Fr Patrick Hederman OSB
I am sure some of you have had the experience of returned emigrants coming back to their old homes, explaining to you just how much they have made good since they left the old sod so long ago. ‘The corn is as high as a elephant’s eye, and it looks like its climbing clear up to
the sky!’ Tell me now, says the visitor: ‘How many acres have you here on this little farm of yours?’ ‘About 35 acres I’d say, not counting the garden at the front, the paddock on the left or the haggard at the back.’
‘Oh, my goodness me,’ says your man, ‘I only wish you could see the
magnificent prairies, the tracts of land that I own back where I come from . . .
I could get up on my tractor in the morning, drive around the headlands for a day and a half and I wouldn’t see a quarter of the property I own.’ ‘Oh, I know well what you’re sayin’ ‘ says my friend, ‘we had a tractor like that one time . . . the divil and all to start it up, and then spluttering and stuttering along the ways . . . an age to get you anywhere . . . a fright to the world.’
To understand the Gospel we have just been reading, we have to know the meaning of hyperbole: hyperbole means telling it as it is, but multiplying by a thousand to get your point across; in other words, exaggerating to tell the truth. And to know how that works, you have to come and live in Ireland for a while. The postman said to me the day before yesterday: ‘I have a mountain of post for you this morning [ now that meant two letters, one small parcel and a bill] After a few weeks of beautiful sunshine that we’ve all been enjoying you could
hear: ‘I’m roasting, I’m biling, . . . my head is like a pat of butter; I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I’m walking around stark naked.
Then we had a day and a night of much welcome rain: so you’d hear: it was ‘raining cats and dogs, I tell you, It’s been raining now for 40 days and 40 nights. Then with everyone home from school you’ll hear throughout the land: He never cut the grass, it’s a jungle out there!
I’ve told you a million times, pick up your dirty socks. A teacher who’s correcting exams will have ‘a ton’ of papers to grade. So, when we hear our Lord Jesus Christ saying: “Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; [or] anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” At least here in Ireland, we know where he’s coming from, what he’s getting at. I mean we’re not all fools down our part of the country!
St Paul uses similar language, making the very same point: Here’s what he says to the people of Philippi: ‘ I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain
Christ.’ [Epistle to the Philippians 3: 7-8] The message is clear: the only thing that really matters in this life and in the next, is knowing Christ Jesus and putting our trust in him.