles. They had just come back from the mission he sent them on. He saw that they needed rest. He took them to a quiet place apart. He knew that the carers too needed to be cared for.

However, things did not turn out as planned. The people followed him. How did Jesus react? Far from getting annoyed he welcomed the people. Doesn’t this tell us a lot about the kind of person he was? He was moved with pity for them. Don’t we all appreciate people who show compassion to us in a time of need?

The three readings today speak of God’s compassion. In the reading from the prophet Jeremiah, God speaks out against those who failed to care for those he had sent them to. Many of them failed, being more interested in their own well-being and a good lifestyle at the expense of those to whom they were sent. So the compassionate God promises that he himself will look after the sheep, his people, who have been dispersed. Furthermore, in the days to come, he will he raise up someone who will be a true shepherd for Israel, His son Jesus. In the Letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells us that God, through Jesus, will gather into one those who have been ‘far off’, that is the Gentiles who were regarded as not belonging to God’s people, and the Jews who ‘were near’, that is God’s people.  Before Jesus, Jews could not accept that the Gentiles were also God’s beloved children. It is the compassion of God which will do all this.

Those of you parents with sick children or ageing parents will know this too. How often when the children were growing up and got sick at night or at others times did you not spend sleepless nights looking after them? Is this not compassion on your part.

It is very important to remember that when giving us the great commandment to love God, our neighbour as ourselves he also told us to love ourselves too.  It is not a choice. Jesus knew that if we do not, we will not be able to care for others when necessary.

Is this one of our strongest images of Jesus, of God? A God full of tenderness and compassion? We will keep the commandments because we are saved by God’s compassion and grace and not in order to earn salvation. That is indeed Good News. Of course, it means that we too are expected to show tenderness and compassion to others in our turn.

‘Lord Jesus, thank you for revealing to us that you are a God of total compassion.  Help us to be compassionate to others also, relying on the gift of the Holy Spirit to do so. Amen’.

Edited from a homily of the late Fr Jim Kirstein, SMA (RIP)

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily for this Sunday from Fr Tom Casey of the SMA Media Centre, Ndola, ZAMBIA.

4 July 2021

Ezekiel 2:2-5            2 Corinthians 12:7-10            Mark 6:1-6a

He was amazed at their lack of faith (Mark 6:6a)

The theme of rejection looms large in today’s scripture readings.  Ezekiel, the prophet of today’s first reading suffered rejection because he predicted the destruction of Jerusalem. He was among the Israelites driven into exile by the Babylonian King, Nebuchadnezzar, and is the only prophet called by God to prophesy outside Israel. The exile was a traumatic experience for a people who saw themselves as specially chosen by God. Captured and enslaved in Babylon, they had lost everything they held precious: their freedom and the things which gave them a sense of identity as a people – their land and their Temple. Their most cherished hopes has been dashed. Many of them were so disheartened that they lost faith in the Lord and in his promises, and turned to the gods of their oppressors. No wonder they refused to listen to Ezekiel. Nevertheless, Ezekiel is empowered by the Spirit and mandated by the Lord to continue proclaiming his word to the people, ‘whether they listen or not’ (Ezekiel 2:5). We might ask ourselves who are today prophets, whose preaching is falling on deaf ears?

Our second reading reminds us that St Paul’s mission, while remarkably successful, was not all plain sailing and that he experienced what he calls ‘a thorn in the flesh’ to stop him ‘from getting too proud’ (2 Corinthians 12:8). While Paul never states clearly what precisely this thorn in the flesh was, many Scripture Scholars suggest that it may refer to one or other of the practical difficulties he mentions in verse 10: ‘weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints’. All of these Paul is prepared to accept for the sake of Christ. ‘For’, he adds, ‘it is when I am weak, that I am strong.’ (2 Corinthians 12:10).

In today’s gospel from Mark, Jesus returns to his home town of Nazareth not to a hero’s welcome, as one might expect following his raising of the daughter of Jairus to life,  but instead to jealously, ridicule, and rejection. Clearly taken aback by the people’s ‘lack of faith’, Jesus responds with words tinged with bitter disappointment: ‘A prophet is only despised in his own country, among his own relations and in his own house’ (Mark 6:4). We know that, following this incident, Jesus would not return again to his home town or set foot in another synagogue in Galilee.

Why did Jesus’ own townspeople reject him? Perhaps because they knew him too well or thought they did. He had lived among them for thirty years as the son of a humble tradesman, and they never saw any signs of extraordinary power or wisdom in him. So,  when he started to speak in their synagogue, they were ‘astonished by his wisdom’, but not disposed to accept him. Instead they raised questions about the source of his wisdom  and his identity: ‘Where did this man get these things? What is the wisdom given to him? How are such mighty works done by his hands? Is not this the carpenter,  the son of Mary and brother of James and Joset and Jude and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?’ (Mark 6:2-3). These remarks clearly show the prejudices that acted as a stumbling block to their acceptance of Jesus and his message. There is also here an echo of an earlier scene in Mark’s gospel, where Jesus’ relations ‘set out to take charge of him’, convinced he was ‘out of his mind’ (Mark 3:21).

It is easy for us to stand in judgement over the people of Nazareth. But, if the historical Jesus were to come among us today and preach in our Churches, would we recognise him and accord him a better reception? An uncomfortable question surely, and difficult to answer with certainty! Like the people of Nazareth we would be meeting with someone we think we know very well. But how well do we really know Jesus? Would he confirm or challenge our expectations of him? Would we listen with respect to a lay man coming from a humble, working class, background and with no formal religious education or religious status? Would we recognise the presence of God in his words and actions?  What are the barriers for us in recognising God at work in our world today?

Today’s readings call on us to open our hearts, our minds and our whole being to the challenging and often surprising presence of God among us: in others, in the events of our lives, in the Church, in our world. God is always speaking to us, but we have to listen and, to echo the words of the poet, Patrick Kavanagh, allow him ‘to surprise us’.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, you break through our deafness of heart to speak to us the Word of life. Grant that we might hear and recognise your voice and respond with faith through Jesus Christ, your Son and our Lord.  Amen.

Michael McCabe SMA, Cork, June 2021

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily for this Sunday from Fr Tom Casey of the SMA Media Centre, Ndola, ZAMBIA.

27 June 2021

Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24              2 Cor 8:7,9,13-15              Mk 5:21-43

‘Do not be afraid; only have faith’ (Mark 5: 37)

Today’s gospel reading from Mark continues where last Sunday’s ended with the account of Jesus calming the storm. It reports two miracles performed by Jesus after returning to the Jewish part of Galilee from the land of the Gerasenes: the raising to life of the daughter of Jairus, and the healing of a woman with a haemorrhage she had endured for twelve years.  In each case, Jesus’ miracle is in response to a courageous act of faith.

Jairus, we are told, is a synagogue official, and therefore a man of considerable standing within the Jewish community. Clearly distraught by his daughter’s worsening illness, he approaches Jesus, falls to his knees and earnestly pleads with him to lay his hands on her and heal her. ‘My little daughter is desperately sick. Do come and lay your hands on her to make her better and save her life’ (Mk 5:23). We can only imagine the courage and humility it took for this ‘important man’ to swallow his pride, abandon his dignity, and fall at the feet of Jesus.

As Jesus accompanies Jairus to his house, followed by a large crowd, we are told that a woman with a twelve-years’ bleeding complaint approaches Jesus timidly and with apprehension. Her condition would have rendered her legally ‘unclean’. At the slightest suspicion that she was suffering from a haemorrhage, the people accompanying Jesus would, most likely, have driven her away for exposing them to defilement. Understandably, then, she approaches Jesus surreptitiously from behind, secretly touches his cloak, and is immediately cured. In response, Jesus turns and asks who touched him. The woman probably could have remained anonymous; yet, at Jesus’ question, she steps forward and acknowledges what she has done. She comes clean ‘with the whole truth’ of her ‘shame-inducing’ condition. Jesus responds by acknowledging her faith and sends her away with the words that must have sounded like music to her ears: ‘My daughter, your faith has restored you to health: go in peace and be free from your complaint’ (Mk 5:34). By addressing her as ‘daughter’ Jesus is ending her sense of isolation and including her in the family of God’s beloved sons and daughters.

At this point, we can imagine Jairus’ mounting anxiety. His daughter is seriously ill and may be dying, and now Jesus’ arrival is being delayed. As if to heighten the tension Mark tells us that messengers suddenly arrive from Jairus’ house and confirm his worst fear: his daughter is dead. No point in troubling Jesus any longer!  Jesus ignores their message and reassures Jairus with words that echo the message of last Sunday’s gospel: ‘Do not be afraid; only have faith’ (Mk 5: 37). When Jesus, Jairus, and the accompanying crowd all arrive at the house of Jairus, they find family and friends mourning the dead girl. But Jesus enters the room where she is laid out, takes her by the hand, and instructs her, in Aramaic, to arise: ‘Talitha, kum’.  Jairus’ faith in Jesus has not been in vain. His daughter is restored to life. And Jesus is revealed not only as having power over nature but also over death, reversing the work of the devil, as the first reading from Wisdom indicates (Wisdom 2:23-24).

These two overlapping miracle stories contain a number of striking contrasts and one very important common element. The main character in one story is a man, Jairus; in the other, it is a woman. One is a public official, an important person in the community. The other is a woman who has spent all her money and was probably reduced to penury in seeking a cure for a shameful condition that had isolated her from the community. One approaches Jesus publicly. The other approaches him secretly. Yet, in both cases, it is faith that leads them to seek out Jesus in their distress and that brings about his miraculous response.

In a world where sickness and loss are still present realities, the miracle stories in today’s gospel remind us of the Lord’s healing kindness. The faith of Jairus and of the woman with the haemorrhage invites us to reflect on our own faith in Jesus and take steps to nurture and develop it, confident that Jesus’ response will be gentle, loving and healing.

 So, let us pray: ‘Heavenly Father, through the twists and turns of life, brighten our horizons and make our hearts receptive to the message of your Son, Jesus, who healed the sick and raised the dead to life. Strengthen our faith in his healing and life-giving power. Amen.’

Michael McCabe SMA, Cork, June 2021

20 June 2021

Job 38.1, 8-11                    2 Cor. 5.14-17                    Mark 4.35-41

There is a story about a sea captain who in his retirement skippered a boat taking day-trippers to the Shetland Islands. On one trip the boat was full of young people. These laughed at the old captain when they saw him saying a prayer before setting out, because the day was fine and the sea was calm. However, they weren’t long out at sea when a storm suddenly blew up, and the boat began to pitch violently. The terrified passengers came to the captain and asked him to join them at prayer. But he replied, ‘I say my prayers when it’s calm. When it’s rough I attend to my ship’.

Is there not a lesson for us here? If we cannot or will not seek God in the still moments of our lives, we are not likely to find him when trouble strikes. We are more likely to panic. But if we have learnt to seek him and trust him in the quiet moments, then most certainly we will find him when the going gets rough.

Life can be compared to a voyage. Some people hold the view, “paddle your own canoe”. The life of a Christian is not meant to be a solo voyage. We journey with our own fellow Christians, and thus are able to support each other in times of difficulty.

In the gospel today Jesus told the disciples to cross over to the other side of the lake. Then it began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, sleeping, with his head on a cushion. They woke him and said to him. ‘Do you not care? We are going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea: ‘Quiet now, be calm! And the wind dropped and all was calm again.’ Then he said to them: ’Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?

For the Jews the sea and wind were seen as signs of evil and chaos which God only could control (1st reading). But the storm can also stand for the trials and difficulties each of us can suffer in life.

In calming the storm the disciples witnessed the divine power of Jesus at work. The disciples were really in awe at what Jesus did and were being given another insight into who he really was. It was interesting that when Jesus was in the boat during the storm he was asleep in the stern. He showed his tremendous faith and trust in his Father and also assumed that the disciples, as seasoned fishermen, knew how to deal with the elements. The scene showed whom the disciples were really worried about, not so much Jesus but themselves and their own safety. ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down’!

Are we not also like this too at least sometimes? When the storms come into our own lives like a tragedy – a severe sickness, Coronavirus, a sudden death of a loved one, an unexpected ‘bad’ event etc. maybe we think that God doesn’t care. But he is always there even if we think he isn’t. God doesn’t always answer our prayers in the way that we want but our faith tells us that he is surely with us giving us the courage, strength and perseverance that we need to cope with the particular event / situation we are asking help for.

Don’t we like to be in control of our lives? To be ‘not in control’ is not a pleasant experience. We experience small signs of it when we get caught in a very slow and long traffic jam, yet especially with more serious cases when it is severe illness and tragedy. To find oneself in such a situation is both humbling and terrifying. But it is precisely at these times that we find we discover if we have faith and trust in God.

It reminds me of the story of a little boy who was calmly reading in a plane caught in an electric storm with great turbulence. The passenger next to him who was terrified asked him: ‘are you not scared to death like I am?’ ‘No’, he replied ‘why should I be? My father is the pilot of this plane’!

For the early Christians this miracle is very relevant. The boat represented the Church, and the storm the persecutions unleashed on it by evil powers that wanted to wreck it.

If we have faith we will not doubt that he is with us, and we will turn to him in prayer and know his help. The story challenges us to trust in God’s power especially when storms assail us. When we have faith we give up the need to be in control.

‘Lord increase our faith and trust in you especially in the storms of life that come our way’.

Edited from a sermon prepared by the late Fr. Jim Kirstein, SMA

13 June 2021

Ezekiel 17:22-24              2 Corinthians 5:6-10              Mark 4:26-34

‘Small is Beautiful’

In 1973 a German-born economist, E.F. Schumacher, published a famous book on economics, entitled, Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. The book critiqued the dominant ethos of mainstream economic theory, then current, that ‘bigger is better’, and argued in favour of small sustainable technologies, respectful of nature and favouring people above profit. The book became an immediate best-seller. In 1999, The Times Literary Supplement ranked it as one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. Today’s scripture readings remind us that small is not only beautiful; it is God’s chosen way of manifesting his power and establishing his reign on earth. The God we worship is the God who uses tiny things to make big things happen; the God who chooses small beginnings, insignificant events and people to achieve his purposes; the God for whom vulnerability, powerlessness and smallness are blessings rather than curses.

