23rd Sunday Year C 2022

 

23^rd. Sunday Year (C)

(Wisdom 9:13-18; Letter to Philemon 9-10, 12-17; Luke 14:25-33)

 

 

Onesimus, though not a Christian, had hoped to gain some advantage by persuading an honoured Christian teacher, Paul of Tarsus, to intercede with Philemon, a Christian, whose slave he was.  Onesimus’ initial confidence in his owner’s friend and “partner” clearly bore fruit, for Paul, having first guided him to become a Christian, then offered to make good whatever loss Philemon might have suffered by Onesimus’ flight. On this basis, Paul appealed to Philemon to receive his slave back into his household as he would receive Paul himself.

Neither Greek nor Roman slavery was usually a permanent state. Most commonly, an owner granted freedom to a faithful slave as a reward for his or her work and loyalty; this was frequently done through the owner’s will at death. While owners could punish disloyal slaves by including in their wills a clause prohibiting their heirs from ever letting such slaves go, there is also much evidence that others, while still living, had a variety of reasons for choosing to set free some of their slaves, not infrequently  about the age of thirty. Thus the question regarding Onesimus was most likely when, not if, Philemon planned to set him free.

The main features distinguishing 1st century slavery from that later practiced in the New World are the following: racial factors played no role; education was greatly encouraged (some slaves were better educated than their owners) and it enhanced a slave’s value; many slaves carried out sensitive and highly responsible social functions; slaves could own property (including other slaves!); their religious and cultural traditions were the same as those of the freeborn; no laws prohibited public assembly of slaves; and (perhaps above all) the majority of urban and domestic slaves could legitimately anticipate becoming free persons.

You will have noticed, I am sure, that Paul, in our second reading, was not like our modern "human rights" promoters and protagonists.  Neither was Peter in his first letter where he writes (2:18-21):

Servants, be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh.  For this is commendable: if, because of conscience toward God, one endures grief suffering wrongfully.  For what credit is it if, when you are beaten for your faults, you take it patiently? But when you do good and suffer -- if you take it patiently -- this is commendable before God.  For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps.

Now, I do not in any way wish to detract from the noble work done by many good people for the human rights of the underprivileged and needy, however, there is something we should understand about the unwillingness of St. Paul, and indeed St. Peter, to adopt such an attitude with regard to the public institution of slavery in the situation of the early Church.

Perhaps we should note, first of all and just in passing, that there are some people who will promote good causes for reasons which, at times, are not so worthy as the causes they are promoting.  For example, some will promote a good cause because, basically, they like a good fight, in which case they are not so much promoters as protagonists; others love to see their own ideas, their own opinions, prevail, and to that extent they promote others' rights only in order to express their own ego, exert their own talents, or to extend their own sphere of influence.

However, there are indeed many who promote human rights from good motives and with the right intentions.  Then why not Peter, why not Paul, with regard to the social institution of slavery?  This is worth considering because we can perhaps learn, from both Peter and Paul, why so much apparently being said and done today, nevertheless, and despite many a fanfare of official praise and media proclamation, seems to bring forth little or no good fruit.  Surely it is one of societies' most anxious questions today why so much apparently well-intentioned legislation and so many, much-trumpeted, positive measures taken in society, are seemingly quite unable to stem the slide into ever-greater indiscipline, lawlessness, moral decadence, and even rank corruption?

In our Gospel reading you heard Our Blessed Lord declare:

If anyone comes to Me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be My disciple.

Our Blessed Lord unequivocally demands that we put Him first in our lives.  And, indeed, since He only wants this in order that we might thereby be enabled to live before God in Spirit and in Truth, and to love and serve each other aright, He goes on to show the folly of those who would seek discipleship on any other terms:

Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple.  Which of you, wishing to construct a tower, does not first sit down and calculate the cost to see if there is enough for its completion?  Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers should laugh at him and say, 'This one began to build but did not have the resources to finish.'

