​As we receive the Gospel of Mark today we can realise that our society is different to that of pictured in the Gospel. At the time of Christ people in long robes made an impression on their fellow men and women. Their long and ostentatious prayers done in public won them people’s admiration. If I went to the Flinders Street Station dressed like for Mass I might get a few curious tourists asking to have a selfie with me but I doubt I would generate any admiration from passers-by. I believe it is a blessing. The Lord has allowed it to happen so that, as his followers, we could resemble the poor widow from the Gospel rather than the scribers. There can be among us a lot of religious display and little of living the faith.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The poor widow didn’t have anything to impress superficially religious people who flocked to the Jerusalem Temple. Her clothing was not shining. She didn’t have a support of her husband. He was dead and she was insignificant. The money she dropped into the treasury didn’t make noise to attract people attention. However in the immense crowd of the people who were in Jerusalem ready to celebrate the most important Jewish festival, the Passover, she stood out. She stood out in the sight of Jesus Christ. What did Jesus see in her offering? Our Blessed Lord saw not just money but life. Jesus said that she gave: ‘all her life.’ She had two coins. She could have kept one and give one, but she gave both coins. Because she gave both coins her gift was not about the money but about her life given to God.
How much she must have trusted God. How much those who were giving big sums ‘out of their abundance’ could have learnt about religion from that poor woman. Unfortunately they were too preoccupied with fulfilling religious obligations to please God so that they could continue making more profit that they missed an opportunity to go deeper in their faith. Let us not repeat their mistake. Let us learn true religion from the poor widow, the wisdom figure in today’s Gospel.
            When I was meditating on this Gospel I paid attention to the timing of the event. It happened during the week we call the Holy Week. It occurred to me that the great prophet John the Baptist was dead by then. The prophet who was called to point out to Jesus Christ was not there anymore. However this poor widow from this Sunday’s Gospel took on the duty of John the Baptist. By her action she pointed out to the action Jesus Christ was to do in a couple of days. What was the action? He was going to make of his own life a gift for God’s glory and for our salvation. In the Gospel of John Jesus said: ‘I lay down my life. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my free will.’ That poor widow was a prophet of Jesus’ final hours. Jesus gave his life for us. He did it to the last drop of his blood. He didn’t give something of his life, like his teaching, his wisdom or his miraculous powers. He gave all his life. When he was led through the streets of Jerusalem to the hill of Golgotha, when he was crucified on Golgotha the world didn’t stop, like the world didn’t stop when the poor widow gave to small coins. The world went on when she was making her offering. The world went on when the Son of God was making his offering on the cross.
            My dear Fellow believers! Pay attention to the person of Jesus the poor widow is pointing out to. But don’t go sentimental. Don’t go tearful. Instead imitate Jesus. The poor widow did. She gave her all life like Jesus did. She might have heard Jesus say: ‘However wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the Gospel will save it.’ Don’t look however for some big treasuries your treasury is your parish community, your treasury is your family, your treasury is your work or retirement, your treasury is your school or kindergarten, your treasury are your friends and people in need you meet. So look at Jesus offering his whole life for us and for our salvation. Meditate on the action of the poor widow and give your whole life to those treasuries I have just mentioned because in heaven you will be asked how much of your life you have spent not how much you have accumulated. Those who have spent it all for God and other people will enter the Kingdom. They will be like Jesus Christ who gave it all.

​Last year I was talking to a man whose wife died when they were still young. In the time leading up to her funeral, and after the funeral, people were approaching him to express their condolences. If someone was saying: “I am sorry you have lost your wife” his response was: “She is not lost. I know perfectly well where she is. She is where Jesus Christ is.”
I couldn’t help thinking that the man was an evangelist in mourning for his wife. His faith is Jesus Christ not only sustained him during that difficult time but it also led him to get across the Good News of Jesus Christ to the people whom he met around that time. Some people thought he went mad after the death of the woman he loved so much, however there were people who were deeply touched by his witness.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! This first Sunday of November brings us together to pray for those who have died over the last year. As Christians we believe that our deceased are well and truly alive. They have not evaporated into nothingness. We hold onto what St Paul wrote in the Letter to the Romans: ‘When we were baptized we went into the tomb with Jesus and joined him in death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the Father’s glory, we too might live a new life.’
