29th Sunday Year B

29th Sunday B – What is an obligation?

What is an obligation? I ask because we were discussing this question at our Deanery meeting this past week and it caused some heated debate. An obligation is a requirement, a rule or statute that you have to follow. It is something that you have to do.

Almost every type of club you might think of joining, has its own set of rules that you are obliged to follow. Rules that you have to keep, to adhere to, to show that you belong to and in this club. From wearing the right tie or jacket to different types of handshakes: from not parking in the Club Captain’s spot to knowing and reciting the club promise at the start of every meeting.

Obligations – we all have them and we all encounter them almost every day of our lives and think nothing of them. Why then is it, that when we come to our faith and the practice of our religion, we seem to want to balk at the idea of following some, all or at least a selected few of these obligations?

Jesus speaks to us in today’s gospel about the need for us to demonstrate our followership of Him through a life of service. “Anyone who wants to become great among you must be your servant, and anyone who wants to be first among you, must be slave to all.”

To be great is to serve others. To be first, is to be last among all others. We are obliged to look after the needs of others before our own. We are required to follow all of the rules of the church, without question, just as the early disciples were required to follow all of the rules of the Jews, laid down by Moses and detailed in the Law.

If we remember the young rich man from last week who wanted to know how he could be guaranteed a place in heaven and Jesus listed the commandments he must keep, the rules he was obliged to follow, and he said that he had done that all of his life. He was then told to sell all that he had and give the money to the poor. In effect to become the servant to the poor; to become last or lower than them. The first obligation that Jesus stressed was that he had to have followed all of the commandments and this applies to us too.

Jesus later summarised these ten commandments into just two: Love the Lord your God with all you heart and mind and spirit. And the second was to love your neighbour as yourself: to love your neighbour just as your heavenly Father loves you.

I have been teaching two young boys in preparation for their First Forgiveness and First Communion and we have been looking at the Commandments and how we put these last two into action. And we agreed that we show our love of God by attending mass each week as we are obliged and required to, and receive the Blessed Sacrament in Holy Communion and try to come to Confession (Forgiveness or Reconciliation), regularly to make our peace with God. Equally, we show our love of our neighbour by how we act and interact with those around us: how we treat them, speak with them, look out for them and look after them and we do all of this from our starting point of when we gather together at mass, in community, in congregation, in family.

So, to come back to my opening question, “What is an obligation?” and what was the obligation we were talking about. It was this, “Should people be obliged to come to mass on Sundays?” Should the Bishops remove the temporary exemption they had put in place because of Covid, that allowed people to watch mass at home on the TV or on their laptops instead of coming to church and attending mass? Should they continue to allow this exemption or should they revert to the original ruling that obliged people to attend mass on a Sunday and to receive the Holy Eucharist? Discussions were split.

The Church is a Holy Body. It has rules and obligations that have been passed down thousands of years, some from the time of Moses. Remember to keep holy the Sabbath Day was one of these rules or commandments and this has been incorporated into the body of the Church from the beginning. It is one of the most basic rules of our Church and of our faith. It is the most basic of ways of showing our love for our Father in heaven. It is the simplest way we have of connecting ourselves to our Father inn heaven and receiving the sacrament of our day’s food for our days’ journey.

There are many requirements or obligations that we have to face in our lives. Our faith has them as well and it is for us to identify them, to know what they are and to then put them into practice any and every time we can, to show our love and understanding of that faith by and in our practice of it.