Homily from Sr Clare Mass - Bishop McKeown

Third Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C
Sunday, 26 January 2025
Mass in Long Tower, Derry.

Today we hear about the start of Jesus' public ministry, in his hometown of Nazareth. Speaking to his neighbours and relations, he makes a profound statement about who he is and what his mission is. The early followers of Jesus clearly remembered this story because it said something about how they saw the purpose and work of the Church in every age, including our own. And we are all invited to hear in the scriptures, not merely theology but a message for me and for us today. After all, the Word of God is not merely the stories in a book but the Jesus, the Word made flesh. Unless we know Jesus, the Word who was in the beginning, we will never really know who is being revealed in the scriptures. What messages do I hear in this Gospel this year?

Firstly, according to the passage from Isaiah, who drives the mission of Jesus? The Holy Spirit. And who is prioritised at the centre of that divine mission? The poor and the downtrodden. We know from the Gospels and the life of the early church that the early followers of Jesus sought to be faithful to that task, whatever the cost. Jesus knew that his path would lead to Calvary. Mary was told that a sword would pierce her soul. It is not surprising that the story of Jesus calming the storm appears in al the Gospels. Putting out into the deep is part of Jesus' command to the church. We have to let ourselves be led by God's plan and not by our own strategies or fears. One danger for the church is to assume that we have to develop a business model for the future, setting goals and targets and assessing ourselves against our standards. Since the age of St Columba, the Irish have been at their most blessed when they set out to do impossible tasks on all continents – not in the service of human plans but to build God's kingdom. Our local church has to listen to little prophetic voices on the margins and not just to strong institutional voices at the centre. As St Paul wrote, we all have gifts to build up the church. God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom. Modern saints all knew that.

Secondly, Jesus does not have limited horizons. He expects great things and will send his motley band of apostles to make disciples of all nations. The great strength of the missionary church in every age is that it let itself be led by the Holy Spirit to do outrageous things. That has often meant coming into conflict with people in political authority. That is what happened to Jesus and to the apostles – and they paid the ultimate price for that. The saints in every generation have been fools for Christ's sake. So often they were motivated by a divine desire to bring good news to the poor and to set the downtrodden free. Many saints were not motivated so much by the desire to found organisations as by an urge to gather a band of like-minded people who could respond to a need to provide love, education, support and good news in Jesus' name to the neglected. The church is being renewed wherever we find new groups who are prepared to do outrageous loving things for Christ. A church without new bands of passionate young rebels is dying. And that is where modern saints will be found and formed.

Thirdly, for the church in every generation, Jesus, our Lord and our leader, is the model of what we are called to be if we want people to meet him in our time and place. That is not easy. We have many models of leadership. One powerful and damaging model for too many leaders is to complain that they and their followers are victims of baddies somewhere else – and that story binds people together. But they risk becoming bullies, blind to their own faults. Some models of political leadership imprison people in an angry narrative of being victims. They use their narrative of victimhood to reject any criticism of their actions. 'I suffered. So somebody else has to suffer'. Jesus has a different model of leadership. He wants to offer liberation from being prisoners of the past, trapped by either our own actions or by what others have done to us or by resentment against others. He is concerned with sacrificing himself for the welfare of others and forgiving others for what they did to him on the cross. He wants a church made up of followers who look outwards rather than being frightened and angry. Church will never reflect Jesus if it is focussed on its own pain and weakness – or the alleged plots of others. We will be renewed by becoming weak with the weak, not by hiding behind an angry desire to be strong and smash alleged enemies. That sort of ungenerous self-righteous heart is precisely what Jesus condemned in the Pharisees. In the words of Jesus, he emphasis is always to be on the plank in our own eyes rather than on the speck that we like to see in the eye of others. Saints are those whose prayer drives them to dare to look outwards

What does this passage say to us as we pray for the Holy Spirit to guide the process that may lead to the canonisation of Servant of God Clare Crockett? Being a follower of Jesus starts with meeting him as the revelation of the Father's mercy and walking with him. That means having a prayerful heart that is open to the uncomfortable promptings of the Holy Spirit. Genuine prayer will always bring us healing and point our hearts outwards. Then that prayerful journey of faith will challenge us to find ways of being good news for the needy out there. Don't waste time with angrily trying to identify and condemn the baddies. There may be much satisfaction but little grace in fighting somebody else's political battles. . Jesus wants us to fight for him and not for somebody else's blinkered political agenda or hollow slogans.

Those are the uncomfortable thoughts that my reading of this Gospel (Luke 1:1-4,4:14-21) speaks of to me. Your job is to not be afraid of what it says to you. Sr Clare wasn't.

+ Donal