21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
Aug. 26, 2001
Luke 13: 22-30
St. Joseph, Passaic, N.J.
On the 3d Sunday of the month, the deacons preach at
all the Masses at Holy Cross in Champaign.
Here’s a 15-year-old but still timely homily on today’s readings.
“Behold, some are
last who will be first, and some are first who will be last” (Luke 13: 30).
Both the gospel and
the reading from Isaiah speak of God’s call to all the nations to belong to
him. When Israel is scattered far and
wide, says Isaiah, they will attract foreigners and lead them to the Lord, and
those peoples shall become his own as much as Israel. Jesus tells the Jews of his time that people
will come from every quarter of the world to enter the kingdom of God, to feast
at the Lord’s table. We ourselves are
testimony to Jesus’ words, for we don’t come from his land or his people, in an
ethnic sense.
But Jesus’ words
are uttered in a context of caution, even of warning. He spoke to large crowds during his public
life, he healed many people, he ate and drank in the homes of many and had
others as guests at his house in Capernaum.
Yet on the day of judgment many of those folks, Jesus warns, may find
themselves locked out of God’s house.
Few actually believed Jesus’ message and became his followers.
It’s not enuf to
belong to the chosen people or to have been familiar socially with Jesus. “Lord, open the door for us.” “I don’t know you.” “But we ate and drank with you, and you
taught in our streets.” “I don’t know
you. Depart from me, all you evildoers!”
(Luke 13:25-27).
 |
| Last Judgment (source unknown) |
On Aug. 14 some
fellow’s letter appeared in the Record,
giving his opinion about Pres. Bush’s decision on stem cell research. He wrote:
“It was obviously a 100 percent political decision made by a president
with a lack of vision and courage to do the right thing for the majority of the
people. I don’t see any conflict of
conscience at all. As a Roman Catholic I
was always taught to believe that healing and caring for the sick was the
highest calling. Now my church and other
religious groups say that is not the case.”[1]
Well, yes,
Catholics are taught that healing and care of the sick are high callings. But the Church has never said it was the
highest calling or the highest priority.
The Church has never said that we may do something wrong in order to
produce a good effect—in the particular case referred to in the letter,
deliberately and directly to kill an innocent human being in order to help heal
someone else. And, in fact, the Church
has also consistently condemned the production of human beings in laboratories,
whether for experimentation or for possible implantation in the womb. People are not commodities, not products, not
means to a doctor’s or a scientist’s or a parent’s end.
Instead, what the
Church has always taught as the highest calling is being a disciple of
Jesus. Do you remember the gospel about
Martha and Mary that was read 5 weeks ago?
Martha was hustling to prepare and serve a meal to Jesus and her other
guests, while her sister Mary sat listening to Jesus, and when Martha griped to
Jesus about that—“Tell her to get up and help me!”—Jesus replied, “Martha,
you’re worried about many things. Only
one thing’s necessary. Mary has chosen
the better part, and it will not be taken from her” (Luke 10:40-42).
Or, to return to
the topic of healing and caring for the sick, sometimes compassion toward the
sick means causing them pain and trouble:
surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, physical therapy—some of you have been
thru that, and you know that none of it’s pleasant, but all of it may be the
highest compassion. Likewise, Jesus is
being compassionate in the fullest sense—Jesus, who was so compassionate toward
all of us that he suffered torture and death for us—when he directs us to a
difficult road as the way to heaven:
“Strive to enter thru the narrow gate” (Luke 13:24). In St. Matthew’s version of the same
warning—we read St. Luke here, but in St. Matthew’s version—Jesus adds, “For
the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction…. How narrow the road that leads to life”
(7:13-14). Even the pagan poet Vergil
noted that the descent into hell is easy.
Walking with Jesus
isn’t all warm feelings. Sometimes it’s
hard choices, unpopular opinions: to do
good rather than to feel good; to exercise tough love; to put others ahead of
oneself; to swim against the currents of a materialistic and hedonistic and “I
want it now” culture—the wide and easy road to perdition. (That’s mixing my metaphors, of course, since
one doesn’t swim on a road. Maybe I should
say, “Swimming against the wide river that sweeps one over a deadly waterfall.”)
Last week Jesus
asked his listeners, “Do you think that I’ve come to establish peace on
earth?”, and he answered, “No, I tell you, but rather division.” He went on to speak of households divided by
their decisions for or against him (Luke 12:51-53).
Our age, our
culture, wants toleration of every opinion and lifestyle; wants compromise in
every disagreement. The Gospel, however,
does not compromise about sin: “Depart
from me, all you evildoers!” The
Christian who ate and drank in the Lord’s company but didn’t repent of his sins
and attempt to change his ways will be wailing and grinding his teeth, will
find himself cast out of the kingdom of God—just as Jesus warned the chosen
people in his own time.
Therefore, brother
and sisters, don’t listen to those who tell you that the Church has to
accommodate itself to the morality of our time, that the Church has to
understand how people are nowadays, that the Church has to get “with it”—that
we have to accept and even approve of pornography, of divorce, of sex outside
of marriage, of homosexual behavior, of contraception, of abortion, of in vitro
fertilization, of embryonic stem cell research, etc. Instead, “Strive to enter thru the narrow
gate.” Read the word of Jesus in the New
Testament, believe what you read, practice what you believe, and trust in the
power of Jesus to forgive whatever wrong you do thru human weakness.
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