REFLECTION FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

In 1987 there was a massive drought in Natal, so much so that water was not merely restricted, but actually rationed to 400 litres per day per household. When it broke there were extremely violent thunderstorms, such as we had not seen for a very long time. I remember it vividly, for I had the terrifying experience of flying through one in a little Boeing 737 on my way back to Durban to be ordained to the priesthood. One of the striking things about those storms was how, well after the skies had cleared, the seas continued to batter the coast. The sea was by no means calm once the storms had abated.

We can miss this detail in the story of today’s gospel. Jesus rebukes the storm and it subsides. We are told that “the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.” A sceptical person might see Jesus’ rebuke and the cessation of the storm as coincidental. But there is nothing natural about the sudden calm. As the storm ceases, the energy of the waves subsides. Since there were fishermen amongst the disciples in the boat, men who knew the sea of Galilee well, this would not have been lost on them. Look at their response: “…even wind and waves obey him.” They are in awe at the sheer scale of the work  that Jesus has just performed, and of what that implies about who he is.

Jews, and therefore Jesus’ disciples,  were not at all sceptical about miraculous events; indeed, these were acknowledged signs of the presence and reality of God’s power. But the miracles of the Jewish healers consisted largely of healings and exorcisms. Already in the multiplication of the loaves, as well as later in the raising of Lazarus described in John’s Gospel, Jesus shows extraordinary powers over nature, far beyond those of his contemporaries. But to calm a storm and the waves of the sea with merely a command? Only God is capable of such power, and they realise it in no uncertain terms. Those of them who were familiar with the book of Job would have recognised in this event the words of God to Job: “Who shut in the sea with doors…and said, ‘thus far shall you come, and no further’.” Or perhaps the words of Isaiah, “…if you pass through raging waters in the sea, you shall not drown…” The suddenness with which the violence of the waves subsided was witness to them of the total power of God over his creation.

We would do well to recognise this truth in our daily lives. We all pass through storms; in our families, our work, our finances. We are confronted with crime, violence, all the threats to our children. Sometimes these figurative seas threaten to capsize us. It is essential not to forget that Jesus, now as then, is with us, even though he seems to be asleep in the stern as our little boats are tossed about by the storms that surround us. But he blesses and protects those whom he loves, and who love him. The answer is total surrender to his will. We need to place our whole lives in his hands, to follow and obey him in all that he asks of us. In his own words as we have them in John’s gospel: “In the world you will have sorrows. But be brave; I have already conquered the world.” 

Fr Phillip

POPE FRANCIS GENERAL AUDIENCE 17 JUNE 2015

“We can console one another in this faith, knowing that the Lord has conquered death once and for all.”

In the course of catecheses on the family, today we take direct

inspiration from the episode narrated by the Evangelist Luke, which we have just heard (cf. Luke 7:11-15). It is a very moving scene, which shows us Jesus’ compassion for one who suffers -- in this case a widow who has lost her only son -- and it shows us also Jesus’ power over death.

Death is an experience that concerns all families, without any exception. It is a part of life and yet, when it touches family affections, death never seems to appear to us as natural. For parents, to survive their children is something particularly excruciating, which contradicts the elementary nature of relations that give meaning to the family itself. The loss of a son or a daughter is as if time stood still: a chasm opens that swallows the past and also the future. Death, which takes away a small child or youth, is a slap to the promises, to the gifts and sacrifices of love joyfully given to the life that we made to be born. So often parents come to Mass at Saint Martha’s with the photo of a son, a daughter, a baby, a boy, a girl, and they say to me: “he is gone.” Their look is so sorrowful, and death does touch us. And when it is a child, it touches us profoundly. The whole family remains as though paralyzed, dumb. And the child that remains alone, because of the loss of a parent, or of both, also suffers something similar. The question: “But where is Daddy?” “Where is Mommy?” -- In Heaven -- “But why can’t I see him?” -- the question that covers the anguish of the little boy or the little girl. He remains alone. The void of abandonment that opens within him is all the more anguishing because of the fact that he does not even have the sufficient experience to “give a name” to what has happened. “When is Daddy coming back?” “When is Mommy coming back?” What can one answer? The child suffers. Death in a family is like this.

