Last week we welcomed the Word of God as a cure and light for us who build up this community of the Church, the community so dear to our Blessed Lord. It was the cure for the mentality we acquire while immersed in the world around us. We don’t want to run away from the world but we don’t want to transmit the worldly mentality into the Church either. Jesus calls us to be a different community in the midst of the world. That’s why the Word of God from last Sunday about the fraternal, patient correction aiming at winning back our sinning brother or sister came to us as a cure for our relationships within the Church. This different dynamic of our community as disciples of the Lord needs also divine light in order to grow stronger and stronger in faith which draws us closer to the Lord but also draws us closer to each other.
            The Word of God which comes to us this Sunday is full of hope for us. Once again we see Peter on whom Jesus promised to build his Church, his ecclesia.  It is important for us to observe Peter. We don’t spy on Peter but by witnessing Peter’s journey in faith we are drawn to the grace which transformed the Apostle. That’s why the Church is built on Peter. In Rome there is this magnificent Basilica called St Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican. Under the main altar, where the Pope celebrates Masses, there is Peter’s tomb. When it was discovered in the last century the archaeologists found an inscription saying: ‘Peter is here.’ Truly it can be said that this beautiful church in the Vatican is built on Peter. However with full conviction it can be also said that the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ where we are members, is built on Peter because the life giving Good News of Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the World, which we listen to, accept and venerate with love, faith and hope comes to us as the Gospel which challenged, formed and uplifted Peter too. This Gospel has run through the Apostle, through the first generation of the disciples of  the Lord – the early Church, through all the generations of Catholics which followed and us. The story of Peter is the Good News about the Holy Spirit at work in a human person.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Today’s passage taken from the Gospel of Matthew may not come across as the most striking page of the Bible like some other pages when Peter is a participant of some wonderful and inspiring events pertaining to our salvation. However I invite you not to rush through in order to find something more exciting about Peter because these final verses of chapter 18 of St Matthew’s Gospel which we face this Sunday reveal some powerful work of the Holy Spirit in Peter.
            Firstly we witness Peter who speaks about some other person, who also followed Jesus, as ‘BROTHER.’ Don’t take it lightly. We get here a glimpse into Peter’s soul. He followed Jesus. He came to love Jesus. He admired Jesus. Following Jesus marked Peter’s soul, heart and mind profoundly. It marked him so profoundly that Peter’s family expanded and now included those who walked with Jesus too. Peter didn’t walked with Jesus alone. Peter wasn’t a stranger among strangers. Peter lived his love for Jesus, his faith in Jesus, his hope in Jesus in such a way that he was a brother among brothers and sisters. We are built on this Peter. I pray so that as you listen to this Gospel, which gives us a glimpse into Peter’s soul, may be graced to have the same experience, to realise that you are a brother or a sister among other Catholics who are your brothers and sisters. I pray so that you may discover the beauty and power of living your faith and love for Jesus as the gift which is a common gift of your fellow believers.
            Secondly, we witness Peter who experienced firsthand that the other brothers and sisters of him who followed Jesus weren’t angels. He says today: ‘How often must I forgive my brother if he wrongs me? As often as seven times?’ How realistic! Peter was wronged. Peter was hurt by another follower. However there is more. Look, the Gospel isn’t finished yet but Peter knows that in the Church there is no getting rid off sinners. The Church grows in her beauty not by eliminating sinners but by forgiving them. What Peter receives from Jesus was the grace to multiply the capacity of his heart and mind to forgive, not seven times but seventy seven times, which means always. After all he speaks to the Lord, the God himself. This Lord and Saviour doesn’t simply tell what to do, this Lord and Saviour gives us grace to fulfill what he says. We are built on this Peter. I pray so that as you listen to this Gospel, which gives us a glimpse into Peter’s soul, may be graced to have the same experience, to realise that the capacity of your heart to forgive is multiplied by the grace of the Lord.
