NOVEMBER 4th. THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Mark 12:28-34

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

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The greatest commandment exhorts us to love God with all of our hearts, souls, mind and strength. Don Fabio says that by reflection on this commandment we can discover the complexity and beauty of the human person. To love with all of our heart signifies to stop pursuing the small, futile things to which we dedicate our lives, and instead make God the centre of our existence. To love with all of our mind means to stop nourishing our thoughts with the trash, distorted images, consumerist philosophies and superficial values that have become the daily diet of our minds. Instead we must cultivate in our minds the beautiful and varied things that are worthy of God. The scribe in the Gospel understands Jesus words, but he does not take the step from understanding the Kingdom to entering the Kingdom. Help us Lord to cross the threshold between understanding and action! Help us to listen to you and dedicate our hearts to you, nourishing our minds and souls with things that are worthy of you, and to fill our days with humble acts of love.

Do we put God in first place every day in our lives?

A scribe approaches Jesus and poses the classic question, “Which is the greatest of all the commandments?” The answer would have fairly evident, since, as a Jew, the scribe would have repeated a number of times each day, “Listen Israel, the Lord your God is one Lord, and you must love him with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.” We have heard these words many times, but do we ever really think about what they mean? This is presented to us as the greatest of the commandments, which means that whatever great achievements we think we might have accomplished in life, if we have not fulfilled this commandment then we have done nothing. If we do not put God in first place every day in our lives, then everything we do lacks substance.

The first step every day is to stop and listen to the Lord

The first words of the saying are crucially important, “Listen Israel!” The first thing that must be done is to turn our attention to the Lord. The word “obedience” is derived from the verb “to listen”. The first thing that we are asked to do in life is to fix our attention completely on the Lord. We think we are completely free, with the liberty to do what we please, but we are wrong. Before we ever act, we have already given our attention to something; our interest and our motivation are already being pulled in certain directions. That is why it is essential to take stock of where our interests and attention are fixed, and to turn them back decisively to the Lord.

                When people ask for help, the first thing we have to tell them often is to listen to the Lord. When marriages are in difficulty, when lives have gone down tortuous complicated paths, the first thing that must be done is to stop and turn our attention to God. If we continue to do things as we have always done them; if we continue to operate out of the same mentality, then things will remain exactly as they are. I must open myself to doings things in a new way. I must be ready to leave behind my system of doings things and be prepared to be surprised by God’s way of doing things. I might think that I can live for my own goals, using my own principles, taking my own paths. But living life without being rooted in God leads nowhere. Often, the first thing that we need to do is to stop and be silent. In situations of difficulty, the first step towards a resolution is to start listening, stop absolutizing the “word” that we have inside, and open oneself to accept a different word.

There is only one God. We must place him above the other small things that take the place of God in our lives

We must open ourselves to God, recognizing that he is one – the only one necessary. He is the only one that has ultimate meaning, and by recognizing this we start to get our priorities right. In our daily lives, we lose ourselves in the pursuit of many small things, but there is only one great thing that is ultimately significant. If we do not purse that one great thing, then of what value is the possession of all the smaller things? We are asked thus to listen, to reorder our priorities through listening, and to make God the most important focus in our lives.

Love with all your heart: This means to give God THE central place in our lives

The greatest of the commandments reveals to us that the fundamental thing that we are called to do in life is to love. The relationship with God is not to be one of obligation or slavery, but one of love. Once we focus on what this love consists in, then we embark on a journey of discovery of the beauty of the nature of the human being. Firstly, we are to love with all of our hearts. The heart represents the centre of our very essence, the principle of the unity of our being. To love God with all of our hearts means to be attached to him with all of our being. Love is the only authentic kind of relationship that exists. If the relationship between friends is not one of authentic love, if the relationship between parent and child is not one of genuine love, then what kind of relationship is it?  If colleagues at work do not have a relationship built on genuine love, then what does the relationship consist in? Convenience? Utility? At the centre of our being, in this place we call the “heart”, if there is not the joy of encounter with God, then unfortunately, something else must be there. Solitude, darkness, love of unworthy things. How many of us have love for the wrong things in our hearts! This Gospel calls each of us to heal these mistaken tendencies and announces clearly that our hearts can be healed and priorities in our lives restored.

Love with all your soul: this means to open our entire psychological and mental apparatus to God

In Greek the word for “soul” is “psyche”. If this Gospel calls us to the healing of our hearts, it also announces the healing of our entire mental apparatus. The tendencies nowadays is to analyse endlessly the causes and the blames for our psychological neuroses and fixations. What is needed, first and foremost, is to open our minds to love God. It is only in the encounter with God that many things are pardoned and healed.

Love with all your mind: this is a call to hygiene of the mind, nourishing our ways of thinking with words, images and ideas that are worthy of God, instead of the rubbish that has become the daily diet of our minds.

