May 27th 2018.  Feast of the Holy Trinity

GOSPEL Matthew 28:16-20

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading ...

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GOSPEL Matthew 28:16-20

The eleven disciples set out for Galilee, to the mountain where Jesus had arranged to meet them. When they saw him they fell down before him, though some hesitated. Jesus came up and spoke to them. He said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, make disciples of all the nations; baptise them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teach them to observe all the commands I gave you. And know that I am with you always; yes, to the end of time.’

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . .  The Feast of the Holy Trinity is not a time to reflect abstractly on a difficult theological doctrine; it is a celebration of a vibrant relationship with God. This feast proclaims two things to us: firstly, we are called to live an intimate, vibrant and concrete relationship with Father, Son and Spirit here on this earth. Secondly, the vibrancy of the relationship we have with the Trinity is manifested by our capacity to transmit it to others. We are capable of communicating this way of life and passing it on to the extent that the relationship is real in our hearts. In the Gospel, Jesus sends us forth to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit. The word “baptize” means “to immerse”. Each of us must be immersed in God. We must be disciples who live an intimate relationship of obedience, trust and abandonment to our Master. If we are immersed in God, then it becomes easy for us to follow Jesus’ command and go out to the whole world and immerse others in God. A teacher is dry and uninspiring when he teaches something abstract and purely theoretical. But a teacher who loves his subject, who lives what he teaches, has the capacity to communicate in an infectious and inspiring way. This is what we are called to do – firstly immerse ourselves in the life of the Trinity and secondly go out and immerse the whole world.

This is not a feast about a theologically abstract notion: it is a celebration of a relationship that brings happiness in the concrete here and now.

The feast of the Holy Trinity is not a feast about a theological abstraction but a celebration of our knowledge and experience of God. We do not deduce God - we encounter him. He has been revealed to us in a person; in everyday things we have the potential to come to an intimate knowledge of him. The first reading speaks of a God who has revealed himself to his chosen people. This God has manifested himself in signs and wonders, in battles with outstretched arm. These anthropomorphic descriptions of God demonstrate that he is a Lord who reveals himself to us in ways that we can understand. He is a God who is both up in heaven and operative down here on earth. There is no other God, and Moses exhorts the people to obey him by keeping his commandments. Interestingly, Moses does not say that the people are to honour God because his divine majesty merits the subservience of all people to him. Rather, by following his commandments they, and their children, will enter into a state of happiness. We care for our children more than we care for ourselves, so this point is very important. God asks for the obedience of the Israelites so that they and their children will live in happiness, will prosper in the land that the Lord has given them. They will be enabled to already taste the happiness of eternity here and now on earth. The God who lives in heaven can be experienced here on earth as the fount and principle of happiness.

Some of the disciples hesitate in bowing down before the Lord. This is how we are made. The measure of our unhappiness is the measure of how much we hold back from abandoning ourselves to God.

How do we live in this state of happiness on earth? The Gospel is from the last few lines of Matthew. Jesus’ appears to his disciples in Galilee upon the mountain where he himself had imparted to them many of his teachings. The disciples prostrate themselves before Jesus, but some of them hesitate. What a curious thing is this persistence of weakness within us. We always hold something back from the Lord. It is hard for us to abandon ourselves to him completely. This is our state of poverty; this is how we are made. We are in a process of continual negotiation with the Lord. There is always something within us that remains unenlightened. Our unfulfilled happiness is always proportional to the portion of our heart that we hold back from God, to that portion of our heart that has given in to hesitation.

The power of Jesus is a power that is not simply terrestrial. It is a power to make heaven present on earth right now by forming relationships between disciples and God

Jesus proclaims his power. It is not the power of this earth which is in the dominion of Satan. The power of Jesus is that which unites heaven and earth. During the temptations in the Gospel of Luke, Satan declares that all power on earth has been given to him. This is a power that does not unite itself to heaven and is directed solely to the things here below. The power of Christ is of a different sort altogether, the power to unite heaven and earth, the power to use the things of earth in the service of heaven – as we say in the Our Father: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. As the Gospel passage makes clear, the power of Jesus is directed towards making disciples of all peoples. In the world there are disciples and there are people. The people are “self-made men” whose lives are lived in a self-referential way. Disciples, by contrast, live in relationship with their master. In Matthew’s Gospel, above all, Jesus is presented as the master who teaches. The disciple is not simply someone who listens to his teacher and leaves the relationship at this level. The disciple has an intimate relation with his master. In everything, he absorbs and learns and grows as a person. It is a wonderful thing to be a disciple and to have beautiful, novel, things revealed in every instant.

The Christian is one immersed in Father, Son and Spirit. This immersion is the foundation of his mission. When we are in intimate union with God, then we find it easy to transmit this union to others, forging relationships between them and God

The Christian, in fact, has a very special connection with his master. The Greek root for “baptism” means “to be immersed”. We are fully immersed in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in baptism, the sacrament that is the real centre of our Christian existence. The faith we profess involves being completely immersed in God, and then our Lord comes and immerses himself in us in the sacrament of the Eucharist. This mutual immersion makes us become a single entity. Heaven becomes present here on earth through our relationship with God. All of us experience heaven when we encounter a person who is immersed in God and God in him. The true disciple is fused with his master, has his master always with him in his heart. Such a disciple has the capacity to teach and pass on that which the master has entrusted to him. We are capable of teaching something when it is something that we truly live ourselves. If we try to teach people to do something using purely theoretical considerations, then we will have limited success. When I speak about something I love, I become very good at teaching that thing. I know the subject intimately and am able to describe its inner structure.

May 20^th 2018, Pentecost Sunday

GOSPEL  John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL  John 15:26-27; 16:12-15

Jesus said to his disciples:
"When the Advocate comes whom I will send you from the Father,
the Spirit of truth that proceeds from the Father,
he will testify to me.
And you also testify,
because you have been with me from the beginning.
"I have much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now.
But when he comes, the Spirit of truth,
he will guide you to all truth.
He will not speak on his own,
but he will speak what he hears,
and will declare to you the things that are coming.
He will glorify me,
because he will take from what is mine and declare it to you.
Everything that the Father has is mine;
for this reason I told you that he will take from what is mine
and declare it to you."

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The Gospel passage for this Pentecost Sunday tells us that the Holy Spirit will lead us to the fullness of truth. He does this, we are told, because he does not speak about himself but rather relates what he has heard from the Father and the Son. But, hold on a minute. Surely the Holy Spirit leads us to the truth because he knows the truth, not because he refuses to speak about himself? The Holy Spirit is love, and love never speaks about itself! The Holy Spirit is wholly oriented towards the other. If we are to have authentic marriages or friendships, then we too must be oriented towards the other. This message is not easy for us. We want to retain control over our own lives. We make ourselves and our own interests the fulcrum of our existence. That is why Jesus says that his message is too hard for us to bear all at once. Only the Holy Spirit can lead us to the kind of self-emptying love that is the foundation of real joy. Sometimes marriages start off well but run into difficulty because the spouses seek to base their relationship on their own qualities. But our own qualities are not an enduring fuel for true communion. True relationships are fuelled by the Holy Spirit, and he can only operate when we cease to rely on ourselves. Sometimes we try to mimic a Christian society by basing it on our own efforts at civility. Only the self-forgetting impulse of the Holy Spirit can provide the foundation for authentic communion.

The Holy Spirit is the one who is utterly oriented to the other, not to himself

On this Sunday of Pentecost we hear passages from St John’s Gospel which announce the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Advocate, the one who comes close to us and speaks to our hearts, the “Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father”. When he comes he will guide us to the fullness of truth, Jesus tells us, because he does not speak about himself. Rather he will relate what he himself has heard and will tell us of things to come in the future. This might sound a little strange. Surely he will guide us to the truth because he knows the truth, and not because he refuses to speak about himself? We tend to think of the truth as being a precise thing, a matter of content. But the truth is not simply a matter of content. The Holy Spirit is the one who does not speak about himself, but speaks what he has heard, what he has received from Jesus, and everything that is possessed by the Father is also possessed by Jesus. In other words, the Holy Spirit is love. Love does not talk about itself. It is not centred on one’s ego. Love speaks of the one who is loved. It speaks of God. The Holy Spirit speaks of the Father and of the son and of their relationship. It is hard to express this mystery because love is not something that can be put in a certain category. Rather it is communion. Love is much more than just a sentiment. It is not simply some sort of perfectionistic act. If someone approaches us and speaks to us with love, their words can sometimes be hard and challenging, yet we recognize that they are speaking for us, for our good.

It is frightening for us to lose control over everything. The Holy Spirit leads us down that path

The Holy Spirit says little about himself. He is not self-affirmative because he is love. This attitude can be a little bit scary for us. To be obedient to the Holy Spirit signifies to loosen one’s control over everything. The things that are ours only attain their meaning as a function of love. The things that Jesus has to relate to us of the Spirit are things that we can receive only gradually. For the moment, Jesus tells us, these things are too heavy for us to bear. We are incapable of living them and they would appear to us as a moralistic burden. It is only the Holy Spirit that can teach us to lose ourselves and no longer be at the centre of our own lives. We have a dark terror of no longer being at the centre of reality. In the first reading, the disciples attain the capacity to go out and lose themselves, speaking to and for others. This is an art that is not learned in one day, but the result of a long process of self-emptying.

We only mimic a truly Christian society if we do not build it on the Holy Spirit and the art of emptying oneself

Matrimony is a continuous adventure of progressive growth. Sometimes marriages that begin well go more and more wrong afterwards, often because the Holy Spirit has not been allowed to do his work. These are people who are as good and decent as anyone else, but they have sought the wrong kind of fuel for their marriage: they have tried to rely on their own strength. It is only when we lose ourselves that we make space for the love of God. Marriage is a process of ever greater emptying of oneself, a process of falling deeper and deeper in love. Such marriages are not just a theory or an ideal: they exist in the Church. They occur when two people recognize matrimony as a vocation, as a call that only the Lord can bring to completion. When we cease to be the centre of everything, then everything we do becomes a place where we lose ourselves and enter into the greatness of communion, the greatness of collaboration, of being together with others, of taking care of others. This is authentic family, authentic friendship, true society. A Christian society can only be constructed upon people who have been emptied of themselves. We can only mimic such a civil society if communion and the Holy Spirit are not placed at the centre.

Let us abandon ourselves to God and allow him to control our lives

This Pentecost let us have courage! To receive the Holy Spirit means to lose oneself and to place others at the centre of everything. Only God can do this. We are too fearful and lack the strength to bear this burden of completely losing our self-referential control over things. I wish everyone, and myself first of all, the grace to permit ourselves to lose this “battle” with God, to allow him to win within our souls.

 May 13^th 2018.  The Ascension of the Lord

GOSPEL: Mark 16:15-20

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL: Mark 16:15-20

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Go into the whole world
and proclaim the gospel to every creature.
Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved;
whoever does not believe will be condemned.
These signs will accompany those who believe:
in my name they will drive out demons,
they will speak new languages.
They will pick up serpents with their hands,
and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them.
They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.”
So then the Lord Jesus, after he spoke to them,
was taken up into heaven
and took his seat at the right hand of God.
But they went forth and preached everywhere,
while the Lord worked with them
and confirmed the word through accompanying signs.

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The Ascension has little to do with the triumph over gravity and everything to do with the culmination of Jesus’ journey back to his Father. The Father is the source, meaning and goal of everything.  Everything we do, if it is to be directed towards its rightful end, must be oriented to the Father. But Jesus’ Ascension is not just a movement back to the Father but a journey to the right hand of the Father. “Right hand” symbolizes Lordship. The Ascension is all about Jesus becoming Lord. What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord”? Does it mean he sits on a special throne? No, it is all about Jesus exercising dominion over us, and, as the Gospel tells us, this dominion is manifested in the signs that accompany us when we proclaim the Gospel. The proclaimers of the Gospel “drive out demons”, thus freeing people from the power of the deceiver. They “speak new languages” which refers to their capacity to speak with love, to communicate that which is born of God. They “take serpents in their hands” which means that they do not run away from reality but face up to it, confession their sins and acknowledging before the Lord the ways in which they have been deceived. They “drink deadly poison and are unharmed”, referring to the capacity of the Christian to be unaffected by the poisons that are present in our culture. And they “lay hands on the sick and heal them”, referring to the power of the Church to bring peace and healing to people by the imposition of hands.

The Ascension has little to do with the triumph over gravity and everything to do with the culmination of Jesus’ journey back to his Father

This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Ascension. The first reading narrates the actual event of the Ascension, but let us concentrate on the Gospel, which this year is from Mark. The sixth article of the Creed is that Jesus ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. But what does this mean? Is it concerned with the bodily victory over gravity and the transportation of Jesus to another place, a place that is not a place at all in the sense of our conception of space and time? What is sometimes forgotten is that this is the culmination of a pilgrim journey by Jesus to the Father. He came from the Father and now he returns to his origins. And this also is the goal of all human life: to return to the Father. The notion of Christian “ascent” is not concerned with people trying to achieve some sort of perfection with respect to personal integrity. Rather it is a movement towards God the Father. The Ascension teaches us to follow Jesus, in all the events of our lives, in his journey to the Father.

It is a journey to the right hand of the Father. And “right hand” symbolizes Lordship. The Ascension is all about Jesus becoming Lord

And it is not just a journey by Jesus to the Father, it is a journey to the right hand of the Father. The right hand is a symbol of action and power. As the psalms say, “the Lord’s right hand has triumphed, the Lord’s right hand has worked marvels”. To be seated at the right hand of the Father means to be the executor of his power, to truly be Lord. As the letter to the Philippians says, it is to receive the name which is higher than all names. What does it mean to say that Jesus is Lord? Does it mean that he is seated on a special throne that everyone can recognize is the highest position of all? Is it a seat like the seats of power in our human structures of bureaucracy? No, it is something different altogether.

What does it mean to say “Jesus is Lord”? Does it mean he sits on a special throne? No, it is all about Jesus exercising dominion

We are sent out into the whole world to announce the Gospel, and it is here that Jesus reveals himself to be Lord. “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned. These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will drive out demons, they will speak new languages. They will pick up serpents with their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them. They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” The Lord confirms the preaching of the disciples with the signs that accompany their preaching. He manifests himself as Lord in these signs. What exactly are the signs in question? The capacity to drive out demons refers to the ability to free people from the grip of the deceiver, from the devil who separates us from God. How many times throughout history people have been liberated from the grip of the deceiver. The ability to speak new languages refers to speak in a way that is new with respect to all other languages. It is the speaker that has been renewed by the new and eternal covenant, and he can now communicate that which is fresh, that which springs from God. Whoever has the love of God in their hearts is able to speak this new language. There are people who can speak eloquently with flawless logic and with an outstanding grip of the language, but often the content that they communicate is empty. And how often a child can talk in simple terms and touch your heart because they are able to speak with love. It is not about perfect articulation, but about having the capacity to communicate with love. We can listen easily to those who have love in what they say, who communicate effectively the maternal care of the Church. This is the new language spoken by authentic Christians.

The power of the Gospel liberates people from the power of Satan, it makes people recognize and reject the poisons inherent in our culture, and it brings peace and healing to those who are sick

We are told that the faithful will be able to take serpents in their hands. Some people try to live by escaping from reality, but serpents must be taken in hand. The serpent, the liar, who tries to sow confusion in our hearts, must be taken in hand and drawn out. In confession we name our sins and state clearly the ways that we have been deceived. This is what it means to take serpents in our hands. Their poison no longer has any effect on us because we consign them to God. “If they drink any deadly thing, it will not harm them”: generally in our time we are very conscious about not exposing ourselves to any poisonous substances. This is all very good, but the real poison that the Christian is not affected by is the poison inherent in our culture. “Everything is pure for the one who is pure” says St Paul. When our hearts have been touched by the truth, we recognize deceit. Its falsity becomes very apparent to us. We must remain small and humble, clinging to the Lord, so that we can be preserved by him. And the final sign of the Lordship of Christ is that the sick will be healed when hands are laid upon them. The Holy Spirit is transmitted by the imposition of hands and people are healed, some of them physically, whilst it is the heart that is healed more often. The riches of the Church – the Holy Spirit – can be transmitted by this gesture of laying on of hands, placing into the hearts of people peace, acceptance, freedom and love.

May 6^th 2018.  Sixth Sunday of Easter

GOSPEL   John 15:9-17

Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio

Don Fabio’s reflection follows the Gospel reading . . .

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GOSPEL   John 15:9-17

Jesus said to his disciples:
"As the Father loves me, so I also love you.
Remain in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love,
just as I have kept my Father's commandments
and remain in his love.
"I have told you this so that my joy may be in you
and your joy might be complete.
This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.
No one has greater love than this,
to lay down one's life for one's friends.
You are my friends if you do what I command you.
I no longer call you slaves,
because a slave does not know what his master is doing.
I have called you friends,
because I have told you everything I have heard from my Father.
It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you
and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain,
so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.
This I command you: love one another."

The Gospel of the Lord: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

Kieran’s summary . . . The effort to arrive at the fullness of life through the observance of laws never manages to reach its goal. Moralism is not just unpleasant, it is useless: it never leads us anywhere. Our hearts are never changed by means of the observance of a norm. Where is authentic new life really located? Wherever true love is to be found. As Jesus says, “Just as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you”. It is only in a relationship of love that we experience joy and fulfilment. There is all the world of difference between doing something according to a code of behaviour and doing the same thing out of love. The Lord is calling us to a life of love, not detached acts of obligation. We did not choose him, he chose us. He has loved us, elected us and given everything for us. He has opened up the riches of his life and invited us to partake of them. Let us welcome him and remain with him just as he remains with us. We will discover then that life is beautiful.

The first reading reveals how the Lord’s plan of salvation is intended for all of humanity

The first reading for the sixth Sunday of Easter is from Chapter 10 of the Acts of the Apostles. Peter sees an uncircumcised family receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. He then baptizes them on the spot because he sees that he cannot remain fixed in his ideas regarding salvation while the Lord is already moving ahead. This was something surprising and serious that the Church had to work through. It was necessary to accept that the Lord was calling those who did not belong to the chosen people. In fact, this reading is relevant for each one of us. It tells us that we can enter fully into the inheritance that the Lord has prepared for humanity since eternity.

No matter how hard we try to observe laws, such observance never brings us to an authentic kind of life. It is only in relationships of love that we experience joy and fulfilment

Peter has to accept something that he was not prepared for. What exactly is it that he has to accept? The Gospel throws light on this question. The most bitter diatribe that ever came from the mouth of Jesus was directed at those who were obsessively preoccupied with the observance of norms. Jesus brings another type of life, another way of living in fullness. In fact, the effort to arrive at the fullness of life through the observance of laws never manages to reach its goal. Moralism is not just unpleasant, it is useless: it never leads anywhere. No one’s heart is ever changed by means of the observance of a norm. Where is authentic new life really concentrated? Wherever true love is to be found. “Just as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you”. Jesus is the joyful Son of the Father and he carries this happiness to us, treating us according to that same happiness. We are called to remain in this happiness - “Remain in my love”. Even though our bodies might be moved to thousands of different places, with all of our hearts and minds we are called to remain within the love of God for each one of us.

There is all the world of difference between doing something according to a code of behaviour and doing the same thing out of love. The Lord is calling us to act out of love, not obligation

“If you keep my commandments, you will remain in my love . . .” Some people observe the Lord’s commandments without love.  The rich young man tells Jesus that he has observed all of the commandments since his youth, but he still does not experience the life that he yearns for. He has not changed. Nothing eternal has touched him inside. But when one remains within the love of God, he does not observe the commandments in order to be righteous, to feel ok with himself, to have a quiet conscience, to sleep easy at night. It is one thing to do something for you because it is an obligation, but an entirely different thing to do something because I want to be with you, because I want a genuine relationship with you. I do the things that you want because I want to be with you. There is all the world of difference between a life lived according to a code or a set of rules, and a life lived from the point of view of a valued relationship. Here we are not talking about living up to a certain model of behaviour but about giving one’s life for another. This is not something that can be understood rationally. It requires investing oneself completely in a relationship. Prayer according to this mode of relationship is not about completing some sort of devotional practice but about remaining with the Lord and uniting oneself with him. It is about having a serene and profound joy, not a vain human euphoria that vanishes quickly.

We did not choose the Lord, he chose us. He has elected us and given everything for us. He has opened up the riches of his life to us

The Lord Jesus wants to give us everything, and He cannot wait to meet someone who will open their hands to receive what He has to give. Through the events of our lives, we respond to this love, but not through acts that take their initiative from us. As the Gospel passage says: “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you”. It is the Lord’s initiative. He chooses us and we should know that we have been elected by him, like a woman who realises that a man truly loves her and wants to be with her profoundly in every area of her life. In the same way the Lord wants to throw open all of his riches for us. We are his. He has chosen us, elected us. The Lord Jesus has made his choice and is on our side from the very beginning. We are his property, but not in the sense of being dominated by him. Rather, he is on our side and values us completely. We are never nothing, never forgotten. He is ready to do everything for us. He says to us, “YOU ARE MINE!” We are for him because he is for us. As we say every time at the Eucharist, his body is for us. It has been given for us. Let us welcome him and remain with him and life will be beautiful.