You may still remember the “City of Lights” - Paris and its hour of darkness which happened during the French Revolution. When the revolutionaries “worked” on the establishing the Republic of France they erected the guillotine at the Square of the Revolution which today is known as the Square of Concord. So many people were murdered there in order to establish a “better country”, that an unexpected problem developed. The smell of the blood-saturated ground frightened the horses which drew the carts with people to be guillotined. The animals refused to enter the Square as they smelled death. The authorities had to move a guillotine to a new place.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The smell of death was also the environment of the event we heard of in the Gospel of John. When upon his arrival in Bethany Jesus’ asked for the grave of his friend to be opened Martha said: “Lord, by now he will smell, this is the fourth day.” That smell from the grave is the most terrifying reminder that death is just around the corner. Martha was not the only one afraid of the death. Her reaction mirrors ours too. We are afraid of death too. We find it hard to come to terms with the fact that our death is just around the corner. Why do we need to die if there is such a strong desire for life in us?
            That’s why this catechesis from the Gospel of John is so lengthy. We need to keep listening to the Word of God for a long time to hear it. We need to calm down first. Otherwise our own fears and rebellions accusing God will thunder in our head. Martha is again a good mirror to look into. When Jesus arrived she made an accusation for his delay: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”
We are afraid of death and are scandalised by the necessity of dying but Jesus calmly says pointing out to the fields: “Unless a whet grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain, but if it dies it yields a rich harvest.” These words from the chapter following the passage we contemplate today are not from an agriculture workshop. They are the message from the school of the Kingdom of God. As an experienced farmer knows that the seeds have a potential for life as Jesus knows that the death is not a closure but a pass over to a new life. That’s why his words in relation to the death of Lazarus: “I am glad I was not there” can scandalise those who don’t have faith in the Lord. However for those who believe dying is necessary in order to poses a new life, to pass over to the new life. Jesus was glad because Lazarus was to receive a new life soon.
The new life begins with our baptism and constant commitment to put the baptismal grace to work in our daily dealings. Lazarus is a fresh reminder that the life we receive in baptism is a new life given us by the Lord. It is the Lord’s gift. Lazarus would need to die again like each of us will need to die eventually. The life he was given, when he walked out of his grave, was not about an extended life span but about a new quality of life, a new lifestyle, a Christian life. Baptismal death, as the Scriptures powerfully describe it, is annihilation of the sinful desire in us. It is starving our pride to death by refusing to feed it with empty self-glory. It is exterminating our avarice by the means of almsgiving. It is drowning our uncontrolled lust in the sea of love for God and people. It is controlling our gluttony by feasting on the Word of God. It is destroying anger, resentment and revenge by means of humility and service to our brothers and sisters. It is overcoming laziness by eagerness at spreading the Good News. That’s new life.
            My Dear Fellow Christians! I hope that in the coming weeks you will be queuing up for Reconciliation because when you say: “Bless me father for I have sinned” you do what Jesus told the people in Bethany to do with the grave of Lazarus: “Take the stone away.” The smell of death and sin which keeps coming doesn’t frighten us anymore because we live the life given us by the Lord.  Our sins don’t frighten us anymore because the Lord Jesus is greater than our sins. We don’t need to spend our life neutralising the smell of death around us by giving in to our passions and taking our mind away from death. But by believing Jesus and giving him our life we spend our life for God and others. That is living to the full.

