A Homily for the Fifth Sunday after Easter

+ As the Sacred Liturgy continues to contemplate the unprecedented and defining reality of the Resurrection, our Holy Mother, the Church, has St James address us this morning with the stark injunction: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.”
 
In secular terms, one might say: ‘There are those who talk, and there are those who do…’ In respect of the Faith we might say that there are those who are baptised and there are those who live out their baptism… Now, the fact that we are at Mass this morning presumably means that we have at least made the choice to leave our beds behind and come to worship God in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, which is the first duty of any baptised person. Deo gratias. The Church and world would be far better if the primacy of this duty was well understood and acted upon—for if we are not prepared to make the necessary effort and sacrifice to worship God, our creator, we shall end up worshipping ourselves and the person we have created.
 
But there are other duties that flow from the worship of Almighty God, and it is precisely here that St James addresses us with his injunction: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” For it is all well and good for us to be present at Sunday Mass—or indeed for a monk to be present at seven offices a day and one at night—but if we do not open our hearts, minds and souls so as to be permeated and transformed by that in which we participate, if we are not motivated to act on that further that conversion of life that is so necessary in each of us, if we do not allow that which we touch and taste to take root and grow into deeper faith and more fruitful good works, then yes, as St James says, we are deceiving ourselves.
 
Of course, we are well used to forms of Christian activism whereby all manner of practical social good is done by many, and we often support such causes. We must be prudent in so doing, however, for even some Catholic care organisations include activities that are morally unacceptable amongst their apparent good works. Nevertheless, practical charity is indeed necessary as St James instructs this morning us later on in the Epistle.
 
Yet, as necessary and as good as such practical charity is, a follower of Christ—a Christian—is not a social worker and the Church is not an N.G.O. that exists to bandage the more unpleasant cuts and bruises of life. A Christian is someone who has heard the word of God. He or she is fundamentally someone who, in response to the Good News, in response to the reality of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, simply cannot not fail to worship Him—beginning in the Church’s sacred rites and continuing throughout each and every circumstance in which they find themselves.
 
Certainly, practical charity and social action are intrinsic to Christian life, for as St James teaches us later in his Epistle: “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (2:17) But we must not forget that the primary act of Christian charity, the first social activity to which we are called, is to be missionary—a reality that, happily, we have heard on our Holy Father’s lips quite frequently in the past two weeks. Yes, indeed, we must give a cup of water to those who need it (cf. Mt 10:42) but we do so in witness to the realities of Christian faith, in the name of Our Lord (not our own!). Thus, our practical charity, our ‘doing’ of what God’s Word requires of us in whatever circumstance, becomes missionary. It becomes a sacramental of the love of God. It calls the other to respond to that love with faith. It is ordered to the salvation of their souls, which is the fundamental missionary goal of the Church.
 
For, if Jesus Christ truly rose from the dead, if He is the definitive revelation of God in history, if He is the unique saviour of mankind, our conduct must needs be practically missionary. We are indeed deceiving ourselves if we sit here contemplating the wonders of the Christian faith, of the person of Jesus Christ and of the salvation he offers and do nothing at all about it. For some, to be sure, that doing involves a call to enter deeper into that mystery in the prayer and work that is the monastic vocation (and any monastic can assure you that there is plenty of the latter, plenty of ‘doing’, in our life). For others the doing must be done in the home, in the family, in the workplace and in other circumstances in the world.
 
Wherever our particular vocation takes us in this life, the principle is the same: the reality of the Resurrection of Christ which the Word of God makes known to us must result in a radical transformation of our lives. Our lives must be lived in the light of the Resurrection, as it were, so that what we do and what we say—indeed, the very person we have become—reflects that light and invites others to enter into all that it makes clear.
 
Let us pray, then, as does the collect of this Mass, for the grace to hold fast to the One, True, Faith, and to be able to put it into practice—for otherwise, we are deceiving ourselves. +