In these cases, death is like a black hole that opens in the life of families and to which we are unable to give an explanation. And sometimes one even blames God.

But how many people -- I understand them -- get angry with God, curse: “Why have you taken my son, my daughter? But God isn’t! God doesn’t exist! Why has he done this?” We have heard this so often; however, this anger is what comes, somewhat, from the heart of a great sorrow. The loss of a son, of a daughter, of the father, of the mother is a great sorrow, and this happens continually in families.

In these cases, I have said that death is almost like a hole. However, physical death has “accomplices,” which are even worse than it is, and which are called hatred, envy, pride, avarice, in sum, the sin of the world that works for death and renders it even more painful and unjust. Family affections seem like the predestined and defenseless victims of these auxiliary powers of death, which accompany the history of man. We think of the absurd “normality” with which, in certain moments and in certain places, the events that add horror to death are caused by the hatred and the indifference of other human beings. May the Lord deliver us from becoming used to this!

In the People of God, with the grace of his compassion given in Jesus, many families demonstrate with facts that death does not have the last word. And this is a real act of faith. Every time that a family in mourning -- even terrible -- finds the strength to protect the faith and love that unites us to those we love, it impedes death, already now, from taking everything. The darkness of death is confronted with a more intense work of love. “My God, lighten my darkness!” -- is the invocation of the liturgy of the evening. In the light of the Resurrection of the Lord, who does not abandon any one of those that the Father has entrusted to him, we can take away from death its “sting,” as the Apostle Paul says (1 Corinthians 15:55); we can impede its poisoning our life, rendering our affections vain, making us fall into the darkest void.

We can console one another in this faith, knowing that the Lord has conquered death once and for all. Our dear ones have not disappeared into the darkness of nothingness: hope assures us that they are in the good and strong hands of God. Love is stronger than death. Therefore, the way is to make love grow, to render it more solid, and love will protect us until the day in which every tear will be wiped away, when “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any more” (Revelation 21:4). If we let ourselves be sustained by this faith, the experience of bereavement can generate a stronger solidarity of family bonds, a new openness to the sorrow of other families, a new fraternity with the families that are born and reborn in hope.

To be born and reborn in hope! – this is what faith gives us. However, I would like to underscore the last phrase of the Gospel we heard today. After Jesus brings this young man back to life, son of the mother who was a widow, the Gospel says: “Jesus gave him to his mother.” And this is our hope! All our dear ones who have gone -- all -- the Lord will restore to us and we will meet together with them. And this hope does not disappoint. Let us remember well this gesture of Jesus! “Jesus gave him to his mother.” Jesus will do this with all our dear ones in the family.

This faith, this hope protects us from the nihilist view of death, as well as from the false consolations of the world, so that the Christian truth “does not risk mixing itself with mythologies of various sorts,” yielding to rites of superstition, ancient or modern” (Benedict XVI, Angelus, November 2, 2008).

Today it is necessary that Pastors and all Christians express more concretely the meaning of faith in dealing with the family’s experience of bereavement. The right to weep should not be denied. We must weep in mourning. Jesus also “wept and was “profoundly moved” by the grave mourning of a family he loved (John 11:33-37). Rather, we can draw from the simple and strong witness of so many families who, in the very hard passage of death, were also able to pick up the secure passage of the Lord, crucified and risen, with his irrevocable promise of the resurrection of the dead. The work of the love of God is stronger than the work of death. It is precisely of that love of which we must make ourselves active “accomplices” with our faith! And let us remember that gesture of Jesus: “And Jesus gave him to his mother.” He will do this with all our dear ones and with us when we shall meet, when death is definitively defeated in us -- and defeated by the cross of Jesus.

