Sacred Heart Catholic Parish, Teddington

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Homily:  Sunday 16 Year C

This is Fr John’s final homily before leaving the Sacred Heart Parish to take up a new appointment.

As I was preparing for this Sunday’s liturgy I began to wonder what I said on the first occasion I preached here and I tried to find the homily I gave.    Unfortunately, while I am very good at hoarding things, I am pretty awful at filing them properly, so I gave up the search.     I do, however, remember one of the central points, and that was my hope that during my time here all of our parishioners would feel a greater sense of responsibility for our parish.     This was not just about, or even about, parishioners taking some of the workload off their priest, it was to do with the very mission of our church, which is to speak the good news of Jesus Christ, both to ourselves and those we come into contact with.

If there is a central point, or two, to the gospel of Luke that we are reading this year, it would be first that the task of every Christian is to be a disciple of Jesus, to let Jesus guide our lives, and to share our knowledge of him with others, not to hold it for ourselves or be afraid or ashamed to utter his name outside of the safe confines of the church building.  In other words, if we are to be real Christians, we need to have a missionary spirit, and if we try to have that spirit, God will turn it into something good..

The second central point of Luke’s gospel, I think, concerns hospitality.    In today’s gospel passage we find Jesus receiving hospitality from Martha and Mary.    Invariably in Luke’s gospel we find Jesus either giving or receiving hospitality, and this is no coincidence, I believe, because the first quality of a missionary will be the capacity to give and receive hospitality, not just to and from those we feel comfortable and familiar with, but with the stranger, with the awkward person, with the one who does not fit into my culture.   And a missionary parish will be, by its very nature, an hospitable one.

By a very happy coincidence our Old Testament Reading today is the story I used when we had those sessions on Sunday afternoons around the corner in the Lion pub, to which every parishioner was invited a couple of years ago.    That story was a story about hospitality, about how Abraham gave hospitality to some mysterious guests who arrived at his tent in the noon day sun just as he was settling down for his siesta.    In the sessions we noted how the great Russian painter of Icons, Rublev, saw this event as an image of the three persons of God giving and receiving hospitality to one another, and how we come to Mass to receive the hospitality of Christ, the image of the invisible God.   Hospitality is more than a human phenomenon, it is a pointer to the very nature of God.  And hospitality is at the heart of the missionary spirit too.

Last week we listened to the story of the good Samaritan and discovered that we do not have to be at home to offer hospitality.   The good Samaritan displayed his missionary spirit by his compassion and his active assistance to someone in need, not someone he was bound to by ties of family and friendship, but to one to whom in normal circumstance he might not give the time of day, because the God of hospitality does not recognise the boundaries of race or creed or class.

   In today’s gospel Luke offers us a different lesson about hospitality and the missionary spirit.   Hospitality is not something superficial, going through the motions, like a cocktail party where we keep on the move, circulating in order to see and be seen, or to improve our network or just  to find someone more interesting.   Hospitality involves being still and doing some serious listening and not getting so caught up in the necessary peripherals that clear the ground for hospitality that we end up missing  the point of the exercise.   ‘Martha, you are busy about so many things, when one thing is necessary?.    Was Martha’s frustration with Mary not the fact that Mary was giving her full attention to Jesus, but that Martha had become so caught up in the peripherals that she was no longer capable of stopping, and sitting with the Lord, and she missed that..    In her busyness and relentless activity she had lost something supremely important, which Mary still retained.   Martha was jealous for what she had lost, and the only way she could find to compensate for her loss was to hit out at Mary.

This gospel passage is a reminder to us that our parish hospitality and missionary activity is not just a matter of programmes and events.    It must always be rooted in prayer, in stopping and listening to the Lord.    This is the thing that gives every Christian activity its flavour.

  But the story of Martha and Mary also offers a hint to us would-be missionaries, when the world seems to be against us, that perhaps at times the hostility of the world comes from a certain jealousy, a jealousy that in our relationship with Christ we have discovered and clung to something important that the world has given up, or lost, for the sake of more superficial things.   In our faith and life with Christ we have something very special that the world longs to have, but cannot admit it, so instead the world focuses on our faults and shortcomings.   ‘You are no better than us’, says the world. ‘Leave your prayer, leave your life with Christ.    Don’t waste time with God, spend it more profitably with us and you will be as happy as we are’ (which is not to be very happy at all).    Martha represents the values of the world lurking in the very heart of the Christian community, even wanting to claim divine authority for their point of view and unsettling us.     Next time we think about praying, but don’t, or go through a day without a thought for God, or are tempted not to come to Mass one Sunday, we might  bring to mind  Jesus’ response to Martha, the Martha that is in us all,  ‘Martha, you are busy about so many things, when only one thing matters’.    

