Homily: 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
As we know, Saint Paul lived in the
first century AD, when the dominant religions were all pagan. Pagan religions were based on a belief that
gods were fickle beings who, while wielding great power, could, nonetheless, be
swayed to use that power for a person’s benefit if they made a pleasing
offering to them. Thus, these pagan
religions emphasized and relied on the power of external rituals. These rituals sometimes consisted of
sacrifices in which animals were slaughtered, grain was burned, or wine was
poured out. They also sometimes
consisted of ritual dances, prayers, songs, or similar actions. In every case, however, the power of the
worship, and its (supposed) ability to convince the false god to send blessings
on the worshipper, depended on the exact performance of the ritual. It was kind of like a gymnastics routine in
the Olympics: if the ritual wasn't performed with perfect precision, the
worshipper would get a bad score, and the gods would either ignore the prayer
or, worse, get angry.
This pagan focus on external rituals
had also seeped into Jewish practices at the time. Throughout his writings, therefore, Saint Paul
is constantly warning the early Christians against falling into an excessive
focus on the externals, or, what we might call, ritualism. Paul sought to
train the early Church to have a close personal relationship with God: not a
cold, distant one, made up entirely with empty formalities. This is why he writes to the Romans, as we
just heard, "offer your bodies
as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, your spiritual worship." In
other words, he was teaching them that the Christian's relationship with God
isn't reducible to a few rituals and prayers; rather, everything he/she does is
meant to be worship. One’s actions,
words, and decisions—the way one lives his/her daily life—all these things are
ways for one to show that he/she loves Christ and wants to follow him. This was a radical new concept of religion—a
religion built on a personal friendship with the one true God who became man in
Jesus Christ—and it required, as Saint Paul wrote, that Christians "be
transformed by the renewal of their mind."
This “new-at-the-time” concept of
religion helps us to understand so much of our religious tradition. In particular, it helps explain one of our
Catholic traditions that a lot of non-Catholic Christians have trouble understanding:
namely, our devotion to the saints. You
see, some non-Catholics think that the statues of saints in our churches are
there because we worship them, as pagans used to do, who would worship a sacred
statue (like that of an animal) or an image of an ancestor as if they (the
animal or the ancestor) were divine. Devotion
to the saints, however, is different. We
use images of saints for the same reason that we use family photographs: to
remind us of some of the great members of our Christian family who have gone
before us. The example of their faith,
courage, and holiness, of which the image reminds us, is meant to inspire us to
strive for holiness, too. So, no, we
don't worship statues; and, no, we don't worship the saints either.
We know the saints; and we know that
they were normal, everyday people just like us, and that they aren’t gods. They had personality flaws, family problems,
and plenty of headaches, but they allowed God's grace to touch those things,
and to sanctify them. They recognized
that God's offer of friendship in Christ was able to make them not only better
church-goers and pray-ers, but also better husbands and wives, generals and
lawyers, carpenters and nurses, scholars and artists. These men and women followed Saint Paul's
advice, trying to make every activity of their day—whether folding laundry or writing
theological treatises—into a "living sacrifice" of "spiritual
worship." That's why we have named patron
saints for almost everything and everyone, like Saint Barbara, the patron saint
of mathematicians, and Saint Brigid, the patron saint of midwives, and Saint
Wolfgang, the patron saint of those suffering from paralysis, and Saint Martin
de Porres, the patron saint of public schools.
For those connected to any one of those situations, these saints provide
an example of how to make their lives into a “living sacrifice” of “spiritual
worship”.
Friends, we aren't superstitious, nor
do we believe in good luck charms, but we do recognize that, when God comes
into a life, he has the power to fill every little nook and cranny of it with
everlasting meaning, if we let him; and our devotion to the saints helps to
remind us of this by reminding us of how he has already done this in the lives
of countless men and women before us.
No, my brothers and sisters, we do not
worship our ancestors or pray to multiple gods for multiple many things—and our
relationship with the one God who we worship is not based on external rituals
alone—rather, it's based on an internal identity, often expressed externally. I believe that this truth can help us to understand
one of life's great mysteries: that is, the mystery of suffering and the cross.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus said
to his disciples (and, so, he says to us): "Whoever wishes to come after
me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me." Jesus doesn’t promise that following him will
lead to a problem-free life, even though that's what all the pagan religions
claimed to offer. We know that such a
promise is empty, because we know that, in this fallen world, no one can avoid
suffering and loss. What Jesus does
promise is that, at the end of history, he will "wipe away every
tear" and put an end to evil, suffering, and death for those who have
endured such things patiently on account of him. He demands this of his disciples not because
he is some fickle god, looking for external proofs of their commitment to him,
but rather because he knows of suffering’s redemptive power: power that he
activated when he, himself, took up the cross.
Just before telling his apostles “whoever
wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me”,
we hear that Jesus showed his disciples that “he must go to Jerusalem and
suffer greatly … and be killed and on the third day be raised”. Jesus did not make himself immune to what his
disciples would suffer; but rather embraced it, in obedience to the Father’s
will, as the means of salvation for humanity.
And so, when we unite our inevitable sufferings to his through faith and
prayer, we tap into this means of salvation.
This gives our crosses internal meaning, even though externally they
remain painful. Our crosses then become
part of the "living sacrifice" and "spiritual worship" that
please God, reverse sin, and spread God's grace.
My brothers and sisters, Jesus has
redeemed the world and has turned our sorrows into paths of salvation, just as
in a few minutes he will turn our offerings of bread and wine into his own
grace-filled body and blood. If we are
at all feeling down and defeated because of the crosses that being a Christian
demands that we bear, let’s look to our friends, the saints, for inspiration to
persevere in carrying them, and to this Eucharist—which re-presents to us the
saving sacrifice of Jesus on the cross—to find the strength we need to bear
their weight until our Lord returns in glory.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – September 2nd & 3rd,
2017
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