My visit to Wales last week to direct a retreat at Llantarnum Abbey, near Newport, for the Sisters of St Joseph of Annecy was, as always, a thoroughly Godly experience. In one respect, however, it was a journey into the past. This was nothing to do with the sisters themselves. They were great. Nor was it to do with the accommodation. I had a lovely little cottage at the bottom of the garden all to myself. No: it was nothing to do with these things. It was to do with the TV reception in the area. For some reason, Channel Five was unavailable, and with Channel Four entirely in Welsh, I was reduced to just three stations. Can you imagine it: trying to survive for a whole week with only BBC1, BBC2 and ITVWales? It was tough going, I can tell you. But God works in strange ways and in this case it was through the fact that, deprived of TV channels, I listened more to the radio. As a result, I heard the first of this year’s Reith Lectures on Radio 4, and this has became the starting point for today’s homily.
The lectures are being given this year by a man called Michael Sandel who lectures at Harvard University, and his theme, one we ourselves have returned to over and over again in recent months, is the current financial and political crises and what they tell us about ourselves and the morality of our public life. As we have done many times, he detects in our society today a restless impatience with politics as it is and a need to develop deeper moral and spiritual values. We cannot, he argues, allow economists to tell us what to do. They can advise us when we need their advice, but in the end there are things which money cannot buy and things which it can buy but shouldn’t. What we are witnessing, he says, is the end of the era of market triumphalism, an era which, he argues, began with Thatcher and Reagan, continued through Blair and Clinton, and has now been seen for the fundamentally flawed theory it always was. He didn’t quote Pope John Paul II, but he could have done when, in his encyclical on work, the Pope wrote that economies exist for people and not people for economies. We used to be a society with a market economy. Now, Sandel claims, we have become a market society, a society which, to shift to an image you have heard from me many times over the years, worships the goddess money, lives by her commandments, treats as heretics those who question her and sacrifices every day on her altar the lives of millions of human beings who are created for something so much better. And now, as I suggested to you myself two weeks ago, the world has a window of opportunity. There are those who just want the current crisis to pass so that we can get back to what we were doing before, as many fear is starting to happen with the banks. But there is an alternative view, a far more prophetic and far-seeing view, which demands that we reflect on what has happened, learn from it and embrace profound change. Professor Sandel calls for nothing less than a new kind of politics, dominated, not by personal greed – the ‘what’s in it for me mentality’ – but by a deep commitment to the whole concept of the common good, a term taken straight from St Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages.
So why am I saying all this to you today on the Feast of Corpus Christi? Should I not be talking about holy things like Transubstantiation and Benediction instead of all this political and economic stuff? Surely that is not what you come to Mass for. If you want to hear that you can watch Newsnight on TV. Well, there are those who take that view, maybe even some of you here, but it is a view which I believe is completely and utterly mistaken and, as it happens, is completely at odds with the teaching of the Church over the last fifty years The world today is faced with huge moral issues, issues of right and wrong, which inevitably take us into the world of politics and economics and if there were only one day in the whole year for speaking about these things, it would be today, on the Feast of Corpus Christi. So what do I mean by this?
Well, as the world struggles at the beginning of a new millennium to come to terms with questions of what is the right way for human beings to live and organise our society, the Mass, the Eucharist, which we celebrate each week, holds up before us two fundamental truths. And the first of these is the truth that we are created in the image and likeness of a God who poured himself out for us and died on a cross for us. In other words, if we are to become what we are created to be, if we are to achieve the happiness we all long for, if we are to discover what it means to be fully human, then it will be by giving rather than receiving, pouring ourselves out for others rather than dominating them, serving rather than being served and ultimately dying to self so as to become the people we really are. And until we begin to understand this, there will be no new politics not dominated by greed and self-interest.
And the second truth we celebrate here each week is the truth that, in the Risen Jesus, really present among us under the appearances of bread and wine, we are united with every man, woman and child on the face of the earth. Every celebration of the Eucharist is an invitation to become more like the one who comes to us in Holy Communion, to become other Christs, and as this begins to happen the whole way we see the world will begin to change. It will mean an end to barriers between peoples. It will involve washing the feet of those who, under the old tired, failed way of thinking, were our enemies. It will be the beginning of the end of the ‘What’s in it for me’ approach to economic policy, the unquestioned presumption that the job of every government is to look after the national interest, and the start of new global thinking which embraces the whole of humanity.
None of this, of course will come easily. But there are already signs of it happening, the green shoots of moral and spiritual recovery, if you like. And the key is here, right under our noses. It’s what the Mass and the Feast of Corpus Christi have always been about.
BIDDING PRAYERS
The Eucharist, far from being a cosy, comfortable gathering, challenges at many different levels those who even begin to understand it. Every Mass should have a health warning attached to it in that it calls us embrace ways of thinking and living which are radically at odds with the values of the world we live in. To come to Mass and be open to what happens here is a dangerous and subversive thing to do, and we pray for the grace to see that today..........Lord hear us
Above all, the Eucharist challenges us to reach beyond the limits of traditional human thinking. A world divided into friends and enemies, those who are on our side and those who are against us, the deserving or undeserving poor, makes no sense to those who enter seriously into the mystery of the Eucharist and receive the body and blood of Jesus in Holy Communion. In Jesus, we are united in love with every human being without exception and we pray for the grace to see that too.........Lord hear us
The Eucharist also challenges our understanding. In today’s Gospel, we heard how Jesus took bread and said ‘This is body.’ He then took wine and said ‘This is my blood,’ words which millions have believed to be true for centuries and which for a thousand years has been celebrated on the Feast of Corpus Christi. But now, many no longer believe this because it does not make sense to us and we cannot explain it. And so we ask God to free us from such intellectual arrogance................Lord hear us
Our current anger with politicians, while understandable, is also dangerous. Through politics, we shape the kind of world we live in. Major decisions are made about how our money is spent, what we are going to invest in, what groups we are going to help, whose country we are going to invade and so on. These are major moral as well as political and economic questions and must not be left to politicians alone. And so we pray for the commitment we need to play our part in the process..............Lord hear us
In his Reith lecture, professor Michael Sandel has said that there are things which money can’t buy as well as things which it can buy but shouldn’t. We must not, he went on, allow economists to tell us what to do. Without realising it or wanting it to happen, he argues, we have become a society ruled by market forces. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to seek the things in life which really matter and not be seduced by the false values of the consumerism that surrounds us.............Lord hear us
And we pray for those who govern our country. Like the rest of us, they are flawed human beings. But they are not monsters. Many of them are good people who went into politics with the best of intentions, even if they have subsequently been seduced and led astray by an expenses system which has corrupted many. But they are human beings who play an important part in our society. And so, as sinners ourselves, unable, therefore, to throw the first stone, we pray for them today...........Lord hear us
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