Four minute homilies

The Ascension 

            The church that marks the place where tradition says Jesus left the earth flying up to heaven has an octogonal shape, with a circular dome. In the old days the roof was open and you could see the sky. On the floor there is a glass covering the rock where Jesus’ feet touched our ground for the last time. It is a reflection of how we should live our lives: with our feet firmly anchored on earth and our eyes constantly fixed on heaven. On the rock you can see the marks of Jesus’ feet, most likely carved by a pious Christian, who missed the figure of the man of God. The church sits on top of the Mount of Olives, close to the garden of Gethsemane, where everything began, when Jesus felt the agony during his prayer. When Jesus was lifted up towards heaven, he blessed his apostles as a last gesture: everything should begin and finish with prayer. We see the beginning and the end of Jesus passion: through the cross, we reach our resurrection.

            What is Jesus telling us today before he goes up to heaven? What is his last will? “Now it is your turn. I’m going, but I’m leaving you here in charge. I gave you the Gospel, now you can pass it on to others. No worries, you are not going to be alone. I’ll be with you till the end of time.” This is what the angels reminded the apostles, when they were looking towards the sky, after Jesus flew away. Maybe they thought he was going to come back again, as he had done during these days after the resurrection. They were waiting for him, without knowing what to do, paralysed. Jesus had to send his angels to wake them up and to tell them: “Go back to Jerusalem and begin to work. Your days of glory with Jesus are finished. Now it is Mission Impossible.”

            Saint Luke says that after Jesus left them, the apostles returned to Jerusalem with great joy. They knew Jesus wasn’t coming back, but they didn’t go back to the city discouraged, or downcast, because they trusted that Jesus was going to be with them for ever. They had only to wait for few years to be reunited with him again, and with the other apostles together in their glorious bodies. Meanwhile Jesus was going to walk with each one of them, while preaching the Gospel around the known world.

            Our lives here on earth are never fulfilled. There is always something missing. There is a point of frustration when we experience the lack of perfection, an awareness of everything passing by, an impossibility of stopping our magic moments from disappearing. This is why God has placed in our hearts a longing for heaven, a timeless eternity, a desire for an infinite and definitive encounter. Jesus is gone, but he left us with a spark, a passing shooting star, a tiny thirst for him, because he wants to be with us for ever. Something we can never quash or delete completely.

            Can you imagine the welcome Jesus received in heaven when he arrived there? It is impossible for us to imagine because heaven is not a place but a state. Nevertheless with our imperfect and earthly  human intellect, we can try every year to go to heaven on this day to witness the big welcoming party, a countless multitude of angels and saints, all these people that have been waiting for him for centuries, with plenty of time to prepare an amazing feast.

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Love one another

            Today in the Gospel Jesus lifts the level of his message to an impossible height: love one another as I have loved you. God loves us with divine love, without measure; his love is infinite. He even gave his life for us. But how can we love others with his love, if we are not God? Precisely, when we love God, he lends us his love. God is love and any love is a participation in his love. We cannot love others as he does, but we can love others with his love.

            To love one another is the summary of the Christian message. They used to say of the early Christians: look how much they love each other. It is a sign of our love for God. Saint Augustine says that if we do not love our neighbor that we can see, how can we love God that we cannot see. All the saints show a special love for others. They are very attractive to us. We can love somebody out there, an imaginary friend, an actress that we will never see, a beautiful photoshop image, an Instagram character. But your brother, your sister, your boss, your spouse, your client, your colleague, they are the ones we need to love. And our love for God pushes us towards them, without excuses.

            We normally love ourselves first, then others, normally for what they can do for us, and then we love God, just in case he exists. We need to turn things around, to turn our socks inside out. This is the Christian transformation. The love of God sets our priorities right, makes the pieces of the puzzle fit together, shows the full picture. After Peter’s denial, Jesus asked him: Do you love me more than these? Yes Lord. Then you can look after my sheep. Once you love me with your whole heart, then you can love others with true love.

            But how can I love people I don’t like? Saint Therese has a beautiful story. There was a grumpy old nun in her convent that everybody tried to avoid. She, overcoming her natural antipathy, tried her best to love her. So much so that one day this nun approached her and asked her what did she find in her: “Whenever we meet you give me such a gracious smile.” Saint Therese said to herself: “What attracted me? It was Jesus hidden in the depths of her soul, Jesus who makes attractive even what is most bitter.” We are brothers and sisters, and love comes from the will: we can love whoever we want. At the beginning it is an attraction, we feel that we connect better with some people than others. but with time it is a choice.

            Two practical things: try not to get upset and not to judge. Bring into your prayer the people or the things that make you angry. We normally don’t have our priorities right, or we put other things before God. We get upset because things go wrong, people let us down. When we let Jesus be the boss, we are normally more content with the outcome. If our expectations are very high, we are ready for a crash. When we try to control everything, something always will go wrong. Try not to judge. Pope Francis says: “Before you judge look at yourself in the mirror.” We don’t have the task of judging; nobody has appointed us a judge of others. The one who judges is the Lord who knows everything.

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The Vine and the Branches

             Jesus loves to talk in parables. He finds us a bit slow to grasp things and tries to find comparisons for us to understand better and deeper the things of God. It is not easy for him to talk about the other life. A vineyard was very precious in the ancient world. People risked their lives to possess them. For us it is just a business. But for them it was their livelihood. It produced wine, grapes and raisins, fruit and drink for the whole year, when many times water was scarce and polluted. A vineyard was an asset for life.

            The Old Testament already used this image. Psalm 80 speaks of the uprooting of the vine in Egypt and its establishment in another land: “You brought a vine out of Egypt; you drove away the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground; it took root and filled the land.” In the book of Isaiah God complains that despite the care he has lavished on it, his vineyard has yielded only wild grapes. Jesus uses this image of the vineyard in his parable of the murderous tenants to explain how the Jews rejected Jesus. Here the comparison is different, more personal. Jesus is the true vine, because the old vine, the chosen people, has been succeeded by the new vine, the Church.

            This parable has to do with producing fruit, the fruit God wants us to produce. Two very simple questions we need to ask ourselves: Am I producing anything worthwhile? Am I producing the fruit God wants me to yield? We need to be sincere. It is easy to fool ourselves. Of course, we are doing something, working, earning some money, but maybe it is not what God wants from us. It could be just wild grapes. We all feel we are not producing enough, a small percentage of what we should. We need to examine ourselves to see how we can increase our output.

            This parable tells us the secret of how to be fruitful. It is very simple: to be united to the vine, united to Jesus; the more we are in union, the more fruit. It all has to do with words synonymous of union: immersion, intimacy, identification, indwelling. Interesting, all these words begin with the word “in”, which gives the impression of us being introduced into Jesus Christ, centering ourselves around him. Saint Paul talks about becoming Jesus Christ, the same Christ, Ipse Christus. How can this happen? It has to do with letting Christ live in us, letting Jesus be our boss. Do we allow Jesus to come into our lives? It is a bit like letting Jesus into our own car. But we can just place him at the back, or in the passenger seat, or maybe even in the boot. We should let him be in control, actually driving our car.

            Every winter the vines are pruned. You need to know how to do it. The next crop depends on a good pruning. The vines that are pruned look naked, devoid of any branches. It is a completely different sight, the vines in winter, bare and brown, and in full bloom during summer, lush and green. We too need to be pruned, to suffer our own cross, to experience obstacles and difficulties, to produce more. If we don’t allow Jesus to prune us, or if we rebel against his will, we are not going to produce what God wants from us.

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The Good Shepherd 

            Today we look at Jesus as the Good Shepherd. It is a beautiful image that comes from the Old Testament. King David was a shepherd before he became a king, and Jesus called himself the son of David, because he was a direct descendant. The Gospels give us plenty of details about who the Good Shepherd is. Jesus says of himself: “I am the gate. Whoever enters through me will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.” We go to heaven through Jesus Christ. We cannot bypass him. He is the way, the gate and the sheepfold.

            Jesus is the true gate. As long as we go in and out through him, we are safe. Life is like a big room with many doors to be opened, to be tried, to find happiness. We can choose any one, but we don’t know where they will lead. Some are better than others. We need to be careful not to go through a door that can lead us astray. Some of the doors are beautiful, even attractive, mysterious, but we know where they could lead us. We have learnt by experience, we have tried some and we have found them lacking. We Christians are lucky: we know which one is the only true gate: Jesus Christ. He is the only one who can lead us to green pastures. He knows where they are and he knows the good ones. We all want to be happy, but we look for happiness often in the wrong places. We need to be aware that some pastures are poisonous, some grasses are venomous like snakes, some food is not good for our spiritual health. Good pastures are difficult to find. Sometimes we have to cross deserts to reach them. We need to trust Jesus and follow him to come across those oasis that are difficult to find.

            Jesus also says that we need to hear his voice. It is the best way not to go astray. It is so easy to get lost, to become the famous lost sheep of the parable. If we keep hearing his voice, we follow his footsteps, as we speed along, and this means we are on the right path. When we get distracted, when we are curious, or we want to play with fire, one of his whistles can bring us back to the path. It is normally a good confession, a timely book, a good movie, a deep conversation with a friend. Jesus has a beautiful voice, easy to hear.

            He knows us one by one, by our names. For him we are not a number; we are unique, irreplaceable, one of a kind. When we look at the other sheep, we can think that we are all the same, that we cannot be distinguished from one another. Sheep always go together to defend themselves. But for Jesus we have a distinctive shape, our personality, our character. He is ready to leave the other ninety-nine and go out looking for us. He is calling us, shouting our name, trying to find us in the forest, and he keeps looking until he finds us. Then he places us on his shoulders and bring us back to the sheepfold. If we hide from his calls, then he cannot find us. It is up to us to go back to him.

            Other shepherds are not interested in us. They look after the sheep for money. They are not going to defend us against the wolves. They are not going ahead of us, but behind, throwing stones at us. They don’t know our names, they don’t care about the green pastures, they sleep at night. If we get lost, they don’t come looking for us. Jesus is the opposite; he is the true good shepherd. He really wants us to reach the eternal sheepfold.

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Serenity

            The apostles were afraid and locked themselves into the upper room for fear of the Jews. Their leader had been killed and now his opponents were going for his minions. In spite of some news about Jesus’ resurrection, they were huddled in fear behind locked doors, all together not knowing what to do. We too are afraid of the future, worried about what could happen, insecure about our qualities, with fear of failure, self-centred in our sins, and we lock up ourselves just like an oyster. We become anxious and paralysed. And Jesus going through the walls appeared in the midst of them like a magic trick, with his glorious body. Maybe we cannot break away, but Jesus can, if we let him in. The power of God can break any wall, obstacle, or defence we place in front of him. He is the only one who can set us free.

            The first thing Jesus says: “Peace be with you.” Be at peace, Shalom. Without peace we cannot pray, we cannot serve God. When we are too concerned about something, when there is something that occupies our mind, we cannot connect with God, we are not able to listen to his voice. When we are angry, when we feel insecure, we cannot see God as a Father. On the contrary: we can be upset with him. When we have lost control of ourselves, when we are all over the place, we need to go back to Jesus and allow him to come in and say: Peace be with you! Many times we are not ready for that.

            Saint John XXIII wrote the Ten Commandments of Serenity. He begins each of them with these words: just for today. It is a reminder of how important is the present time. Forget about the past: we have gone to confession. No worries about the future: it is in God’s hands. Think about just for today. Focus your mind in the here and now. Children are the only ones who live in the present. Young people live in the future, looking forward about something; old people live in the past, regretting or blaming themselves for something. God has everything in his presence.

            Saint John XXIII says that when he was elected Pope, at the beginning he couldn’t sleep because of the problems of the Church. One night he received an interior inspiration: “Who governs the Church? You or the Holy Spirit?” From then on he slept very well, so much so that he had to set an alarm to wake himself up from his afternoon nap. If we look after the things of God, He will look after us. We need to take it for granted that He is always in control.

            Saints put all their attention into whatever they were doing at that moment, 100% focused in that particular task. That’s why when you were in the presence of John Paul II, you thought that time had stopped or at least slowed down, and you could explain two minutes in two hours. This time of Easter we need to look at Jesus as the Risen Christ, who comes to us with Easter Joy and says: be serene, be tranquil, no worries; sleep and be merry. I’ll worry for you. Look at the sleeping Saint Joseph. While he was sleeping peacefully, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him all he had to do. God tells us what we need to know in due time. We would like to know the future, but it is in God’s hands. Be patient; everything will be revealed if we are at peace.

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Thomas

            On Sunday morning the disciples were together with the doors locked for fear of the Jews, and Jesus came in through the wall. He stood in their midst and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his wounds, all opened in front of them. He didn’t want to hide them. There they were, naked without shame. They were healed, but still open, light shining through them. Jesus was smiling, proud of them, showing them like medals. His hands, palms first, and his feet, bare without shoes, for them to see the holes of the nails. He even opened his garments to show the big wound in his side. Once Saint Josemaria asked the sculptor who was carving an image of Jesus risen from the dead, to emphasised his wounds on the marble, saying: I need to see them. This is how we normally represent Jesus after the resurrection, coming to us with his full body on display.

            Why did Jesus show his wounds to the apostles after the resurrection? Four reasons that I can think off. First to show them it was Jesus himself: it is me! I am the same, but different. They were also the proof of his crucifixion. He couldn’t come back to them with no marks; they would have thought he was a ghost. They say that martyrs keep the marks of their torture in their glorified bodies. This is how we represent them, Saint Lucy showing us her eyes on a platter, Saint Sebastian with arrows all through his body, Saint Lawrence holding his grill, Saint Catherine of Alexandria with her spiked wheel. When our Lord appeared to Saint Teresa of Avila as the risen Lord, she said he was the devil. They asked her: How did you know it? She said: He had no wounds.

            Secondly, to show them how much he loved them: these are the proofs of my love for you, you can see the signs. They will be with me forever, as a permanent testimony of me being crazy about you. Like those mothers who have gone through a Caesarean section to have their babies, show their scars years later to their kids, a proof of how they came into the world.

            Thirdly, please, don’t do it again. This is your doing; look at what you have done to me. Every time you sin you are widening my wounds. We feel bad when we see his wounds. We would have liked them to disappear: out of sight, out of mind. We prefer those sweet images of Jesus, peaceful and smiling. We don’t like to see his wounds, a reminder of all our iniquities.

            Fourthly, he opened these wounds in his flesh for us to find refuge. He could have left the nails there, but he wanted them to be free, with open access. We have five doors, five entrances to his humanity. Five places, one specially very close to his heart, where we can find love, atonement and consolation. We have a long tradition of saints showing us how to heal our own scars, going through Jesus’ ones. If he went through his sufferings being innocent, what about us? We are the guilty ones. He became broken to repair our brokenness. As the prophet Isaiah says: “Through his wounds we have been healed.” Going through his wounds, our ones become a source of pride, medals that show a bit of own sufferings for him, a way to give something back.

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Easter Sunday 

            Saint John arrived first at the tomb because he was younger and could run faster. Saint Jerome says that the wings of celibacy allowed John arrive first. But he did not go in, out of deference to Peter. This is an indication that Peter was already regarded as the leader of the Apostles. “He saw and believed.” What did he see? The linen on the ground. John knew Jesus well and he could say his body wasn’t stolen. You can go to a room in your house and say: I know who’s been here. The dishes are all on the sink, her clothes are all over her room, he’s been in the kitchen because all the chocolate is gone.

            “The linen clothes lying there.” The Greek participle translated as ‘lying there’ seems to indicate that the clothes were flattened, deflated, as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose and disappeared, as if it had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being unrolled, passing right through them, just as later he entered the Cenacle or upper room when the doors where shut. This would explain the clothes being ‘fallen’, ‘flat’, ‘lying’, which is how the Greek literally translates them, after Jesus’ body, which had filled them, left them. One can readily understand how this would amaze a withness, how unforgettable the scene would be. You don’t steal a body and leave what’s around him there.

            “The napkin rolled up in a place by itself.” The first point to note is that the napkin, which had been wrapped round the head, was not on top of the clothes, but placed on one side. The second, even more surprising thing is that, like the clothes, it was still rolled up but, unlike the clothes, it still had a certain volume, like a container, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments: this is what the Greek participle, here translated as ‘rolled’, seems to indicate. From these details concerning the empty tomb one deduces that Jesus’ body must have risen in a heavenly manner, that is, in a way which transcended the laws of nature. It was not only a matter of the body being reanimated as happened, for example, in the case of Lazarus, who had to be unbound before he could walk.

            We remember now the Holy Shroud, the famous relic in Turin. John Paul II said that  “the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI had a lot of devotion to Holy Saturday because he was baptised on this day: “this sacred Cloth can nourish and foster faith and reinvigorate Christian devotion because it spurs us to go to the Face of Christ, to the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ, to contemplate the Paschal Mystery, the heart of the Christian message.” People go to see the shroud to contemplate Jesus’ face. To see God, to contemplate the face of Jesus Christ, to be eternally happy through the vision of the divine glory, is the human being’s deepest desire, although millions of people are unaware of this aspiration. 

            The evangelists talk about the empty tomb. It means that Jesus is alive. It is very important for our faith. It is the icon of the resurrection. Tradition says that Jesus appeared first to His Mother. It was so obvious that the evangelists didn’t even to bother to mention it.

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Holy Thursday

             Today is an important day for the Church. We priests celebrate two Masses. In the morning all priests of the Diocese go to the Cathedral to concelebrate with the bishop what we call the Chrism Mass. Two things happen during this Mass. First we priests renew our commitments, to place Jesus first in our lives, to obey our bishop, and to look after the People of God. Secondly during this Mass the bishop consecrates the three oils we use for Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders and Anointing of the sick. It is called the Chrism Mass because Chrism is the name of one of the holy oils. At the end of the Mass we collect our oils to keep them in the parish. Every year we burn the old ones and we replace them with the new oils. It is like what happens to us during these days of Holy Week: we die to ourselves and we rise again with Christ.

            In the evening we have the Mass of Holy Thursday, the beginning of the Easter Triduum, where we commemorate three things that happened at the Last Supper: the washing of the feet, the institution of the Eucharist and the institution of the priesthood. The Eucharist is the important one. Jesus had to go to heaven, but he wanted to stay with us, because he loves us and we need him. He could do it because he is God. Therefore he left us this sacrament, for the priest to be able to consecrate the bread and the wine, for us to be nourished by his body and blood, and for Jesus to be able to remain with us in the tabernacle. If all the sacraments are important, this one is the most important one; in the others we receive grace from Jesus, in the Mass we receive Jesus himself.

            In the washing of the feet we remember Jesus washing his apostles feet. We normally wash twelve men’s feet, easier for us to identify them with the twelve apostles. But what we truly remember is how Jesus lowered himself to the form of a servant to wash our feet. The washing of the feet was reserved to slaves. God is coming down to us to the point of performing a menial task. Our feet need plenty of washing, because when we walk we get dirty. Peter said to Jesus when he came to wash him: Master, wash my hands and head as well. We too are like Saint Peter: we need a thorough washing. Jesus even washed Judas’ feet. He is ready to wash any sinners’ feet, ours too.

            The last thing we commemorate today is the beginning of the priesthood. Jesus established priests for his Church to renew the sacrifice of Calvary throughout the centuries. The main reason for our priesthood is the Mass. We also need priests for the other sacraments, specially Confession, to become better, holier and closer to Jesus. Today is a special day when we pray for priests, specially the ones in our own parish. The more we pray for our priests, the holier they become. It is a good selfish prayer. We get the priests we deserve. When we complain about our priests, we should blame ourselves: we don’t pray enough for them.

            At the end of the Mass we reserve the Blessed Sacrament on the altar of repose. We keep enough hosts to give Communion on Good Friday because it is a day when we won’t have Mass, because Jesus is dead. The tradition is to spend a bit of time in front of the Blessed Sacrament. We keep Jesus company on this night, when he was alone in the garden of Gethsemane.

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Palm Sunday

            Today we begin Holy Week. Palm Sunday is the gate. We enter into the most holy week of the year. We need to walk slowly; we are on Holy ground. Put off your shoes and walk on tiptoes. Hit the brakes and try to follow Jesus’ footsteps. We should try to keep to Jesus’ pace, not too slow, and not too fast, not to miss him, not to overtake him; just the right speed. Once a year the Church gives us an opportunity to become closer to Jesus and touch in a special way his humanity, that brings us closer to his divinity. Every year is like a spiral that brings us closer to the centre, one day sucked in by God.

            We have covered all the crucifixes with purple cloths. Why? It is not to avoid seeing Jesus on the Cross, but to lift our senses to spiritual things and build within us a longing for Easter Sunday. Even though these are beautiful pieces of art that help us to become closer to Jesus, they are not the real thing, just sparks of God. There is much more up in heaven. No worries, on Good Friday we are going to uncover them.

            Today is a day of joy. Jesus enters his holy city amid the shouts of the crowd. In every Mass we use the words the people shouted today when they acclaimed him: Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, Hosanna in the highest. Hosanna means “save us”. It was used like the expression: Long live the King. Jesus comes as a king. Today we let Jesus to enter our hearts and we allow him to be the king of our lives. We are shouting for joy, acclaiming him. He is knocking on our door. The handle to open the door of our hearts is always on the side of the door.

            Today’s feast is a paradox. What is a paradox? A paradox is something contradictory. It looks one way, but also goes in the opposite direction. Today is a day of joy, but it opens to us the Passion and death of Jesus Christ. It’s the beginning of a horrible week. But no worries. It has a happy ending. Eventually Jesus will rise from the dead. Today the people acclaim him; tomorrow they will condemn him to death. Today they shout Hosanna; tomorrow they shout crucify him. Today they call him King of Israel; tomorrow: We have no King but Caesar. Today they use palms; tomorrow they are going to scourge him. Today they are waving olive branches; tomorrow they are going to place thorns on his head. Today they are placing garments on the floor as a carpet; tomorrow they are going to strip off his garments. Today they give him a donkey to ride; tomorrow the wood of the Cross. We do the same with Jesus. Today we tell him that we love him; tomorrow we leave him alone. Today we promise him many things; tomorrow all our promises remain unfulfilled.

            Let us not be afraid and begin the road to Calvary, where so many people stay behind, starting with most of the apostles, some running away, denying him, or betraying him. It is a long and winding road, full of surprises and treacherous potholes. This is why we need to go hand in hand with Mary, not to get lost, not to run backwards, but to manage to go around the landmines that the devil places in our path.

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Lent 5 B The grain of wheat

            In today’s Gospel some Greeks went to Phillip and told him that they wanted to see Jesus. We too ask the same; we long to see his face. We follow the responsorial psalm: “Create a clean heart in me, O God.” We need a pure heart to be able to see him, clear eyes without any obstacles. How can we see Jesus? He tells us his secret today in the Gospel in three sentences: to die, to lose your life and to serve him. It goes against our culture, which recommends the opposite, trying to keep on living at any cost, to always win and not to serve anybody but ourselves.

            The first sentence is very clear: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” How many grains normally produce an ear of wheat? I googled it: from 45 to 50. If we don’t die to ourselves we are only one; if we are buried in the ground we can multiple by fifty. This means that we need to bury our pride, our selfishness and our sensuality deep in the soil. It is the manure that fertilises the wheat, and eventually produces the flour that will be baked into the delicious warm bread we like. From our sinfulness God can bring about beautiful pastry. But for this we need to disappear into the dough mixed with the yeast.

            The second sentence follows the same demanding tone: “Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life.” It is a paradox, that common sense has summarized in a proverb: no pain, no gain. If we want to win eternal life, we need to offer our lives to God. This is what the cross is all about. We don’t want to hear about the cross; we run away from it. We can look at what we call crosses in our lives and change our attitude. Three stages: accepting, looking for and loving. Just look at the things that upset you. If you change the way you react to difficulties, they won’t upset you anymore.

            The third sentence from Jesus is a bit easier to follow: “Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there also will my servant be.” Saint Josemaria says that to follow Christ, “We must accompany him so closely that we come to live with him.” He distinguishes four stages in this identification with Christ: “Seeking him, finding him, getting to know him and loving him.” If we seek him, we will find him and we won’t have any problem of loving him.

            How do we follow Jesus? Where do we find him? In the word and in the bread, in the Scriptures and the Eucharist. During the Mass, we have two parts, what we call the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist. We come to be nourished at both tables. I knew a priest in New Zealand who had two tables in his church, but they looked a bit weird, like two altars. Certainly they emphasised these two ways of finding Jesus. We normally hear the Word of God from the lectern and we witness the coming of Jesus on the altar. Once we have nourished our intellect with his word, we can come to the table of the Lord to receive him in communion.

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Lent 4 B Nicodemus

            Today in the Gospel we see Nicodemus, a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin of Jerusalem, the upper class of the political elite, a teacher of Israel, an intellectual, an educated man, a ruler of the Jews. He was a lover of truth, searching for what is right, humble, and, unlike others, he acknowledged that Jesus performed miracles, therefore God was with him. We too should be like him trying to find the truth in our lives, knowing that Jesus is the Way. It is so easy in our society to be biased, to spread half truths, to foster misinformation, to cloud the net with false news. Nevertheless the truth always wins, always comes out, eventually it manages to find the light. That is why we should fight for what is right and acknowledge that we don’t have all the answers.

            Nicodemus went to see Jesus by night for fear of the Jews. He spent the whole night with Jesus. We too would like to spend hours with Jesus, talking to him, but we don’t need to go at night. We can go any time we want; he is waiting for us 24/7. We too have human concerns and we are worry what people will think about us. We forget that all of us are going to die and we are going to face God. A man who recovered from an almost certain death, commented: “Before I had human respect. Now I have lost it. Now I talk about God to everyone. I saw judgment so close that I am not ashamed of anything.” Let us get rid of the silly fear of spreading the good news to other people.

            Saint John in his Gospel only gives us a summary of that long conversation. We would like to know more, but the Gospels can only give us a few ideas. The main one is the declaration of God’s love for us: “God so loved the world that he gave us his only Son.” We have heard many times that God is love, but it is not easy to live it, or experienced it personally. God not only gave us his most precious treasure, but he let him be with us in the Eucharist. The deeper we go in our spiritual life, the more we experience God’s love. Somebody said that the devil knows our name but he calls us by our sins; God knows our sins but he calls us by our name. We are his children and for him we are like his only begotten Son, a unique child.

            The second idea of that conversation is also very important: “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Moses showed the serpent to the Jews to cure the ones who were bitten by the snakes God sent to punish their unbelief. God gave us his Son and all we did was to kill him. We lifted him up on to the cross, not to be healed of our physical ailments, but to have life eternal. Therefore we need to do the same, lifting him up to the pinnacle of our lives, making him our centre and summit, root and source.

            After the crucifixion, when everybody had run away, Nicodemus was there, asking Pilate for the body of Jesus to bury him. He had the courage and the honour to be close to Jesus in his last moments. We too must follow Nicodemus to be with Jesus till the last moments of our lives.

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Lent 3 B Cleansing of the Temple

             In today’s Gospel Jesus is going to the Temple to pray, but he is going to do something completely different. It was the feast of the Passover, the most important day for the Jews and the temple was overflowing with people. They had to offer a sacrifice of an ox or a sheep, if they were wealthy, or two pigeons if they were not. Also they had to pay a half shekel, the Temple money. Other coins in circulation were considered impure because they bore the image of pagan rulers. There was a lot of business activity, the of selling of animals and the changing money. The priests of the Temple benefited from these commercial transactions. Jesus couldn’t bear the sight of his Father’s house converted into a shopping mall. He made a whip with cords and drove them out of the Temple all by himself. It must have been an amazing scene. Try to do the same in your shopping center; in no time you’ll be tackled by the security guards.

            They couldn’t stop him. He was filled with holy anger. Oxen and sheep running around, pigeons flying away happily to be free, coins dropping everywhere. Men running away from the famous prophet, afraid of his miraculous powers. The authorities of the Temple looked at the pandemonium without doing anything; they couldn’t stop him because he was right. They only asked him about his authority to do so. Jesus told them about the temple of his body, the future place for all of us to worship. They didn’t understand what he was talking about.

            Jesus gives us an example of how to react when confronted by sin, that separates us from God. We could think his actions are over the top, that there is no need to take such extreme measures. It depends of how we look at our salvation, of how keen are we to reach heaven. We are normally more concerned about our body than our soul. Jesus didn’t care much about what people thought about him and did what he had to do. He helps us to open our eyes and follow his example.

            We can look at ourselves and discover how many oxen, sheep and pigeons we have in our soul, too many money changers. What would Jesus do if we let him in, into the temple of our soul? We are afraid of him, hiding our vices under all sort of excuses. This time of Lent is an opportunity to open our soul and discover our lust, pride, envy, greed, anger, gluttony or sloth, what we call the seven deadly sins, those sins that are present in our soul in one form or another. If we fail to identify them, Jesus won’t be able to drive them away. We can also go through the Ten Commandments or the Seven Works of Mercy.

            The Gospel says that when his disciples saw Jesus driving everyone away from the temple, they remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” We ask the Lord to have the same zeal, the same holy anger, to drive away what separates us from God, not only for us, but also for others. Not to be afraid to help others to see what oxen and sheep they have in their souls, whatever is there that Jesus doesn’t like. We cannot forget that Jesus is coming, and we don’t want him to find anything in our soul that is not pleasing to him. And if we ask what right does he have to enter into our souls, he would tell us that he has created them in his image and likeness.

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Lent 2 Transfiguration of Jesus

            The transfiguration is an Icon of contemplation. We need to climb the mountain to become part of this body of elite souls who are contemplatives. Not many people are ready to climb up through the path of sacrifice and docility to God’s will. You need to leave many things behind and travel light. Most of us carry too much baggage, and we are constantly bogged down, pushed backwards by the heavy weight. Our struggle is to let things go, to shed whatever is not helping us to become closer to God. Once you reach the summit, you see things differently. It is an amazing panorama. You can contemplate Jesus in his glory. Contemplation is a gift from God. If we don’t pray, Jesus cannot show us his divinity.

            The three beloved apostles fell sleep. They were tired after the climb. They too are going to fall asleep at the agony of Gethsemane. Waking up they found Jesus transfigured in front of them. Jesus lifted the veil that hid his divinity and showed himself as he is. He is always like this. When we talk about a sunset, we talk in a figurative way: the sun never sets. We are the ones rotating. If the sun were always up, we would die of heat exposure. It is the same with Jesus’ divinity. Jesus doesn’t want to dazzle us. Otherwise we will have to veil our faces like Moses after talking to God. The Israelites couldn’t stand looking at him.

            The three apostles never forgot this experience. It was an amazing mystical experience. Talking to people, I come across many spiritual experiences, ways of God showing his face, even though normally He is silent. Some people are always looking for miracles. We don’t need them. We have enough proofs of the existence of God to keep us going. If God showed us his face, we could lose our freedom.

