Sermons

Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time, June 19, 2016

It is good that we can celebrate together. That we are gathered here after the killings in Orlando, after the assassination of Jo Cox in Great Britain, the murder of two French police agents in Magnanville near Paris. People hate each other, for various reasons: political, racial reasons, because of the sexual orientation of a person, because of their cultural background. In the reading we just heard, St Paul describes the Christians, the friends of Jesus as totally different from these men and women filled with hatred (Gal 3,26-29). So I would like to concentrate on the letter to the Galatians. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" - liberty, equality, fraternity: this was the motto of the French Revolution in 1789. These terms depend upon each other. The concept of equality is the fruit of the period of En¬lighten-ment, but it has its roots also in the Bible. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul speaks about equality: “There are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but all of you are one in Christ Jesus“. Something new had come into being: the common faith and the life in one Christian community was meant to abolish hierarchical orders. Each and every one in this community is wished and created by God. All have the same dignity before God. We Christians are convinced that God is a friend of life and that God wants the happiness of all. All are invited to reach the fulfillment of our lives, to become what and who each and every one is meant to be. We are convinced that all human beings have been drawn nearer to God through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We say we are redeemed: we do not need to seek redemption ourselves, but redemption is offered to us. Paul says: “All of you are one in Christ Jesus.“ This is not something very spiritual, but something very concrete: we form the body of Christ here in our world, and we belong to this body by our baptism. We are linked to Christ, and we are also linked to each other. So within the Christian community we are equal. Does this mean that those who are not within the Church are less equal? What about Jews and the so-called pagans? It is absolutely clear that they also can reach the fulfillment of their lives. And what is true for us Christians is true also for them: they can reach the fulfillment of their lives not out of their own effort, but because God wants it, because God loves all human beings with the same love. And the measure for us all is to be found in Matthew: “What you did to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!” This is what Jesus says – independently if the action or the omission is put in a relation to Jesus. In history, the Christian teaching on equality abstained for too long from a political claim. It concentrated on individual admonitions for living together in small communities, in families. Equality before the law was achieved only after centuries of political struggle – often against the Churches. American and French constitutional law from the 18th century led to the formulation of the equality of men and women, and to the inadmissibility of discrimination because of one's sex, one's race, one's origin, one's language, one's faith, one's sexual orientation, one's political views etc. Now these social and political developments influence in their turn the way the Church and the faithful see themselves. The concept of equality is an example how biblical and Christian values migrate into the historical and social evolution. There they grow and mature – and there they are rediscovered one day as originally biblical and Christian. That the official Church is not immediately willing to welcome this concept of equality is a fact, a fact that makes many of us sad. But on the other hand this biblical origin of equality allows the church to address its message not only to Catholics or to Christians, but explicitly to “all men and women of good will“. "Liberté, égalité, fraternité" - liberty, equality, fraternity - let us not forget their biblical meaning and let us implement them wherever we live and work.

Fr. Wolfgang Felber SJ

June 12th, 2016

It is fortunate that we have four different Gospels, because each Gospel shows us a different Aspect of Jesus. This year we read the Gospel of Luke who was a doctor by profession and thus acquainted with human suffering – very appropriate for the celebration of the year of God’s mercy. He saw in Jesus the visible expression of God’s love for the sick and the suffering, the poor and the sinners. Another characteristic of Luke Gospel is the place and role he gives to women. Both aspects come out in today’s Gospel in which Luke proves himself again a wonderful story-teller. They key persons are a very religious man, a Pharisee, and a woman who has a bad reputation in town. Who proves to be the better person in the end? It is not the Pharisee who invited Jesus only to put him to the test and treated him with contempt. It is the sinful woman. The Pharisee with his rational, legal mind but he does not understand the message of Jesus. The woman experienced Jesus’ compassion and forgiveness and expresses her deep gratitude and love in a very personal way. Luke then add a little footnote in which he mentions a number of other women, among them Mary from Magdala, who also express their love and commitment to Jesus in a very practical way. They act as a kind of logistic team and support him and his disciples materially and financially. How could the community around Jesus for three years moving from village to village without these women keeping them going very discreetly. It is still like that in the Church today. Is it not most of the time the women who prepare the after mass coffee, bring biscuits and clean up the kitchen... But it would be a mistake to think that Luke sees the place of women mainly in the kitchen. He put them at the same level as the men by adding very often after a story about a man a similar story about a woman. When the parents bring the child Jesus to the temple there is the old man Simeon who receives them and makes a prophecy about Jesus and his mother. Luke immediately adds the story of prophetess Hannah who also praises God for the birth of the Messiah and tells everybody else about the event. When Luke tells the story of the Good Shepherd who goes after the lost sheep he adds the parable of a woman who lost a coin and turns the house upside down till she finds it. God in the search for lost humanity is depicted both as man and as woman. Even more dramatic is the role of the women disciples in the Easter story. While the men are totally paralysed after the shock of Good Friday and unable to do anything, the women do what needs to be done. They go to the tomb to embalm the body of Jesus. It is they who understand first that Jesus is risen and alive and become messengers of the Good News. They become apostles of the resurrection and it will take the Twelve quite some time to catch up the women apostles. In the first generation of Christians the women were evangelisers, messengers of the Gospel, a ministry that got lost later on. Pope Francis would obviously like to give women a bigger scope and a greater responsibility in the mission of the Church. In his gentle and patient manner he just constituted a commission to study the role of women deacons in the early church. What a blessing it would be for the Church if women could also preach. Already now they do most of work in passing on the message as mothers to their children and often also catechists to the youth. The Pope also gave recent a small, but significant sign how much he appreciates the evangelising work of women. He elevated the liturgical commemoration of St. Mary Magdalene to the level of a feast equal to the feasts of the apostles. Luke will surely be happy with that.

Fr. Wolfgang Schonecke MAfr