Homily: 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle C
If any of us stopped to think about
receiving a valuable gift, chances are that many of us would think of receiving
something made out of gold. Gold is a
metal that we consider to be precious and valuable and so we only use it for
things that will be valued and preserved.
In other words, we don’t make hammers out of gold because we expect them
to be used, abused, and eventually discarded.
Wedding rings, the vessels we use at Mass, and gifts that we receive
when retiring after a long career are made out of gold because they will be
treasured, preserved, and valued for many years to come.
What makes gold so precious to us is
both its rarity and its beauty. Its
rarity is a characteristic inherent to gold itself. There’s only so much gold in the world and to
find a mine of it is valuable because it is a valued commodity. Its beauty, however, is not something with
which it comes naturally. Rather, raw
gold ore must be refined before it will begin to show the beauty for which it
is highly prized; and this refining process is a violent one. There are actually a few different methods of
refining gold, but the two most common methods use either heat or chemicals.
Refining with heat is one of the
oldest methods of refining metals. Mentioned even in the bible, this form of
refining involved a craftsman sitting next to a hot fire with molten gold in a
crucible being stirred and skimmed to remove the impurities (or dross) that
rose to the top of the molten metal. With flames reaching temperatures in
excess of 1000 degrees Celsius, this job was definitely a dangerous occupation
for the gold refiner. The tradition remains largely untouched today with the
exception of a few advancements in safety and precision.
In the chemical method of refining
gold, strong acids such as nitric acid and hydrochloric acid are used to
dissolve the impurities in the gold ore and, afterwards, are neutralized and washed
away, taking the impurities with them. The resulting product is a muddy
substance that is almost pure gold. This muddy substance is then dried until it
is a powdered residue and then heated to melt the gold powder and fuse it so
that it becomes a usable solid. Both
processes, as you can see, are pretty violent!
And I mention them here today because I think that they help us to
understand what our Scriptures are trying to tell us today.
Near the end of his time on earth,
Jesus starts to say some disturbing things to his disciples. He tells them that a time of violent unrest
will come upon them and that no one, even his disciples, will be kept free from
suffering. In fact, he tells them, they’ll
be persecuted, and some of them killed, even, perhaps, by their own family
members! This is not the image of
triumph that his followers were hoping the Messiah would bring and so I can
only imagine how disheartening Jesus’ words were to them.
Nevertheless, Jesus makes a
promise. At the end of these words of “doom
and gloom”, Jesus tells them, “…not a hair on your head will be destroyed. By your perseverance you will secure your
lives.” In this promise Jesus shows his
followers that there is a way through this time of tribulation and that is
perseverance in faith. Perhaps, however,
this begs some questions: “If God is intent on preserving his faithful ones
through this time of tribulation, why not just prevent the tribulation in the
first place? Is he just trying to test
them to see if they will fail? Is this a
punishment for sins that they’ve committed, even though they were trying to
follow him?” The answer, I think, lies
in our understanding of how gold is refined.
The suffering that Jesus is predicting
that his followers will experience is not the suffering of punishment or even
the suffering of an uncaring God who just refuses to keep them safe from it. I think, rather, that the suffering that is
predicted is a suffering of refinement.
The tribulations that will befall Jesus’ followers are like the refiner’s
fire: a violent aggression against the element that nonetheless purges its
impurities so that nothing but the pure, precious element remains.
The human person, marred by sin, is
like raw gold ore: valuable more for what it could be than for what it is. Unrefined, it is marred by the impurities
that are mixed in with its chemical structure.
In order for its full beauty to be seen—and, therefore, its full value
to be known—it must go through the violent and painful process of refining:
stripping away its impurities, until nothing is left but pure gold, an element
of striking beauty. In preparation for
the second coming of the Lord, the world—and, specifically, the human person—must
also go through a refining process, because only those who are pure can stand
in the presence of God. Perseverance in
faith through tribulations is like the gold maintaining the integrity of its
chemical composition throughout the refining process: having endured the
violent process, each person will emerge in the purity of his or her humanity
and will be a strikingly beautiful creature to behold.
The challenge, therefore, for
Christians is two-fold: One, not to fall away from the faith when the
tribulations come. Remember, Jesus said “By
your perseverance you will secure your lives!”
The second challenge for Christians is to hasten this transformation by
living transformed lives here and now! If
we are truly anticipating Jesus’ return and the coming of God’s kingdom in its
fullness, then we ought to be "stoking the flames" of the refiner's
fire by living transformed lives and thus put into stark contrast the misdeeds
of those who do evil. Living the corporal
and spiritual works of mercy beyond the close of the Year of Mercy is one major
way to do this. In other words, and this
is counterintuitive, we prepare ourselves for the great tribulation—and, in a
real sense, hasten its coming—when we readily seek tribulation in our lives:
that is, opportunities to sacrifice ourselves in the name of Jesus to build up
his kingdom and to purge all that is dark and impure within us.
Another way that we can prepare
ourselves for (and, thus, hasten) Jesus’ coming is our daily examination of
conscience and our frequent celebration of the sacrament of reconciliation. The examination is like a daily refiner’s
fire that causes all of our impurities (that is, our sins) to bubble to the
surface. Then, in the sacrament, Jesus, the
Divine Refiner, skims the dross of our impurities from the surface when we
confess our sins and receive absolution.
As purified gold we then go forth to shine in the world to show it that
purity is possible by the way we live our lives, now unhindered by the
impurities that once discolored us.
Sure, impurities will begin to attach themselves to us once again as we
intermingle with the world; and this means that this is a process that must be
continually renewed until the end of time.
I believe, however, that this is what Jesus meant when he said: "By
your perseverance you will secure your lives".
My brothers and sisters, as human
persons, many dark things separate us from one another and keep us from being
the amazingly beautiful and pure creation that God intended us to be: a visible
image of the communion of persons that he is in himself. Therefore, let us use these frightful words
that Jesus speaks to us today to inspire us to allow the refining process to
work in our lives and then to be prophets in the world by which others come to
acknowledge and accept their own need of refining.
My brothers and sisters, the eternal
salvation of many depends on the work that we do to bring them to accept this
hard work of being refined. Let us not
fail them, but rather spend our lives for them.
In this way we will model our Lord's sacrifice for us and thus conform
ourselves to his image, even as we help form the human family into the image of
God on earth. In doing so, we will
secure our own salvation. May the
strength that can only come from God bring this good work to fulfillment in our
lives.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – November 12th & 13th,
2016
