All of you know from experience just how transitory life is, governments come and go, national borders change, transport systems change, medical treatments change.
The only thing that doesn’t change is God.

The good news we celebrate at Christmas of the birth of Jesus doesn’t change.
It becomes more meaningful in our lives as other stuff fades away.

Christmas proclaims that despite everything going on around us, God is still in control. And God always has a plan to deal with the evils that assail us.

During lockdown I heard a magnificent homily from Cardinal Collins of Toronto, Canada. He was talking about the time when for the Israelites the Red Sea was on one side of them, and Pharaoh and his army were closing in to attack them. It was only when the Israelites were reduced to prayer, to acknowledging that nothing else other than God could save them, that God opened up their escape route and drowned Pharaoh’s army.

That pattern was repeated many times in the Book of Judges, where the Israelites are living miserable lives under foreign rulers, that it is only when they collectively get desperate enough to pray, and they pray, that God raises up a leader anointed with His Holy Spirit to deal with the evil oppressing them.

In Jesus Jairus saw the very last hope for his daughter to live.
In Jesus the woman with the haemorrhage saw the very last hope of healing.
In Jesus the apostles sinking in the boat during the huge storm on Lake Galilee saw their only rescue.
All of them pursued Jesus and called out in their desperation to Him, and everything was instantaneously set right.

So we are never to get discouraged when things look bleak.
Pray instead.

Faith and fear are opposites, they cannot co-exist.
Faith calls into being the good things that aren’t visible yet.
Fear calls into being the evil things that aren’t visible yet.

When we are in fear the strategic thinking parts of our brains don’t function, and automatic responses of flight, fight, flee or freeze kick in. Immediate danger needs an immediate response - because there isn’t time to think through all the options.

In the bible God says ‘Do not be afraid’ over and over again.

This means that we need to feed our faith, and we need to reduce our exposure to things that engender fear.

One of the best ways to feed faith is to read passages from the bible, especially from the Gospels. Pondering Gospel scenes through the Rosary is another way.

If you notice your fear levels increasing after watching, listening to or reading the news, do less of that. If something is truly important, you will find out about it another way. Pay attention to when your fear levels increase, and where you were, and who you were talking to, when that happened. Spend more time with people who make you feel hopeful.

God is still in control.
God is always good.
God will never permit anything to happen unless greater good will come out of it.

All things, ALL things, work together for the good of those who love God.
‘We know that by turning EVERYTHING to their good God
co-operates with all those who love Him’, Romans 8:28a

That includes masks, lockdowns, illnesses, falls, aches and pains. ALL things.
If you haven’t seen the greater good yet, then it is still on the way.
After loss, death and grief …. resurrection always comes, always.

It is tempting to get discouraged when yet another layer of malicious evil comes to light. But such times should increase our hope and our courage because it means that God has been at work. Wounds only get better when they have been exposed to the light and cleaned of all gunk. God is the one who shines light into our lives. He is the one who exposes and cleans out all the gunk caused by the enemy of our souls.

As St Padre Pio recommends: Pray, hope and don’t worry.
Your prayers are needed more than ever, as is your hope and your faith.

God is in control.
God is always victorious over every kind of evil.
God is always working towards our greater good.

We can safely trust in Him, always.
……………………
Dear Heavenly Father, as the birthday of Jesus draws near the difference between the peace proclaimed by the angels to the shepherd and the conflicts and turmoil of our modern world seem starker than ever.
But You are still in control.
Draining the evil swamp areas, local and multi-national, while preserving the good, is a painstaking and messy business.
Yet You have undertaken to accomplish this for us, since it was so far beyond our capacity to do.
You are the only antidote to evil this big and this entrenched.
The blood of Jesus and the wounds of Jesus vanquish every evil.
Today we reaffirm our trust in You.
We thank You for the mind-blowingly wonderful outcomes that are on their way; victories against evil that are so thorough that only You can win.
As we wait for the promised manifestation of Your Kingdom on earth, we also wait for Your promised deliverance from all evil.
We know that we do not wait in vain.
But dear God, sometimes the pain of waiting weighs so heavily upon us.
Please help us each time our faith in You is assailed by the enemy of our souls.
May this Christmas find us more confident of Your love, Your goodness and Your providence than ever before. 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.

​The Gospel for this Sunday, Corpus Christi Sunday, Year B, comes from the events of Holy Week leading up to the Last Supper, and during the Last Supper. The missing verses are about Jesus arriving with the Twelve to the upper room and about who will betray Him.

It is the way the circumstances of the Last Supper were arranged that have caught my attention. Compare it to the circumstances of the birth of Jesus.

In Bethlehem Joseph and Mary were among the last of the descendants of David to arrive for the census. They had trouble finding anywhere to stay, and ended up in a stable of sorts.

Just outside Jerusalem, it is the day the Passover lambs are sacrificed, and there’s just enough time to get the lamb back from the Temple, and then roast it in time for the Passover meal.

By then, you would think all the best Passover meal locations would have been taken, most of them booked every year in advance by the same families. Yet Jesus is completely unconcerned. He knows His Heavenly Father has this covered.

Jesus is facing His final hours on earth and this momentous meal with the kind of trust a child has that if he falls backwards his daddy will immediately catch him. These moments are so precious and have been foretold in the scriptures, that Jesus has confidence that every detail will be utterly perfect.

The two disciples are shown a large upper room. What we translate as large is written as ‘mega’ in the Greek. We know from Pentecost that 120 people fitted comfortably inside it.
The whole place is prepared, it is clean, the tables, couches, lamps, crockery, condiments etc are all ready – which would have taken many, many hours of preparation. And it would be palace quality, not stable quality. Amongst it all would be fine details to surprise and delight the participants, calling forth memories from past Passovers that they hadn’t shared with each other before, and also referencing many aspects of the salvific history of the family of Abraham.

Reading between the lines, the only thing missing is the lamb (and The Lamb).

All of which means that the disciples can get back to Jesus rather quickly - and miss as few of these precious moments with Jesus as possible; and that Jesus has them close to Him for as long as possible.

That’s the stunning kind of provident care the Father worked behind the scenes for Jesus.

It is an important place. It is the location of the Last Supper. It is where the disciples will gradually return to after they have been scattered by the events of the Passion. It is where many appearances of the risen Jesus will take place. It is where Pentecost begins. We shouldn’t be surprised that the Father chose it with great care, and caused it to be available and ready for all of these sublime purposes.

This is how the heart of the Father operates.
His standard operating procedure.
If only we have eyes to see, and hearts to notice and appreciate.

We can be assured that our heavenly Father has the details of our last meals and last conversations with our loved ones already taken care of. He is the absolute best at preparing perfect endings.

We can choose to trust in Him, and to let Him take care of all the details of our lives far better than we could ever do ourselves.

He’s waiting for us to let Him do this.

May His tender care inspire us to have that same level of utter confidence that Jesus had. Amen.