            My Dearest Sisters and Brothers! How much hope for us and for our Church we find in the life of this man, Peter. He isn’t buried in the past. His story filled with Jesus Christ has become Good News for us. We are built on him.
            St Peter, we thank you for giving your life to the Lord and to us as well.
            St Peter, pray for us.

            The Living Word of God given to us this Sunday is a cure and a light for us who are members of the Church.
This Word of God is a Divine cure  because we have been called out of the world. This is what the word Ecclesia, which is translated as church, means: called out of. We have been called out of the world but we haven’t been removed from the world. Furthermore we still bear the common impact of the original sin which affected people’s relationship with God and with each other. That’s why today’s Word of God comes to us as a cure for what we bring to the Church coming from the world.
This Word of God is also a Divine light so that a new lifestyle, a godly one, could flourish in us and among us like biological life flourishes under the light of the Sun.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! In today’s Gospel the word Ecclesia (Church) occurs twice. There is also one more occurrence. We heard it a couple of weeks ago when Jesus said to Peter: ‘You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church.’ What did Jesus find in Peter that he made the Apostle such promise? It was the faith of the Apostle who confessed: ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ The faith Peter had in Jesus was indicated by Jesus as the foundation of the Church.
In the Gospel we received two weeks ago Jesus showed the foundation of the Church. This Sunday Our Blessed Lord shows us the Body of the Church arising from that foundation. ‘Where two or three meet in my name, I shall be there with them.’ What these people have in common is their faith in Jesus ‘Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Therefore the Christians, who have been called out of the world, are not left in some vacuum. They are gathered in the community which Jesus called Ecclesia (Church). This new society arising from the foundation, which is the faith in Jesus ‘Christ, the Son of the living God,’ transforms women and men into sisters and brothers. All of us have been reconciled to one God. All of us have been washed in the same blood of the same Lord Jesus. The love of the Father and the blood of the Son made us one family of God.
St Cyprian of Carthage, a bishop and martyr, who lived in the third century, wrote: ‘You cannot have God for your Father if you do not have the Church for your mother.’ The Church allows us, who maybe strangers to each other, to be reborn into brothers and sisters who call the Heavenly Father: Our Father, who call his only begotten Son Jesus Christ: Our Brother. However these great mysteries we have been made partakers don’t hypnotize us. There is still a long process for us to undertake so that with profound conviction we could look at our fellow believers as our brothers and sisters. Jesus gives us a fascinating insight today when he says: ‘If your brother sins against you.’ The Lord doesn’t promise us that our fellow believers will be angels but he promises to give us grace so that in the sinful fellow believer we could still see our brother and sister whom we love out of sin, whom we love into holiness.
In the nineteenth century France was blessed having St John Vianney, a great pastor of the parish of Ars and a great confessor. Lots of people travelled to the little village of Ars to make their confession there because the holy priest could read people’s hearts. One day a bishop arrived. After making his confession before John Vianney he was walking away sobbing. Asked what happened he answered: ‘He told me to love my priests.’ St John became a brother to the bishop. He discovered that the bishop was lacking love for his priests but the way he said it to the bishop moved the man deeply. He didn’t feel condemned or judged but loved, encouraged and supported to embrace a change in his life.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! I pray that when you go to confessions you can have this belief that there in the confessional room sits a brother of yours, a brother in faith. That your confession is witnessed by a brother who loves you out of sin and who loves you into holiness. That when you open your soul to him he will offer you a truthful and caring insight because he cares about your eternal life.

            Yesterday we observed the day of the Assumption of Mary. This fullness of Redemption accomplished by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in his life, death and resurrection was manifested in the empty grave of Mary as she was taken up to heaven in her body and soul. We glorified the Most Blessed Trinity for the fullness of Redemption accomplished in the Mother of Jesus, who is also our Mother. We also looked up to her as our model and guide in faith.
