A Homily for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost

​+ There is a common conception that a Christian is someone who is usually quite “nice”, who cares and who is helpful and does good for others somewhat more often than others might. And there is no denying, as the Holy Gospel of this Mass insists, that loving charity gives the other person the same priority as one gives oneself is of the essence of being a disciple of Jesus Christ. The Church’s great religious orders and institutions—monasteries included—have rightly been caring for those in need for centuries before any secular state became thus involved.
 
Our Lord’s teaching on the judgement of the sheep and the goats which comes later in St Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-46), should give us all pause. What do we wish to hear on that day? If we do not love our neighbour as ourselves we risk hearing the terrible condemnation: “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” 
 
In this respect Christianity is not “nice”. It is, in fact, quite dangerous. It is dangerous because it makes demands of us—exclusive demands which go beyond simply social ‘do-gooding’ which have eternal consequences and that ‘interfere’ as it were with each and every aspect of our life. And often Christianity says “No. This or that behaviour is not acceptable. It is not of God.” It sets boundaries. “For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it,” Our Lord teaches. (Mt 7:13-14)
 
One of the demands of Christianity--the primary and fundamental demand on anyone who claims to be a Christian—is also enunciated by Our Lord in the Holy Gospel: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment,” He teaches. This comes first, before anything else; before any social activity no matter how good or necessary that may seem to be.
 
This is, of course, the commandment to worship the Lord our God, and not merely to have some residual or cultural sentiment towards Him, and to worship Him with all our heart, with all of our soul, and with all of our mind. It makes the ultimate demand on us: I must recognise and humbly submit to the truth that I am God’s creature and give to him that honour, love and obedience that is His due in daily personal and public worship and witness. To put it another way, this commandment demands that I must accept that God is God and that I am not. I must make a personal act of faith in Him. And only when I have done this shall I truly be able to fulfil the second, consequent commandment, to love my neighbour as myself as a son or daughter of God, and not simply as a social worker or someone promoting a merely humanitarian cause howsoever noble.
 
In the light of current controversies there is another aspect of this commandment which is important. Our Lord teaches that we must love “the Lord your God…” This is a quotation from the Book of Deuteronomy (6:5). To the modern ear the expression “your God” may suggest the possibility of a subjective choice, that we can each find our own different path to God, that all religions are of equal validity, that it does not matter what religion you follow so long as somehow you love that which you believe to be God (or gods), that no one religion is exclusively true.
 
Let us be clear: Our Lord is not teaching post-modern syncretism. The commandment He uses by no means repudiates the fundamental tenet of the fiercely monotheistic Jewish tradition—that the One True God has revealed Himself in human history and that salvation is found only in worshipping Him. That Our Lord Himself is the definitive fulfilment of this revelation, the way, the truth and the life, and that no one comes to the Father except through Him (cf. Jn 14:6), is a truth of the very nature of Christianity—one for which over two millennia countless missionaries have expended decades of labour and for which many martyrs have given their lives, firm in the faith that “whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic faith. Which faith unless everyone do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic faith is this: that we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity…” (Athanasian Creed).
 
Certainly, Almighty God can in His mercy grant salvation to those who through no fault of their own do not have explicit faith in Christ (cf. Catechism n. 847) but we may never presume this, nor use it as an excuse to cease seeking to convert people to the One True Faith. For the Gospel’s command to Love the Lord your God is no invitation to shop in a supposed “supermarket of religions,” but to humbly submit ourselves to the definitive revelation of God in human history in Jesus Christ, and in so doing to be able all the more to love and serve our neighbour as witnesses to the saving truth that is found only in Him. For that humility, and for the strength that it imparts, let us beg Almighty God as we now approach His altar to render Him the worship that is His due. +