Week 23 Saturday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Timothy 1:15-17; Psalm 113; Luke 6:43-49

Must we wait then for the harvest to see whether we have borne good or bad fruit? Must we wait for the storms to come to see whether we have built our house on rock or on sand? It seems that we must wait. When we are asked to evaluate persons or movements it is often wise to give things time, to wait and see how they turn out. It is the advice of Gamaliel in the Acts of the Apostles when he offers his views about the new Christian movement: if it is from men it will fizzle out, but we do not want to find ourselves opposing God, so let us wait and see.

Saint Paul says it is only at the judgement that we will see whether what we have made of ourselves counts as gold or straw: fire will test the quality of each person’s work (1 Corinthians 3:13). And it is the criterion given by Jesus in today’s gospel: by their fruits you will know them, in the day of trouble you will know how solid is the house you have built.

 

It means that our life of faith is itself lived in faith. I asked an older brother once whether I could be certain that I had the faith. He replied immediately saying ‘no, you can only believe that you have the faith’. The certainty of faith about which theologians speak is a certainty found in the object of our faith which is God. Saint Paul, in the text just referred to, says that the day of judgement will reveal the quality of what we have built but the foundation on which we build is Christ. The foundation is sure, then, and secure and reliable. The certainty of our faith comes from that foundation.

Nevertheless we often try to transfer the certainty of faith from Christ, to ourselves, to our own act of believing, or to our own doctrines, or to our own teaching authorities. But all absolute certainties of salvation, all paralyzing dogmatisms and all shrill fundamentalisms: all of these have to be wrong and they are wrong because they are idolatrous. They seek to anticipate the outcome of a judgement that belongs only to God and they therefore shrink God to include him within the limits of their own criteria of judgement. We can only live in faith and hope, with the kind of trust and confidence that these gifts establish in us.

One kind of failure is easy enough to detect and Jesus also speaks about this in today’s gospel: just because we say ‘Lord, Lord’ does not mean that we are with him. If we do not do what he asks, we can say ‘Lord, Lord’ as much as we like and it makes no difference. In fact the instructions Jesus gives in today’s gospel make no reference to us saying anything at all. Our job is to come to him, to listen to his words, and to act on them: come, listen, act. Some of us are called to preach and to teach the faith and that merely puts us in a more dangerous position, with more ways in which we can fail.

But the focus in this is on Christ and not on ourselves. He is our way, our truth and our life. So whatever confidence we have about our salvation, whatever certainty about the truth of what we believe, can only be established on him, not on our own understanding or our own knowledge or our own moral rectitude.

What is trustworthy and deserves our full acceptance, Paul says in today’s first reading, is that Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Building our life on that conviction about Christ means building our house on solid ground. Living in communion with him means we will stand when the storms come. Living in communion with him means we will bear good fruit and apart from him we can do nothing.

Week 23 Friday (Year 1)

Readings: 1 Timothy 1:1-2, 12-14; Psalm 16; Luke 6:39-42

The contrast in the parable is one of the absurd, ridiculous comparisons we sometimes find in the parables. On one side is the speck of dust or wood, a splinter, irritating the eye. On the other side is a beam, a huge piece of wood that could be used for constructing the roof of a house. It is obviously absurd that somebody could go round with a beam in his eye, something hundreds of times bigger than the eye, and not be aware of it. Unless what is meant is such a comprehensive problem that it means the person is, in fact, blind while thinking that he can see.

It brings to mind the text of John 9, the healing of a man born blind. Towards the end of that chapter, Jesus says that he has come into the world so that the blind might see and that those who see might become blind. He is present in our world for judgement. (One of the points of today's parable is that judgement about others does not belong to us.) Those who know they are blind, or partially sighted, or who see but with something irritating their eyes, are in a happier situation than those who think they can see, think they see everything, clearly, and without any difficulty. This is what emerges in the reaction of his interlocutors in John 9: 'are you saying we are blind?' 'If you were blind', answered Jesus, 'you would be without fault, but because you say 'we see' your guilt remains.'

