OT XII [B]: Job 38:1, 8-11; II Cor 5:14-17; Mk 4:35-41

Our Old Testament reading and our Gospel today each pose, in their own way, the same question: who is in control? In the midst of his sufferings, Job curses the day of his birth, having found no meaning to his sufferings, and no cause for them in any unrighteousness on his part. But in Chapter 38 he is put in his place by the Lord who finally gives answer from the heart of the whirlwind. The Lord’s answer to Job comes in no uncertain terms: He, the Lord, is in control. Job must understand his own place within the created order, for he is a creature, not God. He was not present when the Lord created the world, he did not see the sea constrained in its place, or the dry land made. It is the Lord who controls all of these things, and not us.

It is in this context that we can understand the Lord’s actions in the boat as a proof of his divinity, for only the Lord could constrain the natural powers by a mere rebuke. From this powerful action comes their wondered confession: Who can this be? Even the wind and sea obey him. 

But we notice that their confession is not yet perfect for even as rebuking the wind and the waves, the Lord offers something of a rebuke to his disciples: Why are you frightened? How is it that you have no faith? The disciples must still, by slow steps, come to know not only that it is the Lord who is in control, but that the Lord stands before them. Witnessing the Lord calming the storm made the disciples' faith grow, though not strong enough.

 

If we are looking for a reason for Job’s suffering or ours, we may not find it. But this we do know: Job’s ordeal has given him an even greater appreciation for God’s goodness. Job’s relationship with God has deepened, his faith has grown stronger and he has become wiser as a result. The same could be said of us whenever we experience hardship or face adversity. It’s not always easy to trust in the Lord’s providence and wisdom. But we are assured by St Paul, “we know that in everything God works for good for those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). We may not see it clearly now, but it makes the hard times a little easier to bear, knowing that there is something to learn and that God will answer us “from the heart of the storm.

 

We need to remember that Jesus is always with us in the boat of our life. All of us are making a journey across the sea of time to the shore of eternity.  Hence, it is natural that, occasionally, we all experience different types of violent storms in our lives: physical storms, emotional storms, and spiritual storms.  We face storms of sorrow, doubt, anxiety, worry, temptation, and passion.  The storms we encounter in life are often what make us or break us; either they bring us closer to God and one another or they alienate us from God and others.  And it is only Jesus who can still these storms for us.  Jesus can give us real peace in the storm of sorrow.  When we are totally depressed with sorrow, Jesus assures us of the glory of the life to come.  At the loss of our dear ones, Jesus consoles us with the assurance of eternal life for them in the Heavenly home of God the Father where we, too, will live one day.  When the storms of doubt seek to uproot the very foundations of our Faith, Jesus is there to still that storm, revealing to us his Divinity and the authority behind the words of the Holy Scripture. 

When helplessly watching the sufferings of a loved one, or in the face of personal tragedy, or in times of depression or natural disaster, we might think that the Lord is sleeping in the boat of our life and he doesn’t care much about us. That is not true.

As a young Indian boy approached manhood it is the custom of his tribe, that he had to undergo several tests to prove his bravery, before acceptance into the fighting braves of the tribe. He was brought out into the middle of a jungle and left there alone all night. He was terrified. Every leaf that fell, every branch that creaked, every movement in the underground caused his heart to pound. He never knew a night could be so long. On several occasions, he would have run away, but where does one run in a jungle in the middle of the night? After what seemed an eternity, the light of dawn began to filter through the trees. In a relatively short time, his eyes got used to the growing light, and soon he was able to see clearly. He moved from where he was and as he approached the nearest tree, he was amazed to find his father standing there with a gun. He had stood there on guard all night long. The young lad’s instant response was to think, “If I had known that my father was watching over me like that, I would have slept soundly all night.” When going through the difficulties we think we are alone and God is far away from us. Only true faith and trust in our loving God can help us see the God who is present to us in the midst of suffering and difficulties. Today, if you are going through difficult times or pains, remember Jesus is there to calm them, but we need to first wake him up in the boat of our lives with our faith and continue to trust in his promise: “In the world, you will have tribulations. But take heart, I have overcome the world.” (Jn 16:33).

"So do not fear, for I am with you; do not be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." (Isaiah 41:10).

 OT XI (B) (June 16) Ez 17: 22-24; II Cor 5:6-10; Mk 4:26-34

In the Gospel of today, we have two parables concerning the growth of the Kingdom of God.  He uses the image of the seed and the plant indicating how the Kingdom that he is proclaiming would grow quietly as every farmer would experience. It is a call to belong to the kingdom of God, who calls us to put ourselves fully, consciously, and deliberately under the power of God, to experience that power, and be empowered by it.