In the opening pages of the Gospel we hear the words of St Elizabeth who upon welcoming Mary to her home said of Mary: ‘Blessed is she who believed that the promise made her by the Lord would be fulfilled.’ Thus the first beatitude we find in the Gospel is that of faith and it refers to who believed as St John Paul II said to the pilgrims visiting Rome in 1998. As Jesus was entering this world of ours in the mystery of his Incarnation, in the mystery of God becoming flesh, he awoke faith in Mary, a young girl from Nazareth. In Mary we discover faith in its pristine form. Mary believed not in an abstract deity but in God who comes to his people, in God who makes the first move. This first move of God fills people with grace to trust him, to accept his message as the Good News. This is what we discover in Mary. That’s why we keep turning to her because we don’t want to lose what we have been given by God. We want to cherish God’s first move made towards us. We want to see his grace grow in us into faith.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This Sunday the Holy Scriptures present us another woman. We are truly blessed with a feminine weekend this weekend. The woman whom we meet is very loud. I wish she had the strongest amplifier possible because what she says is precious. I think that the reason why Jesus appeared to be ignoring her was that he wanted her to keep saying what she was cherishing in her soul. Jesus wanted her to keep disclosing the riches filling her soul so that many more people could hear it.
The first riches is her motherly love for her daughter. The love which caused her suffer so much because of her daughter’s illness. We can understand and appreciate it. It resonates with our human experience. I believe that this is the reason why Mary is so attractive to us too. Our Blessed Mother also lived and loved in the way which was so human.
This first riches disclosed by the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel, her deep love for her daughter was situated in the drama of the suffering experienced by the girl. We don’t know what kind of suffering it was but it must have been severe. Here the other riches of the Canaanite woman is disclosed. How often when suffering or difficulties impact us it seems to weaken our faith. My Dear fellow Christians let us pay attention to what the Canaanite woman is saying. Let us gather every single word she is saying. Let us take with us into our daily life every single word she is saying. She is a great mother indeed. She is also a ‘woman of great faith.’ This is how Jesus spoke of her at the end of the Gospel passage we have been given this Sunday.
We’ve already reflected on her motherly love. What can we say about her great faith?
She spoke of Jesus as ‘Son of David.’ This pagan woman must have definitely heard of Jesus. She might have even heard and seen him herself. As she speaks to him she acknowledges him as the one who fulfills the promises given to the People of Israel. Her pagan imagination about divine has been changed. Her image of divine is no longer about some god she must go to but it is the image of God who makes the first move, God who comes to his people because his feels compassion for them.
This pagan woman also speaks of Jesus as Lord. The Jews reserved this word for God as they out of reverence didn’t utter the Holy Name of God. The woman didn’t say it once. She didn’t say it twice. She said it thrice. Thus the way she addressed Jesus wasn’t accidental. She acknowledged in Jesus the God whom the Jews refused to recognize.
My Dear fellow Believers! If you find yourselves in a situation which makes you doubt God I invite you to turn to Our Blessed Mother. Let her calm the storm of fear and doubt in your soul. I also invite you to fill your heart and mind with the words of the Canaanite woman from today’s Gospel. In your struggle keep repeating to Jesus her words: ‘Son of David, take pity on me.’ When everything appears to suggest to you that God is not there for you keep saying: ‘Lord. Lord. Lord.’

            Imagine that the bread and fish which Jesus multiplied in the Gospel were taken to the MasterChef judges. Do you think that it would get Jesus to be among the fifty semi-finalists? I doubt. However the memory of that event which happened in a lonely place two thousand years ago, as St Matthew told us, is still remembered among us, Christian communities. Even if we didn’t taste what Jesus distributed to feed the hungry crowd, even if the twelve baskets full of scraps haven’t been preserved to inspire and support us, still the Gospel passage comes to us as fresh as the bread just baked and the fish just cooked.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! We gather today in this Church, like we do every Sunday or some of us even every day. We come here not like the MasterChef contestants and judges who have an abundance of recourses. Rather we come here like the people from the Gospel who left everything they had, at least for a day, to listen to Jesus. We know that they left everything because they didn’t have even the basics to eat. They followed Jesus to ‘a lonely place’ leaving everything behind. They followed Jesus in their poverty. We come here in our poverty too.
