​            We are still at the summit of our Liturgy as we observe the Easter Octave. After forty days of not singing Alleluia this Easter week is saturated with Alleluias. We are like the thirsty who after wandering through a dry desert come upon an oasis and can’t have enough of the gushing water. We keep singing Alleluia. We can’t have it enough. Alleluia – Praise the Lord. The Easter is the reason for this though what unfolded in Colombo on Easter Sunday has left us in shock and with tear-filled eyes. How can we repeat the verse of the Psalm: ‘Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love is everlasting’? How can we say with conviction the Opening Prayer for his Mass: ‘God of everlasting mercy’? How can we still sing Alleluia? How can we still praise the Lord?
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Followers of the most persecuted religion in the world. What happened last week in Sri Lanka is a reminder that in such advanced world of the twenty-first century Christians are a target not of some isolated, random attacks but a carefully crafted extermination. After two millennia the words of St John from the Book of Apocalypse, which we have just heard, are still valid and fresh as they were when our Christian sisters and brothers were persecuted by the pagan Roman Empire: ‘My name is John, and through our union in Jesus I am your brother and share your sufferings, your kingdom, and all you endure.’
Can you hear my fellow Christians what John is saying? He says that he shares our suffering but in the midst of that suffering we have something else in common, it is our kingdom, the kingdom which Jesus Christ has established by his death and Resurrection.
When we witness the destruction of the lives of our fellow Christians, when we witness the expulsion from their homeland, when we witness the destruction of their homes and churches we could succumb into thinking that the Christian world is crumbling. However in the midst of destruction and annihilation St John says to us: ‘your kingdom,’ the kingdom of your Lord and Savior is there. It is not in worldly power and prestige but in the resemblance to Jesus who said: ‘If the world hates you, remember that it hated me before you. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you too.’
Again we pause at the suffering of our fellow believers; despite the Easter Week we are more like the disciples of the Lord from the Gospels going to the tomb with heavy hearts and red and swollen eyes. That’s why on this Divine Mercy Sunday we need these words of the Risen Lord, who walking into the upper room where the fear overcame the disciples, said: ‘Peace be with you. Receive the Holy Spirit. For those whose sins you forgive, they are forgiven.’ The Lord who hanging on the cross forgave his executioners entrusts us with the mission of forgiveness so we can fully resemble him both in suffering and forgiveness.
            Let us take consolation in the words Jesus spoke to St John who was imprisoned ‘on the island of Patmos for having preached God’s word and witnessed to Jesus’: ‘Do not be afraid; it is I, the First and the Last; I am the Living One. I was dead and now I am to live for ever and ever, and I hold the keys of death and of the underworld.’
            It is the Resurrection of Jesus which assures us that ‘a light shines in the dark, a light that darkness could not overpower.’ Darkness can reject the light of Christ but darkness cannot extinguish the light of Christ. When our church was in darkness we sang at Easter Vigil: ‘Christ the light,’ let us hold onto this proclamation now. May our paschal faith enable us to see the light of Christ shining from the many graves of our fellow Christians who are like ‘a wheat grain which falls on ground and dies in order to yield a rich harvest.’
            Let us also preserve their memory in our hearts and history. In a church, I saw a fresco of the crucified Jesus by whose side stood a feminine figure, the Church. She was holding up a chalice to collect the blood flowing from the pierced heart of Jesus.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Like that precious blood, collect and treasure the memory of the sacrifice of those Sri Lankan Christians, and so many thousands of other Christians, martyred for their faith. In this way what an early Church writer Tertullian observed will happen again in our times: ‘The blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church.’ Their sacrifice is our strength.

​As a child I used to spend some of my summer holidays with my maternal grandmother. The little timber cottage in the middle of the meadows and fields just a short stroll from the forest was all a little boy needed to turn his time into the most exciting adventure. A few years ago while vising my relatives I went to see the house. It was still there. The meadows and fields, and the forest, were still part of the landscape. However the feeling was not the same. Something was missing. I realized that the place was empty without my grandma. Though practically blind she made my holidays special.
