Christmas Day 25 December 2013

Fr. Gerard Kelly

The day has finally arrived!  For all of our planning for Christmas and preparation for its celebration, the time has now come.  This is the day to celebrate.  It is no longer just a list of things to do, or anxiety that all will work out well.  It is here and we are celebrating it.

The account of Jesus’ birth as we heard it in St Luke’s gospel also has this sense that the time has finally arrived.  After generations of waiting for the Messiah, something has happened.  Luke is quite particular about the details of how Jesus came to be born.  He locates it at a particular time, when a major census was being taken.  He locates it at a particular place, Bethlehem.  Today we celebrate that moment, that event.  Something happened long ago, back then.  Today we remember it.

As we hear the story of those events, like generations before us, we are fascinated to know their full meaning.  After all, this Jesus who was born went on to shape the course of world history.  His birth was a religious event like no other.  He is called Emmanuel, which means God is with us; he is called the Saviour.  His birth leads to an outpouring of praise of God.  Another way of saying this is to speak of God entering into human history.  God takes on human flesh like ours, a human nature like ours.  This is what makes Christianity unique: our God has visited us.  No other religion speaks this way.  Christmas points to the great gift God has given to the whole of creation.

If this is how God has acted, we will want to know how this gift was received.  The Christmas story tells us this.  We all know those famous words, “there was no room in the inn”.  Because there was no place for Mary and Joseph to lodge, they were forced to find a shed on the fringes of the town.  Think of the meaning of this.  God enters the world on the margins rather than at the centres of power.  I wonder what things might have been like if God had entered the world at the centres of power.  Might not the people there have thought that they could manipulate God for their own ends?  And in the end, might this gift of God among us have remained un-received in the world?  In fact, throughout history many have tried to manipulate God.  They claim God for their cause, and create God in their own image.  But Jesus was born on the margins, and from there God offers a precious gift to all people.  Jesus is this gift.  As one who is truly human, he is for us a model of authentic human living.  As one who is truly God, he foreshadows the divine life in each of us.  As St John puts it in his letter, “we shall be like him because we will see him as he truly is.”

Being born outside the town, Jesus was first revealed to the shepherds.  This first revelation of Jesus marks the beginning of a pattern that will unfold during his ministry.  He reaches out to the lowly, and the poor.  He encounters human misery, human frailty and weakness.  His actions will bring out the best in people.  He will lift them up so that they can live with all of the dignity that comes from being the sons and daughters of God.  The shepherds are the first ones to receive this gift of God.  Look at how this happens.  They search out this child they have heard about, and then they tell of his birth to others, astounding them with this news.  This too will become a pattern for Christian living.  The spiritual life of the believer entails seeking out our God who comes to visit us.  It involves seeking him out in the midst of shepherds’ fields, as it were.  In other words, seeking him out where we live our lives, and not in some imaginary world where we would like to live.

In the fields where the shepherds were – in this ordinary place – the angels of heaven sang their praise, “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”.  They re-affirmed what we have already learnt about the birth of this child.  Heaven and earth meet; the world is beginning to be transformed.  Their message is one of peace – peace for the whole of creation.  This peace is not just an end to violence – and wouldn’t that be a wonderful gift in so many parts of the world and even on our own inner-city streets!  This is a peace that takes root deep in the human heart.  For each of us, it is a peace that springs from right relations with God and hence a deep sense of contentment with who we are.  Only a peace that is deep-seated in the human heart will provide the foundation for the peace promised to the world by the choirs of angels.

Yes, the day has finally arrived.  Christmas is here.  Today we remember and celebrate what God has already done in the world at the birth of Jesus.  Today we receive a remarkable gift from God.  God’s gift is never exhausted.  May the peace we experience this Christmas sustain our faith and hope that Jesus is truly our Saviour, the Saviour of the world.

4th Sunday Advent (A) - 22 December 2013

Mt 1:18-24

Fr. Ruben Areno, SSP

What am I suppose to do?

This is the question that Joseph, and many of us ask of ourselves when we are confronted with making a difficult decision in life.  What am I suppose to do today, next week, next month, or next year?

St Ignatius of  Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Congregation, proposes three ways of making a discernment in answering that question. What am I suppose to do?

First method is to lists down the disadvantage and advantage why not or why yes you should do it.  The negative way, what are the factors and the conditions that prevent you from not doing it? The positive method, what are the plus advantages and projections for growth & development when you say yes you will do it?  After putting it on a balance scale, you finally sense the weight of the matter that will give you peace of mind when you decide on it.

The second way is to ask the experts, counselors, mentors, spiritual directors.  In the ways of the spirit, there are spiritual masters and directors with whom we can ask for advise.  These mentors, teachers, and spiritual guides can clarify us as to the purpose and goals upon which our actions are directed.  Since we cannot see all angles of reality, we need someone who will act as a mirror to clarify, to confront us, to make us accountable and responsible for the actions that we are about to take.

Third, when the decision is really difficult, St. Ignatius would say: “at deathbed situations, would you do the thing you are about to do, and face the Lord at the last judgment.” 

After passing through these ways of discernment we can truly say along with St. Joseph, that we are doing the will of God, and trying to abide by God’s plan in our history.

Daily we make decisions.  We also have to possess the readiness and disposition to act spontaneously at any given notice.  Readiness is virtue of Mary and Joseph to be at the service of availability for God.

To picture it for us, here is a story: Chin Lin has a small restaurant. Everyday before all the customers come, she would do a short meditation and picture all the customers coming in.  Then, she would write small notes and put them inside the fortune cookie. People would find the message or exchange it among themselves. One particular couple, after reading through the message, ate the message together with the cookie.  In the days when we participate in the Holy Mass, we hear the message from Scripture and break bread with Jesus.  The Word of God and the Eucharist are our daily bread.  We hear the word of God and put them into practice, and Word makes his dwelling amongst us.  Merry Christmas to all.

3rd SUNDAY ADVENT (A) 15 December 2013

Fr. Gerard Kelly

During this season of Advent we don’t just think about the birth of Jesus at Christmas, but we spend a lot of time listening to the Old Testament prophets, especially the prophet Isaiah.  His was a voice that called out to the people, sometimes challenging them, sometimes consoling them, but always urging them to think about the future.  We’re probably not as unfamiliar with this as we might think.  Prophets would urge the people to hold out until there was a new king or a new leader, or to wait until a drought ended and rains came, or just to wait until it was summer and the flowers would bloom.  Often the future they were speaking about was very close.  Our world also thinks in these terms, whether it be waiting for the dollar to fall or the draught to end or a government to change.

But the prophets were also capable of speaking of a bigger vision.  When Isaiah spoke of the wilderness and the dry lands exulting he was thinking of more than just the breaking of a drought.  Here was a vision of a new earth, marked by the abundance of water, and teaming with life.  It was as if God would re-fashion the earth and make it anew.  This new creation would also extend to human beings.  The blind would see, the deaf hear, and the voiceless would get a voice.  This was a vision that would not just encourage the people, but also strengthen their trust in God.  It was a vision that looked beyond a new leader or a new season.  It was a vision that looked to God ruling the earth in justice.  This did not mean, however, that the leaders were not important.  Isaiah was expecting the leaders to model their lives on God and to rule as God would rule, thus helping to usher in this new world.