During an interview in 2010 Lemmy, an English musician and songwriter, said:  ‘In your twenties, you think you are immortal. In your thirties, you hope you are immortal. In your forties, you just pray it doesn’t hurt too much, and by the time you reach my age, you become convinced that, well, it could be just around the corner. Do I think about death a lot? It is difficult not to when you’re 65, son.’ Although Lemmy was an agnostic in his honest reflection on life and death he shared the insight of St Paul from the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘Our time is growing short’ and few sentences later ‘the world as we know it is passing away.’ However the difference was in the way they addressed it. Lemmy escaped into drugs and alcohol. St Paul found his strength in Jesus Christ. Today’s readings, both from the Book of Deuteronomy and the Gospel of Mark, confront us with the most important commandment: ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You must love your neighbor as yourself.’ Did you notice that the scribe from the Gospel asked Jesus for the first off all commandments? Jesus however gave him the first and the second, loving God and loving the neighbor. Why did our Blessed Lord do that? Because our love of the neighbor flows from our love of God but our love of God is real when we love our neighbor. Separating the first commandment from the second or the second from the first makes our religion and life dysfunctional.
This Sunday as we remember those people in our life who have died our presence and prayers for them are a sign of our love for them. We are here not only to share our memories of them but to pray for them because as followers of Christ we believe that with death ‘life is changed not ended.’ Gabriel Marcel, a French thinker and writer, who was a son of an agnostic and who was an agnostic himself until his conversion to the Catholic Church at the age of forty wrote: ‘To tell someone, with fullness of heart: ‘I love you,’ is virtually the same as saying: ‘You shall never die.’
The God who created the whole Universe, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who led the people of Israel out of Egypt, the God who spoke through the prophets, the God whose only Begotten Son Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, who was crucified, died, was buried and was raised to life, this God has invited first his Chosen People Israel and then the Church founded by Jesus Christ and thus all people to love him ‘with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.’ In this loving relationship we hear God say to us: ‘I love you. You shall not die. Your death will be your Resurrection. Look at my Son Jesus Christ. He is the Firstborn among the many brothers and sisters. He is the first of the many who will follow him in his death and Resurrection.’
Today we pray for the dead because we realize that our loved ones were not perfect as we are not perfect. If being in the presence of ‘the Holy, Holly, Holy Lord,’ they still acknowledge the traces of their sins stopping them from being united in the eternal happiness with God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, our loving and faith filled prayers offered in the name of Jesus can contribute to their desire to be with God forever and ever. Amen.

In 2012 the movie ‘The Vow’ was released. It was inspired by the life of a married couple Krickitt and Kim Carpenter. Two months after their wedding they had a car crash. When Krickitt woke up from her coma she couldn’t recognise her husband. The last two years were erased from her memory. She has never regained the memories of her falling in love, dating and marrying her husband. The movie, which was quite emotional, presented their life after the car crash, their struggles to rebuild their married life.
However the movie left out the most crucial part of the story. Krickitt’s husband Kim gave an insight to that when he said: ‘Both of us know we would not have made it through this ordeal without the Lord being in the centre of it all.’
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Isn’t the insight into the life and healing of the blind man Bartimaeus? He wouldn’t have made it through without Jesus coming into his own misery. When Bartimaeus said to Jesus: ‘Rabbuni, let me see again’ he had revealed that there was time when his eyesight was fine. Unfortunately he had lost it. We don’t know whether it was because of an illness or an accident but he had become blind. However the blindness taught Bartimaeus how to beg, but not only people for money but also God for healing. Despite the limitations the blindness imposed upon him Bartimaeus had developed his hearing. Some people say that when one of the senses is lost the other senses become stronger. In Bartimaeus we see this and more. From today’s Gospel we learn that Bartimaeus did not miss people saying that Jesus was passing by. The blind beggar’s determination to approach Jesus must have been inspired by what he had heard about Jesus Christ before. He not only heard what people were saying about Jesus but he also reflected on it, treasured those testimonies he heard. So when he was crying: ‘Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me’ his cry was not only loud but it was predominantly faith filled. ‘Son of David, Jesus, have pity on me’ was Bartimaeus’ profession of faith in Jesus. That’s what Jesus heard in the beggar’s crying. The beggar’s faith filled cry was able to overcome the noise of the people who surrounded Jesus.
