28th. Sunday of Year (C)

(2 Kings 5:14-17; 2 Timothy 2:8-13; Luke 17:11-19)

If I were to ask you whether you remember a parable told by Jesus about a Samaritan and some Jews, I am sure that it would not have been today's parable that came to your mind; most, perhaps all of you, would have thought immediately of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Now that is instructive, because it tells us something about our modern attitude in regard to religion, and it also lights up a certain weakness in our spiritual character.

It is popularly thought in our contemporary Western society that religion is about being kind to people.  God can’t even be imagined; people alone are real.  Consequently, most of those who never go to worship at church would say of themselves, as proof of their deep-seated religious worth -- and how often do you not hear it said of one who has just died -- that they would do anything for anybody.  Here we have an example of the process whereby relics of Christian teaching -- having been torn out of the context of the living faith -- are then used, by the devil and his unwitting human tools, to destroy Christianity. 

It is, as you all well know, a supremely important teaching of the Christian faith that we should love our neighbour as ourselves; and this aspect of Christianity has been seized upon by non-worshipping, self-styled, Christians who say that getting on with, and being willing at times to help, our neighbour, is the only requirement for Christian living, all else being optional: "You might not see me at Church but I'm as good a Christian as the next man; I'd gladly help anyone who needs help." This sort of love-of-neighbour religion is very popular among Christians who have nothing but vestiges of the Faith left in their minds and hearts, because it solves for them the great problem of Church worship and Church obedience: for, as they glibly say, there is no need to go to Church in order to do good to others, and there is, most certainly, no need to obey her.

Of course, those who assert that Christianity only requires that we do some good to others, never think of offering a sacrifice of praise to God.  No!   'Sacrifice of praise to God' sounds alien to their way of thinking: the word 'sacrifice', in particular, tends to offend them.   Anyhow, He doesn't need anything, least of all a sacrificial offering of praise from us.  Here we begin to touch at the heart of the modern weakness of Christian character which I mentioned earlier, for sacrifice implies loss, hurt, suffering, and many modern worldly Christians, not wanting to hurt anyone, including themselves, would gladly surrender any principles they might hold, should those principles prove offensive to others or seriously detrimental to themselves: for, being more attached to the world than to Jesus and His Church, they most certainly do not want to lose any of the worldly privileges, possessions, and pleasures to which they have grown accustomed and in which they take great delight.   And so we have it that when certain young Muslims seem to be quite ready and willing to sacrifice themselves for what they consider -- albeit quite wrongly -- to be worth their sacrifice, many of these so-called Christians are not only outraged (rightly) at the evil of indiscriminate killing and partisan fanaticism, but also somewhat disgusted and frightened at the thought of such distasteful self-sacrifice, since their own pseudo-faith requires nothing more of them than to think occasionally of doing some good, some time, to some people.

This sort of faith, of course, is nothing short of a parody of true Christianity which is essentially founded on sacrifice and demands a fully sacrificial attitude in all its adherents.

As Jesus entered a certain village, there met Him ten men who were lepers, who stood afar off.  And they lifted up their voices and said, "Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!"  So when He saw them, He said to them, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And so it was that as they went, they were cleansed.  And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at (Jesus’) feet, giving Him thanks. And he was a Samaritan.

If you remember from the first reading, Naaman, after being cured of leprosy by the prophet Elishah, said:

Please let your servant be given two mule-loads of earth; for your servant will no longer offer either burnt offering or sacrifice to other gods, but to the LORD.

In other words he, Naaman, filled with gratitude, wanted to sacrifice to the true God, the God of Elishah and of Israel, and he thought -- according to the ideas prevalent in his day -- that he could only offer such worship on Israelite soil.  Therefore, although he had to return to his king in Syria, he resolved to take Israelite soil back with him so that his worship of Israel's god would be acceptable.

That is also the significance of the Samaritan returning to Jesus as soon as he realised that he had been cleansed:

One of them, when he saw that he was healed, returned, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at (Jesus’) feet, giving Him thanks.   And he was a Samaritan.

God had shown Himself present and active not simply in Israel, on Israelite soil, as in Elisha’s time for Naaman, but in Jesus; and so, that Samaritan returned to Jesus, shouting the praises of God active in and through Him, and throwing himself at His feet.  Jesus' words to His disciples standing by indicate the real significance of this:

Where are the nine?  Were there not any found who returned to give glory to God except this foreigner?"  And He said to him, "Arise, go your way. Your faith has made you well." 

Jesus had healed the man, and he had rightly, as Jesus said:

returned (to Jesus, in order) to give (acceptable) glory to God.

People of God, the only way to give glory to God for the salvation given us through Jesus is by returning to Jesus Himself with grateful thanks; and thus, through Him, in Him, giving glory to God, as was foreshadowed by Naaman taking Israelite soil back to his home in Syria in order to be able to make his sacrifice acceptable to the God of Israel.  No nominal Christian gives glory to God while remaining apart from Jesus and His Church.

