We Have Come to the City of the Living God (22.C)

When I got back from two peaceful weeks at Mount Angel Abbey, I was delighted to find new lighting in the church, with energy-efficient, long-lasting bulbs. It’s a project we started before the pandemic, so it’s long overdue.

But this morning what we really need is a spotlight—like the ones that focus attention in a darkened theatre. Because our second reading deserves center stage and real concentration from every one of us in church this morning.

Before we look at it, let me read the passage to you again, in the old Jerusalem Bible translation. It’s less literal, but more poetic. And it was in the days when we heard the Jerusalem Bible at Mass that I first came to love this text.

Here it is: 

What you have come to is nothing known to the senses; not a blazing fire, or a gloom turning to total darkness, or a storm; or trumpeting thunder or the great voice speaking which made everyone that heard it beg that no more should be said to them. 

But what you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem where the millions of angels have gathered for the festival, with the whole Church in which everyone is a ‘first-born son’ and a citizen of heaven. You have come to God himself, the supreme Judge, and been placed with the spirits of saints who have been made perfect; and to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant.

The first paragraph of this abbreviated reading just sets the stage; no spotlight needed. It tells us that the letter is talking about what happened on Mount Sinai when the Lord gave the Ten Commandments to Moses amidst fire and cloud and thunder. The old covenant was accompanied by shock and awe as God showed his power and might. It was terrifying.

With that backdrop, the letter shifts the scene to the present, to the life of those reading and hearing its words.

Your experience, it says, is something quite different. What you have come to is Mount Zion and the city of the living God. You are not quaking at Mount Sinai out in desert. No, you stand without fear at Mount Zion, the holy hill at Jerusalem.

The change from one mountain to the other overflows with meaning. Mount Zion is a synonym for Jerusalem, while Jerusalem points to heaven, as the text reminds us.

When the author takes us from past to present, it seems as if he also shifts to the future. He writes as if we are in heaven already, united with the angels and saints. Isn’t that a ways off?

Not for the Christian. Five chapters earlier, Hebrews says that in baptism we have “been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come.” (6:4-5)

The “them” in the first part of the reading is the Chosen People, but the “you” in the second part is not just the readers of the letter. You is us—here at Mass this morning. We are the ones gathered as an assembly of the firstborn enrolled in heaven.

The Jerusalem Bible translation takes this a step further: we are “gathered for the festival, with the whole Church.” Scholars tell us that those who first heard the letter would have understood “assembly” as church.

And so should we.

Coming to church can become routine, but these magnificent words remind us what’s really happening, in all its wonder and excitement, and what’s going to happen, more wonderful still.

We are gathered as women and men whose baptismal birthright is the heavenly Jerusalem. As St. Paul says to the Philippians, “our citizenship is in heaven.”

We are “enrolled” in heaven—we have a place reserved for us there. Jesus says to the disciples in Luke’s Gospel “rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” (10:20)

But we do not only approach the city of God: we approach God, here and now.

The Revised Standard Version translation we hear at Mass uses a run-on sentence, but the Jerusalem translation puts it simply: “You have come to God himself.”

This is not a future verb. It’s happened. It happened in baptism and it’s happening now.

We have come to “the supreme Judge,” before whom we stood at the penitential rite at the beginning of Mass. We have “been placed with the spirits of saints,” whom we invoked during the “I confess” of the penitential rite, and on whom we call in each of the Eucharistic prayers.

And we have come “to Jesus, the mediator who brings a new covenant.” At every Mass, the priest consecrates the wine as “the Blood of the new and eternal covenant” poured out for the forgiveness of sins.

The late Albert Vanhoye, an eminent scholar on Hebrews, points out that the letter does not just say “new covenant. ” It uses a special Greek word meaning “brand new covenant,” which expresses the newness of a covenant that “has all the freshness of youth.”

“The covenant established by Jesus,” Cardinal Vanhoye writes. “is not only of a new kind; it is at the same time radiant with youth, bursting out like a spring of fresh water.” (The Letter to the Hebrews: A New Commentary, p. 214)

This is what we are here for this morning— to celebrate a “beauty ever ancient, ever new,” to use the words of St. Augustine, whose feast we celebrate today.

Which takes us to this very moment, here in church. As the pandemic fades, some of us are still adjusting to regular Sunday worship. So we might ask ourselves whether we are experiencing the Mass with the freshness and richness that the Letter to the Hebrews presents.

