A Homily for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

+ We are frequently asked by friends, family and acquaintances how we are doing, how our life is progressing, and it is a source of legitimate pleasure to be able to respond that we are content to be doing well, that our studies, career, family, etc. are making good progress. Even when obstacles and problems arise it is again good to be able to say that we are dealing with them as best we can and are moving forward nevertheless. Life has its difficulties, we are wont to say, but we are content that somehow, we will manage.
 
This settled contentment can be present also in our lives of faith. We make progress in virtue and eliminate the worst of our vices and develop good habits of daily prayer and Sunday Mass, etc. Monks live their observance as faithfully as their situation allows; clergy are dutiful in respect of their responsibilities. When suffering arrives our faith enables us to carry its burdens. All is as it should be.
 
Or is it? For Christianity is not a placebo for the middle classes, nor is it a palliative for the more unpleasant and unavoidable elements of human existence. No, it is a radically unsettling call to daily perfection—nothing less. For, in the face of our comfortable existence (materially and spiritually) Our Lord Jesus Christ addresses us this morning in the Gospel of this Holy Mass, warning us that “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” External observance of the basics is not enough. Coasting along comfortably will not do. More—much more—is required of each of us if we are to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Indeed, we are warned that “if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.”
 
Whilst when asked we might say often enough that we are doing well, and may well feel relatively comfortable, very few of us would respond that in fact we are “really quite perfect, thank you very much,” socially or spiritually. We know only too well that we are imperfect in many ways that perhaps only we and Almighty God can see. We may even have become quite settled in our imperfections, excusing them as it were with the anthropological deceit contained in the adage: “I’m only human, after all.”
 
In the face of this, Our Lord’s call to perfection can seem utterly unrealistic. The kingdom of heaven can seem too much to which to aspire; the required virtue and reconciliation is just too much to ask. How can we ever reach the required standard? How can we hope daily to live according to the teaching of Saint Peter in the Epistle of this morning’s Mass? We may not be utterly evil, but we are certainly not angels either! Our comfortable lives are indeed far from perfect. The answer is clear: by ourselves we cannot reach the required standard. We need help.
 
In the face of this predicament we do well to recall the fundamental tenets of Christianity—its specificity—that which distinguishes it from any and every other form of religious observance known to man, namely that God Himself became man, and Himself suffered and died and rose from the dead so that we, flawed and inadequate and sinful beings, might ourselves share in His resurrection—in that life beyond bodily death that has no end.
 
How can we ever reach the required standard? By joining ourselves to Jesus Christ who, out of self-sacrificing love, has already won the victory over sin and death—over all that limits us—by entering His family, the Church, through the Sacrament of Baptism and by persevering in the life of that family nourished, healed and sustained by the Sacraments, most particularly by the Sacraments of Confession and of Holy Communion.
 
For through Baptism all our sins are washed away and we are immersed in the life and love of God—indeed His life, His grace, comes to live in us. Through the Sacrament of Confession those sins we have committed after Baptism are absolved—literally removed from existence—and the grace and life of Baptism is renewed. And through the worthy reception of Holy Communion that life of grace is fed; we are nourished by the very Body and Blood of Christ Himself, we are given His strength to enable us to persevere in all that Christian life demands.
 
This is why our wise Mother, the Church, insists that we go to confession regularly and receive Holy Communion worthily as frequently as possible. It is why she insists that we come to Mass at least every Sunday and day of obligation. For whilst we might muddle along reasonably well in terms of the world, we cannot hope to enter the Kingdom of God without supernatural help—without He who is brought to us here, on this altar, this morning, in the most sublime manner possible in this life. If we approach Him with the necessary humility and conversion of life, with the desire to be perfect as He is perfect (cf. Mt 5:48) we shall share in His Kingdom, in His unending life. We shall be doing very well indeed—supernaturally. +