Homily for Friday, 25th Week of Ordinary Time

Homily for Friday
25th Week of Ordinary Time

September 28, 1982

Luke 9: 18-22
Eccl 3: 1-11
Don Bosco Cristo Rey, Takoma Park, Md.

After a substantial period of public ministry, after sending the apostles out to extend his ministry, and after the execution of John the Baptist, now Jesus judges it’s time to begin to reveal to the apostles who he is.  It’s not time for a complete self-revelation, lest a misunderstanding “public” put in him a false faith.  Even the 12 aren’t ready yet to understand a Christ who must suffer.

Qoheleth, the Preacher, composer of Ecclesiastes, speaks today in beautiful poetry of time, the right time for everything in our lives.  The right time is a revelation of God to us, of seeing our place in “the work which God has done” (3:11), i.e., how we may fulfill “the task that God has appointed for” us (3:10), just as Jesus opened himself to what the Father asked of him.

St. John XXIII and the 2d Vatican Council urged the Church to be open to “the signs of the times,” and so do spiritual advisors urge us as individual disciples—all those signs, all those times, all those seasons of our lives thru which God speaks to us.