19th Sunday Year A - Homily 4

  Homily 4 - 2017

“O you of little faith”. Jesus was not talking about the disciples’ familiarity with the Catechism, but about their readiness to trust him – his sense of God and his way of life. As I pondered on the Gospel this week, trying to hear how it might be relevant to today’s world, the current discussion on euthanasia came to mind, especially as society struggles really to trust within the bleak context of a consumerist, competitive culture.

I was reading recently about a study conducted in Holland on the five principal reasons given by patients for requesting euthanasia. At the top of a list of five was "not wanting to be a burden to others". "Avoidance of pain" came a very distant fifth – although it seems to be the reason given top priority among proponents seeking to legalise the practice here in Australia.

I am not all that surprised that pain avoidance came last. People’s experience of pain is very personal, and is very much related to other factors. I remember years ago reading a book written by the eminent Jewish psychologist, Victor Frankel, dealing with his observations arising from his experience in one of Hitler's extermination camps. He noticed that people who had a sense of meaning in their lives could put up with almost any prospect of suffering, while those without meaning crumbled. He survived the awful experience because he yearned to be reunited with the wife he loved.

In a consumerist culture where pleasure, productivity and autonomy rule supreme, dying generally makes no sense, and people prefer to live without thinking of it. Where the sense of autonomy, the need to feel always in control, predominates, so-called “dying with dignity” seems to require being somehow in control of the dying process . Where productivity is idealised, becoming a financial burden on the community is dangerous; and being dependent on family, or on medical and nursing staff to meet everyday needs, seems supremely undignified.

Yet not always being in control, being in fact sometimes dependent on others, is part of being authentically human. It constitutes the essence of any genuine relationship of love. Some of you are old enough to remember Neil Diamond singing [about fifty years ago!], “He ain’t heavy; he's my brother.” It was not just cute; it was profoundly true. Love makes burden irrelevant. Burden makes love beautiful. And the correlative is perhaps even truer. “I'm not heavy. I'm his brother.” Being loved by God constitutes our dignity; being loved by others makes us aware of it.

I fear that our pleasure-prioritising culture makes it difficult for us to get in touch with love, real love. We talk about it ad nauseam – and misunderstand it profoundly. Love is pure gift. We cannot earn it, merit it, or buy it – we simply accept it. We have no control over another's genuine love for us. But for being loved to do us any good, we need to trust it, be humble enough to let it be, and learn from it. It takes time, sometimes a lifetime.  

Years ago I decided that I want my death to be, as far as I have any say in it, the most fully alive moment of my life. I believe that I can best prepare for that by letting myself be loved every moment, and by seeking to love others as well and as consistently as I can. I do not have to succeed - but I do need to be in process.

All of this, I believe, can make sense to any thoughtful person, believer or not. In addition, for believers, knowing that God loves us makes a wonderful difference – provided that we do not simply take someone else’s word for it but have allowed God to whisper it to us personally. Like Elijah who encountered God in “the sound of a gentle breeze”, we need to take the time deliberately to listen to God. We need to learn to pay attention as we pray. It is surprising how much life changes as we learn God’s language of silence.