18th. Sunday of the Year (C)
(Ecclesiastes 1:2; 2:21-23.
Colossians 3:1-5, 9-11. Luke
12:13-21)
Watching a news programme on the television a few years ago,
I saw a picture of a Mosque in Birmingham filled with men worshipping. Then, and even more now, you could go, to
Christian churches, even to Catholic churches, and find them half empty. Why is this?
Because so many Christians, too many Catholics, are not living their
faith today: they are either living for the world, for its pleasures and
advantages, or in fear of the world in its denial of God and criticism of the Faith. The Muslims I then saw filling the mosque, on
the other hand, were there, at that time, because they felt themselves to be a
minority somewhat under threat, and so they were rallying together round the
one thing that, in a somewhat alien country and historically Christian society,
most distinguishes them from others and most unites them among themselves, that
is their Muslim faith. It was like that
in Ireland over a hundred years ago when Irish men and women, under persecution
and oppression, held firm by rallying together round their faith, their
Catholic Faith, which distinguished and
sustained them in the face of their Protestant persecutors and British
opponents. The same phenomenon occurred
in Poland when Catholic Poles were under atheistic Communist rule. When oppression more or less ceased in both Ireland
and Poland, then the practice of the Catholic faith also began to fall in
fervour as men and women, more at ease with an apparently friendly world, began to enjoy
living in the world more than they rejoiced in the practice their faith: with
the world an enemy, the faith was a lifeline; with the world apparently
friendly, should the precepts of Catholic faith be allowed to disturb that
mutual acceptance and the approval of surrounding society?
Today especially, even where Catholics still value their
faith, too many are tempted to live at ease with the world in which the ruling
society most assiduously claims itself to be doing GOOD, by doing whatever is acceptable
to modern men and women, by promoting whatever assimilates the great majority
of them into one … a process that used to be known as finding the lowest common denominator,
but which is now regarded as political correctness, enforceable by criminal
law.
Those modern Catholic and Christian believers and
practitioners of whom I speak do
not openly or totally give in to such temptation, but are prepared to make
serious concessions to it, and so, they begin to talk about the need to make
our faith acceptable to and popular with, modern society where people claim to
have a much greater knowledge of science and a much wider understanding of non-Western cultures than their forebears
possessed, and a much greater awareness of and hatred for, racism, colonialism,
prejudice, etc. etc., indeed for whatever divides or distinguishes. In
this way some come to justify singular interpretations of the Faith, indeed
they seem to feel it their vocational calling to do all they can: watering down
difficult teaching and brushing aside unwanted rules, all in order to make
their presentation of the Faith as attractive and as easy to understand as
possible, for others whom they hope to thereby persuade to accept the Catholic
way of life. People will come to the
Faith it is thought and said, if, but only if, they find us nice people
not overburdened with troublesome principles; only if they find our message
accommodating and comforting, and if the portals of our church are open wide, welcoming and obstacle free, to 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 Him:
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)
The Father draws and gives to Jesus disciples who have come
to know Him through the witness of Mother Church and her children, disciples who
themselves make Jesus known by proclaiming His Truth and presenting His
teaching to all who are sincerely seeking God and His salvation. But, People of God, how could anyone come to
love the authentic Jesus if His followers are intent, first and foremost, on
presenting themselves as nice Jesus-people? How can followers whose aim is to offer a
popularly acceptable message, rightly proclaim the teaching of Jesus? Their want to present their own
version of the Gospel, a version adapted to modern ideas and current
preferences, not the Good News of Jesus as given us in the Scriptures and
proclaimed in the traditional teaching of the Church. They do appear to be ashamed of Jesus and of
His words in the face of the world!
Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth. I have come to bring not peace but the sword. For I have come to set a man ‘against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her other-in-law;
And that possible rejection of both Himself and of His teaching Jesus
foresaw and most deliberately condemned it, by going on to say:
He
who does not take up his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it , and
he who has lost his life for My sake will find it. (Matthew 10:34–39)
This state of affairs comes about because people all too
easily think only in terms of this world, as if everything is to be decided
here on earth according to human judgements and expectations; and therefore our
readings today are providential, warning us, most explicitly, about this folly,
by proclaiming that this world is not the be all and end all of life for a
Christian or a Catholic:
Here is one who has laboured with
wisdom, knowledge, and skill; and yet to another who has not laboured over it, he
must leave property. This also is vanity and a great misfortune.
In fact, this world and our experience of it, is but mankind’s
essential preparation for what is to come, a life of either eternal fulfilment
or eternal loss:
Then Jesus told them a
parable. “There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest. He asked himself, ‘What shall I do, for
I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do: I shall tear down my
barns and build larger ones. There I shall store all my grain and other goods and
I shall say to myself, “Now as for you, 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?'
The currently widespread persuasion that the Good News of
Jesus has to be subjected to our adaptation is an unacknowledged capitulation
to modern society’s craven worship of popularity. 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.
There are some disciples in the Church today who follow
Pilate rather than Jesus:
Pilate therefore said to Him,
"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 give the
same thought a different twist: the only true proclamation of the Gospel
is one that makes Jesus and His teaching popular, we must therefore study
modern attitudes and practices carefully
and sympathetically, so as to be able to make suitable adaptations to the
Gospel message that will enable it to win 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 and in Jesus our Lord and Saviour; we have to
stir up more 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 (1 John 4:6) says quite bluntly:
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.
And they had this confidence and strength because they
firmly believed what the infallible 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, fulfilment, and, in order to attain that blessedness they proclaimed a
Gospel of Truth, knowing that only divine truth can form a human being in the
divine likeness:
The new self is being renewed
for knowledge in 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 cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by
His wounds you were healed. (1 Peter 2:24).
Therefore, even in the early Church, there were those who wanted
to preach a Gospel without the Cross, a popular Gospel instead of the Gospel of
righteousness. Of them, the Apostle Paul
said with incisive clarity (1 Corinthians 1:18-19):
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."
And again in his letter to the Galatians (5:11):
Brethren, if I still preach
circumcision, why do I still suffer persecution? Then the offence of the cross
has ceased.
People of God, in times of trial we must cling to Jesus all
the more closely in Spirit and in Truth, for:
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. (2 Timothy 2:11-13)
(2022)