Do we recognize that angels and saints gather with us around the altar? Are we lifting up our hearts and minds to the heavenly Jerusalem, which St. Paul calls “our mother” (Gal. 4:26) and which tradition has understood as the Church of Christ?

We gather this morning at the intersection of past, present, and future. The promises of the past are fulfilled, the one sacrifice of Christ is made present, and future glory is anticipated and promised.

Let’s spend a few moments now shining a spotlight on our hearts, preparing to approach the Lord’s table this Sunday as people who are enrolled in heaven, joyfully claiming our birthright as brothers and sisters of Christ, “the firstborn of all creation.” (Col. 1:15)

The beautiful stained glass window at the top is from the Chapel of the New Jerusalem in the Anglican cathedral, Christ Church, in Victoria, BC.

The Assumption - From Mount Angel

My time at Mount Angel Abbey continues to be very rich. Abbot Jeremy Driscoll's homily took my understanding of the Assumption of Mary to an entirely new level. I wasn't sure whether it was a preached poem or a homiletic hymn! We were spellbound.

I don't have the Abbot's homily to share with you--I hope it will be available in due course on the Abbey's website--but last evening's reading from a 1953 book by the English Dominican Father Gerald Vann provides some real food for thought and prayer. It, too, has a poetic quality...

From The Water and the Fire (pp. 175‒176)

The gulf between matter and spirit, between material things and the praise of God, is widening at a pace and to an extent hitherto unknown: it would be very easy to despair of this civilization of ours, very easy to despair of the future of our race, very easy to feel that, so far from marching triumphantly forward to a golden age, we are rushing headlong into an abyss; very easy to feel that our world is doomed because all the physical and material side of life must continue to drag man down and degrade him till the heavens are closed to him. But it is just at this moment that the voice of the Church comes to us like a challenge: we are on the contrary to shout aloud our belief in the dignity and holiness of material things; we are to affirm our faith and our hope in the future of man’s flesh. The woman who stands in the heavens, the Mother of God, is also the mother of men, and her glory is the guarantee of theirs.

The doctrine of the Assumption is of supreme importance not only to Catholics but to all men and women because it means that there is still in the world, there will always be in the world, a voice to affirm and a power to defend the dignity and the ultimate glory of matter, of material things, of human flesh and blood, of the lovely mystery of human love, of the beauty which is the work of men's hands. There is a voice with affirms, there is a power which defends all the material things which make life worthwhile; and they bid us be of good heart because we can hope in the end to achieve our own lives, full, rich, deep, unified, free, not by escaping from the flesh and material things, but by the healing and sanctifying of the flesh and material things.

In the greatest of the Church’s definitions of doctrine concerning Our Lady, the doctrine that she is the Mother of God, it was her Son that the Church was defending. But she is also the mother of all men; and here, in the doctrine of her Assumption, it is all her sons that the Church is defending. Just as the figure of motherhood is at the very centre of the earthly history of every human soul, of the earthly history of the human race, so the figure of this Maiden-Mother is at the very center of the eternal history of individuals and of the race. If she is attacked, later on her Son will be attacked, and in the end her other children will be attacked. Men will begin by denying some part of the God-given greatness and glory; they will go on sooner or later to deny the divinity of her Son; and in the end there will be no defense for the greatness of humanity itself. The Church’s voice is a challenge because, while it tells us to hope because in Mary the flesh is sanctified and glorified, material things are sanctified and glorified, it also tells us to beware because the dragon, defeated, went elsewhere to make war on the rest of her children…. and he stood there waiting on the sea shore.

Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus: Hebrews 12 (20.C)

I am very happy to be at Mount Angel Abbey praying and resting after an exceptionally busy time. And Fr.  Philip Waibel’s powerful homily today on Pope Francis’ teaching on creating “a culture of encounter” is coming back with me to Christ the Redeemer!

But I am more than a little disappointed that my favourite chapter of one of my favourite books in the Bible is being read on the two Sundays I am away!

