The Constitution Of A New Kingdom

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. These are the founding documents of our country. They spell out how our country will be governed and what rights we will uphold. They define what kind of nation we are to be.

Today's gospel is the Beatitudes which forms the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount. The Sermon on the Mount is, for Jesus, the constitution of a new people. It's a founding document spelling out for us what kind of church Jesus intends us to be. It's a declaration of independence from a narrow view of religion as just a bunch of "thou shalt nots" to a living relationship with God the Father. Just as Moses climbed the mountain to receive the Law from God and deliver it to His people Israel, so Jesus, from the mount, delivers a new law for a new people.

What kind of people is God gathering? What kind of Church does Jesus intend to found? We hear about it in the Beatitudes. God's people are the poor and the lowly. They are those who have no power in the eyes of the world.

Human governments are formed and run by people with power, wealth and influence. They conquer through force, by gathering strong armies with fearsome weapons.

But God means to conquer the world in a different way. God means to conquer the world one heart at a time.

God whispers to the poor, "Let me be your wealth". The world's riches depreciate in value and are easily depleted, but God's wealth never loses value. God whispers to the sorrowful heart: "Let me be your consolation." The world offers empty words of consolation which cannot reach the depths of the person. Only God can reach the unfathomable depths of the human heart which He created.  God whispers to the hungry heart: "Let me feed you." The world's bread only fills the belly for a few hours. Soon, the stomach growls for more. But God's bread is free and satisfying beyond any food the world can offer.

Jesus is gathering a new people, a new Kingdom. Jesus is instigating a revolution of peace and justice, not by means of armies and fire-power, but through simple people who seek to do God's will. Jesus is forming this new people out of you and me with our gifts, with our failures, with our limitations.

If we read the Beatitudes and hear in them a message of resignation before evil, then we really haven't heard Jesus' words. Jesus isn't saying to us that life is hard, but if we tough it out we'll be rewarded in heaven. The Kingdom of God which Jesus preaches about is not an event in some never-never land far off in the future. The Kingdom of God is today. It is here. It is now. Today is the day for the sorrowful to be comforted. Today is the day for the hungry to be fed. Now is the time for mercy and peace to be practised.

Neither are the Beatitudes something for other people to practise and live out. It is not something left up to the bishops, or nuns or other more "spiritual" people. It is for us to do. We are to practice mercy in our day-to-day lives. We are to make peace a reality. And, if necessary, we are to bear insults, ridicule and persecution for the sake of Jesus and the Kingdom which is breaking into our world. If we don't say "yes", if we don't let God conquer our hearts, then this Kingdom cannot be real and effective in the world.

We are gathered here today to witness something spectacular. It will go largely unnoticed. Katie Couric and Bill O'Reilly won't be here to cover it. Nonetheless, something revolutionary is taking place here today. Simple bread and wine will be transformed into the body and blood of Jesus. And, we will be fed by it. God will whisper to our hearts that He wants us for His own people.

Will we take this gift home with us? Will we allow it to transform us, transform our families, transform our work places, transform our world? Only then will this revolution of peace be underway.

Repent!

There is one overarching theme to all of Jesus’ ministry. Everything He did and said can be summed up in the words, “The Kingdom of Heaven.”

It was to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to us that Jesus came to earth. He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Most of His parables began with the phrase, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like...”. The miracles He performed were proof that the Kingdom of Heaven was already among us conquering the kingdom of this earth which has burdened us with sin, suffering and death. In His preaching, Jesus taught us that in God’s Kingdom the poor would be blessed, those who mourn will be consoled and those who humble themselves will be glorified. It is a Kingdom which turns everything we are accustomed to on its head. It is a true revolution in which the first shall be last and God will be all in all.

When Jesus announces that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand in today’s gospel, He tells us that we must “repent”. What does He mean by that word? To repent means to welcome the coming of God’s Kingdom into our world and to change our attitudes and our lifestyle accordingly. To repent means to submit ourselves to God’s word and to live according to its demands. This repentance is not a one time event as our “born-again” brothers and sisters sometimes insist. Rather it is an ongoing openness of our minds and hearts to the transformative power of God.

