Homily from the Parish Priest for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mass Readings: Wisdom 2:12,17-20; James 3:16-4:3; Mark 9:30-37

What do you really want in life? A question the human being is hard wired to ask constantly. What do you really really want, your deepest desire? For the community receiving this letter from St James that would have been a challenging question. The community would have needed to listen to these words very carefully as there seems to be a direct challenge to how they are going about things. “Where do these wars and battles between yourselves first start? Isn’t it precisely in the desires fighting inside your own selves? You want something and you haven’t got it; so you are prepared to kill. You have an ambition that you cannot satisfy; so you fight to get your way by force. Why you don’t have what you want is because you don’t pray for it; when you do pray and don’t get it, it is because you have not prayed properly, you have prayed for something to indulge your own desires”. What we really want, our deepest desires, need to be discerned well and constantly. St Ignatius himself started with this question – what is my deepest desire? – but as he continued his own inner pilgrimage through life he realised more and more how the question he should be asking is what does God want from him? Where am I going? And how am I responding to the call to fulfil my potential not for myself but for others?

I think that at this time, as we emerge from the pandemic, we all need to listen to this question and to ask ourselves, as the first Christians did, where I contribute to peace rather than conflict, to

reconciliation and to unity rather than personal ambition and entrenched attachments and agendas, as we are being called back to the basic questions about our shared humanity, our own interconnectedness on this planet, and perhaps – many I believe are experiencing this – to a new sense of what is beyond ourselves and earthly concerns, to spirituality, to prayer, to God.

As for the early Christians this is a critical time of change, indeed a change of era. At a time of advancing ecological devastation, what would it mean to rediscover the biblical sense of the natural world groaning, hoping, waiting for liberation? What might it mean, in the light of the cross, to embrace a mission as Church across ecumenical divides, to help re-educate and rebuild a society in which all human beings share their interconnectedness and have mutual respect for each other, and in which the natural world is embraced, celebrated, respected, rather than plundered for our own gain. This is what it is to stand as humanity, stewards of creation, under the banner of the cross. This is the time, we keep hearing from Pope Francis, to take bold steps and heed where God is calling us to a new era, where God is calling us back to himself amidst the devastation of Afghanistan, capitalism gone crazy, unbridled hedonism, to be peacemakers of a new world order.

Emerging from the tunnel of the lockdown and COVID restrictions, it’s time to look back so as to look forward. At Farm Street Church we

are meeting many challenges which try to address the question of what is this new era. And to live Church in different ways. Many have been very grateful for our livestreaming – and we have attracted many more to our celebration of Mass through this. And we will carry on with that now and want to engage with our new digital congregation. But many have also said how much they miss gathering around the altar to pray, to worship, to receive Holy Communion, yes, to be Church together, to feel we are together, as Francis reminds us constantly in his letter Laudato Si’, to embrace our interconnectedness. In a certain sense, despite all we have been doing to continue to minister during the pandemic, and despite all the wonderful expressions of sharing faith at home which also are an unexpected gift of this time for our future – the domestic Church in small groups being rekindled - there is no substitute for being physically gathered around the altar. Without that we have been struggling to be Church. Because the Church is the gathered assembly from all over, bringing together a scattered diverse group of people around the table of the Last Supper. We need to welcome back those who have fallen away. We need to invite them – people we know – to come back. And we need to listen to the stirrings of desire for God and community in others and invite them to come and see, again. The Landings Programme for Returning Catholics is developing various opportunities for helping to welcome back.

And at this time of crisis we are seeing a desire urgently to save our fragile planet. This change of era is challenging us to consider the evil we have been doing to the earth given to us freely by God with a command to be good stewards. I see all around me a desire to lighten our consumption, to avoid increasing pollution, here in Mayfair to create greener areas, rewilded and re-embraced with the respect and care our earth deserves. Creation, many in our city and country, outside of religion or with faith, recognise is groaning, making us aware of our need to change our attitude to creation, to place ourselves on this earth under the banner of the cross, and to not simply discern and wait but to take action urgently so we reclaim our future, a future of hope made real in what Christ has done for us on the cross. The new creation is here to be celebrated, embraced, respected deeply. And this is what we are celebrating together as Christians at this season of Creation, a new ecumenical initiative which invites us to solidarity as Christians united under a common vision, a common standard of Christ’s cross.

May we be inspired to work to bring about that new creation and may this season help us to respond fully to the call to celebrate the gifts of the natural world we have been given and to preserve them for future generations. May it inspire our hearts to make that great prayer of praise to God for the gift of the creation we are called to rebuild: Praise be to you! – Laudato Si’!

Fr Dominic Robinson SJ