6th. Sunday Year (C)
(Jeremiah
17:5-8; 1 Corinthians 15:12, 16-20; Luke 6:17, 20-26)
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, the overall message of
our readings today is one of trust and hope.
In our first reading taken from the prophet Jeremiah we heard:
Blessed is the man who trusts in
the Lord, and whose hope is the Lord.
That may sound somewhat strange, as if the same thing were
being said twice; there is, however, a difference of emphasis between the two
phrases. “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord” stresses the fact that here and now -- in whatever
circumstances such a person finds himself and whatever he is trying to do --
such a one, trusting in the Lord at
all times, knows that it is the Lord who enables him to respond and face up to
the changing situations, difficulties, and trials of daily life; whereas the
second phrase ‘and whose hope is the
Lord’ is totally centred on the future, centred on the very Person of the Risen
Lord Jesus, now glorified in the human flesh He shares with us, and Who finally
will come again to call all His faithful disciples to share with Him in the glory
of His Father and the Holy Spirit in heaven.
The second reading, taken from St. Paul’s first letter to
the Corinthians, being centred on the heavenly Jesus is obviously to be
related to that second phrase ‘Blessed is the man whose hope is the Lord’, for St. Paul tells his
converts:
If Christ is preached as raised
from the dead, how can some among you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
The Church’s proclamation that Christ is risen from the
dead, Paul is saying, should be your sure and steadfast hope for your own
future state beyond the grave; because Jesus has already taken our human flesh
with Him to heaven, the only question will be about the nature of our
personal relationship with Jesus; and for that we now turn to the Gospel
reading, where Jesus develops that beatitude of ’trust in the Lord’ proclaimed
by the prophet Jeremiah.
Jesus,
raising His eyes toward His disciples, said: “Blessed are you who are poor, for
the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are
you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will
laugh. Blessed are you when people hate
you, and when they exclude and insult you, and denounce your name as evil, on
account of the Son of Man. Rejoice and
leap for joy on that day! Behold your
reward will be great in heaven, for their ancestors treated the prophets in the
same way.”
Blessed – not that
inept word happy -- are those whose
trust in the Lord is so great that here
and now, in this demanding, deceptive, and increasingly antagonistic world, their
minds are in no way centred on personal
success or popularity in their dealings with the world, for they are well aware
that their true peace and joy, their true fulfilment, is only to be found with
God and their trying to doing His will in Jesus. To that end, they are content to have less and,
if necessary, to suffer more than others in the course of their daily lives; indeed,
some there are whose commitment to the Lord is such that they are able to bear
contradiction and opposition without ever regarding themselves as misguided or
lonely. Blessed, says Jesus, are such whose trust is,
indeed, in the Lord their God.
I think that, even today, many can still understand and
appreciate the meaning of Our Lord’s words and the beauty of the character they
portray. It would indeed be a privilege
to know someone like that; and how still more wonderful would it not be for us
ourselves to be personally blessed to such a degree that it could be truly said
of us, that our trust was wholly in the
Lord.
However, leaving aside such personal thoughts and aspirations,
those words of Jesus I have just quoted would have been an excellent place for Him
to end His short discourse and thus leave a pleasing impression on the minds of
His hearers. But Jesus did not stop there,
He went on to add:
But woe to you who are rich, for
you have received your consolation. Woe
to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve
and weep. Woe to you when all speak well
of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in that way.
Why did Jesus go on to say those words? Because, dear People of God, Jesus came to
bear witness to the truth and we present-day Christians in a up-to-date and
increasingly pagan society are afraid
to accept and profess them as God’s truth.
There were very many Jews in Jesus’ days who pretended to be authentic,
obedient, Jews for what they could get out of such pretence: the admiration of
others, money, authority, and social position.
And why does Jesus, through His Church today, continue to say such words
to many who call themselves, or are regarded as, Catholics and Christians whereas,
in fact, they are insipid or even treacherous witnesses to Jesus before the
world? Because Jesus’ words were and are
for all time and they are most urgently needed today. Dear fellow Catholics, if at times the immediate
words of our pagan legislators and leaders of society seem to bear witness to Jesus’ own words or intentions their
overall actions and their most intimate intentions are far from love of and/or
obedience to Jesus. And what is more,
there are Catholics and Christians of greater and lesser significance who also cannot
comfortably hear, and most certainly cannot proclaim, such words of Jesus as we
have just heard – and there are many other like words disregarded for public
reading – lest such proclamation provoke hostility towards themselves or the
Church! It could even result in someone saying
to them personally: “What’s wrong with being rich?” or “What’s wrong with having
plenty; what’s wrong with enjoying a good laugh and liking to hear
praise?” Before such confrontation far
too many Christians today become apologetic; they want to slip away quickly
before their adversaries go on to add in yet more strident tones: “The trouble
with you Christians and Church-goers is that you are spoil sports; most human
feelings and pleasures are sins according to you.” And if, at this late juncture, a few of the more
prominent and committed Catholics might, perhaps, still be standing apparently firm
in the face of such hot, self-righteous,
indignation from worldly people, they will almost certainly feel it necessary
-- more prudent -- to explain Jesus’ words in such a way that
their cutting, offending, edge is blunted and softened so that they no longer
trouble, disturb, and certainly cannot infuriate, the sensitive ears of those
who have left behind former religious and/or pious Christian attitudes for more
modern, politically-correct and popularly-acceptable thought patterns.
