31st Sunday

Year B

31st Sunday Year B

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!

Homily 2 -2012

The scribe in today's Gospel got it right. Generally, in the Gospels, they didn't. But this one did. It's important to notice, though, what he got right: To love God with everything, all stops out, and to love your neighbour as yourself is life. Holocausts and sacrifices are religion. He said that life is more important than religion – more specifically, living which is loving is more important than religion. The two aren't the same.

We meet our neighbours and engage with God in the kitchen, the bed-room, the office desk, the paddock, the school or hospital, the bowling green, the supermarket… The ordinary is holy because it is there that we engage with God; we encounter and build the Kingdom

Religion can be confused with religiosity that tends to fence God around and confine God to special times and places and rituals. It can all too easily drift away from loving, and too easily become self-absorbed, self-centred – meriting reward, avoiding punishment, considering ourselves better than others. And we're all susceptible. It's what, to so many of today's atheists, rightly smells fishy.

So the scribe was right. As Jesus said: You are not far from the Kingdom of God. But – not far from means not there yet! What was still missing?

Living in love is easier said than done – loving God, not just a bit, not just a fair bit, but with everything, with all your heart, soul, mind and strength; and loving the neighbour – not just selected ones, but whoever crosses your path – even the ones next door, or the ones who inconveniently arrive in leaky boats via Indonesia without a visa. We simply don't measure up. But that need not be the end of it.

Fortunately, the Kingdom of God is gift, sheer gift. It needs our cooperation, our desire to live in love, and our efforts to live in love; but, of itself, it is beyond us – yet offered, and there for the taking. We access it through, with and in Jesus.

Have you reflected much about the delightful conclusion to every Eucharistic Prayer? Through him [that is, through Jesus], with him and in him, O God almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all honour and glory is yours. Not: without Jesus, not prescinding from him, not independently of him – but through, with and in Jesus.

In the unity of the Holy Spirit. That through, with and in Jesus is brought about through the unifying energy of the Spirit, who is the love of God abroad in the world.

Through him… Jesus has gone before us, for us. But we can associate ourselves, and become one with him in his saving death and resurrection through the unifying energy of love that is the Spirit. With him, with Jesus, speaks to me of intimacy, relationship and deep personal friendship – all the fruit of prayer. That, too, consists of love. In him, in Jesus, is what is totally beyond our capacity but is offered as free gift. The risen Jesus has made his home in us and invites us to make our home in him.

We do not yet experience the fulness of all this in what we call heaven. But, in the meantime, we meet him, we connect with him, in sacrament. Right now, within this sacramental meal, shared among friends, not by-passing or ignoring life and love, but precisely expressing and celebrating them, we engage with Christ. And in the process … all honour and glory is yours, O God, almighty Father, from whom the whole plan originates and by whom it is endlessly sourced and sustained … and it is happening right now.

Homily 3 - 2018

Today’s Gospel incident is the one positive interaction Jesus has with the Jerusalem authorities during his last week in the city before his arrest and crucifixion. The scribe asked Jesus what was the first of all the commandments in the Jewish Scriptures. Apart from the well-known Ten Commandments, there were over seven hundred other commandments – a lot, but not as many as in the Church’s Code of Canon Law.

Jesus quoted the commandment which he himself would almost certainly have recited to himself that very day on getting up, and which every good Jew would do similarly every morning: “Listen Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength”. Most of us would nod our heads in agreement without thinking about it twice. And then, without being asked, Jesus added a second commandment from the Jewish Scriptures: “You must love your neighbor as yourself”. And again we nod our heads in agreement.

But should we nod our heads so quickly? Do we take seriously the first word Jesus quoted: “Listen”? The commandment speaks about love, an extraordinarily deep love, a love that engages all our heart, all our soul, all our mind, all our strength. It speaks of a relationship – a relationship that does not just happen, but needs to be worked at constantly, deliberately. What does it feel like to love God like that? Can we feel it? What shape does it take? How do we know we love?

And the second commandment – is it just another commandment? or is it related in some way to the first? Is it, indeed, the way we can tell that we are succeeding with the first?

This commandment, too, is talking about love, not about just any relationship, but about loving – loving our neighbour, loving ourselves, indeed loving our neighbour as we love our selves. If we take Jesus as our model, loving our neighbour seems also to involve forgiving - not just sometimes, selectively, but seventy-times seven; but it also includes much more than forgiving.

And what does loving ourselves involve, for that matter? How seriously do we take that? I find myself consistently criticising myself. It seems to be my default reaction. Loving myself…? – not just being soft on myself, looking after “no.1”. That is anything but love, and can be highly destructive of my true self.

Which do I find easiest – to love God? myself? my neighbour? I am not sure of this, but I think, in my experience, it all starts with truly allowing God to love me, to love me as God loves himself. I think it is that experience, or at least that faith conviction, that gives me the energy, the inspiration, the freedom, not simply to thank God in return, or quietly to praise God, but to want really to love God. And that love slowly grows over time. In turn, that shyly unfolding love I have for God enables to see God more, as it were, from inside. I wonder if God then begins to let me love with him, somehow.

The more I open in love to God, the more I begin to understand God’s love as totally unconditional. It is the only way that God could love me. As I slowly get the hang of that, I begin also, with God, to love myself unconditionally. And as I come slowly to terms with that, I recognize that I am becoming more and more able to love others similarly, that is, as I love myself. I hope the process continues – because it is great; but I also realise that, in one sense, it doesn’t matter. God will love me no less if I don’t – because God does love unconditionally. It is the only way God does love, the only way God can love.

Homily 4 - 2021

In response to the scribe’s query about the greatest commandment in the Law, Jesus quoted a verse from the Law that he and every other Jew recited daily: “Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord; and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.” We have heard it before and we nod our heads.

But some of us, I fear, hear something else as well, which Jesus did not say; and it is something like, “Or else”. “or else” you run the danger of being punished by God in purgatory or even in hell — with the result that so many Catholics are basically frightened of God because they are frightened of purgatory or hell.

Is it possible really to love God — to love God with all our heart, all our strength — if we see God as a God who tortures people, or hands them over to the devil to do it for Him? If we believe that our God is a punishing God, I can’t see how we can possibly love God with anything like an exuberant, overflowing love, a love where we freely and joyfully want to give God everything.

Jesus insisted that God loves us, and he meant it. God knows that we sin; and God is equally insistent on forgiving us, forgiving us unconditionally. The Kingdom of God is “good news”. “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son”, even though he knew that “the world” would crucify his only Son — and in crucifying his Son would, effectively, break his own heart because God dearly loved his Son.

I know that people can quite deliberately choose not to love God, certainly on this side of the grave — and that God also respects their freedom. I used to think that God sends no one to hell; and that people put themselves there. But now I wonder… When people die and see God face to face, when they see God loving them unconditionally, can anyone freely hold themselves back from loving that God? Are the deceits of the devil more convincing than the sheer love of God?