The Gospel for this Sunday, Trinity Sunday, Year B, comes from the final verses of St Matthew’s Gospel, and contains what many refer to as ‘The Great Commission’.

I recall pondering this Gospel segment in times past, but I haven’t gone back to find what was written back then. However I do remember that no one knows where this mountain location is in Galilee and that it is the same location that Jesus and the Apostles withdrew to when He wanted to teach them privately.

It seems fitting that Jesus wanted them to re-gather in this place of special shared memories to give them the sending forth that constitutes them as Apostles. They are the ones sent out by Jesus with the primacy to continue His ministry.

Wikipedia says this: An apostle, in its most literal sense, is an emissary, from Greek ἀπόστολος, literally "one who is sent off", from the verb ἀποστέλλειν, "to send off". The purpose of such sending off is usually to convey a message, and thus "messenger" is a common alternative translation; other common translations include "ambassador" and "envoy".

From that angle, the privacy of this world changing event makes sense.

All of us who through their response to God have become disciples of the Lord Jesus, and who have been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirt, share in their ongoing mission.

Have you wondered ‘But why did some hesitate?’

The answer could lie in the profound change in their relationship with Jesus. Before the Passion, Jesus was teacher, companion, confidant, friend, preacher, miracle worker and they had gradually come to accept that He was indeed Son of God. But it was the kind of acceptance based on faith. When He showed Himself to them glorified and risen, this was an experience of His power and majesty as Son of God – a whole new ballgame, as we might say.

It is one thing to accept a truth, and quite another to be confronted with the reality of that truth.

In this meeting between Jesus and His Apostles on the hidden mountain, it is quite likely that Jesus displayed a level of authority, kingship, majesty, power and victory that was well beyond anything they had previously experienced when He had shown Himself risen to them.

Most of them had the usual response to a manifest presence of God: flat, face down on the ground in worship.

But the rest were in ‘stunned mullet’ mode, or frozen because they no longer knew how they should relate to Jesus, or how He wanted them to relate to Him.

He is Lord of the universe, and yet He invites a relationship that is closer than a spouse. 
One of those both/and things that are so paradoxical.

And what does Jesus do? He makes the first move, He comes up to them, He doesn’t berate them, and He speaks to them. He meets them where they are at.

Then He speaks those words that have resounded through the centuries:
“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And look, I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.”

Here is the purpose of their sending forth as Apostles, to bring everyone into the profoundly personal ongoing relationship that God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, wishes to have with everyone, and through that relationship profound unity and love with each other.
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In His goodness, may the Lord Jesus enable us to come to deeper understanding of His total authority over everything, grounded not only in faith, but in the experience of His divine presence, so that we may come to that unlimited trust in Him which dispels all fear and sets us confidently on this mission to go, disciple, baptize and teach. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, Pentecost Sunday, Year B, comes from the two segments of St John’s Gospel, Chapter 16, containing promises about the coming of the Holy Spirit.

These promises go some way to helping us understand why Jesus ascended to the Father, and sent the Holy Spirit.

If Jesus was still present on earth in His glorified body, we would all be pre-occupied with everything He said and did, and would never get around to doing what God wants us to do. Think of the biggest celebrity you know, and multiply that pulling power by at least 100. Yet on earth, Jesus continually refused anything to do with celebrity in favour of building long-term personal committed relationships. Superstar celebrity is not the modus-operandi of Jesus.

What He did is very different, and far more effective. He sent each and every one of us who have committed our lives to Him the gift of a Master Tutor, a.k.a. the Holy Spirit.

At the time these promises were given at the Last Supper, the disciples had not been through the crucible of the death and resurrection of Jesus. So there were plenty of things at that level that they had no hope of understanding until after they had experienced His risen presence.

But the ‘I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you to bear now’ went even deeper than that.

A young child is incapable of understanding anything at an adult level. A lot of growth, maturity and learning about the world we live in is necessary before anyone attains an adult understanding of anything.

Similarly if you started to explain the finer points of performing a Beethoven symphony to someone who has only just learned to play ‘chopsticks’, it is going to be completely lost on them. To get them from playing ‘chopsticks’ to giving a credible performance of a Beethoven symphony is going to require many lessons that build on each other, and lots of homework, practice, tests, and time.

The same is true for the difference between someone learning the first 10 nouns and the first verb declension of a new language, and someone reading and writing literature in that language; or the difference between someone who has just begun to learn how to do a plie and a tendu and someone who dances as prima ballerina in Swan Lake.

Everyone begins at the beginning.

When we hear ‘Advocate’ or ‘Paraclete’ to describe the Holy Spirit, it may be useful to translate that into Master Tutor.

Because that is exactly what the Holy Spirit is, and what He graciously does. He takes us step by step, lesson by lesson, from baby steps in our relationship with God and our ability to administer His love to others, on a perfectly designed individual learning plan, to heights of relationship with God and ability to administer His love to others that we can’t even start to imagine. And there’s always more that He wants to teach us, and far more that He is capable of teaching us.

