22nd Sunday Year A

See Commentary on Matthew 16: 21-27 in Matthew 16:21-28


Homily 1- 2005

Today’s being Migrant and Refugee Sunday prompts me to reflect that the Jewish people, our forebears in the faith, began their history as migrants. As the Epistle to the Hebrews wrote of Abraham and his family:They were only strangers and nomads on earth. When Matthew painted his picture of the early years of Jesus’ life, Jesus’ family were refugees, first over the border in Egypt, fleeing from Herod the Great, then in Galilee, out of reach of Herod Archelaus.

All of us here are descendants of, or even first generation, migrants... Perhaps the forebears of some of us were more refugees than migrants. There is something attractive in the make-up of migrants and refugees; something that makes them different from those of their countrymen who stay put: among other things, the initiative to move, and courage, sometimes enormous courage.  

Nearly always they are drawn and energised by a dream, a sense of something more. As the Epistle to the Hebrews again put it, in speaking of Abraham and his family: They were longing for a better homeland. Today’s responsorial Psalm talked about longing, too, a different, deeper longing. O God, for you I long, for you my soul is thirsting; my body pines for you like a dry, weary land without water. Jesus knew the feeling, and assumes that we all know it, too. That is why he could say: Anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it - for my sake, because captured by love. Or, as the Psalm put it, Your love is better than life.

The starting point of the Christian journey, (or for those of us who are cradle Catholics, born into the culture, the taking-off point), is the intuition of love - of being loved, of being loved by the mysterious reality sustaining the whole cosmos, that we call God. Given that intuition, we know that our response to that God - all or nothing at all - sits right with our deepest sense of ourself. We reverberate in tune with Jesus: we know what he is talking about.

Yet, as if we don’t have enough trouble coping with our own innate self-interest and self-centredness, Paul went on about our need to adopt a counter-cultural stance towards our world: As he said in today’s second Reading: Don’t model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you. Yet being different, not going with the flow, can be demoralising. And it costs; at times it hurts. With Jeremiah we can say: The word of the Lord has meant for me insult, derision, or, in our own case, at least the sacrifice of what we would often have liked. Again with Jeremiah, we can feel at times like shouting, You have seduced me, and I have let myself be seduced. Or, like Peter in today’s Gospel, we can prefer not to face it. But we are fascinated, irresistibly drawn by God.

We still struggle to live consistently. We are walking paradoxes, courageous cowards, blind teachers of partial truths, filled with misconceptions no less than fired by high ideals. But we manage, we struggle on, because we know what Jeremiah was talking about: the fire burning in our hearts, imprisoned in our bones. We don’t volunteer for hardship for its own sake – that would be sick, perhaps pathological, but when it’s the price of love, we’ll have a go, and take up our cross and follow him. We grow in our capacity to love, consistently, unconditionally. Provided we are in touch with his love stirring in our bones, we know that our choice makes sense; it rings true.


 Homily 2 - 2008

I remember reading a book years ago written by a Benedictine monk.  It was on prayer.  He wrote that his relationship with God only took off when he found himself exasperated enough to say to God: This is boring! God, you’re so boring! Jeremiah, in today’s First Reading, didn’t call God boring. He went further, and said indignantly: You have seduced me! and I have let myself be seduced! The lonely Jesus trusted enough to cry out to God on the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me! Often enough, when we pray, we can feel, as the psalmist put it in today’s Responsorial Psalm: like a dry, weary land without water.

The common thing with the Benedictine monk, Jeremiah, Jesus and the Psalmist was that they were honest with God: they responded from where they were at; they named it as it was for them. It wasn’t a prayer, but it reflected the same dose of reality, when Jesus, in today’s Gospel, was able to say to Peter: Get behind me, Satan! Hardly polite, but straight. To be honest, brutally honest, with God can sometimes take a bit of courage. We can feel a strongly conditioned pressure to be on our best behaviour whenever we pray to God – to revert to a sometimes infantile state and try to be a good boy, or a good girl.

If we are not real, God can hardly touch us. Genuine intimacy, with anyone, can happen only between people who are mature enough to be real to each other. Trying to be courteous, to be “nice”, to people, when that is anything but what we feel, might sometimes be the best we can manage, but it keeps them, and us, a thousand miles from each other, from any real contact. No wonder that at times God seems so distant, if all we can bring is ourselves on our best behaviour. Another wise author, in a book on prayer, gave the obvious advice: Pray from where you are, not from where you are not! – at least if we really want to engage with God.

Relating to God, praying, can be surprising, hard, and sometime scary work at times. When it is, it is. Pray from where you are, not from where you are not! Jeremiah would get so fed up with God at times that he would say to himself: I will not think about him. But at the same time, he recognised: there seemed to be a fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones. The effort to restrain it wearied me, I could not bear it.

We can get tired of people who are always trying too hard to be nice. Perhaps God can, too. There’s nothing there to relate to. No one’s at home! God loves real people. And intimacy can grow only between real people.


Homily 3 - 2014

All three readings this evening agree on a number of points. The most obvious is that a truly personal option for the ways of God and a determined commitment to them means running counter to public opinion.

