OT XXI [C] Is 66:18-21, Heb 12:5-7, 11-13; Lk 13:22-30

In Bethlehem, there is a wonderful Basilica called the Basilica of the Nativity. It is the oldest church in use in the Holy Land, dating from the 6th century. Most of the churches in the Holy Land were destroyed by the Muslims in the year 636, but this one was spared. The entrance into this ancient Basilica is not very imposing. It is a very small and low door, which only admits one at a time. Over the centuries, the entrance got gradually smaller to prevent people from taking away large amounts of booty. Nowadays, the door is called the door of humility and all but children have to lower their heads to get through it. Just as a small, narrow door leads into the wonderful Basilica of the Nativity, so in the gospel reading the narrow door Jesus speaks about leads into a great feast at which people from east and west, from north and south have gathered.

Jesus’ refusal to answer the question, ‘Will there be only a few saved?’ directly suggests that it is a wrong question. It is not for us to speculate as to who is in and who is out. Strive to enter through the narrow door. Jesus’ reference to a ‘narrow door’ is clearly an image. He is not talking about an actual narrow door that can be found somewhere. To enter by a narrow door requires a certain amount of concentration, whereas we can sail through a wide door or gate without even noticing it. The word ‘strive’ suggests struggle and exertion. To get through a narrow door, you need to be focused and attentive. You need a clear vision of where you are going and a certain commitment to get there.

This narrow door is, in a sense, Jesus himself. On one occasion, in the gospel of John, Jesus spoke of himself as the gate or the door. ‘I am the gate’, he says, ‘whoever enters through me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture… I came that they may have life and have it to the full’. Taking Jesus as our gate, our door, entering through him, requires a certain effort and focus on our part. Walking in his way, living by his values, does not happen automatically for us. There are plenty of other doors and ways that compete for our attention; there are other sets of values that try to engage us. We have to consciously choose the Lord’s door before other doors that open up for us that are easier to get through and make fewer demands on us. Much of the culture in which we live today pulls us in very different directions from the direction that the gospel calls us to take. The world in which we live is not always supportive of the values of the gospel. There can be a lot of pressure on people, some of it subtle, to act in ways that are contrary to the message of Jesus. Choosing the narrow door, choosing the Lord, involves coming to know him with our heart and mind, growing in our relationship with him, so that he becomes a significant presence in our lives.

In the gospel reading, some of Jesus’ contemporaries declared, ‘We once ate and drank in your company; you taught in our streets’. However, Jesus suggests that that kind of superficial relationship with him is not enough. We are to take the Lord to heart, just as he has taken us to heart. The key question is not whether we know about Jesus, but whether He knows us. Salvation is a living relationship. In John 10:14, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” On the last day, the difference between those inside and those outside will not be whether we have heard His teaching, but whether He can say, “I know you.”

The evangelical Christians are so obsessed with the notion of salvation by Faith that they totally ignore an entire body of Jesus’ teachings that call for commitment and sacrifice. They believe that merely by receiving baptism, one goes to heaven whether one lives a true Christian life or not. This gospel passage clearly refutes that theory. Enter through the narrow gate. It is true that when you receive baptism, you are saved and are offered heaven. But you can also lose it by renouncing it by yourself, rejecting the offer of God. You can reject your faith and become a Muslim, the follower of the worst religion in the world. But when you come back, you don’t need to be rebaptized because God did not revoke his promise of giving you heaven. God will still keep his promise; we are the ones denying it for ourselves, not God. God will not drag anyone to heaven against one’s choice.

 

Our going through that narrow door is not all down to our own efforts and striving. Our efforts are contained within the Lord’s effort on our behalf. Jesus said of himself: ‘When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself’. The Lord is always drawing us through that narrow door that leads to life. He is not standing on the far side of the door looking at our efforts in some kind of detached way. Rather, he is continually engaged and involved with us. In the first reading, the Lord, speaking through the prophet Isaiah, states: ‘I am going to gather the nations of every language’. The door may be narrow, but the Lord is going to pull through that door large numbers from every language and culture. In the gospel reading, Jesus speaks of people from east and west, from north and south who take their place at the feast on the far side of the narrow door in the kingdom of God. There is an implicit answer here to the question that was put to Jesus in the gospel reading, ‘Will only a few be saved?’ The answer to that question is ‘no’. People from the four corners of the earth will get through that door, and some of those who get through may surprise us, ‘those now last will be first’.

