A Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Lent

+ “Sed haæc quid sunt inter tantos?” “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish; but what are they among so many?”

This question of St Andrew—which contains the majority of his few words recorded in the Gospels—resounds through the centuries to our own day. How can we manage with so few resources? What can we do in the face of the impossibility of the circumstances that confront us?
 
From the duty of preaching the Gospel of Christ to all nations (cf. Mk 16:15) to the duty to love and care for our neighbour who is poor or suffering (cf. Mt 25;31-46) the Church has faced an impossible task since her foundation. For even today she is very few, and the need, the sheer number of people to whom she must reach out and touch with the saving embrace of Christ, is enormous.
 
In our own times, which is witnessing a rapid decline in the numbers of practicing Catholics—accelerated without doubt by the liturgical, doctrinal and pastoral dissipation that the Church seems almost to have wished upon herself the past half-century, and which in the last decade seems to be being pushed even further still almost as a matter of urgency—we may very well ask sed haæc quid sunt inter tantos? How can we possibly manage to fulfil the duties of Christian life and worship and witness that Our Lord expects of us?
 
Here in France many, many dioceses find it impossible even to assure a Sunday Mass in each parish, let alone provide the wider sacramental care God’s people need for their salvation. Throughout the world Catholic hospitals and charitable institutions have closed and stand empty, sometimes replaced by secular counterfeits, at other times unable to continue because of a lack of those willing to offer themselves in the service of God through love of their neighbour. Even here in our own small monastic foundation we can be tempted to ask how can we possibly manage: what hope do we have in a world (and even a Church!) that seems to spurn all that for which we stand?
 
In the second chapter of his Rule St Benedict addresses the anxieties that may confront an abbot: “If he be tempted to complain of lack of means,” St Benedict says, “let him remember the words: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you. (Mt 6:33) And again: They that fear Him lack nothing. (Ps 33:10)” One can almost hear some pragmatic abbots reacting: “That is all very nice, of course, but it does not pay the bills!” Some such abbots may even have been called Andrew: “Sed haæc quid sunt inter tantos?” “But what are they among so many?”
 
And yet the history of the Church is replete with the miraculous transformation of but a handful of good men and women into great missionaries and saints and martyrs who have preached the Gospel to throughout the world, who have brought the hope of eternal salvation to those who hitherto worshiped false gods and who have reformed human societies according to the law of the love of God and of one’s neighbour. Monastic history boasts of many sons and daughters of St Benedict and of St Scholastica who have reformed monasteries or established new ones that they might become true households of God’s praise and worship—beacons of Christian life, culture and learning (and indeed, as necessary, of pastoral care and practical charity) in very dark ages of the Church’s history.
 
Our own times, too, has seen such miracles, perhaps most eloquently expressed in the lives of such tenacious individuals of St Teresa of Calcutta or, closer to home, of Dom Gerard Calvet, the founder of the Abbey of Le Barroux—whose prophetic fidelity in the face of much hostility bears abundant fruit in the Vineyard of the Lord down to this day. Who were they amongst so many? They were individuals who offered all that they had—all the little that they had and were—before the Lord and allowed him to bless it and multiply it that it might nourish and sustain many. They sought first the Kingdom of God and found that they were given the spiritual and material means they required.
 
Who are we amongst so many? How can we persevere in the face of the world, the flesh and the devil that constantly threaten us and in the light of persecutions that arrive even from within the Church? The answer is the same: we must offer all that we have—no matter how meager that be spiritually or materially—to the Lord and allow him to bless it and multiply it that it might nourish and sustain us, and that through us it will bear fruit. To be sure our offering to the Lord must be pure, and because of this our Lenten disciplines, particularly confession are of vital importance. If we but offer ourselves, the Lord can and shall work miracles in and through us.
 
This morning, as once again we go to His altar, let us offer ourselves anew, confident that He will bless our offering, and that He will do so abundantly. +