The Gospel for this Sunday, the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from a series of sections of Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel, which began last week, and will continue for three more weeks. The only section missing from this series is the account of Jesus walking on the water, which takes place in verses 16 to 23. This Sunday’s section leads up to Jesus proclaiming, ‘I am the Bread of Life’.

To the request that Jesus would always give us the true bread from heaven, He replies: ‘I am the Bread of Life. Whoever comes to Me will never hunger (crave, be needy), whoever believes in Me will never thirst.’

How are we to understand this emphatic reply and this very great promise?

Obviously we get hungry and thirsty every day, otherwise we wouldn’t be motivated to eat and drink. Most of us don’t experience the poverty or the extreme environmental conditions that produce the deepest levels of hunger and thirst. But those who have experienced being reduced to such desperate levels never forget it - and are often haunted by those memories.

At those desperate levels, people become willing to do desperate things to satisfy those intense cravings, and will accept poor substitutes for true food and drink (eg rats and urine).

So what kind of hunger and thirst is Jesus talking about?

Could it be emotional hunger, spiritual hunger, or something else?

• Internet searches reveal that hungers of the heart include:
• Meaning and purpose in life
• Commitment and connection to something greater, something worthwhile in life
• Relationships of quality and depth
• Healing from life’s hurts
• Intimacy
• To be listened to, and to be really heard
• To be loved and appreciated
• To be accepted for who we are, and not just for what we do, or what we can do
• To belong
• Yearning for times of solitude
• Desire for deep peace, on the inside, and with everyone else, especially those closest to us

That is the human experience, isn’t it?!

There is an emptiness in our hearts that nothing in this material world can fill.

Often the more material things we have, including success, the deeper that emptiness feels. Many biographies include something along the lines of ‘I thought that if I got to the pinnacle of …… that this would make me happy; but it didn’t; I felt more lost and empty than ever’.

Here’s where those famous words of St Augustine make sense:

Great are You, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; Your power is immense, and Your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of Your creation, long to praise You – we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that You thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising You may bring us joy, because You have made us and drawn us to Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

Other spiritual writers talk about a God shaped hole in our hearts, that can only be truly filled by Him, and Him alone.

Nothing else suffices, nothing else satisfies.

We do try and stuff that hole with sport, entertainment, work, partying, marriage, family, possessions, success, music, gardening, politics, study, and with addictively dangerous things too.

But nothing fills that hole except God Himself.

Experiences of God help fill that hole better than everything else, but experiences are fleeting, and as nothing compared to God Himself.

Experiences of God give us only a taste of Him; and leave us craving for more.

Let’s remind ourselves of the kind of bread that Jesus wants to be for us. Those barley loaves were fresh, tasty, nourishing; crunchy on the outside, and satisfyingly a little chewy on the inside; the solid kind of bread an army can march on, the kind of bread that provides the essential nourishment for daily life, and the base upon which everything else is ‘icing on top’.

Only the real thing, the real God-thing satisfies; and that God-thing has been generously lavished upon us the Eucharist – in Jesus incarnate under the forms of consecrated bread and wine.
This is Himself, whole and entire, body, soul, blood and divinity, available to us whenever we come to Him through reception of Holy Communion.

Sacramental Holy Communion is the greatest gift God can give us - because it is Himself.

Spiritual Holy Communion, through which we express our longing, consciously or unconsciously, for the fullness of sacramental Holy Communion, is a real but partial participation through desire in that full reality.

During lockdown many of us have rediscovered spiritual communion through the prayers that are often provided at online Masses. There are many such prayers, usually written by Saints, used at those online Masses, but even our own prayers of the heart expressing our desire for sacramental union with Him are acceptable in His sight.

Over the years I have listened to my protestant brothers and sisters talk about how deeply meaningful and how profoundly they have been moved in their hearts on those Sundays when they have Communion in accordance with the various ordinances of their faith communities; and even (shudder) they ‘take’ communion outside those rites and ordinances. What they have been experiencing is spiritual communion; and it is real, valuable, grace-filled, yet it falls short of the fullness of sacramental communion.

Is it possible for a well made spiritual communion to be more grace-giving than a poorly made sacramental communion? Yes it is, but it wouldn’t happen very often.

In this way is Jesus our Bread of Life.
In this way Jesus satisfies the deepest hunger of our souls.
In the Eucharist.

That’s the Bread of Life, the kind of daily bread we primarily pray for unceasingly in the Our Father; a prayer that includes seeking God’s providence for all our other daily needs as well.

Lord Jesus, please give us that Bread, Your sacramental self, always. Please Lord may we never be deprived of You in sacramental Holy Communion via lockdown conditions – or any other conditions - ever again! May all the deprivations we face, and have faced, through pandemic lockdowns, only serve to awaken in us deeper hunger for You; deeper hunger for Your Eucharist, deeper hunger for You in the Eucharist, because absolutely nothing else can truly satisfy our hungry and thirsty hearts. Please Lord Jesus, lead our precious brothers and sisters in faith to full communion with You in the Holy Eucharist, please take away all the obstacles that are preventing their loving hearts from receiving You in full sacramental Communion. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 17th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the first section of Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel, which begins with the miraculous feeding of the 5000.

