5 Sunday Lent, Year A, John 11:1-45

There are a few aspects of our Christian faith that many of us find difficult to understand. Some of the moral requirements that are made of us can at times feel like a burden. And then there are aspects of our faith that we can find ourselves wondering about. Resurrection is one of those things. Sure, there may be moments when it is crystal clear, but by and large we don't fully understand it: either what exactly it means or why it would happen.

This Sunday we gain an insight into the resurrection. In our first reading from Ezekiel we are presented with the Jewish understanding of the resurrection on the last day. The image given is of God opening the graves of the chosen people and returning them to the soil of Israel. For many of us, this is an image of the resurrection that we can at least imagine. It makes sense, even if it is a supernatural image.

The second reading from St Paul's letter to the Romans offers us a dimension of the Christian understanding of the resurrection. Here, St Paul tells us that if God's holy Spirit dwells in us, then God will come looking for his holy Spirit and we will be resurrected because of that. Kind of like turning up with a VIP to an important event, because we are friends with this most important of people, we will be allowed in.

And then, in the Gospel we hear a story of love. This story is of Jesus' particular and personal love for Martha, for Mary, and for their brother Lazarus. One of the beautiful lines of our Gospel reads:
'Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, "Where have you put him?"'

This tells us something further about the resurrection promised to us in Christ: it is because God loves us that he comes to bring us out of death.

And so, today, we have three images for the resurrection:
1.God opening the graves of his people and leading them back to Israel
2.God's holy Spirit, dwelling in us, the VIP that ensures our entry into the resurrection
3.The personal love that Jesus has for each one of us that causes him to sigh with distress and weep, but most of all it causes him to raise us up.

3 Sunday Lent, Year A, John 4:5-42

Water of Life

A good friend of mine, who was a priest of my home diocese, didn't like tea. Now, I'm not sure if any of you are Father Ted fans, but a priest who doesn't drink tea is something of a rarity, right?

My friends dislike of tea led to many uncomfortable moments for him in ministry, when people would offer him tea, or coffee (he didn't like coffee either) and he wouldn't accept it. It was like he wasn't accepting their hospitality – like he didn't really want to be there.

Water is mentioned quite a lot in our gospel for this Sunday. The Samaritan woman goes to Jacob's well to draw water. Jesus is thirsty. He asks for a drink. The ice is broken, and the conversation unfolds. It is a heart moment. Jesus is quiet and calm; the lady, bemused and wondering. Jesus speaks in what seem like riddles about the water of life.

And something clicks. She gets it. She runs to tell the others.

Like many of the stories of the gospels, if we pause for a moment; hear some of the words and follow some of the actions, we too can find ourselves 'getting it', even if its just for a moment.

'Water' is one of those words. Water is life. Unclean, dirty water, is death. This week we have heard about water contaminated by radiation in Tokyo and the measures taken by the authorities there to distribute bottled water to families with infant children. 'Water' is life. Not one of us would wish to give our child contaminated water.

Water is also the means by which we are all brought into the life of Christ and the life of the Church at our baptism. Some among us may be preparing to celebrate their baptism this Easter. Water of life, and words of life: "I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit."

Our baptism with water calls us into the new life of Christ. It reminds us of who we are as children of God. We realise that nothing can or should separate us from the new, eternal life offered us in Christ; not sectarian divisions or other things that divide us, including our sins.

We are all welcomed and invited. It is up to us to allow ourselves to listen carefully and be moved enough to follow.

2 Sunday Lent, Year A, Matthew 17:1-9

About a year after my ordination as a priest, I was sitting outside the adoration chapel next to the Cathedral in Sligo town, talking to a couple that I am friendly with. At the time they were preparing for their wedding.

The lady, who had been involved in a prayer group at IT Sligo when I was there as a student, commented to me that she knew that something was going on in me about the call of priesthood because of the way I led prayer there at that time. She mentioned that on one particular evening, I had called on everyone present to offer themselves with a full heart to the will of God in their lives.

A short time later, I was in Maynooth.

Our readings today are all about call. Our first reading which comes from the very first book of the Bible, Genesis, is about father Abram. Before he becomes Abraham, he is called Abram, and here we have one of the first moments that Abram does what God asks him to do by leaving 'your country, your family and your father's house, for the land I will show you. ... So Abram went as the Lord told him.'

The second reading, from the second letter of St Paul to Timothy, one of the earliest letters of the Apostle Paul, reminds Timothy, and the Church he oversees, that we are called to be holy.

Finally, our well known gospel of the transfiguration reminds the apostles and us: 'This is my Son, the beloved; he enjoys my favour, listen to him.'

In short, we hear the primary call of God like father Abram and we take a core action: leaving the familiar and the known to journey into the unfamiliar and the unknown – we realise like the apostle Paul that it is not enough to listen and to act, but that, having been saved in Christ, we are now called to holiness. And, what is holiness in today's gospel? It is listening carefully to Jesus Christ, who, according to the voice of God in today's gospel is in the first place, before anyone or anything else.

