I wonder if any of you have had the same experience as me, meeting someone we used to see regularly at Mass who hasn’t come back to Mass since the Lockdown? You can hear and see me giving this Homily on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQMiJfEzPKo
They usually say something like “Oh, after a bit during the Lockdown, I realised I wasn’t missing it, so I didn’t see any point in it anymore.” I wonder what you say to such people? I usually tell them that even if they are not missing us, we are missing them. But I’m tempted to be much harder on them than that, and say “Actually you’ve completely missed the point. We don’t go to Mass to get something out of it, we go to Mass to offer ourselves to Almighty God.”
Our Gospel today is actually all about this. (Luke 14:1.7-14) because, like so many of the sayings and stories of Jesus, it isn’t just about ordinary life – being humble rather than pushy – it ‘ also about our relationship with God. You see the Wedding Feast Jesus is referring to is actually a standard image of Heaven, so what Jesus is telling us (just like he did in last week’s Gospel about the first being last etc) is that with God the more we push ourselves forward, the more prayers we pride ourselves on saying, and the more good things we pride ourselves on doing, the further back in the queue we will be. It’s a bit like that incident in Alice in Wonderland. Do you remember it? It’s where Alice is trying to get somewhere and the more she tries the further aways she seems to be, until the Cheshire Cat tells her to go in completely the opposite direction to where she wants to go, and almost immediately she finds she’s got there.
The danger we religious people face is that most of us actually enjoy going to Mass. We have various reasons for this. I like singing along with other people, which is why even if I am saying Mass where there is no organ or music group to lead us, I will lead people in singing unaccompanied. Others go because they like a place to pray, to light a candle, and be with other people praying. Others go simply because it is good to be with other good kind people. Now none of these are bad reasons for going to Mass, but they all miss the point. If our life changes, as it did during the Lockdown, or if things are different at our Church, maybe with a new priest, and it doesn’t feel the same, or if we move to another area and the Church is different and strange, then we may well stop going. And what is wrong? Well, it’s what I said earlier, we have forgotten that our principal reason for being at Mass is simply to offer ourselves in love and service to Almighty God and to our fellow Christians…and here’s the crunch… to offer ourselves without expecting any reward.
This problem is also highlighted in our 2nd Reading. (Hebrews 12:5-7.11-13) The writer is trying to help Christians in Rome who are having a hard time, and after giving them a pep talk to stop being wimps, (which we heard last Sunday) he then tells them to remember who it is they are meeting when they pray together, at what we now call Mass. The point is that however hard the priest tries to make the Mass a good spiritual experience by the way he says the prayers etc; unless people realise in whose presence they stand then all the priest does will make little or no difference to what they experience. The writer of our Reading evokes the story of Elijah. Remember the story? Elijah is told he is going to meet Almighty God face to face, and so he expects something stupendous. An earthquake? A great fire? A mighty rushing wind? And he gets none of these. Instead, eventually God becomes present to him as a “Still small voice.” In our Reading, the writer uses some slightly different images to make the same point, of how we stupid humans expect a meeting with God to be like ; so as well as “a blazing fire”, there’s “A gloom turning to total darkness”, there’s “Trumpeting thunder” and there’s “A great voice.” – very different from the still small voice that Elijah hears.
In our modern world, where all sorts of amazing and dramatic things can be presented to our senses, mostly on a TV or a Computer Screen; where we can get all sorts of thrills to get our juices running and our adrenalin level sky high just by turning on a switch, there is no way prayer, even prayer in a beautiful Church with a brilliant choir at a Mass, or prayer alone using some kind of meditative technique, can really compete. All too easily we seek something that we can really sense and feel. Our Reading reminds us that we are looking for the wrong thing, for when we pray with others at Mass, or pray alone, then something very different is happening. How does he put it? “What you have come to is nothing known to the senses.” This means that each of us has to listen for the still small voice of God, and take that voice with us to Mass. For each of us, how we find that still small voice will vary. Some will find it in traditional ways, like saying the Rosary, or spending time in silent Meditation; but others may find it in other ways – in a garden, on a sports field, or watching real events on TV, rather than made up thrillers, where people actually save others, as in the Programmes about Lifeboat Rescues. I was moved the other day watching the programme called “Ambulance.” This youngish man (well young to me) was shown doing a marvellous job caring for people, and then he told us how he got into the job. His young wife died lying in bed beside him, and after he had recovered a from his immediate grief, he was moved to join the Ambulance Service; and he said he hoped that Charlotte (her name) was looking down with love and approval as he saved other people’s lives, even if he couldn’t save hers. As I listened to him, there was a still small voice speaking through him to me. “Here I am. Here you meet God.”
So although I am very happy if someone says “Thank you for the Mass, or thank you for the Homily, Father.”, what matters so much more is that each person at Mass brings with them to that Mass their own personal experience of God. For when the Church is filled with real praying people who, rather than seeking something for themselves, are simply offering themselves in love to God and to one another.
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