Now Isaiah spoke nearly three thousand years ago.  Does he have anything to say to us?  I think our age has a fundamental problem with this type of prophecy.  We want something that seems to be better grounded in the present.  People who dream of a new world where the blind see, or where there is no more war, are often accused of having their head in the clouds.  I think Isaiah would respond to this by saying that unless there is a vision for the future we are doomed to a life of mediocrity or even misery.

Advent is a time to allow ourselves to listen to the voice of the prophet.  As soon as we do this we will find ourselves asking questions – questions like: when will this happen?  How long must we wait?  How do we get ready?  What are we to do in the present time?

I think these are the sorts of questions that John the Baptist faced as he sat in his prison cell.  He wanted to know who Jesus was – not just if he was new political leader, but if he was God’s anointed one, the Messiah.  In his state of imprisonment he probably wanted to know what his future might hold.  Perhaps he wanted to know if Jesus might be able to get him released.  Jesus sends back a message – it almost seemed to be in code.  He simply tells the messengers that the blind see again, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed.  This was a message that probably put John’s imprisonment in some sort of perspective for him.  God’s reign was breaking in to the world, the new creation was groaning as it came to birth.  I guess that as John heard these words his own fate took on a particular meaning as he sat in his prison cell.

We have to face our own questions for our own time.  Perhaps the first question is, “which voices do we listen to?”  There are voices calling out to us from everywhere.  Advertisers promise us health and beauty and prosperity and happiness – if only we buy their products.  These voices promise us immediate gratification or even instant success.  They fit well in an age when we want things right now.  Ours is not an age that displays a lot of patience.  We are probably becoming less and less able to formulate a long term vision for ourselves or for our society.  Jesus puts the question: what did you go out into the wilderness to see?  This is a question also for us: what do you want to hear when you listen to the prophets of today?

The words of St James can challenge us to think about this.  He urged people to be patient, and to wait for the long term.  He used the analogy of a farmer who waits for the rains to come and for the crop to grow.  For us city-dwellers who are probably more used to the speed of email and are frustrated if it takes any longer than a couple of seconds, to speak of waiting for something seems to be more and more irrelevant.  Yet, the message of St James is important.  This season of Advent gives us a lesson in patience, teaching us how to wait, and how to keep our focus on the great vision of a new creation.  It teaches us to think beyond the next few weeks or even the next few years.  It reminds us that if we allow the vision of the prophets to shape our lives then we will truly be participants in the coming to birth of the new creation and the new humanity that John the Baptist saw, symbolised in the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lepers being cleansed and the poor having the good news preached to them.

Christ the King (C) 24 Nov 2013

Fr. Noel Connolly

Today is the last Sunday of the Church’s Year. Unlike the secular calendar which begins on January 1 or New Year’s Day, the Church’s calendar begins next Sunday, the First Sunday of Advent. So this Sunday is the Church’s official end of the year.

Endings are always a time for review, for looking back over the year with all its joys and hopes, its concerns, sorrows and anxieties. It is extremely important if we want to be reflective, prayerful and grateful Christians that we frequently look back over life to count our blessings and reflect on our anxieties, our failures and all the things we wish had never been.

In celebrating the Feast of Christ the King, the Church is proposing to us the context in which we should review the year namely the confidence that when all is said and done, when we reflect on our lives we recognise that Christ is our King. He is the ultimate value in life and he loves us and will protect us.

In today’s readings we are given different images of Kingship. In the second reading we have the beautiful theological image of Jesus as “the first born of all creation, for in him all things in heaven and earth were created ….. Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers – all things were created through him and for him.” And “all things will be reconciled through him and for him, everything in heaven and everything on earth, when he made peace by death on his cross.” In this one reading we have the two great contrasts in God’s power or kingship. He is king of all in heaven and on earth but his kingship is not like that of worldly kings. His is a different type of power. It comes not from lording it over others but from service and ultimately from his death.

This contrast is strongly emphasised in comparing the first reading and the Gospel.  In the first reading from the book of Samuel we learn of how David was anointed King of Israel. Before Saul and David Israel’s only King was God. Israel was a group independent tribes united only by their common faith and history. Whenever they were attacked a charismatic leader would emerge who would unite them to fight off their enemies. But as their enemies got more powerful and sophisticated, many Israelites came to Samuel their priest and elder and asked him for a King. Samuel was reluctant to give them a King. He recognised they needed a king to defend themselves against the better organised and united Philistines but he warned them that a king would need a standing army and for that he would collect taxes and conscript their sons. He would also need a capital and servants and most likely he would be corrupted by greed and hunger for power and lead them away from God. In that he was prophetic. Israel survived because of their kings but the rest of the Old Testament is a history of good and bad kings and the prophets who challenged them when they were unjust or unfaithful.

Luke’s Gospel paints an entirely different picture. It portrays Jesus as King, but a King on the Cross. Instead of lording it over others Jesus would be servant to all. He spent most of his public ministry trying to warn his disciples about the dangers of power and to wean his disciples away from the idea of an all-powerful God. Whenever they got carried away with the idea of making him a King he would warn them that he must die.

We all want God to be powerful. We want a God who is in charge, who will fix our problems, who will give us clear directions, and rescue us from our crises. But Jesus shows us a God who reveals his love in rejection, darkness, failure & death. In today’s Gospel the soldiers and even one of the thieves taunt Jesus to prove that he is God by coming down from the cross. That is the worldly understanding of power, the ability to do whatever you want, to get out of all kinds of trouble, to save ourselves. But God’s power is contrary to human power. It is found in love and forgiveness, in patient suffering, in service of others especially the weak and the poor. Jesus proves he is God not by coming down from the cross but by staying on the cross and loving till the end. On the cross the contrast between the different concepts of power is clear. Rome seemingly has all the power. It can kill Jesus. But Jesus has the power to love, forgive and save. The Romans are forgotten and Jesus still lives.

God’s love is vulnerable & contrary to human power. God is active in pain, suffering and ambiguity. Jesus never evades suffering. And God normally doesn’t interfere and take us out of our crises or even our suffering. But he does love us and will always be with us. He will support and protect us. That is the kind of King Jesus is.

So on this last Sunday of 2013. We look back over the year to count our blessings and reflect on our anxieties, our failures and all the things we wish had never been. We entrust everything to Christ, our King.

33rd SUNDAY(C) 17 Nov 2013

Fr. Gerard Kelly

I have recently been involved with a group of people who have become uncertain about their future at work.  They have heard news that they might be forced to re-locate and work closely with another group.  However, no decision has been made, so they are not sure what might happen.  This type of situation creates a lot of anxiety for the people involved.  I notice that something that intensifies their anxiety is the rumours and opinions that are spread by other people claiming to know what will happen.  This sort of situation of an uncertain future is not all that uncommon.  We need only think of the many workplaces where change is happening and workers are unsure of their future.  The word “restructure” has become a word to instil fear in most people today.