This journey is the most frightening journey of all, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the comfortable to the uncomfortable, from the known to the unknown. Who knows what will happen if we listen to the call of Jesus deep in our hearts?

This is the journey of the heart. It is a journey from our heads into that place inside us all where God dwells, transfigured, and lighting us up. The journey of the heart is one that is undertaken by priests and prophets, poets and artists. It is a journey that we are all invited to be a part of.

Sometimes we have to do something to begin the journey inside – like Abraham and the apostles, we go to a place like a mountain to retreat, to reflect, to pray and to come close to God. Here in Sligo, we are spoiled for choice – we have religious sites by the dozen, and beautiful places in nature that allow us access to our hearts.

Stand at the top of Ben Bulben on a fine day and tell me that you are not touched deep inside. Tip your toes in the ocean that is on our doorsteps. Make a pilgrimage to the holy well at Tobernalt near Carraroe. Make a visitation to our beautiful Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception. Pray in the chapel of Adoration at the Cathedral, or down at St Bernadette's on the riverside. Make a trip out to Skreen and to the community of prayer at Holy Hill hermitage. Book your place for this summer's season on Lough Derg. Plan a pilgrimage to Lourdes, Fatima, Medjugorje, or maybe World Youth Day this August – how's about a day at our beautiful national Shrine at Knock? Read a spiritual book. Learn a new way to pray, or renew an old one. Pick up your rosary beads. Ponder on the Stations of the Cross. Ask someone to show you if you don't know how.

The journey to the heart begins on the outside, but it finishes on the inside. God is waiting for you, don't hesitate to start today.

9 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 7:21-27

My first appointment after ordination was as curate to the Parish of Ss Peter & Paul, Athlone. As part of that appointment, I served the small community of Clonown, south of Athlone on the west side of the River Shannon. The road from Athlone out to Clonown is called simply: The Clonown Road. It is a road that was built by the army in the 1940s to gather turf during the emergency. The local people would have travelled into Athlone by boat at that time. Because the road was built in a rush, it is built in the middle of a floodplain, and it seasonally floods for about 4 to 5 months each year.

Amazingly, houses have been built along this road, although outside of the seasonal flooding zones. One such house, that  people told me was built about 25 years ago, was built on a raft foundation. As the house was coming to completion, the back of the house began to sink into the bogland that it was built on. Amazingly, because of it's raft foundation, the walls of the house have very few cracks. But the back of the house sits some 6 foot lower than the front of the house! It was like the leaning tower of Pisa on the shores of the River Shannon!

Today, we all know the value of building our house on a firm foundation. We know it in a literal sense, like the house that I just talked about in Athlone; but we also know it in a metaphorical sense, where 'house' is a term that means life, family, career. We know it also in the other metaphorical sense of 'house' as people and nation. At the moment, we are paying a high price for building our 'house' on the sands of greed.

Our Gospel today, with it's warning to build on a firm foundation, speaks to Ireland in 2011. Washed up on the sands of the values of greed, we are forced to take stock. We are standing there, angry, shocked, bewildered. But if we look around us, we will be able to see that what was missing was a firm foundation.

Our Gospel presents to us a core dynamic – that of listening and acting. Like children who listen to their parents, and then go and do exactly the opposite of what was explained to them; so too, in life, we may listen, but rarely act according to what we have heard.

We are to listen to God's Word – which is Jesus Christ. Listening is not simply about hearing. We have to hear God's Word, and then spend time pondering it in our hearts. This is why the core prayer of the Church is God's Word itself. Then, having pondered God's Word, we are to allow ourselves to be shaped by it. Eventually, our lives become so shaped by the Word, shaped by Jesus himself, that we can act in the way that God asks us to.

To listen and to act – none of us would like to be the person who is caught out by the rising flood waters, or by the shifting sands of fortune. Many of us will visit famous places like the tower of Pisa in Italy where the lack of a firm foundation has created a huge tourist attraction.

To be wise in the ways of God is to listen to God's Word, and to build our lives on it as the firm foundation that will never fail.

8 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 6:24-34

Have you ever been on a train, or on a bus, and quietly observed the people around you? I call it “people watching”. There is a real skill to it, to look at all that is going on around you, without letting them know that you’re interested in the slightest! Watching people, how they dress, what phone they have, clean-shaven or three day old stubble. Fashion conscious, or not fashion conscious. Confident or not confident. There is something of a tradition of people watching here in Ireland at Sunday Mass. We observe each other, where we sit, what we wear, pious and prayerful or talkative and letting on to be disinterested.

Yet, in our gospel this Sunday we are exhorted to focus first on the coming Kingdom of God. Our worries are very often bound up with what will happen next in our world. We are worried about what will happen for the children of this generation, will they be able to live in the Ireland of the future? Will there be a return to mass poverty? Worries like this can inhabit our mind. They can take over and leave us fretful and worried about the future.

