The Gospel for this Sunday, the 25th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is taken from the third quarter of Chapter 9 of St Mark. Between last Sunday and this Sunday (Mark 8:27-35) there has been the transfiguration of Jesus, questions about Elijah preceding the Messiah, and the deliverance of a boy with a spirit of dumbness.

At the transfiguration the Father had a message for the disciples and for us, ‘Listen to My beloved Son’; and what had Jesus been talking about prior to the transfiguration? That the Messiah must be rejected, suffer and be put to death, and be raised up.

After the transfiguration and the deliverance of the boy, Jesus deliberately takes the disciples away from the hurly-burly of public ministry, away from all the usual distractions, so that He could teach them something of the utmost importance.

The crucial mission of the Messiah – far above all the other parts of His mission from the Father – is to redeem the world from sin, to totally conquer evil, and the only way that can happen is through His sacrificial death as the pure and innocent Passover Lamb of God.

Soon the journey to Jerusalem, the one that will take Him to Calvary, to accomplish this crucial mission, will begin. It is imperative that He prepares His disciples for the cataclysmic events that are going to take place.

But it becomes obvious that they are either unable to listen or unwilling to engage with the topic of the necessity of suffering and of the Cross.

One reason for this is denial. Jesus is talking about truly horrific things as being a non-negotiable done deal. It is also our usual first response to bad news.

Another reason is fear. When we experience fear, the body’s fight/flight/freeze response kicks in, and the higher mental functions of reasoning are suspended.

So they don’t do their job as disciples, which is to ask questions of the teacher. Asking questions and probing a topic is how students best come to grasp and internalize that topic. And no teacher can go on to the next topic until he/she is sure that his/her students have grasped the prerequisite topics for understanding the new topic he/she wants to present to them. For example, in order to teach multiplication, you must first teach addition; before you can teach how to cook a mornay, you have to teach how to prepare a basic white sauce.

What kind of questions was Jesus expecting?

Perhaps…
How are You feeling about that?
Is this suffering you are to undergo absolutely necessary?
Help me understand why.
Why is it necessary for the Messiah to suffer like this?
What’s the point?
How do You prepare for sufferings like that?
How do You keep sane knowing that this is coming?
How certain is this, 80%, 90%, 100%?
Does that mean suffering of that order of magnitude is in our paths too?
What do You want us to do when this begins to happen?
How can we help You as You face this?
Is it possible for us to help You in any way?
Those psalms that foretell this are quite scary, is it really going to be like that?
What is the value of rejection, suffering and death?
How should we prepare for when these days overtake us?
Teach us how to prepare for our own times of suffering and trial.
How far away are these events? When will they take place?
How do you want us to handle your burial?
Death is final. What is this event after your death that you speak of?
How will we recognise it?
What will become of us when you are gone?

Can you begin to understand how differently the disciples would have coped with His passion and death if they had asked any of these questions?
Can you begin to fathom the treasures of wisdom and understanding that were there for the asking, but were never asked for, and how much we (the whole church throughout time) would have gained if those questions had been asked?
Can you begin to grasp how frustrating it must have been for Jesus, to see His disciples not listening, and so utterly disengaged from what He is trying to teach them and prepare them for.

Despite their lack of engagement, Jesus still continued to try to prepare the disciples for the horror to come, and also tells them that the horror won’t be the end of the story. What else could He do? He had to trust that when the hour of His passion and death overtook them, that they would remember that He had told them it was going to happen, so that they might find a ray of hope that God was still in control, that this was indeed part of God’s plan, and that His death was not the end of that plan, and there’s something big to come after His death.

Fear and denial are our usual response too
‘dear God I hope that’s not true, may it never happen’.

In fact we do it regularly. We dismiss prophets as false because what they say seems so surreal eg Kenneth Hargin 1963 http://garycarpenter.org/PDF/KennethHagin1963Prophecy.pdf

We did the same with the very few prophets who said ‘pray, because there are laboratories preparing bio-weapons’ and the ones who said, ‘a pandemic is coming’.
It seemed so wild, so far from the reality at that time, so weird, so far-fetched,
and yet ultimately it was true.

Our automatic response at the time was: ‘O dear God, I hope that’s not true, may it never happen’.

It should have been
How do You want me to pray about this?
What do You want me to do about this?
What kind of preparations need to happen to minimize and/or prevent this?
I need confirmation from You to treat this as seriously as You want me to; if this is true please send me confirmation, and help me to recognise it when it comes, as coming from You.

If the disciples can’t hear the part about ‘rejection, suffering and death’, then they can’t hear the part about being raised up either. We don’t know what else Jesus wanted to reveal, because the disciples shut their minds and hearts down and refused to engage in the teaching process.

Jesus must have been so disappointed and discouraged by this. Any teacher is when his/her students just don’t get it and they actively disengage by passing notes and creating paper planes.
And this was teaching of the highest importance, the key to understanding everything else.

To make things worse, instead of spending their conversation time productively
His disciples indulge in that sad masculine pastime of ‘I’m better than you because…’

What did Jesus do?

He set Himself to do the best job of teaching them these unpalatable truths that He could.
That way He knew He had done the best He could, and He could hope that later on they might remember that He had tried to teach them about the cataclysm that was going to happen.

He could have chosen to leave them in the ignorance they preferred
but He loved them far too much to let them face the days of His passion and death without preparation.

Jesus could have walked away, the provocation was there, but He chose to persist with His apostles and disciples. This was probably in obedience to His Father, because part 1 of the messianic mission is suffering, death, resurrection and ascension and part 2 is building the foundations of the church, of the kingdom of God. Both missions had to be fulfilled.

He could also have yelled and thrown things and generally have let His frustrations out with impact, but He doesn’t.
Have you ever tried to teach something as basic as the answer to 10 times 11, and they just couldn’t get it, no matter how many times and ways you tried? That kind of frustration.
Be amazed at His self-control in this situation, at His gentleness, and at His patience.

If we are amazed at His resurrection and ascension, we should be equally amazed at the church that emerged at Pentecost from this motley bunch; and astounded that today it is still continuing His mission, albeit at some times in history much better than at other times in history.

Jesus knew what was going on, with the one-upmanship game, and He had a plan.
But it didn’t get sprung until they were behind closed doors at Capernaum, where they felt safe.
He could have given them a public scolding about being unteachable and about how one-upmanship decreases love and trust.
but He chose to do it in private, to not humiliate them publicly.