Our first reading from the prophet Ezekiel, who lived in the 6^th century BC – a time when the people of Israel were exiled from their homeland and reduced to slavery in Babylon. The prophet employs the metaphor of a small shoot becoming a mighty cedar tree to encourage his disheartened fellow Israelites and keep their hopes alive. He assures them that God has not abandoned them, that he will bring them back to their own land and make them great again:  ‘I will plant it (the shoot) myself on the high mountain of Israel. It will sprout branches and bear fruit’ (Ezekiel 17:23). The shoot refers to God’s faithful remnant, the ‘Anawim’ or ‘little ones’, those who remained steadfast in the midst of terrible adversity and became the nucleus of the restored Israel after the exile. It was from this faithful remnant that the Messiah came. By their fidelity to prayer and humble submission to God’s will, this remnant, this small shoot, transformed the messianic hope of Israel from a political to a spiritual one. To the ‘anawim’ it was no scandal for the Messiah to come from a poor family and be born in a cattle-shelter.

In today’s gospel passage from St Mark, Jesus employs the image of small seeds producing extraordinary results to explain the growth of God’s reign on earth. Mark’s gospel, like the book of Ezekiel, was written at a time of persecution and crisis to strengthen the faith of the early Church. The two great apostles of Rome, Peter and Paul, were dead. The expected Parousia – Jesus’ Second Coming – hadn’t arrived. Many Christians were abandoning their faith, while self-appointed prophets and teachers were distorting the message of Jesus and creating confusion. The faithful few were wondering if God had abandoned them. It seemed as if the Church was doomed and the Kingdom of God a long way off. In this context Mark recounts five parables of Jesus about the Kingdom of God and how it grows. Two of these parables appear in today’s gospel reading. The first uses the image of seed growing mysteriously by its own inner energies in the dark of the night as well as in the light of day. The second employs the image of a tiny mustard seed developing into a large shrub with wide spreading branches providing a home and shelter for the birds of the air. Both images, taken from nature, highlight the mysterious manner in which God works to achieve his purposes. God is at work even even while we sleep or when we think he is asleep or has abandoned us. ‘Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear’ (Mark 4:28).

We live in a time, not unlike that of the Israelites in exile, or of the early Church at the time of Mark: a time of unforeseen decline for the Irish Church, both in the practice of the faith and its influence on society; a time of general mistrust of religious and civil institutions; a time of confusion and uncertainty. But if God’s Kingdom is like a mustard seed, then the size of our institutional church is not important. What matters is the quality of our witness.  This is the good seed which, in God’s time and God’s way, will yield miraculous results. So, let us not lose hope in the face of adversity. Like the ‘anawim’  of old, let us learn the art of vitality in smallness and increase the quality of our faith and relationships in this seemingly fallow time. Let us work for the coming of the Kingdom even if the desired result is not yet in sight. And let us continue to nurture the seed we have received.

I will end with a short story I came across a few years ago. ‘Many years ago two young people, a man and a woman, were on board a sailing ship, returning to their home in a distant island. The man noticed a little grain of corn at his feet. He picked it up and examined it. ‘Ah, it’s only a single grain’, he said. ‘If I had a sackful, it might be of some use!’ So he threw it away disdainfully. But the woman bent down, picked it up, put it in her pocket, and treasured it till they reached their island home. Then she sowed it. It grew into a plant and yielded a tiny crop, so small as to be laughable. But she sowed that again, and the next time the result was enough to fill a cup. This again she sowed and there was enough to give a few grains to her many friends. So the crop grew and, in the end, yielded an abundant harvest. The little grain of corn was the means of introducing corn to the islands’.

Michael McCabe SMA, Cork, 9 June 2021

9 May 2021

Acts 10:25-26, 34-35, 44-48;              1John 4:7-10;              John 15: 9-17

‘Love one another as I have loved you’

In the year 120 AD Aristides, an Athenian philosopher, defended the early Christians in a letter he wrote to the Emperor Hadrian. His words give us a striking picture of their exemplary lives: ‘Christians love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If one of them has something, he give freely to the one who has nothing. If they see a stranger, Christians take him home and are happy, as though he was a real brother or sister. They don’t consider themselves brother and sister in the usual sense, but brothers and sisters instead through the Spirit of God. And if they hear that one of them is in jail or persecuted for professing the name of their Redeemer, they all give him what he needs… And if there is among them any poor or naked person, they fast two or three days in order to supply the need. They live with much care, justly and soberly as the Lord their God commanded, and they do not declare in the ears of the multitude the kind deeds they do but are careful that no one should take notice of them…. Truly this is a new people and there is something divine in them.’

The great Church historian, Adolph von Harnack, also noted this extraordinary witness of the Early Christians when he wrote: ‘The new language on the lips of Christians was the language of love. But it was more than a language, it was a thing of power and action.’  Clearly, the Early Christian community had taken to heart Jesus’ final instruction to his disciples on the eve of his death: ‘Love one another as I have loved you’, an instruction repeated twice in today’s gospel. We usually remember the last words spoken of those who were close to us. Jesus’ disciples not only remembered them: they practised them; they lived them. As the testimony of Aristides shows, their love was not mere words or pious gestures, but a practical love, expressed in deeds of caring service – service especially to the poor and those most in need. It was the kind of love Augustine referred to when he wrote: ‘It has hands to help others. It has feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of people. That is what love looks like’. Sadly, as Mahatma Gandhi has observed, and as history testifies, many who have dared to call themselves Christian have failed to abide in the home of love and to emulate the admirable example of the early Christians. By their hatreds and prejudices, their violence and divisions, they have given, and continue to give, counter-witness to the explicit command of Jesus and to the God who is Love (as today’s Second Reading states).

In contemporary parlance, love is, as Pope Benedict XVI pointed out in his first encyclical letter, God is Love, a much debased and misused word, a word employed to cover up what is the very opposite of love – domination and exploitation. The love Jesus wants his disciples to practice is, in the words of von Harnack (cited above) ‘a thing of power and action’, a reflection of that divine energy that brought the universe into being. It is a love that is ever faithful and constant. The only adequate measure of this love is the enduring love of God the Father for all his children: ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love and am therefore constant in my affection for you’ (Jer 31:3). 

The love that has its origin in God is a love that is universal and unrestricted in scope, open to all, irrespective of class or ethnicity. This truth is pointedly illustrated in today’s first reading from the Acts of he Apostles, which tells the story of the reception and baptism of Cornelius and his family into the Christian community. The story of Cornelius is not primarily a conversion story. It is rather the story of how the early Christians are led by the Spirit to overcome their innate prejudice and antipathy to the Gentiles, and to accept them into their  community. As Peter came to realise, ‘the truth is… that God does not have favourites, but that anybody of any nationality who fears God and does what is right is acceptable to him’ (Acts 10:34-35). The truth that Peter, and the early Church, came to realise is that God loves and cares for everyone, that his Spirit is present and active in the strangest places, in and through persons and situations where we might least expect her to be present, situations that invariably take us by surprise. 

The spiritual journey that led Peter to welcome Cornelius into the Christian family was a journey of discovery into the outreaches of divine love. It is a journey that remains unfinished, a journey we are all called to make over and over again, as we strive to live out, in the circumstances of our time and place, Jesus’ great commandment of love. Love is the one and only power that will truly transform the world and draw it home to its divine source, the God of Love. In the stirring words of Teilhard de Chardin, ‘Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, humans will discover fire’.

Michael McCabe SMA, cork, May 2021

2 May 2021

Acts 9:26-31
1 John 3:18-24
John 15:1-8

A young man in his twenties had got into bad company, drinking heavily and taking other drugs. He was warned by his employer that if his work did not improve, he would be made redundant. His life was a mess. About this time he met a young woman and they shared a meal. She realized what was going on in his life as they shared their experiences. She refused to go out a second time as she was not happy with his lifestyle. But she decided to accept provided he showed signs of change. After that second date, he knew she might be the one he was looking for. As they became closer friends she told him clearly that unless he gave up drugs and heavy drinking she would end their friendship. Bit by bit he did change and they are now engaged. It was his relationship with her and her understanding that ultimately bore fruit. However, it was a process which took time.

Today’s gospel is also about relationships, communion and friendship. Just as without the help of his girlfriend the young man might have continued his disastrous life, Jesus is telling us that even more so, we will not have the deep joy and peace we seek unless we are in a deep personal relationship with him and his Father. We will not be true disciples of Jesus if we remain far from him and don’t have his value system. Sadly, many Christians think that their religion is about keeping the commandments and if they do more good than bad in life they will go to heaven. For sure we have commandments and laws to guide us but ultimately Christianity is a Person, Jesus Christ and our relationship with him. Then the commandments will take their proper place. I can go to Mass on Sunday, pray and do good works which are very good actions. But I can miss out on the essential fact of Christianity, my relationship to Jesus, the Father, the Spirit and to my fellow human beings. Laws in themselves don’t give life.

We know deep down that life is about people, and people are about relationships, and relationships are about communication, sharing, forgiveness, all of which result in real love and friendship. Sometimes people who are lonely, ageing, seek for something or someone to relate too. We may know people who live alone and who only have a cat or dog for company. But their need for a relationship of some kind is vital for them.

In the Christian life solidarity or a deep relationship with Jesus is the condition for bearing fruit. In the Old Testament there are a number of times when Israel is described as the vine planted by Yahweh. Sadly, it often bore sour grapes because it had cut itself off from Yahweh. It did this by following false gods, worshipping idols of the surrounding peoples. Because it had abandoned Yahweh it got into all kinds of trouble. Eventually the Israelites were exiled for 70 years.

When we as Christians turn aside from worshipping God we naturally seek other gods to replace him. These maybe the gods of pleasure, money, status, drugs, sex or drink etc in a way that these are given a far too great importance in our lives. Usually at this stage we feel we don’t need God. Our own natural abilities will see us through whatever comes up in life. Yet Jesus today says very clearly, using the image of the vine that ‘cut off from him, we can do nothing’. The choice is ours. We can allow God to rule our lives or we feel we don’t need God. If we are trying to be faithful to God, he will prune or purify us in the sense that he will reveal to us what is not life-giving in our lives for ourselves and for those we relate to.

The image of the vine sketches a series of relationships of love which is the bond uniting the Father, Son and the disciples with each other. The key relationship is between Jesus and the disciples.

There is another beautiful image in today’s gospel, that of the ‘home’. Jesus says ‘make your home in me, as I make mine in you’. Isn’t he great to want to do this? A man was invited out to a business dinner by people he didn’t know too well. Obviously, he dressed fairly formally. During the meal with people he did not know well, the conversation was very polite and all were a bit reserved. Then when he got home, he immediately changed into more comfortable clothes and slippers. He relaxed in an easy chair and chatted with his wife and family without having to watch his words. He was ‘at home’, he could relax and be himself. That is the kind of relationship Jesus is inviting to. He wants us to relax in his presence. When we pray we can tell him exactly how we feel or share our problems honestly knowing he will hear us with great love and compassion. We don’t need to put on any airs or graces. We can be ‘at home’ with him as he invites us to be.

“Lord Jesus, thank you for inviting us into a close relationship, a deep friendship with you. Help us to realize that only you can fulfil our deepest needs. May we express our gratitude to you by the way we reach out to all others, especially those in greatest need of our help and compassion. Amen”.

This is an edited homily written by the late Fr James Kirstein SMA (RIP)

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

18 April 2021

Witnesses to the Peace of the Risen Christ

Acts 3:13-15, 17 – 19;          1 John 2:1-5a;          Luke 24:35-48

During the weeks after Easter, the eyes of Christians turn to a rough-hewn doorway that leads into an empty tomb. Rolled to one side is a huge boulder that was meant to bar the way and make the tomb impregnable. Now that sealed tomb is forever open! Not far away from that empty tomb, among a network of narrow streets in Jerusalem,  is a house with the door bolted – a ‘safe house’ where the disciples of Jesus were hiding for fear of being arrested and killed like their master.

It is easy for us today to identify with the feelings of the quarantined disciples of Jesus. ‘Locked in’ captures the condition of many people in our world today. We think of the many victims of poverty, oppression and discrimination, trafficking, those confined by sickness or disability, those walled behind prisons of anger and fear, those caught in the insidious web of depression, unable to find an exit. We count ourselves among the millions reluctantly enduring an enforced quarantine for fear of a relentless Covid 19 pandemic that continues to hold us captive.

Today’s gospel speaks powerfully to all who find themselves locked in, either physically or psychologically. The ‘locked in’ disciples have a visitor. Their Master, now risen, comes to them in their place of hiding, behind closed doors. As recounted by Luke, it is while the two disciples, who had met the risen Jesus on the road to Emmaus, are telling their companions about their encounter that ‘Jesus himself stood among them and said “Peace be with you”’ (Lk 24:37). They can’t believe the evidence of their eyes and think they are seeing a ghost. Even when Jesus shows them the marks of his passion on his flesh, they remain dumbfounded. They even forget their manners! He has to ask them for something to eat. The passage ends with Jesus opening their minds to the meaning of the Scriptures and commissioning them to be be his witnesses to all the nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

We note how the Risen Christ gradually breaks through, not merely the physical barrier of their hiding place, but the much greater psychological barriers of their fears, doubts, guilt and confusion with his assuring presence, his gift of peace, his empowering words and his commissioning of them to be his witnesses. It is the same way that our Risen Lord breaks through the barriers that continue to hold us captive today, whether they be barriers created by others or barriers of our own making. And he, likewise, empowers us with his presence and peace and commissions us to be his witnesses and to share his peace with all peoples.

We may ask: What is this gift of peace that Christ gives us and that empowers us to be his witnesses? It is, first of all, an enduring serenity of spirit, even in the midst of danger and uncertainty, a serenity based on the victory of Christ over all the powers of darkness and evil in the world. It is a serenity that comes from knowing that, as St Paul reminds us, nothing can now separate us from the love of God manifest in Christ. It is the fruit of God’s Spirit at work among us. It signifies, not merely the absence of those things that keep us locked behind closed doors, but the full presence of harmony and integrity in our personal lives, in society, and in the created world. It implies wholeness, being fully healed so that we are ‘at one’ with God, with self, with others, and with all created things. It is the consummation of the marriage of heaven and earth. And it is this gift we are called and commissioned to share with all nations. Indeed, we cannot help but share it when we have experienced it.

I end with a short poem by the Anglican theologian and poet, John V Taylor, in which he describes the great missionary challenge of the Risen Christ to his disciples:

‘This is the visitor who has come to stay,
This city, the kingdom he will not surrender.
Cut through the cords of your own cowardice,
then out once more with him, if eyes can bear
the blinding sunlight of the third morning;
take up the quarrel of his undying truth
in the give and take of the streets, the cut and thrust
of this tempestuous marriage of earth and heaven
which human will can never put asunder.’

