Our readings today are centred upon what one might call the art of loving God in Mother Church.
We were told of the good things God promised and did for Israel, that you may live and take possession of the land that the Lord your God is giving you, and, bequeathing such gifts to Israel, Moses urged those Israelites to:
Listen to the statutes and the rules that I am teaching you.
However, the subsequent history of Israel – even at its very best -- can be characterized by the words of Fr. Faber, ‘We make His love too narrow by false limits of our own, and we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own” -- was perfectly exemplified by the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Jesus’ days. The Pharisees were relatively new-comers to religious life in Jerusalem and Israel as a whole; they were popular with the people and, indeed, they had become the self-appointed religious leaders of the common people. The traditional Sadducees were the priestly authorities in charge of the world-famous Temple in Jerusalem and men of power in Jewish society. The Pharisees knew the Law very well but they were most enthusiastic about their own traditions and they were seriously jealous of their own assumed authority as teachers of the people. The Sadducees on the other hand dealt with the occupying Roman power as authorised rulers of the Temple with multitudes of gift-bearing worshippers coming from abroad every year to join their Palestinian brethren for the great religious feasts.
The first and second readings should also serve to remind us of the great blessings God has bestowed on us in our Catholic Faith and Mother Church:
Keep (what you have been taught) for this will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, 'Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.
Every good and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with Whom there is no variation or shadow due to change. Of His own will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. … Therefore, receive with meekness the implanted word which is able to save your souls. But, be doers of the word and not hearers only.
Moses told the Israelites how they should treasure God’s gifts:
You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of the LORD your God that I command you;
And in these modern ‘synodal’ times such words are of supreme importance for us Catholics, because the Faith we have received is to be kept in its unstained integrity because it is not of human origin, as Jesus made abundantly clear when He said, as we heard in last Sunday’s Gospel reading:
The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. (John 6:63-64)
It was blessed Peter -- first and greatest Pope -- who was inspired by the Father to give the only true response to Jesus’ words, not only on behalf of all his fellow Apostles, but in the name of all subsequent Catholics and true Christians:
Lord, You have the words of eternal life. Also, we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." (John 6:68-70)
And it is that
same spirit to which you heard St. James give expression in our second reading:
Receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your
souls, (and) be doers of that word.
But
what about the Scribes and Pharisees, self-appointed, and ‘God-exclusive’ spiritual
leaders in Israel proclaiming their own traditions:
Jesus said to them: ‘Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written: “This
people honours Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me; in vain do
they worship Me teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.” (Mk. 7:6)
In order face up to the modern versions of such malign influences we must, above all else, learn to truly appreciate and love the Faith which God has so graciously bestowed upon us, and cherish it in a personal relationship of love with God, mirroring Jesus’ love of His Father, and the Holy Spirit’s bonding power. For the Faith has been given us in order to change us from what – from who -- we are, into what – who -- God wants us to become ; it has been given us to re-form us, not in accordance with the maxims and examples of the world around us, nor for the fulfilment of our own personal preferences and ambitions, but after the pattern, and according to the will, of Him Who is now seated at the right hand of the Father in heaven, preparing a place for us to live there with Him for all eternity.
The traditions of the elders to which the Pharisees and Scribes were so devoted were originally practiced -- and subsequently handed down -- as a means of helping and protecting true devotion among the people of Israel. And there were undoubtedly some in Israel who had profited and would continue to profit from their observance. The trouble was, however, that the zeal of the Pharisees and Scribes for such traditions led them, at times, to disregard or even reject God’s Personal commands and His broader spiritual teaching given through the Prophets of Israel.
You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men. (Mk. 7:8)
Moreover, this
excessive and misplaced zeal of the Pharisees and Scribes pushed them further,
even, indeed, to assert that everyone in Israel should be bound by their
traditions. This amounted,
Teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.