Jesus takes this stand because He knows that if He Himself is not first in our lives, sin will, inevitably, continue to rule there.  And the empire of sin is never stagnant.   And when men -- ignoring or attempting to deny the existence of personal and public sin -- pretend, of their own assumed wisdom and presumed goodness, to prescribe remedies for deep social sicknesses, their tragic misunderstanding of human nature only compounds the suffering by deepening social confusion and anxiety, and fostering  hopelessness and despair among individuals.

St. Peter and St. Paul, however, faithfully put Jesus first, not only in the letters they wrote, but in their whole life and work; above all, in their work of establishing the Church as the Body of Christ.  The Church was being newly born, so to speak, into an alien world, and the very first thing Christians had to understand was that, by living their new lives with unwavering faith in Jesus and full confidence in the strength and inspiration of His most Holy Spirit, they could now transcend and would ultimately transform their earthly situation.  This new, God-given faith – being, as Jesus Himself put it, like the pearl of great price and the treasure found with great joy in the field – was known by the Apostles to be of such supreme value that they could in no way allow it to be subjected to worldly considerations or made secondary to earthly values.  For those blessed with the gift of faith even the bonds of slavery could in no way be allowed to overshadow the joy of their personal relationship with Christ or inhibit their commitment to, and confidence in the power of, His Spirit in their lives; whereby, the lowest and least fortunate, the most despised and worst abused, could work in and for the Church as much and as well as all others, confident that their faith could empower them to joyfully order their lives so as to bear effective witness to Christ and bring about the ultimate triumph of His Spirit.  In those early Christian house-churches there was no distinction between slaves and free, all were equally slaves of the Lord Jesus, and all were totally committed to and equally important for the triumph of the Kingdom of God over the pagan empire of Rome.  Indeed, such was their confidence that even direct opposition and persecution by the imperial power came to be seen as no insuperable obstacle to the new Faith.

Nevertheless, that imperial power could not be openly confronted, and therefore Peter and Paul , guided by the Spirit of Jesus their  Lord and Saviour, considered it their main duty to teach Christian disciples how to rightly worship the Father, and live each day by the light of Jesus’ Gospel truth in the power of His Spirit, thus growing ever more calm and assured in their Christian confidence and love.

And that, dear People of God, is still of supreme importance for us modern disciples of Jesus; for, if our Christian witness is to be effective before the world, He, Jesus, has to be first in our lives, not our presumed good works, supposed social influence, or desired personal popularity, :

Love the Lord your God with all your Heart, and with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. This is the first commandment.  (Mk. 12:30-31)

At this, the most basic and most important level, however, many Catholics are failing grievously today, for all too often they go to Mass out of mere habit or, at best, to receive a little-understood Communion. For those Christians envisaged by St. Paul and St. Peter, the supreme reason for our attendance at Mass should always be a will to give humble worship and most grateful praise and thanksgiving to God our Father by personally offering ourselves with Jesus in the sacrifice of Holy Mass -- Mother Church’s re-presentation, for God’s People of today and all ages  to come, of Jesus’ unique self-sacrifice on Calvary -- by the Spirit of Jesus ever abiding in the her and refreshing us anew at every such Mass, to the glory of God the Father.

Moreover, that intention to worship the Father should always be imbued with and embrace a desire to know Him and to follow Jesus ever better.  That is why, at Mass, the Scriptures are read and a homily given: because God's Word is, as Jesus Himself said, our bread of life.  And yet, how many Catholics hardly listen to its solemn proclamation, and make little effort appreciate a sermon, or address, given to explain it!

And so, the ultimate reason why our modern society is failing, and why Government initiatives fall so short of producing the sort of society we all want, is shown us by Our Lord's words at the end of our Gospel reading:

Whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple.

Here Jesus is speaking as the supreme doctor of human souls, seeking to find out what are the passions or possessions that have over-powered and taken possession of us, and which always harm, gradually lessen and demean, and ultimately seek to destroy, us. 

There are, however, some disciples of Jesus today who seem to be willing to endure hardship, suffering, and opposition, and even to go so far as to hate their own life, for Jesus.  And yet, despite all that, cling hard to something that is still theirs, something that modern man and woman find most difficult of all to give up, something which, for them, defines the essence of their own personal identity and being: namely, their own opinion and their own will.