Most commentators tell us that change can be very unsettling.  Change can happen in many varied ways throughout our life.  In its most basic form we change all the time as we age.  Generally people cope with this quite well, but sometimes there are moments when we realise it is happening and begin to get unsettled.  I have often met people who take fright when they are about to celebrate a birthday that puts them into a new decade – perhaps turning fifty, or sixty, or seventy.  Earlier in life, of course, the first day at school for a child can be quite terrifying.  Sometimes when the circumstances around us change we feel that we are no longer in control and we get anxious about it all.  Control seems to be the big factor.  When we can control change and don’t feel that it is controlling us, then we tend to manage it reasonably well.

The question of change and the future is behind the scene in today’s gospel as Jesus walks in the Temple and is questioned by some of the people there.  It almost seems as though Jesus wants to unsettle them.  But in the end, he tries to settle them down.  I think he is preparing them for the changes that they will have to face.  He doesn’t want them to become too fixed in their ways so that they will be unable to deal with what must inevitably happen.

It is very common for people to take this passage and Jesus’ sayings and start to read into our own times apocalyptic visions of the end of the world.  People have probably been doing this since the time when Jesus first spoke these words.  But I think we need to note carefully what in fact Jesus did say.  He seems to make two points.  The first is that it is important to read the signs around us.  These can give us some clue to what is happening and likely to happen and how to prepare for it.  We do this quite often is some areas of our life.  If we see dark clouds when we look out the window we are likely to take an umbrella with us just in case it rains.  Or to take a different type of example, children often have a sense of when it is a good time to speak with their parents about something.  The instinctively know when their parents are in a good or a bad mood, as they would describe it.  They have read the signs.  If we are able to read the signs well, then we can be better prepared for what is likely to happen.

The second thing that Jesus says is that we have to be careful that we don’t misread the signs around us.  Those who misread the signs show bad judgement.  Sometimes people misread them because they want to make a situation out to be worse than it is.  They are natural pessimists and may even seem to like conspiracy theories: “they’re all out to get us!”  Misreading the signs may be because we don’t trust other people or even because we don’t trust ourselves.

So what does Jesus propose to help us face the future?  We need to note that he doesn’t pretend that we won’t face challenges – even sorrows – throughout our lives.  Rather, he says it is important to deal with the challenges by trusting in God.  He gives us a new slant on wanting to be in control.  Don’t think too much about what you are to say or do, he says, because I will you the eloquence and wisdom that you need.  This doesn’t mean that we are simply passive in the face of the future.  We need to consider the reasons why we can have confidence in God.

We grow in confidence by looking to the past and remembering what has happened.  We can remember our own capacity to deal with new situations as they arose previously.  We can remember the support we have received from our various communities.  And we can remember God’s own goodness.  This memory is the source of our confidence as we face the future.

We also grow in confidence by developing a vision for the future that is based on hope.  Our hope is not the same as thinking that everything is fine and there will be no challenges in the future.  Rather, hope is based on God’s promise that in the end all will be good; that our lives will be blessed.  We can’t control the future, but we can face it with confidence in God.  In this way we live in the present, ready to face whatever situations confront us.

29th SUNDAY (C) 20 Oct 2103

Fr. Lito

Within each one of us is a seed of the goodness of God, a seed of the image and likeness of God. Sin cannot totally erase this indelible image that is ours in the sacrament of our Baptism. Hence, even the story of a corrupt judge's dealings with a widow can still be a parable of God, in one way or another. The way God deals with us in our prayers and supplications is, of course, far more benevolent than that of the corrupt judge.

Thomas Keating, the Cistercian monk who is known worldwide as the founder of the Centering Prayer movement, advocates a fresh way of meditating on the Parable of the Widow and the Corrupt Judge. He says that it may be good to get the story out of the limited context of Luke's narration. For one thing, even biblical scholars maintain that the present parables of Jesus could have undergone a good deal of reinterpretation as the evangelists wove them into their interpretative account of the life of Jesus. This is the whole point of what they call "redaction criticism."

Taken out of the Lucan limitations, the Parable of the Widow and the Corrupt Judge stands out as a story about the Kingdom of God. For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was the justification and foundation of his life, mission, and preaching. From this pristine point of reflection, then we realize that God cannot be compared to anyone unjust and corrupt like the judge. We are the ones who are corrupt and unjust in ways. Not only are we unjust with others, but with God. Many times, adsorbed in the affairs of the earth, we fail to give God what is due. God is the begging widow. Though strong, he chooses to be helpless and gentle like a woman (cf. also Lk 15:8-10).

The Parable we have today then is an invitation of God: "Do me justice... give me the time and the thanksgiving and the adoration that is due to me." God is the Divine Widow pounding on us morning, noon, and night. God continues to come to us through persons, events, our own thoughts and feelings, our consciences, our readings. Many times we put "her" off. In the end, many times, we finally give the Divine Widow her due not because we have turned just, but because we simply cannot stand the importunities of grace.

26th SUNDAY (C) 29 Sep 2013

Fr. Noel Connolly

Click here to download Chinese translation of the homily (在此下載中文翻譯錄音)

One thing I often reflect on is power. All my life I have been a powerful person. I am the eldest child and son. At school I was the Captain of the School and of the Rugby team and Dux. I became a priest and at the age of 32 I was appointed Rector of our Seminary in Turramurra and for the next 32 years held roles like Vicar General and Director of the Columbans in Australia and New Zealand.

If I am honest I must say that I enjoyed being powerful but as time passed I was also became frightened of what power could do to me. After all in the Gospels Jesus’ criticisms are not of the obvious sinners, the prostitutes and publicans but of the rich and powerful.

One of my favourite books is Paul Tournier’s The Violence Inside. I first read it thirty years ago and I have never forgotten his claim that “the weak are very conscious of their weakness and the powerful are rarely conscious of their strength”. The successful tend to believe in the present order of things and become insensitive to weakness and failure. The powerful often hurt people without intending to. I have seen this born out often in my own life. I know I have hurt people without ever intending to. I often find it difficult to understand why the weak just cannot “get their act together” after all, “life wasn’t meant to be easy.”

We all know that power can corrupt and I often try to examine my conscience in that regard. But I think the more insidious effect of power is that it can blind us. We just cannot appreciate the point of view of the weak and worse still we cannot see what power and prosperity are doing to ourselves. Tournier suggests that a person’s moral conscience or sensitivity was often in inverse proportion to their power. In his experience as a medical doctor he found that the powerful were the hardest to deal with because they were the most fearful and vulnerable, dissatisfied but impelled towards a constant effort to increase their power still further. Power and affluence seemed to stifle the spirit.

That is why most of Jesus’ warnings were reserved for the rich and powerful. He tried to warn them how dangerous wealth and power can be for the spirit.