            My Dear Fellow believers! I think that most of us could recall a similar situation; this overwhelming feeling of emptiness when someone or something important to us is missing. It can be the emptiness left by someone we loved. It can come from betrayal, misunderstanding or envy. It can be triggered by the loss of a job, failing health, shattered plans or dreams. It can happen to us when we realize our sinfulness, lack of integrity, when we are disappointed with ourselves. This emptiness can come from the disappearance of that lively and simple faith we once enjoyed as children or absence of comfort we used to have when we turned to God, when we worshiped in our faith communities.  All these situations become for us an empty tomb. We may attempt to run there like Mary of Magdala, Peter and John did in our Gospel reading, hoping that what was familiar to us, what was treasured by us, can be in some form still found there. Yet the tomb is empty. It is empty of what was old, what was familiar to us, what was before. A German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche even said: ‘God is dead.’ However what I hear in these words is a cry of profound desolation. Similar cry I can hear in our society which claims to be secular. However I don’t think that our society is secular. It may not be church going. I may ignore God. However the void needs to be filled somehow rather.
It is filled when people start expecting of other people or things to provide them with what only God can provide. We can lay people with a burden which is heavier than the cross Jesus Christ carried. It happens when we expect from people the love, forgiveness, perfection which can only be found in God. It is a crushing burden we place on people when we expect them to replace God for us.
The void we discover in us we may also attempt to fill when we expect from the things which possess or desire to possess, to give us security, hope, joy and fulfillment which can ultimately come only from God.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! There was a time when the Son of God was in a tomb. We call it Holy Saturday. However Holy Saturday ended when Jesus Christ was raised. The Sunday which followed ‘unlocked for us the path to eternity’ as we prayed in our opening prayer for this Mass of the Resurrection. I am moved and strengthened by this prayer because it captures that the mighty work accomplished by the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ is not forced upon us. Rather it is a path marked by growth in faith in the midst of our ups and downs.
On Easter Sunday Jesus was risen but his disciples were still followers of Friedrich Nietzsche as they believed that ‘God was dead’ because the Resurrection of Jesus was not accomplished in the spotlights or in front of the mass media. The first Easter Sunday morning was for the disciples as dark and empty as Holy Saturday. The tomb to which they rushed was not a sign of hope yet. It was just a further expression of the emptiness they had in them. However the Spirit of God begins to manifest his work. The disciple Jesus loved, the one who followed Jesus from the beginning of the Lord’s mission until his redeeming death on the cross, starts putting the pieces of Jesus’ teaching and the sight of the empty tomb together. What is the result? ‘He believed.’ He hadn’t seen Jesus risen yet but he had come to believe in the Resurrection. We haven’t seen the Lord either but from one generation to another was pass on the Good News which turns the emptiness into which we run every now and then into the joy of the presence of the Risen Lord and the new life, ‘this path to eternity.’ We repeat, treasure and celebrate that at the outset of our Christian religion is what St Peter announced to Cornelius as we could hear it in our First Reading: ‘People killed Jesus by hanging him on the tree, yet three days afterwards God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen…We are those witnesses – we have eaten and drunk with him after his resurrection from the dead.’
In the light of that message of the Resurrection I am grateful for those lovely holidays I had as a child. Although I miss my grandma like I miss my dad who died many years ago I know that they were my grandma and dad not my God. The emptiness left by them is now filled with the Risen Lord. What my loved ones gave me is a taste of more I am given every day by my God and Lord.
I pray this Easter Sunday for you my Dear Sisters and Brothers so that if you experience some form of emptiness in you these days you may believe that the Risen Jesus wants to fill it with his presence and new life like this empty chalice will be soon filled with his precious blood.
Happy Easter. Christ is risen. Alleluia.

​            In recent years we have been able to witness a powerful reaction of various communities around the world in response to manmade or natural tragedies. The silent marches, peaceful rallies, night vigils are a moving insight into our humanity revealing our empathy at our fellow human beings’ suffering.
My Dear Fellow believers! Good Friday has brought us together to adore Jesus hanging on the cross. The words of the ancient prophet Isaiah capture what Jesus looked like that first Good Friday: ‘As the crowds were appalled on seeing him – so disfigured did he look that he seemed no longer human.’ We remember that it was a grievous injustice done to him. The Roman Governor Pontius Pilate in his judgment made it clear that the accusation against Jesus had no merit: ‘I am going to bring him out to you to let you see I find no case.’ But when he realized that his stand could cost him his career he gave in to the demands of those who gathered in front of his palace.
So, are we here rallying against that injustice? Our Lord tells us something different in the words he addressed to the women of Jerusalem who mourned and lamented for him when he was carrying his cross: ‘Do not weep for me; weep rather for yourself and for your children… For if men use green wood like this, what will happen when it is dry?’ Can you hear that the scourged and burdened with cross Christ on the way to the Calvary spoke of himself as a green tree. He who was doing the will of his Heavenly Father, he who loved all human children of his Heavenly Father to the very end, wanted those women and us as well, to see what he was put through as life giving. He repeated what he said before: ‘No one takes my life from me; I lay it down of my free will.’ If he wanted to defend himself he could did it with his one divine and powerful word.  He didn’t need Peter’s sword to protect him. That’s why even if we pity Jesus for his fate the prophet Isaiah moves our empathy to adoration: ‘The crowds will be astonished at him, and kings stand speechless before him, for they shall see something never told and witness something never heard before.’
