6th Sunday of Easter - Year A

Acts 8:5-8.14-17; 1Peter 3:15-18; John 14:15-21

Have you seen the programme from America called The Moment of Truth? The questions it raises are far more interesting than the programme itself which, to tell the truth, is disappointingly contrived. Yet the concept is fascinating.

Take an ordinary man or woman and offer them a choice between truth, money, or their own reputation and see what happens. Actually, the results are mostly unedifying and tend to give a bleak picture of the integrity of the contestants.

Presiding over the charade is the god Polygraph whose disembodied female voice judges with heartless and misplaced confidence: That answer is true. That answer is false.

Viewers complacent enough to continue watching beyond the first episodes of this show might eventually come to realise that it deals more often than not in isolated facts about its sacrificial victims, rather than in the truth. Hopefully, as these sit at home counting their loot and coming to terms with their losses they will come to realise they have been duped and not be overpowered by the ugly glimpse they caught of themselves – not in a moment of truth but – in a moment of greed.

Facts are very different from truth, indeed, facts can lie. My photo of myself at 18 looking for all the world like the heart throb of the day, Ricky Nelson, is undeniably a photo of me, but it lies. I have never, sad to say, borne a resemblance to Ricky Nelson. The charcoal cartoon sketch I brought home from Paris, on the other hand, is recognisably me. Somehow, Monsieur Whoever, in a few strokes of genius, captured the truth with a stick of charcoal and anyone seeing his work exclaims: Hey, that’s you!

The Pharisees bring to Jesus a woman caught in the very act of adultery – no doubt at all about the facts – and now she deserves to die. Jesus looks at her and sees the truth – so very different from the facts – and refuses to condemn her. The tax collector Matthew sits at the counting house despised by all and yet Jesus, seeing the truth about Matthew, calls him into his most intimate circle.

God alone knows the truth about us – we can only know facts - that's why no man can judge another.

Pontius Pilate was totally baffled by the concept 'truth', the Pharisees failed to recognise it when it stared them lovingly in the face, the Greeks laughed at it for its simplicity, Judas sold it not for $500,000 but for thirty pieces of silver. Jesus bore faithful witness to it and then gave his life for it.

Truth is the only real power in this world. That is why Jesus, on leaving his disciples, gave them not courage or eloquence but the Spirit of truth. That would be all they needed - they would be invincible - and the gates of hell would not prevail against them.

I shall ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you for ever, that Spirit of truth whom the world can never receive…

Truth is like gravity, always drawing us back to itself. It needs no army to defend it – it cannot be overcome – only struggled against. Truth is the very power of being – written into the DNA of our existence – nor can it be 'genetically modified.'

When we fight truth we fight ourselves and take ourselves captive. When we believe the truth, surrender to truth, speak the truth, do the truth, we truly become who we were created to be – we become like Jesus. This is because ultimately and inescapably, in the Christian view, the truth is a person, a man with a name – Jesus – a man who is God.

This man showed us in his life, death and resurrection that only truth will stand eternally – because it brings us into communion with God who is Truth – and who is Eternal. All falsehood is doomed eventually to pass away.

Truth has many names, all the names of God – Love, Mercy, Justice, Light, Life.

Truth is constantly searching for us. It seeks to dwell in human hearts and to become act in human lives. The deeds of truth are many - service, obedience, sacrifice, forgiveness, while the greatest expression of truth is the love that keeps the commandments of God.

If you love me you will keep my commandments.

Obedience to God’s commandments is a non-negotiable for the lover of truth - it is the path to Life.

The loving eyes of Jesus see the truth about each one of us. As John 2:25 says: he never needed evidence about any man; he could tell what a man had in him.

How disconcerting! To be gazed at by the eyes of truth! And yet - how comforting! There is one who can understand me, penetrate my defences, untangle my self-deceptions, look beyond the facts, and offer me a Way to freedom from my greatest enemy - untruth. And that Way is himself - the Truth and the Life.

