31st Year of Ordinary Time Year A

Addressing the people and his disciples Jesus said, 'The scribes and the Pharisees occupy the chair of Moses. You must therefore do what they tell you and listen to what they say; but do not be guided by what they do: since they do not practise what they preach. They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men's shoulders, but will they lift a finger to move them? Not they! Everything they do is done to attract attention, like wearing broader phylacteries and longer tassels like wanting to take the place of honour at banquets and the front seats in the synagogues, being greeted obsequiously in the market squares and having people call them Rabbi.

'You, however, must not allow yourselves to be called Rabbi, since you have only one master, and you are all brothers. You must call no one on earth your father, since you have only one Father, and he is in heaven. Nor must you allow yourselves to be called teachers, for you have only one Teacher, the Christ. The greatest among you must be your servant. Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will exalted.

We have just completed the first Presidential Election in Ireland in fourteen years. For many people it is the first one they can remember. In the process seven candidates put themselves before the people as potential holders of the most senior position in the land. Seven people put their lives before the electorate in the hope of being selected and each of them had a grueling time. Private details of family and business were explored and examined, and for some of them the experience was to say the very least difficult. Only one could be chosen and after all the campaigning, canvasing and debating the election is over. Only one could be chosen; for the next seven years Mr Michael D. Higgins will be President of Ireland.

Now taking the personalities out of the equation, the entire business of picking a new president was a remarkable business. Some candidates has posters, smiling effigies of would be leaders peering from lamp posts and bridges, everywhere smiling, everywhere presenting themselves as someone to trust, someone to be trusted in. Others sent letters, their faces beaming from the glossy publications, explaining in detail what they wanted us to accept and vote on. There was never a question of a doubt about their ability to be Head of State, what they had on offer made perfect sense. At the end of the day one had to be chosen, obviously the one in the post box or looking in your window from the close by street lamp was the obvious choice. At any given moment there were seven obvious choices for the prized 'No 1' in our prized proportional representation. If not father, teacher or rabbi - they all wished to be called President. 

I cannot help but draw parallels to what I have seen and heard in the last few weeks with the Word of God today. In an election everything is done to attract attention. Be it complaining about the age of one or the record in public life of another, it was most important to be seen and heard, so that the voter will have been attracted to attention. Nice ties and impressive designer dresses, take the place of broader phylacteries and longer tassels. Being greeted obsequiously in the market squares took place in schools and active retirement groups. It did not matter who you talked to once it looked good, garnering another few votes as you move along. 

The Gospel today points to a different way or style when it comes to leadership. Jesus says that to put yourself in the first place can be a dangerous business. Anyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and anyone who humbles himself will exalted. To attempt to put yourself in the first place runs the risk of disappointment when the self delusion we create for ourselves turns out to be a bottle of smoke. Every misjudgement, every error, every sin of your life is on display for the whole nation to see.

 No one going for election feels they are not worthy of the post they look for. Despite all the talk of being servants of the people, it is obvious that a candidate must always put them selves forward with confidence. Jesus says 'the greatest among you must be your servant.'  Not just in talk but in action. As a nation reflects, we have a chance to ask the very basic question of ourselves 'am I at peace with myself so that humbled or exalted, because I have always done what was right? if we all lived for the other, how great a world we would have - everyone at the service of everyone else. The crazy thing is that it is possible - only thing it costs and the cost can only be paid in one currency - humility. Rare stuff and like cod liver oil - often hard to take. We have only one master and you are all brothers and sisters. May Jesus give us the grace to be like Him and create a world fit for his Kingdom.

Mission Sunday

Gospel proposed by the Irish Episcopal Conference for Mission Sunday 2011

Matthew 9: 1-8

He got back in the boat, crossed the water and came to his home town. And suddenly some people brought him a paralytic stretched out on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, 'Take comfort, my child, your sins are forgiven.' And now some scribes said to themselves, 'This man is being blasphemous.' Knowing what was in their minds Jesus said, 'Why do you have such wicked thoughts in your hearts? Now, which of these is easier: to say, "Your sins are forgiven," or to say, "Get up and walk"? But to prove to you that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins,' -- then he said to the paralytic-'get up, pick up your bed and go off home.' And the man got up and went home. A feeling of awe came over the crowd when they saw this, and they praised God for having given such authority to human beings.