The greatest commandment asks us to love God with our ways of thinking, with all of our minds. There are ways of thinking that are right and good, and there are ways of thinking that are mistaken. How do we nourish our minds? We persist in nourishing our minds with the greatest rubbish imaginable! When we feed our children, we make sure that the food is clean and of the highest quality. We don’t give them food off the ground. Yet, on an everyday level, we continue to feed our minds with trashy images, with superficial and distorted visions of the nature of the person and of human existence. We continue to watch, listen and talk about things that have the minimum of reason or depth behind them, drinking in the propaganda of crass consumerist philosophies. In the last century, the human being nourished his mind with mistaken ideologies that painted a false picture of history and humanity, leading to unimaginable evil and the destruction of human life. We fill our minds with rubbish and we are urgently in need of hygiene of the mind, of the things we cultivate with our minds.

Love with all your strength: this means dedicating ourselves completely to developing and increasing our capacity to love

“Love the Lord your God with all of your strength.” The human being is remarkable in the way that he can apply himself with all of his strength to particular tasks, even if that task is virtually worthless! What are you applying yourself to these days? Some people are highly professional in work but completely illiterate when they return home to their families. There are people who are extremely talented in the things of this world, but incapable of performing a genuine act of love, unwilling to develop their capacities to accomplish that which lasts forever.

We understand this Gospel. Are we willing to take the final step and act on it?

How many beautiful things we are called to in life! The greatness and the resoluteness that we are called to have in our hearts! The healing that we are called to accomplish in our souls! The beautiful and worthy ways of thinking that we are asked to cultivate! The most important part of this Gospel passage has yet to come. The scribe agrees with what Jesus says about love of God and love of neighbour and replies, “It’s true. What you say is really true!” Jesus tells him that he is not far from the Kingdom of God. In a well-known children’s game, one of the children says “hotter!” or “colder!” when the other child approaches or moves away from a hidden object. Being “hotter” is of no use at all in this game if the object is not eventually found. Jesus says “hotter!” to the scribe, but the only thing that matters is to arrive at the final destination. To be one step away from the Kingdom but not to enter into the Kingdom signifies to understand but not to obey. We can understand the beautiful things that this Gospel places before us, but we can still refuse to enter in. It would almost be better not to know them at all if in the end one refuses to enter. That the Lord might grant us the grace to launch ourselves across that threshold between understanding and doing! All that matters, despite all of our internal contradictions, is to try in small ways to take that step. Help us Lord this week - in our hearts, our souls, our thoughts, our actions - to cultivate small, humble, acts of love towards God.

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OCTOBER 28^th. THIRTIETH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Gospel: Mark 10:46-52

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

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As always Don Fabio asks us to apply this Gospel directly to ourselves. We are all blind like Bartimaeus. We feel an anguish and restlessness in our hearts because we have a God-given intuition that we live in darkness, distant from the fullness of life. This natural anguish should not be buried in the hustle and bustle of our lives but should become the basis for a prayer like that of Bartimaeus, “Lord, that I might see!”  

The prayer of Bartimaeus is powerful because he desperately wants to see the light. Often our prayer is dull and lifeless because we are not sufficiently interested in seeing the light

In this celebrated passage we are presented with Bartimaeus, the man who has learned the art of prayer. “Jesus Son of David, have pity on me!” This is a prayer from the heart and, as such, is the greatest weapon against temptation - a profession of faith accompanied with a cry for help. As Jesus walks by, Bartimaeus utters this cry with every breath, stating in one line who Jesus is and who he himself is. Though it may be brief, this is a very important Gospel that teaches us many things. When Bartimaeus is asked by Jesus what his prayer consists in, the blind man replies, “Lord that I may see!” The powerful nature of Bartimaeus prayer derives from his memory that light exists. He is not resigned to an existence in darkness and knows that another state of life is possible. Often our prayer is empty and dull because we lack a strong interior intuition of the realm of beauty that prayer connects us to. No-one asks in a genuine way for something that they are not interested in. Prayers, liturgies and rituals become dull if the people involved are not interested in what the liturgies are oriented towards. We “pray” out of a bureaucratic sense of obligation, not knowing or caring what we are doing.

We are all blind like Bartimaeus. God has planted in our hearts a desire for the true light, which reveals itself as a sort of anguish, an anguish that we should not try to suppress or deny

God has placed in our hearts a memory of the true light! In moments of anguish, we glimpse this original spark and it enables us to pray sincerely. Such anguish is a gift from God. We are gifted by God with a sense of non-fulfilment, a feeling of distance from the fullness of life. It is a great mistake if we try to bury this anguish that reveals the truth about our existence. We make a colossal error if we go into marriage or the consecrated life trying to eke out a soft existence, trying to distract ourselves from the anguish that comes from our own insufficiencies and our distance from the light. We must all cry continually with Bartimaeus, “That I might see!” The verb in Greek that Bartimaeus uses doesn’t just mean “to see” but means “to see in a superior way”. We shouldn’t think that blindness is something that Bartimaeus and others suffer from whilst we can see perfectly. We are all blind in the most important sense, and perhaps Bartimaeus has better vision than us in that he at least recognizes the saving power of the Lord Jesus.

We remain blind until we see from a divine perspective

Until I see things from a divine perspective, I remain blind. When Eve looks at the forbidden tree in the Book of Genesis she sees with eyes that are already blind. She sees the path of transgression as a means of coming to fulfilment, the betrayal of God’s trust as something acceptable. This is the vision that all of us have, and it allows us to place ourselves in opposition to our creator and to the rest of creation. I look at the things around me and don’t see the reality, beauty and divine order that is present. It is not reality that is defective but my way of looking. In Matthew’s Gospel we hear, “If your eyes are afflicted with illness, then how great the darkness is!” To truly see means being finally able to see love, beauty, and the providence of God at work in everything, to see the design of God active in my life, to see oneself for what one truly is.

