ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER -2017

When Gustav Mahler composed his Third Symphony in the early 1900’s, he wanted to make it a vast hymn to God’s Creation. He built up its six movements in a hierarchy leading from inanimate matter, through plants, animals, human beings and angels, right up to God himself. Of this last part, he said: “I have called this movement ‘What loves tells me’, but I might have called it ‘What God tells me’, since for me God can only be conceived as love.” He made clear exactly what he meant by affixing to the beginning of the music, two lines of German poetry in which Jesus addressed his Father:

              Father, look upon these wounds of mine;
              let not one of your creatures be lost to you.”

The image of love that this Jew turned Catholic chose to give, was that of the Resurrected Jesus pleading for us before the judgement throne of God, asking him to forgive our sins since he has died on our behalf, and has already paid the price for them.

This image of Jesus the Advocate, whose blood, as the letter to the Hebrews has it, pleads more insistently than Abel’s, is one which should be of great comfort to us. We do not appear before God’s judgement in the hope of being found “not guilty”; we are all sinners, and therefore guilty of the sins of which the infallible judge convicts us. Our hope is entirely based on hope of mercy, of forgiveness. In the words of one of the weekday Mass texts:

              In love you created man,
              In justice you condemned him;
              but in mercy you redeemed him.

It is the hope of the Prodigal Son, who admits, in his conversion of heart, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.”

But God’s mercy knows no bounds; it is his love as it applies to us sinners, and his love is boundless. “God loved the world so much, that he gave his only, so that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent his son into the world, not to condemn the world, but so that through him the world might be saved.” The Jesus who pleads for mercy on our behalf, was in the first place sent by the one who judges us.

But God does not leave us with one advocate to plead our cause; in the words of Jesus in today’s Gospel, he promises us another Advocate. Jesus must leave us and return to his Father in heaven where he pleads our cause. And he sends us that other Advocate, or as the Greek word has it, Paraclete, to be always with us here on earth.

Think for a moment of all the roles an advocate has to play in the life of the accused person he is representing. He knows the law, and argues the case on behalf of his client. He advises his client on what to say and do, how to behave. He even, when things look like they are going against his client, needs to be a source of comfort.

And this is precisely what the Holy Spirit does as we wait for Jesus to come again. The Spirit guides us both as individuals and as a Church. The Spirit makes us aware of the salvation of Jesus at work in our lives, and the presence of Jesus himself within us. The Spirit leads us to live as though our lives depended upon it, and thus prepares us for our judgement. Amidst the difficulties of life, when temptation to turn away from God is ever before us, and when we sometimes have no hope of ever being able to escape the bonds of sin. it is the Holy Spirit who comforts us and brings us new courage and determination. Without the Holy Spirit to guide us as we wait for Jesus to return, we might in fact not even be ready for him when he does return.

So it is that the Holy Spirit needs to be a major factor in the way we live our lives. Even as Jesus prepared his disciples for his departure, he prepared then for the coming of the Holy Spirit. As the Church has progressed through the Easter season, you will have noticed how the theme of the coming of the Spirit, leading up to the feast of Pentecost, has become more and more prominent in the Scripture readings at Mass.

The Apostles spent the days that fill the gap between the Ascension and Pentecost, waiting and preparing for the coming of the Spirit. These nine days are the Church’s original novena, a novena being a period of nine days of preparation and prayer. As we reflect on all that Easter and the coming of the Spirit means to us, and we have seen that it means a great deal, perhaps we need to spend a lot more time preparing for this great event in our lives in Christ. There is, in fact, a special novena through which we all can consecrate ourselves to the Holy Spirit and thus prepare ourselves for his coming at Pentecost.

The Holy Spirit transformed the lives of the Apostles on that first Pentecost day, turning them from a group of frightened men hiding away in the Upper Room, into a band of fearless proclaimers of Jesus Christ, who spread the Good News and renewed the face of the earth. If we really want him too, he will transform our lives in the same way.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION - FIFTH SUNDAY OF EASTER - 2017

About ten years ago, the press “exposed” a Cape Town club which had alleged­ly been running a brothel. Some of us might remember, right back in the Eighties, the horrid and embarrassing incident of the “Squidgy” telephone call between Princess Diana and a sup­posed extramarital lover, to which it was possible to listen on what was called a “hot line”? How often do we approach our media, be it newspaper, news magazine or broadcast, only to find the real news displaced by yet another exposé of “the truth,” as such publications like to call it?

If one were to ask an editor about the heartache and humiliation, the destruction of homes, happiness and lives which these exposures entail, we might receive answers on these lines: “The public have a right to know…we are here to serve the truth, we can’t help it if others behave like this…The consequences are no concern of ours, our task is just to publish things as they are…” and so on. And, of course, scandal increases circulation, and increased circulation increases profit, not that anyone, God forbid, should publish “the truth” merely for these reasons.

