'True friendship with Jesus is expressed in the way of life.' Sunday Reflections, 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

 

Crowning a baby after baptism

George Cardinal Alencherry, Major Archbishop of Ernakulam-Angamaly (Syro-Malabar), India [Wikipedia; photo]

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel Luke 13:22-30 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India).

Jesus went on his way through towns and villages, teaching and journeying towards Jerusalem. And someone said to him, “Lord, will those who are saved be few?” And he said to them, “Strive to enter through the narrow door. For many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able. When once the master of the house has risen and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, open to us’, then he will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say, ‘I tell you, I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. And people will come from east and west, and from north and south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God. And behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.”

Léachtaí i nGaeilge 

Responsorial Psalm (NAB Lectionary, Philippines, USA)

This week I’ll hand over to Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI. Here is his Angelus talk, given in Castel Gandolfo on Sunday, 26 August 2007. I have highlighted some parts of it. Perhaps it is futile to do so since Pope Benedict’s talks and writings are so rich and uplifting. May God strengthen his great servant in his old age.

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today's liturgy presents to us enlightening yet at the same time disconcerting words of Christ.

On his last journey to Jerusalem someone asked him: "Lord, will those who are saved be few?" And Jesus answered: "Strive to enter by the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will seek to enter and will not be able" (Lk 13: 23-24).

What does this "narrow door" mean? Why do many not succeed in entering through it? Is it a way reserved for only a few of the chosen?

Indeed, at close examination this way of reasoning by those who were conversing with Jesus is always timely: the temptation to interpret religious practice as a source of privileges or security is always lying in wait.

Actually, Christ's message goes in exactly the opposite direction: everyone may enter life, but the door is "narrow" for all. We are not privileged. The passage to eternal life is open to all, but it is "narrow" because it is demanding: it requires commitment, self-denial and the mortification of one's selfishness.

Once again, as on recent Sundays, the Gospel invites us to think about the future which awaits us and for which we must prepare during our earthly pilgrimage.

Salvation, which Jesus brought with his death and Resurrection, is universal. He is the One Redeemer and invites everyone to the banquet of immortal life; but on one and the same condition: that of striving to follow and imitate him, taking up one's cross as he did, and devoting one's life to serving the brethren. This condition for entering heavenly life is consequently one and universal.

In the Gospel, Jesus recalls further that it is not on the basis of presumed privileges that we will be judged but according to our actions. The "workers of iniquity" will find themselves shut out, whereas all who have done good and sought justice at the cost of sacrifices will be welcomed.

Thus, it will not suffice to declare that we are "friends" of Christ, boasting of false merits: "We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets" (Lk 13: 26).

True friendship with Jesus is expressed in the way of life: it is expressed with goodness of heart, with humility, meekness and mercy, love for justice and truth, a sincere and honest commitment to peace and reconciliation.

We might say that this is the "identity card" that qualifies us as his real "friends"; this is the "passport" that will give us access to eternal life.

Dear brothers and sisters, if we too want to pass through the narrow door, we must work to be little, that is, humble of heart like Jesus, like Mary his Mother and our Mother. She was the first, following her Son, to take the way of the Cross and she was taken up to Heaven in glory, an event we commemorated a few days ago. The Christian people invoke her as Ianua Caeli, Gate of Heaven. Let us ask her to guide us in our daily decisions on the road that leads to the "gate of Heaven".

Marktl, Bavaria, Germany

Birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI; he was baptised in St Oswald Church (centre-left) [Wikipedia; photo]

True friendship with Jesus is expressed in the way of life, says Pope Benedict. We are invited into this friendship, which Jesus desires to be eternal, at our baptism.

Traditional Latin Mass

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 8-21-2022 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 Corinthians 15:1-10. Gospel: Mark 7:31-37

Christ Healing the Mute Man

Italian pre-Romanesque painter [Web Gallery of Art] 

'So that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ . . .' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday)

 

The Incredulity of St Thomas

Rembrandt [Web Gallery of Art]

Readings, (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa) 

Readings, (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Gospel, John 20:19-31 (English Standard Version Anglicised: India)  

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

John 20:19-31 from The Gospel of John (2003) 

Directed by Philip Saville; Narrator: Christopher Plummer

In 2007, during a visit to Canada I was asked to give a talk to a prayer group. Afterwards, over coffee, I was chatting with one of the members, an elderly immigrant from Germany, who told me how she had become a Catholic. She had been raised as a Lutheran and had been on the verge of joining the Catholic Church for a long time but could not take the final step.