Today’s gospel challenges us to cut through ‘the cords’’ of our fears and hesitations and go out with our Risen Lord into ‘the blinding sunlight of the third morning’ to take up again ‘the quarrel of his undying truth’.

Let us pray
Compassionate and loving Lord, you promised to leave us your peace, a peace unlike that which the world offers to us.  Father, lead us all to that peace.  Help us to trust in your living word and to do what you ask of us.  Grant us a confident faith – one that looks to the light rather than at the darkness – one that dares to enter the turmoil of the world – knowing that you are making the world new. Amen.

Fr Michael McCabe SMA, April 2021

Easter Sunday 2021

Acts 10:34, 37-43
Colossians 3:1-4
John 20:1-9

‘Christ has turned all our sunsets into dawn’ (St Clement of Alexandria)

We are an Easter People and Alleluia is our song. The Easter liturgy makes it clear that the centre piece of the great drama of salvation is the passage of Christ from death to new life. In Christ not only is death defeated but even our fallen condition has become no longer a curse but a cause of rejoicing. Because of Christ’s resurrection we can shout triumphantly in the words of the Exsultet: ‘O happy fault that brought us so glorious a Redeemer.’ 

In the first reading of today’s Eucharist, Peter makes it clear that Jesus’ Resurrection from the dead was the direct action of God: ‘God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen’ (Acts 10:38). The Resurrection is God the Father’s response to the Cross, his affirmation of everything that Jesus preached and did, everything for which he lived and died. It is the definitive answer of the Father to a world that sought to silence Jesus forever.  It is the supreme manifestation of the power of God’s Love – a love that is stronger than death or hatred or injustice. It is the Father’s final, astounding reply to all our hesitant, faint-hearted, self-centred responses to his gracious initiatives. It is the final word between God and humanity in the dialogue of salvation: the great Amen of God, not just to humanity, but to all creation.

The second reading from St Paul’s Letter to the Colossians reminds us of what Jesus’ resurrection means for us, his disciples. Through baptism we died with Christ and came to share in his new, risen life. So ‘we must look for the things that are in heaven, where Christ is, sitting at God’s right hand’ (Col 3:2). 

The gospel passage from Saint John, recounts Mary of Magdala’s discovery of the empty tomb. She runs to tell Simon Peter and John (‘the other disciple’) who run to the tomb and, seeing for themselves that it contained only the burial cloths of Jesus, come to believe in his resurrection. Until that moment, John tells us, ‘they had failed to understand the teaching of Scripture, that he must rise from the dead’ (John 20:9).

There are different ways of coming to believe in the Resurrection of Jesus. The following story, which I came across some time ago, illustrates one of these ways.

The editor of a leading religious newspaper was walking along some cliffs near Eastbourne, England, one Easter morning. On his walk he met an old fisherman, and during their conversation together, the editor was struck by simple faith of the old fisherman in his risen Saviour. ‘How do you know that Christ is risen?’ he asked. ‘Sir,’ came the reply, ‘do you see those cottages near the cliffs? Well, Sir, sometimes when I am far out at sea I know that the sun is risen by the light that is reflected by yon cottage windows. How do I know that Christ is risen? Why, Sir, do I not see the light reflected from the face of some of my companions every day, and do I not feel the light of his glory in my own life? You may as well tell me that the sun is not risen when I see its reflected glory, as tell me that my Lord is not risen.’  This story echoes the memorable statement of the great second century theologian, Clement of Alexandria, on the significance of Christ’s resurrection: ‘Christ has turned all our sunsets into dawn’.

In one of his Easter homilies, Pope Francis encourages us to welcome the Risen Christ into our lives as a friend, with trust and confidence: ‘If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk. You won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for, and the strength to live as he would have you do.’

On this Easter Sunday we rejoice and are glad because we know that Christ is risen and that death, and all that is negative in us and in our world, has no longer any power over him. And, with him, we too are victorious, for now nothing can come between us and the love of God manifested in Christ – manifested supremely in his glorious resurrection from the dead. I wish each and every one of you a blessed and joyful Easter.

A blessed Easter to you and yours!

Fr Michael McCabe SMA, Cork

28 March 2021

Today, Palm or Passion Sunday, is the first day of Holy Week, the high point of the Church’s year, climaxing in the Easter Triduum:  Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Two gospels are proclaimed during today’s Eucharist. The first is proclaimed during the procession with palms and recounts Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on a borrowed colt. He is greeted joyfully by the crowds, who spread their garments and leafy branches on the road before him and acclaim him with the words: ‘Hosanna! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed is the kingdom of our father David that is coming! Hosanna in the highest!’ (Mark 11:10). It is shocking but salutary to remember that these are the same crowds who will, a few days later, shout out in unison, ‘Crucify him!’ (Mark 15: 13).  

At the Liturgy of the Word, the events of Jesus’ passion are proclaimed in full, this year from the Gospel of Mark. We will hear these same events once more on Good Friday, when the passion of Jesus according to the Gospel of John will be proclaimed. Why does the Church give so central a place in its liturgy to the passion and death of Jesus on the Cross? Why do we continue to remember in all their shameful and gory details the humiliation and crucifixion of the one who was Love Incarnate, the one who came on earth only to bring healing, forgiveness and peace? It was surely not because this was the price demanded by the Father for our sins. Only a sadist would demand such a price, and God, far from being a sadist, is Love itself. Nor does Jesus deliberately court his own destruction. He did not seek the Cross though he did embrace it freely as he discerned that the inevitable outcome of his mission of love was to be handed over to his enemies and put to death: ‘Now it happened that as the time drew near for him to be taken up, he resolutely turned his face towards Jerusalem’ (Luke 9:51).    

Jesus’ passion and agonising death by crucifixion was not a consequence of the Father’s need to be placated nor the result of a martyr complex on the part of Jesus himself. It was, as Fr Denis McBride CSSR states ‘the final solution thought up by a world opposed to Jesus’ way’. Jesus’ suffering and death shows us, with startling clarity, what happens to self-forgetful love in a world ruled by the demons of hatred and violence. Jesus could have avoided the Cross but only by turning aside from his mission of proclaiming and inaugurating the God’s reign of justice, peace and love. And this he could not and would not do. To reveal the full extent of God’s love for us, he had to endure suffering and death. The events we recall today represent the final phase and climax of Jesus’ life-giving mission of love.

In the story of Jesus’ passion and death, presented in exacting detail by all the evangelists, Jesus’ mission moves into a higher key, in which he allows himself to be acted upon rather than to act. For three years, he had acted: reaching out to people, especially the poor and marginalised, proclaiming a message of hope to those longing for liberation, healing the sick, forgiving sinners, and casting out demons.

In the first phase of his mission, he was the protagonist. Now, in this climactic phase, he is the one being acted upon. We see him being betrayed, arrested, imprisoned, interrogated by Caiphas, Herod and Pilate, scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, forced to carry a cross, stripped, or his garments,  and finally nailed and hung on the cross until he expired. This is the supreme moment of his witness to the God of Love. Jesus suffering and death on the Cross, as the noted Dominican theologian, Herbert McCabe OP, points out, reveals ‘the weakness of God…, not the weakness of ineffectiveness but the weakness of love, which is our best picture of the power of God. From creation itself right through to redemption the power of God is exercised not in manipulating and interfering with things but in letting them be, because the power of God is the power of love (God Matters, p. 108). It is, however, only through the lens of the resurrection that we come to see the weakness of divine love in our world not as a tragic defeat but as a glorious victory.

As we prayerfully recall the dangerous memory of Jesus’ passion and death, we profess our gratitude for a love that allowed Jesus to be ‘led like an innocent lamb to the slaughter’. We also remember and express our solidarity with all those people whose courageous love makes them victims of violence in our world today.

Fr Michael McCabe SMA, Cork, March 2021

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

21 March 2021

Jeremiah 31:31-34
Hebrews 5:7-9
John 12:20-33

As we continue our Lenten journey with Christ, the human face of God, today’s readings remind us of the painful struggle Jesus had to endure to be faithful to his vocation as the suffering Messiah. As we saw on the first Sunday in Lent in the story of the temptations, Jesus had to decide how he would fulfil his messianic vocation. From the beginning of his ministry, he chose the path of suffering love, the way of the Cross. Both the second reading from the Letter to the Hebrews and the Gospel give us an insight into what this would cost him.

The Letter to the Hebrews tells us that, ‘Although he was Son, he learnt to obey through suffering’ (Hebrews 5:8). The gospel reveals his agonizing struggle within himself as the time of passion and death draws near: ‘Now the hour has come… now my soul is troubled’ (Jn 12: 27).  We have here an echo of Jesus’ agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where he seemed appalled at the prospect of his forthcoming death and prays to his Father: ‘Take this cup away from me’ (Mk 14: 36).  John’s account of this harrowing moment is less stark: ‘What shall I say: Father, save me from this hour? (Jn 12:27). Jesus’ fear reveals his humanity. Fear is natural. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn states: ‘A person without fear is no hero; the person who overcomes fear is. Jesus’   trepidation is followed immediately by his humble submission to the Father’s will: ‘It was for this very reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name! (Jn 12: 27). 

Jesus knows that his death is necessary and he embraces it freely. It is his supreme witness to his Father’s love, the climax of his life-giving mission:   ‘Unless the grain of wheat falls on the ground and dies, it remains a single grain, but if it dies it bears much fruit’ (Jn 12:24). This declaration may, at first sight, seem to conflict with Jesus’ earlier affirmation of the life-giving nature of his mission: ‘I have come have come so that they may have life and have it to the full’ (Jn 10:10). It is indeed a paradox and a deeply counter-cultural one. But it expresses a profound truth at the heart of life and a key principle of all Christian discipleship. To try to avoid death, including the ‘little deaths’ that are part of everyday living, is to stunt our growth in love and suffocate the Spirit. From the moment we are born until the moment of our physical death, our lives are marked by a series of ‘deaths’, beginning with our departure from the comfort and warmth of our mother’s womb. Our lives are marked by a whole series of ‘deaths’, losses and renunciations – in our relationships, in our career goals, in our hopes and expectations. It is from these ‘little deaths’ that we learn to change, to adapt and make new gains.

Recently, I was listening to a BBC programme on old age and heard an 82 years old Asian woman being interviewed. She was asked the question: What in your opinion are the most important ingredients for a happy life?. Two things she said struck me: ‘Let go of being needful of the approval of others’ and ‘Don’t be afraid of death. If you’re afraid of death you will never live.

Ilia Delio says that every time we try to hold on too tightly to our comfort and security, every time we try to control our lives as we would like them to be, we reject the movement of God’s Spirit in our lives. ‘To say “I will not die” is to die. To be willing to die by surrendering to the freedom of the Spirit is to live forever’ (Making all Things New, p. 82).

Jesus’ challenge to us is clear. It is to die to self and imitate his own life-giving service: ‘The one who serves me must follow me. Wherever I am, my servant will be there too (Jn 12: 27).

At this time, as the Covid pandemic continues to dominate our lives, we are all going through a frightening experience of loss – loss of freedom, loss of friends, loss of control. There will be no return to the way things were before the pandemic.

But, as Pope Francis reminds in his most recent book, Let us dream, there is a way out of this ‘labyrinth’. It is the way of de-centering and transcending. It is the way of the Cross.  ‘We have to leave behind the “selfie” culture and look at the eyes, faces, hands and needs of those around us; and in this way find, too, our own faces, our own hands, full of possibilities’ (Let us Dream, p. 137).

Fr Michael McCabe SMA, Cork

14 March 2021

2 Chronicles 36:14-16,19-21
Ephesians 2:4-10
John 3:14-21

Two of the most beautiful, heart-warming and challenging statements in the Bible are found in the passages chosen for today’s Eucharist: ‘God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life (Jn 3: 15); and ‘We are God’s work of art’ (Eph 2:10). These statements are intimately connected to one another and the connection is Love. God loved the world so much because, as John tells us in his first Letter, ‘God is Love’ – Love at the heart of the world since the dawn of creation. And Jesus is Love Incarnate. Hence we, who are created in the image of the God of Love cannot but be ‘God’s work of art’. What a different world it would be if we all believed those statements and took them to heart.

The problem is that we don’t really believe that God loves us or that we are his work of art – works of art in which he delights. One of the tragic consequences of sin is that we remake the God of Love into a projection of our guilt. As the Dominican theologian, Herbert Mc Cabe, states: ‘Blinded by our guilt, we don’t see the real God at all; all we see is some kind of judge who condemns us’. Jesuit priest, Fr Gerard Hughes, makes the same point in his spiritual classic, The God of Surprises. Many people, he writes, are burdened with an inadequate image of God as a stern judge, not averse to using threats to get his way – a God who warns us to be good or else face rather drastic consequences. One of the consequences of this distorted image of God is that we hide away from the God we have grown to fear. We turn away from the light and take refuge in darkness. The great philosopher, Plato, wrote: ‘We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when adults are afraid of the light’.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme religious court in Israel. He was also an open-minded man and a seeker of truth. However he, too, was afraid of the light. That was why he came to Jesus at night-time.   Nevertheless, Jesus made time for him and tried to open his heart to the God who loved him so much that he could make a new person out of him, and even enable him to be born again. This was too much for Nicodemus to take in. He had lived too long in semi-gloom of a tradition, hide-bound by a myriad of legal prescriptions to be able to take that leap of faith into the light Jesus is proposing to him. However, Nicodemus did not break off all contact with Jesus and he eventually came to see the light and accept the message of Jesus. 

There is a lot of Nicodemus in most of us. We are attracted to Jesus and his message about God’s love but hesitant to open our hearts fully to its transforming force. And we find the idea that we might be God’s work of art at least as frightening as it is consoling. As the American author, Marianne Williamson, states: ‘It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, “Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?” Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.’

As he was with Nicodemus, Jesus is patient with us. He understands our fears and will help us to overcome them. If we keep returning to him, who is the incarnate God of Love we will overcome our fears, leave the dark behind and flourish in the sunshine of God’s loving and admiring smile. Let us not be afraid to trust Jesus to lead us out of darkness into the light and help us grow to our full stature and dignity as God’s works of art.

