Emptying out for greatness

Today's gospel (Luke 22: 24-30) is another example of how later episodes in the life of Jesus provide a commentary on earlier ones. The scene is the Last Supper. The disciples argue about who should be considered the greatest. And Jesus offers two lessons; first he points out that the greatest among them will be their servant, as He has made himself their servant; and second, He promises them that they will be exalted in the world to come as the judges of Israel.

Let us deal with the second of these. The future that Jesus promises the disciples is not our own. Theirs was a particular vocation related to their exalted calling as his principal witnesses; the members of the College of Bishops today are simply the heirs of this august group. What then is our own future, if we are faithful to Him? St Paul tells the Corinthians that eye has not seen nor ear heard what things God has prepared for those who love Him. Yet eternal life is not ultimately about conditions but about persons. Our future, if we are faithful unto the end, is to breathe forth our souls in peace with the God who has loved us from eternity. Hearts can be filled according to the measure that God has called them to. May we all be thus filled.

What then of the first lesson? In answer to the disciples' shallow one-upmanship, Jesus offers instead His own example of what St Paul again calls 'self emptying'. Jesus did not come to stand on His dignity, even if St John the Baptist says he was not fit to undo Jesus' very sandal. Rather, He lowered Himself in the eyes of the world from the very first moment of His earthly life, conceived in the womb of an obscure daughter of the House of David and born surrounded by animals and their filth. Look around the stable and what do we see? The witnesses of Christian self emptying.

By tradition, we observe a donkey - the little donkey of the carol - the diminutive cousin of the nobler horse, known especially for its dogged, plodding willingness as a beast of burden. There is no glory here; only the example of a willingness to submit to the crosses that accompany our obscure lives. Yet it is not the lion or the horse who accompany Jesus into Jerusalem but the donkey ... with shouts about his ears and palms beneath his feet.

Next to the donkey, again by tradition, comes the ox - symbol of the priestly cast and thereby often used as the emblem of St Luke whose gospel opens with the story of Zechariah. Yet what is the ox in the stable menagerie but a humble ruminant, chewing over and over again the extraordinary scenes in which it now figures? No glory here either; the power of the ox is not developed in a gym but comes from its grazing and rumination, as steady and as fixed as the eye of the contemplative who drinks in daily the mysteries of the Beloved.

But my favourite witness of Christian self-emptying in the stable is the straw of Jesus' crib. The straw - the spikey, bloodless, pele mele straw, incapable of providing comfort by a single strand alone but when bundled up and wrapped in cloth, a more than adequate mattress for the newly born Christ Child. How we can identify with the straw - with our distracted prayers, our resurgent needs and half-baked promises! Easily blown about, too cold, too weak - and yet here gathered together to be the comfort of our Saviour. 

It is as the failing eyesight of the poet John Milton saw: they also serve who only stand and wait.

Of rebellion and redemption

Today’s gospel (Luke 1: 46-56) needs no introduction to a COLW audience. It is for many of us a daily prayer. For all those who want to turn towards God, it is a kind of anthem, a celebration of God’s gracious gaze upon His servants, of His providential power, and of His enduring faithfulness to Abraham and his descendants forever.

But there is something else in the Magnificat which is also tangible: the reality of revolt and the reality of fidelity, the contrast between rebellion and redemption. In this light, two outstanding temptations beset us every day: the temptation to make peace with our sins, and the temptation to think God won’t mind them because He is a loving God. But they are lures in a world full of mortal danger.

The only human being who has ever been truly justified in being at peace with their choices is the Blessed Mother. Conceived without the stain of sin and constantly attuned to God’s will, Mary’s joy is to exult in God at every moment of her life, even in her greatest trials. The Magnificat tells us this. If we do not exult in the same way as Mary, it is because despite our resolutions and efforts, we are still children of rebellion.

Let us not think that the proud of heart who are routed by God in Mary's words are some other class of sinner to which we do not belong, thank heavens. We are the proud of heart when we refuse God’s rule over our choices. We set ourselves up as princes to be pulled down from our thrones when we prefer our way to God’s.

No human felt more justly proud than Peter when Jesus classed him as the rock of his Church (Matthew 16: 18-19), but within a few verses we see Jesus denounce Peter as Satan (Matthew 16: 22-23) because he judged the prospect of Jesus’ suffering from a human and not a divine perspective. Here Peter enters into rebellion simply by imposing his worldly judgement on the circumstances of the Passion that Jesus prophesied for the disciples. Would that Peter had a tenth of the Virgin’s wisdom to understand how sin had misled humanity and how far the plan of salvation would have to go – to the very roots of our souls! – to bring us back from the brink.

