31ST SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – 2016

The prophet Amos is often referred to as the great social justice prophet of the Old Testament. In the modern world, we are inclined to split off social justice from its Jewish-Christian source. We talk about “principles for a just society.” We refer to “gospel” or “kingdom” values, as though these can be lived out in isolation from the God who makes them possible. We have, in many ways, lost the essential link between acting justly and being just, or if you will, holy, as though just actions were something external to us or our faith.

This was not so to the people of the Old Testament. For them, loving God and loving neighbour were two sides of the same coin, forming the unity we know as the Great Commandment. In Amos, how frequently God promises justice to those whom Israel mistreats, how often does he warn Israel to act justly? But it is not quite so simple, for the Old Testament emphasises the holiness of God, who calls his people to be like him. In the New Testament Jesus expresses it like this: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

Amos is unsparing in his attack on Israel for its injustice to the poor and needy: “They have sold the upright for silver, and the poor for a pair of sandals; they have crushed the heads of the weak into the dust, and thrust the rights of the oppressed to one side!” A powerful, angry message; yet Amos’s primary interest is not social, but religious; the core of his message is not only “act justly” but especially “be just [or holy].”

In Amos’s time, Israel had been divided into two kingdoms. The Northern Kingdom had been tainted by a long period of pagan infiltration, and its worship had become corrupted. It is this that Amos attacks. Worshipping ISRAEL’S God, the one true God, the God of truth and justice, makes one just and truthful. Worshipping the other false gods, makes one become unjust and false. In the words of the Psalm, makers and worshippers of false gods “…will come to be like them, and so will all who trust in them.” For Amos, the true need is not for just-ice, so much as just-ness [or holiness]. Only just-ness leads to true just-ice, and justness can only come from true worship of God.

We become like the gods we worship. Like the people in Amos’s day, we are faced with this big question: do we worship the God who said “Let us make man in our own image,” or the one of whom man says, “Let us make god in our own image.”?

We are blessed in receiving the whole truth about God through the Lord Jesus Christ in his Church. This truth is before us whenever we need or wish to discover it. Through the Church we can remain in a relationship with God. In the terms of modern technology, our relationship with God is not a dial-up connection, but a perma­nent open line. We can be in no doubt as to whom the true God is, what we are to believe of him, and how we are consequently to live.

But every time we put brackets around some aspect of God we find difficult, or do not like, and change his teaching to suit ourselves, we are recreating God in our image. And the more we recreate God in our own – sinful – image, the further we move from his truth and his justice. We become ultimately like the god we have created out of our own desires, false and unjust. Even justice, when it becomes more important than Truth, ultimately ends by becoming unjust.

We can only serve God in justice by serving him in truth; by following him and his teachings with all our hearts. We must allow God to recreate us in his image. Only when we have been made just, or holy, by God, will we be able to act with true justice. Let us ask him today to bring us to holiness, to transform us, that we might be “perfect, as [our] heavenly Father is perfect,” that we might not merely act justly, but become people of true justice.

Fr Phillip

 

30TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – 2016

One of the most striking teachings in Paul’s letters is the image of the Christian Soldier in Ephesian 6: “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil. Therefore, put on the full armor of God. 

Stand firm, with the belt of truth around your waist, with the breastplate of righteousness in place, and with your feet fitted with the readiness that comes from the gospel of peace. Take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God. And pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests.”

The Christian is seen as a soldier in the army of Jesus Christ, who marches before us as our general to a victory which is inevitable, a victory against the power of Satan. “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood,” Paul tells us, but against spiritual powers far beyond our human strength. That is why we need the spiritual armour Jesus provides for us in the passage quoted. In the world of Paul’s day, the Roman soldier was a familiar daily sight, and it is his armour that inspires this passage. The Roman armies were considered unstoppable, which must, like the armour, form part of the human picture on which Paul’s image is based.

When the Romans celebrated a victory, there would be a triumphal procession through the streets of Rome with the victorious general following in his war chariot at the end, a crown woven of laurel leaves on his head. The laurel wreath was a sign of victory awarded also to poets and athletes (Dante Alighieri traditionally wears one in his portraits); in other words, a crown that was won rather than inherited, as was the gold-and jeweled diadem of a king. Paul sees himself as a soldier in Christ’s army, sharing in the triumph of his victorious general, which is why he speaks of receiving the “crown of righteousness” in his Second Letter to Timothy, from which we read today.

A soldier is fit, well-trained, motivated and obedient. The last of these is essential if victory is to be won. A soldier must act as an extension of his general’s tactics. A Christian soldier becomes fit through prayer, which brings him close to God and prepares him for battle against the enemy, Satan. His training is knowledge of the faith and the ability to communicate it. His motivation is the sure knowledge that Jesus has won the victory over Satan by rising from the dead. 

And if we are to share in his victory, we must be obedient to his Word. 

A soldier does not choose where he is to fight; he goes unquestioningly where his general sends him. So must we. We must keep fit through constant prayer, well-trained through ongoing learning about our faith. That same faith must sustain us in confidence of Jesus’ victory over Satan. We must listen to God and obey him at all times, no matter what he asks of us or where he sends us so that we, too, may one day share in his victory, that each one of us, too, might receive the “crown of righteousness” which He has prepared for us.

Fr Phillip

29TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR – 2016

Paul is for a large number of Catholics a closed book. We are used to the Jesus of the Gospels, which are usually the Scripture of choice for Sunday homilies. But the dense, almost indigestible chunks of Paul that form the main content of the Sunday Second Reading? What does he really have to say to us?

It is hard for us to conceive that the last Paul’s letters pre-date even the earliest of the Gospels, Mark, by at least five years. Paul was the great missionary, the one who spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, throughout the known world of his time. The Church which wrote the Gospels between about 700-100 AD had already been brought to faith in Jesus Christ by Paul’s missions and his missionary letters.

Paul’s language is dense, often difficult, and like the rabbi he once was, he thinks and argues in circles, coming back to the same ideas over and over in the course of a single passage. Yet it is Paul who holds so many of the keys to our faith. Today’s reading from the Second Letter to Timothy, is a case in point.

Paul has some quite powerful things to say about scripture and the faith it inspires. And for Paul, faith is not some kind of vague belief, like the insipid modern idea of “believing in yourself”. For him, the only faith worth having is faith in “Christ Jesus.” He expresses this unequivocally: “Take your stand upon this; proclaim the Good news of Jesus Christ risen from the dead, in or out of season.” Going for the overkill, he says, “I tell you, admonish you, exhort you to teach these things patiently.”

Do the words addressed by Paul the Apostle to a bishop 2 000 years ago have any meaning at all for us today? Most certainly. He calls us, in the same way, to stand firm in our faith, to believe in the great Christian truths we have been taught from our youth. He calls us to be His unflinching witnesses to Jesus Christ, risen from the dead, in and out of season. He “tell, admonishes and exhorts” us to attend to the Scriptures, which can “teach, refute error, correct and discipline” us.

If we are ever to convince the world that Jesus is Lord, we have to believe it ourselves, and bear witness to him at all times. The world, though it might hate us, must be able to say of us, “they really believe in something” – or rather, someone. In the world in which we live, it is time for us all to put aside the easy compromises we so often make, to lay down the exceptions to the Church’s teaching about faith in Jesus Christ which we reserve to ourselves. We must leave the Church Comfortable and become once more, like Paul, members of the Church Militant. Like Paul, we must become utterly convinced by our Faith in the Risen Lord Jesus. God will give it to us if we really ask him, if we truly want the superlative gift of Faith that he gives.

Fr Phillip