            The experience is full of light, whiteness and purity. White expels all the colours; black keeps them in. We need to expel all our impurities. This is how our soul should look, pure and clean, white and transparent, for us to be able to see God. A painter was looking for a beautiful girl as a model to paint Our Lady. When he found one she said she would come back tomorrow: she wanted to go to confession first. We need to keep going for reconciliation, to wash our soul many times. I had a friend who had a machine to polish stones. It took a long time for the sand to grind them and make them shine. It was a beautiful change, from the boring, grey, dull image of the river stones, to the bright, polished, smooth surface of many different colours.

            Peter couldn’t contain himself and declared: “It is well that we are here.” He wanted to stop time and stay there forever. We too would like to be there, but we need to wait for eternity. We climb up to meet God and bring him to others. We need to go up and down all the time. We cannot stay up there. We climb up through prayer. Once we get the power of God, we can come down to bring it to others. Peter, you cannot stay up here. We cannot stop time. We need to keep going up and down. Begin and begin again every day. Our love of God has to be lived every day. Once you stop climbing, you begin to fall down.

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Lent 1 Temptations of Jesus

            Every Lent we try to accompany Jesus into the desert. We don’t like it, but it is the best way for us to return to God, to have a small conversion. We go down from Jerusalem towards the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, below sea level. Jesus wanted to stoop down to our human level, surrounded by a very rough terrain. It is a place of open spaces, silence, constant blowing of the wind, harsh conditions and a brown landscape. We are going there to spend time with Jesus alone, without anything that could distract us from him. He spent forty days of penance to prepare himself for his public life. We need to prepare ourselves for the temptations we are going to face this year. Close to Jesus, strengthened by our penance, we can overcome any temptation.

            After forty days of fasting, Jesus was weak. The devil took advantage of this moment to tempt him, to discover who he was. He does the same with us. He knows our weaknesses and always comes in the same way. We need to be sincere and learn from our mistakes. God allows us to be tempted, for us to show him that we love him more than ourselves, to become stronger in our virtue and to be humble. It helps us to realise that we, like little children, need his power, and we cannot do it alone. We are in the desert with Jesus, and we need to be very close to him.

            The first temptation is to convert stones into bread, to fix our problems, to make our lives more comfortable and smooth, with no obstacles and traumas. God is not a butler in our service or a plumber to fix our leaks. It is the other way around; we are at his service. It is the temptation of pleasures, food and entertainment. The Roman Caesars used to give people bread and circuses, to keep them entertained. The devil does the same with our soul, to lull us to asleep and suppress our desire for God. The desert, fasting and abstinence, rekindle our thirst for God. The internet could be a technological drug that keeps us stoned, addicted to screens. Silence, solitude and recollection, will bring us back to life.

            The second temptation is to jump from the pinnacle of the temple and let the angels save us. It is the allure of fame, prestige and glory. Vanity makes us think that one day we’ll be famous. If I get a million hits when I upload my silly video on YouTube, I’ll be very happy. I’m counting very carefully my likes and dislikes in my Facebook page. I have so many people following me, so many groups in WhatsApp; I’m an influencer. My moods change depending on what’s happening on my smartphone. Lent is a good time to take a break from whatever is trying to feed our pride. Maybe it is a time to delete the app that’s taking too much time in our lives, or put some order into our use of our little gadgets.

            The third temptation is to worship the rulers of this world. We think that money and power are going to make us happy. We like to control people, to have a job that make us somebody, to look at our bank account and be pleased by what we see. We forget that we come from God and that we go back to him, sooner than we think. We cannot take anything with us when we go. This is what the Church reminds us at the beginning of Lent, when the priest places the ashes on our forehead saying: “Remember that you are dust and unto dust you shall return.”

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Ash Wednesday

Today we begin Lent, a special time to grow, a time for a small conversion. Our Mother the Church opens the flood gates of its abundant graces, to shower what we need in our parched soul. It is a time to look towards how we are growing in our love of God. Maybe we have been slowing down, stopped or even went backwards. It happens in the lives of saints too; sometimes it looks like they are growing fast, and other times they are not moving. Why is that? Is it God’s will or our lack of struggle? Saint Teresa of Avila talks about the four things that slowed her down, from when she became a nun at twenty years old, till she was almost forty and decided to take her holiness seriously. A statue of Jesus suffering his passion moved her to tears.

The first one is carelessness about sin. It is a complacency or complicity with sin, finding easy excuses for our imperfections. We even look towards other people to reassure us in our lack of struggle. We reduce the gravity of sin. It is impossible not to sin, but at least we should be aware of the sins we can recognise, the sins we consent to. Making a decision never to commit even a small sin, is a turning point in our spiritual life.

The second one is not avoiding the near occasions of sin. It is a sadness of not being allowed to play with certain things. If we play with fire, we are going to get burned. It means avoiding peoples, places or situations we know are not good for us. The devil always goes the same way. He knows how to get at us. We need to be sincere and recognise that we are weak and we need the power of God. At the end of the day it is a matter of choosing between the love of God and our self love.

The third is self-reliance. We begin our spiritual life with a strong determination, but sooner or later we become discouraged. We fall down over and over again, and either we abandon our way or we conform with an easy pace. Relying only on ourselves we go nowhere. Voluntarism hides our pride. Thinking that we can do it deceives us. We forgot that we cannot go alone. We need God. Only He can make us saints. We should trust more in his love and mercy than in our own efforts. Humility and simplicity are essential to follow the right path. God uses our docility in spiritual direction, to destroy our self assurance.

And the fourth is not valuing the graces we have received from God. We complain a lot about God not helping us, but we waste a lot of the graces we receive from him. We think we know what we need, and we forget that God knows better. Therefore we should be more aware of the help God is sending us constantly. Saints have a sixth sense to notice the graces from God. We, on the contrary, are rough, and we fail to sense God’s help. Babies have a tender skin and can sense the mosquito straight away. We don’t notice the inspirations of the Holy Spirit in our soul. Saints develop a quick promptness to answer the call from God to prayer or to action.

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The curing of a leper

            The first reading of the Mass tells us about Jewish customs and leprosy. Because it was a contagious disease, the Law declared that lepers were impure and they had to leave society. They lived together and had to show that they were lepers, sounding a bell or shouting “unclean.” Leprosy was seen as a punishment from God. The healing of the disease was regarded as one of the blessings of the coming of the Messiah. More than the physical suffering, the hardest thing was the social exclusion. You can suffer as long as you have people around you. When they were cured they had to present themselves to the priests to certify their healing. Nowadays coronavirus is seen a bit like leprosy. You don’t need to sound a bell, but you must isolate yourself. It is sad that we have left old people die alone.

            We are all lepers; we are all sinners. You cannot hide leprosy; it is in your face. Slowly it disfigures your body making it a horrible image of your former self. The same happens with our soul in the state of sin, a much more radical reality, because our soul is the dwelling place of God and it is immortal. If people could see our sins we would go to confession every day, in the same way we look at ourselves into the mirror every morning, have a shower and spend a lot of time and money grooming our bodies. We are ashamed of our sins, but we find difficult to bring them to the priest, to Jesus, to heal them.

            In the Gospel we see a leper coming up to Jesus and kneeling down in front of him. It was illegal for him to be there, in a town full of people. He recognised who Jesus was and forced himself to get closer to Jesus even though it was forbidden. He had such a strong desire to be healed that he despised social regulations. We too need that determination; nothing can stop us in our quest to clean our sinful nature. The devil is going to suggest all sort of excuses for us not to go to Jesus.

            The leper told Jesus: “If you wish, you can make me clean.” What a great line! With these words the leper won over Jesus. He is telling him that he is there to do his will. We need to learn how to touch Jesus’ heart. The more we know him the better we can get through. Every person has a button that can be pushed to open his or her heart. We learn these lessons in our personal prayer, in our encounter with the Lord.

            Jesus moved with pity, stretched out his hand, touched him, and said to him, “I do will it. Be made clean.” Jesus did the forbidden thing: to touch leprosy. Jesus is ready to touch our wounds. We are ashamed of them, but we should allow Jesus to gently dress them. It reminds me of Saint Francis of Assisi who was very afraid of lepers. Once he came across a leper in the bush who begged him for alms, with what was left of his hand outstretched. Francis was just going to drop a coin, with a disgusting face, but he controlled his feelings, and took his hand and kissed it. The leper disappeared: it was Jesus Christ. When Jesus touched the leper, he was cured immediately. In the Gospel other miracles occur gradually. But here all his limbs were instantly restored. It must have been an amazing scene, a bit magical. He even got back his beautiful blue eyes and could see Jesus’ face, just in front of him, smiling, all the people around them amazed.

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Peter’s mother in law

            After leaving the synagogue in Capernaum, Jesus went to Peter’s house with Andrew, James and John, to dine together. We can imagine those meals with Jesus. Peter’s mother in law was sick and she couldn’t wait on them. Maybe she was upset with her son in law for joining Jesus and leaving his wife behind. Jesus healed her, won her over and convinced her to serve them. The news spread quickly and people began to bring their sick ones, their friends, maybe their mothers in law, for Jesus to heal them. The Gospel says that the whole town gathered at his door. It was a big throng. Jesus began his public ministry healing at the sick and casting out demons. It is a good sign of a real prophet.

            We too need Jesus healing. We should recognise that we are sick and in need of help. Some are physical illnesses, but more frequently our problems are spiritual ones. We are blind, deaf, lame, paralysed and crippled in our spiritual life. Two things are important to be able to be healed. First to be well diagnosed, to recognise our true sickness, and secondly, to get the proper treatment. We find it difficult to acknowledge that we are gravely ill and sometimes we wait until it is too late. Also many times we lack the faith to go to the divine doctor. Jesus is the only one who can solve our problems and many times we go to him as the last resort.

            After a full day’s work, Jesus rose very early before dawn and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed. He needed to spend time with his Father God, to be alone with the Alone. It is not just an example for us, but Jesus as a man felt the need to charge his spiritual batteries. We too need to do the same, even though we don’t feel the same urge. Somehow we are more incline to seek after material things and we forget about the needs of our soul. That is why we become anxious, upset, depressed, unsettled; we become addicted to things or we lose the perspective of what it is important. Precisely our prayer life helps us to focus our priorities and to feed the famine of our soul. We don’t normally realise how important it is because our spiritual hunger is not self evident.

            When Simon and those who were with him woke up, they couldn’t find Jesus. They looked for him everywhere. They weren’t used to his early routine. When at last they found him they complained: “Everyone is looking for you.” It is a great statement. It is true for all of us, even though many times we don’t recognise this truth. We are all looking for happiness, and only in Jesus we can find true joy. We are created for God, we need God; it is inscribed in our DNA.

            Jesus replied to them: “Let us go on to the nearby villages that I may preach there also. For this purpose have I come.” We can be selfish wanting to keep Jesus for ourselves. We can live in a bubble, isolating ourselves from the dangers outside. Pope Francis reminds us that we need to get out, mix with others and smell like the sheep as the shepherds do. Jesus has come to save every human being, to heal us from our inclination to sin, and he counts on all of us. Let us follow Jesus wherever he goes.

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The unclean spirit

            Today we see Jesus teaching at the synagogue in Capernaum. Jesus centred his public ministry in this town, at the shores of the lake of Gennesaret. He didn’t want to stay in Nazareth; a prophet is not well liked in his home town. Apart from Jerusalem, there is no other place like Capernaum that contains more memories of Jesus in the Gospels. The ruins are well preserved because the place was deserted until the Franciscans bought the land at the beginning of the twentieth century and spent almost 100 years excavaiting it. You can see now the ruins of the synagogue and a church built over the house of Saint Peter.

            Even though he wasn’t a rabbi, they allowed him to teach in the synagogue. He was becoming a famous prophet and everybody wanted to hear him. The Gospel says that “The people were astonished at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes.” Rabbis taught based on the authority of famous rabbis, and you could trace their lineage back to Moses; and of course, Moses got it directly from God. But Jesus spoke with his own authority, without the need to quote anybody else to bolster what he said. He defended the truth with his own testimony.

            There was a man in the synagogue possessed with a demon. We don’t know if he was allowed to enter or they placed him there to cause trouble. We priests know of lunatics coming to churches and causing havoc. You need to be very careful not to upset them and try to be gentle but firm to get them out. Somehow mad people are attracted to sacred places. It is the first time that Jesus faced an unclean spirit, in Hebrew, Beelzebub. The man cried out: “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” It was a tense situation, all eyes are fixed on Jesus, to see how he was going to react. His power was tested. The possessed man recognised him: “I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” On the contrary most contemporaries of Jesus missed who he was. It wasn’t easy for them. It is not easy for us either. How can we recognise Jesus passing by? He is coming to us every day, many times hidden in unforeseen situations.

            Jesus knew how to deal with him and treated him with authority: “Quiet! Come out of him!” The unclean spirit didn’t go out without a fight: he convulsed the man with a loud cry. It must have been very dramatic. Exorcists learn from Jesus how to expel demons. They study the scriptures to follow Jesus’ practice and try to use his power. People are fascinated with exorcists. It is a good theme for a horror movie. We shouldn’t be afraid of the devil. Once I heard an exorcist saying that the best exorcism is a good confession.

            Devils have easy control of people. They try to slave them through sin. We too are possessed by sin. It is a kind of slavery, that we need to be free off. Even though we are prone to evil, sin doesn’t make us happy. Jesus has the power and the authority to help us. We need to recognise our addictions and let Jesus to free us from them. With our will and his power, we can become holy.

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The calling of the first apostles

            In the Gospels of these first Sundays we are at the beginning of Jesus’ public life, when he calls the apostles. Today we see Jesus calling the first four, Simon and Andrew, John and James. Last Sunday we saw the first meeting of Jesus with John and Andrew. Today Jesus is formally calling them, together with their brothers to follow him. He found them where they were, working as fishermen, in their own natural habitat, among boats and nets. Jesus is also calling us where we are, in the midst of society, among our relatives and friends, working to make our environment a better place.

            Why is Jesus calling them? He doesn’t need people, he is God and he can do whatever he wants. But he prefers to work with us; he thinks that is better for us to give him a hand, for us to feel we are cooperating with him. We are fulfilled when we see that we are making a difference. Saint Josemaria give us a nice comparison, to explain our desire to help God, one he witnessed himself: “We saw a boat approaching the shore. Some men jumped out. They began to haul in the net that trailed behind the boat. It was laden with fishes, all shining like silver. Their feet sank into the sand as they pulled away with amazing strength. Then all of a sudden a little boy appeared. He came up to the rope, seized it with his tiny hands and began to tug away with evident clumsiness. The tough fishermen must have felt their hearts soften, for they allowed the child to join in, without chasing him away, even though he was more of a hindrance than a help. I thought of you and of myself.” God does the same thing with us. We are more of a nuisance, but God’s heart is moved when we try to pull the rope with him.

            Why isn’t Jesus calling more people? He is, but some people don’t want to give him a hand, others don’t listen to his voice, and others begin to help him, but they get discouraged or disappointed, and abandon the task. He tells us to pray more: “The harvest is plentiful, but the labourers are few; pray therefore to the Lord of the harvest to send more labourers to his harvest.” But don’t worry; God normally uses a few people for us to see that it is him doing the job. We should be very grateful to see that he is working with us, that he allows us to give him a hand.

            Why did Jesus call mainly fishermen? He centred his ministry around the lake of Gennesaret, but there were other people around there with different professions. He must have found that fishermen have virtues suitable for fishing men: patience, constancy, perseverance, endurance and hard working habits. Maybe he wanted his 12 apostles to come from the same place, to know each other prior to their calling, to have a group already bonded. We don’t know; all we can do is to beat around the bush, but at the end of the day God does what he wants, and he knows what he is doing.

            All the apostles left everything to be able to follow Jesus. Today we see John and Andrew leaving the boat and their father behind. I imagine Zebedee, their father, looking at them from the boat, not agreeing with the decision of his sons. This is the condition of a true apostle. It is not the matter of how much we have or what we have, but if we want to follow Jesus closer, we need to leave things behind. To increase our speed we need to travel light.

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Two disciples of John

            Today, our second Sunday of ordinary time, we begin another year with the Gospel of John telling us how he met Jesus for the first time. In the first reading of the Mass, God is calling Samuel, but he doesn’t know what to do. Eli tells him how to answer: “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” This should be our response to discover what God wants us to do this year. The Responsorial Psalm has the same attitude of generosity: “Here am I, Lord; I come to do your will.” We try to begin this year with the desire to do God’s will. We realised that last year we were a bit selfish, too centred on ourselves, doing our own thing, and we now renew our resolution to be more docile to what God wants us to do.

            John the Baptist was sitting down on the shores of the River Jordan with his two best disciples, John and Andrew. Looking at Jesus passing by, he pointed him out to them with these words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” This expression was very familiar to the Jews: He is the chosen one, the Messiah. The priest repeats these words every Mass before Communion, lifting up the host for us to see him, reminding us who he is we are going to receive. Both disciples understood John’s intention and followed Jesus. John offered to God his two most beloved followers. He knew Jesus had to grow and he had to diminish. It is not easy to give away our prestige, to fade away in history when are very famous. We should offer to God our best, doing things just for him. Many times we are stingy, we give God left overs, just in case. Remember the sacrifice of Cain and Abel. God was pleased with Abel, who gave him the prime of his flock. The smoke of Cain’s fire didn’t go up to the sky.

            John and Andrew were following Jesus from a distance, a bit embarrassed to bother the Lord. Suddenly he turned around and said: “What do you seek?” What do I seek? Happiness. We all seek happiness. “Come and see.” Jesus is inviting all of us to an intimate, personal relationship with him. Come and see. Pope Benedict XVI used to tell us: Christianity is not just a set of rules, a lofty idea, but a relationship with a person who changes our lives. Jesus is an experience, an encounter, a person; there is nobody like Jesus. How can you explain love, beauty, inner joy or peace? You have to experience them to know what they are. It is the same with Jesus.

            John says that they stayed with Jesus the rest of the day. He even remembers the time of his encounter with Jesus many years later: the tenth hour, around four o’clock in the afternoon. We all remember moments when we have experienced the supernatural, when we have touch somehow the divine. We would like these moments to happen more often, or for longer periods. But we all have had enough proofs of his existence to keep us going, to know that Jesus is walking with us.

            Afterwards Andrew brought his brother Simon to Jesus. We cannot keep a treasure hidden in the ground. Jesus uses other people to bring us to him. Once we experienced his countenance, his gentle touch, we want people around us, the people we love, to share the same feelings. Thanks to Andrew, Simon became Peter, the rock.

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Epiphany

            Pope Francis in one of his homilies talks about the three actions the Magi undertook to reach the baby Jesus: seeing, setting out and bringing. Those three actions can guide our journey towards the Lord this year. We need the three of them. One or two are not enough. We need to see, we need to move and we need to bring ourselves. If we don’t see, we don’t move; if we don’t move, we cannot give ourselves.

            The first thing is to see the star. We ask the Lord to see, like the blind man in the Gospel, when Jesus asked him what he wanted: “Lord let me see.” Maybe we need to learn how to look, how to open our eyes, be more humble. There could be an obstacle in front of us, and we should remove it. What is it that doesn’t allow me to see the star? Maybe we don’t even look at the sky, we don’t spend time in prayer. How are we going to see it if we don’t look? Other people saw the star but only the three wise men followed it. They found excuses not to follow the star. Maybe we have seen the star, we know what God wants us to do, but we are not ready. We lack generosity, spirit of detachment, or we are afraid of risking our lives. At the end of the day we need faith to trust in God. He is going to fulfill his promises; he is not going to let us down.

            The second action is to set out, to go, to begin to walk, to try. We need to get out of our comfort zone. It is not going to be an easy journey. We don’t know where we are going, how long it is going to last, when is the star going to stop, what obstacles we are going to find on the way. We could lose the star, change our minds, find another way. Herod was afraid of the star. Maybe we are afraid too. The priests in Jerusalem pointed out the way but they didn’t follow it. We could show others the star, explain what they have to do, but we don’t follow it ourselves. Maybe other people will try to discourage us to follow the star. They could tell us not to be fanatical, take it easy, relax. To begin is easy; to keep going is more difficult; to reach the end is what’s important.

            Our last endeavour is to bring something. When we travel we normally buy gifts to bring them back home. We cannot arrive in front of baby Jesus empty handed. The Magi brought gold, incense and myrrh. We can bring the same gifts, the gold of our own lives, in spite of being made simply of clay. Our lives turn into gold when we offer them to God. We can also bring incense, the perfume of our Christian lives, the virtues that we strive to produce; each one of them is a grain of incense, that together produces a unique scent. And myrrh, the sacrifices God is asking of us. They mixed myrrh in the drink they gave to Jesus on the cross; they also used myrrh when they buried Jesus’ body. It is a gift that reminded Jesus of his passion. It was at the beginning of his life and at the end. We too have a beginning; we need to follow Jesus till the end.

            The Gospel says that when the three wise men arrived, “going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother.” We normally represent baby Jesus on his mother’s lap; she is holding the creator of the universe. She is the seat of wisdom, the throne of glory. Mary, Miriam, means star of the sea. In the same way the sailors at sea, used to direct themselves at night looking at the stars, Mary points us the way to her son. During the storms and crises that we find in our lives, Mary is the star that brings us to a safe haven.

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Holy Family B

             The first Sunday after Christmas we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family. Once we have a baby, we have a family. Before we had a couple, Mary and Joseph, just married. Now we have three persons, and this constitutes a family. It reminds us of the mystery of the Holy Trinity, of which the family is a reflection. Marriage, the love of husband and wife, is geared to having children. In our society we talk about love and we forget about children. Some couples don’t want to have children. They say: “father, we are not ready.” We are never ready for children. “But father, how can we bring children to this mad world of ours.” Precisely, we need good children to make it better. When I ask couples how many children do they want to have, they answer: “two, a boy and a girl; we want to give them the best.” The best thing you can give to your children is a brother or a sister. “But we cannot afford more.” And then I ask: How many cars do you have? How many TVs? How many cell phones?

            Some couples just live together without getting married. The commitment is not there, and they are just testing the ground. Marriage is not a testing exercise, but a covenant for life. The first question I ask when couples come to baptise their baby is: “Are you married?” With embarrassing look they say: “father, not yet.” I tell them: “you are beginning to build your house with the roof instead of the foundations.” You get married to have children, not the other way around, to have children to get married.

            Today, the feast of the Holy Family it is a good reminder of how important the family is for our happiness, for society and for the Church. The most important thing we have, after God, our life and our faith, is our family. It is more important than your wealth, your career, you job, your future, your gadgets, your pets or your prestige. I remind people when they come to bury a relative: now you realise how important your loved one was. We take people for granted, and at the end of the day other people are what we need most, to support and support us, to go through life together to reach heaven. We are social beings and we need family and friends for us to grow and mature.

            We live in a society where the family is not supported, not defended as it should be, and it is attacked on all fronts. When the family disintegrates, society crumbles. Most of the problems of our society come from a lack of strong families. Today we pray for the families in our country, and we commit ourselves to do what we can to help our own families and the families around us.

            The lack of vocations we are experiencing in the Church is because there are few good Christian families. Our families are too small to produce children ready to give themselves to God. If the parents are generous, the children follow their example. To have large families demands a lot of generosity and dedication. A child is not just a toy to be bought and played with. It demands a lot of time and suffering, and we tend not to be ready to accept that, especially fathers. Today we ask the Holy Family to help us to foster young couples to want to have more children.

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Christmas

            The life of Jesus is an open book from the beginning to the end, from his birth at Bethlehem until his death on the cross. We can learn from every page, from every sentence. He teaches us graphic lessons through his words and his actions; everything in his life has a meaning for us. Today we contemplate him as a baby, his first professorial chair.

            The first lesson we learn is simple: silence. God became man shrouded in silence. During a wintry night, in an unknown town lost in the middle of nowhere, in a cave surrounded by a mule and and ox, the King of kings was born, hidden from the eyes of the powerful and the learned. The Jews had been waiting for him for centuries and they missed him. Only a few shepherds went to adore him, warned by the angels. The most marvellous works of God, his incarnation, his birth and his resurrection, were surrounded by silence, hidden from the naked eye. The ways of the Lord are different from ours. We expect to find him in big miracles, apparitions, revelations; in the fire, storm, hurricane, or earthquakes, like Elijah, but he comes through a soft breeze. Silence is the language of God. He speaks in a very low voice, almost imperceptible, and we need a special gadget, a hearing aid, to tune to his wavelength: faith. They say that the best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they can only be felt with the heart. The mysteries of God are immersed in silence, and only faith can see through. Noise is the common language of the devil.

            The second lesson is clear: humility. God coming to us as a baby. He could have come as a grown up man, but he wanted to come to us in the same defenceless and humiliating way that we all come into this world. To access him we need to reach down to his level. The first thing he says when we approach him is: get rid of your fancy dress, the outfit you have weaved with your pride. In front of the baby we cannot talk about our talents, achievements, or our wealth. We need to go down on our knees and become as little as him.

            The third lesson is poverty. He was the only one who could choose his birth and he chose a poor family to be born into. Not even the place where he was delivered was his. He came with nothing, and he left with nothing, only the wood of the cross as his dying bed. It is the same with us: we came naked and we cannot take anything with us when we go. He is looking for a place in our hearts, and it is full of things.

            Where there is a baby, there is a mother. We depict Mary with baby Jesus sitting on her lap, looking after him, showing him for our contemplation. We call her Sedes Sapientiae, seat of wisdom, throne of grace. She brings to us the infinite well of knowledge and grace. Let us take advantage of these days of Christmas to spend time looking at the beautiful baby, and learn from him as many lessons as we can. And don’t forget to give our Mother a hand.

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Fourth Sunday of Advent B

            The three most important events in history are the conception, birth and death of Jesus Christ. Today we witness the first one, what we call the incarnation, the taking of the flesh, God becoming man. It happened in a most natural, quiet and discreet way. God began his human existence, like each one of us, as a little, tiny embryo. All started with an angel appearing to a girl. We can be there with our imagination and witness the scene. Every time we pray the angelus, we are reminding Mary of one of her most treasured memories. From eternity she can tap into any moment of history, like the inside of a gigantic wheel, and go back to the past, remain in the present or forward to the future. She is with us now.

            The Annunciation happened in a lost corner of the Roman Empire, hidden from the eyes of men, involved in silence. This is the language of God. We normally forget that God talks to us heart to heart. The most important things happen in the center of our souls. Sometimes we complain: Why is God not talking to me now? We are the ones not listening to him, or not tuning in to the same frequency. Mother Teresa used to remind us that nature, trees, flowers and grass, grow in silence. The stars, the moon and the sun, move in the most complete silence. Most of the universe is wrapped in silence. Unless we shut down all the noise surrounding us we cannot hear the voice of God.

            The village where this happened is called Nazareth, a small place of around 100 residents, situated at the foot of a hill, houses built in front of caves. So insignificant that Nathaniel asked if any thing good could come, had ever come out of Nazareth. There was a saying that if God punished you, he would give you a wife from Nazareth. God chose to land in a town lost in the middle of nowhere. Nothing to do with famous paintings of great artists depicting the event. The oriental tradition places the scene at the fountain of the village. We prefer to contemplate it at Mary’s house, because the Gospel gives the impression of the angel coming in, while she is recollected in prayer. If an angel comes to you to deliver a message, how is he going to find you? Watching tv, listening to music, surfing the net.

            We know the name of the angel: Gabriel. He is one of the three archangels named in the Bible, in charge of the messages around Jesus. His name means God’s strength, fortitude of God. He is a big guy. If angels are impressive, he is specially remarkable: he is an archangel. The first thing he says to Mary is don’t be afraid. He tries to make her at ease. We witness a dialogue between him and the future mother of God. They say angels talk singing, flapping their wings in unison. The voice of our mother matches his tone, sounding clear and pristine.

            Mary is so beautiful that we miss the conversation, distracted in contemplation. We only realised that the angel asked a question, when there is silence. He is waiting for her answer. And her yes or no will affect us deeply. We wait with great expectation for her lips to move, the whole of creation is in awe without knowing it. We witness her yes rejoicing at her docility to the will of God, ashamed that we are not generous enough to do the same, and say the same yes, which will enable us to follow her path towards God.

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Third Sunday of Advent B

            Today in our second reading, from the letter of Saint Paul to the Thessalonians, we read: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks.” They say that this letter is the earliest New Testament text we have. These words are placed at the very end of the letter, as final words of encouragement. If Saint Paul tends to go over the top, here he pushes us further. For him the coming of Jesus changed everything.

            This is a summary of our spiritual life: rejoice, pray and give thanks. The three of them go together. “Always” is the adverb that connects them, that unites them. If this constancy is not maintained, all three go up like smoke, like fireworks. It is a triangle, with three sides complementing each other; two alone won’t work. They are in tension, in a difficult balance, ready to blow up. If one side is defective, not maintained, the three of them break up into pieces. When we rejoice, we pray, and we give thanks.

            Rejoice always. It is easy to smile when life goes our way, but how can we be happy in front of contradictions, obstacles, accidents, and problems? Because God is in control. A French convert used to say: Christians, your only obligation is to be happy. If we are not happy, there is something wrong with our faith. There is nothing wrong with our Church. We are the problem. We need to stop blaming others and look at the blessings God has bestowed on us, at the beautiful things that surround us. A sad saint is a contradiction, like a square circle, an old baby, a dwarf giant; it cannot exist.

            Pray without ceasing. How can we do that? It doesn’t mean to be the whole day in a church, kneeling down, murmuring prayers. Not even the monks can do it. It is like the beating of the heart, like breathing. We are not aware of it, but it is happening. It becomes unconscious, part of our lives, a second nature. It is a constant presence of God, an awareness that God is always with us. It is a gift from God if we try our best. In the Eastern tradition, you can find the Jesus prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. It is said breathing in and breathing out. If we say it many times, the prayer works his way into our being, determining every aspect of our lives. Then we can access that deep place of our soul, where God is hidden, and live with him. Jesus told us the parable of the unjust judge, to remind us that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart.” It doesn’t mean that God is an evil judge, but that we need to follow the example of the persistent widow, who prayed day and night. We pray till we reach our heavenly home.

            In all circumstances give thanks. Everything we have comes from God. What is ours is our will and our sins. Everything else is a blessing, if we look at things through God’s eyes. God can even bring good out of evil. He uses the actions of the devil for his own plans. It must be frustrating for the evil one to see God using him for a good purpose. As Saint Paul tells the Romans “everything works for the best for those who love him.”

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Second Sunday of Advent

            On the second Sunday of Advent the Church presents to us Saint John the Baptist as a preparation for Christmas. He began to follow his vocation within his mother’s womb. Benedict XVI says that you find your goodness following the plan God has prepared for you. Nowadays people are afraid of discovering God’s plan for them. They think that their lives are too precious to use them for something else but themselves. They forget that unless you give your life, you lose it. When you follow God’s plan, you find your truth, and the truth sets you free. Your life becomes a witness to the truth. Living in a relativistic society, your life becomes a beacon of the truth.

