18th. Sunday
(Year C)
(Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23. Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11. Luke 12:13-21)
People
today think almost exclusively in terms of this world as if everything will be
ultimately decided according to earthly judgements, actions, and
expectations. Our readings today
however, remind us explicitly that this world is not the be-all and end-all of
human experience:
Here is
one who has laboured with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; and yet he must leave
(his) property to another who has not laboured over it. This is vanity and a
great misfortune.
Qoheleth
there expresses what few people consider before they become actually aware of
the sombre approach and threat of
old-age: ‘What was the point of all my strivings since nothing that I have
done, made, or achieved can go with me, be available to help me if needed? And as for me myself there is no seed of new
promise budding within me to offer me hope:
I know of nothing that I can look forward to or aspire to! Have I left a name behind me that someone
might remember with a measure of admiration or gratitude perhaps? Does van Gogh’s present world-wide fame make
up to him for the fact that in his life time he lived and died in dependency
and poverty managing to sell only one painting, cheap? Here is
one who has laboured with wisdom, knowledge, and skill; and yet must leave the
fruit of his labours to another who has not laboured over them. This
is vanity and a great misfortune.
Notice
the difference with Jesus however; He does not blow bubbles of philosophical or
mystical hues, as it were, like Qoheleth as he muses about our human experience
of life; Jesus, on the contrary, speaks immediately and directly about ultimate
reality, the nature and value of life itself:
One’s life does not consist in possessions.
Jesus
teaches that our present experience of life is, in Divine Providence, but the
essential preparation and testing ground for what is to come, either the true
life of our eternal fulfilment or else eternal loss:
He told
them a parable: ‘There was a rich man whose land (having) produced a bountiful
harvest (said), “you have so many good things stored up for many years, rest,
eat, drink, be merry!” But God said to him, 'You fool! This night your life
will be demanded of you; and then the things you have prepared, to whom will
they belong? Thus will it be for all
who store up treasure for themselves but are not rich in what matters to God.’
The
widespread persuasion that the Good News of Jesus needs to be subjected to our
scholarly adaptation and current spiritual appreciation if there is to be any
hope that people will learn from it and begin to store up for themselves
treasure that matters to God, is an unacknowledged capitulation to modern society’s
craven worship of popularity. And
therein is the root error: for popularity has neither role nor authority in
matters of faith; indeed, at the best it is irrelevant, while potentially it is
most harmful in matters of faith.
There are
many in the Church today who are in sympathy with Pilate rather than Jesus:
Pilate
said, "Are You a king then?" Jesus answered, "You say rightly
that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come
into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the
truth hears My voice." Pilate said
to Him, "What is truth?"
(John 18:37-38)
What is
truth? Pilate doubted there was such a thing as truth. Today, pseudo-disciples of Jesus give that
same thought their own particular twist: visible success is the only criterion
for the successful proclamation of invisible truth (whatever that might be of
itself), which means that, with regard to the successful proclamation of the
Good News of Jesus, we must surely seek both to make Jesus Himself popular and
His teachings acceptable. Consequently
it is up to the disciples of Jesus and promoters of His teaching to study
modern attitudes and practices carefully and sympathetically in order to make
adaptations – only those which are essential, of course! -- to the Gospel
message that will enable it to gain more widespread acceptance.
Now that
can never be the authentic Christian, Catholic attitude; we only need to look
at and listen to Our Blessed Lord once more to realize that:
Remember
the word that I said to you, 'A servant is not greater than his master.' If
they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you. If they kept My word, they
will keep yours also. But all these
things they will do to you for My name's sake, because they do not know Him
Who sent Me. (John 15:20-22)
Today we
need to renew our trust in God; indeed, we have to stir up our courage on the
basis of our faith. The original
apostles, the original Christians who were called Catholics from the very
beginning, did not cower before the world's criterion of popularity as so many
do today. For example, the gentle,
loving, Apostle John says quite defiantly:
We are of
God. He who knows God hears us; he who is not of God does not hear us. By this
we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error. (1 John
4:6)
And they
had this confidence and strength because they firmly believed what the
Scriptures and the Catholic Faith taught them, as we heard in the second
reading:
If you
were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the
right hand of God. Think on what is
above, not of what is on earth. For you
have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too
will appear with Him in glory.
In other
words, they looked forward to a heavenly, not an earthly, ultimate fulfilment,
and, in order to attain that blessedness they proclaimed a Gospel of Truth, in
the sure knowledge that only divine truth can re-form a human being in the
divine likeness:
The new
self is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its Creator.
That very
truth required them to preach what would be unpopular at times. Indeed, the essence of the Gospel message is
that we can only find salvation through the Cross of Jesus, Who died for our
sins before rising again for our salvation:
(He) bore
our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live
for righteousness -- by whose stripes you were healed. (1 Peter
2:24)
As a
result, even in the early Church there were those to be found who wanted to
preach a Gospel without the Cross, a popular Gospel instead of the Gospel of
righteousness; and in their regard the Apostle Paul said with incisive clarity:
The
message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who
are being saved it is the power of God.
