April  2006

Pope Benedict XVI's general prayer intention for April is:
           "That the individual, social and political rights of women may be respected in every nation."

The Pope's mission intention for April is:
       "That the Church in China may carry out its evangelizing mission serenely and in full freedom."

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The fifth Sunday of Lent

(April 2)  St. Francis of Paola, hermit (1416-1507). Born at Paola in Calabria (Italy), he aspired to be more united with the crucified Christ and became a hermit in a cave by the sea near his birthplace. He lived a life of prayer and mortification, and founded a congregation of hermits which was later changed to the Order of Mimims (the least brethren) which  received the approval of the Holy See in 1506. He died at Tours in France.  (Saints)


Scripture today:   Jeremiah 31:31-34;   Psalm 51: 3-4, 12-15;   Hebrews 5:7-9;   John 12:20-33

“Unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain”. (Jn 12:20-33)

  One of the striking features of human history is the advance of human knowledge. Human society has advanced remarkably in its knowledge of philosophy, medicine, science, technology, literature. All of these fields of study relate to one or other aspect of man and the visible creation. But there is one fundamental component of man’s make-up and of the functioning of the universe that in a sense is so simple and yet so profound, a component that is completely lost from the view of vast sections of mankind. It is the presence and the reality of sin, understood as both a state of alienation from God and a proneness to rebel against him. People understand crime and immorality, and so does society because society punishes it even if it continually adjusts its understanding of it. But sin is a different matter. Sin is not much recognised. It is mentioned very apologetically, or as something of a joke and without seriousness. In fact sin is a profound and fundamental element in the nature and the activities of man. It is something that many are aware of, and something many more are not aware of.

   By our own reflection we can easily gain an awareness of the moral corruption of our hearts. By that I mean it is not hard to become conscious of the fact that we have thoughts and desires that are contrary to what our reason tells us should be the case. Most have a sense of human wrongdoing, and can see that wrongdoing leads to great unhappiness, to harm, to strife  and to death.  The whole world knows that the issue of wrongdoing is a profound element in the life of mankind and of each person. But this is not the case with "sin", because sin involves the notion of an offence against God. Society accepts there is evil and much wrongdoing, but it does not necessarily accept the presence, the evil and the prevalence of sin because it does not necessarily accept the reality of a holy God who constantly judges our conduct as pleasing to him or as offensive to him. To have a sense of sin implies having a sense of God and of what is offensive  to Him, whereas having merely a sense of  wrongdoing is quite compatible with being an atheist.

   Now, over and above the sense of sin which one may gain from conscience and personal reflection, in fact God has revealed certain things about man’s sin. Man’s sin originated with our first parents and their deliberate disobedience to God. By his deliberate sin man alienated himself from God and to a fair degree ruined the natural harmony of his inner condition and he forfeited various supernatural gifts. This occurred at the beginning. Man fell from a gifted position and remained wounded in his nature, and this wounded human nature was handed on to all mankind. The whole world was affected by that original sin and by the grip that sin gained over every man and woman as a result. Sin became the greatest problem of the world, a problem it did not have when it came from the hand of God. Man’s undoing was his own doing. To put things right he had need of a redeemer.

   We have been given a redeemer and we have the answer at hand. The redeemer is Jesus our Lord and the answer to the predicament all of us are in is what our Lord provided for us by dying on the Cross. Sin is at the root of the evils, the sufferings and the problems of the world. There is no bigger problem that we face in our own individual lives, and there is no bigger problem that mankind in general faces. The problem is sin. The answer is to accept the person of Christ and what he has done by dying on the cross, and to follow him. He freely bore on his own shoulders the sin of the world and expiated for it by his own obedience to his Father. By his obedient witness to the truth about himself amid suffering He atoned for the sin of the world and opened up to each of us a new divine life to be lived out here on earth and enjoyed forever in heaven.

   In today’s Gospel our Lord refers to his coming hour when the Son of Man would be glorified. That hour was his death. Let us accept with full hearts what Christ has done for us by dying on the Cross. He tells us that “unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies it remains only a single grain; but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.” (John 12:20-33) The result of Christ’s Cross was a rich harvest for mankind. Let us resolve to love him and to follow him along his way of obedience to the will of the Father, whatever cross this may bring to us. It is the answer to sin and the way to life.
                                                                                                                              (E.J.Tyler)

Further Reading: The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 606-618

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If you say that you want to imitate Christ ... and yet have time on your hands, then you are on the road to lukewarmness.
                                            (The Forge, no.701)

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Monday of the fifth week of Lent

(April 3)  Today let us think of St. Richard  (Saints)


Scripture today:   Daniel 13: 1-9.15-17.19-30.33-62;      Psalm 23: 1-6;      John 8: 12-30

“Then the whole assembly shouted, blessing God the saviour of those who trust in him.” (Dan. 13)

Our first reading today from the Old Testament book of Daniel presents us with the well-known story of Suzanna and her vindication by Daniel. She was falsely accused of immorality by two who colluded against her and she had no supporting witness. “The Lord heard her cry and, as she was being led away to die, he roused the holy spirit residing in a young boy named Daniel”. (Daniel 13: 1-9.15-17.19-30.33-62)  Daniel cross-examined the two accusers and showed their complete inconsistency. We are given the message of the story at the end. It tells us about God:  “Then the whole assembly shouted, blessing God, the saviour of those who trust in him.” In particular God is shown as the saviour of those who trust in him and take their stand by the truth. He will put down the one who chooses falsehood. Just how this is played out in the course of human life and the history of the world is another matter, but ultimately God is a God  of the truth.

In our Gospel today our Lord fulfills this great message of the Old Testament. “I am the light of the world; anyone who follows me will not be walking in the dark; he will have the light of life.” (John 8: 12-30) At the beginning of his Gospel St John tells us that "in him was life and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness ... the Law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." Christ was the light because he was the Truth. At the Last Supper our Lord said to his disciples that "I am the Way the Truth and the Life." Our Lord bore witness to the Truth in his public life and ministry and supremely at his death. During his Passion he said to Pontius Pilate, “For this I was born, for this I came into the world, to bear witness to the truth.” His witness to the Truth was vindicated by his heavenly Father when he raised him from the dead. The Holy Spirit was sent by the Father and the Son to the Church in order to empower Christ’s disciples to bear witness before all nations to the Truth of Jesus.

Let us resolve to live by the Truth down to the last detail. Let us remember that the Truth is to be found supremely in the person of Jesus. We are called to live in that Truth and bear witness to it.
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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Professional work - and the work of a housewife is one of the greatest of professions - is a witness to the worth of the human creature. It provides a chance to develop one’s own personalty; it creates a bond of union with others; it constitutes a fund of resources; it is a way of helping in the improvement of the society we live in, and of promoting the progress of the whole human race. For the Christian, these grand views become even deeper and wider. For work, which Christ took up as something both redeemed and redeeming, becomes a means, a way of holiness, a specific task which sanctifies and can be sanctified.
                                                     (The Forge, no.702)

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Tuesday of the fifth week of Lent

(April 4) St Isidore, bishop and doctor of the Church (560-636). He was born in Seville, Spain. He was Archbishop of Seville for thirty-five years and was well-known in the fourth Council of Toledo (633) for his leadership. He strengthened Catholicism in Spain; he was admired for his preaching, his writings, and his miracles. His most extensive work (Etymologies) was an encyclopaedia which continued to be used throughout the Middle Ages.  (Saints)


Scripture today:        Numbers 21: 4-9;         Psalm 102: 2-3, 16-21;      John 8:21-30

“He who sent me is with me, and has not left me to myself, for I always do what pleases him.”
    (John 8:21-30)

Our Lord at various times appealed to the witness of his works - which is to say, his miracles. Even to his disciples at the Last Supper we notice our Lord saying that if they had difficulty believing him, they could at least believe in him on the basis of his works. However, that said, it would seem that in the case of our Lord’s truest disciples and closest friends it was not because of his miracles that they believed but because of their knowledge of him. They knew him and loved him. Consider the case of our Lord’s first disciples, the two disciples of John the Baptist who followed him at the word of John. They followed, our Lord turned and invited them to come and see where he lived. They stayed with him that day. The next day they went to their companions and told them they had found the Messiah. They had not seen any miracles. Of course miracles played an important part in our Lord’s ministry, but they were meant to be signs of who he was. Getting to know him from being with him was the important thing. So too we must be with him and get to know him.

In today’s Gospel we read our Lord’s words about the Father and about himself. “I am (He)”, our Lord tells them. He does whatever the Father tells him to do and preaches whatever the Father has given to him. The Father is always with him “for I always do what pleases him.” Christ is utterly united to God his heavenly Father and never offends him. This is our Lord’s testimony about himself, and we read that “As he was saying this, many came to believe in him.” (John 8:21-30) They believed his own testimony about himself because of their contemplation of his person and his words, rather than primarily because of his miracles. They watched him, heard him, contemplated him, and he won their hearts and minds. That is the cue we ought take up. We ought strive to contemplate the person of Jesus and in this way come to know his person. Let us then constantly meditate on his words and actions, entering into his mind and heart, and especially taking to heart his own testimony about himself. We must learn to know Jesus intimately especially through the Gospels. If we do this, our love for him will grow, our faith in him will deepen, and we will be thoroughly disposed to accept the truth about him conveyed to us by the Church.

Let us resolve to strive to know and love the Master as the real and living person he is.
                                                                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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The Lord wants his children, those of us who have received the gift of faith, to proclaim the original optimistic view of creation, the love for the world which is at the heart of the Christian message. So there should always be enthusiasm in your professional work, and in your effort to build up the earthly city.
                                               (The Forge, no.703)

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Wednesday of the fifth week of Lent

(April 5) St Vincent Ferrer, priest (1350-1419). He was born in Valencia, Spain. He joined the Dominican Order and was renowned as a preacher, a missionary, and a teacher of theology. He converted thousands of sinners, Jews and Moors by his preaching. He died at Vannes in France.  (Saints)


Scripture today:   Daniel 3: 14-20.91-92.95;      Psalm Daniel 3: 52-56;      John 8: 31-42

“I tell you most solemnly, everyone who commits sin is a slave.”  (John 8:31-42)

I think we could say that ever since the French Revolution the great ideal of modern society has  been liberty for all. Liberty is something Western societies boast of and regard as their mission to spread - as did revolutionary France. The problem is that if the image of liberty simply involves freedom to do virtually anything it will result in anarchy and death. Indeed, if we think again of the French Revolution we have there a parable of what will happen at a deeper and more personal level. The liberty that became a clarion call at the start of the Revolution in 1789 led to the great Terror, which in turn led to the dictatorship of Napoleon. So-called “Liberty” led to one form of bondage after another, and a European war involving Britain, all of Europe and Russia which lasted more than twenty years. The point is that liberty to do just anything leads to slavery.

In our Gospel passage today our Lord tells us how to achieve liberty. “If you make my word your home you will indeed be my disciples, you will learn the truth and the truth will make you free.” The truth which comes from Jesus is what will make us free. So liberty ought be sought in order to adhere to the truth, especially the truth which comes from Jesus. The truth which our Lord is and which he reveals will make us free indeed. What is it that will enslave us? It is sin: “I tell you most solemnly, everyone who commits sin is a slave.” (John 8:31-42) In a world that (very laudably) places a very high premium on freedom, the Church is able to offer a key as to the purpose of liberty and as to the means of acquiring greater liberty. The key is Truth, the Truth that is Jesus and which the Church has been entrusted with. Let us resolve to live by the Truth and to bring it to others by the witness of our lives.

Our Lord said on another occasion, “I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.” This life will come by living in the light of that Truth which is Jesus, and which the Church proclaims.
                                                                                                                                  (E.J.Tyler)

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“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”   (John 8:31-42)
Commentary from the Second Vatican Council
(Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (On the Church in the Modern World), nos.16-17

In the depths of his conscience, man detects a law which he does not impose upon himself, but which holds him to obedience. Always summoning him to love good and avoid evil, the voice of conscience when necessary speaks to his heart: do this, shun that. For man has in his heart a law written by God; to obey it is the very dignity of man; according to it he will be judged (cf. Rom 2:15-16). Conscience is the most secret core and sanctuary of a man. There he is alone with God, whose voice echoes in his depths……

Only in freedom can man direct himself toward goodness. Our contemporaries make much of this freedom and pursue it eagerly, and rightly to be sure. Often, however, they foster it perversely as a license for doing whatever pleases them, even if it is evil. For its part, authentic freedom is an exceptional sign of the divine image within man. For God has willed that man remain “under the control of his own decisions” (cf. Sirach 15:14) so that he can seek his creator spontaneously, and come freely to utter and blissful perfection through loyalty to him. Hence man’s dignity demands that he act according to a knowing and free choice…… Man achieves such dignity when, emancipating himself from all captivity to passion, he pursues his goal in a spontaneous choice of what is good, and procures for himself through effective and skillful action, apt helps to that end. Since man’s freedom has been damaged by sin, only by the aid of God’s grace can he bring such a relationship with God into full flower.

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You must be careful: don’t let your professional success or failure - which will certainly come - make you forget, even for a moment, what the true aim of your work is: the glory of God!
                                                                                                                    (The Forge, no.704)

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Thursday of the fifth week of Lent

(April 6) Today let us think of St. Marcellinus   (Saints)


Scripture today:      Genesis 17: 3-9;         Psalm 105: 4-9;        John 8: 51-59

“I tell you most solemnly, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” (John 8: 51-59)

Consider all the prophets from Abraham to Moses, through Elijah, Jeremiah to the last and greatest of them before Christ, John the Baptist. Who among them claimed or would have uttered a claim like the one our Lord makes in our Gospel today and which he makes with the utmost solemnity? “I tell you most solemnly, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” (John 8: 51-59) The “Jews” replied that this was preposterous. Let us take any world figure, any founder of any religion and ask the same question. I do not think any other figure who could be taken seriously has made such a claim, be he Zoroasthra, Buddha, Confucius, Mahomet, or whoever. It is one of many claims that Christ made and which are unique to him. Especially unique are those claims that relate to his very person, such as - a claim made in another part of the Gospel - that he is the very Son of the Father, which “the Jews” could see included the claim to be equal to God. In our Gospel passage today he applies to himself the very name God used of himself when giving his name to Moses:  “Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.” The "Jews" saw what he was claiming, and we read: "So they picked up stones to throw at him".

