Holy Ghost PNCC

Our lives, to be fruitful, must be full of Christ; to be able to bring His peace, joy and love we must have it ourselves, for we cannot give what we have not got – the blind leading the blind. The poor in the slums are without Jesus and we have the privilege of entering their homes. What they think of us does matter, but what we are to them does matter. To go the slums merely for the sake of going will not be enough to draw them to Jesus. If you are preoccupied with yourself and with your own affairs, you will not be able to live up to this ideal.

Lord, give us patience as we wait in hope for Your coming. Help us to receive all Your gifts with gratitude and to share them with those in need. Amen.

In Advent, the Church reminds us that we are people living between two great events, the coming of Jesus as a child in Bethlehem and His second coming at the end of time. The first was in humility and obscurity, the second will be in power and glory. The readings in Advent help us to “think big” and to have a Christian view of time. Our lives, and all life as we know it, are moving towards a goal. The human race is not heading for extinction, as some predict, but towards the final victory of God. The message of Advent calls us to remember constantly that we live in the time between the first coming of Jesus and His second coming. He tells us to “stay awake” not in a frightened way but in the sense of being always alert to the truth He spoke and that He embodies. Our Christian hope is cosmic as well as personal. Jesus will make all things new, raise the dead, and free the universe from its bondage to decay. No wonder that He tells us to watch and pray, and keep our Christian hope alive.

Good and gracious God, You know how much clutter fills my mind and heart these days. Help me to pay attention to Your presence in my life. Help me to look for and find opportunities this Advent to become more aware of how You touch my life each day. May I become evermore a sign of Your love in the world. Amen.

Today’s solemnity of Christ the King invites us to celebrate a King who embraced humanity with compassion and love, neither rejecting nor excluding anyone. It is challenging, because our secular world encourages individualism. As people of the body of Christ, we are called to selfless love in communion with one another. Jesus does not distinguish between rich and poor, between sick and healthy, between victim and criminal. Jesus loves all of them, all of us, unconditionally. If we are to be true followers of Jesus, He calls us to be prepared to do the same: to love unconditionally, the loveable and the unloveable. Jesus’ example teaches us to reach out in love – even when it can seem difficult or intolerable to do so. For when we embrace our fellow human beings we also embrace Christ, as He says, “in so far as you did this to one of the least of these brothers [or sisters] of mine, you did it to me.”

Jesus tells the parable about the talents after He has warned His disciples that the Son of Man will be returning one day in glory and that there will be an accounting. In His preaching He has spoken of God’s unbounded mercy and love, and He has demonstrated this in His ministry by the way He has reached out to bring healing and help to those who are sick and poor, and all kinds of sinners. Jesus shows us how the gift of the kingdom is like a businessman who gives different sums of money to three of his employees and expects them to use them well. The first two make a good profit and are invited to take on greater responsibility and enjoy the boss’s good favor. The third does not do anything with the money but just buries it in the ground to makes sure it remains secure. The focus of the parable is on this third employee. When he is challenged, he blames his employer because of his severity in dealing with people and admits he was too frightened to take the risk of producing fruit from the gifts he had been given. Everything depended on the image the three employees had of their master, Jesus reveals a picture of a loving God who is unlimited in mercy and kindness but who expects us to respond with a similar extravagance. No doubt among His followers there were those who felt safe with a God of strict justice, whose gifts must be preserved rather than being used to produce some benefit for others. They performed to play safe and watch their back. But the Lord expects His gifts to be appreciated and used to further His kingdom. That’s why this parable ends with a tough reminder to the complacent and lazy that the Lord expects us to imitate His love, not take it for granted.

We are called to have our own change of heart and recognize that it is possible to live with less: rather than holding on to what we have, to be willing to share what has been given to us. The Gospel confirms that if we make an effort to put our faith into practice and use our gifts fruitfully, we will indeed enter the joy of the Master.

The ancient writer of today’s first reading says to us that wisdom is to be found by those who look for her: “Watch for her early and you will have no trouble; you will find her sitting at your gates.” Wisdom is a grace of God, which is meant for human hearts. Our hearts are the proper home for this divine gift of grace. Where else would wisdom live if not in the hearts of good and upright people?

We are not know-alls. We do not pretend to a superior knowledge of life. Wisdom is a gift that embraces others in love, and teaches us humility about our own state. Let us aspire to be wise every day. Let us ask for wisdom to understand one another, to encourage one another, and to witness to the Lord, who is the power and the wisdom of God.

Today’s Gospel tells us that authorities – including religious authorities – must be respected but also challenged when their practice is out of line with their teaching. Jesus particularly warns religious leaders that being conscientious and meticulous about trivial things may prevent them from allowing God’s love to flow out of their lives in gracious acts and deeds, and hinder them from recognizing that everyone has a valuable contribution to make to their communities. The failure of others is not what is most important. Jesus is concerned that His disciples look at themselves and ask about their own failures. He holds up the scribes and Pharisees as a kind of mirror in which they may see their own weaknesses. The kingdom that Jesus announces points them to something greater that themselves, and greater than structures that have been built by humans. This relationship characterizes the new age that Jesus has initated among us. Jesus points out that all people are called to be listeners to God’s message. That listening is something that we are able to do together, regardless of status. The way of living offered by Jesus has nothing to do with arrogance and power. Rather, it is about partnership, servanthood and humility.

