+ J. M. J. +
Homily Outline for the 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
Where do we encounter truth? Where and how does God speak to us? There are many competing claims in our world, many voices offering to lead us to peace and happiness. Some are clamoring, advertising, selling. Some are beguiling, luring, whispering. Our hearts are often bewildered, seeking, discontented. If we are attentive to our hearts, if we desire to penetrate beyond the surface, on some level every one of us must be a seeker, seeking to understand, to find that which we desire.
The summer I was 21, I was traveling in Europe with my best buddy Steve. Midway through the summer, we were in Rome, and I was disappointed because I’d heard that Pope John Paul II was at the papal summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, outside Rome. One day we went to St. Peter’s Square to visit the basilica, and they were setting up thousands of seats. We asked what they were for, and we were told there was going to be a papal audience! We got great seats, since we were quite early, and for the first time I saw the pope in person. He passed by just a few feet away, and to my intense surprise and embarrassment, I found myself weeping for joy, deeply impacted by his presence, and the knowledge that he was the living successor of St. Peter, the Vicar of Christ! My own reconversion to a deeper faith had taken place some 4 years earlier, and I had for some time enthusiastically believed that God works through His Church, but that close firsthand encounter made it real and concrete in a far deeper and breathtaking fashion.
Some have characterized religion as man’s search for God… and it is true that we see this search in people of every time and place, of every culture and century. On some level, then, it might be accurate to lump all religions together and call them man’s search for God. However, if we attempt to understand our Christian faith in this light, we are going to miss something essential and foundational: God has revealed Himself to us, first to the people of Israel, and then in the fullness of time through Jesus Christ to all nations. God has sought us, tracked us down, and invited us to be His adopted sons and daughters. The saints of our Church are not so much men and women who through great exertion or ingenuity or luck managed to find God, but rather they are people who allowed God to find them, who allowed God to speak and move in their lives. Hearing His voice, they responded generously.
In God’s search for us, He has mysteriously chosen to rely upon us! God has repeatedly entrusted His identity, His truth, His teaching to human beings. Infinite in power, He has allowed His powerful love to be spread about by our very finite efforts. In the fullness of time, Jesus came; Jesus who is fully human and fully divine, the God-man. Jesus was finite in His humanity, but perfect, free of sin. And, yet, Jesus Himself didn’t simply display the raw power of God, overwhelming the hearts and minds of those He met. He slowly and gently revealed His power, His identity, and His mission. And, then, as God had done amongst the people of Israel for thousands of years before Christ, Jesus entrusted that truth and power to His apostles, and to His disciples. In our Gospel we hear of 72 disciples, chosen and sent. This number is symbolic of the totality of all the nations, and signified that God was now seeking every one of them, regardless of race or tongue. The Church is beginning to be called into existence at this moment, and Christ is beginning to work through His Body.
In our first reading we hear of Jerusalem, personified for us as a generous and abundant mother who cares for her children, nourishes them, comforts them, and protects them. Isaiah spoke these words to a Jewish nation torn asunder by division and exile, very much in need of encouragement and comfort. Jerusalem is a place, the city of David. Jerusalem for the Jewish people was also an image… God’s city, the place and state of being gathered together and ordered by God. For us as Christians we receive this image and place, and it is fulfilled and further developed in the life of the Church. As Catholics we no longer go up to one temple mount each year in pilgrimage, rather we prepare and wait for and seek the heavenly Jerusalem, described in the Book of Revelation in symbolic terms, the heavenly city, where every tear will be wiped away. By our baptisms we have become a new creation, and citizens of this heavenly city. The Church is the visible presence on earth of God’s heavenly kingdom. God continues to be present and at work in our midst through us, with all of our faltering cooperation and weakness. God continues to offer us through the Church nourishment and comfort and protection… truth, goodness, and beauty. And, just as in Jesus’ time, that offer is accepted by some, and rejected by others. Indeed each one of us at times has accepted God’s grace, offered to us through the Church, and at other times each of us has rejected it to some degree.
We find ourselves in recent decades in particularly turbulent waters, for reasons beyond the scope of this homily. The storms of history and the world have often appeared to nearly engulf the ship of Christ, the Bark of Peter, the Church. Very many of our family members and friends have been pulled away by these currents, some have jumped ship. The heavenly city, imperfectly present and visible in our midst often seems on the verge of being abandoned, bankrupt, or deserted. Each one of us must once again make a choice. God has sought us… God has taught us… God offers to heal and nourish us. Will our hearts and lives and families be like the towns that accepted Christ’s emissaries? Or will we be like the towns that turned them away? The Church offers us the truth that sets us free to live lives of authentic peace, the Church offers us moral teaching that guides us away from sin and brokenness. Do we accept those gifts? The Church offers us Christ’s words, “Take up your cross and follow me.” The Church offers us St. Paul’s words, “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.” Do we follow, respond, receive? Or do we turn away, following the siren song to buy, to acquire, to take pleasure, to follow impulse and the crowd?
From the time of Christ down to us, this Good News has been handed from person to person. In unbroken succession, we stand in the line of those 72 disciples who were sent out. By my ordination and the power of the Holy Spirit, I will offer you today the Lord’s own Body and Blood. Receive Him now, and then bring Him to the whole world.
+ A. M. D. G. +
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