Sunday Reflection_12th Sunday (2017)

There are two connected themes in today’s Gospel: don’t be afraid to witness to your faith in Christ – because God loves even the sparrows.

The early Church needed this exhortation of Jesus. During the first three hundred years after Christ’s resurrection, a believer in Christ could be put to death for his or her faith. For the first two hundred years the state did not actively search out believers in Christ. But if a person was denounced as a Christian and he or she admitted it, the person was put to death. Torture was often used not to extract the “truth” about their belief, but to “persuade” them to give up their belief. After 250 the Roman Empire was being threatened and so the State sought to have “unity” by having everyone offer incense or sacrifice to the Roman gods. At first some Christians had their slaves sacrifice in their name, or they purchased certificates from the officials saying they had sacrificed. Eventually the Bishops said that they could not do that. And so in the later empire-wide persecutions there were many martyrs. Christians were told that they had to confess their faith in Christ, even if it meant their death.

After 313 the Roman Empire made Christianity a legitimate religion and so people were not killed for believing in Christ. However, in later centuries when missionaries brought the Gospel to Asia (e.g. China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea), the penalty for believing in Christ was death. The leaders of these countries saw the Christian faith as undermining the social unity of their country at a time when it was sorely needed. But even in the face of death many confessed their faith in Christ. And so today in our liturgy we celebrate the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese and Korean martyrs.

Today in Australia our choice generally is not between believing in Christ and announcing the Good News of the Gospel and being killed or not believing nor preaching the Good News and living a peaceful life. But Jesus said to His disciples; “What I say to you in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the house-tops.” Jesus does expect His followers to spread His teaching and share their faith in Him with others. But how does one do this in today’s society so that the others will listen and hear what we are saying and not simply dismiss it as “religious rubbish” (as I heard one person say to me once).

In the early 13th century when Francis of Assisi and his followers were writing the Rule for the Friars, they included a chapter about the Friars who might choose to go and live among the Moslems. The Rule said they could either go and live among them as servants and not speak about their faith. Or they could go and preach, in which case they should expect martyrdom. But these instructions were popularly summarised in the expression: the Friars must always preach – and sometimes use words. Those who lived among the Moslems without speaking of their faith were still expected to “preach” through the example of their lives.

In the letter of St Peter he talks about giving a reason for our faith “gently”. Paul talks about sharing the “joy” of the Gospel. Perhaps today our preaching must primarily be the way we live our lives. We should be ready to give an explanation of why we live the way we do, but an aggressive attempt to lead others to believe as we do is likely to be rejected. We must always preach, but when words are not appropriate let it be by the action of our lives.

A second theme in today’s Gospel is that we must not fear for our lives because we know that God loves us and will care for us. Jesus uses the example of the sparrows. “Can you not buy two sparrows for a penny? And yet not one falls to the ground without your Father knowing.” Pope Francis in his encyclical Laudato si invites us to be strengthened in our trust in the love of God by contemplating creation. He writes: Every creature is thus the object of the Father’s tenderness, who gives it its place in the world. Even the fleeting life of the least of beings is the object of his love, and in its few seconds of existence, God enfolds it with his affection. (77) It is for this reason that we can “always preach” without fear – we know we have a loving God.