Let us then contemplate the wonderful person of Jesus, his beauty and grandeur, his uniqueness and the blessing he is to all mankind! Let us gaze upon him in faith as he reveals himself in Holy Sripture, and let us do this in his presence in prayer, or before the most holy Eucharist. Let us listen to his words about himself and about the blessings he confers, and consider who it is who is uttering them, and let us make acts of faith in Jesus and hope for the blessings he promises to give us. Let us hope for life, for that is what he promises to those who accept his word in faith and endeavour perseveringly to put it into practice. He promises life and victory over death, in other words a share in his victory over death, a share in his divine life. “I have come” he says elsewhere, “that they may have life and have it in abundance.” Now, what is it that his “word” tells us about the path to life, about the avoidance of death? The keeping of his word and the path to life is the path of taking up our cross daily and following in his footsteps. Whoever loses his life for Christ’s sake and for the sake of the Gospel will find it and save it.

Let us spend our lives listening to the word of Christ, appreciating who it is who is uttering it, and let us perseveringly day by day keep that word. It is the path to life here and hereafter.
                                                                                                                           (E.J.Tyler)

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“Abraham saw my day”   (John 8: 51-59)
Comment by St Ambrose (340 – 397), Bishop and Doctor of the Church (On Abraham, I, 67-68)

“God called to Abraham: Take your son whom you love, Isaac whom you have treasured; go to the heights and you shall offer him up as a holocaust.” (cf. Gen 22:2) Isaac prefigures Christ who will suffer. He comes on a donkey…… When the Lord came to suffer his passion for us, he detached the foal of a donkey and sat on it…… Abraham said to his servants: “We will come back to you.” He prophesied that, which he did not know…… Isaac carried the wood; Christ carried the gibbet of the cross. Abraham went with his son; the Father went with Christ. For he said: “You will leave me quite alone. Yet I can never be alone; the Father is with me.” (Jn 16:32) Isaac said to his father……: “Here is the wood, but where is the sheep for the holocaust?” He spoke prophetic words, but he did not know it. For the Lord was preparing a lamb for the sacrifice. Abraham also prophesied when he answered: “God himself will provide the sheep for the holocaust, my son.”……

“The angel said: ‘Abraham, Abraham…… Do not lay your hand on the boy, do not do the least thing to him. I know now how devoted you are to God, since you did not withhold from me your own beloved son.’ (cf. Rom 8:32)…… Abraham looked about and spied a ram hanging by its horns in the thicket.” Why a ram? He is the most valuable in the flock. Why hanging? To show you that it was no earthly victim... Our horn, our strength is Christ (Lk 1:69), who is superior to every human being, as we read: “Fairer in beauty are you than the sons of men.” (Ps 45:3) He alone was raised up from the earth and exalted, as he teaches us by his words: “I do not belong to this world; I belong to what is above.” (Jn 8:23) Abraham saw him in this sacrifice, he glimpsed his passion. That is why the Lord said of him: “Abraham saw my day and was glad.” He appeared to Abraham and revealed to him that his body would suffer the passion, by means of which he redeemed the world. He even indicated what kind of passion he would undergo by showing the ram hanging. The bush is the gibbet of the cross. And raised up on this wood, the flock’s incomparable guide drew everything to himself so as to make himself known to everyone.

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Christian responsibility in work cannot be limited to just putting in the hours. It means carrying out the task with technical and professional competence ... and, above all, with love of God.
                                                                                                                 (The Forge, no.705)

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Friday of the fifth week of Lent

(April 7) St John Baptist de la Salle, priest (1651-1719). Born in Rheims, France. He was known as the Father of Modern Pedagogy. He opened free schools for poor children, introducing new teaching methods. He organized the congregation called the Brothers of the Brothers of the Christian Schools (De la Salle Brothers) which made a great contribution to popular education. 
             Today let us also think of Blessed Herman Joseph    (Saints)

 
Scripture today:    Jeremiah 20: 10-13;      Psalm 18: 2-7;     John 10: 31-42

"The Jews answered him, ....'You are only a man and you claim to be God'."  (John 10: 31-42)

There are many passages in the Gospel of St John that state in explicit terms our Lord’s unique claims in respect to his own person. We learn from the Gospel that, though our Lord was circumspect in respect to his being the Messiah (because of its connotations of temporal kingship), he did nevertheless claim to be the long awaited Messiah, and unhesitatingly accepted people's recognition of him as such. But his claims were much more exalted still, and our passage today sets this forth very clearly. Our Lord stated he was the same God as Yahweh, whose name was I AM. The “Jews” saw clearly what he was claiming to be and their words are quoted in our passage today: “We are not stoning you for doing a good work but for blaspheming; you are only a man and you claim to be God.” (John 10: 31-42) They could see that he was man, and they were refusing to accept his claim to be God. But that is indeed what our Lord did claim to be. He was not claiming, though, to be the Father. He was claiming to be “the Son of God” and that “the Father is in me and I am in the Father”.

We do not appreciate our Lord enough. We ought sink our minds and hearts into the mystery of Jesus and the saving plan he revealed and which by his work he brought to fulfilment for us. He is great beyond compare, unique in human history, and we who are baptized are in him just as he is in the Father and the Father is in him. We are in him, intimately close to him in a way beyond description. Due to this intimate union with Christ brought about by our Baptism and reinforced by our Confirmation and nourished by the other Sacraments, we can grow in the  life of God. During these days of Lent let us keep our eyes on the person of Jesus asking him to fill us with love for his person and a readiness to follow him closely. We can only do this with his grace, and his grace flows to us from our union with him. The work of our life is to deepen this union. Those to whom our Lord addressed himself in today’s Gospel wanted to stone him. Down the ages many others have wanted to do the same and have done so by their sins. Let us resolve to make up for those sins, and for our own sins, by a wholehearted acceptance of Jesus.
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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“Many good deeds have I shown you from the father. For which of these do you stone me?”
(John 10: 31-42) Comment from St Bernard (1091-1153), Cistercian monk and Doctor of the Church
                          Various sermons, no. 22, 5-6
 
You owe your entire life to Christ Jesus, since he gave his life for yours and he bore bitter torments so that you might not bear eternal torments…… What would not seem sweet to you, when you have gathered together all your Lord’’s bitterness in your heart? …… As the heavens are high above the earth (Isa 55:9), so his life is high above our life, and yet it was given for our life. Just as nothingness cannot be compared with anything else, so our life is in no proportion to his……

When I will have consecrated to him all that I am, all that I can, it will be like a star compared to the sun, a drop of water compared to a river, a stone compared to a tower, a grain of sand compared to a mountain. I have nothing except two small, even very tiny things: my body and my soul, or rather one single small thing: my will. And I wouldn’t give it to him who came first with so much kindness? I who am such a small being to him who redeemed me entirely by giving himself entirely? Otherwise, if I keep my will for myself, with what face, what eyes, what mind, what conscience would I go to find refuge in our God’s heart of mercy? Would I dare to break through the very strong rampart that guards Israel and cause not just a few drops but the whole tide of that blood to flow, that comes forth from the five parts of his body to pay for my redemption?

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What a pity to be killing time when time is a treasure from God!
                                                                                                (The Forge, no.706)

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       What is the plan of God for man?
God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. In the fullness of time, God the Father sent his Son as the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind, fallen into sin, thus calling all into his Church and, through the work of the Holy Spirit, making them adopted children and heirs of his eternal happiness.
                                  (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.1)

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Saturday of the fifth week of Lent

(April 8) Today let us think of St. Julia Billiart   (Saints)


Scripture today:    Ezechiel 37: 21-28;     Psalm - Jeremiah 31: 10-13 ;      John 11: 45-56

“I shall make them into one nation in my own land ...and one king is to be king of them all”.
      (Ezechiel 37: 21-28)

There is an astonishing and beautiful grandeur in very many of the passages of the prophets. Among the more striking of these passages is surely our first reading of today, taken from the prophet Ezechiel. God promises that he will gather together into one his chosen children. He will bring them from everywhere and make them into one nation where they will have one king. They will be cleansed of their sins and he will be their God. David will reign over them for ever. God will make them holy, and his sanctuary will be with them forever (Ezechiel 37: 21-28). This is an exalted future that is foretold, and together with other messianic prophecies it shows the religion revealed by God to be a religion of great hope despite all  vicissitudes. The question was, what would it mean in its detail? The Christian knows that the only way to read the Old Testament and its hope is in the light of the person of Jesus. He is the fulfilment of all the prophecies and the master key to the Old Testament, and the Old Testament with its prophecies add lustre and support to the New. Jesus explains the Old Testament, and it helps explain him.

These are general considerations, but our Gospel today shows the prophecies receiving their fulfilment in surprising historical circumstances. Sin, Satan and moral blindness combine to put down the person of the Messiah. The chief priests and the Pharisees call their meeting and confirm one another in finding pretexts for doing away with Jesus: “If we let him go on in this way everybody will believe in him and the Romans will come and destroy the Holy Place and our nation.” (John 11: 45-56) Their blindness cut them off from appreciating and welcoming the all-holy Jesus, and found them fighting against God. But to no avail, for in and through their machinations God would bring to fulfilment his promised plan. And so as St John observes, the High Priest “did not speak in his own person” (when he said that it was better for one man to die for the people) “it was as high priest that he made this prophecy that Jesus was to die for the nation” and “to gather in unity the scattered children of God.” That is to say, the hand of God was over all.

Let us fill our mind, our heart and our religious imagination with the divine panorama of prophecy and fulfilment. God spoke through the prophets revealing his saving plan. Sin and Satan struck their blows at this plan but God brought forth his saving results in the evil that was done. United to Jesus especially in his Cross we ought always have confidence in the power and the love of God.
                                                                                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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“It was in order to gather into one all the dispersed children of God”  (John 11: 45-56)
Comment by St Leo the Great (? – 461), Pope and Doctor of the Church (8th homily on the Passion,7)

“Once I am lifted up from earth, I will draw all men to myself.” (Jn 12:32) O admirable power of the cross! O unspeakable glory of the passion! That is where the Lord’s tribunal is, there the world is judged, there is the power of the crucified. You drew all things to yourself, Lord, and when you stretched out your hands all day to an unbelieving and rebellious people (Isa 65:2; Rom 10:21), the whole world received the knowledge to confess your majesty. You drew all things to yourself, Lord, for all of nature’s elements gave their verdict……, the whole of creation refused to serve the ungodly (Mt 27:45ff.). You drew all things to yourself, Lord, for when the curtain in the Temple was torn, the symbol of the Holy of Holies truly manifested itself ……, and the Law led to the Gospel. You drew all things to yourself, Lord, so that the worship of all nations might be celebrated in a complete sacrament that was finally manifested……

For your cross is the source of all blessings, the cause of all graces. From the weakness of the cross, the believers receive strength; from its disgrace, glory; from your death, life. For now the diversity of sacrifices has come to an end; the one and only offering of your body and blood consummates all the various victims offered by the world, for you are the true Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world (Jn 1:29). In yourself, you accomplish all the religions of all humankind, so that all peoples might now form but one Kingdom.

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All honest professions can and must be sanctified. No child of God, then, has a right to say: I cannot do apostolate.
                                            (The Forge, no.707)

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    Why does man have a desire for God?
    God himself, in creating man in his own image, has written upon his heart the desire to see him. Even if this desire is often ignored, God never ceases to draw man to himself because only in God will he find and live the fullness of truth and happiness for which he never stops searching. By nature and by vocation, therefore, man is a religious being, capable of entering into communion with God. This intimate and vital bond with God confers on man his fundamental dignity. 
                                                  (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.2)

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Palm Sunday B

(March 9) Today let us think of St Waldeatrudis   (Saints)


Scripture today: Mark 11:1-10;   Isaiah 50:4-7;  Psalm 22;   Philippians 2:6-11;   Mark 14:1-15:47

“And those who went in front and those who followed were all shouting, ‘Hosanna!’” (Mk 11)

   Today, Palm Sunday, we place ourselves in the scene of our Lord’s entry into Jerusalem at the beginning of the last and greatest week of his life. Little did the people who accompanied him know what was ahead. Consider the crowd around Jesus acclaiming him with joy as he proceeded seated humbly on the donkey (Mark 11:1-10). That crowd consisted of various people, some of whom had a very superficial adherence to Jesus, and who once Calvary came would desert him. But there were others, such as his closest disciples and the Eleven apart from Judas, who in the fullness of time after his resurrection would go on to give their lives for him. Let us think especially of these with Jesus.

   We are at the beginning of the holiest week of the Church’s year, and here at Mass we join our Lord in the reliving of the beginning of the holiest week of his life. Let us place ourselves with those around him who would be truly faithful to him. Even they would fail him this week. Consider Simon Peter, whom our Lord had called the Rock. He too was there accompanying our Lord as he entered Jerusalem amid the shouts and acclaim of the people. He too would have been joyful. Yet during the week all this changed, and Christ, by the plan of God, would fall into the hands of those who had planned to kill him. Peter fled, as did the others. But they loved our Lord, and after he rose from the dead, they with Peter at their head would be found by our Lord to love him ardently still. So let us place ourselves with them, those who would turn out faithful and who were the foundation of the Church which Christ was founding and of which we are members. Let us in our hearts very sincerely, and with a full knowledge of what was in fact coming to our Lord this week, acclaim him as the King of kings and the Lord of lords.

   Let us resolve to acclaim Jesus as the Lord our whole life long. That entry of our Lord into Jerusalem could perhaps be taken as a symbol of our Lord’s constant attempt to enter the hearts of men and the life of the world down the ages by means of the ministry of the Church. For this he depends on us and on our constant acclaim of him, which is to say our witness of him. Our Lord is constantly trying to enter his own city and that city is the world which he himself has made. All too often he comes to his own and his own do not receive him. All too often he is crucified again and again in the rejection of him by the human heart, and in the sins of mankind. Let us resolve to take our stand with Peter and the other Apostles as they acclaim him, which is to say let us do this as members of the Church and in union with the Church’s acknowledgment of him. We acclaim Jesus firstly in our own hearts day by day in prayer and silent obedience to the divine will. We acclaim Jesus by the witness of our Catholic lives in family and workplace and in the midst of those around us. We acclaim Jesus by speaking of him and of the Church his body whenever there is the opening. But acclaim him we must. That is our calling just as it is the calling of the whole Church. Our Lord said that anyone who is ashamed of me before men, of him will I be ashamed before my heavenly Father. So today let us resolve so to live that our lives will be an acclamation of Jesus as Lord and Messiah.

