One of my goals with this blog has always been to put people into contact with decent resources to help them deepen and strengthen their relationship with God.
“[Fr. Francis] has been a great teacher of mine though his retreats and tape ministry. He has also been instrumental in my spiritual life through his careful and clear articulation of a theology of transformation, and insistence that we, as Christians, come to know and live the normal Christian life, a life of on-going and total transformation by the grace of God. He is a humble and prayerful man of God, a holy priest”
Fr. Francis has a number of resources on his YouTube channel which include commentaries on the Sunday Mass readings. What I would like to draw your attention to here, however, is his series on my favourite Gospel, the Gospel of St. John.
So, if you’d like to work through John’s Gospel with a great teacher, now is your opportunity…
In this week’s readings we hear the passages of Scripture which have been used by the Church throughout the centuries to defend the Primacy of Peter and the authority of the Pope. Our Gospel Reading, in particularly, was cited at the First Vatican Council in the document “Pastor aeternus”.
I’m going to do my best this week to ensure that these notes remain a Scripture commentary, rather than an apologetic defense of the Papacy. I may well write a more apologetic piece later in the week. 😉
“When the builders laid the foundation of the temple of the LORD, the priests in their vestments and with trumpets, and the Levites (the sons of Asaph) with cymbals, took their places to praise the LORD, as prescribed by David king of Israel.” – Ezekiel 3:10
Reading I: Is 22:19-23
The First Reading this week is our hermetical “key” for understanding the Gospel Reading.
In this section of the prophet Isaiah we hear how Shebna, the Chief Steward of the Kingdom, was replaced by a man called Eliakim. Understanding this ministerial office is critical to our understanding of what Jesus says in the Gospel which, in turn, is paramount to our understanding of the Papacy.
In this passage we see foreshadowed a man on whom God would bestow His blessing. This man would exercise authority on behalf of the King in the administration of the Kingdom. He would be a secured feature, a father to the people and an honoured member of the family of God…
Thus says the LORD to Shebna, master of the palace:“I will thrust you from your officeand pull you down from your station.On that day I will summon my servantEliakim, son of Hilkiah;I will clothe him with your robe,and gird him with your sash,and give over to him your authority. He shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem,and to the house of Judah.I will place the key of the House of David on Eliakim’s shoulder;when he opens, no one shall shutwhen he shuts, no one shall open.I will fix him like a peg in a sure spot,to be a place of honor for his family.”
Questions:
What is happening here in Isaiah?
Who is Shebna?
What kind of job did he have?
Who is Eliakim?
What symbol of authority is Eliakim given?
What does he mean when he says “when he opens, no one shall shut when he shuts, no one shall open”?
Commentary:
“Thus says the LORD to Shebna, master of the palace: ‘I will thrust you from your office…'”
Through the Prophet Isaiah, God “fires” Shebna from his position as “master of the palace”. Up until this point, Sheba was the Chief Steward, the Prime Minister in the Davidic Kingdom. The Master of the Palace was not the one ultimately in charge, the King was, but the Prime Minister exercised the King’s authority in the administration and running of the Kingdom. This is the same kind of post that Joseph (son of Jacob) had when he lived in Egypt.
A little while ago, there was a film released called The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. In the movie, both characters are diagnosed with a terminal illness and, as a result, they decide to write a “bucket list” – a list of things which they want to do before “kicking the bucket”…
If you google “bucket lists”, you will find them on many blogs. If you read a lot of them (and I have), you start to notice some commonalities among them. As in the film, the common theme that runs through all of them is that they are attempts to really try and experience the depth and breadth that that the world has to offer and to truly suck the marrow out of life.
In this post I would like to give a little bit of my testimony. The full story of my faith journey is obviously quite long, so today I would just like to share with you the genesis of my walk with God.
