Sunday, January 15, 2023

Ordinary Time is not ordinary

 Homily: 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A

         This week the Church transitioned back into Ordinary Time.  Perhaps for most of you the switch was rather unremarkable.  Generally these transitions are pretty smooth for me, too, but because of my vocation, I can never just “roll through” them with little notice.  In the breviary, which is the book of prayers from which all priests must pray every day, there’s always a little note at the end of a season.  For example, this past Monday was the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, which officially ended the Christmas season in the Church.  At the end of Evening Prayer there’s a simple note that says: “After the feast of the Baptism of the Lord, Ordinary Time begins.”  Even though I know that this is coming, I almost always pause when I read that and think to myself: “[sigh] Suddenly, everything just feels so… ordinary.”

         This can be how we feel, right?  How many of you were lamenting to put away Christmas and get back to the “rest of your life”?  We know that we can’t live our lives in constant celebration, and that we have to get back to work and school, and so we go back to “ordinary” things and we leave Christmas, and all the excitement of celebrating Christ’s birth, packed away in boxes until next year.  Can you see that there’s a problem with this, especially when we apply it to our lives of faith?

         “Ordinary Time” never means “just go back to doing what you were doing before”.  Rather, Ordinary Time is the time to take all of the blessings that you received during the celebratory season (like those new things that you received at Christmas) and apply them to your everyday life so as to help renew your everyday life and thus grow as a Christian disciple.  Ordinary Time is the time in which we engage the hard work of growing in holiness.  It is not “throwaway” time in between the great seasons of Advent/Christmas and Lent/Easter, rather it’s valuable time given to us so that we might produce fruit in the world for God’s kingdom.

         And so, let me remind all of you of something: holiness is a great privilege to which we have been called.  This is what Saint Paul says to us in the second reading: that we are “called to be holy”.  He says these words as if it is an exclusive gift that not everyone is chosen to receive.  In reality holiness is unobtainable by ourselves; and so to be chosen to receive it is a great privilege.  Yet, how often do we see it as a burden!  “Well, I guess I ought to be holy today… ugh!”  To be holy is difficult and if we weren’t called to be holy we wouldn’t be able to obtain it ourselves, but we are called and so we can obtain it.  The problem, it seems, is that we’ve lost touch with the understanding of the amazing gift that holiness is; and so we’ve lost the ambition to become holy, even though we’ve been called to it.

         If we have, indeed, lost touch with the understanding of what a gift holiness is, then how do we turn back to see it?  We have to embrace what is essential, once again.  We have to embrace those essential works of the spiritual life: Mass, prayer, confession, mortification, reading, devotion to Mary and the saints, etc.  In order to for this to be fruitful, however, we first need to re-center our hearts and our lives on what is essential: that is, on Christ, himself.  John the Baptist, in today’s Gospel reading has to point out Jesus to his followers—men and women who were flocking to him to receive his baptism of repentance.  They were so caught up in the work of repenting, that they were missing the reason for their repentance—Christ, himself, walking among them.  Today, if I can be so bold, in order to inspire us as we enter into Ordinary Time, I’d like to do the same for all of you.

         We, as Catholic Christians, have as our purpose to be a Christ-centered people.  This purpose is realized when both our faith is active and when our love for Christ in the Eucharist is fervent.  The Eucharist, of course, in which Jesus is truly present to us, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, is where we have the opportunity to unite most perfectly in the Heart of Jesus.  Love of the Eucharist, therefore, is the most perfect way to become and remain a Christ-centered people.

         Now, if we say that our purpose is to be a Christ-centered people, and that Christ is truly present to us, in the fullness of his Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity, in the Eucharist, and in the Blessed Sacrament that we reserve in the tabernacle and in our adoration chapel, then we have to ask ourselves a question: is that demonstrably obvious to anyone who knows us?

         When I first started to attend this parish twenty years ago, the adoration chapel was just being constructed.  Father Richard (and Monsignor Duncan before him) knew that having parishioners praying before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament every day, throughout the day, would be the fuel that would motivate and power everything else that we would do as a parish.  Let me tell you, they were right.

         In my own experience, committing myself to making the celebration of the Eucharist the most important thing in my life and making it a priority to spend a minimum of one hour a week in adoration of Christ in the Blessed Sacrament—that is, striving to become completely Christ-centered in my life—completely changed my life for the better.  Well before I discovered my vocation to the priesthood, becoming Christ-centered in my life in this way changed my attitude towards life and the things of this world.  I found grace to deal with the ups and downs of this world and my relationships with my family, friends, and co-workers all improved as a result.  Now, nearly twenty years later, I can say that the same is still true: being Christ-centered in this way remains the most important thing in my life, and so I encourage each of you to examine your lives—individually and as families—to explore how you can be more Christ-centered in 2023. ///

         My dear brothers and sisters, Ordinary Time in the Church is never ordinary.  Nevertheless, this year, as we enter into this Ordinary Time, we have a special opportunity to embrace this time for what it is: a time to heed the call to be holy by re-centering ourselves on Christ through our love of the Eucharist.  I pray that the power of Christ that we receive in this Eucharist will inspire you to engage more deeply in this bold work of allowing our Lord to strengthen this parish as a place that proclaims from every side the proclamation of John the Baptist, “Behold the Lamb of God!”—so that we, along with all those around us, might encounter him anew and say once again (or, perhaps, for the first time) those words that bring us salvation: “Now I have seen and testified that He is the Son of God.”

Given in Spanish at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Parish: Carmel, IN

January 15th, 2023

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