A Homily for the Sunday after the Ascension

+ “Keep sane and sober for your prayers. Above all hold unfailing your charity for one another, since charity covers a multitude of sins. Practice hospitality ungrudgingly to one another. As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace: whoever speaks, as one who utters oracles of God; whoever renders service, as one who renders it by the strength which God supplies; in order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.”
 
These exhortations of St Peter, with which the Sacred Liturgy of our Holy Mother, the Church, exhorts each one of us this morning, are as simple and straightforward as they are sublime. One might be forgiven for thinking that they were written especially for monks—but let us not forget that the monastic life is nothing other than a distillation of the Christian life itself: a more intense living of it, as it were. So yes, through the inspiration of God the Holy Spirit St Peter’s exhortations were most certainly written for monks, just as they were written for each baptised Christian down to our age. In the Providence of Almighty God they challenge each of us this morning. We would do well to contemplate their import more profoundly.
 
It is instructive that the first thing St Peter requires is prayer. Prayer is not something to be ‘fitted in’ or ‘added on’: it is fundamental, and we are to be prudent and watchful in respect of ourselves in order to fulfil this duty—the first duty of mankind: to worship Almighty God. One can ‘do Christian things’ as it were, indeed one can do much that is of itself good in the world and for others, but a Christian is one who first and foremost prays, who worships God together with all the baptised in the Sacred Liturgy, above all at Holy Mass at least on Sundays and on the feasts of obligation as set down by the Church.
 
Worship of Almighty God and the prayer that it gives rise to in our hearts, minds and souls, is literally fundamental: it is the solid basis for every element of Christian life—be that perseverance in times of persecution or be it the flowering of charity towards the other. Prayer roots us in the fertile soil of the very life of God from which all grace and virtue comes. Without it we risk becoming another shallow activist, ephemeral lobbyist or passing politician. Whereas when prayer—most particularly the public prayer of the Church (the Sacred Liturgy)—is the source and summit of our Christian life, we can draw deeply and ever more fruitfully from the very “strength which God supplies.”
 
And it is with this “supernatural strength”, with this grace given by God, that we can in fact be unfailing in our mutual charity. Quarrels emerge in monasteries just as they do in families. Disputes erupt in places of work or leisure. Sometimes, indeed, we must bear clear witness to the Truth in the midst of such turmoil: not to do so could be to allow falsehood to fester, to condone the lies upon which many base their lives and to allow them infect others.
 
But, as St Peter instructs, in bearing witness to the Truth we must do so with unfailing charity. Charity is supernatural love for the other practised in the light of Truth. It is not charitable to pass over morally wrong or criminal behaviour in silence. Patience may be necessary at times, but it must be that loving patience of the father of the Prodigal Son hoping and waiting and praying for the return of his errant son, ever ready to run to embrace him whilst he is still on the road, and to celebrate his return (cf. Lk 15: 11-32). Patience must not become that all-too-common counterfeit form of charity that fears to speak the truth under the pretence that nothing is wrong.
 
This does not mean that we ought to launch the type of puritanical moralistic crusades that repels the weak and seems to exalt ourselves with a pride that is not at all of God. No. We are all sinners. Each one of us is called to conform our lives to the Truth of God revealed in Jesus Christ and, as we ought to know only too well, most if not all of us have a long way to go yet. But if we have at least begun to convert our lives then we can and should bear humble witness to the Truth whom, by God’s grace, we have encountered before those who know Him not. We should bear the evangelical invitation “come and see” (cf. Jn 4:29) to others as true missionaries of the Truth.
 
This is true charity—to bring people to Christ and as St Peter assures us, “charity covers a multitude of sins”! For Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life for all men and women of all times and places, and it is only in seeking ever more to conform ourselves to Him, and in bringing others to Him, that we shall come to enjoy that Life, now and for eternity.
 
As we go now to the altar, let us humbly beg for an increase in that charity so that in us and through our worship of Almighty God in prayer and in bearing witness to the truth, indeed, in everything, Almighty God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. +