Sunday Homily, 13 April 2025 - Fr Paul Rowse, OP

God doesn’t belong here among us, and we know it all too well.

There was a time, quite a while ago now, when God came and lived here.  To us, that can seem like it was an experiment.  Did it work?  Well, we’ve just heard how it ended.

In fact, it never went very well: although angels broke through from the heavens and sang of his birth in the night, only a few wise men and some ragtag shepherds went to visit him – this, when all creation ought to have run to Bethlehem and fallen to its knees.  But we made him fall to our knees as he carried his cross.

God doesn’t belong here; but we have great need of him.  We mere mortals rightly look back to the Creator for more life when ours is running out.

So, we’re in a bind: we need God, but we cannot abide him being here with us.

Because God cannot long abide in this world which he made but we felled, we shall have to live with him in heaven.  It isn’t he who must change.  How could he, when he gave everything over to us when he was here?  No, it is we who must change, we who must be changed.  We must grow accustomed to his presence, recognise and heed his voice, and acknowledge his claim on us.

We have to make the world a place, not where God can live with us, but where we can live for him.  We shall keep pushing aside all that seems to compete with God’s perfect will for human life, both in me as an individual and among us all together.  We shall be on the look out for injustice and hostility and hatefulness, and seek to end them.  Then we shall pursue righteousness and peaceability and all-charity instead.

On this great day, when we have marked the Lord’s entry into his city, we shall also mark his entry into our lives to change us.  That may be difficult.  We may have much to let go of. 

Then we should resolve:

Lord, there’s nothing I want to hang on to if it means losing you, in whom is all-life.

Help me; show me how to do without it.

And when we have let go of the death-dealing thing in our life, we shall find the Lord waiting for us.  For he let his glory go to be with us; he won’t ask more than that from us to change us.  But whatever it is that we must let go of, whatever is killing our soul, the gain is heaven with God and the life of the soul.

For it is to heaven we must look for life, for a home.  God doesn’t belong here, and neither now do we.  We’ve been made and re-made for heaven.

And whether there is glory to be seen in his work on our life or not, he is yet God.

And whether there is complete knowledge about what he is up to or not, we are his people.

Fr Paul Rowse, OP Parish Priest