THE LORD IS COMING, BRINGING PEACE AND SALVATION

I SUNDAY OF ADVENT:Isaiah 2:1-5; Mt 24:37-44

The liturgical season of Advent, which we start this Sunday, is a time filled with hope, enlightening and warming our hearts in the cold of our anxieties and distresses.

Looking forward to the arrival (advent) of the Prince of Peace and Lord of Life, we are called to prepare ourselves in earnest so that we may give him a great welcome.

Remembering the historical event of Jesus' birth, we celebrate his coming into our lives today, while preparing ourselves for the time when God's promises will be fulfilled and our salvation will be complete.

The words of the prophet Isaiah still resound in today's world. They come to us like a dream in the night, which fills us with joy and hope. But it is not a dream. Isaiah announces a time of reconciliation and peace; and this peace is a promise and a project, being offered to us as God's gift and demanding from us commitment and the readiness to make difficult choices, changing our ways and our relation with creation and with each other.

"He will wield authority over the nations

and adjudicate between many peoples;

these will hammer their swords into ploughshares,

their spears into sickles.

Nation will not lift sword against nation,

there will be no more training for war.

O House of Jacob, come,

let us walk in the light of the Lord." (Is 2:1-5)

During the Advent, we must be ready to have our homes, our lives and our hearts wide open for Jesus Christ to come in, and this is very much stressed in the Gospel: "the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect." (Mt 24:44) We have to be on the look out, so that we are not caught unaware and unprepared.

We must cultivate an attitude of alertness, restraining ourselves from all self-indulgence which gives a short-lived respite from all the pain that oppresses our lives, and committing ourselves to listen to God's word and do his will.

CHRIST, THE KING OF KINGS

XXXIV SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME:

A profession of faith

We end the Year of the Faith with the celebration of Jesus Christ the King. With Thomas, after overcoming his doubt, we confess our faith: “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28).

Jesus is the King of kings and Lord of lords. In his plan of salvation, God has decided to subject everything to Christ’s rule, so that finally he can surrender everything to the Father, making it possible for God to be “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

Speaking of Jesus’ kingship we use human words, which may lead us to false conceptions about his kingship. The people of Israel expected a Messiah king in the manner of all other earthly kings, only much more powerful. However, in his life and in his death on the cross, he made it clear that he had no come for that. When people looked for him to be king in order to solve their problems, Jesus went ino hiding (Jn 6:15). Finally, he was proclaimed king on the cross, which sounds like a joke.

A mission of service

The kingship of David was always looked upon as a prophecy of the Messiah and this Sunday’s first reading presents two essential aspects of his kingship. First, he was chosen by God, who called him and ordered him to be at the service of the people. The political power entrusted to him is part of a mission of service. There are many who get political power for the sake of power, using and abusing their power and transforming everybody else into tools that must satisfy their hunger for glory and dominion. Nobody can stand up to them, because everybody else must be subservients to them.

A pact with the people

The text of the first reading makes it also ver clear that David was chosen by the people and that his kingship was based on a pact made between the elders of the people and himself. And he was anointed as king only after that.

The pact with the people is an essential aspect of political power. When that pact is broken, the ones exercising it loose their legitimacy.

Jesus is proclaimed king on th cross

This passage on the enthronement of David as king is used to understand the kingship of Jesus Christ, who is the King of kings and the Lord of lords. 

From the Father, Jesus received a mission of service and he made that very clear in the Last Supper, teaching his disciples to serve, even by doing what was considered humiliating work, like washing the feet of the others. Jesus is king by his service and love, not by dominion and oppression.

Jesus is proclaimed king on the Cross, because it is on the cross that he showed is faithfulness and his love, and it is on the cross that he establishes a new covenant, by which a new people of God is created.

We are called to share in Christ’s kingship, but for that we must walk on his footsteps, sharing his cross.

NO WORK, NO FOOD

XXXIII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME:2 Thessalonians 3:7-12

Excited with the Second Coming

The Christians of Thesalonika got so excited with the end of the world and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ that many of them stopped working.

Paul had to call them to their senses, reminding them of his own example: 

“we were not idle when we were with you, and we did not eat anyone’s bread without paying for it; but with toil and labor we worked night and day, so that we might not burden any of you” (2 Th 3:7-8).

