34 Sunday Ordinary Time, B, Solemnity of Christ the King, 25 November 2012, John 18:33-37

Christ the King

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 celebrate Our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King.

This Solemnity was first instituted by Pope Pius XI in 1925. In his encyclical entitled Quas Primas, 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.

Living now, as we do, at a time of increased uncertainty and anxiety, primarily as a result of 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 XI, we find ourselves living in an uncertain time, with the possibility for great good and for great evil.

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 an anchor, some stability in this storm of words, then we must float on top of words like depression, unemployment, recession, economy, loss of jobs. Like St Peter, we find ourselves trying to step out in faith, to do that which seems impossible, to walk on water, only in our case the water is made up of ugly words and ugly talk. Only by placing our trust in Christ who reigns over everything 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 recognise that we are not kings or princes of our own destiny, but that in Christ the King we might find peace.

Our Gospel for today, a snippet of the Passion account from the Gospel of John which we hear proclaimed every Good Friday, points us in the way of truth. All who are on the side of truth listen to the voice of Christ. These are words written for us in our time. The truth, which is difficult, and at times is a two-edged sword, is the only way that we can follow. Christ is truth personified; we cannot claim to be followers of Jesus Christ if we deny truth. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life.

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 truth, the bottom line is about people.


Pope Pius XI's encyclical Quas Primas is available at:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/pius_xi/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-xi_enc_11121925_quas-primas_en.html

33 Sunday Ordinary Time, B, 18 November 2012, Mark 13:24-32

The Greenwich Meridian

Time

A few years ago, I was visiting London. While there, I took a water-taxi down the River Thames to Greenwich. This was one of the things that was on my to-do list.

Located at Greenwich, the Royal Observatory is a laboratory of time. As the British Empire spread across the world, navigators needed to have reference points so that they could calculate where they were on the face of the earth. And so, in 1884, Greenwich Mean Time was adopted internationally as a reference point. Everywhere on the earth tells its time by Greenwich Mean Time. So, here in Ireland we share the same time-zone as London, Lisbon, The Ivory Coast, and Morocco along with many other places. Rome, Paris, Berlin, Madrid are all one hour ahead of us.

One of the fascinating places to visit at the Royal Observatory is its museum. There are timepieces there from the last four hundred years or so. Some of them were made by Isaac Newton. Some are from very recent history. Most of the early attempts are very inaccurate by our standards today.

The gospel this Sunday is all about time. It is about the end of the world, a so-called apocalyptic vision of the end of time.

Time is strange for us human beings. Our perception of time is effected by our personality, by the activity we are engaged in and by our mental state. If we are depressed we can lose all sense of time and time can seem to move very slowly. If we are intoxicated with alcohol we can lose our sense of time. If we are having great fun, time can seem to fly by. And, we are told that we have to occupy our time, because as the old saying goes: 'idle hands are the devil's work.' And, of course, time might seem to go very slowly when we are at Mass listening to the priest rabbit on!

Our sense of time changes as we get older. Time seems to slip by very fast as we age, whereas when we are young, time can seem to go very slowly. When we are a teenager, our body clock is set around a 25 or 26 hour day which means teenagers are always sleepy and will happily sleep in any chance they get. But, the average 60 year old can actually cope with a lot less sleep as there body clock is set around a 20 hour day. The older we get, the earlier we wake up!

The gospel this Sunday is an apocalyptic vision of the end of time. The closest we can come to understanding this is when a loved-one belonging to us dies. Time can seem to stand still. We cannot understand why the world keeps going, the trains keep rolling, cars keep driving by. We want to scream and shout at the world to stop. We want time to stop because of what has happened to us. Time has stopped.

Whatever our experience of time, one thing is for certain. We don't have a lot of it. And in today's world we seem to have less and less of it. We are so busy that time seems to slip through our fingers. We forget to catch up with friends and family. We meet at weddings and funerals. Our career becomes all-important. Time is too short.

Some day our time here will come to an end. Becoming more conscious of this every day can lead us to live fuller, more fulfilling lives – dare I say, holier lives. An awareness of our mortality, that death comes for us at a time that we know not, this awareness of our mortality helps us to live our time here in the best way that we can. Our time on this earth is valuable and not to be wasted. Its time to put our time to good use.

31 Sunday Ordinary Time, B, 4 November 2012, Mark 12:28-34

A Standard / Measuring Tape

Before I entered the seminary I was a student of Civil Engineering at IT Sligo for three years. I still love anything to do with roads or bridges, railways, airports or airplanes. Indeed, my two brothers and I share a huge interest in cars, in buying and selling them, in servicing and maintaining them, and in polishing them up to look shiny and new.

