Homilies for July 2024

For July 7, July 14, July 21, July 28

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 7, 2024

Readings: Ez 2:2–5 • Ps 123: 1–2, 2, 3–4 • 2 Cor 12:7–10 • Mk 6:1–6
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/070724.cfm

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, in the section on the First Commandment, lists atheism as “a sin against the virtue of religion” — not just a false belief or an error, but a sin. Now, the Catechism is quick to acknowledge that culpability in particular atheists “can be significantly diminished in virtue of the intentions and the circumstances.” In praying for “those who do not acknowledge God” in the Solemn Intercessions on Good Friday, the Church asks that, in “following what is right in sincerity of heart, they may find the way to God himself.” So disbelieving in God’s existence doesn’t automatically mean that someone isn’t sincere in seeking to follow what is right and true. Saint Edith Stein — an atheist herself in her youth — wrote in a 1938 letter, “God is truth. All who seek truth seek God, whether this is clear to them or not.” Atheists may not be aware of seeking God, but we can hope that by seeking truth, goodness, and beauty, they do seek for him. Even so, none of this allows us to entirely separate questions of belief from moral virtue or vice. There is such a thing as being responsible for what you ought to know, and not every belief or opinion is arrived at entirely honestly.

“Whether they heed or resist — for they are a rebellious house — they shall know that a prophet has been among them,” God tells Ezekiel in the first reading. Will they know it? God calls the Israelites “rebels who have rebelled against me . . . hard of face and obstinate of heart.” Will these obstinate people recognize Ezekiel as a true prophet? Father von Balthasar, commenting on this passage, suggests that perhaps God means that they will come to realize it in the future. Even if they don’t acknowledge it, though, does that mean they don’t know, on some level? What did Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth make of him in the Gospel reading? They did acknowledge his wisdom and his mighty deeds. They spoke well of him, according to Luke’s Gospel. Yet they also took offense. To them Jesus was simply “the carpenter,” the son of a carpenter, a regular guy whose mother and family members they knew. Prophets for them were mysterious figures in the scriptures, or at least had the decency to live in the wilderness and dress and act in unusual ways. Jesus for them was too familiar, too normal, to be something special. Does this mean they weren’t responsible for their rejection of Jesus?

Among the most attractive and reassuring of the Church’s teachings is that the possibility of salvation is not limited only to those who are fully incorporated into the Catholic Church, or even to those who explicitly desire to become Catholic. That is, non-Christians who, aided by grace, desire to know and to do the will of God and seek to do so as best they can, strive to repent of their failings and amend their lives, and hope for divine help can receive the gift of new life normally given in Baptism. This is called implicit baptism of desire.

But with this attractive and reassuring teaching comes a sobering corollary: If it’s possible to be united to God via implicit desires or choices, it’s also possible to reject or resist God via implicit desires or choices. Rejection or resistance of God can be explicit and deliberate: I’ve known rare cases of believers whose way of living is so openly contrary to what they profess to believe that they say in so many words, “I am not on the path to heaven; I expect to be damned.” Usually, though, we rationalize our worst impulses. For instance, we know we’re called to love our enemies and forgive all who sin against us, but it’s easier to define down “love” and “forgiveness” — to reduce them to empty words that don’t get in the way of our hatred and grudges.

We are now about halfway through 2024: the “Year of Prayer,” as Pope Francis has designated it. Prayer is an encounter with God: the real you and the real God. One obstacle to true prayer is our tendency to prefer our ideas about God to God himself, and for that matter our ideas about ourselves to the truth about ourselves. You may have heard people say, “It’s hard to hear God’s voice when you’ve already decided what you want him to say.”

What is it that I don’t hear God saying because I don’t want to hear it? What areas of my life, my worldview, my beliefs, do I not want to hear him calling me to change with his help? Lord Jesus, help us to pray fearlessly to hear your voice in all things, and open our ears and our minds so that whatever we’ve resisted hearing until now will be clear to us before this year ends. Amen.

Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 14, 2024

Readings: Am 7:12–15 • Ps 85:9–10, 11–12, 13–14 • Eph 1:3–14 • Mk 6:7–13
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071424.cfm

“A plan for the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, in heaven and on earth.” This amazing sentence in the second reading, from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, is the climax to a magnificent passage that comes up in the Sunday Mass readings just once every three years — today being that day — though this passage is prayed by priests, deacons, and religious typically every week in the Divine Office, during Monday Evening Prayer! So it’s a key passage in the heart and mind of the Church, even though we hear it so seldom at Sunday Mass.