            What can we learn from John the Baptist? Many things, but I think his most important virtue and the foundation of all the others was his humility. Jesus praised him saying that there was nobody like him. Humanly speaking he was tops. To open the way of Jesus, he had to have the best talents, the best qualities to resemble his Master. He could have done whatever he wanted with his life, even becoming the Roman emperor, but he fulfilled his mission and disappeared. He even told his disciples when they complained that everybody was following Jesus, that he had to decrease and Jesus must increase. He also said that he wasn’t worthy to kneel down and undo the strap of his sandals. We, on the contrary, are too concerned about our own qualities, and we place them at the service of self, thinking how we can become famous or noteworthy.

            Another virtue that shines in John the Baptist is generosity. He gave Jesus his two best disciples. When Jesus was passing by, he pointed out who Jesus was: “Behold the lamb of God.” John and Andrew didn’t think twice and followed Jesus. They became part of Jesus’ beloved apostles. His attitude is completely contrary to the norm in our society where we are encouraged to think only about ourselves. We have never had so much wealth in the history of humanity, and we have never been so selfish.

            Saint John the Baptist gives us another great example to the people of our generation: fortitude. He denounced Herod, knowing that he could lose his head, and told him that he should not take his brother’s wife. We on the contrary are afraid what people will think of us and we don’t say what we need to be said because of fear of being belittled or being canceled out. Social media creates an anonymous culture where you can say nasty things without being accountable. We throw the stone and hide the hand that actually throws it. We need to think twice before we post anything, always trying to point out the truth yet acting charitably.

            Let us follow the example of Saint John the Baptist to help open the way of the Lord for our relatives and friends. Jesus has sent us ahead of him in much the same way. But to do so we need to share some of his virtues, his talents, so that people can discover a bit of Jesus in us. Today we ask John the Baptist to help us to develop what we need in our lives to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.

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First Sunday of Advent

            The Advent wreath is a Christian tradition that symbolises the passage of the four weeks of Advent. It is a reminder that time passes, every Sunday a new candle, and we need to be ready for when Our Lord is born in our soul on Christmas Day. The lighting of a candle can be accompanied by a Scripture reading, some prayers and reflections. By the lighting of the candles on each subsequent Sunday, the light increases, until, by the last Sunday of Advent, all four candles are lit. The traditional way to light the candles is clockwise, following the normal passage of time. Some Advent wreaths include a fifth candle in the middle, the Christ candle, which is lit at Christmas Eve. It shows in a graphic way the centrality of Jesus in our lives.

            The wreath is made of evergreen leaves or branches, which symbolise the hope of eternal life and the continuous life of Christ, since neither ever die. It also represents God’s unchanging love for us. The green colour is the most pleasing to the eye, symbol of hope. The circular form of the wreath symbolises the eternity of God and the immortality of the soul, since a circle has no ending. It also represents God’s infinite love for us. In a circle neither the beginning nor the end can be found. God’s love is always flowing without interruption. It gives an impression of a never ending life of grace for us.

            The four candles have different interpretations, each one emphasising different aspects of Christian life. One specifically symbolizes the Christian concepts of hope, peace, joy and love. Another interpretation states that the first candle is the Prophecy  candle, representing the prophets who predicted the coming of Jesus; the second is the Bethlehem candle, representing the journey of Joseph and Mary; the third represents the Shepherds’ candle and their joy; and the fourth is the Angels’ candle, representing peace. Other visions centre onthose looking forward to the coming of Christ: the prophets, John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. Some spiritual authors foster some acts of virtue for every week, specially directed to the people we live with: patience, forgiveness, acts of service and a smiling attitude.

            The colour of the candles also has meaning. The traditional two colours are violet and rose, corresponding with the colors of the liturgical vestments for the Sundays of Advent. The third Sunday the priest is allowed to use a rose chasuble; it is called Gaudete Sunday, corresponding to the first words of the Latin entrance antiphon, meaning rejoice. Christ’s candle is always white, the colour that encompasses all of them.

            The candles are lit reflecting Christ as the light of the world, who came to dispel darkness. It reminds us that when we baptise a baby, we bring a lighted candle close to the neofite, to signify his soul full of light and cleanliness. Getting closer to Christmas more candles are lit and therefore produce more light. Every day that passes, we are getting closer to the coming light. The closer we come to Jesus the more we see. As Psalm 35 says, “In your light, God, we see light.” While the candles are lit we are safe. We cannot allow the flame to be extinguished, otherwise we will be in total darkness, the absence of Jesus, the colour of the evil one.

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Christ the King

            We arrive today at the end of the liturgical year. In the Church we have, in a sense, two years, the normal year, which follows the feast days of Jesus, Mary, angels and saints, and the year that follows the liturgical seasons, Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter. We finish the ordinary time with this beautiful feast day of Christ the King. The Gospel of today’s Mass brings to our consideration three main ideas: there will be a judgement at the end of time, Christ identifies himself with everyone in need, and evil people will experience eternal punishment and the good eternal reward.

            In the Bible Jesus is depicted as a judge on a throne, who will come to judge the living and the dead. We believe that time will come to an end with the last judgement, when everyone will be punished or rewarded. It will be very interesting to watch the movie of our lives in front of everyone. Everything will be uncovered, all the secrets revealed. We will know all the things we wanted to know, the why, the when and the wherefore. But thanks be to God, the things we have confessed will be deleted, the hard disk will be formatted. Those things will be left alone in God’s mind. There was an old woman who used to go to the priest telling him that Jesus appeared to her, and she could talk with him. He didn’t know what to believe. One day he told her to ask Jesus about his own personal sins, to see if they were forgiven. Next time she told him that she had asked Jesus about his sins. “What did he say?” “He has forgotten them.”

            We talk about the last Judgement to distinguish it from the particular judgement, which everyone will undergo immediately after death. The sentence pronounced at the end of time will be a confirmation of this one. People who had near death experiences talk about how they relive their entire lives in a flash of a second, in the presence of a superior being, with a good sense of humour. Those experiences normally change their lives for the best. We all feel empty handed in front of Jesus when we have to give an account of our lives. We are not ready because we are still here. Saint Josemaria says that for us Jesus won’t be a judge in the harsh sense of the word, but he will simply be Jesus.

            That’s why we need to see Jesus in every person we come across, especially in people in need. People who annoy us, who bother us, who make our lives more difficult, are in need of our affection, our thoughts and our care. The homeless, the old, the poor, the people who are ungrateful, are Jesus passing by, hidden behind a distasteful crust. We do not know how much we love God; but we can know how much we love our neighbor. We are normally self centred and we need to make an effort to look around us.

            The modern mind finds it very difficult to believe in eternal punishment. You don’t hear these days much about hell, fire and brimstone. Why is this? Because we all want everybody to be saved, we believe in humanity, and God has created us to be with Him in heaven. But if there is no punishment, there is no justice, and there is no reward. After this life we wouldn’t like to go to a natural paradise if God is not there. We are naughty little children, and we need to be admonished by our Father God that there is a hell.

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Parable of the talents

            At the end of the year, the Church brings to our consideration the parable of the talents. It is not easy for us to grasp what a talent is. A talent was not a coin but a measure of value, a unit of account, worth about fifty kilos of silver. It was a lot of wealth. With a talent, a family could live for 30 years. It is so much that it doesn’t matter if it is five, two or one. All we need to do is to produce a double amount. From here we have the expression talented people.

            We don’t like this parable, we don’t like being tested. We don’t like exams. We don’t like having to produce or reach a certain quota. The elements of the parable are clear. We are the servants. The talents are the qualities, gifts, virtues, God has bestowed on us. The master is God. The journey of the master signifies the duration of our lives. His unexpected return means our death. The settling of accounts is our judgement. Heaven is the banquet that we have been invited to, if we produce our share.

            This parable has to do with spiritual economics, with investment, risk and return. God is the banker, the one who has lent us everything. We complain about banks and we depict bankers dressed with suits, fat and smoking cigars. We give them our money and they charge us to look after it, while they make money with our money. But God is a different kind of banker: we haven’t given him anything. It is the other way around: all we have comes from him. We are completely in debt to him, at his disposal. We belong to him. And we think that we own our lives. We are the stewards of God’s property. What he is asking from us is to produce, to give back to him the interest on his loan. Not for him, but for us. He is going to give us back what we produce and a reward for our good investment, much more valuable than anything we possess: the infinite gift of heaven. It is a good deal, the best one. And we are still doubting what to do.

            These talents God has given us have a special quality. They follow the law of the spiritual gifts: unless we invest them, we lose them. If you don’t risk, you cannot double; it is all or nothing. If you don’t work with your talents you lose them. Money that is not invested loses its value. If we don’t invest our lives, we are going to waste them. People who risk a lot can be successful. Saints risk everything and gain everything. It is a paradox: the more you give, the more you get. If you don’t use it, you lose it; if you keep it, it disappears. Unless the grain of wheat is buried and dies, it doesn’t produce. It is like a voucher that has to be used by a certain time. Or like air time in your phone, that if you don’t use it, it disappears once the month is finished. Unless the grain of wheat is buried in the ground, it doesn’t produce the ear.

            This parable brings to our consideration two main ideas: we are stewards of the talents God has given us and therefore we have to give account of them when we die. It is not my time, but God’s time; it is not my life, but His life. We know we are going to die, but we don’t think about it, or we live as if it is never going to happen.

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Parable of the foolish virgins

             It is difficult for us to understand this parable because we are not familiar with the customs of Jewish weddings. The bridegroom would go to the bride’s house to fetch her and take her to his home. The bride would be accompanied by her maiden friends with their lamps on, to light the way. To be waiting for the bridegroom with lamps and no oil was silly. It is like going to a birthday party with no gift, a dinner with no wine, or to a church with no money for the collection.

            We are waiting for the Lord who is coming to meet us, with the lamp of faith in our hand, lighted with the oil of charity, and holding it up high, to be able to see when the bridegroom is coming, awake with hope. No faith, no lamp. We need the lamp; if we don’t have the lamp, we don’t have a place to contain the oil. But the lamp is not enough. It has to be lighted, and for that we need oil; no oil, no light. Love is the all purpose oil that lubricates everything. A lamp without oil illuminates nothing. Faith without love is useless. The devil believes in God but has no love. Hope is what keeps us awake, waiting for the Lord that is coming. When we are asleep, the light eventually goes off.

            There is a famous painting, “Jesus, the light of the world”, depicting Jesus holding a lighted lamp, in the midst of darkness, knocking on a door. The flame lights the beautiful face of Jesus and you can see that he is very keen to open the door. But the door has no handle. He is knocking at our door and the lock is on our side. We are the only ones who can open that door. We have the key which is the right shape to go through the keyhole. We don’t know when he is coming; what we do know is that he is coming. Sooner or later he is going to knock at the door of our life. If we are asleep we are in for a surprise.

            This parable teaches us not only to be waiting for the Lord, but also to be ready for when he comes. Christian life doesn’t mean just to be part of the Church, like to having a card that shows we are members. To be baptised, to have received our first communion, having been confirmed, is not good enough. We need to be an active member, a Christian who is alive, who adds to the life of the Church, who gives light to others. An Irish man was on his dead bed surrounded by his family. He asked his wife: Mary, are you here? Yes honey. To his daughter: Rose, are you here? Yes dad. To his son: Patrick, are you here? Yes dad. Then, opening his eyes said: who is looking after the shop? The Church is in our hands and we need to feel the responsibility of looking after it. Two questions Jesus is going to ask us when he comes: Do you have oil? Did you give light to others?

            It is not enough to have the lamp, to believe, but we need also the oil. It is a small thing but it is very important. How sometimes small things make a big difference. If there is no oil, there is no light. We cannot be in darkness when Jesus comes to pick us up, otherwise we are not going to see him coming. How do we get this oil? Through the sacraments, mainly communion and confession, our prayer life, our charity, our good deeds, the things we do for others. Our love of God and the love for others are the olives where we can squeeze the oil for our lamps. We need to make sure we have enough oil to keep the lamp burning until he comes. Be awake and waiting.

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All Saints

            Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.

            The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.

            What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.

            Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.

            We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of JesusChrist. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”

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The first Commandment

             Chapter twenty two of Matthew’s Gospel is question time. We saw last week about the tribute to Caesar, then a question about the resurrection of the dead and today about the greatest commandment. It is a lawyer who asks to test him. He wanted to know how much Jesus knew about the law. Be careful with lawyers. Don’t forget Jesus is the one who made the law. The Pharisees loved to fulfill the law but had 613 commandments. There were endless arguments about their importance, because some of them were not easy to live by. Jesus gives us a simple answer: love God above everything and others as yourself.

            It is a simple commandment: “You shall love the Lord your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” It is the core of the Gospel in a nutshell, it’s a summary. It is very demanding, not easy to put it into practice. If you do it, you’ll become holy. We heard this many times and we would like to do it. But, is it possible? It is; God cannot ask us something we cannot fulfill. The saints have done it. We can do it, but do we want to do it? We are created to love God. It is the only way for us to be happy.

            The Old Testament says that Moses was very much loved by God. He talked to Him as a man talks to his friend. After conversing with God he had to cover his face because it shone like a powerful light. The Israelites couldn’t look at his face. Moses wanted to see God’s face. But man cannot see the face of God and live, so God in his merciful love promised to place Moses in a cleft of a rock. “There I will station you while my glory passes by, and cover you with my right hand till I have gone past. So, when I take my hand away, then you shall follow me with your eyes, but my face you cannot see.” Thus God allowed Moses to see his back. We cannot imagine what he saw. We too want to see God. But our love for Him is not strong enough.

            At the end of our lives we are going to be measured by our love of God. Jesus, our judge, is going to hold a scale with two plates: one with our sins, and on the other with our love for him. We already have our sins; the plate is full of them. We need to make sure our love is heavier. Look at big sinners who became great saints: Mary Magdalene or Saint Augustine. They eventually loved God above everything. They give us plenty of hope. We are small sinners, but we can become small saints. Don’t worry too much about your sins; make sure we keep growing in our love of God. There is a secret: we love him with his love; therefore ask Him for this gift.

            How much do I love God? It depends of how much I am ready to do for him. Are we ready not to offend him? How do we grow in our love of God? In the same way we love people: doing things for them, trying not to offend them, thinking about them. Our mind goes to the people we love. We have five main languages of love. Acts of service: we need to serve God, doing things for him alone. Words of praise: we adore God mainly going to Mass. Quality time: we should spend more time with him in prayer. Physical touch: the best way to touch Him is to receive Him in Communion. Offering gifts: we should be generous with Him, giving Him whatever He is asking from us now.

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Giving to Caesar

            The Pharisees wanted to catch Jesus. They planned a clever trap. How silly! Sometimes we think that we can fool God. Other times we get upset with Him. We blame Him for things that are our own doing. We bring God down to our level to wrestle with Him. If we knew the infinite difference between us and God, we wouldn’t dare to mention even his name. When we place God in the proper context, we realise our nothingness. Thanks to Jesus, the Son of God who became man, we can become closer to Him.

            It was a good trap, a catch twenty two. There was no way out. Whatever Jesus said, it would had upset one side. Even though both sides were against each other, they both hated Jesus, and they were allied against him. The Herodians were pro Romans, supporting Herod who was a puppet of the authorities; the Pharisees were Jewish nationalists. If Jesus had said no to paying taxes, the Herodians would have told the Romans. If he had said the opposite, the Pharisees would have had something against him in front of the people, to discredit him.

            It was a brilliant answer from Jesus, a good come back, one of his most famous one liners, like the one with the adulterous woman. This allowed him to walk the thin middle line, avoiding both extremes. So many times in our faith we take sides, either or, black or white, and we fail to keep the balance. Heresies normally emphasise one side of the question, falling down through the gap. The truth is trying to keep both together, showing the mystery in all its splendour: grace and freedom, man and God, one and three, virgin and mother, body and soul, sinner and saint.

            What Jesus is telling us today, through the trap that was put to him, is that we need to give to Caesar what is his due, but no more, because to God we must give everything. God and Caesar are on two quite different levels. We need to provide for the common good, help society in the way we can, but we cannot forget that we are passing by, that we come from God and we are going back to Him. Everything we have comes from Him and we need to recognise this reality in our own lives.

            Jesus asked the Pharisees to show him a coin, not to keep it, but to ask them what was the image on the metal: the face of Augustus. It is a good reminder of what it is inscribed on our bodies: the image of God. Our bodies carry the most lovable face of Jesus Christ. We need to preserve His image, make it shine, portray it in the best possible way. It doesn’t belong to us, it’s not ours; don’t try to appropriate it; give His image back to Him. They say that Saint Francis of Assisi was the most perfect image of Jesus Christ. We can all be a special image of Jesus in our own way. Blessed Carlo Acutis used to say: “we are all originals, don’t become a photocopy.” We try to copy the people the media presents to us as role models. If we could meet them, we would realise their lack of virtue and holiness. We Christians, because of our Baptism, we have a special character inscribed in our soul, that enables us to become what we are: an image and likeness of God. You are the only one who can make it so.

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Parable of the marriage feast

            God has invited us to a wedding banquet in the kingdom of heaven. We are all invited; he wants all us to be saved, to be with him. No one is left out of his invitation. But He respects our freedom; it’s only an invitation, it is not compulsory to accept, even though it is for our own good. It is a wedding banquet. For the Jews it was the highest degree of happiness. It lasted for few days. For us a wedding reception is also a big celebration, but only lasts for few hours, where everything has to be perfect and normally it costs a lot of money. We all love going to weddings.

            But this is a special wedding. It is the wedding of Christ and his Church. Christ is the bridegroom and we are his bride. He is not only inviting us to his wedding as guests, but as his bride. He is proposing a union with us, a union more intimate than the marriage union. Marriage is only for this earth, where we need to generate children. Jesus says that in heaven we won’t get married. The union that Jesus is proposing to us is an everlasting union, a union for the whole of eternity. He wants us to be so united with him, that we become more like him. Now here on earth Jesus is already offering us his engagement ring. This engagement normally lasts for the years we live here. But for the saints, the wedding banquet begins here. If we want to, we can also have it here.

            But most of us don’t want to go to his wedding. It is silly but we don’t know much about it; we are not sure. We invent plenty of excuses not to go: “I have a business to attend, I just bought a new gadget, I am watching tv, listening to music, resting in my bed, doing my own thing.” Every time we don’t follow his will, every time we sin, we are telling him that we don’t accept his engagement ring, or we are throwing the ring back in his face, breaking the engagement. We fail to see the beautiful, precious stone in the ring. It has more power than the ring of “The Lord of the Rings”. It is the ring that opens for us the gates of paradise.

            It is impossible for us to imagine what heaven is like. That’s why we reject the invitation. This rejection can be so blatant that it merits eternal punishment. Both, the no to God and the existence of hell puzzle us. I’ve heard a man saying that he doesn’t believe in a God that created hell. We are the ones who have created it with our evil deeds. God on the contrary wants to be with us for ever. People in hell don’t want to leave, they won’t ask God for forgiveness. We should better concentrate in our yes to God and to the amazing place he has prepared for us.

            One of the guests at the wedding banquet is thrown out because doesn’t have the proper dress. Saint Gregory the Great says that the wedding garment is the theological virtue of charity, our love of God. It is the only virtue that perdures in heaven. If we are not dressed with this garment, we are going to be thrown out from the banquet hall into the outer darkness. We have our whole life to weave our wedding dress. We cannot do it in one go; it is a long life task. We do it every day, one step at a time, one thread a day. Sometimes we are like Penelope, who weaved during the day and unraveled it at night. We need to renew our love of God every day.

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Parable of the wicked tenants

             Today’s readings talk about how much God has done for us and our failure to correspond to his love. The first reading from the book of Isaiah is a song exulting the vineyard. An orchard with vines was very precious in the Mediterranean area. It produced grapes, fruit for the time, wine, a good healthy drink with no bugs, and dried fruit, raisins, for the months ahead. It required a lot of work to keep the vines healthy, and to learn the art of winemaking. The parable of the wicked tenants highlights our responsibility in looking after the vineyard of the Lord and the duty to produce a good spiritual wine in due time. It is also a reminder of our history of salvation.

            God first entrusted his vineyard to the chosen people. He gave them what they needed, a promised land, a land of milk and honey; he dig a trench around it, making sure they lived in peace and prosperity, getting rid of all the enemies surrounding them; and built a watch tower in the middle of it, giving them prophets and kings to lead them. But they were unfaithful to him and adored the neighbor’s gods. God tried everything with them and forgave them when they repented. But they kept rebelling against him and in the end He sent them his only Son as the last resort. They seized him, threw him out of Jerusalem and killed him.

            Today is good day to examine ourselves. How are we taking care of the vineyard, of the piece of the kingdom God has entrusted to us? It is not ours, but we should take care of it as if it was ours, our personal responsibility. We should make sure we yield the fruit God is expecting from us, not our personal product; it should be something for others, not just for ourselves. It will be a pity if we were to hear the admonition of Jesus at the end of the parable, directed to the Jews: “The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that will produce its fruit.”

            What sort of fruit are we producing? Are we only collecting wild, sour grapes? Is our life worthwhile, full of beautiful sweet grapes? God has been so good to us. He has given us all we need to look after his vineyard. And we, like the chosen people, are often ungrateful, we are lazy, we don’t put the time and dedication our job deserves, and we let the vineyard to go waste. Instead of looking after what God has given us, we look over our neighbor’s fence and we envy him his vineyard. We think that his grass is greener. At the end we fail to produce the wine God is expectimg from us.

            A friend of mine, a winemaker, told me about this famous winemaker who makes only five hundred bottles a year, mixing with art good vintages, and sells them in the US for a thousand dollars a bottle, a wine only for the rich and glamorous. He makes half a million dollars. I asked him if it is a good wine. He said: “It must be a good wine, but I don’t know if it is worth a thousand dollars. I cannot afford the test it.” This is the wine we need to produce, a wine worth a million dollars, worthy for the table of the Lord, a wine to be tasted for eternity, that will last for ever.

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Parable of the two sons

            Last Sunday, today and next Sunday we have the parables of the vineyard. Israel is described in the Old Testament as the vineyard of the Lord. It represents the care God has for his people. A vineyard demands a lot of work to produce the right wine. The first miracle Jesus performed was to convert water into wine. Wine is compared to the grace God gives us to make us happier, to become more like him. Saint John of Cross says that “The cellar is the highest degree of love to which the soul may attain in this life.” We cannot forget that which becomes the blood of Christ during the Mass is wine.

            God allows us to help him to produce a good vintage. He sends us into his vineyard. It is important to consider that the vineyard is our own inheritance. The wine we are producing is for our eternal life: this is the wine that we are going to drink for all eternity, and we need to make sure it is of the best quality. A king once asked his son to build a castle. He gave him a lot of money for the project. The son, who was a greedy man, kept most of the money and built a cheap castle. When he finished, he gave the keys of the castle to his father. The king gave the keys back to his son saying: “This is precisely your inheritance.” We should be very interested in working in the vineyard of the Lord, working hard and well, because we are directly interested in producing our best.

            When God asks us to work in his vineyard, sometimes we say yes, sometimes we say no; sometimes we go, sometimes we don’t go. We are sinners and many times our first reaction is negative. But afterwards we change our minds. We shouldn’t be too concerned about our first intention, many times a product of our selfishness or pride, but make sure we change our minds and we do what God wants us to do. What’s important is the end result. The parable of today was proposed to the Jews who rejected to work in the vineyard of the Lord and therefore God gave his vineyard to all of us. We should be grateful that we are allowed to make wine, a marvelous privilege, a wine that is going to last for ever.

            When we obey, we conform our will to God’s will. God prefers our obedience rather than heroic acts which maybe product of our selfishness. Saint Teresa of Avila was jealous of a famous nun who was doing a lot of penance. Her spiritual director didn’t allow her to imitate this nun. When she complained to Jesus, he told her that he preferred her obedience rather than the penance of this nun. We can do a lot of good things out of pride, but obedience always brings about humility.

            The second reading of today’s Mass, from the letter to the Philippians, Saint Paul proposes the example of Jesus, who humbled himself and became obedient unto death and death on the cross. The crucifixion was considered the most degrading form of execution. It was reserved for the worst criminals. Jesus gives us a lesson in obedience, following the will of his Father, to give his life for us in a most cruel way. When we find it difficult to do what God wants us to do, we can look at Jesus dying on the cross.

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Labourers in the vineyard

             We can relate to this parable in South Africa. So many people looking for work. Often you see them at roundabouts, with a sign announcing their skills: electrician, plumber, carpenter, painter. All waiting for somebody to hire them for the day. We can pray for these people that they find work to feed their families. And pray for the corruption to go away, greedy people who only look after themselves.

            We all feel uneasy with this parable, sympathising with the workers that worked for the whole day and got the same wages as the ones who worked only for an hour. It is not fair. Children use this expression when they see something that lacks equality. But parents treat different children differently. The same with God. We are all the same in God’s eyes, with the same dignity, but God gives different graces to all of us. Why? Because we are all unique, and we all show different perfections and qualities of God. Variety brings forth many more gifts. Imagine if all of us were the same; life would be boring, all cracking the same jokes, inventing the same stories, composing the same music. Opposites attract each other, different skills balance societies, the more choices the more richness. At the end God gives the same reward to everyone: heaven. In paradise everybody will be filled with gifts, as much as they can hold. But if you compare them, some will contain more than others; the containers all have different capacities.

            What is going to happen with people becoming Christians at the end of their lives, Catholics going to confession after many years just before they died, babies dying just born, fetuses being aborted in their mother’s womb? We all agree that they should go to heaven, in spite of their brief or non existent Christian lives. What about the good thief who stole heaven at the last moment? Jesus promised him: “Today you will be with me in paradise.” We cannot limit God’s mercy, goodness and generosity. Precisely as Jesus asks us in the parable: “Are you envious because I am generous?”

            In the first reading from the book of Isaiah the Lord says: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways.” How can we dare to pass judgment on the Lord? How can we try to fit God in our mind, to measure him with our imperfect and limited human standards? We cannot cage him in our small world. It is like trying to fit all the data of the servers in the cloud on a single floppy disk. The Lord continues: “As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” We are a bit like babies trying to read the Summa Theologiae of Saint Thomas Aquinas. We human beings see things with our eyes directed towards earth, only seeing the flat surface of the ground with no spatial perspective.

            Jesus finishes his parable saying: “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” In heaven our society will be up side down: the poor will at the top and the multimillionaires will be the rubbish collectors, the famous and influencers will be forgotten and the real good deeds will come to the light. Imagine a race where this saying is fulfilled: everybody would run backwards. This is what we need to do: instead of running towards our own ego, we need to run towards God. We should be first in our love of God and last in our pride.

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Parable of the unforgiving servant

            The parable of the unforgiving servant is at the heart of the Gospel. It is an example for us to learn how to forgive and forget. We know by experience that it is not easy. Until we forgive the other person from the heart, we won’t be able to forget. If the grudge keeps coming back to our mind, it is a sign that we haven’t managed to forgive. It is only a desire, an intention, something we would like to do, but we don’t have the heart to do it. Jesus gave us this parable to learn how to find true forgiveness.

            This parable puts things into perspective in a very graphic way. The difference between what the servant has been forgiven and what he should forgive to his friend is colossal; it must have blown the minds of the listeners. For us it is difficult to grasp the ammount of money, because the Gospel uses the local currency of the time and we are not familiar with it. It is the difference between millions of dollars and few hundred dollars. It doesn’t make sense that the servant didn’t forgive the debt of his friend, specially just after a big debt was canceled. It is so ridiculous that it highlights the selfish attitude of the unforgiving servant, and at the same time our own pettiness.

            This parable helps us to understand a bit better the difference that exist between us and God. God forgives us everything, but we keep track of little petty things. When we go to God with our complaints, pointing out the offences we have suffered from our brothers and sisters, the first thing he asks is: “Do you want me to show my list? Do you really want to see it? It is so long that it is rolled up as a toilet paper. And I have a whole warehouse full of them.” Once we see how ridiculous our small list of grievances is, compared with the infinite list of our offences to God, we can forget about our little grudges and learn how to forgive.

            Once I saw a cartoon where God was displayed as an old man with a white beard sitting on a cloud, looking a bit sleepy. There was a small angel flying around asking God: “What do you do all the time? Aren’t you bored?” And God responded: “What do I do? I forgive.” This is what God does with us all the time. We are little children, being naughty, trying to push the boundaries, trying to get away with things. And God, who is a good loving Father, is always ready to forgive and forget. He says that once he forgives, he buries our sins in the deepest black hole in the universe, and they disappear from his eyes, sucked in by the dark matter. God’s delete button is for ever; you cannot retrieve the files from his hard disk. God doesn’t keep grudges and he doesn’t remember once he has forgiven us. He has a very short term memory. We need to learn from him if we are to be good sons and daughters of his. He loves when we make up with his children.

            If the unforgiving servant had forgiven the little debt of his friend, he would had become the forgiving servant, even though the parable would had disappeared. But It would had started a chain of forgiveness that would have reached down to our own time. We can start this chain ourselves, beginning to pray about the grudges we keep in our hearts and trying to heal them, comparing them with all the offences we have caused to our Father God, and learning from Him how to delete them from our minds.

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Fraternal correction

            Today Jesus talks to us in the Gospel about fraternal correction. We are all brothers and sisters in the faith and we need to help each other. Last week we saw Jesus correcting Peter. You could say that during his life with us he actually spent three years correcting his apostles, forming them, passing the Gospel on to them, preparing them for their mission. From a human perspective he didn’t do a good job: at the end only one followed him to the cross. One betrayed him, another denied him and the others ran away.

            The early Christians practiced fraternal correction; they corrected each other, they said things to each other face to face. They didn’t talk about others behind their backs. Others said of them: “See how they love one another.” People wanted to become Christians when they experienced their Christian charity. It is the best example we can give of our faith. We should love everybody, but specially our brothers and sisters in the faith. We want them to be better, to become closer to God.

            Both to correct and to be corrected is hard. Our pride gets in the way. It is important not to correct when we are upset or frustrated. It is going to lose its effect. We should correct when we are serene, out of love, thinking beforehand what we are going to say and how we are going to express ourselves. We should only do it when we are close to the person we want to help. It is a good remedy against gossiping or back biting. It is very rewarding to know that the people that love us are not going to stab us in the back. We can be very honest with them.

            We should be also open to correction ourselves. It is something you see in the Saints; they are very grateful when they are helped. It is not easy to be told about the mistakes we have made, but it is good for us, specially when it comes from people we know who love us. We should be grateful when our spouse, our parents, brothers and sisters, our friends, tells us things openly, face to face. I remember talking to the Managing Director of a company who was complaining: “Nobody corrects me, they are all afraid of me; they want to please me.” It happens to parish priests too. We all need to be told how can we change or improve. If nobody tells us how is it possible? Nobody is perfect. Some couples they have a moment every week when they can tell each other one thing they don’t like about the other spouse. This is what it means to be vulnerable.

