Homily:
24th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B
This past week, the 2018
Eucharistic Congress was held in Liverpool, England. A Eucharistic Congress is an international
gathering of clergy, religious, and laity to bear witness to the Real Presence
of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. These
have been held since the late 1800’s (1881, to be precise) and include talks by
international leaders in the Catholic Church focused on fostering and spreading
devotion to the Eucharist throughout the world, along with Masses and
opportunities for Eucharistic Adoration.
Each Congress concludes with a Eucharistic procession through the
streets of the city that is hosting the Congress. The 2018 Congress in Liverpool was no
different.
Typically, this procession
is a bit of a triumphal affair: the Congress being gathered to bear witness to
the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, making a triumphal procession of
the Blessed Sacrament through public streets a great expression of that
purpose. This year, however, given the
current state of affairs in the Church (in the Western world, at least), the
Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, who was the host of this year’s Congress,
spoke of a much more solemn tone. Here’s
what he told the participants in the procession:
[This Eucharistic Procession] is undertaken in a spirit
of “prayer and penance …[without] one iota of pride or triumphalism in our
steps… In many ways, ours is a penitential procession for we are focused on
Jesus Christ, who we have crucified… Today I come as a beggar seeking
forgiveness laying the load, hurt, damage and mistrust we have caused at the
foot of the Cross.”
One
commentator followed up to this comment and said that “This was to be a
procession with only one destination in view: Golgotha.”
When
I read that, I thought to myself: “Yes, this must be the sign of our time. Not defensiveness, not politicking, not
damage control, but public acts of humble faith signaling both our recognition
that, by our own means, we are unable to fix that which we have broken and our
humble yet confident submission to the one through whose mercy is our only hope
for recovery.” When I reflect on our
readings for Mass this Sunday, it strikes me that this is exactly what they are
inviting us to do.
In
our first reading from Isaiah, we hear how he confidently places all of his
trust in the Lord—that is, in the word of the Lord that the Lord himself opened
his ears to hear—and this in spite of the fact that many come to persecute him
and cause him suffering because of it.
He knows that, right or wrong, his only defense is in the Lord and so he
refuses to turn to worldly advocates for help: trusting that no worldly
advocate can stand up to God. In our
time, the world is coming against us, challenging us to leave the Church
because of the sins of its leaders. We,
too, must stand strong in the word that the Lord has opened our ears to hear:
“On this rock I have built my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail
against it.” And, just as the Cardinal
Archbishop of Westminster has demonstrated for us, let us not seek worldly
advocates to defend us in this trial, but our Eucharistic Lord, allowing him to
purge from his Church all that is sinful, so that we, too, might stand in
confidence before the attacks of the world.
In
the Gospel, we see Jesus refusing to receive the accolades of those who
recognize him as the Messiah; admitting, rather, his fate to suffer and die at
the hands of impious men as the way through which he will conquer sin and
death. He rebukes Peter for thinking in
worldly terms—that is, that Christ would need a worldly advocate to save him
from any wicked thing that the world could throw at him—and then he demands
that all of his disciples follow his example: the path that he is blazing to the
Cross and, through it, to eternal life.
We, too, must remember that worldly triumph is not something that we are
called to realize. We are called,
rather, to take up our crosses daily—that is, the daily sufferings that we must
endure in order to live as authentic Christians in this world—and to follow
Christ to Golgotha to be crucified with him so that we might also be raised
with him and enjoy eternal life. Again,
the Cardinal Archbishop’s comments are true: that if we are processing with our
Lord through public streets in this day, it is to declare that we have taken up
our crosses and are following him to the place where his mercy flows out to us,
his wounded side on the Cross.
Friends,
it seems that we haven’t been doing that as well as we should; and, because of
that, many people have been hurt. I
continue to pray that, as the bishops continue to seek to take responsibility
for these failures—and as we (yes, we!) continue to strive to bring healing to
those who have been hurt—that our bishops will also commit themselves to public
acts of humble faith: demonstrating their desire to place themselves and the
Church fully under the mercy of God. We
should support them in their efforts by showing them our solidarity through
placing ourselves at the mercy of God so that his power might rise up again in
us. And let us not fail to take up our
own crosses daily, so that each person with whom we come into contact will see
the power of God's mercy working in our lives.
Then we, too, will be able to speak as Isaiah spoke: that "The Lord
God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced."
Church,
sometimes the works that demonstrate your faith are acts of penance, humble
acts of faith: like walking in procession behind our Lord to proclaim who it is
you will serve. Let us all seek ways
like this to demonstrate our faith—both individually and communally—taking up
our crosses each and every day; so that, by placing our lives at the mercy of
the all-powerful God, we might find that we have preserved our lives in heaven.
Given at Saint Mary’s
Cathedral: Lafayette, IN – September 15th & 16th,
2018
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