Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Luke 8: 1-3

 

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Luke 8: 1-3 

(24th Friday of Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

In serving one finds freedom and happiness

When I was in the seminary, I remember trying to make sense of the world from within a clerical point of view. A seminarian is no cleric but since so much of his life is consumed with liturgical and pastoral matters, aspects of one’s life resembled that of cleric, albeit set apart from the world, at least for the seven years in formation.

From other clerics and seminarians, often I heard that society is self-centred and materialistically driven. Pope Francis often referred to the modern world as the throw away culture. We buy one thing and quickly replace it, absorbed in getting the latest gadget or trying new experiences with impulse. Although I didn’t see much of this since my time was spent mainly reading theological and philosophical literature, as a seminarian’s life is consumed with study, I caught a glimpse of this plaguing my family when I took annual leave. My siblings were absorbed with material and dull leisurely experiences such as wanting to constantly travel and have different food experiences at different venues. I don’t think they gave much attention or their resources to the poor, like most un-practicing Catholics. I do however acknowledge that there are many people who are not practicing Catholics who do good work with their resources.

Even today, now that I live outside the walls of the seminary and no longer in formation for the priesthood, the narrative is the same: travel, food, and material dominates their thinking; it’s about me, not them. Even I can get caught being consumed by the me culture despite my past seminary formation for a clerical career. Sometimes, I intentionally have my heart and intellect fixated on my next pay cheque, consider how I can make use of it all personally, saving what I can, doubting I can give two percent to charity.

The heart of the Gospel message is not self-centred but other centred. Jesus in his earthly ministry preached a message that God is love and his love is unconditional, to the point of death. In other words, love does not count the cost, it gives selflessly until it can’t give anymore.

In today’s Gospel reading, Luke invites us to reflect on the preaching ministry of Jesus. At the heart of this message, Jesus is out preaching and proclaiming the Kingdom of God, accompanied by the 12 apostles and ministered by some of the women he had healed. The imagery surrounding this passage show the people of God, who are clerics and lay in the Church, gathered around their teacher, Jesus, sharing their lives and possessions. In actual fact, this is the vocation of the Christian community. While we share our gifts, talents, and time with friends and family, the reality is that a large portion of the people of God is poor, and to pick them up from the pits they find themselves, requires conscious giving that is done selflessly from whatever resources we have.

The morale behind sharing resources has psychological and emotional ramifications on the giver too. Indeed, sharing whatever we have especially to those in most need is good and can make us feel purposeful, but in actual fact to share generously our resources makes us happier people. I don’t have the scientific data before me that correlates giving with happiness, although I am told that it is scientifically proven that people with four children or more are happier families. A family with more children is able to give more I suppose and as a result receive more love in return. However, looking at this Gospel, we get a sense that giving or focusing our resources on others indeed works towards benefiting a happier self. This is realised in the women who ministered to Jesus.

Mary Magdalene, one of Jesus’s women disciples, was cured of evil spirits. There isn’t much information on the other two women who feature in this passage, but we could presume they may have led similar lives to Mary. According to tradition, Mary of Magdalene was a prostitute. A prostitute is someone who has sex with another person for money; it’s not a one off nor a mistake, but a coordinated act that is ongoing. Sometimes women and men turn to prostitution not for the thrill of it, but because they have no other means to earn a living. Mary in this regard was a habitual sinner fornicating with other men and as a result was plagued by the devil.

Whether you believe in the existence of the devil or not, the Church recognises this creature to be more than an abstract idea. The devil is a real being who pursues us until our death, hoping we reject God and die in our sins. Whenever we sin, we invite the devil into our lives, and depending on the severity of our sins will depend on the degrees of possession we are afflicted with: oppression, obsession or possession. Turning back to Mary, who was possessed by the devil, was cured by Jesus. It is obvious too that Mary’s life took a turn. She left her self-centred life, portrayed by tradition as her being a prostitute, which made her also sad and a sick individual, now centres her life on others, primary the work of Jesus.