Pay attention how he asks Jesus: ‘Rabbuni, let me see again.’ Rabbuni is not just another title given Jesus. In order to appreciate today’s Gospel I would like to fast-forward the events and to arrive at a certain tomb on Easter Sunday. It was Jesus’ tomb. It was empty tomb. St John tells us that Mary Magdala was there crying. When the Risen Lord Jesus appeared to her, when she recognised him, she said: ‘Rabbuni, my beloved teacher.’ Over the previous three days when Jesus was taken away Mary was in agony. Her life was miserable because there was no Jesus in her life. She was longing for the Lord Jesus with her whole being.
My Dear fellow believers! We can understand Mary Magdalen as she spent some time with Jesus. She had come to know and love him. Bartimaeus hadn’t met Jesus before. He only heard of Jesus but as St Paul reminds us in the Letter to the Romans: ‘Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.’ It was enough and plenty for Bartimaeus. What he heard of Jesus he treasured and pondered in his heart. It permeated his heart. It was the seed of faith which grew within him.
Can we be surprised that when Bartimaeus was healed and when he heard from Jesus: ‘Go, your faith has saved you’ he went after Jesus, he followed Jesus. Could he find anything more worthy of seeing that the Son of God taking the final walk to Jerusalem to accomplish the Redemption by his Death and Resurrection? ‘Blessed are your eyes, for they see what the prophets and the righteous wanted to see.’
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Let me recall the words of the Saint John Paull II from his inaugural Mass on October 22, 1978: ‘Do not be afraid to welcome Christ and accept his power. Do not be afraid. To his saving power open wide the doors for Christ.’
The woman who lost a portion of her memory said: ‘a Scripture I really hold unto is: ‘I can do all things through him who strengthens me.’ I believed I was called according to God’s purpose, and I followed with my whole heart.’
Her husband added: ‘It is amazing we live in a world that there is such a big deal made about a man and woman who simply did what we said we were going to do. It is strange to think of our marriage being portrayed as a remarkable love story, when, for us, we just did what we said we would do – we kept our vows.’
            They kept them because they kept their faith in Jesus. Jesus was their Rabbuni. Is Jesus your Rabbuni?

Some centuries before Jesus Christ was walking the Promised Land the Prophet Isaiah was expressing his own hope, which was also that of his people, that the mysterious figure of the Lord’s servant would ‘offer his life in atonement,’ that ‘by his sufferings the Lord’s servant would justify many, taking their faults on himself.’ We believe that the hope of Isaiah and the hope of the People of God from the Old Testament came true when the Son of God became man for us and for our salvation.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The fulfilment of the Isaiah’s hope also gives us confidence to hope that we have someone to go to with the burden of our sin. Jesus Christ tells us right now: ‘The Son of Man himself did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ We are faced with his servant attitude every Holy Thursday when the Lord of heaven and earth kneels at the dirty feet of his followers to wash them. The duty which was reserved to the person whose status was the lowest. We can be scandalized at that, like Peter was. How can God take the lowest position among the humans? To our mind which often tells us that prestige, good reputation and significance in the community are things to be perused the image of God at the feet of people is beyond comprehension. Maybe we could cope with Jesus kneeling at the feet of his beloved Apostle, or even Peter, but that day when he had his Last Supper with his disciples Jesus knelt at the feet of Judas, the betrayer. He didn’t have to but still he did. Why did he do that?
Because he wanted to. Jesus was not put there by any one. He himself chose to take the lowest possible place. I would like to invite you my fellow believers to keep before your eyes that image of Jesus at the feet of Judas. Don’t dismiss it easily. Let it be firmly and deeply engraved in your heart and mind. And keep reminding yourself that no one dragged Jesus there. He got there out of his free will. He wanted to be there.
