Homily for the Sixth Sunday of Ordinary Time
Abba Serapion
6th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Year C
Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.
In The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, I remember reading a story that the Abba Serapion told about himself. Serapion was a contemporary of St Athanasius and helped him in the fight against Arianism. Serapion, like Athanasius, also had known St Anthony of Egypt himself.
When Serapion was a novice, a young monk learning from a very old and very holy monk, young Serapion fell into the habit of taking a biscuit at the end of their one meal a day and slipping the biscuit into the pocket of his tunic, so that he wouldn’t have to go hungry. Just knowing that the biscuit was there seemed to ease his hunger. And he knew he could nibble on it anytime he felt like it as he went about his work. But the little thrill of pleasure he got from stealing the biscuit after every meal was greatly outweighed by the remorse and guilt he felt after finishing the biscuit. But he couldn’t bring himself to confess his sin to the old monk because he was so ashamed of it, and he felt it was beneath his dignity. But the secrecy of the whole thing made him powerless to resist the temptation at the end of every meal.
One day, some visitors came to see the very old and very holy monk, and after the meal, they began to ask the old monk questions. Young Serapion listened quietly, every so often feeling the biscuit in his pocket and smiling to himself. Then the old monk began to speak about the sin of gluttony, and about the terrible power that an unconfessed sin has to enslave the soul.
Well! Serapion began to fidget. Had the Lord revealed his sin to the very old and very holy monk? He was sure of it! Serapion began to sigh, then to choke back tears, but then he burst into sobs. He jumped up, took the biscuit from his pocket, threw it down, and accused himself before his Master and the visitors. Then the very old and very holy monk said to Serapion: “Have faith, my child. Without any words of mine, your confession frees you from slavery. For you have today triumphed over your adversary, by laying him low by your confession.”
In light of that story, listen now again to our Lord’s words in today’s Gospel: Blessed are you who are poor, for the kingdom of God is yours. Blessed are you who are now hungry, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who are now weeping, for you will laugh.... But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep.
The young Serapion was unwilling to go hungry. He was unwilling to experience emptiness. He wanted to have control over when he would eat or not, when he would satisfy his hunger or not. It wasn’t even important to him that he actually eat the stolen biscuit but just knowing that he could at any time he felt like it, filled him up. Yet, unfortunately, that left no room for the Lord – not in Serapion’s stomach – but in his heart, his life. Serapion was unwilling to let the Lord fill his emptiness; Serapion wasn’t sure that the Lord would provide enough. But Serapion made a mistake. He thought the biscuit could fill his emptiness. What he didn’t realize was that the hole, the void in his life wasn’t biscuit-shaped – it was, as they say, “God-shaped” and all the biscuits in the world weren’t about to fill it up. That’s why the Abba Serapion told this story about his younger self.
Part of being human, part of being a finite, limited creature, is that we have to make use of other things, even other people, apart from ourselves, to make us whole, Only God is whole and entire in Himself. As human beings, we always stand in relationship to other people, and to the rest of physical creation. Only God is entirely self-sufficient. But first and foremost, as human beings we stand in relation to God, as creatures to our Creator, but even more than that, as beloved children to our loving Father.
Why is the first of the Ten Commandments, “You shall have no other gods besides Me”? Because of our tendency to turn to anything other than the One True God to fill up the need in our lives, because of our tendency to put other people, or material goods, or earthly power, or anything else in God’s rightful place in our life – to make gods out of other creatures.
As monastics of the 21st century, rather than of the 4th century like Abba Serapion, you know that one comes to the monastery -- man or woman -- for the same reason today as back then: to learn to live for God alone, to hunger after God alone, to say to the Lord, quoting Psalm 16: O Lord, it is you who are my portion and cup / It is you yourself who are my prize. Or as we heard from the Prophet Jeremiah earlier:
Blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose hope is the LORD. He is like a tree planted beside the waters that stretches out its roots to the stream: it fears not the heat when it comes; its leaves stay green; in the year of drought it shows no distress, but still bears fruit.
Fr. Brian Mulcahy, O.P.