Homily: 32nd in Ordinary Time – Cycle B
Friends,
our Scriptures today point to and remind us of God’s care and providence when
we follow his call. Our first reading
today presents the great figure of Elijah, the prophet, and of his encounter
with the widow of Zarephath. Although we
are not given the context of the story—some of us may already know it—I would
like to recount it here for you because I think that it emphasizes what this
story points to and reminds us of God’s care and providence when we follow his
call.
Elijah
is one of the great prophets of the Israelites and he was called to prophesy at
a desperate time for the Israelite people.
King Ahab was a bad king and his bad actions led to a reaction from God:
he would send a severe drought on the land and thus a famine would afflict the
people. Elijah was called by God to tell
this to king Ahab, which he did. After
this, God directed Elijah to go down to a small river, from which he will get
water to drink, and God promised that a raven would come and bring him food to
sustain him. Elijah obeyed this call
from God. He camped by the small river
where ravens brought him food and from which he drank water until the water
dried up because of the drought.
This
is when we come to our reading for today.
After the river dried up, God commanded Elijah to go to a foreign land
(Sidon) and to look for someone who probably had little to nothing to give (a
widow) and he promised that this widow would provide for him until he decided
to end the famine. Frankly, this was an
absurd proposal. In a foreign land, he
had a much lower chance of finding anyone to help him and widows were usually
so poor and uninfluential that there’d be little chance that she’d have much to
provide him with, anyway. Nonetheless, Elijah obeyed God’s call and traveled to
the town of Zarephath in Sidon.
There,
he encountered the widow and called to her to provide him with water and
food. She reveals to him what he
probably already knew: that she barely had enough to provide one small meal for
her and her son and after that, they would likely die of starvation. Elijah relates a promise from God, however:
Go and make me a small cake and God will ensure that you have both flour and
oil until he decides to end the drought.
Amazingly enough, she believed him and did it! Perhaps she thought, “Well, I’m going to run
out of food anyway, so why not give this a try?” Either way, she believed what the prophet
said and responded to this call. As we
see from the reading, God’s care and providence provided for her, her son, and
Elijah throughout the entire year that the drought lasted.
Then,
in the Gospel reading, we see another example of this when Jesus points to the
widow in the Temple who, while only giving a small amount of money to the
treasury, nonetheless made a great act of sacrifice and faith in the care and
providence of God. This because she was
poor and the two small coins were probably all the money that she had
left. In giving it over to the work of
the worship of God in the Temple, she proved that she trusted God to care for
her in her need. Although we don’t know
what happened to this poor widow, we can feel confident that, because Jesus
commended her for responding to God’s call to support God’s worship in the
Temple, she was provided for by God’s providence.
In
these examples, we see the core of every vocation: that is, a willingness to
follow God’s call, trusting in his care and providence. When I first discovered that God had a
calling for my life, I had to learn to trust that God would take care of me
before I could be ready to respond to God’s call. I spent a lot of time in prayer and in
reading the Scriptures, talking to God about my anxieties and meditating on the
examples of those, like the Elijah and the widows in today’s readings, who
trusted totally in God’s providence and care.
I asked God that, little by little, I would trust him more. So that, little by little, I would be ready
to hear his call. God filled me with
great graces during that time and helped me to develop the trust in him that I
needed so that I was ready to receive and respond to his call.
The
way God did this was by calling me to smaller things and giving me the chance
to respond. For example: One time I was
be at the gas station filling my car with gas.
When another car pulled into the station, I felt a strong suggestion to
pay for that person’s gasoline. This was
something that I was not accustomed to thinking of, but I was asking God to
help strengthen my trust and so I immediately recognized it as a call from
God. Would I follow? Ultimately, that day I did not. Nevertheless, even my failure to follow
provided an opportunity to grow in trust so that I would follow the next time
he called.
This
week we celebrate National Vocations Awareness Week: a week in which we take
time to honor the gift of religious vocations (that is, priesthood, diaconate, and
consecrated religious life) and to recommit to promoting awareness of these
vocations as ways that God may be calling you and others here in this parish to
give their lives in service of God’s kingdom.
This is important for us to do.
Each of us is called to holiness—that is, called to become saints—and some of us are called to
become saints by embracing a religious vocation.
Perhaps
one of the biggest concerns that I hear from families is a concern about whether
their son or daughter will be taken care of if they forego marriage to pursue a
call to a religious vocation. This is
why these readings are so important for us today. They remind us that, when God calls someone
to follow him in a special way, he does not abandon them, but rather provides
for them through means that are not always readily obvious. Elijah had no possessions in the world, but
God commanded ravens and then a poor widow to provide for him in his need. The widow herself was destitute and ready to
eat her last meal, yet God provided for her when she nonetheless received
Elijah into her home. In the same way,
God will use all means (common and uncommon) to provide for those who follow
his call to a religious vocation.
Therefore,
I urge everyone here—and especially the young people here—to meditate on these
scriptures this week and to pray to God that he help you increase your trust in
his care and providence. So that, when
he reveals his vocation to each one of you, you’ll be ready and willing to follow
it. Parents and grandparents, you have a
great power to witness to this trust in your own way. When you said “yes” to marriage and a family,
you could not know all of the challenges that would come with it. Perhaps, however, over the years your trust
in God’s care and providence has increased.
If so, I encourage you to share the stories in which your trust
increased with your children and grandchildren so that they can see that every
vocation involves great trust in God, not just religious vocations.
Friends,
our Lord Jesus is the perfect example of trusting in God’s care and providence. His trust led him to submit to the terrible
torture of the cross. God’s care and
providence was not that he avoided suffering, but rather that, after suffering,
he was glorified in his resurrection. As
we celebrate this memorial of his passion, death, and resurrection today, let
us ask for the grace to trust as he trusted, so as to be glorified as he has
been glorified for eternity in the life to come.
Given in Spanish at St. Paul Parish: Marion, IN – November
6th, 2021
Given in Spanish at St. Bernard Parish: Crawfordsville, IN
and Our Lady of Mount Carmel Parish: Carmel, IN – November 7th, 2021
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