Like most disciplines today, there are standards in engineering and in design. The world of work, the world that many of us share, is a world of standards and meeting standards, of procedural guidelines, of reform of standards and renewal of practices.

And standards make for a high quality of life. They are an imposition, but standards mean that when you turn the key in the ignition, the car will start, when you flick the switch on the heat in your house, the boiler will kick in.

So, standards are important. And, in many ways, Church is one of the few places in our world where some would have us lower our standards and change our practices. The standard bearer has become tarnished.

A Sieve / Flour Sifter

I am my father's son, but I am my Mother's boy! What I mean is that, like my father, I love apple pie! And, guess what, my Mum is great at baking them!

When we were children, my Mum taught us how to make all kinds of breads and doughs, and to make a really good apple pie you have to make a pastry dough. This is one that has fat, or butter incorporated into it to make it flaky, crumbly and really tasty! But, among the many tricks to making the perfect dough, a key step is to sift the flour. This isn't so much to get the lumps out of the flour, but rather to add air to it before trying to make a dough with it.

Today's Gospel

Last Sunday, we heard the gospel passage all about the healing of Bartimaeus. This Sunday we take a jump, from the middle of chapter 10 of Mark's gospel all the way to the middle of chapter 12. We jump over stories like the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem that we hear on Palm Sunday. We also skip over the section where Jesus throws the money changers out of the temple. And, the story of the widow's mite. In short, then, the stories that we skip over are important to understand the gospel for this Sunday. The story of the money-changers is about a purification of the temple from the business side of religion. Jesus throws them out of the temple because the temple is supposed to be a pure place, not a place of profit. And the widow's mite is something to do with us offering everything that we have to live on to God, or perhaps to give ourselves completely to God.

Shema

So, then we land at the gospel for this Sunday. And here, we find Jesus quoting the words from the book of Deuteronomy that we heard in our first reading. “Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Let these words I urge on you today be written on your heart.” (Deut 6:4-6) The passage continues: “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” This passage from the book of Deuteronomy is arguably the most important passage in the whole Jewish Bible, for the Jewish people. It is known simply as the 'Shema' from the first two words: 'Hear O Israel...', in Hebrew 'Shema Yisrael...'.

To the Shema, Jesus adds in the gospel: “The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”

Here then, for the Christian is the fulfilment of the Law & the Prophets, promised by the Christ. It is the binding together of our religious life with our non-religious life. Our love of God is to be matched by our love of our neighbour, which is to be bound up with how we love ourselves. Let me repeat that for you, because it is super-important: Our love of God is to be matched by our love of our neighbour, which is to be bound up with how we love ourselves.

Practical Implications of the Gospel

Is the gospel a standard or a sieve?

Very often in our religious lives we might wonder where we should begin. Indeed, when we are telling a story, we very often say: where will I begin? The first practical implication of the gospel is that we must love ourselves. Or, to put it more basically, I must love me, and you must love you. If I do not love myself adequately – and I don't mean vanity, or being self-centred – if I do not love myself adequately then how can I love my neighbour? And how can I love God? Or, more to the point – grace, which is the love God has for us, which he makes known to us through the death of his Son Jesus – this grace comes to life in us when we begin to love ourselves, which is to admit that I am loveable, that you are loveable. Out of this place of true love of self, I am truly able to share with other people, with my neighbour, the love that God has for them, which evidently leads me, them and us to God.

A Sidenote

A couple of weeks ago, I met Fr Muredach Tuffy in the refectory in Maynooth. He looked well. I was impressed with how well he looked. I remembered him as being well groomed, a capable young priest. And so, like all of you I am sure, I was genuinely saddened to hear of his sudden and tragic death. That he died by suicide makes it all the worse, because it tells me that in some way Muredach did not know how much he is loved. I dearly hope that he knows now the love and mercy that God has for him. As we wonder at his death, perhaps this Sunday's gospel sheds a little light for us. We have to learn, carefully, painfully at times, struggling at other times; we have to learn to love ourselves. We have to learn to seek the help and assistance that we need from each other to begin to love ourselves, and it is only then that we can possibly minister to our neighbour.

A Final Note

For me, the gospel is a sieve, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have standards.

I was telling you at the beginning of this homily all about my Mum teaching us how to make dough, and how I love apple pies! I was telling you about sieving, sifting and aerating the flour to make the dough. This Sunday's gospel, what we might call the 'Golden Rule', what the Jewish people call the 'Shema'; this golden rule is like a sieve through which we can sift the bits and pieces of our life, which is to give air, the breath of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God which is love, to allow God's love to sift through our lives, bringing healing and peace, hope and joy. In this way we can hope to offer ourselves as bread to be broken, wine to be poured out in joy.

The Shema of a Christian

Jesus said:
“This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)