The parable today does not invite us to narcissistic and egocentric introspection. go look into yourself to try to identify the plank that's blocking your vision. First of all we don't need encouragement to be narcissistic and self-preoccupied, worried about our own spiritual difficulties. Secondly it seems as if we would be moving in a circle, trying to see things when there is a radical problem with our sight! The whole point of the parable seems to be that my blindness is so comprehensive that I will not be able to find the problem by myself.

So we must look to Christ which is, in any case, always the better and wiser thing to do. Earlier in the week we read from Paul's letter to the Colossians that 'in Christ are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge'. Now imagine this absurdity, of a person saying 'I have seen all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge, I know all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge'. It is clearly absurd for any human being to say this, as absurd as a man walking round with a plank sticking out of his eye. It can never be so. The treasures of wisdom and knowledge are infinite, so we remain always learners, always disciples. We never arrive at the height of our Master: it is another comment in today's gospel which is therefore calling us to docility, to being open always to learning more, to seeing afresh, waiting for our vision to be strengthened and clarified, for new things to be presented for our vision.

Paraphrasing Jesus' way of speaking we can say: how happy are you who have splinters in your eyes now because you know your need for help and you will see. But woe to you who think you can see now because all you are really seeing is a plank blocking true vision, confusing and distorting and darkening your vision of what is true. Turn towards Christ, then, like so many blind people in the gospel and say 'Lord, that I may see'.

Week 23 Thursday (Year 1)

Readings: Colossians 3:12-17; Psalm 150; Luke 6:27-38

The teaching of Jesus about turning the other cheek, giving to everyone who begs from you, lending while expecting nothing in return - all this can seem idealistic and quite unrealistic for the rough and tumble world in which we live. Jesus is here sketching the 'ethics of the kingdom': where God's love reigns, people will find themselves living in these ways. But, as long as we are living in a fallen and struggling world, many feel that such a way of living remains an ideal beyond human ability. And it is. In ourselves we find the 'first Adam' and the 'last Adam', the old man and the new man, and the struggle between them is never fully resolved in this life.

But when we love, we find ourselves able to live in the way Jesus asks. Where we like people, are fond of them and want to remain in friendship with them, we find ourselves turning the other cheek, giving whenever we are asked, and lending without expecting anything in return. It is only where we 'fall out of love', or lower our sights from the goal of loving, that we begin to count the cost, measure what we give in terms of what others are prepared to give, and then begin to judge and condemn others.

We must look above and beyond the particular situations and relationships in which we find ourselves, to God and His way of loving. God is our third point of reference, above ourselves, above others. From God we experience forgiveness for ourselves and learn how to be merciful to others. This comes about not just through some kind of external learning but because, as Paul puts it in the first reading, 'the peace of Christ controls our hearts'. As long as our hearts are unhappy we will experience the world as divided and in conflict. We will generate division and conflict to confirm the way our unhappy hearts believe things to be. But the Word of Christ dwelling in us generates gratitude and mercy, the peace that the world cannot give and the love that is to be put on over everything else. Then the teaching of Jesus about turning the other cheek, giving to everyone who asks, lending without expecting anything in return: such behaviour is no longer strange but perfectly normal in the kingdom established by Christ.

Week 23 Wednesday (Year 1)

Readings: Colossians 3:1-11; Psalm 145; Luke 6:20-26

Luke's version of the beatitudes is not as well known as Matthew's. The eight beatitudes that open the great Sermon on the Mount in Matthew's gospel have a secure place in people's knowledge of the New Testament. The fact that they are often read at funeral Masses and on other special occasions puts Matthew's beatitudes up there with 1 Corinthians 13 as one of the best known texts of the Bible.

Luke gives us just four beatitudes. Famously Jesus here says simply 'blessed are you who are poor'. We are told that the radical edge on this is already blunted a little by what might seem like a gloss in  Matthew, 'blessed are the poor in spirit'. Throughout Luke's gospel Jesus is more direct, more incisive, about the dangers riches pose for following him. It is not just our attitude to riches that might be problematic, it is the simple fact of being wealthy (in all the many ways in which human beings can be rich) that makes it less likely that people will be able to respond to his call.