22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A

Jeremiah 20:7-9; Romans 12:1-2; Matthew 16:21-27

The word seduction is defined in the dictionary as: leading someone out of the way, persuading them into surrender.

In our readings today there seems to be quite a lot of seduction going on.

• Jeremiah is seduced by God into speaking the difficult word of repentance to his stubborn people.

• The pagan world of St Paul's era was seducing Christians into behaving like pagans.

• And Peter is trying to seduce Jesus out of the way of his plan of suffering – which is the plan of God.

And where is the battlefield in which this struggle to seduce one another takes place?

Paul warns: Do not model your selves on the behaviour of the world around you but let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind.

The battlefield is the mind; change a man’s way of thinking and you change his behaviour.

To Peter Jesus says: Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God's way but man's (Mt 16:23).

To convert his followers Jesus has to lead them out of their mind; he had to persuade them to surrender their way of thinking; this is not easy to do.

As a priest I try my hardest to show people the importance of thinking the way God thinks which is the way the Church thinks; I practically beg them to let God form their minds. What stands in the way is always that most treasured possession of ours - our own opinion!

We all love our opinions; we are terribly attached to them; we treat them as the final word on any subject. Nothing is more sad than the man or woman totally trapped in his or her own opinion, victims of what they think they know. They are like people floating in an ocean filled with sharks, oblivious to the dangers, and treating would-be rescuers as wicked enemies. How tragic!

A survey conducted by the Pew Forum between May and August 2007 on more than 35,000 American adults revealed that 48% of Catholic respondents favour legal abortion (16% in all cases, 32% in most cases), while only 18% agree that abortion should always be illegal. 58% said that society should accept homosexuality.

At the very least these figures show that a huge number of Catholics no longer think as Catholics; although they vigorously insist on identifying themselves as such. Their thinking is now ‘man’s way’, the thinking of the world. They do not understand, or perhaps they do, that they have broken with the Catholic Church; they are no longer in communion with the Catholic Church’s teaching; they have become something else!

The thinking of the world has invaded our Catholic Church and it terrifies me.

Are the words of Jesus only ‘his opinion’? Is the teaching of the Church only ‘her opinion’? Am I standing here week after week, year after year, telling you ‘my opinions’? Well if I am, you must have a lot of time to waste; you must have a very boring existence; I suggest you need to go and get yourself a life.

Opinions cannot save you! They may entertain you but they cannot save you. Truth alone can save you; only absolute truth can lead you to God. And let me remind those of you who call yourselves Catholics and yet obstinately, wilfully, deliberately express your erroneous opinions to the young and the ignorant, and cause them to fall into sin, that Jesus said: Anyone who is an obstacle to bring down one of these little ones who have faith, would be better thrown into the sea with a great millstone round his neck (Mark 9:42).

If you have been keeping up with the events at St Mary’s Catholic Parish in South Brisbane you have there a prime example of exactly what I am speaking of. Two priests leading an entire congregation out of communion with the Catholic Church. They justify themselves with specious ‘feel good’ arguments but all the time they are drifting away from truth, the authority of the Archbishop, and disappearing over the horizon, taking many with them.

Archbishop Bathersby has written: St Mary’s seems to be an authority to itself. Despite the good that it does, it places itself outside the practice of the Catholic Church. Therefore we might well ask is it a parish in communion with the Roman Catholic Church, or a community in schism. [ .. ] In reality St Mary’s South Brisbane has taken a Roman Catholic parish and established its own brand of religion.

Let me ask you here today: Have you established in your mind your ‘own brand of religion’; your own brand of the Catholic faith? Is your thinking Catholic?

It is not important how great the number of people who think the wrong way, it’s still the wrong way. If the whole world believed abortion or any other grave sin was acceptable, it would still be a grave sin. To put it another way, the truth has never depended on the number of people prepared to believe it, it is still always the truth. I would hate for any Catholic to live, or worse still to die, on the wrong side of the truth.

