Homily for 32^nd Sunday Year B

This morning, we are gathered here for our usual Sunday celebration. But we make this gathering a little special on this first Sunday of November, by remembering and praying for all those who have died during this long pandemic of COVID  19.

I think each one of us here has been affected deeply by the sufferings of those who died in Intensive Care wards, in the nursing homes or at home during the past 20 months or so. Many of us have attended at least one funeral during this time and we were all struck by the loneliness, the solitude of those members of the grieving family who were able to gather for prayer and for the farewell Mass. It was so noticeable when most people had to stand around outside and only the very closest of relatives were allowed in. They were painful moments and lonely. Now, that is in the past, even if our grief is still very raw to this day.

In this Eucharist, our memorial of Jesus’ own suffering, we join our pain to that of God’s Son at the time of his death, in the hope that God will somehow bring some good out of it, just as God accomplished our salvation out of the sufferings of the crucifixion. We hope that, struck by all these afflictions, the national and regional health authorities and councils will apply themselves to improvements in the management of our amazing NHS and make the necessary reforms in the care of our elderly. We offer our suffering to God and unite ourselves to the agonies of others across the world who do not even have the most basic care or the most basic support to face up to this pandemic and who have still not been vaccinated.

In the story we just read, in the first reading, about the widow at the time of Elijah, God saw the suffering of that poor woman – the figure of the people of Israel – and came to her rescue. In the Gospel, Jesus perceives the treasure that the poorest widow gave as her temple offering. It was a treasure because it came from her great distress and her poverty. In human eyes, she gave nothing: a penny. In the eyes of God, she could not have given better; she gave her heart. Is hers not an example of Christian sharing that we try to emulate ourselves? It is often said that this parish was built on the pennies of the poor!

In Christian wisdom, suffering is not senseless or useless. Suffering cannot be escaped in life. Death itself is the one sure thing about anyone’s life. Death, like birth, is essential for life. But with the death of a loved one, comes the suffering of grief and mourning, sometimes heart-rending and crucifying in itself. In that suffering, we have to reach into our inner-most recesses to find the strength to live through it and come out the other side. That is where we can find Christ, in his suffering on the cross. That is where, if we search with the eyes of our heart, we find salvation. Every cloud, every cloud has a silver lining. We just need to be patient in our seeking of it.

Our world itself is suffering now and as it suffers, we suffer with it. The typhoons lashing across the Pacific nations; the fires in the Mediterranean, Australia and the Southern States, even in Siberia; the flooding in Cumbria, the Borders and Wales: they all bring great suffering to people. This suffering is now concentrating the minds of our leaders in Glasgow, in the summit COP 26. Its also concentrating our minds. Covid, global warming, destructive weather; it’s all connected and it all comes as a result of our human greed and selfishness, our short-sightedness, over the past generations.

It calls us all to conversion; to change our ways, to leave behind self-centred desires, the individualism that we have been living for too long now. It tells us to remember that we are all connected; everyone, black, white, yellow, rich poor, young and old. We are all one, children of the same God and part of our loving God’s beautiful creation which our selfishness is destroying.

COP 26 is showing us that there is only one way out of this. It is to unite, to change our lives, to change, indeed, our hearts’ desires, and to seek out the good of all humankind and of the nature by which we live. Another way of saying that is; to seek the Kingdom of God. For it is only there that we will find true happiness and the relief of all our suffering.Homily for Sunday 32 of Year B . Terry