When Mark put today’s two parables into writing, he had seen the death of two great apostles of Rome, Peter and Paul. The Parusia or the second coming of Jesus that they were expecting had not come as yet. Nero blamed the Christians for the great fire of Rome and the faith of the Christians was at a risk.  The parables of Jesus given today provide an insight into the Kingdom of Jesus to the early church, as it gives to us today and explains its growth.  

Having done the sowing, all that the farmer can do is to go about his other business, while the seed takes over and does its own work, producing first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear, until the crop is ready for the harvest. In the parable, it is said of the farmer that ‘he does not know’ how all this happens. Between his actions of sowing the seed and harvesting the crop, a great deal of activity goes on, which is invisible to him and which he does not fully understand.

Jesus seems to be saying that if the farmer does not know the ways of the humble seed, how can any of us fully know the ways of God? If natural growth is mysterious, how much more mysterious must be the growth of God’s kingdom? The author of the book of Ecclesiastes expressed it well, “Just as you do not know the path of the wind, or how the body is formed in a mother's womb, so you cannot understand the work of God, the Maker of all things” (11:5).

There is a reassuring, hopeful message here for all of us who may be tempted to discouragement by the slow progress that the ways of God appear to be making in the world. The spreading of God’s reign is ultimately God’s work and that work is always underway, even when we do not see it or understand it.

The second parable in today’s gospel reading reminds us that God can be at work in situations and in places that seem very unpromising to us. There is a stark contrast between the tiny mustard seed, ‘the smallest of all the seeds on earth’, and the large shrub whose branches become homes for the birds of the air. Insignificant beginnings can lead to a wonderful result. Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like that; it often finds expression initially in what is small and seemingly insignificant. We can feel at times that our own faith is insignificant, as small as a mustard seed. The parable assures us that the Lord is working in and through such faith. Our hope can appear to diminish to the size of a mustard seed. The parable assures us that the Lord will see to it that the final harvest from those endeavours will be abundant. The parable comforted the people of the early Church in the face of discouragement when their efforts did not seem to be getting them anywhere. How surprised those early Christians would be to see the Church today. We can visualize how the mustard seed has grown in the world of today. 

 

The good news is that you don’t need to have all the answers. You don’t need to rescue yourself or others from a fix. You don’t need to be in control. You don’t need to be superman or superwoman. God has your back. God is the answer. God is always working even when nothing seems to be happening. God will always accomplish His purpose even when our efforts seem to fail, and every situation seems hopeless. This is the reason why in scripture, we often see God deliberately choosing men and women that culture overlooks to expose the hollow pretensions of the people who think they are something. God chooses what the world considers nonsense, weak, and ordinary to not only shame but also destroy all pretentious thinking and inflated pride. He does this so that the only thing that one can boast about is – Christ.

 

Many people who are reading this parable may be very upset because they did everything they could to raise their children in the faith. However, their children stopped practicing their faith when they left for college. Then they got married, outside of the Church, and now have grandchildren who haven't even been baptized. So they may ask, "Where did I go wrong?" Well, they did not go wrong. The world got to them. Such people need to continue to pray that their children will be open to the faith. That seed that they planted may spring into a marvelous tree, but only after a long period of time. God’s reign comes in power through the seemingly insignificant actions of each of one us. But it will bear fruit. This week I got a call for the last sacrament from someone living in our parish limit. The husband is dying of cancer. The doctor said there was only one week left. I haven’t seen either of them in this church all these years. The seed of faith is not dead, that is why they thought about the sacrament of the dying. The faith will start growing in its time, in God’s time.

The Kingdom of God is the growth of God’s rule in human hearts that occurs when man does the will of God and surrenders his life to God. The seed of Faith lies dormant within each of us. When we permit the Holy Spirit to nurture it with TLC (tender loving care), it grows miraculously into gigantic proportions. The growth is slow and microscopic in the beginning. But this seed grows by using the power of the Holy Spirit, given to us through the Word of God, the Mass, the Sacraments, and prayer. As we learn God’s will from His words and try to put these words into practice, we participate in the growth of God’s Kingdom on earth, a growth which will be completed in our Heavenly life. But since we need the special anointing of the Holy Spirit to be doers of the word of God, let us offer our lives before God every day, asking for this special anointing.