These words came to me some years ago when in an old Church in Europe I discovered a cross with a smiling figure of Christ. First I was astonished and speechless. I even thought that it was something wrong. But as I was gazing on this unusual crucifix I remembered a story of a mother and her daughter drowning in a river. When some people came to their rescue the woman pushed the child up. Seeing the child being saved there was a smile of relief on her face despite being sucked to her death by the river current. That ancient crucifix wasn’t scandalous but it was powerfully preaching to worshippers and hopefully to tourists as well the depths of God’s love for us revealed in Jesus Christ. Later when I did some research I discovered that the most ancient crucifixes didn’t focus on suffering of Jesus. They presented the crucified Lord as Priest vested for Mass. They presented the crucified Lord as King robed in his royal regalia.
Today as we gather to celebrate the Passion of the Lord I invite you to gaze upon ‘the One whom they have crucified’ not as a victim but a conscious Priest making of himself the sacrifice for our sins.
Today as we gather to celebrate the Passion of the Lord I invite you to gaze upon ‘the One whom they have crucified’ not as a victim but a conscious King who came not to be served but to serve.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Take from this Liturgy the smile of the Crucified Lord. It is the smile which tells volumes about God’s love for you and me, for us.

​As I stand before you at this holy celebration of the Lord’s Supper my mind is still filled with images of the burning Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. I am deeply sad at the horrific damage done to this ancient church but there is another image which keeps coming to me. It is an image of a community of Catholics kneeling in one of the streets of the French Capital beautifully chanting the Rosary as they witness their cathedral, the mother church of their diocese in flames.
            My Dear Fellow Believers! At the outset of the most sacred three days of the Paschal Triduum: Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday we come together, like those Catholics in Paris, because of what Our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ has done for us by his Passion, Death and Resurrection.
In the First Reading from the Book of Exodus we were given a glimpse of those final hours before the People of God were led out of Egyptian slavery. God invited them to turn their waiting for deliverance into a celebration of Passover. The consummation of the roasted lamb and the bitter herbs marked that night of God’s wonders and power, but it wasn’t just for that one night. God envisaged it as a yearly ceremony for his people: ‘This is to be a day of remembrance for you, and you must celebrate it as a feast in the Lord’s honour. For all generations you are to declare it a day of festival, for ever.’ That’s why every Jewish woman and man as they sit at the table to celebrate Passover can say: I am among those who left Egypt. As I pray and eat the Passover I experience the power of God’s mighty arm right now, right here.
Some fourteen centuries after that first Passover and the glorious Exodus there was a Passover celebration in Jerusalem of which both St Paul in our Second Reading from the Letter to the Corinthians and St John from the Gospel Reading wrote about. The Son of God, Jesus Christ, ‘knew that the hour had come for him to pass over from this world to the Father.’ This new pass over of the Son of Man was too in the midst of plagues like those which devastated Egypt, in fact the most deadly plagues of all: sins. This new pass over of the Son of Man was not passing by the sin controlled people and events but rather walking into the lion’s den, the sin’s den. Was Jesus out of his mind? St John gives us an explanation: ‘Jesus had always loved those who were his in the world, but now showed how perfect his love was.’ God who knelt and washed the dirty feet of his creatures gave them also a new meal made of bread: ‘This is my body, which is for you’ and wine: ‘This is the new covenant in my blood.’ Then he said: ‘Do this as a memorial of me.’
There were twelve men with Jesus there. As Jesus consecrated the bread and wine into his Body and Blood as he consecrated them into priests of the New Covenant. They were the first to consume Jesus’ Body and Blood, they were the first to embrace the transformation into what they consumed and they were also the first of the long tradition of bishops and priests to share this precious and life giving Eucharist with their sisters and brothers in faith. Tonight as we meditate on the mystery of the Eucharist and Priesthood pray my Sisters and Brothers for your bishops and priests. As they give the Eucharist to their communities may they also make of their lives a gift to their communities.
