22nd Sunday after Pentecost 24 Oct 2021 Sermon

22^nd Sunday after Pentecost 24 October 2021 Give to Caesar

Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God's (Mt 22,21).

Some would say nothing is God's and close Him out completely.

Others would give Him only what ceremony or custom require, such as Midnight Mass and weddings and other formal occasions.

Others again would see Him as an authority figure, to be avoided as much as possible.

Our understanding is that everything belongs to God at least insofar as He has a say in how we use it.

He does not need our houses and cars or any other possession, but He has an interest in whether we use them for His glory, or we think they are entirely our own to use as we please.

We give to God our obedience, trust, gratitude, even abandonment to His will.

What remains for Caesar is that we operate in the worldly sphere, and Caesar represents all that is legitimate in that sphere.

So we are honest in our business dealings, and we do not steal or cheat; and we do not covet what our neighbours have etc.

We give priority to the spiritual domain but that will always coincide with the best way of handling material concerns.

For example, if we trust in God's providence we will see there is no need to steal.

If we love God first, we will find happiness in Him, and not be drawn to false and harmful pleasures, such as through impurity and drugs.

If we worship God we will not be worried about our own social standing, but be happy to be seen as a servant of Christ.

It  all  hinges on our attitude towards God.

If we reduce Him to zero or only partial relevance we will have a very diminished life.

Instead we seek Him out; we give Him due place in our lives.

God wants us to understand Him as more desirable than any other person, thing or activity; to be appreciated, thanked, obeyed, adored, seen as a source of blessing.

God is as relevant as any being can be. He is the referral point to everything else. He is there first and last.

He cannot be removed even if we deny or defy Him – He cannot be removed from existence; nor can His plans be derailed.

Where do we look, and how far, in trying to keep God in mind?

He does not expect us to think of Him every second of the day, but if we are absorbed in the material domain we will still be operating by spiritual principles.

If we do not know exactly God’s will at every point, we can at least avoid things which we know will displease Him – such as any form of sin.

Then we can sort out more specific responses to His will, as we grow in wisdom.

We develop a sense of what He wants, His general approach, as we learn from revelation and inspired writings, and example.

We have all the formal events still, but not in such a way that we present as strangers. We do this every day anyway – that is, we pray. Sometimes we are a bit more formal than others but always with the same idea.

Praying will not become a dull routine if we stay sensitive to God's presence. It is an adventure to be involved with Him. Look at the saints, and what they experienced. We can be part of that world.

We do not have to pray 24 hours on our knees, but nor do we ignore God for 24 hours either. We find the balance, which will always be in general terms that the spiritual world governs the material.

Everything comes from God, is kept in being by Him, and directs back to Him.

All praise and thanks to Him.

21st Sunday after Pentecost 17 Oct 2021 Sermon

21^st Sunday after Pentecost 17 October 2021 Forgiveness

God is abundant in His actions, as we see for example, in the size of the universe, and the variety of  His creation.

This abundance extends to His attitude to our sins and our need for mercy.

He is rich in mercy (Ep 2,4); He runs to meet the repentant son (Lk 15,20).

He desires the conversion of a sinner (Ezek 33,11) and even the angels rejoice over one repentant sinner (Lk 15,10).

That He forgives so freely can be mistaken for indifference on His part; that He just brushes off the sin as a thing of no importance.

This is not the case, however. God sees our sin in the clear light of divinity, where even the smallest sin would be seen in its ugliness. (Like defacing a work of art.)

He saw sin as serious enough to require the Incarnation and Crucifixion to deal with it.

When God forgives sin He restores us to right relationship with Him.

God forgives us because He looks at us through His Son, the perfect sacrificial victim.

This sacrifice was such a strong act of love that it more than compensates for the sin of the world. God is more pleased with His Son’s sacrifice than He is displeased by our sin.

We could never atone for the sins we have committed against God; they are too many and too serious.

So we go through the Son, relying on His merits to make up for what is lacking in us. And this is essentially how we are saved.

We might settle for just good health and material blessings, but those things are just steppingstones to our complete destiny, which is freedom from sin, union with God.

Sin, meanwhile, is ugly and destructive. We need to ask for mercy whenever we sin, not just simply presume that mercy will happen anyway.

We need to be sufficiently contrite on the one hand, and sufficiently grateful on the other. Contrite enough to realize we are in a dark place; and grateful enough to realize we have been rescued from that darkness.

Not everyone is automatically forgiven. There has to be at least some contrition, some recognition of what sin means, and why it is so undesirable.

Many think of sin as just a part of life, normal human behaviour. It is very normal as far as how often it happens but it is not meant to happen.

Forgiveness is available to any who genuinely seek it. We are then claiming on the merits of Christ.

But if we do not ask we will not receive. There are various reasons why someone might not ask for mercy – they don’t think they need it; they don’t see how God comes into the picture; they are afraid to ask for it etc.

The more contrite we are in the process the more complete will be our forgiveness, and the less likely to re-offend. Also, in the light of today’s parable we will be more likely to forgive others whatever wrongs they have done us. Generosity flows from gratitude.

The first debtor in the parable must not have been contrite enough because he certainly was not grateful enough (Mt 18,28).

We need a real spiritual sensitivity here. The world has grown coarse with too long denying proper attention to Almighty God. The world denies sin and mercy, and cannot offer any way out of the tangle it has created.

We have, by contrast, the way to be free of sin and the way to Heaven.

Lord, have mercy on us.

 

 

 

20th Sunday after Pentecost 10 October 2021 Sermon

20^th Sunday after Pentecost 10 October 2021 Degrees of faith

The nobleman had a certain amount of faith but not strong.

