23rd Sunday Year C - Homily 6

Homily 6 - 2022

While many people are celebrating today as Fathers’ Day, the universal Church is marking what it calls the “Season of Creation”, lasting for the whole month of September. The Church asks all Catholics to deepen our sense of responsibility for what we are increasingly coming to recognise as our fragile and threatened environment. As I was previewing today’s Readings earlier in the week, I began pondering what light they might possibly throw on our current responsibilities as Christian citizens in the midst of our ever-changing world.

Today’s Gospel presents a challenge. We need to realise that Jesus and his contemporaries often spoke in extremes. So not surprisingly, in today’s passage, we find Jesus thinking and speaking in terms of loving and hating, with no middle ground; and also of giving up all of one’s possessions — all or nothing at all! Given that tendency, as we often find in the Gospels, Jesus' words are not to be taken literally in every case. However, we certainly do need to take him seriously. So, let us turn down the volume sufficiently to be able to hear what Jesus might really be saying to us.

Jesus constantly warned his disciples to expect differences and disagreements on the home front. He insisted that disciples not simply accept the customary values and assumptions of family members or even of society in general. If business as usual were simply to go on as always, there would have been little need for him to become flesh and dwell among us.

Jesus, after all, had a radical message of necessary social change if our world is to live truly in peace. He was so convinced of this need, unpopular as it was, that it led to his eventual rejection and tortured crucifixion. Within this context, Jesus had carefully instructed his disciples to learn from him how to love others who were unresponsive to his message. He insisted that they were never to hate them, even in the face of deep disagreement and personal danger.

That was in fact his core message. It is possible.

Not surprisingly, he also insisted that they not be shocked that living according to his vision and values would often have a financial impact — even if rarely going as far as literally requiring their surrendering all their assets. Jesus' vision of social change would certainly impact the political realm. Jesus’ crucifixion itself resulted from a political decision — though in his day such decisions were rarely determined democratically.

Given the current world order, environmental responsibility can be adequately exercised only by co-operative political action. In a democratic society, whom we align with and how we vote often become intrinsically moral issues — questions of conscience.

It is through our regular exercise of conscience that we learn God’s will in general and develop the wisdom to apply it in frequently complex situations. Given this involvement of conscience, I was struck by the observation mentioned in today’s first Reading:

“As for your intention [O God], who could have learnt it,
had you not granted Wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from above?”

The writer made two clear statements: firstly, that discovering God’s intentions is a skill, a virtue, that needs to be learnt.  Because of life's complexities, our judgment can rarely be definitive. It is an on-going task, an on-going possibility, a gift of God that needs to be asked for in prayer.

The writer’s second point, confirming the first, was that the reliable operation of conscience requires on our part a conscious effort to tune in to God’s Spirit, to become familiar with the Spirit’s voice [as it were] — not only on rare occasions, but whenever we face the challenging decisions that life regularly presents to us.