FEAST OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, KING OF THE UNIVERSE.

Gospel Reading: Luke 23:35-43. Find it in your Bible, or missal, or click here for Sunday Mass Readings.

JESUS CHRIST IS LORD !  JESUS CHRIST IS KING ! IOSA CRÍOST, RÍ !

Christ is the Servant King. Click here for Youtube, for Graham Kendrick singing  ‘The Servant King’:

At that time the disciples came to Jesus and said, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" 2And He called a child to Himself and set him before them, 3and said, "Truly I say to you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.…

Behold your ‘king’! What kind of ‘king’?

” ‘Who then is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’ And he called a child and set him before them.”

Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God, a king upon the ‘throne’ of his cross, and in every child, and in the hearts of all who welcome him.

Christ, with the rough hands of a carpenter.

Christ being baptized in the Jordan river, by John.

Christ laying his hands of blessing on children.

Christ asking ‘who is the greatest in the kingdom?’ and then calling a little child and placing the child in front of his disciples.

Christ eating at table with outcasts and other sinners.

Christ showing the disciples the wounds in his hands and side and feet.

Jesus Christ, the Redeemer: showing the wounds in his hands, for us. From apse of Clonard Redemptorist Church, Belfast.

Christ breaking bread and sharing it among the disciples,- ‘my body’.

Christ giving them the blessed cup of the blood,- his blood- of a new Covenant with God’s people,- blood poured out for all for the forgiveness of sins.

Christ on his knees before those who would shortly run away.

Christ on his knees in the garden of Gethsemane.

'Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!' (Luke 23:42)

Christ turning his crowned head towards the repentant thief,- ‘this very day, you will be with me in paradise’. Imagine, salvation for the no-hoper!- and for each and every no-hoper who just turns and looks at Jesus, as this dying thief did.

Christ Jesus, nailed to the wood of the cross, about to enter into his kingdom.

Christ, ‘I am among you as one who serves’.

Christ is king! ‘Behold the Lamb of God! Behold him who takes away the sins of the world.’

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Christ is king of people’s hearts who welcome him.

He is the king who is at their service, praying with and for them, saying ‘you are my friends…!’, saying ‘Father, not my will but yours be done!’, saying ‘Father, forgive them for they know not what they do!’

Christ saying ‘Father, into your hands I commend my spirit!’, saying ‘Receive the Holy

The Most Holy Redeemer: see crown of thorns, and the whip for scourging him, on either side of his 'Crown': detail, from apse of Clonard Redemptorist Church, Belfast

Spirit!’, saying ‘Go out to all the world…’, saying ‘Greater love than this no-one has…’, saying ‘Come, follow me!’, saying ‘Take and eat… this my body given for you’, saying ‘Take and drink… the cup of the new covenant’  saying ‘love one another the way I have loved you’, saying ‘the way my Father loves me, that’s how much I love you! Make your home in my love! (John 15:9,10)

Christ, saying ‘Peace I leave you, my peace I give you!’; saying ‘place your finger into the

'Christ the Light of the World' - 'See, I stand at the door, knocking...' (Rev. 3:20)

wounds in my hands, and your hand into the wound in my side’; saying ‘See, I stand at the door knocking. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and sit down and have supper with that person.’ (Revelations 3:20)

And we are saying ‘Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus’.

‘I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me!’

Today’s Question:  IS HE ‘KING’ OF MY HEART, -OF OUR HEARTS TOGETHER?

Seamus Devitt C.Ss.R.    seamus.devittcssr@gmail.com

Gospel: Luke 14:1 and 7-14.  Reading 1: Ecclesiasticus 3:17-20, 28-29.  Reading 2: Hebrews 12:18-19, 22-24. Click here for Mass Readings for today.

Of Ladder, Jockeys, and Bicycle Wheels.

Climbers...