One weekday afternoon, feeling somewhat down because of this she went for a walk. She was perhaps somewhat like St Thomas when he said, Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe. She happened to pass by a Catholic church and decided to go in. While she was there a group of teenage boys came in, went up to the front of the church, genuflected before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, knelt down for a couple of minutes, stood up, genuflected again and went on their way.

These boys were expressing what the Church has always taught: Do not, then, regard the eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as he himself has declared. Whatever your senses may tell you, be strong in faith.

You have been taught and you are firmly convinced that what looks and tastes like bread and wine is not bread and wine but the body and the blood of Christ. You know also how David referred to this long ago when he sang: Bread gives strength to man’s heart and makes his face shine with the oil of gladness. Strengthen your heart, then, by receiving this bread as spiritual bread, and bring joy to the face of your soul. (From The Jerusalem Catecheses, used in the Office of Readings for Saturday within the Octave of Easter.) 

This is the reason that Fr Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade, rescued the Blessed Sacrament from the burning Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Holy Week of 2019.

The visit of those Canadian teenage boys to the Blessed Sacrament was the German woman's My Lord and my God! moment. She became a Catholic shortly afterwards. Those boys had no idea of how their simple expression of their faith had so profoundly touched the life of a person whom they may not have even noticed.

The moment that St Thomas said My Lord and my God! was truly an 'eternal' moment. It led to his martyrdom and to his living with God for all eternity. 

My German-Canadian friend's moment is 'eternal' in the same way. It led her into a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus and with all the members of the Church and pointing towards an eternity with God himself.

Every such moment in our lives is meant to be eternal, a moment when we experience the presence of God's love so clearly, a moment that we continue to carry with us, sometimes consciously but perhaps more often not being aware of it, a moment that leads us to eternal life.

I think that we may legitimately think of those many moments in the way St John in his gospel writes of the many other signs [miracles] that Jesus did, which are not written in this book. These moments are graces given by God so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

The Mar Thoma Sliva or Saint Thomas Cross, the symbol of the Syro-Malabar Church [Wikipedia]

As of December 2018 nearly nine per cent of nurses in the Republic of Ireland were from India. Most of these nurses are Catholics from Kerala who belong to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church that traces its origins back to St Thomas the Apostle. These, as well as the Syro-Malankara Catholics in Kerala, are in full communion with Rome. 

I have met many Keralite Catholics here in Ireland and also in Britain and know how fervent they are in living their faith.There are Masses in the Syro-Malabar Rite every Sunday in the Archdiocese of Dublin and in some other places, including the parish of Johnstown-Walterstown, which includes St Columban's, Dalgan Park, where I live.

May St Thomas the Apostle, whose My Lord and my God! is the most explicit expression of faith in Jesus Christ in the whole of the New Testament, continue to watch over them. 

Syro-Malabar Hallelujah

Traditional Latin Mass

Low Sunday

The Octave Day of Easter

The Complete Mass in Latin and English is here. (Adjust the date at the top of that page to 04-24-2022 if necessary).

Epistle: 1 John 5:4-10.  Gospel: John 20:19-31.

St Thomas the Apostle 

Jusepe Martínez [Web Gallery of Art]

My Lord and my God!

'In giving us faith, the Lord has given us what is most precious in life.' Sunday Reflections, 21st Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Syro-Malabar Catholic Wedding [Wikipedia]

Readings (New American Bible: Philippines, USA)

Readings (Jerusalem Bible: Australia, England & Wales, India [optional], Ireland, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa)

Gospel Luke 13:22-30 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)  

Jesus^[ went through one town and village after another, teaching as he made his way to Jerusalem. Someone asked him, ‘Lord, will only a few be saved?’ He said to them, ‘Strive to enter through the narrow door; for many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able. When once the owner of the house has got up and shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, “Lord, open to us”, then in reply he will say to you, “I do not know where you come from.”  Then you will begin to say, “We ate and drank with you, and you taught in our streets.”  But he will say, “I do not know where you come from; go away from me, all you evildoers!” There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrown out. Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God. Indeed, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.’

Léachtaí i nGaeilge

Luke 13:22-30 in Filipino Sign Language

Six years ago when I was at home in Dublin from the Philippines a friend who had been a parishioner of mine in Mindanao when she was a child and now works near Dublin, invited me for a meal in a hotel. When the waitress came along I asked her if she was from Poland or Lithuania or 'one of those countries. 'One of those countries', she replied with a smile, 'Latvia.' She took our orders but the food was brought by an Indian waiter. Later on an Irish waiter looked after us.