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Day for Life

This weekend the Bishops of all the British Isles have asked us to reflect upon the meaning of human life, and in particular human life at its very beginning. The idea of a ‘Day for Life’ was a response on the part of the Bishops to an encyclical written by Pope John Paul in 1995 entitled, ‘The Gospel of Life’. Put simply, the message of the encyclical is that the good news that Jesus brings us is that every human life has value and dignity, and every life is a gift from God, but we have to preach and live out that good news in what the late Pope called ‘a culture of death’. When the Church speaks about human life it is not speaking about life in the abstract, but about real human persons. In previous ‘Days for Life’ the bishops have proposed that we reflect on the life of older people and the terminally ill, the life of the disabled, or the life of the family. This year’s theme, on life at its earliest beginning, was chosen because this year marks the 40th year since the passing of the Abortion Act in this country. In the mind of the late Pope the growth of facilities for terminating the life of the unborn, especially in democratic state health care systems, is a particularly sinister manifestation of the culture of death. There is an early Christian writing by an anonymous author, called ‘The epistle to Diognetus’, where the author asks, ‘what is the difference between Christians and the rest of mankind?’ There is a difference, he says, but it is not a matter of language, nationality or customs. Christians don’t dress or eat or observe a different kind of social life from their neighbours. Yet there are features of their lives that are quite remarkable or surprising. Though they take their full part as citizens, yet in a certain sense they appear to be just passing through. Like other people, they marry and beget children, but they do not expose their infants. They obey the prescribed laws, but in their own private lives they transcend the laws. In that assessment of the writer of the letter to Diognetus what makes Christians different, and stand out, is their regard for life and their witness to the sanctity of life, and to the sanctity of particular forms of human life which people in general regard as expendable. They simply do not do what others in the culture take for granted, and throw out their unwanted children, a common practice in the culture of the Roman Empire, although they would be within their rights to do so. The Letter to Diognetus seems to presume a Christian community united in its defence of human life, more so I suspect than the Christian community is on the matter of abortion today. There are many conflicting voices in our society, and some of those voices are particularly potent, especially when they say that it is better to provide a safe abortion in an NHS or private clinic than to consign women to back-street abortionists. Many Christians now echo these voices, as do many who say that the fundamental right is the right to choice and this overrides the right to life. I am not sure, however, that either of these arguments have been proved beyond reasonable doubt, or even beyond the balance of probablilities. One of the things that is often said on the pro-choice side of the argument is that nobody decides to have an abortion lightly, and I respect that. If that is true, and I have no reason to doubt it, then it seems to me that there must be a deep reason why even people who decide on an abortion struggle with the decision. It certainly cannot be because they are working on the principle that removing a foetus is the moral equivalent of taking out an appendix. If they were, then abortion would not be a problem demanding a second thought. In the end, I believe, for many it must come down to a decision about whether this is about the taking of an innocent human life, and whether they are prepared to do so lest they have to face something worse. In the end it is not the foetus, or whatever we call it, that is the cause of fear, but the child who will inevitably emerge unless it is stopped. The fact that questions are still raised, 40 years after the passing of the Act, seems to me to indicate a real struggle going on in the consciences of people in this country. 40 years ago, when the Act was passed, it was easier to make out a case that perhaps the foetus wasn’t a human being at all. With the development of ultra-sound scans, this becomes much less of an option. Some time ago I watched a programme that traced the growth of a baby from almost the point of conception, and it was pretty clear that what we were seeing was the growth of a human being, even though it started as barely the size of a pin. As a pastor, I feel I could not possibly encourage someone to take the path of a termination. I must say, however, that I have never, thanks to the grace of God, been in a situation where myself or someone very close to me in my family has been in that position, but I can well imagine the fear and the temptation there can be to take a decision in favour of termination, and I can well understand the strong temptation to take the path of a termination when it is available. To have to face a pregnancy without support can be a lonely, terrifying experience. As a pastor I may not be able to convince someone not to go down that path, but what I can do is to help that person receive the forgiveness of God, and come to some peace, through the sacrament of Reconciliation. So what might I say to a politician if I found myself asked for my opinion? I think I would have to say, ‘Legislating for abortion is the equivalent of saying to the person, ‘You have a problem, we will help you solve your problem by taking the life of your child’. I would prefer to ask the politician to say, ‘You have a problem, and short of taking the life of your child we will do all we can to ensure that your child will not be a problem, and that if you act in favour of life we will support you and help you make your life meaningful and worthwhile. Isn’t that, after all, the least we should expect from a society that calls itself inclusive? Many people, faced with a crisis pregnancy, feel that there is no alternative to a termination. There are alternatives, but they are not well known. As you leave the church today there will be a collection, at the Bishop’s request, partly for an organisation called LIFE. LIFE is a non-denominational charity, but it depends a lot on the support of Catholics Life offers free confidential advice, pregnancy tests and practical help to women in crisis pregnancies. It runs a helpline which takes about 1500 calls a month and encourages callers to visit one of its 80 pregnancy care centres. Many of the women who call have little support, and their partner may have thrown them out. In such circumstances, LIFE can offer accommodation and support. This is the only part of the work for which LIFE gets any government aid. Women who need to can stay on after birth, and LIFE also offers counselling to woman who have gone through abortions. The other organisation helped by today’s collection will be the Linacre Centre. This is a Catholic foundation which helps Catholics and others to explore the Church’s position on bioethical issues. It prepares expert research papers, and submissions to government, has a large library and organises teaching and seminars throughout the country.