24th Sunday of Year C 2016

24^th. Sunday Year (C)

(Exodus 32:7-11, 13-14; 1Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10)

People of God, you may have felt today's Gospel parable to be somewhat unfair and consequently rather difficult to appreciate:

I tell you there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

However, the second word-picture Jesus went on to paint for us was much easier to understand.  In it we learned of a woman who had lost one silver coin, a notable part of what little wealth she had, and we were told that:

When she has found it, she calls her friends and neighbours together, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I lost!'  In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.’

As I said, I think we can easily understand that second example of joy in heaven over one sinner repenting.  Why therefore did Jesus deliberately choose, in His first little parable, to speak in such a way as to make His point more difficult and appear somewhat unfair?  Was He trying to shock, and if so, who and why?  Let us recall the beginning of our Gospel passage:

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’

So we can easily understand who Jesus was wanting to shock: those Pharisees and scribes who were watching Him at some little distance and who, in their critical thoughts, were disdainful of the ‘sinners’ crowding round Jesus, and belittled Jesus Himself for His ‘undiscerning’ familiarity with them:  ‘Surely if He is holy He cannot fail to recognize what sort of people these are?’

The story of the first parable is, of itself, just as easy to accept and understand as that of the second, the difficulty lies in the interpretation, or application that Jesus gives it.  It is no longer a parable of joy on finding what was lost but has now a barb -- more over one than over ninety-nine -- which has been given it for a quite deliberate purpose:

I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

It is no longer a parable for the humble with pastoral sympathies, it has been re-created ‘in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye’ by one most fully aware of heaven’s joys, for those who in their pride boast on earth of heavenly pretentions:

Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings. You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to enter. (Matthew 23:13)

What is the joy of heaven?   Catholic theology tells us that heaven is where God is all in all; and where the Holy Spirit of love -- proceeding from the Father to embrace the Son, and, flowing back from the Son in acknowledgment of His Father -- is the Bond of Unity whereby the three Divine Persons are one God.

The Father's love for His Son in the Spirit is the source of all joy in heaven, and of all hope on earth:

Behold!   My Servant (My Son) in whom My soul delights!   I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. (Isaiah 42:1)

The Father willed to make manifest His love for His Son when, at Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, He declared in the hearing of John the Baptist: 

This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased (Matthew 3:7),

and then – this time on the Mount of Transfiguration – the Father’s voice rang out once more from the overshadowing cloud and said to Peter, James, and John (Mark 9:7):

This is My beloved Son, listen to Him!

For His part, Jesus -- speaking not openly but to the intimate circle of His Apostles -- several times mentioned the bond of love uniting Himself to the Father:

The Father loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.

The Father and I are one.  (John 3:35; 10:30)

So, People of God, there is only one Holy Spirit of love, one joy, one rejoicing, in Heaven, it is the love of the Father, rejoicing, delighting, in His Son, it is the love of the Son responding wholeheartedly to His Father, in and by the Spirit.  Therefore, when we hear Jesus say:

There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who have no need of repentance,

He is speaking of the Father's rejoicing because one sinner has come to repentance through Jesus: that is, because one sinner who, on hearing the Good News of Jesus and recognizing his own sinfulness has turned repentantly to Jesus; and, having thereby rejected any pretence of personal self-righteousness, has been consequently clothed in the righteousness of Jesus by the Holy Spirit.  The Father rejoices in heaven over one sinner who has thus been transformed and reformed into the likeness of Christ and become, thereby, a son in the beloved Son.  St. Paul puts is very clearly for us (Philippians 3:8-9):

I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.  For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. 

God the Father does not delight in any way over people who, considering themselves ‘to have a righteousness of their own coming from their observance of whatever law’, consequently think they have no need to put on the wedding garment of the righteousness of Christ in order to enter the great feast in God’s heavenly Kingdom; and yet, as I have just said, the Father's love for the Son in the Spirit is the originating source, the total fullness and fulfilment of all joy in heaven.

Jesus said to the Pharisees, You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God.  (Luke 16:15)

John the Baptist, prepared the way for Jesus by preaching in the wilderness of Judea:

Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.  (Matthew 3:1-2)

And Jesus Himself began His public ministry in a like manner:

From that time Jesus began to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’   (Matthew 4:17)

And this call to repentance by Jesus was so urgent and so essential that He once declared in Jerusalem:

Unless you repent, you will all perish. (Luke 13:5)

Now that was not meant just for the inhabitants of Jerusalem of those days; no, it is meant for all mankind as St. Peter, at the very beginning of Mother Church's proclamation of Jesus, made totally clear:

Let it be known to you all, and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here before you whole.  This is the 'stone which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.'   Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:10-12)

Repentance means, however, much more than just sorrow for the past; it requires a change for the future, as John the Baptist had told those who came to him:

Bear fruits worthy of repentance. (Luke 3:8)

Sincere repentance for the past, John warned, must also involve something of supreme importance for the future, but which he could only describe vaguely as "bearing fruits”.  Since John was only preparing the way for Jesus, having reached this point he could proceed no further, it only remained for him to seal his witness by his death. 