Another contrast between Luke and Matthew is that here the four blessings are followed immediately by four woes or laments that mirror the blessings exactly: woe to you who are rich, who are filled now, who laugh now, of whom people speak well. Poverty, hunger, weeping and rejection are blessings because knowing these things allows people to understand what the prophets experienced. We need think only of Jeremiah and what he suffered at the hands of the people and their leaders, a passion that anticipates very clearly the passion of Jesus. The woes, on the other hand - of wealth, a full belly, laughter and esteem - these are what the false prophets received. The most radical contrast is between the true and the false, the prophet serving God's word and the prophet serving other interests.

Here is another way in which Jesus teaches 'the great reversal', the first will be last and the last first, the one who humbles himself will be exalted and the one who exalts himself will be humbled, the one who saves his life will lose it whereas the one who loses his life for my sake will find it. Happy are you when you are last, humbled, losing your life ... It is not simply a moralistic teaching, it is an analysis of what serving God's word of truth will inevitably bring.

In today's first reading Paul presents in other words this same teaching of Jesus. You have died, Paul says, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. Here too the fundamental contrast is between truth and falsehood. 'Stop lying to one another', Paul says. Neither is this just a moral exhortation but the recognition of a radical falsehood that is shown up, brought out into the light, by the truth that is Christ. Paul speaks of the reversal in this way: the old self is dead, all the masks and pretences, the sad efforts at fame and fortune, the ways in which we try to save ourselves by making something of ourselves, by being some kind of effective persona in the world - all of this is empty, vain, disintegrating. But our true life, the life of the new self, is hidden with Christ in God. This new life means our re-creation in the image of the Creator, the emergence of the human being as originally intended by God.

We are to shed the old skin, let it go, with all its pathetic aspirations, and allow ourselves to live from this new source, Christ who is all and is in all. A whole series of 'behavioural changes' must inevitably follow. It is not simply effortful teeth-gritting that brings an end to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, anger, fury, malice, slander, obscenity. It is much simpler than that: stop lying to one another. Stop lying, in the first place, to yourself. Look to Christ, walk in him, be rooted and built up in him - all that Paul said yesterday - and we begin to see things correctly, without distortion. We see that the austerity of the beatitudes recounted by Saint Luke is simply the fresh air of truthful living, the capacity to be in touch with reality, the way along which Christ will appear, and we with him in glory.

Week 23 Tuesday (Year 1)

Readings: Colossians 2:6-15, Ps 145; Luke 6:12-19

Paul gives us a series of images for our being 'in Christ'. We are to walk in Him, we are to be rooted in Him, and we are to be built up in Him, established in the faith and abounding in thanksgiving. The image of walking is found elsewhere, in Ephesians 5:2 for example. It means to live and to move, to proceed from day to day, to persevere in a way of living and acting. Walking is neither standing nor running: it means to maintain a steady course.

To be rooted is a contrasting image, taken from the natural world. It is difficult to walk and be rooted at the same time but this is what we are to do: have our roots in Christ as we walk in Him. The roots provide food and water for the organism. They give it a secure place in the world, a firm hold on things, feet on the ground.

The third image is taken from the world of construction: we are to be built up in Him. It is a common image for the Church as a whole which is often described as a building or house or even as a temple. Here Paul speaks to individual Christians, the 'living stones who make a spiritual house' as Peter puts it in his first letter (1 Pet 2:5). Each believer is constructed on Christ who is the foundation, the corner stone, the enduring support and the overall plan of the entire edifice.

When we turn to the Gospel we can bring these images with us and ask 'who does Jesus walk in? where is Jesus rooted? on whom is Jesus constructing his life?' The answer is immediately clear: 'he spent the whole night in prayer to God'. More than any of the other evangelists, Luke reminds us again and again about the prayer of Jesus. His relationship with the Father is the air he breathes. He walks always in that atmosphere. His life and mission are rooted in the Father's will ('my food is to do the will of my Father who sent me', Jn 4:34). There is no other foundation for his life than the love the Father has for him and the love he has for the Father.