And he ordered in Jesus’ name that everybody  should “do their work quietly and to earn their own living” (2 Th 3:12). In a very straightforward talk, he wrote to them: “Anyone unwilling to work should not eat” (2 Th 3:10).

A festive atmosphere

During my holidays in Portugal, it has surprised me that most of the people are continuous speaking of their rights and of the duty of the government to provide for everything. 

The national basket is empty, and the country must borrow more money to pay the huge debts, subjecting itself to the impositions of the lenders, who force people to tighten their belts and change their spending habits. People are not ready for that and their outcry gets louder and louder, demanding that we ignore the creditors and live our own lives, enjoying all the rights granted in the constitution. There is very little talk of personal and collective responsibility; and there are no alternatives being offered to change the situation. Coming from outside, and looking around, during the Summer time (and part of Outumn), one sees a festive  atmosphere that pervades the whole country. It seems as if it is the duty of someone else to move the country’s economy around.

With a very low birth rate, Europe is becoming an old continent, in which Portugal occupies one of the worst positions. With very few children, and an increasingly aging population, there will be no futurion, without a big change in values and attitudes.

Hope moves us forward

Hope - mainly the hope of Second Coming of Jesus - must fill us with courage and motivate us to work hard. While we should respect the rights of the others, we must pay attention to our duties and commit ourselves to carry them out.

GOD IS THE GOD OF THE LIVING

XXXII SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: LK 20:27-38; 2 Mac 7:1-2,9-14

The seven martyrs, their mother and Eleazar

The traditionalist Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection

During Jesus' time, the resurrection of the dead was already a commonly accepted belief among the Jews. In spite of that, the Sadducees, a group composed mainly of priestly families, who were traditionalists in questions of faith, refused to believe in the resurrection. Guiding themselves only by the Torah, that is the written Law as it can be read in the first five books of the Bible, they saw the faith in the resurrection as something new and alien to the truths revealed by God.

The long process of revelation

The Sadducees did not realize that God's revelation was a long process through which God guided his people towards the truth. Coming to Jesus, the Sadducees tried to laugh at him and fill him with scorn by showing how laughable the belief in the resurrection was. Jesus told them, straight to their faces: "you are wrong" (Mk 12:24), because in the resurrection, we will be children of God, equal to angels, and our bodies will acquired a completely new dimension, since God's life and God's glory will be manifest in them.

God is the living God

Little by little, the people of Israel discovered this truth, which Jesus expressed very clearly: God is the God of the living; and he is our God. In the journey of faith, the people of Israel were influenced by others, specially the Persians who believed in the resurrection and who had liberated them from the Babylonians, allowed them to go back to their homeland and gave them freedom to follow their customs and practice their religion. But more important than the Persian influence was the guidance of the Holy Spirit, who led them to a deeper understanding of Yahweh. With the Exodus, the people of Israel recognised Yahweh as Liberator and Lord. Through the prophets, they came to realize that, being the Liberator, he wants to set us free even from the power of death. Yahweh, being the living God, is the God of the living.

In 2 Maccabees 7:9, the faith in the resurrection appears clearly. One of the seven brothers told the king: 

"you dismiss us from this present life, 

but the King of the universe will raise us up 

to an everlasting renewal of life, 

because we have died for his laws”.

The example of the seven brothers

The books of the Maccabees present the revolt against the oppressive laws of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV,  giving witness to many Jews who chose to remain faithful to God and defiant to the king, in spite of the persecution inflicted upon them. The story of the seven brothers represents the attitude of many others, who did not care about what was considered politically correct, aware that the politically correct many times is not correct at all. They believed in the resurrection, and in that belief they found the courage to die for their faith.

ALL SOULS DAY: REMEMBERING THE DEAD

ALL SOULS DAY

Yesterday, as I travelled from Porto to Régua, I met a very old widow, still full of life, in spite of her 82 years. Carrying a bunch of flowers, she was heading to her home village to pay her respects to the dead, mainly her father whom she mentioned several times.

In the evening, I went with Fr. Horácio to Vila Marim, one of his parishes, where I took the picture of the cemetery. In the background, you can see Vila Real, a city of the living, and in the foreground the city of the dead, that is the cemetery, ready for the celebration of All Souls’ day. 

People pay great attention to the dead and spend lots of money remembering them, with expensive mausolea, tombstones, flowers and candles. One remains with the impression that the dead are more important than the living. It is much more than a simple remembrance… it looks like a cult of the dead. 

