9th Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 – 2008 

It is not those who say to me, “Lord, Lord”, who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven.

The kingdom of heaven … - the experience of being with God, of breathing the same air, as it were, standing shoulder to shoulder, arms around each other’s shoulders, sharing the same vision, the same dreams and hopes, loving all we see with the same inclusive, vibrant love.  I’ll know I’m there, when I can stand here and look at you all, and love you all easily, personally, freely as the adult persons you are, with the same intense, inclusive love that God has for you all.  Whenever, wherever, I can love like that, I’ll know the experience of the kingdom.

As Jesus said, It is not those who say to me, “Lord, Lord”, who will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the person who does the will of my Father in heaven.  Of course! When two people love, it’s true that: “Your slightest wish is my command!”  Of course, I would want what God wants because God’s desires and hopes would be also my desires and my hopes.  How can I get to that stage? How can I even know my own deepest desires and hopes?

Today’s Gospel passage concluded a whole collection of Jesus’ moral teachings – what we call the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s a fascinating collection – teasing us, challenging us, even confronting us, opening up possibilities, inviting us to see life, the world, through eyes enlightened by Jesus’ insights, convictions and priorities.  It is not a book of rules; but, like parables, it challenges us to think, to check out what we really believe.  What was he really driving at?

Jesus took his Jewish heritage seriously – yet his approach to the Law was so different from the approach of many of the experts of his day – the scribes and Pharisees.  At the basis of everything was Jesus’ sense of God.  Jesus knew God as the God who loved, who loved indiscriminately – as he said so strikingly: who causes his sun to rise on bad people as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike.  That’s the way that our heavenly Father is perfect.

But how do we know God’s will – what love asks of us – in the various, sometimes complicated, situations we find ourselves in every day? Ultimately we need to follow our consciences.  It is through our conscience that God speaks personally in the depths of our hearts.  It sounds easy.  But our consciences need to be formed and informed, or it won’t be the voice of God that we hear but a whole chorus of other competing voices as well.  How do we recognise God’s voice within us?  I don’t think that there is any easy answer to sorting out that chorus and recognising God’s voice within us.

We can look to the Church’s teaching – but, of necessity that teaching is usually general.  In the real situation, things can seem impossibly complicated.  Are we kidding ourselves? What do we really believe? What can we do that sits comfortably with our truest selves and our radical integrity?

To answer those questions, we need to know ourselves.  I don’t think there is any other option.  And that calls for reflection – and prayer.  As the Gospels said of Mary: She treasured these things and pondered them in her heart.  We need to look at life, and its complicated situations, closely.  We need to ponder them in the light of what Jesus shared with us.  We need to move from our heads into our hearts.  And always, overriding everything, our search is empowered and sustained by the God who looks on us with love.

Letting God look at me … letting God look at me with love … at me.  I am still trying, not by trying hard, but by stopping trying, and by learning simply to be who I already am.  “Your slightest wish is my command!”  Well, not yet!