A Homily for the Twenty Third Sunday after Pentecost

+ It is easy to say that God did many wonderful things in the times of the prophets and patriarchs but no longer acts like that. Is this not the attitude of the crowds surrounding the dead child Our Lord was about to raise from the dead. They go so far as to mock God when they see Him. Soon, however, that mocking is brought back onto their own heads as Jesus leads the girl out alive and well. In contrast, the ruler who came to ask of Jesus that his daughter be raised acted in full faith. He knew exactly Who he was approaching. He does nothing before adoring Jesus – an act which is reserved for God. He addresses Him Lord, a divine title. He asks, confident in the response.

It is, moreover, often much harder to see exactly what He is doing in our age bristling with so much empty activity and noise. Everything is scrutinised under a rationalistic microscope hiding under our pride the acts of providence. A pride, a self-reliance, which has also dulled our creative participation in Him through art. No longer is man capable of building a great gothic cathedral – despite all his technology.

Reason, it is often said, replaces faith. But this is not so. Faith perfects reason. By faith we accept the testimony of God – Who alone knows everything exactly as it is. By reason we learn about the same things, with the possibility of mistakes, through our own means. Neither can be considered a bad thing. Scrutiny of every detail is not in itself a bad thing. And more, love of God is exactly what drives us to scrutinise all His creation that we may come to know Him better. This is the working maxim of the scholastics and medieval scientists. Keeping God in the foreground as the reason for all science, we are far less likely to abuse it unto our own destruction. Yet no science can ever fully reveal to us the fulness of God’s power and majesty. They can only show unto us the grandness of His creation – which is ever entirely subject to Him. The great cathedrals of our heritage provide a far superior image of the His power and majesty through their brilliance and splendour of art.

Howsoever much our theoretical knowledge of the world develops and illuminates the creative majesty of God we must never allow the sense of wonder to escape us. Anything which teaches us more of God, in Himself or in His creation, cannot fail to humble us. It illumines all the more the love that God has that He should make everything in such splendour, without failing to know every hair on our heads. Yes, He will even intervene, when He deems it apposite, and always to move man to Himself, that he may be saved on the final day. For this is His will – that we should be converted and live.

God’s close attention to each detail is demonstrated the more clearly in the miracle of the woman troubled by a blood issue. The woman, full of faith, seeks the miracle in a private manner – Our Lord in contrast brings her healing into full public light. He does not, however, break from discretion. God does nothing accidentally, nor without exact knowledge. We then must not only be aware of what He is doing for us, but actively seek it out. We must never allow ourselves to be blinded from the guiding hand of His Providence.

Only in the humility of silence, of prayer, can we listen to that small still voice in which the Lord speaks. A silence which is free not only from talk but also from vain web browsing, instant availability by phone, and other background noises stifling the voice of God. Prayer comes not so much from the lips but rather the heart, which imbibes us with the words of Scripture – especially the Psalms and Canticles the Church has always prayed with. In such a manner we are emptied of our empty curiosities and vain desires, allowing God to fill our hearts. There is then no space left for the mere routine, but a true joy in doing what is good and holy – even if it appears as if a routine.

Such a joy in doing what is good and holy, is nothing other than the full awareness of the presence of God. It is a joy which physical suffering cannot break, for God is all the more intensely with us in times of trial. Knowing God’s personal and loving goodness during these trials must fill us with a courage for it only in Him, and through His grace, that we can overcome the world and the trials it sends to us.

With eternity every before our eyes, our temporality takes its natural place. Adoration of God takes an easy and prominent place in life, following His promptings for each hour with ease. It is in the Sacred Liturgy and especially the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, when He is truly present before us on the Altar that we are revivified in our awareness of the presence of God. As we kneel before Him at the moment of the Consecration let us be overcome anew with awe at this act of God coming before us in the perfect and incomparable self-gift. Let us be ever fortified to guard the silence of heart in which He can speak to us through the liturgical texts of this Mass. +