REFLECTION FOR THE SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Dear Friends in Christ

This portion of the gospel on the feeding of the multitude is one that is very familiar to us, and it is full of imagery pointing to Jesus being the Bread of Life. A crowd has followed Jesus because of the miracles they have seen him perform. There are thousands to feed, not enough money, and seemingly inadequate provisions. But we know what happens when Jesus offers thanks for the food at hand. There is more than enough for everyone, and all are astonished.

However, it would seem that there is more to the story than giving thanks and providing food. As the scene is opening and the situation becomes clear, Jesus poses the problem to Philip and the disciples: "where can we buy enough food for them to eat?"(John 6:5). Yet scripture tells us that Jesus already knew what he was going to do: "He said this to test him, because he himself knew what he was going to do".

Jesus uses this circumstance to bring his disciples deeper into his mission. He is encouraging them to see that his work is also their work. In other words, he is nurturing those seeds of faith, preparing them to believe things that up to this point were thought unbelievable.

But again, the act of satisfying people's physical hunger is not to be ignored. Taking responsibility for the hungry and those less fortunate is paramount in sharing in the reign of God. Jesus provided bread for their hunger; his life was bread for their lives. We are called to do and be the same.

Fr Mafu

REFLECTION FOR THE SIXTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

“They were like sheep without a shepherd.” There are few sadder lines uttered by Jesus than this. People flocked to him because he “spoke with authority.” They recognised that in him, God spoke directly to them. And they followed him because he was giving them the clear, firm leadership that was so lacking in the religious leaders of his time.

There were four main trends in the religion Israel. There were the Sadducees, who served in the Temple. They were concerned with keeping in with the Roman overlords to protect their position of power. They were also avid in the acquisition of wealth. There were the Zealots, who saw religion mainly in political terms, revolutionaries whose aim was to overthrow the Romans. There were the Essenes, who removed themselves from everyday society and lived a life of endless rituals and purifications. There were the Pharisees, who at least were concerned with teaching the religion of Israel to the people. But they turned it into a complicated legal system of 613 commandments which was impossible for the man in the street to learn, let alone keep.

Jesus answered all of these in ways that were radical and direct. He hurled the market, which was a money racket, out of the Temple, his message to the Sadducees loud and clear: “This is my Father’s house, but you have turned it into a den of robbers.” The Essenes he answered simply by working, teaching and healing amongst the people, to the point of utter exhaustion. To the Zealots his answer was, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” Rendering to God, in his case, meant suffering a terrible death in order to carry out God’s will for him. He cut through the endless legalism of the Pharisees; for example, of their many Sabbath laws, which turned the Jewish day of rest into a nightmare, he said, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.”

Jesus’ ministry, which is the model for every priest, is one of service; to preach God’s word, to administer his sacraments, to minister to the pastoral needs of his people. Like Jesus, the priest must take time aside to pray. And like Jesus, the Good Shepherd, he must be prepared to lay down his life for his sheep. This is the yardstick by which every priest should judge his ministry.

But not only priests. The world is filled with people who do not know God, who long for Him without knowing it, who want Him even when they insult and scorn him. Every Christian shares in this ministry. Those who do not know him must see in our lives that he is the only hope, the one who answers all our questions, who gives meaning to our existence. Do we leave others around us like sheep without a shepherd? If so, we have a lot of work to do to.

REFLECTION FOR THE FIFTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

The book of the prophet Amos is one of the most studied in the Old Testament.  During the last half of the previous century, Amos was popular for his strong message of social justice. But this is to miss the point. Amos is not primarily a prophet of social issues, but of the worship of the one, true God.

First, what is a prophet? Not someone who foretells the future. A prophet is a messenger from God, sent to call Israel back to Him when they have wandered from the path of truth. But a prophet speaks the word of God, which is “alive and active, sharper than a two-edged sword” (Hebrews). We are told that “God said…and it was so” (Genesis). In other words, because a prophet spoke God’s word, he did not merely foretell the future; the very words he spoke actually brought it about. And the essence of the prophetic message is simple: come back to the Lord, and all will be well; continue on your path of sin, and you will have to face the consequences. Not a popular message for those engaged in sin as a way of life, particularly if it is economically profitable! Little wonder the rulers of Israel killed the prophets at such a rate; they wanted to silence them before they spoke oracles which might come true.