The relationship of Jesus and the Father is the source, root and foundation of His life, and His life is the source, root and foundation of our lives. Elsewhere Paul puts it this way: 'you are Christ's and Christ is God's' (1 Cor 3:23). In the calling of the apostles recounted in today's gospel we begin to see how this relationship with Christ and with God is to take shape within human relationships. The apostles are taken up into the mission of Jesus. As soon as they are called, the fruit of that night of prayer, they are faced with the apostolic task: a large gathering of disciples and a great crowd of people who want to hear Jesus, to be cured of their illnesses and to be freed from unclean spirits.

The people wanted - and still want - to touch Jesus because power comes from him to cure us all. It happens now through His Church, in the sacraments it celebrates, the faith it preaches, and the charity it practises. This is most clearly experienced in the lives of the saints, the people who do these things best, walking in Christ, rooted and built up in Him, established in the faith and abounding in thanksgiving. We pray that God will raise up saints for our time in the Body of Christ. We pray that by His grace we may be counted among them.

Week 23 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18; Psalm 89/90; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

From the earliest days of the Church, the words of Jesus in today's passage from Luke have caused problems. Truth be told, just one word: the word 'hate'. It survives in the translation referred to here: 'if anyone comes to me without hating his father, mother ... even his own life, he cannot be my disciple'. However, in many other translations 'hating' disappears to be replaced by something closer to Matthew's version, 'if anyone does not love me more than he loves father, mother ... even his own life, he cannot be my disciple'.

The problems with hating are clear. The Bible, after all, tells us to honour our father and our mother, and Jesus himself tells us to love our enemies. What can it possibly mean then to speak of hating our parents, children, spouses, and even our own life, in order to follow him? Preachers, teachers, Fathers of the Church, interpreters and translators - all twist and turn in the face of this word and often come down on the side of translating it in a way that removes the scandal of hatred: you must not love father or mother more than me. We know what Jesus said, as Luke records it, but this must be what he meant.

But that brings other problems with it. One problem is that it becomes acceptable and tolerable to us, and there is nothing too radical or surprising about it. But today's first reading reminds us that 'the deliberations of mortals are timid and our plans are unsure'. And it continues, 'who can know God's counsel or conceive what the Lord intends?' The scandal of hatred, the way it stops us in our tracks, may actually be essential if we are to be lifted out of our normal ways of thinking and be led to think in a new way, opened up to the ways in which God's counsel is inclined, opened up to the purposes God intends.

Here is the second and more serious problem with the softer translation: it places God among the other objects of our love and implies that there is some kind of quantitative comparison we can make between them all. So I can love chocolate, the cat, and my new car. Turning to people, I can love my friends, my spouse, my parents, and my children. And all of this is okay as long as I love God more. Is that what Christianity teaches? One problem with this is that it sets up a kind of competition between my love for God and my love for other people, as if they can be measured against each other, and that cannot be right. The more fundamental problem is that it turns God into another object of my love, one among the objects of my love, when God is the foundation of all love, the reason why there is any love at all.

It is God, who is Love, who makes it possible that there are creatures, and that they are good, and therefore lovable. So God cannot be simply included in the class of lovable objects, even as the most desirable of them. God as Creator and Redeemer is the source of all that is lovable and the originator of all loving. Jesus has come to reveal this mystery of the divine love and in order to do so he must lead us to the limits of our own natural wisdom. He must lead us beyond the limits of our own experience and intentions. Having the mind of Christ, as St Paul puts it, we are led by Jesus to see, perhaps just in a glimpse, something of the mystery of divine love beneath, before and beyond all that falls within our experience of love.

The other way in which Jesus speaks of this here is in reference to the cross: 'whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple'. This is also scandalous but we have become so familiar with it that it does not shock us any more. (Don't forget that, although great crowds are still following Jesus at this point, by the time he arrives at his Cross there will be few, if any, capable of staying with him: the whole thing will have become too scandalous, too disturbing.)