Why did he want to be there? Because in this way he could reach the person who had fallen the lowest. Judas who was loved and chosen by Jesus, like the other Eleven, Judas who was among the people who were blessed to live with God made man more than anyone else, Judas who was sent to preach the Good News chose thirty silver coins over his Lord and Master. How could you do that Judas? How could you betray Jesus? How could stain the good name of the community to which you were called? However these are our questions. These questions were not Jesus’. Jesus made himself lower than Judas so that Judas like the lost sheep could find himself on Jesus’ shoulders. Jesus ‘who came to seek and save what was lost’ went to the lost one, he went to Judas. Judas however was not moved. Judas despised his lowly Lord and Master even further. Despite that rejection Jesus hasn’t changed. He wants us to treasure the image of him kneeling and washing Judas’ feet so that we who fall low too can find ourselves on Jesus’ shoulders.
When you are going back home today ask yourself who among the people you know needs to hear this message. If there are people who you judge the worst sinners remember that Jesus is even lower than they are. Tell them that, that there is still hope for them to have their sins atoned for. Theirs and ours hope is JESUS.

            The Book of Genesis, particularly its beginning, has inspired many artists to convey the beauty of that mysterious garden of Paradise. Although those pieces of art capture something of that original beauty they usually overlook the essence of Paradise which is the profound communion of the first people with God and the subsequent communion with each other.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! These days ecology is a popular topic. It is also an urgent topic, as because of unteachable hearts of people they have failed seeing goodness and beauty of creation which, as the Book of Genesis tells us, God saw when he created it all. The failure to see goodness and beauty of creation led to exploitation of our common home instead of caring for the Earth as the inheritance we were entrusted by our Heavenly Father.
That one side of the coin called ecology and as with any coin there is another side. The Holy Father reminds us about it when in a prophetic way he speaks about human ecology. It includes the truth of being crated as man or woman, dignity of every person from the moment of conception until natural death, the complementarity of sexes based on their difference and uniqueness, the sacredness of marriage between man and woman, necessity of father and mother for the upbringing of children. Pope Francis said that we have failed to appreciate these fragile human and social conditions. His message is drawn from what our Blessed Lord said in the Gospel when he was questioned about divorce which was allowed by Moses. Jesus’ reply was: ‘It was because you were so unteachable that he wrote this commandment for you.’ Before ecology became a hot topic Jesus stood his ground as an ecologist defending human ecology. Before people began reacting to the pollution of the planet Jesus reacted to the pollution which occurred to human relationships and resulted in introducing divorce. Our Savior responding to the question on divorce brought up the image of Paradise. However Jesus didn’t focus on the untarnished flora and fauna. He focused on the untarnished relationship of the first people: ‘From the beginning of creation God made them male and female. This is why a man must leave father and mother and the two become one body. They are no longer two, therefore but one body.’ This is a great mystery of the power not only of human love but also human word. The words of the wedding vows exchanged by bride and groom transform two people into one. When the Bible speaks about becoming one body it uses the word which means joining so closely, profoundly and deeply that there is no way anyone could separate it without harming or even destroying the two who were joined together. That’s why to appreciate marriage mathematics will not help, as in the marriage situation one plus one doesn’t make two but one. In order to appreciate marriage one needs trusting faith of a little child. The Gospel message of the inseparability of wife and husband is followed by the situation describing Jesus’ interaction with children. It is not an episode softening the previous message but the continuation of it. Being a little child is embracing the childlike attitude of the first people towards God, the attitude which characterized them before the tragedy of the fall.
My Dear fellow believers! In a short while, when I speak the words of the consecration and bread and wine are transformed into Jesus’ Body and Blood I will also think of those of you who by the words of your wedding vows have transformed the two individuals into one. This is the mystery of faith like the Eucharist is. I thank you dear wives and husbands for living this mystery. By your commitment and perseverance you tell us more about the Paradise than the most impressive painting.