 

 OT X (B) Gen 3: 9-15; II Cor 4:13–5:1; Mk 3:20-35 (L/24)

On this tenth Sunday of ordinary time, the Church reminds us that as humans, we all have an existential struggle against evil. The early chapters of the Book of Genesis have much to teach us about why things are as they are today and why we are mostly surrounded by evil. The first reading tells us of the goings on immediately after Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden tree. Is this a true account, exact in every detail? We don’t know as there were no witnesses there taking notes. What we do know is that all mankind is descended from Adam and Eve and that we all bear the stain of their first (the original) sin. We also know that the Holy Spirit guided the human author of this account thousands, if not millions, of years later to set down the theological truths that God wanted to be revealed.

The reading says after the Great Fall, The LORD God then called to the man: where are you? Isn’t God omnipotent? Yes, He is. Doesn’t He know everything? yes, He does. What He is doing is telling the man that He knows something is wrong, and He is inviting the man to tell Him about it. The question really is “Where are you in your relationship to me?” It is always God who issues the invitation to confess our sins to Him – He does it with a little nudge of the conscience. God knows all our sins, but He wants us to verbalize them so that we are sure that we know what they are.

The man’s reply was: “I heard you in the garden. The King James Version says I heard your voice, but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself. He recognized that he was lacking something – it’s not clothing that he was lacking, it’s God’s grace.

Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?  Since they are the only two humans in all creation; God points out that it is his conscience that has pointed out his sin.

God says You have eaten, then, from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!” God now points out what the sin was – he has eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He is now able to recognize that they have done evil and have lost grace.

Then the blame game begins. Adam blames Eve for his state. She blames the serpent. This is so typical of evil. The person who does evil is always looking to implicate other people rather than accept his responsibility for the evil deed. In the Catholic Church we teach our children to take responsibility for their misdeeds as soon as they are able to distinguish right from wrong. That is why we have First Penance at 7 years old. By doing this, we are teaching our children to fight against evil.

Why does God approach the man first? After all, the woman was the first to eat the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:6).

Before God made the woman, He had put the man in the garden to work it and to keep it (Gen 2:15). The Hebrew word (shammar) translated as “keep” can also be translated as “guard” (keep safe). After this commission, then God commands the man not to eat of the tree. If he was to guard the garden, he must guard everything and everyone in it, including his companion; and there must be something to guard against. The man failed to keep the serpent from influencing his wife and himself – he had only one command to obey: Do not eat of the tree.

The command not to eat had been given to the man before the woman was created. The man had instructed the woman, but she did not heed his direction but chose instead to listen to the serpent. She had chosen the serpent over her husband – a form of adultery. Remember that the Bible is all about covenant – family. She ate with the serpent rather than with her husband. She had communion with him.

Then the LORD God said to the serpent: “Because you have done this, you shall be banned from all the animals and from all the wild creatures; On your belly shall you crawl, and dirt shall you eat all the days of your life. The devil will not have influence over any of God’s creation except man (who was made from dirt). The only example we have in the Holy Scripture of demonic possession of animals is in Matthew 8:30-32 (Mark 5:11-13; Luke 8:32-33) where demons enter a herd of swine and then commit suicide rather than be possessed.

God cursed Satan saying, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; He will strike at your head, while you strike at his heel.” Have all women (or men, for that matter) had total separation/rejection between them and Satan? Obviously not, but “the woman” was sinless until this event, and her name is changed to Eve as a result (Gen 3:20). There has been sparring between the devil and mankind ever since. Total enmity occurred when another sinless woman came along; a woman whose own son referred to her as “woman” as a sign of respect, The Blessed Virgin Mary.

On this Sunday, the Church reminds us that as humans, we all have an existential struggle against evil. However, the good news is that, we are illuminated through the assurance of victory, through the seed of the woman (Mary).

In today’s Gospel Jesus is the victim of calumny by his opponents. The scribes say that Jesus has made a pact with the devil and that it’s by the devil's power that he casts out demons. The Lord defends himself by asking quite logically: “How can Satan cast out Satan?” “A household divided against itself cannot stand.”  Jesus points out to them the absurdity of their thinking that he uses the devil to cast out demons. In fact, it is Jesus who ties up the strong man, Beelzebub, and overcomes him. To any honest mind, these miracles proved that he was, at least, a friend of God.

Be sure of this: there is a war which is being waged. Paul says, “We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places” (Eph 6:12). And we, as followers of Christ, have no choice but to be involved. There will be skirmishes in every one of our lives. There will be times when we might think we are losing. We are not losing. The outcome of the war is certain in God’s time, the Son of God will crush the head of the serpent. Trusting in God’s power God has granted us in our baptism, let’s have that confidence to fight the enemy of the human race, and keep him out of our homes and lives. 

