Sunday 18 July 2010

Homily for Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time Year C 18 July 2010
One of the wonderful things about this parish is the large numbers of converts, of all ages and backgrounds, that come and ask to be brought into the Catholic Church through the Sacraments and what a joy it is to instruct and prepare them – and today we welcome into the Church in the sacraments of initiation that will follow this homily two dear young people Etienne and Peggy from our French-speaking community. And so, mes chers enfants, I am speaking to the whole congregation but you will easily guess that I am speaking at the same time particularly to you!
Today’s readings seem very appropriate for this occasion of welcoming new members into the Church. In the letter of St Paul to the Colossians St Paul describes his mission- a mission in which all Christians, but especially all clergy, share: he says he is “responsible for delivering God’s message to you”. That is the awesome task of those who instruct converts, whether in the RCIA programme or by individual sessions – we must deliver God’s message to you, not our own agenda, not what we would like God’s message to be, not what we think you would like to hear, not what we think will sound really up to date in 2010, but God’s timeless message as we have it from the long tradition of the Catholic Church’s teaching authority that goes back ultimately to the Gospels. And he describes the message as essentially a mystery- “the message which was a mystery hidden for generations and centuries and….now ….revealed to his saints”. Now when we use the word “mystery” in Church things, we do not mean a mystery in the sense of something we can’t understand, like an Agatha Christie novel. It can’t be something we don’t understand because, as I tell all my converts, we have been born with a brain and God expects us to use it to understand him better, we do not check it in at the holy water stoop when we come to Mass and pick it up again on the way out. No, our holy religion cannot be a mystery in that sense! When we use the word “mystery” we use it as a technical term, just as when we speak of the ancient religions of the East, the famous Greek shrine at Eleusis for example, we call them “mystery religions”. A mystery in this sense is something that is acted out on earth at a given place and time, that has simultaneously an eternal significance. So today, using the very ordinary materials of water and oil, we will baptise Etienne. We will see, at about 12 noon, water being poured over his forehead. With the understanding of our faith, we know that something is happening that is not just me giving his face a bit of a wash – no, by these actions, so simple in themselves, something is happening on the supernatural plane, something with eternal significance: Etienne is becoming grafted onto the Body of Christ to belong to him and to us in eternity. That is a mystery. That is what we mean too when we talk about the mysteries of the rosary- we are not saying these are a series of events that we cannot understand, we are saying these events in the lives of Our Lord and his Holy Mother 2000 years ago have eternal significance now and forever. This is what St Paul means when he says “The mystery is Christ among you”. What is our religion about? It is about Our Lord Jesus Christ, not dead, not in Heaven occasionally looking out of a window at us, but actually in our midst- “Christ among you”. Among us when we say our prayers, among us when we read the Bible and reflect upon it, among us when as he puts it “two or three are gathered together”, but above all among us when we encounter him in the sacraments, when he comes to nourish us in Holy Communion and to kiss us better in Confession. “This” St Paul says today “is the Christ we proclaim, this is the wisdom in which we thoroughly train everyone and instruct everyone”. He goers on to say that the aim is “to make them all perfect in Christ”. That is a daunting ambition! The Psalmist today has some good advice to help us on our way towards this perfection, this union with Christ, this spiritual height that he calls “your holy mountain”: he suggests that we should try to “act with justice and speak the truth from (our) heart” and not “slander with (our) tongue”,”do no wrong to (our) brother” and “cast no slur on (our) neighbour”. The psalmist hopes that we will be people of our word, who keep our promises and do not let our friends down “come what may”, honest in business and fair in all our dealings. This psalm is in fact an ideal choice for today’s ceremonies of initiation, because this is one of the psalms that were used as a sort of liturgy when Jews entered the Temple in David’s time: the visitor arriving at the courtyard entrance would say “Lord, who shall dwell on your holy mountain?” as a way of saying “Who can come into this holy place? What do you have to do to be good enough to come in?” and the priest would respond with these verses that begin “The one who…” Have do we live in union with God, the psalm asks? The person who is trying to lead the good life is on sure ground, comes the reply. We see this again in Psalm 24, when the pilgrim at the Temple gates would ask “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord and who shall stand in his holy place?” and receive from the priest the reply “ He who has clean hands and a pure heart” and so on.
Dear friends Etienne and Peggy, you stand today on the threshold of the Temple that is the Christian life in the Catholic Church. As you approach its gates, that are the sacraments of initiation, you too ask “Who can come into this holy place?” – “Lord, who shall dwell on this holy mountain?” Who can belong to the Catholic Church? If you look around you, you will see that we do not seem to have very strict requirements, it’s not like the golf club, there are all sorts here and that’s just in the sanctuary! The answer we give you is not a great long list of requirements, without which we shall not be satisfied and the gates will remain shut! You are already aware of the teachings of the Church, which are the teachings of Our Lord himself as you will shortly testify before us all, and we know that you will do your best to take them seriously. Don’t be too alarmed, too nervous about the step you are making, but take heart from the words of Jesus to Martha this morning: “you worry and fret about so many things, and yet few are needed, indeed only one”. This story, unique to Luke’s Gospel, shows us that although loving our neighbour and doing good to those around us is vital, what we need for the authentic Christian life is to put all our actions into the context of listening to the word of God – that is the one thing that really matters, so that all our actions are informed by our love of God. Dear Peggy, dear Etienne, like Mary in today’s Gospel you have understood this truth, and Our Lord affirms you this morning, saying of you as he does of her: “You have chosen the better part, it is not to be taken from you”. New Catholics or old, let us make today’s gospel acclamation our prayer at this Mass and always: “Open our heart, O Lord, to accept the words of your Son”, come among us, be Christ among us as we stay faithful to your sacraments and to your Church. Amen.