This church is our lonely place. It is lonely not because there is no one here. Even in the Gospel the place where people found Jesus could hardly be described lonely. After all a few thousand people gathered there. This place, our church, is lonely not in terms of the absence of people but because of the absence of recourses we have come to believe, or have been made to believe, we cannot live without. Commercials, social pressure together with our desire to have more and more have made us ‘hoarders.’ We accumulate things because in them we see life. This church, this Eucharist is God’s given a materialism detox for us. That’s why this Sunday I would like us to pay attention to the group of the disciples who were with Jesus.
I realise that in the crowd of many thousand people they can be overlooked easily. It is even easier to overlook ‘the five loaves and two fish’ the disciples had initially. I don’t want us to overlook these details. To be honest they are not details, they are crucial elements of this passage to absorb the mystery of the miracle Jesus performed there, in ‘the lonely place.’
The disciples we meet in the Gospel today had just enough to get them through another day. They took to heart what Jesus said some time earlier: ‘Do not get any gold or silver or copper to take with you in your belts, no bag for a journey or extra shirt or sandals or a staff.’ What the disciples had was five loaves and two fish. Enough food for their small community for one day. This food wasn’t reserves for many days to come. This food was to survive one day. This food was their life. You may remember the poor widow from the Temple in Jerusalem who put two little coins into the treasury. From the perspective of the rich it was nothing. From her perspective it was life. Jesus said of her: ‘She gave all she had to live on.’ She gave more than money. She entrusted to God her life, her future.
When in today’s Gospel Jesus asked his disciples: ‘Bring them (bread and fish) here to me.’ He asked them to do what that poor widow did in the Temple: to give their life for others. And they did. The disciples put their very life at the disposal of others. Before the five loaves and two fish were multiplied a miracle happened in the hearts and minds of the disciples. Jesus performed ‘metanoia’ – conversion of their hearts and minds.
My Dear fellow Believers. The church is not a MasterChef competition. The church is the time and miracle performed by Jesus so that our hearts and minds could be transformed like the hearts and minds of the disciples in the Gospel did. Jesus is working very hard on us to transform us from ‘hoarders’ into givers. It is not just limited to what we have but it is all about giving away who we are. When we embrace the live of giving away our life we discover profound peace and joy. Is it easy? It is not. That’s why we come to church, to Mass so often because we know that it takes a long time to have our minds and hearts transformed in such a way. That’s why we keep receiving Jesus in Holy Communion because Holy Communion is all about Jesus giving himself away to us. Receiving him so many times we gradually mature to become whom we receive.

            In the Holy Land one can buy all sorts of souvenirs. Some visitors return home with a bottle of some perfume which they were told was like the one which Mary of Bethany, as the Gospel tells us, used to anoint Jesus’ feet. The Gospel tells us that she brought ‘an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard.’ To test the authenticity of the perfume a simple question can be asked: ‘How much did you pay for this perfume?’ If the cost was equal to the year worth salaries it makes sense to investigate the authenticity of the perfume further. Otherwise the perfume isn’t worth even of the space it takes in the luggage.
