12th Sunday after Pentecost 23 Aug 2020 Sermon

 

12^th Sunday after Pentecost 23.8.20 Helping others

The same action of helping someone - such as picking up a poor man from the road - can have different value in God's sight, according to who does the action and with what motive.

It is good to help others. There is what we call common humanity which should operate in everyone, even those who have no faith.

We are all made by God, and have something of His nature planted in us.

We are made in God's image and God is love, which means we must have some of that divine love working within us, even if it is impeded by sin and lack of faith.

At the core of our being we have the ability to love as God loves. This is where the compassion comes from, when it does come.

The love of God is constant and human love is not! So we do not always have the same intensity of compassion for each person. Sometimes we are glad to help; sometimes not.

We want to reach a state where we see people as God sees them, not clouded by external factors such as appearance.

Formed in the image of God we come to think and act as He does. To make the link even stronger still, we have God become Man, whereby He greatly expands the human capacity to love.

Our Lord is the Good Samaritan, helping all of us who have been robbed by the devil of our inheritance. Now He comes to restore that inheritance to us. We are once again children of God, in full favour with Him.

Our Lord helps us in our need; He also helps us to become people of sufficient compassion to want to help others.

Coming to know God better our hearts are unlocked and love of neighbour will emerge freely.

I help the man in the gutter because I love God! Not so much the man himself, whom I may not even know; but God first, then love for others will follow.

Thus we can help complete strangers because we see them in God's light.

Always we keep the main focus on God and what He wants from us.

And we go one stage further, as Our Lord did with us. We seek not just to have people well-fed and warm, but that they themselves will come to know and love God.

If we live in a state of grace our actions will be for God’s glory, even if we do not always allude to that. It is a matter of habit, good habit.

The more good we do the more grace increases and we are more likely to do even better still, and to more people.

So we nurture the state of grace, making the necessary effort to keep spiritually alert.

If we never pray or rely on natural goodness only, our good works will very likely not go far. It is likely that we will do occasional good deeds, and then think we are good enough.

Many try to bypass God. Loving other people is enough, they would say.

This has the appeal of simplicity, but it loses sight of the main point of our existence on earth - which is to know, love and serve God; to adore Him with thanksgiving.

We will love with greater force and accuracy if we go through God first. Attempts to help others might make matter worse if we exclude God from the process (eg cooperating in someone else’s evil act).

We want to get both the motivation and the actions in right balance, drawing charity from God, and returning it to Him in thanksgiving.

Discovering His wonders we become more focused on Him at all times.

11th Sunday after Pentecost 16 Aug 2020 Sermon

 

11^th Sunday after Pentecost 16.8.20 Resurrection

We are still in the afterglow of yesterday’s feast of the Assumption, when we celebrated Our Lady’s glorious entry into Heaven.

 That event could also be called Our Lady’s Resurrection, as it was her glorified body which entered Heaven.

The epistle of today’s Mass gives us further occasion to consider our hope of resurrection.

Some have trouble believing in the resurrection because it is not an everyday event – whereas dying is! Funerals, cemeteries, news of people dying – it is around us all the time. But who ever hears of someone rising from the dead?

If we cannot see it happening then maybe it is not real – so says our overly scientific citizen. They have to see it to believe it.

Against which we can say that sense perception is not everything.

There are many things we cannot see but they still exist and act in our world. Not least, Almighty God Himself; or angels and saints; or grace and mercy.

And Resurrection. We do not see it often, but we will see a great deal of it on the Last Day, when every person who has ever lived will be brought back to physical life, reunited with their souls.

We might prefer more direct proof of resurrection but God's wisdom always knows best what to reveal to us.

The way things are arranged, we need faith to believe, and hope to sustain us. We learn to trust God in spite of sense experience.

If God made the world He can control the timing of His interventions and the workings of natural processes. If we believe in God it is not a great leap to believe in the resurrection of the body.

Believing and hoping, we also rejoice that things are heading towards a much happier state than we have now.

And for this life a firm belief in the Resurrection enables us to bear adversity and remain cheerful in all circumstances.

Our faith is not just external observances, but internal concord with all that God intends.

Our unruly flesh comes into submission to our spirits, which in turn submit to the Holy Spirit, making an orderly continuity, with every part in place and acting in unison with each other.

What a strange world where the most enlightened creatures are the most rebellious – namely angels and humans!

It is not wise to go against the One who has put all this in place and promises so much more.

This is what sin amounts to, and it brings death into the world. The wages of sin are death – of which we have seen so much evidence.

Now is the time to leave death behind and discover resurrection instead.

We are preparing for our final resurrection by already seeking union with the Risen One, with God Himself.

We start to rise as soon as we let God influence our minds and hearts.

We do not worry about the delay in time before we see the general resurrection. That delay is to give sinners time to repent, and the righteous time to grow in virtue (cf parable of the Talents, Mt 25,14-30).

The delay in time in no way diminishes the promise.

We experience a glorious liberation in bringing the flesh under control, ending the rebellion within.

Then, better still, eternal life.

