A Standard / Measuring Tape
Before I entered the seminary I was a student of Civil Engineering at IT Sligo for three years. I still love anything to do with roads or bridges, railways, airports or airplanes. Indeed, my two brothers and I share a huge interest in cars, in buying and selling them, in servicing and maintaining them, and in polishing them up to look shiny and new.Like most disciplines today, there are standards in engineering and in design. The world of work, the world that many of us share, is a world of standards and meeting standards, of procedural guidelines, of reform of standards and renewal of practices.
And standards make for a high quality of life. They are an imposition, but standards mean that when you turn the key in the ignition, the car will start, when you flick the switch on the heat in your house, the boiler will kick in.
So, standards are important. And, in many ways, Church is one of the few places in our world where some would have us lower our standards and change our practices. The standard bearer has become tarnished.
A Sieve / Flour Sifter
I am my father's son, but I am my Mother's boy! What I mean is that, like my father, I love apple pie! And, guess what, my Mum is great at baking them!When we were children, my Mum taught us how to make all kinds of breads and doughs, and to make a really good apple pie you have to make a pastry dough. This is one that has fat, or butter incorporated into it to make it flaky, crumbly and really tasty! But, among the many tricks to making the perfect dough, a key step is to sift the flour. This isn't so much to get the lumps out of the flour, but rather to add air to it before trying to make a dough with it.
Today's Gospel
Last Sunday, we heard the gospel passage all about the healing of Bartimaeus. This Sunday we take a jump, from the middle of chapter 10 of Mark's gospel all the way to the middle of chapter 12. We jump over stories like the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem that we hear on Palm Sunday. We also skip over the section where Jesus throws the money changers out of the temple. And, the story of the widow's mite. In short, then, the stories that we skip over are important to understand the gospel for this Sunday. The story of the money-changers is about a purification of the temple from the business side of religion. Jesus throws them out of the temple because the temple is supposed to be a pure place, not a place of profit. And the widow's mite is something to do with us offering everything that we have to live on to God, or perhaps to give ourselves completely to God.Shema
So, then we land at the gospel for this Sunday. And here, we find Jesus quoting the words from the book of Deuteronomy that we heard in our first reading. “Listen, Israel: the Lord our God is the one Lord. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength. Let these words I urge on you today be written on your heart.” (Deut 6:4-6) The passage continues: “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.” This passage from the book of Deuteronomy is arguably the most important passage in the whole Jewish Bible, for the Jewish people. It is known simply as the 'Shema' from the first two words: 'Hear O Israel...', in Hebrew 'Shema Yisrael...'.To the Shema, Jesus adds in the gospel: “The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.”
Here then, for the Christian is the fulfilment of the Law & the Prophets, promised by the Christ. It is the binding together of our religious life with our non-religious life. Our love of God is to be matched by our love of our neighbour, which is to be bound up with how we love ourselves. Let me repeat that for you, because it is super-important: Our love of God is to be matched by our love of our neighbour, which is to be bound up with how we love ourselves.
Practical Implications of the Gospel
Is the gospel a standard or a sieve?Very often in our religious lives we might wonder where we should begin. Indeed, when we are telling a story, we very often say: where will I begin? The first practical implication of the gospel is that we must love ourselves. Or, to put it more basically, I must love me, and you must love you. If I do not love myself adequately – and I don't mean vanity, or being self-centred – if I do not love myself adequately then how can I love my neighbour? And how can I love God? Or, more to the point – grace, which is the love God has for us, which he makes known to us through the death of his Son Jesus – this grace comes to life in us when we begin to love ourselves, which is to admit that I am loveable, that you are loveable. Out of this place of true love of self, I am truly able to share with other people, with my neighbour, the love that God has for them, which evidently leads me, them and us to God.
A Sidenote
A couple of weeks ago, I met Fr Muredach Tuffy in the refectory in Maynooth. He looked well. I was impressed with how well he looked. I remembered him as being well groomed, a capable young priest. And so, like all of you I am sure, I was genuinely saddened to hear of his sudden and tragic death. That he died by suicide makes it all the worse, because it tells me that in some way Muredach did not know how much he is loved. I dearly hope that he knows now the love and mercy that God has for him. As we wonder at his death, perhaps this Sunday's gospel sheds a little light for us. We have to learn, carefully, painfully at times, struggling at other times; we have to learn to love ourselves. We have to learn to seek the help and assistance that we need from each other to begin to love ourselves, and it is only then that we can possibly minister to our neighbour.A Final Note
For me, the gospel is a sieve, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't have standards.I was telling you at the beginning of this homily all about my Mum teaching us how to make dough, and how I love apple pies! I was telling you about sieving, sifting and aerating the flour to make the dough. This Sunday's gospel, what we might call the 'Golden Rule', what the Jewish people call the 'Shema'; this golden rule is like a sieve through which we can sift the bits and pieces of our life, which is to give air, the breath of the Holy Spirit, the grace of God which is love, to allow God's love to sift through our lives, bringing healing and peace, hope and joy. In this way we can hope to offer ourselves as bread to be broken, wine to be poured out in joy.
The Shema of a Christian
Jesus said:“This is the first: Listen, Israel, the Lord our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: You must love your neighbour as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:29-31)
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