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has written a powerful and beautiful work entitled, The Joy of the Gospel.  Though it has received some notoriety in the press because of its criticism of rampant consumerism and the growing inequality among the rich and the poor,  it also is a firm but gentle critique of how we Christians too often stand in the way of God’s work in the world. Our Holy Father is echoing the call of Jesus for all of us to repent so that the Kingdom of Heaven may be a reality in our world.

All of us should spend time reading over The Joy of the Gospel for ourselves so that we can be enriched by its wisdom and inspired by its call to bring Christ to others. In light of today’s readings, however, let us look at two ways the Holy Father is calling us to repent - to change our attitudes, behaviours and lifestyles so that the Kingdom of Heaven may be made visible in our world.

First of all, every follower of Jesus is called to evangelize. The Holy Father writes:

“All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization.... The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization...(EG 120)

To evangelize simply means “to share the gospel with others”. Pope Francis is challenging each of us no matter what our state in life is and no matter how much we think we may know or not know to go out of our comfort zones and speak to our family members, friends, co-workers, schoolmates and even strangers about the love of God made visible in Jesus Christ.

In the past, we may have seen this work as belonging only to priests and religious. However, we need to repent of this attitude and take hold of this work ourselves. Long gone are the days when we could expect people to come to church on their own. Even if Catholics left in their teenage years, we would expect them to come back to be married or to baptize their children. We all know from personal experience that this is not the case anymore. If these people are not to be lost, then we have to seek them out ourselves, bringing the joy of God’s love to them. We have to repent of the comfortable spiritual lives we have created for ourselves and take the risk of reaching out to others with the power of the gospel message.

The second way the Holy Father is calling us to repent is by putting aside all rivalries and conflicts we may have with one another. Saint Paul echoes this in today’s second reading: “[Let] there be no divisions among you, but...be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” We know that divisions among Christians are an excuse for many people not to believe in Jesus. If we cannot love and forgive one another, then how can we preach love and forgiveness to others? Sadly, in our parish, even despite our best efforts to get along, we often have one group grumbling about another group. We too often talk behind one other’s back and sometimes even undermine one another’s work, forgetting that we are all on the same team.

If we are going to be a people who reflect the love of Christ, then we must repent of the resentments and grudges which keep us from working together. This is the advice our Holy Father gives us:

“We all have our likes and dislikes, and perhaps at this very moment we are angry with someone. At least let us say to the Lord: ‘Lord, I am angry with this person.... I pray to you for him and for her’. To pray for a person with whom I am irritated is a beautiful step forward in love, and an act of evangelization. Let us do it today! Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the ideal of fraternal love!” (EG 101).

The Kingdom of Heaven has come among us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. There is nothing we can do to stop it. But we do have a decision to make. Will we accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ? Will we submit ourselves to His rule? Or will we cling to our false sense of ownership over our own lives and stubbornly hold on to the illusion that we are in control? By heeding our Holy Father’s call to bring the gospel message into the lives of those we meet and by forgiving and loving one another, we can show that His Kingdom of love is already at work among us.

God's Kingdom At Hand

The message of Jesus is simple.

The gospel writers agree that it can be boiled down to two sentences. They are the words that Jesus proclaimed as he traveled through Galilee:

The Kingdom of God is at hand.

Repent and believe in the good news.

These words may be simple, but their meaning is deep. And applying these words to our lives is anything but easy.

Today’s gospel, however, gives us some pointers for understanding the meaning of his words and how they are meant to change our lives.

Jesus appears in Galilee for the first time walking the countryside preaching the good news. On the shores of the Lake of Tiberias he calls simple fishermen to follow him. They drop everything to answer his call.

The immediate and wholehearted response of these men and of so many others who will follow their example teaches us what it means to repent and believe in the good news. It means encountering the person of Jesus, following him and leaving everything behind.

