4th Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C)
1.Cor.12:31-13:13 & Luke 4:21-30
Homily preached by Fr Oswald
I remember very clearly the first patient of mine who died when I was a junior doctor. I was just 24 and he was 76, and had been admitted to my ward with a terminal illness. A fierce Protestant, and prominent member of the local Orange Order in Midlothian, he took one look at my name badge and said: So you’re a Catholic, then – my granddad was a Belfast Catholic – and said it as if spitting, as if the word itself was poison in his mouth. Not a happy beginning for either of us.
Over the next few weeks, as his condition deteriorated, we spent a lot of time together – me doing the sort of things all doctors did then, taking blood, changing catheters, sorting out pain-relief and hydration through a drip – all tiny tasks but ones that needed some kindliness to mask their basic brutality and invasiveness. Gradually, we began to talk together, even about religion and the mystery of life and death. We did not often agree, but still we talked. In the last few days, his renal failure took over and he lost full consciousness. His family were not well off, and the hospital some way from home, so they were not always there until the very end. In those days, often in the middle of the night, I would pop in to check he was comfortable. Knowing I was there, he would grasp my hand and squeeze it, as if comforted to know that someone he knew was with him. Often it would be hours before I could get away. Eventually, he died on my night off, with his wife holding his hand as he had so often held mine.
We have just listened to St Paul’s great hymn to love from the first letter to the early church at Corinth. It is one of the masterpieces of New Testament poetry, and very often read at weddings. At a wedding, it conjures up very powerful feelings of romance, of hope and joy – Love is always patient and kind… it is always ready to trust, to hope, to endure… Love does not come to an end. And yet these feelings – true as they are – do not tell the whole story, do not give the whole picture. We can too easily be blinded by the poetry and idealism of these words to take them seriously, to recognise the flip-side of Love. It’s always the problem with masterpieces – we frame them and admire them from a distance, but we don’t always let them change our view of the world.
If you talk to your parents, or your housemaster or housemistress, or your matrons or tutors, you will probably find their description of love seems a bit different to that which St Paul gives. In “real time”, Love is the 2am rise to change the nappy or warm the next bottle of milk. Love is the ability to clear up the mess when someone has been sick in the dorm and still be cheerful. Love is the worry felt by them when you come back late from Windmill, or the party, or the interview and you haven’t texted or phoned to explain the delay. Love is the hard word that needs to be said when something goes wrong, which both sides know to be true, but both feel awful about having to say. Love is the squeeze of the hand in the face of death, the last sign of gratitude to those – no matter how different or divided they may be – that a person can give to those who have cared.
Our world seems to be forgetting that Love is hard work. For too many people, love is just the grand romantic gesture, the biggest bouquet, the huge Valentine’s present, the good times, and these things, important though they may be, do not last.
Real life is not really like that, and we fool ourselves if we think it is, even when we are young. Real love, and real Christian love is about all the little things we can do for each other, the little things hidden beneath the poetry of St Paul’s writing, the little day-by-day acts of kindness and generosity which can transform our lives, just as the little acts of cruelty and unkindness to each other can destroy them. There was no particular heroism involved in my treatment of my dying patient – just the little acts of caring which meant he died knowing he was loved enough to matter to someone, even a Catholic – cared-for enough to dissolve age-old militancy and hatred.
One of the boys in my house said to me the other day, as we were trying to find a way through a difficult problem “There’s no magic wand to make people friends with each other: there’s only the little things which help people get along, and allow friendship to grow”. In a sense, it’s not a bad summary of the gospel. It is the little things – the patience, the kindness, the generosity, the delight in truth, the trust, the hope, in short all the things which St Paul lists – which, day by day, can teach us to love God and love our neighbour, which can give us the strength to take up our cross each day and follow Christ. Each little act of love is an icon, a sacrament of the greater love of God; each little sacrifice we make to help another is an echo, a sacrament, of the greater sacrifice Christ has already made for each one of us, and which we celebrate here and now.
At the beginning of Mass, we prayed that we might love God with all our hearts, and might love each other just as God loves us. In the coming week, let us try to take that prayer seriously, recognising that it is a real challenge, but not a challenge beyond our strength if we trust in God’s help and do the little things well. It is the same God, who came as a little child to know and share our weakness, and who transforms our little gifts – a piece of bread and a sip of wine – into a share in his life and his Love, who will help us if only we ask him.
There is a rather corny song, whose tag-line is “Love changes everything”. Well, it may be corny, but it’s true – try it in the little things you can do today, and see what you can change.
A selection of homilies given by the monks...
The Solemnity of the Assumption, 2009
The Solemnity of St Laurence, 2009
Homily for the Easter Vigil 2009
Homily for Maundy Thursday 2009
Homily for the Solemnity of St Benedict, 21 March 2009
Homily of the Apostolic Nuncio
Funeral homily for Fr Benet Perceval, 6th February 2009
St Laurence's Day, 10th August 2008