            Last week we explored some of the most romantic places in our city, Melbourne. However if I asked you which city is called the City of Love, what would you say? … Paris. It has got some other nicknames too. The most famous is “La Ville-Lumière” which means “The Light City” or as it is translated more often “The City of Light” or “The City of Lights.” As the nickname “The City of Love” comes from its beautiful sights, the melodic native language and many honeymoon makers choosing it as “La Ville-Lumière” derives from being a centre of education and ideas and the early adoption of street lighting. However the famous City of Light had its time of darkness. Was it because of a blackout? In a sense it was, though the streets were still illuminated. It was a spiritual blackout. What plunged into darkness were consciences of people. In 1793 the atheistic government emerging from the French Revolution took control of the nation, in the name of the nation and claiming new ideas of the Enlightenment. What followed was described by a contemporary witness, Joseph Broz, later a member of the French Academy, in this way: “I saw Paris in those days of crime and mourning. From the stupefied expression of people’s faces you would have said that it was a city desolated by a plague. The laughter of a few cannibals alone interrupted the deadly silence.” A historian of that period wrote: “It is impossible to read of this period without impression that one is here confronted with forces more powerful than those controlled by men.” Even R. R. Palmer, an apologist for the Revolution wrote: “Even reasonable men succumbed to the contagion. A spirit, which contemporary conservatives truly describe as satanic, was there.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers!
            St Paul in the Letter to the Ephesians wrote: “You were darkness once, but now you are light in the Lord.” Why were those Christians in Ephesus light in the Lord? Because of the Lord Jesus, who upon seeing the blind man, as we could hear in the Gospel today, said: “As long as I am in the world I am the light of the world.” The Lord Jesus who was the first to see the man born blind and who made him see for the first time, also saw those women and men in Ephesus, like he did in other places, and he offered them a miracle of faith through the preaching of the Gospel. St Paul the Apostle reflecting on their journey wrote: “Anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light.” The illumination the Apostle speaks of is the sight of the Lord Jesus Christ who is the first to see what is plunged into darkness of sin and who gives his Holy Word to turn it into light.
            In the Gospel we heard that the Lord “spat on the ground, and made paste with the spittle and put it over the eyes of the blind man.” Then he sent him to the Pool of Siloam (a name which means ‘sent’). In our over hygienic society it may put, at least, some people off. But in the tradition of the Bible, what comes from the mouth of God, as we heard it on the First Sunday of Lent when Jesus was in the desert, is the Word of God, his Good News. The spittle here is a symbol of the Word of God. The acceptance of that Good News leads to Baptism when one is bathed in the Lord like the earth bathes in the sunlight every morning and embraces a new day. The person emerging from Baptism embraces a “new day” which isn’t defined by hours but by the quality of life, by a new lifestyle.
            Those atheistic leaders of France despised the Good News, they despised the Bible and they first plunged themselves into darkness then they turned the City of Light into the City of Darkness. However it is not the thing of the past. The Word of God, His Good News is despised and ridiculed today too.
            My Dear Fellow Believers! We continue our Lenten journey when through prayer, fasting and almsgiving, with minds enlightened by the Word of God, His Good News, with consciences illuminated by the sight of the Lord Jesus we bring to the throne of mercy, to the Sacrament of Reconciliation our past. What for? Because “anything exposed by the light will be illuminated and anything illuminated turns into light.” For some that journey will climax at their Baptism, for most of us it will culminate with the renewal of our Baptismal Promises at the Paschal Vigil when we recommit ourselves in the midst of our Mother Church to follow Christ who said: “Whoever follows me will have the light of life” not simply for themselves but to offer to the wider community a contrast which can enlighten them as well.
            St John the Apostle in his great vision saw a “City of Light.” It wasn’t Paris though. It was the New Jerusalem descending from heaven, the gathering of the redeemed who don’t need the light of lamps and the sun because Jesus Christ is their light. Before that vision is manifested at the end of times we, the followers of the Lord Jesus, are called to be light in the world we live in.

