Homily: 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle B
More
than 20 years ago now, when I was still a young adult, I found myself in a difficult
moment, personally. This was long before
I discerned the priesthood and entered the seminary. A long-term relationship that I had with a
young woman had ended… badly. I was very
dissatisfied with my chosen career. And
I was living here in Indiana, where, at the time, I had few friends and no
family. I was stuck, because my
understanding about life was that I had to choose how I would live it and I
felt that all of my choices up to that point were bad ones.
Thus,
I decided to start anew. Certainly, I
believed, the lessons I had learned through my choices so far would help me
choose better for my life in the future.
This proved to be harder than I thought, however. With every enticing option that presented
itself, there was a voice in my head that said, “How can you be sure that this
will turn out better than what you had already chosen?” I was still stuck.
It
wasn’t until I participated in a parish mission that I discovered the way
out. The priest who preached the mission
taught and reemphasized the importance of asking God what his will is for our
lives and then striving to follow it. It
was in that moment that I recognized (in fact, I felt like I discovered) the
truth of vocation: that is, that our
lives will become fulfilling and satisfying not when we choose to do the thing
that we most want to do in the world, but rather when we experience a call from
outside of ourselves to move in a particular direction and do a particular
thing. In that moment I had no idea what
that direction or thing might be. Nonetheless,
I embraced the truth as if it had unlocked for me a great secret to happiness.
Reflecting
back on that time in my life, I see in myself a lot of the scribe in today’s
Gospel reading. He comes to Jesus and,
having heard how Jesus astutely responded to the questioning of others, decides
to ask him a fundamental question: “Which is the first of all the commandments?” As we heard, Jesus responds by naming the
command to love God above all things.
The scribe, in hearing his answer, was confirmed in his own conviction
and so affirms what Jesus said. Jesus,
then, affirms the scribe for his understanding and, with an audacity that only
someone with divine authority could do, declares that the “kingdom of God” is “not
far” from him. In other words, Jesus
declares that this man, in demonstrating his heartfelt understanding of God’s
commandments, is well on the path to the happiness that his heart seeks. I imagine that the scribe was feeling the
same satisfaction that I felt when I had “discovered” that finding happiness in
life is about finding and following a vocation—a calling from God—rather than
striving to forge a path of happiness on my own. ///
All
of us here believe in God at one level or another. And so all of us, at least implicitly, believe
Jesus when he teaches us that “the first commandment is this: you shall love
the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength.” What I mean
by that is this: We can all hear these words today and say to ourselves, “Yes,
that is true. This is the ideal for
which I should be striving”. As we hear
it, however, perhaps there is a little voice that emerges that says, “Woof. I’m a long way from doing that.”
Thus,
we discover the great challenge of this commandment: God commands that we love
him with our whole being (heart,
soul, mind, and strength). Yet, when we
examine ourselves, we find that we are highly disintegrated: and that only
parts of us are striving to love God, while other parts are continually
striving to serve our own selfish desires.
In this state of disintegration, how is it possible to fulfill this
command?
The
obvious answer (although not the solution) is to work towards reintegration:
that is, to ordering all of the parts of us towards loving God. The solution, which will help us to achieve
this answer, is NOT to force those selfish parts to love God or to try to push
them far enough below the surface that they no longer affect my choices. This solution only exaggerates the disintegration,
even though it may, for a time, appear to eliminate the selfish behaviors that
turn us away from God.
The
solution, rather, is to acknowledge and accept those parts of us that appear to
resist loving God wholly. For example,
perhaps you find yourself very resistant to make time for prayer each day. Even though you may have set a time for
prayer, whenever that time arrives, a part of you starts making all sorts of
excuses for why you don’t have time for prayer or it leads you to any number of
distractions that take you away from your prayer time. Sound familiar? Then, to correct this, what do you say? “I just need to force myself to go to prayer
and ignore the distractions.” How often
does that work? Sometimes, it does. Most times, however, it doesn’t. That’s because the solution is either to
force those parts to conform or to push the desires of those parts below the
surface. In other words, the solution is
greater disintegration, which is no solution at all.
Instead
of the disintegrating solution, what if we became curious about our experience
and tried to understand why there are parts of us that resist going to prayer
and so constantly drive us away from it (either into more busyness or to
distractions)? In other words, when the
daily time for prayer comes and we begin to feel resistance to it, what if we
stopped to ask ourselves, “Why am I resisting this?” Maybe it’s something as simple as, “I’m
really tired and I don’t have the energy to do it”. Or maybe it’s something like, “I’m not sure
how to pray by myself and so I’m afraid to do it wrong”. Still maybe it’s something like, “I’m mad at
God right now and so I can’t pray”. Whatever
the answer is, when we become curious about the reasons for our resistance, we
open ourselves both to acknowledge and to accept the parts of us that are
resistant to loving God wholly, which is the first step towards integrating
those parts with the whole so that we can love God with our whole selves.
If
you’re tired, go sit apart during your prayer time and simply rest. If you aren’t sure how to pray, use your
prayer time to read a book or listen to a podcast on prayer to help increase
your ability to pray. If you’re mad at
God because of something, use your prayer time to express your anger towards
God. When we respond sympathetically to
the parts of us that resist prayer, they feel like they have a “place at table”
and, in the future, will be more ready to cooperate with the whole of you:
thus, leading to greater integration of your self, which then allows you to
fulfill more completely the command to love God wholly. And the most beautiful piece of it all is
that, when we give these parts a “place at the table”, we discover that God is
right there, too, ready to help us in this work of integration.
Friends,
Jesus teaches us the ideal that unlocks the secret of happiness for our lives:
to love God wholly, that is, with our whole selves. This truth can create discouragement for us
when we realize just how disintegrated we are.
Yet, if we begin there—that is, acknowledging the truth about ourselves—then
we can begin the work of integrating our parts: a work so important to God that
he offers abundant grace to accomplish it.
Perhaps
we’re discouraged even now, as we gather here around this altar, thinking that
we are too disintegrated to worship God in this Mass. If so, do not be afraid. God is ready to receive us and our worship no
matter how disintegrated we are. Rather,
let us confidently approach this throne of grace and receive mercy. For when we do, we will walk away from here
mysteriously more whole than when we arrived, and therefore strengthened to
love him and our neighbor more wholly in our lives.
Given in Spanish at St. Joseph Parish: Rochester, IN –
November 3rd, 2024
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