A homily for the 6th Sunday of Easter

St Laurence’s community put a lot of thought into the questions that were asked in the recent survey on the family and related matters. But is that the right thing to talk about in a homily, do you think? It would be more suitable to exchange about this on another occasion. On the other hand we shouldn’t create the impression that we’re ignoring it? So anyway here goes. It was noticed how several respondents reported their finding, that the Church is lacking in mercy. There’s a thing. Is that true, is the Catholic Church lacking in mercy?

Now perhaps the first issue to look at is just, what did the questioners and the question-answerers have in mind, when they speak just like that of 'the Church'? Is it the Church teaching, teaching with all her authority, or the Church being taught, the learning Church? Are we talking of the leaders, or of what Pope Francis prefers to call the missionary disciples? For example, is my first experience of the Church what I read about it in the Catechism, or is it the Church of our marriage, what Vatican II called the domestic church, me and the wife and kids, the church of our home? Or again, are we thinking of the Church as a weighty over-arching institution, the Church as it, or the Church as she, the bride of Christ, our mother? Because what image of the Church comes to mind, will determine how you ask and answer.

When the Catholic Evidence Guild advertised a course on Catholicism many years ago, their advertisement included a picture of lots of bishops’ mitres standing on a table. The millinery Church. When my late father needed to explain his funny son to the Lincolnshire farmers he did business with, he used to say I’d gone into the Church. Sounded as though I’d fallen down the well. Is having clerics what makes us Church?

Now fortunately tonight’s Scripture comes to our help here. We heard at least three descriptions of the Church just now. To begin with the Acts of the Apostles (Chapter 10), the apostle Peter gives an angle on what counts as Church, those who with no other distinction clearly fear God and do what is right, for they have received the Holy Spirit and are baptised in the name of Jesus Christ. Surely St John in turn, in his first letter (4. 7-10) which supplies our second reading, is talking about the same thing when he says how those who love are begotten by God (born again as children of God by baptism and the Holy Spirit) and know God. And the gospel says it again (John 15. 9-7): for our dear Lord, it’s those who abide in the love of the Father and enjoy a friendship. I call you not servants, but friends. Why are we here, as servants to do our duty? No, we came for the friendship. Some people come to Mass only to meet their friends. The gospel of St John can’t think of a better reason!

So let’s start by focussing on the Church’s vision of Church, and not one we have invented, or a watered-down customer-friendly version. It is that holy people who have put on Christ and received his Spirit and who by baptism are made a priestly people, just as it says in the teaching of the Church in every age from the apostles to the Second Vatican Council. A people of priests, a consecrated nation. Just as Christ was consecrated priest, prophet and king, so we by baptism are anointed to offer praise and thanksgiving, to declare the wonderful works of God, and to lead and guide, each in his or her measure.

So let’s go back now to mercy, the mercy of Christ and his Church. We are those who have received the mercy of God who has called us out of darkness into His wonderful light. The very type and pattern of Holy Church, is our blessed Lady, Mary mother of mercy, mater misericordiae. So, how did all you box-tickers know about mercy in the first place? Who was it gave you the example of the divine mercy? Was Sister Faustina? I think it was the Holy Spirit you have all received! Isn’t this how you know of that great mercy? That you know how to demand mercy? That you know how to give mercy to one another?

When I became a Dominican I had to lie on the floor in the chapter-house in front of the prior and he asked, Quid petis? What do you come here looking for? The right answer was, Misericordiam Dei et vestram, God’s mercy and yours. Yours meaning not only his, the mercy and love of all the brothers. How am I still here 50 years later? Because of God’s mercy and the mercy of my sisters and brothers. Your mercy too!

So perhaps we need to stand the call for mercy on its head. You and I without further distinction are the priestly people called to give and to show mercy to one another and to all the little ones of the earth who call for mercy. If there were no mercy there would be no Church. If there was a parish community without mercy, we’d do best not to belong to it! If there was just one person or one single category of persons who couldn’t find mercy here, and by mercy we don’t mean just tolerance of an evil, forbearance, reluctance to judge, but kind welcome and the active loving-kindness of the heart, then really we would have nothing profitable to say to anyone, and we should shut up shop as the secularists want us to. But for Pope Francis the Church is a house whose doors are open, and there is no-one who must be left outside the camp. Is our own church good news, this church, the one around here? This is where we belong, where we are church and are set to make a home for one another.

When Pope Francis called the Synod he asked for all the different voices to be heard, including those of all the people with doubts and difficulties. We who are the Church listen to the people of God here today, but also to the Scriptures, to the Evangelists, to the great theologians of the past, St Augustine, St Thomas Aquinas, St Catherine of Siena and St Theresa of Avila. All are members of the Church and all must be heard. The Church doesn’t put in opposition the old and the new.

The Church has a beautiful teaching about marriage and married love and life together and you are the priestly people who live that teaching, it’s you the experts. Is that so simple and straightforward? Perhaps not, you told Pope Francis and the Synod. So can we look closer?

In matters concerning love and marriage, it’s those who do fall in love and do marry and do found a family who exercise their baptismal priesthood in precisely those respects; it is they who know the difficulties and the challenges and who struggle to bring together the lovely ideal and the realism of the actual situation. These are the ones to teach the Church. This is by no means an easier way than expecting authority, the clergy, an encyclical letter, to provide all the answers and tell your couple just what to do.

The human couple, not servants but friends, witness by their lives to the love of God that has called them together. Their loving builds up the human family and the family of the faithful and deepens and confirms their love for one another, aspects that can’t be held apart, but where the emphasis lies and where the path leads is a matter for thought, prayer, discrimination, prudence – for the gift we so often speak of here, discernment. My old friend Christoph Schönborn, he is the one who has the Cardinal’s hat, says, I do not have to give people permissions, I accompany them whilst they work out for themselves what it is good and right for them to do. The role of the priest, I mean the ministerial priest, is to be like the Good Shepherd who also calls himself the gate of the sheep – a gate is to let you in, to let people in to fresh pastures. Because in the Church there are to be no masters or servants, only friends. When people look at the Church what are they meant to see, a set of Nos and Donts? Can they see Christ in whom it is always Yes? With the Lord there is mercy, and fullness of redemption, there is.

Fr Bob Eccles