HOMILY FOR SIXTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME (A)

Fr Billy Swan

Dear friends. The readings put before us today the gift of our freedom that God has created us with. God is love and loves freely; and because we are made in his image and likeness, then we are free to love too. But what do we do with that freedom? Either way we must choose.

Often, we think of love as a feeling as ‘falling in love’ implies. But love is a also a choice that leads to wisdom that in turn leads us to become different people. It’s something Jesus asks us to do, to ‘love one another’. If love is defined as willing the good of the other, then every act of love is a choice.

This is why the first reading from Ecclesiasticus tells us that ‘He has set fire and water before you – put out your hand to whichever you prefer…man has death and life before him. Whichever he likes better will be given him’. If we do choose to love, to choose life, to choose forgiveness, to choose mercy and choose God then a new wisdom will come with that. We will begin to understand things and people in ways that are impossible without loving them.

Take the cross of Jesus and the manner of his death. It is impossible to understand the wisdom of the cross without seeing it from the perspective of God’s love for the world. Only by loving someone can I have the wisdom to know how best to serve them and help them.

Choosing to love changes us. In the words of the Gospel, it makes our virtue grow deeper. For the scribes and the Pharisees, all that mattered was the action. If you kept the law then you were off the hook and deserved reward. But Jesus said ‘no’. What matters is the spirit behind the action. Often we do the right thing not because it is right but out of fear that we will be punished if we don’t – penalty points for not driving carefully, fines for not paying for parking, being published as a tax defaulter. Sometimes we can be easy with doing what is wrong if we will never be caught.

But the message of Jesus challenges us to always do the right thing for love’s sake and for the sake of what is right. And when we do, we are changed. By consistently choosing the good and what is right and true, we become more loving. By consistently choosing to forgive, we become more forgiving. To use the example of Jesus in the Gospel, by consistently saying ‘yes’ if we mean ‘yes’ we become more faithful, sincere and trustworthy.

This point is so important because it teaches us that our gift of freedom is not like a power we have, that we use and that leaves us unchanged. Every choice changes us to resemble what we have chosen. If we make virtue a habit by choosing the good, then our human nature becomes inclined to the good. If I make a habit of choosing the bad, misuse my freedom and sin, then my human nature is damaged, making it easier to sin again. By choosing the good and by choosing to love, we move closer to what St Paul speaks of in the Second Reading – “the things that no eye has seen, and no ear has heard, things beyond our minds, all that God has prepared for those who love him”.

If we always do things out of duty, we will get tired. If we do things out of love, there will be life, new energy and a youthfulness that will never grow old. Choose again the path of love for when we choose love we choose God for ‘God is love’.

‘Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions or even at their difficulty, as at the love with which we do them’.

St Therese of Lisieux.