Amos was also speaking against the background of Psalm 135: “…they have mouths, but they cannot speak…eyes, but they cannot see… ears, but they cannot hear…their makers will come to be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” The pagan gods of which he speaks had produced nations of great cruelty and immorality. And we become like the gods we worship. This is the core of Amos’s message.

In our times, economic exploitation and social injustice have reached epic proportions. Massive financial, economic and military forces, as well as the speed of transport and communication, have made this possible. But this is ultimately a consequence of the corrupt human heart. And our age is also one of the most godless in history. When the “bottom line” becomes our yardstick, then anything that promotes it is acceptable to us. And it has become the yardstick of the earthly powers of this age.

But if we worship the true God, the God of love, of truth and compassion, the God who did not spare his own Son for our sake, then we will become like him, for he purifies our hearts as surely as modern gods corrupt them. Of Jesus, Peter says, “there is no other name in heaven or on earth by which we can be saved.” Former earthly powers have fallen one by one. All looked invincible – but all have passed, Ozymandias-like, leaving few traces of their former glory. The same will happen to ours. Its apparently invincible power pales into insignificance before the authority of God. Like Amos, we need to remain faithful to the true God. He is our only hope. He will never let us down or abandon us.

Fr Phillip

READY FOR ANYTHING!

Preparation for Mass which one might not find in the GIRM

Of the last five Sunday 6pm masses at Sacred Heart Cathedral, three have been celebrated in darkness due to load shedding. But South Africans are a hardy lot. Each Sunday, more of us have been ready for such an eventuality, coming to Mass armed with lamps and torches. Here is a photo of the celebrant’s chair for Sunday 5th July, showing such preparations. On this occasion, the Mass was celebrated without electrical incident. We are thus thankful for the Kyrie intercession we have been praying for the past month: “You bring light to those in darkness…”

REFLECTION FOR THE 14TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Some years ago, when I was struggling with a bright but very disturbed pupil, a psychiatrist whom I consulted about him said this: “Remember, think in the long term. In thirty years’ time he might be about to stab someone, and something you said might just stop him.”

It is so often like this in our Christian faith. It is not visible success that is the most important factor in our service of God; it is our faithfulness. In the early chapters of the book of the prophet Ezekiel this is made clear: “Son of man, if I tell you to warn the wicked man to repent and you do not, he will surely die for his sins, but I will hold you responsible for his death. But if you warn the wicked man to repent and he does not, he will die for his sins, but you will have saved your life.” The issue is not how many wicked men repent; that is their choice. The question is whether we are faithful in carrying out God’s will for us. The prophets were more often met by ridicule, suffering and death than by success; their hearers were, after all, not over-eager to hear news that they would suffer if they refused to turn from their favourite (and often profitable) vices to God. But despite this, God, who wants all men to be saved, sent the prophets to them so that they might hear the call to repentance.

On the surface, the ministry of Jesus was an apparent failure. He was rejected in many places, as in today’s gospel. He collected a small band of followers around him, one of whom betrayed him, all but one of whom denied and abandoned him when he was finally arrested. The leaders of his own people conspired against him and succeeded in having him killed. In sheer human terms, Jesus was one of the greatest failures who ever lived.

And yet, after his Resurrection, the Good News of his Lordship spread like wildfire throughout the earth. His opponents were powerless to stop it. His disciples were themselves prepared to die rather than refute his name. Within just a few decades, his had become the name on everyone’s lips. Still today, he is revered by billions world-wide, and all the dark forces of the world which oppose his Church, one by one, have fallen away, as he promised to his followers: “…the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” Who, living during Jesus’ time on earth, could have predicted all this, based upon the evidence of his eyes and ears alone?