Both Joshua from the Book of Numbers and John from the Gospel reading come across as inadequate, don’t they? Joshua was Moses’ successor. John was the beloved disciple of the Lord. However both of them appear in the Scripture readings for this Sunday green-eyed. Why didn’t the Israelites and the early Christians censor the passages? If they had censored the biographies of those significant figures in their community they could have boasted having impeccable leaders in their history. But it wouldn’t be true. Anything that is built on a lie will sooner or later collapse. There is also a pedagogical reason. Those significant figures from the beginnings of their communities were a reminder that imperfect people who are honest before God are given grace to change.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Last Sunday Our Blessed Lord presented a child as a model for his disciples. This Sunday Jesus goes further to protect the childlike attitude among his followers: ‘Anyone who is an obstacle to bring down one of these little ones who have faith would be better thrown into the sea with a great millstone around his neck.’
What can a child teach us? What can a child contribute to our practise of faith? There are a number of things. One of them is honesty. Children are not perfect but they don’t pretend to be perfect, at least to a certain stage. In our own faith formation we need childlike honesty.
            How would you react if someone came to this church and started throwing dirt at the statue of our Lady? Let me tell you a story from the book I have recently read. A woman was sitting by the hospital bed of her husband who was dying of cancer. Various treatments were given to him but nothing worked. One day the woman went outside and collected some dirt. Then she went to the hospital chapel and started throwing dirt at the statue of Mary. Some people called for security to restrain her but then a hospital chaplain turned up, stopped the security and said: ‘Leave her alone. She is praying.’ The woman obviously tried to be strong for her husband to support him but there was a lot of pain and anger in her. She was hurting. In an unusual way she expressed it. She was honest.
            Joshua and John were not perfect but they were honest. They were also open, like children, to learn from their mentors. For Joshua it was Moses, for John it was Jesus. The beloved disciple felt insecure when he discovered that someone outside their group was able to cast out devils while a few days earlier the Apostles failed to do it. What Jesus does is to invite John to see in this outsider a new brother. The outsider was not a threat but a person who had faith in Jesus if he ‘was casting out devils in Jesus’ name.’ Jesus was saying to John: ‘Look there is a bond between two of you. You both have faith in me. John, your faith is not strong yet but there is a brother who can be of help to your faith.’ If John had kept his thoughts to himself his jealousy would have eaten him from within. By being honest and open he saw that their small group of followers of Jesus grew by one that day.
            My Dear fellow believers. What would you identify as a prayer you can be sure everyone in this church knows by heart? Wouldn’t it be the Lord’s Prayer? Do you remember how we got the prayer? One day Jesus’ disciples we jealous that John the Baptist taught his followers how to pray, so they came to Jesus and said: ‘Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.’ They were honest how they felt and they were given the prayer which, after two thousand years, we still love and pray often.
            As you pray Our Father pray it like a child who comes to his or her father honest about his or her imperfections but also convinced of the father’s love which can bring good out of imperfections.

                A week ago Fr Paul Rout, a Franciscan who lectures in London, gave a talk at the Catholic University in Brisbane. In his talk he said: ‘We are in danger of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing…. Wisdom comes about through our values, and not everything can be explained by the scientific method of enquiry.’
Listening to the first reading we from the Book of Wisdom we were given an insight into the situation of the Jews who found themselves living outside the Holy Land. They were in the same country like their ancestors at the time of Moses. They lived in Alexandria, an important and wealthy Egyptian port city. It was the time close to the coming of Jesus Christ. However it was also a situation which was presenting challenges to remaining faithful to God, as those who wanted to be faithful were under pressure to give up their beliefs. In fact, as today’s First Reading tells us that some Jews drifted away from living their faith and with their pagan collaborators were mobbing those who chose to love God and to live according to God’s Word. ‘Let us lie in wait for the virtuous man… Let us test him with cruelty and with torture… Let us condemn him to a shameful death.’ Despite being targets of mobbing the believers didn’t only recorded the difficulties they faced to remain God’s followers but they voiced a prophesy about the virtuous man, which brought them close to the New Testament not only chronologically but theologically as well. When St Paul and St John were searching for expressions to present the profoundness of Jesus Christ they turned to the Book of Wisdom.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! The sufferings of the virtuous man, as described by the author of the Book of Wisdom, this Sunday are paralleled by Jesus’ own prediction of his suffering and death. It is the second time he talked about the approaching time of betrayal, torture, death and his resurrection. Jesus’ words on his approaching suffering and death must have been striking as his disciples overlooked his words on resurrection. When we listen to Mark’s account we get a sense that the disciples still hoped they belonged to a new powerful party following Jesus. It was so strong in them that after some time of silence following Jesus’ announcement of his approaching death they argued about their own significance in the group gathered around Jesus.
