St John the Evangelist, El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]
Readings
(New American Bible:
Philippines, USA)
Readings
(Jerusalem Bible: Australia,
England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan,
Scotland, South Africa)
Gospel Mark 9:38-43, 45, 47-48 (New
Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition)
John said to Jesus, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in
your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one who does
a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterwards to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water
to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
‘If any of you put a stumbling-block before one of these little ones who
believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung
around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is
better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to
the unquenchable fire.
And if your foot
causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than
to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.
And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you
to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown
into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
St John's complaint reflects that of Joshua to Moses in the First Reading. the response of Jesus reflects that of Moses: Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them! (Numbers 11:29).
In August 1982, after a year’s study in
Toronto and before three months of Clinical Pastoral Education in Minneapolis,
I supplied in a number of parishes for short periods in the Diocese of Boise,
which covers the whole of the state of Idaho in the western USA. One of my
purposes for this was to visit the Abbey of Our Lady of the HolyTrinity, Huntsville, Idaho,
where I had spent ten days or so in August 1970. There I had met some of the
monks who were to be part of the team that would open the first Trappist
foundation in the Philippines, in Guimaras island, now the Abbey of Our Lady of the Philippines.
I
spent a week in one parish where the parish priest was from India, there were
reservations of two different Native American tribes, many
Spanish-speaking immigrants working on farms in the area and a majority of the
people in the town proper of the Mormon faith. The local newspaper carried
photos of young Mormons going on mission to other countries.
Just after lunch one day the doorbell
rang. A young woman asked me to go to the hospital where an old woman, a
Catholic and a relative of hers, had been in a coma for a long time, and was
dying. I immediately went to the hospital and, to my surprise, the patient was
fully awake and participated joyfully in the Last Sacraments, including
viaticum, as I had brought the Blessed Sacrament with me. I learned later that
she died about twenty minutes after I left.
The young woman who had asked me to go
to the hospital was a Mormon.
When I was a child we lived in a street
of terraced houses in Dublin where no one had a telephone. One time one of our
neighbours, Jem Norris, got gravely ill in the middle of the night. Charlie
Brooks who lived across the road went for the priest, whose house was about a
kilometre away.
Charlie was a Protestant.
I have posted in Sunday
Reflections before about a Mass in Belsen concentration camp, Germany,
shortly after it was liberated in 1945. The account, published in
2004 in The Daily Telegraph (London) is by James Molyneaux,
then a young officer in the British Army and later leader of the Ulster
Unionist Party in Northern Ireland and now a member of the House of Lords. He
wrote:
The most moving experience came on the
second morning as I was walking from what had been the luxury SS barracks which
our troops had transformed into a hospital. My attention was drawn to two
packing cases covered by a worn red curtain. A young Polish priest was clinging
to this makeshift altar with one hand, while celebrating Mass. Between his feet
lay the body of another priest who probably died during the night. No one had
had the energy to move the body.
I had no difficulty in following the
old Latin Mass, having been educated at St James's Roman Catholic School in
County Antrim, and, although an Anglican, I had gained a working knowledge of
all the rituals. Still supporting himself against the altar, the young priest
did his best to distribute the consecrated elements (editor's note: the
Body of Christ). Some
recipients were able to stumble over the rough, scrubby heathland. Others
crawled forward to receive the tokens (editor's note: to receive the
Body of Christ) and
then crawled back to share them with others unable to move. Some almost
certainly passed on to another - probably better - world before sunset.
Whatever one's race or religion one can only be uplifted and impressed by that
truly remarkable proof of the ultimate triumph of good over evil.
When I first read this article I was
deeply moved in a number of ways. I was surprised to discover that the author
had gone to a Catholic school in a community where, at least since the latter
1800s, there has been a deep divide between Catholics and Protestants, for
historical reasons that are not entirely theological. But here was an Anglican
from that background giving a powerful testimony to the Mass as the Holy
Sacrifice. And he noticed how those who were barely able to crawl shared the
Body of Christ with those who couldn't move at all.
I find in the three stories above an
illustration of the response of Jesus to the complaint of St John, Teacher,
we saw a man casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he
was not following us. Jesus says, For he that is not against us is
for us. For truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink
because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward.
St John's complaint reflects that of Joshua to Moses in the First Reading. the response of Jesus reflects that of Moses: Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, that the LORD would put his spirit upon them! (Numbers 11:29).
A memorial stone erected near the ramps where prisoners for Belsen were unloaded from goods trains
James Molyneaux's article also illustrates the reality of hell that Jesus speaks about today. He writes:
On arrival at Tactical Headquarters, we had been briefed on the discovery of the Belsen prison camp nearby. In company with our RAF medical unit and the two 2nd Army Field hospitals, we wasted no time. Briefed though we were, the shock excelled all the horrors of the battles of the 12 months since Normandy.
As we passed through the camp gates, the Royal Military Police requested us to drive very slowly to avoid the numerous disoriented prisoners. We were handed adhesive tape to put over the vehicle horns in order to prevent them going off accidentally, lest the shock would cause still more deaths. [This little detail is surely telling.]
The British liberators were staggered and shocked by the inhuman behaviour of some of the former guards, who continued to abuse and torment prisoners nearing death when they assumed we were looking the other way. I confess that on such occasions I may have breached the Geneva Convention to prevent further ill treatment of helpless victims. Their behaviour after we had arrived contradicted the excuse that the SS had forced them to carry out orders. Our new orders to them were "Stop acting like savages".
The 'Thousand Year Reich' of Hitler was in ruins after twelve years, and millions dead all over the world. These deaths, like countless deaths since, were caused by persons who chose evil over good. Each choice we make for sin is not at the level of choosing the evil of Belsen but it moves us towards that. Other dictators have tried their hand at their own version of Hitler's distorted vision and people have gone along with them.
Each of us likes to have power. We may not be conscious of this and in many instances there's no sin at all. I remember once seeing in a Catholic magazine a cartoon of people assembled for Mass where you were asked to 'spot the errors'. One was the proverbial 'little old lady' kneeling in the middle of a pew instead of blocking it at one end. There are times, especially as I grow older, when I can see the 'little old lady' in myself, trying to subtly ensure that things are done my way. Indeed, in the parish in Idaho where that kind young Mormon woman asked me to go to the dying elderly woman, the housekeeper asked me what time I'd like to have dinner at each day. I told her - but she always served it thirty minutes earlier.
But if I am a spouse, a parent, a teacher, a boss, a priest who doesn't listen to the other, who rules my little domain with a heavy hand, the words of Jesus are directed at me.
What is the 'hand', the 'foot', the 'eye' that causes me to sin, especially in the use of power?
Antiphona ad Communionem
Communion antiphon Cf Pas 118[119]:49-50
Memento etiam verbi tui
servo tuo, Domine,
Remember your word to
your servant, O Lord,
in quo mihi spem dedisti,
in which you have given
me hope.
haec me consolata est in
humilitate mea,
This is my comfort when I
am brought low,
quia eloquium tuum vivificavit me.
that your promise gives me life.
The setting by contemporary Japanese composer Nobuaki Izawa includes the last line above that is not in the Missal.
