14th. Sunday
(Year B)
(Ezekiel 2:2-5; 2nd.
Corinthians 12:7-10; Mark 6:1-6)
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 impress upon the people that there was a
prophet in their midst, and 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, he found hard to understand because it was so much
at variance with his own 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 Himself and for us.
Consequently, He would only allow Paul to do great things for His holy
name in such a way that, at the same time, Paul would be learning –
unforgettably – the truth that, of himself, he could do nothing for
salvation. And so Paul eventually came
to rejoice, for example, in his own inability to make great literary 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 accord 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 the wisdom of 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 bishops and
frequently expected by Catholic people to somehow make Jesus popular and His
teaching acceptable to all who hear them.
That, however, is not their
primary function: they must first of all bear witness to God’s
truth, learnt first of all from Mother Church and then vivified by their own
faithful awareness of God’s Personal activity and goodness in their lives. 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 will be
– at times – a contradiction to us, or it will seem so: creating a decisive
tension within us, or simply jolting us out of our complacency. And that is its essential purpose and
function: to touch and sound new depths in, to open up the very roots of, our
God-given being to the influence of His grace, and thus lead us to a richer,
fuller, and more authentic human life and Christian fulfilment as witnesses to
God’s truth.
For,
left to ourselves, we tend to spend so much of our lives in superficial
pleasures and distractions which empty us of character; and these God-given
contradictions, where God can seem, at times, so absent, are not necessarily
meant to make us more noticeably holy or
religious, more obviously ‘good’, but simply, 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, beauty and truth, of our
experience of life. Now, faith is the Christian faculty that
enables us to believe, recognize, and to respond to God’s presence in and
throughout the whole of life; and we respond to His presence by doing what is
true, loving what is beautiful, and dedicating ourselves to life in all its
fullness -- spiritual as well as bodily, eternal a well as natural -- because of
His imprint which they bear and His call they 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 and trusting: trying to draw God to their
children by constant prayer and trust, and their children to God by ever deeper
(and more costly!) love and patience. As
silent witnesses to God where words of exhortation and instruction cannot be
given because they will 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.
Again, young people growing up can encounter for the
first time what have been called the ‘frontier experiences’ of sex, when their
growing sexual awareness opens up frontiers of life hitherto unknown, instilling
a zest and adventure into life, and discovering vast, exciting, new areas of
sensibility. On the other hand though,
these ‘frontier experiences’ can also bring tension and intense anxiety, fear,
and disillusionment into sincere young hearts.
Nevertheless, these trials and sufferings are not situations,
experiences, where God is absent; no! for those who have faith, who seek life’s golden nugget of worthwhileness, these experiences can also be recognized
as God’s word, meant to make them more humble and patient in and with
themselves, more loving and trustful of His Spirit gradually leading them to the
depths of human maturity that they may then be made more truly and fully divine
in Christ.
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 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 the teaching of
Mother Church and in our personal awareness and experience of God’s
goodness.
Seek
true humanity, full and free; seek confidently and unswervingly the 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.
(2015)