But He still got the message across that even if they thought they could hide what they were up to from Jesus, He knew the whole without being told.

He waited patiently, and took this teachable moment when the opportunity was ripe, and then whammied them with a lesson in kingdom values that they would never forget.

Humble service is the yardstick of greatness in the kingdom of God;
the exact antithesis of the world’s yardsticks of money, power, attractiveness and pleasure.

What is the challenge for us in this Gospel?

Don’t be afraid to ask Jesus questions.
Don’t be afraid to ask Jesus difficult questions.
Don’t be afraid to ask Jesus to tell you more when He shows you something that is beyond your current levels of understanding and comprehension.

If you are game, pray with me…

Dear Jesus, there is probably something in my life, or something about my future, that you have been trying to show me, and I just haven’t grasped it. I may not have even picked up on Your signals. I am truly sorry for not having been attentive enough to You. I am sorry for the many times I have not recognised the ways You have tried to gain my attention. I am sorry for the times I have said to You in my words, or by my actions, ‘oh no, I don’t want to go there, I don’t want to know that’. Please forgive me. I trust that You only want to show me things – especially when they are difficult things – to bring about greater good in my life and in the lives of others – and that You know me and love me too much to give me anything that I can’t handle (with You and Your grace to assist me). In Your goodness, please help me to recognise the messages and teaching You are so graciously offering to me. Help me to engage with You on those matters, and to courageously ask You questions about those matters, and to wait for Your answers and to act diligently upon them. Help me to believe You the first time, and to take what You say seriously. I want to be a much better student and disciple of Yours, better than I have ever been before. Amen.
​
Holy Mary, mother of Jesus, please intercede on my behalf for this. Amen.
​

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is taken from the end of Chapter 8 of St Mark. Between last Sunday and this Sunday (Mark 8:1-26) there has been a second multiplication of loaves, a demand for a sign, a warning against the leaven of the Pharisees and the healing of a blind man at Bethsaida. In this part of Mark:8, while they are on their way to the villages around Caesarea Philippi, Jesus interrogates His disciples.

But before we get to that, if the ministry itinerary of Jesus seems strange, well it kind of is. Why would Jesus push on to Sidon after going to Tyre, and why is He off to Caesarea Phillipi?

The answer is in the map of Israel at the time of Joshua, and where the territory of the various tribes were apportioned within Israel.
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e6/a6/de/e6a6dec8f6ced5c5fcc09f40fe6df877.jpg

Tyre and Sidon are where the tribe of Asher settled, and the area around Caesarea Phillipi is where the tribe of Dan settled. In the time of Jesus these places were foreign territory, but if you were looking for descendants of the lost tribes of Israel, you would look in these places. This speaks of an incredible commitment of Jesus to seek out the lost, and of God giving a message through these missionary journeys that God has not forgotten His covenant with the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, even if they have forgotten Him.

Jesus opens up this deliberate interrogation by asking ‘Who do men say I am?

The answers are interesting:
John the Baptist is one answer, recognizing that Jesus and John preached the same message ‘The kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent, and believe the good news.’
Elijah is another answer, recognizing that with His miracles Jesus is on a par with the greatest prophet of Israel. Remember that at the Transfiguration, Moses represented the law, and Elijah represented the prophets.
Or one of the other prophets was the third answer the disciples provided, recognizing that Jesus carries a powerful message from God, and is a catalyst for the destiny of Israel, and this will bring Him into conflict with those who do not fear God and don’t walk in God’s ways.

Then Jesus puts them all on the spot and asks;
‘Who do you say I am?’
Peter responds, ‘You are the anointed one’.

When Israelites were hoping and longing for the anointed one of God, the Messiah, what did they expect the Messiah to be and to do?
-That the Messiah would usher in a new covenant. Jeremiah 31:31
-That the Messiah would be a prophet like Moses. Deuteronomy 18:15-19
-That the Messiah would be the Son of Man. Daniel 7:13-14
-That the Messiah would be greater than David. Psalm 110:1-4
-That the Messiah would be a descendant of David. 2 Samuel 7:12-16
-That the Messiah would be the coming one to whom the scepter belongs. Genesis 49:10
-That the Messiah would be the descendant of Abraham through whom all nations would be blessed. Genesis 12:3

When David was King, an extraordinary king who took God as His commander, Israel was united, and Israel had rest from the enemies that normally besieged or enslaved them. David carried that triple calling of priest (worshipper of God), prophet and king; and was seen as a type of the Messiah to come.

Peter and the others were likely to be hopeful of being close retainers of king Jesus in a new earthly Davidic kingdom following a swift and painless overthrow of the Roman occupation.

But Jesus starts teaching them about the Messianic prophecies they’ve never ever considered before. All of that suffering servant stuff in Isaiah, and some of that gruesome stuff in Psalm 22 and other places.

Whoever we think Jesus to be
Jesus Himself insists that God’s plan for the Messiah is rejection, suffering, death and resurrection
and that to belong to Him
and indeed even necessary for salvation,
we have to be willing to walk exactly the same path.

That’s exactly what the scriptures have foretold that the Messiah will be.

In effect Jesus is saying here we are at A, the destination is B.
You think getting from A to B will unlock lots of glory with little effort.
Whatever you think B is, the B is bigger than you can ever possibly imagine.
God’s plan isn’t earthly and temporal, it is divine and eternal.
You are thinking far too small if you are thinking about a terrestrially based kingdom.
You are thinking far too small if you are only considering the salvation needs of this generation.

Getting to the fulness of the kingdom of God is going to take total commitment from Me, the pathway is not straight forward, and it is going to require significant suffering and rejection, and yes even an ignominious death, to get there.

The requirements for you to enter into the fulness of the kingdom of God are no different.

If you are going to come with Me from here on in,
this is what it is going to cost you.
No compromise is possible.

Either you are 100% with Me, and do it 100% God’s way,
no matter how heavy the ultimate personal cost turns out to be,
or you walk away now.

I will follow God’s path for Me even if none of you stay as My disciples.

It is decision time.

To stay with Me you have to accept this path of the Cross,
you have to live it wholeheartedly.

Are you coming with Me all the way?
Or do our ways part now?
​
On your answer hangs the salvation of countless others.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B, is taken from the end of Chapter 7 of St Mark. Earlier in this Chapter Jesus has had a confrontation with the scribes and Pharisees (last week’s Gospel), and has then travelled to Tyre and Sidon, healing the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman, and seems to be taking the long way through the Decapolis region back to Galilee. So this miracle of Jesus, healing the deaf and mute man, may have taken place outside the territory of Israel- where gentile culture held sway. Living according to the Law of Moses in this culture would have been very challenging.