So many apparently good Catholics, good Christians, fail God, the Church, and indeed, themselves too, because, deep down, everything has to pass the test of their own self-approval and that of others; with the result that they feel the need, at every serious juncture in their faith-life, to review once again their own belonging to Jesus and His Church; to re-negotiate, so to speak, their own agreement with Him and His Church; and only after significant hesitation will they feel themselves able to accept anew the costs involved and signal their continuing but conditional commitment.  Now to such people, Jesus declares without any concession:

No one, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.  (Luke 9:62)

People of God, having ourselves been most wonderfully blessed in Jesus and in the Church, and now being faced with the ravages of sin bringing shame upon the Church and turmoil and catastrophic suffering all over the world, we should strive to live our lives ever more and more with Jesus for the Father.  Ultimately, the only life worth living for a human being is one of loving gratitude and joyous commitment to the glory of God the Father, in union with Jesus our Lord, under the rule and power of the Holy Spirit.  Only by faithfully walking along that way can we hope to find the fullness of being for which we long.  As was said in the book of Wisdom:

(Only when You) sent your Holy Spirit from on high, were the paths of those on earth made straight and people learned what pleases you.

22nd Sunday Year C 2022

 

22^nd. Sunday, Year (C)

(Sirach 3:17s., 20, 28s.; Hebrews 12: 18s., 22-24a; Luke 14:1, 7-11)

 

The story about the place of honour at the wedding feast seems, of itself, to be merely worldly advice; indeed, it seems to lead to a rather hypocritical semblance of humility, with the subject publicly choosing the lowest place whilst not only thinking himself worthy of a higher place, but indeed planning to receive honour in the sight of the other guests on being called higher by the host.  And yet, Our Blessed Lord uses such worldly scheming as a parable for heavenly truth and experience.

This, first of all, teaches us that our basic human attitudes and feelings are orientated towards the good ... that our human nature is not fundamentally vitiated.   Though we are indeed weak, ignorant, and sinful, our human nature is by no means totally corrupted, nor is our natural sensitivity without a measure of spiritual  awareness.  We have been and are made in the image of God, and this nature of ours is disturbed in the depths of its being by sin which, fundamentally, does not suit us.

The story told by Jesus about the natural embarrassment one would feel on being dismissed from the highest seat and sent to the lowest, is concerned not only with the resulting public humiliation, but also with the morally good response of deep personal embarrassment on being thus publicly obliged to admit one’s overweening pride and self-esteem on having originally arrogated the place of honour at the banquet table.

Human nature is made for God and can at times warn us of the presence of sin – something opposed and foreign to our true good -- when our explicit thinking is unable or unwilling to detect or recognize such a presence.   For example, most young people will instinctively feel embarrassment or even a certain fear at the first wrongful sex activity, whereby their basically good human nature warns them even when their minds and consciences are not sufficiently aware or enlightened; and how, indeed, can they subject themselves to their very first experience of dangerous drugs leading to  experiences with unknowable personal consequences without instinctive trepidation?  Adults also may make ‘faux-pas’ or gaffs in public and feel intense embarrassment as a result; and often enough, such feelings are not merely due to an anticipated loss of face, but also to the awareness of having originally spoken foolishly out of personal vanity, or fulsomely in a quest for human acceptance and praise.

Human nature is, I repeat, still good and sensitive enough to give authentic warning signals -- truly, intimations of immortality -- to our minds and explicit thinking.  Unfortunately, however, we can so quickly learn to resist and confuse our residual integrity, fighting against or even rejecting our instinctive modesty and honesty, with the result that even prostitutes and murderers, thieves, traducers, and traitors, become hard-faced as the Scriptures and daily-life experience in the world today tell us, and such people will say, ‘Where is our sin; what harm are we doing, we’re not hurting anyone who doesn’t deserve it are we? 

