A Homily for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

​+ In the Letter to the Hebrews we are taught that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.” (4: 12) Nowhere is this more the case than here, in the Sacred Liturgy of the Church, where the Word of God Incarnate, Our Lord Jesus Christ, lives and works in His Church today, Himself speaking to us in and through the liturgical proclamation of the Sacred Scriptures. (cf. Sacrosanctum Concilium, 7)
 
A “two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” is, however, likely to unsettle us—to challenge our comfort and complacency. And it should: Our Lord did not become man and suffer and die on the Cross for our sins so that we could somehow feel better and anesthetise ourselves in respect of our sinful lives. No: He came to call us to that conversion of life which is the beginning of the path of salvation. He came to rescue us from the path of eternal perdition: to save us from hell and offer us the possibility of eternal life in heaven.
 
This is the clear teaching of Saint Paul in the Epistle of this Mass: “For just as you once yielded your members to impurity and to greater and greater iniquity, so now yield your members to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. But then what return did you get from the things of which you are now ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the return you get is sanctification and its end, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
 
It is worth noting here that St Paul clearly condemns impurity—sexual sins. It has become fashionable in some quarters to undermine this condemnation with observations such as “There are other sins than sexual ones.” That is true, and we must take due account of all sins in examining our consciences. But there are sexual sins, and the Word of God living and active in His Church today, piercing through all our feeble excuses, teaches unequivocally that they lead to eternal damnation. If we are caught up in them, with the help of the grace and mercy of Almighty God made available to us in the Sacrament of Confession, we must convert our lives in order to live in the hope of eternal life. Great saints—including St Mary Magdalene, the secondary patron of our diocese—have sinned seriously in this area: let us not hesitate to imitate their humility in the hope of achieving their holiness!
 
The Word of God addresses another clear warning to us in the Gospel of this Mass: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits.” In the Tradition of the Church this warning has been understood in respect of the pastors, of the shepherds, of the Church and, alas, it has clear applications to the Church in our own times.
 
For we live in an age when a young bishop who boasts that “We don’t want to convert the young people to Christ or to the Catholic Church or anything like that at all,” regarding dialogue an encounters as sufficient ends in themselves, is suddenly named a Cardinal; when others, in the name of unity impose an unprecedented uniformity which excludes people from the Church’s life-giving millennial forms of worship; when more still acquiesce in an obediential Quietism that furthers an ecclesiastical programme in which processes are engaged in for their own sake regardless of the demands of the Word of God, or indeed of His command to “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Mt 28: 19-20) Others still are crassly immoral or mired in the politics of power and the perverse pursuit of material wealth.
 
The two-edged sword that pierces to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and that discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart cuts through this facade. “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven,” He teaches us. Not every Pope or Prince of the Church, nor priest nor every prelate is to be followed—for, tragically, in our times as in the past, some are indeed false prophets, as is becoming more and more evident from their fruits.
 
In the face of this we must cling to the living Word of God as it is handed down to us in the Tradition of the Church, alive and acting here in her Sacred Rites. As it does today, the Word of God will pierce us and demand the conversion of our lives. And it will enable us to recognise and to resist those who present themselves “in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves” for what they truly are.
 
For the humility necessary to hear and act upon the piercing call to conversion that is addressed to each of us this morning, for the wisdom and courage required to reject the false prophets rampant in our times, and for the fortitude needed to be faithful witnesses to Jesus Christ, the unique saviour of mankind, in the different circumstances in which we live and work, let is beg Almighty God at His altar in this Holy Mass. +