Faith in God

Reflection on Luke 17:5-10

The apostles asked Jesus to "increase their faith. The V meaning of Jesus' response is that the efficacy of faith does not depend on its quantity, its size, its volume. but rather on its quality, its worth. Consequently, the apostles did not need to have the volume of their faith increased. What they needed was for their faith be as solid, compact, unbroken as a mustard seed. That was a very small seed indeed; but even faith that was no bigger than that could uproot a tree move mountains, and do much more.

There is a popular notion that faith is something you do with your head. That is not correct. Rather, faith is something you do with your heart. It is an emotion of the heart. Its other name is trust. When you trust someone or something, you have faith in that person or thing. Something in you tells you that you can depend on that person or thing; that they will not let you down or fail you.

If we are normal human beings, we must trust someone. If we cannot trust anyone, there is something wrong with us; we are not normal. But we also know that we cannot trust any human being 100%. Experience will have taught us that even our most trusted relatives or friends can fail us. The reason is very simple: they are only human. Because they are human, they are limited. There is a limit to what they can be or do for us. As a result, even with the best of intentions, they can fail us when we least expect them to do so. That must have been the reason why the Prophet Jeremiah made a particularly strong statement about people who place their trust in human beings. He said: "Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength" (Jer. 17:5).

God is different. He is infinite. There is no limit to what he can be or do for us. He is the only one we can trust 100%. He will never let us down; he cannot let us down. It is not in his character. That is why we can have absolute trust in him, and our faith in him can be as solid and unbroken as a mustard seed. With that kind of faith in God, we shall be able to move mountains. Again, the Prophet Jeremiah had something to say on that. He said: "Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord" (Jer. 17:7).

GOD Before Money

Reflection on Luke 16:1-13

“Money is the root of all evils." The Bible does not say that. What the Bible says is “The love of money is the root of all evil" (1 Timothy 6: 10). The full text is: "The love of money is the root of all evils, and there are some who, pursuing it, have wandered away from the faith and so given their souls any number of fatal wounds."

The love of money may indeed be the root of all evils. But can we do any good without money? We need money to build churches, to furnish them; we need money to spread the Good News; we need money to train various categories of workers in the vineyard of the Lord; we need money to carry out the many works of mercy that the Church is known for. Therefore, money cannot be bad in itself. It is the love of it that is bad. Perhaps I should say "inordinate love" of money. That is what happens when we are prepared to sacrifice higher values in the pursuit of money, values like honesty, truth, justice, peace. The extreme of inordinate love of money is when we are prepared to sacrifice even our faith in the pursuit of money. That can happen at different levels. It can happen if we abandon our faith to join a secret cult or society in order to make money. It can also happen if we choose to do business on Sunday instead of going to church to worship God. On no account must our quest for money come between us and our obligations to God. Otherwise we shall be guilty of being slaves of money rather than God's. That is what Jesus warns against in our Gospel passage today.

Therefore we do not do any wrong if we work hard and make money, a lot of it, by honest means. The next important question is what we do with our money. We should put our money at the service of God and humanity, including our own family. If on the contrary, we hoard our money or we spend it on sheer frivolities that do not do anybody any good, we are guilty of wrongful use of money.

It has been said that money is a good servant but a bad master. As long as we are the ones using money, we are safe. But the moment we allow money to use us, we are in trouble. Money can be a hard taskmaster. If we subject ourselves to it, it can make outrageous demands on us: it can demand our family or loved ones, it can demand even our own soul. In the end, it will take away our happiness. A certain writer put it this way: "Money is a useful commodity, and can purchase everything except happiness. It is a passport to everywhere except to heaven."

The cost of Discipleship

Reflection on Luke 14:25-33

Many of the contemporaries of Jesus regarded him as one of the many Rabbis that the Israelite nation produced from time to time. Rabbis were highly respected religious teachers. People looked up to them to show them how to live in such a way that they would find favour with God.

It was customary for a Rabbi to have a retinue of followers. Those followers were called “disciples”. They followed the rabbi in every sense of the word. First, they went with him wherever he went, walking behind him, as it were. We might say walking in his footsteps, almost putting their feet on the footprints of their Master. That is to say, they followed him physically. But, more importantly, they also followed him morally and spiritually. That is, they did all they could to imitate his lifestyle, they modeled their lives after his own, trying to be copies of their Master.

Like the Rabbis of his day, Jesus too had his own disciples, with one important difference. Whereas disciples normally chose the Rabbis that they followed, in the case of Jesus, he chose his own disciples. He chose them; they did not choose him (John 15:16). However, his own disciples too were expected to follow him, some physically, like the twelve Apostles; all morally and spiritually. Jesus expected, indeed, he required all his disciples to model their lives after his own, to copy his lifestyle. That is what he said in John 13, after washing the feet of his disciples. He said, “I have given you an example so that you may copy what I have done to you” (John 13: 15).

Jesus is saying exactly the same thing in today's Gospel reading to all his disciples down through the ages. That includes us. Hear him: “Anyone who does not carry his cross and come after me cannot be my disciple." When Jesus came into this world, he carried the cross from the crib at Bethlehem to the hill outside Jerusalem called Golgotha. He knew suffering from his birth to his crucifixion on Calvary. He drank the cup of suffering to the dregs. And when he asked his Father that the cup might be taken away from him, he added, “Nevertheless, let your will be done, not mine" (Luke 22:42). The cup was not taken away, and he had to drink it.

Now, he says that his disciples must follow in his footsteps if they are to be truly his disciples. They cannot be his disciples any other way. His disciples must be prepared to bear the cross of suffering as he bore his own.

It follows that the cross, suffering is part and parcel of being a Christian. Suffering is not alien or incidental to Christianity. If you take away suffering, you don't have Christianity any more. What you have is a mere palliative, an analgesic, like Panadol or Aspirin, a painkiller. Christians, authentic Christians, true Disciples of Christ must beware of salesmen who are peddling different brands of such palliatives that they call “churches”, and saying: "Suffering is not my portion." Well, suffering was the portion of Christ. If suffering is not your portion, then whose disciple are you? Certainly not Christ’s.