Homily given at Confirmation preparation Mass:

An important part of our faith is our relationship with the Saints. Most days of the year there is a specific saint celebrated, an we called these days feast days. Some of these days we know well, for example March 17th is St Patrick's Day, December 26th is the day of St Stephen. If your school is dedicated to a saint or blessed their feast day is usually marked by a special celebration. November 1st is a holy day when we remember All Saints. When you celebrate Confirmation you will take a new name and normally that name is the name of a saint whose story you will learn. I took Martin after St Martin de Porres. He was a Dominican saint from Peru and when I was growing up my mother had great devotion to him. His picture was in our home, he was like a special friend to us, so I took his name and to this day I often feel he is with me in my life.

Why are we so interested in saints? Obviously enough they are close to God. They lived such good lives  in response to their faith, the Church can confidently say they are in Heaven, praying for us and guiding us in our lives. But even more than that the saints are ordinary people, just like us, who were so caught up in their love of God their entire lives were changed by it. They give us an example of how to live as we should and show us that by being close to God - by giving their entire lives to following Jesus - they learned what it really means to be happy. Not only that, being so close to God they were able to help others to come to know Him making Heaven visible all around them. But the Saints are ordinary people just like us. They struggled and sinned as we all do, but being completely open to God, they did not let weakness stop them growing closer to Him. Every saint has a story that we can learn from. There are two I really like.

Once there was a name named Ignatius. He was a young Spanish noble, who dreamed of being a great warrior. In a battle one day he was injured and was forced to spend a long time in hospital. Lying there for days and days, he had nothing to do but think. There were a few books in the place so to pass the time he read them. Some of them were stories of great heroes and battles. He would read them and picture the scenes. He would imagine himself in the stories and pretend he was receiving the glory of the people described. Then he would get bored and put the book away. One day he was given another book, a story book version of the life of Jesus. He started to imagine those scenes, putting himself in the crowd. He began to notice that when he thought of these things he never got bored, in fact he noticed that they made him feel very happy; the more he thought about them, the more he wanted to think about them. Eventually he realised the other stories were of no interest to him at all. All he wanted to think about was Jesus, because it made him happy. He got better, but instead of returning to war, after a long journey, he became a priest and founded one of the great orders in the Church - the Jesuits.

Another story is about a young girl called Therese. When she was young all she wanted to be was a nun, and not just any nun, a Carmelite nun. These nuns lived in a special convent called an enclosure. They never left the convent spending their lives praying, working and thinking about God. One day the superior asked her to write down all she could about her life. She wrote many beautiful things. She wrote that she wanted to do all kinds of things for God. She wanted to go to far away countries to tell everyone about God, she wanted to be a martyr - that means she wanted to die proclaiming the faith- she wanted to do all kinds of things. She realised, however, that God had not called her to do any of this. He wanted her to do one thing - He wanted her to love. He wanted her to be love for everyone around her, and if she was to do this she would change the world. And she did.


The men in the Gospel had faith and they carried their friend to Jesus and they were all changed. All the people praised God when they saw what happened. Not everyone was happy though, some grumbled and complained.

Just like St Ignatius and St Therese, if we allow Jesus into our lives we will be like the people in the Gospel who praised God. We will not be grumblers, there are enough of them in the world.    We call ourselves Christians. When you receive Confirmation you will stand before all the people in the world with a new name; but more that that you will stand before the whole world with a new power in your life that will change you - if you let it! You will be a witness to the greatness of God - if you allow God into your life. If you allow the Spirit to mold you into a genuine follower of Jesus you will be really happy - even when things go wrong. Seeing you people will give praise to God and will desire to have what you have. There is nothing as powerful as a smiling Christian; unfortunately it's a rare commodity! On this Mission Sunday may we let that power shine in our lives and on our faces and witness our world change around us.

