A Homily for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ Christianity is often regarded as a ‘nice’ religion that engenders charity and care towards others, that excuses almost, in not, every fault or sin and which makes very few significant demands on those who subscribe to it at least nominally. Certainly, in the present day, Christians are a relatively passive and peaceful presence in modern society causing little real trouble to secular rulers. Prelates appear in public occasionally to lobby for one cause or another, but they exercise little real power and seem happy enough to smile for the photographs before returning to the management of their frequently declining dioceses, most often sincerely seeking to do what good they can. They are nice, of course, but their efficacity as Apostles is somewhat anaemic.
 
But Christianity is not a ‘nice’ religion. It does not excuse all. It makes real demands—no more clearly than in the Holy Gospel proclaimed this morning: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.”
 
Let is note the imperative “shall”. “You shall love the Lord your God…” “You shall love your neighbour…” These are not options. They are fundamental demands made by Jesus Christ, the definitive revelation of God to mankind in human history. Whilst many like to call themselves Christian in one way or another, in truth one cannot be a Christian without observing these imperatives. They are not options on a menu: they are the obligatory fare.
 
Let us also observe that there are two fundamental demands and that they have a clear hierarchy. One is “the great and first commandment” and the other is “second” and “like it.” The first is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” The second is to “love your neighbour as yourself”. That is to say that our love of God must come first and that from this love of God flows our duty to love our neighbour.
 
In our world being kind and charitable to the less fortunate are activities that are affirmed by all. When disasters strike a family, a village or town or nation, people of any or all creeds or none are willing to help, and this is a good, certainly. In the West it is a nice remnant of Christendom, even as the State has long-since sequestered the charitable works the Church performed for centuries. Love of neighbour is not yet extinct, even if that part of the command that requires us to love our neighbour as ourselves most probably demands much more from each of us.
 
But our world has extinguished the duty to “the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” Such activity may be tolerated by the State when practiced in private by consenting adults, as it were, but reformations, revolutions and so-called ‘enlightenments’ have long-since banned this fundamental element of Christianity and of Christendom from the public sphere. ‘Worship God if you really want to, but do not in any sense suggest that others should,’ is the policy that privatises faith and that removes religious belief from any real contribution to public discourse. The ‘curious’ moral teachings of Catholics are just that, and so long as they do not interfere with the State’s agenda, they can be tolerated. When they do, however, they are proscribed (as we see in the attacks on the secret of the confessional, the right of parents to refuse State-mandated sex education, etc.).
 
But no Christian or Catholic worthy of the name can accept such a privatisation of faith and morals. Our first duty is the complete worship of Almighty God: in the worship we offer here in the rich sacred rites handed on to us in the Tradition of the Church over the centuries, and consequently in every activity of our hearts, souls and minds in every circumstance of whatever particular vocation is ours—in the family, in the workplace, in politics, in places of education and even in ecclesiastical office. We are each called to be faithful witnesses of the Truth of Jesus Christ and of the requirement that we convert our lives and live according to that Truth if we wish to have eternal life.
 
That requirement is sometimes not nice. It requires us to say “no” to the world, and to authorities—even ecclesiastical ones—when their edicts run contrary to that which is True, Beautiful and Good. It requires us, out of true love for our neighbour, to insist that there is another way—the way of Jesus Christ—that does not demand acquiescence in what we know to be evil and that would lead to the loss of eternal life in the everlasting punishments of hell.
 
On this weekend when it is our joy to welcome many visitors for the annual Journees du Patrimoine ​(historical buidlings open days) let us not obscure this reality. For the very stones of this historical building were placed in the beautiful Romanesque harmony that we greatly appreciate as a witness to the Truth of Jesus Christ. Their architects and masons and decorators knew and sought to live the truth of both the commandments of today’s Gospel. They were not building something of historical interest, but a living testament to the saving Truth the Church is called faithfully to announce in every age. As we admire their work today, let us listen attentively to their voice which speaks through these stones still: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind… You shall love your neighbour as yourself. +