Homily for Shrove Tuesday : Mark 7:1-13

Even when the will is perverse – even when a creature is enthralled and captivated by one great sinful adhesion, which makes one’s days a flight from God towards lust or power – even then some few good and commendable acts contradict one’s general attitude. These isolated acts of virtue are like a clean handle on a dirty bucket; with them, God can lift a soul to his peace.

Fulton J Sheen Lift Up Your Heart

In this evening’s first reading we see God’s Creation in its perfection and its peace: ‘God saw that it was good’. Here we find all that is needed for human flourishing through staying close to Him and listening to what he says to us and doing it. We see the traditional notions of marriage and family as ordained by God, for our good, and with which we meddle at our peril, and that of the whole of society in general. We see the need for rest – it’s something ordained by God, and which the modern world with its 24/7 always on mindset seeks to erode. It’s something against which we need to fight, because it is wrong and it’s not good for us. We need to rest, to have time off, to spend it in rest and relaxation with our nearest and dearest, it helps give our lives value and worth and first and foremost it is holy, it is set apart for rest and refreshment by God – we cannot simply disregard this divine command because it’s inconvenient in the modern world. It shows us that when the world and the Church are in conflict it is the Church which truly values humanity and affords them proper dignity and respect, rather than seeing them as a commodity which is to be exploited.

          As someone who is part of the religious establishment I must admit that I always get more than a bit concerned when I am faced with Our Lord confronting the Pharisees. It is, I would suggest, a good and a healthy thing simply because it reminds me that I am never to ask the people of God to do something which I do not. It forces me to examine who and what I am, and what I say and think and do, which is never a bad thing.

          The Pharisees approach Jesus to point out that his disciples have not been following the letter of the law, and eating with unclean hands. They are, as ever, keen to point out minor outward transgressions, and are themselves unable to see the bigger spiritual picture. Our Lord is right to say to them:

 “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,

“‘This people honours me with their lips,

    but their heart is far from me;

in vain do they worship me,

    teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’

You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.” Mk 7:6-8

Outward conformity then just will not do; we cannot simply go through the motions and expect everything to be alright in the end. We need to honour God with our lips and with our hearts, so that what we think, what we say, and what we do are all in accord with each other: otherwise we are hypocrites and no better than the Pharisees.

          They saw the law as salvific: if you do the right thing, everything will be fine. Their mechanistic approach to religion is cold, dead and empty, and through the words of Jesus we know that it is not pleasing to God. We cannot and should not fall into the same trap as them.

          We are here tonight to take time to begin our preparations for Lent, to prepare to enter into the desert of repentance, like our Lord spending forty days in the desert before starting his public ministry. We are to give our souls and lives a spiritual spring-clean. We prepare to celebrate Our Lord’s Passion, Death and Resurrection just like those preparing for Baptism did and still do: in prayer, with fasting, with self-denial, and through the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. We prepare by examining our lives and our consciences to confess our sins to God, so that he can heal and restore us. It may sound scary, but take it from me, as someone who does it regularly, it really isn’t: it’s wonderful, it’s a chance to lay down your burden and feel the embrace of a loving Father around one of his prodigal children. It’s why today is called Shrove Tuesday – people were shriven – they confessed their sins as they prepared to enter this solemn time. They faced up to the fact that they were sinners in need of God’s love and mercy, who needed to be healed and restored by him, it wasn’t something they could just do on their own. It is not easy to recognise that we are work in progress, and that we need God to be at work in us; but this is exactly what Jesus came to show us. He came to heal and restore us, to forgive us our sins, suffering and dying for us – weak, foolish sinful humanity that we are. He came to restore the image of God in us, to take us back to the perfection of Creation, to turn us from the disobedience of Adam and Eve to the obedience shown by his mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the obedience which her Son lives out even to his death on the Cross for our sake, and beyond.

          So let us prepare to worship him in spirit and in truth, not just with our lips, but with hearts, minds, and souls and lives  cleansed, healed, and restored by the one perfect sacrifice for sin, who gives himself, in his word, in his Body and Blood, in the Sacraments, and the teaching of the Church, his body, filled with his Spirit, so that we may have live in all its fullness and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever

 

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Year C

We always make the fatal mistake of thinking that it is what we do that matters, when really what matters is what we let God do to us

Fulton J Sheen Seven Words of Jesus and Mary

I have to admit that the one thing I cannot stand watching is a horror movie. I probably have an over-active imagination, or get too drawn into the action, and certainly don’t like feeling scared. As humans we aren’t keen on being afraid: we feel powerless, we’re not in control.