But why, after wrongly choosing the highest place at the feast, in our Gospel story, would the person concerned have to betake himself to the lowest seat of all?  Here  Our Blessed Lord has adapted the real-life situation somewhat in order to fit it for its present function as a parable of heavenly truth.  For, before God, none of us can, in truth, say that we are more worthy than anyone else: first of all, because we rarely – indeed, at times, will not – recognize the sin in our own lives, and secondly because we can never penetrate the hearts of others.  Therefore, the only attitude for a conscientious Christian is to take the lowest seat of all.  For greatness in the Kingdom of God is determined not by our opinion of our own worth or that of anyone else, but by God’s judgment, as St. Paul says (1 Corinthians 4:1-5):

With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged by you or by any human court.  I do not even judge myself.  I am not aware of anything against myself, but I am not thereby acquitted.  It is the Lord Who judges me.  Therefore do not pronounce judgment before the time, before the Lord comes, Who will bring to light the things now hidden in darkness and will disclose the purposes of the heart.  Then every man will receive his commendation from God. 

This part of our Gospel passage for today is rounded off by a general statement which seems to have been a favourite saying of Our Lord:

Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the man who humbles himself will be exalted.

Pride, self-assertion in ordinary human society is both bad manners and bad policy, but in the Kingdom of God it is totally inadmissible.  There, ‘pride goes before a fall’, and there is only kind of privilege and dignity: the kind that comes to those who do not seek it, but rather seek to love and serve God and are content to walk humbly and at peace with their neighbour.  The advice given in our Gospel reading about who to invite to your parties, is not meant to be exclusive of anyone, rich or poor, close friends or chance passers-by; the hospitality advised by Jesus is one which seeks to give generously, not to get, surreptitiously.  To all who are in need -- and the rich can be in need also – we should give, if our conscience calls and as our conscience guides; give, that is, in generous simplicity not with calculating discernment.

To close, let me offer you a story, from the early Desert Fathers, of one who knew how to give, when faced with need, and what is much more, he learned how to humble himself in his giving:

Before Abba Poemen’s group came to Scetis, there was an old man in Egypt who enjoyed considerable fame and repute.  But when Abba Poemen’s group went up to Scetis, men left the old man to go to see Abba Poemen. Abba Poemen was grieved at this and said to his disciples, ‘What is to be done about this great old man, for men grieve him by leaving him and coming to us who are nothing?  What shall we do, then, to comfort this old man?’  He said to them, ‘Make ready a little food, and take a skin of wine and let us go to see him and eat with him.  And so we shall be able to comfort him.’  So they put together some food, and went.

 When they knocked at the door, the old man’s one remaining disciple answered, saying, ‘Who are you?’  They responded, ‘Tell the abba, it is Poemen who desires to be blessed by him.’  The disciple reported this to the old man who sent him back telling him to say to Poemen, ‘Go away, I have no time.’  Nevertheless, in spite of the heat, they persevered, saying: ‘We shall not go away till we have been allowed to meet the old man.’  Seeing their humility and patience, the old man was filled with compunction and opened the door to them himself.  Then they went in and ate with him.  During the meal he said, ‘Truly, not only what I have heard about you is true, but I see that your works are a hundred-fold greater than those reports’, and from that day he became their friend, and the beauty of mutual appreciation and respect was restored among the brethren.     (2022)

21st Sunday Year C 2022

 

               21^st. Sunday of Year (C)                                      (Isaiah 66:18-21; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30)  

 

 

Jesus was asked, as you have just heard:

“Lord, will only a few people be saved?" He answered them, “Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I tell you, will attempt to enter and will not be able.”

Notice the question: ‘Lord, will only a few people be saved?’

That, in St. Luke’s Gospel, is a question asked by ’someone’; as Jesus was ‘somewhere’; literally ‘ passing through from one city and village to another’ on His way to Jerusalem.

Both Saints Mark and Matthew, however, give us the same teaching and tell us that the occasion when it was originally given by Jesus was in response to a rich young Jew who wanted to make sure of his way to heaven, but could not quite prevail over himself so much as to relinquish his great riches.