This is graphically illustrated in today’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the beggar who wanted to eat the crumbs that fell from his table. The rich man’s sin was not so much what he did but that he never even noticed Lazarus. It was as if Lazarus only existed as part of the landscape. The rich man could not appreciate Lazarus’ need and was completely indifferent to his suffering. He certainly didn’t see him as a person and possibly never spoke to him. But before we become too righteous about the rich man in the parable we should ask ourselves whether our power and affluence have blinded us. Are there needy people like Lazarus sitting just outside our door that we cannot see?

The irony of today’s parable is as Jesus points out that if the rich man had have noticed Lazarus he could have been his salvation. The poor man who could have saved the rich man.

Luke makes the same point in his account of Jesus’ visit to the house of Simon, the Pharisee. Simon was a powerful man with eyes only for his own virtue. He didn’t wash Jesus’ feet and despised the sinful woman who not only washed Jesus’ feet with her tears but dried them with her hair and anointed them. Simon could not appreciate the suffering or the love of the sinful woman. But Jesus points out to Simon his self-righteousness, the shallowness of his love and how judgemental and insensitive he is. He suggests that Simon could learn a lot from this sinful woman. A sinner could save a successful, religious man.

This is the point our present Pope, Francis keeps making we must turn to the poor. Only that can save us.

We like to say “we never had it so good” but actually the Gospel would say “we never had it so dangerous”. Power and prosperity tend to give us arrogant and self-important eyes rather than loving and compassionate eyes. Arrogant eyes unconsciously have eyes only for themselves and their virtue and projects.  They do not see the need, virtues and beauty of the other.

May I close with a story? There once was a famous and wise rabbi who asked his disciples, “how can you determine when the night has ended and the new day begun?” One disciple replied, “When you can see the form of an animal in the distance and recognise whether it is a sheep or a dog.” Another disciple responded, “When there is enough light to tell the difference between a black and a white thread.” But the rabbi answered, “The new day has dawned when you can look into the face of every man and woman and recognise the face of your brother or sister. If you cannot do that, then it is still night.” That is the lesson the rich man, Simon the Pharisee and we have to learn.

17th SUNDAY (C) 28 July 2013

Fr. Tom Richie 

Click here to download Chinese translation of the homily here (在此下載中文翻譯錄音)

One of my very early memories is my mother praying with me the prayer to my guardian angel before I went to sleep. Prayer is a vital part of our lives if we claim to be Christians or even people who believe in God. Usually when we are little we learn prayers and we form an idea about God. But sometimes God is used to threaten us with punishment if we are bad children. Some develop their idea of God as a fearsome authority figure. The way we pray flows from the way we see God. For some their prayers are a ritual they need to fulfil in order to keep safe or get what they want.

In the gospel today the Disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray just as John the Baptist has taught his disciples to pray. In this Gospel Jesus teaches them the prayer that we call “the Lord’s Prayer” or the “Our Father” and then we have several other teachings of Jesus about pray that have been collected together. I am sure we can learn something here to help us pray. I think the most important thing we learn is the way that Jesus begins. He doesn’t say “O, all powerful Lord”, or “Great God”. He says when you pray say “father”. Actually that is not right. We have even made it sound more formal than it should be. What Jesus actually says is in Hebrew “Abba”, which is more like “Papa”, or “Dad”. And this is not the only place where he uses this way of addressing God. Jesus is not telling us that prayer is about getting the right words for prayers. What Jesus is telling is that to begin we have to have the right relationship with God. To pray is about entering into a relationship, or making ourselves aware of our relationship with God as our loving father.

When we want to communicate with people we must first be aware of our relationship with them as our co-worker, as a shop assistant, as our child, our wife, a beggar, our boss. Our communication will follow on from our relationship. We will not be using a set formula of words. When we are thinking of God Jesus say think of him as “Abba”, Dad, or Papa. How the Hebrew people described God’s attitude to his people was to say he was rich in “racham” a Hebrew word meaning  “compassionate love”.  The word is related to the Hebrew word for womb and it means the tender compassion that a mother or father has for the child that they have borne. When we begin to pray Jesus is reminding us that we are responding to the God who loves us in this tender way and we can think of him as having the qualities of loving father and mother.

Jesus tells us that we then remind ourselves that we want everything to be in his hands, our life, the whole world, “your kingdom come”. We can ask for our needs “give us bread”, we remember that we do wrong “forgive us as we forgive”, and we need to be protected from temptation and evil, ”deliver us from evil”.

The story of Jesus about asking the man in bed to get bread is not telling us that it is very difficult to get God to hear us, but to say that if an unwilling man will answer our request how much more easily will we be heard by our loving father. If we do not give up on trust in him he will not give up on us. He will answer our prayers but not always in the way that we expect. I think that many times what we ask for could turn out to be like the stone or the snake or the scorpion for us if we were to really get it: Like praying for success and riches, or to punish someone else. God will always listen to our prayers and he will answer them but in a way which often changes us to see things in another way. He helps us to bear the pain, the sadness, the loss, the humiliation. He changes our hearts to take away the hardness, to see the good in others, to forgive and to have the courage to ask for forgiveness. If we really give our heart to God in prayer it will bring joy and peace.

16th SUNDAY (C) 21 July 2013

Click here to download Chinese translation of the homily here (在此下載中文翻譯錄音)

Fr. Gerard Kelly

You probably remember that last week we heard the gospel parable of the Good Samaritan.  Jesus told this parable in response to a question from a lawyer about the meaning of love of God and love of neighbour.  The lawyer had asked, “Who is my neighbour?”  Jesus didn’t give a direct answer, but told a parable and then asked the lawyer which of the three characters had acted like a neighbour.  The lawyer recognised that it was the Samaritan, and Jesus told him to go and do likewise.  In other words, Jesus shifted the focus away from a theoretical discussion about neighbours and placed it squarely on the way we act.

Now, the gospel incident we have heard today comes immediately after the parable of the Good Samaritan.  We may well wonder how the two connect.  In fact, we could imagine Martha replying to Jesus: here I am doing my best to make things right for my neighbour – I am doing something – and my sister Mary is sitting there doing nothing.  When we hear it like that, I am sure that our instincts are to feel sorry for Martha.

But let’s look at Martha and see what is going on.  In some ways she is the perfect model of many people in our generation.  How often have any of us said that we are very busy or that there are too many things to do and not enough time to do them?  The word “multi-tasking” is so common today that it seems to describe the way we live.  For many of us, if we are not busy we begin to feel guilty.  More than that, we can easily describe other people as lazy if they look as though they are idle.  It is probably fair to say that most people today are more like Martha than Mary.  And in fact, we tend to look down on the Marys of this world.

So what is the gospel telling us?  That we should stop doing all the things that we do?  That we should become lazy?  I don’t think so.  We need to remember the context.  This gospel comes after the parable of the Good Samaritan.  It can’t be telling us that we should do nothing.  I think the way we need to interpret it is to ask how it might help us to learn the best way to act in loving our neighbour.