Universal Christianity

Reflection on Luke 13:22-30

The Jews of old had a neat division of the entire human race into two categories: Jews and the rest. Jews were the chosen race. All others were not chosen. Jews were chosen because of the promises God made to their ancestor, Abraham. Those promises passed on to Abraham’s descendants, Isaac, Jacob and the twelve sons of Jacob, out of whom, came the twelve tribes of Israel. "Israel" was Jacob's other name. As far as the Jews were concerned, only they, the chosen race, would have a place with their ancestor, Abraham, in the kingdom of God.

You can imagine their shock when Jesus told them that others too, “men from east and west, north and south, will come to feast in the kingdom of God" with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets, while they, the Jews, would be turned outside. In other words, people of other races, whom the Jews called gentiles or pagans, would be admitted into the kingdom of God, and the Jews turned outside.

One factor would determine who got admitted and who got turned outside: faith. The gentiles would be admitted because of their faith in the one sent by God, his Son, Jesus Christ. The Jews, on the other hand, would be turned outside because of their rejection of him. Of course, those Jews who believed in Jesus - and there were many of them, including his Twelve Apostles – would be admitted too. But the Jewish nation, as a nation, Israel, rejected Jesus as the Messiah, the Saviour of the world. It has continued to do so to this very day .

The prophecy of Jesus has been fully realized in the Church, which is the beginning of the kingdom of God right here on earth. The Church is made up literally of people from east and west, north and south, people of all races, colour, languages and cultures. That is why the Church is Catholic, meaning universal. What all those people have in common is their faith in Jesus Christ. And it is by their faith that they most resemble Abraham, who was the man of faith par excellence. It is that faith that makes them the real descendants of Abraham.

That was why St Paul taught that, after the coming of Christ, descent from Abrabam would no longer be reckoned merely on biological grounds or observance of the Jewish Law. Rather, descent f from Abraham would be based on faith. In the words of St. Paul, “That is why the promise is to faith, so that it comes as as a free gift and is secure for all the descendants, not only those who rely on the Law but all those others who rely on the faith of Abraham, the ancestor of us all” (Romans 4: 16).

We Christians constitute the kingdom of God that is here on earth. We shall remain in that till that kingdom and attain its fulfillment in heaven only if we continue in our faith in Jesus Christ. But, as St. James clearly taught, that faith is not exclusive of good deeds. In fact, it is manifested in good deeds. In his words, “… faith: if good deeds do not go with it, it is quite dead” (James 2: 17). Even Abraham's faith was manifested in his deeds. Alain, in the words of St. James, “Was not Abraham our father justified by his deed, because he offered his son Isaac on the altar?” (James 2:21).

Therefore, we are justified, that is, saved, purely by faith in Jesus Christ, as I have just described it, not by human considerations like race, tribe, nationality, colour, language, culture or gender. Justification, salvation is available to all who put their faith in Christ universally!

Solemnity of the Assumption

Reflection on the Solemnity of the Assumption

When we way the Creed, we say that we believe in the resurrection of the body. What that means is that after the Last Judgement on the last Day, our dead bodies will be reunited with our souls. Wherever our bodies will be at the time, God will make them come back together with our souls to share with our souls whatever is the reward for our lives here on earth.

Somehow God did not wait until the end of the world or the last judgement before uniting the soul and body of the Blessed Virgin Mary in heaven. That is to say, what we all shall experience at the end of the world, Mary is already experiencing before the end of the world. Her soul and body are already united in enjoying the bliss and happiness of heaven. That is what the Assumption is all about.

The reason why Mary was assumed into heaven was because she had no Sin, not even original sin. We know and we believe that Mary was conceived without sin. That is to say, from the first moment of her conception, God preserved her from every stain of sin, including the sin of our first parents. We know that death and bodily decay are the wages of original sin. If Adam and Eve had not sinned, there would have been no death, that is, the separation of soul and body, followed by decay of the of the body. Now, if Mary was not touched by the sin of Adam and Eve, then she should not suffer the consequences of a sin. It would have been a grave injustice on the part of God to allow her to suffer the consequences of a sin that the same God had preserved her from. That is the reason why, after her life here on earth, God took her body to body and soul to heaven, something that can happen to the rest of us only on the Last Day. Undoubtedly, the Assumption, like the Immaculate Conception, is a wonderful thing that God did for Mary. In our Gospel reading today (Luke 1:39-56), we hear Mary herself say that the Lord has done great things for her. The greatest thing that God did for her was to choose her to be the mother of his Son. Of all the women God has ever created and all the women God will ever create, Mary alone was chosen to be the mother of the Son of God. What honour can be greater than that? lt is a great honour for any woman to be the mother of a great man or woman, like a king, a queen, a president, prime minister, a bishop, a cardinal, a pope. But you cannot compare any of these with the honour of being the mother of the Son of God. That was Why Elizabeth said to Mary, "Of all women, you are the most blessed" because "biessed is the fruit of your womb". And she called Mary "the mother of my Lord". And she said she was highly honoured to be visited by the mother of her Lord.

The Assumption is one of consequences of the honour of being the Mother of God. God almighty decided that the Mother of his Son should not suffer death and decay in the grave. Therefore, he. took her body and soul to heaven. That is one of the great thtngs that God did for her. With today's feast, we are acknowledging what God did for Mary by taking her body and soul to heaven.

Be Vigilant

Reflection on Luke 12:32-48

Armed robbery is one of the greatest problems in our country today. It has become so brazen that robbers even operate in broad daylight. That has not always been the case. In the past, they would only come to your house in the middle of the night. Nowadays, they operate both at night and during the day. We can say that night and day are the same to them. Sometimes, robbers even send their victims advance notice to expect them on such and such a day. And they keep their appointment. Telling the Police is no use. They too have suffered terribly at the hands of the men of the underworld.

Now, suppose you receive a letter from a gang of armed robbers that they will be coming to your house on a particular day. I am sure you will take steps to reinforce the security of your house to deny them access. Or else, you might even pack out of the house completely, and move to another place before that day. But suppose they don't tell you the exact day, they are coming. You will begin to sleep with one eye open. You will keep some good money in the house to give to the robbers whenever they do come. In short, you will be on your guard, you will be vigilant or, as Jesus says in our Gospel reading today, you will "stand ready."