I realise that these words may disappoint some who spent ten dollars on the fake perfume but can you imagine how disappointed Judas was when he saw what Mary did? He would need to work for a year, without eating, drinking and paying rent, to save up for such perfume. His disappointment revealed two things about him. Firstly, he was good at calculating the worth of material things. Secondly he was hopeless at calculating the value of spiritual, divine things.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The First Reading for today, taken from the Book of Kings, gave us some useful prayer which the young King Solomon prayed. Please listen to the prayer again: ‘Give your servant a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil.’ This is a prayer which can turn our mentality up side down. It does so because we tend to associate understanding with our mind not heart. We also perceive that heart is for love and not for such an ‘unromantic’ thing like discerning. A singer even sung: ‘I know, the heart does not obey orders.’ If it were true there wouldn’t be any silver or golden jubilees of marriage. If it were true there wouldn’t be people like Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Maximilian Kolbe and many other known and unknown saints. Just imagine how sad and disappointing our world would be. Our Father in heaven doesn’t want us to live in such a world that’s why he has given us this prayer for ‘a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil.’ Our Father in heaven has given us also the Holy Spirit so that we could delight in good, so that the Psalm 118 which we prayed between our Readings today could become the prayer coming from the depth of our soul: ‘I love your commands more than finest gold. Your will is wonderful indeed; therefore I obey it. The unfolding of your word gives light and teaches the simple.’
            When Mary of Bethany anointed the feet of Jesus she acted like the people in the first two short parables we heard this Sunday: someone who found treasure hidden in a filed and a merchant finding a beautiful pearl. These two people gave up all they had in order to get the treasure and the pearl. However all those passages of the Gospel cannot be explained by the practical mind of Judas or the emotional approach of the singer I have mentioned. The passages bring us into the discerning heart of Mary, the treasure seeker and the pearl merchant. It is the heart which finds that Jesus is good. He is good to us indeed but he is also the goodness himself. He is worth of all we are and have. He is worth of every effort we make to live life which is all about following him. If following him doesn’t cost us something is wrong. We are like the people coming from the Holy Land with a ten dollar bottle of perfume thinking that they have something authentic.

            From my childhood home I remember a framed picture of Jesus walking with his disciples through a filed of wheat. The picture has been lost but as I have grown up a question has been coming back to me: Was it a picture of a past event or a present one?
In the Gospel we find a passage showing Jesus walking with his disciples through fields of wheat while his hungry disciples were picking the ears of wheat and eating them. We even know that it happened on Saturday which was a Sabbath day. Thus we could say that the picture I mentioned captures something which did happen two thousand years ago when Jesus lived in the Holy Land.
However the Gospel for this Sunday, and the Gospel for last Sunday as well, reveals to us the mystery of Christ which extends beyond the boundaries of the Holy Land and the timeframe of his life there two thousand years ago. This mystery Christ illustrated through the two parables about the sower and the seed. He is the sower. In the parable we heard last Sunday he explained that the seed was his Holy Word which came to different kinds of people symbolized by different kinds of soil. In the Gospel today our blessed Lord speaks about the seed which are the people of his kingdom. The seed, his Holy Word as we heard last Sunday, makes a miracle that those who welcome it like the fertile ground become the seed themselves. They have been so transformed that there is no difference between what Christ proclaims and what they practice. ‘The kingdom of heaven may be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.’ Thus the picture I mentioned before can be seen as what is happening before our very eyes. Christ the Lord walks through the filed of our own world. The picture reveals a present event as well.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The parable Jesus told us today is not idealistic. It captures the reality of evil present in our midst. Something we struggle to come to terms with. As Jesus explains to us evil is no by-product of what God has created. It is the result of the action of the evil one. Jesus also reminds us that evil is no abstract. Evil is not something which circulates in the air. Evil becomes apparent in the people who accept the lure of devil and allow it to posses them. ‘While everybody was asleep his enemy came, sowed darnel all among the wheat, and made off.’ The darnel is weed which at the beginning looks like wheat. Only after some time of growing they can be told apart. However even when the people who have been lured by the evil one are identified Jesus forbids removing them. This will be the task of his angels at the time of harvest when he returns is his glory to judge the living and the dead. The task of his Church now is to heal the darnel so it may not only resemble the good seed but to become good seed too. The medicine comes from two other short parables we have heard today.