Focusing first on the coming Kingdom of God is a life-long task that each one of us must try to do. Having discovered our faith for ourselves, we then have to make a choice to place God in the first place in our lives. This means entering into a relationship with the Other; the Other that God is and the other that my neighbour is. This is what the commandments are all about – relationship with God, relationship with our neighbour, relationship with my own self.

And we have to love all three. We have to strike a balance between loving God, loving my neighbour and loving myself. We come here to Church as individuals, gathered with our nearest neighbours, to worship God together. That three-fold relationship of love between myself, my God and my neighbour is fed in this gathering.

That is why we say that the Kingdom of God is here and yet still coming to be. When we gather as a community of faith, the principles of the Kingdom of God gain an entrance into our world. We get a small insight of the beauty that awaits us in the coming Kingdom of God.

“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.”

7 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 5:38-48 (Children's Homily)

What do you think of when you see a heart? (Hold up the Heart) Maybe you think of St Valentine’s Day, which we celebrated last Monday. Maybe you think of your Mum & Dad, and how much you love them, and how much they love you. Or maybe you think of your brother or sister; or your best friend; or maybe even your teacher in school. It’s easy to love the people who love you, isn’t it?

It’s not just as easy to love people who don’t show us love though. Maybe someone was mean to you in school; maybe they didn’t pick you to play football on their team; or maybe someone made fun of you or called you names. It’s not so easy to love them, is it?

Today, Jesus teaches us a lesson about love. Jesus taught this lesson to the disciples on the side of a hill. The lesson started a few Sundays ago, and it’s nearly finished this Sunday. It’s a long lesson isn’t it? So, what does Jesus teach us about love? (Hold up the Heart again) This Sunday, the lesson that Jesus really wants to teach us is that we have to do our best to love the people that don’t really love us.

You know when you fall out with your Mum or Dad, your Teacher, friend, brother or sister? You know the way that it’s fairly easy to make up with those who love you by saying you’re sorry for what you did wrong?
Well, today, Jesus asks us to love those who don’t love us. He asks us to love those who don’t really like us, and for the A+ grade, Jesus tells us to love those who hate us!

Jesus tells us that love is what God has already shown us, and so we have to try to love everyone as well. And while it isn’t easy to do that, we know that if we try really hard to love everyone, then even those who hate us can one day become our friends.

Maybe we can say a prayer to God to help us to love those who don’t love us:

Father,
it is easy to love those who love us.
Help us to love our enemies
so that they might know
that we are all your children.
We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen.

6 Sunday Ordinary Time, Year A, Matthew 5:17-37

Two years ago, the film ‘2012’ was released. It is a fiction, set in the near future, about cataclysmic end-of-the-world events. Around the time of the film’s release it kicked off a worldwide fascination with the Mayan people, who are said to have predicted the end of the world in December 2012.

Our fascination with the end of the world is endless. Films and books, gurus and religious fanatics of many creeds and persuasions have attempted to convince us of the impending doom that is coming upon us. The ‘end of the world’ is a very profitable industry.

Anybody here who has lost somebody precious to them knows what the end of the world feels like. When a loved one dies, or when a marriage breaks down, or when we ourselves experience a form of nervous breakdown – everything changes. Our world ends. Everything that was important: our job, house, car, salary – it all loses its value in the face of what has just happened to us. In one way we are lost. But, in another way we are found, because in that moment of loss we encounter reality in its purest form. I don’t mean that we have to be sad to be real. What I do mean is that the priorities we have in life – success and status, honour and prestige, lose all their value in the face of loss.

It is the same when we encounter God. We know that we have encountered truth when all of the priorities of our life get turned upside down. When success and status lose their power over us, we know that we have encountered the holy in some way.

It is much like this when a priest hears the call of God in his heart for the first time, calling him to give up everything: success, land, money, wife, for the sake of God’s Kingdom – as the song goes: ‘nothing else matters’.

It is like this when a young couple fall in love for the first time: ‘nothing else matters’.

In a way, we need a ‘nothing else matters’ approach to hear today’s gospel in the way that it was intended. We need to be able to hear it from the point of view of having encountered God. And, when you think about it, if you or I had encountered God, would anything else matter?

This brings us to a subtlety of the spiritual life: and that is our ability to forget the most beautiful encounters we have had with God. It is the same thing that allows us to move on from a painful experience of loss. We gradually forget the pain of loss – and we gradually forget the beautiful spiritual consolations that we have been given.

For the pain of loss, the therapists and counsellors recommend to us to remember the painful experience in order to be genuinely healed. For the beauty of the encounters we have had with the divine, the spiritual directors and accompaniers exhort us to keep a journal, so that we will be able to remember, and give thanks.

Our gospel today appears to be hard-hitting and uncompromising. It appears to make no sense in our time and place. We forget that it did not make sense in Jesus’ time and place either!

This Sunday’s gospel calls us to a deeper reality than the everyday aims and goals of our daily living. It reminds us of the real priorities of life that we encounter in the fleeting moments of love or of loss, of the call of God and the way of truth.