Holy Violence

Thursday of the Second Week in Advent A-1

Entrance Antiphon Cf. Ps 119 (118): 151-152 You, O Lord, are close, and all your ways are truth. From of old I have known of your decrees, for you are eternal.

Collect Stir up our hearts, O Lord, to make ready the paths of your Only Begotten Son, that through his coming, we may be found worthy to serve you with minds made pure. 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: Isaiah 41:13-20; Psalm 145:1 and 9-13ab; Matthew 11:11-15

Jesus said to the crowds, “Amen I say to you, among those born of women there has never been one greater than John the Baptist. Yet the least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist till now the kingdom of heaven undergoes violence, and the violent bear it away. For all the prophets and the law prophesied till John. If you will accept it, he is Elias that is to come. He that has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Matthew 11:11-15)

Holy Violence One of the fascinating things in life is to observe what people enthuse over. Some people live for sport. Some absolutely love horse racing. A whole nation can hold its breath for days and weeks as its team approaches the World Final. Another person can love cooking. Not only is it fascinating to see the things people give themselves over to, but it is also fascinating to see how one person loves what another person hates or has no interest in. Now, whatever about this unsurprising fact there is one great Object which God means us all to be interested in with all our heart and soul. It is he himself and his plan for us. God sent his Son to establish his Kingdom and this Kingdom is meant for all. It is nothing other than the lordship — the dominion — of God over the heart of every man and woman. This lordship, this Kingdom, has a very definite contour and character. It has its structure and its life. It has its regime and its officers. It is a Kingdom and not just a vague state of existence or relationship. It is this which Christ came among men to announce and establish, and it was the greatest Event of all time. But what did he encounter? St John tells us that he came unto his own and his own did not receive him. He met with the variety of attitudes that I referred to earlier that we see everywhere in all sorts of contexts. Some were interested, and some were not. Some were mildly interested, others greatly. Yet it was the One great Thing which had long been predicted and prepared for. The prophets had pointed to it and to the Messiah who would inaugurate it. Something of this is referred to by our Lord in our Gospel passage today. “Amen, I say to you, among those born of women there has been none greater than John the Baptist; yet the least in the Kingdom of heaven is greater than he. From the days of John the Baptist until now, the Kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent are taking it by force.” God is asking of every man and woman a total commitment to his Kingdom because it is the greatest thing of all.

The “violent are taking it by force.” Whoever has ears ought to hear this. Yes, in every family, in every community, indeed everywhere and in all contexts we see men and women pursuing their various callings and interests. But within this very diversity there should be one underlying common love and goal. It is God and his Kingdom, the Kingdom announced and established by Christ. This Kingdom is, as I said earlier, God’s lordship as embodied and found in Christ. That is to say, we are all called to serve and love God in Christ with all our heart precisely in the diversity of our various works and interests. The one thing that ought link all men and women is their being in Christ. Christ is the light and the life of every man and woman, and being in him by faith and baptism is the foundation and life of the Church. “The violent are taking it by force”, our Lord tells us. This means that those who give their heart and soul to the work of living for and in the Kingdom — in and for God in union with Christ, that is to say — will bring off a great victory. The victory is the victory of holiness. It means that in all the interests and works that make up our daily life, we must be endeavouring to love and serve God. It means sanctifying our daily life. It means sanctifying our daily work and making it something holy and worthy to be offered to God each day. If we sanctify our daily work, doing it with as pure a love for God as we can and doing it as well as we can constantly, that work we do will sanctify us and others as well. We shall be advancing in the Kingdom through the violence we are doing to our self‑love and self‑indulgence. It is a holy violence that we are engaged in, a violence that will give us the victory. This is the true jihad, the true struggle in the way of God. The Kingdom, the lordship of God over our own hearts and the hearts of the world around us, requires that we give ourselves fully to the task. Christ wants warriors in everyday life, warriors of the spirit, hidden warriors, warriors that take him for their model and who are prepared to follow him to the cross.

What this means in practice is the giving of ourselves totally to the doing of God’s will in daily life. Such people as these are the violent whom our Lord says are taking the Kingdom of heaven by force. This is the Christian jihad, the jihad of being nailed to the cross of obedience to the will of God. Let us then take our stand with Christ and fight with him with his weapons, the weapons of humility and meekness, the weapons of the beatitudes, the weapon of the Cross, the weapon of death to self. Therein lies the victory, and gaining that victory means entering the Glory.

(E.J.Tyler)

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