St Andrew's Church, Westland Row, Dublin [Wikipedia]

A week later I found myself in St Andrew's Church, Westland Row, beside one of Dublin's main railway stations. While I was praying there a grandfather and his grandson aged about three came in. The grandfather was wearing bright summer clothes - unlike grandparents when I was young who seemed to be always dressed in dark clothes - and genuflected before kneeling in the pew. After a while the little boy asked him some questions. His grandfather pointed at the altar and also at some of the Stations of the Cross as he explained things to the youngster. They then left.

St Brigid's Church, Blanchardstown, Archdiocese of Dublin

On one Sunday a month in St Brigid's Church, Blanchardstown, in the Archdiocese of Dublin and the parish that became my home parish after my late father and my brother and his family moved there in the late 1970s has Mass for the Syro-Malabar Catholic community in Dublin once a month. Many of these are nurses from Kerala, India, working in Irish hospitals. St Brigid's Parish also has a Filipino choir that sings at one of the Masses on the last Sunday of the month, except during the summer.

Then people will come from east and west, from north and south, and will eat in the kingdom of God, Jesus tells us in the Gospel this Sunday. Forty years ago churches in Ireland were still full at Sunday Masses, with young and old, and almost everyone Irish. Today there are fewer priests,  fewer Sunday Masses and fewer people attending them, most of them old. A large proportion of Sunday congregations are from places such as India, Nigeria, Poland, the Philippines. Mass servers - and there aren't too many of these anymore - are likely to be either immigrants or the Irish-born children of immigrants.

The above are snapshots of contemporary Ireland, as different from the Ireland of my childhood as are the mobile phones that everyone has from the box cameras that a few had and the telephones  that even fewer had in my time. 

But we had something precious that has been largely lost - our Catholic faith. There are various reasons for the rejection of the Church by many and the outright rejection of the Christian faith by some. But this can remind us that our faith is pure gift from God, a gift that can be shared and that was generously shared, even to the point of giving up life itself, by the countless missionaries who went overseas, or it can be lost, not only by individuals bu by whole communities.

The gift of faith can be lost by taking it for granted, by apathy, by not taking it seriously, by not passing it on. Jesus in the Gospel is telling his fellow Jews - and we must never forget that he is and will be for all eternity a Jew, just like Mary - that many of them are in danger of losing the precious gift of the faith, the faith they inherited from Abraham, our father in faith (Eucharistic Prayer I - Roman Canon) Isaac and Jacob, and that others will accept that same gift with gratitude.

Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle

Archbishop of Manila [Wikipedia]

In 2003, at a gathering of priests in Antipolo City, near Manila, sponsored by Worldwide Marriage Encounter, then Bishop Luis Antonio G. Tagle, now Cardinal-Archbishop of Manila, spoke about a then recent survey on the values of young Filipinos. What he projected could happen within twenty years in terms of the loss of the Catholic faith in the Philippines was what had been happening in Ireland over the previous twenty years.

I was heartened by the sight of the grandfather passing on our Catholic Christian faith to his young grandson by his example and by his readiness to answer the boy's questions. I am heartened by the living faith of so many immigrants to Ireland.

My hope is that the Catholic faith will continues to be passed on in Ireland and elsewhere by grandfathers - and grandmothers and parents - like the one I saw in St Andrew's Church. My hope is that the Catholic faith will be renewed in Ireland and elsewhere by the example and fervour of immigrants from Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, by people from east and west, from north and south and that together we will all will eat in the kingdom of God, not only in heaven but here and now as brothers and sisters working together to build a world where the values  of the Gospel prevail, a world where everyone will have heard the Gospel of Jesus proclaimed to them, especially by the lives we lead. 

Blanchardstown Parish has a Nigerian priest as an assistant, Fr Aloysius Zuribo, who came to Ireland as an immigrant and later was ordained for the Archdiocese of Dublin.

My hope is that the nurses from Kerala, who trace their Catholic faith back to St Thomas the Apostle, the waiters, drivers, caregivers and nurses from the Philippines, whose faith embodies a tender love of Mary the Mother of God as our Mother, will help the Irish to re-discover the greatness of the gift that their ancestors received more than 1,500 years ago from a great missionary who first arrived in Ireland at the age of 16 as a kidnapped slave, St Patrick.

My fear is that there will not be enough grandfathers - and grandmothers and parents - who will know and value the gift of faith enough to pass it on and that the youngsters, children of immigrants to Ireland and elsewhere in the Western world, will succumb to the values of their contemporaries and reject the most precious gift that God has given us - our Catholic Christian faith, an invitation to share in the love of God for all eternity.

Though the video was made for the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord it invites us to reflect on our faith, received through baptism, as pure gift from God, something we should do constantly. 