Jesus will restore all families. Thank you.

FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART OF JESUS

On Sunday we commemorated the patronal feast of the cathedral and of the diocese: that of the Sacred Heart of Jesus. 

Fr Cyriacus celebrated the 9.00am Mass where an image of the Sacred Heart was blessed after the reading of the Gospel. After Communion the entire congregation processed to the to the end of our driveway (also known as Green Street), led by the Brothers of the Blessed Sacrament, the Catholic Women's League and the Knights of da Gama.

 

  

When the procession reached the bottom of the hill, we paused and prayed over the city, entrusting it to the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

 Thereafter, the procession returned to the Cathedral.

After the procession the congregation gathered in the Cathedral again for the final blessing and dismissal. On their way out all were given a memento of the day:

REFLECTION ON THE FEAST OF THE SACRED HEART

The heart is a central symbol of both Judaism and Christianity. The ancients believed that the heart, rather than the brain, was the locus of our thought. Cerebral thinking in the modern sense was unknown to them. Thoughts, for them, were passionate ideas. “A heart to know thee,” as Eugene Cuskelly put it in his Summa of the Spiritual Life. In the case of Christianity, love of God, and in particular of the Risen Lord Jesus, is the core of a profound wisdom. Once again, the heart, with its capacity to feel, is the locus of Christian thought.

In St Philip Neri, the heart is also the home of the Holy Spirit within us. Love is linked to the Holy Spirit and the joy that He brings. Philip would pray in the catacombs at night. While he was praying on the eve of Pentecost, he experienced the Holy Spirit entering him as a globe of fire, coming to rest within his heart. So intense was the joy it brought him, that he was barely able to endure it. He became the supreme saint of the Holy Spirit, the saint of joy par excellence, whose motto, from Psalm 100, was “Serve the Lord with gladness.”

At moments of intensity, his heartbeat would thunder, and such was the heat it generated, according to contemporary witnesses, that even in winter he kept his windows open. It was also said by contemporaries that, when disturbed people were pressed against his chest, they experienced comfort and peace. When he died, a post-mortem examination revealed that his heart had enlarged to twice its normal size, and that several ribs had burst outward in order to accommodate it. On the coat-of-arms of many Oratories is a flaming heart. The flames are frequently stylised into a fleur-de-lis, which was on his family’s coat-of-arms.

The joy of the Lord is a sign of the true presence of the Spirit within the human heart. It is fashionable today, as in many eras, to think that sadness and sorrow are the most profound emotions, that tragedy is deeper than comedy. But this is not so. Aristotle took comedy very seriously as a profound mode of expression. Even an atheist philosopher like Nietzsche had a strong intuition that “joy is deeper than grief”, that “all joy seeks eternity.” Real joy is not mere happiness; it is a deep-seated emotion that flows from the very presence of God within us. No-one knew this better than Philip Neri. Life in eternity with God is joy without end. With his famous cry, “Paradiso! Paradiso!” Philip affirmed this. On this feast of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, then, we remember that we are made for joy; deep joy, beyond all sorrow. And in the example of Philip Neri, we recall that the gift of the Holy Spirit, which we have all received, can and will bring to us to a joy which is beyond all grief, and which will lead us into eternity with God.

Fr. Phillip

POPE FRANCIS' GENERAL AUDIENCE 10 JUNE

We continue with the catecheses on the family, and in this catechesis I would like to touch on a very common aspect in the life of our families, that of sickness. It is an experience of our fragility, which we live in the main in the family, as children and then, especially, as elderly, when infirmities arrive. In the ambit of family bonds, the sickness of persons that we love is endured with “more” suffering and anguish. It is love that makes us feel this “more.” So often it is more difficult for a father and a mother to endure the sickness of a son, of a daughter than their own. The family, we can say, has always been the closest “hospital.” Even today, in many parts of the world, the hospital is a privilege for a few, and it is often far away. It is the mother, the father, brothers, sisters and grandparents that guarantee care and help to heal.