Michael McCabe SMA, Cork, February 2021

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

28 February 2021

Genesis 22:1-2, 9, 15-18
Romans 8:31-34
Mark 9:2-10

Some of you may recall Brenda Lee’s 1960’s hit song, “Is that all there is?” I believe that the song was a hit because it echoed a common human experience of shattered dreams and disillusionment. A somewhat similar view of life was voiced by the American novelist, Thomas Wolff, when he wrote: ‘loneliness is the constant weather of our lives, Love the rare and precious flower’ (“God’s Lonely Man”). Certainly, disappointment and loneliness are part and parcel of human life. They were real experiences for Jesus too in the course of his ministry. But, as today’s gospel illustrates, there are moments when the veil between the visible and invisible worlds is lifted, and the love which makes the world go round transfigures everything and helps us cope with ‘the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune’ (Hamlet).

The story of the Transfiguration, as recounted by Mark takes place at a critical moment in the life of Jesus. He was soon to leave behind beautiful Galilee and face towards Jerusalem where he sensed that he would meet the same fate as the prophets before him. He had already warned his disciples that the Son of man would ‘be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again’ (Mk 8: 31). And he had rebuked Peter for refusing to accept this prophesy: ‘Get behind me, Satan! Because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s’ (Mk 8:33),

Now, as was Jesus’ custom when facing into danger, he withdrew to a mountain (probably Mount Tabor) to pray and reflect, taking with him three of his disciples, Peter, James, and John. In their presence he was transfigured and, as on the occasion of his baptism by John, affirmed in his identity and messianic vocation by his Father: ‘This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen to him’ (Mk 9:7). It was surely this affirmation that gave Jesus the strength to face the dark and threatening future that lay ahead. His intense experience of the Father’s love confirmed the truth that Paul powerfully articulates in today’s second reading: ‘With God on our side, who can be against us’? (Romans 8:31).

The transfiguration experience was important not just for Jesus but even more so for his beloved disciples, Peter, James, and John. Their eyes were opened to catch a glimpse of Jesus in his glory and their ears were opened to hear the divine confirmation of Jesus’ identity as ‘beloved Son’ to whom they were enjoined to listen. Captivated by the experience, Peter wants to remain on the mountain in the exalted company of Elijah, Moses and Jesus. However, this is not to be. The luminous moment passes and the three disciples find themselves alone with Jesus who warns them not to tell anyone what they had witnessed ‘until the Son of Man had risen from the dead’ (Mk 9:9). We are told that the disciples observed his warning faithfully, but continued to reflect on what they had seen and heard, wondering what it all meant.

Today’s gospel may prompt us to recall ‘transfiguration moments’ in our own lives, moments when we catch a glimpse of a transcendent beauty beyond the horizon of the habitual. The poets capture such moments better than we can. In his poem, ‘Primrose’, Patrick Kavanagh, remembers a moment when, as a child sitting on a river bank, he found

‘One small page of Truth’s manuscript made clear.
I looked at Christ transfigured without fear –
The light was very beautiful and kind,
And where the Holy Ghost in flame had signed
I read it through the lenses of a tear.’

Seamus Heaney, in his poem ‘Postscript’, writes of a moment when, while driving along the coast in county Clare, with the wild ocean on one side and the extraordinary expanse of the Burren on the other, ‘big soft buffetings come at the car sideways / And catch the heart off guard and blow it open’. Such moments may not change us for they are always fleeting. But they do blow open our hearts to a sustaining presence that can help us cope with times of fear and uncertainty, and carry us forward in hope of a better future. 

Lent is a time to remember such moments in our own lives and draw strength from them. It is a time to trust in the Lord like Abraham in our first reading, even when the odds seem stacked against us. It is a time to withdraw to the mountain with Jesus, to listen to him, and let him lead us on our journey towards Easter. I end with a reflection on mountains from the pen of Fr Flor McCarthy, SDB:

Jesus often went into the hills to pray.
He preached his most famous sermons from a hilltop.
He was transfigured on Mount Tabor, died on Mount Calvary,
and ascended to heaven from Mount Olivet.
It seems that he loves hills and mountains.
Why was this?
Was it because he grew up among the hills of Galilee?
Or was it because heights enlarge our vision and cause our spirit to soar?
Lift us up, strong Son of God, so that we may see further.
Strengthen our faith that we may see beyond the horizon.
And when the valley closes us in,
help us to remember the view from the hilltop.’

Michael McCabe SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

21 February 2021

Genesis 9: 8 – 15
1 Peter 3:18 – 22
Mark 1:12 – 15

Jesus’ life was dominated by a single passion: to proclaim and establish on earth God’s reign of justice, peace and love. His mission was not about saving people’s souls by taking them out of the world and bringing them to heaven. It was about bringing God’s kingdom on earth and challenging people to embrace it. But how was he going to carry out this mission entrusted to him by the Father? He had no blueprint or plan of action to guide him. What he had was the Holy Spirit, the Spirit who came upon him at his baptism. This same Spirit – the divine energy that brought the universe into existence and ignited the fire of life – now drives Jesus out into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan and clarifies for himself how he is going to establish God’s Reign in the world. A better word than tempted is tested.

Jesus’ forty days in the wilderness was a decisive and defining experience for him, determining the path his messianic mission would take. It led him to reject the way of violent revolution adopted by the Zealots, and the way of easy compromise adopted by the Jerusalem elite – the Sadducees and High Priests – and to choose instead the path of redemptive suffering. Jesus’ path would be to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile and to take up the cross. He would defeat evil by letting evil do its worst to him, by suffering it in love and forgiving his enemies. Mark’s brief reference to the temptation of Jesus ends with the sentence: ‘He was with the wild beasts, and the angels looked after Him’ (Mk 1:13).

I can still vividly recall my own brief experience of the wilderness, while on a sabbatical programme in Jerusalem in the Spring of 2008. Along with my companions, I spent a short but memorable time in the Sinai Desert, including a night sleeping in the open. I had imagined the desert as a place of sand, heat and dust. But it wasn’t like that at all. Instead of sand there were rocks – huge mountainous boulders on every side – terrifying and yet strangely protective. Instead of heat, there was piercing cold. No matter how I tried to nestle down into my sleeping bag in my several layers of clothes and with my head covered, I could not get warm. Sleep eluded me and the night seemed to drag on and on interminably. And instead of dust, the air was crisp and clean with high visibility. I had never in my life seen so many stars in the sky, shining brilliantly, a sight of awesome beauty – ministering angels indeed! And then there was the silence, not just the absence of noise but the sense of ‘hush’ which made you want to speak in whispers so as not to disrupt the silence. It was an unforgettable experience. It made me feel small and insignificant and yet immensely privileged. It made me want to de-clutter my mind and heart and let go of things I thought I needed and focus on ‘something not sold for a penny / In the slums of Mind’ (Patrick Kavanagh, The Ascetic).

The message Jesus formulated in the wilderness and that we are called to take to heart in these days of Lent, is in the final words of today’s gospel: ‘Repent, and believe the Good News’ (Mk 1:15). This means to turn away from the clutter in our lives and to listen to the One who speaks to us in nature, in people and in the depths of our hearts. Lent is not a dreary, sad season to be patiently endured. It is a joyful season, as today’s Lenten preface reminds us: ‘Each year you give us this joyful season when we prepare to celebrate the paschal mystery with mind and heart renewed. You give us a spirit of loving reverence for you, Our Father, and of willing service of our neighbour. As we recall the great events that gave us new life in Christ, you bring the image of your Son to perfection within us’.

Lent, then, is a truly graced time; a time to embrace with enthusiasm ‘an offer we cannot refuse’; a time to experience afresh the breath of the Spirit and the embrace of God’s love; and to grow in our understanding of the riches hidden in Christ. It is not a time for ‘beating up’ on ourselves and our failures; it is rather a time to focus on God’s graciousness and fidelity to his promises as the first reading reminds us – a time to imitate the example of Christ and lay claim to his victory over Satan, as our second reading reminds us. Lent is the springtime of the Spirit, a time of hope and renewal, as Fr Flor McCarthy, SDB, reminds us in the following reflection:

Each year the trees give us a lesson in renewal.
First the bud, then the blossom, and finally the shoot.
Spring dresses the trees in a new robe, and makes them young again.
But this is possible only because in Autumn they let go of their old leaves,
and in between endure a period of nakedness.
Lent is the Springtime of the Spirit.
Lord, help us not to be afraid to let go of old habits,
and to face our spiritual poverty,
in order that you may renew us, and so at Easter
we will feel young again in our discipleship. Amen.

Michael McCabe SMA, February 2021

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

First Reading: Leviticus 13:1-2,44-46
The Law regarding leprosy is given to Moses and Aaron.

Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 32:1-2,5,11
A prayer of contrition and confession for sin.

Second Reading: 1 Corinthians 10:31—11:1
Paul urges the Corinthians to imitate him as he imitates Christ.

Gospel Reading: Mark 1:40-45
Jesus cures a person with leprosy, who reports his cure to everyone.  

Touching the Untouchable

Leprosy in biblical times covered a wide range of skin diseases from ringworm or psoriasis to what is today known as Hansen’s disease – a truly horrific condition which, if untreated, can lead to loss of fingers and toes and other deformities of the body. Fear of contagion forced victims to live outside the community and endure a much more severe form of isolation than that endured by the victims of the Covid-19 virus today. Lepers were treated as outcasts, pariahs, untouchables. Their miserable plight was made even worse by the ingrained belief that their disease was a punishment from God for sin. Thus, to their physical affliction was added the psychological and mental affliction of feeling rejected not only by society but even by God. As our first reading from the Book of Leviticus makes clear, a leper was declared ‘unclean’ by one of the priests, compelled to wear ‘his clothing torn and his hair disordered’, to ‘shield his upper lip and cry, “Unclean, unclean”, and to ‘live outside the camp’ (Lev 13:45-46). Moreover, Jewish Law forbade anyone from approaching or touching a leper under the pain of incurring ritual defilement. Hence the life of a leper at the time of Jesus was nothing short of a ‘living hell’. Death would have been preferable to living with leprosy

This context makes the story of Jesus’ cure of a leper in today’s gospel quite remarkable. First there is the extraordinary courage and faith of the leper. In spite of the frightful stigma he had to endure, he still has the courage to approach Jesus, trusting that he will accept and cure him. To come close to Jesus he had to risk the anger of the people around Jesus and the likelihood of been chased away with stones. With an exemplary combination of faith and humility he goes down on his knees before Jesus and pleads with him in words that must have wrung the very heart of Jesus: “If you want to, you can cure me” (Mk 1:40).

Even more extraordinary is the response of Jesus, especially the manner in which he cures the leper. Moved with compassion for the leper, he says: “Of course I want to. Be cured”. And then, with a gesture not only forbidden by the Mosaic Law but profoundly counter-cultural, he reaches out and touches the leper with his hand.  This gesture – touching the untouchable – spoke more eloquently than any words could and brought spiritual as well as physical healing to the unfortunate man. It was a gesture of acceptance and empathy that restored the leper’s humanity and sense of self-worth as well as curing him: ‘At once the leprosy left him and he was cured’ (Mk 1:42).

One of the sad consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic is its proscribing the gesture of touch, in effect making lepers of us all. The sense of touch is at the core of what it means to be human. Far more than words, it conveys concern, empathy, support and affirmation. In his latest book, Let us Dream, Pope Francis reminds us that, while ‘social distancing is a necessary response to a pandemic, it cannot last without eroding our humanity…. The communication we most need is touch…. We yearn for the touch of those we love, which we must sometimes give up for their sakes and ours. Touch is a deeply human need’ (Let us Dream, 23). Pope Francis illustrates this truth from his personal experience. During his Wednesday audiences, he was often approached by blind children who wanted to touch his face with their hands so they could “see” the Pope.

The power of touch was brought home to me forty years ago when I was teaching in a seminary in Liberia, West Africa. Every week, with a small group of seminarians, I travelled to a nearby Leprosarium, bringing some food and leading a prayer service with the members of the Leper community. The highlight of the prayer service was always the kiss of peace, when all decorum was abandoned, and everyone went around shaking hands with everyone else – not the usual handshake with the person beside you that we are accustomed to in Ireland. [The leprosy was inactive so there was no risk of contagion.] At that moment the small assembly became alive and radiated a joy that was truly infectious, making a lasting impression on me. It taught me more about the message of Christ than many homilies.

As disciples of Jesus we are called, like St Paul, to model our lives on Christ, to reach out to others with compassion and love, especially to those who are rejected and stigmatised in any way. The recently published Government report on the Mother and Baby Homes has made us shamefully aware of the profoundly unchristian manner in which we (Church and State, priests and people) treated unfortunate girls who became pregnant outside marriage. As Archbishop Michael Neary of Tuam stated in his response to the Report, ‘when the Church is not serving with compassion, it is failing’.

The love of God impels us to imitate the example of Jesus and bring his compassionate and healing touch to the lepers of our time: the isolated, despised and broken women and men longing for acceptance and love.

So we pray: ‘Lord pour your Spirit into our hearts and make us effective instruments of your healing love in our world today’.

Michael McCabe SMA, February 2021

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

31 January 2021
Deuteronomy 18: 15-20
1 Corinthians 7:32-35
Mark 1: 21-28

The Authority of Jesus: Today’s gospel reading makes a clear distinction between the teaching of Jesus and that of the Scribes, the official interpreters of the Torah or Law of the Jews. Scribes never expressed their own judgement or opinion. They always began by citing their authority and supported whatever they said with quotes from the great masters of the past. Furthermore, their focus was on the external observances of the Law rather than its spirit. Their teaching failed to make much impression on the people because it lacked the power of personal conviction, of being grounded in experience. Moreover, they did not always practice what they preached to others (cf. Mt 23:3).

The people immediately recognized that Jesus was a different kind of teacher. Mark tells us that ‘his teaching made a deep impression on them, because, unlike the scribes, he taught them with authority’ (Mk 1:22). Why did the teaching of Jesus have such an impact on the People? In what way was it different from the teaching of the scribes? The words of Jesus had the power to move people’s hearts. They had the ring of truth about them because they came from personal experience. Jesus did not just repeat what others had said. He spoke with his own voice, his own authority. The difference between the teaching of Jesus and that of the scribes is captured very well by the great nineteenth century American philosopher and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson, when he wrote:  ‘One person speaks from within, or from experience, as a possessor of the fact; another speaks from without, as a spectator, as acquainted with the facts on the evidence of a third person. It is no use to preach to me from without. I can do that for myself.’  Jesus taught with authority because he spoke ‘from within’, not from without. 

About thirty years ago I attended a Summer School on Spirituality in SMA House, Maynooth. One or the speakers made a memorable statement about the latest trend in Spirituality when he said: ‘we have moved from the experience of authority to the authority of experience’. We no longer listen to people simply because of their official status or authority. We listen because their lives give credibility to what they say. As Pope Paul VI stated in his famous Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Nuntiandi, published in 1975: ‘People in our time listen more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if they do listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses’ (EN 41).