If the Book of Wisdom was in close proximity to the New Testament the events in today’s Gospel were the final moments before the Holy Week.
The disciples misunderstood the power of Jesus’ death and because of that they overlooked that Jesus’ death was to pave the way for his resurrection. The misunderstanding of the Lord’s death is our problem too, though it is from a different perspective. We know that we cannot change the past in which Jesus’ was captured, thrown into dungeon, scourged, crowned with thorns, burdened with the cross and nailed to it. However we need to ask ourselves: Do I think and talk about our Lord’s death on the cross always in connection to his resurrection? The whole spectrum of very physical suffering cannot be separated from the glory of his resurrection. At the same time the glory of his resurrection will never fully shine without the darkness of Good Friday. The value of the both events is God’s love for us.
As we pause in silence now in reaction to Jesus’ words about his death and resurrection it is not a contention of his death’s necessity or his resurrection’s reality but as an expression of our awe that ‘we are precious in God’s sight, and honoured and because he loves us.’
My Dear fellow believers. The disciples in the Gospel wanted to be important among others. Jesus however gave a different spin to their appreciation of being important. It is the importance of a child in the sight of its mother and father. It is the importance which is not earned but established by the parent’s love for their child.
This is our importance, this is our value.

When I reflect on a passage from the Scriptures I look into its context. It gives me a chance to see the passage as a part of a bigger unfolding mystery of God and man, not just an isolated event. However the context of a Scripture reading is not only the page before and the page after. A reading from the Gospel of Mark needs all sixteen chapters of the Gospel as its context. Only then we can appreciate it. Moreover a reading from the Gospel of Mark needs the whole of the Bible to communicate to us its Divine message as God speaks from the first page of the Genesis to the last page of the Apocalypse. I also turn to our saints and spiritual writers who have contemplated on a given passage. It reminds me that I am not a spiritual orphan in my pursuit of the will of God. That’s what the Gospel for this Sunday reminds me of as Jesus asked a question about his identity: ‘Who do you say I am?’ The question he asked has a plural form. It wasn’t addressed to a singular person. It was addressed to the twelve people, to a community which was a nucleus of the future Church. ‘Who do you say I am?’ cannot be answered by an individual. When Peter gave an answer, he spoke from the midst of that community of the Twelve, from that nucleus of the future Church. Peter and the eleven other Apostles must have had discussed it before among themselves. They must have talked among themselves what they saw and heard as they followed Jesus. They did hear what the people spoke of Jesus but they also heard what Jesus was saying himself. They saw what Jesus was doing both publicly and away from the crowds. They also remembered the prophecies of the Old Testament.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Listen to this: ‘You are the Christ.’ Whom do you hear here? Some could say: ‘It is Peter.’ It is a correct answer but it is not the complete answer. In what Peter said we can hear the voices of the other Apostles as well. When every Sunday a Catholic says after the homily ‘I believe in one God’ the Catholic professes that, he or she personally believes in God who is loved, worshiped and believed by this family called the Catholic Church. We speak like Peter did in todays’ Gospel we speak from the midst, from the center, from the heart of the Church which grew around that original nucleus which was made by the Twelve Apostles of the Lord.
