My first post in a few weeks... I have to admit, I was a little rusty!
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Homily: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time – Cycle A
My brothers and sisters, we know that,
for a Christian, strength is found in weakness. This is because our teacher is Jesus Christ,
and, as we just heard in today’s Gospel, he wants us to learn from Him to be
meek and humble of heart. While the
world may brush the simple aside and call them ignorant, Jesus’ prayer to his
Father teaches us to value the greatness of the little ones among us because God
himself chose them to be preachers of Divine Wisdom. Let us, then, reflect a little more deeply on
this important principle of our Christian faith.
At the risk of overstating the
obvious, I am reminded that it was the humiliation of Christ that brought about
the salvation of man. The people of
Israel had different expectations for the Messiah. Many of them thought that he would be a great
worldly king that would make the nation of Israel stand out and above all other
nations of the world. Many others thought
that he would be a mighty warrior who would overthrow the kingdoms of the world
and thus unite all peoples under one king, the Messiah. But Jesus confounded these notions by his way
of doing things. When he came, he
presented himself as a humble king, a meek king. In fact, when he makes his
triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, he does so meekly, riding a
donkey; and in doing so, fulfills the prophecy given hundreds of years before
by the prophet Zechariah.
As if being divine and taking on a
human nature wasn’t enough, Jesus stripped himself of any aura of greatness
when he came to us. In other words, he
made himself small and lived among the forgotten, among those who are hidden
from the eyes of the world, and he chose them to be guardians of the message of
salvation. This is most poignantly demonstrated
by the fact that the most noble of all teachings ever known—things that the wise and the learned were constantly
seeking—were spread throughout the world by a handful of simple fishermen.
These disciples, who otherwise would have been forgotten because they were
among the hidden ones in the world, began the most transcendent social
transformation in all of human history; and this because Christ had humbled
himself so completely.
Earlier in the Gospel of Matthew, at
the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches the Beatitudes—his
teachings on the meaning and the way to true happiness. In these, Jesus declares: blessed are the
poor, the humble, the imprisoned, the sick, the suffering, and the weeping… in
other words, the little ones, that
is, all those who labor and are heavy
burdened. Throughout the centuries the
truths of these teachings have played out in the lives of a number of Saints, many
of whom have changed history with their simple projects. For example, just to name a few: Francis of Assisi,
who was called the “poverello”—or little
poor one—who restored to the Church’s consciousness the value of poverty
and evangelical zeal; Therese of Lisieux, the “Little Flower”, who proposed
“the little way” of holiness that has been so widely adopted that she has been
declared a Doctor of the Church; Mother Teresa of Calcutta, who was known as
“the angel of the lepers” because of her care for the outcast and forgotten,
awoke once again the spirit of charity in the Church.
Of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t
mention the most purely simple soul that ever existed: the Blessed Virgin Mary. God chose this most simple of women—the most
humble and the most pure—to carry out his most sublime mission: to bear his
only Son into the world. Mary, for her
part, adopted these virtues of humility and simplicity and made them the
absolute measure of all her actions. Thus, when the angel Gabriel appeared to her
to reveal God’s plan that she become the mother of his Son, it was in
simplicity that she could say “yes” to him.
Having done so, she then became the key to the story of salvation. Friends, true freedom, true joy, and true
beauty are found in the mystery of simple souls. Only by striving to imitate them and by
becoming simple ourselves can we call ourselves disciples of Christ, who was
“meek and humble of heart.”
My brothers and sisters, the examples
of these saints demonstrates for us the truth that man is transformed when he
draws near to Christ with a humbled spirit.
This is what he is calling us to learn from him by taking his yoke upon
us. Too often, however, we are content
with bearing our own yokes, ourselves. In
other words, we think that, if we are going to become holy, we have to do it
ourselves. Christ knows what a heavy
burden this is for us and that it is one that we cannot possibly bear
forever. Thus he calls out to us “Come
to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.” It is a very beautiful promise: one, I’m sure,
that each and every one of us longs to realize.
But it’s the conditions for realizing the promise that keep most people
from realizing it: Come to me…
Friends, if we are truly going to
realize the perfect rest that Christ promises to us, then we must be willing to
come to him and to abandon ourselves to him by taking his yoke upon our
shoulders so that he might teach us the way of simplicity: how to be meek and
humble of heart. One practical way that
we do this is by reading the Gospels and by striving to imitate our Lord’s
simplicity in our daily lives. Another
way would be to come to Adoration on Tuesday nights and on First Fridays. By spending time with our Lord in the Blessed
Sacrament, we allow him to transform our hearts into his. Above all, of course, is your regular participation
in the Mass in which we come to him most intimately when we receive him in Holy
Communion.
Let us, therefore, take up this good
work once again today so that we might grow in simplicity and humility after
the model of our Savior; and that we, too, might be counted among the little ones whom God sends to bring
the Good News of life and salvation to all those around us.
Given
at All Saints Parish: Logansport, IN – July 9th, 2017
