Fr Henry O’Shea OSB
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
It is, I think, true to say that most of us like to imagine that we are in control of our own knowing and behaving. That is, if we ever really reflect on this matter at all serioulsy. On examination, we can recognise, if we don’t’ find it too uncomfortable, that when we read anything, see anything, play anything, do anything, we bring with us a baggage of experience, of pre-conceptions, of ways of looking at things, of ways of deciding what interests or affects us or not.
This baggage, these realities, can be likened to a set of lenses or prisms that filter our perceptions. With that filtering, they influence what we know, or think we know, influence what we think is relevant or irrelevant, important or unimportant to us. These lenses or prisms influence how we behave, what we desire, what we imagine we can hope for. We like to think that our spectacles are our own, constructed or appropriated, made part of us, by ourselves. But are they?
Most of us, most of the time, simply go with the flow. Most of us, most of the time, accept the consensus in our group or society. Just look at the changing consenses in the last hundred years of our country’s history. Most of us go along with what ‘everyone knows’. George Orwell described this reality very eloquently in his presentation of the four-footed animals caught up in the revolution on the farm – a revolution against their human owners. The cycle of – ‘two legs bad, four legs good’, morphs back into ‘four legs bad, two legs good’. This brainlessness is most evident in any society, in a culture that is superficial, ephemeral, throw-away, virtual rather than real. Does this sound familiar in a digital age?
Returning to lenses or prisms: the readings at Mass – along with all the other prayers, chants and actions – are intended to help us to acquire a certain way of seeing, of understanding and of being. The filter through which what we read and hear is presented by the gospel-message in general. This message is most usually presented in the actual gospel-reading of the day. Often, too, though, it is spelled out in the second reading, which is nearly always from the New Testament. The gospel-reading is intended to put the first and second readings into context. And the context is that of the gathered, listening, worshipping community that is the Body of Christ, that is us, the Church. We, the community of the baptised, are constantly learning, constantly trying to learn, the heart- and body-language of love.
The gospel-message and the gospel-text filters out whatever in an Old Testament reading that is conditioned by the, time, place and context at and in which that reading was composed. The gospel filter constantly attempts to extract the core message.
The Old Testament prophets were not and did not attempt to be, fun persons. Today’s first reading from the prophet Ezekiel is an example. What Ezekiel presents us is a balance between the responsibility of the community to help and admonish but also of the freedom of the individual to refuse to heed that warning, to refuse to accept responsibility.
The New Testament reading usually presents the attempts by the early Christian community to put into words and deeds what it was experiencing in its living of the expanding mystery, or showing-forth, of the risen Christ. In three short verses, today’s second reading from Paul’s letter to the Romans, provides what was at the time, and what still is, a revolutionary, overcoming or surpassing of a legalistic box-ticking of attitudinal and behavioural norms. It is not that Paul is telling us that the Ten Commandments are no longer relevant or binding. What he is telling us is that if our keeping of these commandments is not inspired by, not permeated with and held together by love of one another, then this keeping, however commendable, is merely an exercise in ethical box-ticking, societal propriety.
Today’s gospel-reading from Matthew is a fairly typical example of this writer’s style. All verses deal with the role of the believing community, the Church. The first three verses deal with how to cope with disputes among the faithful. This begins with a one-to-one meeting, progresses to a group-mediation and ends, if necessary, with the involvement of the whole community. This can even lead to expulsion form that community.
Again, like what we heard from St Paul, we, the community are responsible for one another. Responsible in love, but not in dictatorial power. But it also remains true that the individual can avail her- or himself of right to reject this love. Matthew goes on to assert that the Christ has given the community of the Church the competence to articulate and channel this love. Christ himself has given the community of the baptised the capacity to provide lenses and prisms to recognise reality and let hearts expand in the loving living of that vision. Matthew tells us that our praying and asking are not just a whistling in the wind, but are listened to because Christ, the Master, himself is present in his body, the Church, even when only two or three of his lovers are gathered in his name.
Scorn, cynical dismissive and mocking conformity, ‘everyone knows’ gets one only so far.
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”