Week 30 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: Philippians 1.18b-26; Psalm 41/42; Luke 14.1,7-11

The teaching of Jesus is not just a piece of social etiquette such as we find in parts of the wisdom literature: better to take a humbler place with the possibility of being promoted than to take a higher place with the possibility of being demoted (and the embarassment that would go with it). When he speaks about a 'wedding banquet' he is always speaking about the wedding feast in the kingdom that is coming. Who is entitled to be there? What is the basis of that entitlement? Where does the invitation come from? And how are people to be ranked at the wedding feast of the kingdom? Is anyone more important than anyone else? It seems that the answer is 'no'

People are looking closely at each other. This happens at wedding banquets. People have keen eyes for each other, to see old friends and family members, but also to see who is more 'in', to see what the fashion and style is: it is very good to have been invited in the first place and yet we wonder whether others are preferred to us in some way. Who does not think about their place when they see what the seating arrangment is?

Here though we must look first at the host. Of what kind or character is the host? And who is likely to be the more important in his kingdom. In Jesus' parables, the host is often the Heavenly Father who is always gracious and generous, kind to the ungrateful and to the wicked. Saint Paul often talks about this, from his personal experience, and he does so again in the first reading today. He is open to whatever the Spirit of God wants to do with him - to depart and be with Christ or to remain and continue to serve Christ in his neighbour. 

So today's readings are about humility and about grace. The humble person compares himself not with his fellow guests or even with an idea of what he thinks of himself. The humble person compares himself only with Christ, thereby knowing his own greatness and his own nothingness. This is, once again, what Paul does, keeping his focus exclusively on Christ, and encouraging his readers to boast only of Christ and of what he is doing in them.

The invitation to the heavenly banquet is a matter of grace, not entitlement. If you manage to live with a humility and generosity comparable to that of Christ you are already living the life of the resurrection. Those who live humbly and in true charity are already guests at the banquet, they are already citizens of the kingdom of heaven.

Week 30 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 5:21-33; Psalm 128; Luke 13:18-21

The readings today give us three domestic parables. It goes without saying that Jesus is wiser than Paul and perhaps we see it in a practical way here in the fact that his parables are so simple whereas Paul seeks to spell out the analogy based on marriage. In doing so he gives many hostages to fortune.

The two parables of Jesus could hardly be shorter. To what can the kingdom of God be compared? It is like a mustard seed which a man sows, it grows into a big shrub, and the birds come to make their nests in it. It is like the yeast which a woman adds to three measures of flour and eventually it is all leavened. That's it. No allegories, no commentaries, think about either of these situations and meditate on how the kingdom of God is like it. They are rich and wonderful.

Paul gives a much fuller explanation of the ways in which the relationship between Christ and the Church can be compared to marriage. His intention also is to keep us focused on the mystery of Christ and the Church, the mystery of the kingdom of God. The analogy he offers has a long biblical history. God is the husband of Israel and she is his wife. Jesus speaks of himself as the bridegroom inviting his disciples to continue to use the analogy, now in speaking about the relationship between Christ and his body, the Church.

But things get in the way of our meditating serenely on this passage. It has been used in the course of the centuries to support discrimination against women. There are some places where it is now considered unsuitable for celebrations of marriage. Social and political arguments about the equality of the sexes and the roles of men and women gather around as we listen to this reading and distract us from its main focus. Here is another domestic parable, an analogy, that teaches us important things about the kingdom of God. But its use over the centuries, and some of its phrases, make it a stumbling block.

One might begin to list the points that weigh against a discriminatory interpretation of this 'profound mystery': be subject to one another (it is mutual, not one-sided), out of reverence for Christ (the focus is on Christ), love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her (this is the counterpart to the wife's obedience which represents our obedience to Christ), a husband loves his wife as his own body (the union is the most intimate possible), nourishing and cherishing her as Christ nourishes and cherishes the church (the mystery is the love of Christ for the Church).

The sowing of a mustard seed and the placing of yeast are rich subjects for meditating on the mystery of the kingdom, but neither has become a sacrament of the Church. Marriage, however, the fundamental domestic reality, is a sacrament of the Church, In some ways it is the paradigmatic sacrament since all the sacraments establish, express, and celebrate the nuptial relationship between Christ and the Church, the covenant of life and love that binds the believer to Christ in the Church.

