'There is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones . . .' Sunday Reflections, 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

Landscape with Christ and St Peter

Goffried Wals [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 Matthew 16:21-27 (English Standard Version Anglicised)

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”

Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

A Man for All Seasons is a movie made in 1966, written by Robert Bolt and based on his stage play with the same title. It is based on the life of St Thomas More, Lord Chancellor of England during the time of King Henry VIII. His position would be similar to that of Prime Minister today. More refuses to  sign a letter asking Pope Clement VII to annul the marriage of the King to Catherine of Aragon who had not borne him a son. Eventually More is found guilty of high treason and sentenced to death.

During his trial Sir Thomas More discovers that Richard Rich, who had given perjured testimony against him, had been made Attorney General for Wales as a reward for this. The laws of England were about to be extended to Wales, a country of 20,779 square kilometres in the west of the island of Britain which also includes England and Scotland. More says to Rich, Why, Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world - but for Wales? [3:30 - 4:20 in the video above].

On Sundays in Ordinary Time the First Reading and the Gospel are linked thematically whereas the Second Reading is from on the Letters of St Paul read over the course of a number of Sundays. But this Sunday it is closely related to the other two readings in that it reminds us that as followers of Jesus we are called to be living sacrifices:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).

The Prophet Jeremiah discovers the cost of doing God's will: I have become a laughing-stock all the day; everyone mocks me . . . For the word of the Lord has become for me a reproach and derision all day long (Jeremiah 20:7,8).

St Peter cannot abide the thought of any such thing happening to Jesus: God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you. He receives an extraordinary rebuke from Jesus: Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not setting your mind on the things of God but on the things of man.

The Crucifixion of St Peter

Caravaggio [Web Gallery of Art]

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 

St Peter in giving unwanted and unhelpful 'advice' to Jesus had no idea of the price he himself would pay for following in the footsteps of the Lord. He was following human thinking, not God's. This incident shows that our thinking has consequences. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, says St Paul in Philippians 2:5. This is what our baptism calls us to. Everything we do is meant to be in accordance with God's thinking, with God's will.

Last year here in the Republic of Ireland which has a population of almost five million, 6,666 children were legally killed before birth. The law allowing this came into effect on New Year's Day 2019, the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God. The law was the foreseen consequence of a referendum in May 2018 when two-thirds of those who voted chose to 'repeal' Article 8 of the Constitution that protected the life of the unborn child and of the mother. Based on the census of 2016 nearly eighty per-cent of the voters identified themselves as Catholic. The majority of legislators who legalised abortion-on-demand were Catholics by background, one of them a regular lector at Sunday Mass in her parish.

This is a glaring example of what the late Fr Jaime Bulatao SJ, a Filipino, labelled in 1966 Split-level Christianity. (I took some classes under Fr Bulatao in the summer of 1974). Promoting or supporting abortion is incompatible with the Catholic Christian faith. 

In his encyclical Laudato si' No 120, Pope Francis states: Since everything is interrelated, concern for the protection of nature is also incompatible with the justification of abortion. How can we genuinely teach the importance of concern for other vulnerable beings, however troublesome or inconvenient they may be, if we fail to protect a human embryo, even when its presence is uncomfortable and creates difficulties? 'If personal and social sensitivity towards the acceptance of the new life is lost, then other forms of acceptance that are valuable for society also wither away'.

Some politicians who identify themselves as Catholics are now promoting abortion as a 'right'. And many people who work for the dignity of every human life from conception to death are condemned as persons with no interest in the welfare of children and others after birth, a total lie.

Mary Wagner is a Canadian woman who has spent much time in prison for peacefully proclaiming the humanity of the unborn child and for trying to offer mothers an alternative to abortion. Another Canadian who has spent much time in prison for totally silent witness outside abortion centres is Linda Gibbons. I am sure that these two extraordinary witnesses to our Christian faith must have experienced what the Prophet Jeremiah expresses in today's First Reading: If I say, “I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name”, there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot. Please pray for them.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.

The Visitation

El Greco [Web Gallery of Art]

For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy (Luke 1:44).

Miserere mihi, Domine

Setting by William Byrd

Sung by Cardinall's Musick

Miserere mihi, Domine, et exaudi orationem meam.

Have mercy on me, Lord, and listen to my prayer.

Extraordinary Form of the Mass

Traditional Latin Mass (TLM)

This Sunday, 30 August, is the Thirteenth Sunday After Pentecost in the calendar that uses the TLM. The complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 8-30-2020, if necessary).

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Where'er You Walk

George Frederic Handel

Oboist, Leo Duarte and The Academy of Ancient Music, directed by Richard Egarr

It may have happened on some occasion that you paused before a sculpture, a picture, a few verses of a poem or a piece of music that you found deeply moving, that gave you a sense of joy, a clear perception, that is, that what you beheld was not only matter, a piece of marble or bronze, a painted canvas, a collection of letters or an accumulation of sounds, but something greater, something that 'speaks', that can touch the heart, communicate a message, uplift the mind (Pope Benedict XVI).