Homily on my return from pilgrimage 16 September 2007

Homily for Twentyfourth Sunday In Ordinary Time Year C 16 Sept 2007 I am just back from escorting a parish from Brentwood diocese round Portugal, and Fr Chris is back from his annual leave in Ireland, and I guess during the summer, if such we can call it, many of you have also been away. In France this time of year, early September, is known as “la rentrée”, the coming back, the coming home, because this is the time of year when we come back- the children go back to school, and we return to our routines, to our normal life. There is a saying, isn’t there, that weekdays are fact and weekends are fiction, and that is certainly true of the holiday season, which in England used to be called by the press the silly season, when because everyone was away and everything was shut down, the only news the papers had to print was trivial stuff. So perhaps we have been away, and indulged in holiday mood in what we might call fiction- we feel different, we may even look different, wearing our holiday clothes, our resort wear- or, as a friend of mine said when he saw some brightly coloured shorts I was planning to take to Turkey, our last resort wear. We go to different places, do different things, perhaps do uncharacteristic things, things we wouldn’t normally think of doing at home- we feel somehow liberated from the constraints of our ordinary lives, because we are away, we are on holiday, and often, in a sense, we are on holiday from ourselves. These experiences, these adventures, are all very well, perhaps a necessary letting off steam for us- perhaps we feel it is good for us to kick over the traces once in a while. Perhaps it is. But there is a danger in fooling ourselves into thinking that the fiction that we create on holiday is, or could become, fact. It must remain an escape, and be recognised as such, and we must accept the fact of our lives, of our real selves, which is greater than any fiction, than any fantasy, and return to them, because it is in the reality of our daily lives, in the very ordinariness of our ordinary lives, in the humdrum of our routines, that God is waiting to encounter us- not in the fantasies, not in the escapism of the emotional highs, but in our true selves, in our day to day existence. This is what the prophet Jeremiah means when he says “The heights are a delusion, and the orgies of the mountains also”, a phrase I came across in the breviary some weeks ago and which I cannot get out of my mind. Not in the highs of escapism, but in the plains of our down to earth lives will we find truth, and the God who is Truth. Look at today’s Gospel. Today the Church gives us a second chance this year to reflect on the parable of the Prodigal Son. The prodigal son tires of his life, and goes off to have a permanent holiday from it, he exchanges fact for fiction, and lives out his fantasies to the full. And what happens? He finds at the end of the day that all he has left in his hands are husks, things of no substance, and he is desperately, supernaturally hungry, because all the fun of the fair has not been able to satisfy him and he ruefully recognises the sheer emptiness of all the pleasures he has been chasing after. What does he do? He returns! He comes home! And once he is on the path of return, what does he find? He has been rather grimly gritting his teeth about his homecoming, rehearsing a speech he is going to make, of abject apology, and being ready for life to be much harder than it was before, recognising he is no longer worthy to be called his father’s son, but actually it is not going to turn out like that at all- the Father is there, coming to meet him on his way, welcoming him with open arms, and giving him back all his former status as the beloved son. This is what we will find, please God, this autumn, as we return to our routines and the calendar moves inexorably on, with our old commitments and responsibilities making their claims on us afresh- it will be in the normality of things, “back in our own backyard” as Byng Crosby (I think) used to sing, that we will find Our Lord waiting for us. The return to ordinary life, the picking up again of our old familiar ways, will not be a thing to be afraid of or resentful about, for if we approach our lives in the right spirit, we will find that God is there and God will reward us and make our burden light. Are we the returning prodigal son? We may, some of us, baulk at identifying with that wayward young man, we may be thinking “Well, that’s all very well, but I haven’t escaped ever, I’ve just been soldiering on, and very hard work it’s been”. In that case perhaps we are rather like the other son, who is so annoyed at all the fuss when his brother suddenly turns up again, and who remonstrates with the father: “Look, all these years I have slaved for you and never once disobeyed your orders!” He clearly has got just as fed up with the day to day drudgery of life on the farm as his brother had. And our daily routines and our ordinary lives can indeed seem a drudgery, a treadmill, grinding us down. If we see the Christian life as obeying orders, if we see ourselves as slaves, with no say or interest in what’s happening around us, then of course we will be fed up, and we will go a bit sour and resentful, like this other son. Alas, we can all think of people who have been turned sour by religion, who have kept all the rules and ended up bitter and twisted. We must keep the rules out of love, not out of fear, we must follow loyally the teachings of the Church not because we have no choice but because that is our desire, what we do to show our love for Our Lord, Our Lord who said “I do not call you slaves any more, but friends”. Lord Jesus, accept us as we return to you; come and find us in our ordinary lives, and let us find in our daily routines a hundred ways to serve and please you, for the heights are a delusion and we need the truth, the truth of our lives, if we are to know you who are the Truth. Run to us, clasp us in your arms at this Mass and kiss us tenderly as we receive you in Holy Communion. Amen.