The message for us is that sin, which hurts our relationship God and invites unwanted spiritual guests such as the devil and his foul and festering demon comrades, can be overcome when we stop looking inwardly and instead focus our attention, effort and resources on those who needs it most in the community. Who are those in need most? The poor, the downtrodden. However, clerics too. Our priests need our support to help them in their ministry so that they can proclaim the kingdom of God. Remember, Mary Magdalene and Susanna and Joanna from this passage ministered to Jesus, the high priest, so that he may fulfil his ministry given to him by the Father.

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of John 19: 25-27

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

 Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on John 19: 25-27 

(23rd Friday of Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

Mary's role in our lives: mother of us all

There is this saying that goes along the lines of “home is where the heart is.” If you’re unfamiliar with its meaning, rest assure, I had to look this one up myself too. This proverb basically means that where our heart/ desires lies, there we find our deepest affection. Whatever your affections are, whether it might be for blueberry sorbet, Pokémon cards or company with good friends, there is where we find our hearts resting place.

One of our greatest hearts desires is to know who God is. Every human being - at least a plethora amount of times - question his/her existence and whether God is with him/her.. While I can testify to this existential phenomenon for myself, St Augustine once famously said “my heart is restless until it rests in you.” If you are in doubt that you question God ever enters your mind, at least Augustine testifies for all those who lived in his and before his time that God is something that troubles our hearts.

God, who is constantly at beck and call on our hearts, gently troubles our hearts to get our attention, so that when he has it, freely, we might keep our gaze constantly focused on him. This is what God wants from us, to gaze with total affection for him.

We can show this affection by praying to him, we show this affection too by observing his commandments which is to love God with all our mind and heart and to one another as he loved us.

Loving God with our whole mind and heart sounds pretty abstract. How does one do that in a concrete way? In today’s Gospel reading, God has included in our vocation to love him with everything we have by being a community that loves together. Our love for God and for each other should be united in the same manner as a family loves its nucleus community. A love that isolates back and forth, not just simply a stoic kind of love.

We say this for two reasons. The first is grounded in what Church doctrine teaches about who God is: he is a relationship of persons together in love. In God, there is a community of persons - three of them to be exact- that love each other, who love each other as a community of persons. Secondly, in the Gospel, Jesus shows us that to love God is a responsibility of the gathering of believers, whose love for each other should be communitarian in nature, with his statement: "Woman, this is your son... This is your mother.”

The beloved disciple in this instance, as biblical scholarship tells it, represents the gentile community being embraced and loved by God, while Mary the mother of Jesus, representing the Jewish community overcoming their cross of ever accepting gentiles in their fold as a chosen race of people.

So, we have it here: knowing, loving and serving God is home to our hearts; being gathered together as followers of Jesus that loves each other in community flows out of God’s desire for us, which means that being united as a community of believers who love each other in a communitarian way is a true human desire that seeks to be fulfilled.

There is also something else special about this Gospel reading. After Jesus charges the beloved disciple to accept Mary the mother of Jesus as his own, the text then says the disciple took Mary into his home. On the surface, this looks like Jesus is taking care of Mary’s social and financial business as he is dying on the cross. Of course, our Lord in his humanity was concerned for his mother and her welfare, however the text does not suggest this. Instead, this passage affirms Mary’s motherly role in this new family of Jesus which he established at the cross. She leads the community as mother of our pack.

We can speculate this special role of Mary as mother of the pack of Jesus because of our relationship to him. Through baptism we are born into a new life in Christ as God’s adopted children of the Father and also through this adoption as adopted brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. Mary’s relationship to Jesus however is not sisterly as ours are. She is Jesus’s mother and eternally enjoys her company with him as mother. Without her, Jesus, the divine second person of the Trinity would not have become a child, nor grown to be a man in human form, and without her we would not have been redeemed through his sacrifice on the Cross, meriting us with the gift to be called children of God and brothers and sisters of Christ.

Indeed, anything is possible with God, he did not need to have sent his son into the world to save us, however, as Aquinas suggests it somewhere in the Summa, that it was the most fitting way for God to save the human race from their sins, by becoming one of us, and dying for us on the Cross. Since Mary remains as the mother of Jesus for all eternity and we become Jesus’s brothers and sisters through baptism, Mary by virtue of the Sacrament then relates to us as mother. Therefore, we can call upon her as Jesus did when as a child, and seek her counsel, her guidance and her affectionate love us. Indeed, she loves us with the same motherly love she has for the Lord because she knows in the divine scheme of things that she has become the mother of us all.

