Last night at dinner I was asked why the Protestant
Reformation occurred. It wasn’t exactly the pleasant dinner conversation I had
expected, but nonetheless it was important to the person who asked and even
more pertinent to today’s liturgy.
The church was once described as the necessary institution
to disseminate the non-institutional message of Christ. We exist to facilitate the saving message of
Christ being transmitted to all people of all times. Even in these
technologically sophisticated times, God can’t just have a Facebook page that
people could ‘like’. Christianity is a religion of flesh and blood, of
relationships: it does not live in a virtual world. If the Church did not
exist, there would be no way for people to meet Christ as a person. The Church is made up of people like you and
me. Generally we are people who strive to live our lives along the lines of
Gospel values. To the best of our ability we allow the Gospel to penetrate our
thoughts and reflections so that we continue to grow closer to God and so that
the Kingdom of God continues to come into being in our world.
However, this has not always been the case through history,
and it is not always the case in our Church today. Like all other humans, we
become bogged down in our own ways of doing things and stuck in our ways. We
also try to cut corners and sometimes have a public and a private face that are
very different. The current crisis of sexual abuse bears that out only too
well. The Reformation the 16th century was brought on, at least in
part, by the desire of some to constantly reform and the inability of others to
listen to that call. One of the big issues was that some believed that if you
just did things or built great edifices, you could get into heaven. We all know
that you can’t buy God’s love or forgiveness, but it is amazing how many of us
try, even now, to buy off God with actions or prayers without actually changing
our hearts.
In the Gospel Jesus teaches us that God is not impressed
with outward appearance without inward change. He makes it clear that the
numerous dietary laws of the Jewish people are not going to get any them close
to God unless they are accompanied by true interior change of heart. Outward
signs are necessary, but are only real when they indicate what is going on
inside a person’s heart. The Reformers in the sixteenth century saw rotten
people in the church who thought that they could buy God. This was a time where
rich people believed, as some people of Jesus time did and some in our time do,
that power, position and money spent on extraordinary edifices to the glory of
God could smooth the way to heaven . Challenged by the reformers, the Church would
not listen and the reformers rebelled and formed breakaway churches. In time
many of these breakaway churches suffered the same fate whereas, thank God, the
Catholic Church seems to have realised that we are in need of constant purification
so as the keep on the path towards the Kingdom.
The short story is that outward appearance is important, but
only as an indicator of what is going on inside. We build beautiful buildings because
of the love we have for God. We show
respect in the way we dress, treat one another, and reach out to one another because
it comes from within. Goodness, as well
as all the negative aspects that Jesus lists, come from within: if we are people
of integrity, they should all show in what people see in our public lives.
We all need constant reformation to keep ourselves on the right
track. In this Year of Grace may we recognise both our need of grace and the
grace of God working in others to keep us building the Kingdom of God together.
Homily 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time,1st September 2012, OLQP Broome
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