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11th Sunday in Ordinary Time | The Deepest Desire of Our Hearts

Rothermel Thou Art the Man David and Nathan

Thou Art The Man [King David with Nathan the Prophet], Peter Frederick Rothermel, 1884, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia.

Today’s Communion Antiphon is one of my favourite verses in the Bible, and there’s a story to why this verse became important to me:

There is one thing I ask of the Lord, only this do I seek: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. (Psalm 27(26):4)

Back in about 1977, when I was seventeen, I decided to read the Bible cover to cover.  It wasn’t as if I didn’t know the Bible, as I had been a churchgoer all my life, but it’s one thing to hear homilies and the Mass readings in a disjointed way, and quite another to read the Bible as a continuous narrative, albeit a narrative in a number of different genres.

What struck me, when I read the Bible like this, was the seriousness with which God takes our sin and disobedience.  Each person’s life is like a quest where even the tiniest decisions determine the state of one’s soul, the course of one’s life, and then finally, the fate of one’s soul in the afterlife.

Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many.  For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few. (Matthew 7:13-14) 

What I wanted was certainty that I was on the right path.  It’s very easy to live a double life – to think you’re on the right path, but to be blind to your own faults.  I could see that I was living a life of relative comfort, while in the same street homeless people were sleeping on park benches.   I could see that most of my day to day activities revolved around pleasing myself, rather than helping others.  I was sure God expected more of me, and I worked myself up into a state of great anxiety wondering whether I would ever be able to walk the narrow way.  I was aware that many of the Protestant churches play down the importance of our actions (works), and attribute salvation entirely to our faith, but reading the Bible made it clear to me that this was only half the story: works are important too!  (For more on this, see Faith – what must we do to be saved.)

It was in this frame of mind that I kept asking God, “Please give me some assurance that you will help me to inherit eternal life!  Because I definitely don’t want to miss out on eternal life through my own selfishness, laziness, stupidity and ignorance.  I just want to know that I won’t end up in hell.”

How times have changed: I can’t think of anyone I know who actually worries about this question any more and talks about it.  But I’ve heard people say they would rather be in hell than have to obey a God who allows the possibility for hell to exist.  Go figure.  Maybe this is because they haven’t had hell explained to them accurately.  But God has to have somewhere to put souls who have self-selected not to love him during their earthly lives.

Bishop Robert Barron explains hell here:

Anyway, around that time, I had entered a Nazareth House knit-a-thon.  Nazareth House was the Convent across the road which provided housing and care for abandoned children and the aged, and they were going to use the knitted strips to make blankets for the needy.  I remember pestering everyone at work to sponsor me a certain amount of money per knitted row.  And I ended up winning the competition (surprisingly, as I am a terrible knitter), so the Nuns gave me a small prize, which included a prayer card with a special message:

There is one thing I ask of the Lord, only this do I seek: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life. (Psalm 27(26):4)

It was as if God was giving me his personal assurance not to worry, and to keep persevering in my walk with him.  I still have this card, which is so precious to me for its reminder that God wants to have a conversation with us and answer the deepest desires of our hearts.

For a great homily on today’s readings, try this one – yes, we have God’s grace, but it doesn’t come cheap.  David discovered this in today’s first reading, where God sends Nathan to point out to David his hypocrisy and contempt for the Lord.

Today’s readings:

Word format: Year C 11th Sunday 2016

Pdf format: Year C 11th Sunday 2016

 

 


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11th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B | The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed

parable_of_the_mustard_seedWhat can we say the kingdom of God is like? What parable can we find for it? It is like a mustard seed which at the time of its sowing in the soil is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet once it is sown it grows into the biggest shrub of them all and puts out big branches so that the birds of the air can shelter in its shade.  (Mark 4:30-32)

What is this kingdom of God that Jesus keeps talking about in parables?  Jesus is the seed described in John 12:24.

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

Jesus becomes that ‘smallest of all the seeds’ in his humiliation and death, but what follows is the Resurrection and the expansion of his Kingdom, the Church.  We see this pattern repeated in so many ways in church history.  Fr Barron illustrates this in his homily for today with the examples of Charles Lwanga, Mother Theresa and St Francis of Assisi.

It’s not only the membership of the church that grows like a mustard tree, but also our understanding of Jesus’ teaching.  This is the image that Blessed John Henry Newman used in his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine.  I have heard the Catholic Church described by Protestants as ‘legalistic’.  It seems that part of the objection is that we have too much doctrine.  But if we love the Lord, then exploring his word results in a natural growth in our understanding.  New understandings never contradict previous understandings, but are brought forth from them in the same way that advances in the deductive sciences are made: by starting on the trunk of the tree with known knowns, and pursuing them along the branches and smaller twigs to areas which require further elucidation.  In this way, the tree keeps becoming more all-encompassing.  So, for example, the idea of Mary as the Mother of God (Theotokos) was premised on the prior understanding that Jesus the man was also fully Divine, and that he had two natures in one person: a divine nature and a human nature united in a ‘mystical union’ or hypostatic union.  This doctrine was only formally defined at the First Council of Ephesus (431) and the Council of Chalcedon (451) as a response to Nestorianism which held that Jesus was not the same as the eternal Word of God, he was just a human who had received divinity from the Father.  [For more on Newman’s concept of the Development of Doctrine, go here.]

Because new understandings must be consistent with previous understandings, the Church cannot change its teaching on Marriage, no matter what pressures are brought to bear by the culture.  That is the beauty of the Catholic Church: consistent in its teachings from the Apostolic era until today.  That is why Archbishop Costelloe has felt it necessary to reiterate the Church’s teaching during the current debate on same-sex marriage in Australia.  A pastoral letter will be given out today at all Masses explaining the Church’s position.  You can read it here:  Same-sex Marriage Pastoral Letter FINAL

Please also read the ‘Don’t Mess with Marriage‘ document from the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference.  Well done to the Bishops!  You may well find that the media and the same-sex lobbyists want to crucify you too, but stand firm!

Today’s Mass readings (Australia)

Word format:Year B 11th Sunday 2015

Pdf format: Year B 11th Sunday 2015