33rd SUNDAY OF THE YEAR

As our annual journey through the Church’s year draws to a close, - two weeks today is the First Sunday of Advent – the liturgy invites us, forces us even, to confront a tension which runs through the whole history of Christianity. As followers of Jesus we are deeply committed to the world and all that happens in it. As the Constitution on the Church in the Modern World from the Second Vatican Council put it, ‘The joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the men and women of our time are the joy and hope, the grief and anguish of the followers of Christ as well. Nothing that is genuinely human fails to find an echo in their heart. That is why Christians cherish a feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history.’ And yet, if only this were true. If only the followers of Jesus throughout the world were as deeply committed to the human race and its history as the Council suggests. If only we were to be found in the front line of every fight for justice and every protest against injustice and oppression. But, sadly, it is not always like that, and the reason for this tragic failure on the part of Christians in every age lies in today’s second reading.

In it, St Paul addresses a problem in the Church in Thessalonica which has been with us in a variety of forms ever since. He tells the Christian community there that those who refuse to work should not be given any food. This, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with the kind of social and economic policies emerging these days from the Coalition Government. Anyone who tries to link this passage to the issue of the long-term unemployed, as Mrs Thatcher did when she addressed the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland in the 1980s, is either grossly ignorant of the Scriptures or guilty of the most cynical kind of dishonesty. Because what was concerning St Paul was not unemployment, but the tendency among some of those early Christians to withdraw from the kind of engagement with the world the Gospels and the Second Vatican Council speak of and retreat into an other-worldly kind of religion which had nothing to with real life. And, of course, it was this kind of religion, which combined piousity with a failure to engage with things like poverty and injustice, which during times like the industrial revolution alienated so many workers from the Churches and led Marx to describe religion as the opium of the people, a drug which dulled the senses of the poor and, with a promise of pie in the sky when they died, prevented them from rising up against the injustices of the day and doing something about them. And to the extent that we still do that; to the extent that we come to Mass, go through the motions and fail to engage in any way at all with, for example, the current cuts and the question of where our spending priorities as nation should lie at a time like this, we continue that long tragic tradition.

But as we engage with the world, we are also called to confront it. To be in the world is not the same as to be of the world. As followers of Jesus, we are called to engage with the issues of our day and bring to them an alternative set of values to those which dominate our current thinking. And the key to understanding this, lies in this week’s Gospel where Jesus addresses the people as they stand admiring the fine stone work and votive offerings of the Temple. All during Jesus’ life, the Temple had been covered in scaffolding undergoing extensive renovation and now that it was revealed again in all its glory, people were flocking to see it. And as they do so, Jesus tells them: ‘All these stones you are staring at now – the time will come when not a single stone will be left on another: everything will be destroyed,’ reminding them, and through them, us, of the need to focus on the things that last rather than on what is passing. We are called to engage with the world and its history, but with our eyes fixed on the values of the kingdom. As followers of Jesus, we are called to be signs of contradiction, challenging the world to move beyond many of the attitudes which have brought us to where we are today and embrace something new. And that is the message the Church presents to us every year at this time as, like people on the highest point of the big wheel on a fairground, we look for a moment into the far distance before quickly returning to earth again.

What it means, of course, to confront the world involves different things at different times in history. But in our own day there is simply no escaping the financial crisis the world is currently facing. At the root of it lies the materialism of our age, the view that only the material exists, that the spiritual is an illusion, and that, as a result the material has within itself the capacity to fulfil our longing for happiness. The result has been consumerism. Living by its rules we have spent more and more money buying things we can’t afford, resulting in a debt crisis which has almost brought the world to its knees, the only solution the economists can offer us being to spend less on helping those in need and spend even more money in the shops.

And in the face of all this, the words of Jesus ring down through the ages: ‘Man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ Or ‘Your father knows what you need before you ask. Seek the kingdom of God first and all these things will be given to you.’ So ask yourself today how much you have swallowed the values of the consumer society and bought into its values. Have money or material things become more important to you perhaps than relationships? Do you look to money and material things to make you happy, fantasising about winning the lottery and imagining what you would do with all that money? Do you ever stop and reflect on how quickly your life is passing and ask yourself who are the people and what are things that really matter?

Much of what we see around us every day will, like the Temple in Jerusalem, come tumbling down. Our job, by the way we live, is to show the world what is of lasting value. ‘What’ after all, ‘does it profit a man/woman if they gain the whole world and lose their very self?’

BIDDING PRAYERS

We begin this week by praying for the Church throughout the world. Called to imitate and make present in society the God who, in Jesus, was made flesh and lived among us, we pray that it will always be faithful to that calling and show what the Second Vatican Council called its feeling of deep solidarity with the human race and its history. The world faces many challenges at this time and we ask God to pour into the Churches the wisdom they need to play their part in responding to them......Lord hear us

In the world but not always of the world, we are called both as a Church and as individuals to challenge and stand up to forces and ways of thinking in society which are not of God and so cannot bring long-term happiness to the men and women who share this moment in history. And so we pray for the courage we need to do this. We pray, in particular, for the courage we need to resist in our own lives the excesses of consumerism and show the world, by the way we live, the things in life which really matter.......Lord hear us

If the modern world is to find its way back to God then the Churches must become more effective signs of his presence among us. We must demonstrate to people that we have something relevant and worthwhile to say. We must be seen to be a power for good, standing up for justice and not being afraid to challenge the rich and powerful when necessary. We must speak up for the poor who have no voice and defend them in all circumstances, and we pray for the grace to do this....Lord hear us

And we pray for those who govern our country at this time. Every day, announcements are made which have profound implications for the way we live. Everywhere we turn there are warnings of cuts in services and resources which will affect all our lives. And so we pray that those in government who have the responsibility of making these decisions will never forget that the test of any country’s moral maturity is the way it treats its poorest and most needy citizens.........Lord hear us

Within less than thirty years of Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans. In time the Roman Empire itself fell. Nothing in history lasts forever. Even now, before our very eyes, we are seeing economic power in the world shift from West to East, and at a personal level many of us are only too well aware that life is passing quickly and that we are growing older. And so we ask God today to give us a deep sense of what is permanent and lasting in life.........Lord hear us

Today is Remembrance Sunday. And so we pray for all those from every nation who have died in war over the last hundred years. But we pray most of all that, as we move deeper into the 21st century, the world will see with ever greater clarity the utter futility of all war and, with God’s help, finally move beyond it. We pray, especially, for the wisdom to see through the age old myths which glorify war and pretend that there is something heroic or noble about young men and women dying because of it..............Lord hear us