 THE MOST HOLY BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST [B]: (Ex 24:3-8, Heb 9:11-15, Mk 14:12-16, 22-26)

Today, we celebrate the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ, popularly known as Corpus Christi. It was introduced in the late 13th century to encourage the faithful to give special adoration to the Holy Eucharist. Why was it necessary to institute a new feast? Doesn't the Church recall the institution of the Eucharist on Holy Thursday? Doesn't she celebrate it every Sunday and, more than that, every day of the year? In fact, Corpus Christi is the first feast whose object is not an event of the life of Christ, but a truth of faith: His real presence in the Eucharist.

Both our first and second readings talk about covenant, sacrifice, and blood. According to the first reading, the old covenant was sealed with the blood of animal sacrifice which Moses sprinkled on the people. On the contrary, the second reading reminds us that the new covenant was sealed with the blood of Christ. While in the first covenant blood was poured on the covenant parties, in the second covenant the sacrificial blood was consumed by the covenant parties. When we receive communion we reaffirm our acceptance of the New Covenant with God. This is more than just saying, “I agree.” Communion is an intimate sharing of the presence of Christ conquering evil on the Cross. We are not just stained with blood. We take the blood of the Lamb within us. We don’t just offer young bulls for sacrifice. We take the sacrifice within us. The sacrifice is the Body of Christ.

 

While the first covenant never guaranteed eternal life, the new one does because it was sealed with costly blood through a perfect sacrifice offered once and for all. In the gospel, Christ instituted the Holy Eucharist. Here he was both the priest and the victim.

There is a danger that believers face at present regarding the Eucharist which is to trivialize it. There was a time when it was not received so frequently, and fasting and confession had to precede it. Today, virtually everyone approaches it. It is normal that participation in Mass also implies Communion; that is why it exists. But all this entails a mortal risk. St. Paul says: Whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord unworthily, will be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord. Let each one examine himself and then eat the bread and drink the cup because he who eats and drinks without discerning eats and drinks judgment unto himself. We cannot receive God except as "God," that is, respecting all His holiness and majesty. Therefore, worthy reception is demanded from the recipients.  A worthy reception will enable us to communicate with Jesus on a deeper level. Every petition we make is heard by the Lord, particularly when he is within us.

Today’s gospel reading describes the moment when Jesus gave the gift of the Eucharist to his first disciples. It was Jesus’ last meal with them, on the evening before he was crucified. At this last supper, Jesus gave himself to his disciples in a way that was distinctive and memorable. The last supper may have been the last in a whole series of meals, but Jesus also intended it to be a beginning, the beginning of what we have come to call the Eucharist. This is why in the earliest account of the Last Supper in one of Paul’s letters, and also in Luke’s gospel, Jesus goes on to say, ‘Do this in memory of me’. In other words, ‘Repeat what I have just said and done’.

The Lord’s giving of himself in love to his disciples at the last supper looked ahead to the gift he would make of himself to them and to all humanity the following day. On the cross, he gave his body and his blood, his entire self, out of love for us all. The love that shone through Jesus on the cross was shining through him at the last supper and continues to shine through him at every Eucharist. That is why Saint Paul could write to the church in Corinth about twenty five years after the last supper, ‘As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes’. At every Eucharist, we are proclaiming the Lord’s death, the Lord’s self-giving love on the cross, and that love becomes present to us in a powerful way. The Lord who gave himself on Calvary gives himself to us at every Eucharist. As at the last supper he called on his disciples to take his gift of himself, the gift of his love, so at every Eucharist he calls on us to take his gift of himself, to receive his love into our lives. The Lord’s love that we are invited to receive at every Eucharist is a costly love, it is the love of one who came not to be served but to serve and to give his life for all. We are sent from the Eucharist to share this costly love that we have received, so that the Lord can continue to serve others through us. The Lord comes to us in the Eucharist to catch us up into the rhythm of his own self-giving love. He comes to us so that he can live in and through us, so that his attitudes and values can take flesh in our daily lives. Because we receive the Eucharist so often, it is easy to overlook the huge commitment we are making to live and spread the Kingdom of God.

 Sharing in the Eucharist places several significant demands on us, calling us to live in ways that reflect the profound spiritual and communal significance of the sacrament.

Sharing in the Eucharist calls us to emulate Christ’s love and sacrifice by serving others. This includes acts of charity, justice, and compassion, particularly towards the poor, marginalized, and those in need. The sacrament strengthens and sends believers out to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world. As we are dismissed today at the end of the Mass, let’s recognize that we are going out with Christ’s hands and feet and heart and mind to reach out to other people as Christ would today.