Acknowledging the difficulties this text generates for us we must, nevertheless, continue to listen to it and to meditate on its teaching, to try to glimpse the mystery. I can never hear it without thinking of the old Anglican marriage service during which the woman said to the man, but not he to her, that she will obey him. What a shocking thing, we might now say. But the man said to the woman, but not she to him, that he will worship her. Is that even more shocking?

Week 29 Tuesday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 2.12-22; Psalm 84; Luke 12.35-38

THE LETTER TO THE EPHESIANS

Oprah Winfrey has said that the most important book in her life is the Letter to the Ephesians. Scholars of the Bible tell us that Ephesians is more accurately described as ‘school of Paul’ rather than coming directly from the pen of Saint Paul himself. Nor does it seem like a letter in the ordinary sense. Its first half (chapters 1-3) is a majestic prayer and its second half (chapters 4-6) a homily or exhortation to worthy living. It begins with a brief greeting and ends with a brief farewell as if someone, in sending on the prayer and homily, adds a short covering note. In between is a wonderful summary of Christian ‘doctrine and life’.

The first half of Ephesians is one of the greatest Biblical texts on the theme of ‘grace’. It is read at Mass from last Thursday to Thursday of this week. Grace is God’s kindly love turned towards humanity, God’s generosity and forgiveness, God’s initiative in creating and re-creating. This kindly love is a blessing for us who receive it but is also a reason for us to bless God in return. In fact, God’s grace is itself the source of our capacity to give thanks to God in a way that is fitting.

God’s grace is not just a sentiment or a thought in God: it is something powerful and effective, a mystery hidden in God from all eternity but revealed historically in the election of God’s people, the coming of Jesus Christ and the founding of the Church in the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus.

Ephesians has much to say about the ‘household of God’, the community of the Church, where the variety of gifts ensures that the needs of the community are met and the unity of ‘one Lord, one faith, one baptism’ means this variety is held together in harmony. The Church is where Jew and Gentile, reconciled through the death of Christ, share a new life of faith, integrity and holiness.

Nobody is a stranger or outsider to this mystery. Each of us is a participant in God’s grace. Each of us is called to be a ‘servant of the gospel’, ‘imitating God’ by loving as he loved us and offering ourselves as a fragrant offering.

In its second half, read at Mass from this Friday until Thursday of next week, Ephesians exhorts us to live lives worthy of what we have received, a translation into Christian terms of Shakespeare’s ‘to thine own self be true’. The motive for right living is that we be true to who we now are, that we ‘walk’ in accordance with our new life, that we grow towards the fullness of God and of Christ in which we already share. Our older, outer self dies as our newer, inner self is built up through faith, hope and love.

Worthy living for Ephesians is about honesty and integrity in speech, sexual relationships, family and business life. The language of Ephesians is marked by the social circumstances of its time but the key values remain pertinent and challenging, not least the placing of human marriage at the heart of the Christian mystery.

At first sight Ephesians might seem like exactly the kind of text we do not need: ‘wives be subject to your husbands’, for example. But it says a lot more: ‘submit to one another’ or ‘husbands love your wives as Christ loves the church and gives his life for her’, for example.

Ephesians stands in a long biblical tradition for which the relationship between God and God’s people is compared to marriage which is then a symbolic or ‘sacramental’ instance of the mutual love of God and God’s people. The focus for Ephesians is the intimacy of the married couple and how that unique human experience might help us to understand how close Christ is to the Church which is his body.

At first sight we might react to the language of Ephesians about married life. Thinking about this text again we might find ourselves wondering what it means for a man to make a woman holy by loving her or for a woman to make a man holy by loving him.

Both parts of Ephesians speak of power and of the Christian calling. God’s love is powerful in raising Jesus from the dead and exalting him above all other powers as head of the Church. Human beings are involved in the same mystery and are called to live it out by renouncing older ways of relating. Walking in a way that is worthy of our new life is only possible if we put on ‘the armour of God’, truth, integrity, faith. Our only strength is ‘in the Lord’ who has made us members of His household and whose grace continues to fashion us as ‘God’s work of art’.