   But in doing this let us remember where Jesus is heading. He is heading precisely as Messiah and King to the Cross, and it is by means of the Cross that he would redeem the world. So let us acclaim by our lives not just any Jesus, but the crucified Jesus. It means following our Lord along the way of obedience to the will of God amid suffering and opposition from those who do not accept the teaching of Christ as the Church proclaims it. In too many cases when suffering comes God and his holy will are abandoned. Rather, we must ask the Holy Spirit to help us see that the suffering that is involved in obeying God is the source of life and of holiness, and our Lord’s Cross has taught us this. When suffering comes our way in the living of our Catholic Faith and in fulfilling our God-given responsibilities we should ask the Holy Spirit to help us offer ourselves up in union with Jesus for the fulfilment of the divine plan.

 Let us then by lives of taking up daily our cross and following in the footsteps of the Master, the Messiah and King, acclaim our crucified Lord and in this way bring the world to acclaim him.
                                                                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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“See, your king shall come to you, meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass.”
(Zechariah 9:9)             Comment attributed to Saint Ephrem of Salamis (? –– 403), Bishop
                                                                                 (1st Homily for the Feast of Palms)

“Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion.” Be filled with joy, Church of God. “See, your king shall come to you.” (Zech 9:9) Go out to meet him, hasten to contemplate his glory. This is the world’s salvation: God comes to the cross, and the Desired of the nations (Hag 2:7) enters Zion. The light is coming. Let us cry out with the people: “Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.” The Lord God has appeared to us who were sitting in darkness and in the shadow of death (Lk 1:79). He appeared as the resurrection of those who have fallen, the liberation of captives, the light of the blind, the consolation of the afflicted, rest for the weak, spring for those who thirst, avenger of the persecuted, redemption of those who are lost, union of the divided, doctor for the sick, salvation of those who have gone astray.

Yesterday, Christ raised Lazarus from the dead; today he is going to his own death. Yesterday, he tore off the strips of cloth that bound Lazarus; today he is stretching out his hand to those who want to bind him. Yesterday, he tore that man away from darkness; today, for humankind, he is going down into darkness and the shadow of death. And the Church is celebrating. She is beginning the feast of feasts, for she is receiving her king as a spouse, for her king is in her midst.

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You must draw from the hidden life of Jesus this further consequence: you must not be in a hurry ... even though you are! First and foremost, that is, comes the interior life. Everything else - the apostolate, any apostolate, is a corollary.
                                                                     (The Forge, no.708)

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    How is it possible to know God with only the light of human reason?
    Starting from creation, that is from the world and from the human person, through reason alone one can know God with certainty as the origin and end of the universe, as the highest good and as infinite truth and beauty.
                                    (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.3)

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Monday of Holy Week

(April 10)  Today let us think of St. Fulbert  (Saints)


Scripture today:        Isaiah 42: 1-7;        Psalm 27: 1-3, 13-14;        John 12: 1-11

“Mary brought in a pound of very costly ointment, pure nard, and with it anointed the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair”.   (John 12: 1-11)

There are very many people who tend to think that Christianity is simply a matter of exercising certain virtues. They speak of something being a “very Christian thing to do”, and of a person being a “real Christian” - meaning by this that he is a person of integrity and benevolence. Now of course, virtues of this kind are part and parcel of a Christian life, but the notion that many have of the Christian life lacks a most essential component. The most essential component of the Christian life is the knowledge and the love of the person of Jesus. Christianity is not just a way of life. It is not just a set of high moral values. It is not just the way we look on others and treat them. All of this flows from something deeper and very concrete.  Being a Christian means being a disciple of a certain Person, a Person who lives in one’s mind and heart not just as an image or an ideal, but as a Person whom one knows is alive and very active.

There are some who regard the Christian life as of value only inasmuch as it results in useful service of others or of society. But no. The living Person of Jesus is the object of the heart and the life of the Christian, and the Christian is called to love and honour him as such. Gratitude and praise and adoration for the Person of Jesus ought be constantly growing in our hearts. Our daily work in the service of others ought have this constant love for and acknowledgment of Jesus as its fundamental source. For this reason the Church highly values the contemplative life of, say, the enclosed Carmelite Religious, because in such a life the Church is constantly rendering explicit and prayerful homage to the Person of Jesus.

In our Gospel today, “They gave a dinner for him” at the home of Lazarus whom he had raised from the dead. They were honouring him very explicitly and giving him thanks. Then “Mary brought in a pound of very costly ointment, pure nard, and with it anointed the feet of Jesus, wiping them with her hair.” (John 12: 1-11) He was being honoured in the highest way. Our Lord accepted the honour and gratitude and acknowledgment and in so doing reminds us that what Mary did ought be a constant part of the life of the Christian in his prayer, his work, and his witness before others. Christ is to be honoured and glorified by his disciples and by the Church in its dealings with the world. Judas complained that the money spent on our Lord in this way could have been given to the poor. But no. For his complaint he was rebuked by our Lord. That money was excellently spent in giving glory to Jesus.

So too in our life day by day in our prayers, thoughts, work, joys and sufferings we ought be pouring out on the Person of Jesus the very best we have, just as did Mary the sister of Martha and Lazarus, with her pure nard. Let us also resolve to focus our hearts on the Person of Jesus and pour out our all on him.
                                                                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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“The house was filled with the ointment’s fragrance”   (John 12: 1-11)
Commentary by Saint Bernard (1091-1153), Cistercian monk and Doctor of the Church
10th Sermon on the Song of Songs

In the Song of Songs we read: “The fragrance of your perfume is exquisite.” (Song 1:3) I distinguish several kinds…… There is the perfume of contrition and that of piety; there is also that of compassion…… Thus there is a first perfume, which the soul makes for its own use, taken from the net of many faults as the soul begins to reflect on its past. Then it gathers together the many sins it has committed in the mortar of its conscience, compressing and grinding these; and in the pot of its burning heart, it cooks them over the fire of repentance and suffering…… This is the fragrance with which the sinful soul must cover the beginnings of its conversion and anoint its recent wounds. For the first sacrifice that is to be offered to God is that of a repentant heart. So long as the poor and destitute soul does not have what it needs to make a more precious ointment, it must not neglect preparing this one, even if it is made of very worthless things. God will not spurn a heart that humbles itself in contrition (Ps 51:19)……

Moreover, this invisible and spiritual perfume cannot seem vulgar to us if we understand that it is symbolized in the perfume that, according to the Gospel, the sinful woman poured over the Lord’s feet. For we read that “the house was filled with the ointment’s fragrance”…… Let us remember the perfume that fills the whole Church through the conversion of one single sinner. Every penitent who repents becomes a fragrance of life for a crowd of others, whom it awakens to life. The fragrance of repentance rises up to the heavenly dwelling places since, according to Scripture, “the repentance of one single sinner is a great joy for the angels of God.” (Lk 15:10)

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Face up to the problems of this world with a sense of the supernatural, and following the principles of ethics. They do not threaten or undermine your personality: they provide a framework for it. In this way you will bring to your behaviour a living strength which will win people over; and you will be confirmed in your progress along the right path.
                                                      (The Forge, no.709)

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    Is the light of reason alone sufficient to know the mystery of God?
    In coming to a knowledge of God by the light of reason alone man experiences many difficulties. Indeed, on his own he is unable to enter into the intimacy of the divine mystery. T his is why he stands in need of being enlightened by God’s revelation, not only about those things that exceed his understanding, but also about those religious and moral truths which of themselves are not beyond the grasp of human reason, so that even in the present condition of the human race, they can be known by all with ease, with firm certainty and with no admixture of error.
                                                  (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.4)
    
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Tuesday of Holy Week

(April 11)   St Stanislaus, bishop and martyr (1030-1097). Born in Poland about the year 1030, he studied at Paris, became a priest and in 1071 succeeded Lambert as the Bishop of Cracow, Poland. A champion of the liberty of the Church and of the dignity of man, he defended the lonely and the poor. When he reproached King Boleslaw II for his immoral life, the king himself killed him during Mass. He is the patron saint of Poland.  (Saints)


Scripture today:    Isaiah 49: 1-6;       Psalm 71: 1-6, 15 and 17;        John 13: 21-33.36-38

“At that instant, after Judas had taken the bread, Satan entered him.”  (John 13: 21-33.36-38)

There has been a flurry of excitement in the world’s media lately over the National Geographic Society’s recent publication of the third to fourth century Gnostic manuscript dubbed The Gospel of Judas. In this particular Gnostic piece, Judas is presented as fulfilling a divine mission. Gnosticism has had a long history and is alive and well in our day, as exemplified in the spectacularly successful novel, The Da Vinci Code.

The danger, of course, is that fantasies like this can infect and cause havoc in the religious imagination of an undisciplined readership. Readers ought instead endeavour to appreciate ever more profoundly the real facts as presented in the canonical Gospels - such as the facts about Judas. Consider Judas. It is a wondrous thing that he was chosen by our Lord to be his companion and to participate in an altogether special manner in his mission. Just think! Judas had the privilege of the direct and constant company of the Son of God made Man for some three years. Even at the moment of betrayal in the Garden our Lord addressed Judas as Friend, though he had turned his back on our Lord and had opened himself instead to collaborate with Satan. As St John writes in his account of the Last Supper, “At that instant, after Judas had taken the bread, Satan entered him.” (John 13: 21-33.36-38) Judas turned away from Jesus, and chose the path of Satan.

The tragedy of Judas shows forth the drama of human choice. We can choose for good or for evil. We can choose Christ or we can choose Satan. Any of us can do this, and we can be led astray in our choices little by little. Even in heaven, the angels made their choice, and though they were in heaven itself there were many who chose against God. We human beings have the blessing of time, which is to say we can reaffirm and grow in our choice day by day and minute by minute. It is not all over in one momentous choice. Every day we rise from our sleep and can make our Morning Offering giving the day to Christ and his love and grace, renewing that choice during the day by our dedicated work and by our constant prayer.

 We must be vigilant for Satan wishes to enter us too, just as he entered Judas. That is to say, he wishes to insinuate his suggestions, make them plausible to our imagination and our reason, and gradually prompt within us the loss of a spiritual and Catholic mind. He wants to help us justify sin and call it something good, just as he did to Eve when he told he that “No! You will not die!” Rather, “You will become like God”. Let us then appreciate the grandeur of our liberty and its possibilities. The exercise of our freedom can take us to sanctity by the power of Christ’s grace - yet it must be guarded, for it can lead to a catastrophic ruin. Let us then think of the tragedy of Judas, and resolve to take our stand by Christ, rejecting Satan and sin.
                                                                                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

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“The cock will not crow before you have three times disowned me."  (John 13: 21-33.36-38)
Commentary by Saint Maxim of Turin (? –– around 420), Bishop   (CC Sermon 76, 317)

Turning around, the Lord looked at Peter. And Peter, become aware of what he had just said, he repented and wept……; he broke into tears and remained mute…… (cf. Lk 22:61-62) Words can not be successful in expressing a prayer, and they can never succeed in expressing tears. Tears always express what we are feeling, but words can be powerless. That is why Peter did not have recourse to words. Words had pushed him to betray, to sin, to deny his faith. He preferred admitting his sin by means of tears, since he had denied through words……

Let us imitate him in what he said elsewhere, when the Lord asked him three times: “Simon, do you love me?” (Jn 21:17) Three times he answered: “Lord, you know that I love you.” Then the Lord said to him: “Feed my sheep,” and he said it three times. That word made up for his previous aberration. The one who had denied the Lord three times, confessed him three times; he had become guilty three times, three times he obtained grace through his love. See therefore what benefit Peter drew from his tears!…… Before shedding tears, he was a traitor; once he had shed tears, he was chosen as pastor, and he who had behaved badly received the responsibility to lead the others.

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God our Lord wants you to be holy, so that you can make others holy. For this to be possible you need to look at yourself with courage and frankness; you need to look at the Lord Our God; then, and only then, you need to look at the world.
                                                        (The Forge, no.710)

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     How can we speak about God?
     By taking as our starting point the perfections of man and of the other creatures which are a reflection, albeit a limited one, of the infinite perfection of God, we are able to speak about God with all people. We must, however, continually purify our language insofar as it is image-bound and imperfect, realizing that we can never fully express the infinite mystery of God.
                                                  (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.5)

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Wednesday of Holy Week

(April 12) Today let us think of St Julius I   (Saints)


Scripture today:      Isaiah 50: 4-9a;      Psalm 69: 9-10, 21-22, 31, 33-34 ;      Matthew 26: 14-25

“Better for that man if he had never been born!’ Judas...asked in his turn, ‘Not I, Rabbi, surely?’”
     (Matthew 26: 14-25)

Let us for a moment review the centuries in our minds and consider the many persons who were the principal cause of great harm and destruction. Let us think of the massacres and slaughter perpetrated by Alexander the Great, various Roman Emperors, Genghis Khan, and so many others right to our own day. Man is capable of doing great harm and yet the world continues on in its pattern of rising and falling, death and life. There would seem to be a Hand at work in the course of the world that preserves it from utter collapse and, indeed, brings forth new beginnings. For the one disposed to accept the reality of God and of his governance, there appears in the course of history plenty of evidence of an overarching Providence. Yet, we could say, woe betide the one who causes the harm! 

Our Lord made this very observation at the Last Supper in respect to his own betrayal and death. What a monstrous event that was! If we shudder at the thought of the holocaust, what is it to think of the betrayal and killing of a man who was God? This has to be regarded as a cosmic event of the first order and its convulsions were dimly manifest in the darkening of the sky, the shuddering of the earth and the rending of the veil of the Temple. The all-holy Son of God had been slain. Our Lord remarked on it with profound sadness at the Last Supper, “Someone who has dipped his hand into the dish with me, will betray me.” But as with everything in the world, God had his plan: “The Son of Man is going to his fate, as the scriptures say he will". However, and awesome remark then follows: "but alas for that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! Better for that man if he had never been born!”    (Matthew 26: 14-25)

It all reminds us of our God-given responsibility. Everyone of us must learn to feel a profound sense of responsibility for the life we have been granted and for the good or evil we do. Our life can be fruitful in the sight of God, it can be squandered, and it can be the source of great harm and evil. Let us resolve to make use of every minute and to live it out under the gaze of our all-holy Father and Judge.
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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Judas’s despair  Comment by St Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Dominican Tertiary, Doctor of the Church, Co-patroness of Europe  (Dialogue, 37)

[“Judas…… began to regret his action deeply. He took the thirty pieces of silver back to the chief priests and elders and said, ‘I did wrong to deliver up an innocent man!’ They retorted: ‘What is that to us? It is your affair!’ So Judas flung the money into the temple and left. He went off and hanged himself.” (Mt 27:3-5)

[God said to Saint Catherine:] In this world and in the other, the unforgivable sin is that of the person who, despising my mercy, did not want to be forgiven. That is why I consider it to be the most serious, and that is why Judas’ despair made me sadder and was more painful for my son than his betrayal. Thus, people will be condemned for the false judgment that makes them believe their sin is greater than my mercy…… They are condemned for their injustice when they weep over their lot more than over how they have offended me.

