HOMILY FOR THE 14TH
SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME
God has a way of reaching us and teaching us in unexpected ways. It is
sometimes through the most unorthodox and unlikely sources that God may be
revealed to us the loudest and the strongest. Jesus tells us this over and over
again in the gospels.
We hear this in Matthew’s Gospel when Jesus says, “I give praise to you, Father,
Lord of heaven and earth, for although you have hidden these things from the
wise and the learned you have revealed them to the childlike.” And again in
Matthew, “Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you
will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child
is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever receives one child such
as this in my name receives me.” And once more in Matthew, “Let the children
come to me, and do not prevent them; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such
as these.”
Long ago, Bishop Lawrence Welsh came to St. Hubert Catholic Church to
administer the sacrament of confirmation. At the time, St. Hubert had altar
girl servers, long before it became acceptable in the Catholic Church. I asked the Bishop if he was okay with us
having girl servers at the confirmation. His reply to me was this story. “Once
in Spokane, I went to a parish to do
confirmations. We were getting lined up for the procession when I noticed there
was a girl altar server. I said to her, ‘you can’t be an altar server.” She
said, ‘Why?’ I replied, ‘because you are a girl.’ She said, ‘So?’ I didn’t have
a good answer for her reply, and so from that moment I allowed girls to serve
at Mass.”
I have found in my years of teaching as an educator but most especially
as a parent, that as much as I thought I had taught the kids, truthfully, I had
learned more from the kids I taught than perhaps they learned from me. In
today’s Gospel, the people of Nazareth were not receptive to what Jesus had to
reveal to them, precisely because their minds were closed to the other ways in
which God’s reveals himself. They could not open their minds to the teaching of
Jesus because all they saw was the carpenter, the guy who constructed their
homes and built their furniture. In not being able to see beyond Jesus the
carpenter, they missed the opportunity to know Jesus as the Son of God.
We can see this happening right now with Pope Francis’ encyclical on
the environment,”Laudato Si,” being dismissed and poo-pooed by politicians and
others in power throughout the world, because he is approaching the destruction
of our environment by humanity from a religious context. Somehow these people
refuse to pay any attention or dismiss or ignore what he has written in spite
of Pope Francis’ advanced degrees in science, and his credentials as a
scientist. They are not able to open their minds because they see a man dressed
in a white cassock as opposed to a white lab coat.
God is revealed to us in so many ways, it is important for us to keep
our eyes, our ears, and our minds open to receive God’s revelation. And as we
do so, let us not forget that we, too, are instruments of God’s revelation to
others. Let us take to heart these words that St Paul wrote to the Colossians.
“Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and
beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, if one has a
grievance against another; as the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do. And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection. And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which
you were also called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, as in all wisdom you teach
and admonish one another, singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs with
gratitude in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word
or in deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God
the Father through him.”
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