A Homily for the Second Sunday after Pentecost

+ Excuses. Excuses. Excuses. The Gospel is full of them: “I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it’…‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to examine them’…‘I have married a wife, and therefore I cannot come.’
 
Such excuses may seem reasonable enough: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with committing matrimony or purchasing property or cattle. Indeed, they are goods ordered to the sustenance and prosperity of human life and its procreation. But some goods, some good things or endeavours or choices, are subordinate to higher ones. And this is the Truth that is being taught to us by Our Lord through the Sacred Liturgy of His Church this morning. Even good things that are not evil in themselves can be used to excuse ourselves from the demands that higher goods make upon us.
 
We see this frequently enough in respect of the duty all Catholics have to be present at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass each and every Sunday and Holy Day of Obligation throughout the year. Apart from the sheer avarice of using Sundays simply as another day for non-essential paid work, from the demands of children’s sport or family celebrations or the indulgence in favourite recreations, or the pressure to get some work or study done at home, or simply from sloth, all too many Catholics excuse themselves from the Lord’s Banquet, thereby turning otherwise good activities into idols and relegating the worship of Almighty God to second place.
 
We must never forget the third commandment: “Remember to keep holy the Sabbath day” and the demand that it contains to worship God above all and before all, without making pathetic excuses. Certainly, the Church teaches that serious reasons such as grave illness or prolonged travel that make our attendance at Mass impossible are sufficient excuse for being absent, however buying a field or marrying a wife or five yoke of oxen—or any of the contemporary excuses we like to use—are not amongst them. The worship of God must come first.
 
So too, we see the use of lesser goods to excuse from higher ones quite often when a young man or woman begins to think that the Lord may be inviting them to follow him in a particular vocation as a monk or a nun or a priest or religious. Certainly, the invitation is always challenging, if not truly frightening and the range of excuses one can employ in running away from it are myriad. There are so many apparently good things one could and can do otherwise! But, in the face of the Lord’s invitation they are mere excuses—excuses which in fact loose what goodness they may have enjoyed when they are employed to procrastinate or avoid and turn down the Lord’s call, and which can thereby become evils. A car remains a car: but when it is used to flee from a duty that is owed it loses its neutrality and becomes an instrument of wrongdoing. Fugitives are fugitives, even when they hide in seemingly good places.
 
Such running away from God’s will is not the sole preserve of people ignoring His call. How many people flee marriage vows, ordination, or religious vows because, as the saying goes, the grass is seemingly greener on the other side of any given fence? Excuses are the diabolical antithesis to that perseverance to the end through which we are saved. (cf. Mt 24:13) The Lord’s invitation must be accepted on His terms and must not be diluted or dismissed according to conditions we impose.
 
Preaching on this Gospel St Augustine interprets the excuses used thus: “I have married a wife, is the concupiscence of the flesh; [the] five yoke of oxen, the concupiscence of the eyes [or of the five senses]; I have bought a farm, the pride of life [or of power and of possessions].” Most, if not all, of our excuses fall under one of these categories. Again, much that falls under these categories is not necessarily evil in itself, but in the light of the Lord’s invitation to higher things, if they occlude that to which we are being invited they lose their erstwhile goodness. Evil, is, after all, defined as the privation of a due good. If fleshly desires, the delights of the senses and the attraction of power and of possessions are not subordinated to the life to which we are called by our very Baptism, and later to the particular vocation that is ours, they can become millstones around our necks.
 
We might, then, describe this as “no excuses Sunday,” for Our Lord calls us this morning to a radical honesty in respect of the fundamental duties of our baptismal vocation and of those of the particular vocation He has given to each one of us. For His ‘invitation’ is not to some ephemeral social event in which we may or may not wish to participate. It is the invitation to enter the door that is in fact the gateway to eternal life; it is the invitation to the Supper of the Lamb (cf. Rev. 19:6-9), and if we make excuses we shall be counted amongst those spoken of at the end of this morning’s Gospel: “None of those men who were invited shall taste my banquet.”
 
An examination of conscience is in order and, where we have hidden behind excuses, due repentance and amendment of life is necessary if we are to take our place at the Lord’s Eternal Banquet to which we are invited. For the grace so to do, let us beg Almighty God at this foretaste of that Banquet in which we now participate. +