Each day we must, in Pope Francis' words, 'enter into the silence of the cross'. The cross is the key, and the door, through which we may glimpse the mystery of divine love that Jesus has come to show us. This is not just 'the biggest love around', one among the others, even if it is the best of them. It is a reality quite other, beyond our imagining, the heart of God revealed in the world's history. The darkness opened up by the cross, into which we gaze, is the darkness of a mystery too bright for our eyes. Our only ways in are through meditation and prayer, and through seeking to follow Jesus each day by living in the way he has taught us, each of us taking up his own cross to journey after him. And that means suffering in some way.

It is not through ordinary thinking and reflection that we crack this mystery because 'the deliberations of mortals are timid and our plans are unsure'. It is only by prayer, and by following the way indicated by our own cross, that we come to glimpse the truth into which Jesus leads his disciples. It is a new way of thinking, meditating on a death whose meaning is life, on a slavery whose meaning is freedom, on a 'hatred' that guides us to Love, and indeed to the Source of all loves. 

You will find here another version of this homily

Week 23 Thursday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 8:1-7, 11-13; Psalm 139; Luke 6:27-38

According to Saint Paul,  knowledge 'expands' and carries the danger with it of becoming egoistic and excluding. Knowledge swells our heads. It is confident, assertive and domineering. Love on the other hand 'builds up', not just expanding but including, not forgetting the other and his needs. Love opens our hearts and makes us sensitive to the impact of our knowledge on others.

The measure of these expansions and upbuildings, today's gospel reading tells us, is to be a measure we learn from God. We are to be compassionate as God is compassionate, merciful as God is merciful. We are called, therefore, to live in a very spacious place, to live within the (infinite) dimensions of the divine compassion.

Knowledge is knowledgeable and might well remain simply knowledgeable: expert, skilled, confident. Love however includes knowledge, embraces and transforms it. For love also knows, and understands, and is wise. Love's knowledge will feel more risky than mere knowedge does (skill, expertise, competence) because love's knowledge is more a matter of being known than of knowing. Love is in the first place, and fundamentally, about being known rather than knowing: 'if anyone loves God he is known by God'.

By knowledge we take the world inside ourselves and learn how to master and control it. By love we venture out into the world to taste it, to learn not so much how we might master it as how we might joyfully live in it. The pursuit of knowledge is one kind of adventure: we become masters of our universe. The pursuit of love is a very different kind of adventure: we step into God's universe and seek to live there by God's standards. Knowledge might well make progress without love but love cannot but include knowledge also.

Julian of Norwich says that 'by love may he be gotten and holden, but by thought never'. By love we come to know not only God and ourselves but also God's world, and the principles that rule it, and the others whom God loves.

Week 23 Wednesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 7:25-31; Psalm 45; Luke 6:20-26

A common way of moral teaching in the ancient world is in terms of ‘two ways’, one leading on to success and happiness, the other to disaster and disappointment. It is used also in the Bible, which speaks of a way that carries a blessing and leads to life, and a way that carries a curse and leads to death. One is the narrow way of which Jesus speaks, leading to life, and the other is the broad way, leading to death. To place your trust in flesh and in what the world can offer is a way that leads to death, the prophet Jeremiah says. It means living, sooner or later, in a parched land. To place your trust in the Lord is to be like a tree planted near life-giving water, able to send its shoots to the water to find nourishment. Such a tree blossoms, and bears fruit.

                                                    

The form of the beatitudes given in the gospel of Luke follows this pattern of ‘the two ways’. Those who are poor and hungry, weeping and rejected, are blessed, Jesus says. Those who are rich and well fed, laughing and well thought of, are in difficulty. The true prophets experienced the former whereas the false prophets experienced the latter. People experiencing the former are obliged to place their trust in God and so they are like trees planted near life-giving water. People experiencing the latter find their meaning and significance in the world and will find themselves, sooner or later, living in a parched land. Somebody more beautiful will come along, or someone richer, or someone more influential, or someone younger … but the wise person finds the meaning and significance of their lives at some deeper place, where the divine water is to be found.