Our task as Catholic Christians is to ‘put on’ the mind of Christ. We do this by thinking as the Church thinks, by believing what the Church believes and living the moral life of Catholic disciples, following in the footsteps of the Master. I urge all of you to ‘think again’ and if you have drifted, clinging to your ‘opinion’, swim back to the truth, to the barque of Peter, the Church; this is the place of salvation.

5th Sunday of Easter - Year A

Acts 6:1-7; 1Peter 2:4-9; John 14:1-12

Jesus has dropped a bombshell. He is leaving his disciples behind and where he is going they cannot come. The disciples are deeply troubled and Jesus knows it. Peter, almost frantic, questions his Master: Where are you going? Jesus assures him he will come later but Peter insists: Why can’t I follow you now?

The thought of being without the Lord is obviously too much for the Apostles. Jesus is aware of their distress but can comfort them only to the extent that his Father’s plan allows: Where I am going you cannot follow me now; you will follow me later.

The unalterable truth settles into them. Jesus sees their anguish and gently consoles them: Do not let your hearts be troubled.

These few words, because they are from the Master are already enormously comforting. This is the Jesus who calmed the sea, who fed the hungry thousands, who brought life to a dead man. This is the Jesus who faced every difficulty with unshakeable composure and interior recollection. They had faced many dangers and difficulties with him and they knew who it was now saying to them: Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me.

What wonderful words! We should let them be spoken to every one of our difficult human experiences:

• When the doctor diagnoses a terminal illness
• When a loved one dies unexpectedly
• When a pregnancy miscarries
• When a precious relationship ends
• When a sinner suddenly sees what his sins deserve
• When the world seems to be crashing around our ears

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me.

The effective power of these words lies in their origin, their source. They come from the mouth of Jesus, the Word of God, who speaks only the words of God. Jesus invites us to shift our focus from the disaster before us to him – and to trust that his word is the greater, the more real.

His leaving is unavoidable but it has a context of hope.

• I have come so that they may have life and have it to the full. (Jn 10:10)
• I am going now to prepare a place for you… (Jn 14:2)
• I shall return to take you with me… (Jn 14:3)

We clearly see that all Jesus does is done for us: he came for us, he is leaving for us, he will return for us – and why? – so that where I am you may be too. This is the whole reason for all that Jesus has done and is doing for us - so that we might be with him. But let’s be clear about one thing, it’s not so much that Jesus has gone to prepare us a place but rather that he is preparing us for a place in heaven. Jesus is not preparing heaven for us but preparing us for heaven.

Thomas does not seem to hear Jesus say that he will return to take them with him. He seems to think he will have to find the way himself and bluntly informs Jesus that he knows neither the destination nor the way.

As Thomas’ unbelief gave us those magnificent words: My Lord and my God, so now his incomprehension elicits from Jesus the awe-inspiring, inexpressibly profound self revelation: I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.

What man has ever dared make such a claim? From which other man would such a claim be accepted and believed? On the lips of Jesus these unbelievable words are eminently believable – they resonate with all the power of their truth. The Father is the destination; the Son is the Way. No one can come to the Father except through me, says Jesus.

The theological and Christological dimensions of this saying of Jesus are enormous. Whole shelves of books have been written on them. However, I will confine myself to that aspect of his words with which we began, Jesus’ desire to reassure his grieving disciples at the moment when all their hopes appeared to be on the point of being shattered.

I am the Way – not the path you have chosen for yourself. When you see your path blocked, your hopes fade, your desires thwarted, as surely, sooner or later you will, remember then – I am the Way.

I am the Truth – not the material circumstances of your life. All that you see around you, all that happens to you, all that appears to be real in the world is not ultimately real, not the final truth about life. I, and only I, am the Truth.

I am the Life – not your concerns and your busy activities, not your efforts to 'achieve' and your desperate clinging to life here on earth. One day your human life and the life of your loved ones will fail. It will be a moment of great distress. At that time remember and be at peace because, I am the Life.