Being Repaid

Monday of the Thirty-first Week in Ordinary Time C-2

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 38 (37):22-23 Forsake me not, O Lord, my God; be not far from me! Make haste and come to my help, O Lord, my strong salvation!

Collect Almighty and merciful God, by whose gift your faithful offer you right and praiseworthy service, grant, we pray, that we may hasten without stumbling to receive the things you have promised. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Scripture today: Philippians 2:1-4; Psalm 131:1bcde, 2, 3; Luke 14:12-14

On a Sabbath Jesus went to dine at the home of one of the leading Pharisees. He said to the host who invited him, “When you hold a lunch or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or sisters or your relatives or your wealthy neighbours, in case they may invite you back and you have repayment. Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” (Luke 14:12-14)

Being Repaid Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury (1670–1713) was an English politician, philosopher and writer. Shaftesbury is generally regarded as a writer hostile to religion. But his correspondence is said to show a belief in a God, all-wise, all-just and all-merciful, governing the world providentially for the best. He had definite ideas about a true religion and a pure morality – and as a result of these ideas he had contempt for some of the doctrines of Christianity. One of his well-known works was Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times (1711), a work which John Henry Newman (1801-1890) chose to consider when, in one of his books, he analyzed what he called the “Religion of Philosophy”. Newman writes that in his book, Shaftesbury rejected the motive of fear of punishment in the leading of a virtuous life. Newman, by contrast, taught that the conscience, a true foundation of the sense of God and of religion, prompts reasonable and authentic fear at transgressing divine commands. The conscience has a sense of foreboding when divine commands are transgressed, and this, for Newman, is an essential natural support for religion. Sanctions of reward and punishment are necessary – and revealed religion confirms this. For Shaftesbury it is only love of virtue for its own sake which is morally acceptable, and not the doing of things to gain reward and avoid punishment. Under Newman’s analysis it turns out that this position not only ignores the promptings of the conscience, but in Shaftesbury this “virtue” is simply a sense of beauty or utility. Newman writes that “Sometimes he distinctly contrasts this taste with principle and conscience, and gives it the preference over them. ‘After all,’ he says, ‘tis not merely what we call principle, but a taste, which governs men’.” This, Newman taught, is the religion of the “gentleman” and is basically a substitution or re-interpretation of the dictate of the conscience for a sense of beauty, or of what is fitting, or of what is useful – all of which turns out to be a religion or morality driven basically by self-respect. God is lost sight of, and it is the Self that is the object of the heart’s concern. In all of this Newman regards the conscience as the typical foundation in nature of authentic religion and the sense of God. It is natural and to be desired that a person live well and religiously in order to be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.

All of this fits in with natural everyday experience. Grace builds on nature. A student is exhorted to study hard and consistently in order to do well in life. There is the motive of reward for work. Failing this effort and diligence, there is the prospect of serious mishap – which is “punishment” for neglect. The laws of society have sanctions and it is understood that an important motive in getting citizenry to comply with laws is the motive of reward and punishment. This is not to say that in religion one is never to rise above this to higher motives of love, but the fear of loss and the hope of gain will always be present in some sense. And this is confirmed by revealed religion – and specifically by the religion instituted by Jesus Christ. There is no prophet before him who spoke so much of heaven and hell awaiting the period of trial which is this life. In our Gospel passage today (Luke 14:12-14) we read of our Lord telling the leading Pharisees, Rather, when you hold a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind; blessed indeed will you be because of their inability to repay you. For you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.” It suggests that a motive of their being preferential towards the poor is being “repaid” an eternal reward in the Afterlife. Our Lord’s parable of the Poor Man Lazarus and the Rich Man who ignored him is well known. They died and the Rich Man ended up in Hades, while the Poor Man ended up in the bosom of Abraham. It is plain from the parable that the future beyond this life should be an important thought in the conduct of life. In the 25th chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel our Lord gives his famous description of the Final Judgment of all, when the Shepherd-King will separate the sheep from the goats. The sheep will be commended for having helped those in need and will go to their eternal reward, while the goats will be condemned for neglecting the needy, and will go to eternal punishment. Our Lord obviously means all this to be a motive for right action. During the apparitions of our Lady to the children of Fatima in 1917, they were given visions of hell – and it was awesome and horrifying. St Teresa of Avila, doctor of the Church, was once given a vision of her place in hell were she to fall from grace and die without repentance. So we ought think often and long about the great Eternity towards which we are all heading. Life is very short, and eternity is very long. It is everlasting – so we must get to heaven.

One of the many great priests of the twentieth century in America was Father Patrick Peyton. He led great crusades across the world promoting the family Rosary. I remember seeing him interviewed on the Catholic television network, EWTN towards the end of his life. He was asked about death, and he said that he was looking forward to death. This was not because he was tired of life in the way some want to end their lives because of their difficulties. It was because he wanted to be with Jesus Christ. This is the great reward to look forward to. We read how on the mountain God the Father said, This is my beloved Son. Listen to him. That is to be our programme of life, and if it is then we can look forward to life everlasting with him. In all of this, it is the mercy of God which is our hope and we have a wonderful example in the one who died near and with Christ. He said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom! The wonderful answer came: I tell you, this day you will be with me in Paradise.

(E. J. Tyler)