20th Sunday

Year A

20th Sunday Year A

Homily 1 - 2005

Among other things, today’s Gospel shows Jesus being led to review his assumptions. It is a reminder to us of our constant mission to move beyond ourselves, beyond our comfort zone, to the world at large in order to share the vision, the values and the approach of Jesus. Remember the Gospel of some weeks back: The harvest is ready but the labourers are few so ask the Lord of the harvest to send labourers into the harvest. Jesus was talking not of more priests and religious but of you, the laity. Yours is the mission to make of your world the Kingdom of God.

When we were baptised (as will happen with little Isaac John in a few minutes), after the actual baptism itself, a little ritual highlighted the effect of what the baptism had done. We were anointed with oil to symbolise that we had been christened, christed, made one with Christ. The word Christ means an anointed person, and in Jesus’ world, priests, prophets and kings were all anointed persons. By being christened, we were given a share in the priestly, prophetic and kingly roles of Christ.

What does it mean: we are priests? Simply, that as creatures of the world - the intelligent and free creatures of the world - with Jesus we consciously offer the world to God – chiefly by our work. Through our work we bring our world into the service of human persons and allow our world to achieve its purpose. Our work, whatever it is, is sacred: it consecrates the world. Your work scene is your altar: the kitchen table, the stove, the sink, the tractor, the work bench, the shop counter, the office desk, the blackboard, the hospital bed. Through your work the things of this world reach their God-given destiny and are brought into the cosmic song of praise to God. You are priests. You have been christed/christened. You share the very priesthood of Christ.

You also share the prophetic role of Christ - not to foretell the future (that wasn’t the prophets’ role) - but to spell out the meaning of the present, the will of God for the here and now. You are empowered to be truth-tellers. Like Christ, you see the world in perspective. You know the infinite value of every human person – no exceptions! You know the ways of God, the God of whom Isaiah spoke today, the God who insists: Have a care for justice; act with integrity. Through your baptism you are prophets. The Spirit has anointed you to bring good news to the poor, inspiring you to tell the world, through personal experience, of the love of God, to speak the truth in love (as St Paul put it in one of his epistles).

You also share the kingly role of Christ, able to give order to our social institutions. This is the field of political action, of community service: peacemakers, workers for justice, contributors, people who pull their weight. Pope Pius XI said of political action that its importance was second only to the spreading of the Gospel. Indeed, the Bishops’ Synod convened immediately after Vatican II claimed that: Action for justice is an essential component of preaching the Gospel. The world is your stage.

As baptised and christened people, as other Christ’s, we make our world different, and shape it to the likeness of God’s Kingdom. Indeed, we are sent out precisely with this mission. This is the purpose of our being Church, why we are Church. We exist as faith community in Dimboola/Nhill/Horsham for a purpose – not just to survive, not just to passively absorb. The harvest is ready. What is in short supply is the labourers. The problem facing the Church at the moment, always, is not primarily a shortage of priests, but a shortage of Christians living out their roles as other Christs. A truly vigorous Church will have all the priests it deserves.

In a few minutes I shall baptise, christen, little Isaac John. His dignity is awesome. His mission is urgent. Let us support him by being the Church we are all called to be, and enjoying it.

Homily 2 – 2008

In today’s first reading, Isaiah quoted God as saying: My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Did Isaiah get it right? Jesus believed him. To explain his rejection of the temple after his entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, Jesus quoted precisely that line from Isaiah. He rejected the way the temple was being run, with its ruthlessly policed exclusion from its inner sanctuary of all non-Jews, women and the physically disabled. My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

Jesus’ own appreciation of the truth of Isaiah’s claim about God may have resulted from his encounter with the non-Jewish, Canaanite woman, recounted in today’s Gospel passage. There, Jesus corrected his initial reaction of rejection and chose to extend his healing power to the woman’s non-Jewish daughter. It seems to have been one of those special moments of insight - of the penny dropping - in Jesus’ own journey towards wisdom and maturity. Hear her catechism … and, being a pagan, she might have got all her answers wrong! Conduct a moral inventory on her – Would she have done any better? Interestingly, Jesus commends her faith, in stark contrast to the response of the religious elite of his day. Yet, Jesus said of her: Woman, you have great faith!.

