The Gospel for this Sunday, the 2nd Sunday of Lent Year B, comes from the chapter 9 of St Mark and narrates the transfiguration of Jesus.

Most of the time when we read this Gospel passage we relate to how gob-smacked Peter, James and John were in the presence of Moses and Elijah.

I contend that it is equally likely that Moses and Elijah were awe struck to meet Peter, James and John, even though the Gospel passage doesn’t say that they did anything more than look at these three and speak to Jesus.

When we ourselves get through the pearly gates, who are we going to make a beeline to meet first? It is going to be Peter, James and John, or is it going to be Moses and Elijah? My guess is that Peter makes everyone’s ‘top 5 Saints we want to meet in heaven’, after Mary, Joseph and possibly our name saints and patron saints.

What did they have in common? Moses and Elijah were best friends with God. Peter, James and John are best friends with Jesus. This is Jesus introducing some of His best friends to each other.

What distinguishes a best friend from a regular friend? To a best friend you entrust the most private musings of your heart. To a best friend you entrust your deepest secrets. With a best friend you want to share the most pivotal moments of your life.

To become worthy of such a relationship the price is usually passing through lots of trials and tribulations and remaining faithful.

Sharing and keeping secrets are both the mark and the test of close friendship.

The healed leper we met a few weeks ago failed that test and opportunity. He blabbed everywhere. But Peter, James and John passed this test and faithfully kept the secret of this wondrous event until the appointed time. That’s impressive. It really is. It shows the depth of their friendship.

When we look at the lives of St Bernadette, St Catherine Laboure, and the three seers of Fatima we remember that God entrusted them with momentous secrets too, which they faithfully kept at great personal cost. There is therefore enough evidence to suggest that secrets are part of God’s standard operating procedure for those worthy to be called His friends.

When we recall this amazing moment in salvation history like Peter, James and John we are invited into deeper levels of friendship with God.

May we always be given the grace to say Yes to this invitation, and may we always be given the grace to recognise the secrets God entrusts to us and to be proved worthy of that trust. Amen.
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#GospelReflection

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 1st Sunday of Lent Year B, comes from the first chapter of St Mark and references the testing Jesus went through during 40 days in the wilderness.

But that isn’t the part that’s striking me, instead it is verse 15 which could be paraphrased ‘everything the family of Israel has been waiting, hoping and longing for over many centuries is at hand, it’s Go time people!, if you want ‘in’ then it’s time to change your lives, take God more seriously than you ever have before, the choice is yours’.

All of the lives of the patriarchs, the judges, the prophets, the kings, have looked forward to the promised Messianic era. It has been a very long wait. Yet once the signals turn green with the baptism of Jesus, and His time in the wilderness, and John’s arrest, action time begins. Lepers get cleansed, demoniacs get freed, all kinds of illnesses get healed, and invitations to radically surrender our lives to God’s will are issued.

We’ve lost the sense of just how big a deal it was back then, and of how bold you had to be to make pronouncements like that.

It still is a big deal. The offer of eternal life with God always is.

Such a big offer requires a very big response; mediocre responses and ‘What are the minimum requirements?’ responses won’t do. 
 
Ash Wednesday, which we celebrated a little differently this year, helps underline the magnitude of the offer. In past years the ash was moistened with holy water and used to make a cross on our foreheads. Under pandemic restrictions the ash with as little moisture as possible was sprinkled on our heads instead. What a reminder of how ephemeral our lives are here on earth, and of how fleeting they are compared to eternity!

It is still Go time for us; if we want to accept the invitation. When we weigh up live on earth vs live eternal in heaven it should be sufficient motivation to re-order our lives towards the goal of heaven. Any other goal is worthless compared to that.

Lent is the graced time to make those necessary adjustments to re-order our lives.

May this Lent be one that really counts, and one that finds us responding, ‘I want in, no matter what; help me change, help me take You far more seriously’.
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#GospelReflection

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 6th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, comes from the first chapter of St Mark and recounts the healing of the leper and its aftermath.

When the leper comes close enough to Jesus to beg for healing, Jesus is deeply moved with compassion to heal him at once. It is one thing to feel pity for an unfortunate soul, and quite another to reach out and touch someone who is probably contagious with a horrible disease. Jesus does not baulk at touching the leper.

Images of Jesus being compassionate are frequent.
Images of Jesus being stern are not, and this is one of those infrequent times.

Jesus goes to some considerable length to remind the former leper of the official process of being reinstated as clean and healed through the priests, and to not tell anyone about how he was healed.

Why?