Life is like that. Nobody knows when the Ultimate Robber of them all will come. I mean Death."It can come at any time, at any age, anywhere. Sometimes people know that they are dying, and can prepare for it. Some of them are put off by the thought that they will die soon, and rebel against God, against everybody, against the world. They refuse to prepare for death. But the vast majority of people don't get any advance warning that they will soon die.

Since most of us don't know when death will come, what should we do? Jesus says that we must "stand ready" at all times. We must be vigilant. If we knew the exact date of our death, and that it was near, most of us would stop being wicked, sinning; we would begin to be good, kind, prayerful, very religious. That is exactly what we should do when we do not know the exact date of our death. All those things that we would do. if we knew the date, we should begin to do even when we don’t know the date. We should begin to live the kind of life that we would like death to find us living.

A man was once asked what he would do if he knew that he would die within the next 24 hours. The man replied that he would continue to do exactly what he was doing. The man was able to say that because he knew that what he was doing was good, the kind of life he was living was upright, honest and pleasing to God. It would take him to heaven. Now, suppose someone told us the same thing: that we would die within the next 24 hours, would we be able to say, like that man, that we would continue to do exactly what we are doing, living the kind of life that we are living? If we can say that, then we are ready, vigilant. We have nothing to fear from the Ancient Robber, Death. Death will have everything to fear from us.

The Rich Fool

Reflection on Luke 12:13-21

The parable in today’s gospel passage has often been referred to by biblical scholars as “The Parable of the Rich fool.” That is a rather curious title, somewhat like calling someone "an evil genius", and the person in question actually admitting that he is one. How can someone be rich and a fool at one and the same time? That is only too possible, as can be clearly from the parable in question.

The man in the parable was rich in material terms; that is, he had managed to amass a great amount of material wealth. But he had no sense. He made the mistake of reposing confidence in his wealth. He thought that it was all he needed for his security. He failed to reckon with God. When the demand was made for his soul, his entire material wealth was of no use to him.

The man’s foolishness becomes dearly evident when we consider that material wealth can evaporate as a result of some unforeseen circumstances, an accident of one sort or another. How often have we seen that happen? Someone was rich and comfortable yesterday. He was on top of the world; the whole world was at his feet. People were queuing to be admitted into his presence. Then maybe he became seriously ill and had to spend his entire fortune on hospital bills, and today he is penniless. Or else, maybe he made one wrong investment, hoping to make a "kill" In terms of financial returns. But instead, he lost his entire investment, capital, profit and all, and now he is left with nothing. That, sadly, has been the experience of many people in Nigeria in the recent past.

All that goes to justify the warning of Jesus in Matthew 6: 19-20: "Do not store up treasures for yourselves on earth, where moth and woodworm destroy them and thieves break in and steal. But store up treasures for yourselves in heaven, where neither moth nor woodworm destroys them and thieves cannot break in and steal." The rich man in the today's parable was a fool precisely because he stored up his treasure on earth rather than in heaven.

There was this other man, a maximum ruler, who built himself a fortress on a rock. He surrounded it with the most mind-boggling security apparatus, men and materials. He hardly ventured outside his fortress, and on the rare occasions that he did, the most formidable security cordon was thrown around him, such that even a mosquito could not penetrate to perch on the great one. Everything had to be done to keep him alive and in office at all costs. Unfortunately, the man and his entire security outfit had failed to reckon with one enemy that was invisible, noiseless, tasteless, odourless, intangible: death. On the day that it came calling, it took all of them unawares. In an instant, perhaps one of the most protected human beings on earth was felled by it, and a whole nation heaved a sigh of relief that reached up to the sky: "Good riddance to bad rubbish!"

The lesson of today's parable is that our real security can be found only in God. It cannot be found in material possessions. They can evaporate at short notice. It cannot be found in our natural and acquired endowments. They too can take leave of us In an Instant. It cannot be found in human beings either. They can let us down when we least expect or need them to do so. It cannot be found in the paraphernalia of power. These offer no protection against the ultimate enemy of them all, death. I believe that is what the Psalmist meant when he wrote, "If the Lord does not watch over the city, in vain do the watchmen keep vigil" (Psalm 127:1).

Lord, Teach us to Pray

Reflection on Luke 11:1-13

Someone was praying, and he said, "Lord, give me patience. But please hurry!" That is a glaring example of just how NOT to pray. From today's Gospel passage, we gather that patience or perseverance is one of the essential attributes of prayer. If we lack it when we pray, then we just don't know how to pray. Two other attributes of prayer are faith and "right intention.”

When we pray, we must have faith that God will answer us. First, we must believe that God is able to do what we are asking. Then, we must also believe that he is willing to do it for us; that is, he cares enough, he has our interest enough to do it for us. The basis of this faith can be seen in the words of Jesus in today's Gospel passage: "Ask, and it will be given to you .... For the one who asks always receives." Jesus did not say, "Ask, and it may be given to you." What he said was, "Ask, and it will be given to you.” He did not say, "The one who asks sometimes receives." No! He said, "The one who asks always receives:' Jesus was not given to making frivolous promises, promises that he could not or would not deliver on. That is why we have to be convinced that if he said so, then it had to be so. That is why we can and we must pray with faith.

But what we are praying for must be for our own or our neighbour's good. That is where "right intention" comes in. If what I am praying for is not for my own or my neighbour's good, God will not do it for me. He will substitute something that is good for me or the neighbour that I am praying for. Yes, no responsible father would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread, or hand him a snake instead of a fish or a scorpion instead of an. egg. But what responsible father would hand his son a stone if he asked for one, when what he really needed was bread? What responsible father would hand his son a snake or a scorpion even if he asked for either of them? In the same way, God cannot be expected to give us anything that would turn out to be a stone or a snake or a scorpion in our hands, even if we asked him.

Having taken care of faith and "right intention", the next attribute that we must bring to our prayers is patience or perseverance. God is absolutely sovereign. He does not take orders from us. He will do what we ask for in prayer in his own time, not our time. Don't we all say that God's time is the best? How come we don't seem to believe that when it comes to prayer?

