In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen
My dearly beloved in Our Lord,
Today we are invited to reflect on the true nature of being Christ’s disciples: Christians.
The Collect states the paramount condition of being a true Christian: „… te in omnibus et super omnia diligentes… - loving Thee in all things and above all things“.
In the Gospel, taken from the sermon on the mount, Our Lord teaches us to be truly just: „Except your justice abound more than that of the scribes and pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven“. It is not enough, he goes on to explain, not to kill. This fulfills the mere letter of the law, here of the 5th commandment. We must also mortify the passion of anger so as not to treat our neighbor unjustly. In this manner, St Augustine adds, we become more and more remote from any possibility of hurting or killing our neighbor, if we strive to mortify our anger more and more perfectly. For the love of our neighbor is the necessary complement of our true love of God, as Christ teaches us on the 12th Sunday after Pentecost (Lk 10:23-37).
St Peter, in today’s Epistle, explains further some of the qualities of true charity, and its consequences: “Be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, being lovers of the brotherhood, merciful, modest, humble: not rendering evil for evil… if also you suffer anything for justice’ sake, blessed are ye.”
The Postcommunion prayer resumes these thoughts beautifully, making us to implore God “that we be cleansed of our hidden sins and delivered from the snares of our enemies”.
Our Lord tells his disciples, according to St Matthew (16:24) and everyone, according to St Luke (9:23), that in order to follow him, abnegation is the very first condition: “abneget semetipsum – let him deny himself”. If we do not deny our own self, renounce our self-will in order to subdue it to Christ’s will, to God’s will, it is utterly impossible that we love God in all things and above all things; because then we still love our own self in a disorderly way, not for pure love of God. Our Lord says: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:26). This is in keeping with the commandment to love our neighbor if we consider what Our Lord means to say: Rather than let anyone, and be they our father, mother, wife, children, brother, sister or our own disorderly self, be an obstacle to our sanctification and salvation, we need to cut our ties with them. Our Lord expresses the same truth when he says regarding the concupiscence of the flesh and of the eyes, soon after the passage in today’s Gospel: “And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell.“ (Mt 5:29-30) Not even the integrity of our body must be more valuable to us than the good of our soul! Other interpreters say that it means that we must separate from whoever might be a scandal to us, even though, naturally speaking, they may be as dear to us as the eye, or some important limb of the body.
This applies most evidently to all those who practice the scandalous sin of cohabitation. You live with this partner because you say you “love” him? You are loving him or her in a bad manner, in a manner which expresses that you have little or no care for the true good of his soul, no more than your own! Never can such a union be to the likeness of the union that exists between Christ and the Church which is wholly made of love and respect, and is therefore “a great sacrament”, according to St Paul (Eph 5:32).
In the Breviary we read from the books of Kings (or Samuel) after Pentecost. This middle part of the history of the chosen people of the Old Covenant is full of examples teaching us how we should be attached to doing the will of God wholeheartedly, and not our own will, if we want to obtain God’s mercy and help.
First we see the last of the judges, the Prophet Samuel. As a young boy his parents dedicate him to the service of the Temple. There the high priest is the weak Heli who lets his two wicked sons do whatever they like, even disrupt the holy offerings and drive people away from serving God. Through the obedient Samuel God announces the punishment of this priestly family which promptly occurs. Both sons are killed in a battle in which even the Ark of the Covenant falls into the hands of the Philistines for a time.
When Samuel has grown old, the Israelites demand that he give them a king: “Make us a king, to judge us, as all nations have.” (1Sam 8:5) Samuel is very much displeased because God is the judge and the king of His chosen people. But God accedes to their demand: “And the Lord said to Samuel: Hearken to the voice of the people in all that they say to thee. For they have not rejected thee, but me, that I should not reign over them. According to all their works, they have done from the day that I brought them out of Egypt until this day: as they have forsaken me, and served strange gods, so do they also unto thee. Now therefore hearken to their voice: but yet testify to them, and foretell them the right of the king, that shall reign over them.” (ibid. v.7-9) The history of the kingdom – soon to be split in two parts under the fourth king – is a disaster, with some exceptions, and it ends with the deportation of the Hebrews into captivity.
The manner in which God chooses the first king, Saul, and later his successor, David, is very telling. The natural and the supernatural order, the ordinary and the miraculous are intertwined, as in all of God’s great deeds. Saul is soon rejected because of his stubborn self-will through which he acts against God’s explicit orders on several occasions. David will also commit several very serious sins, but he is treated better by God because he shows an humble and contrite heart, as many of the Psalms which he composed, attest. “For the eyes of the Lord are upon the just, and His ears unto their prayers; but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil”, as St Peter writes today. David is a great example of humility and repentance for those who exercise authority!
Let us therefore learn from the Church, and from Sacred history to serve God as we should. Unlike Our Lady, whom we celebrate today as Our Lady of Perpetual Succor, we are weakened by the effects of sin. If therefore we sin rather through weakness, and not so much through bad will, we should quickly and humbly invoke God’s help through her intercession, thus acting according to the first requirement of discipleship, namely denying our own self and pushing back against our rebellious and misguided self-will. Let us not hesitate to employ the prayer which Holy Church has formulated in the Secret prayer last Sunday: “In Your kindness make even our rebellious wills turn to You.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
P. Arnold Trauner (paterarnold@hotmail.com), njemački i engleski