                Those who are too attached to their own way of seeing things end up noticing only the defects of others. They look around them and see only problems. All of us to some extent share in this way of viewing reality. When we recuperate our sight, we begin to see the beauty of other people, other things, the events of life. We look and finally see with spiritual eyes. Saint Francis said, “Most high and glorious God, illuminate the darkness of my heart!” There is darkness at the heart of the human person, and every day we need to shout “Lord, come to save me! Give me sight! Without you I am blind and see in only a superficial way!” To discover joy, cheerfulness, beauty and love, I need my eyes to be opened to the light.

People try to shout Bartimaeus down but he does not accept compromise. Our daily lives are full of murmuring voices telling us to compromise on our inner desire to live fully in the light.

Bartimaeus shows us how to ask the Lord for sight. In the first place he cries aloud like a madman. While he is shouting, people tell him to be quiet. Our daily existence is filled with murmuring voices that tell us to accept the darkness, to adapt ourselves to the way things are, to put up with the mediocrity of our lives. But Christianity and mediocrity are two things that are fundamentally incompatible with each other! It is inconsistent to be a Christian and to put up with anything less than the fullness of life. The Christian has a thirst for the infinite. This doesn’t mean that the Christian is irrational or filled with anxiety. What it means rather is that the Christian is naturally driven to search out the infinite with the help of God.

                This blind man does not resign himself to his blindness and cries aloud. People tell him to stay quiet but he cries out all the louder. We must do the same. We must relentlessly cry out until we have the light in our hearts. This Gospel challenges us in a fundamental way. Do we wish to remain in darkness or do we wish to live in the light? We must persistently cry out until the Lord stops and shatters our darkness. Why does Jesus not stop immediately when the blind man cries out? Because often our supplications are not sincere. Often our prayers are made just for the sake of “praying” and then we get fed up and stop completely. Jesus wants to see if we sincerely want our eyes to be opened, or if are ready to give up at a moment’s notice. Often our prayers come to an end quickly because we are not sufficiently consumed with obtaining what we ask for. If we thought we could gain materially by asking for something, then we would ask with fervour! But material gain only leaves us in darkness and is of no authentic use. Do we want to be materially rich or do we want to have light in our hearts and know how to live?

Bartimaeus throws away his only material possession and comes to Jesus. Often we approach Jesus whilst still clinging to materialism.

The blind man knows that he must persist in his prayer. He remembers the light and wants to have it above all else. His persistence makes Jesus stop and Jesus asks that the man come to him. Bartimaeus throws aside his cloak and jumps up immediately. His cloak is a symbol of his condition and his way of life. He comes to Jesus while he is still blind, leaving behind him the cloak which is his only possession. He has understood that material possessions are nothing in comparison to what Jesus can give. Often our responses to Jesus are very half-hearted. We want him to enter our lives but we also want to hang on to the “cloak” of our previous materialistic existence, not appreciating that once the grace of God is here, everything is rich and beautiful.

Bartimaeus knows what he wants the Lord to do for him. Have we looked into our hearts sufficiently closely to discern what we want the Lord to do for us?

So the blind man comes, and Jesus asks what he wants to be done for him. Often we do not know what we want the Lord to do for us. The Lord is asking us, “What do you want me to do for you?” and we are there with our mouths open, not knowing what we want. We do not know what we want because we have not looked inside ourselves and tried to discern what is of true and lasting value. This Gospel invites us to enter into prayer and look deeply inside of ourselves. Prayer should not consist in forcing oneself to pray for heaven knows what favour to be granted. As Bartimaeus demonstrates, prayer should be the search for the fullness of light and life.

OCTOBER 21st. TWENTY-NINTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Gospel: Mark 10:35-45
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
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This Sunday’s Gospel challenges us to forego our own desires and aspirations, and to conform ourselves to the will of God for each of us. It highlights the fact that our prayer tends to consist in what we want the Lord to do for us, rather than being a process of conforming ourselves to what He wants for us. It challenges us to allow our desires and aspirations to be “baptized” with the baptism that Christ himself undergoes. Instead of viewing life as a process of pursuing our own desires and aspirations, we must be ready to accept the will of the Father for each of us. The acceptance of this will, the drinking of the chalice that He prepares for us, will ironically lead to the very glory that James and John aspire after.

The Gospel is divided into two parts: an incredible-sounding request by James and John, and a teaching from Jesus that is directed to all of the disciples

The Gospel this Sunday is divided into two scenes. Firstly, we have the request by James and John that they be given seats beside Christ when he comes into his glory. Secondly we have a teaching from Jesus that is directed at all of the disciples. Normally the focus is placed on the second part of the Gospel and the assertion by Jesus that he did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. In this assertion Jesus gives a statement of his mission. A ransom was the sum that had to be paid in order to obtain freedom for a slave. We are the slaves and Jesus must pay for our freedom with his blood.