For that is when they are unjust. They do not give me what belongs to me, and they do not give themselves what belongs to them. To me, love is owed, sorrow over one’s fault and contrition; they must offer these to me because of their offenses, but they do the opposite. They only have love and compassion for themselves, since they only know how to lament over the punishment that awaits them. So you see that they are committing an injustice, and that is why they find themselves doubly punished for having despised my mercy.

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Encourage your noble human qualities. They can be the beginning of the building of your sanctification. At the same time, remember what I have already told you before, that when serving God, you have to burn everything, even “what people will say”, and if necessary even what they call reputation.
                                                 (The Forge, no.711)

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    What does God reveal to man?
God in his goodness and wisdom reveals himself. With deeds and words, he reveals himself and his plan of loving goodness which he decreed from all eternity in Christ. According to this plan, all people by the grace of the Holy Spirit are to share in the divine life as adopted “sons” in the only begotten Son of God.  
                                             (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.6)

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Holy Thursday: the Lord’s Last Supper

(April 13) Saint Martin, Pope and Martyr. Born at Todi in Umbria, he joined the diocese of Rome and in the year 649 was elected Pope. That same year he presided over the Council that condemned the heresy of the Monothelites. In 653 he was seized by the Emperor Constans and taken to Constantinople where he was treated harshly; he then was moved to Kherson in the Crimea where he died in 656.
(Saints)

Scripture: Exodus 12: 1-8.11-14;  Psalm 116: 12-13, 15-18;  1 Corinthians 11:23-26;  John 13: 1-15

“Jesus replied, ‘If I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me’.” (Jn 13:1-15)

  Today we begin the holy triduum, the three most sacred days of the Church’s year, when Christ instituted the Eucharist, when he underwent his saving Passion and Death, and then rose from the dead to share with us his divine life. Consider the opening scene in this three-day drama, the scene of our Lord’s Last Supper when he instituted the ministerial priesthood and the most holy Eucharist, and notice how it began with a cleansing. In the Gospel of St John we are told that “He had always loved those who were his own in the world, but now he showed how perfect his love was. ... he got up from table, removed his outer garment and, taking a towel, wrapped it round his waist; he then poured water into a basin and began to was the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel he was wearing. He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ Jesus answered, ‘At the moment you do not know what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ‘Never!’ said Peter ‘You shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus replied, if I do not wash you, you can have nothing in common with me.’ Then, Lord,’ said Simon Peter ‘not only my feet, but my hands and my head as well!’ Jesus said, ‘No one who has taken a bath needs washing, he is clean all over. You too are clean, though not all of you are.’   (John 13: 1-15)

  Of course, as our Lord goes on to explain, he was giving a lesson to his apostles about humble service. “If I who am the Lord and Master wash your feet, you should wash each other’s feet.” But it goes more deeply than simply a lesson about Christ-like fraternal love and service. Our Lord was also demonstrating to his most intimate friends and collaborators the nature of his mission: he had come to cleanse mankind from sin, to take away the sin of the world. He would do it by his Passion and Death the next day. The Eucharist which he was about to institute in the midst of his apostles in this upper room during this paschal feast would unite them to him in his coming offering of himself to the Father which would expiate for the sins of the world. At his conception the angel had told the Virgin Mary that he woud save his people from their sins, and at the beginning of his public ministry St John the Baptist had borne witness that our Lord would take away of the sin of the world. He would cleanse mankind from sin by means of his death, Resurrection and outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and renew it with a share in the divine life.

This was being symbolized by the washing of the feet of his apostles. He was doing it in all humility, and this humble service was a picture of what he would do for them and for all mankind the next day. St Paul tells us in one of his Letters that Christ was divine, yet he did not cling to his divine condition but gave it up and took on man’s condition, becoming humbler still, even to death. His death was the most profound act of humble service and its purpose was to take away the sin of the world and to make all things new with the life of God. Christ, the Prophet who was to come, was acting with gestures like many prophets before him. This humble cleansing from sin was symbolized in the washing of the feet. Moreover, our Lord tells his disciples that they were to do to one another what he had done to them. They were to go forth and bring the forgiveness of sins to mankind. They were to wash the feet of Christ’s future disciples and this cleansing from sin became a fundamental aspect of the mission of the Church. 

  On the evening of the day Christ rose from the dead he appeared to his disciples in the Upper Room, and breathed on them the Holy Spirit, saying to them, “Those whose sins you forgive they are forgiven them. Whose sins you retain they are retained.” Our Lord was giving to them the power to do what he had demonstrated at his Last Supper: to cleanse others of their sins. This is the power exercised by the ordained priesthood, a principal blessing of the redemption which the ordained priest brings to Christ’s faithful, the forgiveness of sins. Every time we go to Confession Christ bends down and washes our feet. He cleanses us from the sins we have confessed and he reconciles us to himself and to his Father by the gift and the grace of the Holy Spirit. Let us then resolve to make very good Confessions, vividly realizing that it is Christ we are speaking to in going to the priest, and realizing that it is Christ who is present and acting in power in this Sacrament. Let us resolve to go to Confession frequently and with a lively sense of Jesus himself being there, thinking of how our sins nailed him to the Cross. For as St Paul writes, Christ loved me and gave himself up for me.
                                                                                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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“He had loved his own in this world, and would show his love for them to the end.” (Jn 13: 1-15)
Commentary from Blessed Guerric of Igny (around 1080 –– 1157), Cistercian abbot.
(1st Sermon for Palm Sunday)

“Your attitude must be that of Christ ” …… ““He was in the form of God,” equal to God by nature, since he shared in God’’s power, God’s eternity and God’s very being…… He did the job of a servant “by humbling himself, obeying his Father even to death, death on a cross.” (cf. Phil 2:5-8) One might consider it to be trivial that, as God’’s Son and his equal, he served his Father as a servant. More than that, he served his own servant more than any other servant. For the human being had been created to serve his Creator. What could be more just for you than to serve him who made you, without whom you would not be? And what could be more blest than to serve him, since to serve him is to reign? But the human being said to his Creator: “I will not serve.” (Jer 2:20)

Then the Creator said to the human being: “So I will serve you! Go sit down at the table; I will serve. I will wash your feet. Rest. I will take your pains upon myself; I will carry your weakness…… If you grow tired or are burdened, I will carry you, you and your burden, so as to be the first to fulfill my law: ‘Carry one another’s burdens’ (Gal 6:2)…… If you are hungry or thirsty……, here I am, ready to be sacrificed so that you might eat my flesh and drink my blood…… If you are taken into captivity or if you are sold, here I am…… Redeem yourself by paying the ransom you will get from me. I give myself as ransom…… If you are sick, if you fear death, I will die in your place, so that from my blood you can make for yourself a life-giving remedy……”

O my Lord, what a price you paid to ransom my useless service!…… What a way you had, full of love, of gentleness and of kindness, to win back and submit this rebellious servant by triumphing over evil through good, by confounding my pride with your humility, by filling this ungrateful person with your kindness! This! This is how your wisdom triumphed.

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You need formation, because you need a profound sense of responsibility, if you are to encourage and direct the activity of Catholics in public life and do so with the respect that everyone’s freedom deserves, reminding each and every one that they have to be consistent with their faith.
                                                                                                              (The Forge, no.712)

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      What are the first stages of God’s Revelation?
From the very beginning, God manifested himself to our first parents, Adam and Eve, and invited them to intimate communion with himself. After their fall, he did not cease his revelation to them but promised salvation to their descendants. After the flood, he made a covenant with Noah, a covenant between himself and all living beings.  
                                           (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.7)

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Good Friday

(March 14)  Let us also think of Saints Tiburtius, Valerian & Maximus   (Saints)


Scripture today:   Isaiah 52:13-53:12;   Psalm 31;   Hebrews 4:14-16;5:7-9;   John 18:1-19:42

“After Jesus had taken the vinegar he said, ‘It is accomplished’.” (John 18:1-19:42)

  The longest section in each of the Gospels is the account of the Passion and Death of our Lord, and on Palm Sunday and on Good Friday we hear the full account of it. This is because the most important part of our Lord’s life and mission was his Passion and Death, followed by his Resurrection. For this reason too these three days, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and then the Easter Vigil are celebrated with the greatest solemnity in the Church’s year.

  Man has had various attitudes to suffering and death. A great and influential man suddenly comes down with a debilitating and painful illness. A person who has been in good health suffers a terrible and humiliating stroke which leaves him helpless. A prime minister goes swimming and is drowned at sea. Every person on this earth will at some point suffer and die. What is our attitude to suffering and death? It is obviously a sad and unfortunate fact of life, and is seen seen by most as the end of everything worthwhile that we do, the interruption and cessation of all that is good in life. A good father of a family dies, or a husband, or a child, or a  worker.  What is the meaning of that death? The average person would say there is no particular meaning in it, that it is simply an unfortunate occurrence. It just  is there, it just happens. It is the end of good things and of benefits, and so is a great negative, unless death has had the effect of taking away someone who is a burden, or a cause of harm to others. Death is seen by most as meaningless and simply to be avoided at any cost.

  Now, of course there is much truth in this. Who could possibly think, just going on the face of things, that death is in itself a good thing? It is the destruction of life and life is good. St Paul tells us more. He tells  us in the Letter to the Romans that sin entered the world through one man and with sin came death and death has spread to the whole human race. So death is the break-up and ruin brought about by sin. There is nothing positive about that. So then, that is the problem. What is to be done about suffering and death, for it seems to be almost a cosmic problem crying out to be fixed at least in principle. But who could possibly fix such a problem as the sin of the world? We can fix a table, a bridge, even the economy, or an international problem, but who could fix that problem of sin, the sin of the world which in principle lies at the root of all the world’s problems? And, just as difficult, what on earth would be the remedy, and who could bring the benefits of this remedy to all mankind? Clearly it is beyond the power of man.

  The good news is that God so loved the world that he sent his only Son not to condemn the world but to save it. At our Lord’s conception the Angel Gabriel said to Mary his mother that Jesus would save his people from their sins. The words of the angel do not tell her immediately how he would do it, and that it would entail unimaginable suffering. At the beginning of his public ministry St John the Baptist pointed out our Lord to two of his disciples and said, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” St John the Baptist did not say how our Lord would do this, and the Gospel suggests that he had notions of how he would do it that were not at all near the truth of the matter. The truth of the matter was that our Lord would save the world from sin by an embrace of obedience in the midst of immense suffering. The Saviour would be the Suffering Servant of God. As God’s Servant he would suffer. The result of man’s sin was suffering and death, and it was through the path of suffering and death that our Lord saved the world. Why the Messiah had to suffer and to die, we are not told.  Why the Father burdened his Son with a horrible death, rather than taking away sins some other easier way, is not explained. But do this he did, and the Passion and Death of the Messiah was what saved us all. Death thus acquired a new and profound meaning that affected everything. A cosmic breakthrough was achieved.

 But there is a fundamental point to bear in mind. It was because his Passion and Death had a very specific character that it brought about our redemption. His Passion and Death was the expression of his obedience to the Father. Suffering and death entered the world because of Adam’s sin, because of his disobedience to God. Life and salvation was brought back to the world because of Christ’s obedience, his obedience in the midst of suffering and death. Christ’s suffering and death expressed obedience to the utter limit. So suffering and death borne in obedience have acquired a new and very rich meaning. By uniting ourselves with Christ in his suffering and death we can contribute to the good he has done. The essence of our union with our Lord in his suffering has to be our union with him in doing the will of the Father. Suffering that is the result of disobedience to the will of God is not fruitful. But suffering that is part and parcel of doing God’s will in union with Jesus is full of fruitfulness and value. And so the sick, the suffering and the dying person can live very meaningfully in a way that may do more good in the sight of God than a very healthy and active person. The key is to live in union with Jesus, especially in his suffering and death. We must accept his invitation to us to take up and carry our cross with him.

   Let us celebrate the victory of Christ over sin which he achieved by his obedience unto death, dying on a cross. Let us resolve to share in his victory by following closely in his footsteps day by day, carrying our cross and bearing whatever sufferings are involved in doing the will of God.
                                                                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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“Lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself” (John 12:32)
A homily attributed to Saint Ephrem (306 –– 373), Deacon in Syria, Doctor of the Church.(Lectionary)

Today the cross is advancing, creation exults. The cross, path for those who have gone astray, hope of Christians, the apostles’ preaching, security of the universe, foundation of the Church, fountain for those who are thirsty…… In great gentleness, Jesus is led to the passion: he is brought to Pilate’s judgment seat; at the sixth hour, people mock him; until the ninth hour, he bears the pain of the nails, then his death ends his passion. At the twelfth hour, he is taken down from the cross. You could say he is a sleeping lion……

While he is judged, Wisdom remains silent and the Word says nothing. His enemies despise and crucify him…… Those to whom yesterday he gave his body as food, watch from a distance as he dies. Peter, the first of the apostles, is the first to flee. Andrew also took flight, and John, who rested at his side, did not prevent the soldier from piercing that side with a lance. The Twelve fled; they did not say one word in his favor, they for whom he is giving his life. Lazarus is not there, he whom he called back to life. The blind man did not weep for him who opened his eyes to the light, and the crippled man, who could walk thanks to him, did not run to him.

Only a bandit who was crucified next to him confessed him and called him his king. O thief, precocious blossom from the tree of the cross, first fruit of the wood from Golgotha……! The Lord reigns; creation rejoices. The cross triumphs, and all nations, tribes, languages and peoples (Rev 7:9) come to adore him…… The cross gives light to the whole universe, it chases away the darkness and gathers the nations…… into one single Church, one single faith, one single baptism in charity. It stands at the centre of the world and is made firm on Calvary.
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Through your professional work, which you bring to completion with all the human and supernatural perfection that is possible, you can and should give Christian standards in the places where you carry out your professional job.
                                                       (The Forge, no.713)

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      What are the next stages of God’s Revelation?
      God chose Abram, calling him out of his country, making him “the father of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:5), and promising to bless in him “all the nations of the earth” (Genesis 12:3). The people descended from Abraham would be the trustee of the divine promise made to the patriarchs. God formed Israel as his chosen people, freeing them from slavery in Egypt, establishing with them the covenant of Mount Sinai and, through Moses, giving them his law. The prophets proclaimed a radical redemption of the people and a salvation which would include all nations in a new and everlasting covenant. From the people of Israel and from the house of King David, would be born the Messiah, Jesus.  
                    (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.8)

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Holy Saturday: On Holy Saturday the Church waits at the Lord’s tomb, meditating on his suffering and death. The altar in the church is left bare, and the sacrifice of the Mass is not celebrated. Only after the solemn Vigil at night, held in anticipation of the resurrection, does the Easter celebration begin, with a spirit of joy that overflows into the following period of fifty days.