Why, People of God, did Jesus not behave in such a way? Why did Jesus choose to use provocatively
hard words, as in today’s particular occasion of Luke’s ‘Sermon on the Plain’,
without giving any explanation?
It was most certainly not
because He didn’t love His hearers divinely; it was not because, as a man, He was irritated and fed-up with people, or that
He just couldn’t be bothered to explain His thought. On the contrary, His words on this occasion
were carefully chosen with the divine intent of spurring His hearers to ponder
in their minds and search their hearts in order to find for themselves some
understanding. In other words, His
failure to explain further was motivated by true love, divine love for the salvation of His listeners. Modern pseudo-Christian attempted explanations
and justifications, on the other hand, being motivated by human sentimentality
at the best, or more frequently by self-love, that is, by fear of giving
offence, are so weak and insipid to non-believers that they promise themselves
to have done with such people and with any further thoughts about the Faith
itself.
Once again, therefore, we come back to the burning question
of why it is that Jesus so frequently and consistently differs from us and our
modern sensitivities?
The reason for Jesus’ difference, the reason why the
authors of the Sacred Scriptures, the old Prophets, and the New Testament
writers Peter and Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, are at times so different
from us in their attitudes and words, is because too many modern Catholics are,
in fact, like the Corinthians to whom Paul was writing in today’s second
reading: the Lord was not those
Corinthians’ hope for the future, and too many of today’s believers,
likewise, do not put their trust fully
in the Lord for our present and future well-being. Too many, high and low, try ever so hard to
please and placate, to be politically correct and socially acceptable even
though we have clearly heard the Prophet saying in the name of God:
Cursed is the man who trusts in human
beings and seeks his strength in flesh.
Because we, Catholics and Christians as a whole, do not
fully trust the Lord, because we – in the sight and hearing of men -- try so desperately
to secure our own personal acceptability, therefore many laboriously thought-out
and much publicised projects and programmes come to nothing, and have to be returned
to the planning board again and again to find out what went wrong the first
time, why people did not respond. And then
we hear of yet another approach, another new scheme, that will, it is fancied,
assuredly bear the fruit we like to desire, and bring the worldly success we so
deeply crave.
People of God, it is only those whose hope is THE LORD, who calmly trust in His loving
Providence and rejoice in His Personal presence in all life’s circumstances and before all people, who can speak
God’s truth when necessary, as did Jesus, without thoughts of self-interest or politics
of popularity and power intruding themselves so as to influence, mould, and divert,
the Spirit’s lead. So often words like ‘prudence’
and ‘wisdom’ are desecrated by being twisted so as to protect and disguise their
user’s secret fears and less-than-honourable
aspirations: “It wouldn’t be prudent to say that just now”, “we must be wise in our choice of words, and weigh up
carefully the possible effects of speaking out in such a way”; and thus we
find ourselves behaving just as did the Pharisees when Jesus asked them about
John the Baptist:
The baptism of John, where was it
from: From heaven or from men? And they reasoned
among themselves, saying: "If we say, 'From heaven,' He will say to us,
'Why then did you not believe him?'
"But if we say: 'From men,' we fear the multitude, for all count
John as a prophet." So, they answered
Jesus and said: "We do not know." And He said to them: "Neither
will I tell you by what authority I do these things. (Matthew 21:25-27)
In such a way -- by countless human caveats and cautions --
the influence of God’s Holy Spirit of fire and truth is, in modern western
society, impeded and confined, blunted and obscured, before finally being rejected
and denied.
Jesus proclaimed His Good News under the inspiration and in
the power of His Spirit. The Holy
Apostles, the Fathers of the Church, all the Doctors and Saints -- holy men and
women -- who have guided and illuminated Mother Church throughout the ages,
have, each in their own degree, done likewise: they have spoken, they have
acted, in obedience to and under the impulse of, the Spirit of holiness and
fire Whom the Lord has bequeathed to His Church. And we Catholic Christians of today, as a
whole and individually, must learn the courage to speak and act in like manner,
lest our tainted presentation of God’s Truth, of Jesus’ redemptive sacrifice, of
the ‘faith of our fathers’ and of Mother Church’s saints and martyrs, will
continue to fail today’s sinful and secular society.
Do not think I am advocating ‘Dutch courage’, or the
‘Gung-Ho’ attitude and tactics of religious fanatics: far from it, I am
speaking of that quiet courage and firm conviction which comes from God and is
given only to those who:
Trust in the Lord, and
whose hope is the Lord.