Let’s pray today for the grace to live out our baptismal promises and prepare ourselves to enter through the narrow gate by prayer, supplication and constant renunciation of our sinful desires and by following Jesus who said: “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” ( Lk 9:23).  

 OT XX [C] Jer 38:4-6, 8-10; Heb 12:1-4; Lk 12: 49-53

This Sunday’s Gospel reading contains some of the most provocative words ever spoken by Jesus: "Do you think that I have come to establish peace on the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division. And to think that the person who pronounced these words was the same whose birth was greeted by the words: "Peace on earth to men of good will," and that during his life he proclaimed: "Blessed are the peacemakers." The same person, when he was arrested, commanded Peter to "Put your sword back into its sheath!" (Mat 26:52). How do we explain this contradiction?

It is very simple. It is a matter of seeing which peace and unity Jesus came to bring and which is the peace and unity he came to take away. He came to bring the peace and unity of the good, that which leads to eternal life, and he came to take away the false peace and unity, which serves only to lull the conscience to sleep and leads to ruin.

Jesus himself distinguishes the two types of peace. He says to the apostles: "Peace I leave you, my peace I give to you; not as the world gives peace do I give peace to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid" (Jn 14:27). After having destroyed with his death the false peace and solidarity of the human race in evil and sin, he inaugurates the new peace and unity that is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. This is the peace that he offers to the disciples on Easter night, saying "Peace be with you!"

Jesus says that this "division" can also work its way into the family: between father and son, mother and daughter, brother and sister, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. And, unfortunately, we know that this is sometimes painfully true. The person who has found the Lord and seriously wants to follow him often finds himself in the difficult situation of having to choose: Either make those at home happy and neglect God and religious practice or follow the latter and put himself in conflict with his own, who give him trouble for every little thing he does for God and piety.

This saying of Jesus on “division” reflects what actually happened within families in the early church. Those who became disciples of Jesus often found themselves at odds with family members who refused to take that step. Jesus did not come with the explicit intention of dividing people or families. He came to proclaim the kingdom of God, the values that God holds dear and wants us to live by. The consequences of proclaiming those values by his word and deed were that communities and families ended up divided. Peace or unity at any price was not what Jesus was about. The Jesus who lived and worked two thousand years ago is the same risen Lord who lives and works among us today, and the world today sometimes can be as resistant to the gospel as it was when Jesus first proclaimed it. We can expect that if we try to live by the values of the gospel today, we will find ourselves at odds with people who have a different set of values. There can be enormous peer pressure, especially on young people, to take a very different path to the one that Jesus calls us to take. The refusal to swim with the tide, to do what everyone is doing, can bring on ridicule and hostility from others, leaving people quite isolated. Like Jeremiah in the first reading we can find ourselves thrown into a muddy well. Jesus himself in today’s gospel reading speaks about the great distress he continues to experience until his mission is completed. We can expect to share in his distress if we identify with his way of life.

 

We are here at this Sunday Eucharist because something of the fire that Jesus lit is burning within our own hearts. The fire of the Spirit of God’s love has been lit in our lives. We often pray that lovely prayer, ‘Come Holy Spirit, fill my heart, and kindle in me the fire of your love’. Perhaps we sometimes pray that prayer out of an awareness that the fire of the Spirit has died back within us and needs to be reignited. On one occasion, Paul calls on his co-worker, Timothy to ‘fan into a living flame the gift of God that is within you’, the gift of the Holy Spirit. We all need that gift to be rekindled from time to time. The Lord wants us to be alight with the fire of the Spirit, a fire that can renew the face of the earth by burning away all that is hostile to human well-being and flourishing. It has been said that true disciples of Jesus have revolution in their hearts, in the sense that they have a burning desire to work with others for a better world. As we work to allow that fire to burn more brightly, it is important that we do not lose sight of Jesus, in the words of today’s second reading. As risen Lord, he is full of the Spirit and he stands ready to pour the gift of his Spirit anew into our hearts if we ask for it.

 

Hence, the central theme of today’s readings is that we should courageously live out our religious convictions and principles in our lives, as Jeremiah, Paul, and Jesus did, even if doing so should result in our martyrdom and turn society upside down.   If no one is ever offended by the quality of our commitment to Christ, that commitment may not be authentic, and if our individual and communal living of the Good News casts no fire and causes no division, then perhaps we are practicing “inoffensive Christianity.”

Let’s pray that the light we received at Baptism and reignited at confirmation be kept aflame brightly to burn off all the impurities in our life and help us to set the fire of God’s love everywhere.

