Along the path

 An audio recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

****

Today’s gospel (Luke 8: 1-3) is a text of great simplicity. At a first read, there seems almost nothing for our edification. Unlike certain parts of scripture, we can feel that we might even bounce off its surface, uncertain of why the Church asks us to read this passage. And yet, in spite of appearances, every sentence is pregnant with mysteries that light our way and draw us towards the One who has called our name.

Jesus made his way through towns and villages preaching, and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom of God. For Jesus is the teacher, and He comes to reveal to us who God really is, how much He loves us, and how we can find our way home to Him. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life; by grace He becomes our way, our truth, and our life. Jesus is the path. No name is given to us under heaven or on earth by which we can be saved. And our obedience to God begins, as the roots of the word obedience suggests, in listening: listening to Jesus’ voice, listening to His preaching, listening to His tales of the Kingdom. When we consider this Jesus who walks the paths through the towns and villages of Israel, we have a glimpse of what Saint Patrick saw when he wrote those beautiful words: Christ on my right hand, Christ on my left hand, Christ before me, Christ behind me, Christ within me.

With Him went the Twelve, as well as certain women who had been cured of evil spirits and ailments. In this line also, we find truths that run deep and that console us. The Church is not one of cheap, doe-eyed anime saints, no matter the horrors committed against their memory by vacuous contemporary Church art. Down the ages, we have seen many kinds of Saints; some, like Saint Joseph or St Therese of Lisieux, seem logical and obvious invitees to the glories of heaven; others, like Saint Augustine of Hippo and of course St Didimus, whose cross stood beside Jesus’, are less likely candidates, humanly speaking. But this is only to see things in a very worldly way, like St Peter, the first pope, trying to block Jesus’ path to the cross. Jesus, who, as we have said, walks through the towns and villages, comes in search of His lost sheep, to fix that which was broken, to restore that which has failed, to redeem that which is captive. We know from the gospel of the woman with the alabaster jar earlier this week that such women were regarded with suspicion, not to say loathing in the time of Jesus. It is not so long ago in our own culture that certain moral failures brought down shame and social exclusion, while, it should be recognised, other moral failures, perhaps even worse ones, went overlooked. In truth, all sin is shameful, for all sin disfigures in us the image of our Creator, and mortal sin robs us of the life of grace. These damaged women with their unsavoury histories, not to mention the Twelve disciples too, are the first fruits of the harvest that Jesus wishes to offer to the Father. Like our Blessed Mother, they are masterpieces of His grace, although they are restorations of another kind. The loving John who stands by the cross at the end begins his apostolic career with vile ladder climbing. And Mary Magdalene who meets Jesus in the blessed Easter garden reverses in that instant the many wayward and unholy trysts of her wretched past. As the saying goes, every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.  

The last clause of this very short gospel reads: Mary surnamed the Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, Joanna the wife of Herod’s steward Chuza, Susanna, and several others who provided for them out of their own resources. On the surface, such details reveal something of the sources that Saint Luke was able to draw on as he wrote his gospel. Saint Luke had names, places, and timings. Whoever reported these things to him was an eyewitness of what had happened.

Yet, on another level, this line is a reminder to us that the Jesus who seeks us along the paths of the towns and villages of the world, calls us by name, knows us already intimately, and bids us listen carefully to that call. For COLW, this line is a reminder that we must read the gospel through a vocational lens and allow the Holy Spirit to show us little by little the next steps along the path.

For the path goes on, through those towns and villages, and for us the path continues along the secret ways of our heart where, as Francis Thompson says sadly,

I fled Him, down the nights and down the days;

I fled Him, down the arches of the years;

 I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways

Of my own mind.

But where, please God, little by little and by His grace, our flight will at last cease, so that we may sit at the feet of Jesus in the cell of our heart to learn His gospel afresh.