Homily: 32nd Sunday in Ordinary
Time – Cycle C
Friends,
we are now well into the month of November, which for us Catholics also means
that we are approaching the end of the Liturgical Year. Although the readings for Mass have already
been hinting at it for the last several weeks, this week our readings shift our
focus away from the nuts and bolts of our daily discipleship and toward
consideration of “last things”, that is, the things that will come at the end
of time. This week, in particular, the
focus of our readings is on the reality of the resurrection from the dead.
In
our first reading, we heard the testimony of three of the seven Israelite
brothers who, with their mother, were being tortured by the Seleucid King
Antiochus Epiphanes in order to make them apostatize—that is, denounce their
faith—by eating pork, which they believed God forbade them to eat. Each of these three courageously handed over
their lives to their torturers rather than denounce their faith in God by
breaking the Law that he had given them; and it was their hope in the
fact that God could and would raise them to life again that gave them that
courage. In other words, they believed
in God’s promise of eternal life to those who remained faithful to his Laws and
commandments and so they knew that, if they kept themselves pure according to
God’s law, even if they should die at the hands of men, God would one day raise
them to life again. And so, we see that
our belief in the resurrection means something about how we live our lives before
we die: for if there’s no resurrection, then eat pork and enjoy your life,
while you have it; if there is a resurrection, however, then we ought to seek
to serve the one through whom the resurrection will come (that is, God),
so as not to incur his wrath.
In
the Gospel reading, in answering the dilemma that the Sadducees put forth,
Jesus doesn’t describe for us how we should live our lives in this world, but
rather describes a glimpse of how eternal life will look. He describes life after the resurrection of
the dead as one in which those who have been raised to life “can no longer
die”, indicating that it will be an immortal life which will extend through all
eternity. Now eternity, I think, can be
a very hard thing to imagine. Fr. Larry
Richards, who is a parish priest from Erie, Pennsylvania, and who travels to
speak nationally, has one of the best illustrations about the length of time
which is eternity and he describes it in this way: he says, “Imagine that, in
eternity, every step requires 1,000 years to take and that you have been given
the job to take every grain of sand from every beach and on every ocean floor,
one at a time, to the top of Mt. Everest.
You can imagine the countless billions of years that it would take to
accomplish this task. Yet once you have
finished this task,” he says, “eternity is just beginning.” He describes it in this way in order to put
into sharp contrast the reality that with our infinitesimally short time on
earth (in comparison to eternity) we will determine how we will spend
eternity (either in heaven or in hell).
Thus, once again, our belief in the resurrection of the dead means
something about how we ought to live our lives before we die.
In his encyclical, Spe
Salvi (in English, In Hope We Were Saved), Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI
wrote, “the one who has hope lives differently.” Hope, as he speaks about it and in the
Christian sense, is not merely “optimism” about the future—that is, good
feelings that, in the end, things will come out positive for us. Rather, it is the grace of a vision of a
real, positive outcome that we see is concretely possible for us to attain in
the future, even if it is beyond our power.
Thus, we see how it is possible for one who has hope to live differently:
for he/she no longer need worry about what can happen in the present time,
because one sees the vision of the positive outcome for him/herself in the
future. This is the hope that the
Israelite brothers and their mother had which gave them courage to endure
horrendous torture and death: hope that provided the vision of the positive
outcome for them—that is, the resurrection to an everlasting life.
Last week, at the end of Mass,
we heard a testimony from our parishioners describing how being involved in the
ministries of Saint Mary’s has made a positive impact on their lives. Each one of them was a testimony of hope:
that what is sacrificed in this present time is of no account in light of the
positive outcome that awaits those who are faithful to the Lord. I pray that you have reflected on these
things over this past week and are now ready to make or re-make your
commitments of your time and talent to the ministries of Saint Mary’s. I pray that your reflection has been full of
hope (and, thus, gratitude): gratitude for the Passion, Death, and Resurrection
of Christ which has made a life beyond this life possible for us, and hope
that, through baptism, we will one day enjoy that life.
Therefore, if you are ready to
do so, I now invite you to make your commitment by turning over your time and
talent commitment card to us. Hopefully
you brought yours with you today. If
not, there are extras in the pew. I’ll
give you a few moments to complete them, if necessary, before inviting the
ushers to come forward and collect them.
They will then be brought forward to be placed at the altar and, thus
united to the sacrifice that is our hope: the sacrifice of Christ’s Body and
Blood for our salvation. If you are not
ready to make your commitment today, don’t worry. Know that you can make your commitment at any
time.
May God bless you all for your
openness to serve and may Mary’s prayers strengthen us to bring these good
commitments to fulfillment.
Given
at Saint Mary’s Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – November 9th & 10th,
2019
No comments:
Post a Comment