Much of our prayer resembles the petition made by James and John

The second part of the Gospel, thus, contains something of the greatest importance and it normally becomes the focus of all of our attention. Let us return to the first part of the Gospel, however, and consider the request made by James and John. “Master, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you”. What a remarkable statement! The Lord must do what I want him to do! At first the assertion by James and John seems ridiculous, but, if we think about it, this is the way that each of us prays most of the time. This is the way that each one of us tends to approach God. We present him with petitions and expect him to do what we want. Does it ever occur to us that prayer should be a process of trying to discern what God wants for us, and that this is much greater than what we want for ourselves?

Jesus works through our desires, selfish though they may be. The challenge is to discern what is valid in those desires

But God is good and patient, and is willing to travel with us on the road that we choose to go. Instead of rebuking James and John, Jesus simply says, “You do not know what you are asking”. Then he asks them a number of questions: “Can you drink the chalice that I must drink? Can you be baptized with the baptism with which I must be baptized?” Jesus is willing to work with what the disciples offer him. What is present in the hearts of James and John? There is a desire, and a great willingness for that desire to be realized. In this frantic quest, something good must be present. In all of our desires there is something good, confused aspirations for things that have genuine value. As Jesus says, we don’t know what we are looking for. We don’t know what we have in our hearts; we do not discern which parts of our desires are good and which parts must be corrected or abandoned. When we look back on our lives, we can see that many times in the past we have desired things that were useless or inappropriate. The whole art of advertising consists in making us want things that we do not need, and to make us feel frustrated or dissatisfied with what we already have. This mechanism of cultivating useless desires and making them into absolutes is all too active in the human heart. If we make our desires absolute goals then we ruin our lives. If our existence consists in pursuing what we ourselves want, then we will always be frustrated with life.

Our desires must be “baptized”, immersed in a reality created by God that frustrates our selfish inclinations and shows us a better way

Jesus shows us a different way. This way involves drinking the chalice that he drinks and being baptized with the baptism with which he is baptized. What does this mean? The chalice is the chalice that the Father gives, and for Jesus it appears in his Passion. God has a design for each of us, a chalice that we must drink. This requires laying our own will aside and learning to do the will of someone else, the will of God. Our desires, therefore, must be subjected to the traumatic encounter with a reality that is different to what we would like it to be. For example, a person might go into a marriage with particular desires or expectations, but once inside he is “baptized” into a reality that is very different to those expectations. He is immersed in a reality in which selfish desires are frustrated or negated.  At this point he has a choice to make: to allow himself to be corrected and formed by reality, or to remain stubbornly committed to pursuing his own desires. As a result, he can start to hate the marriage that he has in the name of the marriage that he desires, or he can learn to grow. He can learn to discover that the place that he thought he was reserving for himself in life is different to the place that God is preparing for him, and that that which God is creating is much more beautiful. When a desire of ours is frustrated we are challenged to discover that part of the desire that remains standing, the part that remains valid, that which the confrontation with reality has not negated. Once we drink the chalice of Christ, once we try to follow his paths, once we enter into the baptism with which he is baptized, then we discover that the Lord leads us to glory after all, but along his ways. In fact, Jesus says to James and John that they will indeed drink that chalice, they will indeed become something extraordinary, something whose true significance they had not understood at all when they asked to share in his glory.

The disciples are asked to go from the state of viewing reality as something that serves them to the state of being able to serve others freely. Only he who serves freely is free from the state of slavery. The “master” who demands to be served is a complete slave to worldly things.

This is the key for understanding the second part of the Gospel. The disciples must go through a process in which the unworthy elements in their desires are negated. They go from the state of wishing to be served by reality, from viewing reality as something that exists as a function of their desires and aspirations, to the state of willing service that, paradoxically, allows them to share in the power of the Son of Man. The Son of Man has the greatest power of all, the power to love, the capacity to serve, the capacity to know how to give one’s life. Only he who knows how to truly give truly possesses that thing. I cannot give an object that is the property of another. If I am fearful of giving something, this indicates that the object is not truly mine. It indicates that the object possesses me and not me it. Only he how knows how to give his life is authentically in possession of his life. Only the Son of Man, who is eternity, has the capacity to give his essence in an absolute way. We are asked to participate in this giving, in this act of liberty that proves that we are no longer slaves dominated by worldly masters. He who serves freely is free from slavery. He who demands to be served demonstrates his complete slavery to worldly things.

This Gospel presents us with a chalice that we must drink and a baptism into which we must be baptized. When we start to drink that chalice, we begin to discern the hidden truth that lies buried in our desires; we begin to discover a profound capacity that lies hidden inside each of us, the capacity to live as children of God, the capacity to follow the exact way taken by Jesus himself, and to be able to give our lives for others.

OCTOBER 14th. TWENTY EIGHTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Gospel: Mark 10:17-30
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
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This Gospel is crucially relevant for our daily lives. If we wish to have the fullness of life then we must rid our hearts of their attachment to things that do not give life. We must give up these things and follow Jesus. A person cannot be a good parent or friend if their actions are primarily directed to satisfying their own needs and only secondarily concerned with being a good parent or friend. We cannot follow Jesus if we are following "goods" of a worldly sort. This presents us with a choice. Which sadness are we most anxious to avoid: the sadness of losing out on worldly rewards, or the sadness of losing Christ?

