Those of you who have sat there all these years listening to me will have noticed, I hope, that my basic position on God, the Church and the world is essentially the same as the prophet Hosea’s in today’s first reading. My deepest desire is that we should all ‘come to know the Lord’ – Hosea’s own words - and, like him, I believe that the fulfilment of that hope is, as he puts it this morning, ‘as certain as the dawn.…that God will come to us as showers come, like spring rains watering the earth.’
There are, of course, times when it’s hard to hang on to this vision, but at a deeper level I draw strength, like Abraham, from the fact that, as we heard in the second reading, ‘God has the power to do what he has promised.’ In any case, there are far more encouraging signs than discouraging ones, last weekend being an example of this. Based on all three readings, the homily was about Christian maturity, making moral choices, the supremacy of conscience over law and discerning God’s will for ourselves as individuals. And the response was very encouraging. Many recognized the truth in what was said and welcomed it joyfully, moving me in the days that followed to thank God for answering my constant prayer that, in our response to the call of God, we will, as a parish, have some of the spontaneity and openness of our patron Matthew in today’s Gospel.
But having said that, there was something about the way some of you responded that made me think that I should say a little more about it. People reacted with enthusiasm to the whole notion of personal choice and personal responsibility for the decisions we make. It is, after, all in tune with the mood of the time. But what I felt was a bit lacking was a fully developed sense of how demanding this can be: that conscience and personal discernment are in no way an easy alternative, an excuse for just doing what we want. There’s a good deal of this kind of thinking around today, but its real name is not conscience, but licence, not discernment, but self-delusion and self-indulgence. And so, as the week has gone on, I have felt a growing need to say more about what it means to discern God’s will for ourselves as individuals and how this relates to things like law and the teaching Church.
And at the heart of all genuine Christian discernment is the desire to do what St Ignatius calls ‘the more,’ the thing which is most consistent with our coming to know God and share his inner life. And no law can do that for us. Designed, not as a description of how the virtuous person might live, but as the basic requirements for order in society, law tells us what not to do: thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal and so on. But when it comes to questions like how do I love my neighbour as myself or how do I live justly in today’s consumer-driven society, there is no law which could ever adequately deal with such complex issues. The answers we are looking for will not be found in law but in prayer and reflection: in other words, through discernment. So how do we go about it? Well, let me spell out two of the basic requirements.
The first thing we have to do is seek from God the inner freedom we need to even begin the process. To the extent that we have already decided what we want the answer to be we simply cannot begin to discern God’s will. Nor can we approach the process with the idea that we will find out what it is first and then decide if we will do it. To discern the will of God in our lives, the course of action which, at a given moment, is most consistent with God’s dream for us, then there must be somewhere in us a willingness to go where God leads even if it’s where we ourselves would rather not go. If our minds are closed or already made up, discernment is a non-starter.
And the next thing we need is proper accurate information. We need to know the truth about the situation we find ourselves in. Sometimes that won’t be hard but sometimes it will be. Decisions, for example, about how best to use our material resources to help those in need will often require some research on our part to make sure that we don’t make foolish decisions which lead to money being wasted. There may be times when the knowledge we require is medical – as in cases where we need to decide whether to undergo certain treatments or not – or scientific – as in situations where we the environment is at stake – but whatever it is, prayer and reflection the most important part of the process, can never be a substitute for accurate knowledge and information. And it’s in this context that I want to say something about the Church.
One of the things I detected in some of your responses to last week’s homily was a tendency to reject out of hand almost anything the Church says. And from a historical perspective I can understand this. But it reminded me of what happens when we move from childhood into adolescence. One minute our parents know everything and the next they are the most stupid people on earth. And I think there is a bit of that happening these days with the Church. As mature Catholics, however, we should not allow ourselves to fall into this trap. Jesus has promised to be with the Church until the end of time. His Spirit guides us as we make our way through history. The institutional Church is not perfect, but nor is it stupid. After two thousand years it has acquired a great deal of wisdom and there will be times when, for the mature, adult Catholic, what the Church teaches will be a vital part of the discernment process. Some of the things written over the years are masterpieces and, although the final judgement comes from within, from prayer and reflection, only a very foolish and arrogant person would fail to take them into account when seeking to know God’s will in his/her life. So don’t be a moral adolescent. The Church isn’t perfect but beyond adolescent disillusionment with the parent we once thought could do no wrong lies a more adult relationship based on reality. And that, I suggest, is the kind of relationship with the Church that God is calling us to at this time.
Mature, adult discernment is demanding. Why else would so many good people have preferred to remain somewhere between childhood and adolescence for so long?
BIDDING PRAYERS
Over the last forty or fifty years, we have seen many of the things which once held society together unravel. There is no longer the same respect for authority. As traditional industries have disappeared, the communities which once surrounded them have been decimated. Work patterns have totally changed and the family structure itself has come under serious threat. Change is everywhere and many struggle to come to terms with it. And so we ask God to give us the wisdom and discernment we need to make sense of all that is happening around us at this time.....Lord hear us
The Church, like every other institution, has been deeply affected by the changes which have taken place in the modern world. It was once at the centre of community life. Now it functions at the margins of society, written off as irrelevant by many and even hated and despised by some. But Jesus has promised that he will be with us until the end of time. And so we ask God to give us today some of the courage shown by men and women of faith down through the centuries as they struggled in their time with challenges far greater than anything we face now........Lord hear us
Within the Church, too, people’s attitudes have changed. There was a time when the Church could do no wrong in people’s eyes. Its faults and failings were either hidden from us or, for our own understandable reasons, we chose not to see them. Now, however, those faults and failings are there for all to see, and many still struggle to come to terms with the reality rather than the fantasy. And so we ask God to give us the grace we need, not just to accept that reality, but to embrace it........... Lord hear us
The faults and failings of priests have also become more obvious to everyone. There was a time when they were a group apart, men who lived on pedestals with both power and status in the community. Even when their weaknesses were there for all to see people very often chose to ignore them, unable or unwilling to accept that these men were real human beings like themselves. Now all that has changed. The weaknesses are there for all to see. The days of living on pedestals are over and we thank God for this from the bottom of our hearts.................................Lord hear us
Faced with the situation today, many tend to lose faith, talking and acting as if God had somehow abandoned his people. And so we pray for something of the confidence of Hosea in the first reading and Abraham in the second. They knew that God’s coming was as certain as the dawn and that God had the power to do what he had promised, and we pray for something of their trust and confidence........Lord hear us
The reason we have patron saints is that the men and women concerned are held up to us as examples and models of how to live the Christian life. Our patron is Matthew, a tax-collector who became an evangelist and whose gospel has been read by millions of people down through the centuries. And so we pray for something of Matthew’s willingness to go where Jesus led and a share in his work of bringing the message of Jesus to the world...........................Lord hear us
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