It struck me that the central question last week’s parable put to us was about the basic instinct out of which we act.  When we are forced to act spontaneously, what will we do?  The Samaritan saw a man, battered and bruised, lying on the side of the road and knew that he had to act to help him.  This was in contrast to the other two people – the priest and the Levite – who walked by on the other side because the Law would not allow them to come into contact with blood.  The Samaritan acted out of a deep instinct of care for other people – even if they were different.  The parable was really pointing to us the problem of indifference: that we can become so focused on ourselves, or even social custom, that we ignore what is happening around us.  Just last week Pope Francis, on a visit to the Island of Lampedusa, referred to the “globalisation of indifference”.  Lampedusa is probably the Italian equivalent of our Christmas Island. It is where thousands of refugees, fleeing persecution in Northern Africa, arrive to seek asylum in Italy.  The pope quoted the parable of the Good Samaritan. 

The problem of indifference is ultimately a problem that goes to our basic instincts.  In the parable, the priest and Levite had poor instinct when faced with human tragedy.  They were so preoccupied with the Law that they were blind to the fundamental commandment to love their neighbour.  At times our instincts can be more shaped by politics, economics, technology or a range of other doctrines, rather than by the love of God.

And this brings us back to Martha and Mary.  The incident points out to us that love of neighbour cannot be separated from love of God.  Martha was so busy doing everything that she had no time to sit like Mary at the feet of Jesus.  It is there at the feet of Jesus, that she would hear a word of love.  It is there at the feet of Jesus that she would experience the love of Jesus washing over her and giving her new energy to go about her tasks.  At the feet of Jesus her attention would be turned for a little while away from herself and on to him.  All of this goes toward shaping her basic instinct.  The more time she spends with him, the more she will be energised to do the tasks that are before her.

It would be wrong to read this incident of Martha and Mary as forcing us to make a choice between either one or the other.  In fact, the church has always struggled to keep both instincts alive.  We need Marthas as well as Marys.  Perhaps it is better if we see them as two faces of the one person.  We each need to wear both faces.  What we learn today is that only by taking time to be with God can we gain that energy that we need to love like God loves.  It is not a question of spending all our time in prayer so that the world passes us by – just as it is not a question of being so preoccupied with the world that we have not time for God or for others.  A balance is needed.  When we have that balance it will show itself in our fundamental instinct that comes into play in a variety of situations we face.

13th SUNDAY (C) 30 June 2013

Fr. Tom Richie

We read in the Gospel to-day about Jesus and the Apostles going up to Jerusalem and wanting to stay at a Samaritan village. But the Samaritans refused to let them stay because they said that they were going up to Jerusalem, the city of the Samaritans’ enemy. By the time of Jesus Samaritan and Jews had been enemies for five centuries, ever since the people of Judah returned from the Babylonian exile. The Samaritans claimed that they preserved the original Jewish religion and the returning people brought new changes that the Samaritans rejected and from then on fought over bitterly. The reaction of James and John to being rejected was great indignation. They wanted to call down fire from heaven and destroy them. They misunderstood the mission of Jesus. Jesus told them “no”, that is not what our mission is about, destroying people and punishing them for lack of respect and cooperation. James and John and the other Apostles have to learn they have come to serve, to be humble, to accept rejection as a way of converting their enemies.  It is when we humble ourselves and make ourselves vulnerable before our enemies that we can win them over.

I remember when I first went to work among the indigenous people in Papua New Guinea there were some fundamentalist protestant missionaries who hated Catholics living about 4 kilometres away from my parish. The only walking track from one of my churches where I said Mass each week went right past where they lived. It was a five hour walk and one day when I was walking past their house I was thirsty and I had an inspiration to ask them for a drink of water. The woman who opened the door was shocked to find a Catholic priest standing at her door. At first she could hardly speak but she gave me a drink. It was difficult for me to ask the first time but I think it was an inspiration from God. Then each week when I was walking past their house I called in and asked for a drink of water. Gradually the woman became more friendly and after about a month she asked me to sit down in the shade and brought me an orange drink and her husband came and started to talk to me. That was the beginning of breaking down their terrible prejudice even hatred against Catholics.

Pope Francis has told us to accept others. In May during a homily he said: “The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone, even the Atheists. And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace.” The Pope has appealed to us to recognise the good that others do and to let them know that we appreciate the good that they do. He does not want us to focus on what separates us but to see what bring us together with those of other beliefs and even those with no beliefs. For a long time we have focused on the things that have separated us: differences in doctrine, differences in the way we do things, but always we believe we are right and they are wrong. Now we are asked to look at the good things that they do and appreciate them.

This should apply to all areas of our lives. Instead of being so quick to judge and condemn others among our families, our friends, our church community and others let us listen to them and learn of the good things that they have done and the goodness that is in their hearts even if they see things differently from us. We can help to bring about the peace that Jesus came to bring.

12th SUNDAY (C) 23 June 2013

Fr. Tom Richie (OFM)

 “We are baptised into Christ” St. Paul tell us in the second reading today. When we are baptised we become Christians, we become a part of Christ.  It is the Gospel which tells us something about what that means. Jesus said to his Disciples: “If any want to be my followers let them deny themselves take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.”  To be baptised, to be a Christian means to share in some way in Christ’s Cross.

There is a film that I saw last year, that some of you may have seen which tells a story about carrying our cross. The film is called “The Way”.

It is the story of a Father who went to identify and bring home the body of his son who died overseas in the Pyrenees on the French/Spanish boarder. It was there that unknown to his father he was beginning to walk the pilgrim Road to Compostela which finishes at the great Church of St. James in Spain. It is a famous pilgrimage that countless Christians have followed. Many make the journey carrying a cross. His Father found out a little about the significance of the pilgrimage and because he had not been on good terms with his son he decided to complete the journey for his son in a way to make up to him by carrying his son’s ashes and leaving some of his ashes at significant points along the journey.

As he journeyed resolutely on he met various people whom he tried to ignore and treated rudely. But circumstances kept throwing three other walking companions together with him. The father was an American ophthalmologist. The other three were a fat Dutchman loud mouthed and prone to take drugs who said he was making the journey to lose weight so he would not have to buy a new suite for his brother’s third wedding; an American woman who was angry and talkative and said she was there to give up cigarettes; an Irish writer fond of drink and very talkative who has lost his ability to write. At first they clashed and argued and separated several times, but somehow always came back together.

Gradually they learned each other’s stories and the cross each was carrying: The American grieving for the son he regretted not understanding better; the Dutchman whose wife refuses to sleep with him and he wants to change his life and be more acceptable; the woman who was abused by her husband and who had had an abortion and now grieves the loss of the daughter she longed for; the Irishman who had lost meaning to his life along with his faith and could no longer write. They gradually learned tolerance and compassion for each other and a bond of friendship and love grew between them which helped transform the life of each one. Each one was able to support the other in carrying their cross and they were able to find meaning in their lives through the love and friendship they experienced.