“In The Beginning…” – Genesis 1:1
I grew up in a home with a mother who was a practising Catholic and a father of somewhat nominal Anglican background. My mother took my sister and me to Mass every week and always encouraged both of us in our faith. At our parish, my sister sang in the choir and I was an altar server. Some of the most vivid memories of my childhood are of the three of us praying together at home and singing along in the car with Psalty the Singing Songbook … 🙂
As a teenager I never had any real rebellion against religion. Sure, I had some doubts at times, but on the whole I enjoyed going to Mass. I took my altar serving duties very seriously and enjoyed the stillness of the Saturday Vigil and the otherwordliness of the Sunday morning celebrations at the Abbey Church.
I then went to University. Although I had been a believer up until this point and prayed pretty regularly, something was about to change…
In my second year of university I moved out of the campus accommodation into a house that was owned by, and situated next to, a Catholic church in the city. As well as having a student Mass, a prayer group was inaugurated shortly after my arrival by an Irish missionary named Maeve who played a significant role in my formation while at University. It was at one of these tiny prayer meetings, in the small back room of the church, that my faith was ignited.
The format of the prayer group was as follows. After an opening prayer, one of the Verbum Dei missionaries would give a short reflection on a particular topic, such as “The Holy Spirit” or “Faith”. Afterwards we would spend some time in silence reading a handout containing some verses of Scripture related to the topic for that week.
Called By Name
It was during one of these times of silence that my eyes came to rest upon the following passage from the prophet Jeremiah:
The word of the LORD came to me, saying, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”
– Jeremiah 1:5
This wasn’t an unfamiliar passage to me – I had taken Religious Studies at school and learned a whole bunch of Scripture by heart for my exams. However, that night, those words had special power in them. This wasn’t just something God had said to Jeremiah in Judah in ~600 BC, but it was something that He was saying to me in that little room, that night, two and a half thousand years later.
Restless Heart
That night I truly knew that I was known by God and that my life had purpose. It was like someone had turned on a homing beacon inside of me. Sixteen hundred years earlier, St. Augustine wrote in his “Confessions”:
“You made us for Yourself O Lord, and our hearts will wander restless…until we rest in You”
That night I began to recognise the deep restlessness of my heart, and the space inside it that only God could fill. And so began my adult journey of faith and my love affair with Sacred Scripture. The Word is “alive” indeed…
The other day I was having lunch with a friend and, out of the blue, she asked me: “What’s the most important quality you look for in a wife?”
Americans! Sheesh! Whatever happened to polite conversation about the weather?!
I did have to chuckle a bit though… You see, at the moment I’m spending some time reassessing and discerning again my vocation – married life, priestly life, religious life or consecrated celibacy. Therefore, questions regarding the qualities of a future wife may well be, at this point, moot.
“She is worth far more than rubies…”
But I also laughed because of the various texts which flashed through my mind when she asked this question. One such text was from the Book of Proverbs:
“Who can find a worthy woman?” – Proverbs 31:10 (ESV)
Who indeed?! 😉
I can still remember when, at university, I was asked to be a Reader one evening and I encountered this scripture for the first time. I had to read this passage at Mass without sniggering. I won’t lie, it was kinda hard…
Yesterday was the Feast of St. Lawrence, so to mark this occasion I thought I would give a quick “tip of the hat” to another Lawrence, Dr. Lawrence Feingold.
Now, I’ve never actually met Dr. Feingold, but I have heard many of his talks and they’ve all been, without exception, brilliant. He comes across as unassuming, yet he clearly knows his stuff and is genuinely excited by the material he’s presenting.
I can’t recall exactly how it came about, but towards the end of 2009 I followed a hyperlink that took me to the website belonging to The Association of Hebrew Catholics. On that website I found the first couple of lectures by Dr. Feingold in his series “Themes of the Early Church Fathers“. I liked his tone and style immediately. At that time I had just started to discover these early Christian writers and Dr. Feingold’s series was a superb catalyst in helping familiarize me with the Early Church.
One of my goals with this blog has always been to put people into contact with decent resources to help them deepen and strengthen their relationship with God.
Lists and buckets
The other day I was having lunch with a friend and, out of the blue, she asked me: 
Yesterday was the Feast of