As I meditate on the life-giving Eucharist I wander what would happen on this coming Sunday if tonight your parish priest instead of giving you the Holy Communion would give each of you ten grand. I am pretty sure that on Sunday the queue to this church would stretch for miles. Is it because the pile of notes is seen as life-changing and life-giving? Though surrounded by such mentality we pray for a Christian mentality. Let’s listen again to the opening prayer for this Eucharist: ‘O God who have called us to participate in this most Sacred Supper.’ It is God himself who has called us to be here and he did so for a purpose: ‘that we may draw from so great a mystery the fullness of charity and of life.’
A couple of weeks ago there was an unusual ceremony in Assisi, the town of St Francis. The body of a fifteen year old boy who died of leukemia in 2006 was transferred from a cemetery to one of the churches there. The boy’s name was Carlo Acutis. Last year Pope Francis recognized that Carlo lived his life heroically as a Christian, thus he is called now Venerable. Rather a strange nickname for a teenager, isn’t it? As soon as a miracle attributed to him is confirmed he will be beatified and even canonized. This boy was rather determined about his lifestyle: ‘To always be close to Jesus, that’s my life plan.’ Why did he want to be close to Jesus? Was he dissatisfied with his life? Nothing of the sort. He loved life. He was passionate about computers, sport etc. He was popular among his friends. It was his funeral that revealed why he wanted to be close to Jesus. The church was filled not only with his relatives, friends, teachers and classmates. There were migrants, homeless, the poor, struggling families. They came because this boy, who came from rather a wealthy family, was spending the money he was given not on himself but on the people in need. On weekends he asked his mother to drive him around Milan to distribute his gifts to the needy. Carlo understood that he needed to be close to Jesus to act like Jesus. He drew strength from the Eucharist which he called: ‘My highway to heaven.’ He was at the Eucharist every day because as he simply put it: ‘The more Eucharist we receive, the more we become like Jesus.’ When informed of his advanced cancer he said: ‘I offer all the suffering I will have to suffer for the Lord, for the Pope and the Church.’
Venerable Carlo Acutis at such young age grasped the depth of wisdom of the great bishop St Augustin who some sixteen centuries earlier while distributing Holy Communion was saying to the people: ‘Receive what you are. Become what you receive.’
Amen.

​This Sunday we begin the week which eludes our familiar structures of time and space. We call it Holy Week but it will end on Thursday, which we call Holy Thursday. On the evening of the coming Thursday we will enter the Most Sacred Three Days of the Paschal Triduum: Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday. We will be coming to church a number of times during the Paschal Triduum but in fact it is one long celebration spread over three days, not three celebrations. It is one saving event we will enter on the evening of the coming Thursday. What ahead of us is not easy to contain in our familiar structures of time and place. That’s why the Church invites us to enter this holy time with faith and trust in the Lord.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! At the culmination of that sacred time of the Holy Week and the Easter Triduum, at Easter Vigil, when we give glory to our God for the event of our salvation, we will be looking at the new flame of the Paschal Candle. Than we will hear the words: ‘May this flame be found still burning brightly by the Morning Star: the one Morning Star who never sets, Christ your Son, who coming back from death’s domain, has shed his peaceful light on humanity, and lives and reigns for ever and ever.’
            My Dear fellow believers! We who love the Lord Jesus, we who treasure what he has done for us by his death and Resurrection, we call him our Morning Star. Our faith moves us to echo what the old Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, said when his was able to speak again upon the birth of the son who was promised to him by the Angel Gabriel: ‘The loving kindness of the heart of our God who visits us like the rising sun from on high.’ It wasn’t made up by the old man. For centuries the Jewish people were treasuring a belief that when Messiah would come from the East. They believed also that the first place he would visit would be the Jerusalem Temple. Some thirty three years after prophesy of Zechariah the people who were around the Temple could hear some noise coming from a mountain ridge called the Mount of Olives: ‘Blessings on the King who comes in the name of the Lord. Peace in heaven and glory in the highest heavens.’
 The Mount of Olives is the ridge east of Jerusalem. If one wants to enjoy the sunrise in Jerusalem he needs to look towards the Mount of Olives.
So those in Jerusalem attracted by the signing, as they riveted their eyes upon the Mount of Olives, could see, like they had seen the Sun many mornings before, a figure appearing as he was approaching the summit from the other side. It was Jesus Christ, the Rising Sun, the Morning Star, the Messiah coming to the Holy City. However his appearance was different to the sunrise the people of Jerusalem were accustomed to see every morning. The Sun would appear over the Mount of Olives and it would continue its rising higher and higher. Jesus after appearing on the summit began descending in order to reach the Holy City and the people who needed his salvation. We are these people too. He, our Rising Sun, was descending to the valley located between the Mount of Olives and the hill on which the Temple was built. He did this so that all of us who at some stage of our life feel like walking in the valley of darkness could say with confidence after the psalmist: ‘If I should walk in the valley of darkness no evil would I fear. You are there my Lord.’
