Homily for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 7, 2019

Collect
Holy Name of Jesus, New Rochelle, N.Y.

“O God, … fill your faithful with holy joy, for on those you have rescued from slavery to sin, you bestow eternal gladness” (Collect).

During Advent we have a Sunday called Gaudete Sunday, “Rejoice” Sunday, and during Lent, Laetare Sunday, “Be glad.”  Today’s another “Joy Sunday,” for that theme permeates both the Collect (opening prayer) and the Scripture readings.

I just cited the petition we address to God in the Collect, asking him to fill us with joy and noting that he gives us cause for gladness by saving us from our sins.  Our Old Testament reading directs us to rejoice and be glad because of God’s motherly care for us—yes, motherly!—and promises us joyful hearts when we experience God’s power in our lives (Is 66:11-14).

In the psalm refrain, we joined the whole earth in crying out to God with joy, joy at the tremendous deeds God has done among us.  The psalmist specifically recalls how God saved Israel thru their exodus from Egypt (66:6).

Israel’s experience was a rebirth.  St. Paul discerns “a new creation” in the way that Christ rescued humanity thru his crucifixion (Gal 6:14-15).  Paul doesn’t speak of joy here, altho he does elsewhere, e.g., in his letter to the Philippians (4:4-9).  But he does “boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (6:14), thru which God has mercy upon us sinners and pours out his grace upon us.

Christ sending out the 72 disciples (James Tissot)

Announcing the grace and mercy of Christ, by which Satan and his demonic cohorts are crushed, causes 72 disciples of Jesus to rejoice:  “Lord, even the demons are subject to us because of your name” (Luke 10:17).  Jesus gives them a mild correction:  don’t rejoice because you’ve overcome demons but “because your names are written in heaven” (10:20).  By invoking the name of Jesus, they’ve subjected the demons; they’ve secured their own salvation, their enrollment in the kingdom of God which they’ve proclaimed, the kingdom already at hand in the person of Jesus.

By the power of Jesus, by the power of his cross, we’ve been “rescued from slavery to sin,” as the Collect said. That’s reason for us to join Paul in boasting—humbly, for it’s Christ who’s victorious, not us; it’s Christ whose “abasement has raised up a fallen world” (Collect).  Christ’s cross, not our own merits, is the reason for our joy.

It’s a real reason for us to rejoice.  As the Hebrews were delivered from slavery in Egypt, as the towns and villages of Galilee were delivered from the clutches of Satan by the preaching of Jesus and his disciples, so are we delivered from our “slavery to sin” and its consequences, and given “eternal gladness” as a gift from God.

That gift comes to us when we hear and accept the message of Jesus, when we place ourselves under the protection of his name, the holy name of Jesus.  You do that every time you enter your parish church!  We do it whenever we celebrate the Eucharist “in memory of him,” making his death and resurrection present, part of our lives.

Jesus sent out 72 disciples to preach redemption.  Even as he did so, he advised them to pray for more laborers in the harvest of salvation (Luke 10:2).  That prayer is as necessary today as it was in 30 A.D.  The Gospel still needs men and women to announce it to a world that’s in sorry shape, a world that hungers, without knowing why it hungers, for “the joy of the Gospel”—appropriately, the title of the 1st apostolic exhortation of Pope Francis (Nov. 24, 2013).

Therefore, sisters and brothers, pray for priestly vocations, for diaconal vocations, for vocations to the various forms of consecrated life, for holy marriages that will be “domestic churches”—an ancient Christian designation for the family, revived by the 2d Vatican Council (Lumen Gentium, 11); miniature churches, where Christ is loved, worshiped, and taught.  Don’t just pray for good and holy vocations, however.  Pray that we priests, deacons, religious, and married people may be faithful to Christ’s calling, may grow in holiness, so that we may be effective witnesses to the power of Jesus’ name.  Finally, those of you who may not yet have discerned in what way Christ is calling you—he IS calling you—pray to know how to answer his call and to do so with courage and joy; for your joy, your eternal gladness, will come in responding to him as a good and holy spouse, a good and holy priest or deacon, a good and holy sister or brother.

To quote from St. Paul again:  “peace and mercy be to all who follow this rule” of fidelity to our Lord Jesus Christ.