The first parable was of a mustard seed which ‘is the smallest of all the seeds.’ However when ‘it has grown it is the biggest shrub of all and becomes a tree so that the birds of the air come and shelter in its branches.’ Two thousand years ago on the Golgotha a small mustard seed was planted. It was the cross onto which the Son of God was nailed. Such an insignificant carpentry item. Definitely it didn’t resemble some other work of human hands like the Great Wall of China which can be seen from the space. It was the cross on which there was barely room for one person. However this cross has grown in a mysterious way. Over millennia generations of people who have suffered physically, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, morally, etc. have been turning to this cross of Jesus on which there is room for everyone. I call you who are listening today: turn to this cross of Jesus too. There is room for you too. Believe in the redeeming power of the one who was hung upon it.
The second parable was of ‘the yeast a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour till it was leavened all through.’ When the dead body of Jesus was taken down from the cross some good people placed it in the tomb of Nikodemus. However through their act of kindness the invisible but merciful hand of the Heavenly Father was at work. The Heavenly Father, like that woman from the parable, placed the Body of his Son in the history of humankind and in the history of every woman and man. This Body in God’s plan was not placed in the tomb to decompose but to be the leaven. When the Lord Jesus rose from the dead on the third day he began leavening those individuals and communities which welcome him.
Some time ago I came across a loaf of bread on which was written that some thirty-year-old leaven was used to make it. I am aware that some bread makers boast using leaven which is even older. Two thousand years ago God has placed in the midst of humankind leaven which was eternal. It was his Son Jesus Christ. I call you who are listening today: Believe that the Lord Jesus has risen. Accept this Good News of his Resurrection so that you too and our community can be ‘leavened all through.’ We will be leavened by leaven which comes from the Holy Trinity. We will be leavened by this leaven to have in us the life eternal.
The picture of Christ walking through fields of wheat… What a powerful and lifegiving picture it is!

            A person after hearing the Gospel passage which we have just heard asked: ‘Why did Jesus say that people who are like a path are wrong? What’s wrong with a path? If we didn’t have paths or roads it would make our life difficult.’
            What that person said is a proper reaction to a parable, and what Jesus told in the Gospel about the sower was a parable. A parable aims at triggering some questions in us. Even if at first the questions may be far away from the core of the parable they can be the beginning of a personal and spiritual journey leading to the core of what Jesus said.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! There is nothing wrong with a path or a road providing they are in the right place. However Jesus spoke about the Word of God which he scatters like a sower scatters seeds. What do sowers expect from the seeds they sow? They expect and hope for an abundant harvest. This is the expectation and hope of our Blessed Lord too. He expects that each one of us, and our faith community, can be like rich soil where his word, his Good News, his Gospel, can become life giving word rather than a piece of literature. That’s why the Lord Jesus keeps sowing his word so abundantly that he could be called prodigal. There is a parable of the prodigal son who wasted all he received from his father. However it was the father who was prodigal. He not only gave a lot to his younger son but even after the boy had wasted it all he didn’t hesitate to welcome him back to the family and its wealth. Similarly Jesus Christ appears to be prodigal in his sowing activity. Should we be surprised? Like Father like Son. Jesus sows not only where the soil is rich but he sows where it is hard like a path and rocky and overgrown with weeds. What a waste! - our profit focused mind would say. However Jesus who speaks about a crop of thirty, sixty and hundredfold wants to evoke in us the desire to become the soil so rich that it can yield such a crop. Jesus is prepared to ‘waste’ a lot to convert us into rich soil.
Therefore he keeps sowing because only his word, his Good News, his Gospel can heal us in such a way that our hardness which shields us like the surface of a path can be cracked. He keeps sowing because only his word, his Good News, his Gospel can heal us in such a way that our patches of rock, our shallowness can be converted into deep Christian faith. He keeps sowing because only his word, his Good News, his Gospel can heal us in such a way that the thorns in us: our worries of this world and the lure of riches can be removed.
