Homily for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 9, 2006

2 Cor 12: 7-10
Christian Bros., Iona College, New Rochelle
Ursulines, Willow Dr., N.R.

“When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12: 10).

Every 12-step program begins with the admission that one has a problem—an addiction to alcohol, gambling, sex, or something else—“Dear Abby” yesterday had a letter from a shopaholic; and the admission that one is powerless to deal with it by his or her own resources.  Lots of dieters go to Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, or a “fat farm.”  Lots of people who need exercise join a gym, hire a fitness trainer, or get a friend to join them in regular walking.

We can’t address a weakness until we admit we have it.  And most of us can’t address our weaknesses without outside help.  St. Paul says the same thing regarding his own spiritual life.  Only when he recognizes his weakness can he draw upon the power of one stronger than he.

St. Paul (Rembrandt)

And Paul, that great apostle, that zealot whom some (non-Christians) even go so far as to call the founder of Christianity—in an institutional sense—Paul had his weaknesses.  We’d love to know what was that particular one to which he alludes today (What kind of ratings would Oprah get if she could get Paul on?):   his “thorn in the flesh, … an angel of Satan” that “beat” him and kept him “from being too elated,” or perhaps too proud or too comfortable about what we’d call the state of his soul.

Whatever this weakness was—a bad habit, a predominant fault, a vice, a repeated severe temptation—it reminded Paul of his need for grace.  When he prayed about it, God told him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9).  God’s grace—his freely given love, mercy, redemption—is enuf for us.  We don’t have to earn God’s favor; we can’t make ourselves perfect enuf to deserve heaven.  God’s grace is all we need:  “Give me only your love and your grace,” St. Ignatius says in a prayer-song we use sometimes.  By definition grace is undeserved.

And “power is perfected in weakness.”  That sounds strange.  But it’s not our power; it’s God’s.  The weakness is ours.  Remember Gideon?  God ordered him to send away thousands of his soldiers and left him with just 300, lest Israel boast that they’d won the victory (Jgs 7:2).  Whose the victory was, was obvious enuf, then, when 300 Israelites routed their thousands of enemies (7:20-22).  God’s power is more than enuf to compensate for our spiritual powerlessness, our inclinations to sin, even what Augustine and Calvinist theology call our depravity.  God’s power is more than enuf to snatch me away from Satan and fling my sins into his face.  Them he can have, but not me.  “When a strong man fully armed guards his house, his possessions are undisturbed,” our Lord says in a pithy parable (Luke 11:1).*  Christ is that strong man, and we are his possession.  What a consolation, if we are weak enuf to entrust ourselves to him!

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    * Technically, in Jesus’ parable the strong man is the devil, who is overcome by one stronger than he, viz., Jesus, who strips away his armor and seizes the spoils (11:22).  The point remains:  the overwhelming power of God!