24th. Sunday
Year (C)
(Exodus
32:7-11, 13-14; 1Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10)
People of God, you may have
felt today's Gospel parable to be somewhat unfair and consequently rather
difficult to appreciate:
I tell you there will be
more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous
people who have no need of repentance.
However, the second
word-picture Jesus went on to paint for us was much easier to understand. In it we learned of a woman who had lost one
silver coin, a notable part of what little wealth she had, and we were told
that:
When she has found it, she
calls her friends and neighbours together, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have
found the coin which I lost!' In just
the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over
one sinner who repents.’
As I said, I think we can
easily understand that second example of joy in heaven over one sinner
repenting. Why therefore did Jesus
deliberately choose, in His first little parable, to speak in such a way as to
make His point more difficult and appear somewhat unfair? Was He trying to shock, and if so, who and
why? Let us recall the beginning of our
Gospel passage:
Tax collectors and sinners
were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began
to complain, saying, ‘This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.’
So we can easily understand
who Jesus was wanting to shock: those Pharisees and scribes who were watching
Him at some little distance and who, in their critical thoughts, were
disdainful of the ‘sinners’ crowding round Jesus, and belittled Jesus Himself
for His ‘undiscerning’ familiarity with them:
‘Surely if He is holy He cannot fail to recognize what sort of people
these are?’
The story of the first
parable is, of itself, just as easy to accept and understand as that of the
second, the difficulty lies in the interpretation, or application that Jesus
gives it. It is no longer a parable of
joy on finding what was lost but has now a barb -- more over one than over ninety-nine -- which has been given it for
a quite deliberate purpose:
I tell you, there will be
more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine
righteous people who have no need of repentance.
It is no longer a parable
for the humble with pastoral sympathies, it has been re-created ‘in a moment,
in the twinkling of an eye’ by one most fully aware of heaven’s joys, for those
who in their pride boast on earth of heavenly pretentions:
Woe to you, scribes and
Pharisees, you hypocrites. You lock the kingdom of heaven before human beings.
You do not enter yourselves, nor do you allow entrance to those trying to
enter. (Matthew
23:13)
What is the joy of
heaven? Catholic theology tells us that
heaven is where God is all in all; and where the Holy Spirit of love --
proceeding from the Father to embrace the Son, and, flowing back from the Son
in acknowledgment of His Father -- is the Bond of Unity whereby the three
Divine Persons are one God.
The Father's love for His
Son in the Spirit is the source of all joy in heaven, and of all hope on earth:
Behold! My Servant (My Son) in whom My soul
delights! I have put My Spirit upon
Him; He will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. (Isaiah 42:1)
The Father willed to make
manifest His love for His Son when, at Jesus' baptism in the Jordan, He
declared in the hearing of John the Baptist:
This is My
beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased (Matthew 3:7),
and then – this time on the
Mount of Transfiguration – the Father’s voice rang out once more from the
overshadowing cloud and said to Peter, James, and John (Mark 9:7):
This is My
beloved Son, listen to Him!
For His part, Jesus --
speaking not openly but to the intimate circle of His Apostles -- several times
mentioned the bond of love uniting Himself to the Father:
The Father
loves the Son and has given all things into His hand.
The Father and
I are one. (John 3:35; 10:30)
So, People of God, there is
only one Holy Spirit of love, one joy, one rejoicing, in Heaven, it is the love
of the Father, rejoicing, delighting, in His Son, it is the love of the Son
responding wholeheartedly to His Father, in and by the Spirit. Therefore, when we hear Jesus say:
There will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who
have no need of repentance,
He is speaking of the
Father's rejoicing because one sinner has come to repentance through Jesus:
that is, because one sinner who, on hearing the Good News of Jesus and
recognizing his own sinfulness has turned repentantly to Jesus; and, having
thereby rejected any pretence of personal self-righteousness, has been
consequently clothed in the righteousness of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. The Father rejoices in heaven over one sinner
who has thus been transformed and reformed into the likeness of Christ and
become, thereby, a son in the beloved Son.
St. Paul puts is very clearly for us (Philippians 3:8-9):
I regard everything as loss
because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake I have suffered the loss of all
things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found
in Him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the Law, but one
that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on
faith.
God the Father does not
delight in any way over people who, considering themselves ‘to have a
righteousness of their own coming from their observance of whatever law’,
consequently think they have no need to put on the wedding garment of the
righteousness of Christ in order to enter the great feast in God’s heavenly
Kingdom; and yet, as I have just said, the Father's love for the Son in the
Spirit is the originating source, the total fullness and fulfilment of all joy
in heaven.