How merciful our Lord is! His word, his Good News, his Gospel which has been treasured and loved and passed on from one generation of believers onto next is still this seed which enables good and holy souls, who are like rich soil, to yield a great harvest, to fill the world with good deeds, thoughts and desires. The same word of Christ converts others, who are not ready yet, into rich soil. You can be assured that this treasure of God’s word will never run out.
I began this homily with a query of a person. It wasn’t simply to provide an answer but to encourage each of you to voice your own questions and reactions to what you hear at Mass or what comes out of your personal prayer or reading the Bible. Searching for answers and reaching out to your fellow believers to hear their insights makes you deeper in faith. The deeper you are in faith the richer soil you are.

            Fyodor Dostoevsky, a nineteenth century Russian novelist, wrote a book Notes from Underground. In the book the main character meets a scientist who tries to convince him that in a hundred years everything will be explained by science, that everything will be as clear as ‘two times two equals four.’ The man from underground whispers under his breath: ‘two times two equals four, two times two equals four.’ Then he asks himself: ‘What else will I do in such a world?’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! I remembered that page from the Dostoevsky’s book when I read the Gospel for today in which ‘Jesus exclaimed: I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children.’ The mere children here are not defined by their age but by their attitude to life. This attitude is all about their inquisitive mind which, by the way, should be the main characteristic of science. Let me give you an example of such a mere child with an inquisitive mind. It is Fr Michal Heller a theologian, physicist, astronomer who once met Richard Dawkins an ethologist, evolutionary biologist and outspoken atheist. In the course of their conversation Dawkins said that God is not needed because everything can be explained by laws of physics. Then Fr Heller asked: ‘Where do the laws of physics come from?’ As he said later: ‘It was the end of our conversation.’
These days we know more then people did in the nineteenth century when Dostoevsky wrote his books. These days people know more then people did when Jesus walked the Holy Land. However I feel that I should bless Jesus’ Father and our Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that he still blesses our era with godly people, these mere children who may be annoying to some learned and clever because they keep asking the unsettling questions like Dostoevsky did in his book and Fr Heller did in his conversation with Dawkins. These questions come from them sensing that that our human world is bigger than what the laws of physics tell us or that two times two equals four.
In the Gospel Jesus points out to the fundamental source of knowledge. To reach this source we need to return to the first reading from the Book of the Prophet Zechariah from the Old Testament. Zechariah wrote about a king who would enter the City of Jerusalem riding a donkey. We recognise in Zechariah’s description a prophesy which was fulfilled on Palm Sunday when Jesus entered Jerusalem riding a donkey. Both the prophesy and its fulfilment indicate the humility of the king. We need such humility to be brave to ask big questions and to be openminded to accept the answers which may turn upside down our world and our knowledge. Over centuries the human world and knowledge have been turned upside down by various discoveries in different fields of science. Let’s remember that this is God’s revelation too. Gradually God has been revealing to humanity through the findings of scientists the mysteries of the world he created. Our God, our heavenly Father is not greedy, he doesn’t keep from us the knowledge which can benefit us.
However there is something which God has revealed through Jesus Christ. This revelation is that he is the Father of Jesus Christ and that he is our Father. If we think about the first and the most fundamental discovery every woman and man make it is that there is someone whom they can call mummy and someone whom they can call daddy. We don’t need sophisticated laboratories and extensive studies to discover this. It is revealed to us by the presence of these special people in our life. What Jesus reveals through his teaching and through his ministry is not limited to the fact that there is God in heaven. Jesus reveals that this God is yours and my Father.
Let us listen again to his prayer, to his conversation with God which we could hear in today’s Gospel. First Jesus says: ‘I bless you, Father.’ This is the foundation of what we need to know about God. God is our Father. Next Jesus says: ’Lord of heaven and of earth.’ God is Lord of heaven and earth but he is Lord of heaven and earth as Father.
