About 9 years ago, Pope Benedict XVI stepped down from being pope because he felt he didn’t have the necessary energy or stamina to take on all the crises besieging the Church. I remember a newspaper at the time running a cartoon, in which Queen Elizabeth confronts Benedict and cries out “Wimp!”. It seems a little harsh, but apparently, Her Majesty seems to have had little patience or compassion for her leaders of government who resigned their post due to sickness or frailty. The homily given by the Archbishop of Canterbury at the Queen’s funeral this week reminded us how she kept going, performing her duties and role right to the end of her 96 years, 70 of them as Queen, and amply fulfilled her promise, given to the nation when she was 21, that her whole life, long or short, would be dedicated to serving them to the best of her ability. As the Archbishop rightly said:” Rarely has such a promise been so fully carried out.”
The readings we have for our Mass today could be summed up in the one phrase:” O Christian, do not be a spiritual wimp!”. Looking back at the Queen’s reign, we can see that she had to endure many crises, national and personal. The loss of the Suez Canal, the ebbing away of Britain’s empire and influence in world affairs, the decisions of many nations in the Commonwealth to pursue independence from British rule, one financial crisis after another, the Falklands war, race riots on the streets of England. And on the personal level, the loss of her sister, Margaret, her mother, her husband, the marriage breakups of her children, Charles, Anne and Andrew, and, even in the last year, the scandal over her son Andrew’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Just one or two of those would be more than enough for any one person to endure, let alone all of those together. I am sure that there must have been times when Elizabeth felt like giving up, abdicating in favor of Charles, and retiring into the simple anonymity she always wanted for herself and never got to enjoy. Anyone who has ever woken to the morning, and really struggled to pull oneself out of bed to begin a new day’s duties knows that feeling. I know that , if I were king, and woke up , contemplating the long list of official duties awaiting me, all those people to smile and shake hands with, all those openings to fulfil, all those matters in the red boxes to sort through, I would be strongly tempted to quit. The real caliber of Queen Elizabeth lay , not in anything spectacular or glamorous she achieved in her reign, but in her steadfastness of purpose, her stepping up to meet the expectations of the world , and, above all, her maintaining of her personal faith in Jesus, when all around her in the West, hundreds of thousands of others were giving up their faith, because they found it too hard and challenging to maintain.
Faith, true, fervent faith is not found among spiritual wimps. It is not to be had by those who, as soon as something goes wrong in their lives, pin the blame on God and abandon faith in him; as soon as God does not answer their prayers the way they want or expect, decide he does not exist and they are not going to bother with him anymore; as soon as scandal touches the Church, or they want to make lifestyle choices which go against Christian teaching, they feel free to give up on the Church and its doctrines and make up their own worldwide religion out of what suits them best . They are like those people described by Jesus as having no “roots” to their faith, but as soon as trouble or persecution arises on account of the word of God, that person immediately falls away’ (Matthew 13: 21). It is to Queen Elizabeth’s eternal credit, and I mean that literally, her eternal credit, that none of the stresses and strains and disappointments and trials she faced during her long life and long reign, ever dented or destroyed her faith in God. Which is why she would be fully justified in turning on many of us, myself included, and describing us, as “wimps”, spiritual “wimps”.
Faith, genuine faith, is not something we just receive and hang around us and get on with our lives. It will not persist in hanging onto us, and we will not persist in hanging onto our faith, unless we are prepared to dig in, give it stronger and stronger roots and keep on watering and cultivating those roots with fervent prayer, regular Scripture reading, studying and owning Church teaching, and living it out through our good works. That is why St Paul, in our second reading, uses such strong, almost aggressive language to describe this process. He urges Timothy, and through him, each one of us, to pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, and all the rest of it. You have to go looking for it, you cannot wander around aimlessly and expect these virtues to simply come to you and tag along with you.
Paul also says that we must “fight the good fight of the faith”, because we are in perpetual spiritual warfare throughout our lives, facing temptation to abdicate faith from an enemy who is committed to our absolute degradation and destruction, the devil, who will send trials and disasters and scandals to try to make us abdicate faith and trust in God and his Church. As someone once said “If you do not know you are in a war, you have already lost” Far, far too many people, including Christians, are not aware that they are in a spiritual warfare that will continue to the last breath. I was watching a Senator in the U.S. Congress saying recently that Americans were proud of their freedoms, but those freedoms had to be fought for, as they were continually under attack. We Christians have to adopt a similar attitude to the truths of our faith. We cannot simply believe that what we believe will be accepted by most people around us, even if they don’t agree with them. We need to realize that powerful forces are in league to attack Christian doctrines, such as with regards to abortion, same-sex unions and euthanasia, and , now , transgender ideology , and if we do not fight with all our strength to defend Christian positions on these matters, we will find that they are thrown out , and we will be attacked for holding onto them, an attack which will take the form of arrest and court cases and prison sentences. We have to always be fighting the good fight of the faith, and not take it for granted that those around us accept what we believe.
Finally, St Paul says in our second reading that we must “take hold of eternal life”. We cannot simply believe that we can “swan” our way into heaven, merely because we have been baptized as Catholics, and, as the second reading says, “made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses” – in other words, been confirmed as Catholic Christians. None of this will avail us, if we are not consciously and actively living out our faith as Catholic Christians. If we hide our faith away, if we simply agree with anti-Christian positions, without objection, if we adopt the moral positions and attitudes of those around us, even when they are in conflict with the Bible and orthodox Catholic teaching, then we face a future judgement , in which we may well end up in hell, everlasting separation from God and those whose faith we mocked and rejected, including those in our own families. I am sorry to be so blunt, but as we look around us at the graves of so many who have pre-deceased us, do we know how they have ended up in eternity, in heaven or hell? Do we know where we will end up? That is why I regularly, at funerals, point at the coffin or urn and say something like “All I know is that this will be me one day, and it will be each one of you. And do you know what will happen to you then? Have you resolved the great questions of faith, of life and death, of heaven and hell?” I know that I have them then, because they can ignore those questions most of the time, but, faced with the evident sign of mortality at a funeral, they cannot so easily duck the challenge.
Brothers and sisters, we as priests are challenged to give a homily at least once a year on what are called “the four last things – namely, death, judgement , heaven and hell” and warn our parishioners about the ultimate decisions they must make . So, brothers and sisters, consider yourselves warned!