(April 15)  Today let us think of St Anastasia  (Saints)


“Since it was the Jewish Day of Preparation and the tomb was near at hand, they laid Jesus there.”  (John 19:42)

Let us in our minds keep company with our Lord as he lies in his tomb. There he lies, dead. The scene of Christ in the tomb surely shows forth the power and the destructiveness of sin, for it was sin which nailed Christ to the cross and brought him to his death. So as we gaze upon his lifeless body, let us think of the sin which did this, the sin which is at work in each of us, the sin which is at work in the world. At the same time the lifeless body of Christ shows forth the love of God. It was the love of Christ for his heavenly Father and for each of us which led him to take to himself the burden of our sins. It was the love of God our Father for us that led him to send his Son to save the world from sin  by dying on the Cross.

The lifeless body of Christ in the tomb shows forth the power of sin, the far greater power of God's love, and the victory that that love was soon to have. Let us then today be with Christ in the tomb thinking of the sin of the world and of how Christ for love of the Father and for us took it away by his Passion and Death. We await his resurrection which will bring us the promise of new life.
                                                                                                                              (E.J.Tyler)

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As a Christian you have a duty to act and not stand aloof, making your contribution to serve the common good loyally and with personal freedom.
                                                                                 (The Forge, no.714)

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    What is the full and definitive stage of God’s Revelation?
    The full and definitive stage of God’s revelation is accomplished in his Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, the mediator and fullness of Revelation. He, being the only-begotten Son of God made man, is the perfect and definitive Word of the Father. In the sending of the Son and the gift of the Spirit, Revelation is now fully complete, although the faith of the Church must gradually grasp its full significance over the course of the centuries.
                          (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.9)    

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Easter Sunday B

(April 16) Today let us think of St Bernadette Soubirous (of Lourdes) (Saints)


Acts 10:34a,37-43;Psalm 118:1-2,16-17,22-23;Colossians 3:1-4, or1Corinthians 5:6b-8;John 20:1-9

“You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified: he has risen, he is not here.” (Mk 16)

  It has often seemed to me that over the past several decades there has been a change in the tone of literature and popular drama which I have seen and read. When I was a child the issues in movies and popular literature (such as comics, and so forth) which I used to view and read a were fairly simple. Good characters were generally very good and the evil characters were obviously bad, and the good triumphed. The characters and the dramas were secular, that is to say, in general without God, but there was no scepticism about good and evil. This was so even in the portrayal of the Church and of the Catholic priesthood, for the Church and the priesthood, as I remember it, were admired. There was a healthy (even if simplistic) confidence and certainty in the portrayal of good and evil. A good example was the great novel, The Lord of the Rings, written in the first half of the last century. But over the years since then I have often noticed that movie plots and characters in drama and literature seemed to become notably darker. The balance moved markedly towards the portrayal of evil, and all characters seemed to be profoundly flawed. Shining through this was an implicit scepticism as to the existence of moral goodness and the likelihood of its triumph. Life was portrayed pessimistically, and the moral fibre of human nature was set forth as being markedly low. Of course, there were numerous exceptions to this, but it did seem to me that this was what we could call the post-modern tendency. There had now arrived a fair dose of scepticism as to human grandeur and moral beauty, and much cynicism as to the possibility of goodness. God, of course, has been absent.

  Now, while we may be disappointed in this, at least the havoc that we know and see to be present in human nature is being brought to light. It is not hard to see that somehow sin and moral weakness is pervasive in humanity. The moral life of mankind is profoundly out of kilter, and there is a similar disfunction in the universe. Now while popular culture and thought has emphasised the evil in man, its portrayal of this has had profound limitations. It describes the problem but it does not get to the root of it. The important question that requires raising and probing is, why is this so, and what in principle can be done about it? That is the question. What we are asking about is sin, about its origin and especially its remedy.

   It has been revealed that the sin of the world appeared at the dawn of human history. It did not come from the hand of God. No, this came from the free choice of our first parents. They were tempted to disobey God, and they embraced the temptation. This fall from God’s friendship and grace had catastrophic consequences, and best way to see its consequences is to look on the crucified Jesus. For the last day or two we have been looking on the crucified Jesus. There before us is God made Man, nailed to a cross and put to death amid indescribable suffering. It was sin that did this, and inasmuch as Christ freely submitted to it for the sake of all of us, the sins of each of us put him there.  So to appreciate sin in the world we need not simply consider flawed and broken man as he is chronicled in the course of his history, as he is portrayed in literature and drama, and as we experience its presence in our own fallen hearts. We get our best impression of our moral and spiritual condition by gazing on what happened at one point in human history. That point in history was when Jesus our Lord was crucified. If man can do that, it tells us how flawed and sinful is the life we live, and how far beyond us is the remedy that is needed. We need a share in a new kind of life, a life far above our own. If only we could share in the life of the all-holy God!

   Well, the remedy has arrived. The remedy was supplied by our Lord’s Passion and Death. God so loved the world that he sent his only Son to save the world by taking on his own shoulders the entire sin of the world, our own included, and making up for it by his obedience amid unimaginable suffering unto death. He then rose to a new life which he wishes to share with every one of God’s children. That rising to new life we celebrate today. Let us place ourselves in the company of the disciples of our Lord after his crucifixion and death. Sin is everywhere and the prince of this world seems to have triumphed with the death of the Son of God made Man. But now, Jesus rises to a new and glorious life and appears to his disciples. The disciples look on the risen Jesus in wonder and joy, and will soon understand his gift more and more. They have the chance now to share with Jesus in the life of God by means of the gift of the Holy Spirit. This is the good news they and the Church bring to mankind. The seed of a new divine life is now on offer for every person.

  To appreciate what our Lord has done and what he now offers we must appreciate as well our own sinfulness and spiritual need. We need redemption, for we are sinners. If we have no sense of sin, we will have little sense of our need for Christ our Saviour. But then, as we think of the sin within us and the suffering our sinful condition brings with it both to ourselves and to others, let us keep our eyes on the risen Jesus. He is the Saviour of the world, and he is risen. He lives and he is with us now offering us divine life. We have been given, by our baptism, by our confirmation, by means of the other sacraments, especially the holy Eucharist, a share in the eternal life of God the most holy Trinity. This life is the life of the risen Jesus and he died and rose to share it with us. Let us embrace this good news with joy, and resolve to live according to his law, the law of Christ and his Church, and by the power of the Holy Spirit to make daily progress on the path to holiness. We each of us have been given the gift of life and soon it will be gone. Our life is a fleeting moment in the course of human history. Let us use it well, day by day, so as to live the life of God here on earth now, and for ever hereafter.
                                                                                                                           (E.J.Tyler)

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Day of the resurrection, day of our joy!
Commentary by St John Chrysostom (345 – 407), Bishop and Doctor of the Church

“This is the day the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.” (Ps 118:24) Why? Because the sun is no longer darkened and everything is illuminated; the curtain in the Temple is no longer torn, the Church is revealed; we are no longer holding palm branches, and we are surrounding the newly baptized.

“This is the day the Lord has made”…… This now is the day in the real sense of the word, the triumphant day, the day consecrated to celebrating the resurrection, the day when we adorn ourselves with grace, the day when we share the spiritual Lamb, the day when we give milk to those who have just been born, the day when Providence’s plan for the poor is realized. “Let us rejoice and be glad in this day.”

This is the day when Adam was freed, when Eve was delivered from her pain, when savage death shuddered, when the power of rocks was broken, when the bars of the tomb were torn away……, when the unchangeable laws of the powers of hell were abrogated, when the heavens were opened because Christ, our Master, rose. This is the day when, for the good of humankind, the green and fertile plant of the resurrection has multiplied its offshoots all over the world, as in a garden, when the lilies of the newly illumined have opened……, when the crowd of believers rejoices, when the martyrs’ crowns again grow green. “This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

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We children of God, who are citizens with the same standing as any others, have to take part fearlessly in all honest human activities and organizations, so that Christ may be present in them. Our Lord will ask a strict account of each one of us if through neglect or love of comfort we do not freely strive to play a part in the human developments and decisions on which the present and future of society depend.
                                          (The Forge, no.715)

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      What is the value of private Revelations?
      While not belonging to the deposit of faith, private revelations may help a person to live the faith as long as they lead us to Christ. The Magisterium of the Church, which has the duty of evaluating such private revelations, cannot accept those which claim to surpass or correct that definitive Revelation which is Christ.
                          (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.10) 

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Easter Monday

(April 17)  Today let us think of St Stephen Harding (Saints)   and St Robert  (Saints)


Scripture today:     Acts 2: 14.22-23;        Psalm 16: 1-2, 5, 7-11;      Matthew 28: 8-15

“This is what you must say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away’.” (Matt 28)

The Resurrection of our Lord transformed the disciples in the sense that the utter catastrophe of his death became an event full of promise. Jesus had died and all their hopes had been pinned on him. Now he lived, and he lived with a glorious life, a life just as real as before but now in a manner far surpassing the limitations of the fallen human condition. Christ rising from the dead and now being gloriously alive was the pivotal event. The Holy Spirit would come to empower the hearts of the witnesses to Christ’s resurrection enabling them to bring the good news of this to the nations. The news for all now is that the Lord is risen.

But many deny the Resurrection. Others disregard it. Immediately following our Lord’s rising we read in today’s Gospel that “some of the guard went off into the city to tell the chief priests all that had happened. These held a meeting with the elders and, .... (instructed the soldiers as follows:) This is what you must say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.” That he had died was not in dispute. The story, Matthew tells us, that still circulated among the Jews in his day was precisely this, that his body was simply spirited away. Other denials have followed in the course of history. When St Paul proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus in the Areopagus he was laughed out of court. Islam even presumes to assert that Christ did not die at all. By this gratuitous position it seeks to explain away the empty tomb. A great number of what we might call nominal Christians would simply be uninterested in the fact and give it no attention. 

This week is the Octave of Easter, and it begins the liturgical season of Easter which finishes with the feast of Pentecost when we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit to the infant Church. Eastertide is a period when we can allow the fact of the Resurrection to take hold once again of our minds and hearts and allow the reality of the risen Jesus in all his humanity and divinity to fill our mind and religious imagination. We need to appreciate its centrality. Where he has gone we hope to follow, and the feast of our Lady’s assumption body and soul glorious into heaven should bring this home. Mary our mother and our model, Mary the first and greatest Christian, has followed her Son in the resurrection from the dead. She now lives with him body and soul glorious. If we live with him we can hope to die with him, and if we die with him we shall rise with him.
                                                                                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

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“Jesus came to meet them”
A meditation and prayer from the Roman Liturgy (Easter Sequence “Victimae paschali laudes”)
                                                                                                                  Written in 1048
May you praise the Paschal Victim,
immolated for Christians.
The Lamb redeemed the sheep:
Christ, the innocent one,
has reconciled sinners to the Father.
A wonderful duel to behold,
as death and life struggle:
The Prince of life dead,
now reigns alive.
Tell us, Mary Magdalen,
what did you see in the way?
I saw the sepulchre of the living Christ,
and I saw the glory of the Resurrected one:
The Angelic witnesses,
the winding cloth, and His garments.
The risen Christ is my hope:
He will go before His own into Galilee.
We know Christ to have risen
truly from the dead:
And thou, victorious King,
have mercy on us.
Amen. Alleluia.


Original Latin version :

Victimae paschali laudes
immolent Christiani.
Agnus redemit oves:
Christus innocens Patri
reconciliavit peccatores.
Mors et vita duello
conflixere mirando:
dux vitae mortuus,
regnat vivus.
Dic nobis Maria,
quid vidisti in via?
Sepulcrum Christi viventis,
et gloriam vidi resurgentis:
Angelicos testes,
sudarium, et vestes.
Surrexit Christus spes mea:
praecedet suos in Galilaeam.
Scimus Christum surrexisse a mortuis vere:
tu nobis, victor Rex,
miserere.
Amen. Alleluia.

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With a sense of profound humility - strong in the name of our God, and, as the Psalmist says, not “in the numbers of our chariots and of our horses” - we have to make sure, without regard for human considerations, that there are no corners of society where Christ is not known.
                                                                                                                  (The Forge, no.716)

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       Why and in what way is divine revelation transmitted?
       God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4), that is, of Jesus Christ. For this reason, Christ must be proclaimed to all according to his command, “Go forth and teach all nations” (Matthew 28:19). And this is brought about by Apostolic Tradition.    
                                   (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.11) 

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Easter Tuesday

(April 18)  Today let us think of Saint Laserian   (Saints)


Scripture today:    Acts of the Apostles 2:36-41;    Psalm 33: 4-5, 18-20, 22;     John 20: 11-18

“Jesus said, ‘Mary!’ She knew him then and said to him in Hebrew, ‘Rabbuni!’ - Master.”
       (John 20: 11-18)

I have often felt that today’s Gospel offers us one of the most beautiful scenes of the Gospel. Let us place ourselves in that Gospel scene, just some hours after our Lord has risen from the dead well before dawn. The women have come and gone, and Mary Magdalene remains near the tomb of Jesus, weeping. She sees the two angels sitting where the body of Jesus had been, and on their question she tells them that she grieves because she does not know where the body of Jesus is. Her love for our Lord shines through in this simple exchange. We could almost think that the angels are playing a little trick with her. They keep her in the dark as to what has happened, for soon she is soon to know. The humour keeps up, for our Lord himself plays the same game and asks the same question as the angels asked: “Woman, why are you weeping?” Our Lord, we could say, is playing dumb, perhaps joyfully laughing within himself at the good news he is soon to announce to her. The angels knew why she wept, and so did he, and they wanted to give her a beautiful surprise. Then he said to her: “Mary!”, calling her by her name. (John 20: 11-18)

The Gospel of St John was written (we are told at the end) in order that we might come to know Jesus and who he is. Our scene today tells us about Jesus. He has risen from the dead, triumphed over death and its prince, and is about to ascend “to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” To him has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and he gives the Spirit to whosoever he wishes. Here in our scene we see Jesus in all his simplicity and accessibility. He is Mary’s exalted friend, her Saviour and her God, the all-holy One whom she knows loves her. He is ours too, and he is every Christian's. Let us place ourselves in her place all our lives. The same risen Jesus is near each of us and loves us as he loved her. The same Jesus who spoke to Mary addressing her by her name and showing her that he truly lives, is near to us constantly, and addresses each of us in our hearts by our name. Together with Saint Mary Magdalene let us look up at the face of Jesus in our mind’s eye and receive into our hearts the loving gaze he directs towards us. He asks for our love and the obedience to the will of the Father that ought be this love's manifestation: "Who are my mother and my brothers?” he once asked. “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven, he is my mother and sister and brother.”