Three years ago I opted for thinking the ‘they’ bringing the deaf and mute man to Jesus had friendly intentions. That’s still possible, and the verbs (parakalousin) and (epithe) back up that interpretation; reminding us of paraclete (Holy Spirit) and epiclesis (hand gesture for calling down the power of the Holy Spirit).
http://www.societyofsaints.net/blog/gospel-reflection-mark-731-37

But what if ‘they’ had hostile intentions?
What if ‘they’ being not defined deliberately permits both interpretations, friendly and hostile?

We know from earlier in the Chapter that Jesus wanted this journey into foreign territory to be incognito. But He was still getting recognised.

We could surmise that Jesus is on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, and that He has already attracted enough attention for a crowd to start forming around Him.

If you were hostile to Jesus, what would be a good way to discredit Him?
Bring Him an impossible case; and do it publicly, expecting to gloat when He fails.

The deaf man who can’t talk properly does not have any right to transact his own affairs. He is at the mercy of others, and sometimes those people will be kindly and sometimes they will take as much advantage as they can get away with.

He was unable to act of his own volition, according to the Law, so he couldn’t bring himself to Jesus. But he has been led/brought/conducted, possibly against his own will, to Jesus.

The crowd is naturally agog to see what’s going to happen.
Jesus doesn’t do the expected thing. He doesn’t say, ‘be opened’, with a grand gesture and hey presto, big miracle.
He goes off to a private place.

Why?

It may have been to recover an atmosphere of prayer, away from heckling and gawking.
It may have been to reduce the onslaught to the senses when the man regained them.
It may have been to reduce scrutiny/mockery of the unusual actions Jesus did, fingers in the man’s ears, and spittle on his tongue.
It may have been a counter measure against effectively becoming a performing porpoise;
It may have been to give the deaf man personal time with Jesus,
It may have been trying to preserve the incognito
or a full or partial combination of these reasons.

The healing happens at the pace Jesus has chosen.

It is a complete healing, of both hearing and speaking.

And Jesus wants it kept quiet?
Why?

And He insists on it, even though the witnesses to the miracle disobey.
Why?

Jesus must have had very good reasons, because He rarely insists on anything.
So it must have been extremely important.

Yet the witnesses, His followers, and the crowd are unable to restrain themselves.

Do we trust Jesus enough to do what He says, even if it doesn’t make any sense to us?
It is an important question, because obedience aligns ourselves with God’s plans
and disobedience delays, obstructs God’s plans and prevents the full good He intended.

So many of us are in lockdown (again), feeling helpless and useless by turns,
living in a secular society that is hostile to the Gospel.

The underlying intention of the lockdown has been to separate us from God, to crush our faith, to reduce our trust in God to nothing, to bring to naught our communities of faith, to make those with faith even more of a laughing stock than they were before.

The malice is the same, the intention is the same.

That’s what would have happened if the deaf and mute man had remained unhealed.

But God is so much bigger than anything malicious aimed at Him or His people.

Lockdown is meant to crush and destroy us.

But God has been working in secret, just as He did with the deaf and mute man.

The feeble faith we went into lockdown with is being transformed by His grace, that little faith, disabled and threatened in so many ways, is being fully restored, resurrected by Jesus, in the hiddenness of lockdown.

What was meant for evil is being transformed by God into a complete restoration of our faith in Him; into a complete resurrection of His Church as He had always intended her to be.

The powers that be expect us to emerge from lockdown even more enfeebled than when we went in. Jesus had a surprise for them back then, and He has a surprise for them today too.

We are coming out fully restored, completely restored by grace.
Unrecognisable compared to how we went in.
A force to be reckoned with, empowered by God,
fully attuned to His voice, completely clear in transmitting His Good News.

His full process is almost complete in us.
We will be emerging soon.
Trust in Him.
He knows what He is about.
​
The change will be so remarkable, so complete,
that it will be described as a New Pentecost
as a world-wide Resurrection.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 22nd Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from an abridged version of Mark 7:1-23. The missing verses only expand on what Jesus means by observing human traditions and how the digestive tract has nothing to do with the motivations of the heart.

Jesus has been in public ministry for a while, His apostles have been chosen, and He is getting a reputation as a wonder worker. The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 has definitely attracted the attention of the ‘higher ups’, and we see some scribes and Pharisees arrive - who have specifically made the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee to find out for themselves what is going on.

Places like Capernaum would not have had the same refined manners as the more wealthy and learned residents of Jerusalem. Fishermen, shepherds and farmers aren’t going to be overly picky about personal cleanliness. Whatever the disciples have been doing (or not doing) about the ceremonial washings that are de rigueur in Jerusalem hasn’t been worthy of comment up until now.

Either these infractions of tradition got up their noses big time, or they didn’t have any better question to ask, so the scribes and Pharisees decided to pick on Jesus by bringing their (the disciples') lack of perfect hygiene up for public discussion.
Boy did they underestimate Jesus!

Jesus took their question, turned it like a mirror back on to the questioners, and then used it to springboard a major teaching to the gathered crowds. A bit like a leg spin bowler serving up a deceptive googly with an expectation of hitting the stumps and the batsman thwacks it for six.

Do not underestimate Jesus.
Do not pick on Him.
Do not pick on His disciples.
It will backfire big time.

How did these ceremonial washings of hands begin? Don’t know. But it could have been a measure introduced to stop the spread of infection within the community in bygone days.

However now it has become a bit of a yardstick to measure who takes God seriously and who doesn’t, and to pressurize people into conformity. Was it something God actually asked the people of Israel to do? No. But these Jerusalemites are enforcing it as though it was of the same importance as the Law and the Prophets.

It is much, much easier to keep your hands clean than your heart clean.

God did require cleanliness and associated preparations for public worship of Him, as is His due. He deserves the best from us, and sloppiness won’t do. But it was also as a physical reminder to ready the mind, heart and soul for worship too.

Jesus calls them hypocrites because they are more concerned with the minutiae of hand cleanliness than with honouring and reverencing God in our hearts, thoughts and feelings.

What is a hypocrite? It was a name used for an actor under an assumed character, or a dissembler, and became a term to describe the disguise (or concealment) of one's real nature, motives, or feelings behind a false appearance.