Jesus took up John’s legacy and advanced to where John could not go.  Focusing His mission on calling ‘sinners to repentance’ (Luke 5:32), He showed clearly what John's vague words ‘fruits for repentance’ really meant, for the theme of Jesus' public ministry was to be:

Repent and believe the Good News. (Mark 1:15)

There can be no repentance without Gospel fruits resulting from faith in Jesus, for God gives us the grace of repentance for our past, sin-scarred, lives in order to bestow on us the supreme gift of faith, whereby we aspire to live our future in loving witness and obedience to the Person and teaching of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour, that is, as sons in the Son, by the Spirit, for the Father. For what is faith but a total self-abandonment and -- in the power of the Spirit – commitment to the overwhelming goodness of God revealed to us in the beauty of the face, and the truth on the lips, of Christ Jesus our Lord?

People of God, all this is implied by, and contained in, those "shocking" words of Jesus:

There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need repentance. 

How wonderfully wise is God!  How full of meaning and life are the Scriptures!  One apparently shocking passage containing so much heavenly beauty and saving truth!

We have rightly gathered here today to praise and glorify God for His wondrous goodness to us in Jesus.   And, having begun to appreciate the beauty of His wisdom, we must also seek to learn from His truth; for the fact is that Jesus came, as He Himself said, not to call those self-styled, so-called, virtuous ones, approved and accepted according to worldly standards, but those who were -- in their own eyes and before God -- sinful and desperately sick.

People of God, we are not holy, none of us; let us therefore learn from divine wisdom and accept that God rejoices not in any ‘home-spun’ holiness of ours, but exclusively in our grace-enabled rejection of self, and love for Jesus.  The only holiness that rejoices the Father is likeness to His Son, Jesus; a holiness which originally comes to us as an undeserved gift we can share, and then must gradually appropriate to ourselves ever more and more by means of a life of true faith and loving obedience.

Our first Catholic and Christian duty, therefore, is to come before God in a spirit of repentance and offer Him the only acceptable worship: the worship Jesus first offered on our behalf and for our salvation on Calvary, the worship He continues to offer Personally in heaven and sacramentally at every Mass here on earth, the worship of His own sacrifice of Self for Love of the Father above all and of the Father’s will in all.   Therefore we should always come to Mass to offer Jesus, in the first place, for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind, and then ourselves -- in and with Jesus -- to the Father; then, indeed, can we fittingly make our requests, and draw near to receive Holy Communion that we might have grace to fulfil in our lives the offering we have just made.

People of God, if the wisdom and truth of God lead us to repentance and faith, then, through the sacraments -- above all through our participation at Holy Mass -- and our daily prayers, God’s power and majesty can be effective in and through our lives.

Therefore, let us praise our God today, let us admire and acknowledge the wisdom and the beauty of His truth as contained in the Good News of Jesus proclaimed by Mother Church, and let us put all our hope and trust in the power of His Spirit unfailingly sustaining and guiding her, and ever at work in our lives.   Such worship is the wedding garment that will enable us to take our seat at the heavenly banquet; it is the token of all those who belong to that flock of which Jesus is the only true and supreme shepherd. 

                                                                                   

23rd Sunday of the Year C 2016

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 for him with Philemon -- a Christian -- whose slave he was.  Onesimus’ initial confidence in his owner’s friend and “partner” (biblical word) clearly bore fruit, for Paul, having first guided him to become a Christian, then offered to intercede with Philemon and make good whatever loss he might have suffered by Onesimus’  flight. On this basis, Paul appealed to Philemon to receive his slave back into his household, still as his slave indeed, but 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 their 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 direct role; education was at times greatly appreciated (some slaves were better educated than their owners), moreover it enhanced a slave’s value.  Many slaves carried out sensitive and highly responsible social functions; slaves could own property (including other slaves!); and (above all) the majority of urban and domestic slaves could reasonably anticipate becoming free persons.

You will have noticed 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:

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 to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow His steps. (2:18-21)

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.  This is worth considering because we can perhaps learn why so much apparently being said and done in our world and our society today, despite many a fanfare of official proclamation and media praise, seems to bring forth little permanent 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:

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

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 there unequivocally and most provocatively 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 ridicule 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.'