In the Gospel, many pages narrate Jesus’ meetings with the sick and his commitment to heal them. He presents himself publicly as one who fights against sickness and who has come to heal man from every illness: the illness of the spirit and the illness of the body. The evangelical scene just referred to in Mark’s Gospel is truly moving. It says thus:  “that evening, at sundown, they brought to him all who were sick or possessed with demons” (Mark 1:32). If I think of great contemporary cities, I wonder where the doors are where the sick can be taken hoping that they will be cured! Jesus never removed himself from their cure. He never passed by, he never turned his face elsewhere. And when a father or a mother, or simply friendly persons brought him a sick person for him to touch and heal, he lost no time; healing came before the law, even the very sacred one of rest on the Sabbath (cf. Mark 3:1-6). The Doctors of the law rebuked Jesus because he healed on the Sabbath, he did good on the Sabbath. But Jesus’ love was to give health, to do good: and this is always in the first place!

Jesus sends his disciples to carry out his own work and he gives them the power to heal, namely, to come close to the sick and heal them completely (cf. Matthew 10:1). We must have well in mind what he says to the disciples in the episode of the man born blind (John 9:1-5). The disciples – with the blind man in front of them there! – argued about who had sinned, because he was born blind, he or his parents, to cause his blindness. The Lord says clearly: neither he nor his parents; he is thus so that God’s works are manifested in him. And he healed him. See God’s glory! See the task of the Church! To help the sick, not to get lost in chatter, but to help always, to console, to relieve, to be close to the sick; this is the task.

The Church invites to continuous prayer for her dear ones stricken by sickness. Prayer for the sick must never be lacking. In fact, we should pray more, be it personally, be it in community. We think of the evangelical episode of the Canaanite woman (cf. Matthew 15:21-28). She is a pagan woman, she is not of the people of Israel, but a pagan who begs Jesus to heal her daughter. To put her faith to the test, Jesus first answered her harshly: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” The woman did not give up – when a mother asks help for her child, she never gives up. We all know that mothers fight for their children – and she answers: “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table!” as if to say: “At least treat me like a dog!” Then Jesus says to her: “O woman, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire” (v. 28).

In face of sickness, also in families difficulties arise because of human weakness. However, in general, the time of sickness makes the strength of family bonds grow. And I think of how important it is to educate children as little ones to solidarity in the time of sickness. An education that lacks sensitivity for human sickness hardens the heart. And it makes youngsters “anesthetized” to others’ suffering, incapable of confronting suffering and of living the experience of limitation. How many times we see a man, a woman arrive at work with a tired face, with a tired attitude and when they are asked “”What is wrong?” they answer: “I slept only two hours because we take turns to be close to the baby, the sick one, the grandfather, the grandmother.” And the day continues with work. These things are heroic; they are the heroism of families! -- those hidden heroisms that are done with tenderness and courage when someone is sick at home.

The weakness and suffering of our dearest and most sacred loved ones can be for our children and our grandchildren a school of life – it is important to educate children and grandchildren to understand this closeness in sickness in the family – and they become so when in moments of sickness they are accompanied by prayer and the affectionate and solicitous closeness of relatives. The Christian community knows well that, in the trial of sickness, the family is not left alone. And we must say thank you to the Lord for those beautiful experiences of ecclesial fraternity that help families to go through the difficult moments of pain and suffering. This Christian closeness, of family to family, is a real treasure for the parish -- a treasure of wisdom that helps families in difficult moments and makes the Kingdom of God understood better than many discourses! They are caresses of God.

CORPUS CHRISTI

We share a few snaps from our various Masses on one of the great feasts of the church.

Fr Cyriacus celebrated the 9.00am Mass in the Cathedral, and led a modest procession through the church. Thanks to Fr Phillip for his quick thinking in taking a few snaps from the choir loft.