            At a Mass I was attending, a deacon began to proclaim the Gospel. The passage was taken from St Matthew about Jesus teaching his disciples to pray. So the deacon got to the sentence: “When you pray, say: Our Father who are in heaven…” then to his consternation the whole congregation joined in saying Our Father. The young man was totally confused and didn’t know what to when they finished. However the experienced main celebrant came to his rescue by saying loudly: “The Gospel of the Lord” which allowed the people in the church to close the embarrassing situation by saying: “Praise to you Lord Jesus Christ.”
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Some could conclude saying that the people at the service were absentminded, but I would offer a different explanation. The prayer which, as Christians, we have engraved in our memory is just a quotation from the Holy Scriptures. The prayer comes from the Scriptures and it belongs to the Scriptures. As it wove so profoundly through our days and the nights when we pray it, it makes our human story filled with God’s word and ultimately it mingles us with the Story of Salvation proclaimed in the Scriptures.
            Sometime later as I was reflecting on that joined proclamation of the Gospel I saw it as a communal acknowledgment of us belonging to the Bible. Through Jesus’ tactic of teaching his disciple, and us too, how to pray he has drawn us to the source of all prayers, the Sacred Word.
            On this most holy day of the Annunciation we are also given a Gospel with a familiar sentence: “Hail Mary full of grace. The Lord is with you.” For us Catholics it is the beginning of the second most popular and loved prayer. Again it is a sentence taken from the Bible. It is the sentence which actually is not about Mary. Can you still recall the whole event we heard of in the Gospel reading a few minutes ago? Could you summarise it in one sentence? What about this sentence? The Only begotten Son of God was being incarnated. The Son of God took flesh.
The story of God becoming a human being is not a Christmas Story but it is the story of this Solemnity we are celebrating right now. It is the story of the Annunciation. It is the story which will always challenge any filmmaker as they usually fail to capture the essence of the event. The essence is not about what can be seen: Mary, the Angel or a house in Nazareth but the essence is about what cannot be seen. It is about the beginning of the human existence of Jesus Christ.
My Dear fellow believers! We remember the visits paid by the shepherds and the Magi to the Baby Jesus, but for centuries women and men of faith have been returning, in their prayers of love and awe, to that inconspicuous moment when God the Son became man; when the Divine Story of the Most
Blessed Trinity merged with the story of humankind in the inseparable way. From that moment when upon Mary’s Fiat (Yes) to God’s request the Second Person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, must be worshiped, contemplated and loved as God and man in one person.
Today’s feast doesn’t stop activates like Christmas does. I believe that is the way God wants it to have it celebrated. In the hustle and bustle of big cities and small villages, because it was the way he chose to begin his human existence that day in Nazareth when Gabriel came with Good News to Mary and that Good News was the Son she was to give birth to.
During the Creed today at the words: “For us men and for our salvation, he came down from heaven” we will genuflect to express our awe at the mystery of the Incarnation, at the mystery of God becoming man. As we pray Hail Mary we can hope that Mary’s sentiments may be ours, not only to bend our knees but to bend our wills to God’s holy will, for his glory and for salvation of our brothers and sisters who all have God for their Father and creator.

            Do you know what the following places have in common: Vue de Monde, Melbourne Star Observation Wheel, Royal Botanic Gardens and NGV? Apparently they are the most romantic places in Melbourne. Do you know what the most romantic place in the Bible is? It is a well. At a well Abraham’s servant found Rebekah who became the wife of Isaac. At a well the patriarch Jacob met his wife Rachel. At a well Moses met his wife Zipporah.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! At a well we meet today Jesus and a Samaritan woman. Maybe it is providential that a well doesn’t evoke in us any twenty-first century romantic connotations like Vue de Monde or Melbourne Star Observation Wheel. Instead we can contemplate the scene from the Gospel of St John with minds made pure, with minds searching for God not for scandalous stories.
“Jesus came to the Samaritan town called Sychar. (…) He sat straight down by the well. (…) When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her: Give me a drink.” The first reading from the Book of Exodus spoke of people “tormented by thirst” I would like you to think now who was more tormented by thirst in the Gospel narrative: Jesus or the Samaritan woman. Think also whose thirst was quenched.
            In a few weeks when you gather in this church of yours on Good Friday to commemorate the Lord’s Passion you will hear Jesus speaking again: “I am thirsty.” He was on the cross when he said that. St John who wrote this testimony introduced Jesus’ request by writing: “Jesus knew that everything had now been completed, and to fulfil the scripture perfectly he said: I am thirsty.” When he sat on the Jacob’s well he was not staring into the water there, deep down. He himself was the well with living water. His thirst was not about himself, it was about quenching her thirst, the thirst for love, for meaning in the life, for hope. St Paul in the second reading wrote about “hope that is not deceptive, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given us.”
            Some time ago I read a definition of hope which I still treasure: “Hope means that God has got everything we need and that he wants to give us everything we need.” Jesus had everything the woman of Samaria needed and couldn’t find in her many relationships. Jesus also gave her what she needed. He gave her his love which is redemptive. She was in need of redemption.
So who was more tormented by thirst? If looking at the distance travelled by both of them to quench their thirst we need to state that it was Jesus. His thirst to give redemption to the Samaritan woman drove him into the unhospitable territory, like he was driven to the wilderness, as we could hear a couple of weeks ago.
Whose thirst was quenched then? Jesus’ or the woman’s? I believe that none of them. Jesus’ thirst cannot be quenched as long as there are people who don’t believe in him, who don’t drink from the wellspring of holiness. The woman’s thirst for love, forgiveness, meaning in life and hope was replaced with thirst for making Jesus known and loved by others. Her thirst after the encounter at the “romantic” well resembled Jesus’. She became an evangeliser telling others about Jesus and bringing others to the well of the living water: Our Blessed Lord.
I began this homily talking about some romantic places in Melbourne. If I had to identify the most love inspiring place in the world I would have to say: the hill of Golgotha. There Our Lord and Saviour became the unmistakable well when his Sacred Heart was opened, for us and for our salvation. So let us drink from the well of salvation ourselves and let us bring to the well of the living water those thirst for love, meaning in life and hope being away from God.

