FIRST SUNDAY OF ADVENT – 2016

There is a very famous play by the British playwright Samuel Beckett called Waiting for godot. In it, two characters spend their time sitting at the side of a road, waiting for someone called godot to arrive. From the beginning of Act 1 to the end of Act 3, they sit there, idly and vainly, going round and round in circles in the same absurd conversation. At the end, they are still waiting as futilely as at the beginning. They sometimes wonder whether they are really waiting for anything or anyone at all. Yet there is nothing else for them to do but to sit around and wait in utter futility. Even the name of the person for whom they are waiting, godot, sounds like a diminutive form of God.

There is an emptiness, an aching void, at the centre of godless modern man. He is aware of this emptiness, and will go to any lengths to avoid it, or to fill it. Godless modern man is waiting for something, but he knows not what. And he sees no hope, no meaning, because he does not know for whom or for what he is waiting. It is an empty waiting, dark with ignorance, bereft of hope, bleak with despair. Godless modern man is still waiting for godot, and godot, like tomorrow, never comes.

How different is the waiting of the Christian for God! The Christian inhabits the same world as godless modern man; sees the same sorrows; experiences the same suffering; is assailed by the same evils. Often the Christian sees his work corrupted and come to nothing in the same way. The Christian knows, as surely as godless modern man, that there is something desperately wrong with this world of ours, something that urgently needs to be set right. And yet, in the face of it all, the Christian is not beset with despair, but filled with hope. Ahead lies not impenetrable darkness, but unquenchable light. And the reason for this completely different response is simple; for the Christian is not waiting for godot; he is waiting for God!

It is this that makes our waiting a waiting of such joy, a purposeful waiting in hope. Here, now, in the season of Advent, we relive that joyful hope as we prepare to celebrate the feast of Christmas, the feast of the birth of Jesus the Saviour amongst us. In the midst of sorrow, suffering, tragedy, even apparent meaninglessness in the world, the Christian has glimpsed the glory of the Lord. All the dark and ugly things we experience are things which the power of God overcomes, are even things which he can use for our good. And all of them ultimately make sense because we are waiting for a God who really is coming, a God whom we can and do know face to face. The God for whom we wait is a person, and he has come to save us.

The darkness of this world is for us merely a shadow which will be banished forever when God sheds his glorious light upon us. It is significant that the last book of the Bible, the Book of Revelation, is a book which practically explodes with a message of hope in the midst of disaster. And the climax of that book, in its final verse, is the cry "Come, Lord Jesus!" Let this be our hope, our message for this Advent. Let us not be a hopeless people, waiting in despair for a godot who never comes. Rather, let us be a people brimming with hope and joy, our eyes fixed on the glorious future He has already prepared for us; let us be a people waiting - for God. Amen.

Fr. Phillip

CHRIST THE KING – 2016

In his book The End of History, Francis Fukuyama suggests that with the coming of democracy, the world has entered a safe, steady state in which human events such as we have known them throughout history, will come to an end. 

It is certain that large numbers of people regard anything that smacks of authoritarian rule as deeply suspicious. But Even in modern democracies, matters are hardly as dull and predictable as Fukuyama suggests. Look at the dramatic “upset” in the United States with the unexpected election of Donald Trump as an example, and the extreme responses it has brought forth. And if the result even of a democratic election such as this can cause such reactions, what does today’s feast have to say to modern people, with its image of Jesus Christ as an absolute monarch, the King of all Creation?

The feast of Christ the King was brought into being in 1934 by Pope Pius XI in his encyclical Quas primas. Why would he do this in that particular year? 1934 was a fateful year in the world. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin ruled as absolute dictators in their respective countries of Germany and the Soviet Union. In Mexico, a terrible civil war was raging, leading to a tyranny which was hostile to the Church and persecuted and killed priests and lay people alike. In the East, both Japan and mainland China were likewise in chaotic situations and slipping into an authoritarianism controlled by powerful military interests. Governments were taking on an authority and total power of an almost infallible character for themselves.