It was a story about life, about every-one’s life. It is about your life and my life. Each one of us has our cross to carry. Often we don’t recognise our cross. It may just seem as if our life is in a mess. It is hard to cope. We may be depressed, we may feel guilty, we may be carrying anger. That is our cross. We need to recognise our cross and realise that we are sharing in the cross of Jesus. The way to find the strength to carry our cross is by trying to help others to carry their cross and by being willing to share the story of our pain with others. We will learn that Jesus walks with us in the pilgrimage of our life. This can change us.

11th SUNDAY (C) 16 June 2013

Fr. Gerard Kelly

As we get to the end of that gospel, Jesus says to the women, “your sins are forgiven.”  This can present a bit of a puzzle for us, as nowhere are we told what her sin was.  Yet, the Pharisee who had invited Jesus to the meal was quite clear that this woman would not be welcome at his table, that she had a bad name in the town.  He was even beginning to have his doubts about Jesus: if Jesus were truly a prophet he would know the woman had a bad name and he wouldn’t have anything to do with her.  However, what we see from Jesus is a true act of prophecy both in what he says and in what he does.  Jesus knows the truth about both the woman and the Pharisee, and he proclaims the truth about how God deals with people.

The first thing we should learn from this scene concerns sin.  The Pharisee seems to be very confident that he knows what sin is and who the sinners are.  He points to the woman.  Jesus never denies that the woman is a sinner.  In fact, in his final words to the Pharisee he acknowledges that she has many sins.  The action of the woman seems to indicate that she too knows that she is a sinner.  There is no indication, however, that the Pharisee ever thinks of himself as being a sinner.  In true prophetic style, Jesus shows him up as a sinner.  So, what is his sin?  His sin seems to be in the way he slots this woman into a category and responds to her in that way.  While this is hurtful to the woman – and, indeed, she has probably long been forced to live the way he has categorised her – it is just as damaging to the Pharisee.  He has created a wall around himself that doesn’t allow other people to enter in.  He is unable to respond to the love that other people show, and only responds to a pre-determined and narrow image that he has of them.  His sin is that he is unable to recognise what his life is like and so is not open to changing it.

When thinking about sin it is easy to focus on the woman in the scene, but less easy to focus on the Pharisee.  When we focus on the woman we see someone whose sin is public and well known.  If we turn to the Pharisee in the story, then Jesus’ challenge to the Pharisee becomes a challenge to us to recognise the sin that is part of our lives but that perhaps we have never acknowledged.  I think Jesus wants us to recognise the sin that is probably bigger than any one of us individually, but which can pervade the group, be it family or society.  Jesus wants us to think about the sin that is all pervasive and for that reason is never acknowledged.

Let me give a couple of examples from recent events in our society.  The first is the incident of the racial slur screamed at a footballer by a young fan at a recent football match.  This led to very wide media coverage and public discussion.  The thing that struck me was the statement, “I didn’t know this was a racist word.”  This is what the Pharisee was like: he didn’t truly recognise the person bent low on the floor near him.  His whole worldview was blind to anyone or anything beyond his immediate circle.  He didn’t recognise that she was a woman who was capable of much love.  The second example I think of is related to the on-going debate in our society about asylum seekers.  Of course, we need to recognise that the arrival of boats presents us with difficult practical and political challenges.  Yet, some in the community easily make judgements about these people without knowing their true story.  It is as though we are blind to the humanity of other people.  This too is a bit like the Pharisee, who failed to show hospitality to Jesus when he arrived after a long walk.  It is Jesus who points this out: the woman washed his feet, dusty from the journey, with her tears; she anointed them with perfumed oil.  She showed him love in a way that the Pharisee did not.  The Pharisee was focused on himself; the woman was focused on Jesus.  Because she showed such love, says Jesus, her many sins must be forgiven her – otherwise she would not show such love.

If the first thing to take from this gospel is Jesus’ prophetic words and actions about sin, there is something else we must notice.  This is how Jesus deals with sin.  He doesn’t yell at people or get angry with them; he simply loves them.  He shows extravagant love – so extravagant that he died on a cross for all of us.  Here once again we see Jesus the prophet.  Encounter with Jesus frees people to begin to love in a similarly extravagant way.  This is what happened to the woman.  There is no doubt that she underwent a conversion.  Her love was the sign of her repentance.  This is what Jesus was calling the Pharisee to do: to let people love, let them show their very best, rather than push them into acting in the worst way.

This takes us to the core of Jesus’ message.  We are all capable of great acts of selfishness and misery just as we are all capable of great acts of love.  Jesus, by his love for us, invites us to renounce what comes from the worst of human nature and to live out of the goodness that resides in each one of us – that goodness given by God when he created us.

PENTECOST SUNDAY (C) 19 May 2013

Fr. Gerard Kelly

Imagine if you had been present at the original Pentecost event.  What would it have been like?  The Scriptures give us a tiny glimpse of what was going on: a sudden wind, and small flames of fire.  In themselves these things do not seem too extraordinary, but we know that what happened was extraordinary.  For those present, it was more than just another big event.  It was surely one of those events that kept unfolding for them in the years ahead.  It was an event that they would look back on and remember.  I am sure that they would have felt that words were not enough to describe it, and that it took a lifetime to properly understand what they had experienced.

If we want to understand what they experienced then we need to think of it in the context of the religious environment in which they lived.  This was an outpouring of the Spirit of God.  The prophets had taught them to long for this.  They would have prayed regularly, “Lord, send out your spirit and renew the face of the earth.”  They prophets had taught them that the coming of the Spirit was a sign that God had finished his work, and that there was a new creation.  The coming of the Spirit would bring in a new way of living.  People would now live in harmony with God and with one another.  The time of the Spirit would see an end to injustice and division; it would see an end to hatred and fear; and it would see an end to ignorance and foolishness.  The time of the Spirit would see them in a new relationship with God, with each other, and with the whole of creation.

This was the expectation that would have grown in the people as they prayed and studied the Scriptures.  But I think we can also be sure that that there were surprises in what they experienced – that the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost was even more profound than their expectations.  The surprising thing would have been that the Spirit was poured out on such a diverse group of people.  The apostles, following their Scriptures, would have been expecting the Spirit just to come upon their own nation, the nation that God had chosen.  But here at Pentecost, it is clear that the coming of the Spirit makes no distinction between nationality, gender, age or health.  The coming of the Spirit signals that God’s plan embraces the whole of creation – or as it says in the New Testament, people from every tribe, and language and people and nation.  This, of course, was important because it meant that you and I can receive the Holy Spirit.  This happened for us at our baptism and confirmation.