29th Sunday of Ordinary Time year A

Render God's unto God.


The Pharisees went away to work out between them how to trap Jesus in what he said. And they sent their disciples to him, together with the Herodians, to say, 'Master, we know that you are an honest man and teach the way of God in an honest way, and that you are not afraid of anyone, because a man’s rank means nothing to you. Tell us your opinion, then. Is it permissible to pay taxes to Caesar or not? But Jesus was aware of their malice and replied, ‘You hypocrites! Why do you set this trap for me? Let me see the money you pay the tax with.’ They handed him a denarius and he said, ‘Whose head is this? Whose name?’ ‘Caesar’s’ they replied. He then said to them, ‘Very well, give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.'

Looking at the protests throughout the world in the last few hours, one cannot but be forced to think about where we are going in the world. Young people, the disaffected and protesters of all kinds (not excluding people who may not have the best interests of society at heart) have taken to the streets protesting against corporate greed and government austerity. A cry seems to echo a voice from people on the ground concerning the state the world is in. It is hard to imagine it is 2008 when the whole system of the world economy started to shake. I came across a prayer service I used in autumn 2008 recently. The theme was fear and anxiety for the future. Dark clouds were amassing. Little did we know that those clouds were going to get very thick and remain would remain in the sky for a very long time. 

Listening to the news and reading the papers it would be easy to believe that economics was the only subject in the world. Of course it is important, we could not function without money; we have to live and eat. The objection that could be made to all the coverage, however, is that there seems to be nothing else at all in the world.  We have become experts in price. 

I remember going to Rome for the first time. It was in the era just before the introduction of the Euro, so for the first few months there, I had the wonderful experience of the Lira! I kept one note from that time; a fresh green 2000lira bill. I brought it to school one day to show the 1st communion class. I told them about this great amount of money, all 2000 of it, and I asked them to guess how much it was worth in euro, I got all kinds of fantastic guesses. The were a bit disappointed when I told them it was worth about 1.20 euro. Not great on the face of it. 

 Somethings we hold very dear; our families and relationships. Often a position or a job is of huge value to us. A car, a house, a boat - there are endless examples. We hold them and treasure them as rightly we should. All of them, however, in an instant can be taken away from us. When look with thanks to God at all we have, we have to remember everything is a gift. If we can have a spirit of gratitude for all we have received, we will never fall into the trap of putting the gift before the giver. 

There is only one thing that lasts.  St. Theresa of Avila once said: "Let nothing trouble you,let nothing frighten you. All things are passing; God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever possesses God lacks nothing: God alone suffices." As we gather to give thanks, celebrating the Eucharist, may we give to God what is God's. The only thing we can possibly give to God is our thanks and our love; He has no need of it our desire to thank Him is itself His gift, as the liturgy says. When we are thankful to God, we will cheerfully give of all that he has given us. With grateful hearts we will receive the gift of Christ's body and blood and prepare to celebrate God's goodness in heaven.

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time Year A

Sorry to have been out of the loop over the last few weeks!

Matthew 22:1-14

Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: 'The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who gave a feast for his son's wedding. He sent his servants to call those who had been invited, but they would not come. Next he sent some more servants. "Tell those who have been invited" he said "that I have my banquet all prepared, my oxen and fattened cattle have been slaughtered, everything is ready. Come to the wedding." But they were not interested: one went off to his farm, another to his business, and the rest seized his servants, maltreated them and killed them. The king was furious. He despatched his troops, destroyed those murderers and burnt their town. Then he said to his servants, "The wedding is ready; but as those who were invited proved to be unworthy, go to the crossroads in the town and invite everyone you can find to the wedding". So these servants went out on to the roads and collected together everyone they could find, bad and good alike; and the wedding hall was filled with guests. When the king came in to look at the guests he noticed one man who was not wearing a wedding garment, and said to him, "How did you get in here, my friend, without a wedding garment?" And the man was silent. Then the king said to the attendants, "Bind him hand and foot and throw him out into the dark, where there will be weeping and grinding of teeth". For many are called, but few are chosen.'

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Many are called but few are chosen.