If you don’t have much affection for Mary and would like to begin a loving childlike relationship towards her as Jesus loved and continues to love her, we can start by learning to prayer to her. Like Jesus in his youth, and perhaps in his adult years too, who in his earthly life would have required tenderly motherly love, as all humans do, just a natural fact, can call for her intercession, asking for whatever our needs are. A helpful prayer that is useful for fostering this relationship might be as simple as one where we pray intently to her through spontaneity. Another way is to develop a devotion to saying the rosary, and over time learn to offer the rosary for our needs and the needs of others.

Jesus has given us his mother because he knows that as adopted children of God, en route towards heaven, we need nurture and comfort which a mother can only give. Indeed, Mary does not save us, only by God’s grace we are saved. Thanks to Mary our mother and God’s own mother we can be called God’s adopted children and in some way we owe her thanks and our love for her for trusting God to be the bearer of Christ which our adoption a reality.

Home is where the heart is. Ideally home for us is satisfying our desire to know and love and serve God. God loves his mother and wills that we might return the same affection he has for her. For any affection shown to her is affection properly owed, since Mary after all reigns with her son as queen of all. 

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 25: 1-13

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Matthew 25: 1-13 

(21st Friday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

"Stay awake:" faith and good works

From my observation, sometimes it can seem that in our Catholic Church, we can divide it into three factions: those who over emphasise prayer who do very little good works; those who don’t pray or pray less and over emphasise works; and those in the middle, whose life is balanced with prayer and good works. As Catholics we are called to live a life of prayer and good works.

Outside of our Church communion, there is an ecclesial community not in communion with us Catholics, who seem terribly fixated on the mantra of being saved through faith alone and not good works. In my opinion, this community of believers over emphasise this not only because they are interested in making this truth of theirs known, but to make a misconstrued point that the Catholic Church does not believe one is saved through faith. This mantra or doctrine really, is true, the church ascribes to it, that faith in Jesus saves a man from condemnation. However, our faith in Jesus should move us to action. This Catholic perspective on faith and good works come from the scripture. It says in the Letter of St James 2:17" faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead." St James goes on further to say in this same chapter that "a man is justified by works and not faith alone" (2:24). One who loves Jesus therefore will act in his name to show that love in their personhood. After all Jesus did the very same, expressing his love for our Heavenly Father and offered his own life for our redemption. He did this out of love for us too and as a result we owe it to God, to love him in return with our entire life.

In today’s Gospel, there are many themes which can be found in it, although it is primarily revolved around Jesus, the bridegroom, and the Church’s belief with respect of his second coming. One day, Jesus will return again, and separate the wheat from the chaff, the sheep from the goats. What this means is that God’s plan for all of humanity will eventually end, like all good things, and when that time comes, those around to witness this spectacular event will see the Lord and know him and realise their relationship to him: Some will be saved due to their faith that works, and others not whose dead faith produced no good works.

While this Gospel is preoccupied with Jesus’s second coming, it has a stark message: “stay awake” until the bridegroom returns. For the majority of us, the second coming of Christ will be experienced at our death. His second coming will be met most likely upstairs in heaven or somewhere nearby there where and have our judgement handed down individually, then and there. However, those who will live in the end times, the second coming of Christ for them is when Jesus meets them here on earth, coming down from heaven on a cloud in all his glory with his angels. That day will be sad and treacherous for many who will not be saved, while glad and full of rejoicing for Christ’s faithful.

How one is faithful to Christ or not is reflected in today’s gospel in the parable of the bridesmaids. In this Gospel, we read that each bridesmaid had with them a lit lantern, however some had with them a reserve of oil and others not, to fuel their lit lanterns. When the bridegroom had returned, it was the bridesmaid with the reserve of oil who entered the wedding hall with Jesus. The others who had no oil, ran out of fuel, and had the doors shut before them.