The paradox expressed in the beatitudes and woes of Luke 6 is most dramatically enacted in the paschal mystery of Christ. He is the seed sown in the ground. But the ground in which it is sown is watered from a divine source so that he springs to life again, life more abundant and more glorious. So when he speaks about the poor and hungry, about those who weep and are persecuted, he speaks about himself. And he knows the meaning and significance human life contains when it remains in touch with the divine water, blossoming (albeit in hidden ways) and bearing fruit (fruit that will last).

Week 23 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: 1 Corinthians 6:1-11; Ps 149; Luke 6:12-19

'Jesus spent the night in prayer to God'. The words 'to God' seem unnecessary: who else could Jesus be in prayer with, or to? On looking at the phrase again, in the Greek New Testament, we see that it can actually be translated 'Jesus spent the night in (the) prayer of God'. 'In the prayer of God': that opens up a rich seam of thought, looking both 'upwards', towards God, and 'downwards', towards the implications for humanity.

Jesus spent the night in the prayer of God: that is, within those relationships of knowing and loving that we believe God to be, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God is prayer, we might say, or at least prayer is a term that describes the experience of human creatures when they are brought to share in the life of God. Prayer means being in the presence of God and tasting something of the knowledge and love God is.

What is produced in this night Jesus spent in the prayer of God? The gospel reading goes on to tell us that the Church is produced out of this night of prayer. Jesus calls the apostles and comes down to a level place where he encounters more of the disciples and a large crowd, come from here, there and everywhere, to hear his teaching and to be touched by him, seeking healing, forgiveness and peace. This is the life of the Church, isn't it, the apostolic commission, the teaching and preaching, the sacraments that touch our lives at the key points, healing, reconciling, sustaining, and uniting. The power that comes from Jesus continues to be present in the world through the teaching and the sacramental life of the Church, the community of those who believe in Him and carry His Spirit in the world.

But there is sin in this fruit of prayer as well, or at least this is how it seems. Judas Iscariot is one of the apostles chosen after this night of prayer, and he was a traitor. Paul in the first reading reminds us (as if we needed reminding these days) that the Church is full of sin, full of sinners. As Jesus often taught: I have come not for the healthy but for the sick. The Church exists for those who are sick and disturbed, afflicted by unclean spirits and possessed by demons. The Church, the community of believers, is not a pure place over against a sinful world but is itself a community of sinners being healed, forgiven and reconciled. Wheat and tares grow together until the day of judgment.

Paul in that first reading seems to define people by their bad actions and we might want to question him about doing this. If we do define ourselves or others completely in terms of bad things we have done, or do, then we exclude ourselves from the life of the kingdom. But is it not wiser not to do that, not to define ourselves or other people completely in terms of some bad behaviour. There is always hope, there is always the possibility of forgiveness and healing, no matter what people have been involved in up to now. If there is no such hope, no such possibility, then the work of the Church is meaningless.

It is a great privilege to be called to prayer. We go as we are, ever more conscious of our weakness and our sin. Out of his night in the prayer of God Jesus continued to call sinners to himself, even to be members of His body, the Church. That does not mean we should be complaceent or indifferent to sin and its consequences. In the prayer of God, like Isaiah and Peter, we will see ourselves as sinful men and women, and see it ever more clearly and painfully. But in the prayer of God we see also, and ever more clearly, God's surprising wisdom and infinite compassion.

Week 23 Sunday (Year B)

Readings: Isaiah 35.4-7a; Psalm 145; James 2.1-5; Mark 7.31-37

We might be forgiven for thinking the prophet Isaiah was a Christian. He was, of course, a Hebrew prophet, a Jewish poet, who lived many centuries before Jesus Christ. But his poetry has so influenced how Jesus himself spoke about his mission, and how the first Christians understood the person and work of Jesus, that the mistake is understandable. 

The beautiful passage we read today, for example, anticipates the resurrection of Jesus. 'My ways are not your ways', God says through Isaiah elsewhere, and so when God's vengeance and retribution take effect, as is promised in today's first reading, it is not through violence and destruction that this happens, but through various kinds of transformation - the healing of blind, deaf, dumb and lame people; a new fruitfulness in parched, abandoned and sterile wastelands. The climax of all this is the resurrection of Jesus when the anger of God, his vengeance and retribution, is once again, and uniquely, expressed in an act of transformation, an act of new creation, putting the fullness of life where there had been only the empty silence of death.