On this Pentecost Sunday it is not enough just to think about what happened on that first Pentecost.  There is a sense in which every day is potentially a Pentecost for us.  The Spirit abides with us, continuing to renew us and draw us into life in the Spirit.  So, how should we act?  What difference does the Spirit make?  I think there are two temptations that we must avoid.  One temptation is to say that because we have the Spirit then we need not be concerned any more about the world in which we live; we can live in isolation from the world.  It is the temptation to think that all is good and we don’t need to grow and change our lives.  The second temptation is to despair and think that the outpouring of the Spirit has not really happened, because we are still confronted by those very things that troubled the people of old – injustice, division, hatred, fear, ignorance, and foolishness.  Both of these temptations show an unrealistic view of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The first Christian witnesses can help us overcome both of these temptations.  The Spirit did not somehow magically transport them from the world in which they lived. In fact, we know that the earliest generations suffered persecution.  However, they were able to deal with this in a way that would not have been possible previously.  They now had a deep sense of being led by God’s Spirit.  They had a deep conviction that they were truly the sons and daughters of God.  It wasn’t as though this put some sort of invisible shield around them to protect them from the world.  It didn’t!  The pages of the New Testament show that under the guidance of the Spirit they engaged with the world around them.  Their faith in the promises of God gave them strength to endure what came.  Their hope in a future prepared by God kept them moving along on their pilgrim journey.  They suffered in the present, but were confident about the future.

We probably don’t suffer in the present.  Nevertheless, we all have a sense of the movement of life as children grow and become adults, and as adults move through their working life and grow into old age.  The Spirit assists us to live with the dynamism that life brings – whatever stage we are at in life.  The Spirit encourages us to be creative in the choices we make and the way we live.  The outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost gives us a reason to always hold on to the conviction that God loves us and desires us to live life to the full, and to communicate love and life to the people around us.

Fr. Anastasius Li 李達修神父

Trappist monk (大嶼山聖母神樂院) Fr. Anastasius Li celebrated Mass in Chinese at Camperdown.

FOURTH SUNDAY OF EASTER (C) 21 April 2013

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

We are now at about the halfway point of the Easter season.  Today we have left behind those we met over the last few Sundays – those who were filled with surprise and eventually recognition as they encountered the risen Jesus.  The focus is now on living in the Spirit of the risen Jesus.  We see the community taking shape as it moves from surprise, through fear and persecution, to a deep sense of mission – going out of itself to the world.

For us, this Easter season is an opportunity to enter more deeply into the mystery of Christ, and to embrace the life he offers.  He presents himself to us today as a shepherd, promising eternal life to those who listen to him.  I think that the gospel today is inviting us to see him in broader terms than simply protecting the sheep.  If we think a little more deeply about it, we recognise that the shepherd works hard.  The first thing he does is gather the flock.  The sheep are often inclined to wander away and to get lost, so the shepherd has a role of gathering the flock.  This tells us something about the meaning of eternal life that he offers us.  We can easily limit our understanding of eternal life to that life we are promised after death.  But the eternal life Jesus is speaking of is something that we already possess because we share in his resurrection through baptism.  It is a life that is shared with all those the shepherd has gathered into his flock.  The shepherd, then, leads the Christian community so that it might be a sign in the world of what sort of flock God is gathering.

This does not mean that the sheep of this flock should be seen as people who are huddled together in a sheep pen, afraid to move very far.  If we were that sort of church, we would quickly die.  That isn’t the image we see in the life of the early church, especially as we hear it recounted in the Acts of the Apostles in the first reading.  This is a church that takes the word of the Lord to ever wider groups of people.  With the true image of the shepherd and his flock the sheep wander far and wide, and are busy with what they are doing – but always under the watchful eye of the good shepherd.  It is in this sense that we speak of the shepherd protecting the sheep.  Let me use a different image to illustrate what the shepherd is doing.  Think of how a parent protects a child.  If the child was never allowed outside to play for fear that he or she might hurt themselves they would probably not grow to healthy adults.  But if the child can play with others, and maybe even sometimes fall over and hurt themselves, or even end up in a fight with other children, then the parent is there to patch up the wounds and to give the child the courage to go back out and play again.  The shepherd is like this: the shepherd bandages the sheep that have come to grief.  When people find that living the gospel brings them into conflict with those around them, then the shepherd gives them the courage to continue to seek out and live this eternal life that is already upon them.

The church itself is a model of this.  At times in history when the church has become more focused on itself rather than on taking its message to the world, it has moved into a decline.  In fact, the church has always been at its strongest when it has been under threat or facing difficulty.  It has become strong not because it retreated into itself, but because at precisely that moment it looked beyond itself and focused on the mission of God.  Apparently there is an old wisdom in monasteries: that if the monastery is having troubles then it sends some monks out to found a new monastery, to bring something new to birth.

So when we speak of the shepherd protecting the sheep and offering them eternal life, we need to see this as something that is bold and dynamic.  The shepherd is calling us to be bold in the way we live our faith.  I believe that this is perhaps the reason why the world has been fascinated by Pope Francis.  With all of the talk of a church in crisis before his election, he has shown that the best way to face a crisis is for the church not to focus on itself.  Surely the gesture on Holy Thursday of washing the feet of those juvenile prisoners said more about the good shepherd protecting the flock than all the lengthy analysis of the problems.  This is not to say that analysis of problems is not important.  Rather, it reminds us that our first priority is to live the gospel and to be a witness to that eternal life which we already share.

That, I believe, is why the shepherd also speaks of the sheep listening to his voice.  We listen to his voice so that we might know what eternal life looks like.  The gospels are full of his teaching and miracles to show us how to live eternal life even now.  His voice calls us back to that mission.  When we are inclined to settle back and think we are here and that is all that is necessary, he calls us to look beyond ourselves and to connect our faith to the rest of life.

Today is the World Day of Prayer for Vocations.  Today we need young people who can hear the voice of the shepherd – not so that they can become saviours of the church or the world, but so that they can be fired by the gospel and be excited by the eternal life that the shepherd offers and desire to be shepherds like the good shepherd.  Let us, as a vibrant community of faith, pray for vocations today.

5th SUNDAY LENT (C) 17 March 2013

 Fr. Gerard Kelly

As we were listening to the Gospel it struck me that we probably don’t fully appreciate what was going on with this attempt to stone the woman.  If we pause and think about it, stoning is an incredibly violent act.  It is not something that we are used to in our society, even if there are still some societies in the world where adulterers are punished by stoning.  We, of course, like to think of ourselves as being far more civilised than that.  Yet, while we don’t practise stoning, there are examples of violence and brutality inflicted on others, particularly women, in anger or even punishment.  There are cases regularly in our courts.  We hear of violence in our news broadcasts, and we even see images of violence in movies and TV shows – scenes of someone hitting another person or bashing them, or throwing objects.  Is throwing an object at someone much different than throwing stones at them?

What is it that makes this sort of response possible among people?  There are probably many ways to interpret this, but two things might be relevant for our reflections during Lent.  In the first place, there is a question of punishment for wrong-doing.  There are public debates around the issue of whether punishment should help a person reform their lives, or whether it is simply a matter of retribution on behalf of the person who has been wronged.  In the Gospel the desire of the crowd to stone the woman was clearly a case of retribution.  Stoning was meant to be final: the person was an embarrassment to her own family and to the community, so the best way to deal with this was to eliminate her from the community.  There was no option of being rehabilitated. 