The Gospels tell us that after that wonderful entry to Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the days which followed were the days of darkness. The disciples of Jesus found themselves in darkness when their Master was taken away, when their dreams and expectations were shattered, when their own weakness, cowardice, sins and selfishness surfaced. Some of them run away, but as we follow carefully the unfolding events to the Holy Week and Easter Triduum we discover a small community of disciples which followed Jesus right to the hill of Golgotha. Their following didn’t have the same joyful character which we could see in the crowds on Palm Sunday, nevertheless the love with which Jesus loved them was their light. They continued following Jesus. They were his Mystical Body on earth.
Over two millennia the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, has been a number of times on the Mount of Olives enjoying praise and appreciation of others. However the Church has also been a number of times in the situations of darkness when some thought that it would be the end of the Church. However God has always raised people like St Francis to rebuild the Church holding unto the love Jesus has loved us.
My dear fellow followers of Jesus. As we enter this holy time draw from the sacred Liturgies, which mark this time, the grace of faith, hope and love.  Let us hold fast to Jesus’ love for us, the love which costed him his life. I pray to our Blessed Mother for each of us so that like her we may treasure and ponder all these events in our hearts. I pray also so that like her we may fill our conversations, whether at home or school, workplace or club, with the events which are ahead of us this mysterious week.

​            Here in Australia we are sensitive when it comes to our privacy, aren’t we? However we have no right to individual privacy in Australian law. That’s why photographers, generally speaking, can freely photograph everyday situations, people and places providing they aren’t breaking any other laws. They would break law if without permission they took a photo of someone while being in a private property like a home or … a shopping center. Streets, public parks or public buildings don’t have this restriction. One could even take a photo of a person or people who were on their veranda or in their backyard if he or she stood with a camera in the public space. One however cannot photograph people inside their home.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The Gospel passage for this Sunday may look like an invasion of Jesus’ privacy. He went to the desert to be on his own. It wasn’t meant to be. His intense time of prayer and fasting was interrupted by the devil. As we embark on our Lenten journey we need to be realistic. Whatever your Lenten resolutions are there is someone who will not leave you alone. The devil will invade your prayer, fasting or almsgiving not simply to tempt you to break them but so that you may start judging yourself of not worthy of God because of your weakness. This weakness can be evident when we don’t persevere in our Lenten resolutions but it is even more apparent when we sin again and again.
As we come to observe the first Sunday of Lent in the opening prayer, the collect, which followed immediately the penitential act as we don’t sing Gloria on Sundays during this season, we asked God: ‘that we may grow in the riches hidden in Christ.’ Being a Christian, a disciple of Jesus, I am determined to come ‘to know him more clearly so that I may love him more dearly and follow him more nearly, day by day’ as St Richard of Chichester, an English bishop from the twelfth, century prayed. St Luke the Evangelist had the same determination for himself and for other Christians. However we can be sure that he was not spying on Jesus in the desert hiding behind a bush. How do we know about Jesus’ temptations? The devil didn’t publicize it. He lost that battle. If we know about that event it is because Jesus shared the memory of it with his disciples. He invited his disciples and us as well ‘to grow in his hidden riches.’ The richness of his divinity and humanity as the beloved Son of God is the environment for our Christian growth.
My Friends! The way the devil tempted Jesus is a clue how the devil tempts us. The devil hadn’t had an experience how to tempt God as before God hadn’t become man. The ‘expertise’ the devil used was how he uually attacks people.
Before Jesus went to the desert he was baptized in the Jordan. There he heard the voice of his heavenly Father: ‘You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.’ As I said before that’s Jesus’ richness. That’s his treasure. That’s his motivation and his strength. He is the beloved Son of God. No one can convince him otherwise. However the devil didn’t know that. Why didn’t he know it? Because many times before he had succeeded in convincing people that they were not the beloved children of God. Do you remember Adam and Eve for example? So he went on with his well-rehearsed and practiced technique.
‘If you are the Son of God, - said the devil - tell this stone to turn into a loaf.’ Couldn’t Jesus do it? Of course he could. Bu he didn’t need to turn a stone into bread to prove that he’s the Son of God. Sometime later however as the Son of God out of compassion for us the lost and doubting, but still beloved, sons and daughters of God he would turn bread into his scared body.
