Set Apart for Charity
HOMILY for 15th Sat per annum (II)
Micah 2:1-5; Ps 10; Matt 12:14-21
The word perishayya in Aramaic means ‘those who are set apart’, and from this we get the term Pharisee. The Pharisees, then, are those who are separated from the Gentiles and other less religiously rigorous Jews in order to pursue holiness, according to the strict observance of the Law, with greater intent. I suppose if one were to give them a Latinate name, we might even, perhaps, call them ‘consecrated ones’?
For what does it mean to become holy? What is it for us Christians to be called a consecrated people, and indeed, why are we, Dominicans and other religious who take vows of religion, said to live the ‘consecrated life’? Are we to be set apart from the sinful world like the pharisees? The temptation I think, which is both contemporary and historically recurrent, is to flee the world; to form intentional communities, indeed, strongholds, that can keep us safely apart from those others who we might consider more sinful than us; and to be set apart and left in peace to follow God’s Law and those of our institutions. Certainly, this is how many in the world would view us.
But the Law of God, of course, is charity. And charity, in practice, is never safe. Hence the Evangelist quotes the first servant song of Isaiah, recalling the Beloved Servant of God, anointed with divine charity. But, as we know, as this servant song develops in the prophecy of Isaiah, it culminates in the fourth song, that of the Suffering Servant, the one who, out of charity, suffers and dies for humanity, and so, by his sacrificial love, consecrates the world to God.
Thus Christ shows us that holiness and consecration doesn’t mean being set apart from the encumbrances nor contagions of our sinful world. But rather, he who is the Holy One and thus by nature distinct from his creation, enters into the world; is born of an immaculate mother but from a genealogy of sinful men and women; dwells and dines with sinners; and then, he “was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.” (Isa 53:12) Christ enters our broken world precisely so as to heal it and make it whole again. And the world is in need of men and women, consecrated in Christ, who are generous enough to do likewise, empowered entirely by God’s grace.
One mistake the pharisees (and their contemporary heirs) make, I think, is to focus on sin, and to be myopically intent on avoiding it by being set apart from it. But sin, metaphysically speaking, is nothing and one cannot build a life focussed on nothing. Rather, we must be consecrated, that is to say, reserved for God, for his purposes, and for his service. Such a life is focused on Christ, and we build our lives on him and his example: “He will not brawl or shout, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets. He will not break the crushed reed, nor put out the smouldering wick”. Many consecrated religious, therefore, have fittingly lived a hidden life, engaged in prayer, in quietly ministering to souls and bodies, and in educating and sanctifying the intellect.
As for us Christians in general, I recall the 2nd-century Epistle to Diognetus which doesn’t call for us to be set apart from the sinful world but to be in it, like the soul, giving life to the body by pursuing lives of charity and Christ-like virtue: “Christians are indistinguishable from other men either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life… And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives… Christians love all men, but all men persecute them… It is by the soul, enclosed within the body, that the body is held together, and similarly, it is by the Christians, detained in the world as in a prison, that the world isheld together… Such is the Christian’s lofty and divinely appointed function, from which he is not permitted to excuse himself.”
So, each Christian, consecrated to Christ by Baptism, by which each of us is now a Beloved Servant of God’s, shall in his own quiet way, contribute to the fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy: We are called to lead the truth to victory, and so to give Christ-focussed hope to the nations. We are called, therefore, to a life shaped by charity. As the Catechism says: “To follow and imitate Christ more nearly and to manifest more clearly his self-emptying is to be more deeply present to one's contemporaries, in the heart of Christ.” (CCC 945)