            It is very difficult to get to know ourselves. It is one of the most difficult things, because we are always on the inside looking out. We cannot see ourselves from outside, only through a photo or a video. The first time you record your voice it sounds strange. We all want to take a selfie to see us through the eyes of others. Look at the Holy King David. God had to send Nathan the prophet to tell him of his sin: he took somebody else’s wife and put him in a position where he was certain to be killed in battle; he didn’t realize what he had done until Nathan told him. We normally place our imperfections behind us so as not to see them. We don’t like to be aware of them or to be reminded of them. We always put our good deeds in front of us. We always think that we are better than we are. They say it is a good business that buys people by their real price and sells them at the value they think they have. We all like putting people down to place ourselves above them. Fraternal correction helps us to correct these bad tendencies.

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Take up his Cross

            Last week Jesus told Peter that he was the rock on which he was going to build his Church. Today he calls him Satan. What happened? Last week Peter called Jesus the Christ, the anointed one; today he tries to discourage him from suffering and dying on the cross. Last week he was inspired by God; today he looks at things as we humans normally do. Jesus took advantage of this moment to talk about one of the most difficult paradoxes of our faith: to be happy we need to carry our cross. Nobody wants to hear about the cross, but Jesus is on the cross, and the cross is the symbol of our Christian life.

            How can we explain this? That the cross is a blessing. This idea goes against the basic core of our present society: that is, seek pleasure at any cost. People kill themselves with drugs or alcohol; they destroy their families committing adultery; they gamble their wealth away; they compromise their body, eating too much or consuming food not good for them; they risk their lives driving too fast; they harm their health working too hard and later on they spend their money trying to fix it. And all of this for the sake of pleasure. We all want to be happy, but many times we look for happiness in the wrong places.

            Saint John of the Cross once told his brother Francis a secret: “I will tell you something that happened to me with our Lord. We had a crucifix in the monastery, and one day, when I was standing before it, it seemed to me that it would be better placed in the church. I wanted it to be venerated not only by the friars but also by those outside. And I carried out this intention. When I had placed it in the church, I stood before it in prayer. Then Jesus said to me: ‘Brother John, ask me what you would like me to give to you for the service you have done to me.’ Then I said to him: Lord, I want from you sufferings which I might bear for you, and that I should be despised and accounted for nothing.” Not long afterwards he was taken prisoner against his will and locked in a small cell for nine months, with almost no food. From there we have the Saint we know.

            While we look for pleasurable things, saints look for the cross. Why? Because they know that God is trying to bless them with the cross. Saints want at any cost to do what God wants them to do. And sometimes the will of God is hard for us. Why? Because He wants us to grow, to mature, to conform ourselves to the image of Christ. Parents know that for their kids to become better, many times they have to suffer. Suffering goes with human life; it is part of human existence. Pain is the other side of the coin of love. Who loves you makes you suffer. It comes from original sin. We either accept it and love it, or we rebel and become bitter.

            Michael Angelo used to look at a block of marble and say: ‘I can see the statue inside; I am going to free it.’ Then he began to hit it with a hammer and a chisel. We are the same. The image of Christ is hidden in our nature. God can see it and He is trying to bring it out. But the process is painful. God has to chisel away many pieces that are not Jesus in our lives. Then he has to polish us and he normally uses people around us for his purposes. As long as we love the will of God, we let him do his work of sanctification.

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Upon this rock

            Jesus today in the Gospel is asking questions to his apostles: What do people say about me? There was a lot of gossip about who Jesus was. The apostles were keen to tell him all the conspiracy theories going around. Then Jesus confronted them asking a direct question: Who am I for you? They were all silent. It is a good question for all of us. Who is Jesus for me? What is the place of Jesus in my life? It is a question every human being should ask him or herself. The answer is important. It determines how we live our lives and eventually our future eternity. While the apostles ponder the question Peter answers: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The Holy Spirit answered the question through Peter for all of us: Jesus should be our priority, the centre of our lives, the apple of our eye. As Pope Benedict XVI used to say, Christianity is a not just a set of rules, but a relationship with a person who changes our lives.

            Answering the question, Peter shows his primacy and Jesus confirms it: you are the rock where I am going to build my Church. Jesus took advantage of this important question to establish his Church on solid foundations, on the rock of Peter. Without the Church, we cannot place Jesus at the centre of our lives. It is not possible to love Jesus and not to love the Church, because Jesus is her spouse. He left us his Church for us to have a beacon to follow, for us to have a straight path to heaven, a sure way not to go astray. We need to base our lives on Jesus, and he is seated on the cathedra of Saint Peter.

            Jesus changed Peter’s name from Simon to Cephas; it means stone in Aramaic. Peter comes from Petros in Greek and Petra in Latin, which means the same. The changing of the name was very important in the Old Testament: it was a way to determine the mission and role of a person. Jesus meant renaming Peter, to found his Church on solid ground: “You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the underworld will not prevail against it.” These words are written on a mosaic inside Saint Peter’s basilica, around the cupola, in big letters, three meters tall, for people to read them from the ground. And they have been fulfilled. After twenty centuries the Church is still alive and kicking. We constantly hear that the Church is finished, and we see how the boat of Saint Peter keeps weathering storms, while the enemies of the Church disappear.

            We call the Church One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. Saint Pius X used to add another note: Persecuted. We complain when Christians suffer persecution and we should defend them against discrimination. But it is a good sign when the media criticise us: we are on the right path. Jesus warned us that, like him, we were going to suffer trials and tribulations. But we shouldn’t worry too much about it; the Church is build on solid ground. Jesus is watching us through the office of the Pope who is the Vicar of Christ, the visible Christ on earth, or like Saint Catherine of Siena used to say, the sweet Christ on earth.

            There is an old proverb in Latin that says: Ubi Petrus, ibi Ecclesia, ibi Deus. Where there is Peter, there is the Church, there is God. We want to be with Peter, because with him is the Church, with him is God; and without him, God is not there. We can be very good, but if we separate ourselves from Peter, from the Church, we will wither away. We have the experience of history. Today we can pray for the Pope, to lead us through these unprecedented times, and to feel on our shoulders a bit the weight of Church.

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The Assumption

            Today is a day of joy, of great celebration, with a big welcoming feast happening in eternity. At last Jesus brings his mother with him, body and soul, up to heaven. During his Ascension, he went up to heaven by his own power. Today he lends his rockets to his mother, for her to be able to be with him together for ever. Jesus couldn’t wait for her any longer. He loves her so much that when we were distracted, he took her from us. We understand him and we ask Jesus to help us to love our own mothers each day more and more, until one day, hopefully, we will be able to be with them in heaven, together again.

            The Assumption of our Mother to heaven is the last dogma approved by the Church, maybe because it is the last chapter of her life on earth. Pius XII solemnly defined this truth in 1950: “The Immaculate Mother of God, Mary ever Virgin, after her life on earth, was assumed, body and soul, to the glory of heaven.” He managed to mention in this short statement the other three Marian dogmas, Motherhood, Virginity and Immaculate Conception. In 1952 South Africa was the first country to declare Our Lady of the Assumption patroness of this land. The first Cathedral in Cape Town was dedicated to the Holy Family of the Flight into Egypt, to remember the first and the only time Jesus came to Africa. Today’s feast we could call it the flight to heaven, or the return of Mary to her heavenly home.

            There is great joy in heaven today, but for us it is a bit of a sad day. We are already missing her. We would have liked Jesus to leave his mother on earth with us. But we know that if Jesus is with us in the Eucharist, we can assume that she is there too, keeping company with her son, while we are oblivious of his presence. She is trying to remind us of her Son’s actual physical presence in the tabernacle. We miss her because Mary is our mother. We are very proud of her. We have two mothers, one earthly and another heavenly. We need them both, one for our natural life and the other for our spiritual one.

            God wanted his mother to be with him at the same time as Virgin and Mother. Only she can be both, to sanctify these two states of life, to be an example for all of us, married or celibate. Nowadays, both, virginity and motherhood, are being mocked, ridiculiced, deconstructed. Our society has a negative outlook of both these qualities of our Mother. They go together, for good or for bad. When we praise motherhood, virginity shines. And the other way around; when one is denigrated, the other flounders.

            Our Mother is waiting for us in heaven. Jesus went to prepare a place for us and Mary went to check it out. Mothers know what their children like, what sort of colours, music, or pictures we prefer. We can take the opportunity of this feast to fix our eyes in heaven, to even try to accompany her with our spirit. It is dangerous to see heaven; we certainly wouldn’t want to come back to earth, or we would try to die sooner. Saints who have been there, they cry when they come back. They are different people. I remember during the Sydney Olympic Games, there was a controversy about who were going to get the best places. I saw a sign outside a Protestant church saying: “Heaven. Good seats still available.” Both, Jesus and his Mother, are coming to pick us up, to take us to our place in the front row.

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Walking on water

            After a busy day, attending the crowd, healing the sick, comforting the troubled and feeding them, Jesus goes on to pray. While he dismisses the people, the apostles sail to the other side of the lake. None of his apostles accompany him. They wanted to get away from the crowd. They were very tired, and they knew Jesus was going to pray for the whole night. Jesus wanted to spend time alone with his Father God. We too; after a busy day, we need to pray to recover our serenity. Even though we are tired, we need to find the time to pray. The busier we are, the more we need to pray. In one of John Paul II trips to the Philippines, after a very busy day, the nuns went to the chapel at midnight to prepare the Mass for the following day, and they found the Pope praying, prostrated on the floor.

            From the top of the mountain Jesus sees the boat battling against the wind and the waves. He could see them well. It was full moon, close to the Pasch. These storms are normal on the lake, dangerous for fishing boats. The Fathers of the Church see in this boat an image of the Church, which is always battling against temptations, persecutions, heresies and infidelities. We often complain about the problems in the Church, but there have been always crisis, many times worse than the one we are going through now; and the Church always comes back alive. Jesus is always watching us from the mountain. He let the apostles struggle for a while. He does the same with us. It is good for us to go through difficulties and obstacles, for us to become stronger. It looks like he doesn’t care about us, but he is always watching over us.

            At the fourth watch, at three in the morning, Jesus came walking on the water of the lake. He is ready to help us whenever we need it. One author says that after praying, Jesus was so inflamed with love, that he didn’t realise he was walking on water. On the other hand I think he wanted to play a trick on them. It made a deep impression on them; all four evangelists mention this event. He looked like a ghost. The white tunic, illuminated by the moon, contrasted with the black background of the water. It must have been very scary. They all cried out; these big men were as afraid as little girls. He had to calm them: “It is I, don’t be afraid.” He always reminds us of this reality, whenever we are afraid: I am always with you. We cannot hide from God. We cannot find a place where God is not.

            Peter asked Jesus to walk on water: “If it is you.” He was still afraid, not trusting. “Come.” Peter jumped into the water. What did he feel on his feet? Was the surface soft? When he stopped looking at Jesus and realised he was walking on water, he began to sink. When we look at the wind, at the waves, the currents, the problems, the difficulties, we become pessimistic first and then we begin to sink, like Peter. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, specially when we are walking on eggshells. This is what it takes to become a contemplative soul: to keep our eyes on the Lord. Where do I fix my eyes? What am I looking for?

            Peter cried out: “Lord, save me!” Jesus pulled him out, coming towards him and grasping him with his own hand. He could have commanded him to come out or jump. But he is always ready to pull us out of whatever muddy waters we find ourselves in. He complained: “Oh man of little faith why did you doubt?” How many times Jesus is telling us the same thing: I am with you always. Why don’t you trust me? I can do everything for you.

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Multiplication of the loaves and the fish

            From time to time Jesus used to take his apostles to a deserted place to be alone by themselves. There were so many people coming and going that they needed to be on their own, for Jesus to spend time with them and teach them his message without interruptions. When they arrived to the solitary place, they found a great crowd of people waiting for them. They had seen where they were going by boat and hurried through the land to be there when they arrived. You can imagine the disappointment of the apostles who were looking forward to spending few days alone with Jesus.

            The Gospel says that Jesus, seeing the people had compassion on them. Saint Mark says that they were like sheep without a shepherd. He healed the sick, listened to their problems, consoled the afflicted and gave them good advice. Jesus is always ready to spend time with us, no matter what the cost, even if we are far away from him. He has a human heart, the same as ours, and he feels in his heart our problems and troubles. After the whole day with them, the apostles asked him to dismiss the crowd, to be able to be on their own. Jesus told them that they must be fed first. They were far away from civilization and because the people had come in such a hurry, they had forgotten to bring food. Jesus not only looked after their souls, but also their bodies. Jesus is not a man with his head in the clouds; he knows what we need. Whenever we complain, he knows what we are going through. He’s been there. He is like us, in all but sin.

            “Give them something to eat.” Their response was predictable: we don’t have any food, we don’t have money, and the shops are far away; we have only five pieces of bread and two fish, not enough for us. It is easy to complain. The apostles wanted the people to go away to be able to stay alone with Jesus. Jesus is telling them: do something. He is telling us the same whenever we complain: do something; you can fix the problem. Jesus tells them: “That’s enough. Bring the bread and the fish to me.” Jesus doesn’t need anything to perform his miracles. But he wants to use our talents, our will, our time, for us to think we are helping him. He wants to use what we’ve got, as long as we give it to him, as long as we don’t hide it, or keep it to ourselves. We should give Jesus our bread and our fish.

            We have in front of our altar two fish and four pieces of bread. It is a copy of a mosaic from the church close to Capernaum, from the fourth century, where the actual miracle took place. People ask why there are only four pieces of bread. Because the fifth one it is the Eucharist, which comes on the altar during Mass and becomes the same Jesus that was there two thousand years ago. The same Jesus who performed the miracle. If we believe that Jesus is here, he will perform the miracle again and again in our lives. He can change our human nature into his divinity; he can multiply whatever we have.

            The miracle happened in a very natural way: nothing fancy. Jesus put the food in two baskets, blessed it and gave it to the people. And the food kept coming out from the same basket. He didn’t attract the attention of the people, to witness his power. It was a beautiful meal. They had the best sandwich of bread and fish ever. The bread was just baked and the fish was recently caught. Afterwards they wanted to make him king, but he ran away. Jesus always gives us the best.

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Parables of the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value

            Today Jesus in the Gospel presents us two parables about the kingdom of heaven: the hidden treasure and the pearl of great value. Both are very similar; they show us the supreme value of God’s kingdom and what we should do to reach it. But they have some differences: the treasure points towards an abundance of gifts, and the pearl indicates more it’s beauty. We are all attracted to gems and pearls. They sparkle in many different ways, we admire their beautiful colours and we would like to have them, no matter what the cost. We use them to show our affection for our loved ones. People risk their lives to get them and others go to jail for stealing them. We too should risk our lives to go to heaven and achieve it by the struggle we constantly have with ourselves.

            There is nothing like heaven. Our heart longs for an everlasting life full of goodness and beauty. Peter Kreeft mentions Saint Augustine’s little thought experiment: “Imagine God appeared to you and said: ‘I’ll make a deal with you if you wish. I’ll give you anything and everything you ask: pleasure, power, honor, wealth, freedom, even peace of mind and good conscience. Nothing will be a sin; nothing will be forbidden; and nothing will be impossible for you. You will never be bored and you will never die. Only... you shall never see my face.’ Did you notice that unspeakable chill in you deepest heart at those last words?” Heaven is to see the face of God. To see the face of a person is to recognise his identity, to acknowledge his feelings, to admire his worth. It is difficult to do so these days with people wearing masks.

            What is heaven for you? For some people it is something nice but far away, somewhere they’d like to go, like the Bahamas, or something they’ll consider when they are close to dying. Many people prefer this earth to eternity. They say: better the devil I know; at least here I can touch things; I don’t know what is going to happen when I die. But eternity is too big to swap for this earth; it is too risky. Pascal’s wager says that it is not fifty, fifty. It is all or nothing; all is all, nothing is nothing. If God doesn’t exist you have a finite loss; if He exists, you have infinite gains. You win more than you lose.

            Another difference between these two parables is that the treasure is something we come across almost by chance, and the pearl is the result of a lengthy search. Faith, vocation, true wisdom, desire for Heaven, are things which sometimes are discovered suddenly and unexpectedly, and sometimes after much searching. If God wants to give them to us, we should be eternally grateful. If He wants us to keep searching, it is good for us. We all love a treasure hunt, looking for something we don’t know what it is or where it is hidden. As long as we keep on looking for it, eventually, we will find it. God as a good Father wants us to enjoy the treasure he has prepared for us. He has an infinite number of goodies and sweets, tailored made to our own personal taste.

            Both men in the two parables have the same attitude and reach the same outcome. They sell everything to buy the field and the pearl; they manage to get it against all the odds, and both come away full of joy and happiness. To obtain the treasure it is necessary to sell everything we possess; otherwise we won’t get what we want. It is the only way to be happy. A good question for us today: What is God asking me to sell now to become closer to heaven? Saint Josemaria used to say that we should walk on this earth with our feet stepping firmly on the ground and with our eyes fixed on heaven.

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Parable of the weeds

            These Sundays the parables in the Gospel try to explain the kingdom of heaven: it is impossible. To do so we need an infinite number of parables. We should be very keen to know more about our homeland. The more we know about our goal the more we quicken our pace. It is important for us to fix our eyes on heaven, to look forward to our destination. Jesus has prepared a place for us and we really want to get there. When you plan a trip you look first where is the place you are going and then you figure out how to get there. We know where we are going and we know the way: Jesus is the way, the only way. We need to make sure we don’t get distracted, side tracked, lost or bogged down.

            Today we have the parable of the weeds. It is easy to understand it. We find weeds everywhere. They upset gardeners and annoy us during our daily lives. They say a weed is a plant out of place. We come across problems all the time. Things normally go wrong or they turn in a different way to how we planned them. We complain about others, about evil in the world and we forget that our hearts are full of weeds. It is easier to see the weeds in our neighbor’s garden. Jesus explains the parable very well. It underlines the drama of our existence. Good and evil, angels and devils: this is what happens behind the scenes. There are not good and bad people; there is good and evil in our hearts, both combined together. And it is up to us to foster the good and shrink evil. At the end of the day evil is a lack of goodness.

            The servants complain to the master about who has sown the weeds. He answers that the enemy has done it while we were asleep. We need to be vigilant. While we are lazing around the devil is at work. People complain to God asking why does he allow evil to exist? The same happened to Saint Teresa of Avila. She asked God the same question. He answered: I created you. The devil never stops; he is always at work, while we complain. The good news is that God is on our side and he is Almighty.

            There are three temptations, self-deceptions, that hide evil from us. First indifference: ignore it, do nothing, let me live my life, it is not my business, I don’t care; we should care, we Christians are the good seed. Second arrogance: we are the good ones, we know better, they know nothing, they are ignorant, we know what is right; if we are close to God it is because of him. Third violence: uproot evil, belittle the opposition, ridicule them, abuse them through the social media, spread false news. The best way is what John Paul II did: spread goodness, go around the world talking about God, throw the good seed everywhere. It is more effective to plant than to root out, to sow than to burn.

            Evil will always be with us. It shouldn’t worry us. God is patient, we should be patient, God is merciful, we should be too. Why does God allow weeds to grow along with the wheat? There are a number of reasons. First for the weeds to become wheat. God can do it. We have our own experience. There is always time for conversion, till the last moment. Some big saints were big sinners. Second for us to become better. In times of persecution we Christians become stronger. Third, God is the only one who can bring good out of evil. God uses evil people for his plans, for us to see that he is in control.

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Parable of the sower

            Today Jesus talks to us with a parable. Why? Because we find difficult to understand his message. He needs to use images, comparisons, material things for us to reach the spiritual ones. We are body and soul, and through our body we reach the soul. The kingdom of heaven is so rich that Jesus needs to use different earthly images for us to understand things better, to grasp some of its aspects. Man before he learned how to write, he began to paint. They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Jesus’ parables are ingrained in our culture. When we talk about the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Lost Sheep, people understand what we are talking about. We remember parables better than abstract concepts. In our society, where screens surround us, images are very important.

            Today Jesus proposes to us the parable of the sower. It is something alien to us. Most of us haven’t seen anybody sowing seeds. These days we use machines for that. In the good old days it was done by hand, throwing the seed as they walked. Jesus is the sower. He throws his seed to us, his graces, his power, and it is up to us to pick them up, to place them in the right soil, to make them fruitful. He respects our freedom; he doesn’t impose himself. He let us be the one to accept his seed, to make it part of our lives, to look after it. He expects from us an attitude of receiving and nurturing. We should be very grateful to his generosity: he always throws an abundance of seed. We shouldn’t squander it.

            It is very important for the sower to use the right seed. There are big companies always trying to improve the seeds, to yield more fruit, to be resistant to diseases, to withstand frosts, to be able to use less water. Jesus’ seed is the best one. You cannot find a better one. And it is free. It is his word in the Scriptures, his living water in Baptism, the bread of life in the Eucharist, the good wine of Cana, the oil of healing, the absolution in confession, the mustard seed that grows to a big tree, the treasure hidden in a field, the pearl of great value, the net that catches many fish, the two coins of the widow. His seed has the potential of always being fruitful. It is up to us to make it happen.

            We are the soil. Our heart is the good soil. But we need to prepare it beforehand. It cannot be either too hard or too soft; just right. Our heart sometimes is very hard; we don’t share Jesus’ feelings. We need to soften it, to make it more capable of receiving Jesus’ seed. Maybe we need to go more often to confession, receive communion regularly, make acts of contrition, to apologize or ask for mercy. Maybe it is too soft and crumbles very easily; at the first difficulty it collapses. It needs to withstand strong winds. We need to face obstacles with stronger determination. If our heart is rocky ground, we need to dig the stones out. What are the stones in my life that don’t allow me to see God? If there are thorns, we should pull them out. What are the thorns in my heart that choke the seed?

            It is not enough to have good soil. We should keep an eye for the right conditions for the seed to grow. The soil should be deep enough for the roots to grow and the plants to establish themselves. We have to plant the seed at the right time, spread fertiliser, water it sufficiently, spray the bugs, prune when it is necessary. It is a little seed that needs to be nurtured, to be planted in the right place, covered from the winds, with enough sun to grow. We cannot fall asleep and leave the plants alone.

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To become like children

            “I give praise to you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the wise and the learned you have revealed them to little ones.” God loves children. Jesus complains to his apostles: “Let the children come to me.” It is easy for children to believe in miracles and angels. When we grow up we lose our capacity for the spiritual things. This is why Jesus reminds us that unless we become like children, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. We need to recover the ability to connect with the supernatural, the faith to believe in the other life. Eternity has a small door and we need to diminish to find it and to go through. Our ego is too big to fit in. What are children like? I’ll point out four characteristics that I like in them: humility, simplicity, sincerity and actuality. All these virtues are very important for our spiritual life.

            Humility. Children are little and they know it. They don’t need to pretend, to show off. Their small stature is always before them. They look up to you, try to climb up things, fall down, mess up, dirty nappies, cry for help. They are helpless. They want to grow up, to become bigger, to dream; they are curious, have a huge capacity to wonder, they hope. All these things help us to see God as a Father and trust in him. We are weak and we need God.

            Simplicity. People love children because they are transparent: what you see is what you get. They don’t know how to deceive. You can read their minds by looking at their faces. They are innocent, naive, authentic. Whatever they think, they say it. You know where you stand with them. They cry when they are hurt and laugh if they are happy. We spend our whole life hiding our feelings, trying not to say what we think, to pretend we are somebody else. We are very good at deceiving. We can have a number of different lives. We act differently in front of different people. God knows us inside out, perfectly, and he loves us in the way we are. We don’t need to pretend with him. The first thing he tells us when we approach him is: get rid of your fancy dress. We can relax with him.

            Sincerity. Little children don’t know how to lie. They haven’t learned yet the art of deceiving. They say that the difference between computers and people is that computers cannot lie. Children are easy to catch: they invent unbelievable lies. Mum knows when her children lie; she was there at the first lie and she knows when we lie: we don’t look at her face, we move our ears, we twitch our nose, we frown. What’s the point of trying to deceive God?

            Actuality. I don’t know how to name this virtue: the art of living in the present time. Children do it naturally. They just play. They don’t care about the past; it doesn’t exist. They don’t think about the future; it is in their parents hands. They move from a smiling to crying in seconds. They can laugh with tears still running down their cheeks. Scripture says that God plays with the children of men. All we need to do is play with him. We don’t need to worry about the past: we have been to confession. Our future is in God’s hands, who is a good loving Father.

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Love of God

             “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” It is a very strong statement. Why is Jesus saying this? Because we have been created to love God above everything. This is our inner make up, our only way to be happy in the long run. We have to put God first, we need to centre ourselves around him. The Bible reminds us a few times of this, that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind.” Is this possible? Look at the saints. They did it, with the help of God. They gave their lives to God. Can you love a person more than to give your life for him or for her? Looking at the history of the Church we see many people have dedicated their lives to God. Unless we give ourselves to God, he is not going to give himself to us.

            How much do I love God? How much are we ready to do for Him? Are we ready not to offend Him? Are we ready to do His will? Love is different from emotions and feelings. It is a matter of the will. We can choose who we want to love. It can be an attraction at the beginning, but afterwards there is a decision from the will. We love God with our intellect and will. We cannot love what we don’t know. The more we know God, the more we love Him. The more we discover who God is, the more we will fall in love with Him. There is nobody like God.

            How do I love God? How do you love others? The same way we love people, we love God. We have only one heart. Some people think that we have two hearts, one to love God and another to love others. We can also think that to love a person we need to see that particular person. People love characters in their imagination, girls fall in love with actors they will never meet. We love our loved ones dedicating time to them, spending time with them, doing things for them, offering them gifts, telling them that they matter to us, giving ourselves to them, making sacrifices for them. It is the same with God.

            Human love depends on another person. This person can let us down, become crazy, get tired of us, can find somebody else better than us. Divine love depends only on you; the ball is in your court. God is always willing. He is very patient, He is always there for us, ready to forgive and forget. We won’t find anybody else like Him. And yet we always keep looking for somebody else.

            Do I know how to love? We think we do, but maybe we only know how to love ourselves. Love is an art that has to be learnt and practiced. With God we have to give first. We think that because He has everything, He is supposed to give us whatever we need. But as a good father, He doesn’t want to spoil us; He wants us to grow strong and mature. Therefore He expects us to give first. When we are generous with Him, He is much more generous with us. He always gives us what we need. And we cannot forget that true love requires time and dedication.

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Body and Soul

            “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.” “Be not afraid” is the verse in the Bible most googled by people. We are afraid of the future, of the unknown, of whatever could happen to us. These are the first words that came out of the mouth of John Paul II when he was elected Pope. He was a man who feared no one: he survived nazism and comunism; he was an orphan and had no close relatives. Jesus is telling us the same today: don‘t be afraid because I am with you always. Just be afraid only of whatever can kill your soul: sin. What are we afraid of? They say that you know a person when you know what he or she is afraid of.

            Our soul can be wounded, sometimes grievously. The good news is that our soul is immortal and it can be revived by confession. We believe that we have a soul. Some people deny it. We cannot identify the soul in the body, but we can experience our spiritual powers. Some people emphasise the unity of body and soul, that we are one; others look at the two different realities than can only be separated by death. We are normally more concerned about our body than our soul. Our body is more visible, we are constantly aware of it unless we are sleeping. We can let our soul sleep, but we cannot stop looking after our body.

            Why is the world so afraid of a little virus called coronavirus? Because it cannot control it. It is a little thing we cannot see and it could attack us any time. But we are not scared of other viruses that are more dangerous and they can cause more damage: temptations, addictions, vices, evil deeds, the seven capital sins. These are the things that we need to be afraid of, and protect ourselves against.

            We wear masks not to infect others, but we gossip, we criticise others, we talk about people behind their backs: we are throwing other kinds of viruses at people. We keep a social distance, but we watch a lot of rubbish on television and YouTube. We sanitise our hands, but we are not going often to confession to sanitise our souls. We keep all the rules and regulations for the lockdown decreed by the government, but we are not doing what God wants us to do. We are more concern about our body than our soul. Our body is recyclable, but our soul is going to exist for ever. We cannot change much of our body, our height or the colour of our eyes, but we can do a lot to make our soul more beautiful. Look what the saints have done with their souls. We ought to be in a hurry because we have only few years to go.

            We should pray about the things that separate us from God, and how we can protect ourselves against those viruses. The coronavirus will come and go. These spiritual viruses are with us all the time. We stop our nation for a virus that can kill our body, but we don’t think much about our souls. We can pray about the things that help us to kill these spiritual viruses and protect us from them. What gives me peace or what makes me angry? What helps me to become closer to others or what separates me from them? What moves me to be generous or what induces me to be selfish? In summary, what are the good and the bad spiritual viruses.

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The harvest is plentiful

            Today in the Gospel we read that “at the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, like sheep without a shepherd.” Jesus is moved by compassion and he feels the need to help us when we are anxious and depressed. It is great to see that Jesus knows our troubles and he is ready to find a way to solve our problems. Most of them are created by our own imagination, pride or selfishness. Instead of feeling down and full of self-pity, we should go to Jesus asking for help. He is the only one who can fix them completely.

            Then he says to us: “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few; so ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers for his harvest.” There is plenty of work to be done in the harvest of the Lord. There is no unemployment. These days governments find it difficult to create jobs for everyone. The job market is constantly changing, and it is not easy for universities to figure out what’s going to happen in the future. They say that people are being prepared now for jobs that are not going to exist in the future. Nevertheless the harvest of the Lord is always there, every generation a new one, and there is always work for the apostle. The reward is excellent: a hundred percent here and eternal life afterwards. You cannot find better return in any other business.

            Jesus is telling us today that he needs people to give him a hand, to make this world better. He does it in a subtle way: pray to the Lord that he sends workers. Looking around we realise that there is a need for people to give their lives to God. He doesn’t need us; he can do everything by himself, but he wants us to cooperate with his work of salvation. He wants us to think that we are doing something useful. Like a father when he allows his toddler son to help him in the garden. He is more than a nuisance, but he thinks he is helping dad big time. The same happens with us when we give God a hand.

            We see that nowadays not many people are ready to give their lives to Jesus. Maybe they can do something for God for a while, for few years, but their whole life? Young people are afraid of commitment: How do I know what the future is going to be? Maybe I’ll change my mind. They think that their lives are precious. We need to compare our lives with God: Who am I in front of an Almighty God? What Jesus is telling us today is that all we need to do is to ask. How often do we pray for vocations, for priests and religious life? Sometimes we complain about the lack of good priests, but we don’t pray enough for them. We have the shepherds that we deserve.

            Why there are only few labourers in the Lord’s harvest? Why is not God sending more people if there is so much evil in the world? Because Jesus normally uses few people to reach big crowds. He chose only twelve apostles at the beginning, to be the foundations of his Church. You don’t need much yeast to bring up the dough. Today it is a good day to think if we are ready to give our lives to God; if we want to give him a hand. This readiness should be the disposition of every Christian.