Light and oil are important biblical symbols. As for light or lamp, it is the image of Christ as our light and our way to God; his message, his actions are our guide to the Father’s heart. Oil with respect to light can mean many things. It can mean presence of God, it can symbolise strength, it can also mean a blessing from God, a popular image in the Old Testament (OT), however in some New Testament (NT) passages, it can mean repentance. A person who is repentant has a change of heart and changes his ways, he turns away from sin and looks to God as his guide and as a result finds blessing in their lives, so blessing and repentance speak to each other.

In other words, oil is used to mean good works.  As for Christ’s faithful they are preoccupied in the good works of the Lord, making him present and known in his or her own actions. These people put their money where their mouth is, or if I could use another idiom, walk the talk, even in difficult times, who like the bridesmaid with the reserve of oil who fell tired and weary at times, kept their lantern alit.

So while faith alone saves us, obedience to Christ can never be substituted for a mindless coziness with the Lord and feelings of warm devotion toward him, which the bridesmaid who had the doors shut on them exemplified: “Lord, Lord.” Our job as Christians is to make the kingdom of God present in the world. This requires work, effort, and perseverance in the work of Christ. Jesus compares us to bridesmaids, and the role of the bridesmaid is to attend to the need of the bride, the Church. Being a bridesmaid isn’t exactly a mere honorary title, it a privilege to serve and so as Christians we serve Christ until Christ is ready to claim his bride, the Church.

Many ecclesial communities have calculated the coming of Jesus and predicted it wrong every time. I have a friend who ascribes to the principles of a Baptist Christian telling me that Jesus is coming soon, and she says this every time with the greatest cheer, as though she knows something which the Church doesn’t. I suspect she does this to spark interest in people so to initiate a conversation about Jesus, and this is noble of her. However, it’s not our place to predict Jesus’s return. In fact, Jesus himself says: "But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only" (Matthew 24:36). Our place is to trust who Jesus says he is and put this trust in action. Like the birth of Jesus, he will come later than expected, when we are least expecting it, so it’s best not to calculate the second coming of Jesus because we will probably be wrong. Instead, we ought to pursue holiness as this text of scripture teaches us. Near expectations only proves an over alert of his coming, making us look stupid and embarrassed although a distant expectation is equally dangerous as it makes a man secular, forgetting God’s concern in human affairs.

The moral of this parable is this: Jesus wants us in relationship with him, to be holy while he is away so that upon his second return he will find us ready to meet him and his bride, the church. Holiness entails not only a lip service to faith in Christ, but a faith that is lived out in obedience to his commandments to the very end. Jesus will judge us on our obedience to faith in his commandments, this judgement comes at death or upon his return, not because we say “Lord, Lord.” 

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 22: 34-40

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

 Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Matthew 22: 34-40 

(20th Friday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

Living our best by loving God and Neighbour as ourselves

In this Gospel, Jesus teaches us two very important aspects of how to be properly human beings. The first of his teachings is that we ought to be absorbed in loving God above every creature with our mind, body and soul. After this commandment, Jesus then instructs us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. If we do these two things, we are then on the straight and narrow path to live the proper human life.

If you are questioning why Jesus informs us to prioritise the love of God with our total existence as the first principle of life, we should first ponder who is God in relation to us. According to Catholic doctrine, God, whose nature is love, is the creator of all that is confined in space and time, and he created all that there is for us out of love. Because God loves us, and gave us a share in his existence out of his own love, we should return this love that God has for us.

Naturally, we came into the world through the marital act which our parents had joined themselves in however by the grace of God, he allowed for human life to be created through that act which made us. Through the martial act, our parents became co-creators with God, which is love.

How can one show this kind of love towards God? As reflected in Jesus’s example, we ought to be obedient to the will of the Father. Jesus did this by dying for us on the cross. We can emulate this act by observing the law he has written in our own hearts, the Ten Commandments. When observed, we mirror Jesus in our behaviour and attitudes; though we do not make a literal sacrifice with our own life with the shedding of our blood, nevertheless we sacrifice and deny ourselves the temptation of the flesh which constantly wants to rebel against God. Other than observing this law, we can enter into a loving relationship with God through prayer, making that relationship with him a personal and intimate one.