‘Worship me – said the devil – and I will give you all this power and the glory of these kingdoms.’ Why would Jesus fall for that? He knew what it was to be the beloved sharer of the Kingdom of his Father. Sometime later however out of compassion for us the lost and doubting, but still beloved, sons and daughters of God he would kneel in front of Peter and other Apostles to wash their feet. He the only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father saw clearly who those people were, the beloved children of God. He saw it despite their shortcomings, their weaknesses and their sins.
‘If you are the Son of God – the devil said – throw yourself down from here, from the top of the Jerusalem Temple.’ Jesus didn’t need to fly like the Superman to prove that he’s the Son of God. He chose to walk firmly on the earth instead so that sometime later as the Son of God out of compassion for us the lost and doubting, but still beloved, sons and daughters of God, he took the cross to the Hill of Calvary and was raised above the crowd on that cross by the hatred of some people. The hatred was generated by the sins of all of us who are so easily convinced that we are not the beloved sons and daughters of God.
Beloved Daughters and Sons of God. We have no right to individual privacy in Australian law but we do have right to inherit the Kingdom of our Heavenly Father as his children. If anyone challenges this right of yours turn to Jesus Christ, your Saviour, your Messiah, your Redeemer but also you brother.

                       A few days ago an elderly woman visited our presbytery asking to see a priest. She was exhausted and sad. The reason she put herself through all this trouble to travel some distance, changing trams twice on a hot day, was the suffering she was going through after the conviction of Cardinal George Pell was made public. In her fragility caused by her age she became even more fragile because of the hurt, confusion and doubt she was experiencing.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers in faith! The image of that fragile fellow believer of ours has stayed with me as a prophetic image of our Church today. Our Archbishop Peter Andrew Comensoli, in his letter to all of us, put it in this way: ‘Your heart is hurting; and your home of faith is hurting.’ Home of faith that’s our Church community. The words of our Archbishop and the image of that elderly woman I find as something I can recall as I pray and reflect on the events which have been unfolding. As we are hurting our Archbishop has invited us ‘to never forget those who walk with this pain every day, whose lives remain devastated by the impact of sexual abuse inflicted on them in their vulnerability.’ Suffering can damage people. We know it well. That’s why I turn to Our Blessed Mother who stood at the foot of the cross and looked at the suffering body of her Son Jesus Christ. She didn’t have power to change it. She didn’t have a means to change it. But she wasn’t hopeless. She loved that suffering body. She held fast to her faith that God was to bring salvation out of that. We call the Church the Body of Christ. Today this Body is severely hurt. It is suffering. At the heart of that suffering Body are those who were abused by the people who were called to show them the face of Christ. In this suffering Body we also see other holy People of God who are hurting because they love the Church, because they love Jesus Christ. You haven’t chosen this situation. You may be asking now how to deal with this situation. Let me tell you what I will be doing. The holy season of Lent is just a few days away. In our churches we will walk the Stations of the Cross. I will make it my Lenten practice to use so called ‘Mary’s Stations of the Cross.’ The reflections help us to look at Jesus’ way to Golgotha through the eyes of Our Blessed Mother. Some years ago I participated in such Stations of the Cross. The reflections were read by a woman who lost her son to a suicide. She carried a lot of suffering, as she led us through the prayers it all came back to her again, this time however she went through her suffering with the suffering Virgin Mary. I will walk this Lent with Mary praying to draw grace to look at the suffering Body of Christ, which are the suffering people of God, the way she looked at the suffering Body of Christ walking through the streets of Jerusalem to the Calvary.
            My Dear Fellow Believers! In the Gospel Jesus said to his disciples to ‘take a plank out of their own eyes.’ For a long time, far too long, such a blank was the blindness of some of our Church people to the tragedy of sexual abuse. This stigma will not disappear any time soon. However as I look with Mary at Jesus I see him carrying a horizontal beam. He also said to us: ‘Take up your cross and follow me.’ Thank God we are not blind to the suffering of the survivors of sexual abuse any more. Today at the verge of Lent maybe the Lord Jesus is pointing out to us the plank we have taken out of our eyes and invites us to take it up with humility and responsibility. I hope and I pray that it can bring healing and new life to each one of us hurting at the moment and to our hurting home of faith.

