Homily: 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
Yesterday, I celebrated a wedding for
a young couple from our parish. On
Friday evening the couple invited me to the dinner after the rehearsal. After the dinner the groom’s father sat down
next to me and wanted to talk. He’s not
Catholic and he recently had a similar conversation with his Lutheran pastor
(whom he surmised was similar in age to me), and so he wanted to take the opportunity
to get my opinion on the same question.
It was a very earnest question: “Taking
a look at everything that is going on in the world, is there any hope,” he
asked, “or have we already lost the world?”
My first answer, of course, was “Yes, of course there is hope! God hasn’t changed. He is still the all-powerful Lord of the
universe. And nothing has changed about
Jesus, his Son, who saved us from sin and death by his own death and
resurrection.” To this he nodded in
agreement as if he already knew the answer.
Thus, it was the second part of that question to which he seemed to need
an answer. “Doesn’t it seem as if we
have lost the world to the forces of darkness and evil?” To this, I tried to be a little more nuanced.
I wondered, perhaps, if he was worried
about the final judgment and about being caught up in the final unleashing of
God’s wrath on the human race because of its increasing disregard for his
commandments. I tried to assure him that
his feelings were a sign that this is a time of action: a time when people of
faith must be intentional about sharing the Good News of Jesus in both word and
in action. I assured him that now is a
time of mercy, but only if we take action.
It’s true, isn’t it, that God’s anger
should be blazing against us because of rampant sin in our world, especially by
those who call themselves “Christians”? We’ve
offended him, time and again. But look
around; it doesn’t seem like anything resembling God’s anger is working around
us, does it? Rather, what we’ve been
given is a time of mercy, instead. Our
scriptures today reveal to us that this has been God’s pattern from the
beginning.
In the first reading, we hear about
Moses, acting as a type of Christ, who intercedes before God on behalf of the
Israelite people to turn away God’s anger from them. The people have fashioned an idol which they
have been worshiping: an offense so grave that God wants to put them to death
immediately. Moses, resisting the offer
from God to have a nation of people made for himself, invokes the promises that
God made to the people’s righteous forefathers, saying, in effect, “Although
these people don’t deserve your mercy, please give it to them for the sake of
Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.” To this God
relents and bestows his mercy on the people who deserved his righteous
judgment.
In the second reading, we heard Saint
Paul who wrote of his gratitude that he had been “considered trustworthy” to be
a minister of the Gospel. He
acknowledged that, because of his actions as a persecutor of Christians, he
deserved the full wrath of God; but that he had been “mercifully treated” by
God; and not for his benefit alone, but rather for the benefit of the Gospel:
that, in treating Paul mercifully, God would prove that no sin is too big for
his mercy.
Then, in the Gospel, we heard three
parables that Jesus used to illustrate how extensive God’s mercy is towards
us. In them, Jesus teaches us that God
refuses to let us be lost. The shepherd,
who risks his own life (and the life of the ninety-nine sheep who didn’t stray)
in order to find the one sheep who was lost, and the woman, who turns over her
whole house to find the one coin even though she had nine others, are
illustrations of how God doggedly pursues any of us who have turned away from
him. The father who daily waits with
anxious anticipation for his prodigal son to return home, and who receives him
with joy and celebration when he does, is an illustration of God’s “prodigal”
willingness to ignore our past when we turn away from it and back towards him
so that we might not be lost forever to darkness, but rather live forever with
him in the light of grace.
But it is not just the scriptures that
confirm that this is a time of mercy from God.
Rather, there have been many events in the last century that demonstrate
this as well. The apparitions of Mary at
Fatima in Portugal in which she called the world to repentance and acts of
reparation for sins so as to avert tragedies that were to come. The mystical revelations of Jesus to Sr.
Faustina Kowalska in Poland in which he gave her the task to foster a renewed
devotion to Divine Mercy. The election
of Pope John Paul II, which made it possible for St. Faustina’s message to be
spread throughout the world. And now,
this Jubilee Year of Mercy, which calls us both to open ourselves to an
experience of God’s mercy and to share God’s mercy with those around us. All of these (and more) point to this time as
being our chance (perhaps our last chance) to repent and to plead for God’s
mercy before God’s final judgment takes place.
The events of September 11th, 2001,
which we also remember today, are a sign that the time of mercy is now: because
when violence like this increases in our world, so the need to proclaim God’s
mercy to the world increases as well. As
we remember these tragic events, let us not allow them to remain in the realm
of lamentation. Rather, let us use them
to remind us of our need to act: first to convert ourselves so that we are not
objects of the just judgment of God, and then to go out and to call others to
conversion and thus transform the world.
My brothers and sisters, our world has
gone far astray from God, but it is never too late to return. This is because God's mercies are not
exhausted; rather, they are renewed every morning. Particularly here, on this altar of
sacrifice, God's mercies are renewed as Jesus becomes truly present to us. With confidence, then, let us approach this
throne of grace and receive God's mercy: Jesus, our Savior. Then, let us go forth from here to be
instruments of God's mercy, that the day of judgment might be a day of joy in
which we all will be united with God our Father forever.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – September 11th, 2016
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