People listened to Jesus not because he had an official status like the scribes but because he was a living witness to the truth of God’s love. He showed this love by the way he lived. People experienced God’s mercy and compassion in his actions. He reached out to the sick and less privileged, those who were neglected or excluded by society. In today’s gospel we see him freeing a man tormented by an ‘unclean spirit’.  This action moves the people to exclaim: ‘Here is a teaching that is new, and with authority behind it’. Unlike the scribes, the authority of Jesus’ teaching is manifested, above all, by his actions.

We tend to associate authority with people in positions of power in society, like political or religious leaders, people we identify as ‘authority figures’. But there is another kind of authority, a moral authority, that has nothing to do with holding official positions of power or influence. It is often best seen in those far removed from the echelons of power, those on the margins of society, the little ones. Think, for example, of the extraordinary moral authority of the Swedish teenage schoolgirl, Greta Thunberg. Her straightforward, no holes barred, speeches about climate change has awakened a somnolent world to the most serious crisis in human history, and touched the consciences of even the most hardened world leaders.

The authority of people like Greta derives not from any office they hold but from the kind of persons they are. It is the highest authority of all and has its roots in the authority of God. Without it, holders of official positions of authority are mere functionaries or mouthpieces.  Jesus possessed this kind of authority in a unique and unequalled way. As his disciples, baptised in his name, and called to be his witnesses, we, too, share in his authority. And it is manifested by the transparent integrity of our lives more than by our words. Even in this time of uncertainty and anxiety, as new variants of Covid-19 continue to hold our trembling world in lock-down, we are called to reflect the authority of Jesus and to be beacons of hope for the people of our time.  This call was movingly expressed by the American Poet Laureate, Amanda Gorman (‘a skinny black girl’, as she describes herself), in her poem, The Hill we Climb, which she recited at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.  I conclude by quoting the final lines of that poem:

‘When the day comes we step out of the shade aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it,
for there is always light if only we’re brave enough to see it,
if only we’re brave enough to be it’.

Let us pray for the courage to be the light of Christ for the men and women of our time.                        Michael McCabe SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA.

24th January 2021

• First Reading: Jonah 3:1-5, 10
• Responsorial Psalm: Psalms 25:4-5, 6-7, 8-9
• Second Reading: First Corinthians 7:29-31
• Gospel: Mark 1:14-20

 ‘Repent and believe the Good News’

The theme of repentance looms large in our readings today. The first reading, from the book of Jonah, illustrates how the people of Nineveh, much to the surprise and chagrin of Jonah, repent and are saved from destruction, when he is sent to warn them about their evil ways. In the Gospel we see Jesus beginning his proclamation of the Kingdom with the words: ‘Repent and believe the Good News’.  He adddressed these words not only to public sinners and those who knew themselves to be nó paragons of virtue, but to everyone listening to him.

It seems a bit strange to us to speak of repentance and good news in the same sentence. We tend to asssociate repentance with feelings of guilt and doing penances.  The good news  that Jesus announced was, of course, that the Kingdom or Reign  of God was ‘at hand’, that God’s vision of a world where Love, Peace and Joy was about replace a world where hatred, violence and sadness reigned. But before this could happen, people needed to recognise and  acknowlege that something was wrong or missing in their  lives and create the space within themselves for God’s future to be ushered in. Only transformed hearts can dwell in a world where God reigns. Repentance is about preparing our hearts for such a world. It is not about self-flagelation or wallowing in guilt about the past, but rather about longing for something better, and a willingness to take the first step ón a journey towards the future God wills for us. It is about conversion, opening our hearts to the action of God’s Spirit.

People may long for a better future but still find it hard to let go of the past and embrace a better tomorrow.  They fear the change will be too much of them. But repentance is not primarily our own work. It is, first and foremost, the fruit of God’s grace in us.  That is why we pray for it.  But there is something we can do to facilitate the process. And the first step we can take is to examine our basic attitudes to change, for these can be the biggest obstacles to repentance.  Some years I was speaking with a friend about the possibility of changing or turning around one’s life. He said to me :‘Trying to change is a waste of time.  Everything I tried has failed.  It’s just not possible to change.’  At the root of this attitude is a kind of despair, a loss of confidence in the possibility of change.   Fatalism eats away at our energy, and undermines our will to change.  It is not just opposed to hope; it is a sin again faith, which means trusting God and in what God can do for us and in us.

Another common attitude which blocks our embrace of change is complacency. The complacent person says ‘I’m all right the way I am.’  There was a lot of that attitude around at the time of Christ and there’s still a lot of it around today.  It is really a form of blindness. I fail see the plank in my own eye, though I can probably see very clearly the splinters in the eyes of my brothers and sisters. In the gospels we see that complacency was the attitude Jesus found most irritating.  For example, he berated the scribes and Pharisees who prided themselves on their observance of the law. He called them ‘blind guides’ because they thought they knew it all and had nothing more to learn.   The attitude of the complacent person is illustrate in the following Zen story:

‘A Zen master invited a visitor to tea.  The guest arrived, crossed his legs and sat in silence.  The Zen Master then took the teapot and started to fill the cup.  When he had filled it to the brim, he continued to pour until the tea was flowing over the saucer and on to the floor.  The guest was horrified and enquired why the Zen master was so careless.   ‘Because’, the master replied, I feel that your head is like this teacup – so full of certainty that it would be impossible for me to add anything to what you already know.  You cannot hear what I say.’ 

It’s very hard for God to find a niche in the armour of people as complacent and closed as the Zen Master’s guest.

A third obstacle which keeps people in a rut and prevents them from changing is fear. It is probably by far the most common attitude among those who have already made a commitment to Christ.  If we were to be converted mind, heart and soul to Jesus, where might that lead us?  The saints who tried to follow Jesus closely didn’t have it too easy. In the gospels, we see fear surfacing quite often among the disciples. And Jesus seems to understand their fears and go out of his way to reassure them.  Remember the incident of the disciples out on a boat in the Sea of Galilee and suddenly caught up in a storm. Jesus’ words of reassurance on that occasion ‘Do not be afraid. It is I’ were words he was to repeat over and over again. Fear, especially of what is new and unfamiliar, will   probably be a familiar companion in our journey through life.  However, our fears need not paralyse us if we acknowledge them and ask the Lord for the courage we need to continue the journey with him. Let us, then, take to heart Christ’s call to repent and open our hearts to the future God has in store for us, trusting his promise to be always with us, especially in our darkest moments.

Michael McCabe SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

‘Speak, Lord, Your Servant is Listening’

17 January 2021

1 Samuel 3:3-10,19
1 Cor 6:13-15,17-20
John 1:35-42

Today’s readings are all about responding to the call of the Lord. The first reading describes the call of Samuel, the son of Hannah and Elkanah in their old age. During the night young Samuel hears a voice while serving in the sanctuary of the Lord. Thinking it is the high priest, Eli, who is calling him, he goes to him to find out what he wants. We are told that at this time Samuel had ‘no knowledge of the Lord and the word of the Lord had not been revealed to him’ (1 Sam 3:7). It is Eli who eventually recognises that the Lord is calling Samuel and who tells him to respond with the memorable words ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening’ (1 Sam 3:9).

These words serve as a template for all who seek to discern the call of the Lord in their lives. They also indicate the attitude we should have when we pray. Sometimes we turn Samuel’s words on their head and say or think: ‘Listen, Lord, your servant is speaking’. Of course, the Lord listens to us, but we must first listen and pay attention to what he is saying to us. And he speaks to us not only in Scripture, but also in the book of nature, through others, and in our everyday experiences. Let us attend to his voice and follow the example of Samuel, whom we are told ‘grew up and the Lord was with him and let no word of his fall to the ground’ (1 Sam 3:9). 

The gospel reading today is John’s account of the call of the first disciples of Jesus, Andrew, his brother, Simon Peter, and John. John and Andrew were already disciples of John the Baptist and it was the Baptist who identified Jesus for them, saying ‘Look, there is the Lamb of God’. The Baptist’s use of the messianic title, ‘Lamb of God’, shows that he recognises Jesus as the Messiah and is prepared to let his own disciples follow Jesus. It also explains why Andrew and John immediately leave the Baptist and follow Jesus [not even waiting to say ‘goodbye’]. Jesus then turns around to them and asks them what they want, or what they are looking for – a searching question, indeed! It reminds me of the Diana Ross 1975 hit ‘Do you know where you’re going to?’ I quote the first verse of lyrics:

‘Do you know where you’re going to?
Do you like the things that life is showing you
Where are you going to? Do you know?
Do you get what you’re hoping for?
When you look behind you, there’s no open doors
What are you hoping for? Do you know?’

Almost certainly John and Andrew were hoping to find the Messiah, the one who would fulfil the promises made to the prophets of old and liberate the People of Israel from Roman oppression. We can also presume that, in common with most of Jesus’ contemporaries, they did not have any clear understanding of how the Messiah would fulfil this promise. They may have expected a great military leader who would mount a rebellion against Rome, or a great teacher of the Law. In any case they were prepared to allow Jesus to reveal himself to them. When they ask Jesus where he was living, Jesus doesn’t give them instructions on how to get to his house. He invites them, rather, to ‘come and you see’  for themselves. Jesus is saying to Andrew and John and also to us: ‘If you want to know me, you have to live with me’. He wants to have a personal relationship, a friendship, with those who wish to follow him. Andrew and John stay with Jesus ‘the rest of that day’. Andrew, convinced that they had found the Messiah, tells his younger brother, Simon Peter, and brings him to Jesus who looks at him intently and gives him a new name, Cephas, which means Rock.

I will conclude by highlighting the important lessons of today’s readings. First, like Samuel, we are reminded of the importance of listening and paying attention to the voice of the Lord and treasuring his word. Second, like Eli and Andrew, we are challenged to share the good news with others and lead them to the Lord, but then let the Lord take over. Don’t stand in the way. Third, we are challenged to clarify what we are looking for in life and what we are hoping for from the Lord. Finally, if we want to be true disciples of Jesus, we must be prepared to spend time with him and develop a personal relationship with him.

So we pray: Lord, help us to be always attentive listeners to your Word, to cherish it, taking time to deepen our relationship with you, and to lead others to you by the example of our lives.

Michael McCabe, SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased

10 January 2021

Isaiah 55:1-11
Acts 10:34-38
Mark 1:6-11

A few days ago we celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany, the manifestation of the Light of Christ to the Gentile world. Today we are also celebrating an epiphany –   the manifestation of Jesus’ identity and mission on the occasion of his baptism by John. This moment marks the beginning of Jesus’ public life and ministry as he sets out to do the Father’s will and proclaim in word and deed the Kingdom of God. He is acclaimed from heaven by the voice of the Father and the presence of the Spirit. As followers of Christ who have heard his preaching, accepted his call, and set out to follow his way, we, too, can take to heart the words addressed to Jesus: ‘You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased.’ Baptised in Christ, we are beloved daughters and sons.

Homily

In his account of the baptism of Jesus by John, Mark’s concern is with the identity of Jesus. As Jesus emerges from the waters of the Jordan, a voice from heaven acclaims him with the words:  ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased’ (Mk 1:11). The words ‘You are my beloved Son’ echo Psalm 2:7, one of the royal psalms used for the coronation of the Kings of the House of David. Hence, these words point to Jesus as the promised Messiah. The words ‘With you I am well pleased’ echo the words of Isaiah 42:1, and thus point to Jesus as the ‘suffering servant of Yahweh’. Jesus’ baptism was a threshold experience for him, a moment of radical change, after which his life would never be the same again.  He leaves behind the quiet obscure life of a carpenter’s son, his hidden years with Mary and Joseph, during which, as St Luke tells us, ‘he grew in wisdom and grace before God and people’ (Lk 2:52). He is now embarking on his messianic vocation in the service of God’s Reign.

I want to reflect for a moment on what living out this vocation would entail.  Jesus was about to launch a revolutionary movement which would turn Israel and the world up-side-down. He would finally establish God’s rule of justice, peace, truth and love in Israel and (through Israel) among all nations on earth. However, he would not choose any of the ways his contemporaries envisaged God’s rule being established. He would reject the politics of violent revolution (adopted by the Zealots); of easy compromise (the option of the Jerusalem elite) and of narrow nationalism (advocated by the Pharisees).  He would choose instead the path of redemptive suffering, as portrayed by the prophet Isaiah.

His way would be to turn the other cheek, to walk the second mile and to take up the cross. He would defeat evil by letting evil do its worst to him, by suffering evil in love and forgiving his enemies.  In obedience to the will of his Father, he would identify with sinners and outcasts, with the poor and downtrodden, and exercise a ministry of compassion and forgiveness, healing and hope. In Jesus’ Kingdom ministry, as the renowned biblical Scholar, Tom Wright puts is, ‘we see the biblical portrait of Yahweh come to life: the loving God, rolling up his sleeves to do in person the job that no one else could do, the creator God giving new life; the God who works through his created world, and supremely through his human creatures; the faithful God dwelling in the midst of his people; the stern and tender God relentlessly opposed to all that destroys or distorts the good creation,  especially human beings, but recklessly loving all those in need and distress.’ (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 90).

As we celebrate the baptism of Jesus and reflect on its significance, let us also recall our own baptism, and renew and deepen our baptismal commitment. We have been baptised, not with the baptism of John, but with the baptism of Jesus. We have been christened (what a beautiful word!) and empowered with the spirit of Christ. We have been entrusted with continuing the liberating, healing and transforming mission of Jesus.  Tom Wright uses a striking image to capture the relationship between our mission and that of Jesus. ‘We are’, he says, ‘like musicians called to play and sing the unique and once-only-written musical score. We don’t have to write it again, but we have to play it’ (The Challenge of Jesus, p. 140). 

How can we do this? Some ways are suggested by Fr Sylvester O’Flynn’s in his Reflection for today’s feast, published in this week’s Irish Catholic. I take the liberty of slightly modifying his words:

‘God alone can give faith, but we can offer witness.
God alone can give hope, but we can pass it on to others.
God alone can give peace, but we can work for unity.
God alone can give power, but we can sustain somebody feeling low.
God alone is the way, but we can show it to others.
God alone is the light, but we can make it shine for others.
God alone is life, but we can give others a taste for living.
God alone can do the impossible, but through us it can become possible.
God alone is self-sufficient…  but, amazingly, God prefers to count on us.