First, believing in the good news means having a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. The apostles did not leave their families, homes and jobs because they believed in an idea or wanted to live an ideal. Rather it was their encounter with Jesus that moved them. Meeting Jesus changed everything for them. Throughout the gospels people are moved by him because they felt the power of his words and experienced his love for them. But more than anything it is meeting Jesus that changes hearts and heals souls.

In our day we cannot have the same face to face encounter that the apostles enjoyed. But we still are able to meet the Risen Lord when we read the Bible which is his word, when we receive the Sacraments which are the continuation of his healing work in the Church and in our sisters and brothers who are his living body. We are not on fire for our faith or passionate about our Church because we like to follow rules. Rather it is because we have met and fallen in love with Jesus Christ. This personal relationship with him that we have through faith and the ministry of the Church drives everything that we are about. It is already ours through baptism. But if we want to understand it more fully and to make it the driving force in our lives, we only need to ask Jesus to help us, and he will make it clear to us in some way.

And so, believing in the good news means, first of all, having a personal encounter with Jesus.

Secondly, Jesus’ message means that we must follow him. Our life of faith can be understood as a journey with Jesus leading the way. It means that, like the apostles, we have to give up our own plans for how we will live our life and put our trust in God and his plan for us. It is not easy because very often the road is steep and the pathway rocky. We will not always see where it is headed, and we will stumble frequently along the way. We will see our friends walking a different way that seems easier, and we will be tempted to join them. But God will give us the strength and the courage to follow him. And we will be blessed with joy because we are with Jesus.

And so, believing in the good news means, following Jesus, walking the same road he walked and letting him set the itinerary for our lives.

Thirdly, believing in the good news means leaving everything behind. The apostles could not follow Jesus and stay fishermen. They had to make a choice. We cannot follow Jesus and continue to live the same way we did before. When we choose to follow Jesus, some things will have to stay behind. We may have to end friendships because they lead us to bad behavior. We may have to change our business practices because they are deceitful. We will all be called to live simpler lives so that we will have more left over to give to the poor. Some will even be called to sell everything and to give their lives totally over to Jesus in religious life. For all of us, gaining Jesus will mean the loss of something or someone we love. It was that way for the apostles, and it continues to be that way for us. There is no other way if we are to put our lives in the hands of our loving Father.

However, there is nothing in this world that can compare with knowing, loving and serving God. Any possession we have will eventually become useless. Most of our friendships will come to an end. But we will have God forever. Nothing else in this world can give us the fulfillment that God can. That is why, no matter how painful it might be, Christians throughout the centuries have gladly abandoned jobs, possessions and even their homelands for the joy that only comes from following Jesus. If there is something or someone in our lives that is keeping us from following Jesus with all our hearts, we must pray for the grace to let it go. Otherwise, we cannot fully know the peace that only God can give.

The Kingdom of God is among us. The Risen Lord is present in our midst. His presence soothes our fears. His words touch and heal our hearts. His Body and Blood nourishes and strengthens us. We meet him in one another, and we fall in love with the one who died for us. We gladly leave everything behind to follow after the one our heart longs for. Despite the difficulties, we know that it is the path of life. We walk with ever growing strength because we have met Jesus and our lives can never be the same.

The Kingdom of Plenty

After seeing the miracle Jesus performed, the crowd wanted to make him their king. They probably thought that with Jesus ruling over them all their problems would be solved. Only a man like Jesus who could feed five thousand people with just five loaves of bread and two fishes would be able to put an end to hunger and poverty in Israel. Only a man like Jesus who could cure any illness would be able to banish sickness and suffering from the land. Only a man like Jesus who could get such great numbers of people to follow him could find enough popular support to lead an uprising against the Roman Empire so that Palestine could be free again. This was what they felt they needed from a king. This was the kind of "salvation" they wanted Jesus to bring - an end to everything that made their lives miserable and hard.