That Jesus did not want to be a popular leader, whimsically chosen and cheered by His followers and inevitably involved in political and social matters, is unmistakably clear. He wanted and willed to be, exclusively, Lord and Leader, sovereign in the mind and heart of any and of all searching for God in Spirit and Truth.  He took this stand because He knew that if He Himself is not first in our lives, sin will inevitably continue to rule there; and  since the empire of sin is never stagnant, when men -- ignoring or attempting to deny the existence of personal and public sin -- pretend, on the basis of their own assumed wisdom or presumed goodness, to prescribe remedies for deep human and social sicknesses, their tragically proud misunderstanding of human nature and its needs can, only too frequently, compound the suffering by aggravating social confusion and public anxiety, and deepening 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, however, in their work of establishing the Church as the Body of Christ and our Mother.  The Church was being newly born into a pagan world, and the very first thing Catholics needed to learn and possess was peace and confidence in their faith.  They had to understand 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 and hidden again in the field – was known by the Apostles to be of such supreme value that they could not allow it to be subjected to worldly considerations or made secondary to any earthly values whatever.  Those blessed with the gift of faith should in no way allow even the bonds of slavery to overshadow the joy of their personal relationship with Jesus their Lord and Saviour, 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 Satan and 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, such a power could not be openly confronted and provoked, and therefore Peter and Paul considered it their main duty to teach Christian believers how, in peace and tranquillity, to rightly worship the Father as His adopted children in and through Jesus, living each day in the light of His truth by the power of His Spirit, and thus growing ever more calm and assured in their possession of Catholic faith, understanding, and love,  in the God-given shelter most deliberately prepared for them by Jesus in the form of His Church, no mere building or organization, but our Mother uniquely able to bestow on us Jesus’ most precious gifts and indeed His own Personal and Eucharistic presence.

Today we are in a similar situation.  Mother Church is no longer (Deo gratias!) hand-in-glove with the State and so she should not be expected to always have and publicly ‘push’ (i.e. against the secular power) her own teachings and criticisms as alternative political opinions and public options.   It is good Catholics who should provoke and confront political parties and their leaders with proposals, policies, and principals imbued  with the Christian teaching they have learned from Mother Church; it is not for Mother Church herself to be constantly invoked or expected to directly embroil herself repeatedly in social questions and quarrels, with the result that she no longer has the time, awareness, or zeal, to inspire her own people with the eternal Truths and heavenly Beauty of Jesus Himself and the incomparable Good News He brings for mankind’s salvation. 

In the nascent Church great Bishops, such as Ambrose, Augustine, and Gregory the Great, Basil, Gregory Nazianzus, and Cyril of Alexandria proclaimed and ‘argued for’ Christian teachings unknown to the pagan world around them; in the developing Christian world  Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius, and Dominic, strove likewise to make Catholic and Christian teaching better understood and practised.  But today we live in a post-Catholic and post-Christian world where Catholic teaching has been and is largely rejected and now ignored by ruling powers, and it is not any longer profitable for bishops to be called upon or themselves seek to repeat what is no longer listened to, let alone appreciated.  Bishops always sound doctrinal and the secular authorities have no inclination or desire to be taught, or to enter into doctrinal discussions that no longer interest them.  What is now much more important is for Catholic lay figures, politically able and inclined, to put forward Catholic teachings not as doctrinal teaching but as human issues, as the anti-abortionists have been doing for so long.

Mother Church’s teaching is, of its very nature, public, as Jesus Himself said:

I have spoken publicly to the world. I have always taught in a synagogue or in the temple area where all the Jews gather, and in secret I have said nothing.  (John 18:20)

Her children, therefore, that is those ‘vocationally’ called as potential public figures should, first of all, make her presentation of Jesus’ teaching part of their own mind and make-up and then as yeast for their personal and public, political and social, endeavours and involvement; they should not try to involve Mother Church directly in order to ‘bolster and add weight’ to their projects, for too often that tends to make bishops (or other Church spokespeople) appear to be imbued with the political animus and ‘know how’ to a greater extent than they should be, while making Mother Church herself appear, to an alienated world, more like an ever-recurring nuisance and ‘always right’ antagonist, rather than a respected and wise source of understanding, help, and possible guidance.

Dear People of God, if our Christian witness is to be ultimately effective before the world, Jesus has to become first in every aspect of our lives, not our own good works, not our social influence, nor least of all, our 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)

Having ourselves been most wonderfully blessed in Jesus and in the Church, and now, 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 must strive to live our lives ever more and more with Jesus for the Father.  Ultimately, as we well know, the only life fully 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 their Most Holy Spirit.  That awareness and conviction, however, is not something that can be in any way convincingly argued, especially -- as I have said -- in a post-Christian political and social set-up where so many are childishly luxuriating in their imagined freedom from all moral restraints as they temporarily delight in what the world seems to be so benignly offering them.   The authentic Christian vision of human life in its ultimate and eternal fullness and fulfilment can only be found in Mother Church’s doctrinal teaching drawn up  for her children and for all who may want to learn from her; but our present partial experience of that ultimate fulfilment  is to be witnessed to by all of us who are her faithful children, living, loving, working, and if and when necessary suffering, for the privilege of being able to tread along the God-given way to that eternal fullness of being for which we were originally created, which is now most assuredly promised us, and for which we whole-heartedly 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 in Christ Jesus our Lord.