Let us look a little deeper.  Giving thanks to Jesus and glory to God is the essence of our Christian, Catholic, faith: that is the spirit of the Eucharist, for 'eucharisteo' is the Greek, the Gospel, word for giving thanks.   At the Eucharist, at Mass, we give thanks and glory to God the Father, through Jesus, as we offer, first of all, Jesus' sacrificial offering of Himself to the Father:

Christ has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma (Eph. 5:2);

and then as, in and with Jesus, we offer ourselves likewise in sacrifice:

I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. (Rom 12:1)

As the Catechism of the Church tells us:

The Eucharist, according to the traditions of East and West, is the 'sacrifice of praise’. (2643)

Now you can understand why I said, earlier, that Christianity is supremely sacrificial, because it offers to God the Father the supreme sacrifice, the self-sacrifice of His own beloved Son, from the rising of the sun to its setting, from East and West, North and South; and the Christian faith urges all its faithful to offer themselves likewise in sacrifice with and through their Lord.  How pale, therefore, and pathetic is the version of Christianity professed by those who say it is enough to do what they call 'good' to others; those who, living largely apart from Jesus and His Church, have no appreciation of Christian sacrifice and are so fearful of it.

Let us listen again to one of the very earliest professions of faith passed on to us in the Church, as you heard, by St. Paul:

This is a faithful saying: if we died with Him, We shall also live with Him.  If we endure, we shall also reign with Him.

The early Christians were quite prepared for sacrifice as such language shows.  They were also absolutely convinced of the importance of remaining true to Jesus.  For Jesus is the eternal Son, the Son who is always turned towards, relating and giving Himself entirely to, His Father.  His disciples can only remain faithful if they follow His example; for authentic Christianity is not determined by the popular attitudes and opinions of any given time, but by loving faith in, and commitment to, Him Whose life, teaching, and self-sacrifice were shown -- by His Resurrection -- to be supremely and solely acceptable to His heavenly Father.

Today a significant part of our Christian difficulties and failings is due to our allowing religion to become world centred, indeed, people centred, rather than God centred.  In that respect notice how Elisha cured Naaman of his leprosy with nothing more than the simple command to go and bathe in the Jordan.  Naaman was both disappointed and offended for he had expected some solemn pronouncement and display in words and gestures: but they were not forthcoming: just a command, passed on by a servant, to go and bathe in the Jordan as directed.  Likewise, in our Gospel story, Jesus is quite impassive; looking towards the pitiable lepers He simply says:

Go, show yourselves to the priests.

Such an attitude seems strange to us today, because so much of what we like to consider as religious fervour, Christian charity, and neighbourly service, is conceived and expressed in ways meant to be seen and appreciated by the world.  And as a result of this, basically good people so often say too much, get themselves into all sorts of exaggerated expressions and wrong situations,  because they feel awkward, ill-at-ease, with Jesus’ attitude so clearly expressed in His words:

Let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No' be 'No,' for whatever is more than these is from the evil one.  (Matt 5:37)

Jesus could be tender, as He was with the widow at Nain; He was deeply moved at times, as at the death of Lazarus and the weeping of his family and friends; but Jesus did nothing because people expected it of Him, He owed the world nothing, all He did was done for His Father.  Today, many Christians are greatly impeded and hindered by the fact that they are accustomed to attempting to give what the world wants: namely, an emotional display accompanied by a plethora of words and replete with approved attitudes and expressions.  And, devoting all their attention to carrying out such supposed duties and satisfying such spurious expectations, they are distracted from, and become ever less sensitive to, the requirements of the Spirit of Jesus.

Today, therefore, let us learn to look more intently at Jesus and commit ourselves more wholeheartedly to Him; and, satisfying ourselves with His approbation alone, let us thus allow ourselves to be further formed in His exclusive likeness, and come to know and appreciate ourselves as being redeemed by His grace alone.

27^th. Sunday, Year (C)

(Habakkuk 1:2-3, 2:2-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-8, 13-14; Luke 17:5-10)

My dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, our first reading from the prophet Habakkuk contained one of the most famous phrases in Scripture:

            The just shall live by his faith.

This phrase has been repeated directly and indirectly time and again in the New Testament:

Romans 1:17           For in it (the Gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written, The just shall live by faith.

Galatians 3:11         But that no one is justified by the Law in the sight of God is evident, for the just man shall live by faith.

Hebrews 10:38       Now the just shall live by faith; But if anyone draws back, My soul has no pleasure in him.

Romans 11:20         Because of unbelief they were broken off, and you stand by faith.

As you can see it was a central and an essential point of Christian teaching for St. Paul … and where do you find faith held in such respect anywhere today other than in the Catholic Church?