But Jesus always rejected the crowd's desire to make him their king. Being an earthly ruler was not the reason the Father sent him to live among us. As Jesus will say in next week's gospel, "You should not be working for perishable food, but for food that remains unto eternal life." Jesus knew that the five thousand people he fed would get hungry again and soon need to find more food. Likewise, all the people he cured of leprosy and other illnesses would eventually get sick again and die. None of those miracles would have lasting effects except as signs of Jesus' power and of faith in those who witnessed them. What Jesus wanted to do for Israel - and for us - was something that no king could give his people; something that would not only have a temporary effect for one nation, but would last forever and be offered to all people of every age. By dying on the cross and rising from the dead, Jesus showed what type of a king he was - a king who could free us from our sins and give us everlasting life with him in heaven where there is no more hunger, no more sickness, no more wars and no more death.

Earthly kings rule over lands and territories by coercion, threatening force against all who would disobey them. Jesus, however, rules over the human heart through love. Jesus is the type of king who gets to the root of what is wrong with each of us and the whole world, namely, sin. He treats the rebellion in our hearts that steers us in the wrong direction - away from his love and mercy and into selfishness. Like the crowd in today's gospel, we prefer the bread to the one who gives the bread. We prefer our possessions to the one who gives us everything we have. We prefer to have total control over our lives rather than submit ourselves with loving trust to the God who created us to fit a certain plan.

But Jesus teaches us what it means to turn away from the sin that is the cause of so much misery in our world; to turn away from the violence which is the cause of so much war and murder; to turn away from the greed which leaves people poor and hungry. Because he is God and lives in each of us, Jesus is the type of king who can make an appeal directly to the human heart to stop hating and to start loving. No king could know all his subjects by name, know all their needs or love them enough to die for each of them. Jesus is just such a king.

Jesus' kingdom will come in its full glory only at the end of the world when all will stand before his throne for judgement. But we do not have to wait until the end of the world or until we get into heaven to know the salvation which Jesus brings. All of us who have turned to Jesus as our Savior and allowed him to be the King of our hearts by making a decision to live as he did already have a taste of what that salvation means. Everyone here has a personal story about what believing in Jesus has done for them. Some people thought they were worthless and good for nothing until they learned how much Jesus loves them. Some people had no meaning in their lives, stuck in jobs they hated, until they believed in Jesus and learned that God has a plan for them. Some people constantly worried about money, about their health or about their future until they learned to place their trust in Jesus who provides for all our needs and who makes all things work for the good. The salvation Jesus won for us by dying on the cross is not something we can only "cash in on" when we get to heaven, but it is something already at work in our lives, changing us from the inside out.

At this altar we will gather to celebrate the everlasting gift of Jesus' love - the bread of life and the cup of eternal salvation. No other healing can cure the root of the sickness that ails us. No military victory could have won for us the freedom from sin that Jesus won for us on the cross. No other miracle than the Body and Blood of Jesus could feed and satisfy the deepest hunger within us for God. What we celebrate every Sunday when we take time off from our work to hear the word of God and to gather around the altar is precisely this - the freedom from sin and the everlasting life which God offers us in our King and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Repent and Believe in the Good News!

There is one overarching theme to all of Jesus’ ministry. Everything He did and said can be summed up in the words, “The Kingdom of Heaven.”

It was to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to us that Jesus came to earth. He taught us to pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.” Most of His parables began with the phrase, “The Kingdom of Heaven is like...”. The miracles He performed were proof that the Kingdom of Heaven was already among us conquering the kingdom of this earth which has burdened us with sin, suffering and death. In His preaching, Jesus taught us that in God’s Kingdom the poor would be blessed, those who mourn will be consoled and those who humble themselves will be glorified. It is a Kingdom which turns everything we are accustomed to on its head. It is a true revolution in which the first shall be last and God will be all in all.

When Jesus announces that the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand in today’s gospel, He tells us that we must “repent”. What does He mean by that word? To repent means to welcome the coming of God’s Kingdom into our world and to change our attitudes and our lifestyle accordingly. To repent means to submit ourselves to God’s word and to live according to its demands. This repentance is not a one time event as our “born-again” brothers and sisters sometimes insist. Rather it is an ongoing openness of our minds and hearts to the transformative power of God.

