In today’s gospel, we have heard Jesus telling us: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful”. Keeping in mind that during this year’s Sunday liturgies we are going through the gospel of St Luke, which is commonly known as “the gospel of mercy”, one can say that this phrase is the central message in Luke’s Gospel.

The invitation is clear. It is not enough for Jesus that I be a little bit merciful in my life. Jesus is asking me to become merciful like my God, who is Father.

The first thought that comes to mind is, if I am to be merciful like my Father, how is my Father merciful, so that I can imitate Him? I believe that if each one of us were to sincerely take a good like at our own lives, it would not be hard to begin to understand God’s mercy towards us. Personally speaking, I know that God’s mercy towards me has known no limits. Irrespective of what I have done in my life, God has always been there to accept me with unconditional love and forgiveness.

St Luke must have known, however, that not everybody is capable of making a good reflection on one’s own experience. Later on in his Gospel, he therefore gives us a beautiful story to help us understand how this Father of ours is merciful. This is the well-known story of the Father of the prodigal son, upon which we will reflect more deeply later on in the year. In this story we have a father who is deeply hurt by the actions of both his sons – albeit in different ways.  The younger son had completely cut himself off from his family. He spent all his inheritance, and now he has the guts to come back to his Father and beg for some kind of forgiveness and reconciliation. Yet, the Father accepts him and embraces him without any questions asked or conditions imposed. The elder son, on the other hand, vehemently refuses to join in the celebrations organized by the Father on his brother’s return. His mind is totally out of sync with that of his Father. Yet the Father reaches out to him, begs him, and tries to help him to start thinking the way He thinks.

Initially we might be scandalized by the actions of these sons. But then, we soon realize that, sometimes, we are not too far from them in our actions. In today’s gospel Jesus tells us that, to be truly merciful, we are to love our enemies and bless and pray for those who do us harm. We are to lend without expecting anything back, and be super-generous in our giving. In a few words we, as Christians, are being asked to make a qualitative leap in our way of living from that of non-believers. It is not enough to love those who love me, help those who can eventually help me, etc. Those are things which “even sinners” do, Jesus reminds us.
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This might seem a tall order. Jesus’ expectations might seem difficult; and, indeed, they sometimes are. But we know that he never asks the impossible from us. With his help, progress is possible for us.
Let us pray that we become truly a community of merciful people. A light that brings some hope in situations of darkness. Salt that can make a difference in someone’s life.
 

Where do you find your happiness? Or, rather where do you look for it?

Together with love, happiness is one of those things that we all long for. God created us to love and to be loved. Probably each one of us has personally experienced the huge difference of how we feel when we feel loved to when we feel unloved or rejected. Each of us has also experienced the beautiful experience of loving. I like noticing the faces of a young girl or boy when they first fall in love with someone. There is a real transformation, and the face literally glows. All this makes sense, because God is love, and we are created in God’s image. It is in love, therefore, that we find out who we really are and who we are meant to be.

Happiness goes hand-in-hand with love. God who is love wants us to be happy. While speaking to us about his commandment to love one another, Jesus says that he is telling us “these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete”. Later on in his life, when he was preparing his friends for his upcoming death and resurrection, he told them, “I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” There is no doubt, therefore, that joy, or happiness, is God’s dream for us.

It is no wonder, therefore, that we find it natural to seek both love and happiness. The problem is not the search itself, but where do I look for such things. I might be looking for the right thing in the wrong place!

St Augustine was a person who had a first-hand experience of this. In his search, he had tried everything: he had a good circle of friends, he travelled, he tried following different philosophies, he had a girlfriend with whom he fathered a child. Yet, none of this gave him that “complete” joy which he was looking for. This he only found when he finally allowed himself to meet God in his life – after many years of trial and error! Perhaps one of the most beautiful prayers ever written is the one written by Augustine the moment he discovered God in his life. In it, we feel that he almost regrets the years he wasted searching for what he was looking for in the wrong place. It begins like this:

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you”.

This takes us back to our question: where do I look for happiness? Today’s liturgy helps us to stay on the right track. “Happy the one who has placed his trust in the Lord”, we pray together in the responsorial psalm, while the first reading and the gospel use some very strong language. The prophet Jeremiah says that the one who puts his trust in man is “cursed”. Perhaps he is speaking from some sour personal experience! He who puts his trust in the Lord is, on the other hand, blessed. Similarly in the gospel, Jesus feels sorry for those who rely on richness, worldly happiness, or reputation for their happiness. These things, we all know, can be very fragile, fleeting, and non-fulfilling. On the other hand, he says that happy are they whose focus is on God, rather than on worldly things.

Let us take a few moments during this week to reflect on our lives. Where do I look for my happiness? Have I really found it? Have I ever sincerely tried to put God before everything else? What was the result?
 

It has often been said that “God’s ways are not our ways”. I think this saying has never been truer than in the story we are celebrating this weekend.