The second thing that strikes me about violent responses is that they also point to a deep seated anger in those who carry out the violence.  These people lack a sense of peace in their lives.  Perhaps they are even using the victim of violence as a scapegoat for their own failures.  This too seems to be at play in the gospel.  Jesus says to the crowd, let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.  One by one they leave the scene.  As we think about it, Jesus has made them reflect on what they are doing by wanting to stone this woman.  He challenges them to change their focus away from the sin of this woman and to examine their own lives and recognise their own sin.  It is as though the desire of wanting to stone the woman was simply a mechanism for avoiding their own sin.  Perhaps they wanted her to bear the punishment for their own sin.  They are not people who are at peace with themselves or with others.

In the face of these types of responses, it is important to see what Jesus does.  The first thing we should notice is that Jesus – precisely because of his own goodness – exposes sin.  In the case of the crowds, he made them realise that they were not without sin.  In the case of the woman her sin was obvious to everyone.  But Jesus exposing sin is not a witch hunt; he doesn’t gloat and point the finger.  The second thing to note is how he deals with sin.  In this he differs from those around him.  He is not seeking revenge; he doesn’t act out of anger.  The crowd around him saw sin as a dead end; they saw the woman as being unredeemable, as having no future.  She probably even saw herself that way.  With all the embarrassment that she must have felt she would have wondered if she could ever walk down the street again without incurring the ridicule of others.  To recognise sin was to be in a hopeless place. 

Jesus deals with it differently.  He offered her a future with a respectable life.  Does no one condemn you, he asks.  Neither do I condemn you.  Condemnation wouldn’t change anything.  Jesus tells her to go and sin no more.  She encounters the mercy of God, raising her up to new life.  This is a new creation.  Jesus has given people a new image of God.  They saw in Jesus what the mercy of God looks like.  They were meant to learn that God desires life not death for all people.  Nothing need ultimately separate someone from the love of God.

We shouldn’t underestimate how difficult it is to hold on to this view of God.  At one level, there is not much in the modern social climate that gives room for the redemption of sinners.  Our society wants everyone and everything to be perfect.  There is shock if someone is exposed as a sinner.  Jesus is saying that these people – the sinners – have an opportunity to change because of the mercy of God.  At a more personal level: all of us, I am sure, like to put our best face on display.  Even when it comes to God, we might imagine ourselves entertaining God by putting out the best silverware or the best cups and saucers.  Yet the woman in the gospel today had no such treasures to put out when she encountered God.  Rather, she was wounded; the silver was tarnished.  The image of God, in which she was created, was hardly visible.  But what she learnt was that God is interested in polishing that image so that it might reveal God’s glory more clearly. 

And this is what we do during Lent!

Rite of Election

For our parish communities - that during this Lenten period, they may grow in

charity and be constant in prayer.

The Elected: Mary Manying Zou, Mary Lingying Kong and Eric Jun Qu

1st SUNDAY LENT (C) 17 February 2013

Click here to download Cantonese homily translation audio

We have begun the season of Lent, and we speak of it as a time of renewal.  Sometimes it helps to think of secular analogies for what we are doing during Lent.  I think of such words – and such processes – as audit, or review, or appraisal or stock-take.  All of these words suggest that we are stopping what we are doing so that we can look carefully at how we have been performing.  Usually there are a set of standards that we use in order to compare our performance.  Analogies like these, of course, are only helpful up to a certain point.  They don’t tell the whole story of what Lent is about.  They don’t tell us, for example, is about a journey to Easter.  They don’t necessarily capture the spirit of Lent, which our liturgy describes as a joyful season.  Often people face an audit or an appraisal with a certain sense of fear and anxiety.  We approach Lent as a time to encounter our loving God more deeply.

This, in fact, is the starting point of Lent: that God has loved us.  Any penance we undertake during Lent is aimed at knowing the love of God more clearly.  God’s love is the source of renewal and repentance.  If we look at any serious effort at religious renewal we see that it always involves going back to the beginnings and recalling how the Holy Spirit has been at work.  Religious renewal will happen as people remember God’s original calling, God’s initial action in their lives, and as they seek to re-kindle that first fervour.   In the years after the Second Vatican Council religious orders of sisters and brothers all spent time renewing their congregations.  The call they all heard was to go back to the charism of their founder.  In a similar way, this is our task in Lent.

In fact, this is what Moses was doing in the first reading today.  He called on the people to remember their ancestors who had been wanderers and who found themselves in Egypt.  Then he tells them what God did for them: he heard their cry for help and he freed them from slavery in Egypt; finally, he brought them to a land flowing with milk and honey.  The point of remembering these events is to remember God’s love for them, and to remember how they became God’s people – his very own people, a people after his own heart.

Today, on this first Sunday of Lent we are being invited to remember, so that memory will become the stimulus for our Lenten observance and renewal.  What should we remember?  I would suggest that the starting point for our memory should be our baptism and all that was associated with it.  Remember what first attracted you to seek baptism; remember the process you went through before you were baptised; remember what you were taught.  If you were baptised as a baby, remember the first time you learnt about God.  Or remember the first time you were taught to pray.  The point of our remembering is to experience once again that initial love of God, that attraction we had to God.  Then, against the background of this experience, we can examine our life now and see how far we might have moved away from that original experience.  True conversion is a response to the love of God.

The readings tell us something more about how we should enter into the season of Lent.  The gospel tells us of the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, when he went into the desert.  It had a similar impact to the penances we undertake during Lent.  The desert was a place that was unwelcoming, where there were none of the usual things that organise a person’s life.  The desert was a place of testing.  When they were out there, people came to know themselves as they had never known themselves before.  Suddenly temptations were all around them.  These were not necessarily temptations to moral wrong-doing.  At their heart, they were temptations to run away from God.  This is what we see with Jesus today.  The three temptations he faced capture for us the idea of how the desert challenges people.  Ultimately, these temptations are about how we stand before the created world (turn a stone into a loaf of bread), before other people (receive power and glory over the kingdoms of the world), and before God (put God to the test).  The temptation is to take control in such a way that God is no longer necessary.  While we see Jesus being tempted in this way, it is also helpful to recognise that these are the temptations of every age.  Perhaps in our own age, more than any other, the big temptation is to push God aside as though we don’t need God.  Modern society acts as though it has the power to conquer everything, to control everything, to determine everything –whether it be creation, people or God.

It is true that I am speaking here in a very general way about society as a whole.  But it can focus our attention this Lent.  Let me suggest two things that we might like to do during this coming first week of Lent.  Take some time to pray – to sit quietly with God.  As you sit with God remember how you came to faith; remember your earliest experiences of being loved by God.  Then, secondly, identify the ways in your life that you seek to control – whether it be trying to control creation, or control other people.  Identify, too, those places in your life you seek to act like God in the most subtle of ways.  If we do these things I believe we will have begun Lent well.

Fr Gerard Kelly (Catholic Institute of Sydney)