The trouble may be with the way things are in our world today. We have gone well past jet age and space age into cyber age. We seem to be able to do a lot of things at the touch of a button. As a result, many of us have lost the attribute of patience. If something we want fails to materialise at the time we expect it, we give up. We stop trying. We say, "It's no use. We are just wasting our time." A well known adage in days gone by used to be, "If once you try and you don't succeed, try, try, try again." It would seem that many of us today have settled for a modern corruption of that adage, which says, "If once you try and you don’t succeed, don't be a fool; give up!"

That is not the right attitude to bring to prayer. That is the lesson of today's gospel passage for us. When we pray, it is we who must wait on the Lord, and not the other way round. We cannot give God any ultimatums or deadlines to do what we want, or else .... That is what we are doing if we lack patience or perseverance when we pray.

Welcoming Jesus

Reflection on Luke 10:38-42

Hospitality is one of the things we Africans used to be well known for. Not anymore! And it is not our fault. Times have changed. Not only have the times become so very hard for most of us financially, but there are so many criminally minded people about these days. The innocent looking guest that you let into your house during the day may well return at night wielding a machete or a gun to dispossess you of your whole life's savings, if not of your life itself.

In days gone by things were quite different. The times were not so hard and crime was not so prevalent. If someone came to your house, say from the village, you received him warmly, you gave him water for his bath, you gave him a warm meal, and he had at least a space on the floor of your room, if not a bed, to lie on for the night. But you would not do all that without giving the visitor at least some moments of your time to tell you what his mission is. That is to Say, you would give him a listening ear.

Which one would you do first? It depends on the need of your visitor. If he arrives very hungry and famished, you would be well advised to give him food first before asking him to state his mission. But if his mission is so serious that it is boring a hole in his heart, then you had better listen to him first before talking about food. The message of Jesus, his teaching was urgent, momentous, far more important than anything material. It demanded the undivided attention of the recipient. That was the kind of attention that Mary gave to it, while Martha busied herself with serving. What Martha did was fine. It wasn’t wrong. Yes, it was a good thing to welcome Jesus with food and drink. But what Mary did was better. She gave Jesus a listening ear, her undivided attention. Jesus said she had chosen the better part, and it would not be taken away from her.

It is all a matter of knowing what to give to God at each moment in our relationship with him. There will be times when we must be Martha: giving our time, talents and treasures (money) in the service of God and our Church. God fully expects that of us when it is the time for it. But there will be other times when we must be Mary: just being present to God, just being there, listening to him and conversing with him, for instance, by going to Mass, visiting the Blessed Sacrament, reading our Bible.

What is required of us, then, is to be both Martha and Mary in our relationship with God, in our relationship with Jesus. Just being one of them, and not the other is not good enough. We must be both of them at different times, depending on what the times and circumstances dictate. That is how we too will choose the better part that will not be taken from us.

Who is my Neighbour?

Reflection on Luke 10:25-37

During one of the Sharia riots in the north, people did unspeakable things to their fellow Nigerians. Men, women and children were slaughtered as if they were sallah rams. Muslims did it to Christians, and Christians did it to Muslims. In the midst of all that, there were cases of acts of heroism and uncommon courage displayed by Christians and Muslims alike. Some Muslim landlords defended their Christian tenants against attack by Muslim marauders at great risk to their persons and their families. Many Christians did the same thing for Muslims who were in danger of attack by Christian mobs. Those were modern day examples of the Parable of the Good Samaritan: Muslims seeing Christians as their neighbours and caring for them, and Christians doing the same.

In the time of Jesus, Jews and Samaritans were mortal enemies. They hated one another with a passion. It can be said that if a Jew saw a snake and a Samaritan, he would kill the Samaritan first before going after the snake. A Samaritan would do the same to a Jew. Therefore, when Jesus presented the Samaritan as the one who cared for the Jew who had fallen into the hands of brigands, Whereas his fellow jews, two leaders of his own nation and religion -a priest and a Levite- failed to care for him, he was making a revolutionary statement. He was saying that a Samaritan was as much neighbour to a Jew as another Jew. And so, the commandment of God to love one's neighbour as oneself applied as much to a Jew loving a Samaritan as it did to a Jew loving a fellow Jew.

As Christians, we are not supposed to have enemies, we are not even supposed to hate anyone. Jesus has not given us any permission to do so. But we cannot help it if other people hate us or they appoint us as their enemies. They may even go on to cause us grievous harm, physically, mentally, emotionally. They are still neighbours whom the law of God says we must love as ourselves. We must be Good Samaritans to them, and care for them in their need as we would for those who call and treat us as friends.

That is what those Muslims and Christians did in the north when they defended members of another religion against attack by people of their own religion. It means that we too can do the same. The final injunction of Jesus to the lawyer in today's Gospel passage is therefore addressed to us too: "Go, and do the same yourself."

Be Involved

Reflection on Luke 10:1-12, 17-20

When Jesus began his public ministry, he knew that he could not do it alone. He would need a helping hand from some hand-picked persons. He picked twelve men, and named them Apostles. "… they were to be (first) his companions, and (then) to be sent out to proclaim the message" (Mark 3: 14). That is the meaning of the word Apostle, someone who is sent out.

As the mission grew bigger, Jesus must have realised that thirteen persons (himself and the Twelve) could not do it all. He therefore proceeded to appoint "seventy-two others and sent them out ahead of him in pairs, to all the towns and places he himself was to visit'~ as we read in today's Gospel passage. Even then, Jesus still remarked that "the harvest is rich but the labourers are few ... "

Just before he ascended into heaven, Jesus threw the mission wide open to all his disciples. The mission was now to "Go, therefore, make disciples of all nations..." (Matthew 28:19). Twelve men could not make disciples of all nations. Twelve men plus seventy-two could not either. All of the disciples now had to do it. All of them had to become apostles, evanglisers, missionaries, call it what you like. That is exactly what they began to do, according to what we read in the Acts of the Apostles. In the early days of the Church, it was not only the Twelve or any other restricted group of disciples that evangelised, that is, proclaimed the Good News. All of the disciples did: men and women, ordained and non-ordained. That was one of the reasons for the phenomenal spread of the Christian faith to the farthest reaches of the Roman Empire in only a few decades of the Church's existence.