Here’s how that climactic sentence reads in the Divine Office translation: “a plan to be carried out in Christ, in the fullness of time, to bring all things into one in him, in the heavens and on earth.” If you were wondering what it means to “sum up all things in Christ,” this wording may be helpful: “to bring all things into one in him.” Other translations have “to unite all things in him” (RSV, ESV, cf. NIV), or “to gather together” (KJV, NKJV) or “gather up all things in him” (NRSV). And Paul is clear that “all things” means “the things in the heavens and the things on the earth” (ASV, ERV) — in other words, all of creation, the whole cosmos!

I’m not sure we think enough about this: what the plan of God in Christ means, not just for us, but for all of creation. We think a lot about what it means for human beings — reasonably enough, since Jesus came as one of us. He didn’t become a snow leopard, or a fir tree, or a galaxy — not because he couldn’t have done so if he wanted to, but because that wasn’t God’s plan! He became human, taking to himself human nature created in God’s own image, in order to reveal God to human beings and to redeem our fallen nature.

Yet in the act of becoming human, the Son of God took to himself not just a human soul, but also a human body: a body made of the same building blocks as all life on earth — cells, DNA, proteins, amino acids, and so forth — all formed of the same material stuff as the rest of the visible universe. You may have heard the idea that human beings are made of stardust: that the elements composing our bodies were forged in dying stars. If that’s true, it would follow that, in Jesus, stardust was united to God, died on the cross, and rose to immortal life . . . and that has implications for every dying star from the beginning of time to the heat death of the universe.

“In him we have redemption by his blood,” St. Paul writes. Why his blood? Why was Jesus’ flesh pierced and his blood shed on the cross? Why did he suffer not just in his spirit but in his body as well? To redeem our souls from sin, yes, but also to redeem our bodies from death. As we share in his death through Baptism, so we hope to share in his resurrection — and glorified bodies require glorified space! “I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus told his disciples. Not just a place for our souls, a place for our bodies also — a real place. God didn’t create snow leopards and fir trees and galaxies for all of it to just go away! He means to bring all things into one in Christ, to unite in him all things in the heavens and on the earth.

Meanwhile this present world, like our mortal bodies, is passing away. The earth will die, as will the Sun and all the stars. Does that make this world less important? On the contrary, the Second Vatican Council teaches in Gaudium et Spes, the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World:

The expectation of a new earth must not weaken but rather stimulate our concern for cultivating this one. For here grows the body of a new human family, a body which even now is able to give some kind of foreshadowing of the new age.

Hence, while earthly progress must be carefully distinguished from the growth of Christ’s kingdom, to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God.

In some way God begins to anticipate summing up things in Christ through how we live in this world, from how we treat one another, to how we vote, to how we care for snow leopards and fir trees and the rest of creation. We can’t bring about the kingdom of God on earth, but if we seek God’s glory in this world in everything that we do, then the kingdom is already at work in us.

Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 21, 2024

Readings: Jer 23:1–6 • Ps 23:1–3, 3–4, 5, 6 • Eph 2:13–18 • Mk 6:30–34
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072124.cfm

Have you ever felt like a sheep without a shepherd?

Have you ever felt lost or alone in your faith? Abandoned, even? Do you know the feeling of going to Mass, perhaps at an unfamiliar parish — or perhaps not — and bracing yourself for what you might experience? Ever had a particularly bad experience with a priest, or looked at problems in the Church, or our nation, or the world, and wondered, “Why don’t the bishops do or say something?”

Let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. These feelings are familiar to many of us — perhaps most. Some of us might feel tempted to look back wistfully at some point in the past when we imagine the Church was on stronger footing and think, “This would never have happened back then!” And maybe so, or maybe not. In any case, plenty of other bad things did happen back then. Our experience of lostness and abandonment is nothing new.

It’s there in the first reading from Jeremiah, where we find shepherds actively misleading and scattering the Lord’s flock. In context, this refers particularly to certain late kings of Judah condemned by name in the previous chapter. These kings were sons of David, expected to be leaders spiritually as well as politically and militarily. They are called to be “shepherds that feed my sheep” (Jeremiah 23:2 Douay-Rheims). Instead, Jeremiah says these kings are set on “nothing except their own gain, shedding innocent blood and practicing oppression and extortion” (cf. Jeremiah 22:17).

Today’s Gospel says that Jesus was “moved with pity” by the crowd, “for they were like sheep without a shepherd.” There’s nothing here about bad shepherds—but Jesus has plenty to say about them elsewhere! Just by calling himself “the Good Shepherd,” our Lord implies that there are bad ones: “hirelings” or “hired men” he calls them (cf. John 10:11–14). And from all Jesus has to say about the religious leaders of the day — scribes, Pharisees, and so forth — it’s clear who he’s talking about.

