Homily 20th June 2021. Terry

Posted on 23rd June, 2021

12th Sunday Ordinary Time B

SVP 19 June 2021

 

Funerals have been a feature for me these past weeks, happily not here in St Vincent’s. It is noticeable that people who have not seen the inside of their parish church for maybe decades want to come back for this most significant moment in their family’s life. This is surely something to be welcomed. They tell you that the church is always there, a constant in life. It was there that they were christened, made their first communion, received confirmation, were married. It is good that we can welcome them when there is a death. Even so, when they come to the Funeral Mass, they can no longer answer the priest, or know when to sit or stand. They do not receive communion and, among those who do, it can be clear that they no longer know how to. Somewhere along the road Catholics have lost their Catholic culture; the culture that had sustained a community for nigh on 200 years.

 

I find myself asking what went wrong? How come people can talk of this church as their church, yet never step over the threshold and no longer have any idea about Catholic practice, either in liturgy or in social life as a whole?

 

Christian faith, I have to remind myself, is about more than culture and more than liturgy. It is about the way that we live. At the earliest time of the Church, and often throughout the centuries that followed, the disciples did not use the word ‘religion’ to describe their Christian faith, they spoke rather about THE WAY. The WAY of being, the way of life, the way of Jesus… Which meant a life of prayer, a life in a living and life-giving community, a life at the service of others.

 

I am puzzled by this collapse of the Christian way of life. I am puzzled, but not overly anxious. I am not too anxious because my trust does not lie in the numbers who come to church. It does not lie in knowing and following the cultural practices of the church, for we who do may not be any better than those who have lost them. No, my trust is best described by the words of St. Paul who writes in the second reading we just heard – “The love of Christ impels us”. It is this conviction that God loves me that keeps me faithful and that keeps me in the community of Christ’s disciples. The Catholic culture helps. It is a means of expressing my belonging to the community which is the Body of Christ.

 

It makes me feel very sorry, and I regret enormously, that people as a whole today do not know God’s love. Because they do not know it, they seek solace and assurance in so many other minor deities that always fail to assuage their hunger for love and for spiritual satisfaction. All too often these deities even lead them to ruin, as we realise now, as nature – the other part of God’s beloved creation – turns against us.

My greatest desire in life is to share the hope and joy of the Gospel with all those around me. And this should be the greatest desire of all Christians.

 

Our baptismal vocation is not to gather each Sunday in Church to praise God and during the week to defend ourselves against the power of sin, even if this is what many of us were taught. Remember the image that was popular for many years in the last century; the image of the barque of Peter – like Noah’s ark tossed about on the rough and stormy seas that we learnt to refer to as “The World”? It may have been a valid image then, but it is no longer so today.

 

Our vocation is to live the Gospel in joy and in hope and living the gospel is best described in the Beatitudes of Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 5, or again in the one commandment that counts above all others, “You shall love your God and your neighbour as yourself”. Love is joy, love is hope, love is oneness with the beloved, is it not?

 

Pope Francis writes in his letter ‘The Joy of the Gospel’, “If something should rightly disturb us and trouble our consciences, it is the fact that so many of our brothers and sisters are living without the strength, light and consolation born of friendship with Jesus Christ, without a community of faith to support them, without meaning and a goal in life”.  EG 49

 

This synod, which we celebrate this weekend, should encourage us, as we weather the storm of the diminution of church numbers and church participation. It should encourage us to allow the Holy Spirit to transform our lives and transform our church into a joyful, life-giving people of God, confident of God’s love and God’s presence amongst us. As Pope Francis said in another part of that letter same letter, “Christians have the duty to proclaim the Gospel without excluding anyone. Instead of seeming to impose new obligations, they should appear as people who wish to share their joy, who point to a horizon of beauty and who invite others to a delicious banquet. It is not by proselytizing that the Church grows, but “by attraction”.  EG 14

Make A Comment

Characters left: 2000

Comments (0)