What is faith? Obviously, it isn’t theology. It doesn’t seem to be moral perfection either – Jesus simply ignored those issues. Then, what is faith? - the faith that matters? It seems to spring from a deep awareness of need, of need for wholeness; and to consist in the readiness to admit to our own powerlessness, and to trust Jesus as the source of that wholeness. It seems to be more heart than head, something arising from deep within our own spirit.

I love the short prayer we all make before we begin our pilgrimage towards the altar for Communion: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.” Come along! Join with all those other sinners making their way forward! The Irish author, James Joyce, got it right in his reference to Catholicism: “Here comes everybody!” We come in trust, yearning for wholeness, forgiveness, acceptance and welcome, straining to love more consistently and to be at home, accepting and non-judgmental, with all the others receiving Communion with us. “… Say but the word, and I shall be healed.” And what is the word we so much want to hear? Perhaps: peace, acceptance, shalom, welcome, I forgive.

But there’s tension, too, isn’t there. We have made some sinners feel excluded. We have been selective with our sins – Many homosexual people, for example, do not feel welcome, nor do some of those married, or remarried, outside the Church. It’s as though some sins matter, and other sins don’t. Or it may even be that, when we say our little prayer before Communion, we don’t consider ourselves real sinners. We’re a bit more respectable, and would like to reserve Eucharist for those like us. But, if we’re not really sinners, if we don’t yearn for wholeness, if we are not straining to love consistently and wisely, there is little point in our fronting up for Communion. As Jesus said on another occasion: The healthy don’t need the doctor.

Isaiah sort of put the cat among the pigeons when he had God saying: My house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. “Here comes everybody!”

Homily 3 – 2011

If you’re like me, you probably feel uneasy about today’s Gospel passage. Mark was the first one to write about it. Luke, writing about twenty years after Mark, for a quite different community of fellow-believers, left it out of his Gospel altogether. Today we heard Matthew’s version of the story. Interestingly, he used Mark’s story - but retold it in his own way. Matthew was writing for a quite different community of fellow-believers from Mark (and from Luke, too, for that matter). He wanted to show the relevance of this incident to the life of his community.

Matthew’s community was made up of Jews and non-Jews – a real multi-cultural mix - which in some ways was a recipe for tensions, and even conflict. At that time, the Jewish members of the community saw themselves still as Jews. As far as they were concerned, they hadn’t changed their religion. Christianity was simply one more reform-movement within Judaism. It wasn’t a new, a different, religion. But being Jewish was not just a religious thing. It was cultural, too, and deeply influenced their whole lives. Jews defined themselves by their difference. Their God was different – holy. They were a holy nation. Non-Jews were not holy. Jews felt awkward, to say the least, with non-Jews. But here were some of these non-Jews joining up with them, becoming ever more numerous, and beginning even to overwhelm them. Tensions. Were non-Jews welcome in the Christian movement? Could they belong? On what conditions? And who made the decision?

In re-telling Mark’s original story, Matthew addressed precisely this problem. He clearly highlighted the differences between the woman and the disciples. He didn’t just identify her by her geographical location, but used the word Canaanite [that was the ancient word for Israel’s’ long-time enemies]. He showed that the problem was firstly the disciples’ problem: She’s shouting after us. He spelt out the usual Jewish objection by having Jesus say: I was sent only to the lost-sheep of the House of Israel. And, in fact, Jesus’ focus was undoubtedly Jews, not Gentiles. But then Matthew added the balance. Jesus responded to and praised the faith of the woman: Woman, you have great faith.

And Matthew used the dialogue between the woman and Jesus to make the point that, when dealing with God, there is enough for all, even the dogs can eat the scraps that fall from their master’s table. And the mention of the scraps gave meaning to the otherwise irrelevant observation tacked on to the end of the previous story of the feeding of the 5000+ Jews in the wilderness: When they picked up the scraps, they filled twelve baskets with what was left over. God’s grace is super-abundant, and reaches out beyond Israel to embrace the whole world.