            In this morning’s first reading the prophet Isaiah has an experience of God’s presence in the Temple in Jerusalem. He does not describe his emotional state, other than what he says speaks of human unworthiness in the divine presence. When he is confronted by the majesty of God, the singing of angels, the smoke of incense, all he can say is ‘Woe is me. For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips’ Isaiah is aware of human sinfulness and the gulf between himself and God. Yet his guilt is taken away, and his sin atoned for – the prophet who will tell of the Messiah, who will save humanity, is prepared for this by God, he is set apart. When God asks ‘Whom shall I send, who will go for me?’ Isaiah can respond ‘Here I am, send me’ It’s quite a journey in a few verses.

            Likewise St Paul, ‘the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because [he] persecuted the church of God’ is living proof of the redemptive power of God’s love at work in the world. He preaches Christ crucified and resurrected, to show us that Christ died for us, and that we can have new life in him. God can (and does) take and use surprising people to show us that we are loved.

            In the Gospel, Jesus begins by using a fisherman’s boat, so that the large crowd at the lakeside can see and hear him. When he has finished teaching he tells Simon Peter to ‘Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch’. Peter cannot see the point – they’ve not caught anything in the entire night, he’s tired, he doesn’t see the point. And yet he is obedient, he does what Jesus asks him – and they catch so many fish that their boats almost sink under the weight of them, a catch which points forward to another miraculous catch of fish after Jesus’ resurrection (in Jn 21:1–11), it is a sign of the Church, a miraculous number of people given new life in Christ.

            Peter’s response is telling: he falls at Jesus’ knees and says ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’ it is an authentic human response to the presence and generosity of God – he recognises his own unworthiness and his reliance upon God. Peter is not worthy of his calling, but because he knows he isn’t that’s where God can be at work. The next thing Jesus says to him is ‘Do not be afraid’ – in Christ we do not need to be afraid of anything, if we trust in him, and let his love be at work in us.

            Once they reach the land the disciples leave everything and follow him, they display metanoia: they change their heart, their mind and their life – the response of a sinner to the love of God. It can be all too easy to see such passages as we have this morning as solely of interest to those of a calling to the priesthood. That’s understandable, but it’s also deeply wrong. It applies to each and every one of us, here, and all over the world. As Christians we are all to kneel in the place of Peter, to recognise our reliance upon and trust in God, and be prepared to be ‘fishers of men’. The calling of the disciples is the calling of the entire baptised people of God: a calling not to be afraid, but to respond to the God who loves us and saves us, a calling to live out in our lives by word and deed the saving truths of God, so that the world may believe. So that it may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Year C - Being prophetic

Many people nowadays want God, but on their own terms, not on his. They insist that their wishes shall determine the kind of religion that is true, rather than letting God reveal his truth to them. So their dissatisfaction continues and grows. But God finds us lovable, even in our rebellion against him.

Fulton J. Sheen ­Lift up your heart

Throughout the Scriptures we see that the calling, life and witness of the prophet is a difficult and a costly one. In this morning’s first reading we see Jeremiah being called to proclaim the word of the Lord. He is set apart for this task, he is made holy, and God says ‘I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations’ – in order to do what a prophet does, he has to be what a prophet is, function follows and flows from ontology, what he is, is prior, it is done to him, so that God may work through him.

            It is a difficult and a costly task, and a prophet has to be prepared for rejection: ‘they will fight against you, but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, declares the Lord, to deliver you.’ It is far too easy especially in the current climate for the Church to be downhearted, when we are assailed by secular power, but we have to be like Jeremiah, and trust in God safe in the knowledge that that the one who called is faithful and will not disappoint us. We can trust in God, we can have faith and hope in him, so that we can speak the truth in love.

            The People of Jesus’ home town cannot see what’s going on, they simply see what they want to see, they see a mouthy jumped-up carpenter’s son who has the temerity to challenge their preconceptions and their lack of faith, who tells is like it is, the uncomfortable truth, which they do not want to hear, but which they need to hear.

            Currently we are being told that our understanding of Holy Order and Marriage need to be changed to conform to the ways of the world; it can only be a matter of time before legislation allowing assisted suicide to be made legal will be considered, so that we no longer have to value life either at its beginning, or its end, that the vulnerable and inconvenient can be disposed of by medical means, cast off, in private and away from prying eyes. Against the vision of a secular state which does not truly value life from its conception to a natural death, which does not value marriage as the lifelong and indivisible union of a man and a woman for their mutual benefit and that of society, and for the procreation and education of children, which seeks to tell the church what it should do and how and why it should do it, we have to offer an alternative.

