Homily from the Parish Priest for the Feast of the Holy Name of Jesus
“Why did you become a priest?” A question I get asked from time to time. And a follow-up question: “how did you know you had a vocation?” I find it’s never an easy one to answer briefly – at least I don’t find it so – and sometimes I wonder if in trying to answer it as fully as possible it’s all too easy to complicate things. Pope Francis was asked not so long ago in an interview who he was? And the interviewer wasn’t expecting the answer to be Jorge Bergoglio or the Pope or an Argentinian. Rather it was a philosophical kind of question perhaps. But the Pope answered very briefly and very simply but with total clarity. “I am a sinner, yet loved by God”. He was quoting the Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius in fact and this is a variation on his papal motto, but it gets to the heart of it. I am a sinner, a flawed, vulnerable, human being, loved by God –the God with a human face whose name is mercy, whose name means ‘God saves’ – that is Jesus Christ, the one who comes to take away our sins and to give us freedom and fulfilment.
This feast day is such an important one for the Society of Jesus and all of us in the wider Jesuit family but it is also so important for the whole Church. Because, whatever our particular path in life, whoever we are, whatever we’ve done, it is this Jesus who is at the centre of everything. And each one of us is called to first and foremost recognise our own vulnerability and need for him. If I know that in myself and I know I am loved by God, God will lead me to serve him in ways that give me deep consolation. It might be encountering the Jesus who teaches us the dignity of the weakest, he wants to lead me to serve more, in a particular profession in the work of work, or to build up the Kingdom more through giving myself to my family life, or as a priest or sister or brother, or deacon. Or it might be I am very weak physically, emotionally, spiritually right now, and unable it seems to do very much. The message of this feast day is that the God who saves, who has come to us in Jesus Christ, and who is present to us today and forever, wants to show us his care, his compassion, his love. All callings in the Church start here with knowing what the name of Jesus means. All Christian lives start here with knowing what the name of Jesus means. All human lives, the Church desires through her evangelising mission, without which the Church would not exist, start with knowing what the name of Jesus means. Compassion, kindness, mercy, the unconditional love poured out in the sacrifice of the cross.
A Jesuit friend of mine often refers to the fact that our religious order is very unusually named. Up to the time of the Reformation most orders were named after their founders – Benedictine monks after St Benedict, Augustinian, Dominican, Franciscan friars and monks named after their founder saints. But we are not Ignatians. And that’s really important. The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius are the lifeblood of our spirituality of finding God in the midst of the world but that is secondary to our being called as all human beings are to follow Jesus and what he’s about. Finding in the midst of human life the real meaning of our lives – not a set of beliefs or a particular spirituality – but a person who died and rose for us and so taught us how to live and to love – Jesus Christ – as the Servant of God Fr Pedro Arrupe said when asked about his motivation for proclaiming a Gospel of preferential option for the poorest in society, it wasn’t this or that agenda or even this or that way of life which mattered but for him at the heart of everything we are and we do as Christians it is Jesus who is everything. “Jesus is everything” in my life he would say often. This is where my heart is.
Pope Francis spoke about the call to this undivided heart in his homily when he celebrated Mass on this great feast day at the Gesù in Rome in the first year of his pontificate, 2014. And in speaking to Jesuits I’d like to think he was speaking to all Christians. (I’m paraphrasing the translation). Each one of us who follow Jesus, he said, should be ready to empty ourselves of our attachments. We are called to this humility: to be ‘emptied’ beings. To be human beings who are not centred on ourselves because the centre of the Society is Christ and his Church. And this God is the God always greater, the God who always surprises us.
But Pope Francis goes on to say there’s a tension here. And this certainly touches me. I know very well, as I know most if not all of us do, that to give oneself with an undivided heart to Jesus and his Church is never plain sailing. Nor can it ever be. Because the Jesus who comes to save us, if we truly stand under his banner, that of the cross, will always challenge us to go the extra mile for his mission, to go for the greater glory of God. To come back to Francis’ homily 6 years ago he says that it is because we are sinners we need to ask ourselves if our heart has preserved the restlessness of the search. To be restless, one might say, is all part of standing under the banner whose emblem is the name of Jesus. “A heart that does not rest”, Francis calls it, “that does not close in on itself but beats to the rhythm of a journey undertaken together with all the people faithful to God. We need to seek God in order to find him, and find him in order to seek him again and always. Only this restlessness gives peace, a restlessness that is also apostolic, but which must not let us grow tired of evangelizing with courage. Without restlessness”, says Pope Francis, “we are sterile”.
Where is my heart this morning? At the start of a new year, in the middle of this pandemic, at this time of turbulence, crossroads, perhaps even purification in our world? Where is Jesus for me? My being here today in person or joining us online means something different to all of us I’m sure. With all our anxieties, our grief, our doubting faith, our tiredness, our frustration, yet our desire to serve, to make a difference to society, to show the person of this Jesus, the human face of God, to our world around us, especially those on the peripheries and those who suffer. Where is Jesus for me in my restless heart? I hope and pray on this feast day we might echo the words of St Pierre Favre, companion of St Ignatius when he wrote, “let us never seek in this life to be tied to any name but that of Jesus”.
May we let his name and all it entails take root in our restless hearts at the start of this new year. In such a way we need not explain why we’re here, why we are a Christian, why we follow this or that vocation. Because the answer is in what we encounter together as we profess his holy name, that is the human face of God.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