2nd Sunday Lent A - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2014

In his Exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel,  Pope Francis wrote a lot of challenging things. One comment unsettled me. He said that we need to listen to the poor – because it is the poor and oppressed of our world who see reality as it is. I’m white; I’m Western; I’m wealthy; I’m powerful; I’m male. What do I see? The probability is that what I see is not reality as it is, but illusion. Inevitably I get it wrong … unless … unless I learn to stand in the shoes of the poor and oppressed and to see life from their vantage point – what Francis calls contemplative knowing. 

Indeed, maturing as human persons requires it - and enables it. Judging from what we see on our TV news programs or hear on talk-back radio, not many seem to learn the skill. What we hear and see so often is simply the fall-out from our failure. The need is to grow up. And we encounter strong resistance to that from within ourselves and from the culture around us. It is a lifelong task. To grow up we need to learn to love – because loving is also the only way really to know others. Contemplative knowing … Anything less is projection; is illusion.

Just before today’s Gospel episode, Jesus had said as much to his disciples. He said that growing up would require what he even described as dying to self – as losing life in order really to find it. He told them that if they wanted to grow up, and to experience life to the full, they too would have to face the paradox, take the punt, run the risk of learning to love, and facing the inevitable dying it always involves. Jesus had said he was prepared to go that way – and Peter had tried to talk him out of it, only to hear himself curtly called Satan!

Peter had been right when he had said earlier that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of the living God – [which Jesus’ transfiguration in its own way served to confirm]. But he was not the Messiah, Son of God, that Peter dreamed of. He would soon be crucified, dehumanised, and killed.

There was more to come. After Jesus’ transfiguration, the voice from the cloud said to the disciples, Listen to him! Listen to what he is saying! Make sense of that!

Jesus has shown us that learning to love is learning to see life through the eyes of the victim – by learning to stand in solidarity with them. Jesus spelt that out in practice. He listened to the sick and healed them.He frequently ate with society's outcasts, the tax-collectors and prostitutes. More than that, he let himself become victim in order himself to see reality as only victims can see it, as it really is.

I am not poor. I am not oppressed. But I can learn to stand in solidarity with the poor and oppressed – the dispossessed first inhabitants of our country, those fleeing persecution and seeking asylum on our shores, those abused sexually or physically or emotionally, those marginalised by an economic system that puts profits for shareholders above human persons. Contemplative knowing ...

There is more! Jesus was not just any victim. He was the forgiving victim – [as if being victim weren’t challenge enough!] Loving in a broken world translates ultimately into forgiving, into breaking the spiral of revenge or of getting even, into finding better ways to counter violence than simply more of the same.

To be fully alive, to live truly in love, I need to learn to respect and listen to those I see as the oppressors, those I disagree with - because they too are human persons, with a God-given human dignity. Disagree – by all means [Jesus did – clearly, courageously.] Resist. But with respect - to my own dignity, and to theirs. I need to learn to see them, too, contemplatively.

Today’s episode finished with the comment: Tell no one about the vision until the Son of Man has risen from the dead – because only with the Easter story of the crucified, risen and forgiving victim, can we really see consistent love and truly mature human life expressed in their fullness.