This Gospel should not be read in an abstract way, but as something crucially relevant for the lives of each one of us

This Sunday we have the famous Gospel of the young man who asks what he needs to do to enter the Kingdom of heaven. The reply from Jesus is that he must leave every thing and follow the Lord. The young man turns and walks away because he has many worldly goods. The risk with passages of this sort is that we tend to consider them in an external sort of way. We see how the rich man walks away from Jesus because he is attached to things of this world, and we consider the scene as if it were an event that happened way back in time and that has little connection with us. This is not the correct way to approach this text! The passage has something crucial to say to all of us, something that illuminates the life of each one of us. The exchange between Jesus and the young man who wants the fullness of life gives each one of us the key for obtaining the fullness of life.

Does the possession of worldly goods really exclude us from eternal life?

When the young man walks away sadly, Jesus says "How hard it is for the rich to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" The disciples are disconcerted but Jesus upsets them even more, saying, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven!" Still more perplexed, the disciples ask themselves "Who then can be saved?" They have understood Jesus to mean that no-one can be saved if they have worldly goods. It is salvation itself that is at risk where worldly goods are concerned.

The opposite of love is not hate but the having of worldly goods

Let us see if we can find the key to this text. Is it possible to enter the Kingdom of Heaven with worldly goods? No. It is physically impossible to pass the threshold of death with worldly goods. Beyond that threshold one cannot take anything! But this principle is also true while we are in this world. In order to live a life as a child of God, I must leave behind that which pulls my heart in a different direction. But this principle doesn't just apply to people who have been given some kind of extraordinary call by God. It applies to everyone. I can't enter into the married life if I don't give up the ways of the old life previous to marriage. I can't enter into friendship if I don't overcome the possessiveness that is incompatible with genuine friendship.

A saying of St Francis might be of assistance in helping us to realize that this Gospel is crucially relevant to the drama of our daily lives. According to St Francis the opposite of love is not hate but the possession of material things. Love is an act of giving. It is not possible to love truly and to keep something for yourself. How can a man love a woman for his entire life if he doesn't give her everything that he is and everything that he has? How can a person be a good parent if they don't dedicate themselves completely to the task, if they don't put everything else in second place to the role of being a parent? We can enter into a relationship for the sake of that relationship or we can enter into them because they are beneficial to us.

Giving alone is not enough. We must give while following Jesus.

The young man asks, "What can I do so that I can possess eternal life?" The way that his question is posed shows how preoccupied he is with possessions. This man, like all of us, is insecure and threatened. Like all of us, he thinks that the deficiencies in his life can be filled by the possession of something. This is a fundamental deception that all of us are susceptible to. The truth is that we are only complete when we are with others, when we are in relationship with others, and when we love. It is possible to be surrounded by other people and not to have truly loved anyone. The young man in the Gospel has kept the commandments all of his life, but has not entered into relationships in the correct way. Above all, he has not entered into relationship with the one person that he needs to enter into relationship with in order to make all other relationships work in an authentic way. Jesus proposes a new way of life for the young man: to give rather than to have. But giving is not enough. The young man must give while following Jesus. It is impossible to follow Jesus if we are holding on to something else. If we are following a car on the road that is leading the way, it can sometimes happen that we end up following another car that looks similar. There are many cars that resemble the car of Jesus! There are many things that appear to give what Jesus gives. Many of the idols of this world seem to supply that which we are searching for. But Jesus is the only way who has defeated emptiness, the only one who has vanquished death, the only one we can enter into relationship with, conquering all our fears. Only he can give us complete fullness, but he can only do so if we are not following other cars.

Following Jesus necessarily involves losing the world

Even if we have made the correct choice every day and followed Jesus, each new day the decision to follow Jesus anew requires a loss. The choice to follow Jesus does not involve leaving something behind. It involves leaving everything behind. Detaching ourselves from things can be easy enough. It is detaching ourselves from our projects and our affections that is much more difficult. The first step that Jesus proposes to the young man is relatively straightforward. He just has to take his possessions and sell them or give them away. But then the process of following Jesus begins. To raise a child involves a loss. Young people nowadays tend to give priority to enjoying themselves before raising a family. Raising a family takes second place. The Psalm says, "The Gift of the Lord is the children of your youth". But none of us wishes to leave aside enjoyment or personal comfort until we discover God. As the Gospel says, it is impossible to leave everything and follow Jesus humanly speaking, but it is not impossible when we are with God. 

Giving up worldly good makes no sense unless we are giving them up so as to make room in our hearts for God

Until we open our hearts to God, until we enter into dialogue with him, we cannot obtain the liberty to leave everything and follow him. In fact, in the Gospel story, Jesus looks at the young man and loves him. Jesus enters into relationship with him. Unless there is a relationship with Jesus, all the sentiments expressed in this homily are complete rubbish. Giving up worldly goods, obeying commandments just for the sake of obeying them, makes no sense at all and takes us nowhere. It is the relationship with Jesus that gives sense to the leaving behind of the things of this world. This relationship recompenses us one hundredfold for that which we give up in order to dedicate ourselves to the relationship. The quality of our lives changes completely. The choice is really between having many things but nor having Christ, or possessing Christ and having everything that is important. That the Lord might grant us the grace to enter into this drama and make the choice for Christ!