Saint Mary Magdalen is a model of the disciple who loves the Master. Let us ask our Lord to help us to know him, for to know him, he told us at the Last Supper, is eternal life: "Eternal life is this, to know you, Father, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent."
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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“Woman, why are you weeping?”  (John 20: 11-18)
Commentary from St Gregory the Great (540 –– 604), Pope, Doctor of the Church
(Homily 25 on the Gospel)

Mary, in tears, bent down and looked inside the tomb. But she had already seen that it was empty, she had announced the Lord’s disappearance. Why does she still bend down; why does she still want to see? Because love is not satisfied with just one look; love is an ever more ardent quest. She already looked for him, but in vain; she is obstinate, and she ends up discovering him…… In the Song of Songs, the Church said of the same Spouse: “On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves –– I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek him whom my heart loves. I sought him but I did not find him…… Have you seen him whom my heart loves?” (Song 3:1-3) Twice she expresses her disappointment: “I sought him but I did not find him.” But finally, success crowns her efforts: “The watchmen came upon me as they made their rounds of the city: Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves.” (Song 3:3-4)

And we, when do we seek the Beloved as we lie on our bed? During the brief times of rest during this life, when we sigh because our Redeemer is absent. We seek him during the night, for even if our spirit is already watching over him, our eyes so far only see his shadow. But since we do not find the Beloved there, let us rise; let us make the rounds of the city, that is to say, the holy assembly of the elect. Let us seek him with all our heart; let us look in the streets and crossings, that is to say, in life’s steep passages or on the spacious paths; let us open our eyes and seek there the steps of our Beloved…… This desire caused David to say: “Athirst is my soul for God, the living God. When shall I go and behold the face of God?” (Ps 42:3)

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Freely, according to your own interests and talents, you have to take an active, effective part in the wholesome public or private associations of your country, in a way that is full of the Christian spirit. Such organizations never fail to make some difference to people’s temporal or eternal good.
                                           (The Forge, no.717)

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      What is Apostolic Tradition?
      Apostolic Tradition is the transmission of the message of Christ, brought about from the very beginnings of Christianity by means of preaching, bearing witness, institutions, worship, and inspired writings. The apostles transmitted all they received from Christ and learned from the Holy Spirit to their successors, the bishops, and through them to all generations until the end of the world.    
                                (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.12) 

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Easter Wednesday (Octave of Easter)

(April 19) Today let us think of Saint Alphage  (Saints)


Scripture today:   Acts of the Apostles 3: 1-10;      Psalm 105: 1-4, 6-9;      Luke 24: 13-35

“Jesus came up and walked by their side; but something prevented them from recognising him.”
     (Luke 24: 13-35)

A sweeping review of history immediately suggests that man has an instinctive sense of the reality of the divine - whatever might be his conception of the nature of that reality. There is an old saying that “forty thousand Frenchmen can’t be wrong.” It is a dictum that refers to the weight that ought be given to a universal consensus, to what we might refer to as the voice of mankind. That voice bespeaks of what is above and beyond this world. The aberration to this pattern of belief in the transcendent is the modern and post-modern period, influenced as it has been by secularist and agnostic Western philosophies. Modern man typically has great difficulty in any thought of there being the Supernatural. But the consensus of mankind has been otherwise.

The issue in belief generally is not whether there is a God (or gods), but what God, the Absolute,  is like. This is where the Revelation brought to us by Christ is so surprising. He has shown that the one almighty and infinite God is with us. God the One who is ever so intimately near. Consider our beautiful post-resurrection scene in today’s Gospel. The two disciples are walking on the way to Emmaus, downcast at the turn of events that had occurred over the previous few days. Christ had died. But then “Jesus himself came up and walked by their side, but something prevented them from recognising them.” Our Lord, the great God made Man who was now risen, joined them in all simplicity and immediacy.  He entered into conversation with them, though they did not know it was he (Luke 24: 13-35). This is surely a picture of what is happening in our lives in so many ways. Christ is accompanying us on our journey without our recognising him. At times he makes his presence more evident to us, just as he made his presence evident to the two disciples when they reached Emmaus. But his presence is not restricted to those moments of manifestation. He is accompanying us all along the way.

What is God like? Gaze on the person of Jesus, and in him you will see what God is like. “He who sees me, sees the Father.” Who is God? God is Jesus, just as truly as God is the Father and God is the Holy Spirit. Where is God? He is ever near, he walks by our side in the person of Jesus guiding us by his word and grace as it comes to us in the ministry of the Church. An image of this constant and friendly presence of God in our life is our Lord's walk with the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. Let us constantly, then, by the help of the Holy Spirit, endeavour to see God and Christ in our daily life and in all things.
                                                                                                                              (E.J.Tyler)

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“Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.”  (Luke 24: 13-35)
Comment from St Augustine (354 – 430), Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 235)

Brothers, when did the Lord let himself be recognized? When he broke the bread. So we ourselves are assured: when we break the bread, we recognize the Lord. If he only wanted to be recognized at that moment, that is for us – for us who would not be seeing him in the flesh but who would be eating his flesh. So you who believe in him, whoever you might be, you who do not bear the name of Christian in vain, you who do not enter a church by chance, you who listen to the word of God with fear and hope, for you the breaking of bread will be a consolation. The Lord’s absence is not a real absence. Have faith, and he will be with you, even though you do not see him.

When the Lord approached them, the disciples did not have faith. They did not believe in his resurrection; they did not even hope that he might rise. They had lost faith; they had lost hope. They were dead people walking with someone alive; being dead, they walked with life. Life walked with them, but in their heart, life had not yet been renewed.

And you, do you desire life? Imitate the disciples, and you will recognize the Lord. They offered him hospitality. The Lord seemed to have decided to continue on his way, but they held him back… You too, hold back the stranger if you want to recognize your Lord… Learn where to seek the Lord, where to possess him, where to recognize him: in sharing bread with him.

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Struggle to make sure that those human institutions and structures in which you work and move with the full rights of a citizen, are in accordance with the principles which govern a Christian view of life. In this way you can be sure that you are giving people the means to live according to their real worth; and you will enable many souls, with the grace of God, to respond personally to their Christian vocation.
                                             (The Forge, no.718)

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     In what ways does Apostolic Tradition occur?
     Apostolic Tradition occurs in two ways: through the living transmission of the word of God (also simply called Tradition) and through Sacred Scripture which is the same proclamation of salvation in written form.
                            (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.13)

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Easter Thursday (Octave of Easter)

(April 20) Today let us think of Saint Beuno  (Saints)


Scripture today:    Acts of the Apostles 3:11-26;     Psalm 8: 2, 5-9;     Luke 24:35-48

"Now you must repent and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out"  (Acts 3:11-26)

The point about the Resurrection, of course, is that Jesus lives. But the main point about the doctrine of Christ rising and now being alive is that he is present and acting with power in our lives. He is close to us and involved in our lives just as much as he was close to people and involved in their lives while he walked the earth, but now far more so, far more effectively, and without, as it were, missing anyone. The risen Jesus is near to each of us, whoever and wherever we are. In our first reading today from the Acts of the Apostles Peter explains to the crowd the significance of the miracle that had been performed for the paralytic. It was not by his power that it had been done. It “is the name of Jesus which, through our faith in it, has brought back the strength of this man whom you see here and who is well known to you.” (Acts 3:11-26) Jesus was alive, and though not seen visibly, was acting in power through the faith of those who believed in him.

Jesus is alive and acting with power to take away the burden of our sins. Sin is the fundamental burden that afflicts the world and our Lord has done all that he for his part needed to do for its grasp to be completely broken. What remains is for the results of his work to be brought to each of us. We must resolve to repent of sin and truly to turn away from it, and in this way prepare for the Consolation intended for us by God our Father. That is the message that Peter drives home to the spectators of the miracle done in the name of Jesus. “Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, and so that the Lord may send the time of comfort.” The danger for any Christian is that he will fail to realize that the Jesus of the Gospels and of the Church’s Tradition truly lives and is active. We do not see him, and especially we, who are children of the post-modern world and culture, will tend to think that because he is not seen he just does not exist. We need a new realization of the Resurrection.

After showing himself to Thomas our Lord said, blessed are they who do not see yet believe. St Peter in his Letter writes that you have not seen him but you are filled with joy. Let us ask the Holy Spirit for a profound conviction of the fact that Jesus lives now, and acts in power.
                                                                                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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“Jesus came and stood before them and said, ‘Peace be with you’.”  (Luke 24:35-48)
Comment by St Peter Chrysologus (406 – 450), Bishop and Doctor of the Church (Sermon 81)

Rebellious people had chased peace from the earth… and thrown the world into its primordial chaos… Among the disciples as well, war was waging; faith and doubt fought furious assaults on one another… Where a storm was raging, their hearts could find no peaceful harbor, no calm port.

At the sight of that, Christ, who plumbs the hearts, who commands the winds, who is master over the tempests and who with a simple sign changes the storm into a serene sky, strengthened them with his peace, saying: “Peace be with you! It is I; fear not. It is I who was crucified, who was dead, who was buried. It is I, your God become man for you. It is I. Not a spirit clothed with a body, but truth itself become man. It is I, the living one among the dead, who have come from heaven to the heart of hell. It is I before whom death fled, whom hell feared. In its terror, hell proclaimed me to be God. Do not be afraid, Peter, you who denied me, nor you, John, who fled, nor all of you who abandoned me, who thought of nothing but betraying me, who do not yet believe in me, even though you see me. Do not be afraid, it really is I. I have called you with grace, I have chosen you with forgiveness, I have upheld you with my compassion, I have carried you in my love, and I am taking you today solely because of my kindness.”

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We have to stand out boldly against those “damning freedoms” - those daughters of licence, granddaughters of evil passions, great granddaughters of original sin - which come down, as you can see, in a direct line from the devil.
                                                       (The Forge, no.720)

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    What is the relationship between Tradition and Sacred Scripture?
    Tradition and Sacred Scripture are bound closely together and communicate one with the other. Each of them makes present and fruitful in the Church the mystery of Christ. They flow out of the same divine well-spring and together make up one sacred deposit of faith from which the Church derives her certainty about revelation.
                                (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.14)

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Easter Friday (Octave of Easter)

(April 21) St Anselm, bishop and doctor of the Church (1033-1109). He was born in Aosta (Italy) and died in England. He was in the Benedictine monastery of Le Bec in Normandy for about thirty years. In 1093 he became the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of England. He is called the Father of Scholastic Theology. In his defence of the Church, he suffered much, including exile. His doctrinal works are among the most noteworthy examples of theology and medieval mysticism.  (Saints)


Scripture today:  Acts of the Apostles 4: 1-12;   Psalm 118: 1-2, 4, 22-24, 25-27a;   John 21: 1-14

“For of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved.”
       (Acts of the Apostles 4: 1-12)

I once saw on television what might be called a religious debate between an American Protestant theologian and a Jewish theologian. Under attack from the Jewish theologian the Protestant theologian drew back from the assertion that Jesus is the only Saviour. She did not defend this point, but this point is at the heart of the Christian claims. Even for the Protestant who relies on the testimony of the Scriptures (alone) for knowledge of what has been revealed, it ought be obvious that this is a pivotal doctrine. Though it risks the appearance of arrogance, it makes Christianity unique among the religions of man and Christ the supreme figure beyond all others, be they Moses, Zoroasthra, Buddha, Mahomet, whoever. The Christian should be very clear about it. If he counts himself a disciple of Christ he must regard Jesus as the one and only Saviour of the world because he and he alone took away the world’s sin by his death and resurrection.

St Peter is very clear about it. Our first reading today (Acts of the Apostles 4: 1-12) gives us his first proclamation of the Christian message about the person of Christ before the leaders of the Jews. Of Christ he says to them that “This is the stone rejected by you the builders, but which has proved to be the keystone. For of all the names in the world given to men, this is the only one by which we can be saved.” (Acts 4:12). Peter (the first Pope) speaking as the visible Rock of the Church states unambiguously that Jesus is the only Saviour of the world. His witness to Jesus reflects what our Lord said of himself, that “he who sees me sees the Father”, and “no-one comes to the Father except through me”, and again that “Eternal life is this, to know you Father and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” Now, we who are Christ’s faithful and members of the Church are called to bear witness as Jesus did, and as Peter did. This is a special need today when the religions of the world rub shoulders with one another in our multicultural society. Of course, this bearing witness to Jesus as the one and only Saviour is to be done in a spirit of respectful dialogue, but the danger is that, out of human respect and a failure of courage, we shall be like that Protestant theologian who when under pressure backed away from the Christian claim.

During this season of Easter when we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, let us appreciate again what he said of himself: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” The mission given to us flows from this: “Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations”.
                                                                                                                            (E.J.Tyler)

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For the sake of the objective truth, and to put a stop to the damage they do, I have to insist that we should give neither publicity nor hosannas to the enemies of God; not even after they are dead.
                                              (The Forge, no.721)

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      To whom is the deposit of faith entrusted?
      The Apostles entrusted the deposit of faith to the whole of the Church. Thanks to its supernatural sense of faith the people of God as a whole, assisted by the Holy Spirit and guided by the Magisterium of the Church, never ceases to welcome, to penetrate more deeply and to live more fully the gift of divine revelation.
                        (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.15)

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Easter Saturday (Octave of Easter)

(April 22)  (Saints)


Scripture today:   Acts of the Apostles 4: 13-21;      Psalm 118:1 and 14-21;    Mark 16: 9-15

“Jesus appeared first to Mary of Magdala from whom he had cast out seven devils.” (Mk 16:9)

In St Mark’s account of the resurrection we have prominent mention of the person of Mary of Magdala. It is generally recognised that Mark’s Gospel is really the Gospel of Simon Peter. That is to say, Mark’s principal source was the preaching and conversations of Peter, for it is accepted that Mark was something like his secretary. It is Peter, then, who tells us here about Mary of Magdala. Our Lord had delivered her from “seven devils” (Mark 16: 9-15). She must have gone through a terrible time and how long that time was we are not told. While we may discount the obvious exaggeration in the movie ‘The Exorcism of Emily Rose’ nevertheless we could perhaps remember that six devils are portrayed as possessing Emily. Mary of Magdala was delivered of “seven devils”, so we can take it that her condition and state had been absolutely desperate. It is from this that Christ had set her free. The result was a tremendous love and dedication to him on her part, a love that led her to be with him at Calvary, and to be at the empty tomb. Christ appeared to her “first”, Mark tells us, and she was the one to inform the others that he was alive.