Prayer which makes our relationship personal gives real meaning to how we think speak and act in the world. We consider our actions and ask ourselves in prayer with God if I do this or that, who will be affected by them? While we naturally hurt others with our poor choices - and some of these include cheating our friends and spouses, fornication, stealing, murdering to name a few - we also offend God too by those behaviours because we hurt the ones who God also loves, who happen to be our friends, family, and other colleagues. We offend God when we fail to love ourselves in a healthy manner, which is observed once again in keeping of the law.

Now, Jesus says the second command is like the first: our love for others should be the same love we have for ourselves. This is an important commandment to reflect on. Jesus wants us to share a part of our existence with others, wanting them to have the same quality of life that we would wish for our own selves. In some way this is the same love God has loved us with. When God loves us he does not love us with a love that is separable from himself but of the same love that he has for himself. God knows how to love himself properly and with this proper love he has, he gives to us unconditionally.

It might help to reflect on Jesus’s own sacrifice and how that act resembles his command to love others as we love ourselves. Jesus who is God has for himself the beatific vision, meaning that contained in his own person he shares the triune divine life. This life from Jesus’s point of view is awesome and much more. He sees himself happy and content in God. He wants us to be happy and content too in God. So that we might be happy and content some day with him, he died for us to make this future reality possible. In other words, with the command to love our neighbour as ourselves, Jesus invites us to put into practice how it is to love others the way God loves us. God in the person of Jesus wants us to experience his love for us and we experience this by loving him first completely. From there, once we discover his unconditional love and are affected by it, we should learn that we are made not just for but also to love unconditionally. God in his commandment to love others as ourselves is a call consider laying down our own lives for others so that they might find life in God.

Today, in our Catholic culture, there seems to be an over emphasis on an horizontal love while neglecting our vertical obligation to love. By horizontal I mean man’s love for man, and by vertical man’s love for God. It is good that our brothers and sisters of the Catholic ilk are out there advocating and seeking the basic needs and more for our downtrodden and neglected neighbour, however, when we neglect a healthy love for God, our love for neighbour is seriously diminished. You see, Gods love is unconditional. To experience this kind of love requires our constant attention on God. When we experience this love of God, we are able by God’s grace to make our love unconditional towards others. We give more than what we can or want to give that justice demands; in extension of justice, we show our neighbour mercy. This kind of attitude we read in Jesus’s parable on the workers in the vineyard, where the vineyard owner pays each of his labourers, whether they worked half a day or an hour, they got the same pay. While half a day’s work warrants half a day’s pay and an hours work an hours pay, God is reckless in his giving, providing more than what justice deserves. God not only gives us the grace to love as he loves, but coming to know and experience God and place our trust in him, our faith informs us this is the only kind of love that warrants a gold star.

Too often we make a fuss about people whose needs have been forgotten, and forget to put God in the equation in their neglect. God motivates us to love others since it is he who wants a just world and for people to flourish. This aspect of love is seriously overlooked and it’s most likely because of secular inculturation of every sphere of society.

God gave us these two commandments not for the sake of the law itself but so that we can truly discover who God is and what we were made for. We were made to love God and others and find life in a relationship genuine in love. Ultimately, Jesus gave us this commandment so that through knowing, loving and serving God in this life we can be happy with him in a beatific way, someday, in heaven. As Catholics who are hard bent on justice, we should love God first and learn to love others as God loves us so that our society will have life and more at the heart of its values rather than so much an ideology separated from love.

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 19: 3-12

 

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Matthew 19: 3-12 

(19th Friday in Ordinary Time, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

A much longer commitment is what Jesus had intended for us

What Jesus teaches us in this Gospel is that divorce - although prevalent in our culture today and perhaps, in Jesus time - is not something intended in the big scheme of divine things. The text is clear: it was Moses who issued certificates of divorce for those whose hearts were stiff to be reconciled, and not God. In fact, now that God never intended divorce an acceptable practice, he likens it to adultery if the divorcee remarries.

Is this saying too difficult for us to accept? Our modern world who issues one divorce cert. after another would find this intolerable. I speak from personal experience. Family members and friends of my own are remarried. They never seem to consider any advice on reconciling with their sacramental spouses but instead dismiss it, pretending the thought of reconciliation is an impossible game or an inconvenience. Even parents of these people don’t like to hear about it. Their excuse is that the rest of the world is doing it so what’s the problem? A pathetic response in my opinion when these folks profess to carry Jesus in the hearts and on their lips and cross themselves before a holy icon of our Lord. This attitude towards marriage does not align with what Jesus tells us here: if a divorced person marries another, that person commits adultery.

