During the past week I have been in Sydney at a meeting called by the Australian Catholic Bishops. The Bishops asked for a representative from each diocese to come together talk about a radical concept. The concept is JESUS. They are proposing a Year of Grace, which is defined as starting afresh from Christ. It is an opportunity to encounter Jesus I everything we do as Church, in every part of our lives. ‘What is so radical about that’ I hear you say, isn’t that what we try to do every day? Well, if my life is any indicator, yes and no. Today’s liturgy gives us a wonderful chance to really ask ourselves that question and seek the answer.
What do I want out of life? Big question, and one that only be answered after a significant amount of reflection, and dare I say it, prayer. We all have our priorities, and often what we would like to see as our priorities are, in fact not what is acted out in our lives. We all have the experience of saying something that we did not intend to, and when it comes we are sure that it was from God and not from us. I think that is what happened to Solomon in his dream dialogue with God that we read about in the first book of Kings. He did not ask for riches, wealth, and power, to win wars, to be handsome or get a stack of really good wives. Instead he asked for ‘a heart to understand how to discern between good and evil’. I don’t think that Solomon saw that one coming, but when it did, he took it and ran. It is right and true, and he was given that gift that made him the wisest and best king of Israel. He encountered God, and having done that, everything else fell into place.
Solomon not only found the answer to life, but was able to sustain the pace. The psalm tells us about that: ‘Lord I love your commands”. That does not mean that they are all easy, or sometimes we do not find them difficult. It means that if we are in relationship with God, we accept him into our lives and allow him to mould and guide us, not just to follow the teachings of God when they happen to agree with our mood or situation.
The one we need to be relationship with, of course, is the one the Bishops have pointed us to: Christ. He is the one that all of our actions need to be measured against. In all our actions and the activities of our day we need to be able to ask: where is Jesus in all of this?
Each of us will have a different way of finding this treasure, and just like the search for the pearl can sometimes be treacherous, so the search for the pearl of great price can be dangerous, and the mighty can indeed fall prey to sin and temptation. We need to stay close to the church, be guided by ample prayer and teaching, and always move forward.
The journeys of each of us here are different, but they are carried on within the same matrix of faith. There is no new way, the path is forever the same, but with the gift of our humanity and uniqueness, always new. We hold a treasure, held in things new and old, a relationship with the Son of God, and through him, with each other. May God protect us and keep us moving together as one people.
Homily OLQP Broome 24th July 2011
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