22nd Sunday Year B - Homily 5

Homily 5 - 2024 

From the Readings that we have had at Mass this morning, one issue particularly struck me. It was a few words from the ending of today’s Second Reading from the Letter of St James:
“Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this, …”. Caught on the hop, how would you continue?

I wonder how many of us would spontaneously continue as St James did: “…coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it.” St James’s comment served to highlight for me what we heard later in the Gospel. There Jesus quoted from Isaiah, sadly, sharing Isaiah’s lament: “This people honours me only with lip-service, while their hearts are far from me.” “… their hearts are far from me”.

If our hearts were more attuned to the heart of Jesus, how should we have answered? I find it helpful to review Jesus’ Beatitudes, but from the more direct version in St Luke’s Gospel: “How happy are you who are poor: yours is the kingdom of God. Happy you who are hungry now: you shall be satisfied. Happy you who weep now: you shall laugh.” In fact, Luke continued: “…rejoice when that day comes, and dance for joy, for then your reward will be great in heaven.” Jesus was hoping, presuming, that we would be attracted by his message of the “kingdom of heaven”, that we would take him seriously, that we would change and repent, and that the kingdom of heaven would slowly establish itself through us.

St James seemed to have been alert to our problem. His fuller quotation that we heard this morning was: “Pure, unspoilt religion, in the eyes of God our Father is this, coming to the help of orphans and widows when they need it, and keeping oneself uncontaminated by the world”. It is largely the influence of the world in which we live, and even of the Church around us, the cultural attitudes that we inevitably inhale with every breath, that “contaminate us” and “keep our hearts far from God”, who spoke to us in the person of Jesus.

We need only look at the TV coverage of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to see the tragic suffering of some of the “widows and orphans” that they cruelly create. And Ukraine and Gaza are only a few of the wars and armed insurgencies occurring in our world. But we need to make the connection between the message of Jesus and our Christian responsibilities in the face of what is happening in the real world around us.

Over the last two weeks I was interested in reading the recent Social Justice Statement issued by the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference. Its title is: Truth & Peace: A Gospel Word in a Violent World. [Google, or perhaps Siri, will help you find it on your computer or even mobile phone.] Towards the end of the Statement the bishops suggested some practical ways we could contribute to a more peaceful world. Among their suggestions were:

Start with yourself. Invite God to nurture peace in your heart. Examining the things that happened over the course of your day when you pray before bedtime is a good practice. Ask yourself how you responded to conflicts. Did you reach out in friendship and love to others, show kindness or offer or receive forgiveness? Ask God for the grace to make peace in your life.

Reach out to a local reconciliation group if you want to support First Nations Peoples, or a refugee support group if you want to work with refugees seeking justice.

You could also offer to help Caritas Australia with its work in war-torn countries.

Join an ecumenical or interfaith group which seeks to foster dialogue and peace-making.