Dear friends, in giving us faith, the Lord has given us what is most precious in life, that is, the truest and most beautiful reason for living: it is through grace that we have believed in God, that we have known his love with which he wants to save us and to deliver us from evil. Faith is the great gift with which he also gives us eternal life, true life. Now, dear parents and godparents, you are asking the Church to receive these children within her, to give them Baptism; and you are making this request by virtue of the gift of faith that you yourselves, in turn, have received (Pope Benedict XVI).

Baptising a young girl in the Philippines

'My Lord and my God!' Sunday Reflections, 2nd Sunday of Easter (Divine Mercy Sunday), Year C

The Incredulity of St Thomas, Rembrandt [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 John 20:19-31 (New Revised Standard Version, Anglicised Catholic Edition, Canada)  

When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’ When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

But Thomas (who was called the Twin), one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.’

A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.’ Thomas answered him, ‘My Lord and my God!’  Jesus said to him, ‘Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

Léachtaí i nGaeilge 

The Gospel of John (2003) Directed by Philip Saville

Narrator: Christopher Plummer

In 2007, during a visit to Canada I was asked to give a talk to a prayer group. Afterwards, over coffee, I was chatting with on of the members, an elderly immigrant from Germany, who told me how she had become a Catholic. She had been raised as a Lutheran and had been on the verge of joining the Catholic Church for a long time but could not take the final step.

One weekday afternoon, feeling somewhat down because of this she went for a walk. She happened to pass by a Catholic church and decided to go in. While she was there a group of teenage boys came in went up to the front of the church, genuflected before the Blessed Sacrament in the tabernacle, knelt down for a couple of minutes, stood up, genuflected again and went on their way.

These boys were expressing what the Church has always taught: Do not, then, regard the eucharistic elements as ordinary bread and wine: they are in fact the body and blood of the Lord, as he himself has declared. Whatever your senses may tell you, be strong in faith.

You have been taught and you are firmly convinced that what looks and tastes like bread and wine is not bread and wine but the body and the blood of Christ. You know also how David referred to this long ago when he sang: Bread gives strength to man’s heart and makes his face shine with the oil of gladness. Strengthen your heart, then, by receiving this bread as spiritual bread, and bring joy to the face of your soul. (From The Jerusalem Catecheses, used in the Office of Readings for Saturday within the Octave of Easter.)

This is the reason that Fr Jean-Marc Fournier, chaplain to the Paris Fire Brigade, rescued the Blessed Sacrament from the burning Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral in Holy Week.

The visit of those Canadian teenage boys to the Blessed Sacrament was the German woman's My Lord and my God! moment. She became a Catholic shortly afterwards. Those boys had no idea of how their simple expression of their faith had so profoundly touched the life of a person whom they may not have even noticed.

The moment that St Thomas said My Lord and my God! was truly an 'eternal' moment. It led to his martyrdom and to his living with God for all eternity.

My German-Canadian friend's moment is 'eternal' in the same way. It led her into a deeper relationship with the Lord Jesus and with all the members of the Church and points towards an eternity with God himself.

Every such moment in our lives is meant to be eternal, a moment when we experience the presence of God's love so clearly, a moment that we continue to carry with us, sometimes consciously but perhaps more often not being aware of it, a moment that leads us to eternal life.

I think that we my legitimately think of those many moments in the way St John in his gospel writes of the many other signs [miracles] that Jesus did, which are not written in this book. These moments are graces given by God so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

The Mar Thoma Sliva or Saint Thomas Cross, the symbol of the Syro-Malabar Church [Wikipedia]

Nearly nine per cent of nurses in the Republic of Ireland are from India and most of these are Catholics from Kerala who belong to the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church that traces its origins back to St Thomas the Apostle. These, as well as the Syro-Malankara Catholics in Kerala, are in full communion with Rome. 

I have met many Keralite Catholics here in Ireland and also in Britain and know how fervent they are in living their faith.There are Masses in the Syro-Malabar Rite every Sunday in the Archdiocese of Dublin.

May St Thomas the Apostle, whose My Lord and my God! is the most explicit expression of faith in Jesus Christ in the whole of the New Testament, continue to watch over them. 

                                                                                                                    Antiphona communionem Communion Antiphon Cf John 20:27

Setting by contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan

Mitte manum tuam, et cognoscere loca clavorum,

Bring your hand and feel the place of the nails,

et noli esse incredulus, sed fidelis, alleluia, alleluia.

and do not be unbelieving but believing, alleluia, alleluia.

Gregorian Chant setting

St Thomas the Apostle, Jusepe Martínez [Web Gallery of Art] 

My Lord and my God!