Baptism introduces people into this way of being, making them members of Christ and so people who live by his life, people who participate in his death and resurrection. Such people, therefore - we the baptised - ought to live in God's way, to think as God thinks, to have the mind of Christ.

One of the most tender moments in the celebration of Baptism is the rite called Ephphatha, which repeats what Jesus does in today's gospel. Touching the ears and mouth of the one being baptised, and using the same Aramaic word which Jesus used - ephphatha, be opened - the Church prays that the baptised person will have ears open to hear and understand the Word of God, a mouth open and willing to testify to their faith in that Word. In other words, that the baptised person will be fully alive with the life they are receiving.

One sign that people are alive in that way is pointed out to us by James, in the second reading. Ever concrete and practical, James calls us to recognise the radical equality between people that belonging to God's kingdom entails. Believing in Jesus, and then treating people in a worldly and discriminatory way, are not compatible. The healing transformation promised by Isaiah, and fulfilled by Jesus, affects all human relationships, establishing them on a new basis. In the kingdom of God all stand on the same ground. All are in need and healing is promised to all. Not only that, a new kind of fruitfulness is promised to all, the ability not only to receive the gifts on offer, but the Spirit (water in a parched land) that enables us to understand those gifts and to share them, in love and service, with others.

Week 23 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Colossians 1:24-2:3; Psalm 62; Luke 6:6-11

Mass for the feast of Saint Dominic often begins with the antiphon In medio ecclesiae, 'in the middle of the Church', or 'in the midst of the assembly' ... he opened his mouth. In the very remarkable first reading Paul speaks of life at the heart of the Church, within the mystery hidden from before the ages but now revealed: Christ with us, Christ in the midst of us and we in the midst of Christ, a simple identification of Christ and His body the Church. 'In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his Body, which is the church'.

The struggle of Paul at the heart of the mystery that now contains him is in the first place about faith,  knowing and understanding the mystery within which we have been called to live. We know from elsewhere that this was a personal struggle for Paul. It is not just that he, like Jesus, has to work hard to initiate the disciples into an understanding of the mystery. Paul has to work hard to keep himself within that mystery, focused on what it means and what it requires of him personally.

It is about faith then, knowledge and understanding of what has been revealed, and the struggle to remain with that, to be in Christ and in his Church, to find Christ and his Church in us.

The gospel reading is also about something happening 'in the midst of the assembly'. The man with the withered hand is asked to stand in the middle and the hand is healed. The impotent hand has lost its ability to do the things hands do: to reach out, to offer peace, to lend a hand, to help, to pick people up. The outstretched hand can symbolise charity and all the practical and concrete ways in which we can love others. Once healed and restored all these things are possible again. Then faith can work through love. What is in our mind and heart, what is on our lips, can find its way also to our hands so what we have come to believe about Christ and his presence with us can be practised in love.

So faith, and love, and hope too. Paul gives us another famous phrase in today's reading: 'Christ in you, the hope for glory'. In all the struggles of life this is the foundation of our hope and its surest guarantee. It is not just a question of optimism or confidence but of being established in Christ, Christ dwelling in us. So faith, hope, love, as Paul says in the opening verses of Colossians, give shape to the Christian experience: knowing the mystery through faith, living it in love, persevering in the struggle on account of the hope that is ours.

Week 23 Sunday (Year A)

Readings: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Psalm 95; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew18:15-20

Some years ago theologian Peter Candler published an article with the arresting title 'Outside the Church there is no Death'. What could he possibly mean? He meant that it is only within a Christian understanding of human experience that the full reality of death can be appreciated. Only the person with the theological virtue of hope, and the understanding of the human person that is required by such a virtue, can look death straight in the face and see its full horror.

