6th.
Sunday of Year (C)
(Jeremiah
17:5-8; 1st. Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; St. Luke 6:17, 20-26)
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Cursed is the one who trusts in human beings, whose heart turns away
from the Lord.
Jeremiah had a great deal of experience with duplicitous
men: kings and religious authorities, ordinary people of faith or no faith; and
his judgement of ‘human beings’ generally was based on that experience. But his judgement was based even more on his
awareness of the blessings that God had already given Israel and was preparing
to bestow a yet greater one on them (Jeremiah 31:33):
This is the
covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the
Lord: I will put My law in their minds and write it on their hearts; and I will
be their God and they shall be My people.
However, though the Law was, indeed, in their minds,
written on their parchments, and meant to be written on their hearts, many of
the children of Israel had, in Jesus’ days ‘turned away from the Lord’, so
that when He came among them to be their Saviour and make them children of God, He was crucified. And we heard in our
second reading Saint Paul -- Jesus’ specially chosen one to proclaim His Gospel
to the nations -- berating some members of the Church he had founded in Jesus’
name in the Greek city of Corinth, using words not unlike those of Jeremiah:
If for this life
only we have hoped in Christ we are the most pitiable people of all.
Paul said that because certain individuals were
saying that there was no resurrection of the dead! Obviously, they did not rightly understand Jesus
as the Christ, perhaps because they were Christian converts of Sadducee origin' indeed, even former members of the synagogue in Corinth, where Paul had first proclaimed
Jesus as the Christ, before going on to found a Christian Church there; for St.
Luke tells us in his Gospel that Sadducees had opposed Jesus towards the end of
His public ministry:
Sadducees
approached Jesus saying that there is no resurrection.
They had then tried to confound Jesus with a trick question
about seven brothers, one wife, and the Law of Moses, but to their imagined
conundrum Jesus answered:
You are misled
because you do not know the Scriptures nor the power of God. Have you not read what was said to you by
God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the
living. (Matthew 22: 29-32)
Dear People of God, the Old Testament dispensation
and its Scriptures had been given to show God’s Chosen People, to teach them of the
fact and about the nature, of sin in men’s lives: that sin separates sinners from the
one true God Who is the All Holy One, as it had alienated Israel from the
Father Who had deliberately chosen them for His own People by calling them out
of the slavery of Egypt and giving them their own land flowing with milk and
honey. Correspondingly, the whole
purpose and aim of the new dispensation which
Jeremiah prophesied -- the new and eternal covenant to be offered by God to
Israel and through Israel to the whole world -- would bring not only forgiveness
of sins, but also the sanctification of all who would believe in the Good News
of Jesus Christ, which was able to purify and free mankind from their
primordial slavery to sin by the Gift of most His Holy Spirit Who would enable
them to rejoice as children of God, new-born in Jesus Christ as members of His
mystical Body, for the praise and eternal glory of the Father of all.
You are aware that St. Matthew tells us of Jesus’
celebrated Sermon on the Mount; possibly, scholars say, reported, presented in
that way, by Matthew for his Jewish-Christian Church congregation, because of
their life-long familiarity with the Law of God given on Mount Sinai to Moses. Today, however, St. Luke’s Gospel gives us a
like sermon of Jesus but presents it as His Sermon on the Plain or Plateau, that
is, a sermon given at the people’s level to the people actually with Jesus and hearing
Him, an account shorter and less Jewish in character than St. Matthew’s presentation
of it as a sermon given to Moses alone on the very top of Mount Sinai
Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount begins with the
words, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’, rather impersonal and legal, whereas
Luke’s Sermon on the Plain begins:
Blessed are you
who are poor, for the Kingdom of Heaven is yours; blessed are you who are
now hungry, for you will be satisfied.
That crowd gathered around Jesus on the
Plain had come far and wide to hear Jesus and to learn from Him: they were poor,
in need of Jesus’ help, ‘hungry’ for His teaching and truth, they were
actually weeping for their sins, because they had come to a prophet Who
called on them to repent and actually enabled and inspired them to do just that. Above
all however those people were to be made aware of what awaited Jesus Himself
and how they themselves might be called upon to share in it with Him as true
disciples:
Blessed are you
when people hate, exclude, insult, and denounce you, on account of the Son of
Man. Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Your reward will be great in heaven!
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ St. Luke’s Sermon
on the Plain is directed to us Catholics and Christians living today, in times
of pandemic and resurgent paganism, where millions, far from seeking out Jesus
for the true wisdom of life, are deliberately turning their hearts away from
the One True God and the Christ Whom He has sent, and rejoicing in what
they foolishly consider as their new-found freedom: to do what they want,
as and when they will; to enjoy their own chosen pleasures as and how
they will; to flourish before men, secure in their power, popularity,
and possessions; and eventually, to contentedly anticipate -- if not exactly
a well-earned rest -- but certainly a gentle entry into the restful peace of untouchable
oblivion.
BUT! our Gospel recalls to our minds once
again the spirit of those words of Jeremiah, ‘Cursed is the one who trusts in
human beings, whose heart turns away from the Lord’, by continuing further with
Jesus’ own words of warning (not cursing):
Woe to you who are
rich, who are filled, who laugh now; woe to you when all speak well of you, for
their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.
Yes indeed, woe to all who turn their hearts away
from the Lord in their search for the good things and comforts the god of this
world offers to all who will – as Jesus would not -- bow down and serve,
worship, him; woe because:
You justify yourselves
in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts. For what is of human esteem is an abomination
in the sight of God. (Luke 16:15)