O most holy Virgin Mary,
to whom God sent the Angel Gabriel
to announce that you should be the mother of His Only-Begotten Son,
pray for us who have recourse to you.
Holy, lovely Mary we give our all to you:
what is past and present, and the future, too.
Blessed be the holy and Immaculate Conception
of the most blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God.
O Mary, Blessed Mother of God, when the angel greeted you,
you were surprised and fearful; yet, in wonder you listened and
opened your heart to the divine  message.
Your life had been ordinary,
like so many of Adam's children,
but your "yes" changed your life and led to the salvation of us  all,
because you invited Christ Our Lord to grow inside of you.
Mother of Our Savior, help me to open my heart to the Father's will in my life.
Pray for me to the Lord God as I pray to Him:

O God, prepare my heart
for it is hard for me to trust in your will.
Give me clarity of vision, that I may see your way.
Open my ears, that I may hear your words.
Place your hand on my shoulder, that I may feel your guidance.
Enlighten the darkness of my soul, that I may be filled with your light.
 
Generous and loving God, like your daughter Mary
help me to know and do your will in this life and in the next.
Grant me a grateful heart and help me to always pray as Mary prayed:

Let us listen to the beginning of the Gospel of St John proclaiming the Mystery of the Incarnation:



             In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
           There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
            He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
          And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.

Let us pray:
Shape us in the likeness of the divine nature of our Redeemer,
whom we believe to be true God and true man,
since it was your will, Lord God,
that he, your Word, should take to himself our human nature
 in the womb of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
God for ever and ever.

During the Lent the Church celebrates one of the greatest mysteries: the Mystery of the Incarnation. On 25th of March when we observe the Solemnity of the Annunciation we return to that moment in the history of the Universe when God the Son took flesh in the Immaculate Virgin Mary. As we are going to celebrate it in nine days I would like to invite you to join in praying, meditating and contemplating the Novena leading up to the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
At the beginning of this Novena we have some reflection by a seventeenth century cardinal, Pierre de Bérulle. He was the founder of the French School of Spirituality. He was also given by Pope Urban VIII  the title of the Apostle of the Incarnate Word - Apostolus Verbi Incarnati. The reflection quated here was the outcome of his adoration of this great Mystery of the Incarnation:

The Divine Word, the splendor, power, and glory of the eternal Father, having been sent into the world, desired to establish there a school of holiness, an order of grace, a holy congregation, guided and animated by his Spirit, to speak to the earth in the language of heaven, to teach human beings the way to salvation, and to raise them to a lofty, and sublime knowledge of God, making them aware of the grandeur of his nature, the plurality of his persons, the profundity of his purposes, and the uniqueness of his works, which, by itself, the human mind could never have discovered.
 
Now one of the first and most important lessons we are taught in this school of wisdom and salvation concerns the sacred mystery of the incarnation. It is a mystery so sublime that it surpasses the loftiest thoughts of humans and of angels; a mystery so excellent that it contains and embraces within itself both God and the world; a mystery so deep that it was hidden from all eternity in the most secret thoughts of the Ancient of Days, in the bosom of the eternal Father, in a way so high and unspeakable that in several places the apostle, with good reason, calls it the mystery hidden from all eternity in God, who created all things. And yet this mystery, so high and surpassing, so deep and hidden, was in the fullness of time accomplished upon earth so publicly as to be in full view of both earth and heaven; and it was accomplished so as to be the object of the faith of the nations, the anchor of their hope, the cause of their salvation, and the achievement of the glory of God in the universe.
 
