Homily from the Parish Priest for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings for Year A: Ezekiel 33:7-9; Romans 13:8-10; Matthew 18:15-20
Being told you’ve done something really wrong. A really difficult experience for all of us I’m sure. We can react in different ways. Profuse apologies, never to do it again, or avoidance, or going on the attack asserting we were right. Maybe it wasn’t at all fair or been twisted to make a point and example - you’d been demeaned by someone in public, or you’d been unfairly criticised behind their back. Maybe it was wholly disproportionate but who’s to judge that? Or you’d given your strong and acceptable view on an issue – very important to you – only to be told that not everyone had to subscribe to your way of thinking. There are all sorts of ways we can be corrected, attacked, put down, demeaned, challenged appropriately or not. Challenging others on bad behaviour needs to be done in ways which help rather than hinder and hurt but regardless it’s the stuff of human interaction, growth, learning.
What’s crystal clear from the Gospel is that Jesus intends us to be challenged in ways which are respectful and helpful. He sees it necessary to show each other how our actions and our behaviour can be harmful. Even and especially when we might be unaware of it ourselves. It is the responsibility of the Christian indeed to challenge a brother or sister who has caused disharmony in the community. If we are to take this Gospel really seriously it requires us to go beyond pleasantry, compromise, and to seriously stand up for what is true and just when we see falsity and manipulation and hypocrisy. When we see injustice. And that includes in our own Christian community, and especially when we see religion cloaking what is unjust, what is wrong.
I think that’s not easy in our culture of individual expression and of toleration of relative values. We pride ourselves in this country and in the western world on tolerance of a diversity of views and lifestyles. It’s good to have choice. It’s a mark of our freedom. And that is all good in itself. As Christians we must promote and value freedom of expression. The exact opposite in society – intolerance, suppression and totalitarianism has not and will not ever work. And yet, however much we value freedom, it must be true freedom to associate including religious views and ways of life.
Pope Francis returns regularly to the importance of discerning clearly between what is good and what is evil, what is right and what is clearly wrong. Pope Francis has a particularly keen sense of this and of the need, when something is clearly of the bad spirit, to speak out against it and to work to promote what is good, just and true. You hear him so often refer to this stark choice in a simple way. The existence of evil over which the good must triumph. And during this time of pandemic he has been calling the Church back to this. To use this time to place myself and my world behind the standard of good. The 2 Standards meditation in St Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises seems to be for Francis how discernment and human interaction on a global scale bites. Not just discerning the signs of the times but working for the victory of the objective good over what is clearly not good in our society, using our God-given freedom to rebuild a future where all truly flourish in a Kingdom of justice and truth. Correcting, challenging, rebuilding is what the Christian life is about. Acquiescing, compromising and remaining static where things are clearly not right is not the Kingdom of God but the temptation of the bad spirit.
But it’s easy to say this is the right way; that is the wrong – at least I don’t find it too difficult in most company to express my discerned views, even if it is labelled “what I would say” as a Catholic priest – standing up for the marginalised, the right to life, for freedom of religion. All those things are easy to say and write about, and it’s relatively safe to do so from a pulpit. Francis keeps reminding us we are not just to discern where the good is to be in this era of change and to stand up for it but to actually rebuild this era of change, to take control of our future. Discernment then is not just working out with the light of God’s spirit where I am and where things are in a pre-ordained plan from God. We don’t take time to pray, to reflect, to just look into ourselves and say what we feel, but to look outwards and to work for a better future. This will involve the challenge presented in the Gospel today on a broad scale. Challenging within the Church any culture of secrecy and corruption which protects those whose ways need to be challenged and exposed in the light of day so we can see how we need to rebuild. It will involve exposing how we treat each other as a society and how we care for our planet before it becomes too late to learn. When we see an inertia to act for the common good of all, when we see the poorest being penalised and left behind due to collective closing of ranks on government policy and a culture which wants to turn a blind eye to the new homeless on our streets, to the struggles of so many right now losing jobs and left on the brink, we as Christians are called to not just point out the wrong but to act on it, to work for a more just society.
And yet we need to be careful. It’s all too easy to shift the blame from ourselves to others on a broader scale – to choose the demon and attempt to exorcise it in the name of democracy or civilisation or God.
And that’s where this Gospel comes in. It’s about authentic dialogue. Discernment in common. Taking our place as Christians, as the Church, within our society confidently working together for a more just world. Trying to understand each other with a spirit of mutual respect and gratitude. May we be given the gift to do so all the more in an age when our voice and our actions as people of faith are needed more than ever.
Fr Dominic Robinson SJ