A Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ Greatly are the things of the earth contrasted against those of heaven throughout the course of the propers of this Holy Mass. Yet in each of those contrasts there is a new nuance which adds to the whole. Never is there an outright condemnation of material things, but various levels of treatment in which they are shown to be inferior to the spiritual. Receiving the integral picture requires stepping back and examining what manner the hyperbole of the given image is being addressed to us. Yet it is the integration of everything which must genuinely be lived to acquire and develop the virtues which God expects of us.

Christ’s preaching has a practical application which is terribly difficult. You cannot serve both God and mammon, you either love the one and hate the other or serve one and despise the other. Yet this is not a direct statement that it is not possible to receive both. Only that we cannot seek after both with all of our heart. Each of us is often given this choice of what is going to be served; my personal interest or God. It matters not what that lust may be, power, money, or liberty to do exactly as I please when it pleases me. It is only in searching for these things regardless of the demands of justice and responsibility that these become destructive.

In continuing the Gospel passage Christ makes this distinction much clearer. The bird who does not sow and gather does not run short of food; not even Solomon has such fine garments as the lilies of the field which do not weave. God will make these things available to you as you have need of them. Justice is the one thing which Our Lord puts before us as that which must be actively sought out. Even if it is to leave us in apparent hardship, nothing can be put before that good of justice. If the flowers have their beauty in appearance, man has his beauty through his proximity to God through virtue, especially the theological virtues of faith hope and charity. Whilst only the one virtue is quoted, Our Lord uses it to envisage the complete set. Whilst material concerns are easy to use as an excuse before which we can apparently avoid works of virtue, they are rarely adequate. Our Lord is perfectly clear that what is necessary will be received, as long as we first seek God.

One of the most fundamental means in which that justice must be served by is to assure that the truth, the sacraments, and the rites of the church are faithfully handed down and made available as widely as possible. At a temporal level the introit can be understood as referring to the sacred liturgy. “One day in your courts are better than a thousand elsewhere.” It is better to spend a brief time in the contemplation of God, in the living of the Church’s rites, than in many other frivolous activities. Those things which are given us by God are of a vastly greater worth than anything else. All the faithful have a right to the full rites of the Church. So often it is forgotten that this goes far beyond the celebration of Mass. In particular assistance at the office of Sunday Vespers is a salutary practice for the sanctification of the Sunday. It can never however replace Sunday Mass.

Having celebrated on Friday the feast of St Augustine it is becoming to dwell on his example. He stands as the greatest of all doctors of the Church upon whose writings almost all later theology ultimately depends. At the end of his life the Roman empire was collapsing and being taken over by various Germanic tribes. He ever held fast to his place as bishop to ensure that he could bring to his flock in Hippo the sacred food as best he could. He engages the politics surrounding him only insofar as it was directly useful to the care of the souls entrusted to him or required of him as bishop. His wisdom and teaching was sought after from afar both because of his learning and, more importantly, because of his authentic simplicity in searching for God. Never did he allow any of his numerous preoccupations to interrupt his simple living of the Gospel, rather he allowed it to drive him to fulfil the Gospel precepts more perfectly.