HOMILY WEEK 12 03 – Yr II

Covenant Love

(2 Kg 22.8-13; 23:1-3; Ps119; Mt 7:15-20)

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A couple reminded me I had married them 36 years earlier and shared all was going well with their marriage covenant. This stirred up in me pleasant memories of the emotions connected with that event. There is something about a marital commitment or covenant that touches deep within our human psyche.

May this celebration help us to be faithful to our covenant with the Risen Lord by our devotion to prayer and the Word of God so we can be more effective in ministry. The gospel acclamation puts it well: “Teach me the way of your decrees, O Lord”.

Throughout salvation history God has always wanted and sought a covenantal relationship with God’s people, not an agreement or contract.

Scott Hahn, a convert, has studied covenants in scripture and points out four major OT covenants and their progression in salvation history: Adam and Eve, a couple; Noah, a family; Abraham, a tribe and Moses, a nation, a Chosen People of God.

In the first reading from 2 Kings, we have the interesting incident of a minor covenant renewed in curious circumstances. There was apparently some spring-cleaning going on in the temple, and when that happens, all kinds of things can turn up. For one, amounts of money were found and turned over to the temple authorities, so some accountant must have been negligent. Then of all things, the high priest discovers the Book of the Law in the House of the Lord and takes it to the king. How it could have gotten lost we hear from the king himself: “Our ancestors did not obey the words of this book, to do according to all that is written concerning us.”

In other words, they are a people who have strayed away from the Word of God, from their covenant with the Lord. This anonymous King responds positively to the discovery of the book. He repents for his people by tearing his clothes and commanding all the people take action to also repent of their ways. The king himself gathers up all the people and reads the words of the book to them. Then he makes a covenant before the Lord, to follow the Lord, keeping his commandments, his decrees and his statutes, with all his heart and all his soul, to perform the words of this covenant that were written in this book. The reading ends with the statement that all the people joined in this covenant.

It is noteworthy this covenant is centered on the Word of the Lord, and obeying that Word by living it out. Today’s psalm supports this fact. Psalm 119 is unique in that every stanza of the psalm, except one, refers to the Law. In today’s three stanzas, we hear the words statutes, law, commandments, decrees, and precepts. The one stanza in the psalm that does not refer to the Law presumably follows the tradition of creating mandelas that are supposed to have one flaw in them, because nothing in this world is perfect. Perhaps this ties in with the poetry of Leonard Cohen, who sings in everything there is a crack, a crack that allows the light to come in.

Through all these covenants, however, the Israelites basically did not keep God’s Word nor honor the close relationship God wanted with them. They repeatedly failed to keep those covenants with often the disastrous results of exile and oppression. These covenants do lead, however, to their consummation in the final, new and perfect covenant established by Jesus, the Word made flesh, the True Lamb of God, a covenant of his Body and Blood. It is this covenant, established by the very Son of God who alone was totally pleasing to and obedient to the Father, that is also totally pleasing to God.

It is this covenant into which we are called by our baptism, final vows as religious and ordination to the ministerial priesthood. It is this covenant that calls us into an intimate and obedient relationship of love with Jesus and the Father in the Holy Spirit, centered on the Word of God.

In the Gospel today, Jesus is concerned his disciples be good trees that bear good fruit. It is living our covenantal relationship with God through prolonged prayer and pondering the Word of God that we will be empowered to bear good fruit in our ministry.

An example of this has to be Richard Rohr, OFM. As a young priest he founded New Jerusalem, a charismatic community centered on the Word of God. Out of that community came his audiotape series of the Great Themes of Scripture. Finally, he had the prophetic insight to found a Center for Contemplation and Actionin New Mexico. For him, ministry flows out of contemplation; action flows out of prayer; bearing good fruit comes from being rooted in the Word of the Lord. He spends every Lent in his hermitage, praying, writing and visioning future ministry. He truly lives out the gospel acclamation: “Live in me and let me live in you, says that Lord; my branches bear much fruit.”

Another example would be St. Cyril whom we honor today. Cyril was a patriarch of the Eastern Church and a Greek theologian. In 412, he succeeded his uncle as archbishop of Alexandria and used his power and wealth to champion his cause – the defence of the doctrines of the Church. At the Council of Ephesus in 431 in great Christological controversy against Nestorius, Cyril held that the relationship between the divine and human in Christ was so closely united that the Virgin was actually Theotokos (Mother of God). This controversy engaged Cyril until his death in 444. In 1882, he was declared a doctor of the Church.

The Eucharist is a participation in our covenant, a keeping of that covenant, a living out of that covenant as we are nourished by the Word of God and receive the very Body and Blood of Jesus.

Our covenant with God is a commitment to make the Word of God central to our lives and ministry, so we may more effectively act justly, love tenderly and walk humbly with our God, in the words of the prophet Micah. Inspired by God’s Word, we are to make present to the world the unconditional love of God we have experienced and invite all we meet into that covenantal relationship with our God.