The Leaf Homily...

Homily for the 27th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

            It has been gray outside, a day seemingly threatening to rain at each moment –  a day of wind and even storms.  This is where our prophet Habakkuk in the first reading is speaking from – a time of storms.  In his case, it was much more dire than a bit of wind and rain.  “I cry out to you, ‘Violence!’ but you do not intervene.  Why do you let me see ruin; why must I look at misery?”  Attack upon Israel seems imminent, and help from God is not evident.  Habakkuk is crying out to God – have you ever felt this way?  “God, where are you in the midst of this struggle?”

            Today we celebrate Respect Life Sunday, and as we look around our world, we see many attacks on human life and dignity.  The unborn are not safe in the womb; the elderly are sometimes abandoned and threatened.  Human life is produced, manipulated, and often destroyed in laboratories, all in the name of science.  The life of the family seems more and more up for grabs.  War and violence rage in many places.  In a difficult economy, some individuals and families see real hardship knocking at their door.  The dignity and sacredness of the human person is cheapened and degraded from many directions.  Often, the very pace of life seems to be threatening even individuals and families that are prospering materially.

            Where is God in the midst of this?  Do your hearts at times cry out?  Does God respond?  What answer does He give to us as we seek His face in the midst of many threats?  Immediately before today’s gospel passage, the apostles were challenged to forgive, even 7 times a day.  In the face of such a challenge, the apostles cry out to Jesus, “Increase our faith.”  How often must we cry out to God as they did – God, in the face of such challenges, increase our faith!

            Where does God respond?  There are many answers to this, but I would like to highlight one.  The Lord responds with beauty.  The moral law, God’s very creation, speaks to us in beauty.  Last night I was up at St. Albert the Great University Parish at Michigan Tech to speak to their college students there.  As I drove home this morning, along Keweenaw Bay, the trees were on fire. Some rain had just blown through, and the sun was shining through the many-layered clouds.   The stretch along the shore there is always dangerous driving for me because the view is so beautiful!  The heights of the Huron Mountains and Mount Arvon constantly draw my eyes away from the road!  It was certainly so this morning.  In places, the sun shone down and set the leaves on fire.  In other places the low clouds caught the reflected light off the leaves and were red and orange.  My heart sang with praise and thanksgiving.

            God’s response to brokenness and storms is often to be found in beauty.  Goodness, beauty, and truth are mutually implicative.  They go together, they suggest and lead to each other.  The beauty of a kind act, the beauty of creation, the joy of discovering the truth about God’s love for us, the love He has placed in us – these things call to us, draw us, and guide us through the storms of life.  The beauty in the natural world can be a spark, an invitation, for our lives also to be beautiful.

            In the midst of many attacks on the sanctity of life and the dignity of the human person, one fruitful response is to seek to lead lives of beauty.  Each act of kindness, each authentic gift of our self is a spark of beauty, a small flame of love.  The beauty of which I speak has very little to do with outward appearance, and everything to do with the movements of the heart, the mind, and the will towards God. God whispers to us in silence, draws us gently into the fire of His love.  He doesn’t want us to be self-righteous, waiting for our reward when we obey His voice, but rather to recognize that we are created to serve and give and love.  The Lord’s work is often hidden, and often seems to be lagging behind.  But listen to His words to Habakkuk: “For the vision still has its time, presses on to its fulfillment, and will not disappoint; if it delays, wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.

            To commit small acts of beauty is to build a culture of life, where each human person is respected and cherished.  This is necessarily a culture also of truth, where the moral law, as discovered by our reason and as revealed by God, the whole challenging and beautiful moral law taught by God’s Church, is respected and followed.    

            Listen now to Paul’s words to Timothy, “Beloved, I remind you, to stir into flame the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.  For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.”  Timothy had been ordained a bishop – most of us here have been baptized and confirmed.  We are invited not to a spirit of cowardice, not to be accomplices of the culture of death, but rather to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, to exercise self-control, and so to love. 

Each one of us is given this spark of fire and grace.  At each Eucharist, we receive again Christ Himself, who longs to set fire to the world, to fan into flame love and beauty in our hearts and lives, in our families and community.  May we allow Christ’s beauty set our hearts and lives on fire. 

The view NE from Hogsback this Saturday afternoon.  Deo gratias!