11th Sunday after Pentecost 21 Aug 2022 Sermon

11^th Sunday after Pentecost 21 August 2022 Perceiving God

Our Lord heals the deaf man (today’s Gospel), and at another time He restores sight to a blind man (Jn 9,1-7).

The Church has always understood the healing miracles of Our Lord to have a symbolic value beyond their physical aspect.

As He makes the spiritually deaf and blind to hear and see clearly, He does the same for all who have lost the capacity to hear the word of God, or to perceive the presence and activity of God in their lives.

Much of our trouble in this world flows from the difficulty we have in perceiving God in His nearness to us, and our resulting lack of trust in Him.

We cannot see Him with the physical eyes so we say He does not exist.

We cannot hear His actual voice, so we say we do not know what He asks of us.

There are ways of knowing things other than through the physical senses.

St Paul, in today’s epistle (1 Co 15), speaks of the certainty of Our Lord’s resurrection.

We in our time have not seen the Risen Christ, but other people have, and many more have based their lives on the truth of this event.

We may be hesitant to believe because we have not seen Him, but He will ‘appear’ to us through the testimony of others, through the countless miracles that have been worked in His name, through the witness of the Church over twenty centuries.

We can sense St Paul’s anguish that there are still so many who do not believe. He has seen the Risen Christ, so he has no doubts, but how to bring others to the same certainty?

This has ever been the Church’s problem.

A combination of several factors will help the individual disciple to a stronger faith.

There is always Prayer, which opens up channels of communication otherwise closed. Prayer is like switching on the light, or the radio, making oneself open to whatever God wants to send.

Then there are Sacraments, direct encounters with the Risen Lord, whereby His power will act on us in various ways, and bring us to a stronger faith in Him.

Then there is the rich deposit of faith, accumulated over twenty centuries available to anyone who chooses to draw upon it.

This deposit of faith is summarised in our Creeds, which we recite frequently.

The words of the Creed are true, beyond the experience or perception of any individual, yet verified by the experience and perception of many.

The individual may falter but the whole Church never.

We can enjoy the certainty that comes from being surrounded by so many witnesses on all sides (Heb 12,1).

We can also sharpen our perception by avoiding sin and fully repenting of past sin.

This will also clear the cobwebs of doubt and fear which will otherwise hover about us.

We must resist the temptation to give up too soon. So many abandon the quest for faith because of some barrier they encounter. The Lord will make Himself known: Seek and you shall find.

Our Lord wants us to search for Him because it will be for our benefit if we do. He does not want us to be entirely passive but to take some share in our own salvation.

When we do this we are experiencing the healing of blindness, deafness, dumbness and all other barriers between us and Him.

10th Sunday after Pentecost 14 Aug 2022 Sermon

 10^th Sunday after Pentecost 14 August 2022  Humility

The pharisee was  too much pleased with himself for his prayer to be effective. And the publican was successful in his prayer because he was displeased with himself, and knew that he needed God’s help.

It is only by God's grace that we can get anything right. He prompts us to make the right choices, and then gives us the will to put those decisions into practice.

We must never for a moment boast of our achievements, even to ourselves, as though we are somehow cleverer or better than others.

We must be humble all the way through – before, during and after. And thank God all the way.

Everything comes back to our relationship with God. Religion is not just a corner of our lives, but has to be central if we are to get the right understanding of things.

Salvation happens when we come into full alignment with God's plans for us. He calls everyone to eternal life, and this call begins with a direct personal interaction with Him, being fully attentive to Him, not just seeking our own advantage, but putting Him first genuinely.

Today there is a lot of emphasis on self-esteem. People are encouraged to discover their true selves and blossom to full potential.

This can be a good thing as long as it is not overdone or misdirected – which it will be if God is excluded from the picture.

No one should be seen as useless or hopeless. We all have something to offer, and so we encourage each other. However, we do not want to overdo this to the point that we think we can do it without God.

Without Him as anchor and guide human pride can run anywhere. See the trouble we have right now with certain tyrants who want to invade their neighbours. They have plenty of confidence, but it is misdirected.

True humility is happy to work with others, having a common objective which stems from God Himself.

Whether we liken ourselves to a human body with all its parts, or an orchestra with all its different instruments, there is a great need for unity and communal collaboration in doing God's work..

There is no place for envy. If others can do something better than I then I am glad about that. Thus today’s epistle 1 Cor 12,2-11 where  the Holy Spirit brings out what is best from all of us.

We must not be envious of particular gifts, particularly the ones which attract attention.

On the other hand, if there are worse sinners than we are, we do not take pleasure in that, but wish them to come to true holiness.

We cannot know the state of others’ souls, in any case. It is enough if we seek increase in our own holiness and wish the same for others.

Humility means we may never be recognized for the sacrifices we make, for our attention to duty, for having anything to offer to the world.

We may be dismissed as old-fashioned, out of touch, still clinging to old ways while the world has moved on.

All this and more we will be told, but this is what to expect as disciples of Christ.

He Himself was rejected because He would not dance to the world’s tune.

He had something much better to give but it was too good for coarse minds to grasp. So as usually happens, violence was called upon, and He was crucified.

We are prepared to endure ridicule and worse for the sake of the Kingdom. We know that we will be exalted if we are first humbled for the sake of Christ.

