Celebrating At Home

Viernes, 09 Diciembre 2022 06:59

Celebrating At Home - 3rd Sunday of Advent

Are you the one?
(Matthew 11:2-11)

This Sunday marks the turning point in the Advent Season. Traditionally called Gaudete Sunday it is a day of rejoicing that the Saviour is near. The focus shifts from the final coming of Christ at the end of time to the first coming of Christ at Bethlehem. The note of joy is symbolised by the inclusion of the colour rose among the purple of the Season.
The joyful first reading from the prophet Isaiah proclaims that God is on his way to save his people.
This coming brings healing and rejoicing and an end to sorrow and lament.
Using images of farmers and prophets, the letter of St James urges patience in our waiting for God. A kind of patient certainty is the attitude of the disciple.
Perhaps it is actually us who are slow in responding to God; slow in letting the message of the Gospel and the Holy Spirit transform our lives so that we too might have power to bring healing and joy. In the Gospel Jesus fulfils the prophecy of the first reading about the Messiah. John the Baptist asks, “Are you the one who is to come, or have we got to wait for someone else?” The words of Jesus clarify his identity and that of John the Baptist. Jesus comes, not as the kind of warrior-messiah, slaughtering and slashing, but as ‘the kindness of God’, tending the sheep, healing and liberating the needy - the blind see again, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, and the dead are raised to life and the Good News is proclaimed to the poor.
But is Jesus the ‘one’ for us, or are we really waiting for someone or something else to save us?
Our Christmas can’t simply be about Jesus’ birth a long time ago, celebrating an historical anniversary. It has to be more than that - the celebration of a fresh discovery of an ever-deepening presence of Christ in each of us.
Rejoice! God is not only ‘on his way’, he is already here!

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Celebrating At Home

Viernes, 02 Diciembre 2022 13:53

Celebrating At Home - 2nd Sunday of Advent

Prepare a way for the Lord
(Matthew 3:1-12)

The magnificent first reading from the prophet Isaiah this weekend looks forward to the appearance of one ‘on whom the spirit of the Lord rests – a spirit of wisdom and insight, counsel and power and knowledge of the fear of the Lord’.
He gives judgement in favour of the poor. His judgement is not influenced by appearances or hearsay. He judges with integrity. His word strikes the ruthless and his sentences bring death to wickedness.
In his day extraordinary things happen: ‘the wolf lies with the lamb…’ All creation is at peace. Even natural enemies (symbolised by the animals) live together in peace. No hurt or harm is done because the whole country ‘is filled with the knowledge of the Lord’. John the Baptist sits at the centre of this week’s Gospel and next week’s. He is the ‘one who cries in the wilderness: Prepare a way for the Lord; make his paths straight’.
John was preparing the people for the coming of Jesus.
Moved by his preaching many sought baptism in the river Jordan. This ancient water-rite symbolised dying to the old way of life and rising to a new way of life.
That’s what repentance is about: turning away from sin and turning towards God. It is about true conversion of heart. It’s about making straight the pathways of our hearts. The fruit of our repentance and true conversion shows itself in good works.
Our preparation for the coming ‘day of the Lord’ is a continual cycle of dying and rising; of turning away from sin and towards God; of remaking our minds and hearts after the mind and heart of Christ. The good works we do give Christ presence, form and shape in the concrete reality of human life. So, Christian life is a constant act of preparation through repentance and good works.
Christmas is not just about the birth of Jesus long ago.
It’s also about giving birth to him in our lives every day.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 24 Noviembre 2022 16:09

Celebrating At Home - 1st Sunday of Advent

Stay awake
(Matthew 24:37-44)

The great Advent journey begins. The Advent readings are a rich tapestry of images centered on the truth that God has come among us. We do not pretend that we are waiting for Jesus to be born in a stable. That happened once, a long time ago, and it will not happen again. We remember that birth as we remember our own birthdays.

The God who came among us is still among us. Advent’s invitation is to become aware of the all- pervading presence of the risen Jesus as Emmanuel – God among us.

