A Homily for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost

+ Here in Europe the world has been ‘back at work’ as it were for a week or so now, with holidays over and ‘normal’ business regaining its momentum—even its control over our daily activities. For some, this is a welcome relief to the relative inactivity of the summer: an opportunity to push forward with various projects and ambitions and to contribute further to the good. For others, the return to work marks a return to something more mundane or even of questionable value, or even to routines that serve only to augment a sense of quiet despair in a world that, it can so often seem, has long since left me behind.
 
For monks, too, the end of the summer marks a return to studies and to projects set aside during the summer with its constant flow of guests and the increased demands of the garden and of the animals. So too, we must resume our interaction with the various authorities responsible for historic buildings and so on, planning and working to advance their restoration, etc. (And here, even monks can be tempted to despair!)
 
Amidst our resumption of ‘ordinary’ activity, however exciting or depressing that may be, the Sacred Liturgy of our Holy Mother the Church addresses to us a most extraordinary exhortation. She does so in the Epistle of this Holy Mass in the words of the Apostle Paul written from his imprisonment in Rome to the Ephesians. In fact, it is a prayer of Saint Paul, which the Church addresses to us this morning (as she has done on the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost for centuries). Saint Paul prayers that the Father “may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.”
 
It is not a bad prayer, is it? We may well want to include some of its demands on our Christmas wish-list this year! But let us consider its teaching and implications a little more seriously.
 
We are busy. There is too much to do. There are too many stresses—personal, familial, social, political, ecclesial, etc.—in our lives. We may well achieve some things, but the pressure to do more is constant. And then there is always the threat, indeed the reality, of sickness and the frailty of old age that beckons on the horizon, however distant we may think it may be. The world grows more godless—indeed it becomes more and more anti-God—in its positivist partisan political turmoil and even the One True Church founded by Jesus Christ seems to be rent by rampant syncretism, moral relativism if not heresy at many levels. There are notable exceptions, thanks be to God, but the overall demographics do not look good. In such a situation our own efforts in the world, in the family, in the monastery or wider Church can seem futile. Why go back to work? Why even try?
 
We may cynically answer that we need to earn a salary in order to survive. OK. But that simply renders our efforts purely utilitarian if not ultimately futile. Certainly, to work for the bread we eat is a consequence of the Fall of our first parents, Adam and Eve (cf. Gen. 3:17) but even amidst its sweat and toil by the grace of Baptism we enjoy the dignity of sons and daughters of God Christ. Hence St Paul can indeed pray that we may “be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man…that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; that…being rooted and grounded in love [we] may have power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fulness of God.”
 
For with this dignity, with Christ dwelling in our hearts, nothing is futile no matter however menial or trivial it may seem; nothing is merely utilitarian. No suffering or illness or frailty can ultimately destroy us or take away the life and love of God that dwell within us. Nothing, that is, except our freely chosen rejection of the life of God through mortal sin.
 
As the world busies itself with resuming its mundane tasks, it is time for us to get back to work spiritually, as it were—to renew our good habits of daily prayer, of regular penance, fasting and almsgiving and, where necessary, to seek the restoration of the grace of Baptism in our souls through the forgiveness and healing that is available to us in the Sacrament of Confession.
 
In this resumption of spiritual work let us not forget, most particularly today on her feast, to ask the assistance of the Blessed Virgin Mary. May she who was filled with the fulness of God in a singularly privileged way, and all the saints who join us join us at this altar in giving God the worship that is His due, win for us the grace of perseverance in faith, hope and charity in the duties that are ours and in the sufferings we must endure. Amen. +