Homily: 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
For many, it seems, that just when God
seems to be closest, he allows great trials to befall his closest friends. Our readings today touch on this theme. The prophet Elijah, who at the time appeared
to be the only person faithful to God after the northern kingdom of Israel
abandoned their faithfulness to him, finds himself hunted down as a heinous
criminal after having proven that Yahweh, the God of the Israelite people, is
the true God and that the gods that the people of the northern kingdom had been
worshiping (the baals) were false and powerless. Because of this, Elijah fell into
despair. He had called down fire from
God when the over 400 prophets of baal could do no such thing; and, instead of
finding a people who turned to God (and thus, who might stand with him, instead
of against him), he found a people ever more anxious to destroy him. This was a great trial for Elijah, known as the
man of God.
Saint Paul, after his conversion on
the road to Damascus, began a very fruitful mission of bringing the Gospel to
the Gentiles: the people from any nation that wasn’t a descendent of the
ancient Israelite nation. Nonetheless,
he was tormented constantly because the people of his own heritage, the
Israelites, with whom God had established his covenant, had rejected his
message and had failed to accept Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah whom God had
sent. He was so bothered by this that,
in his letter to the Romans, he wrote that he would readily give himself up to
condemnation (that is, to eternal separation from God) if it would mean that
his people would accept Jesus as the Christ and thus see the covenant come to
fulfillment. This was a great trial for
Paul, known as the Apostle to the Gentiles.
In our Gospel, we read how, after the
miraculous feeding of the 5000, Jesus sent his disciples across the sea in a
boat through the night. During the
night, a storm arose, filling the disciples with fear for their lives. So much so, that when Jesus came towards
them, walking on the water (!), they thought it was a ghost and, thus, a sign
of their impending death. This, too, was
a great trial for those known as first followers of Jesus.
Saint Teresa of Avila famously summed
up this experience of frustration and despair that can befall many who follow
God closely and have experienced his powerful intervention in their lives. She lived in the late 1500’s and worked
strenuously to reform the Carmelite order.
To do so she travelled much. As
you can imagine, travel over long distances in the 1500’s was difficult, even
when the weather was good. Nonetheless,
Teresa continued to travel and God continued to prove that he was in her work
by the fact that she could overcome what seemed to be impossible obstacles to
reform monasteries and to establish new ones.
Her travels weren’t without their
trials, however. Famously, in one of her
last journeys, Teresa and her companions found themselves in the midst of a
horrific storm: one that completely flooded the road on which her carriage was
traveling. Undeterred, she encouraged
her companions to go forward on foot.
When she had been just a little way, the water rushing around her almost
swept her away. At this, she looked up
and cried out “Oh Lord, when will you cease from scattering obstacles in my
path?” “Do not complain, daughter,” the Lord
reportedly answered, “for this is the way that I treat my friends.” “Ah, Lord,” Teresa replied, “it is also because
of this that you have so few!”
One of the things that anyone who has
accepted their vocation from God must face is the frustration and despair that
can come when God seems to take his favor away from us, leaving us victim to
the tumultuous forces of the world, even after he may have intervened in a
powerful way in our lives. In any one of
these three episodes today we can probably find something of our own
experiences. Perhaps some of you have
spoken up boldly against some wrong—maybe at work or in the community—only to find
that those whom you expected to support you have turned against you and you
begin to suffer more than if you had never spoken. Or perhaps you made great sacrifices in your
family—maybe even submitting yourself to great embarrassment among them—so that
your children or grandchildren might grow in the Catholic faith, only to suffer
as time and again they ignore and even reject your efforts. Or maybe you’ve given of yourself and made
sacrifices of both your time and your money to do the work of God to relieve
some suffering for the poor, only to find that your own security is swept out
from under you by the loss of a job or the support of a benefactor.
While none of these things may ever
destroy our belief in God, each one of them can, and often does, damage our
trust in him. As God has proven
throughout history, however—in the Scriptures, in the lives of the saints, and
in our own lives—he is never far from us when we find ourselves in the midst of
these trials. For Elijah, God allowed
himself to be encountered in the “tiny whispering sound” in order to remind him
that, in the midst of the clamor of the world seemingly fighting against him,
God was close to him in the most silent recesses of his heart. For Peter and the disciples, it was Jesus’
appearance in the midst of the storm, while unaffected by it, that could calm
their fear and embolden them to step headlong into it (as evidenced by Peter’s
trust in the Lord’s command to step out of the boat). For Paul, it was the constant witness of the Scriptures
that assured him that God’s promise to his people had not been revoked that
motivated him to continue to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles: even to
the point that he came to hope that it would be through the Gentiles that his
people would eventually accept Jesus as the Christ.
So it is for all of us, brothers and
sisters. We should in no way consider
ourselves immune from this type of trial.
Rather, in the midst of these trials, we must give ourselves back over
to God in trust: knowing that he, who did not abandon the great saints and
prophets before us, will not abandon any of us, either. In order to cultivate this trust, however, we
have to do something that is increasingly difficult—nay, seemingly impossible—in
today’s culture: we need to cultivate silence in our lives. To do this, we must first turn off the
external noise: the television, the internet, and our smart phones. Then, comes the difficult work: for we must
then confront our internal noise—our passions, anxieties, and frustrations—and
seek to silence it as well by offering it all to God with acts of trust in his
power to satisfy our every true desire and to save us from every trial. Only then will we truly begin to hear the
“tiny whispering sound” that is God’s assuring presence with us; and, thus,
find the strength to persevere. My
brothers and sisters, we must take up this good work of seeking silence: for
our lives of faith, literally, depend upon it!
May God’s abiding presence in this
Holy Eucharist fill us with peace to overcome every fear and to remain faithful
to him until he comes again in glory.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – August 13th, 2017
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