Trust God and discover the immensity of his love for you.
Sunday XI B 2012
What is God trying to tell us today with these images of planting and growing? That first reading of a few verses from the prophet Ezekiel seems pretty straightforward: God is going to take a shoot from the top of a cedar and plant it and watch it grow into a big tree. So what? Well we need to look at this prophecy in its context. The context was the exile in Babylon of the leaders of the Jewish people. The Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar, had deported the Hebrew king Jehoiachin to Babylon and placed another, Zedekiah, on the throne in Jerusalem. But Zedekiah tried to get support from Egypt to restore the state of Israel. When Nebuchadnezzar found out about this, he reacted swiftly and violently and that was the end, for the time being, of the Hebrew monarchy. That was about 609 B.C.
What we have heard this morning is a message of comfort delivered through Ezekiel to the exiles in Babylon. God is faithful to his promises. Despite the military and economic catastrophe which had befallen Israel, God had no intention of abandoning his people, he would indeed honour his promises. Let them be faithful to their part of the covenant and God would be faithful to his.
This gospel has two growing-seed parables. I expect we’ve all had the experience of planting and watering seeds and then, after a while, seeing the first shoots emerge from the earth. We may have put the seeds into the earth, we may have poured the water – yet we know that we have not caused the seeds to germinate. Or, as the gospel says of the farmer: Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how he does not know.
There is a touch of story-teller’s exaggeration in the parable of the mustard seed. The seed itself may be tiny but the resulting shrub is nothing special. The important thing is that the seed does grow and the plant produces its fruit. Notice that Jesus introduces each of these parables with the words the kingdom of God is like … And the second concludes with the assurance that he spoke to the people in parables because parables were what they could understand.
In what way then is the kingdom of God like a growing plant? There are at least two similarities. Firstly, it starts in a small way and grows a lot bigger. If we compare the Church today with the band of believers in Palestine at the time of Our Lord’s ascension, the growth has been enormous. If, on the other hand, you compare the Church today with the total population of the world, you see at once that there is still a lot of room for further development.
Just as we do not know exactly what causes a seed to germinate, we do not know exactly why some people believe in the gospel. It seems likely that God presses the button which sets off the process of germination. And faith too is a gift of God. I can believe that everyone is born with a predisposition to religious faith – but it is necessary for that faith to be proposed and expounded to them. That is why Pope Benedict has launched a “new evangelisation” of Europe. We might add that it is just as necessary in Australia and in other parts of the developed world.
If we can see the hidden power of God in the growth of plants, we might also recall that Jesus’ own power was only visible intermittently during his earthly life. Indeed it seemed at the time of his crucifixion that he was altogether powerless. Yet we know that he rose glorious and immortal from the tomb. Let that contrast reassure us in our moments of doubt.
I’m not sure that we’d all agree with St Paul when he assures the Corinthians – as we heard in the second reading – that: We are always full of confidence when we remember that to live in the body means to be exiled from the Lord, going as we do by faith and not by sight – we are full of confidence, I say, and actually want to be exiled from the body and make our home with the Lord. Paul seems pretty sure of himself. Perhaps we are not so sure of ourselves. There’s the challenge of the Last Judgement. School exams, university exams, driving tests, intelligence tests – they have all caused us enough worries. How will we fare in the most important test of all?
When he was Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Hume sometimes contributed to the “Thought for today” spot on BBC radio. I remember once hearing him predict that our final judgement would be like whispering confidences into the ear of a loving father. Nothing to worry about! God knows all about the good – and the bad – we have done. Trust God and discover the immensity of his love for you. (Quentin Howard)
17-06-2012
Pentecost: Empowering the Church
Pentecost B 2012
We might say that the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples liberated them from their fear and transformed them into apostles, men with a mission. Not for nothing do we say that this feast marks the birthday of the Church. Let’s look more closely at what today’s readings tell us.
First of all, Pentecost was an established Jewish feast, one of the most important in their liturgical calendar. It was sometimes called the Feast of Weeks, because according to the instructions in the Torah, it took place seven weeks after they had gathered the first sheaf of new corn. So initially it was a kind of harvest festival. Torah stressed that the entry of the tribes of Israel into the Promised Land marked the fulfilment of God’s promises to his Chosen People. It was right and fitting that they should offer the first fruits of the harvest as an act of thanksgiving. The Jewish people came to think of the festival as a celebration of the renewal of the covenant. A key aspect of the covenant was God’s gift of Torah, the laws for righteous living and it just so happens that in rabbinical teaching, fire was often used as a symbol of Torah.
