23rd. Sunday Year (C)

Twenty Third 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 by the owner’s will at death. While owners could punish disloyal slaves by including in their wills a clause prohibiting the heirs from ever letting them 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 inviting individuals’ hopelessness and despair.

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 the 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, 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.  However, since such a power could not be openly confronted Peter and Paul therefore considered it their main duty to teach Christian disciples how to rightly worship the Father, in and through Jesus, and to live each day by the light of His truth in the power of His Spirit, thus growing ever more calm and assured in their Christian confidence and love.

That 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 good works, social influence, or 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.  (Mark 12:30-31)

At this, the most basic and most important level, however, many Catholics are failing grievously today. For example, all too often they come to Mass not in a spirit of loving obedience, but in compliance with an unwelcome obligation or out of sheer habit: at best, in order to receive Communion.  Now, the supreme reason for our attendance at Mass should always be a will and a desire to personally encounter God in Jesus, worshipping the Father in the only acceptable way, that is, through Jesus: at holy Mass offering Jesus’ self-sacrifice on Calvary -- and ourselves with Him  -- by the Spirit, 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, many Catholics do not appreciate 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 possessions that have taken possession of us, and what, by wrongfully possessing us, thereby harm and lessen us. 

There are some 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, there remains something that is still theirs, something that modern man and woman find hardest of all to give up, which defines the essence of their own personal identity and being, namely, their own opinion, their own will, their own reputation.  So many apparently good Catholics, good Christians, fail God and the Church, indeed, fail themselves and the world too, because, deep down, they are not willing to give up their own self-approval and that of others.  That apparently little something is so often held back in their offering to Jesus, and through Him, to the Father, with the result that they have, at every serious juncture in life and in every time of trial, to review once again their own belonging to Him and His Church, to re-negotiate, so to speak, their own agreement with Him and His Church; and only after significant hesitation and delay, 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 yet, on the other hand, 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 the first reading said:

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

     

21st. Sunday of Year (C)

    Twenty First  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 phrasing of the question really means, ‘does God save only a few?’, and that, I say, is a typically human, and indeed modern, way of phrasing the question, in that it implies that any blame for human failure to find salvation is to be laid at God’s door, so to speak.

Jesus often refused to answer questions as desired because frequently they were put not simply to 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; He responds as One Who truly loves God and whole-heartedly seeks to do His will; He responds as the only-begotten, uniquely beloved, Son of the Father:

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 men and women will make the required effort to enable themselves to receive what God chooses to offer them.  Many will, indeed, seek to enter the kingdom of God, but they will not strive to enter through the narrow gate; rather, they will present themselves late in the day at some other point of entry they imagine to be more easily accessible.

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:

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." (Matt 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 subsequently 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, inevitably, involve suffering in some way or other since 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 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 contempt for Him, for they had not really given attention to His words 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. (Matt 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. (Mk 8:34-36)

So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; 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. (Matt 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.

We should take notice even more carefully if, within that privileged Catholic society, we are in any way influential, powerful, or leaders -- such as priests, teachers, and parents -- because:

Some are last who will be first, and some are first who will be last.

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 Spirit He has given us and the teaching He has left us in Mother Church.