Fr Dominic Robinson SJ: 'Where in my life do I see Gospel values in stark confrontation with those of the world?'

Welcome to Farm Street today. If you're here for the first time we hope you experience us as a place of welcome and hospitality to all. We try to be that at least - a place of Christian welcome in the centre of London, where we can meet God, meet each other and foster service especially to the weakest in our city, to those on the margins, and to the homeless and refugees in particular.

Service of the weakest in society is what Christianity is all about. It's what Christ taught us to do through his life of service. It's what Christ taught us in fact also by who he was himself: the Son of God yet becoming the weakest himself, sacrificing himself on the cross in total service of others. A life which sets the bar high for the Christian disciple, always challenges our complacency and, if you're anything like me, makes me question if I'm really living out Christianity at all.

In this Sunday's Gospel Jesus begins to outline just how radical Christianity is. The so-called 'Beatitudes' - a series of statements starting with the word 'blessed' representing who it is who will inhabit the Kingdom of God and are to be called truly blessed. The translation of the Greek we read is 'happy' but 'blessed' is more accurate in fact. It's actually something deeper being expressed, something representing the essence of the call of God, of the holiness of those who inherit God's Kingdom exemplified by humility, purity, and the sacrifice which lives out a life in the service of others.

And this living out of the call of the disciple is the hallmark of the Kingdom. And it will sometimes find itself in total opposition to the ways of the earthly kingdom, of the world. The Beatitudes drive the Christian to realize what being a Christian is really about - and in doing so we cannot but conclude it's never been anything but tough to be truly Christian. And one may well think it's never been harder than right now because the values of the Kingdom demand us to make a stand against a world view which is sheer contrary to the Gospel. As Christians we are called to see in the poor and the weak the very presence of Christ, to see the person of Christ himself in those especially who are as Christ was - without a home, treated with disdain as a stranger in his own land, treated indeed in the way sadly our world is more and more treating those who need our solidarity, our help, our Christian compassion.

Indeed what we are seeing right now in the pernicious policy of the new administration in our friends in the United States. A sad day for humanity when the very real tragedy of the persecution of Christians in the Middle East - a very real tragedy indeed which requires us to do all we can to help Christians to stay in their historic homelands in the Middle East and allow those who apply to leave to be given hospitality in the west - when this very real tragedy of Christian persecution by a minority of Muslims who have nothing directly to do with the Islamic faith and religion - is used perniciously.

Because the appeal to the prioritization of Christianity here is paradoxically not to defend Gospel values but being used to promote a policy wholly contrary to the Gospel values of Christ's Kingdom. A policy which is forcing good people fleeing terror to go back to face terror, which punishes people simply because they are born into and ascribe to the Islamic religion, which breeds isolationism, hostility, xenophobia. As Christians who ascribe to the values of the Kingdom laid out here we really do need to be careful. We are invited to hear what we are really about if we are to say we as British people are a Christian country, ascribing to Christian values. Christian values of Christ's Kingdom: service of the weakest. Because in the weakest we meet Christ himself. And we learn to embrace Kingdom values: welcome, hospitality, reconciliation, dialogue, true religious freedom.

Where in my life do I see these Gospel values in stark confrontation with those of the world? Where is Jesus in my own world? Do I compromise my Christian and Catholic faith to keep others happy or to win approval? I know I do every day. Pray God we do not fall into the trap of complacency, of keeping the status quo of the changing political climate, of acquiescing with what appears to defend and protect our religious freedom as Christians when it is in fact sheer contrary to the Gospel values of the Kingdom, sheer contrary to Christ's vision for humanity, of the common good, of common humanity.

It's not easy to be a Christian. Still harder to call ourselves a Christian country. To live the Kingdom is to turn the language of our human identity in the world on its head: to recognize first our duties, not our rights, which should be regarded as primary in human society. Indeed the more we place it the other way round - our rights on the terms of our own understanding of what we need to be 'happy', before our Christian duties to those on the margins, the more we place economic and political considerations before Gospel values, and so sink into that progressive secularism which pushes what religion is really about onto the margins of society.

So we make ourselves, our own isolated contentment, so-called freedom to practice our Christian faith, the God, rather than finding our true freedom, our true happiness, the true meaning of Christianity in the vocation to duty which meets Christ in the stranger, in the other, in welcome, respect, compassion, mercy.