In the first reading this Sunday Isaiah captures the sense of God’s presence among his people through the images of the high mountain and the Temple – the dwelling place of God among his people. The people’s response in the reading is to be drawn into God’s presence ‘that he may teach us his ways’ and ‘we may walk in his paths’, and be utterly transformed into a new way of living (making swords into ploughshares, etc). In the second reading St Paul reminds the Romans that they are already living in ‘the time’. They should ‘wake up now’ and ‘live decently as people do in the daytime’.

The early Christians believed that Jesus would return very soon as the Lord of Glory. As time passed, they had to re-think this belief and work out how to live in the meantime, the time in between the first and final comings of Christ. That’s our challenge, too.

This week’s Gospel calls us to “Stay awake”, to be vigilant and attentive to the signs of the times so that we do not miss the moment when God breaks into human history once again. The God who came among us is still among us. In Advent we train our eyes to
see the reign of God more clearly so that we may be totally caught up in God’s action in the world as we wait for the final manifestation of God’s glory.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 17 Noviembre 2022 07:54

Celebrating At Home - The Royal Shepherd

The royal shepherd
(Luke 23:35-43)

On this last Sunday of the Church’s year we celebrate the Feast of Christ, the King. Today is a day to give thanks to God for all the blessings received during the past year. Most of all, we thank God for the great gift of his son. We celebrate Christ as King of the Universe and look forward to the coming of his kingdom in all its fullness at the end of time.

We are also conscious of the reign of God here and now. The Preface of today’s mass says that Christ’s kingdom is

‘a kingdom of truth and life,
a kingdom of holiness and grace,
a kingdom of justice, love, and peace’.

Whenever we act like Christ, the Kingdom of God breaks into our world. Whenever we are moved by the Spirit to proclaim the truth, to respond to need, to work for justice, to transform and heal our society, the Kingdom of God breaks into human reality and the grace of God becomes clearly visible in our words and actions. May we be a people who always seek to bring the reign of God’s goodness into our world. That would be the very best way of celebrating this feast.

The first reading from the book of Samuel tells the story of David’s election as king of Israel. Under David all the twelve tribes of Israel gathered to form one kingdom. The reading recalls God’s commission to David to be ‘shepherd of my people Israel’. David is not to lord it over his people, but to be a shepherd to them.

Like David, Christ comes to gather all people into the one Kingdom of God. He, too, acts as a shepherd-king to God’s people.
The Gospel illustrates this clearly. Here is a king who gives up his life for his people. He has no fine clothes. His throne is the cross. His crown is made of thorns, not of gold. Even in the throes of death faith and forgiveness are at work and entry into the kingdom of God gained and granted. Indeed, the final act of the dying King Jesus is to grant forgiveness, mercy and admission to the kingdom – a gospel within the Gospel.

The Gospel readings throughout Ordinary time have lead us on a journey of accompanying Jesus on his earthly journey, listening to him unfold God’s desire for the human family, watching him restore health and wholeness to many, being taught how to pray properly, to be aware that the Kingdom is both ‘here and now’ and ‘yet to come’, the lengths God goes to in order to win us back, and how God meets us with mercy, forgiveness, healing and peace.

Our journey has been about discovering who God is and therefore, who Jesus is, and therefore, who we are called to be when we enter into a faithful relationship with him.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 10 Noviembre 2022 08:41

Celebrating At Home - 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Not so soon
(Luke 21:5-19)

Passages of Scripture, like today’s Gospel, can leave us feeling disturbed.
Talk of destruction, wars, revolutions, persecution and betrayal by close family members can be quite unsettling.
We have to read the Gospel as Luke’s community would have received it, knowing that the Temple and Jerusalem had already been destroyed (ca 70AD) at the end of the Jewish-Roman war, some 10-20 years before Luke’s Gospel was written. In the light of that destruction, and the ongoing persecution by both Romans and Jews, perhaps many in Luke’s community thought the end was near.
Looking at the world today many of us, too, are dismayed by the wars, persecutions and destruction in our own day.
Like Luke’s community, perhaps we, too, long for a saviour to come to our rescue, to make it all right. Maybe that is why so many are prepared to put their trust in harsh dictators who promise to make things right and restore a sense of control and national identity, even at the expense of basic human rights.
The words which Luke places on the lips of Jesus are designed to comfort and give hope. Jesus warns them not to listen to those who think they know God’s plan for the end of time – rather, they should know that God is with them always and no matter what happens.
The Church must continue its journey (persevere) in spite of all sorts of difficulties and persecutions. Like Jesus, the disciples will be vindicated by God with the gift of eternal life.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 03 Noviembre 2022 08:22

