HOMILY WEEK 12 03 – Year I
Fruitfully Participating in an Intimate Covenant:
Memorial of St. Irenaeus
(Gen 15:1-18; Ps 105; Mt 7:15-20)
****************************************************
Have you ever found yourself yearning for intimacy?
God yearns for an intimate covenant relationship with us that is best fostered through contemplative prayer and expressed by acts of love.
We are a covenant people, called to live in an intimate relationship with our loving God who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit – a divine dance or perichoresis of love. That is the image of God the artist André Rublev portrays in his painting of the hospitality of Abraham, or the Trinity. The three figures in that painting representing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, are caught up in a delicate warm exchange of love and silently extend an invitation to us to be the fourth person of that Trinitarian scene of intimate, gentle love. The small square on the front of the table near the bottom may have been a mirror, in which we would see ourselves as part of that divine dance.
Scott Hahn, a convert to Catholicism, is a great proponent of this covenant relationship with God. He points out that from the beginning, God has always wanted this intimate covenant relationship with God’s people. In a divine progression, the first covenant was with Adam and Eve, a couple. Then came the rainbow covenant with Noah, a family. Today’s reading describes the sacrificial covenant with Abraham and his tribe, called to set out into the unknown. The biblical covenant at Mt. Sinai with Moses was with a nation, a people set apart. Then came the covenant with David, which was the first covenant of unconditional love, setting David apart as the only true king that Israel ever had.
The final covenant of course, is with Jesus, centred on his Body and Blood, a covenant intended for all of humanity. What could be more intimate and loving than a little baby born among us as Immanuel, and growing up in a humble family setting at Nazareth? What could be humbler and loving than the Messiah living among God’s people, poor and itinerant, teaching and healing? And what could be more loving than Jesus as Saviour giving his life for us on the Cross to reveal to us the depth of God’s covenant love for all people?
The invitation is sent out to us to respond to this invitation and deepen our intimate relationship with this loving God. One of the best ways to do that would be the practice of contemplative prayer. Rhonda shared with me how her mentally challenged daughter would be obviously unhappy if she stayed away from home too long to her liking, which was a danger with Rhonda’s work and church activities. It struck both of us how her daughter is actually a God-given barometer to help her measure the quality and amount of family time. Just Rhonda’s presence in the home is enough to reassure her daughter and keep her happy.
Could it be that is how God relates to us? That God delights in our presence before him in silent, contemplative prayer. We don’t have to do or say anything. Just knowing that we are present and God has our full attention, must be a source of delight for our loving God who hungers and thirsts for that intimate relationship with us.
Another way to develop a more intimate relationship with God is to keep a prayer journal in which we write out and share with Jesus our feelings stirred up by God’s word in the scriptures. Surely that is analogous to the intimacy that we would achieve with a trusted friend and soul mate with whom we can share our most intimate thoughts and feelings.
Fr. Robert was a participant in a renewal program for priests and religious. During a Progoff workshop, he heard another participant, a religious sister, expressing a yearning for intimacy, shortly after he himself had shared much the same thing. They met after that session to explore their common yearning, an encounter that led to a lifelong, intimate friendship they now call “a sacramental friendship in the Lord” in which they find themselves soul mates for each other. It is a unique, life-giving relationship of complete trust and commitment that has brought personal healing and vitality to both.
The fact that God yearns for a similar, intimate covenant relationship with God’s people makes even more sense to them now. Spirituality is all about relationship, a connectedness that gives deeper meaning and more profound purpose to life, as well as a wonderful sense of belonging and wellbeing. That is meant to happen with Jesus as much as it is meant to be our experience with our closest friends or spouses.
In the gospel, Jesus reminds us that a true intimate covenant relationship with him will express itself in “bearing good fruit”, in loving as he has loved us, freely giving his life for the world, and even forgiving those who were crucifying him. Secure in God’s love for us, we can bear fruit by letting go of any people-pleasing tendencies and any efforts to earn God’s love or the love of others.
Today, the Church invites us to honour St. Irenaeus, someone who lived this gospel as an early disciple of Jesus. He was born in Asia Minor, probably between 130 and 135, and went to Lyons as a missionary priest sometime before 177. By 199 he was bishop of Lyons. Through his writings, we know he was a disciple of St. Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John the Evangelist; thus, Irenaeus was in the direct line of the disciples. His writings refuting heresies helped lay the foundations of Christian theology and give us a window on the early Church. He fought against the Gnostics (elitism and matter is bad) and Valentinians (secret tradition). Perhaps his most important contribution was his assertion that creation is not sinful by nature, but rather distorted by sin. Irenaeus started the tradition of biblical scholarship and played a decisive role in fixing the canon of the New Testament by going through all the books extent and giving reasons for or against its canonicity.
The Eucharist is especially focused on the blood of a new and eternal covenant that is poured out for us and for many. To celebrate the Eucharist is to enter into an intimate meal with our Lord that we are to foster through intimate contemplative prayer as well as deep friendships with one another. It is also to commit ourselves to bearing fruit by loving others as Jesus loved us, to the point of praying for and forgiving those who might even kill us.