The passage from Acts that we heard just now stresses the crowds present in Jerusalem on the day that the Holy Spirit descended on the disciples, looking like tongues of fire. There were pilgrims from every part of the world into which Jews had gone. These pilgrims from the diaspora then can be said to symbolize the known world. As the apostles began to preach, each of the visitors heard them in his or her own language. And we may be sure that when they returned to their own countries they talked about what they had seen and heard in Jerusalem. Later, when the apostles began to move out from Jerusalem carrying the good news towards the ends of the earth, no doubt some of these people came forward to support what the apostles said, and to welcome the gospel.
Today’s gospel is another extract from Our Lord’s final instructions to his disciples during the Last Supper. He promises to send them an Advocate whom he describes as the Spirit of truth who issues from the Father; he [or she] will be my witness. Scholars argue about the best translation of the word rendered here as ‘advocate’. To us ‘advocate’ suggests a court of law which is not the normal setting for the apostles. Still, there is a touch of the courts in Jesus’ instruction that you too will be witnesses because you have been with me from the outset. Because they have been with Jesus throughout the years of his public life, they will be able to testify – to bear witness – to all that he has said and done. Since the Spirit is the Spirit of truth they can count on her to help them recall accurately the details of Jesus’ life and teachings: the Spirit of truth will lead you to the complete truth [and] will tell you of the things to come.
We sometimes speak of the ‘indwelling’ of the Holy Spirit. By that we mean that the Spirit once received remains with us, unless we drive her out by committing grave sin. The Spirit dwelling in us represents Jesus’ ongoing presence in the world. This makes us vulnerable, for Jesus does have enemies in the world. Think of the often renewed attacks on Church schools and the teaching of religion generally. Think of the plague of abortion. Think of the indifference to and the demonization of refugees and asylum seekers. Insofar as we draw attention to these evils, we shall receive the abuse that Jesus’ enemies can no longer give to him directly.
Writing to the Galatians, St Paul was concerned not so much with the Spirit’s influence on the mission of the whole Church as with her effect on the life of the believer, that is to say every single one of us. After all, we all received the gifts of the Holy Spirit when we were confirmed. God does not force his gifts on us. We can put them to good use, or we can ignore them. We can follow the promptings of the Spirit, or we can pay no attention. Paul writes: If you are guided by the Spirit you will be in no danger of yielding to self-indulgence. He lists the fruits of self-indulgence. They include sins of the flesh, works of idolatry, activities that harm the community, like jealousy, anger, factions; and drunkenness and carousing. By contrast, the fruits of the Spirit are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trustfulness, gentleness and self-control.
As you know, this year’s feast of Pentecost has been chosen by the Australian bishops to launch the Year of Grace. It is not so much a time for doing something new as a time for pausing to take stock and for being more deeply what we are already: people of God, recipients of many gifts. Just as the Jewish people regularly recall God’s liberating gifts to them, so also we are being invited this year to review all that God has done for us. It will then be natural for us to draw closer to God with prayers of thanksgiving. Please note that I am not saying we should say more prayers. What I am saying is that we should pray better, i.e. we should spend more time quietly in the presence of God offering prayers of praise and thanksgiving.
During this week the Church reminds us of another matter, namely the need for reconciliation between indigenous Australians and the later arrivals and their descendants. When the first European settlers invited themselves into Australia at the end of the 18th century they were immediately struck by the differences between themselves and the native inhabitants. ‘Different from’ quickly came to mean ‘inferior to’. The 18th century is sometimes called the Age of Reason. It was a time of research, enquiry, exploration; it was a time of notable achievements in literature, art and music – a high point in European civilisation. Regrettably it was not the most civilised Europeans who arrived at Botany Bay. From the point of view of the Aborigines, what they call ‘the invasion’ has been a disaster. Yet we now know that those peoples had developed a very intelligent way of managing and using the resources of this continent. They had an elaborate set of beliefs about the origin and purpose of creation. They had laws and a moral code and ways of dealing with transgressors. Certainly their culture was very different from that of the Europeans, but it was not inferior to it as a way of ordering society.
You may remember that it was not until 1967 that Aborigines were granted full citizenship rights. I can tell you that to an Australian who has lived abroad for more than 30 years, that is an embarrassing fact. So progress has been made, but it is far from complete. The purpose of this reconciliation week is to make us all aware of the problem, and at least open to attempts to solve it.
Early navigators called our country the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit. Let us not stifle the Spirit within us, but rather be open to her promptings to draw closer to God and to each other. (Quentin Howard)
26-05-2012
It was as a result of a vision that 
Junjun FAITHBOOK 