Homily
for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time
27 September 2015
I hope that you’ve been following a little of Pope Francis’
visit to the United States. In a lot of ways, this has been a phenomenal time
for the Church in America. Our Holy Father continues to witness to the Gospel
among the people of this great nation.
Some of you may have had the chance to catch the Pope’s
address to Congress this past Thursday. During that talk, the Holy Father
mentioned four Americans for us to emulate: Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther
King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton. These four people, the Pope tells us,
point to four characteristics that we as Americans – and for us, especially, as
Catholics! – should practice: openness to God, social justice and rights,
liberty, and plurality. Each of these characteristics can be traced to the
example of Moses, and that, as Pope Francis reminded us, should lead us to God,
Himself.
These four characteristics are also realized in our readings
this day. As we have listened to a portion of the story of Moses and the
Ancient Israelites, and we reflect upon the ministry and teaching of Jesus, we
realize that our vocation as Christians must include the examples of Lincoln, King,
Day and Merton.
As we consider Abraham Lincoln and his characteristic of
liberty, we recognize that it is this liberty that God gives to us to live in,
to pursue, and to exercise our free will. This gift of liberty is the essential
and primordial present that the Lord gives to us. It is this gift which we
first choose or reject God. Liberty is that characteristic in which we enter
into the life God gives us and allows us to pursue the happiness that we’re all
searching for. The Ancient Israelites were experiencing this now-found liberty,
and, while still pining for their days in Egypt, they began to understand this
gift that God had given them, and how to remain faithful to Him through the
struggle from slavery into freedom. It is this gift of liberty that Jesus
provides for us to be able to follow Him, to do His will, and to preach the
Gospel in word and deed. It is that liberty in which that anonymous person was
driving out demons in the Name of Jesus, and it is that liberty in which we are
free and able and called to do the same.
When we turn our attention to Martin Luther King and his
characteristic of plurality, we come to the recognition of how it’s not left to
a select group of people to fulfill the will of God and the building up of the
Kingdom. Rather, each person has the obligation to labor in the vineyard of the
Lord. Just as Eldad and Medad began to prophecy in the camp of the Israelites,
to that anonymous person exercising demons in the Gospel, we are given the
examples to see how the Spirit of God will move as He will, and that – in liberty
– we, as individuals and as a community, have the choice to cooperate with
Spirit whenever He moves us. This characteristic of plurality reminds us that
each person and each community has the opportunity and obligation to work with
each other for the spreading of the joy of the Gospel.
This leads us to consider the example of Servant of God
Dorothy Day. This convert to Catholicism and her characteristic of working for
social justice and rights bring to light how this gift of plurality ought to be
used to work for the benefit of our neighbor and the advancement of the common
good. The working for social justice and rights is NOT socialism, but is,
rather, the ordering of the society to work for the human society because of
the underlying understanding of the dignity of the human person being created
in the image and likeness of God. Though Dorothy Day worked primarily with the
physical needs of the people, her work was based in the Gospel. She understood
that working for social justice and rights was not simply a matter of giving
people some clothing, food or shelter. Rather, she understood that to be the
image and example of Christ, she would do more than something physically good
for her brothers and sisters, but could also help them in their spiritual
longings, as well. She understood the Gospel teaching that to truly care for
our brothers and sisters, we must take an integrated and holistic approach:
that the body and soul must be taken care of simultaneously. To work for social
justice and rights, we look at the person as person and recognize their dignity
of being our brother or sister – no matter their race, sex, sexual orientation,
national origin or religious creed. But we must work towards those justices and
rights through the understanding of the teachings of Christ and His Church, and
apply those teachings to the working of building up the dignity of humanity as
an image of God, fully alive in body and soul. As we can glimpse through our
readings today, the understanding that to take care of a person’s physical
well-being could also heal them spiritually and vice versa was commonplace. It
is an awareness that we have lost in this post-modern age, because we have
separated the spiritual and the physical. The human person is body and soul –
and both have to be taken care of. And as we work together to ensure the
liberty of each person – born and unborn – we do so because the work of
ensuring the justices and rights of each person is done for the building up of
the common good and the Kingdom of God.
Yet none of the three previous characteristics – liberty,
plurality, working for social justice and rights – make sense or have any
weight if there is not first an openness to God, as Thomas Merton examples for
us. Merton, as Cistercian monk, lived a life that was always searching for that
which would fulfill him. Until he truly opened his life to have that freedom,
that liberty, to encounter God, Merton, himself, could not truly live. It is
the same with us. This openness to God is at the very heart of who we are as
Christians. It is this openness which allows us to be Christ-like to the
greatest and the least of our brothers and sisters. If we do not have this
openness to God, then our attempt to live out the Gospel is futile. Pope
Francis made mention to how Merton was a man of dialogue, which he truly was.
But he could have never been a man of dialogue if he didn’t first have that
openness to dialogue with God first. As Merton teaches us, it is in the
silence, solace and solitude of our hearts that we truly encounter the Presence
of the Living God. We must be open to first dialogue with our God – Father, Son
and Holy Spirit – before we can ever begin to dialogue with others, or even
begin to work for their good and the common good. It is this openness to God
which we see working in the prophesying of Eldad and Medad among the
Israelites; it is this openness to God which we see working in the anonymous
person in the Gospel. It is this openness to God that you and I must have at
the very depths of our hearts, the very core of our being, if we are to truly
be Christ to one another and to others. It is the same openness to God that our
parish family must be during this time of discernment within our diocesan cluster
of Brookline and Beechview. If we cease in any way our openness to God, we
cease being a human being fully alive; we cease being a Church alive. Merton
reminds us so plainly in his life how the dialogue with God gives us the grace
and the openness to do His will.
Those who are open to God, open to a true dialogue with God,
and open to the movement of His Spirit will always choose the liberty He offers,
not simply for themselves, but for the common good of their brothers and
sisters. We will recognize that it is the job of each man and woman to labor in
the vineyard of the Lord so that the justices and rights that are given to us
by God – and not those deemed essential or necessary by humanity and the whims
of society – are established and secured for the dignity of all mankind. Abraham
Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton all understood this.
Pope Francis understands this, as well, and calls not simply the Congress to
live this out, but is calling the United States of America to once again be a land
and a people who are open to God, so that greatness of our nation may be an
example of the true liberty, the true freedom and the true exercise of rights
given to us by God may be an example to the rest of the world. And, at the same
time, we are to be, in that openness to God, a people who champion for the
dignity of all life, defending the unborn, the elderly, the sick, and the
imprisoned – especially those on “Death Row” – so that all people may know and
experience the mercy, compassion and life that our Risen Lord promises in this
life to prepare us for the next. It is this openness which will truly allow us
to experience the intimate encounter of our God in the Eucharist, and through
the Eucharist, be sent back out into the world, so that our brothers and
sisters may, themselves, learn what it is to be truly open to God so that they,
like Dorothy Day – and like we should be, may be servants of the Gospel first,
and our own desires second.
Our Holy Father’s visit to our country truly has been a time
of great excitement. However, that excitement must be that which opens us up to
dialogue with God in the silence, solace and solitude of our hearts, leading us
to defend and champion the liberties, rights and freedom that true justice in
God provides. We are to be a people who are not afraid to be like Eldad, Medad,
Moses, Jesus or the anonymous person – for each brought forth the glory of God
to their time and place, to their neighbor and community. It is time for us to
do the same. It is time for us to lead our society out of the darkness of sin
and into the light of God.
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Enjoy the journey . . .
