Sunday 26 February 2017

Worrying. 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A



Mt 6:24-34
We just heard in today’s Gospel text a beautiful example of Our Lord’s intimate and compassionate knowledge of our human nature. We heard Him speak about WORRYING –that thing that we can spend so much time and effort doing.
Over these past weeks we’ve heard Our Lord’s teachings in the Sermon on the Mount:
Sometimes we hear Our Lord’s words uttered as words of authority, of command;
sometimes we hear Him speak hard words that we know are not easy to follow.
But today, as I said, we hear this same Lord, who was and is both fully God and fully human, we heard Him speak very human words to us:
words about worrying, words that show He knows exactly what we are like.
Most of us have at least some occasions when we worry,
Some of us regularly lie awake at night worrying.
And worrying is an odd thing:
it’s not like planning or decision making when we actually ACHIEVE something,
when we actually become better able to deal with what we must do.
No, worrying does not help us in any way. As Jesus beautifully put it, “Can any of you, for all his worrying, add one single hour to his span of life?”(Mt 6:27)
And yet, we DO worry, and we often spend great energy worrying.

Let me make three points.
First, the Lord points out that we often worry because we’re focussed on the wrong things in life.
He says, very directly, that we focus too much on material things. And so He warns us that “you cannot be the slave of two masters... of both God and of money [mammon]” (Mt 6:24).
And the simple remedy He gives us is that we need to repeatedly remember that, “life means more than food and the body more than clothing”(Mt 6:25).

Second, there is the issue of whether we worry about things with a SELFISH focus, or with a focus that is on OTHER people.
Most of us have probably had moments when we realise that so often when we worry about something we worry about it because of how it will affect ME, not about how it will affect others -that even when we worry about family our worries can be filled with anxiety not for THEIR sake but because of some way in which we fear matters will affect us:
affect our time, our reputation, or something else.
This is one aspect of worry that the Lord calls on us to identify within ourselves and to seek to “let go”, to detach ourselves from our SELFISH attachment, and to attach ourselves instead to GOD:
“see ye first the kingdom of God” (Mt 6:33).
The remedy to this is to be bold enough to seek to (1) love others first, and (2) love God first and foremost, because when we do this our worries often take on a much REDUCED significance.

Third, and finally, there is the issue that our worrying is caused our lack of trust in God. And here the Lord Jesus berated His disciples for being “men of little faith” (Mt 6:30). He pointed out that God cares for the flowers of the field and the birds of the sky, and yet God loves US much more than either of these.
This type of worry can often be rooted in a sort of mistaken attempt to do everything ourselves and by our own power.
The remedy to this is to (1) call on God’s grace, (2) trust in His strength, (3) trust in His plan for our welfare.

“So do not worry about tomorrow”, and as more literal translations put it in a beautiful parody of our own worrying: “tomorrow will worry about itself” (NIV) “tomorrow will be anxious for itself” (RSV),
“Each day has troubles enough of its own”.

Priests are not immune from worry, as I’m sure you’re aware.
Not even popes are immune from worry. As Pope John XXIII supposedly used to pray each night as he pondered the problems in the Church, “It's your Church, not mine, Lord. I'm going to sleep now”.
If we seek to (1) put God’s things first, (2) focus on the eternal values and not the merely material ones, then we should be able to take the good pope’s attitude for ourselves:
it’s His world, His problems, and we can entrust them to Him.

Sunday 19 February 2017

Who is my Enemy? 7th Sunday in Ordinary time, Year A



Mt 5:38-48; Lev 19:1-2.17-18
Today we heard the command from the Lord that we must, “Love your enemy”.
There is, what I consider to be, a very interesting point here, and I want to note that, as well as indicate WHO my enemy is, WHY I must love him, and HOW I must love him.

The point I consider interesting is this: the Lord bluntly acknowledges that we have “enemies” in life. There is a certain false caricature of the Lord Jesus that pictures Him as cuddly, and fuzzy, and out of touch with the harsh realities of life.
Yet, here He is, bluntly acknowledging that we DO each have enemies in life.
Now, maybe this doesn't surprise you. Maybe you have a mother in law, and it is self-evident to you that you have an enemy in life.

Let us consider, then, my first question: WHO is my enemy?
Maybe you might answer this by saying, it's the person who is always out to thwart my plans, to ruin what I am trying to do, to interfere with my projects, to do me harm, to rejoice in my downfall..

What, however, would be the description the LORD would use to describe my enemy?
As we know, the Lord was asked, “and, who is my neighbour?” But it doesn't seem He was ever asked, “and who is my enemy?”
Rather boldly, I'm going to tell you what I think the Lord’s answer to this question would have been.
The Lord, we might recall, frequently answers questions by turning the question on its head. And, if He was asked who my enemy was I think, He might have said:
Who is my enemy?
My enemy is “my neighbour”.
And, once I have identified my enemy this way, it becomes obvious why Jesus says I must love him.

