31st Sunday Year B - Homily 1

Homily 1 - 2006

The scribe in today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark got it right. He asked Jesus what was the greatest commandment. Jesus answered, and he agreed totally, even adding his own little observation that things like liturgy, rubrics and worship (or as he called them holocaust and sacrifice), in comparison with the priority of loving, just didn’t rate.  Jesus said of him that he wasn’t far from the Kingdom of God; but still, if not far from it, then not yet in it! At least, his thinking was straight.

But the Kingdom involves more than simply thinking straight, much more than orthodoxy.  The Kingdom involves acting straight – not merely talking about love, but doing it. There lies the problem! 

Love God with everything – totally, with every ounce of energy, with a love so total that no vestige of self-love remains, no self-interest, no self-centredness at all: a love that is so overarching that it spontaneously reaches out also to others, and to our own deepest, hidden, often-denied true self – all reflections of the mystery that is God.

I think all of us here today have moved some distance along the road in that direction – but I would also hazard the observation that we all have some distance still to go before our love is total, involving all our heart - our deepest motivations, all our soul, all our mind – our thoughts, our judgments, and all our strength – every ounce of energy until every single thing we do is in one way or another an expression of love, an acting out of love.

To arrive there means that our false self, our self-interest, need to die. Jesus made that clear.  But for a variety of reasons, we lack the motivation, the courage, the energy, the support and encouragement.  Our culture influences us negatively. We influence each other, and we remain locked in mediocrity.

By the time we die, we shall have run out of time, with the journey incomplete. I know that that will be true of me, and I suspect that it will be true of you.  The month of November - ushered in by the twin feasts of All Saints and All Souls - as it invites us to remember those we loved also invites us to take time to pause and to reflect.  We die, with our journey still unfinished.... What then?

As Catholics we believe in Purgatory. We distinguish the experience of Purgatory from the experience of what we call Heaven, without really knowing many details of either.  Perhaps they are two facets of the one journey into the heart of God who is infinite, inexhaustible love.  Purgatory may be the painful experience of the breaking down of the false self, the letting go of the Ego, the relentless dying to self-love.  Heaven may be the exultant, delightful experience of growing in love, the blossoming of the true self, reflecting ever more perfectly the mystery and the simplicity of God, the enjoying, along with every other person, of the never-exhausted, ever newly-discovered beauty and wonder of God.

That is the adventure that lies before us!