Homily: 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C
One of the promises that priests make
at their ordination is to pray daily for the Church. We fulfill this obligation by praying what is
called the Liturgy of the Hours. The
Liturgy of the Hours are prayers structured around the Book of Psalms from
the Bible. Over a four-week period, at
five different “hours” each day, every priest and religious prays through the
Book of Psalms. These hours also include
various “canticles” – which are songs from the both the Old and New
Testaments. One of these canticles is
the one that we heard in our first reading today and appears in Morning Prayer
of Thursday in the first week of the four-week cycle.
I began to pray the Liturgy of the
Hours as a seminarian. We would pray
Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer together in the chapel; and I can admit that,
the first few times that we encountered this canticle in the cycle, I found
myself feeling a little embarrassed to proclaim (or even just to hear) the
words “Oh, that you may suck fully of the milk of her comfort, that you may
nurse with delight at her abundant breasts” out loud in the chapel.
While it was certainly a sign that
there was a level of maturity that I needed to obtain in order to overcome my
embarrassment at speaking these words, I think that there was another part of
this that we can ascribe to how our oversexualized culture has distorted the
way that we look at women: because the image of a woman that we are given in
the first reading today is that of a “nourshing mother”, which contradicts the
way our culture invites us to think of women and their bodies. If you think that this image is strange,
however, let me just ask: Have any of you have ever called the college or high
school from which you graduated your “alma mater”? If you have, then you are already invoking
this image. That’s because alma mater is actually a Latin phrase
meaning “nourishing mother”. And why do
we call our schools alma maters? Well, because they are places where we find
nourishment: not only intellectually, but also emotionally, as we form
friendships that will last well into the future and are cared for by teachers
and staff who help form us to be good persons once we are “sent out” into the
world.
For the Israelites,
For us Christians, God has given us
the Church to be our “alma mater”, that is, our “nourishing mother”. She is the “New Jerusalem” that God has
established through Jesus to be our place to find nourishment and comfort and,
thus, the strength to go out into the world.
It is here that we come when we are weary from the difficulties that we
suffer in the world and it is here that we find the strength to go back out
into the world and to be faithful to all that God has commanded us and to be witnesses
to his love for all of mankind. Thus, if
we consider our schools “alma maters” because they have been places of
nourishment and strengthening so that we can go out to successfully complete
some work in the world, then so, too, must we recognize how the Church is our alma mater par excellance, in whom we find nourishment and strength to go out
and complete our mission from God. /// And the Church, my brothers and sisters,
is nothing less than Jesus himself. ///
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus
sends his disciples out to reap the Lord’s harvest. Up to this point, Jesus had been nourishing
his disciples with his word and his fellowship and he strengthened them by
giving them his power and authority to work mighty deeds. Then he sent them out to bring the Good News
to all of the cities and towns that he wished to enter. The disciples went out and did, indeed, do
mighty works in Jesus’ name and, thus, brought many to believe in Jesus. Then they returned to him to celebrate what
had been done and to be nourished and strengthened once again so as to continue
this work in Jesus’ name.
But just as Jesus was, in a sense,
that “nourishing mother” for his disciples, who strengthened them with his word
and gave them his power and authority to go out and do mighty deeds in his name
so that the nations would come to know that he had come to save us, so, too,
did Jesus establish the Church to be our “nourishing mother” to do the same for
us. And so, just like those first
disciples who went out to the towns and villages that Jesus wanted to enter, so
we, too, must go out to the towns and villages that surround us – to the people
who have not yet received the “light of faith” – to show them the mighty power
of God: that is, the faith that has the power to transform their lives in
positive ways. Then we must return, like
the first disciples did, to share and celebrate our successes and to be
nourished to go out and do it all again.
And this is radical, isn’t it? Radical because it requires us to give up
some of the things that we want to do in our lives, so as to be about the work
of bringing forth God’s Kingdom. But
this, nonetheless, is what we are being called to do and, quite frankly, if we
wish to call ourselves Christians, we must do it.
“The harvest is abundant, but the
laborers are few,” Jesus told his disciples.
My brothers and sisters, the same is still true for us. One of the shocking statistics of our diocese
is that it is only about 8-9% Catholic.
That means that less than 10% of the people who live in the 24 counties
that make up our diocese are Catholic.
Perhaps an even more shocking statistic is that nearly half of our
dioceses’ population is completely unchurched! Thus, the harvest is, indeed, abundant and it
appears that the workers have been far too few. ///
First, however, we must be nourished:
we must bask in the “light of faith” ourselves.
In other words, we must first find nourishment in our alma mater, the Church, by dwelling in
the Word, which she safeguards, and by being fed from this Eucharistic table,
which she never fails to prepare for us.
And this is exactly what we do in the Mass each and every week. We come together to give thanks to God for
all of the blessings that he has bestowed on us throughout the past week. In the Mass we are nourished with God’s Word
and receive spiritual strength when we receive Christ’s Body and Blood from
this table. Then we are sent out to do
it all again when, at the end of Mass, the priest (or deacon) says “Go and
announce the Gospel of the Lord.”
My brothers and sisters, if you are
struggling to find that nourishment and strength here in the Church, then
please ask for help. That is what we are
all here for, to help each other and strengthen each other in faith and
discipleship. If you are apathetic about
it all, then please pray to God for the light of faith. I promise you that it will not be time wasted,
because God will never fail to respond to that prayer. Whatever you do, do something and the light
of faith will be given to you, and God’s power will shine through you, like it
did through those first disciples.
Let us, then, be renewed today by our
“alma mater”, the Church, and be strengthened by the food she provides, and
thus go forth to reap an abundant harvest for the Lord.
Given at St. Louis de Montfort Parish: Fishers,
IN – July 5th & 6th, 2025