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Corpus Christi

            Today we are going to take Jesus to the streets. We are going to walk with him, to take a stroll with him, to accompany him around the streets of the church. And we are going to play music, use incense and bring him flowers. We wish to bring the flowers of our good deeds. During the day we gather little flowers that we find along the way and we manage to put together a nice bouquet. Little flowers that nobody notices, but not unnoticed for the gaze of a careful eye. We burn the incense of our good desires, which go up to the presence of the Almighty God, through the smoke that keeps climbing. And we play our best music, bringing our thoughts to him, expressing with the lyrics what we have in our hearts.

            On Holy Thursday we have also a Eucharistic procession inside the church, to the altar of repose. We accompany Jesus to the garden of olives, to his agony at Getsemane. It is a sad procession, with the apostles falling asleep, only Judas awake. Today we relive the mystery of Holy Thursday in the light of the resurrection, just a few days later. Then it was Via Crucis, the way of the Cross, through the streets of Jerusalem; today is Via Lucis, the way to the light, bright as the sun shines at midday. We couldn’t celebrate the Eucharist properly on Holy Thursday because Jesus was going to die for us. After his resurrection he went up to heaven but stayed with us in the tabernacle. And today we are congratulating him for his presence. We are grateful that he has decided to stay with us.

            It is a magnificent feast. It is like a king that goes out to meet his people. We play music, we sing songs, we rejoice in his presence. We accompany him with our best clothes, with our best wishes, and with our presence we acknowledge his kingship, his rule over us, and we are happy to be citizens of such a kingdom, a kingdom of peace and justice, a kingdom of truth and life. We sing alleluia, hosanna, God save the king, may his kingdom last forever. It is going to last for eternity.

            We made a carpet of flowers for him to walk on softly. In Europe there is a long tradition of making carpets of flowers through the streets of the villages for today’s feast. Beautiful carpets, where people go to admire the amazing colours and forms before the procession. Every house makes its own, through the narrow streets, with a bit of competition, placing nice bunting on the balconies and decorating the windows. Also in the big cities they use magnificent monstrances carried by people, or pushed on wheels, with all sorts of precious stones, surrounded by silver and gold, crafted by the best jewelers.

            We carry him under the canopy, to cover his divinity, hidden behind a piece of bread, white as snow, concealed from our eyes without faith. Normally he hides inside the tabernacle, cold in winter, hot in summer. But today he wants to see the full light of the day, look into our souls, heal our wounded bodies, pierce our mortal flesh. From the vantage point of the monstrance, he can gaze above our heads, looking into our future, forgiving our sinful past. And like on his way to Calvary, we meet his mother, who is waiting on the foot path, while we are passing by, with a desire to have a glimpse of his countenance, this time full of joy, when she sees us walking with her son.

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Holy Trinity

            We are talking today about the summit of our Christian faith, the mystery of the Holy Trinity. When we walk through other mysteries, we need to walk on tiptoe; now we need to postrate ourselves in front of the majesty of God, touch the floor with our forehead and keep silence. This is holy ground. We cannot see God and live. But God has opened his intimate life to us. He has given us access to his inner life. Open the door slowly and glance with awe.

            We say that God is incomprehensible. And it is true. We cannot fit God into this coconut we all have on top of our shoulders. But we can try to go deeper. Saint Josemaria used to say that sometimes God gave him some insights about Him, and he became happy; but other times he couldn’t see much, it looked like he had hit a wall, and he was happier, thinking that God is much bigger than anything we can imagine. We need to plunge ourselves into this mystery, knowing that we will never be able to touch bottom, but nevertheless we can go deeper and deeper. Saint Catherine of Siena says that “the Holy Trinity is like a deep sea, where the more you seek, the more you find, and the more you find, the more you seek.”We should be ambitious. We shouldn’t be happy in the way we are. We need to go deeper. Look at the love saints have for God. How they immersed themselves in God. You cannot find deeper or truer love than theirs.

            We use our time in many endeavours, listening to music, podcasts, audiobooks, watching movies, following our favourite tv series, reading the news, surfing social media, hobbies, topics of interest. We are looking for happiness and trying to fill our hearts with all sorts of things. We cannot be happy drinking from the pot holes. We need to quench our thirst with the true living water. We come from God and we go back to God. We are created to know and to love Him.

            There are four classical ways to reach the Holy Trinity. The first one is through created things. In the same way we can discover God in creation, in the beauty of nature, we can also find traces of the Trinity as well, even though in a more hidden way. Theologians talk about groups of three things: air, water and earth; gas, steam and fire; rain, slate and snow; spring, lake and sea; frost, snow-flakes, and ice; father, mother and child. You can try to find more. The second is the reality of the indwelling of the Trinity on the soul of the just man. If our soul is in friendship with God, He is there with us, making his abode in the depths of our spirit. We can find him inside of ourselves. We don’t need to look outside to find love. He is with us all the time. We need to become more inward looking. It happens to us like Saint Augustine: “You were within me and I was looking outside of me.”

            The third place is Sacred Scripture. God revealed to us this mystery in the New Testament, with the arrival of Jesus Christ. Before, God emphasised in the Old Testament the oneness of God, to avoid the belief in many gods. When we were ready, he opened his inner life to us. Through the Bible we can find the three persons of the Trinity. The fourth is the liturgy, the public action of the Church, specially the Eucharist. When we participate in the Mass, we are attending the heavenly liturgy, that liturgy celebrated by the Holy Trinity in heaven. Let us hide behind our Mother Mary.

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Pentecost

            With Pentecost we come to the end of Easter. We have been preparing ourselves for a while to receive the Holy Spirit. Once a year we have the opportunity to get to know the third person of the Holy Trinity better, who Saint Josemaria calls the Great Unknown. He is still unknown and we would like to become closer to him. It is easy for us to see God as a Father. Easier to see God as a man when we look at Jesus as our brother. But it is not easy to see God as a dove, our spouse, who is Love. It is good to desire his coming. We should foster it. The more we desire something, the more God will give it to us. We can say Come Holy Spirit, Veni Sancti Spiritus. We desire his coming, his presence.

            The Greek philosophers talk about the four classical elements that constitute the universe: air, fire, water and earth. Three of them are representations of the Holy Spirit. We are the fourth one, the earth. We come from dust and we will become dust again. We are normally very earthy and we would like to become more spiritual. Original sin has made us more inclined to the earth. Our eyes normally look down more, rather than up. Material things are very important to us. That’s why we need the Holy Spirit to transform us, to help us to become more spiritual.

            Air. On the day of Pentecost a strong wind shook the whole house. It was the sign of the Holy Spirit coming. But Holy Scripture normally represents the Holy Spirit as a soft breeze. We can feel it but we don’t see it. He prefers to pass unnoticed, to disappear, to be in the background, to work from within. This is how the Holy Spirit works in our soul. We need air to breathe; we don’t realise how important it is until we cannot breathe if we are under water. We need the breath of the Holy Spirit, the breath of God, for us to live a spiritual life. The bishop when he consecrates the holy oil during the Chrism Mass, breathes air into it. We need to allow the Holy Spirit to breathe his holy air into our lungs, so that they become filled with his power, like the sails of a ship. We ask the Holy Spirit also to send a strong wind to remove all the dead leaves from our soul.

            Fire. On the day of Pentecost tongues of fire rested on the heads of the apostles. They were filled with the Holy Spirit. We ask for the same thing today: Burn us, Holy Spirit, purify us. We say with Saint Josemaria: “Remove that filthy crust of sensual corruption which covers my heart, so that I can feel and readily follow the touches of the Paraclete on my soul.”Like a log when the fire burns it, it transforms the wood into light and warmth. We too want to be transformed into love by the third person who is Love. We want to become glowing embers who look like rubies. Instead of becoming ashes, we want to become like God.

            Water is part of life. We cannot live without it. It is not as essential as air, but very close. Water quenches our thirst, washes our body and refreshes our spirit. This is what the Holy Spirit does to us. But first we need to realise that we are thirsty, that our soul is dirty and we need his love. We need to approach that well of living water that Jesus promises the Samaritan woman, to collect that pure, fresh, transparent water, that leaps into eternal life. To fetch water from a well we require a bucket. No bucket, no water. The well is too deep. Today we ask the Holy Spirit to lend us his bucket to reach for God’s grace.

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Ascension

            Saint Bernardine of Siena tells the story of a young fellow who went to the Holy Land and tried to follow Jesus’ footsteps. He began in Nazareth, then Bethlehem, Cana of Galilee, Caparnaum and Jerusalem. He followed Jesus’ life from the beginning till the end. He arrived eventually to the place of the ascension. There is now a circular church that used to have an open roof to see the sky, with a rock in the middle, with the last footprints of Jesus before going up to heaven. Then he began to cry: “I followed you during all these months through all the places you have been and I have become much closer to you. Now where do I go?” He had a heart attack and died. He must have gone straight up to heaven. We are doing the same. Every year we follow Jesus through his life, death and resurrection, like a cycle, every year a bit closer, and eventually one day we will jump up to heaven.

            Today it is a sad day. Our Lord is going up to heaven and he is leaving us behind. Why? We are not ready. We still have few things to do. Our mission is not finished. We would like to go with him, but first he is going to check the place he has prepared for us. And he is going to come back and take us to himself. But nevertheless we will miss him, his face, his speach, his affection, everything about him. The more we love him, the more we miss him. It is very human. Imagine how the apostles felt after three years with him. That’s why we are never completely happy here. We are created for heaven, to be with Jesus. Today is a day where we can fix our eyes on heaven, like the apostles. Today we foster our desires for heaven.

            But why did he have to go? Could not have he stayed both with us and go to heaven? He is God, he could have done it. He could have stayed in one place, in Jerusalem, Rome, or our home town. But then we would have had only five minutes in our life time to talk to him. 7 billion people is a lot of people to go through. Instead he did something better. He stayed with us in the Eucharist, in the tabernacle, in a piece of bread, for us to eat him, for us to come to see him and spend time with him. He is here waiting for us, 24/7. There is a vigil lamp telling us that he is here. What’s a tabernacle? A box into which we place God. In Hebrew it means a tent, a dwelling place. The tabernacle is normally the centre of the church, where we try to give Jesus our best.

            But Jesus wants to go back with his Father God. We understand this. His glorious body deserves the glory of heaven. Hopefully one day we too will have a glorious body like Jesus. Saint Ambrose says that God came down from heaven and a man went up. Before we knew Jesus as man; today we see Jesus as God. Our faith grows looking at his divinity. Saint Bernard talks about the three steps of Jesus coming down: incarnation, crucifixion and death; and three steps going up: resurrection, ascension and sitting at the right hand of the Father. We too would like to be with God for ever. Everything is possible in heaven.

            Today Jesus is flying up to heaven. When Jesus performed his miracles, he tried not to show off, to make them as natural as possible, not to draw attention to himself. Even when he multiplied the loaves and the fish, he just blessed them and began to distribute them; he didn’t act like a magician. But today he is doing something special. Till now he has appeared and disappeared. Today he wants his apostles to know that he is leaving definitely. That’s why he is flying away. If you want to, if you are quick, you could go up with him. But I prefer to stay with Mary, our Mother.

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The Will of God

            Today we hear in the Gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” How much do I love God? How much am I ready to do anything for him? It is as simple as that. Love is not feelings but uniting our will to the will of God. Marriage is to become one, in body and soul, in will and spirit. You love somebody when you are ready to do his or her will. When two people marry, they give themselves to the other person in a way that they don’t belong to themselves anymore. From then on they need to think what the other person wants them to do. The problem is when one or both don’t give themselves completely to the other, when they keep a single attitude. They end up living two separate lives. Our union with God, says Saint John of the Cross, resides in the union of our will with His, and is measured entirely by that union. The more we unite ourselves to God’s will, the more we become him, until we reach a moment when there is only one will, His.

            God has given us a free will to be able to love him. Love cannot be compulsory. People complain about evil in the world, why God allows bad things to happen. It is because he has made us free. He has run the risk and the adventure of our freedom. In marriage there is normally an infatuation at the beginning, when you are attracted to a person and you fall in love. But afterwards marital love requires an act of the will: I love this person because I want to, because he or she is my spouse, independently of my feelings. Sometimes we feel it, many times we don’t feel it, and other times maybe we feel the opposite.

            Imagine you have two workers. One is a hard worker, but he does his own thing. The other is a bit lazy, but he does what you want him to do. Which one do you prefer? The one who does your will; the other is useless. It is the same with God. We can be very busy but doing our own thing. Saint Augustine has a beautiful expression: bene curris sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. God prefers that we follow his will, rather than spend the whole day in church.

            God has designed the path he wants us to follow. It is there to be walked. Do you remember those old drawings in the magazines, where all you had to do was to draw the line between the dots? Then a nice figure appeared. The Holy Spirit has punched the dots. All we need to do is unite the dots every day, just the dot in front of us, without knowing what thedrawing is going to look like. You cannot see what you are doing looking forward; you can only see it looking backwards. The only way to see what the figure looks like is from the air, from above, from an eagle or a drone view, through God’s eyes.

            What’s important is the attitude we have in front of God’s will. It is easy to follow him when his will is the same as ours. It is harder when there are two different wills, his will and our will. There are different stages in conforming our will to his will. We start with resignation, a negative word; we move to desire to love his will; once we manage to accept his will, we begin to love it. And we end up abandoning ourselves in his hands. Like a baby is left in his mother’s arms. A baby doesn’t have a will. It is a pure instinct of letting himself be loved.

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Way, Truth and Life

            Jesus was telling his disciples: I have to go and prepare a place for you, then I’ll come back and take you to myself; and you know the way. Thomas, a down to earth man, complained: Master, we do not know where you are going, how can we know the way? Thanks to Thomas’ logic, we have these beautiful words from Our Lord: “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Jesus is the one, he is a must, we cannot bypass him, he is compulsory. He should be our center, our summit, our soul, our love, our soulmate, our everything. A good question to ask ourselves: What is the place of Jesus in my life? When you look at a photo of a group of people, you can identify the relationship between each of them, depending where every person is placed in the photo. The one in the middle is normally the most important one. If I take a photo of important people in my life, Where do I place Jesus? At the back? Or maybe our photo is just a selfie.

            Saint Augustine says that the way leads us to the truth, and the truth to life. Jesus is the way, the only way. There are as many different paths, as there are people, but only one way. Our life can go only in one direction. If we want to reach heaven, we need to follow Jesus. We come from God and we go back to God. We are here only for few years, wandering around, like a shooting star in the middle of the sky, that comes and goes. We were created without our consent; but it is up to us to reach our final destination. There is a famous saying in the spiritual life: God who created without you, won’t save you without you.

            It is so easy to get lost. We see it all around us. So many people losing their way. There are many things in our lives that are trying to pull us away from the path, to distract us, to bog us down, to turn us around. This is one of the reasons why Jesus came to earth: to lead us, to show us the way. He is a short cut, the direct line, the straight path, a free way. He is our true GPS. We trust our gadgets to lead us where we want to go, but sometimes they let us down: our battery is flat, we run out of data, or we go through a spot where there is no coverage. But we don’t trust Jesus, the only real GPS, who never fails, the only one who can get us to our most important destination in life, heaven. If we look for him, he will find us, and once we find him, we will have no other freedom than to love him. We won’t let him go. We’ll keep our eyes on him and we won’t get lost.

            If we follow the way, we will find the truth. Jesus always leads us to the truth. Sometimes we don’t follow the way because we cannot handle the truth. We don’t like what the truth is going to reveal to us, what the truth brings about. We live in a relativistic society that doesn’t care much about the truth. People fashion the truth according to what they think or how they live. Either you change the way you live according to what you believe, or you change your beliefs. This is the problem with the truth: it is going to have an influence on our lives. It is hard, but it will make us free. It will free us from the things we are attached to, from the things we are enslaved by, from the things we would like to be free of. The truth will make us free.

            That’s why the truth lead us to life. Once we live according to the truth of our nature, we will begin to live an authentic Christian life, and we are happy because that’s what God created us for. If we live the life God has prepared for us, we are in our way to heaven.

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The Good Shepherd

            Every fourth Sunday of Easter we have the Gospel of the good shepherd. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, who leads his flock to good pastures, who knows his sheep one by one and calls us by our name. It gives us a lot of confidence to know that we have a great shepherd to lead us to heaven. All we need to do is to follow him. The early Christians loved this depiction of Jesus. In fact the oldest image we have of Jesus is a young man carrying a sheep on his shoulders, in the catacomb of Saint Calixtus, in Rome. Have you ever tried to carry a sheep on yours shoulders? It is not easy.

            We also call Jesus the Lamb of God. In every Mass the priest shows us the host saying: Behold the Lamb of God. He is the lamb of sacrifice. In the Old Testament the Jews used to offer animals as sacrifices to God. Now they are not needed anymore, because Jesus gave his life for us once and for all. We Christians, followers of Jesus Christ, we try to be like him, sheep and shepherd.

            To be a shepherd means to give your life for the sheep. It is nice to be the boss, but it demands sacrifice, responsibility to forget about yourself, to do the best for others; in one word, to lay down your life for them. It means not to have your own life. We cannot be the hired shepherd, who doesn’t know his flock, who doesn’t care about his sheep; shepherds who only think about themselves, who are there just for profit, who don’t know how to serve. Service is a beautiful word that has almost disappeared from the dictionary. We talk about rights, but we forget about responsibilities. We don’t like to talk about duties.

            We are also sheep, a good one, who follows the whistles of the shepherd. Not the lost sheep of the parable. It is easy to get lost. We like wandering around, playing with fire, doing our own thing, following the inspirations of our pride and selfishness. And when we are lost, then we complain. We want the freedom of doing whatever we want, and when we are in trouble we ask for help. Jesus tells us to be a sheep, not a wolf. Sometimes we prefer to be a wolf, fighting with everyone, biting whoever comes our way, barking all the time. A wolf is more exciting, but a sheep is a gentle, peaceful, smiling animal. It doesn’t complain and lets you do whatever you want. It is a big difference between to kill a sheep and a pig. A sheep dies without complaining; a pig doesn’t go down without waking the whole neighbourhood. There are two kinds of people: people who create problems and people who solve them. A mother is always helping. Spoiled kids are always creating trouble.

            We call this Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday. Today we pray for vocations, asking Our Lord to send us good shepherds. We are fulfilling Jesus advice: “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” We pray that the Lord will send us shepherds, specially from our own parish. Jesus knows that we need vocations. All we need to do is pray for them.

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Emmaus

            The road to Emmaus resembles our own journey. We are pilgrims. We can identify ourselves with these two disciples, who went back to their village, after Jesus’ death. It was all over. In fact, we only know the name of one of them, Cleophas; we can easily be the other one. We had placed our desires and ideals on that man whom we thought was the Messiah. We followed him for three years, expecting him to save Israel from the Romans. And they killed him; the most horrible death on the cross. We saw him dying and we are going back to our former life, all hope lost; we tried for a while, but it didn’t work out. We are going away from Jerusalem, away from God, the wrong way, against the traffic. You see sometimes on freeways a big red sign: wrong way; go back. Go back to your God.

            Jesus comes out to meet us. He runs up to us, and he is walking with us, next to us, on our right hand side. But because of our discouragement, our self centredness, we don’t recognise him. A question, I’ve been thinking about: Are we sad because we don’t see, or because we are sad, we don’t see? I think normally sadness comes from blindness. It happens to us many times, when we fail to discover Jesus who is passing by our lives. He is passing by every day. He could have come with his glorified body, showing us his five wounds, but he came as traveler, as a pilgrim, like each one of us. He is a man. He comes to meet us in our journey. God comes down to our level, to follow us and to seek us out. We expect him to come with special effects, fire works, beautiful music and big miracles. And he passes by unnoticed, through the normal circumstances of our lives. Saint Teresa of Avila used to say that God is among the cooking pots.

            And Jesus begins to walk and talk with us. He listens to what we have in our hearts, to our discouragement, to our lack of hope. And he begins to explain to us what the Scriptures had to say about him. He give us the other side of the story. He always has good news to share with us. And we need to listen to what Jesus has to say, specially when we are down. Jesus gives us an example of how to help people we come across in our lives. We run up to them, we meet them at their own level, we accompany them on their journey, listen to what they have to say, what they have in their hearts, share their emotions, understand their problems, and speak to them of what is in our hearts. We don’t need to impose our ideas or our opinions onto them. Just open our hearts to them, explain to them our own life journey. We take them with us to Emmaus, through our words, our affection, our example, and introduce them to Jesus.

            When the two disciples of Emmaus arrived in their village, they asked Jesus to stay with them: stay with us because it is getting dark. We need to say the same to Jesus: stay with us because without you there is no light, without you there is no hope. You are our way, the truth and the life. Sitting at the table they recognise him at the breaking of the bread. It took them a long time to recognise him. The breaking of the bread was the beginning of the meal. Jesus broke the bread in a particular way. This was the name the early Christians used for the Eucharist: the breaking of the bread. It is a good question for us: Do we recognise Jesus at the Holy Mass? Do we believe that Jesus is in the tabernacle waiting for us? We see bread but it is Jesus. We need more faith.

            When they recognised him, he disappeared. It happens to us: Jesus comes and goes. We need to keep searching. The Gospel says: “Did not our hearts burn within us when he opened the Scriptures to us?” They realised then of the warmth of walking with Jesus. We can get used to him, to the security of our faith, to the trus

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Thomas

            When Jesus came to meet the apostles after the resurrection Thomas was not there. Where was he? We don’t know. Did he go shopping? Did he go fishing? Maybe he was still running away. All we know is that he wasn’t there. We need to be there when Jesus comes. No excuses. We cannot miss our Lord. We need Him. He comes when he likes and we need to be ready, waiting.

            When Thomas came back the apostles told him, with a hint of jealousy: “Who do you think came while you were running around?” He didn’t know. They told him: “We have seen the Lord!” This is our Christian message, a great act of faith, witness to his resurrection. He couldn’t believe it. When they insisted, he became upset and proud, and he denied it: “Impossible!” And he declared more angrily: “I want not only to see his wounds, but to touch them and put my fingers in them.” Fair enough; we recognise the risen Christ through his wounds, but his statement was a bit too much. Thomas is a modern man, sceptical and empirical: “Unless I see and touch, I don’t believe.” Thanks to his unbelief our faith grows. The doubting Thomas increases our faith.

            Today, eight days later, Thomas was there when Jesus appeared again. This time Thomas had learned the lesson and he is there. The first thing Jesus says is: “Peace be with you!” Be at peace. I have risen, it is all over, I have overcome death, be not afraid. The same angels say when they appear to men. These were the first words Saint John Paul II said when he was elected Pope: “Be not afraid!” We are afraid and angry because we are not at peace with ourselves.

            When Thomas saw Jesus, he hid straight away behind the other apostles thinking: I hope he didn’t hear the silly thing I said the other day. He was ashamed now, all his arrogance gone. But Jesus hears everything; we cannot hide anything from him. He went directly to Thomas, walking through the people around him. He took his right hand, and, even though Thomas tried to resist, with the strong force of his glorious body, Jesus placed Thomas’s hand into his wounds saying: “Do not be faithless but believing.” Thomas could only say: “My Lord and my God!” A good act of faith in front of the Eucharist. Then Jesus praised all of us when we feel our lack of faith, and we are envious of Thomas: “Blessed are you who have not seen and yet believe.”

            When Jesus left, Thomas kept staring at his hand. Tradition says that his hand became red, a reminder of his lack of faith. Thomas never forgot this encounter with Our Lord, the first one of a line of saints to find refuge in Jesus’ wounds. Later on, Thomas would had shown his hand to the early Christians, when they asked him about this scene, showing off with pride and a bit of arrogance: I am the only one who touched Jesus’ wounds. It is not completely true because the holy women anointed them with oil, when they buried Jesus’ body. When I read this Gospel, I would like to ask Thomas what he felt when he put his fingers into Jesus’ side. You could say that he felt the depth of Jesus’ love for him.

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Easter Sunday

            Mary Magdalene went to the tomb early on Sunday morning and found it empty. She was the first one to discover the empty tomb. It is very important for us the empty tomb. It shows that Jesus rose from the dead. It is empty because Jesus overcame death. It is an icon of the resurrection. Mary ran back and told Peter and John about the tomb. Both ran to the tomb to check it out. Saint John arrived first; he was younger and ran faster. Saint Jerome says that celibacy gives us wings. But he did not go in, out of deference for Peter. Peter was already regarded as the leader of the apostles.

            The Gospel says that John “saw and believed.” What did he see? It is a traditional question. He saw the linen on the ground. John knew Jesus so well that he realised Jesus had risen. He was there on Friday night when they laid him in the tomb. And looking at how things were now around the tomb, he could figured out that Jesus walked away by himself. You can go to a room in your house and say: “I know who’s been here. I know what has happened.” The dirty dishes are in the sink, her clothes are all over the room, he’s been in the pantry because the chocolate has disappeared.

            The Jews accused the apostles of stealing Jesus’ body. The Gospel says that the linen clothes were “lying there.” This expression in the Greek version seems to indicate that the clothes were flattened, as if they were emptied when the body of Jesus rose, as if he had come out of the clothes and bandages without their being unrolled. One can understand how this would amaze a witness, how unforgettable the scene would be. If you steal a body, you take it with its clothes; you don’t leave the linen behind.

            The napkin which had been wrapped around his head was “rolled up in a place by itself.” The napkin was not on top of the clothes, but placed on one side. It was still rolled up but, unlike the clothes, it still had a certain volume, like a container or a cocoon, possibly due to the stiffness given it by the ointments. Jesus’ body must have risen in a heavenly manner, that is, in a way which transcended the laws of nature. It was not only a matter of the body being reanimated as happened, for example, in the case of Lazarus, who had to be unbound before he could walk. Jesus rose from his death and left the linen there, untouched, sliding out of them.

            This remind us of the Holy Shroud, the famous relic in Turin. It is supposed to be the linen Peter and John found on the floor of the empty tomb. It has always attracted veneration. John Paul II said that “the Shroud is a mirror of the Gospel.” Benedict XVI had a lot of devotion to Holy Saturday because he was baptised on this day. He went to see the Holy Shroud and said: “this sacred Cloth can nourish and foster faith and reinvigorate Christian devotion because it spurs us to go to the Face of Christ, to the Body of the Crucified and Risen Christ, to contemplate the Paschal Mystery, the heart of the Christian message.” People go to see the shroud to contemplate Jesus’ face. This is our deepest human desire: to see God, to contemplate the face of Jesus, to be eternally happy through the vision of the divine glory, although millions of people are unaware of this aspiration. Happy Easter to you all.

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Good Friday

            After the homily we are going to bring the crucifix veiled, Jesus crucified hiding behind a purple cloth. Purple used to be a royal colour, because it was the most expensive colorant to produce. Herod covered Jesus with a purple robe, to mock him. This is why we use this colour. We cover the crucifix because we don’t know if he is still alive; we don’t want to see him dying for us. The unveiling signifies the death of Jesus. Before it was hidden; now we know.

            We are going to unveil him slowly, each limb with music, to remember his wounds. We are going to sing “Behold, behold, the wood of the cross.” Slowly, for us to make sure we see him, we look at him, we contemplate him. Slowly to see each one of his five wounds engraved in his flesh. I recommend you to look into his eyes. We are normally afraid of looking at him. Why? Because this is what we have done to him. Jesus, with his body, is telling us: this is me. We need to face Jesus, Jesus as a man. Can you hold his sight? Can you look at him straight?

            Then we are going to venerate him. One by one, through a long queue, with time to spare. We need time to repent, to atone for our sins. We are quick to sin, but we are slow to say sorry. Contrition normally drags its feet. We are not going to use three crucifixes to go faster; otherwise, it would look like Calvary, with the two thieves on both sides of Jesus. I wouldn’t like to kiss the bad thief. We are going to kiss him, to soften his suffering, to try to make up for our sins. Sometimes children don’t want to kiss him; they are rightly afraid because they can see beyond us. Can we kiss him after inflicting him so much suffering, so much pain? It looks a bit like Judas’ kiss. We need to cry in front of him, a cry of repentance.

            The crucifix shows us his five wounds, wide open in front of us. We can find refuge in them. Saints have a lot of devotion to Jesus’ wounds. They remind us of our own scars, those wounds that haven’t been healed, that are part of our brokenness. We complain about them, but we don’t allow Jesus to heal them. Jesus is proud of his wounds; he shows them as medals, a proof of what he has gone through. In the army, when you get wounded, they decorate you with a medal. Our scars show that we have fought, and that we have been wounded. We should be proud of them; they are like medals. If we look at them as proof of what we have suffered, we can begin to heal. Instead of complaining about them, we can begin to understand why God allowed those things to happen, see them as medals and give thanks for them.

            When Jesus’ body was taken down from the cross, it was placed in the arms of our mother. His blood stained her clothes, but she didn’t care, because she wanted to hold him for the last time, his body still warm. She wanted that moment to last for ever, and kiss him for the last time, remembering when she had him in her arms when he was a baby, crying for her milk.

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Palm Sunday

            Why did Jesus enter in Jerusalem on a donkey? He could have come on a horse or on a camel, more elegant animals, sitting higher to be able to be seen and have a better view. But he wanted to fulfill the Scriptures. They said that the Messiah had to come riding on a donkey. Why did the Scriptures prophesied on a donkey and not another animal? Because the donkey is a humble, docile and hardworking beast, more suitable as an example for us, unlike a horse who prefers showing off and pretending. They say a donkey is a symbol of peace, humility and the simple life. A horse is a symbol of war, pride and luxury.

            One of the Psalms says that we are like a donkey before God. Jesus has decided to ride on us. We are just a donkey. Many times we think that we are a horse and we become silly, proud and rebellious. We cannot forget that even though we are carrying Jesus, we are just a donkey. When we pretend that we are a horse, the ride becomes bumpy, and Jesus finds it difficult to stay on top. Don’t be a stubborn, grumpy old donkey, only thinking how to find revenge with a kick. Be a young one, with long ears ready for the Master’s command, a quick step ready to work in his service. The Lord wants to ride us, to reach heaven together. The best way for us to enter into heaven is being docile to his call.

            Eventually you allow him to ride on you and you experience the shouts of the multitude and the cries of joy to the prophet who is coming to the holy city. People lay their garments for you to walk softly. You enjoy treading on people’s clothes. You feel important, thinking that people are welcoming you. You look around, acknowledging people’s praises and almost crash against a pole in the middle of the road. A simple gesture from Jesus makes your head bow low and fix your eyes on the way. No more frivolous thoughts or wandering looks. All around you is not for you; just for Jesus.