Tellers of Truth in the modern media are today largely distinguishable by two characteristics: a high level of moral indignation and self-righteousness, and a refusal to be held accountable for their views, though they hold others accountable for their actions in no uncertain terms. In fact, moral indignation is the principal means by which they thwart anyone trying to bring them to account.

It is a sad fact that many Christians take the same easy option which the modern media have embraced, and exercise the same ruthless and unforgiving moral indignation against their neighbour. This idea of truth as a harsh exposure of wrongdoing is in fact the antithesis of what God and the Scriptures have to say on the subject.

The Old Testament teaching on truth is to be found it the shortest of all the Psalms, Psalm 117. In the Authorised Version it reads as follows:

O Praise the Lord, all ye nations,

Praise him, all ye peoples.

For his merciful kindness is evermore towards us,

And the truth of the Lord endureth forever.

The significance of this passage, is that it joins together two of the closest-linked ideas in the Old Testament: ideas represented by the Hebrew words hesed and emet.

Emet is the Jews’ word for truth. Truth for the Jews is not to be confused with the passing facts of everyday existence. “Squidgy” is not truth for them, since who even today really remembers the facts of that story? Truth, for the Jews, was that which is revealed by God, things of eternal significance and endurance. “The truth of the Lord endures for ever.” One somehow does not think, thank God, that “Squidgy” will endure for ever. God in three persons; the Word made Flesh; the death of the Saviour of the cross; The coming of the Holy Spirit; the Consummation of all things at the end of time; “God is Love’; these are emet, and for a Christian, there can be no other kind of truth. For a Christian, in fact, all truth is summed up in the person of Jesus: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

But the idea of emet, or truth, is bound together with that of hesed. There is no single English equivalent, but the Authorised version comes very close to it with its “merciful kindness.” Compassion would be the single word which most closely captures its meaning. It is an idea which stretches through the Old Testament, particularly in passages such as:

 The Lord is kind and full of compassion,

 Slow to anger, abounding in love.

How good is the Lord to all,

Compassionate to all his creatures.

Here is the heart of divine Truth; that God, who is truth, is kind and compassionate. God’s moral law is absolute, but God applies that law with love and compassion, raising up, forgiving…yes, forgetting. “I will turn my face from their iniquities, and never call their sins to mind.” The sins of man are in the first place offences against God, yet it is God who is “slow to anger.” The picture which emerges here is quite the opposite of the newspaper idea of truth as an exposure of others’ sins. For God, human sins are offences against the truth. But they are offences which God wants to forgive precisely because they are an affront to the truth. “It is not the death of the sinner that I require, but his repentance.”

God’s reaction to human sin is not to seek the humiliation and destruction of the sinner, but his redemption. It is a singular fact of Christianity, and one which we take into too little account in the day-by-day practice of our faith, that it is God, who is affronted by sin, who humiliates himself on our account in order to achieve our salvation. “on Him lies a punishment that brings us peace, and by his stripes we are healed.” In this union of truth and loving compassion are echoed the powerful words of the Gospel of John: “The truth will set you free…when I am lifted up from the earth I will draw all men to myself…I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.”

Has the editor who exposes the sins of others (who very likely have never offended him) in the name of “printing the truth,” any idea of the exalted meaning of that word in the mouth of God? For that matter, have Christians who wax indignant over the sins of others, and spread gossip all round, albeit in hushed, self-righteous tones of “How shocking!” any better an understanding of the God who has called them, loved them, and died in humiliation on the cross for them in order to redeem them from their sins?

On many occasions people, both Catholics and others, have spoken with me about the confessional. Not a few have articulated the idea that a priest “knows the truth” about the members of his congregation. In that fact they are right; but they are generally most wrong as to what exactly “the truth” is. For, as any priest will tell you, it has nothing to do with whether Mr. X and Mrs. Y are having an extramarital affair, or what sort of dirty thoughts Miss Z enjoys, or even whether Mrs. Q is a secret tippler, who finances her beverage out of the petty cash.

The truth that comes out of the confessional is “the truth (which) endures for ever”; that human beings are created in the image of God; that we have fallen short of the glory of God; that we are in desperate need of redemption; that God in his loving compassion has given us a Saviour who died that we might be forgiven; and that in those words “I absolve you from your sins…” we have the absolute certainty that our sins have been forgiven in His name. That is the astonishing and miraculous truth of the confessional; all the rest is just passing detail. Sin, after all, is marked down for total destruction; it is the truth of the Lord that endures for ever.