Throughout St. Matthew’s Gospel, one of the subplots is the relationship between Jesus and the Pharisees, who were influential teachers of the tradition of Moses; but as we know, the Pharisees’ behavior did not match their rhetoric and they saw Jesus as a serious threat to their authority. Once again today we are told how they try to disconcert Jesus, but Jesus is more than equal to them. Jesus’ response to the Pharisees can challenge us in our own time and place. For every community of people there is always a temptation to maintain order and control by lying down the law: this is the human way of keeping order. It is a perennial temptation even within the Church to misuse power in this way and believe that maintaining the structures is all that really matters. But Jesus shows us a wholly different way, in which those who are powerful do not lord it over those who are weak, but place themselves at the service of all. There is only one critierion by which we can judge ourselves and that is the law of love.

The Pharisees understood life and faith as literal adherence to the Law; by this criterion they judged others, judged themselves, and judge Jesus. If they could show that He was breaking or ignoring the Law, they could declare Him a blasphemer, unrighteous, someone who was a danger to the people of Israel. Buth they struggled to find unorthodoxy in His teachings, and so conspired with their disciples and others to trap Him by posing what they regarded as trick questions, impossible to answer without getting into one kind of trouble or another. Jesus’ reply showed once again how radically different was His approach to the Law of God. He simplified the question using what we would term lateral thinking: shifting the whole basis of the argument. He applied the supreme principle of giving to God what belongs to God, with the consequence that anything else is a relatively insignificant detail.

How do we strike a healthy balance between law and freedom? How do we avoid being like the Pharisees, living the letter of the law, but ignorant of its spirit? What matters above all else is love and service of God and of neighbor: everything else can then be seen in its proper place.

Today’s Gospel has a message for all of us, and the message is that we need to invest more of our time in our family life. The Gospel story shows us Jesus at the age of 12. That was the age that every Jewish boy was expected to make his bar mitzvah and so become a responsible subject of the law. It was a ceremony of legal adulthood. One way teenagers celebrate their coming of age is to go out and do those things that the law had previously forbidden. You know your boy is growing up when he stops asking where he came from and begins to not tell you where he is going. Jesus was no exception. To celebrate His coming of age He attends the Temple Bible class without informing His parents. When His parents catch up with Him after two days of searching for Him everywhere, all He tells them is, “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Even holy families do have their occasional tensions and misunderstandings. The most puzzling part of the story, however, is the way it ends: “Then He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was obedient to them.”

We have two lives, a private or family life and a public or professional one. These two lives should be in harmony but very often they are in tension. Whereas Jesus resolved the tension by giving priority to His private life, we, unfortunately, often try to resolve it by giving priority to our professional life, leaving our family life to suffer. The celebration today of the Christian Family challenges us us to value and invest in our private life with our families before our professional life at the work place, even when our job is as important as saving the world.

The vineyard is a favorite image of God’s people in both the Old and New Testaments. It brings out the closeness of the Lord to His people, the way He is prepared to work with them to produce fruit, his long-term investment in their success. But things can go wrong. If the vineyard is not well cared for, if it is neglected, it will not produce good fruit. If those who are in charge keep the produce for their own use, pretending it is their own and not God’s, then disaster will ensue and the vineyard will be taken away from them. We have inherited the Lord’s vineyard. As we hear this parable we may find ourselves asking the question: “How are we to look after this gift to us?” St. Paul, in today’s extract from his letter to the Philippians, bids us ask God for anything we need in prayer and thanksgiving, and God’s peace will guard our hearts and thoughts.

We are all called to care for the vineyard of the Lord, to build up God’s kingdom in the world and to help it to bear fruit. Each one of us has a calling and a responsibility to work towards that end. There’s a sense too in which God has given each of us a unique vineyard or garden to cultivate in our own lives: in our life of faith and prayer, and in our relationships with the people we know and among whom we live, our families, friends and colleagues. We are all responsible for the well-being of our vineyards. Just as there is no one way of cultivating a vineyard, so as we go through life we will find that we make some choices that work, others that fail. But even in difficult times, when faith seems weak and relationships are challenging, we can remember that nothing is irredeemable. Vines are a hardy crop and benefit from growing on stony ground and being vigorously, if carefully, pruned. And they tend to grow better when cooperation and goodwill are ivnolved in cultivating abd caring for them. And perhaps the same is true of us. Above all, let’s always remember the passion the Lord has for His vineyard. We are never alone in our endeavours. The Lord is always there with us, encouraging us and working alongside us as we bring to fruition the unique gift of our lives.