We have in these visitors from Jerusalem people who are supposed to be 'the best of the best' in putting God first in their lives, and they are more concerned with infractions of ceremonial handwashing than with the worship offered in mind, heart, and will to God.

Jesus tells us (and the big crowd that has gathered around Him) the truth:
nothing from the outside can make us unclean or defiled,
only acting on the evil thoughts and malicious desires of our hearts makes us truly unclean and truly defiled.

Jesus then goes on to make us aware of just how much He fully understands human iniquity and our capacity for evil.

(verse 21) For from within the hearts of men 
come/ discharge/proceed/project (ekporeuontai)
evil/ bad/worthless/depraved/injurious (kakoi)
thoughts/ discussion/consideration/debate (dialogismoi).
sexual immorality (porneiai)- feminine plural
theft (klopai)- feminine plural
murder (phonoi) slaughter, killing- masculine plural
adultery (moicheiai) - feminine plural

The plural is very interesting here, because it includes collectively planned evil, evil with the support and encouragement and teamwork of others.
But there’s more….

(verse 22) greed, (pleonexiai) covetousness, avarice, aggression, desire for advantage – feminine plural
wickedness, (ponēriai) iniquities, depravity, malice; plural plots, sins- feminine plural.
deceit, (dolos) guile, treachery, tricks, wiles- masculine singular
debauchery, (aselgeia) licentiousness- feminine singular.
envy, (ophthalmos) the eye; the mind's eye, by implication, vision; figuratively, envy – masculine singular.
slander, (blasphēmia) abusive or scurrilous language, blasphemy, vilification- feminine singular.
arrogance, (hyperēphania) pride, disdain, haughtiness- feminine singular.
foolishness, (aphrosynē) want of sense, impiety, wickedness, egotism; recklessness- feminine singular.

Even if we might debate how poorly the ancients considered the morality of women relative to the morality of men; this list doesn’t let anyone off the hook, male or female, alone or in groups.

It is also a stark reminder that some forms of depravity take an element of organisation and teamwork, and that we can be culpable not only as individuals but as parts of groups.

Ouch! Gulp! Oh Ohh!

Yes, the Lord Jesus is giving us an opportunity today to look deep into our hearts, and to acknowledge the depths of wickedness that linger there, to accept our own culpability,
and to ask and beg for His mercy.
For only He can truly make us clean on the inside.

May each one of us accept that loving challenge from Him. Amen.

You might like to pray this adaptation of a well-loved prayer in response:

Lord Jesus, I come before You, just as I am,
I am sorry for my sins,
the sins I am aware of, the sins I may have forgotten,
the sins I do not yet comprehend the full gravity of;
​the sins I have committed through human weakness,
the evils that I don’t yet understand as evils,
squashed my conscience about,
and yet have done them anyway.
I repent of my sins, please forgive me.
In Your Name, I forgive all others for what they have done against me.
I renounce Satan, the evil spirits and all their works.
I give You my entire self, Lord Jesus, now and forever.
I invite You into my life, Lord Jesus.
I accept You as my Lord, God and Saviour.
Heal me, change me, strengthen me in body, soul, and spirit.
Come Lord Jesus, cover me with Your Precious Blood,
and fill me with Your Holy Spirit.
I love You Lord Jesus. I praise You Jesus. I thank You Jesus.
I thank You for the enormity of Your mercy towards me.
I shall follow You every day of my life. Amen.

Mary, my Mother, Queen of Peace,
​and all the Angels and Saints,
please help me to ratify this prayer with my whole life. Amen.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from a series of sections of Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel, which began four weeks ago, and concludes this week. Between last week and this week one verse was skipped, v59, acting as a reminder that this whole discussion took place at Capernaum, home base for the missionary work of Jesus. It also bookends an earlier verse forming a syncope and in effect double underlining v58, viz

“This is the bread that came down/descended from heaven
Unlike your ancestors who ate (ephagon) and died (referring to the manna in the desert)
who eats (trogon) this bread will live (zesei) for ever.”

We often overlook the importance of location, but John has drawn attention to it for a reason.

Capernaum was where Jesus started His public ministry, and where He recruited many of His apostles, and where He returned to after each Galilean mission, and after each feast day pilgrimage to Jerusalem during His public ministry, until the final journey to Jerusalem culminating in His passion, death, resurrection and ascension.

Why?

Because this is the place where the greatest number of people have had the most long term relationship with Jesus (outside of Nazareth); where the most people have heard His teachings and have seen His miracles. Therefore up till this point it has been the epicientre for disciples of Jesus and for wannabe disciples of Jesus.

At this point anyone remotely anti-Jesus has already left the discussion.

And those who remain, who have considered themselves His followers, are now in a bit of an uproar over Jesus insisting that they must eat His flesh and drink His blood.

The stakes as Jesus has laid out are extremely high, participation in the divine life,
eternal life and
bodily resurrection on the last day.
The conditions are clear: eat His flesh and drink His blood.

It is decision time.

Is this intolerable, unacceptable language?
(Has Jesus jumped the shark?)

Is this incomprehensible, but the speaker has proved His trustworthiness to us? (I don’t understand, but I believe and trust in Jesus, and I’m willing to trust Him on this crazy stuff too.)

Some left Him for good.
A much smaller number stayed with Him.

Jesus was prepared to keep on going with His mission from God even if no one stayed with Him as a disciple.

What was the difference between those who left and those who stayed?
The quality and depth of his or her personal relationship and commitment to Jesus.

The apostles, and those who similarly strong relationship with Jesus stayed.

One, Judas, stayed to see how this would pan out, gambling on the chance of a big reward.

The rest left.

This a shakeout of a similar magnitude to Gideon and the shakeout of the army mustered to fight Midian and Amalek. Judges Chapter 7. From 32000 men, 22000 left; of the 10,000 left, only 300 were chosen (and in a weird way; lapping from the water’s edge). In that account, the reduction was so that the victory would be seen to be God’s and not resultant from the might of men.

With those who are left Jesus can build something long-lasting, eternally worthwhile, despite the presence of a few treacherous and curious ones who will eventually get shaken out.

May this underline for you that Jesus is not seeking celebrity -ever – at all.

What Jesus wants above all is true commitment and deep relationship.

Have you decided what your response will be?

Do you remember how high the stakes are?
This is the time to choose all or nothing.

May the heavenly Father grant you the gift of being able to say with Simon Peter
“To whom shall we go?
You Lord have the words of eternal life.
We believe that You are the Holy One of God.”