How consoling and encouraging it is that none of us is a spiritual orphan or a Christian kind of Robinson Crusoe. That’s why having this realization of following Jesus with others who make the Body of Christ, the Church I also put the Scripture readings in the context the Church reads them day after day. If I love the Scriptures I love the Church too. It was the Church which had the words of the New Testament engraved in her heart and memory. The first copies of the Gospels were the Christian communities. Before the Gospels were written down in ink on paper they were written in Spirit on the hearts and minds of the people who made the Body of Christ in those early days of the Church. That’s why when I read the Mass readings I also focus on how the readings are given to us during the liturgical year.
This Sunday I would like to draw your attention to the sequence of readings over last three days. On Friday we had the Feast of the Exultation of the Cross. On Saturday the Church commemorated Our Lady of Sorrows. Today the Church proclaims to us the Gospel in which our Blessed Lord foretells his crucifixion. In all three Gospel readings the cross stands out. One could say that we are having now a September Cross Triduum. Today as we are completing these three days focused on the Cross of the Lord we are given a mission: ‘If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, let him renounce himself and take up his cross and follow me.’
My Dear fellow believers! Jesus doesn’t send us to search for crosses. He asks us to take up the cross which is growing in our life. Let us look at the first disciple, the first follower of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Gospel for yesterday’s memorial of our Lady of Sorrows we heard that ‘Mary stood near the cross of Jesus.’ She was not fainting. She was not despairing. She, a strong woman of faith, stood there. She didn’t choose that situation she found herself in, there at the foot of the cross on which Jesus was. She didn’t choose that situation. She chose, however, to stand in the midst of that situation as a disciple of the Lord. Each one of us at some stage of our life faces something similar. We find ourselves in situations we don’t choose. Then the calling of our Lord from today’s Gospel becomes our calling too, to choose to stand in these situations, to deal with the situations we didn’t choose, as disciples of the Lord. If the Lord calls us to do that it is because he will not leave us orphans. He will be there like he was in the midst of the two men crucified with him. Then in our own life the unfolding mystery of God and man will occur too.

Last Wednesday there was a thanksgiving Mass at All Saints Church in Fitzroy to commemorate the second anniversary of the canonisation of Mother Teresa of Calcutta. During the procession with gifts my attention was drawn to a tiny little old sister, a Missionary of Charity, who was bringing a ciborium with bread. Wearing her white and blue habit, from a distance she looked like Mother Teresa. When she approached the altar I had an impression that she was offering not only the bread. I thought of the many years of her service, her daily offering of her life to Jesus and the poor.
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! Listening to the Gospel about Jesus healing a deaf man, who had also troubles with talking, one could think that Jesus was a good otologist and a good speech pathologist. He was also cheap. To be honest he offered his services for free. However it was cheap for the people who came to him it wasn’t cheap for him. He paid an ultimate price: the crucifixion. Our Lord Jesus Christ didn’t only do good things for people, he gave himself, and he gave his life for them. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus said: ‘The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.’ His giving away his life fills every page of the Gospel and finds its culmination on Golgotha.
            When I was reflecting on this Gospel I thought about St Maximilian Kolbe. We know that he offered to die in place of another prisoner in the German death camp of Auschwitz during the World War II. However many of us, who admire him, don’t know that Fr Maximilian was a passionate evangelist. Before he died to save his fellow prisoner he worked tirelessly to spread the Gospel. First in Poland where he established a Franciscan convent where he published a magazine called the Knight of the Immaculate. His passion to make Jesus known and loved was so contagious that within a few years the convent had 800 Franciscan brothers working together to spread the Gospel. However Fr Maximilian couldn’t be satisfied. He wanted to take the message to the people who knew nothing about Jesus. That’s why he and three other Franciscans went to Japan. They had no money. They knew no one in Japan. They didn’t speak Japanese. However in a month after their arrival they published the first issue of the Knight of the Immaculate in Japanese.
            When I reflect on Fr Maximillian’s sacrifice in the concentration camp I believe it wasn’t an accident. His decision to give his life to save a fellow prisoner was the fruit of his many years of being immersed in the Word of God. Fr Maximillian didn’t simply publish a religious magazine. He lived the message of the Gospel first. It was his daily bread.
