Sacred Heart Parish

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21TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (C)

  1. The Catechism asks the question – “Why did God make us?” The secular form of this Catechism question asks – What meaning, what value does my existence have? You and I, as believers in the risen Christ, consider this question of supreme importance. Many of our contemporaries tell us that they find such questions naïve and pointless. This, perhaps, is not surprising in a secular-consumer society which tells us, at least by implication, that God is at least absent if not dead and that persons are of worth when measured not by virtue and character but by what one possesses. This is the triumph of “having” over “being”.

  2. You and I say in faith that there is a beginning and an end to human history, a beginning and an end of each personal history, and that end of history is nothing other than God himself. How often we hear the words of S. Augustine – schoolmaster of the Christian West – “God had made us for himself, and we will not rest until we rest in God.” Augustine expands on this sentiment in a wonderful homily on the 27th Psalm. He says to his parishioners – Suppose God told you that you could have all the pleasure, honor, power and wealth that you could possibly desire, that you could have all this not only for a brief time but forever. There is but one condition – you will never see God’s face. Augustine, imagining the pained reaction of his hearers at these words, then asks – Why are your hearts struck with fear when you hear the words – You’ll never see God’s face. If you abound in all good things in the world, what more could you desire? Augustine answers his own question by quoting from the 27th Psalm – “One thing I ask of the Lord, only this do I seek – that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”

  3. How difficult is it to gain final entrance into God’s home? Is it crowded there, or are there many rooms ready there for residency? These questions point to our Gospel reading. The disciples ask Jesus how many will share in the salvation promised in God’s kingdom? Are only a few to be saved? The Lord does not answer these questions directly. He offers the warning that serious hearers must strive always and diligently to enter God’s kingdom whose door is described as narrow. Looking at it from our point of view, those who choose to follow Jesus through the narrow gate of self-surrender are given the hope of finding their way. These are the folks I suspect who are striving to say “yes” to the relationship God wants to have with each one of us. But there’s more involved than human effort. Entering the kingdom depends very much on the master of the kingdom who has the power to open the gate or to close the gate and to lock it tight. Salvation is the work of grace with which we must cooperate. This means that if we get to heaven its thanks be to God; if we don’t get there, the fault is exclusively our own. To put across my view of the situation, I will borrow a distinction from the writings of John Cardinal Newman. He distinguishes between “notional” assent and “real” assent. What is meant by notional assent? Think of yourself watching the Pats and Colts on television, five minutes are left to play, the Patriots are six points behind. Suddenly, you hear noise and confusion outside on your street. You run to the window and discover that your neighbor Harry’s house is on fire and things look rather grim. You say to your wife as you settle back to watch the Patriots – I do hope that they can catch that fire in time. That’s notional assent and it will get us nowhere. Real assent means abandoning the TV, running across the street ready to do whatever will help Harry at this difficult time. Nobody gets to heaven without real, gospel assent.

  4. There’s another question that Luke’s Gospel is dealing with today with which we should strive to wrestle. Although the early followers of Jesus were Jews and saw in the apostolic preaching the fulfillment of the Old Testament, the question that concerned the early Gospel writers was – Why did not the great majority of the Jews accept Jesus? Why, for example, do we read in the Prologue of John’s Gospel – The Lord came among his own but his own received him not. This suggests a further question for ourselves – Does belonging to the Church guarantee our entrance into God’s kingdom, because the Church, we know, is the sign and secret beginning of God’s kingdom here and now? Belonging to the Church is vitally important, but belonging to the Church means belonging to the Lord Jesus with real assent, with faithful, grace-inspired effort to live his Gospel in the modern world – the only world we know. This means that the Beatitudes, the Spiritual and Corporal Works of Mercy, the command to forgive, the command to love even those who do not love us in return must all come center-stage, and we must give to all these gospel obligations real assent. A quotation from St. Augustine, repeated at the Second Vatican Council, echoes our Gospel text. Augustine reminds us – “The Church has some whom God does not have; and God has some whom the Church does not have.” I hope I’m not leaving you on a scary note.