10th Sunday after Pentecost 9 Aug 2010 Sermon

 

10^th Sunday after Pentecost 9.8.20 Judging others

We should not judge each other (Lk 6,37). We often hear that. It is often used as a counterattack on any attempt by one person to correct another.

You cannot judge me; therefore you have no right to comment on what I do.

We do not know the state of another’s soul; we do not have enough information. We do know however whether certain things are right or wrong.

If I see someone starting to burn down the town hall, I do not know his motives or his mental state. I can judge however that objectively, his action is wrong.

We must not be silent on moral matters out of fear that someone could be offended.

Feelings do get hurt when the moral truth is asserted. This is why people were so angry with the prophets, and with Our Lord.

The truth will set us free (Jn 8,31-32), and truth is all we are seeking. Those who are genuinely ignorant of their wrongdoing will be happier if they come to know their true position.

Many would be unaware of why what they are doing is wrong, or how seriously wrong it is. Their ignorance may or not be excusable, but in any case it is a serious wrong, objectively.

For ourselves at least, we aim at getting it all right, objectively and subjectively. We want to do what is right and best, with the best intentions, especially wishing to give glory to God.

We must be prepared ourselves to receive correction, and as far as correcting others we must always take the splinter out of our own eye first (Mt 7,5).

We do not consider whether we are better or worse than others; we seek merely to do what is best as our situation requires.

Is the other person sinning? Very likely, yes. Is it a mortal sin, a venial sin? We will not always be able to tell. We do not need to know the full extent of the degree of sin; we simply say that it would be better for everyone to listen to the wisdom of the Church and change our behaviour.

The other person may or may not go to hell for what he is doing. We, for our part, pray for his soul and for all the other related needs. We desire the salvation of all no matter how much we may disapprove of their behaviour.

Do we think we are better than others? Probably we do think it, and we should not.

We have our own sins which may be worse or as bad as theirs.

Instead of judging we encourage each other to find the right way.

Who is worse, who is better, does not matter so much as that we all find mercy.

We can make prudential decisions about whom we mix with. For instance we would not be  best friends with criminals.

This is a judgment about what is our best course of action. It is not a condemnation of other people as such, more of a tactical consideration.

We avoid occasion of sin, and this can mean avoiding certain people. We do not want to be exposed to temptation, or our children to be so exposed.

It all comes back to God and what He wants. He must be obeyed, honoured, loved.

The pharisee took comfort in thinking himself better than the publican. He was wrong.

The publican asked for mercy on his own account. He was right.

They both should have asked mercy for themselves and each other. This we do now, here at Mass.

Lord, be merciful to us, sinners.

9th Sunday after Pentecost 2 Aug 2020 Sermon

9^th Sunday after Pentecost 2.8.20 Beyond our strength

St Paul tells us that we are never tested beyond our strength (1 Cor 10,13).

This has been understood as referring to temptations to sin, and more generally to our need to cope with problems.

There is no sin that we have to commit. The temptation might seem to be overwhelming but cannot really be so. If we did not have power of consent there would be no sin.

Temptation is like a flame that can be easily extinguished in its early stages (eg putting out a match) but is impossible to control once it has taken hold.

We have to develop the discipline to be able to see temptation off very quickly or we will lose that promised protection.

We need also to have a solidly formed Christian character which will enable us to deal with any type of sin that might approach us.

By a combination of this general character and specific sorrow for sins, we will have access to the grace which will enable us to resist any temptation.

Sin is a misdirection of the will. It means we want the wrong thing more than the right one.

With divine help we can steer our own will back to the right path.

God is always the most desirable being, the object of our will. The best thing we can do is to align our wills with His. He will help us to see what we really want.

This is how the human race was supposed to be from the start.

This is to enjoy complete tranquillity of mind with no discordant passions.

Our bodies rebel as it is (Ga 5,17) but they will come into line if the will does first.

The other sense in which we can understand this verse concerns our ability to cope with sufferings more generally. God will never send us more than we can bear.

How much we can bear is very hard for us to know. We do not know our own strength in this area.

We can look at our lives and see times when we thought something was insurmountable, but now we see that we did get through it.

God parts the waters for us and we cross on dry land, like the Israelites.

We find in the lives of the saints that they all suffered huge amounts. Yet they could absorb that suffering. They had the capacity to love God to such a degree that the sufferings seemed light to them.

When we love enough we do not count the cost. When a crisis is on people rise to the occasion, for example, trying to rescue someone in need.

Would you lay down your life to save someone else’s. You probably would if you loved the person.

What about to save someone’s soul? Even more important.

And what about saving people we do not even know? The saints could do that because they were imbued so completely with the love of Christ.

If we have suffering we can ask for it to be removed or resolved; or we can ask that we be big enough to carry that suffering.

One way or the other God will never let us down.

This is our consolation and it is a powerful one.

Here again we need discipline to keep this awareness of God's help. We will be tempted to think that God has abandoned us. It could never be that.

The two senses in which we can understand this verse converge. If our wills are in union with the divine will, then we will not fear adversity nor be attracted to sin in any form.

May the grace of God sustain us through all storms, till we reach eternal peace.