Mary of Magdala became a privileged disciple of our Lord and undoubtedly a very significant member of the infant Church. It surely shows us what the grace of God can do in the life of a person and how in the figure of Mary of Magdala all of us can find courage and inspiration to begin again. Now I begin! Who would have guessed among those who knew her at the time of her colossal affliction and helplessness that she would become such a wonderful disciple of the Messiah? We are reminded of that parable our Lord told of the Master going out to find workers for his vineyard. He went out at various times of the day and invited to his vineyard those he found. All who accepted his invitation received of his abundant generosity which was not limited by their late arrival in the employ of the Master. Christ is rich in mercy, and the story of Mary of Magdala ought remind us of this. God’s power shines forth in his mercy in the sense that he can transform profound affliction into joy and blessings. Mary of Magdala was transformed from being bound by Satan to being free in Christ, free indeed because of her love for him. She is a wonderful instance of the power of God’s grace to make a saint of seemingly unpromising material.

Let us pray to Saint Mary Magdalene to gain for us the grace to turn away from the world, the flesh and the devil, and to give ourselves entirely to Christ and to his mission.
                                                                                                                             (E.J.Tyler)

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Nowadays our Mother the Church is being attacked in the social field and by the governments of nations. That is why God is sending his children - is sending you - to struggle, and to spread the truth in those areas.
                                               (The Forge, no.722)

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     To whom is given the task of authentically interpreting the deposit of faith?
     The task of giving an authentic interpretation of the deposit of faith has been entrusted to the living teaching office of the Church alone, that is, to the successor of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, and to the bishops in communion with him. To this Magisterium, which in the service of the Word of God enjoys the certain charism of truth, belongs also the task of defining dogmas which are formulations of the truths contained in divine Revelation. This authority of the Magisterium also extends to those truths necessarily connected with Revelation.
                                       (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.16)

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Second Sunday of Eastertide B    (Divine Mercy Sunday)

(April 23) St George, martyr (died about 303). Popular tradition presents St George as the knight who killed the dragon, making him a symbol of a triumph of faith against the forces of evil. He was the son of an illustrious family of Cappadocia and at a young age was rased to the ministry during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. When the emperor promulgated an edict against the Christians, George professed his faith publicly, for which he was martyred. He is the patron saint of England. His tomb is in Lod, near Tel Aviv in Israel.  (Saints)


Scripture: Acts 5:12-16;  Psalm 118:2-4, 13-15, 22-24;   Apocalypse 1:9-13.17-19;  John 20:19-31

“Then he spoke to Thomas,’Put your finger here; look, here are my hands. Give me your hand’.”
      (John 20:19-31)

  Recently I saw a television segment which followed the work of a particular member of the Rotary organization. He had the responsibility of coordinating the medical help Rotary gives to physically ailing persons from the Pacific Islands. It showed him arranging for an infant who had a hole in the heart to be brought to Australia for an advanced operation. The impressive thing about that gentleman was his compassion. He felt very profoundly for the child, and was in turn deeply distressed and then overjoyed at the medical progress of the baby. It also showed a host family who volunteered to Rotary to put the mother and her infant up and look after them while they were in Australia for the medical treatment. That family too was deeply compassionate. They were all very compassionate and merciful people. We could describe mercy as the compassion evoked by the sight of another’s misery leading a person to offer all possible aid. Those people were very merciful. Our Lord said, blessed are the merciful, for they shall have mercy shown them. He also said, Be compassionate as your heavenly Father is compassionate. Time and again the Gospels speak of the compassion our Lord felt for the ones he saw to be in need. On one occasion on seeing a poor widow accompanying the body of her son to the cemetery, his compassion moved him to raise the young man from the dead and return him to his mother. It was the compassion and mercy of God that led the Father to send his Son to save the world from sin.

  Today being the second Sunday of Eastertide, we celebrate the divine mercy. That is to say, we celebrate the infinite compassion of God in the face of the world's need. God is viewed by very many people as far away, a distant figure, remote and uninvolved in the world and in our own personal lives. They look on him as making no difference because he is just not part of life. But they do not know God. What they are thinking of in that image of him is not the real God, God almighty. It is a fantasy, a theoretical construct of our secular and agnostic culture, an image fostered by various currents of philosophical thought. Our secular culture and public life fosters the assumption that life is to be lived without any recourse to God. God is thought of as uninvolved, unconcerned and indeed irrelevant to the great problems facing us. We think of him that way because we are  encouraged to assume that the supernatural is not real. Modern Western man characteristically does not give faith in God a serious trial. To exclude God from a culure is an impoverishment.

  My point is that we must make it our business to embrace the image and notion of God which God himself has revealed. He has revealed that he is rich in mercy. That is to say, God’s attitude to the world’s misery and to the misery and suffering of each one of us is one infinite compassion. God feels for each of us as does a compassionate Father who responds by doing all in his power to alleviate the need he sees in his sufferng child. He is merciful in his response to that need. Because of his compassion he sent his very own Son to take upon himself the world’s sin and expiate for it by his suffering and death. God gave up everything to fix our problem. We speak rightly of God as being almighty, and indeed that is the first thing we all think of God. He is our Father almighty. But let us remember that God reveals and manifests his almighty power precisely in his mercy, in his compassion, in the action he takes to alleviate our needs at their root, and their root is sin. God’s power has been revealed in the work of redeeming the world, causing such a breakthrough as to make holiness possible for all who take up the invitation to believe in Christ. It was by God’s almighty power that the world was redeemed, and this power revealed his mercy.

  All of this is manifested in the wounds of Christ. By his wounds we are saved. His wounds show forth his almighty mercy and compassion, for they display the unimaginable sufferings which Christ endured in his work of mercy, the taking away of the sin of the world. In today’s Gospel passage our Lord shows his wounds to Thomas and Thomas seeing them and touching them says from the bottom of his heart: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:19-31) In those wounds on his hands, his feet, his side and all over his body, Christ reveals how rich and powerful God is in mercy. Let us resolve to gaze constantly on the wounds of the crucified and risen Jesus so as to draw near to the compassionate heart of Jesus and unite ourselves with the divine mercy, the mercy of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this way let us be filled with the thought of God's mercy towards us, and let us resolve by our compassionate lives to bear witness before others to the mercy of God for them.
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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You are an ordinary citizen. It is precisely because of that secularity of yours, which is the same as, and neither more nor less than, that of your colleagues, that you have to be sufficiently brave - which may sometimes mean being very brave - to make your faith felt. They should see your good works and the motive that drives you to do them.
                                                   (The Forge, no.723)

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     What is the relationship between Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium?
    Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium are so closely united with each other that one of them cannot stand without the others. Working together, each in its own way, under the action of the one Holy Spirit, they all contribute effectively to the salvation of souls.
                            (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.17)

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Monday of the second week of Eastertide

(April 24) St Fidelis of Sigmaringen, priest and martyr (1578-1622). Born in the town of Sigmaringen, Germany, he entered the Capucin Order. He led a life of deep contemplation and hard penance. As an evangelist and catechist, he was known as an advocate of the poor. He was ordered by the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith to preach in the canton of the Grisons in Switzerland, and there he was pursued by the heretics and suffered martyrdom in 1622 at Seewis. He is considered the apostle of Switzerland.    (Saints)


Scripture today:     Acts of the Apostles 4: 23-31;      Psalm 2: 1-9;      John 3: 1-8

“Do not be surprised when I say: You must be born from above.” (John 3: 1-8)

There would be many people who think that religion is no more than a matter of mind over matter, as it were. By that I mean that many people unconsciously think of religion as simply something we set our minds to do (with the emphasis on what we are doing) in order to deepen our relationship with God and to live a good life. What we choose to do makes up the life of religion. Now, of course a religious life involves a range of things we choose to do that are profoundly different from the choices in life of one without religion. But the good news is that the Christian life is far more than this for it involves primarily what God does, rather than simply what we do. That is what makes the Christian life so utterly different in the sight of God from all other forms of religious life. It is life in Christ, life in the Holy Spirit, life in the Father, in a word, it is the life in God which is made possible by the action of grace. It is grace that carries us along and which sustains our efforts, making it possible for a new life to grow and develop within us. God gives the growth and it is growth in a life that comes from above.

In our Gospel today (John 3: 1-8) our Lord makes it very clear that to enter into the realm of God which he came to establish (that is, God’s Kingdom) it is necessary to be born again. This new birth is not something we simply resolve to achieve or experience. It is a profoundly new beginning brought to us by the Holy Spirit. Our Lord is referring in the first instance, of course, to Baptism which brings about this new birth, but the point we ought dwell on is what this new birth means for our entire religious life. We are being sustained by the Spirit of God, and action of the Holy Spirit is the source of the faith, the life of prayer, the daily service of God and all the other elements of our daily Christian life. It is not something that is primarily the product of our own resolve or personal virtues. It is in the first instance the result of the grace of God. He is doing the work which, of course, will come to nothing is we do not co-operate obediently with what he is doing. There is a wonderful Reality present in our souls that transcends us even while being intimately present to us. Our religion is not just a matter of what I am trying to do, but above all of what God is doing. “The wind blows wherever it pleases; you hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going.” (John 3: 1-8) The wind blows and has its effect. Our Lord is referring to the action of the Spirit.

During these days of Eastertide let us endeavour to appreciate in a new way what life in Christ means. It means being sustained by God in growth in holiness. God is giving the growth. Let us then give ourselves over to doing his will at whatever cost and he will make us like unto him.
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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Children of God - like yourself - cannot be afraid of living in the professional or social surroundings which are proper to them. They are never alone! God our Lord who always goes with you, grants you the means to be faithful to him, and to bring others to him.
                                                                        (The Forge, no.724)

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     Why does Sacred Scripture teach the truth?
      Because God himself is the author of Sacred Scripture. For this reason it is said to be inspired and to teach without error those truths which are necessary for our salvation. The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors who wrote what he wanted to teach us. The Christian faith, however, is not a “religion of the Book”, but of the Word of God - “not a written and mute word, but incarnate and living” (Saint Bernard of Clairvaux).
                      (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.18)

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Tuesday of the second week of Eastertide

(April 25) Anzac Day in Australia


Scripture today:     Acts of the Apostles 4: 32-37;       Psalm 93;       John 3: 7-15

“The apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus with great power”
          (Acts of the Apostles 4: 32-37)

The mention in today's first reading of the testimony of the apostles to the resurrection shows that in the mind of the early Church the person of the risen Jesus - which is what is meant by “the resurrection of the Lord Jesus” - is the most important Reality in the world. We may ask, is there some linchpin that holds the entire universe together and gives it endurance and hope for the future? There is. That linchpin, that cornerstone of the entire cosmic structure, is the risen Jesus. The entire cosmos relates to him for its being and for all its prospects. He is the firstfruits of all creation, and in him all things are held together. All power and authority in heaven and on earth reside in him. The risen Jesus is the heart of the world, and to relate to him and to bring the world into connection with him is to bring all into contact with its source. The Church does this by bearing witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. The early Church, we are told in our passage from the Acts of the Apostles today, did this “with great power” (Acts 4:32-37).

It is generally agreed that St Luke proposes the infant Church not only for our meditation but for our imitation. When therefore he refers to the early Church testifying to the risen Jesus “with great power” he means the reader to reflect on how he too can do the same. Firstly we must strive to realize the resurrection. “The resurrection” is a term which is so familiar and frequent that its use can mask a lack of realization of what it is standing for. We need an imaginative appreciation of it. Imagine a person you knew well and loved who died. Think of such a person in your experience.  Think of your loss at his death, and of how often you felt the loss since his death. Then he comes back in the flesh! You see him and speak to him, understanding beyond any doubt that it is he indeed. Imagine yourself speaking of him now, as of one who is truly alive and in a glorified state. You would certainly testify to him with a greater power than you did before. You would be convincing because you would know he was alive.

The difference with Jesus is that his rising from the dead has implications for everyone. The problem is that many Christians do not see that it has any implications. It is just a tale, an event which may or may not have happened, but which has no real bearing on life. Such an attitude to the rising of Christ from the dead needs the testimony of the Church, and a testimony with great power.
                                                                                                                                (E.J.Tyler)

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All for Love! This is the way of holiness, the way of happiness. Face up to your intellectual tasks, the highest things of the spirit, and also those things that are most down to earth, the things we all of necessity have to do, with this in mind; and you will live joyfully and with peace.
                                                                                                      (The Forge, no.725)

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     How is Sacred Scripture to be read?
     Sacred Scripture must be read and interpreted with the help of the Holy Spirit and under the guidance of the Magisterium of the Church according to three criteria: 1) it must be read with attention to the content and unity of the whole of Scripture; 2) it must be read within the living Tradition of the Church;
3) it must be read with attention to the analogy of faith, that is, the inner harmony which exists among the truths of the faith themselves.
                                 (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.19)

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Wednesday of the second week of Eastertide

(March 26) St Mark, evangelist. He was the son of Mary in whose house Peter sought refuge after being freed from gaol. He aided St Paul and St Barnabas in the evangelisation of Cyprus. Later, Mark became the companion and secretary of St Peter in Rome. He wrote the second Gospel which presumably had St Peter for its principal source, and probably reflects Peter’s preaching. (Saints)


Scripture today:    1 Peter 5: 5-14;       Psalm 89: 2-3, 6-7, 16-17;        Mark 16: 15-20

“Go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.” (Mark 16:15-20)

As we read our Gospel passage today for the feast of St Mark the evangelist we cannot help but appreciate how central to the Christian life is the sense of mission. It is an essential component of the will of the Lord Jesus that we participate in his mission to the world. His parting words to the Eleven are words of mission, telling them to “go out to the whole world; proclaim the Good News to all creation.” Survey after survey has shown that too many Catholics lack this sense of mission. They perceive the practice of the Catholic Faith in terms of a personal piety that lacks a sense of responsibility for the mission of Christ and the Church to the world. We are told that “the Lord Jesus, after he had spoken to them, was taken up into heaven.” What then did his disciples do? They, “going out, preached everywhere, the Lord working with them” (Mark 16:15-20). That was their response to the Lord. What is our response? St Ignatius Loyola in his Spiritual Exercises, directs the retreatant to ask himself, “What have I done for Christ, what am I doing for him, and what shall I do for him?”