And God does indeed count on us. Let us not fail Her!

Michael McCabe SMA, January 2021

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

Introduction: Today we celebrate the Solemnity of the Epiphany of the Lord, one of the most important celebrations of the Liturgical Year – a feast with particular significance for missionaries.  The word Epiphany came from the Greek word ‘Epiphaneia’, which means revelation or manifestation. This Solemnity celebrates the revelation of the light of Christ to all the nations and peoples of the world, represented by the Magi or the Wise Men. It is an appropriate occasion to thank God for our own missionary vocation ad gentes.

Homily: In the Gospel we hear of the enthralling story how the certain wise men (Magi) from the East, guided by a Star, come to visit to the Lord in Bethlehem. The Magi saw the star from afar and they knew that a very prominent event was about to happen, the birth of a great King, destined to bring integrity and justice to the world, an event foretold by many prophets and wise men throughout the centuries and millennia past. The Magi undertook a long and arduous journey from their own lands, enduring difficult conditions to reach the place indicated by the star. Although their names are not recorded in the Scriptures, Church tradition has given them the names of Gaspar, Melchior and Balthasar. Their places of origin are often given as India, Persia and Arabia or other distant lands. On entering the place indicated by the star, ‘they saw the child with his mother Mary, and falling to their knees they did him homage. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh’ (Mt 2: 11-12).

While this beautiful story should not be taken literally, it is a wonderful summary of the entire life of Jesus and every element in it is rich in symbolism. Jesus’ birth was like a star rising in the skies to guide people on their pilgrimage of life. His birth has an important background, highlighted by John in his prologue to his Gospel – the moment when the Eternal Word gave birth to the Universe, nearly 14 billion years ago. This is, as theologians today increasingly recognise, the first incarnation of God, a free and creative event with particles of matter and light expanding in an endless adventure. The initial birthing of our universe eventually gave rise to our Star, the Sun, the source of the atmosphere of our planet and of all living beings. At a certain moment in time this cosmic and unfolding story converged in a unique and incomparable conjunction of light and love, of human and divine, in the historical person of Jesus. So, it is given to us today, as to the Magi, to contemplate the great miracle that is birthing the Cosmos and shines in the defenceless and tender flesh of a baby.

The story of the Magi, as recounted by Matthew, shows how Jesus is recognised as the Messiah and universal Lord by those who genuinely sought wisdom, while many of his own people rejected him for various reasons. The political leaders, represented by Herod and the Jerusalem elite were perturbed. They felt threatened by a child! The Chief priests and scribes had access to all the right texts. But their knowledge of the texts did not open their hearts and guide them along the road of faith – a warning surely to those who are too sure of themselves and their knowledge. The wise men, however, were seekers, and willing to undertake a long and hazardous journey. And, as Matthew tells us, led by a star they found the house and went inside. The house represents the house of faith. The gifts of the Magi, the gold, frankincense and myrrh express the true nature of Jesus, Universal King and Lord of all Creation, Eternal High Priest and Suffering Servant. The gift of gold expresses the real significance of Christ’s Kingship; incense is a sign of his Priesthood; while myrrh signifies the manner in which he would fulfil his role as Messiah – his suffering and death.

At the time the Gospel of Matthew was written, around 85 AD,  the Jews had, by and large, rejected Christ and his message. However, the Gentile nations had responded to the preaching of Paul and his companions and were entering the house of faith, the Church. In today’s second reading we find Paul rejoicing that ‘the pagans now share the same inheritance, that they are part of the same body, and that the same promise is made to them, in Christ Jesus, through the gospel’ (Eph 3:5-6). This providential acceptance of Christ by the nations was foreseen and gloriously celebrated by the Prophet Isaiah in the 8^th century BC – as we see in the first reading: ‘The nations come to your light and kings to your dawning brightness’ (Is 60:3).

As we join with the Magi in acknowledging the great light that has come upon the earth with the birth of Jesus, and offer him our homage Let us pray:

May Christ, our Lord, King, High Priest and Saviour, revealed and manifested to the whole world, be our Light and Guide. May he sustain us with his Spirit as we continue to walk faithfully in his presence in this world, bearing witness to his truth and love. May he bless us all now and always. Amen.

Fr Michael McCabe SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

25 December 2020

Some years ago I read James Redfield’s novel, ‘The Celestine Prophesy’, a popular expression of New Age spirituality. While I found little in it that was either new or profound, I could readily understand why it struck a chord with so many people searching for meaning in their lives and became a runaway bestseller. At a time of doom and gloom, it seemed to tune into positive spiritual energies in the world around us and within us. However, the claims made for this novel in the blurb were fantastic: ‘a story that comes along just once in a lifetime to change lives forever’. The Celestine Prophesy is not such a story. It is not the answer to the meaning of our lives, but the Christmas Story is.

Christmas is a story about a New Age in human history, an age that arrived 2000 years ago in the little town of Bethlehem with the birth of Mary’s child – an epoch-changing event heralded by angels in the words of today’s gospel: “I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For today in the city of David a Saviour has been born for you who is Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:12).

Today, we celebrate the moment for which we have been waiting and preparing over the past four weeks – the birthday of our Saviour, Jesus Christ. We celebrate it with great acclaim because it was a moment that changed lives forever, breaking the curse of Adam’s sin, and bringing us a sure and lasting hope. The liturgy today pulsates with a joy that resonates throughout the universe. The responsorial psalm calls on all peoples and nations to sing a new song, and on earth and heaven, seas and plains, to rejoice and be glad.

The child whose birth we recall and celebrate this day is hailed by Isaiah, in our first reading, with the resounding titles, ‘Wonder Counselor’, ‘Mighty God’, ‘Eternal Father’, ‘Prince of Peace’ (Is 9:5). The second reading, taken from the Letter of Saint Paul to Titus, tells us that, with the birth of Christ, ‘God’s grace has been revealed, and it has made salvation possible for the whole human race’ (Titus 2:11).

The gospel reading from Luke describes in concise, elegant language how the Christ child came to be born in a manger in Bethlehem, David’s city, while Mary and Joseph were there to be registered for a census of the people. It tells us how angels announce his birth to shepherds who come to worship him. And we, too, worship him because he is Emmanuel, God-with-us. As we gaze in wonder upon the nativity scene, represented in the Christmas crib, we see the Lord of the universe as a baby totally dependent on his mother for his every need. Becoming one with us, he became subject to the joys and pains that all human flesh is heir to the joy of loving parents, of friendship, of play and laughter, of song and dance; but also to hunger and thirst, grief and sadness.

Like all humans, Jesus had to learn to walk and talk, to pray and study, to work and play. He would come to know the joy of bringing healing and hope to the crippled, the blind, the dumb, and those excluded from society. He would experience the pain of ingratitude and rejection, and the misunderstanding of even his closest disciples.  He would also know fear when faced with the hostility of those who sought to destroy him. Finally, he would endure the awful agony of a shameful death on Calvary – and all this to manifest the Father’s unfailing love for us and to show us what it really means to be human.

The Christmas story recalls the birth of this unique person, the incarnate Son of God, who emptied himself of glory to be with us –  who didn’t just give tell us how to live but showed us, through his tears, sweat and blood. The Christmas story touches something deep in our hearts, but also challenges us to reflect on the life of Jesus so that we enter into the immense mystery of the love of God and discover the meaning and purpose of our lives and share it with others. I will conclude with some words from a reflection on the meaning of Christmas, written by two Missionaries of Africa:

‘Kneeling before the Christmas crib, we acknowledge the supreme gift of God’s love, which is stronger than death, or hatred or injustice, the Father’s final, breathtaking reply to all our human, faint-hearted, self-centered responses to God’s gracious initiatives, the last word between God and us in the dialogue of salvation, the Word-made-flesh, the Great Amen of God’ (taken from a book entitled Catalysts).

As we celebrate Christ’s birth this Christmas, may our hearts burn with the fire of the love he has kindled on this earth. Have a happy, peaceful, healthy and eco-friendly Christmas.

Fr Michael McCabe SMA

20 December 2020
2 Samuel 7.1-5,8-11,16
Romans 16.25-27
Luke 1.26-38

Waiting with Mary
The role of Mary in the unfolding of God’s plan of salvation is one of the great themes of the Advent season. Some liturgists argue that December has an even greater claim than May to be called ‘Mary’s month’. In today’s Eucharist, it is the scene of the Annunciation that is evoked in the opening prayer, and recounted in the gospel reading – that dramatic moment when Mary said ‘yes’ to God’s choice of her to be the mother of the Messiah. The Second Vatican Council in its Constitution on the Church highlights the importance of Mary’s ‘yes’ in bringing God’s plan of salvation to fulfillment:

The Virgin Mary, when the angel brought the news, welcomed the Word of God in her heart, and in her body brought life into the world… Embracing God’s saving will with a full heart and impeded by no sin, she devoted herself totally, as the handmaid of the Lord, to the person and work of her Son.

Once assured that she would become the mother of the Messiah by God’s Spirit, Mary responded with the total gift of herself: ‘Be it done unto me according to your word’. Her response of total availability was made possible by the way she had lived up to the time she received the angel’s message. She had grown up with a profound awareness of God’s presence in her own life and in the life of her people. This is captured beautifully in the familiar prayer, the Magnificat.

The Magnificat is one of the most hopeful of all Christian prayers. We pray it so often that we easily miss its meaning – and how much it tells us about the way God has acted, and continues to act, in history. It is Mary’s prayer of praise and gratitude to God for choosing her as the mother of the ‘Son of the Most High’ – Emmanuel. The long period of waiting is over and the great hope of Israel is about to be realised. Mary’s experience of God’s action in her personal life is the starting point of the prayer: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord… for he has done great things to me and holy is his name’. The prayer then goes on to situate her experience in the context of the historical experiences of the people of Israel from the time of Abraham and Sarah down to the time when Mary lived. 

The Magnificat is a popular prayer, especially among marginalised and oppressed people.  It is also a very challenging prayer for people living in the so-called ‘first world’. Far from being the prayer of an innocent or sheltered girl, it is the prayer of a mature young woman, who bears in her womb as well as in her heart the hopes of a downtrodden people. It is clear that Mary has reflected often and prayerfully on the social and political history of her people – a history of ups and downs, successes and failures, joys and sorrows. In this history, God had manifested his power by putting ‘forth his arm in strength’ and scattering ‘the proud of heart’; bringing down ‘the powerful from their thrones’ and raising up ‘the lowly’; filling ‘the starving with good things’ while sending ‘the rich away empty’.

The God that Mary praises with all her heart is a loving and compassionate God who is ‘ever mindful of his mercy’;  a God passionately concerned for the plight of those oppressed and pushed aside in the dramatic struggle between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’. This is the God, whose Son Mary ‘bore in her womb with love beyond all telling’, (as the Second Advent Preface puts it). This is the God we meet in the person and ministry of Jesus, the Christ.

There is hardly any better way of preparing ourselves for the birthday of Jesus, and of getting to know him better than to put ourselves into Mary’s shoes at this time, the time of her pregnancy. From the moment the Angel left her, Mary knew that Jesus was there within her womb. But she had to wait nine months, to wait for her child to appear, to show himself, so that she could see him, touch him, feed him, hug him, and kiss him. Women, especially mothers, can easily identify with Mary’s feelings during her pregnancy, the joys and the pains, the longing and the anxiety – until her time was ripe and the child within her would come from her womb and be visible. Then she could gaze into his face, hear his cries, and hold his shivering body to her breast. She would experience her child with all her senses: eyes, ears, touch, taste, and smell. Then her waiting would be over and her joy would know no bounds.

If we invite Mary to lead us through this Advent season and remain close to her, we can be certain that Christ will become more alive for us, too, and we will experience some of Mary’s Christmas joy and join with her in praising God for the wonders of his love.

Fr Michael McCabe SMA, December 2020

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

13 December 2020

Isaiah 61:1-2,10-11
1 Thessalonians 5:16-24
John 1:6-8,19-28

Many have seen Franco Zeffirelli’s famous film, Jesus of Nazareth.  Though I saw it many years ago, a striking line, spoken by Yehuda, the rabbi, as he looks forward to the birth of the Messiah, has remained with me. ‘A future without hope’, he says, ‘is like a night without stars’. An Irish liturgist, writing on the Advent Liturgy, describes Advent as a continuous song of hope. Today’s liturgy especially resonates with joyful hope. The first reading from the Prophet Isaiah underlines this note of joy: ’I exult for joy in the Lord, my soul rejoices in my God, for he has clothed me in the garments of salvation, he has wrapped me in the cloak of integrity’ (Is 61:10).

Christianity is basically a religion of hope. Christians look forward to a better and brighter future for all humanity and for all creation. Our hope is based on God’s personal dwelling among us to heal, redeem, and transform our lives. This hope is movingly expressed in Isaiah’s portrait of the promised Messiah as a wise, holy and peaceful King ‘who will judge the poor with justice and decide in favour of the land’s afflicted’ (Is 11:1-10). He will put an end to conflict and bring lasting peace. With his coming, warring factions will ‘beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks’.

Yet, despite Christ’s coming, our world is not as God wants it to be. It is still a world marred by injustice, hatred, and violence. The brave new world envisaged by science and technology is very far from being a reality. Confidence in the progress of civilization has been severely damaged, if not undermined, by the emergence of new forms of lawlessness and corruption. The recent re-emergence of xenophobic populist movements frustrate political efforts to create a more open and caring society. A pernicious drug culture is spiraling out of control in many countries, including Ireland. The Covid-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on a global scale. Accelerated global warming and the frightening extinction of species threaten the very future of human life on earth.

In circumstances such as these it difficult to be optimistic. However, hope is not to be confused with optimism. Optimism may be naïve about the reality of failure in our lives. Hope is not. The hope which we celebrate in the Eucharist, and to which we strive to witness in our lives, is a hope that can look beyond the brokenness of our world because it is based on our faith in Christ. It is hope for a new life that rises out of the ashes of death and decay. Such hope is not confined by the limits of our vision or our human resources. Even when we are tempted to lose heart, God is not. His ultimate purpose in creation, reaffirmed in the incarnation, and gloriously manifested in the Resurrection of Christ, will not fail.