And here the second temptation becomes germane. If God does not really mind our revolt, why on earth does He tear the mighty from their thrones? Why on earth does He feed the starving with good things and send the rich away empty? Again, we must not see this purely as some kind of social commentary. Who are the rich if not those who are full of themselves, their own sufficiency, their own satisfactions and their own plans? Who are the rich if not ourselves when we make our own choices into the treasure we long for? Yet we do not know what is good for us. If God cares about sin, it is not because He is a rigid rule giver; it is because He knows that we can never be happy ultimately unless, as St Augustine says, our hearts rest in Him. But for that, we must come down from our pinnacles of pride and turn to penance.

If God were not to cast the mighty from their thrones, if He were not to mind that we choose ourselves over Him, He would be giving up on being God. Mary’s Magnificat not only tells us about her own vocation. It tells us about the kind of God who loves us so much, that He is willing to conquer every obstacle we place in His way, in all our rebellion against Him, if we will but let go of our tinsel crowns and seats of power and join our ‘yes’ to Mary’s ‘yes’. 

The Magnificat is a resounding 'yes' to God's reconciliation and 'no' to the revolt that sets us against Him. We cannot say 'yes' to God without in some way saying 'no' to ourselves. There is no Magnificat that does not somehow involve the Cross which leads the way to the uplands of God's peace.

Zechariah and Mary in a world of unbelief

Today's gospel (Luke 1: 5-25) relates the story of Zechariah to whom the Angel Gabriel appears as he ministers in the temple. There are two angelic visions in this chapter of Luke: in one, a humble and obscure virgin hears the divine message and speaks her 'yes' that changes history; in the other, a specially chosen priest who offers incense in the temple, hears the divine message, sceptically questions it, and ends up under a curse that leaves him speechless. Who says there is no justice?

How the mighty fall! Minutes before writing this, I was listening to Esther Rantzen on the radio, relating in her warm and friendly tones how, now that she has Stage 4 cancer, she has joined Dignitas and believes fully in the compassionate freedom of being able to end her own life. Rantzen, the social conscience of Britain, voice of the voiceless and champion of the weak, stands now for death. But what has this to do with Zechariah?

Everything. Zechariah is a priest, chosen from among men in the things that pertain to God, as St Paul says in the letter to the Hebrews. At the appointed time, he enters the inner sanctuary of the temple and there performs the ceremony of the offering of incense. His is a ministry of mercy and compassion, interceding for the people. Then, while interceding before the divine presence while the people watch on from outside, Zechariah gives way to his scepticism in the face of God. Zechariah, mediator with God and the most privileged of men, stands now for unbelief.

But, isn't Zechariah the model of reason and good sense (like Rantzen)? Do not humanity and compassion underpin all his difficulties as he faces his angelic visitor? What after all are his objections?

'How can I be sure of this?' he says - an admirably humble response, not wishing to trust in himself... 'I am an old man and my wife is getting on in years' - which seems to show how very prudent Zechariah really was, knowing his limitations and those of his spouse... Are we sure this is not so? 

The modern response to what happens next is easy to imagine. How cruel, it would say, does Gabriel then become? Refusing to have mercy on Zechariah's just fear and ignoring Zechariah's humble admission of weakness, Gabriel brings down a punishment like some appallingly cruel Greek deity. How callous is God who places such burdens on Zechariah when he surely cannot carry them? Such, I imagine, is the compassionate commentary.

But Zechariah's uncertainty does not bespeak humility; it bespeaks complexity. Zechariah, who is supposed to be worthy of his priesthood, is unfamiliar with the divine, possibly through lack of deep prayer. His response to Gabriel is not a sign that he does not trust himself; it is a sign that he is resistant to seeing things from God's perspective. 

Likewise, Zechariah's complaint that he and his wife are too old is the age-old human pretext for not doing what God asks of us. We say we cannot, but we are then usually trying to cross the bridge before we come to it. God will send us what we need in the right moment, and not before. 

Before we enter Christmas, these two poles stretch before us, marking out the tension that rends the world asunder. Zechariah, the mighty priest with a ministry of compassion, who stands before God's presence in the temple, is the model of infidelity and unfaithfulness. Mary in all her obscurity, who runs to her cousin Elizabeth with tales of her joy in God, is the model of constancy and acceptance. Only the priesthood of Jesus - a priesthood he receives thanks to the human nature that comes from Mary's flesh - marries priestly dignity and the perfection of goodness. And its advent in the world is now imminent. 

