22nd Sunday of Year A

This week in 1939 - 75 years ago – on Sept 1^st in fact, Germany invaded Poland, and on 3^rd of September, England declared war in Germany. It was a dark time in 1939 and in 1940 when Churchill took up the mantle and became Prime Minister of Britain. But he was able to inspire people through his rhetoric and memorable speeches and one-liners. Today we would call them sound-bites. One of his many earlier speeches as people tuned in on the radio, the most immediate and popular and effective means of communication, was his line – ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat’.

These words became a rallying cry, for the Government and the people in their darkest hour.

Jesus’ call to discipleship is a rallying cry to lay aside selfishness and to act for the good of others –just as British people found unexpected reserves of courage and comfort in Churchill’s words, we too can find a kind of heroism in daily life. Jesus offers us a reward to those who struggle with him along the way of the cross and self-forgetfulness

The Cross involves the following – ‘The performance of duty even if others seem to shirk theirs’ (St Josemaria Escriva) - to know your role.

To take up the cross, to deny oneself means putting others and the Lord's considerations above your own.

We are accountable and there can be no reward without effort, without a personal cost to ourselves – duty, sacrifice, facing up to our responsibilities, putting away the toys. It is a dying to self.

We need to start again to take up the mantle and once more after another lapse to deny what is particular to ourselves in terms of preference tastes or conveniences

Penance, self denial, and fasting or abstinence can be beneficial to help us forego in essentials and what really matters and to appreciate the gifts that are given to us, but what the Lord asks for most of all is from each person the faithful performance of daily duty in a spirit of sacrifice

There is a tendency in all of us to running away and the temptation of avoidance and procrastination to delay what ought to be done today due to bad habits of laziness and sloth and excessive love of comfort can be an injustice even paying bills and the like...things that can wait we think...and the preference of suiting ourselves ahead of others...

How can I better fulfil my tasks to which I am called in my particular state in life? How can I be more faithful than I have already been? And how can I avoid slacking off and sitting on my laurels?

This is in fact the time of year of a return in many people’s lives to the banality and drudgery as we see the end of school holidays and the return to work for students and teachers and the challenges of early morning traffic and child minding for grandparents are duties so that children can make ends meet.

But for many there are the unheralded ongoing duties to sick family members or those in a family circle the call to duty to do our fair share. There is the duty of charity - the duty to give more generously to others in need in less well off environments even the homeless and the poor in our own society.

True Christianity is not worthy of the name without the Cross, without the voluntary aspect i.e. the will to take to up, a free decision to continue on and to persevere again like the Stations Of The Cross of getting up again whatever the weary repeated falls have been ...

It is dying to selfish preferences and prioritisation to God, duty and others. It is selfless but it is character building and making us people of integrity and faithful.

If we can be trusted in small things we will be entrusted with greater. We become people that others will rely on and people that others turn to, we become the best version of ourselves. And in forgetting ourselves we actually mysteriously find the person we are called to become. 

The greatest and the most inescapable cross that all must bear lies deep within us. Throughout a lifetime we learn that our ways are not always God’s, our thoughts not always his. To accept this truth about ourselves is to die with Christ, to let go of self so as to be raised up in the mind of Christ Jesus.

It begins with daily dying to self. In the words of St Ignatius,a prayer in fact we can make our own.

Teach me, Lord

To give and not to count the cost

To fight and not to heed the wounds

To labour and not to seek reward

To toil and not to seek for rest

Save that we are doing your will O Lord’.

And as we are reminded in the words of the prayer attributed to St Francis: ‘It is in dying (to self) that we are born to eternal life.’