Draft of a Homily for Domenica in Albis

This Sunday is traditionally known as Domenica in Albis – the Sunday for the taking off of the white clothes.  In the Early Church, adults would have been welcomed into the Church at the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday night and would have worn their white baptismal robes to Church for the following eight days – the Octave of Easter - as a reminder to themselves and to others of the new life they had received in baptism.  However, this Sunday they would set their white robes and would be reminded that whilst their way of dress would no longer mark them out as new Christians, their way of life should continue to do so as they did their best to keep their baptismal promises and walk in the way Christ taught them.

Our First Reading gives us a picture of the Apostles and their followers living as a distinctive community whose teaching and way of life was different from the society around them.  If we look at the history books we see that their distinctive way of life led to both the admiration and the contempt of members of the broader society around them.  Because they recognised that Christ was the Lord and that there is only One God, they would not worship the Roman emperor as a god or take part in the pagan worship of the state.  The fact that Christians were equally accepting of slaves and the nobility as brothers and sisters in Christ led to them being mocked for their disregard of the social order.  Because of the Christian principles of respect for all life and the duty to care for the vulnerable, the first Christians would have nothing to do with the Roman custom of leaving sickly new-born babies to die on the rubbish heap – and indeed, often adopted such abandoned babies.  Those who would have no truck with the Christians dismissed this as weak-mindedness, but this Christian example of compassion gradually won many admirers.  Likewise, Christ’s teaching about marital fidelity was radically counter-cultural when men saw it as their right to cast off one wife and take up with another – but the Christian community stayed loyal to the teaching of Christ in recognising the importance and dignity of marriage as a path to holiness for husbands and wives alike.  In short, part and parcel of the Christian life is living a challenging sort of life, made possible by Christ’s gift of the Holy Spirit and the support of the Christian community.

The challenge to us today is to recognise that we too have received the same Holy Spirit – we have the same religious and spiritual DNA as the Christians of the Early Church, and whether we are a small minority or a majority of the population, the challenge to us is the same – to live lives in Communion with Christ and with one another and to bear witness to the Gospel values taught by Christ and passed on by the Church under the guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit.  If we have been baptised, we have been challenged to live a life of faith, basing what we say and do on the Gospel.  St John tells us, “this is what loving God is – keeping his commandants; and his commandments are not difficult because anyone who has been begotten by God has already overcome the world.”

Objectively speaking, God’s commandments are challenging, are difficult.  I don’t think we should understand St John to be telling us that the Christian life is a breeze.  Rather, He is reminding us that if we truly believe in the power of Him who has given us new life, we will have His help in living that Christian life.  And that Christian life, he reminds us, is something that is in opposition to the world.

There was an interesting survey published during the week – the point of it was to show up the differences between the thinking of Irish Catholics and the teaching of the Church.  I suspect the desired intention was to help make the case that the teachings of the Church don’t match up with what is happening in modern life or with the thoughts of Irish Catholics.  To be frank, I wasn’t at all very surprised at the results of the survey which showed Church teaching to be very much the minority opinion, especially where issues of sexual morality were at issue.  It’s not a surprise because our opinions are shaped by the society around us and the opinion makers – the newspaper editors, the advertisers, the writers of soap operas, TV celebrities and journalists and so on, they’re the ones who are talking to us and shaping our thoughts and influencing our opinions.  The question we must ask is whether they are doing so in order to help us follow Christ and live the kind of life He asks of us.  Is it progress if our beliefs and attitudes do not correspond to anything that previous generations of Christians would have recognised as Christianity?

The question we must ask of ourselves as Christians is whether we are making a genuine effort to understand the kind of life that Christ wants of us?  Or are we accepting the common assumptions of society without criticism.  If we are puzzled about something the Church teaches, or puzzled about something that the media tells that the Church teaches, do we make the effort to find out what the Church actually teaches and why?  Do we spend time with the scriptures and with the Catechism of the Catholic Church in order to discern the call of the Lord?  Do we ever balance the hours and hours of television, radio, newspapers and chat with time spent in prayer and the study of our faith?  Have we ever asked a priest we trust to explain something about Church teaching that puzzles us?  Do we believe enough in Christ and His victory over the world to believe that the way of life He calls us to might involve holding values that do not square with the common consensus of that same world?  Is it more important for us to accept the reasoning of the society around us, or to stay in communion with the followers of Jesus throughout the ages who were not afraid to choose a radical way of life above the values of their time?

When ‘doubting Thomas’ saw the Lord’s wounds and made His profession of faith, Jesus blessed all those who would accept the Apostles’ teaching and believe in Him:

You believe because you can see me.  Happy are those who have not seen, and yet believe.

That describes our situation – those of us who have not seen Christ in the flesh, but who know Him through the life of faith.  We know Him in prayer and in the sacraments, in the scriptures and in the life of the Church.  The prayers of this Mass ask that that knowledge and faith be kept alive and life-giving in our lives, in our minds, in our hearts.  We pray that we will have the courage to entrust ourselves to the Lord & the determination to seek His wisdom to sustain us in our Christian lives.

Addendum:  You need to read The Thirsty Gargoyle's take on the ACP survey.