Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A

I can remember some time ago seeing on-line a meme that someone had put together, using a scene from one of the Back to the Future films. “The Doc” has returned in his time machine and he is saying to Marty McFly: whatever you do, don’t go to 2020. For most of us, that year started just like any other, but by the time we got to March we began to see it would be unlike anything we had ever experienced before. A priest friend of mine, who was in a parish in Birmingham at the time, described how roads that were normally rammed solid with traffic, were all but deserted. To begin with, people were really afraid.

At the time, I was the Catholic chaplain to the local hospital. When they started assessing staff for their risk factor for coronavirus, I was placed at the bottom, considered to be relatively low risk, which meant I was able to visit coronavirus wards and give people the sacrament of the sick, and where necessary, the Last Rites. I can remember speaking to staff on A+E, and they, like me, were having difficulty sleeping at night, not knowing what the future might hold. As we know, there were those who lived to tell the tale, and those that did not.

As time went by, people became less frightened. We also realised that to catch something like Ebola, or anthrax, would be so much worse.

2020 was perhaps the first time that the majority of the population had had to think about not making it to the end of the year. But the Gospel reminds us today that there is something worse than death: “do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” Our eternal salvation is much more important than any concerns we might have about our health. It’s one thing to be in pain now, and to be able to put a stop to it. It’s another to be in pain and know there is nothing you can do and to realise that it will go on for all eternity.

One of the problems in contemporary society is that there are a lot of heresies going around, and one of them is called universalism. Universalism states that everyone, apart from a few small exceptions, such as Hitler or Stalin, will go to heaven. So if that’s the case, why bother leading a good life? Why bother converting anyone to Catholicism? Jesus said, “Go, make disciples of all nations” but universalism says, don’t bother. It’s too much work. People will make fun of you, and they’re going to go to heaven anyway, so what’s the point? But universalism isn’t true. And today, Christ shocks us out of our complacency:

“So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.”

Strong stuff! Christ is telling us not to fear what others think, and not to worry about them spreading lies about us. We are to stand steadfast, like the prophet Jeremiah, who said: “But the Lord is with me as a dread warrior; therefore my persecutors will stumble; they will not overcome me.” We are to be like the person in today’s psalm, who, out of great love for the Lord, is happy to undergo persecution: “It is for you that I suffer taunts, that shame has covered my face. To my own kin I have become an outcast, a stranger to the children of my mother.” Some people have found, in an ironic turning of the tables, that those of a more secular opinion want to censor what they have to say. Effectively, they say to them: you have blasphemed and will now be excommunicated. It’s sometimes called being deplatformed, being ignored or silenced, and people may even have their pay cut or lose their job. At times, the message of Christ is uncomfortable, and people don’t want to hear it. They prefer to be left in their ignorance, going after their false idols of money, pleasure, success, various crutches to mask their deep unhappiness. In days gone by there was the saying, “A night with Venus and a lifetime with Mercury”, which meant that a night of immorality could result in having to take mercury for the rest of your life to keep the disease you caught at bay, but mercury of course is also poisonous. It’s a good symbol of what secularism does to you.

The time of the Covid lockdowns was a period when we had to face a fear that we hadn’t known before; in various ways we learnt to deal with it. Standing up for our faith doesn’t normally involve the same fear, but we still at time buckle under the pressure, for all sorts of reasons. We know that God can forgive, and we know that He is the One who makes all the difference to our lives. As the next week begins, we renew today our determination to witness to the Lord, knowing that He is our life, our freedom and our everything.

Curious about exploring things further?  If you would like to ask further questions about the topics raised in these homilies (or maybe think it wasn’t explained too well!), please feel free to e-mail Fr Michael at stjoseph.thame@rcaob.org.uk