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Homily:
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time – Cycle C
A few weeks ago, I spent some time with my niece and nephew
and we watched the animated film, The
Lorax. It is based on the Dr. Seuss
children’s book of the same name and chronicles the story of a young boy who
visits a strange isolated man at the edge of town who purportedly can explain
why the area is in such a run-down state.
The man, named the Once-ler, explains by way of flashback how he came to
this once pristine land full of blissful animals and beautiful trees and began
to use the “tufts” of the trees to make a product—Thneeds—through which he
would make his fortune.
As the first tree was cut down, he remembers, a mythical
figure appeared: the Lorax, the protector of the forest. Instead of being some great, powerful being
that will destroy by force any threat to the forest, the Lorax appears as a
prophet (now, before you think “bor-ing” remember, this is a Dr. Seuss
book). Thus, he confronts the Once-ler
about his actions and then warns him of the dire consequences that will result
if he continues to march forward with his plan unabated. The Once-ler, surprised that this strange,
mythical creature hasn’t invoked any supernatural powers to stop him, ignores
him completely and presses forward with his plan: eventually destroying the
forest (and, thus, the habitat for all of the blissful animals who lived there)
and leaving the land desolate.
In many ways, the Lorax is not unlike many of the ancient
prophets of Israel Judah
In the reading we heard from the Book of Jeremiah today, we
see those consequences being played out.
Jeremiah’s prophecies went unheeded by King Zedekiah and Jerusalem , thus, was under siege and losing the
battle. Jeremiah continued to prophesy,
however, saying that the city would be overthrown unless the king and all the
people would repent and turn back to the Lord.
The princes of Judah refused to hear
him any longer and so they came to the king asking to be allowed to dispatch
him. The king succumbed to their wishes
and left him in their hands. It was only
through the hands of a foreigner, Ebed-melech, that Jeremiah was saved from
death in the cistern. Thus we see that
prophets, and their prophesies, are meant to make us uncomfortable.
In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is claiming his role as a
prophet. He states in no uncertain terms
that he has come to make us uncomfortable.
In fact, he’s come to “set the world on fire”! Here we see that Jesus is more than a
prophet: that is, a passive voice that speaks God’s truths and then leaves the
consequences to the choices of those to whom he speaks. His is an active voice that will challenge
his hearers and force them to choose: either to repent and to follow him or to
turn defiantly and definitively against him.
His message, that he has come to establish division,
instead of peace, makes us uncomfortable, because we want to believe that Jesus
just wants us to be nice and to get along with each other. Yet, his prophesy that households will become
divided—that father will be divided against son and son against father; mother
against daughter and daughter against mother—is still very relevant for us
today as we see it being played out in our own families. The challenge of Jesus is so strong that one
has to choose either to follow or to turn away and, sadly, we see many families
that have become divided and separated because of this.
Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a great abbot of the 12th
century, wrote to one of his monks who had just been elected to be the pope in
order to warn him not to become so accustomed to the hectic schedule demanded
of him as the Bishop of Rome that he should become callous and
unreflective. In it he said: I am afraid that you will despair of an end
to the many demands that are made upon you and become calloused and gradually
suppress your sense of just and useful pain.
It would be much wiser to remove yourself from these demands even for a
while, than to allow yourself to be distracted by them and led, little by
little, where you certainly do not want to go.
Where? To a hard heart. Do not go on to ask what that is; if you have
not been terrified by it, it is yours already.
A hard heart is precisely one which does not shudder at itself because
it is insensitive…
My brothers and sisters, if Jesus’ words today do not cause
us some discomfort then perhaps we, too, have allowed our hearts to become
hardened. Maybe it is through our
negligence as we allow the daily demands of our hectic schedules—the demands
that world places on us—to gradually desensitize us from being stung by Jesus’
challenge to radical discipleship. Or
maybe our sin, like the greed of the Once-ler and the pride of King Zedekiah,
hardened our hearts long ago so that we now despair of ever feeling true
contrition once again. Whatever the case
may be, our call today is to acknowledge the state of our hearts, and, thus,
our discipleship, and to recognize the call of the prophets to turn back to the
Lord who, as the Psalmist says, “will draw us out of the pit of destruction to
set our feet on secure ground.”
Friends, I believe that Pope Benedict called for this Year
of Faith and for a renewed focus on the New Evangelization because he saw Jesus
calling out to us today using these same words that we heard in the Gospel
reading: “I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already
blazing!” This Year of Faith has been a
call to us to shatter our hardened hearts and to return to the faith of the
Church; and then to turn out and to set that flame of faith loose on the world
so that the fire of Christ’s love will consume it entirely.
Saint Catherine of Siena
once said, “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on
fire!” My brothers and sisters, God has
called us to be prophets and evangelists who will set the world on fire for
Christ. But we cannot do this if we are
clinging to our comfortable lives or to maintaining a “false peace” with our
family members, friends, and neighbors who obstinately refuse to follow the
truth. We can only do it if we ourselves
become living flames of faith by “ridding ourselves of every burden of sin and
persevering in running the race that lies before us while keeping our eyes on
Jesus,” as the author to the Letter to the Hebrews exhorts us to do today.
Therefore, let us take courage. For that same author also reminds us that
“for the sake of the joy that lay before him [Jesus] endured the cross,
despising its shame, and has taken his seat at the right of the throne of God.” With his witness and with the witness of all
the saints that have gone before us (the great “cloud of witnesses” spoken of
in the second reading), we too can endure in our struggle against sin, even to
the point of shedding our own blood. For
the promise of glory—the promise that is renewed for us every day on this
altar—is already ours.
Given at All Saints Parish: Logansport , IN
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