Homily: 16th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Imagine for a moment that you are out driving
on a country road at night… maybe it’s winter… and your car suddenly breaks
down. As luck would have it, your phone
charger broke and your phone battery is dead, and so you have no way to call
someone to come and help. Nobody is on
the road at this hour of night, so you decide to start walking to try to find
the nearest house. It’s cold and it
starts to rain. As you approach a house
in the middle of the night, wet, cold, and desperate for help, perhaps you
pause for a moment and think to yourself, “Are these people welcoming? Or will
they just see me as a threat and try to run me off? If they do, what am I going
to do? I can’t stay out here all night by myself!”. If you can imagine yourself in a situation like
this, then you can imagine why hospitality to strangers was such an important
cultural principle in ancient cultures. It
was often a matter of life and death. You
gave it, therefore, because one day you may need it.
In our readings today, we see examples
of this importance. Of course, there’s
no mention of life-threating circumstances in the reading from Genesis, for
example, but nonetheless when these three “strangers” appear before Abraham, he
immediately offers them hospitality. In
fact, he begs them to let him serve them.
They, of course, accede and he does.
But this is a foreign concept for us today, isn’t it? We here in the United States (and even more
specifically here in Hamilton County) live in a “single-family-home” culture:
where everyone has their “four walls” and strangers who come have motels/hotels
in which they can stay (if they don’t already know someone in the area with whom
they can stay). The idea that someone would
just walk into our town, unknown to all, and find people ready to give him/her
a fresh-cooked meal and a place to freshen up before continuing on the journey
is just foreign to our sensibilities, I think.
(In fact, I myself grew up in the “stranger-danger” generation, so I get
it.)
Although this particular idea may seem
quite foreign to us, I think it should challenge us to consider the question, “are
we truly open to receiving the stranger in our midst?” I’ll admit right away that the practicalities
of doing this without perennially exposing ourselves to bad actors is no easy
question to answer. But the principle of
the matter is one we can address: “do I wish to be open to receiving the stranger
in my midst and offering him hospitality, as if it was Christ himself
presenting himself to me?” As
Christians, this is important for us to answer because, as Abraham has shown
us, openness to receiving the stranger and showing him hospitality opens us to
the possibility of serving he Lord himself.
Surely the author of the Letter to the Hebrews had Abraham in mind when
he wrote, “Do not neglect hospitality to strangers, for by this some have
entertained angels without knowing it” (Heb 13:2).
Let’s presume, however, that we are
all open to receiving the stranger in our midst and providing hospitality. In fact, let’s presume that we all consider hospitality
an important duty for us, as Christians.
Starting from this point, we can then engage the story from our Gospel
reading and begin to glean some important lessons.
The story begins with the same principle
as the story of Abraham from the first reading: the Lord shows up to a certain
place and he is offered hospitality.
What we see in the story of Martha, however, is how the duty can
sometimes become an obstacle to deeper communion. [REPEAT] Here we see Martha
with a great openness to receive the “stranger” in her midst and to provide hospitality
(though we know that Jesus is not a stranger to her; even though he did
probably show up unexpectedly). What we
then see is that, for Martha, the duty became the “end” that she was seeking,
not the communion that fulfilling the duty promoted. Thus, when she observes her sister neglecting
the duty, she becomes resentful and asks Jesus to intervene in order to shame
her sister into joining her in fulfilling the duty.
Here we should hear echoes of the story
of the Prodigal Son. There, the older
son was resentful of his brother who “got away” with spending years in
dissolute living while he sacrificed his own desires and remained faithful to
his duty to his father. Here, Martha is diligently
fulfilling the duty of hospitality while Mary “indulges” in listening to Jesus
(seemingly doing “nothing”). For Martha,
the duty became the most important thing.
She forgot the communion with the guest that the duty was intended to
foster. Martha wanted Jesus to
acknowledge the injustice: that one was bearing the burden of duty that both
were expected to bear. In his response,
Jesus reminds Martha that, in him, “mercy tempers justice”. “Mercy”, in this sense, is the “better part”
that Jesus acknowledges that Mary has chosen.
The lesson for us is a warning not to allow
our Christianity to be reduced to a duty towards service, but rather to allow
our service to draw us into a deeper intimacy with Christ, whom we have the
opportunity to encounter in those we serve.
Pope Francis often reminded us not to be “checkbook Christians”. He meant that we can’t just be people who write
checks to support the poor and their needs, as if the transaction (important as
it is) is enough to satisfy our duty.
Rather, he was challenging us also to meet those whom we serve with our
support (wherever possible and within reason, of course), so that the
fulfillment of our duty ALSO supports our communion with the “stranger in our
midst”, thus further building the kingdom of God.
This balance between Martha and Mary
is modeled well for us in the Mass. Each
Lord’s Day, we gather to sit at the feet of Jesus and listen to him in the
Liturgy of the Word. Then we share a
meal (that is, communion) with him in the Liturgy of the Eucharist. It is a meal that he has provided for us (and
which is prepared for us by the work of some in our community), which also serves
as our offering of thanksgiving for all that we have received from him. Then, at the end of Mass, we are sent to go
and engage our duty to serve: that is, to be the instruments of hospitality
that invite everyone to come and sit at the feet of Jesus and to receive the
hospitality that he has provided. Whether that be here at the Mass (the ultimate
good for anyone), or in your food pantry, or in your youth group, or in
whatever service you do individually or as a family in your community… All of
it should be in a service of selfless hospitality to those around us (that is, not
a begrudging duty). When we go forth to
serve in this way, we too "are filling up what is lacking in the
afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body…" as Saint Paul described
himself as doing in the second reading, and thus helping to build the kingdom
in our midst.
And so, my friends, as you sit here
today at the feet of the Master, perhaps you find yourself noticing some
resentment about your duty to serve (perhaps a lot of resentment, even), or perhaps
you find that you have a lack of sense of the duty to serve (or an
unwillingness to serve). If so, then you
are called to place all of that at the feet of our Lord here at this table—this
altar—and to ask for the grace to receive the good he is pouring out to you; regardless
of whether that grace be 1) to strengthen you in your service (in spite of the
seeming disparity in service between you and those around you) or 2) to inspire
you to take up the mantle of service (and so discover the joy of the greater communion
with Christ that service is meant to foster while further building the kingdom
of God).
Above all, my brothers and sisters, let
us give thanks in this Mass that God has invited us to this place in order for
us to receive from him: for in it, we give him thanks and he gives us the Bread
of Life. What a merciful exchange, no?! We give him our imperfect offerings and he
gives us life! In response, may our
lives become living signs of this goodness for all to see.
Given at St.
Louis de Montfort Parish: Fishers, IN – July 20th, 2025
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