Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King, 20 November 2011, Matthew 25:31-46

Pantocrator - Christ the ruler of all

This Sunday is the last Sunday in the Church's calendar. Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, and with it comes a new year. On this Sunday, the thirty-fourth Sunday of the Church's year, we always celebrate Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King.

This Solemnity was first instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925. In his encyclical entitled: Quas Prima, the Pope sought to say the things that really matter as he looked out on the post World War I world. He saw the rise of fascism as the result of the economic decline that would culminate in the Wall Street Crash of 1929. As Pope, as Pastor to the world, he could see some of the serious difficulties that the world was heading towards. In our own time, Pope Benedict has presented the beauty of our faith in his first encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

Living now, as we do, at a time of increased uncertainty and anxiety, primarily as a result of the economic recession, we find ourselves once more called to re-evaluate where our deepest allegiances lie. To do this we must first of all take a hard and honest look at what is really happening in our world. Like Pope Pius living in an uncertain time, we find ourselves living in an uncertain time, with the possibility for great good and for great evil.

Having been talked up, hyped up into a frenzy around the Celtic Tiger, we now find ourselves being talked down into an economic depression, a recession. Certainly a recession is no good thing, we need only to think of the 1980s and early 1990s to remind ourselves of the dual-plague of long dole queues and mass-emigration. None of us want to go back to that. However we must be careful to discern the truth, and even if we found ourselves being swept along by the talk of economic certainty and fortune, we must now be careful not to be swept away by the blue talk of economic downturn.

If we are to have some anchors, some stability in this storm of words, then we must first try to wade through the words, or like St Peter, we find ourselves to step out of the boat in faith and to do with seems impossible, to walk on water. Only by placing our trust in God, in Christ Jesus, will we find a firm foundation, free from the stormy waters of economic upturn and economic downturn. This was what Pope Pius XI was attempting to do in 1925 when he inaugurated this feast day. He was attempting to call people to have allegiance to Christ, to make Christ their King.

Sixty years ago this year, the United Nations published the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In this document, intended to be a global document for a global human family, the dignity of the human person is enshrined. As a result of the declaration, human rights have flourished especially in the western world. It is our job, and our duty both as citizens of our country and also as Christians, to uphold the rights of every human being. These include the right to life, the right to shelter, the right to work. The vision that enables these rights is a vision that sees the world as a creation of God, not merely a marketplace where profit can be made or lost.

In our Gospel this Sunday we see that those who will be judged most harshly are those who do not show love for God in and through their love of their neighbour. Our responsibility to others is not dependent on our own financial wellbeing. We have a duty to other human beings that goes beyond simply the minimum they are due in justice. We, as Christians, are called to a much deeper love of our neighbour that reflects the love that God has shown us in our own lives. It is true that the more we have been forgiven, the more we ourselves in turn are called to forgive and to love. An abundance of love is the call of today's Gospel, a love rooted in Christ, Christ who is in the first place in our lives.

Today is a day to ask ourselves about how we have lived up to the demands of the Gospel in our own lives. The bottom line is not about money. The bottom line is about people.

1 Sunday Advent, 27 November 2011, Mark 13:33-37

The First Sunday of Advent

In the summer of 2007, I spent a month in Los Angeles. I was a deacon at the time. Spending a month in America was about killing two birds with one stone; I wanted to get a holiday and I also wanted to pick up some pastoral experience. So I stayed in a parish there. It was a very nice place, I had access to a car most of the time, and there was plenty to see and do.

One night, about two weeks into my stay, I was brushing me teeth before going to bed. Suddenly the bathroom window began to shake and rattle. I didn't know what was going on, and at first I thought that someone was trying to break into the house. Then, I saw the mirror over the sink. It was swaying in and out from the wall. It was then that I realised that I was experiencing my first earthquake! It measure 4.1 on the richter scale and it woke up many people in the neighbourhood.

In California earthquakes are commonplace. But, even though I knew that, I just presumed it would never happen while I was there. I presumed wrong. If it had been a more serious quake I wouldn't have been at all prepared, and God only knows what might have happened.

We don't experience extreme weather here in Ireland. We don't have to prepare for any extreme conditions, because they rarely if ever happen here.

The Gospel call on this first Sunday of Advent, is to become prepared, to stay awake because we do not know when the time will come. 'The time', this is God's time. In God's time, not our time.

Advent is not about staying awake to wonder when the end of time will be. Advent is about recovering that which has become hidden in us over time. It is about waking up from our spiritual darkness and assuming a position of waiting, of waiting, fully prepared for the coming of the Lord.

