Crescent Comprehensive
Friday 16 September 2005

The picture of the disciples travelling around with Jesus as he was proclaiming the Good News of the kingdom is very attractive. They are full of enthusiasm, buoyed up by the presence in their group of women who have been cured of evil spirits and ailments. The enthusiasm is also expressed in the fact that many of people were putting their own resources into supporting the group. In this Conference we may, please God, sense the presence of a similar joy and enthusiasm in proclaiming the Gospel.

But sometimes we can more easily see ourselves in the context of the first reading. Things are not going very smoothly among Timothy’s flock – people are distorting and missing the point of the teaching they have received; there is jealousy and mistrust; there is ignorance and self-conceit; there are, it seems, those who are so interested in doing well for themselves that they have lost sight of what religion truly means. The scenario may not be entirely unfamiliar to us!

The reading expresses irritation at the harm being done to the community: “All that can come of this is jealousy, contention, abuse and wicked mistrust of one another and unending disputes”; and it expresses pain at how people “get trapped into all sorts of foolish and dangerous ambitions which eventually plunge them into ruin and destruction.”

It is a happy coincidence that these texts are being read on the feast of Saints Cornelius and Cyprian. Cornelius was Pope for two very crucial years in the middle of the third century and his friend Cyprian was Bishop of Carthage around the same time. With the strong support of Cyprian, Pope Cornelius managed to steer a balanced course in a Church that was deeply divided.

It was divided about how to treat those who had betrayed and damaged the Church at a time of persecution by denying their faith. The challenge was to steer a course between those who proclaimed that there could never be forgiveness for such a betrayal and those who regarded forgiveness as something that could be offered without much difficulty – an approach that, understandably, greatly offended those who had risked everything in order to remain faithful.

The balance in such situations is not easy to achieve, but it is as important for us now as it was in the third century. Anyone who really journeys with Christ knows that there is nothing more important than proclaiming and living the Good News. They know that it is the key to the truth that gives a hope stronger than any suffering, evil or death. They know that attitudes and circumstances and trends which obscure and distort the Good News in people’s minds do enormous harm.

And yet those who walk with Christ must also remember his parable: in the field of the kingdom the weeds are allowed to grow until the harvest, lest in rooting them up the wheat might also be destroyed (Mt 13:24-30).

The key to achieving the difficult balance lies in what we celebrate here. We gather to celebrate the Good News, which is God’s presence and God’s gift of mercy; we gather to celebrate the new creation in Christ in which all humanity’s gifts will be ‘illuminated and transfigured’ (Gaudium et Spes 39). We come to celebrate what God has done for us in the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That is what we proclaim to our fellow human beings and to one another – “not ourselves but Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5).

We recognise that many things in the world obscure that message. We try our best to remove the obstacles first of all in ourselves and in the world. But we should not give way to the kind of anger and bitterness that comes from seeing the rejection and obstruction of the Gospel as a personal affront to ourselves.

When Pope Paul VI was Archbishop of Milan, he spoke to his priests about their calling to love others and to love the society around them, even, and indeed especially, when they face hostility:

“We will love all those whom we approach and who may have contempt for us, hinder us, perhaps even offend us. But we will never be able to feel offended. The less we are loved, the more we will love… The more difficult it becomes to free the world of its illusions of happiness, self-sufficiency, satisfaction, the more we will love it (Montini G.B., The Priest, Helicon 1965, p.63).

We should not respond by bitter attacks:

“Let no one feel offended, feel irony, feel himself attacked by our preaching; let them feel on the contrary that they are invited and expected (Ibid. p 168).”

And the truth is precisely that. Each human being, however hostile, however uncomprehending, however remote from our way of thinking, is ‘invited and expected’ in the kingdom of God. When we encounter deafness and hostility to the message we should not feel anger but sorrow. Here is a prodigal son – the Father longs to run out and embrace him, and bring him home with what someone called ‘jubilant forgiveness’.

That is why the two readings of this evening’s Mass, though seeming unrelated, together point us to an important truth. The message is one of joy and hope and transformation. It is addressed to every member of the human family and offers the promise of transformation to each one. Our attitude to people who have yet to understand that Christ is the bearer of that Good News should not be hostility but love. Our Father longs to welcome that person. Who are we to look on him or her as beyond the reach of that love? The message meets hostility not with anger but with love. As the Book of Wisdom says to God: “Your sovereignty over all makes you lenient to all” (Wis 12:16).

On the morning of his inauguration in St Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict spoke of the joy that we share in bringing others to the Gospel and to the Person of Christ:

“Only when we meet the living God in Christ do we know what life is. We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary. There is nothing more beautiful than to be surprised by the Gospel, by the encounter with Christ. There is nothing more beautiful than to know Him and to speak to others of our friendship with Him.”

It is God’s sovereignty that allows him to be completely lenient. It is our weakness that makes us afraid and closed and needing to fight our corner, always tempted to uproot the wheat in our anxiety to get rid of the weeds.

In this Eucharist we express our trust; we offer ourselves as fully as we can, knowing that when we hold something back, as we always do, it is our loss, because we are closing our doors to the truth which can transform our whole being.

On that morning in St Peter’s Square the new Pope echoed the words spoken by his predecessor on the day that Pope John Paul inaugurated his pontificate:

“Are we not perhaps all afraid in some way? If we let Christ enter fully into our lives, if we open ourselves totally to him, are we not afraid that He might take something away from us? Are we not perhaps afraid to give up something significant, something unique, something that makes life so beautiful? Do we not then risk ending up diminished and deprived of our freedom? …No! Only in this friendship are the doors of life opened wide. Only in this friendship is the great potential of human existence truly revealed. Only in this friendship do we experience beauty and liberation… Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and he gives you everything. When we give ourselves to him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ – and you will find true life. Amen.”

+Donal Murray
Bishop of Limerick