4th Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

Over the past couple of Sundays we have seen Jesus proclaiming the Kingdom of God, calling for a social order where people would be treated by others, and themselves would act, in line with their human dignity as persons loved passionately by God.  For that vision to become reality, Jesus had called his listeners to repent.  More explicitly, he had called them to follow me.

The Kingdom of God can’t happen for us unless we change radically.  Even if everyone else were to respond to Jesus’ call, with the resultant change in our whole world order: people deeply respecting each other, living together in justice, love and peace, unless we have ourselves changed radically we won’t enjoy it.  The experience of the Kingdom essentially involves being part of it, actively shaping it.  There are no passengers, no passive spectators, in the Kingdom.  [Like in any friendship – no matter how much another loves me, unless I love them, my experience, whatever else it might be, is not the experience of friendship.]

The disciples, who initially followed Jesus so wholeheartedly, who were captivated by his person and carried along with his vision, struggled with the personal change called for, the on-going need for conversion.  They were ambitious, competitive, possessive, touchy about their own honour, with all sorts of hidden agendas, reluctant to face the prospect of opposition and failure, etc.  In other words, they were like us.

I believe that, to enjoy the Kingdom, we need to enter into our depths, and to discover, and to prize experientially, the truth  that we are unconditionally loved, accepted and forgiven by God.

As that happens, gradually, two steps forward, one step back, we notice ourselves becoming at peace simply with who we are, not unsettled by difference, sensitive to others’ experience, especially their suffering, focussed on the wisdom that only God can give us, able to accept others, even in their sin, and to be merciful and forgiving, alert to and freed from our hidden agendas, our addictions and compulsions, and wanting actively to draw people into dialogue  and to build community.

As Jesus put it: poor in spirit, gentle, able to mourn, hungering and thirsting for God’s justice, merciful, pure of heart, peacemakers

I remember from my earlier days as a priest occasionally going to visit an older priest who had been quite a forward-thinker in his day, with no end of initiative and zeal.  And yet, when I knew him, in his disappointment at the way the Church was changing he had grown bitter.  His bitterness always struck me as sad...  Somehow I don’t think   that that would have been the reaction of Jesus.  Perhaps his problem was not so much in the area of spirituality.  It may have been more a case of clinical depression.

Indeed, Jesus seems to be saying (what I think is wonderful), that, as we grow into it, we find that the experience of the Kingdom, the experience of happiness, of peace, of blessedness, is irrepressible, and is not essentially affected by the response of others.  As Jesus said, and verified from his own life: Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you, and so on... Our joy might be greater when others share our vision, and struggle with us along the road.  But even when we meet reluctance, inertia, resistance, even persecution, our inner peace need not be shaken.

In some ways, it is only then that we are safe to be let loose on our world! that we really do build God’s Kingdom (and not our own!).  But then, we can start only from where we are and we learn only through action... And he got his apostles on board long before they were really ready.  So it must be OK!

The “beatitude experience” was, I believe, the experience of Jesus.  Matthew situated them early in his Gospel, but probably they were articulated only gradually as Jesus’ own experience and reflection deepened and came more clearly into focus as his life unfolded.  They were not some wisdom learnt from any catechism or book, but from life and reflection.

The experience of the Kingdom, the experience Jesus articulated so incisively in the Beatitudes, is not a secret.  It is not overcomplicated.  It is just difficult – a life-long task of dying to self – but it is great, even when it is still incomplete.  I hope that all of us are far enough along the track to know this ourselves, in our own bones.  May we all continue to draw encouragement from each other in our pursuit of our hearts’ deepest desires.