Weekly Reflection: 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Reading references:

First Reading: Malachi 1:14-2:2.8-10
Responsorial Psalm: Psalm 130
Second Reading: Paul Letter to Thessalonians 2:7-9.13
Gospel: Matthew 23:1-12

Today’s readings place an enormous challenge before us. There is something quite dysfunctional in our human nature that is tempted to aspire to elitism or to hold up elitism as something to be honoured. In the gospel today Jesus attacks this mentality and says ‘the greatest among you must be your servant.’ Jesus embraced the religious and social outcasts of his day. He broke right through the purity code/laws that alienated and oppressed so many people who longed to be part of the faith community.

We the church must be careful of this in our time. There is an element within the Church that upholds laws that continue to alienate and oppress people who long to be fully part of our faith communities. There is a temptation to keep returning to the very purity codes that Jesus was so determined to expose for the evil they were. We must remember that Jesus is our truth – not us. Every one of us is contaminated by sin. We don’t like to hear this, but none of us are free of it. But when we exclude people from our communities because we judge their sin to somehow be worse than ours, we ourselves are entering into grave sin.

Perhaps one of the greatest wrongs of our time is to not recognize our own sinfulness: this is religious elitism at its worst. When we exclude people from our faith communities because we judge their sinfulness to be worse than our own, two things happen (among many others): we isolate ourselves from their goodness and we isolate them from the goodness of our own community. All sorts of damage is done in the process. Repentance is a life long journey and a life lived in community is our greatest teacher on this journey.

So why then do we exclude people?

For example what a shocking and often hypocritical thing it is that divorced people who long to be fully part of our community are so often excluded. What do we do to their souls and their spirit when we treat them in such a way? What we are effectively saying to all those whom we treat as outcasts are that you have sinned, but we have been purified and your entry into this community would contaminate the Church (us) in some way.

We must be so careful and aware of laws that exclude, oppress and alienate people who have a desire to be part of our faith communities. Two of the greatest sins of our time are ‘apathy’ and ‘silence’ in the face of injustice, and how much apathy and silence is present in every church on every Sunday? – So we dare not judge when we can be so blind to our own sinfulness.

These magnificent words are in the Wisdom of Solomon and they say this about our God:

“….but you are merciful to all, for you can do all things, and you overlook people’s sins, so that they may repent.” [Wisdom of Solomon 11:23]

There is great richness in these few words and we must learn from them. If God overlooks our sin so that we may repent, then who are we to do otherwise?

Let us pray in the coming week for ourselves as Church that we will learn to question and reject structures and laws that are oppressive and alienating to so many, and pray for the courage to fully welcome into our communities those who have been so unjustly outcast.

Please note: This reflection may be used in parish bulletins etc but with acknowledgment of its author.

Weekly Reflection: 30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Reading references:

First Reading: Exodus 22:20-26
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 17:2-4.47.51. R. vs 2
Second Reading: Paul Letter to Thessalonians 1:5-10
Gospel: Matthew 22:34-40

In today’s First Reading we hear God saying “….I am full of pity” for those who cry out to me in need. Then we declare our love for God in the Psalm. In the Second Reading Paul tells the community at Thessalonica that they are a “great example to all believers….”. Our Gospel tells us we must love God and love our neighbour.

Each of us must ask ourselves where we fit into this extraordinary scene of love and compassion that each of us are being asked to imitate. Martin Luther King Jr. once said: “There comes a time when silence is betrayal.” So often when we keep silent we are betraying God and our neighbour, we are betraying Love, and we are betraying the very existence that Jesus asks us to live. When we look at our Readings and then look at the shocking mess our world is in, we will see how profoundly true these words of Martin Luther King Jr. are. But so often it is the one who breaks the sinful silence that is then portrayed by those who persist in keeping this silence, as the one who has betrayed their community and they often become the outcasts or worse. Jesus invites us today to have a radical trust in Love. If the majority truly lived this radical trust in Love then it would be those who betrayed this trust that would be the outcasts, but tragically this is not the case it is quite the reverse. Any Love that is real will not allow itself to be silenced regardless of the cost. Take some time this week to look at where Love is active (or perhaps not so active) in your own life and your own attitudes to what is happening around you. If we are to grow as human beings and understand what and who we are truly called to be then we must make the time to see where we are loving, but more importantly where we fail to love.