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, has written a powerful and beautiful work entitled, The Joy of the Gospel.  Though it has received some notoriety in the press because of it’s criticism of rampant consumerism and the growing inequality among the rich and the poor,  it also is a firm but gentle critique of how we Christians too often stand in the way of God’s work in the world. Our Holy Father is echoing the call of Jesus for all of us to repent so that the Kingdom of Heaven may be a reality in our world.

All of us should spend time reading over The Joy of the Gospel for ourselves so that we can be enriched by its wisdom and inspired by its call to bring Christ to others. In light of today’s readings, however, let us look at two ways the Holy Father is calling us to repent - to change our attitudes, behaviours and lifestyles so that the Kingdom of Heaven may be made visible in our world.

First of all, every follower of Jesus is called to evangelize. The Holy Father writes:

“All the baptized, whatever their position in the Church or their level of instruction in the faith, are agents of evangelization.... The new evangelization calls for personal involvement on the part of each of the baptized. Every Christian is challenged, here and now, to be actively engaged in evangelization...(EG 120)

To evangelize simply means “to share the gospel with others”. Pope Francis is challenging each of us no matter what our state in life is and no matter how much we think we may know or not know to go out of our comfort zones and speak to our family members, friends, co-workers, schoolmates and even strangers about the love of God made visible in Jesus Christ.

In the past, we may have seen this work as belonging only to priests and religious. However, we need to repent of this attitude and take hold of this work ourselves. Long gone are the days when we could expect people to come to church on their own. Even if Catholics left in their teenage years, we would expect them to come back to be married or to baptize their children. We all know from personal experience that this is not the case anymore. If these people are not to be lost, then we have to seek them out ourselves, bringing the joy of God’s love to them. We have to repent of the comfortable spiritual lives we have created for ourselves and take the risk of reaching out to others with the power of the gospel message.

The second way the Holy Father is calling us to repent is by putting aside all rivalries and conflicts we may have with one another. Saint Paul echoes this in today’s second reading: “[Let] there be no divisions among you, but...be united in the same mind and in the same purpose.” We know that divisions among Christians are an excuse for many people not to believe in Jesus. If we cannot love and forgive one another, then how can we preach love and forgiveness to others? Sadly, in our parish, even despite our best efforts to get along, we often have one group grumbling about another group. We too often talk behind one other’s back and sometimes even undermine one another’s work, forgetting that we are all on the same team.

If we are going to be a people who reflect the love of Christ, then we must repent of the resentments and grudges which keep us from working together. This is the advice our Holy Father gives us:

“We all have our likes and dislikes, and perhaps at this very moment we are angry with someone. At least let us say to the Lord: ‘Lord, I am angry with this person.... I pray to you for him and for her’. To pray for a person with whom I am irritated is a beautiful step forward in love, and an act of evangelization. Let us do it today! Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the ideal of fraternal love!” (EG 101).

The Kingdom of Heaven has come among us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. There is nothing we can do to stop it. But we do have a decision to make. Will we accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ? Will we submit ourselves to His rule? Or will we cling to our false sense of ownership over our own lives and stubbornly hold on to the illusion that we are in control? By heeding our Holy Father’s call to bring the gospel message into the lives of those we meet and by forgiving and loving one another, we can show that His Kingdom of love is already at work among us.

Mysteries of the Kingdom

During the month of July, the gospel readings will be taken from Jesus’ parables on the Kingdom of God. It just so happens that they are grouped perfectly to be used as mysteries of the Rosary. Reflecting on them would be a great preparation for the Sunday liturgies.



The Parable of the Sower - Matthew 13: 1-27
The Parable of the Weeds - Matthew 13: 24-30
The Mustard Seed and Yeast - Matthew 13: 31-35
The Hidden Treasure and the Pearl - Matthew 13: 44-45
The Parable of the Net - Matthew 13: 47-52