…and then to act on it by committing yourself to full membership of a Christian community where the Eucharist is celebrated with a validly ordained priest (Roman Catholic, Eastern Rite Catholic or Orthodox) – whatever that takes. That’s full sacramental life, full community life, and full acceptance of the apostolic teaching preserved in those communities, and to a committed prayer life (personal and communal). Acts 2:42 (These remained faithful to the teaching of the apostles, to the brotherhood, to the breaking of the bread and to the prayers)

Wherever you see that your commitment is currently nil or partial in any of these areas, beg God for the grace to make full commitment in those areas.

The stakes are of eternal significance.
Do not delay your active response to Jesus.
​
Amen.

Recently I was asked by a relative to contribute to answering some of the Questions given in the Agenda for the Fifth Plenary Council of Australia 2021.

​plenarycouncil.catholic.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Plenary-Council-Agenda.pdf
 
While I’m still very concerned that the Plenary Council process has been a waste of time, talent and resources, I did agree to attempt some answers. Here they are:
 
1.CONVERSION
 
How might we better accompany one another on the journey of personal and communal conversion which mission in Australia requires?
 
To accompany one another on any journey means that we have to get to know one another and spend time with each other.
 
The current culture of arriving just in time for Mass, and leaving as soon as it is finished (or even beforehand), does not lend itself to learning to accompany one another. What needs to be done is part of the shift that has to happen from church goers being consumers to church goers being participants in mission.
 
We know from the end of Acts 2 that it was the Holy Spirit who bonded the members of the early church together in unity, community and mission. Without the Pentecost experience of the Holy Spirit there is no impetus/motivation to accompany each other and to care for each other.
 
But the wine of the Holy Spirit needs to go into fresh skins, so some kind of structural shift is needed that celebrates, rewards and makes accompanying each other possible. From experience we know that morning teas after the last Sunday morning Mass are not sufficient. Even though we sit beside many of the same people in the pews each weekend, ‘breaking the ice’ with each other isn’t easy; and the cringe factor when we are invited to say hello to each other at the beginning of Mass or during the homily is palpable.
 
But unless that ice is broken somehow, and at more than a superficial level, then the courage to join any kind of discussion group won’t materialize. Yet it is only in small to medium groups (3-20 people) which meet monthly, or more frequently, that true accompaniment takes place.
 
God must have a plan for such a structural shift, but we are only going to find His answer through assiduous communal prayer.
 
How might we heal the wounds of abuse, coming to see through the eyes of those who have been abused.
 
First we have to recognise just how prevalent abuse is; the statistics are something like 1 in every 4 women, and 1 in every 10 men have suffered some kind of sexual abuse; and that doesn’t count any other kind of abuse.
 
It is a widespread problem that so many people in society and in our pews live with the wounds from that kind of trauma and in ever present fear of that kind of abuse happening again.
 
On the other hand that means there are also a significant number of people committing abuse, some because they can, others due to various kinds of compulsion stemming from abuse that they themselves suffered. They are in our pews too.
 
Both groups need the salvation and healing that Jesus Christ freely offers.
 
But when was the last time you heard a homily about the power of Jesus to heal these wounds? When was the last time you heard a homily about the power of Jesus to help you forgive those who have hurt you – and to forgive yourself – as well? When was the last time you heard anyone talk about how to bring the most shameful things to Jesus in the sacrament of Penance?
 
These things don’t go away with an apology.
 
They don’t go away with any kind of retribution or revenge either.
 
And people with the specific God-given natural gifts and training necessary to do the kind of deep listening that is therapeutic, they are rather rare. While they are effective; that effectiveness can only deal with the tip of the iceberg of this societal problem.
 
Obviously God must have a solution. It is a God-sized problem.
But has anyone or any group even begun seriously interceding for the revelation of His solution?
 
NB. Some people have suggested that something akin to a Truth and Justice Commission would be a way to deal with this situation. But the Truth and Justice Commission in South Africa was not as effective as people hoped it would be. Not everyone wanted to publicly recount the trauma they had been through; not everyone wanted to be identified as a victim, and many perpetrators managed to obtain amnesty when they should have been charged with crimes.
 
How might the Church in Australia open in new ways to indigenous ways of being Christian in spirituality, theology, liturgy and missionary discipleship? How might we learn from the First Nations peoples.
 
We can learn from their knowledge of relationship with the Great Spirit gathered over millennia;
  from the methods they developed to keep families and tribes together
  from their concept of stewardship, and temporary custody of the land
  from their methods of dealing with due punishment for crime
  from their lived experience of all things being held in common (both the good aspects, and the not so good aspects where advantage is taken of the vulnerable)
  from their balance between the need for times of community and for times of solitude (walkabout).

While there is greater openness to including First Nation cultural rituals into our community lives and liturgy, such things should only be done after very careful and thorough discernment of each religious ceremony; since not all of them arose from relationship to the Good Spirit.
 
How might the church in Australia meet the needs of the most vulnerable, go to the peripheries, the missionary in places that may be overlooked or left behind in contemporary Australia? How might we partner with others (Christians, people about the fate, neighbourhood community groups, government) to do this?
 
This isn’t something that pertains to diocesan and national leadership, except in terms of giving permission/encouragement and confirming/commissioning what is happening at grass roots (parish level)

These ministries spring up at grassroots level in response to local conditions and to local needs.

Two examples:

Mary Mac’s Place, Woy Woy
It began as a parish outreach to the homeless, with companionship, lunches, and a place of safety to go to. Over time Catholic Care and the St Vincent de Paul Society added input and degrees of oversight and funding. These days many of the volunteers aren’t parishioners and are from other Christian communities.

Food Bank, Dartmouth, Canada
Part of that parish has the lowest socio-economic levels in the region, and an opportunity opened up when a local Christian community lost their place of worship to provide not only hospitality for somewhere to gather for worship, but also to join together the two parish’s food banks into one, and become more effective together in meeting local needs.

You can’t ‘legislate’ for these things, but you can give pastors and their parishes permission and encouragement to take ecumenical options for works of mercy when opportunities arise.

Likewise you can give pastors and their parishes permission to explore how to best serve the neediest in their locality, but it will always be a matter for local research into local needs/conditions and of local response to how God is calling them to answer those needs in His way.

Thought could be given to the provision of seed-funding for new ministries and support funding for ongoing ministries from a diocesan level.