Matthew sought to make Mark’s story relevant to his community, in a different country and twenty years later. As we listen today, twenty centuries later, a far different community with different questions, how can we see Matthew’s story relevant to us? Tensions between groups. Who belongs? Who doesn’t? and Who decides? Different cultures finding it hard to open to each other. Instinctively, they fear that their own wonderful specialness will be somehow compromised. If they open a little, they still want to feel completely in control…

People fleeing persecution, fleeing oppression, fearing war, approach our borders. How do we, from within our culture, instinctively react? Let them in? Keep them out? Let some in? Keep some out? If they arrive by air, treat them one way. If they arrive by leaky boats, treat them another way. We mightn’t call them dogs, but are our other labels even less helpful – queue-jumpers, illegals? Are they? Whatever about our cultural influences, does our sense of Jesus colour our response? Is Jesus relevant to real-life issues?

Homily 4 - 2014

There is not much happening in my life at the moment – just business as usual. So my focus goes easily to what the media have been presenting – the tragic inhumanity happening in Iraq, Israel and Gaza, and elsewhere. Some of you might have seen Monday night’s Compass program relentlessly highlighting the tragic mistakes made by Church leadership in the whole matter of clergy sexual abuse. During the week there was the heated argument whether the poor will suffer more than the rich from the renewal of the fuel subsidy. Then the issues surrounding the surrogate motherhood of the Thai woman and the fate of little Gammy, the Downs syndrome twin. It is so comfortable and reassuring for me to be able to sit back cynically and to pass judgment; and the more I consider I know the Gospel, the more self-righteous and reassured I can feel.

Then I read today’s Gospel; and scratch my head … and my spontaneous reaction is to continue to pass judgment. But then, something else stirs, and a quiet voice insists: “Forget about judging others. How does today’s Gospel throw light on my life today in mid-August 2014? How might it put me in touch with the way that the Kingdom of God is working itself out as good news in my life right now?” I am not sure of the answers. Eyes that fail to see, and ears that fail to hear are not restricted to the Galilean crowds of Jesus’ day. Who is the Gospel passage about? the mother with the relentlessly fierce love for her daughter? the disciples who wanted Jesus to shut her up because she was such an embarrassment? or Jesus whose first reaction seemed so utterly heartless? And how might all that help me to find deeper insight or interest or energy?

The woman’s care for her daughter fascinates me. Not that it is unique. I presume most mothers would relate to it. Would it not be a wonderful world if that depth of love were shared by everybody, and not just for children and family, but for everyone? Such love would inevitably involve the deep desire also for justice; and would be open to the collaborative and enlightened search for ways in which it might take shape in practice. There is little I can do to change others. I can ask myself whether I would like to love like that – love anyone, everyone, indiscriminately and without judging? But sadly I cannot make that happen either.

Is that the end of the story? I do not believe it is. By the end of his life, Jesus faced death by crucifixion – dying for anyone, everyone, indiscriminately. Was his love as fierce as that womb-love evidenced in the woman of today’s story? It did not seem to be obvious at the start of the story – quite the opposite. Jesus’ attitude seemed more a classic example of us/them, in-group/out-group. Did Jesus change? Did he really allow his recognition of the pagan woman’s faith to expand an earlier prejudiced attitude? Did he really grow in wisdom and age and grace [as stated elsewhere in one of the Gospels]? And, if he did, was there ever some stage when that process of growing came to an end? Referring to Jesus’ crucifixion, the Epistle to the Hebrews spoke of Jesus still learning … and becoming perfect through suffering.

Might today’s Gospel be inviting me not to give up hope, to keep allowing God’s grace to work away sensitising and empowering me, even though I am running out of time? Might I still learn to see people, more often, with compassion, and not with judgment? Might I peacefully accept that I cannot make it happen; and yet live in hope of God’s gift, and rejoice and be grateful for those occasions when grace does seem to strike unexpectedly out-of-the-blue?

