Prayer and Reflection by Archbishop Stephen Brislin

Archbishop Stephen Brislin offers his prayer and reflection for the people of the Archdiocese of Cape Town for today, Wednesday 28 July 2021, during this time of the coronavirus pandemic. It is also available on the Archdiocese of Cape Town’s Facebook page and YouTube channel. Please also see below the text of his reflection, primarily for the deaf.

Welcome to this reflection. Let’s start by praying the Prayer for Southern Africa:

O! God of justice and love, bless us, the people of Southern Africa, and help us to
live in your peace.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury; let me sow pardon;
Where there is discord, let me sow harmony.
Divine Master, grant that I may not so much
Seek to be understood, as to understand;
To be loved, as to love;
To receive sympathy, as to give it;
For it is in giving that we shall receive,
In pardoning that we shall be pardoned,
In forgetting ourselves that we shall find
Unending peace with others. We ask this through Christ Our Lord, Amen.

The Reading I have chosen for today is the Gospel of today’s Mass (Matthew 13:44-46):

“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up; then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search of fine pearls, who, on finding one pearl of great value, went and sold all that he had and bought it”.

In Chapter 13 of St Matthew’s Gospel there are a number of successive parables explaining the nature of the God’s Kingdom. St Matthew begins with the parable of the sower which is about those who “hear the word of the kingdom” but receive it in different ways, and then the parable of the weeds among the wheat. He compares the Kingdom to a mustard seed, to leaven (yeast) and to a net thrown into the sea to catch fish. The chapter ends with people rejecting him, saying “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son?” Jesus is amazed at their unbelief and notes that a prophet is not without honour except in his own country. We are told that he could do many mighty works there due to their unbelief.

The Kingdom of heaven, or as it is referred to in other places in the Scriptures, the Kingdom of God, is central to the life and mission of Jesus – he came to proclaim the kingdom, which he says is “at hand” (Matt 4:17). His preaching, teaching, miracles and his prayer are all oriented towards God’s Kingdom. For this reason, St John always refers to Jesus’ miracles as “signs” and not as miracles, because he wishes us to understand that the mighty works Jesus performed were not to be understood merely as super natural events in the material realm (as amazing as they were). Rather, they all point and teach us about a much deeper reality of which they are merely the physical manifestation. We could even say that his miracles are sacramental. They point to the glory, majesty and power of God working through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. They are revelations of God and the promise of the restoration of Creation to its original beauty and innocence. They teach us of Jesus, “the light of the world” (John 8:12), of Jesus who is the “resurrection and the life” (John 11:25) and that no-one can come to the Father except through him (John 14:6). The proclamation of the Kingdom is accompanied by the call to conversion, to repentance, to turn once more to God and away from all that is sin and does not belong to God. It is a call to righteousness which embodies justice, honesty, truth, uprightness, harmony and, above all, love.

The centrality of Jesus’ proclamation of God’s Kingdom is captured in the two parables we heard in the Gospel passage I started with – a man who finds a treasure in a field sells all he has to buy the field in order to obtain the treasure, and the man who finds a pearl of great worth and who also sells everything he has in order to purchase it. The point is clear – there is nothing more important for anyone than the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom is the greatest treasure we can ever hope to have. It is the purpose and meaning of our existence – we should be able to “sell everything we have” in order to obtain it, and allow nothing in life to impede us from attaining it. remembering how Christ gave everything on the Cross, allowing his life to be poured out, in order to break open the gates of the Kingdom and so to restore us to friendship with the Father.

The proclamation of the Kingdom demands a response from us, the first of which is repentance and conversion, an abandonment of all that does not belong to the Kingdom, and equally to repent of our failure to do the works that would enhance the growth of God’s Kingdom. The second is to ensure that the word of the Kingdom is assimilated in our hearts and lives, that we are no longer only “hearers” of the Word but also “doers” of the word (James 1:22). The most important of all responses is to recognize the hope which Jesus’ teaching on the Kingdom of God offers to us. Despite all the evil in the world, and there is much evil, despite the hardships that we face personally and the anxieties we encounter, despite our lack of understanding, Jesus teaches us and assures us, that the Kingdom of God is at hand, it is in our midst and we belong to it. The goodness in the world may, at times, seem to be small (like a mustard seed) in the face of the darkness of evil, evil may seem to be triumphing over goodness (like the weeds among wheat), faith may seem to be dissipating or even disappearing (like the seed that falls on rocky ground or among thorns), but we await in hope for the new heavens and the new earth (cf. Revelation 21:1), of which we are already part and which already exists among us and is awaiting its final accomplishment.

Even in the dreadful looting and destruction that we witnessed recently in South Africa, there followed an outpouring of goodness as people turned out to clean up, to guard sensitive areas and to seek answers for and understanding of what had taken place. There has been a groundswell of concerned and good people calling for root causes to be identified and addressed, for the injustices of the inequality and poverty of our country to be recognized, and for the need to work for a true peace to be founded on the pillars of truth and justice. We may think that these “signs” are small in comparison, that they are, by and large, spoken about by mostly powerless people, but the signs – like the miracles of Jesus – indicate something far greater at work. God’s Spirit is working throughout the world.

This pandemic is and has been a horrible time for us. The socio-economic and political problems we face are enormous. But even in these horrible times we must see that they are part of the coming of God’s Kingdom and are leading us towards it, rather than happening in spite of God’s Kingdom. What we must ask ourselves is what we have to learn from the horribleness of the times, and what we must do to be instruments of God’s light in the darkness they have brought. So, far from giving in to despair, we face the present with hearts burning with the hope of God’s Kingdom and willing to persevere in being agents and instruments of God’s love and compassion in a world that is truly crying out in anguish for someone who cares.

Let us now pray for God’s blessing:

The Lord be with you R/ And with your Spirit

Bow down for the blessing:

Gracious and loving Father, you sent your only Son into the world to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to call mankind to conversion. Fill the hearts of your faithful with true repentance that they may receive the Kingdom of God within them. Through Christ our Lord, amen

May Almighty God bless you, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (+), amen.