I really miss preaching on Hebrews 12. However, the remarkable Dr. Mary Healy has a summary of the chapter that is better (and shorter!) than any homily I could have preached. Here it is:

The litany of heroes of faith that comprises Hebrews 11 actually culminates not with an Old Testament figure but with Jesus, “the leader and perfecter of faith” (12: 2). He is the only perfect model to imitate, the only one who has persevered in total fidelity to God and attained the glorious reward. But Jesus is not merely our example; he is also the source of our faith and the one who brings it to completion (see Phil 1: 6). By gazing on him, instead of on the obstacles that stand in our way, we press on toward the goal with singleness of purpose. The ultimate lesson of the heroes of faith, then, is to “persevere . . . while keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus” (12: 1–2). 

In chapter 12 Hebrews presents three images that help us to see the Christian life in true perspective. 

First, our life is an endurance race in which we are striving toward the finish line, cheered on by those who have gone before us (12: 1–4). 

Second, it is growth toward maturity through the discipline of a loving Father (12: 5–13), which requires our free cooperation (12: 14–17). Our sufferings have great value for training us in holiness and thus are a reason not for discouragement but for confidence in God’s love for us. 

Third, our life is a joyous liturgical assembly on a holy mountain amid all the angels and saints (12: 18–24). The last image becomes the occasion for a final solemn warning, in which the author urges readers not to turn away from God and thus forfeit such a heavenly reward (12: 25–29).”

— Hebrews (Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture) by Mary Healy https://www.amazon.ca/Hebrews-Mary-Healy/dp/0801036038/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=Hebrews+Healy&qid=1660521593&sr=8-1

Welcoming a Friend at the End? (19.C)

 

Today’s Gospel, obviously enough, is about how we are judged when we die or at the Last Judgement—whichever comes first.

Most of us think that day is a long way off. But my perspective was sharpened when a distant memory of the Challenger disaster came randomly to mind. For some reason it sent me looking for television footage from that tragic day.

What I found was a clip on You Tube which began with the astronauts, including a 37 year old schoolteacher, Christa McAuliffe, happily having breakfast together. It ends, of course, with the catastrophic explosion one minute and thirteen seconds after the launch.

I have to tell you that was a pretty good way of preparing to reflect on the possibility of a sudden end. In fact, watching the event made me want to preach more seriously than usual on these words of Jesus.

I found some very sober thoughts from Blessed James (Giacomo) Alberione, that are more powerful than anything I could say. He was a twentieth-century Italian priest who founded at least five modern religious orders. The first two, the Daughters of St. Paul and the Pauline Fathers, are best known for promoting the faith through modern media, so he ought to be a very good communicator.

Here is what Father Alberione said:

In whatever place we die, there shall the judgment-seat be erected, and we shall face it alone, accompanied only by our deeds, good or bad. Christ has no need of witnesses, neither of the devil’s accusations nor of the saints’ defense of us.

He knows all things; He is the all-wise Judge. He sees our minds and the thoughts entertained there. He knows the whole story, in detail, from start to finish.

Christ knows every sentiment of our heart, from the lowest to the holiest. He knows these sentiments in all their particulars, in all their fine points, in all their intensity. Christ knows every word uttered, from the first moment of our use of reason down to the last time our lips formed a word.

Every word is written in the book of life—empty words, holy words, forgot­ten words.... Christ knows all our most sublime actions as well as the most common, and the worst. He knows every step we have taken, the studies we have pursued, our relationships and correspondence, our daily routine of home life....

Furthermore, the Lord knows how much should have been done... He knows the degree of health a per­son had, the degree of intelligence, keenness of mind, memory, and ability; the graces given in childhood, youth and adult­hood.... There is an eye that sees everything, everywhere, always. There is an ear that hears everything, everywhere and always.... They belong, so to speak, to God.

What tremendous consolation for good souls... Jesus will remember everything ^-those victories over our passions, those repressions of angry impulses, that diligence at work.... If the judgment were to take place now, could we say that we have, for the most part, been faithful to God? ... Judgment will come. For the sinner it will be a terrible encounter.... And what bliss will flood the faithful soul when he at last meets Jesus.... It will be the long awaited embrace of friend with Friend.

I found this quotation in one of my favourite books of homilies, S. Joseph Krempa’s Captured Fire (Cycle C, p. 121). Monsignor Krempa adds a comment that is a fitting conclusion:

We may or may not be here when the Lord appears in glory at the Second Coming. But we will all encounter the Lord when He surely comes to each of us when our earthly life is over. What will that moment be like? Will it be a moment of regret or fulfillment? Will we fear a Judge or welcome a Friend? That is up to us.