Homily for 29th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
29th Sunday of Ordinary TimeOct. 17, 2010
2 Tim 3: 14—4:2
Provincial House, New Rochelle

“Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it” (2 Tim 3: 14).

Paul’s letters to Timothy are sustained pastoral instructions, addressed to a disciple who’s been given care of one of Paul’s churches, specifically the Christian community at Ephesus. Paul writes from prison, as one who has “competed well, finished the race, kept the faith” (4:7). Now Timothy is in the contest. It’s his task to carry on what Paul has begun: “teaching, refutation, correction, training in righteousness” (3:16).

Paul reminds Timothy of the 2 sources from which he is to work, carrying out his pastoral responsibility: Paul himself and the sacred Scriptures. Paul, of course, couldn’t realize that part of his own writings would soon be recognized as sacred Scripture (cf. 2 Pet 3:15). What he taught was the Gospel that he had received from Jesus, and what he wrote in his letters was commentary on that Gospel in various forms of explanation, exhortation, and correction.

Paul’s words to his disciple remind me of what the Congregation has been saying to us for the last several years: return to Don Bosco—“Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it.”

And like St. Paul, Don Bosco points us toward the ultimate source of his teaching: Jesus Christ and the Scriptures. So the Congregation has been telling us not only to return to Don Bosco but thru him to return to Christ, in order that thru him we might lead the young to Christ.

It’s the Scriptures that give us “wisdom for salvation thru faith in Christ Jesus” (3:15). To find Jesus, to meet Jesus, to know Jesus, we have 2 sources: the sacred liturgy and the sacred Scriptures. To lead others to Jesus—whether the young or the no longer young—we have those same 2 sources.

We know, of course, how much Don Bosco insisted on the sacraments, on Eucharistic piety, on Marian feast days. We may not realize how thoroughly grounded he was in the Scriptures, even if he didn’t have the benefit of modern studies. We have to imitate him by reading the Scriptures, studying the Scriptures, seeking Christ in the Scriptures, praying with the Scriptures. St. Jerome advises us that “ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.”* Or, to put it positively, knowledge of the Scriptures is knowledge of Christ.

Paul charges Timothy of proclaim the word—what he has learned from his reliable teacher and from the Scriptures. After the most important matter of our own salvation, our own souls—“wisdom for salvation thru faith in Christ Jesus”—our urgent task, as we know, our God-given mission, is evangelization: the preaching of that same Gospel which Paul handed over to Timothy, faith in Jesus Christ. Don Bosco’s work exists for no other reason—not for arts and trades, not for academic excellence, not for football championships—but for “the salvation of souls and the glory of God,” a phrase that was on our Founder’s lips or flowing from his pen even more than Da mihi animas.

Since nemo dat quod non habet [no one gives what he doesn't have], it’s absolutely necessary for us to have Jesus in our hearts, to be filled with him—and thus to encounter him daily in the Eucharist and regularly in Reconciliation; to take the Scriptures daily in hand, as our Rule urges us (C 87), in order to listen to him. Conversion begins in our meeting Jesus—and the 1st soul to be converted is always our own.

* Commentary on Isaiah, 1:2 (LOH 4:1448).