31st Sunday Year A - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2005

To understand today’s Gospel better, it helps to be clear about the situation of Matthew’s community.  After the Jewish temple had been destroyed (twenty years before Matthew put his Gospel together), the priests (who up till then had also been the official teachers) suddenly had no relevance.  In their place the Pharisee movement and the followers of Jesus, both lay movements, competed for the soul of Israel.  In fact both movements were quite similar in most things, but their struggle led them to emphasise their differences and to send up their opponents (as so often the politicians in parliament do).

In today’s reading, Matthew drew on Jesus’ criticism of the Pharisees for not practising what they preached, for being far too legalistic, and for always wanting to be in the limelight.  On their part though this is not mentioned in the Gospel) the Pharisees accused the Christian movement of betraying Judaism precisely at a crisis time for their very survival as a religious group, precisely because they were too lax (and not just in theory but in their considered practice), and because they sought to influence opinion in the synagogues spread throughout the Empire.

Both groups were half-right.  There were some Pharisees who were inconsistent, legalistic and proud, just as there were some Christians with similar weaknesses.  As we listen today, what might the Spirit be saying to us?  Probably we’re all a bit guilty of those same weaknesses that our forebears were uilty of.  It goes with being human.  Ask some adolescents what they think of adults – or what some non-believers think of Catholics.  “They’re all hypocrites!”  Some of you might remember that book by JD Salinger “Catcher in the Rye”, popular in the 60s: The hero (or was it anti-hero?), Holden Caulfield’s, favourite word to describe adults was “phoney”.

Within our present Catholic community there are groups struggling for the soul of the middle-ground, the extremes accusing each other of either fundamentalism or liberalism – “They bind burdens!” – Sounds familiar?  Though usually sharing the same precious concerns, they emphasise the differences and make life difficult for each other.

It is interesting to note what the Matthean community remembered of the teaching of Jesus: firstly, the need  to be consistent and to act in line with what we claim to believe; then, the need to mature in our exercise of conscience, “lifting the burden” from ourselves and others precisely by discovering our true and deepest heart desires and living from there, responsive to the gentle call of God’s Spirit within and moving beyond doing things because of imposition as though from outside, simply because they’re commandments.  And the third issue, the one that Matthew emphasised the most, was that instinctive drive to be honoured, to be thought more powerful, more responsible, more knowledgeable, or as Matthew put it: to be called master, father, teacher.

It is interesting how Matthew unconsciously changed the addressees of Jesus’ comments.  Instead of addressing “them”, he changed to “you”.  All along, he wasn’t so much interested in Pharisees as in the potential Pharisee tendencies in each member of the Christian community.

For Jesus, as for Matthew, as Christians, we don’t seek to “big note” ourselves and to see ourselves as somewhat special.  We are all sons and daughters of the same Father, and so we are brothers and sisters; or, as Paul so beautifully put it in today’s Second Reading, we love each other, and it is that  love - and only that love - that allows us to put ourselves in the position of servants, sharing with each other respectfully our gifts and charisms, our faith insights and whatever else God’s Spirit empowers in us.

Of recent weeks the Church as been publicly criticised once again for harbouring paedophiles in its midst.  It is important that the truth be spoken, and if the Press didn’t do it, who would?  Our own too human vulnerability reminds us of the constant struggle to practise what we preach, and to do so with profound humility.  We preach an idealistic ethic, especially in the field of sexuality, not from a position of superiority - the enlightened condemning the weak and the ignorant - but from an insight into the beauty of what could be, towards which we struggle, along with the rest of humanity.