I hope my local Tory MP reads this

30^th Sunday of the Year (A) 2020

Love God and love your neighbour, Jesus tells the Pharisees.  He wants to link the two commandments together; as if to say that you can’t have one without the other. You might believe that it is easy to love God.  God can be a distant figure, and it is always easy to love someone far away. What isn’t so easy is to love someone much closer.  What Christ is telling us is that the measure with which you love your neighbour is the measure with which you love God.  And just to help us to know how we can love our neighbour we have the first reading from the book of Exodus; it can be used as an examination of conscience.  What do we read?

The first way to love your neighbour says the book of Exodus is to do no harm to him or her; don’t molest or oppress. This shouldn’t come as any surprise to us; that the least we can do: not to harm them.  Then we are told not to be harsh with the widow or orphan; in other words, the most vulnerable in society. There was no social security in those days; if your husband died you and your child would be destitute. Exodus, notice, doesn’t tell us to be kind and generous, it just says don’t be harsh. So again, it is the basic minimum. Then Exodus speaks about money; that we are not to be dishonest and especially with the poor; don’t cheat them. 

Christ’s message is: to love God we have to love our neighbour and particularly those who are vulnerable, those who are weak and poor. The implication being that if you don’t love those who can’t help themselves then you don’t love God.  To love God isn’t something purely spiritual but also something practical. It is not enough therefore to pray. Nor is it enough to go to Church every Sunday or to go regularly to confession. Catholics can do these things and still be hard hearted. The measure of my love of God is the measure I care for others, and particularly the disadvantaged. So it is quite easy really to know if I love God, whom I cannot see. When I examine my conscience I must ask myself how much do I love my neighbour whom I can see. 

Render to Boris what belongs to Boris

29^th Sunday of the Year (A) 2020

            I think many admire the clever reply of Jesus to the pharisees and Herodians. They thought they had trapped him. But Jesus evades their trap; “Give back to Caesar what belongs to Caesar – and to God what belongs to God.” But Jesus reply isn’t just clever, it’s also profoundly important. It is telling us that we have two authorities: the secular, in our case our government, and God. But by far the greater authority is God’s. Today we don’t have the Emperor Caesar, instead we have Boris Johnson!  And so we must give back to Boris what belongs to Boris.  In other words, we must obey our civil authorities. This is particularly important right now as the government is trying to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.  

I was at Marylebone railway station the other day and a man, seeing my roman collar, asked me if God was responsible for this pandemic. I told him that you can’t blame God for something that humans have somehow created. It is easy to get down and even depressed by what is happening. We cannot meet up anymore, at least for the foreseeable future. We can’t even visit people in hospital, and many are dying on their own. We can’t travel to many places without having to go into quarantine. Young couples have had to postpone their weddings. Funerals have restricted numbers. Some are fearful that this will never end. People may be wondering: where is God in all this? 

Well God is right here. He is with us in our darkest moments. We should never forget Him. He is all-powerful and all-wise. Turn to him in prayer, and ask Him to give you what you need to get through this crisis. This is what He wants us to do. This is what we should do. What God does is to give us hope; that most wonderful of virtues. When we have hope we can endure, it gives us strength and motivation to keep going. Hope is telling us that all will be well, that this pandemic will not last forever, that some kind of normality will return.  

So we have our civil authority, to whom we owe allegiance. Then we have our spiritual authority, God, to whom we owe much more.  He is looking after us and caring for us in a way that the civil authority cannot.  You don’t see Him but His presence is real.  He gives us that precious gift of hope that no civil authority can give; and with that we can persevere, in the sure knowledge that all will be well. You have God’s word for it. 

Even the bad get into heaven

28^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A) 2020

Imagine being invited to a wedding by a king. That would be some wedding. And yet, according to the gospel some of those invited would not come. 

Of course, if the wedding were today he could only have 20 guests.  Even a king couldn’t have more. You’d be a lucky guest then to get an invite. It is not just the wedding itself that you would look forward to, but also the banquet afterwards: the food, the drink, the dancing, the speeches; what a celebration that would be; imagine for the son of the King. 

Now in the gospel we are told that for some reason some wouldn’t come. So the King was keen that the place should be full. It would look bad, wouldn’t it, if the church was half empty; imagine the poor bride and groom; the most important day of their lives and few could be bothered to come. And so in order to fill up the place the King allows everyone to come in; “ good and bad alike”. Now that is interesting: good and bad alike. Remember this is an allegory for the heavenly banquet; to which we are all invited, “good and bad alike”. It’s understandable that the good would be invited but what isn’t so is that “the bad” would be invited too. I am sure the bad didn’t think they’d be invited, and yet they were. This should be consoling for us. 

I say this because I suspect most of us don’t think of ourselves as good, because we see too many faults and failings and even sinfulness. The good news is that we are not excluded. You see the logic: you don’t have to be good to get into heaven!  Remember the famous ‘good thief’; he was a thief, not a nice person at all; the misery he would have caused people when he stole their money, and yet Jesus said to him moments before he died, “today you will be with me in paradise”.  At the last moment the man recognized his faults and failings; Jesus was impressed with this. And it was enough to get him a ticket for the banquet. 

It is never too late to repent; to say sorry to God and to our neighbour. This is all Jesus asks of us; to recognize our sinfulness and ask forgiveness. And if we do,  the ticket to the royal banquet will be in the post; first class delivery.