As the economic situation changes in our country, the certainties that we thought we had are now gone. We have no choice but to wake up from our sleep. We must waken to the fundamental and unchanging things, the signs of God's hand in our lives. As once we were talked up into a frenzy about the Celtic Tiger, now we're being talked down into an economic depression. Where is the truth in this news? Where is God in all of this? As Christians, we're called to see God's creative and redeeming action in the world, in our world. We are called to come awake again to the God who has been waiting for us, God who lights up our way.

33 Sunday Ordinary Time, 13 November 2011, Matthew 25:14-30

euro

I remember learning how to cycle a bike – we had stabilisers on for many months – my cousins arrived from Limerick, and one of my older cousins advised me to take off the stabilisers and learn to cycle without them – it was great until I tried to stop and I didn't put my feet down!

Discovering our talents in life is a bit like learning to cycle a bike – you never forget how to do it

The parable of the talents is a fascinating image for the Kingdom of God – it is one that we can all connect with – the primacy of the economic in our national consciousness at the moment is incredible, and unhealthy – the primacy of the economic is forcing us to make decisions at a national level that are not good – we could almost argue that we have talked ourselves into a corner where the only value in life is the economic value – our sovereignty as people has perhaps been eroded by the presence of the troika (EU, IMF, ECB) – but it is the sovereignty of our thinking that has been eroded by the constant barrage of economic analysis

At least this primary viewpoint of the economic allows us access to the parable – a talent was an ancient measure of monetary value – of money – to put it into perspective, one talent was equal to 6,000 days of labour – if you do the maths, one talent is equal to 500,000 eur – on the minimum wage, a person could earn about 1 million eur in a lifetime – this is roughly equal to two talents of money

So, the parable is about money – but not just that, it is a parable about what we do with our money – and, remembering that it is a parable, money is a way of talking about all of our gifts and talents, not just our money – we have more gifts and talents than money – indeed we could argue from an extreme perspective that we don't need money at all to survive – money is a means to an end – it is there to serve the needs of people, not the other way around – our attitude to money has to be re-formed – and this is not the first time; in very recent history, just after World War II, the whole concept of money changed, even though many people did not know it – we could re-imagine and re-form the international financial system to serve the needs of people rather than the needs of the system itself – it is possible, but may be unrealistic to hope for.

There is a much more pressing implication of the gospel for us – and that is in forming our own attitude to money – I met an asylum seeker in Dublin in 2004 – at that time he was receiving 27 eur each week, plus his living accommodation and food – He was sharing a bedroom in a house with three others – each week they kept 7 eur and the four of them put the other 20 eur into a shared fund – every week one of them received the pot – that way they were able to save enough to buy a pair of shoes or a mobile phone – our perception of how much money we have is very important – our perception is formed by our time and place – how much our neighbour earns – how much a top civil servant earns – even how much the President earns – the UN standard of a dollar a day formed the asylum seekers view of money – he could live on 1 eur/day

The choices we make with the money we have, pay off – we reap what we sow – spend unwisely and live poorly – spend wisely and live well – a housekeeper that I had used to volunteer to teach young mothers how to prepare food from scratch – living on social welfare, and with little training, they were kept poor not simply by the relatively small amount of money they received, but rather that they were spending it on convenience foods because they did not know how to prepare fresh food – teaching people how to prepare fresh food is a core way of helping the poor to a better way of life – rather than paying for convenience foods, they can prepare fresh, highly nutritious meals, with very little money.



Poverty is a reality in our world, in contemporary Ireland – changing poverty has much to do with changing our perception of money – we need help to think in ways that are different to the primary thoughts and views of our world – the primacy of the economic as the only value of worth, leads us to accept, uncritically, the decisions made by government and by those who are in power – the example of the closure of various embassies last week by the government because there was no economic gain from them is a hugely distorted view of the world.

East Timor

To give an example, the embassy in Timor Leste was closed along with the Irish embassies to Iran and to the Vatican. The reason given, which we have uncritically accepted, is that these particular missions are of no economic value to us – however, we did not set up our mission in Timor Leste, aka "East Timor", to gain economically – we set it up because of the massive humanitarian crisis that overtook East Timor in 1999 – It was always to benefit East Timor economically that we set up a diplomatic mission there – not that we would benefit, except of course by our interaction with another wonderfully diverse nation, culture and society.

Embassy of Ireland to the Holy See

We are undoubtedly richer for our relationship with East Timor – I propose that we are just as enriched by our diplomatic relations with other states, including the Vatican, no matter what the naysayers say.

The economic is the only value in our society – it is distorting our vision, and clouding our minds – only we can change that fact ourselves by choosing what we think and informing ourselves of other, richer perspectives.