Jesus said to the Pharisees,
You
are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others; but God knows your
hearts; for what is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of
God. (Luke 16:15)
John the Baptist, prepared
the way for Jesus by preaching in the wilderness of Judea:
Repent, for
the kingdom of heaven is at hand. (Matthew 3:1-2)
And Jesus Himself began His
public ministry in a like manner:
From that time Jesus began
to preach and say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’ (Matthew 4:17)
And this call to repentance
by Jesus was so urgent and so essential that He once declared in Jerusalem:
Unless you
repent, you will all perish. (Luke 13:5)
Now that was not meant just
for the inhabitants of Jerusalem of those days; no, it is meant for all mankind
as St. Peter, at the very beginning of Mother Church's proclamation of Jesus,
made totally clear:
Let it be known to you all,
and to all the people of Israel, that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth,
whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead, by Him this man stands here
before you whole. This is the 'stone
which was rejected by you builders, which has become the chief cornerstone.' Nor is there salvation in any other, for
there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. (Acts 4:10-12)
Repentance means, however,
much more than just sorrow for the past; it requires a change for the future,
as John the Baptist had told those who came to him:
Bear fruits
worthy of repentance. (Luke 3:8)
Sincere repentance for the
past, John warned, must also involve something of supreme importance for the
future, but which he could only describe vaguely as "bearing fruits”. Since John was only preparing the way for
Jesus, having reached this point he could proceed no further, it only remained
for him to seal his witness by his death.
Jesus took up John’s legacy
and advanced to where John could not go.
Focusing His mission on calling ‘sinners to repentance’ (Luke 5:32), He
showed clearly what John's vague words ‘fruits for repentance’ really meant,
for the theme of Jesus' public ministry was to be:
Repent and believe
the Good News. (Mark 1:15)
There can be no repentance
without Gospel fruits resulting from faith in Jesus, for God gives us the grace
of repentance for our past, sin-scarred, lives in order to bestow on us the
supreme gift of faith, whereby we aspire to live our future in loving witness
and obedience to the Person and teaching of Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Saviour,
that is, as sons in the Son, by the Spirit, for the Father. For what is faith
but a total self-abandonment and -- in the power of the Spirit – commitment to
the overwhelming goodness of God revealed to us in the beauty of the face, and
the truth on the lips, of Christ Jesus our Lord?
People of God, all this is
implied by, and contained in, those "shocking" words of Jesus:
There will be more joy in
heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who
have no need repentance.
How wonderfully wise is
God! How full of meaning and life are
the Scriptures! One apparently shocking
passage containing so much heavenly beauty and saving truth!
We have rightly gathered
here today to praise and glorify God for His wondrous goodness to us in
Jesus. And, having begun to appreciate
the beauty of His wisdom, we must also seek to learn from His truth; for the fact
is that Jesus came, as He Himself said, not to call those self-styled,
so-called, virtuous ones, approved and accepted according to worldly standards,
but those who were -- in their own eyes and before God -- sinful and
desperately sick.
People of God, we are not
holy, none of us; let us therefore learn from divine wisdom and accept that God
rejoices not in any ‘home-spun’ holiness of ours, but exclusively in our
grace-enabled rejection of self, and love for Jesus. The only holiness that rejoices the Father is
likeness to His Son, Jesus; a holiness which originally comes to us as an
undeserved gift we can share, and then must gradually appropriate to ourselves
ever more and more by means of a life of true faith and loving obedience.
Our first Catholic and
Christian duty, therefore, is to come before God in a spirit of repentance and
offer Him the only acceptable worship: the worship Jesus first offered on our
behalf and for our salvation on Calvary, the worship He continues to offer Personally
in heaven and sacramentally at every Mass here on earth, the worship of His own
sacrifice of Self for Love of the Father above all and of the Father’s will in
all. Therefore we should always come to
Mass to offer Jesus, in the first place, for the glory of God and the
salvation of mankind, and then ourselves
-- in and with Jesus -- to the Father; then, indeed, can we fittingly make our
requests, and draw near to receive Holy
Communion that we might have grace to fulfil in our lives the
offering we have just made.
People of God, if the wisdom
and truth of God lead us to repentance and faith, then, through the sacraments
-- above all through our participation at Holy Mass -- and our daily prayers,
God’s power and majesty can be effective in and through our lives.
Therefore, let us praise our
God today, let us admire and acknowledge the wisdom and the beauty of His truth
as contained in the Good News of Jesus proclaimed by Mother Church, and let us
put all our hope and trust in the power of His Spirit unfailingly sustaining
and guiding her, and ever at work in our lives. Such worship is the wedding garment that
will enable us to take our seat at the heavenly banquet; it is the token of all
those who belong to that flock of which Jesus is the only true and supreme
shepherd.