What about in the Church age? I would love to tell you that when God says through Jeremiah, “I will appoint shepherds for them who will shepherd them so that they need no longer fear and tremble, and none shall be missing,” he was talking about the Church’s pastors, especially the bishops. And, indeed, heroic and saintly bishops and priests from apostolic times to the present have been appointed by God to shepherd his people amid many difficulties. But it’s fair to say that, as far as we can tell, they have never been the norm. Some of you may know a much-quoted line ascribed to St. John Chrysostom: “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.” The saint didn’t really say that, but here’s what he did write, in his third homily on the Acts of the Apostles: “I do not think there are many among bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish.”

Much more recently, the Servant of God Dorothy Day wrote in a letter:

I never expected much from the bishops. In all history, popes and bishops and father abbots seem to have been blind and power-loving and greedy. I never expected leadership from them. It is the saints that keep appearing all through history who keep things going.

The saints are not necessarily shepherds . . . but, in and through their love of God and neighbor, we do see the work of the Good Shepherd, caring for his flock. This is ultimately where the reading from Jeremiah points:

Behold, the days are coming, says the LORD,
when I will raise up a righteous shoot to David;
as king he shall reign and govern wisely,
he shall do what is just and right in the land.

There are good priests and good bishops in the Church, and praise God if you have one or the other or both. But we are here for Jesus Christ — and, more importantly, Jesus is here for us, until the end of the age. Next Sunday Jesus will feed this shepherdless flock with the five loaves and two fishes, foreshadowing the Eucharistic feast that unites us today with all the faithful in every age and with the Blessed in heaven in the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Dorothy Day said that too, in the same letter: “What I do expect is the bread of life. And down through the ages, there is that continuity.” That’s why we’re here. That’s why, even walking in dark valleys, we are never alone.

Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time – July 28, 2024

Readings: 2 Kgs 4:42–44 • Ps 145:10–11, 15–16, 17–18 • Eph 4:1–6 • Jn 6:1–15
bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/072824.cfm

“This is truly the Prophet, the one who is to come into the world.” For a moment the crowd in today’s reading from the Gospel of John seem to have experienced an epiphany of faith: an insight into Jesus’ identity like Andrew and Philip in John chapter 1 (John 1:41, 45) or the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4 (John 4:29). But then Jesus is obliged to withdraw from them — to not entrust himself to them, just like he has before with shallow followers who believed in him only because “they saw the signs which he did” (John 2:23). Jesus “knew what was in” people like that; he knew their faith was in signs, not in Jesus himself.

To be clear, Jesus will work with that! Belief in signs is a place to start! “Believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me,” Jesus tells his disciples, “or at least believe me for the sake of the works themselves” (John 14:11). And yet the crowd in today’s Gospel isn’t even quite at that level. Next Sunday, in the continuation of this Gospel reading, Jesus will tell this crowd, “You are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled” (John 6:26). Not belief in Jesus himself, not even belief in signs, but sheer appetite drives them to seek Jesus. They just want more food! When Jesus urges them to believe in him, they ask for another sign — and they say in so many words that they’d like him to do the bread thing again! (John 6:29–31)

And Jesus will work with this too! Let’s not be too hard on these people. This is the same crowd we heard about last Sunday: Jesus “had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34). Jesus spent hours healing them, but also teaching them — shepherding them. When they got hungry, he saw to their needs, as a shepherd does. At that point, though, it turns out that this flock wants to be shepherded on their own terms. They want to “carry him off to make him king” — and clearly they’ve got their own ideas about what kind of king Jesus should be. Much later, of course, Jesus will tell Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world” (John 18:36), but this crowd isn’t ready to hear that.

Well, are Catholics today necessarily so different? Are we never preoccupied by signs — caught up, for example, in reports of Marian apparitions and visionary messages, even treating oracles from visionaries as effectively equal to Church teaching, or even to the Word of God? Are we immune to turning to God chiefly with our wants and needs? What about having our own ideas about what Christ’s kingship should mean in our lives and our world? Particularly in an election year, might it be that we come to Jesus with our own ideas about what the kingdom of God means in our world today?

To be clear, turning to God with our needs, and even our wants, is a good thing, not a bad thing. God knows what we need before we ask, Jesus tells us, but he also teaches us to pray for our daily bread; to persevere in prayer and not lose heart (Luke 18:1ff). Every good gift comes from God; “the hand of the Lord feeds us; he answers all our needs,” as we sang in the responsorial psalm. Need can and should prod us to prayer to ask God for his gifts — but the one gift of God we need above all is prayer itself! Our greatest need is not the gifts, but the Giver!

Turning to God only for what he can give us, trying to use prayer only to meet our needs, is like trying to “use the stairs of heaven as a short cut to the nearest [pharmacy],” as C.S. Lewis wrote in The Screwtape Letters. “Seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness,” Jesus tells us, and all the other things will be given to us as well (Matthew 6:33). But the kingdom must be first! God must be first. Anything that is not God himself — even holy things like miracles and visions, or good things like responsible political commitments, or things we need — can become an idol. Only the Lord himself truly answers our deepest needs.