            My Dear fellow Catholics! Most of us here present don’t have a problem with hearing. Those who do they have got a hearing aid. However even the most sophisticate hearing aid will not help to hear God. I believe each one of us needs to repeat ‘Ephphatha – Be opened’ daily. Prophet Isaiah can teach us this lifestyle of striving to be attentive to what God wants to communicate to us: ‘The Lord has given me a disciple’s tongue. So that I may know how to reply to the wearied he provides me with speech. Each morning he wakes me to hear, to listen like a disciple. The Lord has opened my ear.’
            I would like to say ‘Ephphatha’ over the young people in this church, ‘Be opened’ to Jesus’ invitation to give your life to him. I know that you want to make your life meaningful so ‘Be opened – Ephphatha’ to Jesus. If deep down, in your heart, you are hearing his voice calling you to serve him as a priest, a brother, a nun or a missionary don’t panic. Pray, have prayers said for you, talk to someone you trust. Look at Jesus who teaches us that happiness is not about making most of our life but it is about giving all our life to God and others. That’s is life.

think that all of us have our favourite prayers. Prayers we love. Prayers we treasure. Prayers we pray often. I would like to share with you one of my favourite prayers which I was taught when I was a little child. If you know the prayer you can join in:
I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
You shall not have strange gods before me.
You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.
Remember to keep holy the Lord’s Day.
Honour your father and mother.
You shall not kill.
You shall not commit adultery.
You shall not steal.
You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife.
You shall not covet your neighbour’s goods.
Isn’t a beautiful prayer? I would highly recommend making it your daily prayer. Why do I recommend it?
Firstly it teaches us that praying isn’t about us talking all the time. Whose words were we saying as we prayed the Ten Commandments? They were God’s words, weren’t they? We allowed God to speak to us, maybe for the first time in a long time. By saying them we listened to God. How often we want God to listen to us. How rarely we want to listen to what God speaks to us. When Moses, in our First Reading from the Book of Deuteronomy, was speaking to the People of God at the end of their forty-year-wandering through the desert, just before they were to enter the Promised Land, he said to them: ‘Now, Israel, take notice of the laws and customs that I teach you.’ Why was he demanding their attention? Because God gave him a message of eternal life. The people of Israel were to be a listening people. Like Our Blessed Mother who was ‘treasuring all these things in her heart.’ When St Jerome translated the Bible for the first time into Latin he put it in this way: ‘she was having a conference in her heart.’ Mary was confronting her thinking with the words of God. What a life-giving conference.
It is the second reason I recommend praying the Ten Commandments daily. Because when we listen to God with an open heart, believing that his ‘words are spirit and life,’ we receive the best gift from God: our life is changed, our life is transformed. In the Gospel Our Blessed Lord said: ‘Listen to me, all of you, and understand’ and thus he invited his listeners to become his disciples, his followers. Jesus’ disciple is the one who listens to the Word of God and welcomes it like fertile soil. You may remember the parable about the sower and the different kinds of soil. To understand is to welcome the Word of God like the fertile soil. Then the Word, like seed, starts growing in us. Does it make us immune to sin? It doesn’t. But it protects us from becoming a hypocrite, someone who instead of admitting his or her sin believes that it is OK.
My Dear Sisters and Brothers!  Someone said that the Catholic Church has got the strictest moral commandments and the most lenient penitential system. Why do we treasure those strict commandments? Because they come from God, they are not just strict but good commandments. They are good for us. When we fail them it is not God’s fault but ours. It means that we have little faith, little courage, and little perseverance. But even when we fail the good commandants we believe that it is worth picking ourselves up from the misery of sin and to approach Jesus in his Sacrament of Reconciliation. By doing this we also send an important and life changing message to other people who at some stage of their life may be confronted by their own sin and weakness. We don’t want them to end up like Judas in despair. We want them to be like Simon Peter who realised how low he fell, when he denied his Lord and Master. Peter cried bitterly over his sins but Peter also turned to his Lord and Master for forgiveness and new life.
I pray so that the Ten Commandments, the Good Commandments, can become you favourite and daily prayer. Pray them in such a way that your praying is listening to what you say. There is spirit and life in it.