            Jesus is a good rider. He lets you ride at your pace, he doesn’t kick with his legs. He brings peace with himself. His yoke is easy and his burden light. But you need to cooperate. All he wants from you is to follow his path. It looks easy but it is not. Common experience tells us that it is one of the most difficult things. It is all right when both our path and his path coincide. But when his path differs from ours, when begins to climb up hill, when the path gets bumpy and rough, we prefer to go down hill. When are we going to be convinced that his way is the best way?

            When Jesus sees Jerusalem he begins to cry. You don’t know what to do. You never have seen him crying. He is weeping because of what is going to happen to the holy city, its future destruction at the hands of the Romans. It is amazing, Jesus just sad for a heap of stones. He is like us; we humans worry about things and gadgets. Jesus is a man and has good memories of the temple. And all because it didn’t follow the paths of the Lord. You want to apply the lesson to your own life. You don’t want Jesus to weep for you and for your children.

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Lent 5 A Lazarus

             “Lord, him whom you love is ill.” The same can be said of us. We are sick to death by sin, and we need Jesus to either cure us or resurrect us from death. He loves us with divine love and he is ready to come to help us at very short notice. But, can it be said the other way around? Can others say to Jesus: your friend, the one who thinks about you, who wants to spend time with you, who visits you and likes to receive you frequently, is in need of you? Jesus loved to stop over at Bethany, the house of his friends, to spend time with Martha, Mary and Lazarus. Saint Josemaria used to call the tabernacle, Bethany. Do we like to stop over at a church and spend time with our friend? Can we tell Jesus: Lord, I love you and I am ill?

            “If you have been here my brother would have not died.” It is a very strong statement. It is like saying: you are responsible for the death of our loved one. How many times we blame God for our sufferings, our illnesses, our accidents? We ask, where was God then? Martha and Mary could talk to Jesus in this way, because they were very close to him. If we could see their faces at the time, they would have shown a smile among their tears. It was not blaming him, but showing their pain for the death of their brother. Do I have the same confidence in Jesus, to tell him what is in my heart? Jesus, I am sick of everything.

            “Take away the stone.” But Jesus, he’s been there for four days already; he is really dead. For the Jews four days was the sign of real death. “Take away the stone.” But Jesus, his body is corrupt and he stinks. “Take away the stone.” I have been in that cave for many years now and it is impossible for me to move. Trust me, take away what separates you from me, a stone, a wall, a barrier, whatever it is. Jesus is telling us to take away what is between us and him. We are slow to follow his command and we have many excuses not to remove the obstacle from our path. If you don’t remove it, you cannot come out.

            “Lazarus, come out!” It was a strong voice, loud enough for the dead ears of Lazarus to hear from inside the tomb. It goes through the rock. It is the voice of Jesus, manly, well balanced, deep and harmonious, a voice impossible to resist. It is the word of God. The same one that still resounds from the beginning of time. The voice we hear at Mass: this is my body, a body that died for us and rose from the dead. Lazarus came out like a robot, a zombie, an automatic response, against his will. He was sleeping peacefully, more in the other life than here, and didn’t want to come back. An imperative command to come out. His voice is irresistible: Come out of yourself!

            “Unbind him and let him go.” It must have been an amazing scene. They were all paralysed and terrified. Nobody could move, not even run away. They were all tied to the ground looking at him like a ghost, like a mummy. When we take away the stone, he lets us free. There is always something that enslaves us, either a little thread or a chain. Something that doesn’t allow us to fly, to follow the path God wants us to walk. Unbind the ropes that tie you to earth and go, run towards eternity.

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Lent 4 A The blind man

             Last Sunday we looked at one of the four natural elements, water, indispensable for human life. It is very much part of the beginning of our Christian life, when we are baptised. Without water there can be neither natural nor supernatural life. This Sunday we consider another crucial element, light, without which life cannot grow either. It is part of the rite of Baptism, when we bring to the newly baptised person a lighted candle, symbolising a cleaned soul, full of light. Christ is the light who came to dispel darkness. On the Easter vigil we are reminded of this reality, when we bring the Easter candle into the darkness of the church, and little by little, by lighting the candles people are carrying in their hands, the whole church becomes illuminated.

            Today in the Gospel we come across a man blind from birth. It is hard for us to realise what it is to be blind. Try to close your eyes and keep them closed for a lengthy period of time; you won’t last too long. Blindness from the beginning is a harder reality: you cannot dream with images. Once they tried to explain to a blind man what the colour red was; and after much explanation, trying to compare it with a hot instrument, he said that it must be similar to the sound of a trumpet. Colours don’t have much to do with sounds; imagine spiritual things. We are blind from birth to them, because of original sin, and we need Jesus to cure our blindness, to be able to see him.

            Jesus made clay with his saliva, placed mud on the blind man’s eyes and told him to wash himself in the pool of Siloam. Why did he do that? He could have touched his eyes and cured him straight away. It is a reminder that we are made of clay, that our feet can easily break. The pool of Siloam was outside the walls of the city. He could have gone to the nearby fountain and washed his eyes, but it wouldn’t had worked. Jesus wanted him to walk with faith and show others his trust in God. He could go with mud on his eyes because he was blind and knew the way by heart. We also need to show others that we trust in Jesus. God’s saliva cured him, but it had to be mixed with our clay, with our humanity.

            We miss something when we don’t have it. We don’t normally realise that we are blind to the spiritual world. Once we cannot see, we notice our eyes, as when they hurt or we need glasses. We have two of them because they are very important. We have also two ears, to listen better; but only one mouth not to speak too much. We know we are blind because we realise that the saints can see things we don’t see. We would like to see what they see. Better, we would like to see with Jesus eyes. Saint Teresa of Avila wanted to know the colour of Jesus’ eyes when he appeared to her; she says that when she tried, the apparition disappeared altogether.

            Today we ask Jesus to cure our spiritual blindness. First we need to acknowledge that our soul has eyes and that they are closed. Then we have to allow him to put mud in them, and walk with a dirty face for a while, showing others our blindness, till we reach the waters of the Sacrament of Confession. And we need to do this not once, or twice, but a thousand times. Slowly we are going to start seeing; first some shadows, then some sparks of light. The more we clean them, the more light we are going to see. We cannot see the full light from the beginning: it would destroy our eyes completely. And slowly we are going to discover the wonders of the spiritual life.

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Lent 3 A Samaritan woman

            Today we meet a different Jesus, less attractive, more human, more like us. After two days journey from Jerusalem, he is tired, dirty and thirsty. He is all alone, sitting at the edge of Jacob’s well. His disciples had gone to the nearby village to get some food and water. Nobody stayed with him; they were too hungry or too thirsty to keep him company. Jesus couldn’t go on and had to sit down to rest. Or may be he was there waiting for the Samaritan woman and for each one of us. How many times we leave Jesus alone, entertaining ourselves, or giving in our silly little pleasures. And we forget about others.

            It is noon, the sun is up in the sky, the time of the day when everything is quiet and silent, but for the sound of the cicadas. Jesus looks at the fresh water at the bottom of the well with an impossible desire. And a woman comes alone carrying a jar on her head, moving her body in a provocative way. She comes at this hour to avoid other women who didn’t like her, because she stole their husbands. She is beautiful and Jesus is full of dust. Two different attitudes in life: a frivolous woman with a bucket, and a dirty, thirsty God. We are more inclined to notice her than to look at Jesus.

            She ignores Jesus; Jews and Samaritans didn’t talk to each other. And a woman alone didn’t talk to a man. Her situation in life was very messy. But Jesus overcoming his tiredness and her messiness, begins to talk to her. We are all represented in this woman, in her sinfulness, in her desire to draw water and find happiness. Jesus gives us an example of how to reach souls, even the ones that are far away from him. He begins to talk to her about what is important to her, about the water she comes to draw from the well. We normally talk about what is important to us and we find it difficult to know what is important to others.

            Jesus asks her: “Give me a drink.” God thirsty and without a bucket to draw water. He says the same from the cross: “I thirst.” You can find these words in every chapel of Mother Teresa’s nuns. Even though he doesn’t need anything, God always begins asking for things. He is thirsty for our love; he expects us to give ourselves to him, to place him at the centre of our lives. Better: he is telling us what is really happening to us, that we are thirsty of him. We are like the deer in the Psalm that is longing for streams of pure, clear water. And we keep coming back every day to draw water from an earthly well, that will never fill us up. Our heart is a bucket full of cracks, impossible to contain the muddy water we are trying to get from the pot holes in the road.

            Only God can give us this clean, fresh water. This is what he tells the Samaritan woman: “I am the only one who can give you a living water, a water that when you drink it, you’ll never be thirsty again.” A living water, alive, full of energy, with enough nourishment that leads to eternal life. Then, you won’t have to come back again to this well; you won’t have to look for impossible ways to quench yours thirst. It is the water that flew from his side on the cross, when the centurion pierced his heart. It is the grace that flows from the Mass every time we come to drink from his open wound. If only you knew the gift of God!

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Lent 2 The Transfiguration of Jesus

             Last Sunday we went with Jesus down to the desert. This week he is asking us to accompany him up Mount Thabor. We went down through penance and repentance; now, purified and cleansed, we climb up to the heights of the spiritual life, with the new wings sacrifice and mortification have given to us. Even though it is only 300 metres above the plain, it looks higher than it is, because it stands alone surrounded by flat terrain. There is a magnificent view and a beautiful church on top. It is only an hour of climbing, but the road goes straight up. The higher you go the more you see.

            You feel closer to God when you reach the summit. It is part of our Lenten exercise, to climb up the mountain of our sinfulness, towards God, leaving material things behind. You cannot carry much weight if you want to follow Jesus and keep his pace. The closer you become to the top, the more light you find yourself surrounded by. Saints love going up to the mountains to meet their creator. They have received many graces up there. The air is thinner, the light is purer, solitude welcomes you, silence envelops you, and here you feel that God is listening to you. Above the sounds and distractions of society, you find a better connection with God.

            Jesus took with him his three beloved apostles, Peter, John and James, to accompany him; the first Pope, the first apostle martyred and the last to die. He took them on other special occasions. But especially they witnessed both his transfiguration and the agony in the garden. The highs and the lows of his earthly existence. Both in beautiful natural surroundings, a mountain and a garden. They were the only ones to attend both amazing events. Would Jesus take us with him? Are we part of the group of his close friends? Are we ready to withstand the highs and the lows of the Christian life?

            Why did Jesus transfigure himself in front of them? To show them his divinity, just before he was going to show them his horrible passion and death. He does the same with us. If he takes us with him high on the spiritual life, he is going to asks us also to go through suffering and penance. It is the story of every saint. That’s is why there are only few saints; we like the mystical experiences, but we run away from the cross. In both events the three beloved disciples fell sleep; they let Jesus down. We too fall asleep when Jesus asks us to accompany him. But if three of Jesus’ best apostles couldn’t keep their eyes open, we mustn’t feel too bad when we do the same.

            When they arrived at the summit Jesus began to pray. This scene in the Gospel has been depicted traditionally as an icon of contemplation. Before we discover Jesus’ divinity, we need to spend time in prayer, contemplating his humanity. Only when we manage to be in deep concentration, detached from any earthly attachment, sitting above our miseries, can we discover the true face of Christ. It must have been an amazing experience, when they woke up and found themselves in front of the real Jesus. They never forgot that vision. Jesus does the same with us. When he asks us to share the sufferings of his cross, he also sends to us a bit of honey, a spark of heaven, a glimpse of his beautiful face.

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Lent 1 Temptations

Jesus goes to the desert led by the spirit to be tempted. He allows himself to be tested, to share our normal ordinary existence. By doing this, Jesus has entered the drama of human experience. We accompany him, to learn from him, to share his strength. Jesus fought and defended himself as a man, with the same weapons we have. We go to the desert with Jesus, like the desert fathers, to become stronger and be ready to fight the evil one. In the desert there are no distractions, no virtual reality, no place to hide. We can see the devil coming with all his false devices, and we can defeat him more easily. We draw him out from the city and we bring him to our home turf. Here we are just the three of us, and our enemy is outnumbered: we are two against one.

This Lent we are going to spend 40 days with Jesus praying and fasting. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert. Moses and Elijah spent 40 days of penance and prayer before they met God. 40 is the number of testing, discovering of who you are and prayer in the Bible. We need time to get to know ourselves and get ready. After 40 days of prayer and fasting, Jesus is weak, and the devil takes advantage of this moment to tempt him with strong temptations. Traditionally we call our three enemies, the devil, the world and the flesh. The world are others and the flesh is ours. They could attack us one, two or three together. The worst one is us. We are our biggest enemy.

Why was Jesus tempted?  It is a mystery. Maybe the devil wanted to know who Jesus was, how strong he was, a bit of a testing match. We witness a battle between God and the devil. We are not in the middle. We can choose sides. Hopefully we are in God's side, in the right one, the winning one. In the history of humanity at the end God always wins, even though many times it looks like the devil has the upper hand. God uses the attacks and machinations of the evil one to bring his plans to completion. It must be frustrating for him to see all his work undone. He becomes more experienced with time, but he can never defeat God. In the crucifixion, Satan thinking that killing Jesus was going to win, served God’s plan for our redemption.

Why God allows us to be tempted? Temptations in themselves are indifferent; they are good if we win, they are bad if we lose. Sometimes we win, other times we lose. They help us to grow in love and virtue. We ask God to get rid of them because we don’t want trouble. To become stronger:  difficulties help us to grow. To show him that we love Him: we put Him first. To become more humble: we need his help. We realise how weak we are. They help us to increase our merits.

Get to know ourselves. We normally get tempted the same way. Be sincere. Oscar Wilde was running away from temptation very slowly, for it to catch him. I know that if I go to bed late... Once I begin to speak about this topic... If I go out with this person... Once I start eating peanuts I cannot stop. We know that we will never tempted above our strength. We have all the weapons to fight temptations. We need to use the right ones, like in computer games. The Bible: Jesus uses it against the devil. Pope Francis says that we should use the Bible as we use our cell phone: carry it with us, read it frequently, go back home to pick it up. The best weapon against the devil is Our Lady.

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Ash Wednesday

            “Return to me”, the Lord is telling us on the first reading of today’s Mass. It means that we have been wandering off, we have lost our direction and we need to stop and come back. We have been going rather in the opposite direction, towards our own ego, our selfishness and our pride. Return to me, turn around, do a “u” turn. It is hard to do it; it demands a small conversion, to recognise that we have been wrong and we need to put God back at the centre of our lives. Return “to me”, abandon the desires of your heart, that don’t make you happy, and return to your God, to your Creator, your Father, to what constitutes the meaning of your life.

            When the priest today places the ashes on our forehead, he will remind us of the famous words of the Scripture: “Remember man that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.” It is a reminder that without God we are nothing; without God all that remains is this pile of dirt that we see in this little dish. The wind is going to blow away the dust of our bodies. We shall return to the earth where we came from. We get the ashes on our forehead, to make sure our thoughts are in the right place. The Church wants to inscribe on our minds what it is important in life. Memento mori. Remember, we come from God and we are going back to him.

            In the book The Alchemist the boy asks him: “Why do we have to listen to our hearts?” And the old man answers: “Because, wherever our heart is, there is also our treasure.” Ubi thesaurus cor; your heart is in your treasure. If we want to know what our treasure is, we should listen to the beating of our hearts. It is not familiar music, because we don’t normally listen to it. It is normally hidden from our senses. We need to listen carefully. Pope Francis says that “our heart always points in some direction: it is like a compass seeking its bearings. We can also compare it to a magnet: it needs to attach itself to something.” It is always seeking something and it is good for us to know what it is.

            Pope Francis in one of his homilies for Ash Wednesday, proposes three steps for Lent: “Almsgiving, prayer, fasting. What are they for? Almsgiving, prayer and fasting bring us back to the three realities that do not fade away. Prayer reunites us to God; charity, to our neighbour; fasting, to ourselves. God, my neighbour, my life: these are the realities that do not fade away and in which we must invest. Lent, therefore, invites us to focus, first of all on the Almighty, in prayer, which frees us from that horizontal and mundane life where we find time for self but forget God. It then invites us to focus on others, with the charity that frees us from the vanity of acquiring and of thinking that things are only good if they are good for me. Finally, Lent invites us to look inside our hearts, with fasting, which frees us from attachment to things and from the worldliness that numbs the heart. Prayer, charity, fasting: three investments for a treasure that endures.”

            In this journey through Lent, where do we fix our eyes, our gaze? What should we focus on? The Church has the answer: on Christ crucified. It is very simple: Jesus is on the cross and if we want to find him, we need to climb up to the cross.

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Love your enemies

             An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. This was the old law. It is a bit harsh for us: if you steal something, you loose your hand; if you kill, you are killed. It was good then, to stop successive acts of revenge. Justice was made, the deed repaid; no need to further action. They say that an eye for an eye eventually would leave the whole world blind. But Jesus came to lift the level of charity; he asked us to turn the other cheek, to love our enemies. It was a big change. How can we do that? We shouldn’t have enemies, but we all have people that annoy us. What did Jesus do? Even though he was innocent, he died for all of us. There is no offence that we can’t forgive and forget.

            This is the true Christian spirit: we are all brothers and sisters. We should love everybody without exception. This is the heart of the Gospel. We need to look at others as Jesus sees them. Have a big heart that includes everyone. Look at the saints, how they treated others; people were attracted to their way of life. When somebody cuts in on us driving on the road, we get upset; if we recognise the person, we smile instead and we wave to him or her. If we know the person jumping the queue, we are more lenient. We need to ask Jesus to help us to change our glasses, or to see things through his eyes.

            There was an Abbot in a monastery who was worried about the lack of charity among his brothers. He went to see a holy man to find a solution. The holy man told him: “You have Jesus among your brothers.” He responded that it was impossible. The holy man reassured him. Going back to the monastery he began to think: “The cook? No, he is too fat, always eating. The librarian? He doesn’t stop reading books. The porter? He is always gossiping about the news. The bell ringer? He is never on time to mark the hours. The gardener? He forgets to water the flowers. The tailor? He can hardly get the size right. The organist? He falls asleep on the keyboard.” And he went through all the friars to see who could be Jesus. When he arrived at the monastery, he got together all the brothers and told them about the holy man: “He says that one of you is Jesus. I don’t think so, but I tell you this just in case.” They all began to think about who could Jesus be. Then the whole atmosphere of the monastery changed. They treated each other differently. Saint Paul says that some of the people around us could be angels. Sometimes Jesus appeared to saints in a different human form, a leper to Saint Francis, a poor man to Saint Martin, a little boy to Saint Christopher.

            The Italians say that when someone does something against you tie a thread on your finger: not to forget, to have it always in your face. We cannot keep bearing all our grudges throughout our life. It is a dead weight. Eventually they will stop us from living. We need to learn how to forgive, forget and let them go.

            We all have things that upset us. It is part of human life. We should bring those things to our prayer, to our conversation with God and deal with them. Otherwise when we get upset all the things inside of us come out and we hurt people. Why do they upset us? How can we change our attitude? A young couple used to get upset using the same toothpaste. Instead of uniting them, it was the opposite. One liked to roll it up and the other just to press it. Eventually they bought two different tubes. The argument was over. Deep down, it is our pride that causes the upset. We need to recognise this and move on.

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Yes mean Yes

             “Let your Yes mean Yes, and your No mean No.” This was the motto of a boys’ school, to teach the kids to be sincere. They used to ask me, why do we have to say the truth, if with a lie we can get away with things. I used to tell them that Jesus is the Truth and if we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to be truthful. Let what you say reflect what you think. Let your mind express itself. Gulliver in one of his travels comes across an island populated by horses, and tries to explain to them what human beings are. The horses cannot understand creatures that are able to lie: How can they think one thing and say a different one? Scientists say that the difference between computers and human beings is that computers cannot lie; they are programmed to come out with what is right. The day they learn how to deceive others, they will be like us; then we will be in trouble, completely at their mercy.

            Society needs the truth to function properly. We live in a relativistic world where people are not interested in the truth. They are only interested in their truth. As long as I am happy in the way I live, I change the truth to suit my life. The internet is full of fake news. We like to access web sites that say things we agree with. The protagonist of the movie “A Few Good Men” has a famous line: “You cannot handle the truth”. It is true: we don’t want to handle it, to live by it, to live our lives according to the Truth, with a capital T. Martyrs used to lay down their lives for what they believed in. We are not ready to do so. We are only ready to die for what give us most pleasure, money, drugs, sex, alcohol or food.

            First we need to be sincere with God. It is silly to try to deceive God, because He knows everything. But we don’t want to face him, to acknowledge his presence. We live ignoring him, as if he doesn’t exist; we only go to Him when we are in trouble. How can we love Him if we are afraid of him? Maybe we contact Him once a day, out of duty, just in case, when we pray before going to bed. We need to force ourselves to spend time with Him in silent prayer, to try to see things through His eyes, to look at Him with loving eyes. Somebody said that we should look at Jesus’ eyes at least once a day. Sooner or later we are going to face Him.

            In the temple of Apollo at Delphi there was a famous inscription: Nosce te ipsum; know yourself. One of the most difficult things in life is to know ourselves. Because we live inside of ourselves, because we don’t like how we are, we create a different image of ourselves. I’d like to have another inscription: Ama te ipsum: love yourself; love yourself in the way God created you. God doesn’t love a virtual you; he loves you in the way you are. Unless we accept ourselves in the way we are we cannot be sincere with ourselves. How can we love ourselves? How can we get to know ourselves? Open your interior to somebody you love, to somebody who can help you, like in spiritual direction; we all need a sounding board to check who we are and how we are.

            Lastly, sincerity with others. It is very important in human relations. If people know that we are not sincere, they cannot trust us. It is not easy to live with a person who is constantly lying to you. Once we start lying, it is not easy to stop. The truth is harder, but will set you free. How can we stop lying? Try to catch the lie before it goes out; bite it. Slowly you can win the battle.

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Salt and Light

             Jesus reminds us today in the Gospel that we Christians are salt and light; salt of the earth and light of the world. Both are related to two senses, seeing and tasting. Without light we cannot see. Without salt the food becomes insipid. Jesus doesn’t say what we should be, but what we are; we are because of our Baptism. Not because we are better, or because we have done well, but because of his will, because he wants it. Christopher West always reminds us: You are a gift, be what you are.

            We are precious in the eyes of God, like Gollum with his ring. In the old world salt was very valuable. The Jews made their offerings to God seasoned with salt, to make it pleasant for him. The Greeks considered salt to be divine. The Roman soldiers were some times paid with salt. In the times where there were no fridges, to make the food last, it had to be covered with salt. The human body contains almost a kilo of salt. Comparing us with salt, Jesus is telling us how valuable we are in his eyes.

            What does it mean to be salt? It is white and pure; we should live a clean life, different from other people’s tasteless lives. It gives flavour to the food; we should make the world more pleasant, more lovable. It sterilises the wounds, stopping infections; we should preserve society from the effects of sin. It melts the ice when the roads are covered with it; we should melt the coldness of humanity with the warmth of the love of God. It preserves the food from decay; we should be like preservatives, to stop society from disintegrating, keeping things fresh and healthy. It produces thirst, the desire to drink; we should foster our thirst for God, that only his love can quench. But if the salt becomes tasteless what can you do with it? Throw it away. If it becomes contaminated, it becomes useless. When the salt in the underground water comes to the surface, the field becomes barren. It is possible for us to lose our way, our truth and our light.

            Light is very important for us. Without the light of the sun it is impossible to live. Our eyes are our most valuable sense. The same happens in the spiritual life: God is the light. The first thing he did when he created the world was to separate light from darkness. When we see God, we see light. The devil is the prince of darkness. Hell is pitch black. When we baptise a baby we light a candle, to signify that his soul is full of light. Jesus came to dispel darkness.

            We are the light of the world, not our light, but his light. We need to let his light to shine on us. We need to learn how to reflect his light, not ours. Like the moon, that reflects the light of the sun. We compare Mary with the moon. We should be like a lighthouse: to show people where the rocks are, where the danger is. Jesus is the beacon; we are the lighthouse. We can be a beautiful lighthouse, close to the sea, on the forefront, but if our beacon is out, we are useless. To give light we have to have it. Many times instead of salt we are vinegar; instead of giving light, we give darkness. We ask Mary our mother to remind us what we are: children of the light, pure mineral salt.

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Beatitudes

            One of the most beautiful places in the Holy Land is where the church of the Beatitudes is located. It is built on a grassy hill with an amazing view of the lake of Gennesaret. It is one of those places that hasn’t changed much. It is situated on the north west side of the lake, three kilometres from Capernaum. The area is callled Tabgha, meaning seven springs, still flowing down towards the lake. There are two other churches in proximity, on the site of the multiplication of the loaves and the fish, and the primacy of Peter. The church is built in an octagon, in remembrance of the eight beatitudes. You can walk around the outside of the church on a covered veranda, contemplating the lake and the surrounding countryside. You are tempted to keep circling the church watching the panorama and praying about the Beatitudes.

            The prophets of old used to preach from the top of the hill for people to be able to hearthem. We see here a classic depiction of Jesus inscribed in our minds, preaching the Gospel to the crowds, sitting down while people remain at his feet, listening to him, completely absorbed in his words. Pope Francis stresses the importance of “how the proclamation of this message happened: Jesus, seeing the crowds that followed Him, climbs up the gentle slope that surrounds the Lake of Galilee; He sits down and, addressing His disciples, proclaims the Beatitudes. Therefore, the message is directed to the disciples, however, the crowds are on the horizons, namely, the whole of humanity. It’s a message for the whole of humanity.” It is the attitude we must have for entering the kingdom of heaven.

            It is not easy to preach about the Beatitudes, to give a meaningful commentary about them. We priests try to avoid them. Why? Maybe because you need to be very close to Jesus to be able to explain them well. Thank God they speak for themselves. You only need to read them and pray about them, listen to their voice. Once they left Jesus lips, they have a life of their own. Their sound keeps moving through time, amplifying their waves among the history of men.

            They are simple and profound. They speak to us in many different ways. They are very practical, proposing ideas for our own lives. We can try to live them now, today, during the course of the day. They push us to make small resolutions that will bring us closer to God and to others. This is why it is so difficult and so easy to talk about them: they become very personal, suggesting down to earth ideas, like bubbles of soap, popping out from the tube, that resonate specifically to each one of us. This is why we don’t like to read them very often; too many desires come to our minds, with dangerous changes in our way of life. We prefer to close the book and leave it for tomorrow.

            Maybe I have been a bit negative in my outlook today. The Beatitudes are very demanding and I am getting old. Time makes things more difficult. It is easy to become discouraged. We tried them and we failed. We didn’t find them wanting, but we found ourselves failing. We need to keep trying, hoping that one day God will lift us up, whenever He wants to.

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Follow me

            Jesus begins what we call his public life calling twelve men to follow him, to accompany him, to share his life. We call them apostles, the one who is sent out. They are going to hear his message and to be entrusted with the task of passing it on to others. Most of them were fishermen, rough guys, not very smart; one of them betrayed him and the leader of them denied him three times. At the end, all of them but John ran away from his passion at Calvary. Their weaknesses give us hope. We too begin a new year in our lives and we have an opportunity to make a renewed commitment to follow Jesus a bit closer. Last year we ran away from the cross. Hopefully this year we can keep him company.

            ”Follow me.” This is what Jesus told them, how he called them. He is asking them to follow him, to walk behind him, to try to place their feet in his footprints. This means to imitate him, to become more like him, to keep his pace. To follow a perfect man. It was love at first sight. They were all attracted to him. There is nobody like Jesus. We can try to find the perfect person, but we will never find him. Only Jesus can fill all our expectations; he is the one we have been looking for. And this is what he is reminding us today: “You have been created to love me; only in me can you find happiness; that’s why I am asking you to follow me.” Every year, every day, every hour, he is telling us the same. Because we don’t listen, because we stray from the path, because we get distracted, because we follow him from a distance, he is never tired of repeating the same: “Follow me.” It is the best for us.

            “Follow me.” Follow my footsteps, follow my direction, follow my pace. It is not easy. We go either too fast or too slow. We can be doing too many things, with plenty of activity, but we are not concentrating on what’s important. We don’t have our priorities right. Saint Augustine says: bene curris, sed extra viam; you run well, but off the path. Or maybe our laziness is in command, we procrastinate, we become indifferent, and we are going at a tortoise pace. Jesus’ pace is the right one for us. He knows us well. If we go too fast, we overtake him; if we go too slowly, we miss him. For us to know the way is to follow him. We all would like to know what is ahead of us and plan accordingly. But God wants us to fix our eyes on Him and not to worry about what lies ahead of us. We should trust Him as a good loving father. We only need to look at Him to know we are on the right path.

            Is it a command or a request? It is a gift. It is a hidden treasure, a pearl of great value, a bright diamond, a big star shining in the night sky. If we know where we are coming from and where we are going to, it is easier to recognise the value of our treasure. It is a big grace, an amazing offering, that God presents to us. Many are called but only few are chosen. Here we are. And we follow him dragging our feet.

            We are chosen for two tasks: to be with him and to be sent to others. To get to know Jesus Christ and to introduce him to others. The more we know him the better we can present him to our friends and relatives. We need to discover him, to recognise who he is to be able to show him to others. A treasure cannot be hidden. A great treasure becomes greater when it is shared.

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Lamb of God

            John the Baptist, when he saw Jesus passing by, he pointed him out to his disciples with these words: “Behold the Lamb of God.” This second time John recognized Jesus. The first time was when Our Lady met her cousin Elizabeth; he didn’t remember it. This time John wanted to show his disciples who the Messiah was. He wanted his two best men to follow Jesus, to offer them to him. John and Andrew took the hint, followed Jesus and became his apostles. Do I point Jesus to others? Do I give Jesus the best of me?

            Why did John use this expression? It is a representation foreign to us. It doesn’t make sense to us to see God as a lamb. But for the Jews it was something very familiar, coming from their own tradition. Isaiah had compared the sufferings of the Messiah with a lamb going to the slaughter. The blood of the paschal lamb was painted on the door of the Israelites to protect their firstborn against the angel passing by. It became a promise and a figure of Christ, the true Lamb. Every year the Paschal Lamb was sacrificed in the Temple recalling their liberation from the Egyptians and their covenant with God. In the book of Revelation Jesus appears victorious and glorious as the slain lamb, surrounded by angels and saints.

            Three characteristics of the lamb can be applied to Jesus. First, the humble and meek condition of a lamb, who goes about in a simple and trusting way. In the same way a lamb goes to the slaughter without saying anything, as a gentle animal going to its fate, Jesus during his Passion kept silence; he let them do whatever they wanted, without rebelling against the will of his Father God. Second, the spotless whiteness, and the soft and pleasant touch of the wool of a lamb. It reminds us of the purity and innocence of Jesus in front of his accusers, who with amazing violence and force, expressed their hatred in their treatment of Jesus. Third, the offering and satisfaction produced by the lambs sacrificed in the temple of Jerusalem. It is fulfilled in the person of Jesus, who came to give himself up for each one of us. Now no more lambs have to die anymore. Jesus died once and for all.