Most of the time we believers join our contemporaries in denying, in various ways, the reality of death. We speak of it as if it were no big deal, just passing from one room to another, imagining life continuing more or less as before except without headaches or indigestion, without blood or sweat or tears. The person of hope on the other hand does not have such a picture with which to console herself. The direct object of our hope is God, not some future form of human life. The object of hope is God who is love and who is life, in whose Word we trust when he speaks to us of a share in his eternal life. But we know practically nothing about what that will be or how that will be except that it will be a life, that it will be a life of love, and that it will mean the company of Christ and the saints.

Just as you can only be really courageous when faced with something fearful, so you can only be really hopeful when faced with something that presents extreme difficulty. Just as fear and courage are not incompatible but require each other, so too sadness and anxiety on the one hand, and hope on the other, are not incompatible but require each other. In fact hope makes true sadness possible just as courage gives us a true appreciation of what we fear. This, I think, is what Candler meant in saying that outside the Church there is no death: only within a Christian understanding of human  experience can we taste fully the reality of negative things such as fear, anxiety, sadness and loss.

The gospel reading today is about excommunication, the sad and difficult situation where the Christian community comes to the conclusion that one of its members, for reasons of belief or lifestyle, is no longer in full communion with the Church. We prefer not to think about such things, as we prefer not to think about the reality of death. In fact excommunication is a kind of death, a terrible wound in the body of Christ, a real sadness and a profound loss. It means we have failed to maintain the communion to which Christ calls us and for which he prayed in his last great prayer to the Father.

The gospel reading says we are to try everything to maintain that communion: talking privately with a person first of all, talking with them in the presence of one or two other people, and only if it is absolutely necessary bringing a matter to the attention of the whole Church. The conclusion is chilling and we might even wonder 'is it Christian'? Surely we can find a way to stay together, to remain in communion? But truth presses in also, not in order to serve some structure of power or to maintain some artificial conformity. Truth presses in because it is the truth of that communion itself: what if the basis on which we are joined is undone by what a person believes or by how a person lives? Our communion dies.

This passage of Matthew's gospel is about the difficulty of staying together and it reflects how, even in the early Church, it was realized very quickly that there would be problems in staying together. Sometimes people will do things, or will come to believe things, that even the Church cannot see as compatible with the life of the gospel. Of course we hesitate to use the word ‘excommunication’ but in human relations it is sometimes, sadly, the reality. Even having done our best, we do not see how some can be contained within the life of the community. Some ways of living and some convictions are not compatible, as far as we can see, with life in the Church. More often than not it is people themselves who make the decision to separate from the Church because they no longer share its beliefs or are no longer convinced about the goodness of its teaching. Much more rarely the Church itself makes this decision about a person or a group of people.

We can never be happy about the exclusion of a brother or a sister. It is a death and death is terrible, the last enemy of human flourishing, a final failure. But within the context of Christian hope, exclusion can never be the last word about a person or about our relationship with them. They remain always children of the heavenly Father called to be brothers and sisters of Jesus. I like to think that the two or three gathered in Christ’s name at the end of this gospel reading are the same two or three who have earlier confronted the erring brother or sister. They are praying, and prayer is the characteristic act of the virtue of hope. What is on their minds as they pray must be that same brother or sister whom the Church has decided it must relate to as if he were a pagan or a tax-collector. And there is Christ in the midst of them.

Outside the Church there is no death because the Christian life makes us more sensitive to the truth of what death really is. But outside the Church, we can say, there is no outside, because the prayers of the Church, like the anxiety of loving parents, follow her children everywhere. Even when we cannot see how unity and reconciliation might come about, we must continue to hope for those things, to pray for those things, and to work for those things. All the commandments are summed up, Saint Paul says, in this saying: 'you shall love your neighbour as yourself'. We know that our neighbour is everyone, those who are living and those who are dead, those who are sick and those who are well, those who are in joyful communion with us and those who are in sad separation from us. We reach the limits of our capacities but we know that the Lord, who was crucified for our reconciliation, stretches his arms across the widest horizons of this creation in order to gather in all the scattered children of God.

Week 23 Sunday (Year C)

Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18a; Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33

You can will find here a homily for today