But He is a perfect gentleman, and He adjusts everything to our pace, and to the degree of co-operation and trust we give Him, and to our diligence (or lack thereof) in doing the necessary practice and homework to get to the next level/lesson.

Is it not absolutely amazing that God gives us this Master of Master Tutors in the Holy Spirit?

That promise, ‘He will lead you to the complete truth’ is both personal and corporate. If you look carefully at Christian history, you will notice that each era was learning something extraordinary which built on the lived response and understanding of previous eras and generations in the Church. eg. The monastic orders grew out of the desert fathers, the mendicant orders grew out of the monastic orders; devotion to the Divine Mercy was not possible before devotion to the Sacred Heart had permeated the Church.

There are things the Holy Spirit is leading the Church into in our times, that could not have been done in any earlier era. Over the past 120 years some of that has been a rediscovery of the charismatic gifts of the Holy Spirit, which is an ongoing process. We can also see a greater openness to ecumenism led by the same Holy Spirit over the last 50-60 years.

There is always more He wants to lead us into, point the way to, and teach us about.

Are we willing to diligently co-operate with Him?

Let’s pray….

Dear Holy Spirit, I am so sorry for how much I have been underestimating Your work in my life and in the life of the Church, and the superabundantly enormous gift You are from Jesus and the Father. I am so sorry for grieving you, and for being an unwilling, unappreciative, lazy and un-co-operative student. Please forgive me. I want this to change from today onwards, and forever. I want to learn and co-operate with anything and everything You want to teach me. In particular I ask your special help to attain competency in those areas where I have been resisting You the most. I don’t want to do that any more. Please forgive and help me. Amen.    

​The Gospel for this Sunday, the Ascension of the Lord, Year B, comes from the concluding verses of St Mark’s Gospel, Chapter 16, a direct continuation of verses from last week, and contains the instructions Jesus gives to His disciples before His ascension, and what happens afterwards.

Although they aren’t so much instructions, as regal commands. This is Jesus functioning as King of the universe and conqueror of death.

Our task is to proclaim the good news of Jesus everywhere.

How people respond to that proclamation will determine whether they enter His eternal kingdom or not.

Jesus tells us the signs that will distinguish believers from un-believers. These signs are certainly not associated with the timid; but are associated with those who dramatically extend the kingdom of God.

Only those who have complete confidence in the kingly reign of Jesus can cast out devils in His name, and can expect the sick to get well when they invoke the healing power of God.

This is warrior stuff, and not for the faint of heart, nor for wimps.

It is quite a challenge, isn’t it? Most of us fall a long way shot.
But this is what was considered normal in Gospel times.

Jesus then ascends to His place of kingly power and authority, seated at the right hand of the Father on the throne of heaven.

When the disciples do their part and preach, the Lord Jesus provides the evidence that their preaching is true through the signs and wonders that accompany the preaching; working together to extend the kingdom of God.

There are those for whom this is still happening today, eg Sr Briege McKenna, Damian Stayne, Costandi Bastoli, and those of recent memory, eg Dr John Bonnici Mallia, Fr Emelien Tardiff, and many others.

There are still places on earth where signs and wonders are expected when believers preach, and where if there are no signs and wonders, credibility is lost quickly eg Fiji, Uganda.

This is what the Gospel and the Lord Jesus consider normal.
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May God grant that we, too, will return to considering this as normal. Amen.   

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 6th Sunday of Easter, Year B, comes from the of St John Chapter 15, a direct continuation of verses from last week, where Jesus continues to reveals Himself as the True Vine and what the implications are for us.

When you look at a classic grape vine, it is very hard to tell where the trunk ends and the main branches begin.

The more our lives are in alignment with Jesus, the more fruitful they will be.

God the Father poured all of His love into Jesus, and Jesus poured all of that love into us. In imitating this ‘agape’ love we will be fruitful. That is allowing the love of Jesus to be poured into us; and pouring that love out on to each other.

This is the simplest explanation of His Will for us.
Simple yes;
easy no.

Sometimes we wonder if we could possibly be in the right place at the right time for God’s kind purposes when it seems so arid and dry. But these are the words He says to us:

“You did not choose Me. No, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last.”

It is no accident. The Divine vine-dresser selected us to be precisely here, and has pruned our lives in such ways that we will be the most fruitful here. He has commissioned us, appointed us, deliberately set us in this place, so that we can be fruitful. And not an ordinary level of fruitfulness either; He wants quality long lasting fruit – the kind that go to make up Penfolds Grange and will still be extraordinary 100 years from now, not the kind that is only suitable for cask wine.

If we let His love fully in (1st challenge)
and pour that love fully out onto others (2nd challenge)
then this highest kind of quality fruitfulness is assured.

It is precisely in this seemingly barren place that any flourishing will be seen as something only God could do.
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May God grant that the obstacles in our lives to receiving His love may be melted away, and that the obstacles in our lives that prevent us from loving more fully, may they be melted away too. May His infinite merciful love melt all those obstacles away and cause us to be more fruitful in Him than we have ever been before. Amen.