Homily 5 - 2017

The week started with the Charlottesville riot in the United States on the Saturday, and was followed on Thursday with the terrorist attack in Barcelona, Spain. There is a lot of prejudice and hatred in people’s hearts. For some it is so automatic that they do not even see it as hatred or prejudice but natural, taken for granted. On our part, it is always easier to see it in others, particularly distant or different others.

It is to this reality that today’s Gospel may speak. Until recently, I have interpreted the passage as illustrating how a simple Gentile woman managed to persuade Jesus to change his mind, to broaden his outlook and to act mercifully – though that interpretation has never really satisfied me.

We know that Matthew’s community of believers was composed of both Jews and of Gentiles, and that there were tensions in the community. Jews had an instinctive uneasiness regarding Gentiles, a resentment at their historical occupation of their country, and, more importantly, a sort of “taboo” feeling , seeing them as ritually unclean, and sexually promiscuous.

Matthew wanted to confront that deeply embedded, probably unnoticed, attitude of superiority and disdain for Gentiles among his Jewish Christians. In the Gospel he wrote, he had already made a feature of the Gentile Magi. He has shown Jesus insisting on “loving your enemies”, curing the servant of a Gentile centurion, and exorcising Gentile demoniacs in the region of the Gadarenes. He had also shown Jesus challenging the patriarchal disregard for women, deeply rooted in the culture of both Jews and Gentiles.

But perhaps Matthew wanted something more confronting. I wonder now if he reshaped today’s story, taken from Mark's Gospel, as a kind of parable in action. We are reasonably familiar with Jesus’ parables – how they generally start off with a familiar introduction that his audience can relate to, only to conclude with an unexpected and often puzzling sting in the tail. Jesus used them to get his audience really to listen and to be challenged.

So perhaps, in this case, Matthew so edited the story to get his audience firstly to identify with Jesus, and then twisted the knife, as it were, by having Jesus commend the faith, not only of a woman, but of a Gentile woman, and working a miracle in response to her admirable faith. As the story developed, Jesus firstly ignored her. Then he reminded his disciples that he was “sent only to the lost sheep of the House of Israel”; and then he rudely responded to the woman's insistent request with “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the house-dogs”. The story does not express Jesus’ historical attitude, but rather the unrecognized but deeply hurtful bullying mindset of Matthew’s Jewish Christians. They identified with that. But then, came the challenging twist, the surprise [that really was Jesus]: “Woman, you have great faith. Let your wish be granted”.

As Matthew shaped the story, the determining factor in Jesus’ response was the woman’s undaunted motherly love and her readiness to trust him – he showed no interest in her doubtful orthodoxy, nor her questionable moral worthiness, and certainly not that she was a Gentile woman. Jesus is as close to the ones at the edge as he is to the self-regarding bastions of worthiness. Within the Christian community, everything is sheer gift.

Who might be today’s equivalent of the bullied Gentile woman, or of the Gentile and Jewish members of Matthew’s community? Might the story throw light, among other things, on the present contested profile of the LGBTQI community as the current discussion of gay marriage heats up? More importantly, might the story help all of us reflect humbly on our own undisputed certitudes, to see our world more clearly in the light of God’s unquestioning love for everyone? How do we reach out with respect, compassion and sensitivity to those whom society has relegated to the peripheries?

Homily 6 - 2020

One effect of the present Covid lockdown has been to give me time and inclination to look more closely at today’s Gospel passage. The first thing that struck me was the insistence with which the anonymous Canaanite woman pleaded with Jesus. She obviously loved her daughter; and that genuine love clearly motivated her request.

Her earnestness has had me pondering about my own prayers of intercession. Sometimes I wonder how deep is my personal practical concern for whom or what I am asking God to do something.

