A Homily for the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Have you even eaten a pomegranate? If so, you know it is the seeds on the inside that you eat. The pomegranate is one of the oldest known fruits, and is mentioned in the Bible. There is an old tradition that there are 613 seeds, one of each of the laws of Moses, in a pomegranate. Now I have never taken the time to count the seeds inside a pomegranate to see if that is true, but that is what I heard.
Wow! 613 laws in the Mosaic Law, that seems like a lot. However, compared to the 1752 canons in the 1983 Code of Canon Law, I guess the Mosaic Law is not too bad. Why so many laws in religion? Of course the Church, in addition to being the Mystical Body of Christ, is also an institution, and like any institution it needs rules for governing the relations between its members. However, it would be a mistake to look at the Code of Canon Law as just a necessary nuisance for governing the Church on earth. All law should be grounded in Divine Law, and Jesus summarizes Divine Law into the two great commandments, “You shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind,” and “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” In the fact purpose of the 613 specific provisions in the Mosaic Law is to aide the faithful in knowing how to love God with all one’s being and above all else. Likewise, the Code of Canon Law is an aide in showing us how to love God with all that we are and have, and how we should treat others, in love and justice.
No matter how good and just a law or a Code might be, if we are merely giving external compliance to the law we are missing a big part of what it means to live a life of holiness. We become just like the Pharisees whom Jesus criticizes. The Second Vatican Council, in its document Pastoral Constitution On the Church In the Modern World (Gaudium et spes, 1965), spoke of the danger of a practical apostasy. Now apostasy is the renunciation and abandonment of the Faith. While the Council Fathers were not too concerned that a large number of Catholics would just formally renounce the Faith, they were concerned with a trend that they noticed then, and have only gotten worse in the past 40 years, of Catholics being Catholics in name only. They might follow the externals of the Faith – maybe go to Mass, although even that is falling off so that less that 25% of Catholics go to Mass each week, have their children baptized but then do not bring them back to Church until its time for them to receive First Communion – however the Faith does not have any real consequence in their daily lives. Too many people want God to fit into their lives, when they are supposed to love God with all their heart, all their mind, all their soul. Loving God should be the center of their lives. Others complain that they “don’t get anything out of the Mass,” but this betrays a self-centeredness that suggests that the Mass is primarily there to entertain them, rather than being our worship of God who is all good and deserving of all our love. Jesus calls us to be Love, not just to do charitable things. We must change our hearts. How can we awaken and renew our Christian faith, to crave it with all of our hearts?
First we must search for a personal relationship with God. While worshipping with our brothers and sisters in Christ is very important, to have a personal experience of God we must spend time in silence, dedicating time to personal prayer. In our hustle and bustle world this can be difficult at first. We need to learn to unclutter our minds and find the time necessary to become aware of God’s presence in our lives.
We also need to discover the ultimate religious meaning in all that we do. We cannot box God and/or religion into an hour on Sundays. God’s love must permeate and enlighten everything that we do. “Life is necessarily routine and cyclical in nature, but Christianity identifies a direction and destiny in and through what we do” (O’Higgins, Sacerdos Homily Resource Package: October-November 2005, p. 8). As Christians, who we and others become is of overriding importance rather than what we do or achieve externally.
We also need to ask ourselves as Christians if we are experiencing the love of neighbor within ourselves. It is not simply enough to through money into the collection today for World Mission Sunday. The Preacher to the Papal Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, in reflecting on today’s Gospel wrote, “Much of our charity to Third World countries is not dictated by love, but by a bad conscience. We realize the scandalous difference that exists between us and them and we feel responsible in part for their misery. One can lack charity even when ‘being charitable!’” While Jesus does tell us to give to the poor, because they are our brothers and sisters, He first tells us to love our neighbor. Love comes from our heart, the very core of our being. We may not be called to be missionaries in the sense of going to the Third World nations to feed and cloth the poor, to build houses and schools and hospitals. That is a vocation that God only gives to some. However each and every one of us are called to be “spiritual missionaries” who pray for the poor, who makes spiritual sacrifices for them, who use our voice and position in society to speak for the poor and to challenge the social conditions which keep the rich rich and the poor poor. St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower, entered the cloister at age 15 and never left, yet because of her prayers and sacrifices she is one of the patron saints for missionaries. Following her example, we can live as St. John tells us, “Little children, let us not love in word or speech but in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18).
