I have been talking for some Sundays now about human dignity, which comes from human beings being made in the image and likeness of God. This image is not a physical image, obviously, because God is spirit, and has no form. In Christ, God takes to Himself a human form and becomes visible, but man was created in God’s image in his ability to reason, to will what is good and to love what is good. The moral good we are called to espouse as custodians and guards of this beautiful world we live in is an objective good – it cannot be various, so that one person’s vision of good can be opposed to another person’s.
We all seek happiness as human beings, but in the measure that the routes we choose are aligned with God’s plan for us, our desires can be either ordered (according to God’s plan) or disordered. And so He provides us guidance for our lives, that we may arrive surely (if eventually) at our destination in Him. For, as the Catechism says, it is only God Who satisfies, who can be our true happiness.
“The Beatitudes respond to the natural desire for happiness. This desire is of divine origin: God has placed it in the human heart in order to draw man to the One who alone can fulfill it: ‘We all want to live happily; in the whole human race there is no one who does not assent to this proposition, even before it is fully articulated. How is it, then, that I seek you, Lord? Since in seeking you, my God, I seek a happy life, let me seek you so that my soul may live, for my body draws life from my soul and my soul draws life from you. God alone satisfies.'”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1718 [link]
So, when the Gospel tells us that we are blessed if we are poor in spirit, if we thirst after justice and personal righteousness before God, when we suffer humiliation and suffering for the sake of justice and for the sake of God and Christ, the Gospel is helping us to find our home in God, to treat the things of this world not as ends in themselves but as means of getting to God. Those of us who are parents and grandparents, or those who in another way have a care of souls, have a duty to secure not only our own pathway to God, but in so far as we can those of the persons who are given to our care.
It hardly needs saying that in giving us the measure of intellectual and moral freedom that He has given us, God has taken the great risk that we may turn against Him, deny His Wisdom and His Commandments and choose to destroy our eternal happiness instead. In our so doing, by committing sin and especially grievous sin, we denigrate and reduce the human dignity that is a gift to us from God. We abuse the freedom He has given us by refusing the command to charity and unselfishness.
The Catechism has a little section on freedom and responsibility, and states that, paradoxically, the more we follow the Commandments of Christ and do voluntarily what is morally good, the more free we actually become. As Catholics, we exercise our freedom in this way, striving to always honour the Law of Charity – Love of God and love of neighbour – persevering in prayer and seeking to unite our own wills to to divine Will, in order that the choices we make are ordered towards our eternal destiny in heaven, taking personal responsibility for the things we say and the things we do. For our freedom to act, without fear and coercion (which is itself essential to our human dignity), must always (like the Man on the cross) be coloured by love.
“Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude. As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach. The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. the choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to ‘the slavery of sin.'”
Catechism of the Catholic Church, §1731-1733 [link]
I have said often enough that the Church is a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, that all of us have a priesthood. The most obvious role of a priest is in sacrifice, in making offering to God. We all have something to offer, for what we are is entirely a gift of God, and the Christian’s first offering to God is always of himself or herself. This gift of self is free and comprehensive, for it includes all the good things in our lives and all the bad things too. All that we are.
But then, as priests, we are called to pray for ourselves and for others, in particular for others – this is what we call intercessory prayer and it is the basis of such items of the Mass as the prayers of the faithful or bidding prayers, part of our more general ministry of prayer as Christian. Father Abraham demonstrates this in our first reading today.
“So the Lord told [Abraham], ‘The ill repute of Sodom and Gomorrha goes from bad to worse, their sin is grievous out of all measure; I must needs go down to see for Myself whether they have deserved the ill report that has reached Me or not; I must know for certain.’ And Abraham stood there in the Lord’s presence, as the men turned and went on towards Sodom. Abraham drew close to Him, and asked, ‘Wilt Thou, then, sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there are fifty innocent men in the city, must they too perish? Wilt Thou not spare the place to save fifty such innocent men that dwell there? Never that, Thou wilt not destroy the innocent with the guilty, as if innocence and guilt were all one; that is not Thy way, that is not how the Judge of the whole earth executes justice!’ And the Lord told him, ‘If I find fifty innocent citizens in Sodom, I will spare the whole place to save them.’ And Abraham answered, ‘Dust and ashes though I be, I have taken it upon me to speak to my Lord, and speak I will. What if there should be five wanting to make up the tale of fifty innocent men? Wilt Thou bring the whole city to ruin because there are five less than fifty?’ ‘No,’ He said, ‘if I meet with forty-five such, I will not bring it to ruin.’ But he plied Him once more, ‘What wilt Thou do, then, if forty are found there?’ ‘I will hold My hand,’ said He, ‘to save forty.’ Then he said, ‘Lord, do not be angry with me for pleading thus; what if thirty are found there?’ ‘If I find thirty,’ He said, ‘I will not do it.’ ‘I have taken it upon me,’ said he, ‘to speak to my Lord, and speak I will; what if twenty are found there?’ ‘I will grant it life,’ he said, ‘to save twenty.’ And he said, ‘Do not be angry with me, Lord, I entreat thee, for making one more plea still; what if ten are found there?’ ‘I will spare it from destruction,’ He said, ‘to save ten.'”
Book of Genesis, 18: 20-32 [link]
Abraham has just received the promise from God, an answer to his prayers, that he will have a son Isaac, he being a hundred years old and his wife ninety. When Sarah his wife heard this promise, she laughed. But Abraham was certain: if they can have a child in old age, then all things are then possible. So, when God declares that He is about to destroy these cities in the plain near the Salt Sea, the priest Abraham prays for those people.
And so should we, when we look at the mass of people in our society drifting further and further away from the Christian England of the past. Pray, pray, pray for England, and pray for the world. Christ gives us a nice prayer in our gospel reading – the Our Father – for what we can hope for from God. We must say this prayer for ourselves, and for our families, our society, our country.
“Once, when He had found a place to pray in, one of His disciples said to Him, after His prayer was over, ‘Lord, teach us how to pray, as John did for his disciples.’ And He told them, ‘When you pray, you are to say, Father, hallowed be Thy Name; Thy kingdom come; give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins; we too forgive all those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation. Let us suppose that one of you has a friend, to whom he goes at dead of night, and asks him, Lend me three loaves of bread, neighbour; a friend of mine has turned in to me after a journey, and I have nothing to offer him. And suppose the other answers, from within doors, Do not put me to such trouble; the door is locked, my children and I are in bed; I cannot bestir myself to grant thy request. I tell you, even if he will not bestir himself to grant it out of friendship, shameless asking will make him rise and give his friend all that he needs. And I say the same to you; ask, and the gift will come, seek, and you shall find; knock, and the door shall be opened to you. Everyone that asks, will receive, that seeks, will find, that knocks, will have the door opened to him. Among yourselves, if a father is asked by his son for bread, will he give him a stone? Or for a fish, will he give him a snake instead of a fish? Or if he is asked for an egg, will he give him a scorpion? Why then, if you, evil as you are, know well enough how to give your children what is good for them, is not your Father much more ready to give, from heaven, His gracious Spirit to those who ask Him?'”
Gospel of S. Luke, 11:1-13 [link]
The theme of this gospel reading is the same as of the first reading. As Abraham prays repeatedly for the citizens of the two cities mentioned, so Christ asks us to persist/persevere in prayer for the intentions we have, either for ourselves and our families, or for our society and country. He asks us to pester him, to badger him, to be impudent in prayer (‘shameless asking,’ above). And so let us have at it, praying constantly for the good of all, and in our great love we shall mirror the One Who laid out His arms upon that awful cross and gave His life for mankind.
Catholic Louth and Mablethorpe 