Jesus refuses abandonment – Mark 14:1-15:47

Palm Sunday, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

Jesus refuses to abandon the cup.  He doesn’t want this; he wants to stay and teach and heal and form disciples… but that’s not the cup that has been poured.  The cup of divine wrath: divine anger and anguish mixed into one at human suffering, sin and death.  He would drink that fully for us, he would never abandon his perfect obedience to being human, to being his father’s son, to being anguished at sin and, in love, consuming it.

Two weeks off preaching

Due to our increased offertory campaign, I've had two weeks off Sunday Mass preaching.  Here's a link to my homily from this Sunday last year, on the Scrutiny Gospel.

Jesus zealously sacrifices for us – John 2:13-25

Lent 3, Yr B; Holy Cross Parish.

“Zeal for your house will consume me.”  The disciples remembered those words from scripture, we’re told.  Well, they remembered wrong.  The psalm they were thinking of doesn’t say that.  It says: “zeal for your house has consumed me;” not ‘will.’  Their very memory has started to be transformed by their encounter with Christ.  Could they have understood what this renewal of their minds meant yet?  No, not yet.  But, when Jesus had been raised from the dead… then they’d remember anew.  They’d remember scripture and remember Jesus’ words, seeing the two as originating from the same source, and they’d believe.  But now, they let themselves be so transfixed by this encounter with zeal incarnate that their memory of scripture, a psalm they must have sung hundreds of times, gets transformed.

God provides ever more – Mark 9:2-9, Gen 22:1-2, 9a, 10-13, 15-18

2nd Sunday of Lent, Yr B; Holy Cross - St. Stan's

There used to be a show on British tv called Crackerjack.  It was a game show, with kids as the contestants.  After every question, the kid would get a prize no matter whether they answered right or wrong.  There were only two catches: firstly, the prizes would marvelous, getting better with each passing question, if they answered correctly; if they answered wrongly, they’d get a pretty boring prize, often a cabbage.  Catch two: they had to hold all of their prizes in their arms.  Drop one, and their time on the show was over.  I don’t think anyone ever got any of the most coveted prizes, because by the time they became available, they were too busy clutching earlier gifts to be able to receive the gifts they really longed for.