We shall not be overwhelmed. God’s reign is greater than the beleaguered kingdom of our hearts. We have placed our hope in someone who has overcome all things, not in something to be won or lost. And so, we continue to hope, even when situations appear almost hopeless, convinced that God will complete what he began when he sent us his Son. We may not know how or when this completion will happen, but, as surely as day follows night, it will happen. It is to this hope that Paul gives voice in his Epistle to the Romans when he says:

Can anything cut us off from the love of Christ – can hardships, or distress, or persecution, or lack of food and clothing, or threats or violence?… No; we come through all these things triumphantly victorious, by the power of him who loved us. For I am certain of this: neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nothing already in existence and nothing still to come, nor any power, nor the heights nor the depths, nor any created thing whatever, will be able to come between us and the love of God, known to us in Christ Jesus, our Lord (Rom. 8: 31-32; 35-39).

Fr Michael McCabe SMA, December 2020

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

29 November 2020

Isaiah 63:16-17; 64:1,3-8 
1 Corinthians 1:3-9
Mark 13:33-37

Today’s gospel reading admonishes us three times to ‘stay awake’. This means paying attention to the presence and action of God in our lives and in the world around us, and allowing our hearts to become alive with wonder.  The capacity for wonder is said to be the beginning of Philosophy; it is certainly a key element in our life of faith, and it is so easy to lose it.    The famous scientist, Albert Einstein, said once: ‘The one who can no longer pause to wonder and stand in awe is as good as dead.’

We should not be surprised then at how often the Advent readings call us to wake up and take notice of God’s loving presence around us and within us. As the poet, Gerard Manly Hopkins puts it, ‘The world is charged with the grandeur of God’. The fingerprints of God are all around us, but we have to open our eyes and look. The Welsh poet, William Davies reminds us: ‘What is life if, full of care, we have no time to stop and stare/no time to stand beneath the boughs, and stare as long as sheep or cows.’  This is what Jesus tells us, too:

Look at the birds in the sky…

Think of the flowers growing in the fields….

Not even Solomon in all his regalia was robed

like one of these (Mt 6: 26, 28, 30)

If Jesus had not taken time to notice the things around him the Gospels  might have given us a philosophical discourse on God’s providence but we would not have had parables, those marvellous stories which lead us to God through the filter of our senses and imagination. 

Advent is a time – a grace-filled, precious time – for us to try and recover our childhood sense of wonder at the ordinary miracles of life that surround us – basic elemental things, like the smile of a child, the most natural and spontaneous sacrament of God that I know, or the warmth of the Sun as it kisses a new day into being, or the changing colours an autumnal landscape.   Let us, then, turn to the simple things, the things we take for-granted, the things that, as the poet E.E. Cummings says, ‘I cannot touch because they are too near.’  

It is the quality of our experiences that enrich us, not the quantity.  We can easily be seduced by the myth that the more of life we experience the better.  Advertisements urge us to try everything and to leave no stone unturned.  More is better: this is the underlying philosophy of our materialistic world.  But it is precisely this attitude which kills wonder. If we take in too much quantity, we can easily deaden our capacity to appreciate the quality things in life, and we end up with hearts that are cold and indifferent.  If we try to taste too much too quickly, we become unable to really relish anything. Even the most beautiful things lose their wonder for us, and leave our hearts empty and frustrated.

Letting go of the desire to grab at things for ourselves is the key to letting wonder in. When we resist this destructive desire, we allow the inner beauty in things – and more especially in people – to speak to us. We become open to the mystery all around us and come to see things as we never saw them before. We will find ourselves enthralled by a myriad of little things we may have hardly ever noticed before, like the changing colours of the sky, or the sound the wind rustling through the trees, or the singing of the birds at dawn.  

We live in an age of inflation in more ways than one.  Our senses are daily bombarded with a thousand and one impressions.  Through the media, especially TV, computers and mobile phones, we are pummelled by information and images hitting us from every part of the world. Wonder had been sucked from our hearts. We find ourselves choked or paralysed by the effort to take in too much of the world too quickly: ‘Through a chink too wide there come in no wonder’ (Patrick Kavanagh).  We can even get to the stage where we are not to feel anything except confusion, hostility, boredom.  How could it be otherwise? Our senses were made for our hearts, not the other way round. We need to draw back from the forces launching themselves at our senses, and give our hearts time to cope, to focus, to filter and assimilate the multitude of impressions hitting us.  Advent is a time for such screening and focusing: taking in less, but learning to appreciate more, and waking up to the wonder of God’s loving presence in the creatures he has made. There is no better way to prepare our hearts to celebrate the birthday of Christ, who ‘comes to meet us with a January flower’ (Patrick Kavanagh). 

Fr Michael McCabe SMA

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22 November 2020

Ezekiel: 34:11-12
1 Corinthians 15:20-26,28
Matthew 25:31-46

Today we celebrate the feast of Christ the King.

When we think of kings we think of people a bit remote, similar to many celebrities today.  These are well guarded and normally kept a bit away from people. But Christ is not like that. He lives among us and came not to dominate or to rule but to serve and be a close friend to us. The best way to show our loyalty to him is by serving one another.

The essential message of the Gospel is that practical service to the least of our sisters and brothers will be the measure by which we will be judged. Ordinary acts of kindness, courtesy and good manners are very important. The Gospel is basically about God’s kingdom values.

We must be careful in taking the Gospel too literally as if it were only about being kind to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick and so on. Every small action done in love is also important to whomsoever is in need.

The central theme of the Gospel is a reflection on how daily living should be influenced by loving service.  This means that as people go about their everyday business their words and actions should show to others the difference that it makes to be followers of Jesus. Words alone cannot change the world, but the smallest of actions, done by countless people, can transform the human family.

– edited from a homily of the late Fr Jim Kirstein SMA

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15 November 2020

Proverb: 31:10-13, 19-20, 30-31
1 Thessalonians 5: 1-6
Matthew 25:14-30

READY FOR THE JOURNEY…

As the liturgical year draws to a close, November days remind us of the end of times. The readings these days too remind us of the end of times.

Today’s Gospel sounds a note of caution… We must be ready. Entry into God’s kingdom should not be taken for granted. But we should be up and doing, not burying our treasure in the field.

The Christian way is about dedication to duty and work. It might be prudent to bury the talent in order to ensure it is not lost. But Christianity is not about being careful or being complacent or being lazy.  It is about using our gifts. It is about showing love. In a real sense Jesus is telling us not to be afraid to take a risk, to use our imagination, to take initiatives, to challenge our world and its attitude and values. The talent we have received above all is the Word of God and every one of us is charged with the responsibility to spread that Word, the Good News.

So we have to be up and at it. Using our talents for the good of the community. We have to get on with living, living in the light of Christ. While some might think it best to sit around and wait for the Lord’s Coming, that is not what Paul advises the Thessalonians. There is not much point in waiting because we do not know when the Coming will happen. Much better therefore to be wide awake and sober and preparing.

The Second Coming will mark a new Easter night of eternity… Believers will find the fulfilment of all their baptism means – meeting Christ, they will pass from sleep to wakefulness and from darkness to light. That is worth being ready for!

Fr Tom Curran SMA, Ranelagh, Dublin

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8 November 2020

Wisdom 6.12-16
1 Thessalonians 4.13-18
Matthew 25.1-13

A young woman asked her brother were waiting at an airport to meet her fiancé who was due to arrive at 10pm. The plane was delayed several times and eventually the brother got tired and went home, telling his sister he would be back in time to meet her fiancé and bring them home. But he fell asleep and when he woke up he found that the couple had arrived at the house. It was because the young woman loved her fiancé that she was prepared to wait no matter how long or at what inconvenience to herself.

In Jewish culture, the custom was that the bride would wait with her bridesmaids, normally at the city gate, for the bridegroom to come and then go to her house for the wedding feast. With no mobile phones etc. there was no way of knowing when the bridegroom would arrive.  It would have been a great shame for the bride’s family if she was not ready when the bridegroom arrived no matter how late it was.

In the parable, Jesus tells us that five of the bridesmaids were foolish, as they took no oil with them should the bridegroom be late in arriving, and their lamps would go out as they waited. Five were wise and did take oil. The bridegroom was delayed and the foolish bridesmaids had to go to buy oil as their lamps had gone out. While they were away, the groom arrived, went into the wedding feast with the wise bridesmaids. The door was closed and the foolish ones came too late and were locked out.

The parable is telling us that the Church is a procession of people making their way through life to meet the Lord when he comes. Some keep their lamps of vigilance lit, whilst others neglect to nourish their faith because of many attractions of our modern world which are not Christian or life-giving. The former are actively Christian, the others Christian in name only. So the wise and foolish bridesmaids stand for these two types of Christians: those who hear the word and keep it and those who hear it but do not keep it.

In this parable, Jesus is the bridegroom who will come again to invite us to go with him, IF WE WANT TO. He will not force us, so the question is: ‘in which group of 5 am I? With the wise or with the foolish bridesmaids?  As we wait for Jesus what is the oil that nourishes our waiting for Jesus?  As we age, we may tire of waiting and maybe seek different kinds of oil for our lamps – the oil of pleasure that is not life-giving, of overwork, drink, a love of money, even drugs. We may have good health and think that we’ll be around for a good while yet. But life can be tenuous and there are no guarantees as to the length of life. The second reading of St. Paul says that Christians are people of hope as they await the Resurrection.

But Jesus comes into our lives – not only when we die – but each day through the daily events of our lives. He is constantly reminding us. So when we are asked to help someone and we do, we meet Jesus in that situation. Or we can refuse. When we see so much violence on TV what is it saying to us about the certainty of a long life for us? Ultimately our only security is God. If we are honestly trying to follow Jesus then it doesn’t matter when he comes. So the gospel today is a call to conversion.

Our waiting for Jesus is nothing in comparison to his waiting for us. His delight is that each one of us would respond positively because he wants each and every one of us to be with him.  But he is a gentle God who will not force our response.  If he comes and finds us not waiting for him, not interested enough to prepare for his coming, he will not force us. God never prevents me from going with him to the wedding feast when he comes.  I choose to go or not to go, doing my own thing, not too interested in God or his call.

Jesus is reminding us that there are certain things that cannot remain until the last minute no more than a student would wait for the last minute to start studying for exams. It can be easy for us to leave things too late to prepare for the coming of Jesus. Also, there are certain things we cannot borrow just as the foolish bridesmaids found it impossible to borrow oil. We cannot borrow a relationship with God, we must possess it ourselves through daily fidelity. Even if we fail we can start all over again. God never gives up on waiting for us but we may give up on wanting to be with him. It was the love of the young woman which kept her waiting at the airport. May it be so with us in relation to God.

“Lord Jesus, thank you for wanting each one of us to be with you forever in glory.  Give us your powerful Holy Spirit so that we may fill our lamps with the oil of Faith, Hope and Love as we wait for you. Amen.”

Edited from a homily of the late Fr Jim Kirstein, SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

1 November 2020    
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

The early Church suffered many periods of great persecution. So many were killed for their faith in Christ – martyred – that it was impossible to commemorate each one individually. Eventually, when the Church was given an old Roman Temple dedicated to “all the gods”, the Pantheon became a place to honour “All the Saints” and today’s feast was born.

The entire collection of Roman gods was called the ‘Pantheon’ and in ancient times, you could worship any of the gods whose statues were located in the niches of the building. The Pantheon was converted into a Catholic Church in 609 AD and dedicated to Our Lady and all the Martyrs.

On this feast of All Saints, we honour in a special way all the holy men and women who in their day-to-day lives have been challenged by the Gospel and have lived it generously, some even to the point of dying for it.

Our first reading gives us a vision of the faithful followers of Christ rejoicing in his presence in the heavenly kingdom.

St John, in the second reading, invites us to be attentive to the fact that even in this life we are really and truly children of God. As Christian believers, we belong to God because we have been adopted in Christ. We are God’s children and in case there should be any doubt about it, John adds: ‘and this is what we are.’ We have been born to a new life and share, mysteriously but really, in the life of God. Therefore, we can be sure that each one of us is loved by the Father.

If the unbelieving world does not recognise the true status of Christians, it is because the world doesn’t recognise God either. John means that the world has failed to recognise Jesus.

We have to await the coming of the Lord, to see him ‘as he is’ before we can fully appreciate our own identity, our own Christian reality – and only then, will we see clearly that our future state will be like the glorified state of Jesus.

Moreover, our present relationship with God is only the beginning. Being children of God is a source of hope, but it also demands a response from us. Meanwhile, we must be close to God in prayer, show the qualities of God in our actions – his generosity, forgiveness and openness – and live as witnesses to the love of Christ.

There are three questions we could ask ourselves in the light of what St John writes:

• In the presence of Christ, our eyes will be opened, and we shall then truly understand what God has worked in us. What are the elements you look forward to in heaven?
• Who are the saints who have played a part in your life? In what ways does my sainthood manifest itself?
• How are we supposed to behave as we wait to meet Christ ‘as he really is’? We will be told that in the Beatitudes!

And so we come to St Matthew’s Gospel where he gives us the teaching of Jesus, the ‘Be-attitudes’ of a Christian.  They are the qualities that are to mark the followers of Jesus. They are a summary of the teaching of Jesus. Many have recognised in them a portrait of Jesus himself.

Jesus is laying out a set of values that would be foundational to the kingdom he came to establish, on earth as it is in heaven. The important be-attitudes are poverty of spirit, gentleness, forgiveness, a hunger for justice, a passion for peace, a readiness to suffer in his name. These are very much at variance with pagan or worldly values such as pride, vindictiveness, belligerence, aggrandisement and war.

But more than enunciating a set of values, Jesus is describing (1) the stuff of which saints are made, (2) the characteristics of those who desire to participate in the life that Jesus would live and for which he would die and (3) the kind of people who would be citizens of his kingdom.

Today we rejoice in all the saints of the Church, all the saints in our lives and what is saintly in each of us. We thank God for all the holy women and men who gone before us and those still among us today, who have enriched the Church and the world with their quiet witness to the Gospel, people whose lives are unheralded and whose names are unknown. And if you feel thanked in the process, don’t feel confused!!

Today’s feast includes all the saints who were never canonised: mothers and fathers who stayed faithful to one another and their families; single men and women who did good ‘unseen’; those who found God through the pain they endured; all those who never thought of themselves as holy but whose goodness was clear to those to them. Do I belong there?

We belong to a community that has a history of goodness and fidelity to the Gospel. We are related to those who went before us, those who linked their belief to those who went before them. We are part of a chain of holiness. We belong to the sanctified brethren.

Finally, this feast reminds us that, to the extent that the life of Christ is still with us, we are all saints!! The only question is the extent to which we try to live a godly life as God’s children.

Think of those who have been through it before you,
and just tell  yourself:
‘They did it, so it can be done again.’