It is the same for us. We are called to “go out to the whole world and proclaim the Good News.” Christianity is something public; it was never meant to be cosy and private. In the Creed we confess our faith publicly every Sunday. And we are to bear witness to the Good News of the Lord Jesus, risen from the dead, in word and deed. Like Ezekiel, we will encounter opposition and even hatred in the modern world, for the powers that be are, in this era, particularly threatened by the Church’s proclamation, which questions pretty much everything they stand for. And like Ezekiel, we may see very little response to the Word in those to whom we bear witness. But we have God’s promise to Ezekiel with which this reflection began, and that should be enough for us.

We may never see or know what effect our words, our actions have on others. But, to paraphrase the words of the hymn, if we are faithful, others will know He is alive in us. When old Ananias, faithful to God’s command, went in fear and trembling to baptise Saul, the murderous enemy of the first Christians, could he have known that he was baptising the man who would become one of Jesus’ greatest Apostles and missionaries, spreading the Good News to most of the known world of his time and writing half the books in the New Testament? Did the catechist in little Kar

ol Wojtyla’s home parish have even an inkling that she was forming in faith a pope and a saint? We must never underestimate the effect our words might have on others, even when we see no result ourselves. We are called to proclaim the Good News, all of us, in every time and place. Let us be faithful in doing just that. We never know when our proclamation might just change the world.

REFLECTION FOR THE 13TH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Today’s Gospel shows Jesus on his way to raise up a little girl who “is not dead but sleeping.” The narrative of his journey is interrupted by another miracle, the healing of the “flow of blood” from a woman in the crowd surrounding him. The story sounds very graphic; whoever is recounting it saw what happened before his eyes, and remembers it vividly.

Yet all said, there is more to this story than meets the eye. The synagogue official is desperate about the fate of his sick little girl. But Jesus seems calm, collected and not at all in a hurry. When a messenger rushes on to the scene to tell the synagogue official that his daughter has died, Jesus’ only comment is the apparently inappropriate, “Do not fear, only believe.” When Jesus remarks, without even seeing the child, “she is not dead but sleeping”, he is laughed at. But by the words “Talitha, kumi” he raises her up and restores her to her without doubt thankful and joyful parents.

The word “kumi” is a Hebrew command which means “Arise!” It is the link with Jesus’ command to the synagogue official, “Do not fear, only believe.” It is the prelude to a conversion of heart, followed by the command “Shuv!” which means “Turn around!”, a 180º turn which takes us back in the direction from which we came. When the Prodigal son returns to his father from pig-keeping in a gentile country (the lowest to which a Jewish man of Jesus’ time could sink), he says to himself, “I will arise and go to my father and say, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you’!” Arise and go; kum and shuv. He has turned back from sin towards his father, as we are called to turn away from sin towards Our Father in heaven. When Jesus calls on the synagogue official saying, “Do not fear, only believe,” he is calling upon the man to believe in him. As in last week’s gospel, in the midst of the storms of life, Jesus brings calm. It is no doubt because the others scoffed that Jesus would not let them into the house. He required of them that they have faith in him because of whom he is, not merely because of the miracles he performs.

And yet, they already have an example in front of them before he even reaches the synagogue official’s house. The woman with the flow of blood does have faith in him, that he can heal her, that “If I touch even his garments, I shall be made well.” Jesus, being whom he is, is aware of the healing that has just taken place; the whole crowd must have been pressing in against him, yet her touch is different because of her faith. In fact, his response to her is, “Your faith has made you well.” Yet despite seeing this sign and hearing his response about faith in their very presence, they scoff at his power to “wake up” the little girl. But  even here, we must remember that to “fall asleep” is often a euphemism for death, which in turn tells us something about Jesus’ attitude towards death, to be destroyed by his Resurrection.

Jesus calls us, too, to believe in him, not because of miracles or even the “gospel values” (that dreadful term!) he teaches, but because of whom he is. We are called to have faith in him as a person, to turn away from our sins and to be converted back to him. Today’s stories abound with this message of faith and conversion. May they also become our own story, that his words may resound in our hearts: “Do not fear, only believe!”