In the Gospel, the young man has sadness in his heart. There are two kinds of sadness that we can have: the sadness of giving up the things of this world, and the sadness of  not having Christ. The choice is ours. Which sadness are we going to listen to? Which sadness is our priority to address? Of course it is difficult to lose out on the things of this world , but we lose much more if we turn away from Jesus.

OCTOBER 7TH. TWENTY SEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME
Gospel: Mark 10:2-16
Translated from a homily by Don Fabio Rosini, broadcast on Vatican Radio
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Sunday's Gospel speaks of the indissolubility of married love. Is this an impossibile demand in our modern world? Nowadays people are reluctant to love if the personal cost is too great. Instead of watering down this requirement, Don Fabio asks us to reflect on the indissoluble nature of all human relationships. Jesus, by loving us to the end and dying on the Cross, shows how enduring love is possible despite personal cost.

We are inclined to think that lifelong marriages are an impossibility, but all genuine relationships are by their very nature indissoluble

In the Gospel passage this Sunday, the Lord Jesus presents us with the notion of indissolubility, the principle that man cannot divide what God has united. This principle has become more and more unacceptable to the contemporary way of thinking. There is a feeling abroad that the principle is impractical and is only directed at a select few Christians of the heroic variety. But the sayings of Jesus are never absurd in any age, and Jesus' statement in this passage touches on the very heart of love itself. The bond between a man and a woman is often treated as if it were something transitory, something that has validity only for as long as it suits the persons involved. But any genuine relationship - and we are not only talking about that between a man and a woman - is indissoluble by its very nature. True friendship is indissoluble by its nature. Fatherhood is indissoluble by its nature. Parents who refuses to recognize their children are going against a fundamental statute written in the depths of their hearts. As Jesus says, one would have to have a heart of stone, a heart that is hardened against the true reality of love. To conceive of relationships as something that can be  dissolved is to have a very superficial and poorly developed conception of the human being.

The nature of human relationships cannot be understood by looking at their failures. Human beings can only be understood in the light of their divine origin.

All around us we see failures in human relationships, and we conclude that indissoluble relationships are impossible. The human being, however, is not to be understood simply in terms of his failures but in the light of his divine origins. The true nature of man, his eternity and dignity, are not unveiled and understood except in that light. Human relationships, therefore, should not be defined in terms of human desires that are transitory and can be "dissolved" at a moment's notice, nor in terms of humanity's fickle search for material wellbeing. 

Moses had to bow before the hardness of the human heart and permit marriages to be dissolved. Jesus, by loving us to the end on the Cross, showed the true and eternal potential of human relationships.

To understand human relationships we must view them in the light of the deepest and most intimate truths of human nature. In the end, it is only God who brings us face to face with ourselves. It is only God who beings us to fruition. Jesus shatters the veil of deceit that obscures the reality of human nature and achieves something that Moses couldn't accomplish. Moses had to kneel before the hardness of the human heart and accept that human beings were not capable of relationships that endure. Moses brought external adherence to the law, but only Jesus is capable of bringing us the Holy Spirit. Jesus brings us the divine life which allows us to be fully ourselves, capable of an indissoluble love that conquers all. It is Christianity that brings us the indissolubility of marriage. This did not exist in Roman or Jewish culture, nor in the Hellenistic world. Jesus, crucified on the cross, inaugurated the practice of loving right to the end, accepting the limitations of the one who is loved. Jesus made possible the establishment of indissoluble fraternal relations, and of binding oneself to another forever in marriage. 

The failure of parents to love each other to the end creates a barrier in the hearts of children to faith in the eternal love of God

Life springs from the encounter between man and woman, and it springs from no other form of relationship. He who denies the nature of this form of encounter denies life itself. But life in its sacredness and its beauty requires contact with God. God is eternal and gives a transcendental form to the nature of our relationships.. What a paradox we are! We live in constant fear for our self-preservation, but we are still called to love eternally. The denial of this call is a cause of great sadness in the world. Today an incredible sadness is being sown in the hearts of many children and young people - the sadness of never having seen at first hand the practice of indissoluble love. This can give rise to an enormous inner barrier to faith in the eternal love of God. For if Mum and Dad are not capable of loving each other, if they are not capable of dying for the other, if they are not capable of loving to the end, then it is difficult for their children to believe in the existence of eternal love.

If I love the other only for as long as it is pleasant, then I am simply using the other for my own ends. True human greatness begins when we love in an enduring way and forget ourselves

Sunday's Gospel is not just directed at married relationships but at all relationships. There is no relationship that is not called to be permeated by the event of the resurrection. In all of our relationships we are called to lose ourselves, and give ourselves to the other even when the other is not easy to love. If I love the other only to the extent that it is convenient or pleasant for me, then I do nothing more than use the other person for my own ends. Our greatness begins once we start to lose ourselves. Our greatness begins when, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ - and it is him who started us on this road - and through the power of the Holy Spirit, we begin to love in an enduring way even when it is no longer convenient for me to do so. 