32 Sunday Ordinary Time, 6 November 2011, Matthew 25:1-13

Ambry - Oils of Catechumens, Chrism, Infirmarum

You come here to Holy Hill, whether you are on retreat for a relatively short time, or a person here for a few months gaining an insight into the life of this community, or like me, you may have parachuted in for the day. All of us could have gone some place else. We could have gone somewhere for a 'quick Mass' and a short, to the point, homily.

But, you chose to come here. So, I take it as read that you might like something a bit meatier, something a bit more substantial to chew on this Sunday. So, forgive me if you get a little bit of spiritual indigestion! All I can say is that the antidote to spiritual indigestion is silence!

There are three motifs in today's gospel. They are:

1. Oil
2. Lamp
3. Wick

I want to explore the first & primary motif; oil, in three ways so that we can allow the parable into our lives. Firstly from a contemporary perspective, secondly from the perspective of the New Testament times, and finally what this text might be pointing us towards as engaged followers of Jesus Christ today.

Sensible & Foolish Bridesmaids

The three motifs are drawn together by the active persons in the parable, i.e. the bridesmaids and the bridegroom. And, of course, there is our relationship to the parable as readers or listeners, and finally there is the relationship of Jesus to the parable as the primary storyteller.

Parables are stories that are designed to draw us in, to catch us like a fish on a hook. Our first task as a listener, as one of the active agents in this story, is to listen carefully and to allow ourselves be hooked. I'm sure there hasn't been a fish to date who was hooked who thought the experience was great fun! Where the parable, or indeed the homily, creates a response in us: sadness, frustration, joy, anger, tears, laughter; these are all hooks. The point of being hooked by the parable is to allow us to mull over some point of wisdom. As our first reading says: "Wisdom is bright, and does not grow dim."

Back to the gospel motif of oil:

Milford Haven is perhaps the largest oil & gas refinery I have ever seen. It supplies 25% of the motor fuel that Britain consumes, and it is located on the South West Coast of Wales. It was the scene of a huge explosion in June of this year, which created a seismic response!

Milford Haven - Wales

Oil, Natural Gas, and all their derivatives have become central to our lives over the past 150 years or so. This has happened in obvious ways, like transport and heat. But also, in less obvious ways like in our food, because synthetic fertilisers are produced from crude oil.

Without oil there would be no such thing as modern warfare, because war needs oil to power tanks, and planes, and even to create the synthetic explosives that high-tech munitions are made from. Oil is very often the reason for war as countries fight to secure the sources of oil, but without oil there could be no war on the level that we see in our own time.
Forgive the pun, but oil is very slippery and contradictory when we try to understand our current worldwide love affair and, dare I say, addiction to oil.

Oil in our world has a lot of negative connotations. Many people argue that we should learn to live without oil, and at the very least become less dependent on it.

But oil in gospel terms has huge positive value. Olive oil was used in the baking of bread to give it taste. It was used in religious ceremonies. Oil in New Testament times was a very precious, at times sacred commodity. When you consider that it takes approximately 1,400 olives to make a litre of olive oil, not to mention the manual labour involved in pressing the oil, you can see that this gave oil huge value. For this reason oil is the primary motif in the parable. It is by running out of oil for their lamps that the foolish bridesmaids are shown to be foolish.

Olive Oil

Our term 'oil' comes from the term 'olive'. In ancient times, oil was synonymous with the olive. There was no such thing as crude oil drilled out of the ground. And, in the east, the olive tree was held up as a sacred plant because of it's fruit.

In Matthew's gospel, the motif of oil is brought to its zenith in the word 'gethsemane', which we recognise as the place where Jesus prayed on the night before his crucifixion. The term 'gethsemane' means 'olive press'. Here, the place where olive oil is made, here is the place that Jesus chooses to pray. This associates the source of oil with the intense, passionate, prayer of Jesus before his crucifixion. The intense, real, heartfelt, prayer of Jesus takes place in an 'olive press'. For the followers of Jesus, i.e. you and I, to follow Christ means to enter into 'gethsemane', to enter the 'olive press' of prayer, so that we might have enough oil for our lamps.

(Olive) Oil Press

Psalm 119 says: "Your word is a lamp for my steps, and a light for my path." God's Word is the lamp. The world is the olive press and prayer is the means to enter the world in the most real way. Christ is the one who enters Gethsemane, the olive press, the world. He is the incarnate One, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Our task is not to leave the world, but to enter into the world passionately, intensely and willingly. It is only true relationship with Christ, in prayer, that we gain oil to light our way in this bravest of pilgrimages.