Paul expressed it clearly enough. Do not model yourselves on the behaviour of the world around you. He went further. He insisted that Christian disciples offer themselves and their lives in community as sacrifices truly pleasing to God. In using this language, he was well aware of Israel’s great prophetic tradition that refused to separate worship and sacrifice from mercy and solidarity with the powerless and marginalised.

Centuries before Paul, Jeremiah recognised only too clearly that his summoning his fellow citizens to life according to God’s will for them meant for him insult and derision all day long. God’s will is rarely the flavour of the month.

Jesus was hardly different. He knew that his relentless insistence on the way of respect, forgiveness and non-violence would mean that he would suffer grievously at the hands of the establishment and quite simply be put to death. He then challenged his disciples to be ready to do the same – to take up their cross and follow him. He had foreshadowed as much in the Beatitudes and in the rest of his Sermon on the Mount [which we have generally domesticated beyond recognition].

Yet Jeremiah found that the alternative to keep his head down and be silent was not worth living – indeed, was even worse. He felt what he called a fire burning in my heart. I could not bear it. And Jesus flatly stated that those who want to save their lives would lose them – in this world whatever about eternity. Celebrity, acceptance, even the low profile, do not satisfy our deepest yearnings.

And yet, despite years of exposure to the message of Jesus, Catholics’ attitudes are little different from those of the general community – as politicians have come to learn. Our values simply reflect the culture around us, except when it comes to our own self-interest. So much for Paul’s hope that our new mind, as disciples of Jesus, would inspire and enable us to discover the will of God.

Today is Refugee and Migrant Sunday, an invitation, again as St Paul wrote, to seek what is good and what God wants. Current world tensions are creating an increasing flood of refugees fleeing persecution and death. Official estimates number them at over fifty million. Most of these remain within their national borders, hoping to return home when conflicts are resolved. But there remain eighteen million others who have had to flee their countries. Only about one-tenth of these have been accepted by the world’s developed countries. The other nine out of ten have been received by nations struggling even to feed their own populations. Yet each of these is a human person, no different essentially from you or me.

Are we our brothers’ keepers? Can we be our brothers’ keepers? Does the fact that we cannot resolve the whole problem absolve us from all responsibility to respond within our limits? Do we help only up to the point where we feel the impact on our standard of living or our familiar life-style expectations? Are our standard of living and familiar life style sacrosanct? Can we carry on changing nothing, and effectively ignoring the existence of our brothers and sisters, perhaps hoping that someone else, other nations, might do it all?

The issues surrounding refugees, asylum seekers and migration are complex. Yet an appropriate response is important and urgent. The problems are too pressing to be party-political issues, opportunities to score points or to exploit the populations’ basest instincts. A realistic national response calls for the harnessing of the best minds and hearts, and for genuine statesmanship. In this common search people need to respect each other, genuinely listen and live with difference. Can we find ways to insist that our political representatives step up and face the challenge? 


 Homily 4 - 2017

In last Sunday’s Gospel, we had Peter exclaiming, You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and we heard Jesus responding, Blessed are you, Simon, Son of Jonah, For it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I say to you, You are Peter, the rock, and on this rock I shall build my Church. Peter was on a roll. But then immediately after that incident, we have today’s Jesus saying, Get behind me Satan! You are an obstacle in my path, because the way you think is not God’s way but man’s. Peter the rock became Peter the stumbling block.

Before we say, Poor Peter! There he goes again! let’s see if there might not be something of Peter in all of us. Peter was thinking of, hoping for, a triumphant Christ, the Messiah to end all messiahs. The thought of a Christ who would suffer grievously at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be put to death by that religious authority, was beyond comprehension.

Was it a good thing, or a bad thing, that Jesus be treated that way?

What sort of a Christ do we want? Perhaps, to bring it a bit closer to our present predicament – What sort of Church do we want, here in Australia, now? Do we want a triumphant Church, an influential Church, a Church with clout, a respected Church, a Church taken note of? Or a Church up against the ropes? A Church despised, spoken ill of, no longer respected or influential? You know how it feels to be a Catholic in today’s climate, wondering what the next headline will be – feeling confused, bewildered, ashamed, angry, perhaps betrayed. Perhaps even wanting to hit back, somehow.

Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, that the Church is, you are, treated that way?

Today’s Gospel reading went on, If people want to be followers of mine, let them renounce themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it; but those who lose their life for my sake will find it. What is that saying? And did Jesus mean it?

Did you notice that little comment of St Paul hidden away in the middle of today’s Second Reading? Let your behaviour change, modelled by your new mind. That is the only way to discover the will of God and know what is good. What is this new mind, this new behaviour modelled by our new mind? I think it is precisely what Jesus was getting at when he started his public mission and kept on insisting, The Kingdom of God is close at hand. Repent! and believe the good news. It is not just a new mind. It is new eyes, new ears, new heart.

If the Kingdom of God is close at hand, and if it is good news, perhaps we need new eyes, new ears, to notice it, to be aware of it.

The power of Jesus evidenced in his miracles got him nowhere. It had no impact on the Jewish authorities. It seemed to have little lasting effect on the crowds, either, because many of them, when the chips were down, joined in crying out for his crucifixion . It was his death, leading into his largely unobserved resurrection, that eventually led some to change.

