Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Mass Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne,
on Sunday, 5th September, 2004, at 11.00am

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“When Jesus calls a man, he bids that man, ‘come and die’.”

Jesus invites us today to consider how ready we are to give ourselves completely to following him and to being for others as he was.

Today, too, we celebrate Marriage and Family Sunday, when we are united with married couples thanking God for twenty-five, fifty or any number of years of faithful married life, which has been a discipleship to the Lord, a gift to each other and the readiness to be spent for the young people whom they nurture, educate and prepare for life.

We remember married couples, especially as we consider the challenge that the Lord gives us in discipleship. Let us call to mind our sins.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

The prayer of today’s Mass describes us as God’s children in Christ with true freedom, brought to a promised inheritance. The Readings stress that God’s purposes reach far wider than all that we think and are and we can know him in every age as our refuge. Saint Luke quotes Jesus, giving a remarkable challenge of the absolute priority of following Christ, even above father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters.

The challenging words at the end of the Gospel, “None of you can be my disciple unless he gives up all his possessions”, (Luke 14:33) invite us to see all that we are and do as an emptying of self in order to enrich and serve others.

You and I are brothers and sisters, disciples of Jesus Christ, chosen to be God’s people in the Church with unique distinctive roles by which we contribute to the building up of church, family and society.

The married love of husband and wife is described as the domestic church and the foundation of the given and received love by which our Saviour gives life, nourishes the young, prepares them for life, while all the time being involved in a giving and receiving to each others as spouses. It is fitting, then, that we join married couples as disciples of Christ in thanking God for his many blessings and the sustaining care given and received over so many years.

The words of the American poet, T.S. Eliot, might well be applied to being a disciple of Christ: “A condition of complete simplicity, costing not less than everything.” This is the giving to Jesus Christ.

In the first Reading we are advised to trust ourselves to the wisdom of Christ and both Saint Paul and Saint Luke challenge us:-

1. To love Jesus best and first, and act in accordance with that love.
2. Being willing to imitate Jesus so completely as to embrace the daily Crosses that are inherent in our life.
3. Decisiveness in being ready to persevere.

Other writers say that we have to become first human, then Christian, then a disciple. Jesus’ own invitation to love as he has loved us is likewise a challenge to show behaviour that reflects that being and belonging.

Many times I have mentioned the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Lutheran theologian and martyr, who reflected on his own careerism of wanting to be in a soft Christianity within a comfortable Church. However, for him, as it is for us, something kept gnawing at him. What was he to do about the impossible demands of discipleship? He accepted without regret to live as a human, a Christian and a disciple, even though it cost him everything and he wrote to his agnostic brother, “There are things for which an uncompromising stand is worthwhile and it seems to me that peace and social justice and Christ himself are such things.” That stance for Christ cost Bonhoeffer no less than everything because he died by hanging at the Flossberg concentration camp in April 1945.

We might ask ourselves in marriage; what has our stand for Christ cost us? Christ is the total giver. We in imitation of him are givers for others. Everything we have is received. Everything we have comes from the Lord as our refuge and leads us to be challenged and fulfilled in the future.

As we thank God for the gift of marriage and its inherent invitation to giving, whether we are married, single, lay or priest, it is our giving and bearing one another’s burdens and our readiness to place the call of Christ first, to be a disciple, to follow him who gave his all, which challenges and encourages us.

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.