We don’t have the same amount of context for this miracle in John’s Gospel compared to the synoptic Gospels. Prior to this in John, we have the woman at the well in Samaria (Chapter 4) and the healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda (Chapter 5). In other Gospels this miracle happens after the beheading of John the Baptist and after the first missionary journey of the Apostles. There isn’t anything to disprove such a context in John, but it isn’t his primary focus for presenting this special sign that Jesus gave.

The scene for this passage of the Gospel opens with Jesus and His Apostles having crossed by boat to a big hillside with a lot of springtime grass. They go up some distance (implied by the word climbed) and then sit. God has chosen this location specifically for what is to happen.

It is entirely plausible that they could have been there a while, even several days, before the crowd arrives, because if they filled 12 baskets used for provisions while travelling, it stands to reason that they must have been empty, or very close to empty.

Why do you sit? To rest on a journey, to look at and appreciate a view, to converse, to eat, to teach, to listen, even to mourn (sit shiva), and also as an expression of authority (A judge sits to give verdicts, a king sits on a throne for official proceedings, we also talk about sittings of parliament.).

This scene can be viewed as Jesus, King, sitting with His trusted counsellors, advisors, princes, waiting for His army to arrive before the banquet can begin. Because 5000 men is army size, or at least enough for a planned ambush (Joshua 8).

Why did so many come to this designated location? And on the same day? And in this Gospel account, the maleness of the crowd is stressed. John uses “Have the men (anthropous) sit down /fall back, lean back, recline”, “so the men (andres) sat down/reclined”, “When the men (anthropoi) saw the sign that Jesus had performed/caused/made…”

An internal invitation from the Father is one likely answer.
A hunger for Jesus, and a desire to be a part of whatever God is doing, is another likely answer.
Curiosity is another possibility, but curiosity doesn’t usually go as far as significant travel by foot or by boat, and then a decent climb up the hill. That travel, and that climb, speak to the fitness of these men for battle.

It doesn’t feel like the men planned to do this travel in advance, or else they would have brought provisions with them. So this, ‘I’ve got to drop everything now, and go, God is calling me’ becomes more plausible, and really is God the Father marshalling an army of chosen men. We’ve heard accounts like this of ‘I’ve got to go’ from the children of Fatima, and others who have had heavenly encounters with the bodily presence of the mother of Jesus.

Philip may have been the best haggler/barterer and estimator of the apostles, quartermaster even, for the group, and good at it. Conservatively, if we accept that a denarius was a day’s wages, and a day’s wages would feed a family, even looking at a family size of six, and splitting a family member’s ration into 4, that’s 200 x 6 x 4 for a small piece each. 4800.

This is a massive assembly of men being marshalled high on a grassy hillside of Galilee by God the Father.
It is an army.
His army.

It is really weird that Jesus doesn’t do any teaching. Apart from His question to Philip, He only gives two commands, ‘Have the men sit down/recline’ and ‘Pick up the pieces left over’. These are the kind of commands you give to troops.

An army, of course, marches on its stomach. It is basic nourishing food; with a bit of zing as befits the king’s table.

Barley is the first grain harvested in the springtime, and it produces dark coloured loaves with a crunchy exterior, a chewy interior and stronger flavour than wheat. The word used for the fish ‘opsaria’ implies that they are small, probably boiled, and thus very easy to smear with fingers onto bread as a relish. Think a primitive kind of anchovette or sardine spread. That’s why the focus remains so strongly on the bread.

We have a perfect spring day, in a wide lush location with a spectacular view, marshalled together by God, for a meal of biblical proportions and biblical significance.

One of the expectations of the promised Messiah is that he would multiply food like the prophets of old, eg Elisha and Elijah. Jesus has just done that, but He has done it with Eucharistic overtones and Eucharistic and Passover significance.

‘Take, give thanks, break, distribute’ is the pattern of the Eucharist.

The Passover lamb had to be completely consumed, or the remainder burnt. Consider how incredible it is for a crowd of this massive size to only have enough scraps remaining to fill the 12 provision knapsacks. And you can be sure the hungry apostles will eat all those scraps.

The Eucharist is THE food of the army of God.

Jesus is that food.

They came hungry for Him, and He gave them an experience of Himself that points directly to the soon-to-come institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

Indeed, the hungrier they were, the more they were given, because each received as much as he wanted – and all were completely satiated.

They experienced a foretaste and an earthly approximation to what the King’s heavenly banquet will be.

But it is God’s kingdom, not an earthly kingdom; so Jesus made Himself scarce as soon as it was over lest those wanting an earthy kingdom ruin God’s perfect plan for an eternal kingdom.

This is a Very Big sign that Jesus is who He claims to be; the Son of God, and that God can completely provide for His people. We can safely trust in God, and safely trust in Jesus.

May our hunger for Him, and our hunger for His Eucharist always grow and never diminish. Amen.
​
And when God calls, and marshals us, may our response be complete and immediate. Amen.

