Homily, 22nd Sunday C 2022

The eight panels under the half dome in the sanctuary at Holy Name bear images of saints popular when this church was built in 1929. The second one on the left is an image of St Thomas More. Born in 1478, he was an English lawyer who was councillor to King Henry VIII and Lord High Chancellor of England. After the Pope of the time refused to declare Henry’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon null and void, Henry declared himself “Supreme Head of the Church in England”, thereby setting up the Anglican Church. Thomas More refused to recognise the king’s divorce and his break with the Catholic Church. He resigned as Lord Chancellor and continued to argue against the King. When he refused to sign the Oath of Supremacy, by which one accepted the king’s headship of the Church, More was convicted of treason and was beheaded on 6 July 1535. (The panel bearing his image also features an axe, to indicate how he was killed.)

Just before his execution, More was reported to have said: “I die the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”  It was a principled stand and one which many Catholics in subsequent years adopted, even though they knew it could lead to their arrest and death.  

On the day before his execution, More wrote a letter from the Tower of London to his daughter, Margaret. It contained a sentence quoted much since then by Catholics and other Christians at a time of bereavement, and which is often printed on Memoriam Cards. In bidding farewell to his daughter, More asked her to ‘pray for me as I will for thee that we may merrily meet in heaven’.

In today’s Gospel (Luke 13:22-30) Jesus refers to what More called ‘heaven’. He announces that the vision of Isaiah in the First Reading (66:18-21) – people from all over the world, pagans as well as Jews, would come into God’s presence in a particularly close way – is being fulfilled with him.

Earlier in his book, the Prophet predicted that in this Kingdom God would lay on a magnificent feast or banquet for his people. ‘How many will be admitted to this Kingdom’, Jesus is asked. This was a current question of debate among rabbis and the regular answer was that all Jews, except tax collectors and such like ‘sinners’, would gain entry. Jesus does not directly answer the question (although we must not forget that he was the ‘friend of sinners’). Instead, he warns his fellow Jews that they would not have automatic entry to his kingdom simply because they were Jews. They should know that an effort is demanded of them, that it is no easy matter to gain eternal life. They must pass through the ‘narrow door’ of accepting him and following his teaching about what God requires of us. Should they reject him, God would call others (converts from other races) to be admitted to the Kingdom before them. In the event this happened, ‘The last (pagans) shall be first, and the first (Jews who reject him) will be last’ and their loss or separation would leave them with “weeping and grinding of teeth”.

For us who do believe – however shakily – in Christ and try to follow his teaching, Our Lord’s is a consoling and hope-filled message, even if we fail to keep up with him all the time. We might look back on life with regrets or shame, fear or dread of dying and even have doubts about an after-life, but for Jesus at the end of our life’s journey he will lead us into the loving and ‘merry’ presence of God.

This simple and consoling truth of Christ’s teaching sustained Thomas More and all those like him down the ages who have been tortured or put to death for their faith. We too live in the hope, as More asked his daughter to pray, that we will merrily meet in heaven with those who have gone before us.

Michael Campion
Holy Name, Jesmond
21 August 2022