Celebrating At Home - 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

A work in progress
(Luke 20:27-38)

In this episode from Luke’s Gospel, it is the Sadducees, rather than the Pharisees, who confront Jesus. Like the Pharisees, the Sadducees were a Jewish sect. They rejected much of what the Pharisees believed in, including the possibility of life after death.
The rather ridiculous scenario they put to Jesus in today’s Gospel was meant to show how ridiculous belief in resurrection was.
Part of the flaw in their scenario was the assumption that life after death would be the same as life is now, with the same conditions applying. So, they based their scenario on marriage in this world in order to ask the question about whose wife the woman would be in the next.
Without ridiculing their beliefs, Jesus says that in the risen life we are dealing with a totally new situation, one not governed by the laws of this life.
Then Jesus also uses a quote from Moses to show that Moses himself implies that the dead rise again.
Jesus’ proclamation of the ‘God of the living’ gives us the right context for viewing eternal life. Not as separate to, but as a continuation of the relationship with God we already live here. This also helps make sense of the Kingdom or Reign of God as already being present among us – not just as something yet to come.
God’s life in us is a work in progress. The disciples of Jesus live the life of the Kingdom now to the extent that they share in the life of God and can enable that reign of God’s grace to be experienced by others through the good deeds they do.
Eternal life is not something yet to come, but something we have already begun to live here and now.

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Celebrating At Home

Viernes, 28 Octubre 2022 06:32

Celebrating At Home - 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time

Making assumptions
(Luke 19:1-10)

It is all too easy to make assumptions about other people which turn out not to be accurate. In the Gospel today, the crowd assumes that Zacchaeus is wicked and sinful, a traitor to his people because he is a tax collector.
The scene for the Gospel is, as usual, set by the first reading from the Book of Wisdom – in praise of a God whose love for what he has created allows him to overlook sins. God is all-powerful and all-merciful, the lover of all he creates and the lover of all life, ‘whose imperishable spirit is in all’. God corrects his people through forgiveness, drawing people away from evil and towards trust in himself.
This loving, forgiving action of God is on show in the Gospel story. Where we might have expected Jesus’ to condemn Zacchaeus, as the crowds do by excluding him and labelling him a ‘sinner’, Jesus recognises the good that Zacchaeus does even in his so-called ‘sinful’ situation (being a tax collector on behalf of the Roman government). Salvation does not lie in appearing to be good, but in being good. Such a person is truly a ‘son of Abraham’ – one of God’s chosen.
It might be helpful to note here that in Zacchaeus’ speech about intending to give half of his property to the poor and so on, the verbs are usually translated into future tense, as in the version which appears here. In the original Greek manuscripts, however, the verbs are unambiguously in the present tense. So Zacchaeus is describing how he presently conducts his life – a defence against the condemnation of the crowd that he is a ‘sinner’ and a traitor.
It is the crowd who turns out to be ‘what was lost’, not Zacchaeus.
Read against the background of Luke’s community, the story raises questions about judging on appearances, who is truly at rights with God, who is truly the sinner. An echo of last week’s parable about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector.
Most of all, building from the first reading, it is a story about the God who does not judge and punish as we would, but who loves, forgives, heals and reconciles people to one another.
When Jesus pronounces Zacchaeus a ‘son of Abraham’ he removes the barrier between the crowd and Zacchaeus and reconciles them.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 20 Octubre 2022 10:26

Celebrating At Home - 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time

We’ve all met them!
(Luke 18:9-14)

We’ve all met them: people who only seem to be able to bolster their self-image by putting everyone else down. We meet such a character in the Pharisee in the Gospel for this Sunday.

Like the Pharisee in this week’s Gospel, we can sometimes see religion as a set of personal rituals, actions and prayers that cause us to think we have been faithful to God’s calling because we have done this or that.

Spirituality, however, is about practising our ‘faith’ with a profound sense of God’s presence, God’s love for us, and ours for one another. We live work and pray out of our relationship with God, deeply aware of God’s gift of abiding love and mercy that surrounds us.

