HOMILY WEEK 12 04 – Year II
Covenantal Love
(2 Kg 22.8-13; 23:1-3; Ps119; Mt 7:15-20)
*****************************************
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 discovered the Book of the Law in the House of the Lord and took 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 were a people who had strayed away from the Word of God, from their covenant with the Lord. This anonymous King responded positively to the discovery of the book. He repented for his people by tearing his clothes and commanding that all the people also repent of their negligent ways. The king himself gathered up all the people and read the words of the book to them. Then he made 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 centred 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 mandalas that are supposed to have one flaw in them, because nothing in this world is perfect. Perhaps this psalm ties in with the poetry of Leonard Cohen, who sings there is a crack in everything, a crack that allows the light to come in.
Through all these covenants, however, the Israelites basically did not keep God’s Word nor honour 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.
Nursing tree
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 centred 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 Action in 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 the Lord; my branches bear much fruit.”
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.
