29th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B

Isaiah 53:10-11; Hebrews 4:14-16; Mark 10:35-45

The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering.

What strange words these are at first sight! Just to harass an employee, let alone to ‘crush a servant with suffering’, is a chargeable offence in our country. On the lips of the prophet Isaiah, however, these words are not what they seem; they are instead words of wisdom, love and mercy and they seek to radically correct our all too human way of thinking.

• Firstly, they cause us to question ourselves about whether we really believe that God is good.

For many of us it seems the jury is still out on this question. Every bad experience, every hurt or suffering, every unhappy news report of a volcano or tsunami or earthquake makes it plain that we have not yet confidently and totally reached the conviction that God is good. ‘How could God do this? How could God allow this? Why does God not put an end to this?’

Many years ago, as a seminary student, I reached a point where I came to believe I could not go on to ordination. I had given up a teaching career and a house and I was very angry with God. I complained to him one night in a way that now causes me to blush with shame. I blamed God for causing me this humiliation and I told him so in no uncertain terms. When God’s response finally came I was utterly stupefied at his goodness and mercy towards me. Immediately I experienced the most intense remorse and vowed I would never again blame God for anything!

I had learned that God is good; that God is good when the sun is shining and when dark clouds blanket our lives. He is good when all is going well and he is good when disaster strikes. As Job affirmed: Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. (13:15)

When a man truly believes that God is good, and when this belief in God’s goodness, like a solid foundation stone, is firmly in place in his life there is a great peace and a great strength which comes to him. No more anxieties or doubts and no more criticisms. Our God is good!

• Secondly, these words cause us to question ourselves as to who is servant and who is Lord.

We may notionally acknowledge that God is Lord and that we are the servants but in actuality we often seem to live and pray as though it’s really the other way round. That’s one of the reasons we get so angry and frustrated when he doesn’t seem to be answering our prayers the way we want him to, or when our plans are thwarted.

The wise man says: If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.

The good God is not my servant; I am his servant. I am here to do his will and wait on his plans for me. Let’s get this straight in our minds and hearts once and for all.

In many of us, also, there is a de facto understanding that God is the one who must do our will and bend to our agenda and belief system.

‘God must save everyone and must not allow anyone to go to hell.’ Oh, really? You don’t say? 'God condones homosexual acts because God is inclusive.’ Actually, he doesn’t - and he isn’t. ‘A good God would never allow anyone to suffer like that.’ Ok, so what do those words mean: The Lord has been pleased to crush his servant with suffering?

A servant listens to his Master and obeys his word; he doesn’t put words in his Master’s mouth.

• Thirdly, these words cause us to reassess our notions about suffering.

No person in his right mind would claim that suffering is good in itself; certainly it is evil, and we Christians claim that it entered our lives because we misused our gift of freedom; we wanted to set our own limits, to be our own god. Suffering now accompanies almost every move we make; we are born in suffering and we die in suffering.

And yet there is a positive dimension to it all. Suffering can bring good. It dogs our footsteps but it can become an instrument of healing and growth; it can bring us to come to resemble the Lord himself, who learnt to obey through suffering. (Heb 5:8)

His sufferings brought him to perfect obedience, redemptive obedience, and our sufferings can lead us to come to bear a likeness to him.

As the vintner is pleased to crush the grapes (with suffering) so that he can transform them into wine, we too can be transformed if we accept, in the Lord, the sufferings involved in our own purification. We, too, shall become wine, pure and fragrant, and after that we live in the Christian hope that our good God will say over us the words, ‘This is my Body, this is my Blood’ and our transformation will be complete.

The Triumph of the Cross - Year A

Numbers 21:4-9; Philippians 2:6-11; John 3:13-17

The Cross in our lives usually occupies the same space we put all the other unpleasant, unwanted things – disappointments, hurts, humiliations, failures - all the burdensome things we don't want to remember, all the broken relationships and sufferings of our lives. Needless to say it's not a pleasant spot to go; it's a dark, uncomfortable place, to be avoided at all costs.

This is what makes today’s feast so puzzling – The Triumph of the Cross. Even for Christians it’s not an easy thing to make sense of, while for the godless world which seeks to avoid the Cross at all times it’s just sheer madness.

This lack of understanding of the Cross and its place in our Christian lives lies at the heart of our difficulties with it. St Peter was the first to reject it: 'Heaven preserve you, Lord;' he said 'this must not happen to you'. Jesus quickly rebuked him but it was a long time before Peter understood. The trouble is, the Cross is God’s way of thinking but not ours.

St Paul seems to have learned more easily: As for me, the only thing I can boast about is the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…(Gal 6:14).

But even Paul recognised that the Cross was to the Jews an obstacle that they cannot get over, to the pagans madness… (1Cor1:23). He said also: The language of the Cross may be illogical to those who are not on the way to salvation, but those of us who are on the way see it as God's power to save. (1Cor 1:18).

God’s power to save! A little later (vs. 24) he calls it the power and the wisdom of God.

Jesus himself said: Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me (Mt 10:38).

At another time he said: If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me (Mt 16:24).

The people at the foot of the Cross of Calvary totally rejected the Cross and yelled: …come down from the Cross!(Mt 27:40)

The chief priests with the scribes and elders made it a condition of faith in Jesus: …let him come down from the Cross now, and we will believe in him (Mt 27:42).

Whatever way you look at it, our relationship to the Cross is a defining reality of our Christian life. This is borne out almost every day in my work as a hospital chaplain. There I meet Catholics who no longer believe in God’s goodness, or even his existence, because of the Cross they must carry; while others, like Mrs Grixti, adrift on an ocean of intense pain, can look up at me and say with gut-wrenching conviction, ‘God is so good. God is so good.’