It seems, therefore, that Luke knew that he had a piece of very important teaching of Jesus to pass on to the Church but did not know just where to put it in his Gospel account; and so he puts it somewhere serious, that is  – Jesus on His way to Jerusalem -- but also ‘nowhere’, ‘passing through from one city and village to another’.  St. Luke, however, was guided by the Holy Spirit even though he did not know all the facts in this case, and the ‘context’ he chose, of Jesus being nowhere in particular and of nobody in particular questioning Him,  “Lord, will only a few people be saved?" such a context does open up our Gospel reading to today, when the phrasing of that question ‘does God save only a few?’ really means something to us, for it is, I say, truly modern in that it implies that any blame for human failure to find salvation is to be laid at God’s door, so to speak.

Now, Jesus often refused to answer such questions because they were not put to simply learn the truth, but rather to help in the justification of the questioner: simplicity and love of truth have never been common human virtues.   And so, here, Jesus responds not to the carefully chosen words but to the real situation and needs of the questioner (of whom Ss. Matthew and Mark tell us) and He responds as the Son of God, Who Himself, as man, most truly loves God and whole-heartedly seeks to do His will:

Strive to enter through the narrow gate, for many, I say to you, will attempt to enter and will not be able.

For Jesus, the question is not whether God saves only a few, but whether only a few men and women will make the required effort to enable themselves to receive what God wills to offer them.  Many will, indeed, want to enter the kingdom of God, but they will not want to strive to enter through a narrow gate; rather, they will think of presenting themselves later in the day, when, at some other point of entry, they imagine it might be easier to find access.

Our first reading told us of God choosing people from nations of every language, while the second described what would be involved for those thus specially chosen, emphasizing above all their need of serious and even painful training:

My son, do not disdain the discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by Him; for whom the Lord loves, He disciplines; He scourges every son He acknowledges.”    Endure your trials as “discipline”; God treats you as sons. For what “son” is there whom his father does not discipline?  At the time, all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.

However, such is the modern, largely self-indulgent, Western society to which we belong that I can already imagine someone saying: ‘Why should we have to suffer like that, why should religion entail suffering?   The answer is given us by Jesus Himself elsewhere in the Gospel as St. Matthew tells us:

His disciples were greatly astonished, saying, "Who then can be saved?"   Jesus looked at them and said: “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." (Matthew 19:25-26)

The reason why no man can save himself is simple enough: salvation is beyond all human powers, it is something that God alone can bring about, because it gives human beings a share in divine life, in the eternal blessedness and glory of God Himself, by making them partakers of His holiness.  This we have learned from our Christian faith and formation, which teaches us what the original disciples, with their Jewish background, could not begin to understand until they had seen Jesus rise from the dead and ascend in bodily glory to heaven.  A faith that promises such heavenly glory to weak and indeed sinful human beings obviously entails training; and that training will, obviously, inevitably, involve testing and trials, because it is a training intended to change us, to raise us up above our earthly limitations, to purge and purify us of our inherent selfishness and sinfulness.

We can recognize all this in the response given by the Master in our Gospel reading to those arriving outside the house after the doors have been closed:

After the master of the house has arisen and locked the door, then will you stand outside knocking and saying, ‘Lord, open the door for us.’ He will say to you in reply, ‘I do not know where you are from.’

Only those are recognized for salvation whose origin is known, and we are personally known in that way to the Father only if He can see Jesus, His beloved Son, in us: that is, if we, as living members of the Body of Christ, are being formed into the likeness of our Head; if we, as dutiful children of Mother Church, are being guided -- by the Spirit with which she has been endowed -- to follow her teaching and so to  live and walk as true disciples along the way of Jesus Christ, the one and only Lord of Salvation.   Only those thus showing themselves to be sincere disciples of the goodness and truth in Jesus are beloved of the Father.

Of course, all who are left outside, having no appreciation of the holiness and majesty of God, cry out in self-justification:

We ate and drank in Your company, and You taught in our streets.

