HOMILY WEEK 02 01 – Year II
Understanding Three Spiritual Themes:
Memorial of St. Anthony, Abbot
(1 Sam 15:16-23; Ps 50; Mk 2:18-22)
**********************************************
Three significant themes run through the readings today, inviting us to pay attention to them, learn from them and let them strengthen our faith in Jesus as the center of our lives. They are violence in the Old Testament, the importance of obedient listening, and the theme of the wedding banquet.
First let us visit that all too common theme of violence in the scriptures, which puts off many people today from faith in a God they reject because of that violence. This reading from Samuel is just one more example – as he chastises King Saul for not “utterly destroying the Amalekites until they are consumed” (and this is an unusually mild expression of the violence!). How can we explain this?
Many scholars and spiritual writers claim all these expressions of violence are metaphorical and not to be taken literally. They are God’s way of trying to communicate to a very warlike, hard-hearted people of that time a very crucial lesson, hinging on the first commandment not to have any other false gods in our lives. In other words, they are to destroy completely all vestiges of those false gods, crucify them, eliminate them from their lives.
From a psychological perspective, those who understand this best are alcoholics who know they cannot have an ounce of alcohol in their system or they might be dead. From a spiritual perspective, we cannot drag into heaven anything that does not belong there – we have to be rid of all anger, resentment, bitterness, unfinished business (which is what purgatory is all about – the pain of entering heaven and a letting go of the things of the earth). So, God is telling God’s people they are to be icons of God on earth, drawing all the nations back to God, and they can’t so that unless they put the ban on everything sinful in their lives. Today, I like to describe these false gods that confront and tempt us every day as an over-attachment to four P’s – possession, prestige, power and pleasure.
St. John in his old age puts it more mildly as he writes, “Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s seed abides in them; they cannot sin, because they have been born of God” (1 John 3:9). Metaphorically, a modern version would be the disclaimer in a movie like War Horse (“No horses were injured or died in the making of this movie”). Thus, all this Old Testament violence is to be understood as symbolic of living a new life of faith in God, free from all sin.
Turning to the theme of a wedding feast, Bishop Robert Barron asserts it is found throughout the Old Testament as a motif to express God’s covenant with his people. We’ve fallen apart in sin. We’ve gone into exile. And what does God want? He wants to call us back to a great wedding banquet.
Throughout the ministry of Jesus, you find that same motif: he will gather the scattered tribes – yes, the elite, but also the sinners and the outcasts. All are welcome around the table of the Lord, establishing this wedding banquet and unity that God wants with God’s people.
Jesus presents himself as the coming together of heaven and earth. He’s the coming together of divinity and humanity in his own person. He is this wedding banquet. “Why do the disciples of John and the disciples of the Pharisees fast, but your disciples do not fast?” Because, with his presence, this great banquet is already going on!
Henri Nouwen assists us with the third theme, arising from Samuel’s claim that “obeying the voice of the Lord is better than sacrifice and the fat of rams.” Most of us distrust God, he claims. Most of us think of God as a fearful, punitive authority or as an empty, powerless nothing. Jesus’ core message was that God is neither a powerless weakling nor a powerful boss, but a lover, whose only desire is to give us what our hearts most desire.
To pray is to listen to that voice of love. That is what obedience is all about. The word obedience comes from the Latin word ob-audire, which means “to listen with great attentiveness.” Without listening, we become “deaf” to the voice of love. The Latin word for deaf is surdus. To be completely deaf is to be absurdus, yes, absurd. When we no longer pray, no longer listen to the voice of love that speaks to us in the moment, our lives become absurd lives in which we are thrown back and forth between the past and the future.
If we could just be, for a few minutes each day, fully where we are, we would indeed discover that we are not alone and that the One who is with us wants only one thing: to give us love, which takes us back to the theme of the wedding banquet, and fittingly so, because in the end, all that matters is that we are loved, and can love.
Today the church honors St Anthony, who had a profound influence on the history of monasticism. Much of what we know about Anthony comes from a biography of him written by his close friend St. Antanasius. Anthony was born into a wealthy Christian family in Upper Egypt about 251. Both his parents died while he was a teenager; Anthony gave away his inheritance and became a hermit. After years of solitude, he emerged to gather the ascetics who had followed him into a community. This was the beginning of Christian monasticism, with Anthony’s understanding of monastic life taking root elsewhere. In 311, Anthony went Alexandria to encourage the Christians who were being persecuted. In 355, he returned to Alexandria to help his close friend Bishop Antanasius in the struggle against Arianism. Anthony died on January 17, 356, well known for his holiness, wisdom and asceticism.
The Eucharist is a pre-view, a privileged moment, an intimate sharing here and now in, and a foretaste of that wedding banquet that awaits us in the fullness of eternal life. May our celebration today empower us to let go of any sin and darkness in our lives, and to listen more attentively to the voice of God in contemplative prayer as we wait for that time when God gather’s all God’s people at the one banquet table forever.
