32nd Sunday Year C - Homily 2

Homily 2 - 2010

Last Monday was All Souls Day; Tuesday was All Saints. A couple of weeks ago we celebrated St Mary McKillop – and every Eucharist is a celebration of Jesus’ resurrection and of all that that means.

In a sense, we have been looking ahead. But, in Jesus’ mind, the whole point of looking ahead is to look more seriously at the task of the now. We don‘t know much about the future and what awaits us, - and, unfortunately, the way that some people talk about it serves only to trivialise it.

When Jesus spoke of eternal life, sometimes he used the future tense; sometimes he used the present tense. We can live eternal life now. In fact, how we live eternal life now determines how we will live eternal life then. What matters is that we are clear about what constitutes eternal life in our present ways of living.

As far as Jesus was concerned, eternal life – whether lived before death or after death – consists, primarily, in believing in him and believing in the Father. But when Jesus talked about believing in him, he didn’t mean believing in statements about him – believing doctrines or dogmas. Even the devil believes in that sense. What Jesus meant by believing in him was trusting him, entrusting ourselves to him, living like him. committing ourselves to his project, to his yearning for the Kingdom: thy Kingdom come on earth – just as it is in heaven. That kind of living is eternal on this side of the grave and on the other side of the grave.

As far as Jesus was concerned, living like him meant simply: Love one another as I have loved you. Living eternal life is simply living lovingly – and that’s essentially relationally. Living lovingly is a community affair.

It begins with being loved. It moves beyond that to believing we’re loved, to accepting being loved, to being transformed, being created and freed by love in the process. And the circle is then completed as we become loving and give love. Originating and starting it all is God who is love. When we love – truly love – it’s ultimately God’s love that empowers us – whether we realise it or not. Believing in Jesus, entrusting ourselves to Jesus, means stepping into, being plunged into, being swept up into the infinite ocean of loving energy that is God: God is love.

Loving, now, in this life, makes us who we are. It is this us that lives into eternity, and eternity will simply be more of it – but at an intensity that we can never imagine. Heaven, if we choose to use the familiar word, is simply relationship – people living in love. Saints are simply people alive with love – with the love that all originates in God.

If we want to think of Purgatory in this context, Purgatory is the in-between stage when our hearts, that struggle to open totally in love in this phase of life, painfully let go of all that hindered the surrender we didn’t make – the hurts, the fears, the self-interest, the pride – until finally we can step, liberated and complete, into the fullness of love that is heaven.

That is our destiny. It has already begun. And its texture is being shaped precisely by how we are choosing to live now.