14th. Sunday (Year B)
(Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2nd.
Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6)
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We have
here a most important Gospel reading: important, that is, for our right
understanding of the vocation and spiritual life of a committed Christian; and
it is prefaced by two remarkable readings from the prophet Ezekiel and St.
Paul.
Let us,
first of all, listen once again to our reading from the prophet Ezekiel:
Son of man, I am sending you
to the Israelites, rebels who have rebelled against Me…. You shall say to them:
‘Thus says the Lord God!’ And whether they head or resist --- for they
are a rebellious house --- they shall know that a prophet has been among them.
Things were
apparently so bad with the Chosen People in those days, that the prophet was
not being sent to comfort God’s people like Isaiah, not even being sent to
convert delinquents, since it was doubtful whether any would be converted -- whether
they head or resist -- but simply to proclaim God’s word, and
thus to impress upon the people that there was a prophet – a spokesman chosen
by God -- in their midst, and to force Israel to recognize that though they had
often failed Him, He would never fail them.
Witness to
the truth, to God’s truth! That is the prophet’s – and a Catholic
priest’s -- first and supreme function, as Our Blessed Lord said of Himself and
His mission when being questioned by Pilate:
For this I was born, and for
this I have come into the world: to bear witness to the Truth. (John 18:37)
Not to
convert, first of all, but to bear witness to God’s truth; conversions will
come later, as Jesus went on to say:
Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice. (ibid.)
In the
reading from St. Paul, we heard again about this contradictory aspect of God’s
word … be it God’s activity or His spoken message. Paul had received an
abundance of revelations and was in danger of becoming too proud, and
therefore a thorn in the flesh was given him. That was God’s
word in action, you might say a word of contradiction indeed, which Paul
most certainly did not like, but – as ever with God – it was a word to save
him. And so, although Paul pleaded earnestly with God that the thorn might
leave him, God’s reply was something which, initially, Paul found hard
to understand because it was so much at variance with his own, human, way of
thinking …
My grace is sufficient for
you, My power is made perfect in weakness.
Paul wanted
to do great things for God, but he had to learn that God alone does great
things, for the glory of His Name and for our salvation. Consequently, He
would only allow Paul to do great things for His glory in such a way that, at
the same time, Paul would be learning – unforgettably – the truth about himself:
that he could do nothing, of himself, for salvation. And so, Paul
eventually came to rejoice, for example, in his own inability to make great sermons, because experience gradually taught him that when he went
forward in faith – obeying God’s call and trusting in God’s help -- then,
despite his own inability, God would work wonders through him and for him.
Jesus, the
Word-of-God-made-flesh, Himself came among us as Lord and Saviour and -- in
accordance with God’s message to Ezekiel -- both His Person and His spoken
words proved unacceptable to sectarian pride, and less than pleasing to human
hopes; with the result that, as you heard in our Gospel today, Jesus did not
convert many at Nazareth because His fellow townspeople had no faith in His
Person and were not impressed by His words. Nevertheless, Jesus
successfully carried out His mission and fulfilled His Father’s purposes in
Nazareth for He bore witness to the truth and exemplified those sublime and
prophetic words given to Isaiah:
My thoughts are not your
thoughts, nor are your ways My ways, says the LORD. (Isaiah 55:8)
People of
God, so often today great things are desired of the priests of Mother Church:
they are exhorted at times by their bishops, they are frequently expected by
their Catholic people, but above all, so many priests themselves want,
desire, and consequently seek, to somehow make Jesus popular.
That,
however, is not a Catholic priest’s
primary function: he must first of all bear witness to God’s truth,
learnt in all its integrity from Mother Church; and that truth has then to be, must
be, vivified in himself by his own faithful appreciation of, and loving
response to, God’s Personal activity and goodness. Vivified, however, not taken over by
that personal experience; so that in his preaching and teaching as a Catholic
priest, the Truth of God and of Mother Church may be proclaimed with
God-given conviction and truly human understanding and sympathy.
Conversions
will, in God’s mercy and great goodness, follow, for:
Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.
There is
something here for all in God’s flock … something to help us live our faith
more fruitfully. For we must recognize that God’s word may – at times –
seem to be a contradiction to us: creating a decisive tension within us, or
simply jolting us out of our complacency. And that is its proper purpose
and function: to touch and open-up new depths in, and reveal the very roots of,
our God-given being to the saving influence of His grace, and thus to lead us
to a richer Christian fulfilment as witnesses to the beauty and goodness of
God, and ‘exponents’, so to speak, of a more authentic human life.
For, left
to ourselves, we tend to spend so much of our lives in superficial pleasures
and distractions which empty us of character; and those God-given
contradictions, where God can seem so absent, are meant, at times, to help us
realize that we are needy individuals, and to make us look below the surface,
deeper than the obvious, in order to find the true meaning and purpose of our life.
Faith is the Christian faculty that enables us to believe, recognize,
and hopefully to respond to God’s presence in and throughout the whole of life;
and we respond aright by trying to do what is right and true, by affirming what
is good and beautiful, and by dedicating ourselves, perseveringly, to life in
all its fullness -- spiritual as well as bodily, eternal a well as natural --
because of His call which those aspects of life express for us.
For
example, how often good Catholic parents experience anguish and anxiety as they
see their young people wandering away from religious practice and the Faith
itself. And yet, if they will embrace it aright, this experience
can be a great opportunity for them, as with Saint Paul, to glorify God and to
draw even closer to those they love despite the sorrow and suffering
involved. As good Catholic and Christian parents -- despite finding
themselves in such a situation – they can yet persist in loving their children and
trusting God: trying to draw God to their children, by constant prayer and
hopeful confidence; and their children to God, by ever deeper (and perhaps yet more
costly!) love and patience. As silent witnesses to God, where words of
exhortation and instruction cannot be given because they would not be accepted,
such parents who continue to unite God and their children through their own
love and suffering for both, are then, themselves, being conformed very closely
indeed to Christ on the Cross with one arm outstretched to men and the other to
His Father, uniting them both in the great love of His most Sacred Heart.
Let us
then, People of God, take confidence; because life’s most bitter moments, its
most searching trials, when met with faith and embraced with trust in God, can
be experienced as encounters with His holy word, His saving will; indeed, as
His Self-revelation to you for a P/personal fellowship with Him throughout your
life. They are contradictions like the Cross, meant to result in our
resurrection as newer and fuller human beings and more authentic Christians …
men and women all the more capable of joy and fulfilment for having lived
through such troughs of sorrow and trial. For that to happen one thing is
absolutely necessary: faith in Jesus
first of all, faith in His Most Holy Spirit ever recalling Jesus’
teaching to the mind of Mother Church; and deep gratitude for our own
personal awareness and experience of God our Father’s everlasting goodness.
Dear People
of God, Catholic and Christian, seek true humanity, full and free; seek
confidently and unswervingly the authentic meaning of life: its true beauty,
worthwhileness, and purpose. Seek, in a word, God, revealing
Himself in His Son, through His Church unique and universal, and in you,
by His Spirit.
May this
Holy Mass bring about for us who participate in it with faith the great miracle
of our resurrection from the shallows to the fullness of all our possibilities,
human and divine; the fullness for which He created us and towards which He
ever guides and ‘upgrades’ us through sorrow and joy, in Christ Jesus, Our Lord.
