On previous Sundays I have preached differently from the conventional focus on loving our neighbours. Too often this love has been erroneously elevated to a supreme objective of Catholics. However, one simply cannot love one’s neighbours properly, if one does not first love God. It is only after we love God, and love him properly, that we can then love our neighbour as we should. Indeed, it is the love for God that overflow from our hearts that is then directed towards our neighbours.
Gird your loins and light your
lamps
and be like servants who await their master’s return from a wedding,
ready to open immediately when he comes and knocks.
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
My dear brothers and sisters, our relationship between Our Lord and ourselves is clear and explicit from this verse from today's Gospel. We are his servants and we are here to do his work. Recollect the words from the first letter of St. Peter (1:18):
Do not forget that you were purchased from the foolish ways of your ancestors … with the precious blood of the Lamb
My dear brothers and sisters, it is important to remember that we were redeemed, or purchased, or liberated, from two associated masters. The first, is the Devil who is the Prince of this world, the other is the way of our ancestors. To be liberated from the foolish ways of our ancestors is to understand that it refers to our ancestors who were not Catholic, immured in practices that did not recognize the truth of God, and consequently the dignity of the human person. In other words, prior to their baptism, our ancestors were in the thrall of the Devil.
And in some way, our families may continue to be so. Which is why, at baptism, we are also liberated from following the narrow agendas and petty battles of our natal families – the families we were born into. We belong first to Christ, who redeemed us, to His Holy Mother whose care he gave us to, and to His Saints who intercede for us, night and day before His Throne. It is only after this that we belong to the mothers who birthed us, and the families, and communities that raise us.
Too often one is witness to the way in which we are forced to follow not the agenda of Christ, but the petty battles of our families; emotionally blackmailed through our families and friends to commit to the Prince of the World, rather than to Christ. “Remember the fourth commandment,” our parents and elders threaten us! Recall, however, my dear brothers and sisters, the words of our Lord:
Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. (Mt 10: 34-36)
In other words, love God first! It is not our neighbour – whether family, or friends – that we are called to worship, but God, and God alone! Let us not make family and friendships our gods instead of God.
My dear brothers and sisters, if, for the sake of Christ you leave your “houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands”, then I have no doubt that you are a martyr and will receive the promised reward. For listen to the words of Our Lord this Sunday:
Blessed are those servants
whom the master finds vigilant on his arrival.
Amen, I say to you, he will gird himself,
have them recline at table, and proceed to wait on them.
The rewards of heaven, my dear brothers and sisters, the communion with the saints, will be our reward.
My dear brothers and sisters, we should bear in mind the words of Our Lord this Sunday, when we contemplate the scenario I have laid before you:
Much will be required of the person
entrusted with much,
and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.
We have been entrusted with just one task, and that is to preach the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ. Woe to us, if we do not fulfill that task. Let us pray, therefore, in the words of the Collect this morning:
Almighty ever-living God, whom, taught by the Holy Spirit, we dare to call our Father, bring, we pray, to perfection in our hearts the spirit of adoption as your sons and daughters, that we may merit to enter into the inheritance which you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever.
(A version of this homily was first preached to the faithful at the Cathedral parish of St. Catherine of Alexandria, Old Goa.)
(image reference: Christ Washing the Feet of the Disciples, Paolo Veronese, 1580s, National Gallery, Prague.)