9th Sunday after Pentecost 7 Aug 2022 Sermon

 

9^th Sunday after Pentecost 7 August 2022 Punishment

Does God punish? Not as in ‘taking revenge’. He does not want us to suffer hurt but He will allow suffering if it is needed to advance the cause of our salvation. Sometimes harsh measures are required to reach the ultimately soft conclusion.

He is warning us so that we ourselves will make any necessary changes. In that event there would be no need for punishment because the point is already taken.

The same can be said for all prophecies, and messages from Heaven. They are sometimes severe in their tone, but it is all for a reason - to move us to repentance and conversion first, and thus not needing correction or punishment.

We can come to love God for His goodness, and not out of fear.

God wants us to have an attitude of reverence towards Him, of belief in His love and good intentions towards us; of gratitude, humility and loyalty to Him. He has been so good that all these attitudes become our normal way of interacting with Him.

He wants us to have real unity with Him, actually being good, not because we fear punishment, but because we love God, and with that, all that is right and good.

Fear of the Lord, one of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, does not mean we are quivering nervously, but that we take God seriously, with all the reverence and attention that is required.

We think now, and act upon it, making and keeping good resolutions; and if those resolutions collapse we make new ones, and eventually one of them will hold up.

We see God's attitude to punishment when He laments the fate of Jerusalem (Lk 19,41-47). He weeps because they have missed so many chances to be saved.

He wanted instead that sinners would come to Him and be forgiven.

This has never yet happened on the scale that Our Lord wants, so we see the plagues and disorders continue; along with the crumbling of established order as people become more rebellious.

The remedy for all of it is very simple: Repent! That is everything in one word.

There will be other things that are needed but there has to be a clear repentance from the human race.

We repent for one’s own sins, and as far as we can for the sins of all mankind.

We are prepared to do more for that result. If we are close to Our Lord we will share in His desire to save sinners.

Meanwhile, for as long as we live and the world lasts, we maintain a state of humility and reverence towards God, always seeking to improve on wherever we are, never presuming that we have done enough, or that we are good enough as we are.

In this state we will be pursuing all the benefits of salvation as we grasp that more is available to us, if only we seek it.

If the word ‘punishment’ seems too strong or too harsh, then we can say ‘purification’ – things that go wrong can purify us of false or disordered attachments.

Or ‘purgation’, another word with a similar thrust. In Purgatory the souls are ‘purged’ or purified from sinful attachments.

It is painful but also sweet, as we discover the goodness of God and wonder why we did not do that sooner.

Why wait till we die to find that out? We can do it now as we ask the Lord to hold back His punishments, and give us instead the grace to do His will.

8th Sunday after Pentecost 31 Jul 2022 Sermon

8^th Sunday after Pentecost 31 July 2022 Living in the Spirit

One can be intelligent but not wise. Many people are too ‘clever’ to come to terms with God, either as to understanding or obeying.

A humble peasant praying reverently is showing more wisdom than a highly educated person mocking religion.

They say if you don’t know history you  are condemned to repeat it. But it seems that even if we do know history we are condemned to repeat it!

Folly can be kept in circulation and it is contagious.

Every generation makes the same mistakes. We should improve over the centuries but it seems we do not.

We have progressed technologically but not morally.

Generally, if we are learning a new skill and we get something wrong, we go back and get it right, gradually gaining greater control over the skill in question.

We do this cheerfully with certain tasks we attempt, concerning say, music or language, yet we do not do it with our whole lives.

Playing sport or music we could not be so careless as we are with life itself – as to whether we are hitting the right note or not!

Our Lord points out to us in today’s Gospel that the swindlers of the world plan their way more carefully than the honest people.

He is exhorting us to use more of that wisdom He has planted in us, to learn just one thing from the criminal world – that we have a goal and we press on towards that goal no matter what else.

We need a more precise attitude to whether we are doing right or wrong, and this will enable us to build up good habits and perform better overall.

Granted it is harder to live a whole life than to do one or other task, but we have a great deal of help available if we call upon it.

The grace of God will enable anything He asks from us. He will never command the impossible.

He will make it clear to us what He wants and then give us the strength we need to do it.

This works better the more we try it.

We tend to stay with what we know and just say we are good enough generally, and that should be good enough for anyone else!

But now, having been baptized, we live by the Spirit (epistle) and that is another matter.

We have received the Spirit within. He has the power to do things even if we do  not, and He will enable us, as He works through us.

We can uproot various bad habits we may have despaired of ever removing, simply by asking for the strength from the Holy Spirit.

Being good all the time amounts to getting each thing right as it arises. There is no complicated formula, just calling on God's help at each step. Eventually, the right responses become habitual and therefore relatively easy.

Living in the flesh is slavery to passions and disordered desires. We can be set free from that slavery, whereby we want the right things in the right way and the right amount.

Wisdom and intelligence can meet and get along together. We know how things work (intelligence), but more importantly how they fit in with each other (wisdom).

The Holy Spirit transforms us into what we were always meant to be, holy children of God.

This is what each individual is called to, and the Church also, to radiate life and holiness to the world so that people will flock to the Church as a sign of hope and refuge. And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. (Is 2,2).

We can learn from history after all, at least what not to do. Do not go on ignoring or denying Almighty God, but give Him first place in our hearts, minds, and lives.