For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and
bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent." (1 Cor.
1:18s.)
People of
God, in our modern times of trial we must cling to Jesus all the more closely
in Spirit and in Truth for, as St. Paul (2 Timothy 2:11-13) counselled Timothy:
This is a
faithful saying: if we died with Him, we shall also live with Him; if we
endure, we shall also reign with Him. If
we deny Him, He also will deny us; if we are faithless, He remains faithful; He
cannot deny Himself.
Today,
even where Catholics still appear to value their faith, many are tempted to
live for the world that so oppressively surrounds them and so temptingly
allures them: they will not openly or totally give in to that temptation but
they become ever slower and more reluctant -- and even at times unwilling -- to
deny themselves in order to live seriously with and for Jesus. And they will often enough excuse themselves
saying with the ‘popularists’: ‘People will come to the Faith if, and only if,
they find us nice people not overburdened with troublesome principles,
and if they find our message accommodating and comforting, showing that
the portals of mother church are open wide, welcoming, and obstacle free, for
all and sundry’.
This is a
most fundamental and insidious perversion of the Faith. Jesus tells us quite categorically that it is
the Father alone who draws disciples to Jesus:
No one
can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up
at the last day. (John 6:44)
All that
the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no
means cast out. (John 6:37)
Saint
Paul, of course, remains the great bugbear for such protagonists of ‘cosy’
Catholicism, because he is, uniquely, both the gentiles’ Apostle of Jesus Good
News of salvation, and his letters are Mother Church’s earliest and purest appreciation
of and response to Jesus’ teaching; and he makes abundantly clear that
would-disciples of Jesus must always be willing to practice self-discipline and
-- where and when necessary -- to embrace suffering in order that Jesus’ gift
of the Spirit might form them as authentic witnesses to Jesus in their lives:
Put to
death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion,
evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry.
Because of these the wrath of God is coming (upon the disobedient). Stop
lying to one another and put on the new self.
The
Father draws and gives to Jesus disciples who come to know Him through the
witness of Mother Church and her children, and who go on to make Jesus further
known, by themselves proclaiming His Truth and ‘incarnating-in-their-own-lives’
His teaching to all and before all who are sincerely seeking God and His
salvation. That is our wonderful
vocation: to proclaim Jesus in Mother Church by the power of His Holy Spirit
working in us for the glory of His heavenly Father and the salvation of all who
will hear us.
An old
priest has just been slaughtered in his parish church in France. That was done most certainly because he represented
Jesus – the authentic Jesus of Mother Church.
I hope and pray that he was killed also because he himself had proclaimed
Jesus in the truth of his priestly and personal life, for if that was also
true then indeed he is now a truly happy and blessed man! Grant him eternal rest, O Lord, and let
perpetual light shine upon him!
People of
God, there is no place our world today for a ‘cosy Catholicism’ where young
men, naturally inclined to a measure of violence – ‘sons of thunder’ -- can
search in vain to find any challenge or inspiration, that would guide and
sublimate such natural masculine tendencies because acceptable piety and
popular ‘proclamation’ are too timid and apologetic, too feminine indeed, where
God’s ideal embraces both male and female.
As I
mentioned just a few weeks ago, Jesus chose sons of thunder to become
His apostles, followers of dynamic Peter the Rock and fellow-workers with Paul
whom Jesus deliberately chose to suffer so very much for His name. Is there any room for such people today in
popular Catholic devotion and public, priestly, ministry? Of course there is, for Mother Church is
Jesus’ Church and holy; but whoever is called along such paths will have to
suffer much as he or she struggles to penetrate the smothering jungle of
conformity with men rather than oneness with and commitment to the Person of
Jesus and the guidance of His Spirit under the protecting veil of Mary in
Mother Church.
People of
God, that dear priest (about my age) was taken when he could least have
expected it, and his example is a warning for all of us. Will we be found - at our testing --to be one
with Jesus, or basking in human approval?
Note well that I am not in any way preaching anti-clericalism against
Popes, bishops and hierarchy, many of whom have indeed been great saints,
martyrs and models, but rather an anti (self-seeking, self-promoting,
self-indulging) religiosity which mocks true worship in Spirit and Truth
and mimics authentic Catholic spirituality, and which abounds on every hand and
at every level in Mother Church today.
Dear
People of God, the world situation today -- for it is indeed world-wide
– is making it ever more likely that we may all have to face up to and decide
on the question: ‘Am I to be found at my
testing to be a Cosy Catholic, reputable before and acceptable to any modern
society, or to be possibly regarded as an illegal or even dangerous Apostolic
one??
