Our People

Homily for the Fourth Sunday of Year A

Our Lady Star of the Sea Parish, Watson’s Bay

By Most Rev. Anthony Fisher OP
Auxiliary Bishop of Sydney
3/2/2008

This week, as result of a strange alignment of the celestial spheres, we will have Ash Wednesday on the earliest date of any year in history. Many of you will no doubt remember that Ash Wednesday morning, 25 years ago, when there were clear skies and rising temperatures in drought-stricken Victoria and South Australia. A cold front in the Great Australian Bight drew hot air from the centre of Australia southwards, creating a hot, dry northerly wind for several hours. Temperatures in many places soared into the 40s and relative humidity dropped to near zero. By early afternoon hundreds of fires were being reported. Then the front moved inland, the wind strengthened and changed direction, and the fires overtook all fire-fighting efforts. By the next day, 75 people were dead, hundreds of buildings were destroyed, thousands of livestock lost and millions of hectares of countryside razed.

Most Australians probably think it was called ‘Ash Wednesday’ because of the ash produced by the bushfires rather than because of a strange Catholic liturgical practice of putting ashes on heads and reminding people they will soon be dust and ashes themselves. I didn’t get any closer to those 1983 fires than any other TV-viewer; but five years ago I was passing through Canberra on the weekend of its terrible bush-fires and was asked to say Mass in the village of Hall on Canberra’s outskirts. That town had been devastated and it was hard to know what to say to people covered in the ash of their own houses, farms and stock.

What sense might such people make of a Gospel passage like the one we’ve just heard (Mt 5:1-12)? It is a popular text that one, perhaps the most romantic of all the Gospel passages – as long as you don’t listen too carefully! Surely Jesus was not serious when he called the broken-hearted and broken-spirited – like the victims of the bushfires – ‘happy’? How could he wish suffering and calumny on people, as he seems to today? And as for his rewards programme: just ask our peacekeepers in Iraq and Afghanistan at the moment how happy peacemaking makes you! Indeed, we might ask: are any of those Jesus calls ‘happy’ in today’s Gospel actually happy very often? Would any of us count ourselves ‘blessed’ if we were poor, mourning or victimised? Is Jesus just playing with us, being sarcastic, not really meaning what he says? And if so, are we tricked every time we hear the beatitudes? Maybe…

Last Sunday, we heard Jesus begin his preaching ministry with the call to repentance, the call to abandon our old way of life. Today, we hear in his Sermon on the Mount how he proposes we live instead: the life we turn to, when we turn away from sin.

Interestingly, in today’s Gospel Jesus gathers us together to teach us. While repentance is ultimately something each heart must do alone, moving forward is something we must do together. We are not just individuals believing in Jesus and making our own path to God. Jesus’ disciples are those who gather around him, his ecclesia, his congregation, his gathering.

We gather here not just to enjoy one another’s company, as we will today after Mass at our Parish barbecue. No, we gather here firstly because there is much to learn: how to worship and pray; how to live; what to be and do. So now Jesus goes up a hill, just like Moses had done centuries before, to propose to us a new way of life, one that will make us truly happy. Not a happy-clappy life of easy pleasures and no challenges, but one that promises a deeper satisfaction, a richer fulfilment. A life in pursuit of the good and the true and the beautiful, even when comes at cost of some poverty of spirit or grief or persecution.

One thing that the ashes of the Australian bush say to us that perfectly reflects the Christian Gospel is that through fire there can come not only destruction but regeneration. We know that eucalypts and many other Australian native trees rely on the heat of bushfires and the resultant clearing and new soils for regeneration. You might say that there’s nothing a gum tree likes more than a good fire. Just a few days after fire has destroyed our forests they are already budding with fresh green shoots. So too with the human side of bushfires. Amidst all the grief we witness extraordinary acts of bravery and self-sacrifice. Volunteer fire fighters put their lives on the line, community groups feed and house the evacuees, governments and people across Australia assist with donations.

And so it seems that through enduring for a time poverty of spirit rather than seeking or expecting always to be abuzz with pleasure, we may indeed inherit the kingdom of heaven. Through being gentle rather than ruthless in the way of the modern economy, we may indeed gain something much more valuable. Only through suffering the sadness of loss do we come fully to appreciate that we had something beautiful to lose and something even more beautiful to regain when all is repaired and our loved ones returned to us. Through seeking justice and mercy, purity and peace, we will find those gifts for ourselves. The irony is that Jesus is not tricking us with his strange words – we are tricking ourselves, by ever imagining that real happiness comes cheap, that there can be resurrection without death, life without ashes.