            Every time the priest during Mass lifts the host in front of us before Communion saying “Behold the Lamb of God”, we are reminded of this reality. The priest presents Jesus to us in a very graphical way; he shows him to us, he points him out, like John the Baptist. Once a priest told me that sometimes he felt like Pontius Pilate, introducing Christ to the crowd: “Here is the man.” Ecce Homo. He feared that the crowd could answer again: “Crucify him.” We don’t want him to rule over us, we don’t want his kingdom. The priest should try to hide his face behind the host, to disappear, and let Jesus shine: he is the one; what are you going to do with him? It is a good moment to make an act of faith. Do I believe that behind the appearances of bread is hidden the Son of God? If I believe that, my life has to change accordingly.

            “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He is the only one who can take all our iniquities, imperfections, shortcomings, frustrations, away. We can leave them behind for ever. He’s got the power. All we need to do is to believe in him and let his mercy rain on us; apply his forgiveness through Confession to that baggage all human beings carry with us. Today is a good moment to unload the weight of that rubbish that makes us bent over, weighed down, unhappy.

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Epiphany

            The three wise men saw the star and followed it. This is the story of their lives, of their encounter with God, of their place in history. It is an amazing one; by following a star, they met a baby, and they discovered the Messiah. Humanly speaking it was crazy. Why did a passing star provoke that reaction on the Magi? How do you follow a star? Where or when is it going to stop? These are questions that belong to our lives. We too discovered a star, we are following it, and hopefully it will lead us to Jesus. It is crazy, but it is a divine adventure.

            How do we discover the star? Good question. It is not easy. The three wise men dedicated their lives to astronomy, to the study of the sky, looking for clues to their own existence. Man has always looked at space to try to understand where we come from and where we are going to. We too need to spend time discerning the signs, the sparks, the footprints, God has placed in our way, to discover his will for us, to find our path, to hoist our sails towards the right wind. It is a work of prayer, contemplation, silence and reflection.

            It is not enough to discover the star, but we need to follow it. Many people see the star but they don’t do anything about it. Others begin to walk, but they get discouraged; they stop and they go back. It is not easy to persevere on an unknown quest. We don’t know how long it is going to take, where it is going to finish, if it is really the right path, or we lost our way; perhaps we even missed an important crossroads. Sometimes the road goes through a desert, through a rough terrain, across wild plains, deep gorges, dense jungles. Other times there are robbers waiting for us, to attack us when we are distracted; there are beasts ready to devour us, unexpected rivers in flood, precipices that stop us from going ahead, fires raging from the bush threatening our path, sand storms, plagues of locusts and lightning strikes. From time to time, the star disappears behind the clouds and we think she is not there anymore.

            As Pope Francis says, “Jesus allows himself to be found by those who seek him.” We know that we are not alone, that he travels with us, even though we don’t see him. To seek him we need to leave behind whatever slows us down; to travel light, we cannot carry much weight, to be able to keep pace with the star; and to keep our eyes fixed on the horizon, without getting distracted with the marvellous things we come across in our way. The devil is trying to slow us down, to get us stuck in the mud, to deviate us from the right direction, to turn us back to where we came from. If we persevere, we will find him. Whatever happens, the star is always up there.

            We arrive at the crib empty handed. We came naked from our mother’s womb and we leave without anything. Pope Francis’ grandmother used to say that the shroud we are going to be buried in won’t have any pockets. What can we give to baby Jesus when we arrive in his presence? We haven’t got much. All we can do is to offer ourselves. It is easy; a baby brings out the best in us.

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Holy Family A

             Once we have a baby, we have a family. The Church uses three different Gospels for this feast day, the presentation and finding of the child Jesus in the temple, and today the flight to Egypt. In them we see the Holy Family together in three very different settings, today flying away from Herod who wants to kill the baby. We see Joseph sleeping peacefully, after the coming of the three wise men. Pope Francis has a lot of devotion to the sleeping Joseph. He’s got a statue of him on his desk. Joseph is peacefully dreaming about what to do with the gold left by the Magi, either to buy a faster donkey or to refurbish the old kitchen at home. It wasn’t to be; the gold is for the trip. He can still do with the old donkey.

            We are getting used to the angel appearing to Joseph in his dreams. We are also normally used to seeing Joseph getting up in the middle of the night, taking the mother and the child and running away from Herod’s soldiers. But let us take for one moment the place of Joseph. If an angel of the Lord appears to me in a dream and asks me the same as Joseph, my first reaction when I wake up would be of rebellion: that was a nightmare! Or maybe it is the devil. My second reaction would be to challenge God: Why do we have to move? Can you get rid of Herod? Is this baby truly the Son of God? But of course, Joseph is not me, and did what God wanted him to do, without complaining, without asking questions, waking up straight away, without waiting for the morning to say good bye to the people in Nazareth, just in case Herod’s soldiers were at the door.

            The Holy Family went to Egypt to fulfill the Scripture. But it could have been written differently. There are places in Egypt that today still hold the tradition of the passing of Jesus through their land. Joseph gives us an example of docility and trusting in God’s will. We all have the experience of many things that happen to us that we don’t like, that we don’t understand, that we complain about. We rebel and we ask: Why me? The question should be: Why not me? Some things we’ll understand later on; other things we need to wait till eternity. We should be patient. Eventually everything will make sense.

            Again we are used to seeing the flight to Egypt in traditional paintings as something beautiful and romantic. It wasn’t like that. They didn’t book a flight on the internet. It was hard, in the middle of the night, looking back to see if they were followed, going to a new country with a different language, with hieroglyphic handwriting, as refugees. Joseph had to begin again, find a job, build a new house, make new friends. They even didn’t know how long they had to be there.

            After few years of hard work, the Holy Family were settled. They built a beautiful house, Joseph had plenty of work and Mary made good friends. Jesus began to talk with an Egyptian accent. Joseph was again dreaming about a well deserved holiday at the beach, at the mouth of the Nile, when again an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and told him to go back home. And he went back without complaining. Then he spent his years surrounded by the most amazing treasures you can have in your life: Jesus and Mary. God’s plans for us are always the best for us. When we get older we realise that he knows best. And the opposite; when we do our own thing, things go wrong and we get frustrated. Joseph died accompanied by his two greatest loves. Let us follow in Joseph footsteps.

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Christmas

            During this Advent, in our quest for Jesus, we have been following the example of John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary. They have led us to him. We have arrived at our destination. We have reached the center of our lives and the focus is a baby. Now we realise that baby Jesus is all that matters. These days of Christmas are days of calm and serene contemplation of baby Jesus. All we need to do is to look at him, to plunge into the mystery of God becoming man, admiring the mingling of humanity and divinity. Just that, to look at him, and nothing else. Trying to enter deeper and deeper, into the infinite abyss of God’s love for us, a bottomless pit of his majesty and power. And all this is concentrated in a little tiny baby.

            Why did he have to come to us? He didn’t. But he wanted not only to live with us, but to become one of us, and go through the same things we are going through, except sin. And he is now as we were when we were born, just a baby. A baby that cannot open his eyes, doesn’t have teeth, he cannot utter a word, and he’s got his little hands closed. All he does is eat, sleep, cry and dirty nappies. He is completely useless, a hundred percent dependent on his mother. All he can take is his mother’s milk. A God so defenceless, that if you leave him alone, he would die. At this moment he cannot even smile. His face is red and he doesn’t have much hair. If we could open his eyelids, we would see his beautiful brown eyes.

            And this baby is what we need to contemplate, even though he cannot look back at us; he is sleeping. It is a one way gaze, trying to learn from his professorial chair, from his cathedra, from his open book, the book of his life, his first lessons of his life on earth. He could have come to us as a grown up man, but he wanted to start from the beginning, because we are slow learners. We need hours of patient contemplation in front of the statue or a painting of him in the manger, suffering cold, or in his mother’s arms, sleeping peacefully. Two simple, important lessons we learn straight away: poverty and humility. He came like us, with nothing, and when he goes, his only possession is going to be the wood of the cross. And what about humility? Can you find a better example than God coming to us as a baby?

            And now in front of this baby, what do we do? We don’t need to do much. What do mother’s do with their babies? They look after them, giving them attention, love, tenderness. Many of us we don’t know how to look after a baby, but we can give him plenty of love. Some people don’t know how to love. This baby can teach us how to do it, just hold him in your arms, being careful not to drop him. We drop him many times a day. We can also offer ourselves to him. A baby brings out the best in us. In front of him we cannot say no. We need to be ourselves. The first thing he tells us when we get closer to him: get rid of your fancy clothes; be yourself. We cannot pretend, show off or try to deceive him.

            But maybe the best thing we can do is to sit down in a corner of the cave, out of the way, hidden in the shadows, and contemplate how Mary looks after Jesus. It is an amazingly beautiful scene. She tends him knowing that he is God and man. She teaches us how to deal with his humanity and his divinity. You cannot become tired of looking at the mother and the child. Many artists tried to catch a glimpse of it. It is all in our imagination.

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Fourth Sunday of Advent A

             What happened to Saint Joseph? He was the last one to find out about the good news. They came to congratulate him and he was puzzled. He was supposed to know as a husband and a father, but he was left confused and bewildered. Mary kept silent. She looked at his worried face. A few times he tried to ask her a question, but she didn’t answer. God normally allows his loved ones to experience trials.

            Joseph didn’t judge her, he couldn’t; she is so good and so pure. And now that she is expecting, she looks more beautiful, more feminine; she is glowing. She looks so innocent and full of God. But why did she keep the secret to herself? Why is she not talking to him, about such an important matter that concern them both? She must have her reasons.

            What can he do? He cannot blame her, he knows it is not her fault. For sure, she must be doing what God wants her to do. Then, he must take the blame; he has to get out of the way, leaving God in command. He can assume the responsibility for the pregnancy, he can take the blame, look in the eyes of the world as the guilty one. But, he doesn’t want to leave her; he can’t. That’s the hardest thing for him. He can take the blame, but he cannot abandon her. He loves her so much! He has put his heart in her hands. They had decided to live a life of consecration to God and he was very happy to be with her and look after her. He was over the moon and was looking forward to bring her to his home. And now this unexpected pregnancy. This has thrown overboard all his plans. And she is acting as if nothing has happened.

            Joseph gives us a great example of how not to judge. Qui iudicat Dominus est. Who judges? He is the Lord. It is not our task to do it. We don’t have all the facts, we don’t know all the circumstances. Even though we think we know, because it has happened before, because it is very clear, because there is no other explanation; but Joseph gives us an example of how sometimes we can make mistakes, and we can assume things that are not true. All of us, we have made erroneous judgments in the past. Whenever we want to judge, whenever we think we know all the facts, we should think about Joseph.

            Joseph goes to bed without having solved the problem. It doesn’t allow him to sleep. He keeps going over and over it in his mind, but eventually he gets tired and falls asleep. And an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, most likely Saint Gabriel, who is very involved in this business, and tells him the whole truth. Imagine Joseph’s joy on hearing this news. He woke up straight away and went to Mary’s house. She looked at him, at his radiant face, and realised immediately that he was now in the loop. We need to dream big. The devil wants us to get discouraged, to drag our feet through the mud, to paralyse us, to drug us with little compensations. He knows that God’s plans for us have big consequences, and he tries to play them down. Like Joseph, he confuses us and tries to get us to blame others. All we need to do, like Joseph, is to be faithful to God’s plans for us, even though many times we do not know where they are taking us. We need to be patient and sleep well.

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Third Sunday of Advent

            Today we can use rose vestments. Why? To express our joy because the Lord is coming. Today’s Sunday it is called Domenica Gaudete, because this is how its entrance antiphon begins in Latin: Gaudete, rejoice. It comes from Saint Paul’s letter to the Philippians: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say rejoice. The Lord is near.” After two weeks of penance for preparation for Christmas, we take a break, a rest, and we look at the beautiful panorama that the ascent of mount Advent shows us: Jesus is almost upon us. When we climb higher, the air becomes fresher and we can see things more clearly. Today also we light the third candle, the rose candle on the Advent wreath. The first light of sun rise is rose. We try to see everything with rose colored spectacles, a more cheerful way of looking at things. You could almost say that God has this colour on his eyes.

            What is the reason of our joy? The Lord is very near. He is closer than we think. We don’t need to walk far away to find him. We are waiting for him, he is walking towards us. If we don’t see him, we need to examine our conscience to see what are the obstacles between us and him. These are normally caused by our own pride and selfishness, two relics of original sin that grow into big bushes and trees, that hide Jesus from us. We need to prune them or cut them down; at least clear the undergrowth. Maybe a bushfire will do. But we need to be sincere and point out what separates us from God. It is not easy because we get attached to this vegetation; some of it has been there for a long time, and we think it is immovable, set in stone. But the presence of God can destroy any castle, crumble any fortification or melt down the most powerful iceberg. The love of God is so powerful, so hot, that nothing, but our will can resist.

            Patrick Murphy, an Irish guy, died and went to his judgment. Because of a tsunami, there was a long queue of people to be judged.  He could hear what Jesus was telling others. “I was hungry and you fed me; come inside. I was thirsty and you gave me a drink; come inside. I was sick and you visited me; come inside. I was naked and you clothed me; come inside.” He realised that he never did these things: “I was always in the pub drinking Guinness and cracking jokes.” He was afraid when he faced Jesus. Jesus looked at the computer and said: Patrick, I was sad and you told me jokes, I was down and you made me laugh; come inside.

            They say that the quotation in the Bible people search most is “Be not afraid!” You can find it in more than three hundred verses. This is what Jesus told the apostles, what angels say when they appear to men. These are the first words John Paul II said when he was elected Pope. We are afraid of ourselves, afraid of the future, of the unknown, afraid of failing, of something bad that could happen to us. Fear takes our joy out of us, paralyses us, it doesn’t allow us to trust God, to abandon things in his hands.

            The closer we are to God, the more interior joy we have. It is a natural reaction of our make up: we are created for him. Therefore it is a logical conclusion of our search for happiness. We are constantly looking for him in the wrong places, and we find difficult to recognise our mistake. Why is that? Because those things are means or results of happiness, not the real thing. And because we are very earthly, and spiritual things normally don’t attract us. Today is a day to place our heart in the right place, close to Mary our Mother, cause of our joy, who is carrying the creator of the universe, the maker of all the things we like, the one who knows what we like and loves us with divine love.

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Second Sunday of Advent

             Today the Church presents to us John the Baptist as a model to follow. He was the Precursor, the one who comes first. His mission was to open the ways of the Lord, to give witness to the light, to prepare men’s hearts so that Christ may enter. Our mission is to follow in his footsteps. He came two thousand years ago; now it is our turn. How do we do that, if we have lost our way and our life is in complete darkness? We need first find the way, and make sure our soul is full of light. This is what we need to do these days. It is our task for this Advent. John the Baptist leads the way and gives us an example.

            It is not easy to be a Precursor, to open the way, to go before foretelling the coming of another, becoming a bridge between two different sides. The Pope is called Pontifex, a bridge builder. We Christians are called to build bridges between people, to be forerunners of Christ in the world, torches that shine amid the darkness of this mad society of ours. John leads us to eternity and then other people can follow our path. It is not easy to find the narrow gate that opens to paradise.

            What did John do? He went into the desert, to find silence, solitude and simplicity. He ate locust and wild honey and was dressed in camel hair. We too need to seek a wilderness around ourselves, where we can speak in silence, the language of God; to find solitude, to spend time with God alone; and to live the simple life of John the Baptist. What is the desert for me? In this time of Advent we need to find that space where we can develop our spiritual life, to be able to see things with different eyes, through God’s eyes. We eat locust, things we don’t want to eat; we dress rough, with the garments of modesty; and look for honey, the sweetness of God.

            John the Baptist was tough. You wouldn’t like to meet him alone in the desert. His body looked like it was made of roots of trees; his skin was hard and burnt; his hair was meshed like a wild beast; his voice had the sounds of thunder; his eyes burned with prophetic fire. You couldn’t hold his gaze. Only Jesus managed to do so, when John didn’t want to baptise him. They almost had a wrestling match. To follow him we need the gift of fortitude, not to be afraid of the elements, to be able to defend the truth, even though we can lose our head as he did. Fortitude is the only gift of the Holy Spirit that it is related to a cardinal virtue.

            John the Baptist is the only saint that we celebrate twice, his birth and his martyrdom. We normally celebrate the dies natalis of the saints, the day when they were born to eternal life, when they died. But Saint John, before he was born, he was sanctified in his mother’s womb, when his mother Elizabeth met Jesus’ mother; both were pregnant at that time. This is how both babies met, and John leapt in the womb with the infusion of the Holy Spirit. We, on the contrary, were born in sin and we need to wait till we die, to enter back into the bosom of God. We are now waiting with great expectation the birth of Jesus, who is still in his mother’s womb. We should follow in his mother’s footsteps to be there at his birth.

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First Sunday of Advent

            Watch out, the Lord is coming, the Lord is very near. This is what the liturgy is reminding us these days: to be awake, to be vigilant, to be ready. In a crescendo manner, putting pressure with the passing of days, the prayers of the Mass are telling us slowly that he is coming: he is on his way, he is getting there, only a few days to go, he is almost here, he is knocking at the door, he is already opening the door. When he comes, we need to be with our mobile phones on, our camera open, ready for a selfie. He cannot finds us playing games, sending messages or surfing our favourites sites. Otherwise he will keep going, without stopping in our hearts.

            We are celebrating the three comings of our Lord. He came two thousand years ago as a man. He is going to come again at the end of time as a judge. He is coming now as a baby. But he is also constantly coming to meet us personally, in our hearts and minds. Christmas is a reminder of this reality. Jesus not only will come to pick us up when our time is up, but he wants us to experience his presence now in our daily lives.

            We need to tell him that we are waiting for him, that we want to be with him. People in love do this all the time. We know we need him, but we forget, we become distracted, we get side tracked. We need to be reminded of this reality. This is what advent means, “Parusia” in Greek, “Adventus” in Latin: presence, arrival, coming. “Marannatha” in Hebrew or “Veni Domini Iesu”, in Latin, meaning “Come Lord Jesus.” Maranatha is two words in Hebrew and is found only once in the New Testament, at the end of the first letter of Saint Paul to the Corinthians. At the very end of the Bible, in the last words of the book of Revelation, Saint John says: Come Lord Jesus. It is a cry that we all should repeat often these days, fostering a desire, waiting in expectation for his coming.

            The Prophet Isaiah reminds us what we need to do: “Make straight a highway for our God! Every valley shall be filled in, every mountain and hill shall be made low.” We need to build a road, a freeway, to make it easy for us to reach him. We should flatten the mountains and fill the valleys. We need to prepare the surface of our lives to reach him better and faster. The mountains are our addictions, those things that we give too much importance to, that try to take over and easily are out of control. What are those things? Work, finances, family, entertainment, social media, hobbies, sport. What we call wealth, honour, power and pleasure. We need to put a measure on them, to restrict them, to bring them down to their proper place. We should be sincere and seek to acknowledge the lack of balance. And fill the valleys; give importance to what’s important: God and others. Look after our relationship with God and with people around us: our prayer life, spending time with our loved ones, helping people in need, reaching out to the poor and the disabled. Both, mountains and valleys, are correlated, they don’t exist one without the other. We need to fix them both at the same time. We should have our priorities right, and Advent gives us an opportunity to do so.

            We tend to have two attitudes, a passive one, waiting for the Lord, or an active one which is better still: coming out to reach him. Like the sensible virgins, who came out of themselves, to greet the bridegroom, when they heard the voice that he was coming, we too, need to have our lamps ready, with plenty of oil, burning brightly, illuminating our highway that lead us to his presence.

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The Good Thief

             Three crosses, two thieves and three different expressions of suffering. Jesus wanted to be crucified surrounded by sinners, sharing his throne of glory with them. Many saints would have liked to have been there, to change places with one of them, with a holy envy. Three crosses; as Saint Augustine says, one gives salvation, the other receives it and the other despises it. Two thieves; we are represented by these two criminals, and we all deserved to be there. We should be there, but we are still running away from the cross. These two thieves represent two attitudes in front of the cross, two ways of life that can be summarised in every human being: for or against God, with Him or without Him. Three sufferings, one redemptive, another purifying, and the third useless. Which one is mine? Am I with Jesus, accompanying him in his redemption? Or maybe, I am the good thief, waiting for the end of my life to jump into paradise. I hope we are not the bad thief, wasting our lives in useless frustration.

            What did the good thief see to believe? It is a very good question, almost impossible to answer. The two thieves were crucified on both sides of Jesus, suffering the same penalty for their crimes. One, whom we call Gestas, was abusing Jesus, asking him, in frustration and pain, to save all of them at the same time, in a very selfish manner. Dimas, the one on his right, rebuked him, telling him that they were there for a just reason, to pay for their actions, a right punishment. But Jesus was innocent and he shouldn’t be there. And he made the best petition a man can make to God: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” We need to repeat these words over and over again, especially when we are suffering.

            There were other people at Calvary, and they witnessed the same thing, but only Dimas made this petition. Maybe because he looked at things from the cross, from a higher ground; or maybe because he was suffering the same fate as Jesus, wearing the same shoes. When we suffer we see things with different eyes. What he saw was a man dying in silence, not only accepting his cross, but coming out of himself to meet his suffering, welcoming the pain with open arms, with a reason for his torture, savoring every minute of it. But the Roman centurion also present, only believed after Jesus died, when he felt the earthquake and experienced the darkening of the sky.

            “Today you will be with me in paradise.” What did Dimas feel when he heard these words? “Today”, not tomorrow, but now, after few minutes of suffering, opening the door to a new beginning, with a meaning to your crucifixion, with a happy ending, like a successful operation healing your wounds. “With me”, you are coming with me; we are going together, crossing the threshold of this life to eternity hand in hand, lighting for you the way forward. “Into paradise”, the place you long for, what you have been created for, what your heart believes, with all the people you love.

            The good thief gives us plenty of hope. We can easily place ourselves in his shoes. We can turn our bad thief into a good one and at the same time steal heaven. But we don’t need to wait till our last moments. We can begin now to repeat his petition many times, from the cross of our suffering.

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Eschatological discourse

           When we reach November, at the end of the liturgical year, we have these Gospels about the end of times, about the distant future. They are always a bit frightening and we don’t know what to do about them or how to react. We want to read them quickly, and pass soon into Advent, to be able to look forward to Christmas. Why does the Church wants us to look at these events, when we don’t know when they are going to happen, and most likely they won’t happen in our lifetime? They tell us about our future and teach us lessons for our own lives.

            It is very human the desire to know about the future, to plan things accordingly. We would like to have more control of our lives, to foresee situations and be prepared for them. But God tells us what we need to know at every given moment. Curiosity killed the cat. We are in God’s hands and he knows what’s going on. We need to leave things in his hands and let him be the boss. We are just little children.

            There are three future things which are foreshadowed in this Gospel: the destruction of Jerusalem, the end of the world and the second coming of Jesus Christ. The first one happened in the year 70, when the Romans circled the holy city and destroyed the temple of Jerusalem, to quash a rebellion. The Jews never recovered. Now, all they have is the wailing wall, were they can pray for the future temple to be built. Once Jesus came, there was no need for God to dwell in a particular place. We shouldn’t worry too much about the destruction of material things, because everything will pass away, but we should worry about the destruction or corruption of our soul, the actual temple of the Holy Spirit.

            The end of the world is something that has been prophesied many times by many people, and so far all of them have been mistaken. We shouldn’t worry about that, or have the attitude of some of the early Christians who stopped working because they thought it was imminent. This reality brings to our consideration that whatever we do here has an end. Eventually everything will disappear. We all have a desire to leave behind things that will last for ever and this is impossible. The only things that last forever are in the other life, when a new heaven and a new earth will be renewed. This thought will help us to fix our eyes more in what is behind the veil between time and eternity.

            The second coming of Our Lord is less frightening. After all the signs and amazing events of the end of time, the appearance of Jesus among the clouds will be a happy ending of our universe, which began with the Big Bang when God created it. We will be happy to see Our Lord coming back to judge the living and the dead. This future event reminds us of our personal encounter with him at the end of our earthly existence. We need to get ready and the proof that we are not is that we are still here. We ask our Mother to be there when Our Lord comes to pick us up, as we pray every time we say the Hail Mary: pray for us now and at the hour of our death, amen.

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Resurrection of the dead

             Today in the Gospel the Sadducees tried to have a go at Jesus with a silly argument,defending their denial of the resurrection, and thanks to them we have from him a good statement about the resurrection of the body. Jesus uses sometimes our pride and selfishness for our own good, to give us a lesson. Whether we like it or not, at the end of time we will be reunited to our bodies. It will be either a glorious body or a damned one. It is a reminder that our bodies are important. They make us who we are. They are not just a cage were our souls are imprisoned. They are created by God together with our soul and they are destined to be together for ever in the other life. This reality has three important consequences.

            Firstly, our bodies are good. Love your body, look after it, give thanks to God for the body he has given you. There is a vision which separates the body from the soul, a kind of dualism, with two extremes: one that says that our bodies are bad and what it is important is our spiritual side; another extreme says that I am only my body and I can do whatever I want with my body. What we do with our bodies affects our soul; we cannot isolate one from the other. If you take drugs you get addicted. If you cut off your leg you cannot walk properly anymore. If you have sex with many different people, your heart becomes divided. If you eat as much as you want, you become fat and sloppy. Our emotions, our feelings, our character, are related to our body. What affects our body, affects our soul. It is not easy to see it, because it is impossible to separate in this life our body from our soul. Only death can do it. We cannot point out where our soul is in our body, because it exists throughout our being.

            Secondly, our body has dignity. Saint Paul says that we are temples of the Holy Spirit. We must treat our bodies with respect, honour it, celebrate it, bury it. During the funeral rites we sprinkle holy water and we incense the dead body. We place our ashes in a place of remembrance. We go there to pray for our loved ones. We believe in the resurrection of the body. Atheists throw the ashes into the sea, for the fish to eat them. For them everything is finished. For us it is a time of waiting. We venerate the relics of the saints. They remind us of their presence.

            Thirdly, we are our bodies. Without our bodies we are nobody. Our bodies make us who we are. We are male or female because of our bodies, not because of our minds. Our soul in a way has sex, it is either a soul of a male or of a female body. Our bodies give us our identity, our place in space, our relational dimension. We cannot get out of our bodies, we see things from within, we need to carry it with us all the time, like a turtle its shell.

            People deny these important and undeniable realities, manly to do whatever they want, to justify their own vices or passions. They have come out with the gender theory, which destroys our Christian anthropology. During the 20th century we had a struggle between common good and private property. Now it is between sex and gender. As Christopher West repeats all the time, talking about the Theology of the body from John Paul II: “You are irreplaceable, indispensable and unrepeatable; be what you are.”

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All Saints

             Once a year in November the Church on earth as a good mother helps us to remember our brothers and sisters who have made it into eternity. On the first of this month, the saints in heaven; on the second, the souls in purgatory. They say there are around 10.000 saints recognised by the Church. It is impossible to count all the saints in heaven. We don’t have time to canonise every person who enters into glory. There are millions of them. We call them anonymous saints, which means saints with no names; not for God, because for Him all of us have a hidden name. At least once a year we remember them and hopefully one day it will be our feast day. Today it is the biggest celebration in heaven regarding the number of celebrants who are celebrating their dies natalis, their birth into heaven.

            The remembrance of the saints helps us to lift up our eyes to heaven. It doesn’t make any difference to them, because they are already immersed in God; they don’t need our prayers. But we need their example, their model of life, their inspiration, their intercession. Not to copy them, because every person is unique, but to reassure ourselves that we all have the necessary graces to make it to heaven, that the ball is in our court, that God is willing, and it is up to us to make it there.

            What’s holiness? It doesn’t mean to be perfect. It means that when we die, we go straight to heaven. It is impossible to be perfect, but we could make it to heaven thanks to God’s grace. We all feel that if we die now we can hardly make it to purgatory. How can we reach heaven? Through the mercy of God. It is so powerful that it can make us holy. And it is there, up for grabs. The Church wants today to remind us that we are made for heaven, that we come from God and we are going back to him. It is possible for us to become holy. It is good for us to remember the famous question saint Ignatius asked himself, when he was reading lives of saints, and experienced a peaceful feeling in his soul, in front of those beautiful examples: “If they could do it, why not I?” The devil is trying to discourage us; he wants us to be convinced that it is very difficult to reach heaven.

            Once saint Thomas Aquinas’ sister asked him a very difficult question, maybe the most important question of our lives, the same question the rich young man put to Jesus: What do we have to do to go to heaven? Thomas, who was a man of few words, and he was very precise with his explanations, answered with two words: “velle illud”. It is a Latin expression that means: to want it. It is not a matter of conviction but of desire. God will open the gates of heaven if we want it, if we push them open with our struggle, with our desires to be with Him.

            We need to remind ourselves of the power of God. Saint Josephine Bakhita, at the end of her life, expressed in these simple words, hidden behind a smile, the journey of her life: “I travel slowly, one step at a time, because I am carrying two big suitcases. One of them contains my sins, and in the other, which is much heavier, are the infinite merits of JesusChrist. When I reach heaven I will open both suitcases and say to God: Eternal Father, now you can judge. And to Saint Peter: Close the door, because I’m staying here.”

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Zacchaeus

             There were three big obstacles that prevented Zacchaeus from seeing Jesus. They seemed insurmountable, but because he wanted with all his might to see Jesus, he overcame them all, one after the other. We all have some hurdles that make it difficult for us to discover God. And we need to jump over them one by one. Every man has a desire deep in his heart to see God, a hunger for the happiness that only an infinite being can fulfill. We are restless until we find our creator, and we wish to attain the end that we are being created for.

            Zacchaeus was so short he couldn’t see Jesus over the crowds around him. Short people normally have a strong will and they have to learn how to push hard, because they have to stand up for themselves; they have to fight to be able to jump and reach their desires. Our smallness is always in front of us. We cannot forget about it, even though we daydream or try to live in a virtual reality; sooner or later we have to come down to our true level and confront our nothingness. Our artificial life on the internet, cannot be our real life. Without God it is easy to have a low self esteem, hate ourselves, long for attention, and try to hide behind all sort of addictions, that only serve to dig our hole deeper and eventually destroy ourselves. We forget what theologians call the love of predilection: God loves us not because we are good, but we are good because he loves us. His love comes first, independently of how we behave or what we think or what we do. We are his creatures and he made us. And we Christians are also his children. Therefore we need to concentrate more on his love for us and not get bogged down if we find it difficult to see something good in ourselves.

            The crowd was big. Everybody wanted to see the famous prophet. And because they envied and hated Zacchaeus for his riches, they didn’t allow him to see Jesus on purpose. They could see him running along the line of people as Jesus was passing by, and they lifted up their bodies higher for him to see nothing. The biggest obstacle for Zacchaeus to see Jesus was his riches. They didn’t allow him to see Jesus. They were in the way. Once he concentrated in Jesus, he was saved. Our second biggest obstacle is in the world, the multitude of things, people and events that surround us. They can be in the way because we keep looking at them. We don’t see the wood for the trees. As Saint Thomas Aquinas puts it, wealth, honours, power or pleasure, we think they bring us happiness. And over and over again we are mistaken. The happiness of a human soul can only be in an infinite being.