The harvest has never been richer (Le. greater) than it is today. The labourers too, by comparison with the harvest, have never been fewer. I mean the people that are usually thought to be the labourers in the vineyard of the Lord: bishops, priests, deacons, religious, maybe catechists. It is therefore necessary to remind everyone that the ranks of labourers in the Lord's Vineyard have been expanded to embrace all disciples of Christ, every baptised Christian. Jesus did that more than 2000 years ago just before his ascension. Therefore, every disciple of Christ, that is every baptised Christian, must see himself or herself as a labourer in the Lord's vineyard. Everyone must be involved in the task of proclaiming the Good News and doing God's work. It is both a duty and a right. That is, you must do it, and no one can prevent you from doing it, as long as you are doing it right.

If everyone would just do his or her part, and not sit on the fence, the harvest would still be rich (great), but the labourers would no longer be so few. The Church, like the world, is made up of three categories of persons: those who make things happen, those who watch things happening, and those who wonder what happened. Where can you be 'Counted right now? Where would you like to be counted when you close your eyes to time and open them to eternity? So, get involved!

Follow Me

Reflection on Gospel of Luke 9:51-62

In many respects Jesus was like the other rabbis of his time in Palestine. But In many other respects, he was totally unlike them. One clear difference between Jesus and the other rabbi was in the way he recruited his disciples. In those days, if anyone wanted to be a disciple of any rabbi, he simply applied to him. In other words, the disciple chose his own rabbi. The very opposite was the case with Jesus. His disciples did not choose him; he chose them. And that is just what he said in John 15: 16: "You did not choose me, no, I chose you; and I commissioned you to go out and to bear fruit, fruit that will last…"

We see that clearly demonstrated in our Gospel passage of today. One man said to Jesus, "I will follow you wherever you go." Jesus did not want that man to follow him, and so he tactfully fenced him off with the excuse that “the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head."

But the same Jesus wanted two other men to follow him. So he called them to do just that. When they tried to make their own excuses, he would have none of it. He told them to simply drop whatever other agenda they had, and follow him. The meaning of that is that the following of Jesus does not admit of any excuses; it demands total commitment. It is not possible to follow Jesus by half measures; it is all or nothing. That is exactly what first disciples of Jesus did, when they left everything and followed him" (Luke 5: 11).

The Christian life is a call to discipleship, a call to follow Jesus. All of us who are baptised are beneficiaries of that call. As in the case of the early disciples of Jesus, we did not choose him; no, he chose us. That is to say, we are Christians, not because we wanted to be Christians, but only because Jesus made us so by his own deliberate choice. His reasons for choosing us are known to him alone. Whatever those reasons may be, I believe we ought to be grateful to him for choosing us.

Now that we have been chosen, we must remember that Jesus does not take any excuses. He demands total commitment of his followers. We must follow him completely with all that we are and all that we have. That is to say, we must place our very selves and all our possessions at his disposal, to do with as he pleases. That, in part, is what Jesus meant when he said, "If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me" (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23).

To follow Jesus completely also means that we shall not live or act in ways that compromise our call to discipleship, in ways that contradict our Christian faith. Our way of life and the activities we engage in must square with the faith we professed at the time of our baptism, when we rejected Satan, and all his works, and all his empty promises, and said that we believed in God, the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Who do you say I am?

Reflection on Gospel of Luke 9:18-24

After being with his disciples for some time and teaching them, Jesus wanted to know from them what people were saying about him: "Who do the crowds say I am?" They must have been hearing what people were saying, good things and others that were not so good. Tactfully, they chose to tell him only the good ones. Some people were saying that he was another John the Baptist, others that he was Elijah, yet others were saying that he was the re-incarnation of one of the ancient prophets. They did not tell him that some people were calling him a glutton, drunkard, friend of sinners, even Beelzebul, prince of devils. Jesus himself knew that people were calling him those other things too. All that did not really matter much to him.

What mattered most to Jesus was what his own disciples were thinking and saying about him: "But you, who do you say I am." Peter answered on behalf of all of them: "the Christ of God." The word "Christ" translates the Hebrew "Messiah", which means "the Anointed One," There were many anointed persons in the history of the Jewish people. Priests were anointed, kings were anointed, certain categories of prophets too, were anointed. But the Jews had been told that one specially anointed person was going to come. He would not be just another anointed person, but the Anointed One, the Messiah. He would come to set his people free from their subjugation to spiritual and temporal forces. Peter’s reply meant that he recognized Jesus as that unique Anointed One. Jesus did not deny it. But he gave them strict orders not to tell anyone about it. The reason was that people had a completely different idea of the of the promised Messiah than Jesus represented. They believed that the Messiah would be a warrior, a general of some sort, and he would lead his people out in battle against their enemies and conquer them.

Jesus was not that kind of Messiah. Rather, he would be the kind of Messiah that the prophets had foretold, like Zechariah in today's first reading. His own Messiah, ''the Son of Man, was destined to suffer grievously and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and be put to death, and to be raised up on the third day." It was through suffering, death and resurrection that this Messiah would set his people free.

Having spoken about the kind of Messiah that he was, Jesus then invited his disciples to follow him along the road of suffering, the way of the cross. They could not follow him in any other way. If they chose to travel another road than that of suffering and the cross, they would not be following him. They might be following other masters, but definitely not Jesus. If they thought to save their lives by avoiding suffering and the cross, that was exactly when they would lose their lives (their souls). But if they were prepared to lose their lives by embracing suffering and the cross, then they would save their lives.

It follows that suffering and the cross are essential to Christianity. A Christianity without the cross does not exist; it has not yet been invented. If-someone is trying to self us a brand of religion devoid of the cross, it is not Christianity. You will not find Christ there. You can never find Christ without his cross; Christ and his cross are inseparable. Therefore any religion or ideology that is devoid of Christ is not his religion, the one he founded; it is not Christianity. If we are Christians, and wish to remain so, we should embrace the real thing, Christianity with the cross in it, and not settle for a mere palliative, an analgesic or emotional stimulant pretending to be Christianity.