On 16 Jul 2021 Pope Francis issued a Motu Proprio about the Roman Liturgy used prior to the Reform of 1970 with new guidelines for when (and to some extent how) it can be legitimately celebrated.
​https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/motu_proprio/documents/20210716-motu-proprio-traditionis-custodes.html

More colloquial ways of referring to this Liturgy are the ‘Latin Mass’ or the ‘Tridentine Mass’ or ‘Traditional Latin Mass’ or ‘TLM’.

As you might expect, there’s been a bit of a social media storm about these new regulations, and there’s been a lot of hot-off-the-cuff ink spilled about it already – most of it without due reflection on the positive sides of the document.

Because this document is about pruning the TLM movement for its own health, and for the health and unity of the Church.

And this pruning has been needed.

When Summorum Pontificum was issued by Pope Benedict XVI; many times in his excellent blog Fr John Zuhlsdorf requested that adherents to the Tridentine Mass be exemplary in their conduct, be helpful to clergy and parishes, and to not give any cause for offence lest these permissions be withdrawn.

Not everyone heeded him, hence this need for pruning so that the good may be preserved and the diseased parts be separated away lest they infect the whole Church.

Pope Francis does spell out clearly what the issues are, and the criteria by which local bishops are to do any necessary pruning, viz:
*The concord and unity of the Church
*Ecclesial communion
*That those who deny the validity and legitimacy of the 1970 liturgical reform put that unity, concord and communion at risk
*That the risk has reached levels requiring the removal of TLM from parochial churches so that there is no confusion about the validity and legitimacy of the Novus Ordo Mass (1970 liturgical reform).

(Note: Mass centres, oratories, chapels, retreat centres would then still be OK, including designated mass centres within say a cathedral parish which has several mass centres in addition to the Cathedral. ie. It cannot be celebrated at the principal church of a parish.)

Those TLM communities which are in full communion with the Church, and are animated by ecclesial communion, will be preserved.

The risk of new TLM communities forming has been deemed to be too great.

Healthy and wholesome expressions of TLM will remain, be preserved, and even encouraged.

How did it get to this? People forgot Fr Z’s advice.

There has been far too much public criticism of the Pope and far too much questioning of the legitimacy of the papacy, leading far too many believers to distrust the Pope, to distrust God’s choice of the Pope, and thereby opening the door to distrust of God and from there to loss of faith. (There are private ways of seeking answers and clarifications.)

Where has this criticism and questioning been the most vociferous? From those attending the Tridentine Mass. Some have just been the usual hot heads that every community that aspires to a radical life attracts, but some have been publicly well respected in education, theology, journalism, blogging, apologetics etc and among the clergy.

It hasn’t been here and there either; it has become a consistent questioning of every action and motive of the Pope - which would do the Pharisees proud.

Where protest has become normative and taking pride in ‘being more Catholic than the Pope’ takes hold, then those communities have exited out the other side of being Protestant.

Above all else, hear and listen to this:
Unity with the Pope is our sole guarantee of remaining in the true faith of the Apostles and not getting shipwrecked in error and heresy.
Unity with the Pope is our sole guarantee of the whole Church being guided by God.

This is so because Jesus said to Peter, ‘On this rock I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will never hold out against it’.

Yes, I fully understand the flight to the TLM given the continuing abuses of the liturgy that are happening in the Novus Ordo Mass. I understand in a time of uncertainty, that flight to where things are whiter than white, and blacker than black, and no grey in between is really attractive. I understand that being with others trying to take God seriously is really attractive.

But the TLM was never meant to be a flight-from-the-world option, a la St Benedict.

Permission for the TLM was to preserve the patrimony living in the Tridentine Mass from centuries past for future generations to be able to love and appreciate in living form. It is to be fueled by love for the Church, and love for the patrimony of the Church, not fueled by protest.

An analogy might help. The reason people volunteer to help keep steam engines alive on heritage railways is to keep the memory alive of the amazing engineers and workmen that formed that heritage, and for the beauty and majesty of those locomotives in action – not because they want steam to replace diesel electrics anymore, nor because they are protesting at the pollution caused by diesel-electrics.

That’s why Pope Francis is calling a ‘motive check’ on those priests who already celebrate or wish to celebrate the Mass in its pre 1970 form, and on those religious communities set up precisely for the preservation of this liturgical form.

This Motu Proprio is pruning the TLM for the health of the Church, and for the health of the TLM.

Should it be successful in its intent, healthy communities of TLM will remain, and will remain healthy.

As one would expect, only when this has occurred will it be possible to consider new TLM communities, and that could be 10 years away or longer, and only if they don’t fall into the same errors in the meantime.

Instead of grouching, let us be extremely thankful to God for giving us a Pope, and the bishops united with him, who are willing to do this pruning for the sake of the Church, and for the sake of the salvation of souls, despite the enormous backlash they are experiencing, and will experience in the times to come.

To God be the glory, in the Church, and in Christ Jesus, now and forever. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the latter part of Chapter 6 of St Mark’s Gospel and sees the return of the Apostles from their first missionary journey and what happens next. In between the sending of the Apostles and their return to Jesus, the martyrdom of St John the Baptist has occurred.