Our Lord then gave Him more faith through the miracle.

It is one thing to have a miracle. How we respond is vitally important.

If we receive a blessing we thank God and store up the memory in our hearts (cf Our Lady, Lk 2,19).

We do not just shrug it off carelessly as did the nine lepers (Lk 17,11-19).

We have an ever-increasing list of miracles the Lord has worked for us. What marvels the Lord has worked for us, indeed we are glad (Ps 125(126), 3).

As we accumulate our list of blessings we can also deepen our faith, and we will have more faith to call upon the next time we need a miracle.

Our Lord does not want, however, that we be lurching from one miracle to the next but putting our permanent trust in Him.

Even when people could see Him, and they knew He had worked other miracles, they still doubted Him.

Our Lord objects to this lack of faith … unless you see signs and wonders.

He wants us to enter a relationship of trust with Him, such that at any time and in any need we can call confidently upon Him.

The requests flow from a full heart, an already established closeness. It is not shouting across a chasm, but a quiet confident word.

We seek a unity with God which has always been there, but needs to be restored and

increased; a natural growth from strong foundations…like branches on a tree (Jn 15,5).

So that we increase in our love for God.

We do not see Him as only a problem-solver. We are not seeking just to squeeze benefits from Him, but to have a constant trust and gratitude towards Him.

We express all this in our prayer, which is our link with all that is good and powerful.

One of our most important prayers is the Rosary, which we highlight, particularly in this month.

If we seek certainty and security, the Rosary will definitely help.

The Rosary has great stability, being prayed at all places and times, bringing before us the central mysteries of our faith - mysteries which keep rolling upon us like waves on the shore.

Based in eternity, yet active in time, these mysteries remain true and relevant. The more the prayer is prayed the more good is going to come.

It is a prayer with many aspects. It will work at different levels, It makes us stronger, it heals the rift between humanity and God, and because of the increase in faith it is more likely to make things happen.

The Rosary helps to anchor us in God Himself, rather than just being preoccupied with outcomes.

Success or failure we press on. We should pray the Rosary every day. We are not obliged to do that; it is just that it bears so many fruits.

As far as outcomes go, some things require more prayer than others. For really big things like rescue from an invading army, or the overturning of immoral abortion laws, we need more time and more numbers.

It is not that we lack faith that we have to keep doing the same thing – it is just that bigger objectives require more prayer, and more people praying.

Then, there is reparation for past sins, which are countless; and for perennial causes such as conversion of sinners. We have much to keep us busy.

See yourself as the nobleman of today’s Gospel. He was told his son would live but he did not see the miracle straight away. Maybe he thought he would go home and find his son was dead.

Faith enables us to see victory before it is evident. We pray the victory into reality.

The Rosary helps to do this.

Our Lady of the Rosary, pray for us.

 

 

19th Sunday after Pentecost 3 Oct 2021 Sermon

 19^th Sunday after Pentecost 3 October 2021 Heaven or Hell

Can we be certain of being saved? We can make it certain, but we are warned against being complacent.

Many today think that it is impossible to go to Hell, and that leaves Heaven as the only option, which by default becomes certain!

The last part of today’s parable indicates that salvation is not so easy as it may look. (The man without the wedding garment is expelled Mt 22,11-13)

Salvation is easy from one angle, insofar as it is not hard at least to initiate unity with Almighty God. A simple act of repentance can be enough.

That gets us started, but we then have to maintain the new state of affairs and live with it.

First we accept God’s invitation to the banquet (initial repentance, salvation); then we conform with whatever that acceptance requires (ongoing interaction).

We must not, like the unfortunate servant, bury our talent. (Mt 25,25) Once called to work in the vineyard we must work till the end of the day. Or, having put our hand to the plough, we must not look back (Lk 9,62).

If salvation is easy to begin, it is also easy to lose (cf the seed that did not make it to the harvest (Mt 13,1-7).

We are aware of the possibility of being lost, but this is not meant to cripple us with fear; only to ensure that we keep a respect for the wiles of the enemy and the lure of the world.

Those who think Heaven is automatic are at great risk of not paying sufficient attention to the dangers surrounding them.

Any sense that we have already ‘arrived’; that we are already ‘good enough’, must be guarded against.

We race to the finish (2 Tm 4,7) as St Paul puts it. Even he thought he could still be lost (1 Cor 9,27).

We are not meant to be quaking with fear that we might go to Hell, but just keeping a healthy caution.

There is a danger of being lost even if one has been on the right track for most of one’s life (Ez 18,24)

This is the reverse of the idea that one can be saved even after living an evil life (Ez 18,21).

It is what we have become that determines how we are judged.

The best idea is to live a good life and have a good death!

We cannot assess our exact status before God because there may be aspects to our lives that we have not given much attention towards.

There are always certain things we can do which will improve our position even if we don’t precisely know what that position is.

For example, we can always make acts of contrition and confess our sins. We can always pray, do good works. God will know if we are sincere, and He can even help us to be sincere if we were not before.

It would be comforting to believe everyone went to heaven, but this belief is just not tenable.

There is a great deal of Scripture and Tradition that tells us otherwise. eg today: Many are called, few are chosen (Mt 22,14).

Nor is it logical, when we consider that God does not force salvation on anyone. We are invited to the banquet, not forced.

So we keep operating at our fullest capacity, to make more likely our own salvation and - understanding the communal nature of the Church - to help others find their way to salvation as well.

We have to work overtime at present, because relatively few see it in this light.

There is not much prayer for the dead at present. The dead need our prayers more than our praise! Prayers such as: forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell, and lead all souls to Heaven, especially those who most need Thy mercy.