Elijah in a world of information

Today's brief gospel (Matthew 17: 10-13) is another of those episodes in which the disciples are invited to think a little deeper than the plainly obvious. 

They are indulging in that favourite pastime of some believers to speculate about future prophesies. It is almost always a mistake. Of course there are literal and historical senses to Scripture, as the Chutch teaches, but when the reader treats the Sacred Scriptures like they are no more than a text in the world of information - as if they were a book of recipes or a set of technical instructions- then the reader is likely to bounce off the surface. 

Proof that the Sacred Scriptures are more than mere information lies in the way Jesus speaks about John the Baptist as Elijah. He leaves it to the disciples to work this out. He does not make it clear for them. On most occasions, Jesus does not practise the pedagogy of OFSTED or follow the principles of the Campaign for Plain English. 

Jesus stoops to pick us up in our sorry state of sin, for we are travellers waylaid on our way to Jericho. But one of the challenges of receiving  His mercy is that as He picks us up, we must yield to His mystery; submit not only to the depth of His Truth but also to His way of communicating Himself to us. In this, we are like owls blinking in blinding sunlight, disoriented by the merging of mystery and truth, metaphor and symbol, and by the realities that these things point to. Was John the Baptist Elijah or was Elijah John? Not in any literal sense. But the convergence of these two heroes of faith in Jesus' discourse shows us something of God's mysterious mode of teaching, of inviting us to abandon our prosody and rise to the poetry of the Divine Mysteries. 

People speak these days of love languages, and say that the real lover seeks to understand and communicate in the love language of the other. But God is different. While allowing for our weakness, God's love language is so much deeper and richer than ours because His love is so much richer and deeper than ours. If He stoops a little towards us, it is to make us go further up and further in to the reality that He is. 

It is time to stop speculating and explaining (although these have their moment, of course). In these days before Christmas, it is time to pray for the grace to surrender ourselves to the radiance of His wisdom.

Go home!

 Today’s gospel (Luke 5: 17-26) contains three very simple commands from Jesus: get up, pick up your stretcher, and go home. Jesus is demonstrating to the Pharisees and scribes that He indeed has the power to forgive sins. He does this by miraculously demonstrating His power over nature. But He is not only demonstrating His power. He is also curing a man who has been so helpless, he needed his friends to carry him about on a stretcher.

As almost always in the gospel, however, the physical ailment is a sign and symbol of something deeper. The man’s paralysis is the immobility that comes upon the soul who is immersed in sin, who has lost the ability to discover and seize its own freedom. The man needs a liberator from his sins, just as he needs a liberator from his physical paralysis. Without grace – God’s free intervention – he and we are lost.

But dwell for a moment on the final command: ‘go home’. It is the simplest of orders, and yet it says so much about the sinful condition. To sin is to go away from home; from home and from family, notably our Beloved Father. To be cured of sin through repentance and in the Sacrament of Confession is to set out on the journey home. Home is not only where the heart is, but it is where we belong by providence. Every going out is undertaken in view of a returning home. The world does not, or at least should not, revolve around the office desk or the factory machine, but around the family dinner table where grace and gladness meet.  We are most ourselves when we are set free in the wild adventure of domesticity, rather than competing for the recognition of employers or the admiration of the world at large.

Go home. This is Christ’s agenda.  

Lord, I am not worthy

Today’s gospel (Matthew 8: 5-11) reminds us of the origins of words we all say only a few moments before we encounter Jesus in Holy Communion. The dispositions of the centurion would not yet be enough to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament. We hope that after this meeting the centurion went on from acts of faith to acts of friendship and love, but we do not know.

Meanwhile, Jesus not only cures his servant but praises the centurion for his faith. We should praise the centurion too for his reverence. For the centurion shows reverence in two ways. The first is that he addresses Jesus respectfully: “Sir” is the English translation of what he says, and he uses this term both times that he addresses our Lord. Formality is now unfashionable; it is especially suspect in a religious context where it is associated with rigidity and coldness. But, as St Paul says, every knee should bow at the name of Jesus. Only a few years back, pious Catholics would bow their heads at the name of Jesus, mirroring a rubric that was embedded in the liturgy. But why should every knee bow to Jesus if bowing the knee (or bowing the head) is an act of cold-hearted prissiness? “Sir”, says the centurion simply, and I imagine he bowed his head when he did so, if not his knee. Would that every communicant were as reverent.

