Humbling the exalted

From an early age my sons wanted to play for Liverpool and Manchester United. That particular height they did not reach. But they have now been playing seniors and reserves for Devonport for the past few years and have achieved a measure of success. They’re both great characters, put everything into the game and are valued by their teammates. While they have been rightfully proud of their achievements, they are, nevertheless, humble about what they have achieved.

Humility is not a condition, but a quality or virtue. While it is something to be aspired to, it has its roots in the Latin word humus or earth. It is an earthy quality. In the Wisdom of Jesus ben Sirach the writer tells us (Ecclesiasticus 3:18): The greater you are, the more you should behave humbly. Jesus (of Nazareth) picks up this very matter, advising the Pharisees (Luke 14:11) that everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the man who humbles himself will be exalted.

We live in a culture of ‘only the best will do’. Competition for resources, market share, clients, skilled workers, product, is a part of the fabric of our democratic society. And because of it the greater part of the community benefits. It also means that banks, telecommunication and mining companies walk away with billions of dollars of profits. Corporate wealth of this magnitude is almost beyond comprehension. Most of us would admit that the most important part of our lives is our family - our relationship with our spouses, children and friends and yet we know the havoc that is played on those relationships when the needs of corporate business have priority – over where we live and work, over the kinds of jobs we can do, over what we earn, over the wrangling between our political representatives. It is about power, it is about pride. Pride in success.

Ben Sirach (v. 28) reminds us that: There is no cure for the proud man’s malady, since an evil growth has taken root in him.

Jesus explains (Luke 14:12 – 14): When you give a lunch or dinner, do not ask your friends, brothers, relations or rich neighbours, for fear they repay your courtesy by inviting you in return. No, when you have a party, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind - that they cannot pay you back means that you are fortunate, because repayment will be made to you when the virtuous rise again.

There is no doubt we should be proud of our work, of our home, of our children, of our sporting achievement – but we should not buy into the pride that sets us apart as being better than others, having more than others. The Gospel of Jesus has a real clarity about the dangers of power, wealth, pride, greed and knowledge. These ‘values’ are contrary to the kingdom values.

Our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic child care centres, our Catholic agencies, must always strive to be their best, but in living out kingdom values, they must be humble and must always remain available to poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind – lest they forget why they exist in the first place.

Disciplined discipleship

As much as each child is a wonderful gift, our children may sometimes be the cause of our greatest heartaches. We are not born with a set of parenting skills. They are something we acquire – first of all from our own parents, and then by positive or negative modelling from others we admire or fear. We are seldom just reliving our own childhoods when we become parents.

One aspect with which most of us struggle is consistency. Our children are persistent, energetic learners and if we wish to challenge a certain behaviour or develop more acceptable behaviours it is a long journey. Correcting our children, we know, should always be done with love, but tempers fray, we can become impulsive and punitive, we can overreact.

The exact opposite is also possible. We can find excuses for our child’s behaviour, we can mollycoddle, even defend poor behaviour, and even take to task the recipient of our child’s aggression.

Don’t be afraid. This is not new territory. The world has always been the same despite the ever new theories of childrearing. Discipline, the word we use to describe the development of positive behaviours – such as good manners, keeping our hands to ourselves, being respectful of others, applying ourselves to our school work, getting my chores at home done – derives from the word disciple. One becomes a disciple by accepting, taking on and living out the discipline of the master. For us that master is Jesus. It is he who sets the standard.

The writer to the Hebrews (12:5 – 7, 11- 13) reminds us that because are called to intimate relationship with Jesus, When the Lord corrects you, do not treat it lightly, but do not get discouraged when he reprimands you. For the Lord trains the ones that he loves and he punishes all those that he acknowledges as his sons. Suffering is part of your training. God is treating you as his sons.

None of us has perfect children. Assisting them in their growth towards adulthood will require sacrifice and pain. This is no more evident than in the relationship between St Monica and her son, St Augustine. Well before his fame as a bishop and theologian, Augustine was a rake – he lived the high life – a sinful life – his mother prayed for many years that he would find God’s love in his life, and at the age of 30 he converted. He did not disown his past (for he also had a son), because it was an essential part of his journey. The constancy of his mother helped make a difference. The suffering was hers.

We are all called to discipleship, to model our lives as disciplined members of the community, of the church – if we want our children to be effective members of our community, then we must teach, act and behave accordingly.

Assuming Mary

The unquantifiable devotion of centuries of the faithful ensured that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was lavished with a raft of titles: Theotokos, Star of the Sea, Queen of Heaven, Our Lady of Lourdes, of Fatima, Help of Christians, of Mount Carmel, of Sorrows, of Providence, of Guadalupe, of Lebanon, of Peace and there are many, many more. Each title has a deep and rich history. What they have in common is acknowledging Mary’s role in the story of human salvation.

Mary was, as we know well, a very young woman when she was engaged to Joseph. Her ‘Amen’ to the angelic visitation is the paradigmatic, Christian response. We actually know very little information about Mary and her motherhood from the scriptures and much has been made of the small amount that does appear. Inquisitiveness about Mary did not exist in the very early church, and this is reflected in the Gospels and Paul’s letters. In the generations that followed, however, the faithful’s appreciation of her generosity and her proximity to the divine, gave rise to speculation. There is an ancient adage, de Maria nunquam satis (Latin: one can never say enough about Mary)

Speculation and reflection (in some cases) over many hundreds of years led to development of several key teachings about Mary, and ultimately enshrined as dogma by the church: Mary as Theotokos (Christ-bearer, or more commonly the Mother of God) in Ephesus in 431 AD; the Immaculate Conception in 1854, and the Assumption of Mary in 1950.