Adultery is not only a betrayal of our spouse, but a betrayal of the divine loving nature of our own hearts

"He who divorces his spouse and marries another commits adultery". Who is the adultery committed against? Against the spouse, of course, but also against the eternal plan of God for each of us. True adultery and true betrayal involves the betrayal within ourselves of our choice to love. Friendships and marriages often die because the moment arrives in which one imperceptibly begins to kill the love they have in their hearts, begins to kill the choice to love, and to choose death instead. The decision to stop loving the other might appear to be a choice for a peaceful existence because it also brings to an end the conflict with the other.  But being with others necessarily involve discomfort! Life itself involves discomfort! Life is a chaos out of which God brings forth a wonderful creation. To enter into a relationship is to enter into something that cannot be controlled or governed. When we withdraw ourselves from this situation, things become much more orderly and comfortable. There is much more silence when others are not around, but there is also isolation and solitude.

SEPTEMBER 30^th 2012, TWENTY SIXTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL: Mark 9:38-43,47-48

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

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The disciples reject the good deeds of a man who is not part of their privileged circle. Jesus criticizes this attitude and insists that exclusion of a different sort be part of our daily lives. We must “cut off” our limbs rather than risk doing something that leads away from the fullness of life. In order to care for the sick or elderly, or to be a good parent, we must “cut off our hands” in the sense of renouncing actions that we would otherwise have preferred to occupy ourselves with. We must cut off our feet in the sense of not going to places we would have preferred to go for our own interests. The way of love that Jesus calls us to involves routine renunciation of this sort, but it brings us to the fullness of life and to communion with others

  

The disciples were more concerned about vetting people’s membership credentials than in the spreading of the Gospel

The Gospel passage discusses the issue of who should be considered to belong rightfully to Jesus’ circle. John tells the Lord that they had seen a man casting out devils in his name, and they tried to stop him because he was not a recognized member of their group. Casting out demons is a difficult task and cannot be done without invoking the power of God. But the man who was doing it did not have the correct “label” in the apostles’ eyes. He did not have official membership in the right group. Jesus, however, declares that it is not possible to do good in the name of evil. Evil cannot bring about genuine victory over evil. True victory over evil can only be brought about by God. The apostles therefore were combating against a brother who was doing genuine good in the name of Jesus. They were more concerned with protecting their own circle than with allowing others to participate in the saving work of Christ.

Exclusion is incompatible with salvation, but modern society routinely selects who has life and who is to be excluded from life

This is the first part of the Gospel passage, and it tells us that Christianity is not simply about criteria of adherence to a certain group. The second part of the passage goes on to tell us what being a Christian really involves, and it is extremely challenging! “If anyone creates an obstacle to one of these little ones who have faith, it would be better if he were thrown into the sea with a millstone around his neck.” It would be better to have a hand or leg cut off, to be permanently lame, to endure physical limitations of this sort, rather than to exclude someone from the Kingdom of God. The logic of salvation, the logic of life, is incompatible with the practice of exclusion. In modern society embryos are routinely excluded or selected in order to bring about a higher quality of life. The Nazis systematically excluded people who were considered inferior in order to create a higher quality of life for those who were “superior”. The Nazis are no longer around but our culture has become suffused with the principles of Nazism. In other words, we have become arbiters of who can have life and who cannot. We select who should be allowed in and who should be kept out.

We must be willing to “cut” ourselves first before cutting others off from the fullness of life

Jesus declares that instead of cutting others off from life, we must first be willing to “cut” ourselves. We should be ready to cut off one of our own limbs rather than do something that leads others away from life. We must renounce part of ourselves rather than exclude someone else from the fullness of life. When we look at ourselves in this light, we see that many of our choices are choices for death rather than life. Decisions that appear to defend a certain quality of life are in fact to the exclusion of others. The choice for communion with others, the choice for the life of others, is not simply a moral obligation. It leads, rather, to the fulfilment of our own existence. What kind of life am I living if it is at the expense of the lives of others? Exclusion of others ultimately leads to the negation of myself. This unhappy generation of ours is a generation of elitists that routinely practices the exclusion of others, and cries aloud the right to its own privileges. The Lord Jesus has shown us another way, giving his body for the life of others. He allowed his hands and his feet to be nailed to the cross so that everyone might enter life. He entered heaven covered in wounds so that the gates of paradise would be thrown wide open for us.

Giving life to others involves “losing” our own preoccupations and interests

There is a type of “good” that one does in an abstract or conceptual way. The disciples insist that one should belong to a certain circle in order to be able to perform this good. Then there is the type of good that is brought about by the shedding of one’s blood. We cannot be real fathers unless we pay with our very lives for the happiness of our children. We cannot become mothers in the fullest sense of the word unless we are willing to shed our blood for our children. We cannot be brothers in the fullest sense of the word unless we renounce in our bodies that which must be renounced in order to bring about communion. To truly love others always involves losing one’s own privileges, one’s own prerogatives. If we wish to walk with others then we have walk at the pace of others and lose our own pace. We must move out of our own privileged circles and prerogatives.