It is important to determine at a local level who the most vulnerable people are and then set up programs where we may be able to assist. But we must learn from the mistakes of the past and not impose solutions from without. To truly help means to listen with open hearts to what they need – not what we think they need. Any solutions must have significant input and ongoing guidance from those in vulnerable situations. For example: we’ve often patted ourselves on the back for putting in access ramps – but what good are access ramps if there are no accessible toilets for people to use once they’ve got inside the building?

How might the church in Australia respond to the call to ecological conversion?  How can we express and promote a commitment to an integral ecology of life in all its dimensions with particular attention to the more vulnerable people and environments in our country and region?
 
This has to be handled very carefully, and from a distinctly Christian and Catholic perspective.

For many people, anything with a tinge of Green lobby about it has become an instant turn off.
 
How do you answer people who say, ‘well I’m much better than I used to be, I am reducing, re-using, and recycling, - do you mean that’s not enough?’
 
2.PRAYER
 
How might we become a more contemplative people, committing more deeply to prayer as a way of life, and celebrating the liturgy of the Church as an encounter with Christ who sends us out to “make disciples of all the nations”?
 
This topic tends to be where pleas for the return to the 3rd Rite of Reconciliation are given.
Please consider:
 
Grace might be free, but it certainly isn’t cheap.
And we should never treat it as cheap.

Everybody loves the easy option that doesn’t really cost them any more than an hour of time. It is akin to the difference of saying with others ‘we believe in one God’ compared to saying alone before others ‘I believe in one God’.
 
There’s no risk with the former; commitment with the latter.
 
Isn’t that the difference between ‘we have sinned’ vs ‘I have sinned’?

3rd Rite also encourages the consumer behaviour that we want to replace with missionary disciple behaviour.

A shepherd watches over his flock, but he treats each sheep individually when medicinal care is needed (worming, sheep dip, shearing, hoof scraping, inspecting for ticks etc).

Our Good Shepherd is the same, individual care for medicinal needs (healing of sin) is His way.
 
All of the perceived benefits of the 3rd Rite are present in the 2nd Rite (communal preparation followed by individual confession), and the 2nd Rite, produces better fruit than the 3rd Rite.

Each of us needs to hear the ‘I absolve you (singular)’ for certainty of forgiveness.
 
…………………………………………………….
 
How many of us are actually praying every day?

Yes there are some who pray their daily rosary and chosen devotions, and there are some who pray parts of the Divine Office daily, and there are some who incorporate daily reading of the bible into their prayers times, and others who do a bit of everything

but,

the vast majority of people in the pews have no regular prayer life at all.

Once someone has begun to pray, then you have a hope of deepening it,
but the commitment to pray daily is a pre-requisite.

Even 10 minutes a day can make a vast difference in our spiritual lives.
Without prayer we can do nothing.

Sustained encouragement for everyone to pray 10 minutes a day would be a very good start.
 
How might we better embrace the diverse liturgical traditions of the churches which make up the Catholic Church and the cultural gifts of immigrant communities to enrich the spirituality of worship of the church in Australia?
 
Providing devotional space for our immigrant communities would be a good step.

An exterior shrine, or an interior chapel, for localities with a significant migrant population should be encouraged, as places where they can honour the saint/s that are so important in their country of origin.
 
The parish at Marsfield has a chapel for a statue of Our Lady of Graces donated by the local Italian/Maltese community. It is a way of sharing our cultural/spiritual partonomy with each other.
 
When WYD pilgrims visited Sydney, many of them brought images and icons of the patron saints of their localities and nations as gifts to the parishes that hosted them, enriching all of us, and visually reminding us that we are the Church universal whenever we gather to pray.
 
3.FORMATION
 
How might we better form leaders for mission - adults, children and families, couples and single people?
 
Should you happen to have active children, families, couples and non-retired adults in your faith communities count yourselves especially fortunate.
 
The vast majority of parishes no longer have age diversity in their congregations.

In a recent May headcount at a vigil Mass, only 2.5% of those present were aged under 70.

The focus should be on how to form teams, and leaders of teams for mission, from among our 70+ year olds, for there to be any kind of missionary success.
 
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 formation, both pre- and post-ordination, better foster the development of bishops, priests and deacons as enablers of the universal Christian vocation to holiness lived in missionary discipleship?
 
Guided practical experience in discerning whether something emerging in the parish is of God (or not) would be the most useful. Because if something hasn’t been initiated by God, then pouring resources into it is ultimately futile.

Learning how to support laity whom God has commissioned in the catechising, evangelizing and charitable works of the Church would be the next most useful thing. Moral support and financial support: ‘How can I and the parish help you to be more effective in your calling from God?’

Because otherwise two things happen; the priest becomes a bottleneck rather than a coach/cheerleader/enabler who with God’s authority gives permission and commissions for mission; and people forget that lay ministry is crucial for the mission of the church and begin/continue to think that ‘Father and the nuns do all of that’.

Understanding the charisms the Holy Spirit bestows upon His people; and learning how to help His people grow safely and effectively in the use of those charisms, is one of the greatest services to the Church (and to the mission of the Church) that can be done.
 
By and large ordained leadership has been guilty of ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to recruitment for ministry (eg catechists, altar servers) – if you are breathing, and seem reasonable, you’ll do – instead of taking the time and effort to find those who have charisms of teaching to be catechists and to find those who have charisms of service (helps) to be altar servers.
 
It isn’t overly difficult to work out who the naturally out-going people are in a congregation; the ones who have a genuine interest in new people, and to give them some extra training as welcomers and evangelists – because that extra training in techniques and listening to the promptings of the Holy Spirit will make them far more effective than they already are.
 
We have to comprehend that when we see parishioners we can no longer see pawns (ie. interchangeable worker bees), but we see that no one is a pawn, that they are all kings, queens, bishops, rooks and castles with very different God given callings and abilities. Likewise, we have to comprehend the double disaster of putting a rook in a castle ministry; the rook will burn out and be ineffective AND the castle that should have been there has had his/her talents unused.
 
But this goes for the ordained as well. A priest with a more than ordinary effectiveness in ministering to the sick should be placed in a position where he can use those gifts – and not moved to any position where that isn’t a major part of his regular ministry. Permanent deacons without people skills should not be put in situations where people skills are essential, but where the talents they do have can shine (eg livestreaming technology, events organisation, archivist)
 
This impacts preaching too: It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that everyone else has the same calling that you do. That’s why we see priests gifted as evangelists in their preaching calling everyone to evangelise like them when maybe 7% of the congregation has the charism for that ministry, and the rest have charisms for works of mercy, for intercessory prayer, for teaching, for administration and other charisms. Yes, we all have the small ‘e’ calling to evangelise, (the church exists to evangelise) but some have the big ‘E’ calling. Preaching ‘let’s all be big E’ puts off and confuses everyone who doesn’t have a big E calling.
 