Yes, my enemy might be seeking my downfall.
But, his primary identity, even before he started seeking my downfall, is that he is my neighbour.
The same good God loves both of us.
The same "Father in heaven... causes His sun to rise on bad men as well is good, and His rain to fall on honest and dishonest men alike”(Mt 5:45)
and we might add, that Jesus died out of love for those who killed Him just as truly as He died for those who followed Him. He died for Caiaphas and Pilate as much as He died for Peter, James and John.
So Jesus concluded, "You must therefore be perfect just as your heavenly Father is perfect"(Mt 5:48), i.e. love your enemy just as your heavenly Father loves him.

And finally, HOW do I love my enemy? After all, for some reason he IS my enemy. What does loving him mean PRACTICALLY?
To love someone means to seek his welfare, to seek his good (c.f. St Thomas Aquinas, ST I-II Q28 a3 ad3).
I cannot seek his death, I cannot seek his stumbling, I cannot seek his failure.
-such things are not to will his ‘good’.
Sometimes, I might seek his correction, including pointing out where he has wronged me.
But always it involves me doing this, and other things, for HIS benefit, because it is good FOR HIM. This is love. This is love for my enemy.

If I would love the good God who loves me,
if I would love those whom the good God would have me love,
then I must love not merely the brother who is agreeable and pleasant to me,
I must love not merely the neighbour who is at least not un-pleasant to me,
but rather, I must love my enemy .

Sunday 12 February 2017

Seeing Hidden Wisdom, 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A



1 Cor 2:6-10
Today I want to tell you about a secret.
Its not my secret. But at many times in his letters St. Paul speaks about a “secret”, a hidden truth revealed, its repeated feature if how he describes what has been made known in Christ.
He says at one stage (1 Cor 15:51), “I tell you a secret…”, speaking of the resurrected of the Body that will occur to everyone at the end of time: namely, that we shall all be changed, with new different glorified bodies.
He says another time (Eph 3:3-9, also 1:9), where he uses the word “secret” 5 times in just 6 verses, that God had a hidden plan to unite all peoples in Christ, both Jew and Gentile, and that this was His secret plan from the dawn of time.
He says this also elsewhere.
But today I am thinking about this because we heard him speak, in our second reading (1 Cor 2:6-10) of the “hidden wisdom” that has been “revealed”.
-a "secret" or "hidden" wisdom that is hidden no more -it has been revealed in Jesus Christ,
However, it's also true that in each case it remains hidden from most of humanity because people fail to see it -even though its been made known.

My point to you today is this: the hidden, the unseen is actually the more important.
The unseen is actually what will last forever.
Let me know a comparison between God and love in this regard:
Love cannot be seen.
God cannot be seen.
Love is visible in its effects, as God is visible in His effects, but neither can be seen directly while we live in this world
Yet, both love and God are what give meaning to everything else.
And, as scripture says, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8) -so it's hardly surprising that this analogy of both being unseen while both cause the meaning of everything holds.

To come back to St. Paul's text: St. Paul says that they crucified Him because they didn't recognise this hidden wisdom. The “masters of our age”(1 Cor 2:6) rejected Him because they didn't see what was there to be seen.
We, too, can reject what is most important if we fail to have our eyes truly open.

Today, this day, even without pausing to make the conscious choice,
I can allow myself to get so caught up in busy-ness that I fail to see what is important in the midst if the busy-ness. I can busy cooking lunch, or busy unlocking the church doors, busy, busy busy, and I can fail to see and value the PEOPLE who are before me.
And I fail to truly value the people for what they are because I fail to truly see GOD, and see how God chooses and loves these people, and wants me to love these people.

BUT its not just busy-ness that does this to me.
Laziness, failing to mentally engage with the world, with the TRUE hidden meaning of the world, there is a type of mental laziness that fails to see what is before me, fails to see what God has shown me.

The REMEDY to this isn’t complicated.
We’re already here at Mass, so we have the truth before us -but how to see it?
It involves that interior attentiveness that we call ‘contemplation’.
It involves regular times of prayer, when I wake in the morning, when I go to bed at night, and pausing to re-find Him during the day.
None of this is complicated. But when we don’t do it, we become like those who “crucified the Lord of glory” (1 Cor 2:8) because they failed to see what He had shown them:
“the things no eye has seen and no ear has heard, things beyond the mind of man, all that God has prepared for those who love Him”(1 Cor 2:9)
-the “hidden mysteries” He has already told us about, that give meaning to everything else.