The Assumption is a feast that was celebrated from the 7th century in Rome and while it attempts to describe what occurred after Mary died, it is a reflection on her whole life, her call, her parenthood, her faithfulness, her discipleship, her provoking of Jesus’ ministry, her companionship. She stands a model for the church, the model believer. We struggle with language to express Mary’s role, and given Mary’s extraordinary role in salvation history, we need to be able to link the human Mary and what was asked of her in life with the God who asked so much of her. Our experience and reflection tell us that on death, this wonderful and most unique creature in creation was invited in her entire humanity, body and soul into eternal communion with her creator. Would we expect anything less?

Today the Assumption gives us a foretaste of what we too can expect. Mary is indeed the model, the exemplar of discipleship and each of us could do no better than to follow her example. This Sunday is the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

A covenant of love

Without denigrating lawyers (my sister is one), I would prefer to order my life without the assistance of solicitors. Nevertheless I have required their services in the purchase of property, making wills and challenging our local council. Undoubtedly lawyers’ expertise helps sort out the issues, and certainly when drawing up contracts we want to be sure that they are watertight and that they say and do what we mean and intend.

The word covenant has an ancient history and is used richly throughout the religious, biblical, legal and political worlds. In Hebrew the word berith relates both the sense of unconditional gift from God (as with Abraham) and the conditional sense where certain requirements must be met in order to maintain the covenantal relationship. Though we often think of there being one covenant between the Lord and his people, there are several, each deepening the relationship between both parties.

Covenants are contracts. They establish the expectations of the parties who enter into an agreement to provide a service or goods.

The covenant made by God with his people does have one most important difference: it requires faith (Hebrew 11:1 – 19). As imaginative as the story of Abraham and Sarah is – leaving Ur, setting up in Canaan, Sarah’s pregnancy, the promise of innumerable descendents – we need to understand it is already infused with faith. The covenant is the actual means of understanding the mutual commitment that God and humanity have between them. You will be my people, and I will be your God (Ezekiel 36:28). There are mutual obligations.

The stories that emanate from scripture constantly remind us of God’s fidelity to that covenant and humanity’s struggle with its obligations. One major stumbling block was the Hebrew’s knack codifying every aspect of their lives in relation to that covenant, so that the Law became more important than the relationship. In Jesus the New Covenant is established which again sets God’s love, his desire to be in relationship with you and me as pre-eminent.

There is nothing more important in that relationship than knowing that God loves us, and that he loved us unconditionally.

Leap of faith into a southern land

Less than 200 years ago most of our ancestors, with the exception of our Aboriginal families, lived in far, distant places. For a hundred different reasons, they packed all their belongings for a journey that would take several months by sea, to a new land, a strange land, a land of promise and hope. It lay in the south and was thus called Australia (from the Latin adjective australis meaning, ‘south’). Such a journey is unimaginable for those who fly for 24 hours to reach the very shores from which those ancestors came. It is no less horrific but real for those latter migrants who arrived, and still arrive, aboard rotten, unseaworthy boats that are mere flotsam and jetsam. They came from Vietnam, Indonesia and now Sri Lanka.

470 years ago, a unique group of individuals in the church, was formally established and approved as a religious congregation whose aim was to be at the pope’s disposal, at that time Paul III. The group had the capacity to be flexible, to go where there was the greatest need. The founder of this group was of noble descent, a soldier, badly wounded at the siege of Pamplona against the French. A long period of recovery was spent studying the life of Christ and the saints. Ignatius Loyola thus began his journey of faith that was to culminate in the establishment of one of the church’s greatest religious orders: The Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. One of the Jesuit’s earliest missions was to the Far East, making St Francis Xavier the patron saint of missionaries.

In 2008, three young Nigerian priests, Kene Onwukwe, Felix Ekeh and Christopher Igboanua arrived in the chilly climes of Hobart to begin their mission to, and within, the church of Tasmania. Their journey was recorded in a series on the ABC, The Mission.

There are degrees of discomfort for all who seek new lives, our ancestors were pioneers, convicts, freemen, soldiers and sailors. For most there was no return to their place of their birth. They came to fulfill a dream, a sentence, a ‘tour of duty’, to escape persecution. For Ignatius’ followers, some 19,000 today, their mission to preach the Gospel through apostolic ministry is carried out in 112 nations on six continents. A step into the unknown, a leap of faith, and obedience to their call to priesthood brought Kene, Felix and Christopher to these most southern of shores. Their presence and youth are signs of hope in a diocese of great need. Like Ignatius and Xavier they have trusted in God.

Perhaps much less is asked of you and me. Pehaps our sole duty is to survive the 21st century. Perhaps the seed that was planted in all those whose stories brim full in the history of Australia, and those who are driven to make a difference to build a better society, or to build God’s kingdom on earth in this terra australis, is ready to take root in you.

St Ignatius’ feast day is this Saturday.