 

 

 FEAST OF THE ASSUMPTION

Rev. 11: 19, 12: 1-6, 10,: I Cor. 15: 20-27, : Luke 1: 39-56

The Feast of the Assumption is one of the most important feasts of our Lady. Catholics believe that when her earthly life was finished, Mary was taken up, body and soul, into heavenly glory, where the Lord exalted her as Queen of Heaven. (ccc, # 966). This is the feast of Mary’s total liberation from death and decay, the consequences of original sin. Assumption- was a reward for Mary’s sacrificial cooperation in the divine plan of salvation. Her death was a transformation from this life to the next. She is the model Christian who heard the Word of God and lived it. She carried the life of God within her, celebrated the life of her Son on earth and is united to His life for all eternity.

When Pope Pius XII made the proclamation of the assumption on November 1, 1950, he put into words a belief held by the faithful since the first century. Way back in AD 325, the Council of Nicea spoke of the Assumption of Mary. Writing in AD 457, the Bishop of Jerusalem said that when Mary’s tomb was opened, it was "found empty. The apostles judged that her body had been taken into heaven.

According to a legend, when Blessed Virgin Mary died, Apostle Thomas was not around, and when he was informed of Mary’s death on his arrival back from India, he refused to believe it and demanded the grave to be opened and on opening found it to be empty, and only some flowers were found in its place. Tombs in early Israel were not hole in the ground, but caves and holes dug out in rock.

There is no mention of Mary’s assumption into heaven in the gospels. Yet, there is a line in the gospel reading for her feast that could be understood as alluding to it. In her prayer, she declares, ‘The Almighty has done great things for me’. In the context of Luke’s gospel, the ‘great things’ refers to God’s choice of her to become the mother of God’s Son. On this feast, we can include her Assumption into heaven as among the ‘great things’ God has done for her. Yet, the focus of Mary’s prayer is not on herself. It is rather on God and what God has done, not just for herself, but for all who turn to God in their need.

 Some non-Catholics accuse Catholics of worshipping Mary. We Catholics don’t worship or adore Mary because we worship only God, and Mary is not God. We venerate her, honour her, and love her as Jesus’ mother and our Heavenly Mother. If Jesus honored Mary, his mother, we also need to honor her. Honoring his mother pleases Jesus.

Mary herself gives the reason for her honor in her “Magnificat” recorded in Luke (1:48-49): 48: “For he has looked upon his handmaid’s lowliness; behold, from now on will all ages call me blessed. 49:The Mighty One has done great things for me, and Holy is his Name.”

God has honoured Mary in four ways, and we honour her because God honoured her:

a)    He chose her as the mother of His Son, Jesus Christ, the Messiah.

b)    In preparation for this role, God made her “Full
of grace” by her Immaculate Conception.

c)     He anointed her twice with His Holy Spirit: at the Annunciation and at Pentecost, making her the most

Spirit-filled among all women.

d)    God allowed her to participate actively in Christ’s suffering and death, suffering in soul all Jesus suffered in body.

Mary is our role model for all virtues, particularly love, fidelity, humility, obedience, and surrender to the will of
God and patience.

 

 Since Mary’s Assumption was a reward for her saintly life, this feast reminds us that we, too, must be pure and holy in body and soul, since our bodies will be glorified on the day of our resurrection. St. Paul tells us that our bodies are the temples of God because the Holy Spirit dwells within us. He also reminds us that our bodies are members of the Body of Christ.

We celebrate today by singing with Mary her great hymn of praise, the “Magnificat” (Lk 1:39-56). Apart from God’s favour Mary was but a lowly servant living in a “nowhere” town in the hill country of Galilee.  She was at the bottom of the social ladder.  Yet when God touched her womb, she became a queen, the mother of the King of kings.  To this day, she is honored millions of times a day as her “Hail Mary” is recited by humble Catholics throughout the world.  If you check it out, you will be amazed at the number of singing artists, both religious and secular, who have recorded her “Ave Maria.”  Truly all generations have and will always call her blessed.

It is always an inspiring thought in our moments of temptation and despair to remember that we have a powerful heavenly Mother, constantly interceding for us before her son, Jesus, in heaven. The feast of Mary’s assumption challenges us to imitate her self-sacrificing love, her indestructible faith and her perfect obedience.

