HOMILY WEEKDAY 03 04 – Year I
A Provocative New Way
Memorial: St. Thomas Aquinas
(Heb 10:19-25; Ps 24; Mk 4:21-25)
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Are you considered a provocative person? Today’s readings invite us to be provocative – to provoke one another to humble honesty, love and good works as part of a new and living way.
This new and living way hinges on a great shift that happened with King David. The Mosaic covenant was based on the Law – reward and punishment, quid pro quo. It could and did easily become harsh, judgmental and corrupt.
With King David, however, God promised to be with him no matter what he did. It was a new covenant based on unconditional love. And David did mess up – lust, adultery and even murder. However, he repented, experienced that unconditional love of God as pure forgiveness, and became the only true King that Israel ever had. That is why Jesus is never referred to as Son of Moses or Elijah, but often Son of David. He would be the New Covenant, the new King David.
The reading from Hebrews tries to explain this great mystery. Through the death of Jesus on the cross (his blood), we enter the sanctuary where God dwells (the holy of holies). That is why the veil of the temple was torn from top to bottom when Jesus died. There is now no separation between God and humanity. The unconditional love of Jesus on the cross allows us to see into the very heart of God – mercy, humility, forgiveness, compassion, total non-violence and unconditional love.
That reading also alludes to the two-fold mission of Jesus as Son of God and Messiah – to redeem and to sanctify. We come to him redeemed (washed with the water of forgiveness) and sanctified (healed by the sprinkling of the Holy Spirit). In short, we have been given a new and living way, a covenant of unconditional love.
Our response is to provoke, arouse, excite each other to love and good works as part of this new and living way. In the Gospel we also hear that those who have much will be given more, and those who have nothing will have that taken away. That paradoxical statement is understood within the context of love: those who love and forgive, will experience greater joy; those who refuse to love and to forgive, will lose what little joy they may have.
The Gospel also provokes us to be humble, honest and transparent, as all things will come to light. Humble honesty and transparency as part of this new and living way is a wonderful virtue. Cardinal Bernadine of Chicago, when he was unjustly accused of sexual misconduct, defended himself simply by saying that his life was an open book. One young pastor received a card from a young parishioner that stated in part, “May God’s love shine in the dark parts of your life.” The program of AA speaks of “rigorous honesty.”
One way that we need to be provoked is to appreciate more deeply the sacrament of reconciliation. As Richard Rohr puts it, “a lot of healing can happen in a very short time” because of the special ingredients involved – trust, acceptance, humble honesty, the direct imparting of absolution, and above all, the power of God’s grace.
Today the church honors St. Thomas Aquinas, who had one of the greatest minds in the history of the Church. From an early age he posed questions of such great theological depth that his family sent him at the age of five to be educated by the Benedictines in Monte Cassino. At age 19 he joined the newly formed Dominicans, where ironically, some of his classmates named this great thinker “the dumb ox,” a name which prompted his teacher, Albert the Great, to proclaim: “We call him the dumb ox, but in his teaching he will one day produce such a bellowing that it will be heard throughout the world.”
With Albert, he developed the theological Scholastic method which dominated Catholic teaching for centuries. A prodigious writer, his most famous work is the Summa Theologica, one of the greatest examples of theological thought ever composed. Many of his hymn texts, such as Pange lingua, Tantum ergo and Adore te devote, are still used today. A man of towering intellect, Thomas was also a humble mystic. He was canonized in 1323 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1567. In 1880, he was proclaimed a patron saint of universities and schools.
Thomas was able to plant a seed of truth-seeking that enable the works of the greatest philosopher of ancient times, the pagan Aristotle, to become accepted in the Western Christian world, even though that work was coming mostly from Muslim sources. His simple principle was that truth does not contradict truth, so if the teachings of Aristotle rang true to Christian belief, then they must be true and acceptable.
The Eucharist is at the centre of this new and living way, this new covenant in the Body and Blood of Jesus. We experience forgiveness and healing, and are sent out to spread the Good News of this unconditional love of God.
May our celebration of this Eucharist provoke us to greater humble honesty, stronger faith, deeper hope, and love expressed in good deeds.