One advantage of persistent intercessory prayer is that it gives God the chance to work on me, perhaps even to change me. It can serve to remind me that God already loves, and personally and caringly loves, the one or ones I am praying for. It can lead me over time to allow God to work on me, to draw me into the infinite flow of divine love, to alert me to the opportunities I have already to help in practical ways those I pray for. Perhaps God wants me to be a channel for his love — the two of us working together, as it were. God may want to help me to grow in love.

What seems to have impressed Jesus was the woman’s faith. She was a pagan. What she believed would have been anything but orthodox. But somehow she trusted Jesus; and because she was open to Jesus, Jesus could work with her. In the Gospels, faith means trust. They could work trustingly together, each in their own way. So often, as other incidents in the Gospels indicate, that seemed to be Jesus’ preferred way of acting: “Your faith has saved you” — “Seeing their faith” — “You have great faith” — “Only have faith”.

I wonder if, whenever I pray for particular others or particular causes, I could first ponder how Jesus might be asking me to work together with him.

Homily 7 - 2023

We celebrated Mary’s Assumption last Tuesday, remembering her transition from this life to eternal life finally face-to-face with God and once more with her Son Jesus — a destiny to which we are all similarly called. Since we were unable to celebrate Mass in our country churches, I want to share a few thoughts about Mary today.

Popular devotion over the centuries has tended to emphasise the difference of Mary somewhat from us, yet the Church has sought to encourage us to see her not only as our mother in grace but also as the “model Disciple” and to draw inspiration from her. As Jesus was like us in all things but sin, we can say something similar of Mary. Mary was fully, wonderfully human.

Unfortunately the Gospels tell us very little about Mary’s life. But if we look hard, there is still so much we can learn.

The first thing a Gospel told us of her was the Angel Gabriel’s greeting to her of: “Hail”. Sadly, the translation is so inadequate. Gabriel communicated more to her than that. The greeting is better translated as “Rejoice”. And Mary took the invitation very much to heart.

Luke’s picture of her in those early experiences of her pregnancy seem to show her bursting with joy. The first thing she did was impulsively to hasten off over the Judean hills to greet Elizabeth — her older, but surprisingly also pregnant, cousin — and to stay with her for three months. And what a meeting that was! Elizabeth was immediately filled with the Spirit, and like, some of the Hebrew prophetesses of old, she loudly and confidently shouted aloud how thrilled she was with Mary’s presence. She shared with Mary how the unborn John the Baptist, still growing in her womb, had amazingly “leapt with joy”. Mary’s joy was irresistibly contagious!

The same prophetic Spirit of God that filled Elizabeth then filled Mary; and like Elizabeth before her and indeed like Miriam, the sister of Moses and prophetess herself, Mary burst into joyful song praising God:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord
and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.

She realised that her utterly unique role gave her every reason to be joyful — as she sang:

God has looked upon his handmaid …
The Almighty has done great things for me.

Her joy was the overflow of God’s joy.

She could not but sing:

Holy is God’s name,
and God’s mercy reaches from age to age for those who fear him.

It is fascinating to take note of what it was about God that thrilled Mary so much:

He has shown the power of his arm,
He has routed the proud of heart.
He has pulled down princes from their thrones and exalted the lowly.
The hungry he has filled with good things, the rich sent empty away.
He has come to the help of Israel his servant, mindful of his mercy…

Mary’s God and Mary herself lived in the real world, and cared about the real world.

The irrepressible joy of Mary, the brand-new mother, had a similar effect on the shepherds who, when Jesus was eventually born, came to see her and her new-born child. Luke’s Gospel recorded that they “went home glorifying and praising God”, their hearts, too, filled with a joy to be “shared by the whole people”.

As Jesus came to “grow in wisdom and age and grace” over the years, we know few details of Mary’s involvement in his life, beyond what Luke commented about her habitual tendency “to treasure” what she observed and “to ponder it in her heart”. No doubt she kept it up.

I have constantly to challenge myself now whether I seek to know Mary better and to draw inspiration from her or whether I simply continue to view Mary in the likeness of my own stuck-in-the-mud, uninspiring self.

I wish you “All the best!”on the same quest.