The Apostles return to absolute bedlam; it seems that everyone is clamouring for Jesus and for help as they begin the process of repentance. Reading between the lines, this means that those two by two apostolic journeys were wildly successful AND that people are looking for a new anchor because the news of the death of St John the Baptist has reached them (with all the accompanying grief, consternation, panic, and bewilderment that goes with it).

So it is surprising that Jesus says, ‘let’s get some peace and quiet’? No.

Would you, too, be running after the only person left who has all the answers and can make sense of this mess, whatever it took to do so? You betcha.

When they all converge on this lonely, deserted spot, Jesus has deep compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

What does a sheep without a shepherd look like? Good question.
​
Something like this:

According to internet reports, this is how a sheep looked after about 5 years on its own.
​
A well cared for sheep should have looked something like this:

A wild sheep would survive in a natural habitat of good grazing combined with rocky surfaces to keep hooves from growing too long. Domesticated sheep have been under generations of breeding selection for wool yield, meat yield and even milk yield.

So should a domesticated sheep go missing it is going to be a lot heavier and with much greater wool growth than the wild version.

Unshorn wool is heavy, dirty and usually full of parasites. Without the premium grazing, a sheep is going to be eating what it can, and will be at more than usual risk of internal worms. Without regular care, hooves become infected, and knees become inflamed, making mobility difficult. Less mobility means less food, and weakened ewes will not produce enough milk to nourish lambs. Without the usual husbandry separations, inbreeding will occur with other uncared for sheep. More wool than usual will also be more wool over the eyes, reducing visibility.

A sheep that has been a few years without a shepherd is either dead, or a very sorry sight indeed.

Jesus saw these crowds as they were, overburdened, unhealthy, hurting and uncomfortable on the inside and on the outside (and unable to scratch the itches, and unable to rid themselves of the external and internal parasites), lame, blind, grieving over little ones who shouldn’t have died young, malnourished, and totally miserable.

But Jesus also saw them as they were supposed to be, quick, nimble, healthy, frolicking, joyful and contented, and producing lots of quality wool, milk and lambs.

And Jesus, the master good shepherd, knew exactly what was needed, and started the lengthy arduous task of bringing them back to full health, to the best that He knew it was possible for them to be – the best the Father had destined for them from the beginning.

He started that tasking with teaching, with teaching them the truth, and helping them to apply it to their regular lives.

It wasn’t all He did, Jesus also nourished them through the miracle of the multiplication of food, as the verses after Mark 6:34 tell us. But for the next few weeks we are going to be reading from St John’s version of this miracles and its implications in his Chapter 6.

The take away from this Gospel passage is that Jesus sees us, and He fully understands the bedraggled state we are in. But He also sees us in the fulness of what He created us to be. He alone knows how to get us from our current state, to that happy, healthy and productive state.

But to get from here to there, but we will have to fully trust Him and His process. Some of it won’t be very nice (shearing, sheep dip, worm removal medicine, hoof clipping, knee splinting, times of segregation from other parts of the flock, internal and external examinations etc) but we will feel and look so much better afterwards.

The challenge is, will we say Yes to Him and to His process?

Or will we begin for a while, and run away before it is completed?
Or will we just run away and attempt to take care of ourselves again?

Remember, very few survive going it alone without a shepherd, and they don’t thrive.

May He please help us to say a committed, and enduring, Yes to Him.
May He help us to remain, and not resist and kick up a fuss, when the processes are awkward and painful.
May He, in His great mercy and compassion, bring us to the fulness of health and well-being that He has always wanted for us.
Amen. Amen. Amen!

I’ve come to the conclusion that the Church the Plenary Council Agenda is talking about bears little resemblance to my pew-sitter’s view. Admittedly I’m an unusual pew-sitter, since I’ve read all the major reports issued on the Plenary Council website.

Like other pew-sitters, I’d determined that giving any more time to the Plenary Council process would be unproductive. But then someone asked me to read the official Agenda.

So I read it. One page of reading isn’t onerous.
https://plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Plenary-Council-Agenda.pdf

Of the 16 Agenda questions, only 4 stood out as worthy of detailed deliberation, viz:

*How might we better form leaders for mission – adults, children and families, couples and single people?
*How might we better equip ordained ministers to be enablers of missionary discipleship: the Church becoming more a “priestly people” served by the ordained ministry?
*How might parishes better become local centres for the formation and animation of missionary disciples?
*How might the Church in Australia be better structured for mission, considering the parish, the diocese, religious orders, the PJPs and new communities?

(I had no idea what PJPs are: apparently they are ‘Public Juridic Persons’, entities set up in the Church for specific purposes eg Catholic Healthcare, Edmund Rice Education Australia. Hint: Church jargon of that magnitude means it wasn’t written for pew-sitters like me, but for people used to collaborating with diocesan curia – and above.)

But most of these kinds of questions mean very little until they are applied to a case study of some kind, to enable people to wrestle with possible answers to these questions in realistic situations.

What does an average parish look like in Australia?