4.STRUCTURES
 
How might parishes better become local centres for the formation and animation of missionary disciples?
 
Just like each baptized person has a call to a particular mission of the church,
and just like we find that there are calls within calls among our priests and religious (some priests are more gifted at visitation of the sick than others; some religious are more gifted at being memory keepers/archivists than others; some religious are more gifted at spiritual direction than others)
 – so too does each parish have a particular call from God within the general call of being a parish.
 
For example, St Patrick’s Church Hill, understands that it is everyone’s ‘second parish’, either for Mass or Confession, or both, and that a degree of anonymity for those who walk through the doors is needed to preserve that special calling.
 
Only when a parish begins to know and come into agreement with its special call within a call from God, will it truly thrive and become a local centre for the formation and animation of a specific missionary calling (eg inner healing, evangelization of workers, promotion of the rosary etc).

NB these are long term callings, well beyond the lifespan of any pastor, and often linked in some way to the spiritual patronage of the parish.
 
For example the parish of Our Lady of Lourdes at Earlwood has long been known for its healing Masses; and is it a complete surprise that a parish under the patronage of St John the Baptist has retained 4 regular weekly opportunities for confession (when most other parishes only have one?
 
How might the Church in Australia be better structured for mission, considering the parish, the diocese, religious orders, the PJPs and new communities?
 
Most parish and other budgets only look at costs for maintenance of buildings and salaries, and existing ministries (eg sacramental programme/s).
 
Even 5% of budget set aside only for funding the start-up of new missionary initiatives would be a worthwhile beginning.

(Remembering that new initiatives often take until the 2nd year to bear fruit)
 
5.GOVERNANCE
 
How might the people of God, lay and ordained, women and men, approach governance in this spirit of synodality and co-responsibility for more effective proclamation of the Gospel?
 
How might we recast governance at every level of the Church in Australia in a more missionary key?
 
It would help a lot if what we reward and celebrate wasn’t so ‘parish building’ focused.
 
The real mission field is outside the church walls where the believers interact with the non-believers in various ways.
 
The visible ministries of choir, lector, altar server, sacristan, musician get far more regular kudos than the invisible ministries of mothering young children, caring for the elderly, taking Holy Communion to the sick, serving with the St Vincent de Paul society, facilitating small groups of bible study, and listening to the young. That has to change.
 
90% of the miracles Jesus worked happened outside the synagogue and Temple walls. Outside the parish building is where the laity should be focused on the mission to which God has called them.
 
Remember, we should be encouraging our nurses to become holy nurses; our carpenters to become holy carpenters, our shop assistants to become holy shop assistants so that they can have maximum impact in the places and careers, ie the specific mission fields that God has placed them in.
 
You’d much prefer a holy nurse who prayed for you and with you as she changed your wound dressings than a secular nurse, wouldn’t you!?
 
We have a duty to mutually encourage each other to both holiness and mission.
 
We have a duty to help each other see the missionary possibilities that are present in our existing careers and vocational callings, and to encourage and train them to act on the opportunities that arise.
 
Possibilities like taking the opportunity to pray with customers and work colleagues who are distressed, like asking the extra question (you’ve sorted out your legal/financial situation, but have you done anything towards sorting out your eternal situation?), like noticing patterns where vulnerable people are falling through the cracks of bureaucratic systems and working with others- together with prayer- to find an effective solution.
 
6.INSTITUTIONS
 
How might we better see the future of Catholic education ( primary, secondary and tertiary) through a missionary lens?
 
I honestly don’t know if the existing structures have a future.
 
Can we in all good conscience say that our schools at any level (primary, secondary, tertiary) are producing believers, missionary disciples? We see less than 5% of them inside our church walls in any given 12 month time period.

Shouldn’t we be putting our resources where there is good fruit, and pruning away that which is producing no fruit or bad fruit?
 
What we do have are secular schools with a Catholic veneer that are very good at inoculating young people from having any commitment to Catholic faith at all.
 
During this time of pandemic we have seen families cope with homeschooling their children with the ‘remote’ support of teachers and online resources.
 
We could let our already secular schools become fully secular, and instead invest in setting up hubs of teachers to support the homeschooling efforts of Catholic families. But those hubs of teachers need to be fully practicing Catholics with full adherence to the teachings of the Church. It is true that we learn as much from the character and beliefs of a teacher as we do their subject matter.
 
How might we better see the future of Catholic social services, agencies and health and aged care ministries as key missionary and evangelising agencies
 
We could look at them as current and future bastions against the evils of euthanasia, abortion, and care proportionate to the benefits of treatment vs the burdens of treatment.
 
In dire circumstances often hearts open up to the need for God. We are called by 1 Peter 3:15 to always have our answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have.
 
We would be derelict in our duty if we didn’t train our staff in these services, ministries and agencies to be able to do give their answers when asked.

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​The Gospel for this Sunday, the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from a series of sections of Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel, which began three weeks ago, and will conclude next week. Between last week and this week one verse overlaps, v51, acting as the conclusion to last week and the introduction to this week. In this Sunday’s section Jesus makes astounding claims and promises that offend the sensibilities of His hearers.

In 2021 we actually celebrate the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary this Sunday, but it seems important to complete this John 6 series.

There is no way for us earthly creatures to access the things of heaven; doing that is completely beyond our capabilities. A very poor analogy is that a cat cannot become a dog, no matter how hard it tries.

The only way for us earthly creatures to access the things of heaven is if citizens of heaven give them to us.

And Jesus is promising more than things of heaven, He is promising partaking in the divine life of God.

All through John 6 when Jesus says life, it is always a reference to ‘zoe’ life, eternally divine life, not to ‘bios’ life (physical life) nor to ‘psuche’ life (soul life).

He tells us that He is the living bread that descended from heaven, and that if anyone eats of this bread (of Him) then that person will live forever.

Why? Because divine life will then have become part of them, just like earthly food becomes part of us – as the saying goes ‘we are what we eat’.

Jesus then tells us ‘And this bread which I will give/offer for/on behalf of life of the world is My flesh (body)’.

The divine gift of this living bread will only be initiated through the passion and death of Jesus.

Only through His complete sacrifice of His body through His death can we be given this gift beyond all our comprehension.

