A Homily for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

+ “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,” the Letter to the Hebrews teaches us (4:12). And how true this is! In each celebration of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy the demanding reality of God’s saving action in human history is made present anew. It is not just ‘mediated upon’ or merely ‘remembered’. No, the living, active, saving power of God is present to us in a singular and privileged way in the simplest celebration of the Divine Office, in the many other liturgical rites, in utterly specific ways in the celebration of the Sacraments and most sublimely in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. Through the humblest verse, responsory or hymn and above all in the solemn proclamation of Sacred Scripture at Matins and at Mass, God’s Word, “sharper than any two-edged sword,” pierces us to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of our hearts, bringing us face to face with the Risen Christ who looks upon us, who loves us, and who calls us to that conversion of life that will gain us treasure in heaven. (cf. Mk 10:21)
 
This is the essence of the contemplative or monastic life and vocation: that continual encounter with Christ living and working in and through the Sacred Rites of His Church today—not so that we may grow in academic theological knowledge, but so that, having entered into His embrace, all that is not of God within us may be cut away and we may ever-more fully turn (“convert”) to Him, and thereby be sustained in that new life, in becoming that new man whom He calls us to be.  
 
Not everyone is a monk. But monastic life is nothing more than the Christian life lived with more protective structures. Some of us need the cloister lest the world, the flesh and the devil overtake us! The Word of God is addressed to all the baptised, and even if some cannot always be at Matins (!) the encounter with Christ into which it calls us is indispensable if we are to hasten to do now that which will profit us for eternity. (cf. Rule, Prologue)
 
The passages of Sacred Scripture addressed to each of us this morning by Our Holy Mother the Church are a very clear example of this. St Paul is as blunt as ever in the Epistle: “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.”
 
Not much more needs to be said. We simply need to resolve to seek the grace of God to do what is necessary for the conversion of our lives, and to persevere in the hard and ongoing work that conversion is: the conforming of our every thought, word and deed to Christ, even—especially!—when sin and vice have taken root and grown in us for some time.
 
Our Lord’s words are equally direct in the Holy Gospel: “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits… Every sound tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears evil fruit… Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus you will know them by their fruits.”
 
It is clear that Our Lord Himself foresaw that His Church would encounter trouble and division. We may even be tempted in our current crisis to seek complacent comfort in that. But that is an insidious temptation! Wolves in sheep’s clothing, or even in the vestments of shepherds, are to be resisted and banished! Falsehood is to be repudiated with the clarity of sound doctrine no matter whether its proponents are clad in black or white, purple or scarlet.
 
The ancient and venerable Roman Canon—the beating heart of the Mass— prays, and thereby teaches us, that we stand before the altar as one with (una cum) “all those who, holding to the truth, hand on the catholic and apostolic faith,” amongst whom it naturally includes first and foremost the reigning pope and the local bishop. In our times there is much to ponder here, but let it suffice to underline that the criterion for ecclesial communion, the lex credendi taught in the daily lex orandi of the Church for well over a thousand years is not a uniformity of opinion or custom, or a servile and uncritical compliance with policies or prudential judgments of a given pope or bishop, but “holding to the truth,” and handing on “the catholic and apostolic faith.” This is what is required of all, above all of pastors of souls and successors of the apostles, and its absence indicates nothing less than the menacing presence of a wolf.
 
For the grace of the resolution and perseverance necessary in the conversion of our lives, and for the ability to hold on to the truth of the Catholic faith that comes to us from the apostles, no matter who seeks to distract us from it, or undermine it, let us entreat Almighty God at His altar, where we stand, as ever, as one with all those who, holding to the truth, hand on the catholic and apostolic faith. +