13th Sunday of Ordinary Time
Even the COVID19 pandemic does not seem to have eased negative publicity about the Church. It was curious to see articles recently in the media questioning the Church’s engagement of the Government’s JobKeeper scheme. As a religious practitioner, I am eligible for the Jobkeeper payment. I have also chosen to donate this to our First Collection to supplement the loss of income by the parish suffered because of the pandemic. Though this is entirely legal, ethical and transparent, the media’s attempt to make it into something otherwise shows how the Church struggles both to retain and to promote its credibility in society.
In the face of such negative social scrutiny, it is not easy for us to declare who we are. How many of us avoid having to declare our religious identity and affiliation in our workplace or in our business because of the bad press associated with being Catholic? Outside our own circle of family and friends are we embarrassed to be known to be Catholic? There is no cultural or social kudos in being Catholic today. To be Catholic, publicly, is to find ourselves out of our comfort zone, and to declare ourselves as those who do not fit easily into the prevailing social mood or expectation. How difficult it is to be a Catholic teenager or young adult for this reason. It is to set ourselves apart. And this is not a comfortable position in which to find ourselves. We can prefer anonymity, or retreat into what the American thinker, David Tracy once called “a private reservation of the spirit.” We can put our need for social acceptance and approval ahead of opprobrium, scornful reproach or contempt from others.
In the face of the unrelenting issues confronting us, a great temptation for us would be to retreat into our own quiet corner, hoping that no-one will notice us – at least for a while. Discipleship of the Risen Lord, the One who lives now, keeps calling us, though, beyond what is convenient and what is comfortable. It calls us relentlessly outwards. This is the message at the heart of today’s gospel. With the Semitic technique of hyperbole, Jesus urges us beyond complacency, beyond the familiar. We are not to settle into a closed circle of relationships in which we feel safe and accepted. We are to keep going out. But this comes at a price. Something must be sacrificed; something is crucified. What is crucified is our need for social acceptance, our need for acclaim. This amounts to what the German writer, Dietrich Bonhoeffer called the “cost of discipleship,” “costly grace.” There is a cost to the profession of our faith in the Lord.
Difficult as the current experiences are for us as a Church, the graced invitation in their midst is to be stripped of the illusions that we can have about ourselves, the illusions of status and of power. Our status and power are being ebbed away. And when we have no status and power – which is the fundamental call of the Cross – then the living heart of Jesus can become more transparent in our world – a self-emptying become a self-giving – this radical life of hospitality about which both our First Reading and the Gospel itself allude.
This struck me particularly when I was in Malta several years ago, the island in the Mediterranean on which the apostle Paul had been shipwrecked. Whist traveling around the island, I realized especially that the texts of Paul’s time there, recorded in the book of the Bible called the Acts of the Apostles, were not simply historical in character but were, in fact, highly elaborate commentaries on the Church itself for which Paul is presented as a metaphor. The account of Paul’s shipwreck detailed in the 27th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles teaches us this in a very particular way. Taking the peculiarities of the text into account, it is not just a story of Paul battling rough seas, seeking to reach the shore safely. Much more profoundly, it is the story of the early Church at sea and in the midst of storms threatening to shipwreck it and discovering that which is most essential to it – the very mystery of the Eucharist.
In the story of the 27th chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, what brings Paul to safety in the midst of his own storm is the mystery of the Eucharist. At the heart of the storm, as the text says, “he took bread, gave thanks to God in everybody’s presence, broke it and began to eat. All were encouraged and they ate too.” (Acts 27: 35-36). This is a clear scriptural allusion to the Eucharist, and it demonstrates what is most central for him, and for us.
In the midst of the storm of our own moment in history we, too, must not cease to take bread, give thanks, break it and share it. This means that, in all we face, we must come back to the essential Christian act: the act of self-emptying become a self-giving which is what the Eucharistic mystery is about. This is the mystery that is our true anchor and through which alone the Church must find its harbour and safety. As the story alludes, everything else can be jettisoned overboard. However, in the very midst of the storm the mystery of the Eucharist, that mystery of Jesus’ self-emptying become a self-giving, is the one thing to which we must remain true, that gives meaning to all else, and that holds us together.
It is not an easy time to be Catholic. There is an inexorable stripping of power and prestige taking place through events, and through the shifts in social mores and trends which increasingly see us as the ‘outsider.’ Our numbers will continue to fall in the years ahead. We will become a small community in a very secular society which does not share our values. However, this makes the need to renew our witness of sacrificial love even more pressing if we are to remain faithful to the call of the Gospel, faithful to our friendship and discipleship of the Risen Lord. Now is not the time for words. That time has gone. Now is the time to act. Redemption does not come to the world in the form of an explanation. It comes to us as an event. And the way of action forward must exemplify a Eucharistic love. Such action alone will bring us forward to a new harbor in the midst of the storms that swirl around us
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