Dear People of God, those words should give us cause for serious thought, because they are most appropriate for people like ourselves, who, every Sunday, hear the teaching of Jesus in the readings and the homily at Holy Mass before going on to eat and drink the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion.  Let us pray that our situation be nothing like that of the outsiders of the Gospel parable in whom the old adage, ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ was fully exemplified. 

They confidently proclaimed their familiarity with the Master:

            We ate and drank in your company and you taught in our streets.

But such protestations merely brought into prominence their hidden disdain for Him, for they had never really given attention to His words they heard in their streets, they had never seriously tried to appreciate His teaching in their hearts, nor had their eating and drinking in His presence ever been honest and sincere expressions of their love and longing for personal communion with Him.

Jesus’ answer is given in words of clear and deserved condemnation:

I do not know where you are from.  Depart from Me, all you evil doers.

Many today have little respect for religion and so have almost no appreciation of heavenly matters: instead of the transcendent God they can imagine nothing more than a mythical, white-haired, old man sitting on a gilded throne high above; while natural charm of manner, emotional exhibitionism, and the dynamics of spiritual careerism, are the only signs they consider to be indicative of the holiness engendered by the presence of God’s Spirit of truth and life.  Consequently, it is not surprising that this parable of Jesus and the attitude of the Master of the house can cause vehement complaints of self-righteous indignation from many: ‘Why should religion, discipleship, entail suffering?’

Because self-indulgence and self-satisfaction is prevalent among men and women of all ages the same teaching was given by Jesus on many other occasions and in many other ways throughout His ministry so that there could be no possibility of it being overlooked or ignored by anyone in the slightest degree serious about serving God:

 

Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it.  Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Mt 7:13-14)

         Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross,             and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses          his life for My sake and the gospel's will save it. (Mark 8:34-36)

 

So I say to you, ask, (You must ask) and it will be given to you; seek, (you must actually seek) and you will find; knock, (you must be prepared to stand, wait, and knock) and it will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9)

Assuredly, unless you are converted and become as little children, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:3)

People of God, in modern society as we know it, positive words and actions frighten people: leaders of all sorts prefer to be able to avoid responsibility for difficult decisions by saying that events left them with no other option, or that they did all that was humanly possible in straightened circumstances.  This they do, not because they love peace or have a high concern for others, but simply because they want to protect their own back from any possible attack, their own person from any cloud of suspicion or threat of criticism.  Even in religious matters, leaders can feel so vulnerable, so open to bitter criticism, that it is rare today for anything positive to be said if, so to speak, the direction of the wind and the temperature of the water have not been thoroughly tested and suitably allowed for beforehand.

Now Jesus had no such taste for self-preservation, no such fear of what human beings might think, say, or do, in His regard: He served only His Father’s glory and our salvation.  Therefore, we should take Him most seriously when He warns us, who, in this world, are privileged Catholics:

There will be wailing and grinding of teeth, when you see yourselves cast out of the Kingdom of God, and (others) come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and recline at table in the kingdom of God.

However, although we seriously, indeed anxiously, allow Our Lord’s words to admonish us, we must never forget our primary duty and privilege of filial confidence together with gratitude: we must always take to heart from, and place our trust in, words of comfort such as the following heard in our second reading and echoed throughout the whole of Our Blessed Lord’s life and teaching:

The Lord loves those whom He disciplines; He acknowledges every son He scourges.

To be loved by the Lord, to be accepted as His children, what a privilege!!  Surely,  any passing, earthly, trials and suffering imposed by the Lord Who thus loves us in His beloved Only-Begotten Son, are to be embraced with humble confidence and firm trust, by all who would be true disciples of Him Who embraced the Passion and Cross on Calvary with such enduring patience and consuming love for us. 

Son though He was, He (for us) learned obedience from what He suffered; and when He was made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him.  (Hebrews 5:8-9)

Having thus been made perfect in His own manhood when He rose in glory to join His Father in Heaven, He now awaits our purification and glorification as members of His Body; a perfection to be brought to fulfilment in us by the Holy Spirit He has given us and the teaching He has left us in Mother Church.                  (Modified 2022)