3rd Sunday of Lent B

The thing which links this Sunday’s liturgy to last Sunday’s is the word madness. In today’s second reading St Paul speaks of how the Gospel message of the crucified Christ is madness to the pagans of his day. It simply makes no sense to them. And last week, as we reflected on the Transfiguration, I invited you to recognize that we all have Transfiguration experiences, moments when the veil which limits our vision is removed and, for a short time, we glimpse realities normally hidden from us. Such moments move us very deeply, enabling us to experience in a more profound way than usual what it means to be human. And so they should be taken very seriously. And I went on to explain why these things normally remain hidden. Quite simply, at this point in our journey towards God - some would say our evolutionary journey - our minds can only cope with so much reality and so are not yet ready for a face-to-face experience of the God who fills the world around us. Which was where the madness came in. I explained how, for some psychiatrists, what we call madness is simply a failure of certain defence mechanisms in the brain to function properly in some individuals, causing massive overdoses of reality to pour into them. Which is why it’s very difficult sometimes to tell the difference between madness and genius. But one thing is certain – and I hope by the time I am finished you will understand what I mean by this: that only those who, in a certain sense, are mad, can be genuine and authentic Christians. So let me explain by turning first to the first reading from book of Exodus and the Ten Commandments.

People today often speak, sometimes with a sense of nostalgia, as if they have always been from the very beginning the basis of Christian morality. But, as I have explained before, these same Ten Commandments were virtually forgotten during the early centuries of the Christian Church. And the reason, expressed in the language of today’s liturgy, was simple. They were not mad enough. In fact, all you have to do is look at them to see that there’s nothing specifically Christian about them at all. They are no more than the basic requirements for any society which wants to keep order and avoid chaos. It was as important in the Old Testament as it is now not to kill, not to steal, not to commit adultery, not to covet your neighbours ox or his donkey. To allow such things to go unchecked was to invite endless conflict within the group and, even today, these basic rules would be accepted by people who do not even believe in God. But Christianity goes much further than that. It invites people to embrace ways of thinking which have always been madness to many. It proclaims a God who dies on a cross. It invites us to love our enemies. It teaches us to give rather than receive. It rejects the way of money and power and tells the world that the future belongs to the poor and the meek. It even tells us that, if we want to save our lives, we must lose them, and if that isn’t madness, what is? The Christian faith goes completely against human logic. It turns human thinking upside down, and, until we have understood this, we have not understood anything about God. Put simply, it means that we cannot claim to be authentic Christians until, by the standards of the world around us, we are thought to be at least a little bit mad.
And we see this in today’s Gospel. The people in the Temple that day must have thought Jesus had really lost it. What he was doing made no sense to them. Without the men selling cattle and sheep and pigeons and without the money changers sitting at their counters, the business of the Temple would have quickly ground to a halt. So what was wrong with what they were doing? Those who asked this question, however, were looking at the Temple through human eyes and judging it by human standards. Jesus, on the other hand, was looking through prophetic eyes and so what he saw was very different from what the people saw..And it will always be like this for those who inhabit the world of faith rather than the world of religion. They really are two very different worlds and for anyone living in the world of religion – which was what went on in the Temple every day – those who live in the parallel world of faith will always seem to be suffering from some form of madness. And having spent forty years as a priest observing this I offer you two examples of it.

The first is widespread among people who think of themselves as good Catholics. In fact, it’s probably the single greatest obstacle to growth I have come across in the Church. And it’s the notion that the last thing you want to do is take all this stuff about God too seriously. Going to Mass on a Sunday is fine, but anything more than that... like personal prayer, learning more about your faith, getting involved in things...well, you don’t want to become a religious fanatic, do you? And yet, for those who with God’s help can make the transition from religion to faith and begin to know God rather than have just heard of him, a whole new world opens up, a world which once seemed like madness, but which is now seen for what it is, the only world worth living in.

And the second example is the use many people make of the phrase ‘living in the real world.’ It’s often used, especially by politicians, as a way of avoiding the teaching of Jesus and the challenge of the Gospel. They tend to smile at you in a knowing, patronising kind of way, the clear implication of the smile being that, while loving your enemies and living by the values of the kingdom rather than the market place is a wonderful ideal - and wouldn’t it be great if it were possible - well... you have to live in the real world. But what they and all like them have failed to understand is that what appears to be the real world is, in fact, an illusion which, sooner or later will slip through our fingers like sand. Because, as Paul tells us in today’s second reading, God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom.

And so I leave you with this question. Which world do you live in, the world where those who think they are sane are really as mad as hatters, or the world where the apparently mad are, in reality, the only sane people around?


Persecution of Christians has taken many shapes and forms over the centuries. In the early years, many of our ancestors in the faith died violent deaths in the circuses of Rome. But persecution in our time has taken on a new form. It happens when society marginalizes us, dismisses us, laughs at us and treats us as if we were fools. And so we pray for the grace to confront this modern persecution with the same courage and determination as those before us did in their own time.....................Lord hear us

If we are to confront modern versions of age-old persecution, then we will often have to stand up against the crowd. Following the crowd has never been a good idea at any moment in history and it is not a good idea now. Crowds are rarely right. Following the current fashion has never been a reliable way of determining what is true. Truth, throughout history, has nearly always been in the minority, and we pray for the wisdom to remember this as we negotiate our way through life.................Lord hear us

If we are to be faithful to the truth, it will be necessary sometimes to take a stand or to protest against what is wrong. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to recognize when the time has come to do this and the courage to act when that time comes. And we pray for those who are already doing this, whether in society as a whole or within the Church itself. It can be a lonely and painful journey and we ask God to be with them..........................Lord hear us

It is easy sometimes to believe the voices which tell us that faith no longer has any meaning in the modern world, that no one believes all that stuff anymore and that those who do are little more than relics of a bye-gone age. But it is not true. The truths of faith are eternal truths, valid in every age, and as the world struggles with the great issues of our time, we pray that the Churches will learn to express these truths of faith in ways that the modern world can understand....................Lord hear us

There are other voices, too, which undermine faith, and many of these come from within the Churches themselves. They are the voices of pessimism, fear and despair which constantly tell us that nothing can be done, that the world is in a terrible state, that there is no point in trying new things because they will never work. And so we pray for the courage to resist this negative message and be always willing to explore new paths, even if others think we are mad.....................Lord hear u

It is perfectly possible to come to Mass each week and go away untouched and unaffected by what has happened. The bulletin is regularly filled with invitations to think about and respond to all manner of things. And yet the temptation is to tell ourselves that these things are for other people, not for us. This Wednesday, for example, there is a meeting of the Parish Pastoral Council which every person in the parish is entitled to attend and we pray that many of us will......................Lord hear us