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!