The second act of reverence of the centurion is intimately tied up with his faith. “I am not worthy to have you under my roof,” he says. I am not worthy – words that are only spoken either out of a wrongheaded sense of self-abasement (which is clearly not the case here) or out of an abundant sense of his own position in relation to Jesus. Now, it is possible that the centurion is only observing a social convention, knowing how sniffy the leading Jews were about mixing with sinners. But, Jesus does not smile on such delicatesse; He smiles rather on the man’s belief that He could cure the servant even without seeing him. The centurion’s reverence, therefore, does not come from observing the social custom of the Jews who wished to shun Gentile company; it comes from what must have been a deep sense of Jesus’ power that he could easily have witnessed as Jesus made his progress through the Holy Land. There reverence proceeds from his faith. 

I believe. And if I know myself, I must know myself to be much lower than the power I believe in. And yet – here comes the act that Jesus honours in the centurion – despite it all, I humble myself and ask for His help. If we but had faith, we could move mountains, or perhaps see our servants healed. Or better still, we might glimpse the healing touch of Jesus descend on our own hearts.

Bearing with the mysteries (not baring with)

 Today's gospel (Luke 21: 29-33) contains the conclusion of a long and complex prophecy that Jesus makes as He and that His disciples look upon the temple in Jerusalem. This prophecy cannot be read like a plain text. It has layers and layers of meaning that point not only to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70AD but also to the end of the world. The question here really is why does Jesus teach us in this way?

People nowadays want everything explaining to them. But the assumption that everything can be explained is already a mistake when it comes to dealing with God. Being – just the very fact of existence - is something of a mystery, and God is being in itself. As we read in the letters of Saint Paul, the mysteries of God are full of light and depth, unfathomable to the human mind. There is no “dummies guide” to the ways of God because in the end the ways of God are not primarily a subject in a curriculum but a path of knowledge and love that leads towards union with Him. When Jesus teaches, He is not downloading the manual; He is literally educating us, i.e. leading us out of ourselves and towards Him.

And if we must be led out of ourselves, we should be ready for the strangeness that that entails. You will know the truth and the truth will make you strange, said American novelist Flannery O'Connor. To embrace the mystery of Jesus’ teaching; to gaze and wonder at things that seem incomprehensible; and not to demand - as if we were at the Heavenly Citizens Advice Bureau - for a full explanation of the terms and conditions in language approved by the Plain English Campaign: these are challenges that we and all our demanding contemporaries can afford to rise to.

That I may see

Today’s gospel (Luke 18: 35-43) needs hardly any commentary but, like all gospel passages it can be the source of endless reflection. A blind man, hearing of the approach of Jesus the Nazarene, calls for mercy, despite the scolding of his unpleasant neighbours who, one suspects, were clamouring for their own piece of Jesus’ attention. When Jesus responds to him (for He had always been able to hear him), He asks what the man desires. When the man asks for the restoration of his sight, Jesus grants him this blessing instantly. And his neighbours – who moments ago were trying to shut him up – now praise God in their amazement (and no doubt clamour all the more for their own needs).

We sometimes think of such healings only in their positive sense; the outcome of a journey of suffering that now gives way to joy with the healing touch of Jesus. But mark again the man’s words: ‘let me see again’.   This man had been able to see once. That was before he lost that quasi-miraculous sense by which the wide world around us crowds into our tiny heads in visions that fill our minds - sometimes of beauty and wonder, and sometimes of horror and fright. We do not know how he lost his sight, but as with all physical ailments that Jesus cures, we know there is also a spiritual sense to the affliction. Just as leprosy apes sin because it causes loss of feeling and disfigurement, so blindness apes our spiritual condition when we lose the insights that come through Revelation, spiritual vision, and human wisdom.

Spiritual blindness may come from many sources. Sometimes God allows us to walk in darkness because He is inviting us to put a greater trust in Him. Often enough, however, spiritual blindness comes from our refusal to see things as they are. Just as we should surrender to the Father’s forming action, we must take stock of things as God’s action allows them to be, and not as we wished they were.

I wonder if there are two dangers for us here: first, that we are sometimes so confident in our ‘insights’ that we miss the truth of things; and second, that we are so frightened by what we see that we prefer to stick our heads in the ground. The first is blindness through pride; the second is blindness through wishful thinking.