Week 29 Monday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 2:1–10; Psalm 100; Luke 12:13–21

There are teachings on the dangers of wealth that are common to Matthew, Mark and Luke. One cannot serve both God and Mammon, for example. The image of a camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle is also found in all three Gospels: it is easier for a camel to do so than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

But today’s parable is found only in the Gospel of Luke. In addition to his sensitivity and compassion – indeed, precisely because of them – Luke places particular emphasis on the dangers of wealth. He does not qualify the beatitude of the poor as Matthew does, by adding the phrase ‘in spirit’ – ‘blessed are you who are poor’ is Luke’s version, and it is he who adds the woes, beginning with ‘woe to you who are rich’. Jesus does not say ‘woe to you who are unduly attached to your possessions’, nor ‘woe to you who do not share what you have with others’. The mere fact of possessing things is in itself problematic.

‘None of you can be my disciple unless you give up all your possessions,’ we read in Luke 14. Luke 16 is one long warning. And Luke 16 is entirely centred on this warning against riches. Here we find the shrewd steward, the rich man and Lazarus, the Pharisees described as ‘lovers of money’, and a strange encouragement to the disciples to use money – ‘that defiled thing’ – in the service of the kingdom.

In Luke we find Jesus’ teaching on riches in its most radical form. This teaching is, so to speak, made tangible here. It is not a question of our attitude towards our possessions, but a problem that arises from having possessions. The warning is that human beings inevitably begin to find meaning, security and a sense of identity in their possessions. Instead of using them, our possessions somehow become us, and we become them. We accumulate treasures of various kinds (not just money) to secure our lives, to give them meaning and to affirm a sense of identity: to be somebody. If it is through what we have that we become somebody, then we have lost ourselves.

Jesus reminds us in today’s Gospel reading that ‘life does not consist of possessions’. To behave as if it did is to lose one’s life. To be truly ‘rich’ means to receive the gift of the Kingdom and to practise the generosity that lies at its heart: to let our possessions flow through us, so to speak, without regarding them as our own. It is another way of saying that we must become like Jesus who, though he was rich, made himself poor, so that we who are poor might become rich.

Week 29 Sunday Year A

Readings: Isaiah 45:1, 46; Psalm 96; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b; Matthew 22:15-21

Beginning with flattery (what the Irish will recognise immediately as plámás), Pharisees and Herodians question Jesus about paying taxes to Caesar. If he says 'pay' he is in one kind of trouble, if he says 'don't pay' he is in a different kind of trouble. Instead, and as usual, he takes the ground from beneath their feet and changes the basis of the question completely. Whose image is on the coin to be paid? Caesar's. Then give Caesar what is his. And give God what is His.

Sometimes this has been taken to mean that human life and affairs can be divided between a realm that belongs to Caesar (the state, political matters) and a realm that belongs to God (the Church, religion). But there is something wrong about the idea that there might be an area of human life that does not belong to God. And Jesus endorses our suspicion by what he says. Not explicitly, but very clearly.

If whatever bears the image of Caesar belongs to Caesar then whatever bears the image of God belongs to God. What is there that bears the image of God? If the image of Caesar is found on coins, where is the image of God to be found? We know from the Bible that it is the human being that bears the image of God. So it is the human being that belongs to God. And this cannot mean only some parts or aspects or activities of the human being, it must mean the human being in his or her entirety, in all her activities and relationships, in all his projects and commitments. It must mean also each and every single human being since no distinction is made: each and every one is created in the image and likeness of God.

It is a supremely clever answer. While seeming to divide human affairs between two masters Jesus does exactly the opposite, relativising our loyalty to 'Caesar' while acknowledging it, making it abundantly clear that such loyalty is always within a deeper, more all-embracing, and transcendent loyalty, that which is given to God alone. Give to God what belongs to God: in other words, everything.

 

Week 28 Saturday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 1.15-23; Psalm 8; Luke 12.8-12

The vision proposed to us in the readings today is, as we might say, really something else. It is not just a question of a morality or a philosophy to place alongside other proposals of that kind. It is a cosmic, we can even say a metaphysical, vision, of Christ, a man, who is the Son of God, the head of the Church, which is his body, and the fullness of him who himself fills the whole creation.

