HOMILY FOR MASS FOR THE THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME, YEAR B
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 3 NOVEMBER 2024
In 2015, tech-giant Microsoft set out to build the world’s quietest room for testing headphones, microphones and the like.[1] After more than two years they had constructed a room of six layers of concrete and steel, sitting on vibration-damping springs. The floor is a grid of suspended cables and the walls and ceilings lined with fibreglass wedges that absorb the faintest sound-waves. Known technically as an ‘anechoic’ or echo-free chamber, the room registers a noise level of minus-20 decibels, as close as one can get to absolute zero of sound.[2]
Occupants of the chamber hear sounds normally drowned out by the background hum of everyday life: the flapping of an eye lid, the deep bass of a heart beat, even the blood coursing through their veins.[3] As soon as people enter the room, they feel strange: their senses are disoriented and anxiety or claustrophobia follows. Few can bear the deafening silence for more than a few minutes, for we are made for hearing…
But as the great Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton observed that “there’s a lot of difference between listening and hearing”. When it comes to hearing, soundwaves enter the ear canal, the eardrum vibrates, electrical signals course through the auditory nerve, and the brain registers sound. Hearing is something passive, mechanical, involuntary. Listening, on the other hand, is active, attentive, chosen. It requires effort. And it’s relational, engaging the messenger and discerning the message.
That can be challenging. Our world is a cacophony of noises and space for listening is hard to find. Competing voices vie for a hearing. We live in echo chambers of ‘my truth’ and yours, of ‘truthish’ messages and fake. There are too many words, and many are whims or weapons, impassioned but unenlightening. Truth can be as hard to find as sounds in an anechoic chamber.
In recent times, the Church has conducted a vast consultation of the People of God, in local, national and continental stages, in various syntheses and working documents, and in two month-long synodal assemblies of 350 bishops and lay leaders from around the world. “We began by listening,” the Synod members report in their Final Document, “careful to grasp in the many voices ‘what the Spirit is saying to the Churches’”, confessing past failures to listen, and ready to hear afresh the Gospel call to holiness.[4] The word ‘listening’ appears 58 times in the text, as it explores the who and to whom of ecclesial listening, the how and why and what.[5] Discernment is not supposed to be a technique for pushing one’s agenda, nor picking from a smorgasbord of opinions, but a spiritual practice seeking divine wisdom and grounded in faith and freedom, prayer and trust, humility and surrender.[6]
In today’s first reading (Dt 6:2-6), the people of Israel are on the cusp of entering the Promised Land. Moses won’t be joining them. Before they part, he reminds them of a few things. He recites the יִשְׂרָאֵל שְׁמַע (Shema Israel) which is often translated “Hear, O Israel”. It’s a lame translation, for to ‘shema’ is to be seriously, indeed religiously attentive to what is being said, and ready to respond because of Who is talking.
Listening is demanding. But as Moses reminds the people, theirs is the only God, the only one deserving all devotion. Forget the gods of Egypt, of Canaan, the golden calves of culture and economy. That One God has made a rewarding covenant with them. Keeping the commandments is their end of the deal, so to speak. “Listen up, O Israel,” Moses says, “our God is the one and only, so love Him with all your heart and soul and strength… Listen up, O Israel, keeping the commandments will make you prosper and increase.”
In our Gospel (Mk 12:28-34), Jesus meets a teacher of that Mosaic Law. But as the ‘Gospel’ proverb goes,[7] there’s None so deaf as those who will not hear. So instead of His usual preaching, storytelling or sign-language miracles, He uses legalese. The number one constitutional law is loving God with all you are. Its flipside or number two is loving neighbour and self for God’s sake. Three Ls—and the listening and law-abiding are for the loving.
But love has many counterfeits: abstractions, raw emotions, warm and fuzzies, banal, manipulative or unworthy loves. How are we to love truly and better? By listening with “the ear of our hearts”. In his just published encyclical, Dilexit Nos—on the human and divine love of the Sacred Heart—Pope Francis tells us we must pause in silence if we are to attend to the presence of Christ, the heart of the world.[8] When we hear the heartbeat of Jesus resounding in the chambers of our heart and experience His love heard in ours, we are liberated, enlivened, delighted.[9] We become what we love.
For more than 800 years members of the Order of Malta have sought to listen to the voice of God and follow that voice in witnessing to the faith and serving their lords the poor and sick. Today they nourish the spiritual lives of their members, run hospitaller projects for the needy in 120 countries, and defend the faith where they can. It is a good example of listening and loving with all our heart.