Jesus must have had a reason for preaching this difficult doctrine which is highly regarded by the modern world as intolerable. It’s intolerable because as human beings we want more for ourselves in life and if we live selfishly, we are going to want more of the good things via illicit means which violates God’s commandments. If in our hearts we have More and the means to more is by rejecting God’s boundaries, than hearing this doctrine is hard to accept. However, we must remember that Jesus wants us to have more too just as our hearts desires, even if our means to attaining more of whatever that might be is unacceptable. He says so himself: ‘I’ve come to give you life and to have it to the full’. To have more as Jesus intended it requires us to listen to him and accept his teachings. When we do this, we find a more fulfilling life.

Our faith teaches us that Jesus is God who is one with the Father and that God is love. Whatever God tells us in scripture and whatever he has done for us through others in the scriptures is because he loves us. If God is love and Jesus tells us that divorce and remarriage is tantamount to and is in fact adulterous, we must consider for a moment why this doctrine is spoken from a place of love. Jesus has our best interest at heart. He wants us to flourish and for that to happen he must direct and govern our lives. Divorce is never a clean business. Most of us know this with firsthand experience since we know someone we love who is divorced and perhaps sadly remarried unsacramentally. If they have children, they get caught in the mess of it all too. While it has an emotional toll on both parties it is also ecologically taxing. Think about the extra beds that need manufacturing so that divorced spouses and their displaced children need to sleep on, all those extra household appliances when one would do for a family unit, or the extra houses that need constructing and the space it takes up. Each square meter required to build new homes means one less square meter for sister bee and brother wolf to share and coexist with us. Sensible beings such as non-human animals while are a beautiful sight to behold play a vital part In the ecosystem that allow our existence to flourish.

There are good grounds that one must separate from their spouse especially if they are violent. I am not saying a man or a woman should remain in a household if their life is threatened, that would go against Gospel values but let’s face it not all marriages are abusive and if one is subject to abuse, our Lord tells us that this doesn’t warrant for remarriage as it would mean adultery is committed. His or her option is to isolate from the violent one and seek counselling. 

However, the church does provide a condition for a valid marriage. One who is entering a marital contract require four conditions for its validity, which are free will, consent, have the intention to marry for life, and to be open to children. If I can add a fifth, no impediments such as one of the parties has not been married.  Now if you don’t satisfy these conditions the Church - through the marriage tribunal - provides an opportunity to explore the possibility of an annulment, provided that one or more of the elements of the validity have not been met at the marriage. This process is thorough and can be very slow (up to 5 years because it has to be completely sure that one has legitimate grounds for an annulment and that there has been an impediment from the beginning). In other words, the marriage covenant is a serious business and not broken through annulment lightly. 

On a much deeper level, Jesus preachers against divorce and remarriage because marriage is a sacrament and that marriages should reflect the love the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have for each other. God are three distinct beings united in love. They are never divorced from their love but each wills the good of the other. As a married person you’re ought to reflect this love with your spouse because marriage is a covenant between both God and your spouse.  

As disciples of Jesus, what does this mean to us? It means a number of things but I will propose two things. Firstly, if we are single and are prepared to get married, choose your spouse wisely and discern through prayer with Jesus whether he or she is the appropriate partner and whether you have a vocation to marriage. If you are married and find the commitment a struggle, find a way forward to preserve not because it’s your duty, but because you love God and the one whom you have promised to death do you part. Thirdly, if you have a happy marriage then continue to build on the relationship between your spouse and God and be an example for all who aspire for a lifelong commitment of love through this sacrament.

Amen, praise God.

Friday Gospel Recharge: A reflection on the Gospel of Matthew 16: 24-28

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Matthew 16: 24-28 

(Friday Week 18, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

Challenges of Discipleship in the Modern World

The word disciple comes from the Latin word ‘discipulus’. Its basic meaning is that of discipline. We all know too well what it feels like to be disciplined in a task or skill set. It comes with study, preparation and hard work. Without discipline of some skill, trade, or even the body against its appetite for food, drink and sex then really you haven’t mastered what you had set out to acquire.