The background for the Gospel is set in the First Reading from Ecclesiasticus (35:12-14, 16-19) – God’s judgement is not fooled by outward appearances of wealth, or power, or religious shows of piety. God cannot be fooled into judging against the injured, the poor, the widow or orphan.

It is the person ‘who with his whole heart serves God’ whose prayers are accepted.

The parable in this Gospel, we are told, is addressed to ‘people who prided themselves on being virtuous and despised everyone else’.

The Pharisee (people well respected due to their personal piety) prays to God, reminding God (and himself) what a good person he is and all the religious things he has done. He has thus fulfilled the duties of a ‘religious’ and ‘righteous’ person – unlike, he says, the tax collector.

However, the tax collector (considered a sinner in Jesus’ time), doesn’t see himself worthy to even lift his eyes to God and acknowledges that he has sinned and considers himself unworthy to be in the presence of God. But, as Jesus says, he leaves the temple ‘at rights with God’. His relationship with God is from the heart. Overcome with a deep awareness of God’s love for him, and his own unworthiness of it, he does not dare to even lift up his eyes. Whereas the Pharisee, through his lack of humility and apparent self-righteousness, leaves assuming that he is at rights with God.

Our prayer and worship should never be empty words or merely symbolic actions. They must truly come from our hearts and so lead us not only into a deeper relationship with God but also into the willing service of all.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 13 Octubre 2022 14:03

Celebrating At Home - 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Don’t give up!
(Luke 18:1-8)

Jesus tells this story of a persistent widow who wins the day against an unjust judge. St Luke says that the story is “about the need to pray continually and never lose heart”. God is not like the unjust judge, who delays in answering and finally gives in only when threatened. God will hear and answer the persistent cry of his people.
We, too, can be tempted to lose heart as we live in the midst of the evils of our own day. When will there be justice for the poor, the hungry, the disabled, and the disadvantaged, we wonder.
Sometimes in prayer, we realise that we are called to play our part with concrete actions which help to relieve the suffering of others. We know we cannot do it all by ourselves, but perhaps there is something that we can do.
St Luke uses this story to encourage his community of believers – to urge them not to lose heart as, surrounded by the evils of their day, they wait for the return of Jesus. They should keep faith and rely always on God’s goodness. Their persistence in prayer is an expression of their trust in God. Perhaps their prayer will show them what to do as they wait.
Just as Moses keeps faith with God in the battle against the Amalekites (first reading), so the disciples must remain in a faithful relationship with God. Prayer, understood as nourishing our relationship with God, rather than ‘saying prayers’, keeps us in this faithful relationship with God as we wait for Jesus’ return. That is the kind of faith Jesus wonders about in the final sentence.

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Celebrating At Home

Jueves, 06 Octubre 2022 10:41

Celebrating At Home - 28th Sunday in Ordinary Time

An invitation for all
(Luke 17:11-19)

A major theme in St Luke’s Gospel is that the message of Jesus is for all: men and women, rich and poor, old and young, healthy and sick, gentile and Jew. No one is excluded.
It is no accident that the one grateful leper in this week’s Gospel is not a Jew but a Samaritan – an outsider, excluded by race, religion and his illness. He joins the others in asking a Jewish Rabbi for mercy.
In curing the ten lepers, Jesus gives them back to their families, their communities, their religious practice. No longer confined to isolated places for fear of spreading disease, they are free to take up their lives again. In short, as well as healing them physically, Jesus gives them back their lives.
All ten are cured, but only one, the Samaritan, fully experiences his healing as a moment of salvation; a moment when the mercy of God has broken into his life. Jesus says that it is the Samaritan’s faith that enables him to see what the other nine do not. The man is so moved by this realisation that he turns back to Jesus breaking into shouts of joy, praising God at the top of his voice.
The Samaritan’s faith has drawn him deeper into his relationship with God who heals him and sets him free. And that is God’s great desire for each of us.
The way of Jesus (and, therefore, of his disciples) is not to exclude, but to proclaim God as the God of all by working for healing, restoration and the good of all people. And to recognise and celebrate the presence of God we read in the concrete realities of our lives.