            It may not be popular to stand up and proclaim the ultimate and absolute Truth found in Scripture and the tradition of the Church, guided by the Holy Spirit, but that is what the Church is called to do. It may not be easy, people are not willing to listen, but prefer to mock and to jeer, to remain safe and secure in their liberal secular prejudices, looking down their noses at poor deluded fools who stand up for a truth which they see as only one out of a myriad possible options in this post-modern world. It is easier to persecute the church under the fig leaf of upholding equality and diversity, of protecting religion while undermining it, unless it conforms to the secular viewpoint.

            We believe in saying that certain actions are right and others are wrong, they will harm your soul, and affect your relationship with God and each other, that life is precious and must be valued, and we do this because we are loved by a God who lived among us, who died for us, to heal our wounds, who rose again, to give us the hope of glory. He knew rejection, throughout his earthly life, but he was not afraid to speak the truth in love, regardless of the cost. It’s generous; it’s extravagant, in a way which people just cannot understand – entering into glory by being executed like a common criminal, for the love of us, of you and me – to give us new life in him. He is the Truth, the Way and the Life.

            He knew that in the end the power of God’s love was greater than that of the world, the flesh and the devil – all these were beaten on a hill outside Jerusalem. So confident in his victory, in his strength and his truth, let us continue to proclaim it in word and deed so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever

Homily for Sexagesima (BCP ) The Parable of the Sower

Faith lights up all the faculties of a person, as light inside reveals the pattern of a stained-glass window. For faith is far more than the passive acquiescence to a proof; it is a dynamic thing accompanied by an intense desire for the possession of God as author and finisher of our life

Fulton J. Sheen Lift up your Heart

Christianity has, of late, not looked terribly good in the eyes of the world and the media. If we were to believe what is said of us, it would appear that we are obsessed by matters of gender and sex: the ordination of women, clergy in civil partnerships and the proposed redefinition of marriage to include same-sex couples. In the eyes of the world we are wrong, we are completely out of touch, and we need to conform ourselves and the Church to the ways of the world. We cannot, I would suggest, allow this to happen; we need instead to stand up and be counted, proclaiming a truth rooted in Scripture and the Tradition of the Church even if it means that we appear foolish in the eyes of the world: for our faith is foolishness and a stumbling block, but the foolishness of God is wiser than men.

            In this morning’s Gospel we have St Luke’s account of the parable of the Sower and its explanation – Jesus is showing us what the Church and the Proclamation of the Gospel look like in practice. He uses an agricultural image which is as clear to us today as it was two thousand years ago. It’s designed to be transparent, it isn’t complicated, but it does not necessarily make for terribly easy reading. The sower casts out a great deal of seed, and not all of it even lands on soil. Even when it does it necessarily lead to much – the plants bolt and die or are choked by weeds. Only a few seeds grow up into healthy plants, which produce a wonderful harvest, even an hundredfold.

            There are people, who are initially very enthusiastic about the Christian Faith, but who quickly lose interest; others find themselves distracted by the cares of the world, by their riches, and the enticements of pleasure. This reminds us of the salutary fact that living the Christian life is not easy: things get in the way, we get distracted, it is a huge struggle and if we were just left to our own devices then we, generally speaking, are not terribly good at resisting. So what do we do? We need to rely upon God as our help and strength, and also to support each other as we grow together in a community of faith and love, helping each other, through God’s grace, to resist the ways of sin and the world.

            Only a few plants produce a great deal of seed – the Church grew from a small but committed community of faith gathered around Our Lord and the Twelve Apostles. Instead of hearts hardened by superficialities or worldly preoccupations, they display hearts which are open, open to the God who loves them, to the God who heals them, and to the God who saves them, who shed his blood on the Cross for their sake and ours, to take away their sin. They are people who trust God, and who live lives which proclaim God’s saving truth regardless of the cost to themselves, gladly laying down their lives to serve the truth which sets them free. They then reap a harvest of billions of souls saved over the past two thousand years; and we are called to be like them, to live lives like theirs, to trust like them, to be fearless in our proclamation of the Gospel, supporting each other in our lives and in spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and in deed, so that the world may believe and give glory to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, to whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory dominion and power, now and forever