I know I’m digressing here but one reason for it all is the fact that all too often our faith is dependent – our faith depends. I remember the man who stopped believing ‘because of the war’. I remember the young mother who wanted to believe but every time she went to church something bad seemed to happen. Then there was the old man who could no longer believe because his son was killed by a runaway car; and the woman who came to believe because a prayer was answered.

Very few people believe in the existence of God with a faith that is ‘sovereign’, that is, independent of changing circumstances and experiences. People who say: I believe God exists because God exists.

On the way through the wilderness the Israelites lost patience. They spoke against God and against Moses … .

To lose patience with God or to speak against God is the same as losing faith in him; the Israelites lost faith. As the NAB translation of Psalm 106:13 says so eloquently: …they soon forgot all he had done; they had no patience for his plan; and it’s precisely God’s ‘plan’ that is the key to understanding the Cross.

At this point in our reflection I can’t present you with a fully developed theology of the Cross, rather let me outline again our Christian faith in the power of God who reconciled us to God and made peace by his death on the cross (c.f. Eph 2:16 and Col 1:20).

There is no hope we can ever understand this reconciliation or this peace which Christ won for us, if we don’t have a lively appreciation of the debt humanity was in through the sin of Adam and Eve. Through that Original Sin the floodgates of suffering and death were opened and mankind found itself helpless to restore the innocence and harmony which it had forfeited.

The plan of God was to enter the suffering itself and take it to himself in Jesus.

He has overridden the Law, and cancelled every record of the debt that we had to pay; he has done away with it by nailing it to the Cross (Col 2:14). In this way he opened for us the way to heaven.

He was bearing our faults in his own body on the Cross, so that we might die to our faults and live for holiness; through his wounds you have been healed (1Pet 2:24).

And now he says to each one of us, ‘Do not be afraid. Retrieve all those discarded sufferings, your Cross. Gather them all up and follow me. They are your salvation now, because I have made suffering the greatest possible expression of love open to man. Your sufferings are invaluable when you bear them with me and they will lead you to eternal life.’

Palm Sunday - Year A

Isaiah 50:4-7; Philippians 2:6-11; Matthew 26:14-27:66

The Passion began at the Last Supper when Judas left the room. Jesus goes on peacefully speaking encouraging words to his disciples but we know he is stunned by the callous ingratitude and infidelity of his disciple. All you who have been betrayed by a friend will readily know how Jesus felt – and the closer the friend, the deeper the pain.

They rise from table and he takes them to the Garden of Gethsemane. A growing sadness overcomes his features and he begins now to agonise with a heart sorrowful to the point of death – they fall asleep. Have you ever seen indifference on the face of a friend to whom you were confiding some hurt or anxiety of your life? You will know how Jesus felt.

He goes back into the garden and begs his Father to spare him the torture of the Cross – not just the physical pains but the unbearable thought that for some souls this would all be in vain. Covered with the sins of humanity Jesus seeks the face of his Father but his Father can no longer bear to look at his Son, disfigured by sin, and he turns away. Jesus accepts the Father’s will even in this. Have you ever felt God was not listening to you, that he had actually turned away from you? You will know just a tiny bit how Jesus felt.

Judas now arrives and with a kiss hands him over to the cohort to be arrested. They have come with spears and clubs as though to arrest a violent criminal. Jesus is bound and dragged away – humiliated. Have you ever been falsely accused and treated like a criminal? You have begun to know how Jesus felt.

The disciples, his special friends, run away and leave him in the hands of the mob. Jesus is now alone, totally unsupported, undefended. Have you had the experience of watching your friends melt away in the face of some accusation brought against you – leaving you all alone? You will know how Jesus felt.

Jesus is brought before the High Priest, the religious leaders of his time. They sneer at him and reject him and accuse him falsely, even seeking his life. Jesus suffers this horror in silence. Have you ever been misunderstood or even falsely accused or wrongly punished by a religious leader – the one who should be your shepherd rather than the destroyer of your rights? You will know how Jesus felt.

Peter, the leader of the Apostles, denies Jesus three times. How painful this must have been for Jesus who pierces him with such a loving look that Peter goes away and weeps bitterly. Have you ever experienced the pain of becoming invisible to your friends because they did not want others to know they were close to you? Then you will know how Jesus felt.

Jesus is brought before Pilate, the civil authority, and again falsely accused. Pilate is weak and sentences him to death, knowing him to be innocent. Have you ever been punished because your boss couldn’t stand up to his staff? You will know how Jesus felt.

Rejected by the religious authority as well as the civil authority Jesus is now rebuffed by the people he spent himself serving. They demand that Barabbas, a convicted criminal be set free – as though to add to their scorn. How humbly Jesus accepted this, despite the hurt! If you have ever been wrongly punished while the guilty party goes free you will know how Jesus felt.

Now Jesus is handed over to the soldiers, men who promised on oath to give their lives to protect the freedom and rights of citizens. As a common criminal he is mocked, spat upon, struck and humiliated by them. He is savagely flogged for crimes he didn’t commit. Crowned with a mock crown of thorns and made to carry his Cross to his own crucifixion.

How did he endure it all? How did he put up with it? What power enabled him to drink this bitter cup to the end? Of course, it was the power of his love for us, the power of his love for you and for me. How little we understand this and how urgently do we need this to change! The saints tell us the remedy lies in regular meditation on the Passion of Jesus. They say that bit by bit our lives will be transformed.