The king must have been having a very bad day. No matter what he tried to do things seemed to go from bad to worse. For months, maybe even years, he had been looking forward to this wedding. After all the careful preparation and planning that goes into a royal wedding I am sure he was relishing the opportunity to show off his magnificence and exuberance to all who had been invited to share in the festivities. A royal wedding has the added factors of dynasty and politics at play, the love of the young prince and his betrothed may not have been to the fore of discussion. In fact the Gospel text does not deal with the couple that are getting married at all; it was the king’s day.

So you can imagine how he felt when those who had been invited did not show up. They must have forgotten, reasoned the King, so he sent for them. Hearing the petty excuses, he blows! When he was finished punishing, he had everyone else rounded up, if they liked it or not, and marched into the wedding hall. I feel sorry for the character that did not have his wedding garment? I can picture him being bundled up and herded into the king’s palace. Whether he wanted to or not he was on the move. He had not time to think, never mind to change. Unfortunately for him, it did not matter, he was not as he should have been and was thrown out. Jesus finishes by saying many are called, few are chosen

Its all a bit mad, isn’t it? It makes no sense what. What about the man without the wedding garment? Wasn’t the man good enough as he was, after all the King asked him to come and really he hadn’t much choice? Wasn’t the kings action a bit drastic, throwing him out bound and gagged into the darkness? Stay away from that king, if that’s the way he does his business.

By times the Christian call does indeed seem a bit strange. The way we live and love as followers of Jesus Christ is completely different to the norms and mores of our times. As society shifts away from the Gospel, all the more different and alien a life lived by the Gospel appears.  When you think about it, the Gospel demands a lot. It demands that we put ourselves in the second place, it demands hat we act in such a way as to deny what is often better for ourselves in deference to others. As Christians we are to be faithful in marriage or vows of religion. We are to live chastely when the world around us follows another pattern; one of self-indulgence and relative values.

Why was the man thrown out into the dark? That is a question that requires a deeper exegesis than I could possibly offer; however this is what I think. He came to the feast, you would assume by coercion. Maybe there was another motivation, possibly curiosity, possibly following the crowd? There was a free dinner on offer and when again was he ever going to have the opportunity to eat in the king’s dinning room. Before he knew what was going on he was in the presence of the king. But just maybe, his heart was not in it. He was there just for the sake of being there, rather than to share in what was really going on.

We all have an experience like that from time to time. We go too Mass, celebrate the sacraments, and pray the office or our prayers half-heartedly. We are ‘there’ but ‘we are not there’. The call of faith invites us to a much deeper experience of God than a mere going through the motions. It is no wonder that most of the time people have no idea we are Christian at all. If I am honest with myself can I see in my own life the mark of a disciple?

Many are called but few are chosen. I often lament that many of my own family and friends who call themselves Catholic have no more interest or knowledge of there faith than the man in the moon. The Church provides a service of a birth, deaths and marriage office, with the odd first communion, confirmation and Christmas Day thrown in. If the Church was closed there would be a bit of a fuss, but after a few days there would be no discernable difference in life.  If we are really followers of Jesus our entire life should be a living witness to a living faith. Not only should we ‘turn up’, we should come dressed in the garments of faith hope and love, ready to celebrate every good thing the King has to offer. Our very being should radiate gratitude and love for God and for all His goodness and love.

Sometimes we are miserly with our faith; we keep it in the pantry. It is on the shelf - if we need it. When we finally dip into it, we find a stale taste and throw it out. Faith can only be relished if it is fresh and ripe. When we eat what is fresh and green and succulent we will not be content to eat from tins and jars – we will long for the fresh.

If we accept the invitation to the wedding, regardless of how the invitation is given, we have to choose well. Do we go half-heartedly or do we go fully dressed? If we go grudgingly and get thrown out we will spend our lives complaining and giving out about the nastiness of the King; but if we take up the invitation and go rejoicing our lives will be one long canticle of praise – everyone will know we have been to the best party imaginable – and they too will long for the courts of the Lord.


(Not exactly the Royal wedding in the Gospel, but fantastic music!)