Homily for 31st Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
31st Sunday of Ordinary TimeOct. 31, 2010
2 Thess 1: 11—2:2
Scouters taking Woodbadge Course, Camp Alpine, N.J.

“We pray that our God may make you worthy of his calling” (2 Thess 1: 11).

Paul was the 1st to preach the Good News in Thessalonica. But it wasn’t he who called the Thessalonians to accept God’s mercy and change their way of living. The call came from God: “May our God make you worthy of his calling.” Paul is just God’s instrument.

We too may serve as God’s instruments for his calling others, for reinforcing that call, for helping others to discern the call and answer it. Scout leaders are God’s instruments in helping young men find their way in life. That search for their way includes their search, usually unawares, for life’s meaning—for God’s purposes in their lives, for their proper relationships with him and with the rest of his children. We help young men understand reverence, and practice it.

Conversion of St. Paul: painting in the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, Rome


Paul is uttering a prayer in this passage of his letter. The prayer is that God will make the Thessalonian Christians worthy of his call. God doesn’t call people because they are worthy. We see that clearly in today’s gospel story (Luke 19:1-10), as well as in many others, notably Jesus’ calling of the apostles and very notably in Paul’s own call (Acts 9:1-19; cf. Gal 1:11-24). You may have seen the evangelical slogan—on a bumper sticker or going round the e-mail circuit: “God doesn’t call the qualified. He qualifies the called.” He makes us worthy of his calling. We Catholics offer a prayer at every Mass just before Communion that God will make us worthy of himself: “Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.” The healing action, the spiritual cleansing, the sanctification, is always God’s.

St. Augustine says the same thing in a sermon that we find in the Office of Readings: “We have been saved by his grace, says the Apostle, and not by our works…. It is not as if a good life of some sort came first, and that thereupon God showed his love and esteem for it from on high, saying: ‘Let us come to the aid of these men and assist them quickly because they are living a good life.’ No, our life was displeasing to him; whatever we did by ourselves was displeasing to him; but what he did in us was not displeasing to him. He will, therefore, condemn what we have done, but he will save what he himself has done in us.”*

St. Augustine painting: basilica of Mary Help of Christians, Turin

God didn’t call any of us on account of our goodness, our intelligence, our charm, our good looks, our artistic talents, etc. He called us to be his at Baptism, which means he called most of us when we were infants, totally helpless. About the only thing we could do by ourselves was give our parents a mess to clean up! God didn’t call us to be his children because we were worthy of such love, any more than our parents co-created us with God because we were worthy of love. Both God and our parents called us into existence as an act of love on their part, and freely offered that love to us—thereby making us lovable, making us worthy, and in God’s case, making us holy.

Paul’s prayer continues: “May our God powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith” (1:11). In some rituals of religious profession, when a sister or a brother makes vows, we find a similar prayer from the presider: “May God, who has begun this good work in you, bring it to perfection” or “to completion.” May God finish the job he’s started in us! Our pursuit of Christ as disciples, as believers, is a lifelong pursuit, a lifelong journey, a lifelong pilgrimage. (You know what Yogi says!) In the 17th century, John Bunyan reminded Puritan readers of that with The Pilgrim’s Progress. But it’s an age-old Christian image, as old as Luke’s gospel in which Jesus sets out on a long journey toward Jerusalem, leading the disciples with him. Like the apostles, who said things like, “Let us also go to die with him” (John 11:16) and “Lord, I am prepared to go to prison and to die with you” (Luke 22:33), but fled like cockroaches when the light goes on, we need divine help to stay with Jesus when temptation comes, when our faith is challenged by adversity: “May our God powerfully bring to fulfillment every good purpose and every effort of faith.”

Our perseverance in faith, in living out our faith and not just mouthing it, glorifies the name of our Lord Jesus, Paul says. We’re linked to Jesus by our Baptism. We belong to him, and he belongs to us. When God’s grace works in us, producing good, it gives glory to Jesus in whom we live, in whose name we act (at least implicitly)—just as our evil deeds are a scandal, reflecting poorly on the name of Christian. But the good we do is a partaking of the goodness of Jesus, reflects his goodness (we’re mirrors of Jesus, so to say), and so offers praise to the Father.

The 2d paragraph of our reading today takes up the rather different subject of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him” (2:1). That “assembly” will be the ultimate “fulfillment” of our journey with Christ toward the heavenly Jerusalem. The latest “end of the world” fad in our time seems to come from the Mayan calendar, which, so it’s said, ends with 2012. I think there was a movie about that a few months ago, which I didn’t see. But these fads of “the end is near” come repeatedly, and the fads fade, of course. Paul was dealing with one ca. 50 A.D., when, Scripture scholars generally believe, the Christian community expected Jesus’ imminent 2d coming.

Paul’s advice to the Thessalonians is, “Don’t be shaken out of your minds suddenly or be alarmed” (2:2)—“Don’t worry about it.” Not in our reading today is his bottom-line advice later in this chapter: “Therefore, brothers and sisters, stand firm and hold fast to the tradition that you were taught” (2:15). Then, as Jesus says, we’ll be awake and watchful and won’t be caught off guard whenever he does return (cf. Matt 24:43-44).

The Last Judgment, by Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel

I draw your attention to one word in Paul’s reference to the Lord’s coming: “our assembling with him.” In his Greek, that’s επισυναγωγής (episunagoges), in Latin congregationis: synagog, congregation. When we assemble as a “synagog” or congregation each Sunday, we’re “assembling with our Lord Jesus Christ,” doing a dry run, as it were, for his 2d coming. We who meet with him regularly, faithfully, we who are familiar with him, will have nothing to cause us to fear his glorious return on the Last Day. Indeed, we look for his coming again in power, to “bring to fulfillment powerfully every good purpose and every effort of our faith” that we’ve been striving at on our long pilgrimage with him toward Jerusalem.

* Sermon 23A; Liturgy of the Hours, 4:188.