My Dear fellow children of God! It is obvious that we live in the society which is secular and overwhelmed by science which isn’t seen as something what God keeps revealing to his children. We may ask ourselves the question which whispered the man from Dostoevsky’s book: ‘What else will I do in such a world?’ I believe that there is an exciting mission ahead of us. Not just to prove that there is God but to do what Jesus has done: to speak out that there is God who is our Father. That our world is not just determined by laws of physics but by the law of love of the Father who was at the beginning of it all and who by his loving providence nurtures us. Thus we discover a different warmth in this world. It is the warmth of the love of the Father.
With gratitude for having been given this revelation of having God as our Father I invite you pray with our heavenly Brother Jesus Christ the prayer from the Gospel: ‘I bless you Father, Lord of heaven and earth.’

            An Oblate Cardinal Francis George was asked to say a few words to a gathering of young people. This is what he said: ‘The only thing we take with us when we die is what we have given away.’ These word may seem astonishing if one thinks about the audience he was addressing, some young people. However those words of Cardinal Francis George did fit into the audience. The Cardinal was showing, and inviting the young people to embrace, a certain lifestyle. The words I have just questioned echo and explain what Jesus proposed to the Twelve Apostle he had just chosen. Before Our Blessed Lord sent out his Apostles on their first mission, which was to be the continuation of his own mission, he gave them some training. The chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew focuses on that brief training Jesus gave to this Apostles. The training wasn’t about some techniques. Jesus briefly but powerfully introduced the Apostles into his own style of being the Apostle of the Father.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The chapter 10 of the Gospel of Matthew is important and precious for all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus. St Paul in the Letter to the Romans, which we have just heard, wrote: ‘When we were baptised in Christ Jesus we were baptised in his death… so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.’
Each of us here present has been baptised. It means that God chose us for baptism.  He chose us for baptism because he placed some of us in a Catholic family. Before our parents made the decision to baptise us it was first the decision of God himself.  Some of us made this decision themselves as adults. Still it was God’s decision because he revealed to us his glory and love which led us to the baptismal font. Even if our path to baptism was different we need to treasure that at the outset there was God’s choice. God chose us for baptism.
The same God who chose us for baptism also commissioned us to be his Apostles when he poured into us the new life. It is the life which we see in Jesus. It is the life which is all about giving oneself to others. That’s how Jesus lived. That’s how Jesus died. That’s why Jesus wasn’t to stay in the tomb. The life which has been given for others cannot be contained by a grave. There is no grave which can keep it. Such life will break any grave because such life is God’s life. It is life eternal.
Let us listen to some words Jesus said in the Gospel we heard today:
‘Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.’ These words echoed in what Cardinal Francis George said to the young people: ‘The only thing we take with us when we die is what we have given away.’ Can we be surprised that he said it to the young people? It was the most appropriate to address the young people in this way, to show them the lifestyle in which a person makes lots of choices which confirm the fundamental choice of living the lifestyle of Jesus, giving one’s life away. This is what defines my religious order the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. Oblate means offered. It is someone who has made an offering of his life. Our Founder St Eugene de Mazenod understood that to be a missionary one needs to give his whole life to it. That’s how Jesus lived his mission. That’s the lifestyle he proposed to his Twelve Apostles.
As an Oblate, whose distinctive feature is a crucifix worn on the cassock, I couldn’t overlook what Jesus spoke about the cross today. In fact it is the first time when the word cross appears in the Gospel. However Jesus doesn’t talk about his cross but about ours: ‘Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy on me.’ Cross takes form of anything in our life we would like to get rid of. It can be something physical. It can be something moral. It can be something emotional. It can be something relational etc. Our Blessed Lord doesn’t see it as a obstacle for us to be good Apostles, providing we follow in his footsteps.
Taking our cross is the strongest expression of us giving away ourselves. Taking our cross means that we have given away our dreams to have an easy and smooth life. Instead we have chosen to live the life where God is everything in everything.