Forgiving Lord

Reflection on Luke 7:36-8:3

Jesus was a guest at the home of a Pharisee named Simon. So, he was not an enemy of the Pharisees after all. He had nothing against them as persons. He only disagreed with many of their attitudes ways of doing things. Simon had failed to extend a courtesy to Jesus that was customarily given to invited guests. In those days, in Palestine it was customary to pour water over the feet of one's guest before he entered your house. Simon did not do that, perhaps out of contempt for Jesus. He was not being a good host. One wonders why he even bothered to invite Jesus at all.

We can imagine that the other guests at table with Jesus were Pharisees too and other respectable persons in the community. All of a sudden, an uninvited woman barged in and proceeded to shower unusual attention on Jesus. "She waited behind him at his feet, weeping, and her tears fell on his feet, and she wiped them away with her hair; then she covered his feet with kisses and anointed them with the ointment." Trouble was the woman in question had a bad name in the town. Everybody in the town knew it, so that no self-respecting person would associate with her. Jesus was likely not an inhabitant of that town. So, he might not have known the kind of person she was. But, then, if he was a prophet, as many people believed he was, he should have known it by some special insight. Since he did not seem to know, then he could hardly have been a prophet. He was an impostor. So Simon thought, until Jesus sprang a surprise.

The surprise was that Jesus knew what he was thinking. Only a prophet could do that. A mere man could not. So, Jesus might be a prophet after all. Simon and maybe other guests might have been prepared to concede that to him. But they were not prepared to concede that he was divine. Prophet, yes, divine,-definitely not! That was what Jesus implied by saying to the woman, "Your sins are forgiven." Only God could forgive sin. Jesus was not God. So, he was blaspheming. So, they thought, and they were put off by him.

Later on the disciples of Jesus and subsequent generations of his followers would know that he was not blaspheming. They would learn that he was a divine person, Son of God, the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, the Word who became flesh and dwelt among us. As such, he was quite capable of forgiving sin. That was something Jesus did time and time again, like when he forgave the sin of a paralytic before curing him of his paralysis. (Mark 2:1-12) Indeed, Jesus said that was why he came into the world: "I have come not to call the righteous but sinners." (Mark 2: 17)

Jesus' attitude in this regard was the same as God's attitude in the Old Testament, as we can see in the first reading (1 Sam. 12:7-10, 13). King David had committed two of the most despicable sins of his time and all time. After committing adultery, he attempted a cover-up to conceal the result of his sin. He tried to induce Uriah to go home and sleep with his wife. When Uriah, unwittingly, refused to play ball, David compounded his sin with the murder of an innocent man, whom he had earlier cheated of his wife. David deserved to roast in hell for his double crime. God sent the prophet Nathan to confront him with his sins. No sooner did David confess, "I have sinned against the Lord" than Nathan said to him, "The Lord, for his part, forgives your sin. You are not to die." God forgave him just like that. He exacted no price beyond the death of the illegitimate child Bathsheba had conceived from him.

Such is the character of our God. He is not a God of vengeance, as some people would want to make him out to be, and the Pharisees definitely made him out to be. He is a forgiving God. The ancients might have conceived of him as "an avenging God". Today's first reading and gospel story tell a different story, that he is a forgiving God. People had better get used to that, including all the Pharisees in every age.

The Bread of Life

Reflection on Luke 9:11-17

What is the greatest treasure of the Catholic Church? It is the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. No wonder the Second Vatican Council described it as "the source and summit of the whole Christian life" because in it the faithful "offer the divine Victim to God and offer themselves along with it." The Council also said that "the most blessed Eucharist contains the Church's entire spiritual wealth, that is Christ Himself, our Passover. and living bread." All that is to say that the Holy Eucharist is quite simply Christ himself. Or again, as the Catechism puts, the Holy Eucharist is the “true Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ”, under the appearances of bread and wine.

The Catholic Church dares to take Jesus at his words. Sometime during his public ministry, Jesus made a quite astonishing pronouncement. He told his audience that they would have to eat his body and drink his blood in, order to have life in them, and anyone who ate his body and drank his blood would have eternal life (John 6:51-58). Many of his listeners were, quite naturally, put off at the prospect of having to eat his flesh and drink his blood since they were not cannibals. As a matter of fact, many of them began to go away, saying, "This is intolerable language. How can anyone accept it?” (John 6:60).

Jesus did not call them back to offer an explanation or to I say that he had been misunderstood. Instead, he insisted that he meant exactly what he said: they would have to eat his body and drink his blood. Take it or leave it! Even the Twelve (Apostles) did not know what to make of Jesus’ pronouncement at the time. But they elected to stay with him, whatever he meant by his statement. Simon Peter spoke for all of them. He said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the message of eternal life, an we believe…” (John 6:68).'

Only at the Last Supper, when Jesus took bread and said, "This is my body, which is for you”, and he took the cup filled with wine and said, “This is the new covenant in my blood”, did the Apostles finally understand what Jesus meant on the earlier occasion. What he meant was that they would have to eat his body and drink his blood in the forms of bread and wine. But the bread and wine would no longer be bread and wine. They would have transformed into the real body and blood of Christ. They would still have all the physical characteristics of bread and wine, but the real substance of bread and wine would have given way to the body and blood of Christ. That is the process Catholic theology has traditionally called Transubstantiation.

From the onset, Jesus meant the Holy Eucharist, the Sacrament of his Body and Blood for the spiritual nourishment of his followers. He told them to eat and drink. By doing so, they would draw life from him (John 6:57). That is to say they would live with the very life of Christ. They would be able to say with St. Paul, " ... I am alive; yet it is no longer I, but Christ living in me" (Gal. I 2:20). That life of Christ in them would ensure that they live eternally, precisely as he had promised.

All that is what makes the Holy Eucharist the Bread of Life for us Christians. If we only understood it for what it really is, none of us would ever let an opportunity to, partake of it pass us by. And if there was any obstacle in the way of our partaking of it, we would leave no stone unturned to remove it.

