Homily for 33^rd Sunday in Ordinary Time 2009

Is it possible to believe in God today? If you take seriously the kind of things that are said every day about the absurdity of belief in God, let alone belonging to the Catholic Church, you would not believe in God. In all kinds of very subtle ways our society leaves any thought of God out of the picture. For example, every day we hear of some food or something in the environment which we may be told can have an effect on our health. It may well be true. But that is all we hear. The findings of science are the new religion for many. But as we well know science does not claim to have all the answers only that its search for the answers is the only way to true knowledge. The constant stressing of this has had the result that anything that looks at the world differently is regarded as absurd by many. Even though books like the Da Vinci Code and many others are fiction they all help to implant the idea that belief is just superstition and the Church is the root of all evil.

Again, every day we are told how religion has not brought peace to the world but rather violence. This can have some truth to it as history shows. But such accounts of history rarely look to the reality of the lives of Christian people who make an incredible difference to the world. Nor are they aware of the countless communities of faith which quietly live the Gospel against all odds. Such people are like doves amongst wolves. They are often unable to express what their faith means to them or defend how they live.

In addition, every day we also hear the travesty of the Gospel that is Christian or Catholic or Islamic fundamentalism. We have little to match their media savvy. They attract a lot of attention. They are also the intolerant who give the Gospel a bad name.

With all that going on how could you take what the Church might say seriously? Many young people have thought just that. They have walked away. But it is not just the young whose peers hold great sway. It is also our adult peers who have chosen a different Gospel to live by that influence our thinking and behaviour.

We also have to remember, as many do not, that the questions and objections that are put to believers today are the largely the same as have been put to Christians for the last 2000 years. The people who responded to those challenges in the past are the very ones who laid the foundation of Western civilization we have inherited. When we take all this in, the language of the scripture today makes sense. Its symbol and hyperbole may escape us but its intent is clear.

The language and symbol used in the Gospel and in the Reading from Daniel, called 'apocalyptic', gained prominence in the couple of centuries before and after Jesus' time. The prophet Daniel was writing at the time the Jews and their religion and culture were being overwhelmed by that of the Greeks after Alexander the Great swept through the Middle East. Their Temple in Jerusalem was desecrated and occasioned a major Jewish uprising. The Jewish world was under threat. (By the way, this reading today from Daniel contains the only unambiguous reference in the Old Testament to belief in the resurrection of the dead.) The prophesy and its language is offering hope to the people in the face of impending danger. It concludes with these beautiful words: “Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars forever and ever” (Daniel 12:3).

So, too, chapter 13 of Mark's Gospel, like the book of the Apocalypse as a whole, also is addressing a time of crisis and offering hope in apocalyptic language. Jesus sits on the Mount of Olives overlooking the Temple gate into which the Jews expected the Messiah to enter when he came. Jesus himself has prophesied the end of the great Temple and its worship as we have been hearing over the past couple of weeks. He himself would be handed over to be crucified. There would ensue a time of persecution of his followers. Their whole world was being overwhelmed by events. How could they survive? How could they continue to believe in God?

We live in a similar time of crisis. The world as we knew it seems to be passing away. How do we continue to believe in God?

The truth is that in time everything will be taken away from us. We all die. We all lose those we love. We all have to let go of everything we hold dear in this life. So whatever ridicule or persecution or disillusionment we might endure as people of faith those very events purify us in preparation for that inevitable loss. So even as God seems to take away from us our whole world which we love so much, our faith assures us that just as lovingly God will give life to us eternally.

Fr Graham.