And Mother church still has modern Pharisees at work within her, preaching doctrines of their own by adding their modern and more popular interpretation to her pristine doctrines, like certain ‘synodal decisions’ of the German hierarchy, some of whose members have also shown clear signs of the Pharisaic ‘love of money’ (Luke 14:15) And as for present-day Scribes we can sometimes come across clerics who are firmly Catholic both doctrinally and morally, unlike the German Pharisees, but who, nevertheless, are more functionaries of the Church establishment than serving disciples of Jesus. And as for the laity in Mother Church, how many have found Jesus’ words ‘hard’ and have left Him and her … millions in our Western world. And that leaves us who seek and strive to love and live in, work and pray for, Mother Church to learn as much and as best we can from today’s Eucharistic celebration
In Mother Church there are those in positions of authority that entitle or at times require them to give advice and authoritative guidance to the People of God who are members of their flock. Occasionally, that guidance – because the authority behind it stems from learning, experience, and above all, from the acknowledged and invoked guidance of God’s promised grace -- requires obedience, even strict obedience, at times, and it always merits sincere respect and thoughtful attention. No one can totally ignore or disregard such guidance.
Nevertheless, we
must always realize that we have been set free by Jesus Christ to serve God
in Spirit and in Truth as living members of the Body of Christ, in response
to the guidance of His Holy Spirit living and working within us; and that no
human guides can ever be allowed to cut us off from that personal response to
God so long as we remain in Jesus by keeping His known commands, and
following His general teaching mediated to our conscience through the Gospel
proclamation of Mother Church.
Let no one boast in men. For all things are yours: whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world or life or death, or things present or things to come -- all are yours. And you are Christ's, and Christ is God's.
As we go through life, striving to listen ever more carefully to God and
follow Him ever more closely, we are always advancing to what is -- for us –
new and unknown territory so to speak.
Therefore, it is indeed good and necessary that we should have the help
of guidance from Mother Church, for on
her alone did Jesus bestow the fullness of His Spirit, and to her alone does the Spirit recall
all that Jesus taught and did. Nevertheless,
after personal prayer to God, after listening to His Spirit whispering in our
conscience and abiding in Mother Church, after acknowledging our own
inclination to sin and God’s wonderful goodness to us, it is still up to each of us, personally, to
decide finally which way to go, because such responsible commitment is the
hall-mark of a personal relationship with God intimately known and loved
in our heart and life, it is the glory of a Christian which we should not yield,
and certainly never abandon, to another.
Jesus once declared to His disciples:
When they deliver you up, do not worry about how or what you should
speak, for it will be given to you in that hour what you should speak; for it
is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you. (Matthew
10:19-21)
Jesus might have said, ‘the Spirit of My Father will guide you’, but no, He actually said, ‘the Spirit of your Father Who speaks in you’ will help you. As it were obliterating Himself, Jesus shows us how closely He wants His disciples to be united to, one with, His Father, and it is for that end He gives us His Spirit at baptism and renews His Spirit within us every time we rightly receive Holy Communion. Oneness with the Father, in Jesus, by the Spirit, that is the culmination, crowning and fulfilment, of all Christian life and holiness.
At no stage in our life can we presume that we have heard, understood, and responded aright, without regularly checking -- as we proceed further -- that we are, indeed, not only within the parameters of the Faith, but also walking in the direction of, and in a comforting conformity with, the life-thrust of her who is both the unique Bride of Christ and also our own Mother. And this constant longing for, and looking to, God; this unceasing watchfulness for the motions of His Spirit within us; this abiding awareness of personal weakness and ignorance together with an ever growing awareness of and reliance upon God’s goodness to us, … all these endeavours and experiences gradually build up in us an ever deeper confidence and abiding joy in Mother Church, together with an ever more humbling and grateful experience and awareness of the presence, power, and goodness of God in our individual lives.
The Spirit searches all things, yes, the deep things of God: the things which God has prepared for those who love Him; things which God has revealed to us through His Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:9-10)