The gospel reading adds to that along the same lines. Besides the Son who fills all creation there is the Spirit who gives the disciples the words they will need when they are being persecuted.

There is a lot in the readings on the moral level, on human behaviour. As is the usual pattern in Paul's letters, he begins by praising the Ephesians for their faith, love and hope. These are the essential content of the Christian life, the practices in which that life expresses itself. But they are not human achievements, things we can generate from the depths of our souls if only we try hard enough. They are gifts of God, the work in us of the Spirit of wisdom, enlightenment and love. We see the power of the Spirit in what he has done for Christ, raising him from the dead and exalting him to the right hand of the Father. The Church, the body of Christ in human history, is the work of the Spirit who is the power operating in Christ as the head of the Church, as head of humanity, and as the fulness of all creation.

Which is why one can say this vision is really something else.

The gospel reading might also be taken in a moralistic way - do not blaspheme against the Holy Spirit for that is an unforgivable sin. That would be to cut off the branch on which you are sitting. That would be to explode the foundation. on which your house is built. That would be to insult the power which establishes in you these gifts of faith, hope and charity.

In this brief passage the gospel of Luke records a teaching of Jesus - about the Spirit, about truth, about love - which he will develop at much greater length in his discourses at the Last Supper recorded in the gospel of John. This is the deepest reach of the teaching of Jesus about his work and the letter to the Ephesians is anohter development of that teaching. Of course there is a way of living that comes with Christ and his teaching. But that way of living is made possible by a new way of being. To be one who has received the Spirit is to be a person of faith, hope and charity. It is to be a person of wisdom and perception. It is to be what Paul elsewhere calls a 'new creation', a new reality, a new being.

To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit would mean rejecting all that. Let us instead pray for a fresh outpouring of the Spirit on ourselves, on the Church, on the world, that we might allow God to shape us into all that God wants us to be.

Saint Ignatius of Antioch, whose memory we keep today, asked the Romans not to do anything to prevent his martyrdom. 'Only when I am with God', he says, 'will I be truly a human being.' The same is true even for those of us who are not martyrs: only with God are we truly human.

Week 28 Friday (Year 2)

Readings: Ephesians 1:11-14; Psalm 33; Luke 12:1-7

Elisabeth of the Trinity was a French Carmelite nun who lived at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. Searching the New Testament for words that would serve as her motto, Saint Elisabeth fixed on a phrase that we find twice in the first reading at Mass today: she wanted to be, on earth and in heaven, 'the praise of his glory'. Saint Paul says, in fact, that those who come to believe in Christ have been predestined to be 'the praise of Christ's glory', that they are among those whom God has acquired for himself to the praise of his glory.

What is this glory, to the praise of which blessed Elisabeth wanted to consecrate herself completely? It is the word of truth, says Paul, the Word that is Christ himself, bringing to the world the light of truth, the light of redemption, the first installment of which we have already received when we were sealed with the Holy Spirit.

In the gospel reading also Jesus speaks about truth, the light that will illuminate all things. In 2016 our Order, the Order of preachers founded by Saint Dominic Guzman, celebrates the eighth centenary of its confirmation. It is an Order specially dedicated to preaching the gospel of truth for the salvation of human beings. Many things in the readings today call us back to this, our Christian vocation: to live in the truth of the Lord.

We might, however, interpret as threats certain expressions about truth in the gospel reading that we read today - in this light  all secrets will be revealed, and what has been whispered behind closed doors will be proclaimed from the housetops. If it was a cruel light we would have reason to be fearful. But this light of the Word of God is always the light of an eternal and infinite love. The attention God gives to our hairs, and to all the details of our lives, is not the attention of an enemy, or of one who does not have our interest at heart. It is comparable instead to the attention adults give to a newborn child, when we look carefully at all the details of the baby, with a look of affection, admiration and love.

So this light of love and truth is what Dominicans have preached for eight hundred years and continue to preach today. This is the glory to the praise of which Saint Elisabeth of the Trinity wished to dedicate herself completely.

This homily was preached at a Mass broadcast on Radio Maria (Italia) on Friday 14 October 2016. The Mass was celebrated at the Dominican monastery of Santa Maria della Neve e San Domenico, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.