At this point those listening to Jesus erupt in violent disputation.

He wants us to eat His flesh?

He wants us to cannibalize Him?

There are places in the bible where cannibalism is mentioned, corresponding to times of extreme desperation, usually as a result of famine and often in siege conditions. So being reduced to cannibalism was viewed as a horrible curse, and one of the worst punishments that God could give. It was also viewed as the physical horror that accompanies the spiritual horror of apostasy; two sides of the same coin.

To which Jesus responds ‘Amen, Amen, I tell you unless you eat (phagete) the flesh and drink (piete) the blood (haima) of the Son of Man, you have no life (zoen) in you’.

Yes! Yes!
And did I mention that you need to drink My blood as well?

Otherwise you will not (as in never) have divine life in you.

Not only that! If you eat My flesh and drink My blood you will not only share in the divine life of God – but on the last day your physical bodies will be raised back to life as well.

Yes! I really mean you have to eat Me!

‘Whoever eats (trogon)
to gnaw/crunch/ grind with teeth/munch My flesh
and drinks (drink, imbibe) My blood has eternal life
and I will raise him/her up (anastesto) at the last/final day.

For My flesh is real/true (alethes) food/meal (brosis)
and My blood is real/true drink/beverage (posis)

Whoever eats (trogon) My flesh and drinks (pinon) My blood
remains (menei) abides/waits/stays in Me, and I in him.

Just as the living Father sent Me and I live because/through of the Father
so also who feeds on (trogon) Me will live because/through of Me.

This is the bread that came down/descended from heaven
Unlike your ancestors who ate (ephagon) and died (referring to the manna in the desert)
who eats (trogon) this bread will live (zesei) for ever.’

Yes! I really mean you have to eat Me!

There’s no other way for Me to give you My life, divine life, and bodily resurrection too!

In next week’s Gospel section we will see the various responses to these declarations of Jesus.

But He wants your response now.

Will you take Him at His word?
Will you remember the sign of the miracle of the feeding of the 5000, and trust in His word even if you can’t comprehend it?
Do you believe that He is the only Son of the Father, the only one who has descended from heaven, sent by the Father to give us eternal life?

Then you must eat Him; you must eat the flesh of Jesus and you must drink His blood.

How?

His offer is free, but it definitely is not cheap.
He paid for it with His life on the Cross.

Likewise, our response is free, but it isn’t cheap.
It requires total commitment to Jesus; and giving Him the Lordship of our lives.
It also requires a total commitment to His body, the Church, and all that She teaches in His name and in His authority. Always we are saved ‘as a people’ and not as individuals.

That’s what it takes to eat His body and to drink His blood in the bread and wine consecrated at a Mass offered by a validly ordained priest.

Only the Roman Catholic church, in her Latin rite and her Eastern rites; and the various Orthodox churches (Greek, Russian, Coptic etc) have valid ordinations that trace back to the Apostles present at the Last Supper prior to the crucifixion and death of Jesus.

When a validly ordained priest takes the bread and uses the words of Jesus ‘This is My body’, and takes the wine and used the words of Jesus ‘This is My blood’, the bread and wine become the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ.
We believe this because Jesus said so.

And that is enough for us.

Is it enough for you?

Your answer has consequences.

And the stakes are far too high (divine life, bodily resurrection, union with Jesus) for you to even consider avoid answering, or to even consider delaying your answer.

If the answer is Yes
​
*Then seeking membership of a church with valid ordination has to become top priority for you.
*If you already have membership through Baptism, but have lapsed from attendance at the Eucharist (Mass), then you have to rectify that pronto, which includes a good confession first.
*If you already have membership through Baptism, and have some kind of regularity of attendance at the Eucharist (Mass), is your current commitment commensurate with the enormity of the gift? Recommit yourself to Him, to the Eucharist, and to His church, and ask Jesus to show you how He wants you to express that recommitment in concrete action.

The Gospel for this Sunday, the 19th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B, comes from a series of sections of Chapter 6 of St John’s Gospel, which began two weeks ago, and will continue for two more weeks. Between last week and this week 5 verses are missing, v36-40, about the will of the Father to save. This Sunday’s section has Jesus insisting that He is from the Father, that He is the bread from heaven, and Him promising that accepting or rejecting these truths has eternal consequences.

The section begins with those gathered about Him at Capernaum (after the miraculous feeding of the 5000) complaining that Jesus saying that He has come down from heaven cannot make sense because they know where He grew up and they know His relatives.

Has Jesus ‘jumped the shark’ and gone into loopy-land, or is this a truth beyond human cognisance, a truth attested to by the miracles which far exceed regular biblical proportions?

We have here something to add to the list of divine paradoxes, which seem to be God’s modus operandi; man and God, virgin and mother, mercy and justice, beginning and end, immanent and transcendent.

Earthly thinking is that something is either A or not A, mutually exclusive, ie. something can’t be both off and on at the same time.

But divine things can be both, at the same time.

Just because something doesn’t fit within earthly reasoning doesn’t make it divinely impossible.

Are we willing to trust what God says, even when it makes no earthly sense?

Jesus was born of a woman. That’s true.
Jesus came down from heaven. That’s also true.

To which we can add:
Jesus is the only one who has come down from heaven.
Jesus is the only one who has seen the Father.

Therefore we should be taking everything Jesus says seriously, as truth with a capital T, even if it seems outrageous and implausible to us.

In verse 47 Jesus says
‘Amen, Amen, I tell you, he who believes has/holds/possesses eternal life.’

He who believes what?
That Jesus is the bread come down from heaven.
Such a person has, holds, possesses eternal life.
That’s quite a promise!

But it’s not the kind of belief that says, ‘Yeah, Jesus is the Son of God, yeah, I’m OK with that, cool, I can get on with my life and I get eternal life too’.

It is the kind of belief that says, ‘Wow, Jesus left the fulness of heaven to share our earthly life, to bring us the eternal life of the Father, Jesus is the fulcrum of all human history, everything He says carries the weight of heaven, I need to take Him – and everything He says – far more seriously than I’ve ever taken anything in my life before. I need to be fully compliant and obedient to Him, and Him alone. I must base my whole life on the rock of this truth. Hey, this is real News, the people I care about need to know this too. And so does everybody else.’

If Jesus is who He says He is, then any lesser kind of believing in Him is unworthy of Jesus – and not true belief at all.
​
O Jesus, please help us to believe fully in You. Amen.

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.
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And when God calls, and marshals us, may our response be complete and immediate. Amen.