5th Sunday Year A - Homily 6

Homily 6 -2023

What struck me at the moment in today’s Gospel passage was Jesus' comment: “Your light must shine in the sight of everyone, so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.”

In our present world, where many people in many ways show little or no interest in God, we could be pardoned for thinking that that is a most unlikely outcome. Many of our contemporaries may not even be attracted much or at all by seeing anyone’s “good works” and therefore likely to “praise” neither God nor those who do the “good works”. So, why do good works at all?

It is possible, of course, to do them for all sorts of crass reasons. A little later in the “Sermon on the Mount” Matthew recorded how Jesus warned his disciples not to be like those Pharisees who do things “to win everyone’s admiration”. Rather, said Jesus,“When you give alms, your left hand must not know what your right hand is doing; your almsgiving must be secret”. He said something similar in relation to praying and going without things. Don’t try to look holy and impress people; for example: “When you pray, go to your private room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father…”.

Of course, while we are still apprentices, as it were, in the life-long call to maturity, we fairly naturally do perform “good works” in the hope that God will notice and be impressed. The hope of building up merit with God and thus saving our souls, can be very powerful motivations to get us started on the move to maturity. And Jesus takes us where we are at. Particularly, early in his ministry, Jesus indicated how our “good works” would earn “points” with God. The Sermon on the Mount, however, was also full of calls to move beyond mere observance of commandments to the untiring development of the virtues that enable us to keep commandments — and to experience over time how those virtues lead on to true inner peace and social harmony.

Later in the Gospels we see how Jesus focused particularly on the disciples and their on-going growth — inviting them to move beyond self-interest to growth in love, respect and care for each other, and for others beyond their own group; and to discover and to discover and respond eagerly to the love of God, which would take them beyond any concern about merit; and is joyfully expressed God's unconditional, constant, infinite forgiveness and acceptance.

The Gospels finish with Jesus commissioning the disciples to shape the world, beyond the present experience of hopeless loneliness, competitiveness and so often even of violence, and instead to give everyone a foretaste of heaven. Jesus’ hope was that the body of disciples, the Church, would reveal to the world how it is possible for people to live and to work together, with all their uniqueness and personal differences, in profound respect for everyone. May those be the “good works” that Jesus was referring to? After two thousand years that task still lies before us. It will remain purely a pipe-dream until each one of us allows our loving God to set us free.

When we allow ourselves to engage ever more in trusting the amazing love of our amazing God, we find ourselves changing. We let go more and more of self-interest. We discover rather how our deepest desires come to mirror the concerns listed in the Lord’s Prayer. They are enough for us. We become content to move forward in the direction of the “poverty of spirit” celebrated by Jesus in the Beatitudes. Our lives simplify. Whatever about others “giving the praise to God”, that will sum up where we at least have allowed life to lead us.