Abraham Lincoln, who was the sixteenth President of US and who led the country through its civil war and the most severe internal national crisis, once said: ‘The best way to destroy your enemy is to make him your friend.’ In Lincoln’s words we can hear an echo of today’s preaching of Our Blessed Lord. We continue receiving what is known in the Gospel of Luke as the Sermon on the Plain. Last Sunday Jesus presented to us two ways of living: the way of life and the way of death. Today we hear what the way of life looks like. Let’s listen to Jesus’ life giving words again: ‘Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who treat you badly.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We may think now that what Jesus invites us to do is opposite to common sense. How can we open wide our heart to someone who not only doesn’t appreciate it but who hurts us as well? To answer this question let me fast forward to the day when we find Jesus on the cross. Not many people were left there but St Luke gives us some final words of the dying Saviour of the World. What did Jesus say on the cross that St Luke wants us to treasure and to ponder? In his terrible agony Jesus loved his enemies, those who condemned him to death and those who crucified him. How do we know that? Despite his pain, when every cell of his body screamed with pain, Jesus made an effort to say loudly some prayer. It was not a prayer for pain relief but for his enemies: ‘Father, forgive them because they don’t know what they are doing.’ He even managed to find an excuse for what they did to him!
            Our common sense resists such thing. However both Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Plain about loving enemies and his own example of doing it are the grace to transform our rebellious mentality from within of our anger and hatred.
As Jesus went into the ‘belly of the beast,’ which was exemplified by those who hated him and wanted to do away with him, as he goes into the darkness of our heart and mind where we harbor resentment and a sense of vengeance. Why does he go there? To be crucified again? He will be crucified again by us if we cling to our conviction that it is our fundamental right to be angry at some people and refuse them our forgiveness. St Paul in the Letter to the Ephesians put it this way: ‘Even if you are angry you must not sin.’ How can we avoid sinning when we get angry with someone? In the same letter St Paul gives us some good and divine advice: ‘never let the sun set on your anger.’ It means: you may find yourself angry, mad etc. but make it your way of dealing with it that before the sunset you will weed out your anger. Let Jesus, the Rising Sun; dispel the darkness of your hatred and anger.
Jesus doesn’t promise that your love for enemies will be reciprocated. What Jesus promises is that you will be a true missionary going on a mission to your own heart in order to ‘model it on the heavenly man’ - Christ himself. What a mission it is! What a fruit it can bear!
St Paul in the First Letter to the Corinthians wrote: ‘The first man Adam, as scripture says, became living soul; but the last Adam has become a life-giving spirit.’ By the last Adam St Paul meant Jesus Christ.
My Dear fellow strugglers in faith! When the Sacred Heart of Jesus was wide open on the cross, when blood and water poured out, there was the spirit of forgiveness released for us so that we can ‘be compassionate as our Father is compassionate.’ This is the Gospel. This is the Good News for us. Take this Gospel, this Good News, into the darkness of your own heart and mind. Let it work from within. There are still a few hours before the sunset. Use them well to get rid of your anger. For Jesus’s sake do it. 

​At the end of the forty-year-journey through the desert the aged Moses spoke to the people who were about to enter the Promised Land: ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing or curse, therefore choose life.’ At the crucial moment of their history, Moses calls his people to choose, to make a decision. It is not about choosing between going to the Promised Land and returning to Egypt. It is about the choice to live a godly life in the Promised Land. Could it be said that the Land was to bring death and curse upon the people settling into it? Of course not, however people could live in the Holy Land as pagans and that’s death and curse. The Land itself wouldn’t make anyone automatically true worshipers.
As they were sighting the destination of their long desert wandering Moses, as God’s prophet, reminded the people that it was not the end of their journey with God and to God. They would need to live not only off the Land God was giving them but also off the Holy Word which would be coming to them. The very first verses of the beautiful Book of Psalms capture that: ‘Happy indeed is the man who follows not the counsel of the wicked; nor lingers in the way of sinners nor sits in the company of scorners but whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders his Law day and night.’
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This passage of Scriptures applies to us too. Our Promised Land is called the Church. As we read the chapter six of St Luke’s Gospel we find Jesus ‘at a piece of level ground.’ That’s why what he said there is called the Sermon on the Plain. St Luke symbolically says that this is the fulfillment of what John the Baptist preached: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be brought low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways shall be made smooth.’ St Luke, as he contemplates Jesus preaching on the plain, marvels at how the prophesy of the Baptist is unfolding. However it is not simply the geography that inspires the Author of the Gospel. From the landscape he moves his focus to ‘a large gathering of Jesus’ disciples with a great crowd of people’ and at the center of that gathering there is Jesus and the Twelve Apostles chosen just hours before.