When you think about it, St Paul never had any intention to go to Malta. All he wanted to do was go to be tried in Rome, thus using his privilege as a Roman citizen. Had he not filed his appeal to go to Caesar, he would have been a free man. As King Agrippa himself said during Paul’s trial, “This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to Caesar”, because he “is not doing anything that deserves death or imprisonment.” However, since Paul had lodged that appeal, his wish had to be respected.

Undoubtedly Paul was using that excuse to visit the Christian community in Rome, to whom he had already written a letter although he had never visited them yet.  That was Paul’s plan – a long-time ambition of his. God had other things in mind.

As soon as they set sail, they started encountering difficulties. The trip was taking longer than expected due to the bad weather. When they took shelter in Crete, Paul insisted they should not keep going. The centurion, and the owner and captain of the ship decided otherwise. This decision was almost fatal. The storm kept growing. For days on end the expert mariners could not control the ship. Those on board started losing hope. Luke tells us that at one point “we finally gave up all hope of being saved”.

In desperation, some tried to escape. Paul stopped this, assuring everybody that all were going to be saved. By now, thanks to a vision he had, he had become in tune with God’s plan in this story. Paul would, eventually, face Caesar, but first, they had to “run aground on some island.” This was, therefore, the real purpose of this whole adventure.

Paul’s coming to Malta was no human endeavor. It was purely God’s providence in action. There is no doubt that the people of Malta had always been a religious people. The thousands-of-years old temples scattered throughout our islands are ample testimony to this. This religiosity of our ancestors shines forth in today’s story. When Paul was bitten by a snake, the people immediately saw this as a divine punishment for some huge wrong-doing. “This man must be a murderer,” they said. One may manage to escape a storm, but there is no way one can run away from divine justice! Then, upon seeing that no ill befell him, they concluded he must be a god!

By now Paul must have understood how God was constructing this story. And Paul the evangelizer did what he knew best. The above-mentioned phenomenon, together with the healing of the island’s chief official, must have earned Paul the people’s trust. The people of the island stopped to listen to him. And he shared with them that wonderful gift he had received on that fateful day on the road to Damascus.

This is what real faith is all about. It is not merely something for me to keep. Rather, it is something to live and to share. The gift of faith our ancestors had received form Paul has been handed on to us through many generations.

After visiting the Grotto where, according to tradition, St Paul had stayed in Rabat, the Saint Pope John Paul II told the people gathered there that he “gave thanks to God for the rich harvest of faith and good works which he has brought forth among you since the Apostle of the Gentiles first proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ to your forebears.”
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It is up to us, now, to live it and share it. This would be the best way to thank and honor this great Apostle for what he gave us.
 

 
A number of you commented rather negatively on the photo I put of myself in last week’s bulletin. They said it was “too serious”. They want to see me smile. I must say I really like the fact that my parishioners want to see their Pastor happy. It augurs well for my time here at St Paul’s. St John Bosco, whose feast we celebrated during this week, used to say, “The devil is afraid of happy people”.
 
In today’s first reading we hear some very beautiful words God told the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” Has it ever occurred to you that you meet someone for the first time, and that person shows that he or she already knows many things about you? It is a sign that that person is interested in you, that you are not just a name or a number. You matter, and this creates a beautiful feeling inside. It’s good to know that God knows me – dare I say even more than I know myself. He knows how I think, what makes me sad or happy, what my gifts and my defects are. And this is how He loves me. He does not expect me to change before He starts loving me. In fact, this is the person He chose for Himself, or “consecrated”, to use the term the prophet used.
 
Yes, in a way we are all consecrated, we are all chosen, as Christians set apart to live a life lived for God. In my case, He chose me as a Religious, a missionary, a priest. In the case of many of you, He chose you to be parents, or grandparents. Sometimes people tell me “I don’t believe I’m doing a good job being a parent”, or doing whatever it is that God could be asking of them. In these cases, my answer is always the same: if God has entrusted you with a particular mission, it means that He believes you can do it, but not on your own!
 
In today’s second reading we see St Paul burst in that beautiful explosion that is his ode to Love. If I could do anything and had no Love, I would be as good as useless! Some time after St Paul, St John would tell us that God is Love. Thus, when St Paul tells me that I have to do everything with Love, he is practically telling me that I have to do everything with God. Without Love, or without God, I am nothing.
 
This is what Jesus did in his life. Everything with Love because, as he himself told us, “the Father and I are one”. Not everybody was willing to accept this. Some found Jesus’ teaching and his way of living too challenging or uncomfortable. It would go against their selfishness, their interests, or their ego. That is why, like in today’s gospel, they often tried to get rid of him. In today’s case, it was not yet the right time, and he simply escaped from them. Later, as we know, they did manage to get rid of him. Or so they thought, because Love is stronger than everything, even than death itself, and he came out of it victorious.
 
This is the great message that Jesus gives us. We are sure to encounter problems in life. Sometimes things seem to be getting very difficult. But united with him, we’re assured that we can do it. This was precisely Jeremiah’s experience, as he tells us in today’s reading. Because, as St Paul reminds us, “Love never fails”.
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This is, indeed, cause for joy.