12TH SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

More than once over recent months we have had occasion to reflect on what Jesus’ invitation to take up our cross and follow him has meant to people at different moments in history. We have seen how, throughout the first three centuries of the Church’s life, it had a very literal meaning for the people who lived through that period. Martyrdom was seen as the pinnacle of the Christian life and in the persecutions that broke out from time to time during those early centuries many really did take up their cross and died violent deaths in the arenas of Rome.

With the conversion of Constantine, of course, all that changed. Martyrdom as it had been known for three hundred years was now a thing of the past and so people had to reinterpret the words of Jesus which we heard today in a way which made sense in a world where Christianity, instead of being a persecuted minority was now part of the imperial court. And the end result of that process was, as we have seen, the invention of the monastery, where, in a new way of taking up their cross and following Jesus, men and women began to withdraw from the world to live lives of prayer and austerity.

But as the centuries passed, there soon developed another way of understanding Jesus’ words which had a huge influence on the spirituality of generations of people right up to our own day. For most of history, the vast bulk of ordinary men and women have, as millions still do today in the developing world, lived lives of unremitting hardship, poverty and drudgery. And in the face of this, the idea of taking up our cross came to be seen by generations of believers as synonymous with accepting their lot in life without complaining and looking forward to the day when the drudgery would end and the happiness they longed for but, could never have in this life, would finally be theirs. And to a certain extent his idea worked. Many got comfort from it, reflected in many of the old nineteenth century hymns we knew as children. A classic example is the hymn ‘Sweet Heart of Jesus’ with the lines ‘there in thine ear all trustfully we tell our tale of misery.’ and ‘within thy shelter blest soon may we reach the shore,’ a hymn which, like others written at the time, only makes sense against the background of the poverty our ancestors were encouraged to think of as the cross they had to carry behind Jesus.

But while this interpretation worked in the short-term, it had a very serious flaw built into it. It sounded very much like pie in the sky when you die and was used for centuries by those in power to keep the masses down. It was the reason why Karl Marx famously called religion the opium of the people, encouraging them to accept their lot instead of doing something about the poverty and the exploitation they were being subjected to by those who ruled them. And that, in the end, is why we don’t sing those old hymns so much now. We may love the tunes. I know I do. They may stir all kinds of memories in us. But the theology behind them is deeply flawed and totally out of touch with the times we are living through. The truth we have to realise is that, despite our current economic problems, we enjoy a standard of living and a level of affluence no one in the whole history of humanity has ever known and it’s against this background that we have to re-interpret for our own time those two thousand year old words of Jesus. So in this consumer-driven, materialistic society, what does it mean to take up our cross and follow him? Well, essentially, I think, it means going back to the beginning and doing now what the martyrs did two thousand years ago. What they did was have the courage to stand up for what they believed in the midst of a hostile world which totally failed to understand what they were about and that, I suggest, is what we are called to do today.

When I describe our world as materialistic I don’t just mean that we have lots of material things. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with having material things apart from the fact that they are so un-evenly distributed throughout the world. The real evil of materialism as a philosophy is that it denies the very existence of the spiritual and tells us that the only thing that exists is the material world. For Christians, of course, the material world matters. Faith in God is not about pie in the sky when you die and religion is not just the opium of the people preventing Church-goers from addressing the real issues which face the world, one of the great insights of the Second Vatican Council being its deep commitment to the world and everything that goes on in it. But a world which denies the very existence of the spiritual and seeks happiness in the purely material is a society doomed to deep and lasting disappointment. And we can see that all around us. Here in the West we have more material things than we know what to do with and yet there is deep unhappiness in our society which lies at the root of both our culture of drug abuse and the alarmingly high suicide rates we are currently experiencing, especially among the young. And yet, instead of recognizing the spiritual poverty that lies behind these things, we try to solve the problem by acquiring even more material things, a response which, in its turn, leads to the massive credit and debt problem which even now could bring down about our ears the very prosperity we all take for granted.

And it’s against this background that we, as Christians, are called to do what the early martyrs did and show the world that there is an alternative to the paganism that surrounds us. Surrounded by material things on a scale unknown to previous generations, we have to show the world that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. In a society fed on a daily diet of superficiality by the media, we are called to go deeper and live lives of prayer and reflection in the midst of the world. And in a world which has swallowed the lie that acquiring more and more material things will bring happiness, we have to show the people around us how to use material things without worshipping them.

It may not seem much compared to what the early martyrs did. But try it and I promise you: someone, somewhere will crucify you.

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin our prayer today by holding up before God the world at this moment in its history. As a new century and a new millennium get under way, the men and women of our time are facing a whole series of important choices about the way we live which will have a profound influence on the way our society develops in the years ahead. And so we ask God to give us the wisdom we need to make good choices based on a solid grasp of the truth of who we are in relation to himself...........Lord hear us

Faced with so many historic choices about the kind of society we want to be, one of the great dangers we face is the superficial nature of so much that fills our lives. Our capacity to concentrate on serious issues is diminishing in the face a daily diet of rubbish on TV and a News coverage which focuses less and less on the big issues facing the world and more and more on the lives of footballers and pop stars. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to see the danger in this and do something about it........Lord hear us

At the heart of the issues facing our world is the question Jesus asks in today’s Gospel: ‘But you, who do you say that I am?’ The answer we give is fundamental to everything that goes on in the world today. If Jesus is not who we say he is, then the quicker we forget him the better. But if he is who the Christian faith claims he is, he is the most important person in history and his teaching is the key to everything that happens in the world. And so we pray for the grace we need to see this...........Lord hear us

In the second reading this weekend, St Paul tells us that there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female. We are all one in Christ, an idea which goes to the heart of the challenge facing our modern world. We can either continue along the path of separate nations with all the conflicts that have gone with this way of thinking, or we can forge a new world built on the common humanity St Paul speaks of. And so we pray for the wisdom we need to make this choice...........Lord hear us

There is a very real sense in which religion has been over the centuries the opium of the people. It has sometimes been used as a form of control by those in power. The Church itself often colluded in this idea by encouraging the poor to accept their lot and justifying the position of the rich and powerful as somehow the way God intended things to be. But those days are over now. Christians today are deeply committed to changing unjust social structures and we pray for the grace to be part of that...Lord hear us

On Wednesday of this coming week, we have a very important meeting about the religious education of children of this parish. The primary responsibility for teaching them about God lies fairly and squarely with their parents, a responsibility they took on at baptism. But it is the job of the parish to support the parents and be the kind of faith-filled community where what begins in the home can grow to maturity in the world. And so we pray that God will bless this week’s meeting.........Lord hear us