These sayings of Jesus are not directed to someone else! I must be routinely “cut off” my hands and feet in order to love others

The Lord Jesus, in order not to lose a single brother or sister, was literally cut to the flesh. This is the law of love. It is not possible to have brothers or sister or friends, or to found a church and maintain it in existence, without “striking” at one’s own body. These sayings of Jesus regarding the cutting off of an arm or a leg are not sayings that are directed at someone else! These are things that all of us must do thousands of times. We must “cut off our hands” and renounce certain actions of ours in order to love others. We must “cut off our feet” and not go where we would like to go in order that we are available to love others. It is not possible to take care of a sick person without renunciations of this very sort. It is not possible to take care of an elderly person, or raise a family, without restrictions of ones’ own movements. We live in a society where everything is centred on the values of the single individual. But without the capacity for self-renunciation, the individual is doomed to solitude and can never achieve true communion with others.

The renunciation that Jesus is referring to is not some kind of cold philosophical stoicism. What Jesus is speaking about is the action of God breaking through our terror of individual-preservation and opening us to the fullness of life and truth. What loss is a hand if as a result I have communion with others? What loss is a foot if others are led to happiness because of me? What is it that really matters in life? Is renunciation of this sort really a loss, or is it a gain?

SEPTEMBER 23^rd 2012, TWENTY FIFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

GOSPEL: Mark 9:30-37

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

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This Gospel passage puts two ways of life before us: the path of putting ourselves first, and the path of putting ourselves last. The latter is the way of love, because we can only learn how to love when we cease putting ourselves first. Love is the practice of putting the other in first place and taking second place ourselves. Jesus uses the example of a child to illustrate the attitude that all of us must have. We must submit to the paternal will of God for us, following Jesus in the way of love, and renouncing our inclinations to place ourselves at the centre of the universe.

Jesus uses the example of a child to show two alternative paths to life: the path of selfish ambition, and the path of submission to the paternal will of the Father

This Gospel has two parts. In the first part Jesus speaks of the suffering that he must endure before the Resurrection. The disciples do not understand and are filled with fear by his words. This is because their minds are on a subject of a different sort altogether - they were discussing who among them was the greatest! This was the level of their mental exertions during the journey!

                Here we have two attitudes that are diametrically opposed – the attitude of subjecting oneself to the plan of God, and the attitude of following one’s own ego. Jesus takes a child to demonstrate to the disciples which of the two ways is correct. Should we live in the pursuit of our own glory, competing with others so as never to feel second best to anyone? Or should we dedicate our lives to pursuing the sublime call that God issues to each of us? Should we live by following the path that leads to true resurrection? Or do we follow the path that claims to lead to the fulfilment of our egoistic impulses, but in reality leads nowhere?

                There are two paths here, and both purport to lead to fulfilment, to authentic life. What is it that brings life in the fullest sense of the term? The affirmation of my ego? The satisfaction of having surpassed someone else? The feeling of being superior to others? The glory that comes from defeating others? Or, is life attained by welcoming Christ? By having a genuine relationship with him? Does life consist in relationship with others rather than in competition with others?

               

We fear being put in second place. But we cannot love unless we learn to take second place and put others first.

But this is not yet the full message of the Gospel passage for this Sunday. We will not understand God’s plan for us as long as we are wallowing in the fears that issue from our egoistic self-preoccupation. Each of the twelve apostles is filled with the fear of not being important in comparison to the others. We all fear not being taken into consideration by others! We all have a terror of being humiliated in the eyes of others! Is it possible to love others while we are consumed by this fear? Is it possible to love a spouse, a son or daughter, a friend, a brother in the faith, while we foster this fear of being second? The fact is that love does involve being in second place! How can I truly love if I continue to put myself in first place? How can anyone else love us if they place themselves and the satisfaction of their own egos before everything and everyone else? If someone is not willing to put us first then we feel that we are simply being used by them.

No-one can truly love unless they overcome their terror of not just coming second, but coming last, of being overlooked, of not being consulted. What a terror we have of these things! The book of Ecclesiastes says that the entire enterprise of man on earth is nothing other than envy and competition. The tragedy of man, according to Chapter Three of Genesis, begins with his fear of coming second to God. In the grotesque attempt to be number one, man becomes nothing. He loses himself, loses sight of the true meaning of life, and becomes consumed by the fear that he is nothing. He views others as antagonists, and even views God as his opponent. Jesus Christ came into the world so that we would no longer have fear of this void. He himself became the last among men, the most despised, to the extent of being killed. All of this shows us that being last is not a tragic thing, being despised by others is not a tragic thing. The tragedy is not knowing how to love others! The tragedy is the inability to do what love requires; namely, to put others in first place. The tragedy is not having a heart that loves, but to have a heart that is focussed on one’s own ego.

The capacity to love comes at a cost, and that cost is the renunciation of our egoistic aspirations

This Gospel asks us to decide between the child, the one who comes last, and the powerful and great on earth. The “great” man lives in solitude, consumed by his own ego, whilst the child lives under the paternity of God. In the depths of our hearts there is a desire for friendship and communion that can only be satisfied when we overcome the demands of our ego. This desire for communion and fellowship comes with a cost, and cannot be otherwise. This cost is the renunciation of our own supremacy. But this renunciation is not a tragedy but a liberation. There is no greater burden on the soul than obsession with oneself. This burden will not leave you in peace until it is dissolved by the grace of God. Let us ask for the grace to follow Jesus in the way of love, in the way of liberation from the obsessive terror of not being first. Once we cease putting ourselves first, then we obtain the capacity to love. It is more important and joyful to know how to love, to know how to put oneself in second place, than to have the “glory” of being first.