This reflection for the Feast of All Saints is taken from a much longer piece written by Sr Philomena McGuinness SSL where she shares some thoughts on the Feast of All Saints and the readings chosen for the Mass of that day. Click here to read the full reflection. Thank you Sr Phil.

For a Homily by Fr Tom Casey SMA  for the Feast of All Saints click on the play icon below.

25 October 2020

Exodus 22:20-27
1 Thessalonians 1:5-10
Matthew 22:34-40

Some people are very good for Church attendance and religious practices. But at home or at work they can be intolerant, tyrannical etc. A story is told of such a man: daily Mass and prayers, goes on pilgrimages etc. But he was a tyrant to his family and employees; intolerant of anyone who did not do what he wanted. His employees lived in fear of him. He certainly claims to love God. Yet this man fails to respond to what Jesus asks in today’s gospel. His response only partly fulfils Jesus’ conditions for pleasing God.

Jesus tells us quite clearly that there are two great commandments. The first being to love God totally with all our being. The second resembles it: to love our neighbour as ourselves. Both are necessary according to Jesus. The man in the story felt he loved God with his whole heart even though he neglected to love his neighbour (his family and employees).

On the other hand, a young woman, raised as a Catholic decides that she is no longer going to Church since she believes that in loving and serving her neighbour she is automatically loving God. Prayers and Mass, celebrating the sacraments, vital expressions of our love of God now have little importance for her.

Both have got it wrong, or [more correctly] neither have it completely right. Both have one aspect of the two in their lives.

Some people emphasize the love of God in such a way that makes the relationship with one’s neighbour secondary. Others prefer to give great importance to serving the neighbour without feeling the need to have a personal relationship with God. Interestingly Jesus does not give us a choice. He says that loving God is the first and greatest commandment. It is from that relationship with God that the second gets its meaning and importance. The two loves are not meant to be conflicting. It is not a question of either one or the other but ‘both and’.

The danger here is that we may think we know better than Jesus. He states very clearly that the two loves are equally important. The reason Jesus emphasizes our need to love God and so be rooted in His Love is that prayer, the Mass etc. are the vital means of enabling us to love the neighbour. In Christianity we cannot be Do It Yourself people, i.e DIYs. We need God’s enabling power, that is, the Holy Spirit. We need to be nourished at the Eucharist and by the Word of God in order to have the capacity, the ability to love our neighbour. Basically, our neighbour according to Jesus’ story of the Good Samaritan is anyone who is in need. This demands a concrete response.

So Christianity is a very concrete and practical religion. It might be easy enough to love God but the simple test of whether we do or not is how do we love, relate to our brothers and sisters. With our blood relatives it might be reasonably easy but what of the widow, orphan and poor person spoken of in the first reading from the Book of Exodus? This Book tells us of the need to be concretely concerned – ‘if you take your neighbour’s cloak as a pledge you must return it before sunset’ etc. The early Church Fathers said that if we have plenty of clothes especially those items we never use and do not share them with the poor we are stealing from them. Strong words indeed. So loving our neighbours as ourselves means loving them as if they are members of our own family, as if they were our own. This is far from easy. How we deal with asylum seekers is a case in point.

The Good News is that Jesus is inviting us to prioritise what our faith, our religion is all about. God gave Moses the 10 commandments. By the time Jesus had appeared there were 613 laws and precepts governing every aspect of human behaviour, even to things like washing one’s hands as far as the elbows on returning from market. Most Jews were enslaved by all these. So Jesus gives priority to the two great loves. He is saying the same to us. If we love God and our neighbour as ourselves and what that means concretely, then that’s all God asks of us. But it is not easy. Yet God can ask this of us because he knows we have the capacity to do so. Is it by going to war against others that will solve the question of terrorism etc.? Jesus offers us the way of love. He asks us to do this wherever we live and with all we encounter.

“Lord Jesus, thank you for loving us. By the grace of the Holy Spirit may we love God and our neighbour as you taught us to. Amen.”

Taken from a Homily of the late Fr. Jim Kirstein, SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

18 October 2020

Together we can do more – blessed are the peacemakers

World Mission Sunday is the Holy Father’s annual direct appeal for spiritual and financial support so that the life-giving work of missionaries can continue.

Isaiah 45:1, 4-6 – I have called you by your name
1 Thessalonians 1:1-5 – the Good News came to you not only as words but as power and as the Holy Spirit
John 17:11, 17-23 – Keep those you have given me, true to your name

Click here to access some very good material produced by World Missions Ireland.
Mission Sunday Mass leaflet.
Prayers of the Faithful for Mission Sunday.

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA

11 October 2020

Isaiah 5:1-7
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 2:33-43

A certain couple had 5 children, 4 of whom were generally pleasing to their parents but one of the boys, now 25, had caused problems down the years. He stole money and was imprisoned twice. He was on drugs and had 3 children with different women. His actions caused great suffering and embarrassment to the family. The relatives and friends encouraged the parents to disown their son. They were frustrated by his reply to this: ‘how can we, he is our son and we love him. Maybe with the passing of time he will change his ways’.

Today’s readings are asking us how we are responding to God’s call. Are we good workers in his vineyard etc.? The Gospel today poses this question. In such parables Jesus is trying to tell us something about who God is and his unconditional love for us.

The owner had prepared everything for the tenant farmers, he has planted the vineyard, put a hedge around it and erected a tower – a symbol of what God does for us in his loving care for us. Are we grateful enough for all that we have received from God.

Next, the vineyard owner, sends his servants to obtain his share of the grapes. We see the terrible response of the tenants. The owner sends more servants, thereby indicating that – despite what they’d done to the first group – he has forgiven the tenants their awful crime. Sadly, the same thing happens. Then, he decides to send his son, thinking that surely the tenants will respect the son. We wonder if the vineyard owner is totally naïve or crazy to risk this after what had previously been done to his servants whom he sent.

Jesus is saying that this is the way God acts towards all of us.

In the Old Testament God sent prophet after prophet and many were persecuted or killed. Finally God in his incredible love for us sends his Son and we know the end result. One wonders is God totally naïve or stupid or what. No wonder St. Paul speaks of ‘the foolish love of God’. The answer of course is that this is God’s nature: ‘God is love’ according to 1 John 4.8. He is not a vindictive God or a punishing God but trying in so many different ways to show how much he loves and cares for us.

The last part of the parable is a question to the listeners and we see their reply: punish them.

But God’s response is very different. The very Son of God killed on the cross will become the very Saviour of us all. However, God wants to bring about his kingdom here on earth and if some people refuse to cooperate with God he will choose others in their place not as punishment but simply that they will bear the fruit that will help to bring about his kingdom’.

What is the parable saying to me personally about who God is? What is my response?

Taken from a homily of the late Fr. Jim Kirstein, SMA

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4 October 2020 – What more can I do?

Isaiah 5:1-7
Philippians 4:6-9
Matthew 21:33-43

The Jewish people looked on themselves as the Vineyard of the Lord, God’s Chosen People. In today’s first Reading, God speaks to his people in great pain because they have proven to be so ungrateful. Many a parent today might utter the same cry as they experience ingratitude from one of their children.

“What could I have done for my vineyard that I have not done ?  I expected it to yield grapes. Why did it yield sour grapes instead.”

In the Gospel, Jesus speaks to his hearers, the scribes and Pharisees, about the parable on the Vineyard. These same scribes and Pharisees have rejected God’s Son.

Overall the readings speak of the rejection that our Heavenly Father experienced from his chosen people. Today we are God’s chosen people – we are the tenants in the vineyard – I am a chosen daughter / son of God. A day will come when I too will have to give an account of my stewardship. Today’s reading remind me that I should ask what kind of fruit am I producing?

Does God and the things of God come first in my life?
Am I aware of God’s constant love and kindness towards me?
Do I return God’s love by the love I have for others?
Do I show them the same kind of love, forgiveness and compassion that God reaches out to me, again and again.

If not, today is the time to start again…

Edited from a Reflection of Fr Eddie Deeney, SMA

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27 September 2020

Ezekiel 18:25-28
Philippians 2:1-11
Matthew 21:28-32

Today’s Gospel reminds us of how people can change their minds, or their way of life, for good or for evil. There are many such accounts in the Gospel: from Joseph who had decided to divorce Mary informally, to Mary Magdalene; from the woman caught in adultery to Peter the anointed leader who denied Jesus three times; from the doubting Thomas who declared he would not believe unless… to Judas Iscariot, one of the chosen twelve. 

In today’s Gospel we find the two sons, each doing the opposite to what they declare; while Jesus tells us that tax collectors and prostitutes paid attention to John the Baptist and they changed too.

There is plenty of common ground between those bible figures and our own fickle behaviour. 

One day we can be full of fervour and keen to profess our Christian faith, come what may. The next we can’t pray. We ask where is the God of yesterday? Does he exist at all? Is all our time wasted? Those who reject belief, faith, Church, religion and moral responsibility continue life as contented, apparently, as everyone else. Many of them were our classmates with whom we received our First Holy Communion and Confirmation. They don’t darken the door of the Church anymore. They changed their minds!

Of all the gifts given to us by God, the freedom of choice is perhaps the greatest. We’re not pre-determined beings; our choices are sacred and are literally our making, our doing and un-doing.

When we respond positively to God’s grace as also reflected in the best and noblest inspirations and aspirations of our environment, we’re shaping ourselves more firmly in the image and likeness of God our Creator.

Part of the challenge of our day is to ignore the choices made by others and content ourselves with our own good choices which uplift, and determine a better tomorrow for ourselves and society.

Let us pray for those who have changed their minds or way of life and turned away from God. May they experience afresh the fervour of their early faith and experience anew God’s gifts of peace and joy.

Edited from a Reflection of Fr Maurice Henry

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13 September 2020

Ecclesiasticus 27:30 – 28.7
Romans 14:7 – 9
Matthew 18:21 – 35

Today’s gospel follows on from the gospel of last Sunday, speaking about the need for reconciliation. Today’s gospel emphasizes more directly the great need to forgive. In today’s parable, the king calls his servants in order to settle his accounts with them. The first servant owes the king the equivalent of 3 million Euros in today’s currency. This shows up the incredible generosity of a king who loaned such an immense sum knowing the servant would have difficulty in repaying it. Nonetheless, the king is prepared to risk it in order to help this servant. If the debt was not repaid, the servant would be thrown into prison until it was repaid. But the king goes even further when the servant begs for more time to pay. Amazingly, he feels so sorry for the servant that he cancels all the debt.

This reminds us of God’s great generosity, giving each of us so many talents and gifts. Even if we have misused them or squandered them, God is always prepared to forgive us when we turn to Him seeking forgiveness.

The servant whose debt was forgiven leaves the king’s presence and meets a fellow servant who owed him the equivalent of about 15 Euros. This was a pittance in comparison to what he had been forgiven by the king. And what does he do? He refuses to give his fellow servant the time to repay and even tries to choke him before sending him to prison.

The other servants were scandalized at what happened and told the king who now deals severely with the first servant. He reminded him that the very least he could have done was to forgive the other as he himself had been forgiven. Now he pays the price for such unforgiving behaviour.

The message of the parable is fairly obvious. God forgives each of us over and over again, as we turn to him for forgiveness, in proportion to our forgiveness of one another. Have we any other choice then in view of this than to forgive others who ask us to do so?

In the second reading from St. Paul to the Romans, we are told that the life and death of each one of us has its influence on others. Our Christian vocation is, among other things, to witness to God’s forgiveness to ourselves by doing the same for others. How can others know the forgiveness of God if they do not see us Christians practising it?

Forgiveness is at the very heart of who God is. Pope Francis said that another name for God is mercy! If someone we love does something hurtful our first [human] reaction may be anger but usually this gives way to forgiveness because of our love for the other. However, if someone we really don’t like does the same deed, it will be usually harder to forgive that person because we don’t have the same love for them as for someone close to us.

If we refuse to forgive someone, this will ‘eat into us’ and will rob us of that peace which Christ wishes us at every Mass: Peace I leave you, my own peace I give you….. We cannot experience God’s peace if we’re holding anger or hurt within us. We have to let go of it, even if we may never be able to forget what happened. But we can forgive… and sometimes we may never get any further than wanting to do so – but that is the first step and without the first step you’ll never make the second one.

If anyone had the right to refuse to forgive it was Jesus, hanging on the cross, unjustly condemned and crucified. We all know his reaction: ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they are doing’.

‘Lord, you are always ready to forgive me if I turn to you. Help me to forgive others – and myself when need be – so that I may truly experience the peace you want for me in this life and in the life to come. Amen’

edited from a homily of the late Fr Jim Kirstein SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA 

6 September 2020

Ezekiel 33:7-9
Romans 13:8-10
Matthew 18:15-20

Correction in a Christian way…

Many people today are involved in a process called Lectio Divina – trying to make the Word of God more alive by reflecting on a particular reading from the Bible and trying to see what application it might have for their individual lives. Some parishes have groups who do this for the readings at Sunday Mass. When people have reflected on the readings beforehand, they are more attentive to it when proclaimed in the bigger community gathering!

It is said that the word of God wants to speak to us every time it is proclaimed.  Yet how often we hear it said “I got nothing from Mass today!”  Perhaps we take away nothing because we have not prepared ourselves to hear God speaking.

There is a valuable message in what Jesus says in the Gospel today… “If your brother does something wrong, go and have it out with him alone, between your two selves.”

Jesus wants issues resolved in a way that both parties respect preserve the dignity of each other.

He goes on… “If he does not listen, take one or two others along with you: the evidence of two or three witnesses is required to sustain any charge.”

The voice of two or three may bring more weight and help the parties to realize that there is a better way forward.  But again there must be respect and concern.

Finally, Jesus tells us… “If he refuses to listen to the community, treat him like a pagan or a tax collector.”

Harsh!!! Yes, but treating the brother [or a sister] as an outcast may help him see the error of his ways and bring about conversion, much like the Prodigal Son came to his senses and sought forgiveness when he realized the wrong he had chosen. What is often called ‘tough love’ with regard to people who have an addiction and their family have to let them go to the bottom before they can begin to get up and begin the road to recovery!

While alone with our brokenness, Gods’ light can shine and enable us to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit saying, “Come back to me even in your brokenness, and I will make you whole.”

In treating with others we must see them as sisters and brothers, children of God like each of us, and, just like each of us, needing direction in our life’s journey.

 Fr John Gallagher SMA

Click on the play button below to listen to an alternative homily from Fr Tom Casey SMA