23rd Sunday Year A - Homily 2

Homily 2 – 2011 

It’s Fathers’ Day – which, I suppose, also means Husbands’ Day – [just as Mothers’ Day also means Wives’ Day].  The commercialisation of the celebrations is a pity.  It is much easier to give a gift than to cultivate respect - genuine respect - and love.  Respect and love are hard work.  They both need to grow and to deepen across life or else they rust out and atrophy.  When two people marry, time does not stand still.  Across time they both change, so much so that, had they met each other as they had become ten years later, they may not have chosen to get married.  But they did.  And that’s the wonderful thing.  In getting married, they undertook to love each other until death do us part.  Since it is Fathers’ Day today, it is worth noting that the best way to parent children is for spouses to love each other – and to make it obvious.  Loving is the only way to become truly human.

It can be difficult to talk about married love, when the reality is that many marriages do not work out.  Sadly, relationships can become poisonous, destructive.  People don’t put up with violence any longer, whether it be physical or psychological.  Simply for partner or children to survive, it is necessary for some partnerships to break up.  Once that has happened, sad and hurtful as it may be, the experience can be a great way to learn wisdom.  The task becomes to get on with life; and getting on with life means getting on with the task of continuing to grow as a loving person.

Having said that, how does today’s Gospel address our reality?  It takes for granted that where people rub shoulders, there will be splinters.  We are all works in progress.  We are all individuals, not only with real needs, but with myriad wants, desires, addictions and fears.  Growing in love means learning to notice these, learning to sort them out – what comes from our obsession with ourselves, what truly leads to fuller life.  It means learning to let go, to compromise, to die to selfishness.  In the meantime, we hurt each other; we clash.  We want, above all, to control outcomes, to control how the other thinks and behaves.

It is interesting to see what else the Gospel suggests.  It started off by saying: If your brother [or sister… or husband or wife] has something against you…  In talking of brother etc. it presupposes a relationship – one of respect, a determination to love.  Unless we respect the other and are truly determined to interact in love, t then …  lay off!   Wait until we do.  I remember the suggestion given some years ago at a Marriage Encounter Weekend I attended.  The Leaders were talking about how to fight constructively.  Their suggestion – this is, for husband and wife – was to hold hands, to look each other in the eye, to restate their love, and only then to air the grievance.  Do we take the Gospel seriously?

The passage continues: If they listen to you, you have won your brother/sister/ husband/wife.  Not: If you win the argument..; or If you gain control..; but, if they listen..  What the passage didn’t add – but could have done – is this: To expect one to listen, both must listen.  Listening is an attitude, a skill, which needs deliberately to be worked on.

The final point is also worth exploring: If they do not listen to the community, treat them as pagans or tax-collectors.  Jesus did not exclude pagans or tax-collectors.  He took steps to include them.  He did not win them all … perhaps he won precious few … but he did not give up.  He continued to respect them.  He continued to invite them.  But it also supposes: Know your limits.  And: Love never means control.  Having said all that: Happy Fathers Day to all the fathers present.