Something like this:

It has one priest; by and large, if he is a senior citizen he was born in Australia, if he is younger he was born in another country where English was not the native language.
He has the equivalent of one paid administrative person on staff.
The parish contains a Catholic primary school with about 300-400 students.
Of those students, in any 12 month time frame, he might see 5% of the children from that primary school at weekend Mass.
The parish contains people from a variety of ethnicities.
The parish is located at least 50 kms from the diocesan cathedral, (an hour’s drive or more).
Daily Mass attendance average is 20 persons.
Weekend Mass attendance is of 550 persons spread over 3 Masses.
The parish is struggling to make even 50% of the expected annual contributions to the diocesan charitable works fund.
The parish has no resident religious orders, but perhaps has one or two retired consecrated persons of 80+.
95% of those attending weekend Mass are aged 70+, or even 75+.
The parish has at least one St Vincent de Paul Conference, and a few dedicated and overworked catechists who serve in local state-run primary schools.

From the perspective of that case study, even the most pertinent question (How might we better form leaders for mission?’) is framed incorrectly.

Because the question really is “How do we form our 70, 80 and 90 year olds for mission, as leaders, teams, and team members?”

And the follow-up question is “How do we keep our few sub 70 year olds from imploding under the weight of the regular tasks needed to keep a parish functioning and the isolation of how few people are on the same part of their life journey to share faith with?”.

In an average parish there are no able bodies with spare time to give to questions and to ministry in the areas of First Nations, ecology, wounds from abuse, ecumenism, education, health care and social services.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the current Plenary Council Agenda is like determining the precise positioning of deckchairs on the Titanic.

There are 3 very large items missing from the Plenary Council Agenda:

*No mention of the Holy Spirit. Without Him, neither holiness nor mission is possible.
*No mention of sacred scripture. Frequent personal reading of the Bible is the number 1 input that guarantees all discipleship outputs. (Read: ‘No Silver Bullets: Five Small Shifts that will Transform Your Ministry’ by Daniel Im) www.amazon.com/No-Silver-Bullets-Transform-Ministry/dp/1433651548
*No mention of ministry to families. As goes the family, so goes the Church. Family is the plan of God that pre-dates scripture by millennia. All vocations (of all types!) grow in families.

Until the Plenary Council Agenda items have any hope of becoming reality in an average parish, and until these 3 very large items assume due prominence, this pew-sitter will remain disengaged from the process.

If you are a pew-sitter who agrees with me, please share these thoughts with other pew-sitters and with any contacts you may have in the rarefied worlds of curia and episcopy.
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The Gospel for this Sunday, the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the last half end of Chapter 5 of St Mark’s Gospel and contains the story of the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the woman with the haemorrhage.

Both Jairus and the woman are in desperate situations, and both of them know that they are exposing Jesus to the risk of becoming ritually unclean, and of Jesus having to go through the various processes to become ritually clean again. To be ritually clean was a pre-requisite for public worship of God.

Anything or anything touching a woman with a haemorrhage would be unclean until evening; and anyone who touched a dead body would be unclean for 7 days and have to go through two ritual washings with lustral water.

But they are both desperate.

We are told Jairus begged Jesus earnestly, and the word used is ‘parakalei’, which is very close to ‘paraclete’; (giving us a visual image of the work of the Holy Spirit), and he begged Jesus many times. Like the widow in the parable of the unjust judge, Jairus does not stop pleading until Jesus agrees to visit his daughter. So in this desperate situation Jairus wasn’t concerned about making a pest of himself, nor about what his public expressions of desperation would do to his reputation.

This poor woman had suffered greatly with this haemorrhage, and despite treatment by many doctors, and the depletion of all her monetary resources, she was no better, and in fact her troubles had become worse, more severe and more aggravated by the various treatments. Apart from the physical pain, the woman would have suffered from ostracism by the community – who would want to become ritually unclean by associating with her? Any husband she may have had would have left her and formally divorced her; any children she may have had would have been kept far from her. The depths of her desperation were greater and had gone on far longer (twelve years) than Jairus’ acute desperation.

However Jairus can approach Jesus publicly and openly, this suffering woman cannot. To even be among the crowd would have necessitated some form of disguise. She can’t even ask in private for help, due to the constant experiences of rejection that are her lot in life. But what she can do, she does; and it takes a similar kind of bravery to Veronica on the way to Calvary for this woman to work her way through the pressing crowds around Jesus to get close enough to touch His outer garment.

Immediately she is healed completely, and immediately Jesus is aware that a healing of magnitude has taken place.

Can you imagine the terror she goes through when Jesus asks ‘Who touched My clothes?’ She isn’t supposed to be out in public, and if she tells the truth…..

But she is still a woman of great courage, so in fear and trembling she tells Jesus the whole horrible truth, (how easy would it have been to hide and say nothing?!) and Jesus doesn’t tell her off. He calls her, ‘My daughter’, when He could easily have called her ‘woman’; publicly acknowledging that her faith and her courage are worthy of membership in His family, and publicly confirming to all that she is healed completely, and that there won’t be any adverse consequences, so she may depart in peace under His protection.

Poor Jairus, these delays must have been agony for him. Then he gets the unwanted news that all hope is gone, his daughter is dead. Healing is no longer possible.