In both instances, what we need is the healing word of Jesus, either to remind us of our dependence on Him (and so to ratchet down our self-sufficient attempts at wisdom), or to encourage us to look at reality and speak as we find it (and so to fill our wills with the resolve He designed us to live by).

May Jesus grant us all the humility to depend on His sight, and the courage to speak the truth He gives us to see.

*******

Please remember Brian and Lizzie in your prayers today on their thirteenth wedding anniversary. 

Today is also the anniversary of the beatification of some of the Mexican Martyrs. Viva Cristo rey! 

Watch, forgive and believe

 Today’s gospel (Luke 17: 1-6) is another of those passages where Jesus gives a series of counsels that complement each other. Today, it is: watch, forgive, and believe!

We watch when we are responsible and live our responsibility fully, especially towards those who depend on us. Jesus is so firm on this point that we get a glimpse of the divine chastisement reserved for those who lead astray the young – better a millstone round his neck. No mercy for them? Well, this warning is God’s mercy. Know the cost of not being responsible. Know the cost of selling out to your worst self.

It is striking then that the next counsel is for mercy: mercy towards your brother who offends you. What these two counsels hold in common is that we must try to put the other first: do our duty towards others (watch!) but forgive them if they do not do their duty towards us. How different would things be if we all acted responsibly as our brother’s keeper and forgave our brothers and sisters when they failed to do us the same courtesy. And courtesy is the right word here because courtesy is the crown of charity and love. Courtesy is the tribute that respect pays to love.

And then comes the final counsel for today: believe! For if we believed as we should and as we are called to be, we would command the elements. The curious thing here is: if we believed with such vehemence, why would we exercise that virtue in such a self-agrandizing way? (“I believe so much, I can rip up this tree by the power of my faith!”) Jesus is again here at His most rabbinical; I image this is a line said with a Nazarene twinkle in the eye and an ironic curl of the lip that fully implies He knows such an act would be the kind of thing His flesh-obsessed disciples would count as impressive!   

In fact, if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we would almost certainly not exercise it in any way other than to honour God by being responsible and forgiving our neighbour. Our faith would know the right measure (and I'm sure it would not involve destruction of the flora!).

Watch, forgive, and believe, therefore. And, in these counsels we will find we are saying ‘yes’ to the Lord in every moment.

On astute parables

 Most of the time, the gospel teaches us the doctrines and moral truths that belong to Divine Revelation. But sometimes, the gospel teaches us other things besides. Today's gospel (Luke 16: 1-8) is a good example of this.

On the surface of it, if we were drawing up a league table of Jesus’ best parables, I'm afraid to say this parable would probably come close to the bottom if we judged it by what the lectionary has served up for us here. The lesson of the parable appears to be that the children of this world are cleverer in their own business than the children of light. In fact, the parable’s complete meaning does not become apparent until we read the following section of the gospel where Jesus warns us that we cannot be the servant of God and the servant of money. Even then, the parable seems confusing, especially given that the rich master ends up praising his dishonest servant.

So, when it comes to reading such a parable, what should we do? Here is where I think the gospel teaches us other things indirectly. We cannot understand this gospel if we simply stop at the level of its words. In order to understand this gospel, we have to be able to think about the wider context in which Jesus is speaking. Moreover, this is true of other things that people might say to us in other circumstances in our lives. As I often say to my wife, it's not about what it's about.

There is a very simple way to understand this. If I sit down at the table and say, “Where’s my supper?” my question is not simply begging to know the location of my food; I am asking to be fed. If, when I am served my supper, I then say, “Is there any salt?”, my question is not trying to ascertain whether there is salt in the house. I am asking for someone to pass me the salt. My words are not about what they appear to be about on the surface. In how many other circumstances is this the case!

So, why is any of this important? It is important precisely because the children of this world - who understand such things - are cleverer in their day than the children of light. While the children of light attribute the best of motives to their neighbour,  goodwill to all and rose-tinted blessings all round, the children of this world know that much of this world's affairs, even among the children of light, are woven from deceit.

While this gospel’s parable will eventually warn us not to be the servants of money, indirectly it is training us to look below the surface of what people say. It is training us not to be content with being superficial in how we understand what is said to us. It is urging us to understand and to practise the difference between being simple and being simplistic. It is begging us to grasp the difference between confidence and caution. It is asking us to confront in the end the truth about ourselves and the truth about others while we hold to the truth about our loving Father. The Father of Truth, not the father of lies.

The children of this world are more astute in their dealings than the children of light. And let us not forget: this reflects badly - very badly - on the children of light.