It was in the context of powerlessness that Jesus’ authority was greatest. Why do you believe him? Because of his miracles? Or might it be because of the way he died, why he died, because of the personal integrity, the depth of love, the astonishing readiness to forgive, the humility that you see every time you look at a crucifix?

Can we look at our present predicament as Church, as individual Catholics, with a new mind, and see there the traces of God’s gentle presence, the quiet influence of God’s Spirit? Is this an unprecedented opportunity to grow in humility, to find a new and life-giving impact drawn from quiet integrity under stress, expressed in genuine pastoral sensitivity?


Homily 5 - 2020

Jesus could read the writing on the wall. The disciples could not. John the Baptist had met his death as the price of his stance for Truth. A similar fate was inevitable for Jesus — in his case, as the price of living, prioritising and preaching a non-negotiable call to relentlessly consistent Love. The Baptist was beheaded by the secular power. The leaders of the religious establishment — the elders, the chief priests and the scribes — would ensure Jesus’ death.

Peter was astounded and challenged Jesus, who, in no uncertain way, without mincing words, quickly put Peter back in his box.

Jesus than proceeded to challenge all the disciples to be prepared to meet not just the suffering inevitably encountered by everyone in a largely self-interested and violent world, but particularly those arising from consistently following Jesus in his life of insistent responsible love. The very definition of christian discipleship would assume, like it or not, similarly “taking up our cross and following” the crucified Jesus.

Yet discipleship is not for masochists. Following Jesus does not mean embracing suffering for suffering’s sake. Opening out to love means opening out to life. Discipleship is for those who love life — and are prepared to pay the price of coming ever more alive. Jesus paradoxically put it this way: “Those who lose their life for my sake will find life”.

Just as discipleship is not for masochists, neither is it for stoics. Discipleship is for relationship, for friendship, for personal friendship now with Jesus, and in eternity, for that same friendship ecstatically realised and fulfilled. “When the Son of Man comes in the glory of his Father …, he will reward each one according to their behaviour.”

What about those who hold back from paying the price of love? Jesus who preached forgiveness was never himself slow to forgive. But a life lived without much love is only a half-life — and Jesus dearly wants us to live life richly now, on this side of death, not just in eternity.


Homily 6 - 23

Jesus knew where his life was heading if he kept on teaching what he had been teaching and doing what he had been doing. His insistence on loving, loving everyone and anyone, as the only way to save people from themselves and from each other, and to change the present world for the better, was so counter-cultural, so threatening to the status quo, that it would eventually provoke resistance. Unless he changed his tune, it was clear to him that it was only a matter of time before he would be eliminated somehow and finish up being put to death at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the scribes.

How did he cope with that prospect? It was obviously an inner struggle, as is clear from the strength of his reaction to Peter’s outright rejection of the whole likelihood. “Get behind me Satan!” was in alarming contrast to “Blessed are you, Simon son of John!” of a short time before. One thing is certainly evident: Jesus was utterly intent on changing the world and in saving it from itself. He was totally prepared to lose his life if such was to be the price of his convincing the world and of enlisting people’s indispensable cooperation in the project.

So convinced was he that he insisted that his disciples be prepared to renounce themselves, take up their inevitable “cross”, metaphorical or even literal, and follow him. In that same vein he continued: “… those who want to save their life will lose it; but all who lose their life for my sake will find it”.

Yet everything is not ‘doom and gloom’. To the extent that we succeed in loving, we discover the unique joy that love brings. As we come to discover God’s infinite and unconditional love for ourselves and for others, we experience a similar joy. The problem is we so easily confuse the addictive focus on our own selfish wants and pleasures with genuine love — and find ourselves constantly restless and dissatisfied. Yet we rarely seem to learn.

It is interesting that the morality that Moses taught his Hebrew followers was largely a face-to-face, a one-on-one, morality — summed up largely by the Ten Commandments. However, as the Chosen People matured across the centuries, the Prophets came on the scene. They were concerned more with the broader social scene. Their focus was more the political structures and the large-scale moral issues of oppression and social injustice— on issues dealing with people in their hundreds and thousands, on situations whose outreach extended far beyond individual person-to-person interactions, on evil with a capital “E”.

From the start of his public ministry, Jesus drew attention to issues such as these. Quoting from the Prophet Isaiah, he saw it as his mission: “… to bring the good news to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, … to set the downtrodden free, to proclaim the Lord’s year of favour”.

We here in Australia will be voting soon in the Referendum regarding the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Peoples’ Uluru Statement’s “Voice to Parliament”.

For us who are followers of Jesus, it is important that we do our best to discover how Jesus would have us vote. This is one political issue that certainly is also a clearly moral issue, whose outcome will affect the lives of thousands of people. It is important that our choice be motivated by love for those affected. Love takes practical shape in respect for people’s God-given human dignity; human dignity calls for a genuine care for others; caring is expressed in a readiness to listen. People will choose in different ways for different reasons.

We might well ask ourselves over the next few weeks: What is the Jesus I know saying to me?