Yet Jesus reassures him, and continues on His way to Jairus’ residence, but with only a chosen few disciples. What is going to happen, is going to happen in private. Was she asleep (in a deep pre-death coma), or was she truly deceased? Jesus still restores her completely and immediately back to health.

What does this teach us?

That no matter how dire, nor how lacking hope our desperate situations are, Jesus can immediately and totally fix them. Even if they are even beyond all earthly hope.

Nothing is beyond the power of Jesus.

But if we are honest, we also ask, why did God permit things to get so very dire before He stepped in?
An easy answer is, ‘to display the divine power of God, when all human help was decisively proven useless’.

But why did they have to suffer so much before God stepped in?
Was it as simple as ‘Jesus hadn’t passed by near to them yet’?
Well then, why didn’t God send Jesus sooner?

And here we meet the same inscrutable wisdom and providence and timing of God that Job, and Tobit, and Naomi, and Jeremiah, and many other holy ones wrestled with.

He is God. We are not.

Therefore everything He does is done perfectly and with perfect timing; even if we can’t see or comprehend the reasons why. (Frustrating, isn’t it?!)

But let us place our trust in Him afresh.

Because He alone can fix everything; fix it totally, fix it perfectly, and fix it immediately.

Nothing, but nothing, is beyond our hope in His almighty power.

May He give us the grace to live this truth, and to never forget it. Amen.

O great God of mercy and compassion
we bring before You the many desperate situations
we feel we have been importuning You about forever.
You have not forgotten us,
even if everything else screams the opposite.
In particular we bring before You our most impossible desperate situations
and entrust the timing, and the complete and perfect fixing of them to You.
We expect from you spectacular and immediate miracles worthy of these Gospel accounts.
You are the same God today, as you were back then,
and as you will be forever.
You can do it again in our time.
You can do it again today, if You so will.
Please remember how human and limited our patience and endurance is.
Please send us Your reassurance,
lest fear cast out whatever little faith we have left.
We entrust all of it to Your capable hands and Your loving Heart.
Take care of everything, especially our most desperate situations, as only You can.
We decide today, to trust in You,
​with a deeper trust than we have ever had before.
Please help us by the power of Your Holy Spirit to live in that level of trust and to grow in it.
Jesus, I trust in You.
Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 12th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the end of Chapter 4 of St Mark’s Gospel after Jesus has been teaching a series of parables to the crowds. It narrates the story of Jesus calming the storm.

Following on from Jesus teaching the parables of the wheat and the mustard seed which invited us to trust God’s process and God’s timing, we seem to have a parable in this event of the massive storm that invites us to trust in Him even in the worst of times.

What comes after this passage is the deliverance of the Gerasene demoniac, which seems to be where Jesus was headed to on the other side of the lake of Galilee. Is this massive storm an attempt by the forces of evil to prevent this deliverance? It does seem likely.

We do know that Jesus set out deliberately for this locality on the other side of the lake, and plenty of witnesses joined Him in other boats. We know that it was evening before the lake crossing even began, and that they only set out after the crowds had been dismissed.

Jesus was already in the boat before they set out, and we know that at times He preached from Peter’s boat close to the shoreline. There doesn’t seem to have been any prior preparation or planning for this journey; and in all likelihood the seamen among the disciples would have expected a rather swift crossing – no more than an hour or two, with landfall before it got pitch dark.

But we see this sudden, intense, physical opposition to their journey’s progress; and they feel they are facing it all on their own because Jesus is in the back of the boat asleep.

The usual translations we read, do not do the original Greek justice, and water down the intensity of the crisis the disciples in the boats faced. What we often read as storm or great gale can also be translated violent wind-storm, squall, whirlwind, hurricane. They are hard enough to deal with in daylight, but in fading light and darkness it must have engendered extra terror.

So violent was it, that the waves were breaking over and into the boat, so that it was filled entirely. Any efforts to bail out the water were proving to be futile. The boat was beginning to sink.

At this point, like them, we are asking, where is God in all this?

How acutely they must have felt the absence of His reassuring presence! They could have also asked; Why is God permitting this to happen to us? What did we do wrong? Where did we go wrong?

‘Teacher, teacher, we are perishing. We are at the point of being fully and totally destroyed.’

And Jesus gets up, commands ‘Silence!’, ‘Be still!’, and the immediate calm that happens is as great as the storm was.

'megale’ is used to describe both the storm AND the calm.

This supernatural calm overwhelms the disciples with fear, awe and reverence.

Only God.
Only God Himself is able to transform utter disaster, turmoil and chaos into perfect peace and order in a single moment. No one else and nothing else can.

And what does Jesus say to them (and to us)?
Why are you so frightened?
Have you no faith?
Have you forgotten Who is in control?

Ummm. Errrr.
We’re still terrified, before and after, and it is human to be afraid.
Gulp. Obviously not as much faith as we thought we had. At all.
Yep. Completely forgot. Utterly failed that one….. Sorry.

May God help us to remember that even in the worst of times, that He is still completely in control.

May God help us to remember that especially in the worst of times, we can be expectant for His sudden divine action to happen to fix everything perfectly– and thus not despair nor become despondent.