Today we celebrate the feast of St Mark who gave his life for the cause of bringing Christ to the world. In his particular case it involved a special association with the person of St Peter, the first Pope. It also involved bringing the first Pope’s teaching about Jesus to the Church through the writing of his Gospel. This provides a lesson for each of us in our day. We ought place ourselves in the presence of the risen Christ during this Easter season hearing his words in today’s Gospel as addressed to us personally. He asks you and me to do what we can in our everyday life to “proclaim the Good News to all creation.” By the example of our lives, by our words, by our daily professional work and personal apostolate, we ought be contributing to this great cause that is the cause of the Church. A distinguishing feature of our spiritual life and daily apostolate ought be love for the Pope and bringing his teaching about Christ to those around us. St Mark tells us that they went out preaching everywhere, “the Lord working with them and confirming the word by signs that accompanied it.” Christ is working with his disciples still. He works within the Church constantly, including in and through each of us. Let us then take up the challenge and endeavour to bring the Saviour to the world.

Christ is with us. Let us be daily instruments of his Person in family, workplace, and everywhere.
                                                                                                                                  (E.J.Tyler)

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As a Christian, you can give way, within the limits of faith and morals, in everything that is your own; you can give way with all your heart. But in what belongs to Jesus Christ, you cannot give way!
                                      (The Forge, no.726)

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     What is the Canon of Scripture?
     The Canon of Scripture is the complete list of the sacred writings which the Church has come to recognize through Apostolic Tradition. The Canon consists of 46 books of the Old Testament and 27 of the New.
                     (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.20)

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Thursday of the second week of Eastertide

(April 27)  Today let us think of Saint Zita of Lucca (Saints) and Saint Liberale (Saints)


Scripture today:    Acts of the Apostles 5:27-33;      Psalm 32: 2, 9, 17-20;      John 3:31-36

“We are witnesses to all this, we and the Holy Spirit whom God has given”  (Acts 5:27-33)

Our passage from the Acts of the Apostles portrays the Apostles bearing witness to the resurrection and glorification of Jesus before the leaders of the Jews. Whereas the Apostles were previously timid and fearful, now they are intrepid and courageous. This is the striking difference we see in them after the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. That is to say, their witness to Jesus is a sign of the presence and the witness of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is accompanying them and sustaining them in the face of opposition and persecution. They are not alone. As our Lord said on one occasion prior to his Passion when predicting the persecution which would pursue them: “Do not worry about what you are to say, for the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you.” The disciples of Christ would be able to count on the witness and the support of the Holy Spirit in the midst of difficulties. And this is exactly what the Apostles refer to before the leaders of the Jews. “We are witnesses to all this, we and the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him.”  (Acts of the Apostles 5:27-33)

The same Holy Spirit has come to each of us who have been baptized and confirmed, and the Sacrament of Confirmation in particular can be viewed as the special counterpart of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. That is to say, the effect on the Church of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is similar to the effect on each person who is confirmed. The Holy Spirit comes to abide with the baptized and newly confirmed person to aid that person in his mission of bearing witness to Christ. The Apostles speak of the Holy Spirit bearing witnesss together with them. Therefore the Holy Spirit will be bearing witness in our lives, especially to us, but through us to others too. It is important to learn to notice the effect of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Have we noticed how constant our faith in Christ is, even if there is in it still much to be desired? We have there evidence of the action of the Holy Spirit. Have we noticed that at times we are indeed prepared to bear witness to Christ in various - even if in only small ways - to those around us? We have there evidence of the action of the Holy Spirit. During these days of Eastertide as we prepare for the feast of Pentecost and as we follow the Acts of the Apostles let us learn to notice the witnesssing action of the Holy Spirit in our own minds and hearts, and in the influence we at times exercise on others in the name of Christ.

Let us keep constantly in mind the gift and the presence of the Holy Spirit in our hearts and the guarantee that he will be with us to bear witness together with us before the world. This is not just a pious belief. We believe it on the word of Christ and on the testimony of the Apostles.
                                                                                                                                 (E.J.Tyler)

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“The One whom God has sent speaks the words of God”  (John 3:31-36)
Comment by John Tauler (around 1300 – 1361), Dominican (Sermon for the feast of Christmas)

Like Mary, every servant of God must be silent and calm in herself quite often, must shut herself up within herself, hide in the spirit so as to shield herself and escape from the senses and to make for herself a place of silence and of interior rest. This interior rest is what is being sung…: “For when peaceful stillness compassed everything and the night in its swift course was half spent, Your all-powerful word from heaven’s royal throne bounded, a fierce warrior, into the doomed land,” (Wis 18:14-15), when the eternal Word came out of the Father’s heart. True silence reigns in the midst of silence, at the very moment when all things are plunged into the greatest silence; that is when one truly hears this Word. For if you want God to speak, you must be silent; all things must go out so that he might enter.
 
When our Lord Jesus entered Egypt, all the country’s idols collapsed. Your idols are all that prevents this eternal birth from happening in you in a true and immediate way, no matter how good and holy these things might seem. Our Lord said: “I have come to bring a sword” (Mt 10:34) to sever all that stems from the human person… For your enemy is that which is closest to you: that multiplicity of images that conceal the Word in you.

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When you have to give orders, do not humiliate anyone. Go gently. Respect the intelligence and the will of the one who is obeying.
                                                (The Forge, no.727)

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       What is the importance of the Old Testament for Christians?
       Christians venerate the Old Testament as the true word of God. All of the books of the Old Testament are divinely inspired and retain a permanent value. They bear witness to the divine pedagogy of God’s saving love. They are written, above all, to prepare for the coming of Christ the Saviour of the universe.
                          (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.21)

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Friday of the second week of Eastertide

(March 28) St Peter Chanel, priest and martyr (1803-1841). He was born in the town of Cuet in France, he entered the ranks of the clergy and for a few years did pastoral work. Then he entered the Society of Mary and went to Oceania to preach the Gospel. Despite many difficulties he did manage to convert a number to the Faith. In hatred of the Faith he was clubbed to death, thus dying as a martyr in the island of Futuna, Melanesia. He is called the apostle of Oceania where he spread the Gospel. He was a religious of the Society of Mary (Marist Fathers).  (Saints)
                   Today let us also think of St. Louis Mary Grignion de Montfort (Saints)


Scripture today:     Acts of the Apostles 5:34-42;     Psalm 27: 1, 4, 13-14;     John 6: 1-15

“They preached every day both in the Temple and in private houses” (Acts of the Apostles 5:34-42)

Once again, we have in our passage today from the Acts of the Apostles a vivid depiction of the constant impulse leading the apostles on to proclaim the Good News about Jesus. Nothing would stop them, and their sufferings that came from opposition and punishment gave them joy. They were “glad to have had the honour of suffering humiliation for the sake of the name.” (Acts of the Apostles 5:34-42) What was it that drove them on with such constancy? Of course, it was clearly due to the presence and witness to them of the Holy Spirit as we have seen in previous days. But it was also due their own witness. Now what does this mean? Well, their imagination and was fired with the entire experience of having seen the risen Jesus. Their minds were filled with the fact of the resurrection, and they understood that it meant new prospects for all mankind.

If we are to bear convincing and persevering witness to the resurrection before an agnostic milieu that has difficulty with accepting any supernatural reality let alone the resurrection, then we must be deeply convinced of it ourselves. The Holy Spirit will bear his witness to us and to others, but we must bear witness too. That is to say we must be profoundly convinced of the risen Jesus ourselves. This means that we must take the steps to grow in a vivid perception of it. It is not just a matter of thinking the matter through rationally and overcoming to our satisfaction the intellectual objections that might be current around us. It is also a matter of meditating on the resurrection, of contemplating the reality of it and allowing it to fill our minds, our religious imagination and our hearts, and thus become our deepest conviction. Our conviction about it must be as if we had seen. Through prayerful meditation on this dogma of the Faith we must allow the resurrection to imbue our imagination with its power. It is then that we shall feel it, as it were, and it will become the motive power for our constant testimony.

Let the thought of the unyielding conviction of the Apostles encourage us to seek to be similarly convinced of the reality of the resurrection. This requires the daily practice of meditation and lectio divina (prayerful and meditative reading). By this prayerful meditation let us fill our hearts and minds with the Good News so as to be able to bear witness to it with utter conviction.
                                                                                                                               (E.J.Tyler)

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“They gathered twelve baskets full of pieces left over”  (John 6: 1-15)
Comment by St Ephrem (306 – 373), Deacon and Doctor of the Church (Diatesseron, 12, 4-5)

In the twinkling of an eye the Lord multiplied a little bread. What human beings do in ten months of work, his ten fingers do in an instant… Nevertheless, he didn’t measure this miracle by its power, but according to the hunger of those who were there. If the miracle had been measured by its power, it would be impossible to evaluate it; measured according to the hunger of those thousands of people, the miracle went beyond the twelve baskets. Among artisans, their power is inferior to the customers’ desire; they cannot do everything that is asked of them. Contrary to them, what God accomplishes goes beyond all desire …

When they had been satiated like the Israelites in past times through the prayer of Moses, they cried out: “This is undoubtedly the Prophet who is to come into the world.” They were referring to the words of Moses: “A prophet like me will the Lord, your God, raise up for you.” Not just any prophet, but “a prophet like me” (Deut 18:15), who will satiate you with bread in the desert. Like me, he walked on the sea, he appeared in the luminous cloud (Mt 17:5), he freed his people. He handed Mary over to John just like Moses handed over his flock to Joshua… But the bread of Moses was not perfect; it was only given to the Israelites. Because he wanted to show that his gift is superior to that of Moses, and the call to the nations still more perfect, our Lord said: “If anyone eats this bread he shall live forever,” for the bread from God “has come down from heaven” and is given to the whole world (Jn 6:51).

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Naturally, you have to use earthly means. But put a lot of effort into being detached from everything of the earth, so that you can deal with it with your mind always fixed on the service of God and of your fellow men.
                                                        (The Forge, no.728)

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     What importance does the New Testament have for Christians?
     The New Testament, whose central object is Jesus Christ, conveys to us the ultimate truth of divine Revelation. Within the New Testament the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the heart of all the Scriptures because they are the principal witness to the life and teaching of Jesus. As such, they hold a unique place in the Church.
                                   (The Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.22)

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Saturday of the second week of Eastertide

(April 29) St Catherine of Sienna, virgin and doctor of the Church (1347-1380). St Catherine was a responsible instrument for the return of Pope Gregory XI from Avignon to Rome. In deed and in truth she showed her love for God’s Church and the Roman Pontiff. With her short life she gave us a lesson in courage: the courage of telling the truth for love of the Church and of souls. Imprinted with the sacred stigmata, she died in Rome at thirty-three years of age. She was proclaimed patroness of Italy on 18 June 1939. In 1970 Pope Paul VI proclaimed her Doctor of the Church.   (Saints)


Scripture today:     Acts of the Apostles 6: 1-7;    Psalm 33: 1-2, 4-5, 18-19;    John 6: 16-21

“They had rowed three or four miles when they saw Jesus walking on the lake and coming towards the boat.”  (John 6: 16-21)

If there is one thing which the mass media brings home to us it is that the world in which we live  is marked by instability. Our environment is often not at all in harmony with our obvious interests. A hurricane sweeps across a country leaving mayhem and loss of life in its wake. A tsunami engulfs thousands and thousands of lives. An earthquake destroys countless remote villages whose inhabitants are far beyond easy access and aid. They are natural disasters. Man-made disasters roll on and on, with murders and thefts and other injuries. Hunger hits vast sections of Africa or wherever. A plague suddenly arises which leaves the world’s scientists baffled and initially helpless. If man appears to right reason as being the centre of the universe, then the universe does not appear to respect that. There is disfunction everywhere, from within man’s heart to the cosmos and the havoc the cosmos brings to man who is its lord. The question is, is there any centre man can turn to in order to find ultimate security? Yes, there is.

The person of Jesus is the centre and heart of the universe, for he is not only, as man, part of the created universe, but as God, he is its master. Christ is the source of our security. This applies not only in relation to our presence in the world, but in relation to our presence in the Church. Our Gospel today helps us appreciate this. The disciples were out there battling a strong wind and a rough sea. This can be taken as an image of the world in which we live and of the Church into which we have been baptised. We are in the boat of the apostles and disciples of Christ, and that boat is the Church. In every age the Church is buffeted by waves both within and without. As does the world, so too the Church has its centre of security, and that centre is the person of Christ. He is the heart and the head of the Church as he is of creation. When things are getting rough, Christ is always nearby, coming towards us in the midst of the turmoil and the trouble. He constantly says to us “It is I. Do not be afraid.” (John 6: 16-21) He wants us not to fear, but to have peace and trust in him. “Trust in God still,” he told his disciples at the Last Supper, “and trust in me.”

Let us resolve to keep our gaze steadfastly on the Lord Jesus in a spirit of faith, remembering constantly his presence in the world, in the Church, and in our souls. With him before us, we need not fear.
                                                                                                                                  (E.J.Tyler)

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“Mary has chosen the better portion and she shall not be deprived of it.”
Commentary by St Catherine of Siena (1347-1380), Dominican tertiary, Doctor of the Church, Co-patroness of Europe (Dialogues, chapter 134)

O ineffable Fire, O eternal Father, I no longer want my desire to tire of wanting your honour and the salvation of souls nor my eyes to dry up. I beg of you by your grace that they might become two rivers flowing out from you, a peaceful sea. Praise, praise to you, O Father, for you have responded to my request, and even to what I did not know, and even to what I had not asked of you. By giving me the gift of tears, you have invited me to offer you all my gentle, loving, anguished desires and my humble and constant prayers.

Now I ask you to have mercy on the world and on your holy Church. I beg you to do what you cause me to ask of you… Do not delay in having mercy on the world, agree to realizing your servants’ desire. You are the one who causes them to cry out, so hear their voice. Your truth said that if we call, we shall be answered, if we knock, it shall be opened to us, if we ask, it shall be given us (Lk 11:9). O eternal Father, your servants cry out to you for mercy. So answer them.

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Plan everything? Everything! you told me. All right: we need to use our prudence. But bear in mind that human undertakings, whether they are hard or simple, always have to count on a margin of the unforeseen; and that a Christian should never shut off the road of hope, or be forgetful of God’s Providence.
                                                 (The Forge, no.729)

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     What is the unity that exists between the Old and the New Testaments?
     Scripture is one insofar as the Word of God is one. God’s plan of salvation is one, and the divine inspiration of both Testaments is one. The Old Testament prepares for the New and the New Testament fulfills the Old; the two shed light on each other.
                                       (Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, no.23)

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