Holy folly

Peter Seal, 27 January 2019

Acts 9: 1–22; Matthew 19: 27–30

The sermon was a reflection on the following text, adapted from Karl Rahner’s Servants of the Lord and originally titled ‘Tomorrow’s priest’.

Today’s Christians

will be
people able to listen, to whom every individual matters,
even those of no social or political importance,

people in whom you can confide,

people who practise the holy folly of trying to bear
not only their own burdens, but also the next person’s,

people who, though they have the wherewithal
and are no weaklings,
do not join in the desperate neurotic pursuit
of money, enjoyment and other painkillers
for the dreadful disappointment of existence,

but prove by their lives that voluntary abnegation out of
love for the crucified is possible and liberating.