The use of flowers became a business, and they embellish and soothe the pain and the feeling of loss, not of the dead but of the living. And there are the candles, plenty of candles. We may ask if they are a symbol of the warmth of love, of hope and of life or if they are simply being burnt to the dead as a kind of worship?

THE HOPE OF THE RESURRECTION

In the cemetery of my home town, like in many other Portuguese cemeteries, there are no symbols of the resurrection. There are plenty of crosses and of the Crucified Jesus, indicating pain and suffering; and there are many images of Our Lady and of angels, that they may protect and carry our dead to the Father’s house. Sometimes, we can find an image of the Good Shepherd, but there are no images of the Risen Christ or even symbols of the resurrection. 

People change with the times, and not always for the better. In the church where I was baptised, there are two images of the Risen Christ, being a carving on the door of the tabernacle and a painting over a tomb. And the dead where buried inside the church, for the living to remember that we are part of the same family and that we worship the Lord together. In the end, living and dead are one in Christ, and in Christ they will find life and salvation. 

If we forget the resurrection, our remembrance of the dead easily becomes worship of the dead. Instead of moving forward, illumined by hope, we look backward remembering the past, unable to make of the present a time worthy of the future.

VICTORY OVER DEATH

In his letter to the Corinthians, speaking about death and resurrection, Paul wrote:

“When this perishable body 

puts on imperishability, 

and this mortal body 

puts on immortality, 

then the saying that is written 

will be fulfilled:

“Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

 “Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?”

 The sting of death is sin, 

and the power of sin is the law. 

But thanks be to God, 

who gives us the victory 

through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Co 15:54-57)

THE SCANDAL OF JESUS MIXING WITH SINNERS

XXXI SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME: Luke 19:1-10

A merciless society

A few weeks ago, there was a big headline on a Portuguese newspaper about a rich man who had been president of Benfica and who is in prison because of misappropriation of huge amounts of money. It said: in control of bread and wine (in the sacristy of the prison’s chapel)! It was more against the Church than against the man in prison, and it expressed a very common idea nowadays: whoever commits a crime is beyond redemption, and should be shown no mercy at all. All those who fall must be trampled upon and crushed, and the ones who try to give them a hand are pushed aside and pointed at as being  guilty of the same crimes or at least contaminated by their filthiness. Our society - today’s society - is full of self-righteousness and cannot understand compassion, mercy and forgiveness. It is moved by a strong desire of revenge, exorcising the evil that pervades the whole of it by punishing the ones who are not clever enough to hide. Indeed, we see the speck in others’ eyes, but don’t see the log in our own eyes (Mt 7:3).

This Sunday, we listen to the story of Zacchaeus. Being a tax collector, he was seen as a thief, a collaborator and a traitor. According to the well behaved and the politically correct, he was an outcast that should be avoided like a leper.

Jesus challenges our prejudices

Jesus never allowed himself to be dictated by such false values. He always looked at people as persons, reading into their hearts and seeing the goodness hidden in them. Zacchaeus had made a great effort just to have a glimpse of Jesus, and in that Jesus detected his readiness to repent and to change.

When Jesus made himself invited to Zacchaeus’ house, he caused a commotion and a scandal. How could a man of God sit at the table of a sinner? What kind of a prophet was he? Many people take certain attitudes for granted, and will not accept to be challenged. However, Jesus came to challenge us. Jesus wanted to show God’s patience with all of us; and his patience comes out of his love for us.

God’s love and patience

The first reading, taken from the book of Wisdom, expresses that very clearly:

In your sight, Lord, the whole world 

is like a grain of dust that tips the scales,

like a drop of morning dew falling on the ground.

Yet you are merciful to all, 

because you can do all things

and overlook men’s sins 

so that they can repent.

Yes, you love all that exists, 

you hold nothing of what 

you have made in abhorrence,

for had you hated anything, 

you would not have formed it.

And how, had you not willed it, 

could a thing persist,

how be conserved 

if not called forth by you?

You spare all things because 

all things are yours, Lord, lover of life,

you whose imperishable spirit is in all.

Little by little, therefore, 

you correct those who offend,

you admonish and remind them 

of how they have sinned,

so that they may abstain 

from evil and trust in you, Lord. 

(Wisdom 11:22-12:2)