Because under Jewish law anyone who touched something considered unclean became unclean themselves and had to go through a lengthy process to be reinstated as clean again. If someone touched a dead body, they would be ritually unclean for 7 days.

Someone who had touched a leper would be ostracized until a reasonable quarantine period had been observed.

Any days of ostracism mean days where Jesus is unable to minister to people, to preach and to heal.

If the former leper had been obedient and kept silent about how his healing was accomplished, many more people could have been ministered to by Jesus. That’s a serious matter. God only asks us not to do something if it is important and has consequences.

Keeping silent is a legitimate request. It is not asking the former leper to lie.

Quite possibly if Jesus had been at prayer in a lonely place when the leper approached Him, the disciples didn’t know about it, and only the leper and Jesus knew what had happened.

We know what happened because the story was preserved in this Gospel and in Matthew and Luke as well. The man could not contain himself, even though Jesus had asked him so specifically to refrain from telling the story.

When God tells us not to do something, we need to take it seriously.

When Solomon in his younger days had a profound experience with God, God sternly warned him to not follow any other gods. But as Solomon got older he forgot. In order to please his foreign wives he set up altars to other gods, and incurred the anger of God. Justice came in his son’s reign when only 2 tribes, Judah and Benjamin, were left to the hereditary kingdom of David, and the other 10 tribes went with a military leader who then set about distancing those 10 tribes from worship of the true God. Those 10 tribes are still lost. This was serious stuff.

We don’t know all the ramifications of the leper being disobedient, only that it was serious enough for Jesus to be stern with him. Maybe if the leper had kept silence he would have been greatly honoured by God. Maybe if the leper had kept silence, several thousand more people may have been healed and brought into God’s kingdom. How many people didn’t get to meet Jesus in person, because the leper didn’t keep silence? Maybe the silence was a reparation for the leper being a chatterbox earlier in life.

Most of us are conflicted about this because it is one of our favourite stories of Jesus, and because we think the request for silence was too hard or too impractical. In essence we think the request was utterly unreasonable, and that Jesus was a bit touched in the head for even thinking of requesting it; we think our ways are much better than God’s ways.

The problem is: that’s how disobedient people think; that’s how the serpent in the garden of Eden thought; that’s the thinking that set Adam and Eve up for failure.

God puts a premium on obedience. Obedience pleases Him. Disobedience doesn’t, and never will.

May this Gospel account give us the grace to decide to be obedient to God no matter what. Amen.
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#GospelReflection

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 5th Sunday of Ordinary Time Year B, comes from the first chapter of St Mark and shows us what happened in the 24 hours after the man was delivered from evil in the synagogue at Capernaum on the sabbath.

From the people of the town we see a huge response once the sabbath is technically over. It is normally difficult enough getting the ill and the frail to travel in daylight hours, let alone the additional difficulties in travelling in twilight and in the dark; and yet they all come; and their expectant faith is rewarded.

Carefully watch what Jesus does next; because it isn’t what a celebrity would do. A celebrity would enjoy the limelight, and probably take a few curtain calls the next day, and let word of mouth bring increasingly more people to him each day.

Jesus after a very long, tiring and rather amazing day doesn’t sleep for very long, because His priority is spending quality time in prayer with the Father, in order to get grounded again in the reality of that relationship. He gets up long before everyone else, and intentionally seeks out a place of peace and quiet.

And He stays there.

And He waits there.

It is highly likely that Jesus left Simon Peter’s house with whatever travel gear He had.

When day comes we are told ‘Everybody is looking for You’. Some may have searched Peter’s house. Some may have searched Peter’s boat. Others would have looked for Jesus along the lakeside shoreline. Others would have gone looking at the market place, or back in the synagogue.

The only people who actually found Jesus were Peter, James, John and Andrew.

Why is that?

Because they had got to know Jesus enough to be able to work out His likes and dislikes.
Because they knew enough of His character to be able to go looking in the right places.

In some ways this was a test. How well did they know Him? How prepared were they to leave all familiar things behind? Would they follow wherever He lead?

After big ministry days and momentous experiences of God have you noticed that Jesus becomes a little difficult to find? It isn’t uncommon. Often the same test is placed before us. Are we following Jesus for what He can do? Or are we following Jesus because of who He is? And out of a desire to be with Him and get to know Him better?

So that’s the challenge for this week. To examine just how far we are willing to go in order to find Jesus, and to discover whether we are willing to follow Him on His terms or not.

May God help us to be faithful to Him in all seasons, when everything is going more than well, and when everything is dry, arid and lonely, and everything in between. Amen.
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#GospelReflection