Against this, Pius XII asserted the real and ultimate source of authority in the world, the Kingship of Jesus Christ, as the Irish constitution has it, “from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred.” All authority to rule by earthly powers is, in fact, subject to the benign Lord Jesus Christ. They rule by his authority, and are accountable to Him for all that they do, whether they acknowledge Him or not. God, who created human beings, has placed us under the gentle rule of his Son, whose “yoke is easy, whose burden is light.” Jesus is a humble King who, far from ruling over us from a throne high above, descended to be one amongst us, to place himself, at the end of his earthly life, in the hands of human beings, under human authority.

In today’s feast, Jesus is presented as the Suffering Servant of God, the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” whose authority is not of this world, but something greater and higher, despite his apparent powerlessness and helplessness in the hands of Pilate, who represented the universal, absolute and apparently unstoppable power in the world in Jesus’ time, the Roman Empire. We should note that in the gospel Jesus speaks, not of his kingdom, but of his “kingship” or reign. Jesus is King, not of place or time, but wherever human beings have responded and turned to Him for salvation. Where He is loved and obeyed, where his power is uppermost in human hearts; this is his kingship.

There is no earthly power, from the Roman Empire of his day to the powers-that-be and colossal economic forces in the contemporary world, that can defeat Him. And while it sometimes seems as though the victory is theirs, as long as He reigns in our hearts, the ultimate victory is his; and ours. To this hope we must all cling, no matter what comes our way; for we know that to Him belongs the victory and glory and the power, for ever and ever. In the words of the Latin hymn for Christ the King, “Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!”“Christ conquers! Christ reigns! Christ commands!”

Fr. Phillip 

33RD SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – 2016

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 the gospel, where 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

32ND SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – 2016

Do you remember, as a young schoolchild, being given an assignment for the following week; how far away it seemed? There was so much time before the task had to be handed in; there was no hurry. And then, suddenly, it was the evening of Wednesday and the assignment was due on Thursday morning, and there just was not enough time to do it justice. So, either you had to make a lame excuse as to why it was not done and face the consequences, or face the equally unappetising consequence of a poor mark for a rushed job. Did you ever wish, in such a situation, that you had not wasted the time of the previous week when you could have been preparing thoroughly for the due date of that task?

In the letters of Paul to the communities of the early Church, there is always a sense of this urgency. The day of the Lord could come at any moment; are you ready to meet him when he comes? In Paul’s era, the expectation was that the Lord could come again at any moment; He was, in fact, expected to return quite soon after his Ascension. As time passed, they realised that this was not the case, that Jesus’ return might be quite some time later than originally expected.

This did not alter the urgency with which they regarded his return. Like the early Christians, we do not know when or how Jesus will return, only the fact that he will, that it will be unexpected; as the Lord himself put it, “It is not for you to know the times or places”. Paul is quite clear, as is Jesus himself in the Gospels, that we must be ready to receive the returning Lord whenever he might appear. Whether there will be a great judgement of all human beings at the end of time, or whether each one of us will pass through individual judgement at the time of our own death, we do not know, and there is evidence for both in Scripture. But the only way to be ready to receive the Lord Jesus when he comes again is to be ready to receive him at all times. A half-baked, rapid prayer at the last moment may not be enough if our hearts are not prepared to receive him.

In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, he encourages us to be prepared through our love and attention to prayer, our care for one another, our dedication to supporting and encouraging one another in readying ourselves for his coming. He urges us to sobriety and constant prayer “with all our hearts.” If we want Jesus to place us amongst the saints in his kingdom, then we must give him pride of place in our own hearts. There is no such thing as a “basic minimum” to get into heaven; we are either all for Jesus, or not at all. In our daily lives let us heed Paul’s wise words, and in everything that we do, let us keep ourselves ready to receive Jesus, whenever he might return.

Fr Phillip