In this Gospel passage, Jesus says to his disciples that if they wish to follow after him, then they ought to say no to their own ambitions, aspirations and carry their crosses too. However, not all ambitions are subject to renouncement, since people desire to be religious, priests, married or remain single in the world and these particular lifestyles are good and something which we are all called to consider.  However, what Jesus has in mind here is the denial of our pursuit of worldly things and seek what our Heavenly Father intends for us, which is total obedience to the will of the Father. Total obedience to the Father’s will is what Jesus accomplished with his own life and death on the cross, and total obedience is required to all those who so desire to live to know love and serve their God.

Disciplining oneself to the total will of God requires the discipline of discernment, effort and perseverance. Effort and perseverance are pretty self-explanatory, since every work task requires these two elements to master anything. However, discernment is also important in the part of the discipline of discipleship because we have competing forces here for our soul.  God wants us and the devil wants to conquer us also. To figure out what God wants from us requires discernment therefore because while God informs our hearts that wily bastard seeks to distract us from the data God gives us or distort it with false realities.

God’s will while it is not too demanding on the mind, body and soul, since he asks us to love one another as he has loved us, our weak bodies and societal influences can sway us to direct our wills on ungodly things such as those things which is the opposite of love, which might be to speak uncharitably about others, lie, neglect the need of a neighbour who we are capable of helping, or even lay with our neighbours spouse or any man or woman for that matter outside the covenant of marriage. You see, the influence of the flesh and the world is so enticing we can at times say no to God and say yes to a falsely perceived good, which are some of those things mentioned earlier. We can fall prey to the ungodly for many reasons but one that has been drawn to my attention is that our weak bodies and societal influences inform us that we might just miss out on something good if we constantly direct our attention and will on God’s plan.

Also in this Gospel, Jesus tells us that it’s not what we possess but what we have done that merits eternal life. Even having possession of the whole world will not save man from being judged unfavourably. It’s not all the gold medals nor accolades that wins God’s heart, but our effort in taking the knee and washing the feet of those whom God loves. This point is pertinent because God wants us to be aware that being on top of the world or dominating others is not a condition of discipleship nor something he takes favour in. Discipleship entails something much more than having loads of possessions, it means to have less for ourselves in this life and take up our crosses and follow The way of Calvary and be crucified for Jesus sake. When we bear our crosses, we not only avoid domination of others but instead stand beside our neighbour and relate with them.

Think of the Story of Adam and Eve. It is from Adams rib that the woman is made from. In other words, the woman is neither beneath nor above man but is equal to him. Adam had to lose something apart of himself so that that wonderful creature the woman can also have life and share all that is good about it. The sacrifice of Adams rib for the sake of woman is an indication that from the beginning and in our DNA we were made to be disciples of each other.

Let’s remember too that Jesus who from the beginning was arrayed in majesty humbled himself and became not just a man, but a Nazarene, a nobody, and served others, a hopeful reminder for those who have their hearts set on silver and gold to reconsider their priorities.

So, when the time comes for his second return, Jesus will judge us accordingly to charity and our contribution to building up God’s kingdom on earth. Jesus’s return is a helpful reminder to us that in the presence of God we will be judged, that we ought to lose it all at the time of his second coming which is drawing near.

In summing up, let’s consider our priorities. Is Jesus number or are we attached to worldly pleasures and possessions of all kinds of goods and rarely use them for the benefit of others and the kingdom? The choice is real - our reward for eternity by denying ourselves now or enjoying the pleasures of this world and not nurturing our soul and therefore losing our reward?

