Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbons - 10 October 2021

Twenty-eighth Sunday in Ordinary Time

How do you feel about those who preach to so called prosperity Gospel, the belief that if we pray hard, give to our Church, then the Lord will bless us abundantly with riches? it's really an umbrella term for a type of Evangelical preaching that we find mainly in the US, but thanks to religious media can also be found on TV channels over here. It equates Christian faith with material, and particularly financial, success.

This sits uneasily with the Gospel of this Sunday, particularly what Mark hands out to us, in a story where Jesus clearly states to the rich young man who asks him a question, that those who wish to find eternal life in the Kingdom cannot demand it or buy it , but have to find it by living out the Commandments. Moreover it will also involve hardship, for when the young man tells Jesus he observes all the commandments, this response floors him:

" Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him, "You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to [the] poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." ( Mk 10: 21)

He just can't make that step, too many things hold him back, and so turning outwards to us, Jesus says, as if to challenge anybody who makes big money not least out of religion; '"Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."'(Mk 10:24,25).

I'm sure those caught up in the idea of God's rewards to us in this life can find ways to turn this round, but I'm afraid I can't. There is simply too much at stake here to glibly try and shift Jesus' words to mean other than they actually do, unless of course it is to underscore what he means. The blunt fact is that Christ never promises us happiness for ever in this life, nor unalloyed prosperity, the world is not like that. Endemic poverty, natural catastrophe, disease, our capacity to do evil, make wrong decisions, all those elements that make up the fascinating clockwork of Earthly life mitigate against it.

This of course why we place such stress on Jesus' commandments to support and love one another, to have care for the 'little ones', to recognise in the poor and weak, both human and other living creatures, that spark of Divine Love in us all and react accordingly with loving kindness. In fact his admonition that the last will be first and first last is as unequivocal as it can get, for around that phrase hangs a whole spiritual tradition of teaching concerning the true humility that any of us who are able to interpret and teach the faith must have with others. It runs though Jesus' teaching, it is there in the great Christian classics, we must live with humble, contrite hearts, but this cannot happen on its own, for we need the prayer and help of the God who also has the attribute of Holy Wisdom.

As our first reading suggests we must learn to pray with Solomon's prayer, pleading that we too gain that divine spark of Wisdom;

'Beyond health and beauty I loved her,

And I chose to have her rather than the light, because her radiance never ceases".(Wis 7: !0: )

This is the prayer that gets answered because it is real, and instead of riches we gain that profound and rich insight, not immediately but bit by bit, for it will also involve the hardship of having to rethink, or change our points of view, in fact to listen and learn he voice of Christ in our lives. But we do not do this alone, giving up to follow Christ gains us a new family, sisters and brothers united across time, space, country in the Church. We cannot eradicate all problems, let alone poverty immediately, they like the poor will always be with us in some form, but as a community we provide what is badly needed; love and support! What we have is this : "…organised religion offers a social-support network which might help attenuate the effects of low status, whether or not its members really believe everything their holy texts say about wealth". Though that is the language of sociology and economics, it is blunt and timely reminder of what we, as followers of Christ, are tasked with. May we try to do our best.

Lectio

The mark of a soul that loves wisdom always gives thanks to God.

If you have suffered evil, give thanks and it is changed to good.

He/She has not sinned who suffered the evil but he/she who has done the evil.

Give thanks even in disease, lack of possessions, or false accusations.

It is not we who are injured but those who are the authors of them.

St John Chrysostom

"A simple prayer, is like a soft sighing, like a child's prayer, keeps us alert. Has not God revealed to those who are little, to Christ's poor, what the powerful of this world have so much trouble understanding?"

Brother Roger of Taize

'To humankind, oppressed by so many difficulties, the Church says, as Peter said to the poor who begged alms from him: "I have neither gold nor silver, but what I have I give you; in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise and walk" (Acts 3:6). In other words, the Church does not offer to the people of today riches that pass, nor does she promise them a merely earthly happiness. But she distributes to them the goods of divine grace which, raising them to the dignity of sons and daughters of God, are the most efficacious safeguards and aids toward a more human life. She opens the fountain of her life-giving doctrine which allows all, enlightened by the light of Christ, to understand well what they really are, what their lofty dignity and their purpose are, and, finally, through her children, she spreads everywhere the fullness of Christian charity, than which nothing is more effective in eradicating the seeds of discord, nothing more efficacious in promoting concord, just peace, and the brotherly and sisterly unity of all.

St Pope John XXIII

Extract from Pope John XXIII Address at beginning of the Second Vatican Council delivered in St Peter's Basilica on 11 October 1962, the first day of the Council.