Our prayers to Mary are the prayers of children asking their mother for help. We pray to Mary because she is our mother. When we were little and we fell down and scraped our knees, we called out to our mommies. When we got older, we stopped calling out to our moms in times of minor difficulties, but when major traumas hit, when a girl loses a baby, when a young man learns that he has cancer, it is usually Mom who is still the first person called upon for help. Jesus gave Mary to us to be our Mother from the cross telling, this is your mother. We recognise that it is Jesus’ life and power that saves us, but we also recognise that Mary was given to us at the foot of the cross as our mother.

If we have Mary with us, our prayers have a better chance of being answered soon, as it happened at the wedding at Cana. Let’s approach Jesus through Mary, because she gave Jesus to the world. I think after the Eucharist, Mary is the best gift that Jesus left for us. To Quote Pope Benedict XVI, “On this feast day, let us thank the Lord for the gift of the Mother, and let us pray to Mary to help us find the right path every day”.

 

 OT XIX [C] Wis 18:6-9; Heb 11:1-2, 8-19; Lk 12:32-48 

 

 The readings today focus on two major themes, faith and readiness. Faith is about putting our trust and belief into something, even if we cannot see the results now or in the near future. Faith enables us to keep going forward according to our vision and values, even when the goal seems quite out of sight and at times when the prize seems so unlikely to be achieved.

 

The story of Abraham is extraordinary because even without seeing the promise fulfilled, Abraham never stopped believing in God's promise to him. Abraham trusted in the promise, expected its fulfilment, and lived it as a deep truth even though he would not see the promise completely fulfilled in his lifetime. Abraham is a wonderful model of faith.

After speaking about faith, Jesus also tells us about readiness or preparedness in this parable of the master of a household going on a journey to a wedding banquet. The servants of the household faithfully carry out their duties while he is away. All the time, they are alert to the moment when he returns from the wedding feast and knocks on the door. He will need at least one of the servants to let him in. The servants have no way of knowing when he will return. They didn’t have cell phones like we have now to call ahead and alert. It could be at any time of the day or night. Someone has to be constantly on the watch to let him in when he knocks on the door. Their vigilance is rewarded by the master on his return. In an extraordinary role reversal, he becomes their servant. He sits them down at the table, puts on an apron and serves them a meal. An ordinary master would not do it for his servants for being loyal to this way. 

In telling this parable, Jesus was speaking about himself and his relationship with his disciples, with us. The master in the apron who serves his servants is Jesus himself. According to the gospel of John, this is what Jesus did at the last supper. The disciples were seated at the table, but Jesus got up from the table. Rather than putting an apron around himself, he put a towel around himself and washed the feet of his disciples. Even though he was their Lord and Master, he performed a very menial task that was normally the task of servants. He gave himself in love for his disciples. In the words of Saint Paul, he emptied himself, taking the form of a servant. This very menial service pointed ahead to an even greater act of self-emptying the following day, when, from the cross, he emptied himself of life itself in loving service of all humanity. The Last Supper was also the first Eucharist. At every Eucharist, the risen Lord empties himself out of love for us. He serves us by giving himself to us under the very humble elements of bread and wine. It is the Lord in an apron that we celebrate every time we gather for Mass.

The Lord who comes to us in the Eucharist comes to us throughout the course of our daily lives. Just as the wealthy man knocked on the door of the gospel reading, every day the Lord knocks on the door of our lives, waiting to be admitted. The expression ‘the knock on the door’, often has a sinister connotation. In certain periods of history and in certain parts of the world, the knock on the door spoke of danger and often death. However, the Lord knocks on the door of our lives as one who wants to serve us so that we may have life to the full. In the last book of the Bible, the book of Revelation, the risen Lord says to the church, ‘Listen, I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me’. Whenever we respond to the Lord’s knocking on the door of our lives, he will say to us the same thing that he said to Zacchaeus, ‘Today, salvation has come to this house’

       His primary desire is to serve us rather than have us serve him. Yes, he wants us to serve him by sharing in his work of bringing God’s hospitable love to others. That is what Jesus means when he says to his disciples in the gospel reading that ‘you are to be dressed for action, and have your lamps lit’. The Lord has lit a light in our lives, the light of faith and the light of hope, and he wants us to let that light shine before others, so that they can begin to experience something of the kingdom of heaven for which we all long. The Lord needs and values our service; he needs labourers in his harvest. Yet, what the Lord wants most of all is to allow ourselves to be served by him. Are we willing to allow the Lord to serve us? Or are we keeping him out of the door of our hearts, pretending not to hear his knock? Or we cannot really hear the knock because there is a lot of commotion going on in our hearts?