Why is faith so important?  Well, recall the Gospel reading.  The Apostles -- perhaps after the failure of nine of them to heal an epileptic boy brought to them, a failure, Jesus had said, due to their lack of faith; and also, perhaps, after the other three, Peter, James, and John, had felt themselves so totally overwhelmed on the Mount of Transfiguration where they heard the voice of the Father speaking from the cloud and had witnessed  Jesus conversing with Moses and Elijah – the Apostles, all twelve of them, had come to recognize their need, above all, to grow in faith; and they turned to Jesus and besought Him, saying:

            Increase our faith.

How those recent experiences seem to have affected those Apostles, for they had put a very simple and childlike request before Jesus, a request that made it evident that they were indeed in the process of being formed as children of God.

However a childlike spirit should never be allowed to become childish, and so the  Lord replied:

If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

A mustard seed is the smallest of seeds in the lands of the Bible, St. Mark tells us:

A mustard seed, when it is sown on the ground, is smaller than all the seeds on earth (4:31).

The mulberry tree, on the other hand, was an extremely sturdy and deep-rooted tree which could grow to some 35’ high.

The Apostles were only beginning to understand the treasure which was theirs.   In true spiritual childhood they had asked for greater faith to be given them, but they could not be allowed to childishly think that only God’s giving was involved … they had to grow in understanding and realize that all gifts of God require our co-operation if we are to appreciate them aright and profit from them fully.

They wanted an increase of faith, a greater amount of faith, to put it more concretely, and they were told that, even if their faith was no bigger than the proverbial mustard seed, if they really believed, they could even uproot a  mulberry tree and throw it into the sea … a metaphor to illustrate the un- imaginable power of true faith.

St. Paul did understand this unimaginable power of faith after the Resurrection of Jesus, for in a letter to the Christians at Ephesus he says:

(I pray) that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. (Ephesians 1:18-21)

That is the full understanding of the wondrous power and final purpose of faith: through our faith, the power of God which raised Jesus from the dead unto the right hand of the Father in glory, that very power can be at work in us too.

It is not so much a question of the quantity of faith we may have but of its quality: having received the initial gift of faith, it is not a matter of our asking for more to be given us by God so much as our co-operating more closely and whole-heartedly with what we have already been given; it is a matter of whether we allow faith to work freely in us, or whether we put all sorts of worldly considerations in the way as obstacles to its development; whether we commit ourselves without reserve to the guidance and the demands of our faith or whether we allow earthly fears and selfish considerations to constrict our heart and inhibit our commitment.

The Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

Even if your faith be like a mustard seed, allow it to work freely and fully in you and it will prove to be an ever-increasing and ultimately irresistible force in your life until it brings you to fulfilment.

We are told that throughout His earthly life Jesus – as a man – was being perfected until He was totally committed with the fullness of His humanity – in every recess, at every level, and to the fullest extent of all His human powers and potentialities – to His heavenly Father and to us:

Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things He suffered.  And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him. (Hebrews 5:8-9)

There was so much He could not appreciate and embrace as a child … only as full-grown man, for example, could He appreciate the loving obedience of suffering and embrace the sacrificial commitment of death … and only when having become absolutely perfect in His humanity, could that humanity serve as the source of our eternal salvation.

Throughout creation life engenders life, life alone nourishes life …. What has never been alive can never serve to nourish and sustain the living.  Our Blessed Lord brought new life for mankind; He is the unique source of life able to promote the fullness of humanity and share in the goodness of divinity.  That is why we are not ashamed to say that we eat the Body and drink the Blood of Christ:

Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in you.    Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For My flesh is food indeed, and My blood is drink indeed.  He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him.  (John 6:53-56)

Jesus’ humanity was irrevocably perfected throughout His life on earth because He was, from beginning to end, the only-begotten Son of the eternal Father being led by the Holy Spirit; and a like process of perfecting cannot begin in us until we become children of God through faith in Jesus.  It is our faith which sets that process going; you can say faith is that power of perfection in our life which leads, under the guidance and power of Jesus’ gift of the Spirit, to eternal glory in heaven.

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, let us not only treasure, but let us also understand the nature of, our faith: it is a vital power of communion, meant to become ever more compelling and fulfilling as we are led to take ever greater personal control of our lives; it is not an inert parcel of something which can be given in bigger or smaller portions and which -- remaining the same as when originally given -- might cause us to ask: ‘Give us more, please.’  No, it is a living process of dialogue, appreciation and commitment, which of its very nature goes on and on (if indeed we let it and follow it) until we reach the perfection of our being and the fulfilment of our personal identity.  Although nothing can resist it -- it could uproot even a mulberry tree, transfer a mountain into the sea -- we ourselves, however, can slow it down, indeed, even stop the process of our growth, by indifference, ignorance, worldliness and, ultimately, sinfulness. 

Let us end with St. Paul again, as you heard him speak in the second reading:

Take as your norm the sound words that you heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.  Guard this rich trust with the help of the Holy Spirit Who dwells within us.