The Plain where Jesus preached his sermon became the new Promised Land because there was Jesus, the Twelve, the disciples and a crowd of people. This new Promised Land is defined not by seas, deserts, rivers or mountains; it is defined by the people who are Jesus’ disciples.
This Promised Land, the Church, the gathering of Jesus’ Apostles and disciples, is where we are. We’ve got our Baptismal certificates, Confirmation certificates, Marriage certificates etc. We are in the Promised Land but it is not the end of our journey with God and to God. Jesus, like Moses, said to his listeners gathered on the plain about making a choice between the way of blessing and life and the way of cursing and death.
In order to appreciate Jesus’ sermon on the Plain let me tell you a story. It is about a woman and a man falling in love with each other. They were still young and studying. They didn’t have much money. But they loved each other. When they got married they experienced poverty, even they were hungry sometimes. There were also tears when they felt abandoned by their friends and relations. But at the deep level they were happy. They didn’t regret the hardships because they had each other, because they shared life.
When Jesus ‘fixed his eyes on his disciples’ he put together words the most people would never do: poor and happy, hungry and happy, weeping and happy, castigated and happy. But if we live in the Church as disciples for whom their relationship with Jesus is the most important thing in life we are like that young couple I mentioned before. We may suffer a lot but we have our Lord in our life and what a life it is.
St Catherine of Siena once said: ‘It is heaven all the way to heaven.’ Could we be surprised at that if Jesus is the way, the truth and the life?
My Dear fellow believers! Choose the Way. Choose the Truth. Choose the Life. Then it will be for you heaven all the way to heaven.

​There was a girl whose name was Chiara. She was bright, cheerful and popular. She enjoyed swimming, skiing and being with her friends. When she went to high school there was a misunderstanding with a teacher. Chiara had to repeat the first year at high school. She was disappointed. This is what she revealed to her friend about that disappointment: ‘I wasn’t able to give this suffering to Jesus right away. It took a little time to recover.’
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! In the Gospel for this Sunday we meet a disappointed man – Peter. Let us listen again to how he revealed his disappointment: ‘We have worked hard all night long and caught nothing.’ Peter wasn’t able to give his suffering, his disappointment to Jesus right away either. As a mature man, who was supposed to support his family, he must have felt bad, kind of a failure.
The prophet Isaiah had this awesome vision when he ‘saw the Lord of Hosts seated on high throne and above whom stood seraphs crying ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts. His glory fills the whole earth.’’ At the same time he looked into his own conscience and what he saw was all but holy, in fact he declared with disappointment: ‘What a wretched state I am in. I am a man of unclean lips and live among a people of unclean lips.’ He was disappointed with himself of not being worthy to be in the presence of All Holy God. He was disappointed that he didn’t live up to the standards to which God was calling his people.
Different kinds of disappointments we have seen in these three people. Could you add your own disappointment to the story?  Do think about that. Identify and name your disappointment. Why? Because your disappointment can become your appointment with God. Chiara met Jesus in her study disappointment. Peter met Jesus in his work disappointment. Isaiah met All Holy God in his personality disappointment. If you, my fellow believers, are disappointed with something in your life open wide your eyes and look around. The Lord Jesus is there. He is not going to join you at feeling sorry for yourself though. Instead at this unique appointment in your disappointment he says to you: ‘You did not choose me, no, I chose you and I commissioned you to go out and bear fruit, fruit that will last.’
This is our discovery that God is at work, that God transforms the world through our need for him. He is not waiting for us showing off to him our awards and achievements but he wants to award us with his compassion. He wants us to display before people that we live and move in him. He wants us to fascinate others with our content with living the life as his followers and even more… as his children.
I am fascinated with the life of Isaiah and Peter. I am also fascinated with the life of that girl I mentioned at the beginning, Chiara Badano. Looking at them you can see the radiance of God shining in our world which seems to be a dark place so often. Chiara was born in 1971. She is our contemporary. She died at the age of 19 of a rare bone cancer in 1990. When two years earlier she was told the grim prognosis she was disappointed and she struggled to accept it. She asked her mother: ‘Mum, is it fair to die at 17 years of age?’ However eventually she said: ‘If this is what you want, Jesus, so do I.’ When exhausted with illness she revealed: ‘I have nothing left, but still have my heart, and with that I can always love.’ Our Catholic Church has recognized how precious disappointment it was as it was indeed an appointment with God. Chiara was beatified, she was declared Blessed in 2010, only 20 years after her premature death. Was it a premature death? By 19 she reached the maturity of Jesus’ follower, of a child of God who lived with content her dependence on God, her need for God.
Blessed Chiara, pray for us.