One God, Three Persons

Reflection on John 16:12-15

Faith in the Blessed Trinity is central to the Christian religion. It is impossible to be a Christian and not believe in the Trinity. But the Trinity is a profound mystery, perhaps the most sublime in all of Christianity. The word mystery suggests that we do not know and we cannot know an awful lot about the Blessed Trinity. One thing we do know is that there are three Persons in One God. Jesus revealed that to us in several texts of the Gospels. The Apostle Paul teaches extensively about it. One thing we do not know and we cannot know is how there are three Persons in One God. Therefore, whereas we know that, we do not know how. Therein lies the mystery of the Blessed Trinity.

Mystery though the Trinity is, we do have some very profound lessons to learn from it. The first lesson is that God is community. God is not individualism or isolation. God is a community founded on love. The Father loves the Son, and the Son loves the Father. Their love is not a sterile one. Out of it proceeds the Holy Spirit. The Father and the Son then love the Spirit, and the Spirit loves them both. Their mutual love is so strong, so compelling that it ensures their unity in the one Godhead. The strength of their love is such as to ensure that the three Persons are but one God, not three gods.

The Trinity is a unity in diversity. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Father, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son. Each retains his identity in the one Godhead.

Jesus prayed that his followers would be one as he and the Father are one (John 17:11,21). Therefore, the Trinity was to be the model of the unity of his followers. In that case, we can deduce that Jesus intended his followers to be a community of persons. That is what we call the Church. They were to be a community founded on love. Any attempt to base the unity of the Church on grounds other than love, such as doctrine, laws, rules and regulations would run counter to the will of Jesus. Of course, there would be doctrines, there would be laws, rules and regulations. But these would not be the basis of the unity of the Church. The only valid basis is love.

The Church would also have to be a unity in diversity. The Church's unity should not mean uniformity. That is to say, there should be room in the Church for legitimate differences in expressing and living the same faith. The faith (Creed) would be the same, but people's expression and living of it might differ from one culture to another, from one generation to. another. In other words, while there would be oneness, in essentials, there could be legitimate differences in non-essentials.

All these things are the basis of the Church's teaching on a wide range of subjects, like Church unity, Ecumenism, and Inculturation, among others. Our understanding of the Blessed Trinity is at the root of them all.

Come, Holy Spirit

Reflection on John 20;19-23

Easter is the most important celebration in the Christian calendar. Easter is not a one-day celebration, It is not even a one-week celebration. It is a fifty-day celebration. It begins on Easter Sunday and ends fifty days later on Pentecost Sunday. If Easter is the most important Christian celebration, Pentecost is the second most important, not Christmas, never mind all the fanfare that goes with Christmas.

Pentecost is important for several reasons. One of them is that it is a celebration in honour of the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. The Holy Spirit is God, one in Being with the Father and the Son, and equal to them in every respect. Any celebration in honour of any of the three Persons of the Blessed Trinity must be important because it is a celebration in honour of God.

Another reason why Pentecost is important is that it marks the day on which the Church was first introduced to the world, the day on which the Church was launched, to use a familiar local expression. The first beginnings of the Church were during the public ministry of Jesus, when he gathered disciples around himself and formed them into a community around his person. The actual birth of the Church was on Calvary, while Jesus hung on the cross, in fulfillment of his prophecy, "And when I am lifted up from the earth, I shall draw all people to myself" (John 12:32). But the first public outing of the Church was on the day of Pentecost, after the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles (Acts 2).

Jesus had promised the Holy Spirit to his disciples on several occasions during his public ministry. One of those occasions is recorded in John 16:13. There Jesus told his disciples, "But when the Spirit of truth comes he will lead you to the complete truth." Many of the things Jesus said and did during his time on earth were incomprehensible to his disciples. Those things simply went over their heads. That is why Jesus had said earlier on, " ... but the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name will teach you everything and remind you of all I have said to you" (John 14:26). It was only by the light of the Holy Spirit, after Pentecost, that the disciples began to comprehend all that Jesus had said and done. It was even by the light of the Holy Spirit that it finally dawned on them that "Jesus is Lord."

The Book of the Acts of the Apostles has numerous accounts of what the early Christians were able to accomplish through the power of the Holy Spirit. That is why that book is sometimes called the "Gospel of the Holy Spirit." Since that time, and for over two thousand years, the Church has gone on to accomplish many more great things through the power of the Holy Spirit. Right now, as you read thisret1ection, the Holy Spirit is working his wonders in and through the Church.

But it is not only in the Universal Church that the Holy Spirit is at work. He is at work in the lives of individual believers as well. When we were baptised, we received the Holy Spirit. At confirmation, the gift of the Holy Spirit was reinforced (confirmed) in us. But the presence and action of the Holy Spirit in us may not manifest unless we are, first of all, aware of that presence and that action, and secondly, we make our available for their manifestation in us. That is why we pray, “Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle In them the fire of your love."

May they be One

Reflection on John 17:20-26

There is this story about how Jesus once went to a football match with a friend. The match was between the Catholic Bombers and the Protestant Rockets. The Catholic Bombers were the first to score a goal. Jesus cheered heartily. Then in the second half, the Protestant Rockets equalised. Jesus again cheered heartily. The friend was confused. He asked Jesus which side he was on. Jesus answered, "None. I am just enjoying the game."

The moral of this story is that the disunity among Christians is not willed by Jesus. That is clear from today's Gospel passage. Jesus wanted unity for his followers so much that he even prayed for it. He prayed that they might be one as he and the Father are one, "may they be so completely one, so that the world will realise that it was you who sent me and that I have loved them as much as you loved me."

The disunity among Christians has been a veritable scandal. That is what the Second Vatican Council called it. It has been a stumbling block (that is the meaning of the world "scandal") in the way of proclamation of the Good News. That proclamation would have fared a lot better if Christians did not speak in so many discordant voices.

Thanks be to God, Christian leaders around the world have decided to do something to bring an end to the divisions among Christians. They started doing something around 1948. It is called "Ecumenism" or the "Ecumenical Movement". "Ecumenism" is the name given to all efforts that are aimed at progressively narrowing the divisions among Christians until we become one again, in accordance with the wish and prayer of Jesus for his followers.