Truth, in God’s mind, consists of unchanging, eternal reality, and there can be no truth without the hesed, the loving compassion of God. If we wish to serve that truth, our task is not to humiliate and expose in self-righteousness. It is rather to come in humble service to our brother or sister, and self-effacingly to help them to find their way back to God, keeping all the time before our eyes the fact that we ourselves are sinners in need of his mercy.

“There is more rejoicing in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ninety-nine righteous men.” May God bring each one of us to a self-knowledge of our own sinfulness, and may he use us, through loving compassion for one another, in service of his eternal truth, so that many might find their way to him, and learn to know his love and forgiveness, and so in turn be brought to knowledge of the Truth that endures for ever.

ORATORIAN COMMUNITY IN FORMATION: FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER - 2017

"The whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ."

The sermon of Peter in Chapter 2 of the Acts of the Apostles is the first Christian sermon, and the model for all Christian sermons. The reading itself focuses on the results of that sermon, and moves from the opening sentence, where Peter calls the crowd to attention, to the climax, his proclamation that "The whole House of Israel can be certain that God has made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ."

He proclaims that God has made Jesus Lord and Christ, the anointed one, priest, prophet and king, who rules all creation from God’s right hand. In contrast, his hearers are responsible for God’s anointed one, the hope of Israel, being crucified.

The contrast between the action of crowd in crucifying Jesus, and of God in making Him Lord and Christ, strikes home, for his listeners are “cut to the quick”.

The frightening conclusion that Peter's listeners come to is that, by killing God's Chosen One,  they have placed themselves in a position of unforgivable enmity with God. There is a note of desperation in their question to the Twelve, "What must we do, brothers?" Peter first, tells them three things they must do:

"You must confess your sins." The listeners were righteous Jews, in Jerusalem from all over the civilised world for the Passover. They are now told to confess that far from being righteous men as they would have supposed, they are sinners.

"You must be baptized." Baptism was for the Jews a ceremony performed when a pagan became a Jew. It was a symbolic washing away of the filth of idolatry as the person became a member of God's Chosen People. Peter now tells them that, though they are Jews, they must be baptized. "in the name of Jesus," not only as a symbolic washing away, but "for the forgiveness of  your sins."

"Receive the free gift of the Holy Spirit." This is the gift the Twelve have just received, and which they now set out to share with their first converts.

The second section of Peter's answer must have brought wonderful comfort and hope to his listeners. All that Peter has said is a promise which has been made "to you and to your children and to all those who are far off." It is hard here not to make a comparison with the terrible words uttered by the crowd to Pontius Pilate on Good Friday: "His blood be upon our heads and upon our children's." This curse is now blotted out with a blessing. What is more, it is made to "whoever should call on the name of the Lord their God," in other words, the name of Jesus. Tongues which had called down the blood vengeance of the Lord upon their heads are now invited to call upon his name for salvation!

Peter finally calls on them to "Save yourselves from this wicked generation." Those who put Jesus to death, and refuse to repent of this crime and believe in the Good News, are setting themselves up in opposition to God, and thus adopting false worship. It is not the crime of killing the Lord's anointed that counts, so much as repentance for that deed. Similarly, it is not the crime which sends the "wicked generation" to its end, so much as its stiff-necked refusal to repent.

This message was one of great comfort to its first receivers. It should also be a comfort to us. We are sinners who have rebelled against God. We all share in the death of the only Beloved Son of God. When challenged that his film The Passion of the Christ was anti-Semitic, Mel Gibson gave just this answer. He said that the first person he would accuse of the death of Christ, was himself. It was his own hands that Hammered in the nails in the movie.

We are stiff-necked, rebellious, intent on doing and believing what we want to do, no matter how it squares up with what God wants us to do. We would rather have our own way; if it comes to a choice between what is desirable to us and what is pleasing to God, how often do we choose our own way, and shut God's way out of our lives! When it comes to a human confrontation, how often do we, in our attitudes, actions and words, particularly in our witness to other people, fail to acknowledge him as the Lord and Christ.

If it were dependent upon our sins, upon what we do, we would all be damned. But the wonderful message of hope in today's First Reading is that it does not. It depends not upon our sins, but upon God's mercy. Despite all the offences we have committed against God, he has decided to wipe them away, and never to call them to mind. And he does this through the same Jesus whom we brought to his death. And all God asks of us is that we repent. After the violence with which the human race greeted the coming of its Saviour, comes God's mercy and his call to repentance, with its promise of redemption.

Let us rejoice in the words he addressed to us through Peter in today's First Reading. Let us repent, we who are far off, and call on the name of the Lord, for this promise of salvation is for each one of us. Let us indeed repent, and be saved from this evil generation.