Feast and fast

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

****

Today's gospel (Matthew 9: 14-15) presents us with a paradox that shapes the life of every believer who is committed to following Jesus. The disciples of His cousin John question why His disciples do not fast, and Jesus tells them that as long as the disciples are with the Bridegroom, it is not fitting that they fast, but that a time for fasting will come. It is probably worth noting that while penance is a deeply unfashionable not to say enduringly unpleasant feature of our religion, it is one which comes from the Lord Himself. As he says elsewhere, Unless you do penance, you will all likewise perish (Luke 13: 5).

But let us dwell on the paradox here. We are the wedding guests of this gospel insofar as we dwell with the Bridegroom, and happily we always dwell with the Bridegroom as long as we do not lose Him through mortal sin. Jesus Himself tells us that He and the Father (and, thereby, necessarily the Spirit also) dwell in the souls of those who love Him. What is eternal life except to dwell with Him? In this limited sense, we already hold eternal life in our hands. Our horizons should be different from those of other human beings. We walk with another compass and guide ourselves by another map. In the final analysis, even though we live by faith and not by sight, we are daily held in God's almighty embrace of love and, with His help, we return that embrace to the God who has saved us. 

But here comes the paradox. While in one way we are with the Bridegroom, in another way we are still wayfarers on our journey towards the wedding. While the Eternal One dwells in our souls, we ourselves live in time; our attention and our hearts are constantly surrounded by the things of this world, and being the fallen creatures we are, our minds and hearts too often seek their happiness there. And we are fallen creatures! If any man thinks he can stand, let him take heed lest he fall, says Saint Paul. The good that we wish to do, we do not, while the evil we would avoid we sometimes do (again St Paul who is not letting us slackers off the hook!). 

Like all the paradoxes in our religion, we have to hold these two things together. Rejoice because we dwell with the Bridegroom. Mourn because we are sinners and we need to do penance, not only to train our wills in some ascetic sense, but to share in the Bridegroom’s sufferings, to be where He our master is, and so to help make reparation for our sins - to fill up in our bodies the sufferings wanting to the passion of Christ, as St Paul tells the Colossians. Too often, we hear these days that only joy is allowed for the Christian. But Christ is not so narrow minded as contemporary soothsayers. We must say our fiat in joy and in sorrow, in feast and in fast; we hold the Bridegroom in our hearts, and yet we must not become strangers to the fact that the Eternally Joyful One wept tears of grief over His beloved Jerusalem. Are we here to be like Him or to propose our self-comforting but fruitless alternative?

Those who forget either end of this paradox are in trouble. If we lose hold of the necessity of living joyfully in our hearts with the Bridegroom, we risk becoming a grim burden to ourselves (and others) for nothing alleviates the heavy atmosphere in which our hearts then live. If we lose hold of the necessity of penance, we become doe-eyed religious narcissists who never even think to darken the door of the confessional and who are easy prey for the enemies of all our souls.

We live in joy but must season our smiles with tears until we reach our journey's end. 

Doing the impossible

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

****

Today’s gospel (Mark 10:17-27) tells the tale of a young man who approaches our Lord looking for his advice. What must I do to inherit eternal life? Jesus first reminds him of the necessary precepts, for precepts are always an obligation. When the young man answers that he has kept them all his life, there is a beautiful moment in which the gospel tells us that Jesus loved him. Thereafter, Jesus invites him to sell everything he has, give the money to the poor, and to come and follow him. But the young man is sad for he is rich, and he goes away. The gospel concludes with a dialogue between Jesus and the disciples in which the disciples are bewildered to hear Jesus’ observation that the rich will find it very difficult to gain admission to heaven. All things are possible with God, Jesus concludes.

This is a wonderful gospel to be reading just before the beginning of Lent. Who is this young man in the gospel if not ourselves? Would that we were rich says the reader! But we are rich, and here is the paradox: that we are rich both in the things that we ought not to be rich in, and in the things that we need to be rich in.

Like the young man, some of our riches are held illicitly. Let us be clear here. It is not being rich in terms of worldly possessions that is the fundamental problem. Jesus tells us elsewhere in the gospel that the things that defile a man come from his heart, not from outside of him. He is not corrupted by the money in his wallet or the savings in his bank. The kind of problematic wealth that Jesus is referring to is the kind that makes every human cling on to the things they believe they have. We are corrupted by those things that make us feel that we are the masters of our own fate rather than being the children of God. Of course, material possessions may make us feel this way, but that is not their doing but ours. But as I say, fundamentally, we all of us rent out our security, our sense of self and sense of safety, to the things of this world, whether we have lots of money, or lots of friends, or simply whether we believe ourselves to be rich in some immaterial way, such as reputation or respect. In the secret corridors of our mind and of our heart, our dissonant needs do deals to prostitute our better selves to the things of this world.

If this were not so, none of us would find it difficult to carry the cross. If any man would follow me, let him deny himself, says Jesus. He knows we are backsliders, and He also knows what it must cost us, day in and day out - hour in and hour out, minute in and minute out - to say no to ourselves and yes to him. If we struggle in this process, it is no more then He expects, and it is no more than we should expect. For all of us like sheep have gone astray,

and He who might the vantage best have took found out the remedy.

And so we have a kind of wealth, an accumulation of ugly self-investment, from which we must disinvest. But we should not be disheartened, even though we probably will be. For, in reality, we are already in possession of riches beyond our wildest dreams. In the very moment of our baptism, the sign of the cross, the unique hope of the world, was placed upon our foreheads and marked up on our breast. The waters of regeneration were poured over us, and as our sins were cleansed, the most blessed Trinity took up their residence in our souls. So, who is richer then the friend of the king, even if he have nothing but the friendship of the king?

But, there we sit surrounded by our riches, the sacred scriptures, the seven sacraments, the example and writings of the saints, the lights and inspirations that we receive in prayer: why should the list end here? Reader, you may complete it yourself. And, sadly, we are true to the form of rich people when they look around themselves at all these riches and sometimes find themselves staring heartlessly into their own boredom.

Where can I go where I will not find myself? asks St Augustine. Even when we have divested ourselves of what we think are our attachments, there remains that self-indulgent corner of our eye that always looks for its own reflection, and does not realise that in its own boredom, it is tasting not the limitation of the things of God but its own immaturity. It is time to grow.

And, this is why this particular gospel offers us such consolation. Who will free us from the body of this death? asks Saint Paul, well before Saint Augustine had formulated his question. And Jesus here gives us the answer: with man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God.