The 10am Mass at St. Joseph's was celebrated by Fr Johnson, and was very well attended. We had the pleasure of being led in procession by the Brothers of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as a choir leading us in the singing of traditional Portuguese hymns. 

Just before Mass we noticed a single block of charcoal! Not to be defeated, the servers snapped some bark of the nearby trees, burnt it, and had more than enough charcoal! 

Pictured below is Fr Johnson with the Brothers of the Blessed Sacrament, as well as the servers' effort.

Unfortunately, Eskom (the national electricity supplier, once again attended Mass in the Cathedral and the 6.00pm Mass was by candlelight.

REFLECTION FOR CORPUS CHRISTI

“Take and eat…take and drink…this is my Body…this is my Blood…do this in memory of me.” With these words, Jesus establishes the sacrifice of the New Covenant written in his Blood. In the Jewish Temple, there were two main kinds of animal sacrifice; the holocaust and the communion sacrifice. In the first, an offering for very serious sin, the entire animal sacrifice was burned as an offering to God for sin. The immolated animal died in place of the sinner, for to a Jew, all sin is an offence against God, deserving of death.

The Jewish Passover, from which comes the holy sacrifice of the Mass, is a communion sacrifice. The animal was killed by being bled to death, and the collected blood poured out at the base of the altar. Life was in the blood, and life belongs to God alone, for only he can give it. Of the rest of the sacrifice, a portion went to the priests for their support. The bulk of the sacrificed animal was returned to the offerer, who then held a communion meal, to which many were invited. In eating of the consecrated animal, they believed, they were somehow reaping all the blessings poured out by God through the offering. This explains why communion is so closely linked to sacrifice, and what the relationship between Jesus’ death and the Last Supper is. The new rite simply replaces the old. Or does it?

When Jesus tells his hearers, in John 6, that, “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood shall not perish, and I will raise him up on the last day” his words are a double shock. First, eating Jesus’ flesh sounds like cannibalism, already a horror for the Jews. But next to drinking his blood, eating Jesus’ flesh pales in comparison. For not only is this the offence of blasphemy, but if Jesus really who he says he is, it is a blasphemy beyond telling; human beings drinking the blood of God’s Son, that is, consuming the divine, eternal life of God himself!

But this is exactly what Jesus does mean! He wants us to live in all eternity with him. For this to happen, we must receive his divine life. And one of the most important paths to this is through Holy Communion. Jesus focuses it into the bloodless sacrifice of the altar, where bread and wine become in reality, if not in appearance, his Body and Blood. In South African-speak, the Body and Blood of Jesus is the padkos of our journey to eternal life. And by consuming Holy Communion we, like the Jews of old, are being, literally, filled with all the graces and blessings that flowed from the cross at Calvary.

If we co-operate with God’s grace within us, we will be transformed, made ready and fit to live with him for ever. Holy Communion, as its name implies, is the one of the closest ways in which we come to a direct encounter with the living Jesus, who tells us, “Take and eat…take and drink…this is my Body…this is my Blood…do this in memory of me.” But it is up to us to allow the Lord Jesus to transform us from within by co-operating. Only we can do this. And if we do, what a world awaits us in eternity!

Fr Phillip

ST PHILIP'S DAY 2015

Last week the Bloemfontein Community in Formation celebrated St Philip's Day, our first, and a not-insignificant day: this being the 500th year since St Philip's birth. For more about our holy founder read the biography on the right panel of the screen.

The occasion was marked with Mass in our house chapel attended by only a few friends. The nation's electricity supplier, Eskom, saw it fit to give us the 'catacomb experience' (credit Fr Johnson) by plunging us into darkness half an hour before Mass, and switching the lights on as the final blessing was given. Nevertheless, it was a moving occasion and the first of many for the new community.

Our grateful thanks to the Sardinha family for treating us to a lovely braai (barbeque) after Mass!

A few pictures from the night: