June 27 2021. Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL Mark 5:21-43

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 5:21-43
When Jesus had crossed again in the boat
to the other side,
a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea.
One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward.
Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying,
"My daughter is at the point of death.
Please, come lay your hands on her
that she may get well and live."
He went off with him,
and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him.
There was a woman afflicted with haemorrhages for twelve years.
She had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors
and had spent all that she had.
Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.
She had heard about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd
and touched his cloak.
She said, "If I but touch his clothes, I shall be cured."
Immediately her flow of blood dried up.
She felt in her body that she was healed of her affliction.
Jesus, aware at once that power had gone out from him,
turned around in the crowd and asked, "Who has touched my clothes?"
But his disciples said to Jesus,
"You see how the crowd is pressing upon you,
and yet you ask, 'Who touched me?'"
And he looked around to see who had done it.
The woman, realizing what had happened to her,
approached in fear and trembling.
She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth.
He said to her, "Daughter, your faith has saved you.
Go in peace and be cured of your affliction."

While he was still speaking,
people from the synagogue official's house arrived and said,
"Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?" 
Disregarding the message that was reported,
Jesus said to the synagogue official,
"Do not be afraid; just have faith."
He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside
except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James.
When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official,
he caught sight of a commotion,
people weeping and wailing loudly.
So he went in and said to them,
"Why this commotion and weeping?
The child is not dead but asleep."
And they ridiculed him.
Then he put them all out.
He took along the child's father and mother
and those who were with him
and entered the room where the child was.
He took the child by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum,"
which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise!"
The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around.
At that they were utterly astounded.
He gave strict orders that no one should know this
and said that she should be given something to eat.

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

SHORTER HOMILY . . . The first reading from Wisdom tells us that God creates man for incorruptible life. The Gospel for Sunday begins with the statement that Jesus “crossed to the other side”. This is always a reference to the Passover, to redemption, and, in fact, the text tells the story of two women – both of whom are redeemed from death to life by their encounter with Jesus. Jesus is asked to lay his hands on the sick daughter of Jairus. This laying on of hands is usually an act of fatherhood, an act of bestowing the inheritance upon the children. Jesus agrees to go and in the meantime a woman who has haemorrhaged for twelve years touches his mantle. According to the rabbinic law, this woman with her loss of blood should not touch anyone. So we have two women, one who cannot be a mother because of her loss of blood, and the other who cannot become a mother because she dies on the threshold of maturity. How many young people struggle to become mature adults! How many adults struggle to have the capacity to be mature parents! Jesus comes to heal femininity, masculinity, fecundity, the capacity to be channels of life. All of us need to be visited by grace to bring to completion our capacity for maternity and paternity! There are many particulars in this passage regarding redemption, life and healing. Let us not attend the liturgy on Sunday to perform a ritual! Instead, let us approach the Lord to touch his mantle, and to be touched by him. Jesus can heal our haemorrhages and our illness if we allow him, but we look everywhere else to have solutions to our incompleteness! In this passage we see that many doctors failed to heal the woman, whilst the girl was not saved by the fact that her father was an official of the synagogue. All of our religious efforts and human science will never be able to heal us. What saves us is the fact that Christ has come. Jesus says to the girl, “Little girl, I tell you, arise!” Jesus calls all of us to life. Sometimes, we need permission or encouragement from someone in order to go ahead. When a parent has faith is his child, that trust helps them to grow. Christ shows similar faith in us and says to each one of us, “Arise!” permitting us to escape from our supressed and fearful existences. Within us there is something incomplete or unresolved, so long as we look within ourselves or to the world for permission to be. But Christ himself is saying to each one of us, “Arise!” As the first reading says, God created humanity for life, not for death.

LONGER HOMILY FOLLOWS . . . There are two ill women in the Gospel, one at the point of becoming a woman, and the other whose womanhood has suffered for twelve years. How are these women going to have their lives restored? The little girl is the daughter of the head of the synagogue. Can the Old Testament norms save her now? The other woman has spent all her money on doctors. Can human science or wisdom resolve her problem? St Paul says that the Jews look for miracles whilst the Greeks search for wisdom. These are the two avenues that we tend to go down when we are seeking for salvation. Either we follow the religious instinct, with its search for miracles; or we rely on human wisdom and try to resolve things rationally. The Gospel reveals, however, that it is only when we make contact with Christ (“foolishness” for the rationalist and a “stumbling block” for the religious instinct) that we can attain authentic life. The girl is healed when her father allows Jesus to become her father by laying his healing hands upon her. The woman is healed when she makes physical contact with the Lord. How do we respond to our losses of blood, our emptiness, our crises? With religious practices that are nothing more than our own actions? With the following of solutions that are based simply on human wisdom? Only relationship with Christ our Saviour can bring true redemption!

Two women are in need of life. How are they to attain it?

This Sunday we hear the stories of two women. One is a girl of twelve years old, whilst the other is a lady of unknown age who has suffered a very personal ailment for twelve years. The girl - at the point of becoming a woman – is dying, whilst the other is not able to live her femininity because of her condition. The first reading has a most important passage from Wisdom in which we are told that God did not create death and he does not rejoice in the destruction of the living. Instead he created things so that they might exist. The first thing God calls us to do is to live! We might have many tortured decisions to make but the primary thing for us to do is to live well. We are created for incorruptibility, to endure, to have authentic life. This raises the question of the real challenge facing these two women, one very young, the other an adult.

The girl’s father is head of the synagogue. Can the norms of the old law save his daughter?

In the case of the girl, her father implores Jesus to come and lay his hands upon his daughter. But this is no ordinary father – he is the head of the synagogue. In the Hebrew world, the act of laying hands was very much an act reserved exclusively to the father. For example, in the story of Isaac and Esau we see the relevance of the imposition of hands, which is the moment of the consignment of the inheritance. In the Gospel, Jairus has a daughter who is unable to become a woman. She is twelve years of age, the age at which womanhood begins to manifest itself with the beginning of the menstrual cycle. In the Jewish world, it was an age that marked the passage to adulthood. But this little girl is not going to make it to adulthood, it seems. The father is unable to help her and he turns to Jesus. He is head of the synagogue, immersed in all of the knowledge and norms of the Old Testament, but these norms now seem sterile as he watches his daughter die. The father understands that it is Jesus who can give new life. This responsibility must pass from him to Jesus. He must open himself to a new way of doing things.

The woman has spent a fortune of human wisdom, on doctors and medical help. Can human wisdom save her?

At the same time, we hear the story of this lady who has had a haemorrhage for twelve years. The passage remarks that she has suffered much, not from the haemorrhage itself, but at the hands of many doctors! These doctors attempt to solve her problem using human wisdom, but this lady has a problem that human wisdom is unable to deal with. One can spend all the money in the world trying to resolve one’s difficulties but without effect. It is interesting to parallel this text with the passage from St Paul from 1 Corinthians: “The Jews look for miracles and the Greeks seek wisdom”. Religions tend to have a moralistic aspect to them, but this is not the approach of Christ who operates by grace. We are asked to go beyond the religious instinct, beyond righteousness in the religious sense, beyond rites and devotions that remain solely our own actions. We need the second person of the Trinity to intervene. This head of the synagogue must learn to accept that he is impotent. But we do not need to go beyond simply the religious instinct. We must also go beyond rationality. As St Paul says, the cross of Christ is foolishness to Greeks. Rationality - the wisdom of men – has not healed this woman. Rather it has ruined her materially.

Neither religious practices nor human wisdom can save us. Only contact with Jesus, our true saviour, can bring us to life

How do we respond to our losses of blood, to the emptiness that we encounter, the unexpected tribulations that come our way? Do we respond with the religious instinct, the search for miracles, the mixing of elements of different faiths, or with immature and infantile religious practices? Christ does not bring this. He brings relationship. A father who is no longer able to be a father must accept that the only true father is God. He must consign his fatherhood to Christ. And the woman must touch the Lord, come to life because she has made contact with him. Not with wisdom, not with understanding, not with projects. How often we try to base our pastoral work on sociology, on profound analyses of our problems, but we still do not arrive at life because we have not touched the Lord. We must touch his mantle, have a real experience of him. We must be in contact with his life because it is his life that heals ours. Human wisdom does not provide the solution. It is eminently useful for understanding things, but not for saving things! For salvation we must turn to our only Saviour.

JUNE 20th 2021.  TWELFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL: Mark 4:35-41

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 4:35-41

With the coming of evening, Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Let us cross over to the other side.’ And leaving the crowd behind they took him, just as he was, in the boat; and there were other boats with him. Then it began to blow a gale and the waves were breaking into the boat so that it was almost swamped. But he was in the stern, his head on the cushion, asleep. They woke him and said to him, ‘Master, do you not care? We are going down!’ And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, ‘Quiet now! Be calm!’ And the wind dropped, and all was calm again. Then he said to them, ‘Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?’ They were filled with awe and said to one another, ‘Who can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’

 THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

SHORTER HOMILY . . . Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary time and the Gospel is from the fourth chapter of St Mark. Let us begin with the phrase that comes at the end of the passage: “Why are you so frightened? How is it that you have no faith?” This reveals that it is not just some simple story about Christ’s power over the elements. Rather, it is a paradigm of faith. Even though it is evening, Jesus directs the disciples to cross the Sea of Galilee, a sea that is very susceptible to bad storms at night. Of course, the phrase “to pass over to the other side” evokes the dramatic crossing of the Red Sea. It was a paradigmatic event of the faith for Israel and represents the event of liberation from slavery and entering into freedom. This is a characteristic of faith. It permits us to pass over to the other side at moments of anguish, at times when our own strengths fail. The disciples get into the boat and begin their journey and then the storm begins. There is always a storm in life! In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the parable of the man who builds his house upon rock while the other builds it on sand. For both of them, the storm comes! Being built on rock does not stop the storm. What tends to happen in life is that we make God into a “pocket god”, someone we carry around in our pockets until the moment when he is needed. The disciples take Jesus in the boat and discover that they are not able to overcome the storm by themselves. Jesus is asleep and seems useless. In fact, we make Jesus useless by the way we reduce him to someone to be invoked only when all else fails. It is essential that we pass from a relationship of instrumentalising Jesus to a relationship of trusting abandonment. When the disciples finally invoke Jesus as Lord, which he is, he tells the storm to be silent. This is the same phrase used in exorcisms, because these forces of nature have in them the aspect of worldliness. It is worldliness that enters the boat and enters the Church and prevents the Church from accomplishing its mission. This is the story of the faith. Storms happen very often in life. When they occur, let us stop using the Lord and instead entrust ourselves to him. Faith is an experience of God in the storm. In the first reading, Job is living a time of great suffering but encounters God in the hurricane. Faith is the passing to the other side in the midst of our tribulations. Let us let go of the steering wheel (by which we also try to tell Jesus the way he should go) and give ourselves over to him. This is true of us individually and also for the Church as a whole. Let us consign ourselves into the hands of the Father.

LONGER HOMILY FOLLOWS

Job is in the midst of a terrible crisis, but the Lord reveals himself as the one who has power over the chaotic and uncontrollable

God speaks to Job in the middle of the hurricane. Job has been going through a terrible period of trial and tribulation, an enormous test of his faith that brings him to a direct experience of God. And he experiences God in the midst of the storm, the suffering, the absurd. God proclaims himself in a strange way, in a way that Job did not expect. The Lord announces that he has power over the sea when it “leapt tumultuous out of the womb, when I wrapped it in a robe of mist and made black clouds its swaddling bands.” This poetic language evokes the account of how the Lord created the universe from chaos, darkness and non-governability. Yet these seas are easy for the Lord to control; the passage in Job tells us: “Come thus far, I said, and no farther: here your proud waves shall break”.

The disciples are crossing the water – an image of the Passover. But they seek to do it all by themselves, relying only on their own capacities.

In the Gospel the disciples comes to know the Lord in the interior of a storm. They ask themselves: “Who is this that even the seas and storms obey?” Of course there is only one person that the seas and elements obey – God himself. The disciples are crossing the lake. This is a classical Passover image – the crossing of water. But the disciples are undertaking this challenge all by themselves. This is the typical attitude of the human being: to rely on oneself. But he who seeks to depend only on himself will never get beyond himself, whilst he who puts his trust in God will arrive at a more profound knowledge of God.

It is only when the situation is desperate that we start to realize what really matters and begin to call on the Lord’s name

The image of God sleeping is curious and evokes the moment when Jesus will be sleeping in death after his crucifixion. On Holy Saturday, Jesus is shrouded in silence and impotence, and humanity is conscious of the evil that it has perpetrated in killing the Just One. The centurion, who presided over his killing, looks on Jesus and says, “Truly this is God”. Holy Saturday is the moment when we are stopped in our tracks and all we can do is seek the resist that which is greater than us: when we rage against the wind and the sea, against that which cannot be brought under control. How many marriages refuse to seek help, striving instead to do everything with their own miserable capacities, arriving ultimately at shipwreck! How many people refuse to renounce their absorption in themselves and their reliance on their own way of thinking! They need to awaken God! The Lord cannot enter our lives until we call out, “Enter! Wake up!” In the Gospel, Jesus waits until the boat is filled with water and ready to capsize. It is only then that the disciples realize that they cannot depend on their own talents to continue. It is only when the storm is at its height that we begin to ask ourselves, “What really counts in my life?” It is only then that the eternity of God begins to come into relief and that we start to call on his name. It is only when the situation is out of control that we begin to realize what really matters.

This Sunday let us call on the Lord’s name, asking him to control the chaos, disorder and storms in my life.

Jesus reveals that he is not merely their Master, but something much more. He tells the storm to abate and it does so immediately. This is the same dominion that Jesus reveals in his exorcisms. In the midst of all the storms of life, God has the power to manifest himself. He can block that which is disordered and chaotic within all of us. This Sunday we are all invited to say, “Lord there are many things that are greater than me. It is foolish of me to try to confront these things by myself. Wake up Lord and do that which you know to be right! Bring things to the conclusion that you and you alone wish. I know that you are my Lord. Help me to prostrate myself before you and be aware of who you are, instead of being constantly preoccupied by who I am”.

 June 13^th 2021. Eleventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

GOSPEL   Mark 4:26-34

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

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

(Check us out on Facebook – Sunday Gospel Reflection)

GOSPEL   Mark 4:26-34
Jesus said to the crowds: ‘This is what the kingdom of God is like. A man throws seed on the land. Night and day, while he sleeps, when he is awake, the seed is sprouting and growing; how, he does not know. Of its own accord the land produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. And when the crop is ready, he loses no time: he starts to reap because the harvest has come.’

He also said, ‘What can we say the kingdom of God is like? What parable can we find for it? It is like a mustard seed which at the time of its sowing in the soil is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet once it is sown it grows into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade.’

Using many parables like these, he spoke the word to them, so far as they were capable of understanding it. He would not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were alone.

The Gospel of the Lord.

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

SHORTER HOMILY . . . These short parables from Mark’s Gospel are short and simple but very significant. The parable of the sower reveals that the spiritual life is analogous to biological life. The characteristics of biological life are that it is something gradual, something dynamic, which begins from an event of fertilisation. This event is not a mental thing; it is not something that can be achieved simply by thinking or with effort. There is always an element of gift in the generation of new life. In an analogous manner, the Lord gifts us with his word which generates new life in us. This new life cannot be generated by our intelligence or our effort. Our task is to welcome this life. As the parable makes clear, the power of the seed is not determined by the man who sows. Whether he is asleep or awake, the seed has a power all of its own. In a similar way, the word of the Lord is invested with the power of God. Each Christian is unique, generated by the Father and unrepeatable, just as every human life has a unique and unrepeatable genetic blueprint. The word of God, sown in us, gives rise to our missionary activity. Just as seed sown in the ground results in fruit, so too we have been created to bear fruit. There is a synthesis between the word of God sown in us and our unique characteristics. Now consider the second parable. It might seem like a small thing, this welcoming of the seed of the word, but it can provide shelter for many. The seed of the word is sown in the ground of each unique Christian, but it is an organic thing because there is one Spirit creating a united multiform reality. This fruitful Christian life is attractive to other people because there is a peacefulness and mercifulness about that person. People can find in him the shelter of the glory of God. May the Lord bring this word to fruition in the Church, following this dynamic of beginning small and insignificant, but become greater. This is the way that life works. We can’t ask for fruit when it is not time for fruit. The seed must first be present, and it will achieve its goal if it is welcomed and nourished.

LONGER HOMILY FOLLOWS

The liturgy this week presents us with analogies from the world of agriculture

The readings for Sunday speak about horticultural matters. This might seem a banal theme but in reality it is a very serious one. In the first reading from chapter 17 of the prophet Ezekiel, the Lord puts an analogy before his people. He will take a shoot from a cedar tree and plant it on top of the highest mountain. It will become a magnificent tree and demonstrate to all that it is the Lord who makes short trees grow tall and humiliates the great trees. The Lord alone governs these matters. Similarly, in the Gospel. Jesus presents two facts from the world of agriculture. When a sower throws seed on the land, the harvest that results has little to do with the qualities of the man who planted it. The seed produces first the shoot, then the ear, then the grain in the ear. Jesus also holds up the example of the mustard seed, which is tiny but becomes the greatest of shrubs.

Jesus uses parables from everyday life because the life of faith has a dynamism that reflects the rhythm of other things in God’s creation

What is his point? At the end of the Gospel we are told: “He would not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything to his disciples when they were alone.” There is a sense in which the discourse of Jesus is veiled and is in need of interpretation. The reading from Ezekiel and the parables from Mark point to the fact that life has its own internal mechanism. Life has a dynamic of its own that cannot either be forced or disregarded. The mustard seed does not jump from being a seed to being a great tree in a single stage. It must first produce a shoot and go through other stages before becoming fruitful. And our spiritual life has a similar pattern. Jesus speaks in parables because – as John Paul II explained in a beautiful homily – all of the world is a parable. All of the world speaks to us of what the Lord wishes to accomplish in us. Life in general has a dynamism that parallels the life of faith.

Just as a seed evolves through its various stages, so too our spiritual lives must be allowed to evolve gradually. It is damaging to try to aspire to the spiritual heights before we are ready

The first point is that life belongs to God. It is God who makes the little tree grow great and brings the great tree low. We like to think that we are in control of our existence. We yearn to govern the progress of our lives, but so often we find that the control we seek has slipped away from us. We discover that life has a rhythm that is different to the one that we would like to impose on it. When we seek to rebel against the logic of life – and this is also a very grave bioethical issue - we find that life rebels against us. We have the delirium of thinking that we can govern and manipulate biological life in all of its stages, failing to realize that life has its own internal wisdom that must be respected. The same is true in the spiritual life. Just as a seed must be allowed to evolve through its gradual stages, so too any forced advancement in spiritual matters is extremely damaging. There is an essential gradualism in matters both anthropological and theological. It is not beneficial to take a person and place him in a situation that is too mature for him. The essential point is that we cannot dictate how things must progress; instead our task is to welcome the situation as it naturally evolves. The spiritual life progresses according to a rhythm that is given only by God. It is a terrible thing when we seek to dictate our spiritual evolution ourselves, aspiring to become like Saint Francis in four easy steps. The illusion that we can attain advanced spiritual development in a short time will only lead to frustration. This consideration is even more important when it comes to dealing with others. We must respect the natural rhythm of spiritual progress. It is damaging to expect them to make a particular spiritual step in response to our hurry. Haste does not lead to productive results, neither in biological matters nor in spiritual ones.

The things of God begin simply but become solid and mature, whilst the things that are not of God often begin spectacularly but end in disaster

That which begins humbly leads to something great. And so it is with the Kingdom of God. We tend to seek that which is glorious and victorious, that which imposes itself upon others, but the Lord wills that his designs begin humbly and evolve in step with his rhythm. Say that a farmer wants his tree to produce its harvest two months earlier than usual: anything he does to try to coerce the tree to deliver up its fruit in advance will have little effect; the fruit comes when it comes. The things of God progress according to his timing, whether we like it or not. These things of the Lord are humble but immensely powerful, whereas the things that are not of God often begin impressively but end in disaster. As with the wedding feast of Cana, the things of the Lord reserve the best wine until last, whilst the things of the world are sweet at the beginning and bitter afterwards. The things of the Lord, begin humbly but become solid and fruitful, whilst the projects that are not of God initiate in a spectacular fashion but disappoint at the end. These mundane things do not go towards eternity but towards death. Let us allow our lives to be carried along by the wisdom of God!

June 6th 2021.  Feast of Corpus Christi

GOSPEL   Mark: 12-16, 22-26

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

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

(Check us out on Facebook – Sunday Gospel Reflection)

GOSPEL   Mark: 12-16, 22-26

On the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread,

when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, Jesus’ disciples said to him,

"Where do you want us to go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?"

He sent two of his disciples and said to them,

"Go into the city and a man will meet you,

carrying a jar of water. Follow him. Wherever he enters, say to the master of the house,

'The Teacher says, "Where is my guest room

where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?"'

Then he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready.

Make the preparations for us there."

The disciples then went off, entered the city, and found it just as he had told them;

and they prepared the Passover. While they were eating,

he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, gave it to them, and said,

"Take it; this is my body."

Then he took a cup, gave thanks, and gave it to them, and they all drank from it.

He said to them, "This is my blood of the covenant, which will be shed for many.

Amen, I say to you, I shall not drink again the fruit of the vine

until the day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God."

Then, after singing a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives.

THE GOSPEL OF THE LORD: Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ

SHORTER HOMILY . . . On this feast of Corpus Christi we read the account of the preparation and eating of the Passover from St Mark’s Gospel. It is important not to consider the Eucharist as a static entity. Rather it is a participation in the dynamic events of the liberation of humanity by Christ. Jesus tells the disciples to follow a man carrying a pitcher of water who will lead them to the upper room. This is a symbol of baptism, of being transported to a higher level lived according to the perspective of God. The Lord has already prepared the Passover, prepared our liberation, and we are invited to prepare ourselves and enter. The Lord consecrates the bread and wine into his body and blood, but it is our task to prepare the bread and wine, which is done during the presentation of the gifts using an ancient Hebrew prayer of blessing. Our humanity is offered up in that bread and wine and it is transformed into Christ. The Eucharist calls us to live our humanity as a reality consecrated by God. In a sense, we are asked to live out our humanity in such a way that it ascends to the upper room, a higher and more beautiful level. Women and men are never so beautiful as when they live according to the will of God, carrying the invisible God in their every act and thought. We are invited to live this dynamic where our humanity and actions are transformed into Christ. Participation in the Eucharist is a call to transform our human existence into an existence as children of God, no longer simply a biological reality but a spiritual reality. In the Eucharist, the elements retain their properties, and so do we, but spiritually we become the body of Christ. Twice during the Mass, the celebrant calls on the Holy Spirit, once upon the bread and wine, and the second time upon the assembly of people. We celebrate the Eucharist in order to become the body of Christ, to achieve real union between us. His blood courses in our veins because we have received him in Communion. The goal of all of this is that we become the presence of Christ in this world, even in our simplest acts. The basilica of St Clement in Rome has a mosaic with Christ at the centre of a great tree which encompasses saints, martyrs and everyday scenes such as a women feeding the chickens.  Even an everyday act can become something which has heaven inside it! This is the power of the Eucharist which we celebrate this Sunday.

LONGER HOMILY FOLLOWS

The Old Covenant involved the people of Israel abiding by certain norms

This Sunday we celebrate the feast of the Body and Blood of Christ. The first reading deals with the Old Covenant whilst the Gospel describes the institution of the New Covenant in the blood of Jesus. Blood is mentioned in both texts. In the first reading the people commit themselves on two occasions to abide by the norms of the covenant. This old covenant followed the patterns of other covenants in the near east. Both parties agreed to uphold certain norms, and the agreement was solemnised by the aspersion of blood in a threatening manner. Blood represented life and this ritual signified that the very life of the people was at stake in this event. One side had the right to the life and the blood of the other if the covenant was not respected. In some covenants, it was the sovereign who had the right to the life of the vassal if he did not match up to the demands imposed upon him. There was a threat implicated by any transgression. In the case of Israel the norms were encoded in the ten commandments written upon the two tables of the law. In order for God and the people to maintain their covenant relationship, the people were obliged to keep the law and the Lord would in turn be their saving God. We might think that this relationship was of the archaic sort, but it is actually of a type that still characterizes “horizontal” relationships. Friendships usually involve reciprocal expectations of this sort.

Relationships involve reciprocal commitments, but all of us fail to measure up to some degree

What is the difficulty with this arrangement, indeed with all of our relationships? We are expected to be faithful to certain norms, but in reality no-one manages to measure up fully. We know the importance of authentic relationships, but we still fail. None of us manages to respond in an adequate way to the Lord, and the same goes for all of our other relationships. We are never the friend we ought to be, the husband or child that we ought to be. All of us are inadequate in this sense. Certainly, some people are more consistent and coherent than others, but all of us reveal our cracks and limitations sooner or later. Does this mean that unhappiness and dissatisfaction with ourselves is inevitable?

Our failures prepare us to allow Jesus to enter our lives. Through his sacrifice we are enabled to become, finally, faithful

No, unhappiness is not inevitable! The failures of our covenants is of great importance because it is then that we realize that we can do nothing by ourselves. Into this insufficiency of ours comes the Lord Jesus. The threat of life to him is radically concrete. He gives his life and sheds his own blood. And, in his blood, humanity is enabled, finally, to become faithful. Through the body of Christ we become, not by our own efforts but through grace, not by our own consistency but by pure gift, to enter finally into the covenant. In Christ, a faithful covenant between humanity and God is possible. Why does the sacrament of matrimony involve fidelity and indissolubility? Because the grace of God is present. Without his work we cannot presume that genuine fidelity is possible. Indissolubility cannot be imposed as if it were a human rule, but in Christ it becomes possible. The Father sent his Son so that he would take upon himself the flesh of humanity and make our “Yes” possible. He becomes incarnate in the womb of the Virgin Mary, whose “Yes” also came by grace, by virtue of the Immaculate Conception. Not only the Virgin Mary but all of humanity has been graced by the visit of the Son of God. Do we think that we can measure up to the demands of God by our own efforts, by gritting our teeth and bringing a spiritual hernia upon ourselves? No, it is the Lord Jesus who is our sanctification and redemption and purification.

Our task is to welcome the Lord into our lives. Only in him can we make an adequate response to God

In welcoming the Lord Jesus in the Eucharist, in becoming one body with him, he becomes in us the faithful ally of God; he is the one who adequately responds to the Covenant. When we eat his body and drink his blood, we become united to him. Our art is to lose ourselves in him, not pretend that we by ourselves can measure up to the Covenant with the Lord. The Holy Spirit within us enables us to live out this great reality. This Sunday we celebrate the Covenant with God in Christ. We can be spouses, siblings, colleagues, parents – everything that we are called to be – in the Lord Jesus. We might be weak, but we cling as one body to the Lord Jesus and life becomes beautiful. We are not called to be strong but to ally ourselves with the One who is strong.