Homily for the
30th Sunday of Ordinary TimeOct. 24, 1999
Ex 22: 20-26
Guardian
Angel, Allendale, N.J.
This
18-year-old homily reads in many spots (not including the opening paragraph!)
like it could have been written this week.
Are you ready for Y2K? For several years, and with increasing
intensity, we’ve been hearing dire warnings about computers crashing as 1999
rolls over into 2000, and about what computer breakdown will do to our banks,
utilities, traffic control systems, social security records, etc., etc.
St. Paul points to a different sort of crash: “You await God’s Son from heaven, whom he
raised from the dead: Jesus, who
delivers us from the coming wrath” (1 Thess 1:10). Paul speaks of the wrath of the day of the
Lord, the day of Christ’s 2d coming, the last day, the day of judgment. In a few more weeks—on Nov. 14 and 21,
specifically—St. Matthew will relate to us 2 parables of Jesus concerned with
the coming of the Lord and his ensuing judgment. The 2d of those parables will be of the
separation of the sheep from the goats, good people from evil. And in that parable Jesus will teach us that
the criterion of goodness is our active compassion for our fellow human
beings: “I was hungry and you fed me,
naked and you clothed me, sick or in prison and you visited me, a stranger and
you welcomed me” (Matt 25:34-36).
 |
| The Pharisees questioning Jesus (James Tissot) |
Jesus makes that point of active compassion in a
theoretical way in his answer to the scribe or lawyer who questioned him about
the greatest law. The greatest law is to
love God wholeheartedly, and “the 2d is like it”—i.e., equal in importance—to
“love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:39).
In St. Luke’s recounting of this same discussion, Jesus questioner then
asks, “Who is my neighbor?” Whom do I have to be nice to? And Jesus replies with that most beautiful
parable of one man’s compassion for another, the Good Samaritan, which
concludes with Jesus’ injunction to imitate the Samaritan’s compassion toward
his anonymous neighbor in need (Luke 10:25-37).
Our 1st reading this morning takes the theoretical
and makes is specific. It comes from the
book of the law in Exodus—what Moses brought down from Matt. Sinai, according
to the book of Exodus, not just the 10 Commandments but a whole code of
laws. And this passage is all about
compassion toward our neighbor: You
shall not oppress the immigrant, you shall not wrong the widow or orphan, you
shall not extort from your needy neighbor.
If you wrong these people, my wrath will flare up against you. I’ll hear their prayers for help, for I am
compassionate (Ex 22:20-26). This is the
Lord speaking.
That theme of compassion for the weakest and most
vulnerable members of human society ties in with a document which our bishops
have just issued—about 4 days ago—called “Faithful Citizenship: Civic Responsibility for a New
Millennium.” Cardinal Mahony, head of
the committee that drafted it, remarked, “Catholics really have a great
responsibility to be active members of society, to really be informed,” and to
try to shape their society as disciples of Christ; to evaluate political
candidates and public policy by a gospel standard.
In contrast, the priest-publisher of a national
Catholic weekly newspaper believes that Catholics have allowed themselves to
become voiceless in a culture that devalues the family. Why aren’t educated and well-to-do Catholics
shaping society for the better?[1]
A columnist in a Catholic magazine asks this week
whether we want to leave public policy to the likes of Donald Trump, Warren
Beatty, Cybil Shepherd, or even Jesse Ventura.[2] If we don’t speak up and get involved with
Christ-like principles and positions, we’re abandoning the field to that sort
of person and to the Ku Klux Klan[3]
and to what they stand for: harsh
capitalism, hostility to family, sexual exploitation, racism, atheism, more
abortion.
Our bishops, in their latest statement and in
others, have instead asked us to work for more protection for the unborn,
better treatment for pregnant women, the aged, the dying, working men and women
and especially the working poor, immigrants, and refugees. They have spoken for debt relief for the poor
nations of the world, who are victims of that sort of extortion condemned by
Exodus. They ask us to be more active in
preventing human disasters like Rwanda, Kosovo, and East Timor. They call for more aid for education and
other forms of development in the Third World.
 |
| Charity (Pieter Bruegel the Elder) |
Many of the things the bishops push for—on public
welfare, immigration, debt relief, foreign aid—are as unpopular with Catholics
as with other Americans. These are
political issues inasmuch as they concern the body politic. But they are not partisan issues. And of course, how best to implement a gospel
principle—what is the best means of
aiding an immigrant or improving education or reducing the number of
abortions—is a practical judgment beyond the pastoral competence of the bishops
(or me) to say.
What the Scriptures call us to is to find some means to practice the love of God
and of our neighbor: particularly this
morning, in our treatment of the alien who dwells with us—and we have tens of
thousands of them in our midst, and the Bible doesn’t care whether they’re
legal or not—and of the other poor, vulnerable, and marginalized members of our
world: the beggar we meet on the street;
the unborn child whom we may save or condemn by our vote for a pro-life or a
pro-abortion candidate; the victim of political repression or religious
persecution whom we help or hurt by the foreign policy we support, or are
indifferent to; the single mother who needs some kind of public support to hold
a job and raise her child at the same time.
If they cry out to God, he’ll
hear them, for he’s compassionate (Ex 22:26).
Jesus asks us also to be compassionate toward them.
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