Homlly; Fr. Raymond
Sunday, 04 October 2015
Twenty-seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B
People were
bringing little children to Jesus for him to bless them and embrace them.
This
seemed to be just a bit of a nuisance as far as
his disciples were concerned; to them it was just a waste of time; something that interrupted his much more
important work of preaching; something that interrupted his wonderful ministry
of healing. But Jesus obviously felt very differently about it. He even felt quite
indignant about it. This must be the only time in the Gospels that we learn that
Jesus felt indignant about anything. I suppose he must have felt a sense of
indignity when he saw the buying and selling that was going on in the temple.
But that was a sense of indignity on account of the sacredness of the temple,
God's House. But in today's gospel he is obviously feeling a sense of personal
indignitY.lt1~as a personal affront that really hurt him. It is so obvious that
he felts not fully understood even by his closest disciples and that must have
been hurtful.
This is an awesome
thought: that Jesus was so indignant that his own disciples should feel that he
was demeaning himself by associating with children in such a way. He must have
felt how little they yet understood him. How much he still had to teach them!
This tells us so
much about the character of Jesus. It tells us so much about him both as God
and as man. The proud find it hard to associate with children. They are out of
their depth with children. But Jesus was perfectly at ease with them and they
with him.
'Learn of me', Jesus
said 'Because I am meek and humble of heart'.
The next very telling
phrase in this gospel is: 'Anyone who does not welcome the Kingdom of God like
a little child will never enter it'.
In these words
Jesus isn't teaching us to be childish in the sense of that immaturity, that
self-centredness that is so typical of young children. He is drawing our
attention to other qualities that children have. For instance, a child has no
worries for tomorrow, it trusts absolutely in its parents to provide for its
needs. This is an attitude we should all have to our heavenly Father. A child
knows that it is loved and it subconsciously feels secure in that love. We too
should feel secure in the certainty that God loves us too. A child rushes to
its parents for comfort when it is hurt. We too must learn to turn spontaneously
to oow en we are hurting. And-how many are the hurts that life brings us! A child
is terrified of the barking dog, but once its Father picks it up it feels
secure. How many are the dangers and fears we face in life that are too big and
scary for us to cope with on our own. We stand so much in need of a Father to
run to at times.
God is good and
loving, but the lessons he has to teach us can be hard at times and the
greatest lesson we learn from the hardest of these times is how to be as little
children and turn to our heavenly Father in all our needs.
COMMUNITY SUNDAY MASS
 |
| St. Teresa of Avila |
MEDITATION from MAGNIFICAT com
Coming
to Jesus Like Children
O Son of God and my Lord! How is it that you give so much all together in the first words? Since you humble
yourself to such an extreme
in joining with us in prayer and making yourself the Brother of creatures so lowly and
wretched, how is
it that you give us in the name of your Father everything that can be given? For you
desire that he consider us his children, because your Word
cannot
fail. You oblige him to be true to your Word, which is no small burden since in being Father he must
bear with us no matter how serious the offences.
If we return to him
like the prodigal
son, he has to
pardon us. He has to console us in our trials. He has to sustain us in the way a
father like this must. For, in effect, he must be better than all the fathers in the world because in him
everything must be faultless. And after all this he must make us sharers and heirs with you.
SAINT TERESA OF AVILA Saint Teresa of Avila (t 1582), Doctor of the
Church, reformed the Carmelite Order.
Front cover; Saint Teresa of
Avila
Divinely
human!
In Seville, in 1576, Brother Juan de
la Miseria, o.c.d., was the first to paint a portrait of Teresa. Referring to
the beauty of the saint, María de San José ends her comments with the
affirmation that “she was perfect in all things, as we can see from [this]
portrait”. Teresa herself had some reservations about the likeness of the
painting: “May God forgive you, Brother Juan, for having painted me ugly and
bleary-eyed.” Whatever the case, his portrait was to serve as the model for all
future versions.
In this month’s cover portrait by
José Ribera, the artist gives free rein to his tenebrist style of naturalism. A
Caravaggio-inspired distribution of light and shade can be seen in the
Carmelite habit as well as in the rendering of the cape, worn for liturgical
prayers. The depiction of Teresa in the act of writing is a recurrent theme in
Teresian iconography. For, indeed, in obedience to her confessors, Teresa
undertook the writing of her autobiography, followed by numerous texts on the
life of prayer.
Light descends from above to
illumine the beautiful face of the saint. Her gaze, peering at the origin of
this supernatural light, attests that her whole being is turned toward God. The
dove symbolises the Holy Spirit, the source of her divinely-inspired writings.
“Most of the things I write do not come from my own head, but from the heavenly
Master who inspires them within me,” wrote Teresa. Her writings, which earned
her the honour of becoming the first woman Doctor of the Church, are an
inexhaustible resource for the devout soul.
Note the skull in the foreground, a
“vanity” that the saints of the Catholic Reformation kept always in view to aid
meditation on the fragility of earthly existence and the grandeur of death—a
death to be wished for as the ultimate baptism opening the way toward true
Life: “I die because I do not die!” exclaimed Teresa. How far we are here from
the attitude of our contemporaries to the prospect of death!
Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582),
José de Ribera, called Lo Spagnoletto (1591–1652), Museum of Fine Arts San Pio
V, Valencia, Spain.
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