12th Sunday Year A - Homily 3

 Homily 3 - 2017

Would you say that Jesus in today’s Gospel is warning, even threatening, or encouraging, in fact, quite upbeat? I tend to the latter reaction. After all, we have the refrain, Do not be afraid, repeated three times in the first two paragraphs.

When I hear the phrase, Proclaim it from the housetops, I spontaneously picture a modern house with its TV antenna or satellite dish in full view. And sadly, in today’s world, as far as the Church is concerned, TV and other media have been the means whereby Everything covered was uncovered, and everything hidden was made clear. The Royal Commission has exposed inexorably the sad story of gross sinfulness that, till then, we had not even heard in whispers.

That was hardly what Jesus had in mind when he was giving his advice to his disciples – to the contrary! And yet his repeated refrain, Do not be afraid, remains surprisingly relevant to our current situation. The greater danger for the Church is not that it lose its prestige and privilege, even its influence, but that it lose its soul. In that context, the Royal Commission is a precious call to repentance. There is no need to fear those factors, loss of prestige, privilege and influence, that metaphorically can kill the body. What we need to fear is not an external him, such as the media, but the attitudes and behaviours of those of us in the Church which can destroy the Church’s soul.

We need to ponder thoughtfully, to look closely at ourselves. What motivated us? What enabled us to not see, to not speak up; and to cover up and hide so successfully the evils happening in our midst? Unfortunately, whatever it is, it is something quite complex, hard to identify and hard to change, something that has both its strengths plus, at the same time, its crippling weaknesses. We could call it Clericalism, and it is; but that is too vague. It affects not just priests and bishops, but most others, too, in the Church who are implicated to various degrees with us, and have preferred to remain passive and undisturbed, and, without complaining, to not grow up spiritually or morally. From outside the Church, the Commissioners struggled to understand it; and I think most of us, from the inside, are still puzzling.

Yet, I think that it is very much that that today’s Gospel could be challenging us to do. Do not be afraid. The God who has counted every one of the hairs on our heads, and to whom one sparrow falling to the ground is still of consequence, cares infinitely deeply for us.

I have the strong conviction that in any situation we find ourselves, no matter how tragic it may seem, God is present, not orchestrating events or pulling strings, but present, enabling us somehow to grow in the midst of it, not necessarily solving our problem or changing anything, but quietly empowering life, offering insight, strengthening hope, setting free our capacity to love. St Paul, in his Letter to the Romans, expressed the same insight more briefly: God makes all things work together for the good of those who love Him.

The Church can exit from the Royal Commission a purified Church, a compassionate Church, a humbler Church, a trimmer, less encumbered and more effective Church, a different Church, perhaps even a hardly unrecognizable Church. It may even become a Church able to encounter and to influence the impact of our changing culture. But it will not happen by magic. It can happen by grace. However, we shall need to look hard, to reflect prayerfully, to grow up. And we shall need to do it together.

We can take for our model and companion Mary, of whom St Luke observed: As for Mary, she treasured these things and pondered them in her heart. She accepted reality and searched there for the traces of God’s presence and action.