And so, as we celebrate the sacrament of divine love, we commit to “Listen up, O New Israel, for the Lord our God is one and three, and you shall love Him singularly, as worthy of all your love; yet love Him threely, with heart and soul and strength, just as He loves you with all He is, His sacred heart and holy soul, His broken body and precious blood, His humanity and divinity, all for you!
[1] Mary Jacob, “No one can stay in the quietest room in the world for more than an hour,” New York Post 2 February 2023; Jacopo Prisco, “Inside the world’s quietest room,” CNN 28 March 2018; Anoushka Sharma, “Microsoft headquarters house world’s quietest room: Here’s what you’ll hear,” NDTV 6 February 2023.
[2] Prisco, “Inside the world’s quietest room”.
[3] Nucleus AI, “The room so quiet it’ll drive you crazy,” YourStory 29 March 2024.
[4] XVI Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, Mission—Final Document, 27 October 2024, paras 3, 6 & 82.
[5] XVI Synod of Bishops, Final Document, on who must listen in ecclesial discernment: the Pope and Roman dicasteries (135), pastors (67, 72-73, 91, 108) and theologians (67), those at the Liturgy or ecclesial assembly (27-28, 30a, 83, 84b, 108), all the faithful (43, 87); on who must be listened to in ecclesial discernment: the Gospel/Word of God (6, 27, 30a, 43, 83, 84b, 122); the Tradition/Magisterium (83); pastors (67); fellow Catholics and Catholics-to-be (24, 28, 51, 70, 72, 80); those of other Christian traditions (107, 127); victims (55-56), children (61), the poor (19, 48, 83) and marginalized (78); everyone (48, 51, 72); on listening in order to hear God and know God’s will (3, 6, 29, 30b, 43, 45, 79, 82, 122); on the climate, formation and habits needed for listening (35, 80 82, 84d, 141-150); and on answers offered and actions to be taken after listening (24, 78).
[6] XVI Synod of Bishops, Final Document, 82.
[7] None so deaf as those who will not hear; none so blind as those who will not see. The proverb comes from Matthew Henry (1662-1714) and Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), evolving from one by John Heywood (1546) and Cranmer (1551), but derives from Jesus (e.g. Mt 9:34; 10:14; 13:13-17; 23:16-26; Lk 6:41-42; Jn 6:63-64; 9:30-41; 12:40) and before him Jeremiah (Jer 5:21; Isa 6:9-10).
[8] Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos: Encyclical on the Human and Divine Love of the Heart of Jesus Christ (2024), 57 & 81. Cf. Pope Benedict XVI, Angelus Address, 1 June 2008.
[9] Pope Francis, Dilexit Nos, 217-219.
INTRODUCTION TO MASS FOR THE THIRTY-FIRST SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME, YEAR B
ST MARY’S CATHEDRAL, SYDNEY, 3 NOVEMBER 2024
Welcome to St Mary’s Cathedral for today’s Solemn Mass of the Thirty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time. Earlier this week I returned from the month-long Synod in Rome. I’m grateful for all your prayers for the Church as it gathered to consider the important themes of communion, participation and mission in a synodal key. It is great to be back with you all!
Today I welcome members of the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order of St John of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Australian association of the Order and so I salute:
- His Most Eminent Highness Fra’ John Dunlap, Prince and Grand Master of the Order
- His Excellency Don Riccardo Paternò di Montecupo, Grand Chancellor of the Order
- His Excellency Most Rev. Archbishop Charles Balvo, Apostolic Nuncio to Australia
- His Grace Most Rev. Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane, the Principal Chaplain of the Order in Australia
- His Lordship Bishop Ken Howell of Toowoomba
- Hon. James Douglas KHD (Ob) KC, President of the Australian Association of the Order of Malta
- Professor David Kissane AC, Regent of the Sub Priory of the Immaculate Conception in Australia
- Fr James McCarthy PP, magistral chaplain
- past and present office holders and ambassadors of the Order, and knights and dames of the Order.
Founded in the 12th century in Jerusalem, the Order is a religious order of the Catholic Church, a sovereign subject of international law, a lay association of Christ’s faithful and a major charitable NGO. There are around 13,500 knights, dames and chaplains of the Order, 95,000 permanent volunteers and 52,000 employees (most health professionals). Its leaders and members are always most welcome here, as are you all.
Yesterday was All Souls Day and especially throughout the month of November we commend our faithful departed to the mercy of God, including our faithful reader and friend of St Mary’s, Mr Christopher Flynn. Reminded of our own mortality, we repent of our sins…