            Lastly Zacchaeus had to overcome shame, human respect, peer pressure and a desire for prestige and fame. The last thing he had to do was to climb a tree in front of everybody. Even though he was dressed in expensive clothes, he disregarded what people thought of him and climbed like a monkey. This showed Jesus that he really wanted to see him. There is always a tree for us to climb and see Jesus. We need to find that tree and show Jesus that we are interested in him.

            Jesus told Zacchaeus to come down: I want to come to your house. He gave half of his property to the poor, making room for Jesus. He is telling us the same thing: come down from your addictions and let me enter into your life. There are a few things we need to give away.

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Parable of the Pharisee and tax collector

            We normally see ourselves as the tax collector. We don’t think the example of the Pharisee is for us. And we are mistaken. We walk into a church with the attitude that it belongs to us. We place ourselves in front of the tabernacle with the right to be there. We talk to God listening to ourselves, reading a list of favours we have done to him, expecting him to acknowledge our achievements. We are arrogant and proud, and we fail to see ourselves as we are. We should rather see ourselves at the back of the church, with our eyes downcast and beating our breast with our fist, trying to bring sorrow out of a dry piece of flesh. This should be our attitude in front of God the Father Almighty.

            In our modern society we have taken God out of the picture, or, if we still believe in Him, we have brought Him down to our level. Through the pendulum law, we have gone from a God of fire and brimstone, to an old fluffy sweet man, with a white long beard and a face of a teddy bear. The balance is always difficult to achieve, and the pendulum keeps swinging. We can never imagine how God is.

            Today through this parable Jesus teaches us that prayer should flow from a humble heart. And he does it by opposing two figures very familiar to the Jews of his time. The goodie, the master of the law, the teacher of morals and obligations, and a baddie, a public sinner, who steals the money from normal people and gives it to the Roman oppressors. The righteous man and the thief are the best examples to be opposed to each other, and to bring the audience to a contrary reaction. Both go to the temple to pray, but only one is justified. We know who goes back pleased in God’s eyes.

            What Jesus wants us to do today is to look into our hearts, where nobody else can peek: into the depths of our intentions, our desires and our longings, to what really moves us and what we really worship. He is taking us on a wild journey; he wants us to accompany Him, to come down with us, to drag our feet through a rough surface, and to look at something we don’t normally want to look at: the depths of our soul. What is there? What sort of stuff do I keep inside? Can I make room for him? Today is a good day for a spring cleaning, for a garage sale, to allow Jesus to come in, leave the windows wide open, turn on all the lights and discover what’s inside.

            At the beginning of the Mass, during the penitential rite, we make an act of sorrow, like the tax collector, hitting our breast three times, trying to break it open, to see what’s inside, as Sain Augustine says, “to bring to light what is concealed in the breast, and by this act to cleanse your hidden sins.” Or as Saint Jerome declares, “We strike our breast because the breast is the seat of evil thoughts: we wish to dispel these thoughts, we wish to purify our hearts.” We should hear the sounds of our chest, resounding deep, striking hard without the fear of a broken rib. We need to break the bones of our chest, to let our heart be seen, like open heart surgery, for Jesus to come in, and fix our arteries; maybe to have few bypasses, or better yet, to have a heart transplant, like Saint Catherine of Siena, when Jesus gave her a new heart, his heart. 

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Parable of the unjust judge

            Even though this parable focuses mainly on the reactions of the unjust judge, on his lack of fear of God and his indifference about justice, it should be better called the parable of the persevering widow, because she is the real protagonist, the one who wins at the end and is vindicated. She is our model in front of injustices and the indifference of human beings. She teaches us how to react when we find ourselves in hopeless situations or in great trouble: persevere in prayer.

            The first reading of the Mass talks about Moses watching Joshua fighting against Amalek. While his arms were outstretched, the Israelites were winning; when he grew tired and let his arms go down, they began to lose. What a responsibility for Moses! People’s lives were at stake. We too experience the same. When we stop praying, the devil has the upper hand; when we persevere in our prayer, the faith of the Church  strengthens. People’s souls are somehow connected to our prayer. This teaches us the lesson that we should always have our arms stretched out, in prayer, that we Christians are called to sustain the world with our spiritual life, that we cannot give up and lower our defences. We have the responsibility of supporting others with our struggle, with our sacrifices and with our personal witness.

            The Gospel says specifically that Jesus taught us this parable to teach us how to pray always and not to lose heart. How can we pray without ceasing, as Saint Paul recommends us? In principle it is not possible, because we are not angels. Saint Augustine says that prayer is an exercise of desire. We are created for God and we are restless until we find him. We all have in our hearts a desire for eternity, for the infinite, a longing for our Creator, even though many times we cannot articulate this pain. Prayer finds the embers of this feeling in our hearts and blows them to enkindle them, to eventually create a huge fire that burns the whole forest of our sins. Saint Augustine comments that desire is your prayer; and if your desire is without ceasing, your prayer will also be without ceasing.

            The Eastern tradition have the famous Jesus Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me. Through repetition and breathing, it can become a part of your life, without realising you are praying, like the beating of the heart. In the Western Church we have the Rosary, a prayer that can be said anywhere, anytime. Many saints give us an example of their immersion in God.

            Modern society tells us that it is possible to concentrate on one thing all the time: our mobile phones. They are always in our hands, beeping, receiving messages, taking photos, talking, checking, clicking. They want constant attention, like babies. Big companies design strategies to keep us hooked to the little screen, and try to sell us data for us to keep the gadget happy. We look for hot spots where we can rest and spend time with our handset. Can we do the same for God? Can we give Him more time, more attention? Prayer allows us to connect with God. It is free and we don’t need a fast expensive gadget. It is always on in our hearts. And it connects us with eternity, infinity and beyond.

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Ten lepers

            You could say that leprosy was the worst sickness. They used to call lepers “living dead”. Your body died slowly, in front of you, in front of others. You were thrown out of society, you became a castaway; some of them literally were being sent to an island, like Molokai. You had to walk round sounding a bell like an animal, crying out: impure, stained. They were like zombies. It was considered a punishment from God; he had touched your flesh with his finger and the corruption from the grave was beginning to get you. In a way it was a graphic way to have your death in front of your eyes. We are one of those ten lepers. We don’t normally see it, but our soul stinks. We are missing some limbs and we cannot walk; we lost our fingers to be able to touch; our eyes are gone, and we cannot see. We are blind, deaf and paralysed to spiritual realities. We all need to realise that we need healing from God. The more we recognise our leprosy, our real illness, the more we will look for him. How can we be healed if we don’t acknowledge our sickness?

            A new leper joined the shameful community and told them about the miraculous prophet. They abandoned their caves and set out to look for him. Hopeless sick people are always hopeful of new treatments. It is possible to be cleansed of our leprosy and our flesh restored, like Naaman the Syrian, whose flesh became as tender as the skin of a little child. We normally don’t believe that we can be cured of our vices or addictions. And we give up. We stop looking for him.

            We don’t know how long these lepers looked for Jesus. We don’t know how long we too need to look for him. But if we don’t look for him, we won’t find him and we won’t be healed. If we look for him, eventually we will come across him, like the lepers did, because at the end he is the one looking for us.

            From a distance the ten lepers cried out: Jesus, Master, have mercy on us! A good act of faith. He told them to present themselves to the priests, to certify their cure. He could have touched them but demanded from them a little faith. They were disappointed; they thought he was going to heal them there instantly, but they didn’t know what to do and went to see the priests without much conviction. Like us, many times we do things without knowing really what to do. Go to the priest! He is telling us the same: Go to confession! Have faith in me. I can cure you. Go! While they were on their way, they were cured. We don’t know if it was instantly or gradually. But I t must have been an amazing sight. Ten men dancing and embracing each other. The Samaritan told them they had to go back to thank Jesus. They said that Jesus told them to present themselves to the priests. They wanted to see their families as soon as possible. How quick we are to forget what God has done for us!

            Only one came back to give thanks. It was a Samaritan, an outcast. Jesus complained: Where are the nine? It is one of the big disappointments of our Lord. This question keeps sounding through the timeline of history. He keeps asking this question to us: Where are you? We can be the nine or the one. Let us not disappoint Jesus. He has healed us many times and we haven’t returned to give him thanks.

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Increase our faith 

            Today we go to Jesus like the apostles and we ask him to increase our faith. Like them we have witnessed miracles, we have experienced things beyond our power, we have seen God’s grace, but we feel that our faith weak. We cannot do what Jesus is asking us to do, because Jesus normally asks for faith before he gives us a hand. After the transfiguration, coming down from the mountain, Jesus met the apostles trying to cast away a dumb spirit from a boy. They couldn’t because they didn’t have enough faith. His father came up to Jesus asking for help. Jesus told him that everything is possible for the one who believes. That man, sensing his lack of faith, realising that the cure of his son was dependent on him, gave us a great prayer: “I believe, but help my unbelief!”

            Four men brought their friend to Jesus to be healed. He was complaining all the way, telling them that it was a waste of time. He couldn’t do much because he was paralysed. His friends were very stubborn. When they arrived at the house, it was packed with people. They weren’t discouraged and they dug a hole in the roof of the house, against the will of the owner. They lowered him through the hole right in front of Jesus. The people inside could see four faces looking down through the hole in the roof. The Gospel says that Jesus seeing their faith, healed him.

            Jesus didn’t normally praise people. But he was impressed with the faith of the Roman Centurion, who trusted his word. His faith was shown when he told Jesus that just his word could heal his servant. We repeat his words during every Mass, just before Communion. We should say them with the conviction of the Centurion. Jesus commented: “I haven’t found this faith in Israel.” What would Jesus say about our faith? Would he praise us?

            Jesus put clay on a blind man’s eyes and asked him to wash them on the pool of Siloe. He could have touched his eyes and healed them, but he demanded faith from the man. The blind man could have asked Jesus if he could wash his eyes in a nearby fountain. But he walked with clay on his eyes and recovered his sight. The man with a withered hand had tried millions of times to move it but with no avail. When Jesus asked him to stretch it out, it was healed. He could have refused to move it another time, but his hand wouldn’t had been healed.

            What does Jesus need to do with us? What infirmity do we have that has to be cleaned? We can cry out like Bartimeus, the blind beggar at the side of the road of Jericho, from the top of his voice: Son of David, have pity of me! Or like the woman who suffered a flow of blood for twelve years and was healed when she touched the fringe of Jesus’ cloak. We have to do the same. We must go to the fountain of faith, to the springs of salvation, where the water gushes out pure and clear. We know where to find it, specially when Jesus comes to the altar after the consecration, and we only need to ask: increase our faith. There is plenty of it, and just a little bit, like a mustard seed, is enough for us. 

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Parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus

            We are the both the men in the parable, whether we like or not, the rich man and the poor man Lazarus, with both their weakness and their strengths, with their aspirations and desires. Both lived parallel lives, clearly related to each other but completely opposite, in this life and the next in eternity, crossing each other at life’s intersections; the first will be last and the last will be first.

            The rich man has no name. Possessions don’t give you real identity, don’t tell you who you are, don’t give you roots or indicate where you come from. In front of God we are the same, things have no value, they have no meaning. We are born naked and we are going to return naked, with nothing to hang on to, only with what we have given away. It is not important what you have, or what you have achieved, but who you are or what you have become. Things don’t make you who you are, but what you make of them. In front of God we are little children, with just toys in our hands.

            We are the rich man. We live a life of our own, without realising that in front of us, there are so many people in need, both materially and spiritually. We normally have the door of our hearts closed. We live a life of  self centredness, self conscious, navel gazing. We fail to be aware of the poverty that surrounds us. Lazarus’s sores are licked by the dogs, without us hearing their barking. Jesus tries to turn us around, to turn us inside out, to be aware of all the poor Lazarus’s outside our door. Pope Francis says that Lazarus “represents the silent cry of the poor of all times.” They are constantly knocking on our lives. The Pope reminds us that “to ignore the poor is to scorn God.” We need to see Jesus in the needy, disadvantaged, marginalised, ostracised. In every homeless person we can find him, even though they are dirty, smelly, and ungrateful.

            Lazarus, on the other hand, has a name. Poverty is real and has real effects on people’s lives; you can identify it straight away. Some authors say that Lazarus was a real person in Jesus’ time, a well known poor man, perhaps sitting at the temple door, even helped sometimes by Jesus and his apostles. Judas would have given him some money reluctantly. We are also the poor Lazarus, at the side of the road of life, our sores in need of dressing, begging for God’s help. Lazarus precisely means God helps. Rich people don’t need God, they think they have everything figured out, only desiring more money. Rich countries abandon God, not feeling the need for God anymore. Cathedrals were built by the poor and the lame. Nowadays rich countries build structures for people, stadiums, arenas, courts for sports and games. God is absent from these buildings. When they are empty they have no soul.

            We have to make sure that in this life we are poor in spirit, in need of help, another Lazarus; then in the next life we are going to be spiritually rich, to share the life of the angels and saints. The austerity of this life is transformed into the abundance of God.

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Parable of tthe unjust steward

             This is a parable about stewardship. We have been given a bit of God’s harvest and Jesus is asking us today to examine ourselves how we are looking after it. We are at his service and we could be a bit easygoing, complacent or indifferent. It doesn’t matter if we are in charge of a big field, or we are only responsible for a small part of God’s vineyard. The important thing is to look after it well, and give a good account of our stewardship. The master commended the dishonest steward for acting prudently. Saint Augustine says that Jesus proposed this parable not to praise the dishonest servant, but to have an eye on the future. We should have the servant’s determination to secure our eternal reward. We cannot forget that we are passing by and eternity is all that matters.

            The servant was a smart forward thinking man. I can imagine him well dressed, smooth and articulate. Jesus complains that “the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” We know many people who put a lot of time and effort into their worldly affairs. They make unbelievable sacrifices to acquire more wealth, power or fame. We should have a similar ambition, to put the same amount of effort into the service of God. Saint Josemaria says: “What zeal men put into their earthly affairs! When you and I put the same zeal into the affairs of our soul, then we’ll have a living and working faith.”

            “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones.” If we compare the things of this world with the events of the other life, we realise that our sacrifices are nothing compared with the reward promised. But because we cannot see the promised land, we have nothing to compare it to. Everything we have is a gift from God, and we are his stewards, who sooner or later will have to render an account to him.

            What is behind this parable is a common, human vice: laziness. We are not good stewards of God’s gifts because we are lazy. It is a hidden defect that we don’t talk much about, but affects all of us; we are lazy in one way or another. We do what we shouldn’t do and we don’t do what we should be doing. We could be very active but not in what’s important.

            “No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.” They say that we can only have one Lord; we cannot be schizophrenics. We need to choose the boss we want to love. “You cannot serve both God and mammon.” Mammon is a Hebrew word for riches or wealth. We cannot allow money to become our god, or let the objective of our life become the accumulation of the greatest number of goods and the highest level of comfort. The Prophet Amos thunders against the exploitation of the poor in the First Reading of today’s Mass. We cannot forget the poor. We may be unjust with our own goods, but we must be honest with other people’s money.

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Our Lady of Sorrows

             Standing at the foot of the Cross is our mother. She is standing, not crying or fainting; she is there supporting her son with her presence. Silent tears run down her cheeks. And Saint John is also there, the celibate apostle, the one Jesus loved. Other women are there too. Women are stronger than men. Many artists tried to capture this moment but with different results. It is almost impossible to represent in a painting what happened at Calvary. Where are the other apostles? Where are the big guys? They said they were going to die for him. They ran away from the cross. We too are still running away from the cross. When are we going to stop running away? Today is a good day.

            We can ask Saint John to help us to be at the foot of the cross, not to be afraid of the cross. We ask him to grasp our hand tightly and help us to remain there at this critical moment in human history. We are between him and Mary, hiding our face in our mother’s robes. We don’t want to see what’s happening. We can only hear.

            The passion of Jesus is the passion of Mary. It is impossible to know what is happening through Mary’s heart. We can only imagine. Spiritual sufferings are more acute than physical ones. Why do we bring to our consideration something that happened 20 centuries ago? Because it is still affecting us. In eternity everything is present. We are the cause of their suffering, mother and son, united in their sorrow. The more we look at what happened at Calvary, the more we will try to avoid our sins. The more we love Jesus and Mary, the more we will avoid what is offending them. Our sins affect the people we love, the same way our love for them empowers them.

            Jesus says: “Woman, behold your son.” It is not a detached expression calling his mother “woman”. He is reminding us that when Adam saw Eve for the first time, he called her “woman”, bones of my bones. Eve was the first woman. Mary is the second woman. The first one let us down because of sin. The second one was the cause of our redemption, of our healing. The Fathers of the Church loved this parallelism between Eve and Mary. Jesus called first his mother “woman” at Cana; at the beginning. Now it is the end. Then he changed water into wine; now the wine is becoming blood, Eucharistic wine. She still remembers that moment. For Jesus has to die for us; for her, to become our mother. She gave birth to him at Bethlehem without pain; now we are born at Calvary in a bloody and painful manner. We have caused her so much blood, so much suffering. This is what we are considering today, Mater Dolorosa, Sorrowful Mother, to foster our love for her: how much pain we have delivered to her, for her to deliver us. The more we suffer, the more we love. We contemplate her sorrows for us to react, to change our lives, to have a deep conversion. We cannot remain indifferent in front of her sufferings, specially knowing that she is there because she wants to be there, the fruit of her love for her son and for us.

            “Behold your mother.” Now Jesus talks to us. First he asks his mother to look after us. Some people say that he wasn’t planning to give us his mother, but when he saw from the cross our feebleness, he decided to give her to us. Now he asks us to look after her. He gave us his treasure, his masterpiece. We are represented by Saint John. Nothing is left for him but the wood of the cross.

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Parables of the lost sheep and the coin

            Sinners were attracted to Jesus and the Pharisees complained. Sinners followed Jesus because they saw an opportunity to leave their sinful life behind. That’s why we too are attracted to Jesus. We need him; without him we are nothing. The more we see ourselves as sinners, the more we feel Jesus’ attraction. Like a magnet; the closer it is to the iron, the more difficult it is to separate the two. Our world has lost a sense of sin, the natural pull from God. Our society moves around itself without a gravitational force to keep it steady, like a moon without an earth, to keep it from being destroyed by the sun. The lack of God is like a black hole that sucks everything into a void.

            This grumbling of the Pharisees, gave an opportunity for Jesus to give us these parables of God’s mercy. In this broken world of ours, the consideration of a Merciful God is very important. When John Paul II was asked what impressed him most about God, he answered: “His infinite mercy.” God said to Saint Catherine of Siena: “Mercy is my darling attribute, and to that end, and for the incomprehensible love I felt towards man, I sent the Word, my only Son; I illustrated this by the representation of a bridge reaching from heaven to earth, uniting the human and divine natures.”

            If you could describe Pope Francis’ summary of his pontificate with one word it is “Mercy”. He declared in 2015 a Holy Year of Mercy. He wrote a book titled: “The name of God is mercy”. He says with boldness that “mercy is the first attribute of God.” He wants to remind the modern man living in a field hospital, surrounded by casualties, that “there are no situations we cannot get out of, we are not condemned to sink into quicksand. God does not want anyone to be lost. His mercy is infinitely greater than our sins.” Saint Therese found a weakness in God the Father: “He has one great infirmity. He is blind. And so ignorant of arithmetic that He cannot even add up.”

            Jesus gives us two parables that are very similar. Both depict the same actions: loosing, searching, finding and rejoicing. This is our own story, constantly getting lost, God going out searching for us, finding us if we allow him to, bringing us back to him, rejoicing in our encounter with the angels and saints, and lifting us up to a higher level than before. Every time he finds us, instead of punishing us, he rewards us by bringing us a bit closer to himself. God uses our sins to lift us up, to enrich us, to cover our nakedness with his graces.

            But both parables emphasise different aspects. In the lost sheep Jesus appears as a Good Shepherd, ready to place us on his shoulders. It is the earliest image we have of Jesus in the catacombs. It shows God’s love for us, ready to leave the other 99 in search of us. Jesus never gives up, always persistent in his search for us, and rejoicing when we come back. Give him the joy of finding you. It’s only if you don’t want to be found, that he won’t be able to bring you back to the flock. The parable of the lost coin shows that every soul is important, that we are unique in God’s eyes, because as in every coin there is normally the face of a ruler, we have the imprint of his image in our soul engraved at Baptism. Make sure you keep it bright and shining.

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Conditions for following Jesus

             Today in the Gospel Jesus gets very serious. He looks at the people following him and he realises that many of them were there for human reasons. They were following him because they wanted to experience miracles, because they were fed with tasty bread and fish, because that man spoke very well, because he had a go at the Pharisees, or he defended the poor and he could become a political power. The same thing happens with us: we are here because we feel good, because it is the right thing to do or because of what others are going to say about us. Jesus uses a very strong expression to bring his message across: to love him we need to hate everything else. Some scriptural authors tried to soften the expression, but Jesus wanted to emphasise a point: we are either with him or against him.

            What he says today is about him and about us. Other religions put across their main message in different ways. Most religious leaders, Buddha, Mohammad, or Luther, gave us some ideas to follow, some doctrine to upheld, but none of them commanded us to love them. Only Jesus demands a complete love for him. His claim is very strong, one that doesn’t allow half measures: unless you love me more than anything else, you cannot be my disciple. Either he is right or he is a mad man. Either he is the Son of God or he is a fool.

            In the light of what he says we have to make a choice. If he is right, everything else takes to second place. And of course, he is right. We are created for him and we have experienced that it is in only following him that we are truly happy, that he is the only one who can fill all the desires of our souls. We know it in the depth of our hearts. To put him first, we need to acknowledge what is taking the place of Jesus in our lives. We need to be sincere. There are other things in our lives that don’t belong to Jesus and we should slowly, through a good examination of conscience, find out what they are and bring them to Jesus, or if necessary, get rid of them. We should react against what is holding us back, against what is not allowing us to become closer to him.

            We have the example of the saints that managed to win their war against themselves. Saint Francis of Assisi was dependent on his father; he gave everything back to him, even his clothes, and was naked in front of everyone. Saint Thomas of Aquinas had to fight against his family who didn’t want him to become a Dominican; they locked him in a castle for a year and he had to escape. Saint Catherine of Siena didn’t want to marry the husband her mother had prepared for her; she cut her beautiful hair off and the husband to be didn’t want to marry a bald girl. Saint Anthony when his parents died sold all his possessions and went to the desert; he was attached to his riches and thanks to his generosity he became the father of the desert fathers. Saint Maximilian Kolbe changed places with another man who was going to be killed at Auschwitz; he gave his life for him, like Jesus did for us.

            We don’t need to go to these extremes, but we have things in our lives that don’t belong to Jesus. We can ask Mary our Mother to help us to give them back to him.

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Parable of the first places

             Jesus was having a meal with his apostles. We see often Jesus in the Gospels sitting at the table. It is important to spend time with others, and meals are great occasions to do so. People nowadays spend their time with their phones, just watching screens. These were moments when Jesus took advantage to pass on to them his message; he used these opportunities to teach them a lesson, in this instance, humility. Jesus was very observant, as holy people are, not self-centered, but completely aware of other people’s needs. It is important to have the right open attitude to look and to listen, to be able to help others when they need it. Self-centred people are hardly able to be of use to others because of their own selfishness.

            Jesus noticed that people were choosing the best places at the table and related this parable. It was a practical lesson, where his apostles could see exactly what he was trying to teach them. It is a normal thing to try to pick out the best places when you watch a movie, attend a sport match or listen to a music concert. Beneath this attitude there is our constant pride, that we cannot get rid of. They say that pride dies twenty four hours after we die. The first sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, was pride: they placed themselves before God. If you think you are humble, it means that you are proud, and the opposite. But better we don’t become complicated.

            In the good old days when you read those beautiful books on Moral Theology, the spiritual authors used to describe the spiritual edifice, how our relationship with God could be drawn on a piece of paper. Each one of them had their own theories, where to place the three doors of faith, hope and charity; the windows of the four cardinal virtues, the rooms of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and so on But all of them agreed about the foundations of the building: humility. Without this virtue, the whole relationship with God, our spiritual structure, sooner or later, will crumble and collapse.

            We need to acknowledge that we are proud, that we normally place ourselves before God and others. It is not easy to acknowledge our nothingness. The best way is to compare ourselves with God: He is everything and we are nothing. Everything good we have comes from him. We only have our good desires and our sins. If we see God as a father, it is easier to see ourselves as little children.

            A young man went to a holy man and asked him how to be humble: “Find somebody lower than yourself and do something for him.” He went and found a beggar and invited him for a meal. He felt good and went back to the holy man: “Am I humble now?” “No, find another man lower than yourself and do something for him again.” The young man got upset and asked: “How many times do I have to do it? 100 times?” “Till you don’t find anybody lower than yourself.” Somebody said that Jesus took the last place on earth and nobody can take it from him. He died on the wood of the cross, a place reserved for criminals. If we want to be closer to Jesus, we need to keep lowering ourselves. The lower we go the closer we become to him. I like very much a description of the Virgin Mary by Bishop Alvaro: “Convinced of her littleness, nothing distracts her from God.” If somebody could be proud is her. God bestowed on her as many virtues and privileges that a human being can hold. People with many talents normally sit on a pedestal, high up, above us, and they look down on us. Our Mother, on the contrary, is so accessible, so motherly, ready to give us a hand. Nothing separates her from God.

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The narrow gate

            Today in the Gospel we see a fellow coming up to Jesus and asking an important question: “Lord, will only a few people be saved?” We are still asking this question nowadays. How many are going to be saved? Is anybody in hell? It is based in a truth of our faith: we all need salvation. Few years ago we had a debate about this topic when we had to change the words of the consecration during Mass, to better translate the original. We used to say that the blood of Christ was poured out for all and now we say for many. Some people weren’t happy with the change. We know that we all have the necessary graces to be saved. Saint Paul tells us that God “desires all men to be saved.” The truth of predestination is a difficult one.

            Jesus didn’t answer directly. He just told us: “Strive to enter through the narrow gate.” He threw the problem back at us: the ball is in your court; it is up to us. The narrow gate is a good comparison, a graphic image. Jesus in Saint Matthew’s Gospel tells us a bit more about this gate: “The gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” In this life there are only two roads that reach the other end: one goes down and it is wide and easy to follow; the other goes up, and it is narrow and difficult to find.

            This tells us that heaven is won by force, getting up, struggling every day a bit, constantly beginning and beginning again. Do you think that plodding along, getting by, having an easy life is going to lead us to heaven? Today is a good day to change gears, to fire another cylinder, to take our faith more seriously. Jesus died on the cross for us. What are we doing for him? It is always difficult to know how much effort we need to put in without becoming obsessed, burned up or fanatical. It is not easy to find the balance. Saints are good at that. It is a matter of love. God is not going to ask something we cannot do. Pride can make us do silly things. It depends a bit on how we are. If we are a bit soft, we need to quicken our pace; if we are tough, we need to slow down. We are normally soft with ourselves and tough with others.

            This narrow gate opens wide into a beautiful heavenly banquet. Jesus loves talking about this wedding feast, where he is the bridegroom and we are the bride. He himself tells us what we have to do to get through the gate: “Not every one who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.” We are all invited, but only a few enter. Few doesn’t mean not too many, but it is a reminder that more should enter than actually do. It is the question of how many people are in hell. The saints answer that one is one too many. The good Lord talks to us about hell: “There will be wailing and grinding of teeth.” We need to talk about hell, even though people don’t want to hear, to warn them about its existence. When we fix our eyes in heaven, the road up is not too difficult. It is full of joy. The amazing reward, spurs us on. Look at how the martyrs endured their torments almost with a smiling face. They could see the finishing line.

            Jesus ends the Gospel today with a paradox: “For behold, some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.” Imagine a race where the last wins; everyone would try to run backwards. Many people who are at the top of society will be last. And maybe the guy who is begging for money at the traffic lights will be ahead of us. We shouldn’t envy the famous: they have a more difficult road to travel. We should be happy with our own journey, the one God has prepared for us. It’s the

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The Assumption

             Today we celebrate the feast day of the Assumption of our Mother to heaven. What can we say about what happened on that day? We haven’t got much information. Saint John witnessed it and didn’t tell us anything. John, you told us all about the life of Jesus, with plenty of details, but you didn’t want to tell us about our Lady leaving earth. She is our Mother too, and we would have liked to know more about her. But you preferred to be silent. We needed to know about how Jesus gave his life for us, but we didn’t need to know how our Mother flew up to heaven. It is better for our imagination; we can let it free. It took the Church a long time to declare the dogma, in 1950. Now we can let our imagination fly and accompany her up to heaven.

            The apocryphal gospels, those books written by the early Christians to try to fill the gaps, say that the apostles came back to say good bye to our Mother. They say that they came back each in his own cloud, first Saint Peter and then Saint Paul. Maybe John didn’t tell us this because nobody would have believed him. Saint James was already dead and Saint Thomas, as always, arrived late, because he came back all the way from India. We understand why they wanted to be back. We too want to be there to say good bye to our mother.

            There is a debate about what happened, if our Lady died or not, before she went up to heaven. She would have liked to follow her Son, and die with him on the cross. But Jesus didn’t want her to endure his horrible death. No son wants his mother to suffer. I don’t think Jesus wanted his mother to die either. God wanted her, body and soul in heaven, without her beautiful body experiencing corruption. That’s why she fell asleep. You could call it a sweet death. That’s how saints normally pass away, falling asleep, in a simple and beautiful manner. You die in the way you live. There is a feast in the East called the Dormition of our Lady, dating from the sixth century. According to tradition she fell asleep and they placed her in a tomb. When Saint Thomas arrived, he wanted to see her, and they found out that the tomb was empty. That is why we don’t have any relics from her body.

            How did she fly to heaven? God has his ways of moving people. Most likely it was a transport of love. When love is very intense, it can do things that reason cannot understand. Love is crazy, endures all things, achieves all things. Love can travel through space and time. There is no better means of transport than going through the people we love. Love fired the engines of her soul and lifted her up all the way to heaven.

            Tradition says that our Lady’s beauty, which was veiled here on earth so as not to blind human beings, not to drive them crazy, was revealed on her way to heaven, showing her in all her splendour, dazzling angels and saints in all its wonder. They never have seen anybody like that, not even in paradise. The book of Revelation tries to describe her, precisely with the words of Saint John: “A great sign appeared in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun, the moon beneath her feet, and a crown of twelve stars on her head.” I don’t think it is possible to find a better description of our Mother’s countenance. At last Saint John opened his soul and told us a bit about her Assumption.

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