Homily
for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
21 July 2013
21 July 2013
“Okay, Father,” many
of you might be thinking, “it’s the story with Mary and Martha once again. You’re
going to tell us, ‘Don’t work too hard and spend time in prayer, listening to
the Lord,’ right?”
Yes, I could tell you that.
But I’m not going to.
What I am going to do is share with you
something that Saint Benedict wrote down in his Rule: Let all guests be received as Christ.
My brothers and sisters, our First Reading
and Gospel today explicitly present to us an over-arching theme of “hospitality”.
However, we need to go deeper and understand that it’s what lies underneath the
idea of “hospitality” is where we need to be . . . and that’s experiencing an
encounter with the Living God.
While Abraham and Martha are doing those
important tasks of hospitality, Mary cuts to the chase to show us what it’s all
about. While taking care of our guests is a necessary, we need to provide them
with an encounter that becomes supernatural – affirming that God is present
throughout the course of our lives.
Yet Abraham, Martha, and Mary provide us with
wonderful examples in what it is to be hospitable people of God. And even TO
God! For once we have experienced that deeply unique and deeply personal encounter
with God, we then want to share that with people. We want people to experience
Christ in a similar fashion to us. And that is the mark of discipleship, of
evangelization: To encounter Christ, so as to become Him and take His Presence
out into the world, so that the world may come to know Christ.
However, this only happens when we encounter
Him. How? Yes, through prayer, through the Scriptures, through the Sacraments.
But there’s a more simple answer: through our interactions, through our
encounters with each other.
Think about your experience of the Mass up to
this point. Were you greeted by friendly people? Did you have to climb over
people just to get a seat in the pew? Did someone cut you off in the parking
lot to get the better spot? Or let’s flip it: Did you greet others with a
friendly smile? Did you move out of the way so that others could sit down in
the pew? Did you allow the other person to take that better spot, even if it
caused you an extra step or two of inconvenience? Even these little gestures
can mean so much in allowing people to experience an encounter with Christ.
To have that encounter with Christ, personally
and interpersonally, allows us to encounter and share that peace of Christ
which the world cannot give – that same peace we will share in a few minutes
with each other, before encountering our Lord in the most intimate way
possible: the Most Blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist.
The more times we encounter the Lord – or, I
should say, the more times we allow the Lord to encounter us! –, the more times
we have the opportunity to know not only Who Christ is, but what He is asking
of us in our lives. We must learn to become Mary before we can act like Martha.
We must spend time in listening to the Lord before we can fully appreciate the
mission and ministry He calls us to.
We must sit at the feet of the Lord ourselves
before we can call others to do the same.
If we want all of our guests to be received
as Christ, then we have to know Who Christ is. If we want to treat others like
Jesus, then we need to evaluate how we ourselves treat our encounters with
Jesus.
Yes – so do good things and be thoughtful
like Martha and Abraham, and spend more time with the Lord like Mary. But in
all our thoughts, words and actions, let us encounter the Lord, get to know Who
He is, and then introduce Him to the world. Just because we spend time with
someone doesn’t necessarily mean that we encounter them.
Let us heed the words of our parish patron,
Saint Teresa of Avila: “Keeping Christ present is what we of ourselves can do.”
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Enjoy the journey . . .
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