Think for a moment of your personal relationships. Do your personal relationships reflect this radical Love we are called to live - or do you hold grudges or set out to hurt those who hurt you or ignore the needs of those around you? Look at our country and many of the issues we currently face and ask yourself where in my attitudes to these issues am I living out the radical nature of Love? Keep the words “There comes a time when silence is betrayal” in your mind as you reflect upon your attitudes to the following:

· our immigration policies and treatment of those in detention
· the politics of fear inciting racism and suspicion
· people caught in the poverty trap
· the priority of the economy over people’s well being and rights
· a culture that puts self above all else
· a personal culture that puts the accumulation of money/wealth above personal relationships and well being
· the plight of our indigenous communities
· our care for our environment
· list some of your own concerns

When we reflect upon our attitudes to the above what do we discover about ourselves? Do we have the courage to be truthful? Anything that you are tempted to dismiss in the above list may need your particular attention. What does our silence tell us about ourselves? Whatever it is that we discover it is never too late to Love. This is the one constant in our lives; we are forever being invited to Love. Let’s pray in the coming week for ourselves and for each other that we will be graced with the insight and the courage to break the silences that corrupt our minds and hearts so that we may truly grow in our Love for our God and for our neighbour.

Weekly Reflection: 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A

Reading references:

First Reading: Isaiah 45:1,4-6
Responsorial Psalm: Ps 95:1,3-5,7-10. R. v. 7
Second Reading: Paul Letter to Thessalonians 1:1-5
Gospel: Matthew 22:15-21

In today’s gospel we are presented with a very ugly side of our human nature as seen through the Pharisees, but at the same time we are presented with an extraordinarily beautiful side of our human nature as seen through Jesus. The Pharisees are greatly threatened by Jesus and they set out to find ways to destroy him. They lay traps to catch him out hoping that they can encourage others to learn to also hate him. They want to infect others through their own poisonous and ruthless games. But Jesus keeps beautifully faithful to love and throws them off balance with every attempt to discredit him because he sees everything through the eyes and the heart of love.

So how does all this speak to us today? We are really presented here with two ideologies, one from the Pharisees and one from Jesus. Most, if not all of the greatest reformers in our history have been idealists in one-way or another. Idealism is a good thing, but it must always be in partnership with tolerance - if it isn’t then we become like the Pharisees and we try and enforce our ideals upon others and if they don’t conform then we set out to destroy them – we become dictators. And sadly of course in doing this we ultimately destroy ourselves and so often many others along with us. Not once did Jesus use force – he always invited and left it up to people to respond. His lived example of faithfulness to love was what changed people’s hearts.

Why is it so hard for us to hear and respond to the real message of Jesus? Why do we set out to hurt and destroy each other? Why do we invade each other’s countries and do so in God’s name? Why do we attempt to defame others in ways that will harm them dreadfully and unjustly etc?

Tolerance is something our world craves for today but there are too few role models for us to follow. The predominating mentality today is: ‘if someone hits you, then you hit them back but twice as hard.’ And yet we have over 1 billion Christians in our world who declare that they follow Jesus – the God of Love, the God of Compassion, the God of Peace. Something does not add up here. And this fraudulent declaration of belief in Jesus must be exposed for the deceit that it is – just as Jesus exposed the Pharisees in today’s Gospel for what they really were. But we as Christians must take responsibility for this and live lives that reflect our belief in Jesus.

Let us pray in the coming week that we will examine the way we live our lives and rejoice in our idealism - but pray also for the grace of tolerance so that the way we choose to live our lives will be attractive to others and therefore we will be able to hand back “to God what belongs to God.”

Please note: This reflection may be used in parish bulletins etc but with acknowledgment of its author.