May God help us to remember that nothing is going to stop us carrying out the mission we have been given by Him, even if it has been delayed by enemy tactics – and to expect far more spectacular results if there have been delays and opposition.

In our darkest moments may God send His holy angels to remind us of this Gospel event, and through it to remind us that He is completely in control, and that the end He has in mind is far more amazing and more glorious and stupendous than anything that currently terrorizes us.

Amen. Amen. Amen.
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He alone is worthy of our trust.
Let us place our trust in Jesus.
Let us renew our trust in Jesus.
Let us massively increase our trust in Jesus.
Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the next part of Chapter 6 in St Mark’s Gospel, immediately after last week’s passage about the visit to Nazareth. This next part of Chapter 6 has the Twelve move into a new stage of their discipleship with Jesus.

It seems significant that this new phase happens almost directly after the disappointing visit to Nazareth, as though the lessons to be learnt at Nazareth were a necessary pre-requisite – perhaps to prepare them for when the response to their preaching would be far less than enthusiastic.

So Jesus calls the Twelve apostles to Himself, and commences to send them out two by two to preach the necessity of repentance for entering the kingdom of God. In sending them out Jesus imparts to them a share in His own authority over unclean spirits. This indicates that there is a co-dependence of preaching with delivering people and situations from evil (and vice versa) for either to be effective.

They had seen Jesus preach, heal and deliver sufferers from evil spirits, and now they had a test run of doing it themselves.

The passage doesn’t say what Jesus did while the 6 teams went out in different directions on this mission ‘with training wheels’. Probably Jesus spent that time alone in prayer interceding for them and for the people they were to preach to; waiting for them to return to a previously agreed rendezvous place and time.

But the thing that strikes all of us is how little Jesus permitted them to take on the missionary journey. They don’t have to go bare-foot; but may wear sandals. Perhaps that is because heavier shoes may slow them down and increase fatigue. Apart from that, all they can take with them is their missionary companion, the authority Jesus has given them, and a staff.

The word used in Greek for ‘staff’ is ‘rhabdon’ and is does mean rod or staff, but it can also mean sceptre or staff of authority.

Any kind of walking stick is useful when traversing rough terrain, and for keeping up the endurance on long distances. I’ve followed the journeys via social media of some friends walking the Camino, and they all start out without walking sticks, and they all have walking sticks before the end of the first week.

A good solid rod or stave is also useful for protection against brigands and wild animals.

Maybe the aspect of a staff also representing the authority Jesus has given them now seems more plausible, especially remembering how God used Aaron’s staff and Elisha’s staff.

However we cannot forget that travelling light permits a person to travel much faster than if they have anything on them to weigh them down. This has something to say about the urgency we should feel for spreading the good news of Jesus, and the urgency Jesus must have felt to issue such instructions – that anything that slows us down has to be jettisoned.

To our surprise, and definitely to the Apostles’ surprise, they were very successful on this training mission; they preached, they evicted devils and brought God’s healing to others.

That’s the difference going out with the authority of Jesus makes.

We shouldn’t even consider going on mission without it; without some kind of commissioning by those in leadership in the Body of Christ.

Our other surprise should be that these three things are considered by Jesus and by the communities who were the seed ground for this Gospel of Mark as Normal on a missionary journey to proclaim the Gospel.

Please God, may our New Normal when this time of pandemic is over be this kind of Normal – Your kind of Normal. Amen.

Holy Apostles of God, please pray for us, and especially for all bishops, since they are particularly authorised by Jesus for mission, and to lead mission in His name. Amen.

Holy Apostles of God, please pray for us too, that preaching repentance, healing and deliverance from evil may return to being Normal for all believers in Jesus. Amen.

Holy Apostles of God, please pray for all whom Jesus is calling to Himself at this time, that they be given the grace of a whole-hearted Yes when He sends them on mission, thoroughly dependent upon His providence and authority. Amen.
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Holy Apostles of God, please pray for those who have been given a missionary mandate by Jesus, but who have not yet gone where He has told them to go, or who have become disheartened and discouraged along the way. May they be given fresh hope, and fresh anointing from Your Holy Spirit to completely fulfill the mission You, Lord God, have given them. Amen.
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P.S. I came across this excellent blog-post on the ministry of the prophet Elijah, it is well worth a read: https://www.awmi.net/reading/teaching-articles/lessons_elijah/

.... above is a print-friendly version, 4 x A4 pages, of that blog-post - since it deserves to be shared more widely.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from the beginning of Chapter 6 in St Mark’s Gospel. It tells us what happened when Jesus took His disciples to visit Nazareth, His home-town.

This was a very deliberate move by Jesus for several reasons:
He understood that His disciples needed to see where He had grown up, so that they could witness to this later on.
He also needed them to understand this uncomfortable lesson about the likelihood of rejection by those close to us when God calls us in to His ‘more’.
He would have had a natural hankering for home, and would have ardently desired to give to those He loved so deeply as much of what God had been filling Him with as possible.

We see in this passage of scripture that the inhabitants of Nazareth who knew Jesus in His hidden life, were very comfortable with that experience of Him.