For it was through this mystery that heaven was opened and the earth sanctified. Through it God is adored with a new adoration, an unspeakable adoration, an adoration previously unknown on earth or even in heaven, for heaven indeed had spirits who worshipped and God who was worshiped, but it did not yet possess a God who worshiped. It is through this mystery that God is on earth, abasing his grandeur; and covered with our frailty, clothed in our mortality, he himself is bringing about among us as one of us the salvation of the world. It is through this mystery that earth is a heaven, a new heaven, where God dwells in a higher and more venerable way, a holier and more divine way, than hitherto in the highest heaven. It is by our faith in, love for, and homage to this sacred mystery that God established on earth, through no ministering angels but by himself, a religion never to be altered or annulled, and which he reserved for the last days because it is also the last word concerning his power, his love, and his eternal wisdom.
The Church should be caught up in this mystery in a holy and divine way. It should be the focus for the devotion of the most advanced souls, transfixed with wonder and admiration as they contemplate this object where they discover and perceive in an unspeakable fashion the majesty of the divine essence, the distinction of its persons and the depth of its designs as well as the exalted, rare and unheard of way in which God chose to exist in this masterwork. For everything that is great, holy and worthy of admiration is there. It is like a resume and summary of all that the oracles of faith reveal and teach us about God and his works. This divine mystery is like he center of the created and uncreated world. It is the only place where God chose once and for all to contain and reduce to our level both the world and himself, that is, his own infiniteness and the immensity of the whole universe.
For Jesus is a world, a splendid world, according to authentic theology, and this is true for many more reasons than philosophy ever knew when referring to the human person as a world in miniature, as we will say later. Furthermore, we adore in Jesus the unity of a divine Person, subsisting in two different natures, who divinely and unspeakably, proclaims, honours and serves the supreme unity of the divine essence. O supreme unity, how lovable and admirable you are in the divinity and in in the most divine of its works! How adorable you are, because God himself honours you through the unity of his Word in two related natures! He honours you forever because you are eternal and everlasting.”
 
                                  “Discourse on the State and Grandeurs of Jesus.”

             If our Government’s proposal for the retirement age is implemented, from 2035 only those who are 70 or older will be eligible for the age pension. Such large faith of our politicians in our productive capabilities while we are in our seventies doesn’t however excite most of us. If you are crossed at the leaders of our nation because of such policy think about the first reading about God telling Abram (who would be known later as Abraham) to leave his secure and comfortable neighbourhood for the unknown land. Do you know how young Abram was at the time God was speaking to him? He was 75. Abram didn’t get a brochure with the facilities of his retirement home to make his mind. Instead “he set out without knowing where he was going” (Hbr 11:8) because God was opening before him a new life path, or a career to use the modern language. Not bad for a 75-year-old.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! If you think that it is the story of the past let me draw your attention to the last two popes. Pope Benedict was elected five days short of his 78th birthday. Pope Francis was younger at the time of his election, he was only 76. I still remember a cartoon in the Sydney Morning Herald following Pope Benedict’s election. It captured two priests talking about the new pope. One said: “Our Holy Father is very close to God.” The other one retorted: “You are right. At 78 people are very close to God.” In my prayer and reflection I have been analysing this situation. Why doesn’t God give us someone younger and stronger? The answer came to me from the story of Abraham. In the midst of our self-sufficient and self-focused culture we are reminded that the destiny of the world and every human is ultimately shaped by the Almighty. In the wealthy country of Ur where people believed that they had possessed enough to be able to maintain their lifestyle God chose an elderly man who in his fragility was to manifest the power of God as we read in the Second Letter to the Corinthians: “When I am weak, then I am strong.” That old man did become a manifestation of God’s mighty works. His journey to the Land, which was later to be known as the Promised Land, has become an inspiration and an object of meditation not only for the Jews but for Christians and Muslims alike. Abraham has become the father and the teacher of faith. Why? Because Abraham was good at listening. In the Letter to the Romans we read: “Faith comes from listening.” Abraham did listen to the word of God. How did he listen? The Book of Genesis puts it rather simply: “Abram went as the Lord told him.” In Abraham the word of God became a moving force. It wasn’t just an intellectual process of analysing but it was the word which he allowed to move him across the continent.
Abraham’s journey to the unknown land was also an evangelising event as it revealed to others the God who wasn’t withdrawn and silent but speaking to humans. That God “when the fullness of time had come, sent his Son, born of the woman, born a subject of the Law, to redeem the subjects of the Law and to enable us to be adopted as his children” and the same God has told us: “This is my Son, the Beloved; he enjoys my favour. Listen to him.” Jesus was an excellent listener himself. In his humanity he discerned and was moved by “every word that comes from the mouth of God” as he told Satan in the last Sunday Gospel.
            Some people complain about our aging congregations. I however still recognise the pedagogy of God in this situation. God who in the difficult times chooses what is fragile and powerless to manifest his glory.
            As we continue our Lenten journey let us look at our Lenten resolutions as a means to purify our listening skills, by putting aside whatever captures our attention in order to allow the Word of God to capture our attention and to move us along the paths which will not only take us to heaven but will also reveal to others the God who is a good listener too, God who listens to the cry of his children.