The Reason for our Hope

28th Sunday Homily  by Frank Gerry SVD “On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear. And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations: and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth.” (Is. 25.6,7 8b)

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Isaiah is comforting his people. He is looking to a new age – not to deny the pain and the strife and suffering that was present among his people but to remind them of the reason for their hope – the fidelity of God to them and to his promises in their regard. His image is the messianic banquet – for all peoples, not just for the Jews, for all nations are God’s people. The shroud, the sheet will be lifted to bring the world out of the shadows. Isaiah is speaking to a people who are suffering: God will dry the tears of his people; God will take away the disgrace of living in bondage and misery under an alien rule.

The times were tough and the people needed a message of hope, something to sustain them while they waited and worked for deliverance.

Perhaps we do too! Are we any different?

In spite of our confident way of life here in Australia, there still seems to be a lot of pain in peoples’ lives – broken homes, broken promises, homeless children, insecurity,  diminishing faith in our leaders, people suffering all manner of ills – loneliness, emptiness, meaninglessness, sickness, the neglect of the aged; and possibly most importantly of all, a drifting away from the practice of a faith tradition that has nourished our forebears over generations. How do we handle these tensions? What are the life questions, the questions of meaning, that emerge out of our Australian multi-cultural way of life?

And on the world scene, I do not wish to be a prophet of doom, but sometimes I wonder are we moving toward some catastrophe; not a conflict of civilizations but a despoiling of our world and an impoverishment of all who live in it. What is this torment at the heart of human beings that divides brother from brother as in the old bible story of Cain and Abel, and that ravages the earth? Don’t our hearts break when so many innocent people suffer or lose their lives! The Middle-East, the women and children of the Sudan, Malawi, Iraq, Afghanistan, just to name a few! The recent natural disasters of the Southern USA, Central America, and just yesterday Pakistan!.

When is the pain going to end? When will God dry the tears of his people, as God hasx psromised? What is the Creator Spirit trying to teach us in these catastrophes of nature and human conflict?

Does God shatter us so as to transform us, beat down our pride and arrogance to open us up other who is suffering, to spur us on to transcendence and transformation?

These are real and difficult questions.

It is not easy to say and not easy to live, but faith and hope make it possible: somehow  to see and to experience that God is with us in the darkness, in the chaos, in the pain of our world and the pain of our lives: as Paul says in his Letter to the Romans, “All creation is groaning in one great act of giving birth”, and as the line from the responsorial psalm says, “even though I walk through the darkest alley, I fear no evil, for you are with me.” Didn’t Jesus come to be with us – a ‘God with us’, just as we are? He said, ‘come to me all you who labor and are burdened and I will give you rest!’

It has been that way since the beginning of time. From the first line of Genesis, we read that the Spirit was hovering over the darkness, as though to say this is how life comes to be.  We have our own genesis through difficult times and painful experiences, but it is not just pain for pain’s sake. Pain for pain’s sake is a blasphemy!; but pain borne  for the sake of life and love, and redemption is something else. It is grace.

There is the story of the Big Bang and the hydrogen and helium gases that helped form the stars; and then ten billion years later our solar system began to form: creation has been groaning! And here we are today the result of that genesis. Scientists call that first moment of the universe “the Big Bang”, but it a rather anonymous title, isn’t it.  Dante the poet instead speaks of the ‘Love that moves the stars and other planets’. It goes to show what faith is capable of: the simple but profound difference between the notion of simply a big bang and ‘the love that moves the stars and other planets’. We are the result of that love not just of a big bang! This is the basis for our hope. Creation is still groaning in each of us and within the whole human family, as well as in outer space. The Creator Spirit has not abandoned us!

In spite of the contradictions and failures of the human spirit, there are also those moments like the ones described by the psalmist:

 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
The moon and the stars that you have established;
What are human beings that you are mindful of them,
Mortals that you care for them?

 Yet you have made them a little lower than God.

So there is darkness and there is light. The first creature is light out of darkness: let there be light! Then we have the gospel prologue of John that echoes this moment and then goes on to say: What has come into being in him (the Word who is Life) was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. Love is stronger than death! It is that love that has been unleashed in the universe through the Spirit of Christ and we are witnesses to that love.

This morning we have this Light and this Divine Love speaks to us in the gospel parable of a messianic banquet – all are invited. We are here in response to that invitation. The words spoken by Isaiah have been realized in Christ and are to be realized within us and through us. There is no doubt about that. From here may we go out to our homes, and businesses, our farms, etc., and make of this world and of our lives a banquet of the kingdom, in the ordinary circumstances of our lives – such as Paul says in this morning’s reading: I know how to be rich, I know how to be poor; I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. I can be weak and I can be strong. Either way I am content, for I know I am a child of God and a brother or sister to Jesus, the Light of the world. Yes, I know the love that moves the stars and other planets. I have felt it in my own bones, in my own life and that of my family. It is the reason for my hope that brings me here and that I have for the whole human family.

As this morning’s gospel acclamation reads: May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, enlighten the eyes of our heart, that we might see how great is the hope to which we are called (Eph. 1.17-18).
 

Frank Gerry SVD