They experienced levels of panic, shock and astonishment as this very different Jesus who came to them bearing divine wisdom and divine teaching, and miraculous 'dynamite' power.

In this coming of His to Nazareth, Jesus wanted to give them access to this side, to this experience of Him, as He had done for so many other villages in the surrounding area, but the beloved people of Nazareth were happy to settle for the lesser experience, and didn't want a bar, not one iota, of the greater experience of Him.

In fact it actually scandalised them; the word used in the Greek is ‘eskandalizonto’.

So they sadly missed out on all that Jesus wanted to give them through this coming, and they didn't have a clue just how humongously much they missed out on – because they were not open to the possibility of more.

Recently others have written and spoken about how often when we invite God in to our lives and into times of corporate prayer and worship that we tend to expect something like a tame kitten when as God He has full right to come in as a roaring wild lion and everything in between.

It is the difference between expecting the ‘O good and gentle Jesus’ and receiving the Almighty universal Emperor and majestic Conqueror of sin and death.

He is certainly both, but we definitely have a preference for the former and often too little experience of the latter – much like the inhabitants of Nazareth.

The thing is, if God is going to step in and change our world from the cesspit of malevolent evil to the garden of goodness where His will is done on earth as it is in heaven, then He is going to come as mighty Judge and Ruler.

Are we ready for this?
Are we open to the kind of coming of Jesus that the money changers in the Temple experienced?
Are we open to receive and accept the more that this Mighty All-powerful Jesus wants to give us?

It is possible that this coming of Jesus could be the one foretold in Revelation 20:1-6 that leads to a thousand years of peace, or a precursor to it.

May God grant us the grace to be ready and willing to welcome Him however He chooses to come, especially if that coming of Jesus doesn't match our expectations at all. Amen.
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Obviously Mary, His mother, was ready and waiting for Jesus on His homecoming visit. May she help us prepare for His coming, and help us to welcome Him properly when that great moment comes. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from a section of parables of Jesus given in Chapter 4 of St Mark’s Gospel. These two parables about the wheat and the mustard seed are about the growth of the kingdom of God.

To understand these parables we need to have a better grasp of the development of wheat plants and mustard seed plants.

I found these websites helpful for wheat
https://www.agric.wa.gov.au/grains/zadoks-growth-scale
http://wheatdoctor.org/wheat-growth-stages-and-zadok-s-scale

The most striking thing is how much the wheat plant changes during its growth from seed to maturity and harvest. From seed a seedling springs, then something that looks like green leafy grass, then a stem forms and grows, eventually the flag leaf grows and the ear of wheat begins to emerge, and grow, and then to dry out, brown and harden.

Like the mustard seed, the beginning is small and insignificant.

At the end is a swift, sharp sickle when the grains of wheat are ripe, and farmers watch over their crops like mother hens until the perfect time for harvesting to maximize yield comes.

From our vantage point of history we can see how the Church has grown and changed significantly many times since that first Pentecost in the upper room. The Church under early persecution looked very different to the Church after Constantine and the age of the Desert Fathers; that was followed by the age of the monasteries eg Benedictines; and the age of the mendicant preaching orders eg Franciscans and Dominicans, the age of the crusades, the age of the missionary orders eg Jesuits; the age of the teaching orders eg Josephites, and the age of the laity/charismatic renewal. It is still the same Church fueled by the power of the Holy Spirit, even though it might look and feel different to anyone who lived through Vatican II.

This perspective should help us yield more responsively to how the Holy Spirit wants us to grow and change into the next era.

He is in control.

The most likely candidate for the kind of mustard plant Jesus referred to is the black mustard. Of the seeds planted in the ground, it is the smallest. What gave me a surprise is that it is an annual not a perennial plant. It would have been common in kitchen gardens. Apart from being a plant with a small seed, it has explosive growth, and it looks a lot more like a big weed than a tree.

When the Holy Spirit is active, kingdom growth is exponential not linear. That kind of rapid growth is one of the ways that alerts us that the Holy Spirit is moving upon something. The praise & worship band, Praise Nation, from Pittsburgh USA, didn’t know how many would come to an initial adoration and praise night in their parish, but 120 showed up the first week, 250 showed up the next week, 500 showed up the 3rd week, and 5000 showed up when it was transferred to the cathedral. That kind of growth doesn’t happen naturally.

With both plants the good stuff (wheat, mustard seeds) has to be separated from the useless chaff at harvest time. With both plants, threshing and winnowing is used to do that process. This reminds me of other parables where Jesus promises the separation of the good and the bad at the end of time.

With both plants there is an insignificant beginning, rapid growth, lots of change, and a definite end at the perfect time for harvest, and a separation of good stuff from useless stuff, and the whole process takes time to unfold.

What can we conclude?

God is in control.
God is in control of His kingdom.
God causes the growth of His kingdom.
His kingdom is characterized by small, insignificant beginnings, explosive growth, significant periodic change, and a swift fruitful harvest which happens at maximum ripeness separating the good from the not good.
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Let us be intentionally co-operative with this kingdom plan of His, trust Him, trust Him more than we ever have before, and do whatever is our necessary part to be numbered among the fruit and not the chaff when harvest time comes. Amen.