Properantes Adventum Diei Dei

NINETEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

August 11, 2019 – Bruder Klaus

Wis 18:6-9

Heb 11:1-2, 8-19

Lk 12:32-48

        “Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes.”

        The Book of Wisdom in the passage from today’s First Reading speaks of the Exodus from Egypt and of the first Passover. It describes the event as a scourge for the enemies of the children of Israel and as liberation from slavery for God’s people. What does the Church, what does the Holy Spirit intend to say to us by putting these words before us today?

        “Your people awaited the salvation of the just and the destruction of their foes.”

        The Lord Jesus in Luke’s Gospel today has two things to say to His disciples. “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for the Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.” And “You must also be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”

In faith, we believe that this life is to be lived as our exodus, our movement away from enslavement. Our life here below is not life in the Promised Land; this is our Passover, our exodus. We live always in expectation; our hopes are set elsewhere; what passes here below is of only relative importance in the course of things, when viewed in terms of God’s bigger picture. Here on earth we have no lasting dwelling place. Moreover, our lives are marked by conflict; we can expect no more than that our everyday experience be described as the whole cruel lot of slaves. This tragedy is something permitted out of respect for our freedom, but certainly it is not a suffering willed by God.

        Such a way to describe life is sobering, but I think it helps put into perspective our grasp of what is wrong with society today. To say we deserve better is far from the truth. I remember as a young deacon making a visit to a woman in the hospital who had gone through the old-fashioned gall bladder surgery, which was one of the most painful things you could imagine (in the intervening 40 years medicine has progressed an awful lot in terms of pain management). This woman had not been prepared for so much pain and risked dying from the shock. In a similar way today, many people go into a tailspin over the crimes, faults, shortcomings and sins of other people, people we should be able to trust and admire. We have no lasting dwelling place here and no man or woman on earth can be expected to hold us confident in faith. No! Our help is only in the name of the Lord.

I just finished a book that attempts to explain why ever more people fall away from the practice of the faith. It is entitled Mass Exodus - Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II and is authored by Stephen Bullivant (2019. OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition). The author provides insight into why churches have been emptying out over the last decades, while convincing the reader that the reasons for the problem cannot be easily explained. The thought came to me while reading the book that perhaps it might be better to admit that people today may not be worse Catholics than were their parents or grandparents. It would seem that in the past much of what held the Church upright had to do with the social pressure to identify publicly as a Catholic by going to Mass, fulfilling one’s Easter duty and so on. Today, as Bullivant seems to show in his book, much of that pressure or source of identification has fallen away.  One cannot deny that social pressure has done its share to fill pews over the years. Social pressure, however, is not enough to make a faithful Catholic. To allude to the words of today’s Scripture, conforming does not count as staying awake and watching for the Master’s return.

        “Gird your loins and light your lamps and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding, ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.”

        Our motivation for being faithful Catholics must come from the heart; we must be good servants who intelligently watch and wait for our Lord. Our vigilance in the service of Christ, Eternal High Priest and Universal King of the new and everlasting Covenant, will be repaid beyond measure, as will our culpable laxity will be more or less severely punished. While a certain measure of ignorance on our part may be excusable, we cannot be absolved from our duty to hear and heed God’s holy word, to watch and wait for Him as His good servants.

        “Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”

        There is indeed a radical commitment involved in being a faithful Catholic. Nonetheless, St. Francis de Sales, the great bishop of Geneva, taught very clearly that our duties in the Christian life vary according to our station in life, and that holds especially as far as material goods are concerned. The so-called prosperity gospel preached for profit by any number of tele-evangelists is a false teaching; it is a heresy. No heavenly reward is attached either to gambler’s luck, winning the lottery or to working yourself to death to become a million- or billionaire. To say it another way: moneymakers have no particular reason to believe that they are in any way favored by God. On the other hand, misery or homelessness are not virtues either. Married people and parents, in particular, have to look to the needs of their spouses and children. They need to work and earn a decent living; they cannot be expected to give everything away which is theirs, as if they were St. Francis of Assisi. Parents must provide their children a stable home and that does cost. Faithfulness in marriage until God do us part, supporting one’s spouse both emotionally and financially is proper to husband and wife in marriage… does cost. Similarly, those who enter into religion must not only live soberly but they must deny themselves in order to follow Christ. They must deprive themselves for their own sake and for the sake of giving a witness that will encourage others to seek the Kingdom of God. In the lives of priests, but most especially in the lives of religious men and women, we need to be able to see what it means concretely to have set one’s heart on Christ’s Kingdom.

        But the second part of that phrase from the Book of Wisdom is the part which does not rest easy on contemporary men and women. “…and the destruction of their foes.” It would seem more than most people can bear, to have to accept that not everyone on earth wishes us well, whether they know us or not. But wishing their destruction seems beyond the pale. It seems less than politically correct to ask God not only to deliver us from evil, but to vanquish or destroy our enemies to the extent that they stand between us and God or that they thwart God’s will for our salvation.

        What does the Church, what does the Holy Spirit intend to say to us by putting these words before us today? Very simply, that we cannot serve two masters. We have no choice other than to see ourselves at enmity with those who do not serve the Christ but rather the prince of darkness.

        “Do not be afraid any longer, little flock, for the Father is pleased to give you the kingdom.” … “You must also be prepared, for at an hour you do not expect, the Son of Man will come.”