Friday Gospel Recharge: A Reflection on the Gospel of Matthew: 13: 54-58

Friday Gospel Recharge Series

Friday Gospel Recharge

A Reflection on Matthew 13: 54-58 

(Friday Week 17, Year A of the Liturgical Calendar, 2023)

Rejection of a commoner: Jesus

According to St Augustine, the greatest act one could do for another is to lead them to the truth. Truth in the usual sense is something that is in accordance with a fact or reality, definition (provided by google). This truth is not what Augustine means to say, but instead, he means God. God in general is truth because all things that is true which entails the good things in life, beautiful things, love and everything that is true proceed from him. As for us, who shouldn't only be lead to the truth and thrive on it, always have a tendency to share it and sometimes, when sharing it, are faced with hostility. You see, truth, while it can be a reality or fact that is positive in nature, can say something negative about someone else. For example, this behaviour or lifestyle is morally questionable, and as a result reconsider your actions and outlook in life. People don't like being told what to do and as a result don't want to hear it, expressing it by dismissing what you have to say or rejecting you all together, known as the cancel culture.

In this week's Gospel, we read that Jesus is faced with some hostility by his own Nazarene kinsmen. If you are attentive to the reading, you will realise that the hostility brought upon him is due to what he knows and the things he said. The nature of Jesus's sayings isn't exactly fire and brimstone, but that his words are rich in wisdom and insightful in the mystery of God. It isn't so much that the people can bare the wisdom he has to share, but the fact of his social status among them: isn't this man a bastard Nazarene? Where and how has this man acquired this knowledge and why are we being addressed by such an insignificant figure like this man?

You might be wondering where in the text does it offends and likens Jesus as an illegitimate son. thanks to scholarship, the fact that Matthew addresses Jesus as a son of a carpenter and not the son of Joseph raises suspicion of Jesus not having proper status nor is worthy of honour. To heighten Jesus’ insignificance and being without distinction among his own, Matthew also names each and every one of Jesus’ step-siblings which stresses the fact that his whole family is well known in the village. So, the narrative tells us then that the people are hearing wonderful things about God but from a commoner who according to custom should know less and ought to think and behaviour like a commoner.

Jesus however addresses the people after their dissatisfaction and apostasy by saying that no prophet is welcomed in his home town. We can say that the people apostasies because the Greek verb for turning their backs conveys something close to the idea of apostasy or the renunciation of faith. It is incredible to think that people would turn away from God therefore, because of individuals who are chosen to represent God and his God’s teaching because they see that individual as insignificant and unworthy of speaking with this authority.

Prophets according to Holy Writ were sometimes subject to violence from the people. A prophet is a messenger of God who often came with a message condemning the people’s wayward behaviour, and so no wonder why they were not welcomed at times. However, these chosen individuals were sometimes ordinary in the eyes of the people such as Moses, and others having high social and religious status such as Jeremiah, a man who first spent his career as a temple priest before his calling as a prophet. We get a general feel then that a professional career as a prophet is not acquired through rigorous learning, having social status nor attaining qualifications to meet the job requirements. Instead, God chooses the person for the task irrespective of his standing in society and equips him with the words required for the job.

Prophets in the Old Testament sense do not exist anymore. With the revelation of God made fully known in the person of Christ as God’s last word, there is no need for further revelation nor a need for prophets acting as the mouth piece of God. Although, God’s message found in scripture is still important to us and to those after us to hear so the urgency of having the word proclaimed remains.

As baptised Catholics we have the duty to proclaim the Word of God. The church states that after baptism we share in the threefold mission of Christ as priest, prophet and king. Like the prophets of old, we are sent by God as his messengers to speak for God by word and deed. Whether we find ourselves capable or not, we are required by virtue of our baptism to say something about Christ and about his teachings we are called to observe. For example, to say Jesus is God is an example of our sharing him with others. Saying there is no salvation outside Christ is an example of sharing teaching of his.

We are still called to be a prophet of own time amongst family and friends, but like Jesus, we face being rejected. If you think you’re an insignificant figure representing Christ and have nothing to offer, Jesus sympathies with you because of his own rejection from his kinsman who saw little of him, though their understanding of who he was, indeed was superficial and lacking true insight of him.

However, we need to stand in the truth of who we are in Christ through our baptism as Jesus saw who he was in God, and take the message of the Gospel among the many who are yet called to also know, love and serve God. We need to continue to preach the Gospel, face rejection from others, because in their eyes our social status does not count.

·         How important is preaching the Gospel to you?

·         How much are you prepared to suffer when you preach it?

·         What strategies will you employ to ensure that God’s word is heard?