15th Sunday of the Year

If you’re anything like me, then you know how dangerous the sin of pride is. Examining my conscience, whether before Sacramental Confession, or at the end of each day, I am amazaed how the sin of pride has, somehow, been at the root of all my other faults.

In one sense, pride is a seemingly natural response to achievement; what’s wrong in that? Nevertheless, as Christians, we recognise that Chris is the Lord of our lives; thus, earthly glories, ultimately, must be credited to God. Just as He stands with us in our adversities and blesses us with His Spirit of Hope, so He directs our successes. (For this reason, St Paul urges us to boast only in teh Cross (Cf Gal. 6: 14).)

Sacred Scripture is replete with supportive passages in this regard, but a personal favourite may be found in Proverbs (16: 9): “A man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps.” Thomas a Kempis, in the ‘Imitation of Christ’, explains it, thus:

For the resolutions of the just depend rather on the grace of God than on their own wisdom; and in Him they always put their trust, whatever they take in hand. For man proposes, but God disposes; neither is the way of man in his own hands…

Archaic words, but just as vital for our own day.

Calling upon the Hebrew peoples to keep Covenant with God, Moses, in our first reading, knows that “…whoever listen to … [the Lord] will dwell safel, and will be secure, without fear of evil.” (Prov. 1: 33). Pride and a lack of hope will be the undoing of God’s people, causing them to break faith with God and break His Covenant. For this reason, and constant theme throughout the Old Testament is (the other ‘Three Rs’): Reflect, Repent, Return. The Jew who sought God’s forgiveness would often stand before the scrolls of Torah (the Law), on the elaborate covering of which would be embroidered the words: “Da’ah lifnei omdim” – Know before Whom you stand. The particular Hebrew verb, le’da’at, to know, implies a cache of intimacy; to have an intimate knowledge; and thus (for the Jew, and for us, too) the act of returning (teshuvah), of repenting, must be far more than simply an intellectual exercise, it must be emotional and spiritual.

The author of today’s psalm took Moses’ counsel. He is clearly in a state of personal strife, but still he hopes on the Lord and uses his distress to bring comfort to others: the Lord will not desert them, rather, He will “…revive their souls … [and] … gladden their hearts“. How often do we meet people, who in their humble love of God and their keeping of His Law! Truly, they know before whom they stand!

This need for an authentic and intimate knowledge of God is probably why St Paul, in our second reading, goes to great lengths to stamp out the heresy which he found in the Church at Colossae, and to promote the truth about Jesus Christ: that it is only through Him that God and humanity may be reconciled. “Know before Whom you stand”! The Colossians had come to a distorted understanding of who Jesus Christ was, and failed to note His universal Messiahship, from which would flow their salvation. They had become apathetic – relativistiv – just as may within (and without) the Church today see many ways of approaching God, but without the essentials of Christ and His Law of Life. Pope Benedict, echoing St Paul, is reviled by many for preaching this same, urgent message: “Christ Jesus is the image of the unseen God…“!

The fruits of the Spirit are Love, Joy and Peace (Cf Gal. 5: 22), but without that same Spirit, our fruits sour and become pride, arrogance and apathy. Today’s Gospel of the ‘Good Samaritan’ is a timeous reminder that we meet the righteous requirements of God’s Law, only by walking in His Spirit (Cf Romans 8: 4). The Samaritans were reviled by the Jews for being the remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel, which had succumbed to all manner of alien influences, making them impure. However, as we see in today’s Gospel, just as in the story of Jesus’ meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well (Cf John 4: 4 – 42), the Spirit of God knows no boundaries and will enter wherever invited and do great things, often to the shame (or lack, thereof) of those who should know better.

Like the young lawyer, we may feel pride in knowing how to quote the Law of God; but, do we know how to live that same Law in the Spirit?

“Know before Whom you stand”! With a humble and contrite heart, meet the Lord, intimately, in the Sacrament of Confession, for “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord” (Psalm 37: 23).

Today’s feast of Pentecost is in a special way the Feast of the Holy Spirit. On this day we remember how the Spirit descended on Mary and the other disciples, 50 days after the Resurrection. In that moment the Church was born.

The Hebrew word for ‘Spirit’ – ruah – can also mean ‘breath’. Breath, in turn, signifies life. When God created Adam, he breathed life into him, according to the Book of Genesis. If we have no breath in us, we die.

Today, the Spirit, the Breath of God, gives life to the Church. In doing so, the Spirit continues the work of Jesus, whom we call the ‘Word of God’. The Catechism of the Catholic Church (#689)  puts it like this:

When the Father sends his Word, he always sends his Breath

The work of Jesus culminates in the sending of the Holy Spirit, but in turn the Spirit deepens our faith in Jesus and helps us to live as he commands. No one can be filled with the gifts of the Spirit without believing in Jesus, but in th esame way no one can be truly Christian without the assistance of the Spirit. Both work together in order to lead us in love to God our Father, and to the joys of his heavenly kingdom, foreshadowed even now in the life of the Church.

Pope Benedict, in his Pentecost homily from 2005, declared that the true meaning of Pentecost was this:

In people, notwithstanding all of their limitations, there is now something absolutely new: the breath of God. The life of God lives in us. The breath of his love, of his truth and of his goodness … The Gospel invites us to this: to live always within the breath of Jesus Christ, receiving life from him, so that he may inspire in us authentic life, the life that no death may ever take away.

As we celebrate the end of the Easter Season today, we pray that all of us, as individual Christians and as the Church, we may live fully this new life which Christ and his Spirit bring.