An American TV commentator said, some years ago, in words like these: ‘the greatest tragedy is not when you have a dream to get to the top and fail to reach it, but rather when you get to the top, that you find your dream was empty.’ For those who climb ladders in life, and who seek to pass out others, there’s a little message that they have not noted, in the Scriptures: namely, that you are already away ahead of every one else, and every one else is away ahead of you!,- in other words, that we are all of us Number One in the eyes of our Maker. No need to climb! You are there, already.

Jesus was watching carefully all the jockeying that went on among the people at the banquet. And thirty or more years after that, in the Christian communities, we know from other texts that indeed there was inequality of treatment of people, at the Eucharistic Assembly. The poor were left at the back, the rich brought up to the front: some had nothing to eat, others had plenty that they would not share.

But with Jesus, and in our Christian communities today, ‘the poor, the lame, the crippled and the blind’ were and are VIP’S. And what was amazing to the world of that time was to see all this concoction of people, -Jewish disciples of Jesus, Samaritan disciples (usually hated by the Jews), Gentiles, ‘Pagan’s (meaning from the countryside!), social outcasts, sick people, widows, orphans, crippled people, young and old, slaves and their masters or mistresses together,-  all of them sitting down together at the one table, slaves and free, men and women, Gentiles and Jews,- all gathered around and for the One Lord Jesus, to be energised by the fire in him for people.

A faith-community that's going places...

Bicycle Wheels?-  it could be an image of a Christian community, both in worship and in our daily living, where the Centre is Jesus Christ, the Risen Lord, where each is connected to that Centre, and together we go out to the edges, with strength from the Centre and support for one another.  ‘We are all one person in Christ,- no more Gentiles nor Jews, slave or free, male or female,- all one person in Christ.’ (St. Paul). We come into the Centre for strength, we go out from that Centre with energy to the edges and the margins of society, to serve and live what we have received.

In our parishes and communities, we are each Number One: the lowly are raised up, the mighty brought down to size, until every one is ‘a first-born’ child of God, loved as if the Only One.

The Gospel today is not about social graces and behaviours,- it’s about how humans live together, how Christian communities show to the world the dignity of each and the unity of all.

There are no ‘ladders’ in our communities. Just wheels,- people, radiating out from and with Christ to the world.

Are we Climbers?  Jockeys? Or Radiating Family?

Fr. Seamus

For a poem/reflection on today’s Gospel, entitled  ’Jockeys’,  click here  (from www.emptifulvessels.com, poem/reflections by Seamus Devitt C.Ss.R.)

seamus.devittcssr@gmail.com

P.S. Could you find a way to discuss this with even one other friend, and see what God’s word today is saying to you, where you are and as you are. That’s being ‘community’ already! And ‘where two or more are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them’ says Jesus to us.

Soul Food for Hungry Adults: 28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 14^th, 2012.

Gospel Reading: Mark 10:17-3o   Jesus and the Rich Young Man.

You can’t be filled if you’re full. You cannot be ‘full-filled’! You can’t receive anything if you already have everything.

If you bring an empty glass, it can be filled, whether it’s big or small. But first, it must be emptied. I think it was St. Therese of Lisieux who said that whatever size glass, -meaning heart!- you bring to God, God will fill it if you want it filled.

The Rich Young Man in our Gospel story comes to Jesus, but he already has everything. He just wants to ‘buy’ his way into heaven, (or ‘eternal life’), by DOING this or that, whatever the Master would tell him. But he got upended by the answer he got! Jesus wanted to turn him upside down! If only he was willing to be ‘turned upside down’, then all the money would fall out of his pockets and he would be empty,- and ready to be filled by a relationship with Jesus.

You see, you cannot BUY heaven, you cannot DO something to get heaven as a reward. Because, real life is a pure Gift, poured into a heart that’s has emptied itself of its love of Things, and is ready to be filled up to overflowing by inviting the Son of God in.

Pardon the pun but you could say ‘the penny didn’t drop’, for the young man, because he would let go of nothing from the pockets of his heart, for God or for others in need, and he walked away sad. Jesus loved him, but had to let him go.

The following might make some sense, in relation to Jesus and the Rich Young Man: it’s from www.emptifulvessels.com.

Niagara