Years ago, there was a Consistory -that is a meeting of all the Cardinals with the Pope in the Vatican. Top of the agenda was Ecumenism and how to move it forward. In Nigeria, Catholic Bishops are reaching out to Protestant denominations individually or collectively, within the framework of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN).

The actions of our leaders challenge all Christians to reach out to one another across denominational divides. It is true that we cannot yet do everything in common. We must not do everything in common yet since there are still divisions among us, and those divisions are real and serious. We cannot, for instance, share the Eucharist yet with our Protestant brethren because it does not mean exactly the same thing to all of us.

But there are still a lot of things that we have in common and a lot of things that we can do in common. We can pray together for various religious and civic intentions, including that of Christian reunion. We can give joint Christian witness on issues of social justice and human development. We can collaborate in areas like education and health care delivery, among others. We can certainly show a great deal more love, understanding and respect for one another than we have done in former times.

Whatever we do along these lines will contribute in no small measure towards fulfilling our Lord's wish and prayer, that we may be one, as he and the Father are one.

Peace I Bequeath to You

Reflection on John 14:23-29

The late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, will be remembered for many things. Most of, all, he will probably be remembered as an Apostle of Peace. That is because of so many unprecedented steps he took in the interest of world peace. During a trip to Syria, the Pope did the unthinkable: he took off his shoes, walked into a mosque in Damascus, the capital of Syria, to pray at the tomb of St John the Baptist. He was accompanied by the grand Mufti, the highest ranking Islamic cleric in Syria. While it is true that the Pope went to pray at the tomb of St John the Baptist, it is equally true that his gesture was a powerful statement on behalf of peace between two of the world's great religions, Christianity and Islam. Both religions have a history of hostility going back at least ten centuries, to the time of the Crusades.

While in Syria, the Pope made a passionate appeal for a cessation of hostilities between the Jews and Arabs in the Middle East. Both groups have been locked in violent conflict that has claimed thousands of lives over the years.

In all his efforts for world peace the Pope was only following in the footsteps of his Master, the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Peace was one thing that must have been dear to the heart of Jesus because, time and time again, he wished peace for his followers. He did so before his passion, as we read in our Gospel passage today. He did the same in the evening of the very day that he rose from the dead (John 20:20-21). When he sent out seventy-two disciples, Jesus instructed them thus; "Whatever house you enter, let your first words be, 'Peace to this house!' " (Luke 10:5). One of the eight beatitudes pronounced by Jesus was "Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be called children of God" (Matthew 5:9).

If peace meant so much to our Lord, then we can understand why the Pope, his Vicar on earth, should take it upon himself to be an Apostle of Universal Peace in our time. The Church as a whole is being challenged to follow the leadership of the Holy Father in this regard. Every son and daughter of the Church must share in the passion of Jesus and the Pope for peace in our world. None should be indifferent simply because we are not engaged in open warfare within our own country or with -outsiders. The painful reality staring us in the face is that many countries in our world today do not know any peace.

Several of those countries are in Africa. The men and women and children who are daily losing their lives or limbs or property in those countries are our kith and kin, our own flesh and blood. Their suffering is our suffering, their pain is our pain. We should be concerned about them. We may not be in a position to do anything physically about ending the conflicts i1i those lands. But we can pray the God of Peace to restore peace to them, and quickly. If that is all we do for the cause of peace in the Congo, Sudan, the Middle East, it will already be much.

Can it even be said that we are at peace here in Nigeria? Not really; not with all the recurrent incidents of violence arising from ethnic, political and especially religious differences. The memories of the religious clashes in Jos in the not-too-distant past are still fresh in our minds. We are already being treated to threats of war and bloodshed during the next national elections in 2011. Those threats should not be taken lightly. These are more reasons why we should join the Pope in his crusade for world peace by doing everything we can to promote peace in whatever way we can, beginning right where we are: in our family, our community and our country at large.

The Christian Trademark

Reflection on John 13:31-35

It is often said that Jesus gave a new commandment to his disciples. As a matter of fact, that is what Jesus himself says in our Gospel passage of today. That new commandment is the commandment of love. But how can it be new? Were people not required to love before the time of Jesus? Certainly! The Jews had two commandments of love enunciated in Deuteronomy 6:5 (love of God) and Leviticus 19:18 (love of neighbour). Even Jesus described them as the first and second greatest commandments of the Law (Mt. 22:37-39; Mk. 12:29-31). So how was the commandment given by Jesus new?

The newness of Jesus' commandment lay in its range and application. For instance, whereas the neighbour that a Jew was required to love was another Jew, for a disciple of Christ, the neighbour is every man and woman, friend and foe alike. A Jew had no business loving a Roman or a Samaritan. Not only was he not required to love his enemy, he was even entitled to exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Not so for a Christian. For a Christian, even a Samaritan is neighbour to a Jew, as we learn in the parable of the "Good Samaritan" (Luke 10: 29-37). In our own context today, we might say that even a Muslim is neighbour to a Christian.

Also, the Jewish commandment of love was "You must love your neighbour as yourself" (Lev. 19: 18). Jesus' new commandment is rather "Love one another as I have loved you" (John 15: 12) When you hear what comes next, you will know that it goes far beyond loving your neighbour as yourself. In the next verse Jesus says, "No one can have greater love than to lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). And Jesus went ahead to show it by actually dying on the cross for us, his friends. That is how he has loved us.

If Jesus then commands us to love one another as he has loved us, it means that we must be prepared to lay down our life for our neighbour. There have been cases recorded in history when someone actually did that physically, someone actually died in place of another. What is more likely to happen, though, in our case is that we shall be required to lay down our life for our neighbour morally, symbolically. What that means is that we shall be required to make sacrifices, to deny ourselves certain things that we want, but someone else needs; or indeed something that we need, but someone else needs it more than we do. The thing that we may be called upon to sacrifice or deny ourselves may be material, like money, food, clothes, accommodation; or non-material, like our time, comfort, or simply a listening ear. We must be prepared to love one another as Jesus has loved us with all these things. According to Jesus in today's Gospel passage, that is how everyone will know that we are his disciples. It is the Christian Trade Mark!