21st Sunday of Ordinary Time
Aug. 22, 2004
Heb 12: 5-7, 11-13Ursulines, Willow Drive
Last Sunday (Aug. 25) I was traveling, and since getting home I've been extremely busy with editorial work and packing for a new pastoral assignment. So it's taken me several days to get around to posting an old homily for last Sunday.
“Do not disdain the
discipline of the Lord or lose heart when reproved by him” (Heb 12: 5).
Part of today’s 2d
reading seems like it could have come from Old Testament wisdom
literature. In fact, vv. 5-6 have been
lifted from Proverbs 3.
From reading this
section of the Letter to the Hebrews, we deduce that the Jewish-Christian
community to whom the letter is addressed was undergoing some form of
persecution. It wasn’t a full-blown
persecution that sent martyrs to death, for in v. 4 (the one immediately before
our reading today) the author had just written, “In your struggle against sin
you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood.” They must have been dealing with
discrimination and harassment, the sorts of prejudice and disputes that late in
the 1st century led the rabbis to expel the Jewish followers of Jesus from the
synagog.
There are tens of
thousands of Christians today facing real, sometimes bloody, persecution in
Asia and Africa, in Sudan and China, e.g., sometimes elsewhere. But as we know, discrimination and
persecution aren’t the only trials that may come our way. In a verse from the Book of Judith that we
read regularly in the Liturgy of the Hours,[1]
we “recall how God dealt with Abraham, and how he tried Isaac, and all that
happened to Jacob in [exile] while he was tending the flocks of Laban”
(8:26). God permitted the patriarchs to
be tried severely, and he has always permitted trials to afflict his
saints. Or, to put it another way, he
has never exempted his saints from the trials that afflict all the members of
the human race; not even his own Son was exempt.
For
the last 9 days the media have informed us of the afflictions and trials of the
people of central Florida. We feel for
them, especially as we realize that all of us are vulnerable to natural
disaster or human accident or worse. We
Salesians have particular reason to say, “There but for the grace of God…,”
because our schools in St. Pete and Tampa were in Charley’s direct path till he
made that sudden veer 80 miles south of Tampa.
Why did God spare the Tampa Bay area?
Only he knows. We pray for those
who are suffering.
The
discipline of the Lord touches us directly in other ways. All of us have reached the point in our lives
when our bodies are troublesome. When Hebrews
calls upon us to “strengthen our drooping hands and weak knees” (v. 12), I’m
reminded of 3 surgeries for carpal tunnel syndrome and 1 to deal with torn knee
cartilage—not to mention a herniated disk.
We can appreciate the kind of humor that notes you’re growing old when
most of the names in your address book have “Dr.” in front of them.
Natural
disasters, financial misfortunes, accidents, assaults may strike anyone,
believer or not. Bodily ailments come
upon all of us indiscriminately. Most of
us also have to cope with interior affliction too, at one time or another: the angst of adolescence, in myriad variety;
unpleasant tasks to carry out; conflict with family members, colleagues, or
superiors; anxiety over what may happen or is happening to someone else; the
loss of beloved family members and friends; depression as our physical and
mental powers fade; fear of being put aside and forgotten; interior darkness
and tests of our faith; concerns about our standing before God and our
readiness for death and eternal life.
Trials
are always hard while we’re going thru them.
All of us probably have undergone trials of body or spirit that we
wouldn’t wish upon anyone. Well, maybe
on Osama bin Laden. “At the time, all
discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain” (12:11), the Letter to the
Hebrews says. But the letter continues,
“Later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained
by it” (12:11). Being tempered or
trained by suffering makes us stronger.
It’s true of our character. It’s
true of our spiritual life.
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Christ crucified
St. Mary's Church, Fredericksburg, Va.
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Conversely,
we believers have an opportunity lacking to non-Christians when affliction
comes to us, as it does to everyone.
Unlike everyone, we can see it as discipline, as training, as invitation
to identify ourselves consciously and deliberately with our Savior. “Deliberately” not in the sense of choosing
to suffer and masochistically inflicting it upon ourselves, but “deliberately”
in the sense of accepting graciously as God’s gift what in any case we can’t
avoid. In the olden days the nuns in
school used to express this to us by telling us to “offer it up.” As Jesus was willing to suffer injustice,
pain, humiliation, and death, so do we if that makes us more like him. Our interior union with him even makes our
suffering atoning and redemptive (cf. Col 1:24).
It’s
crucially important, however, that our likeness to Christ be complete. Not physically; we don’t expect the
stigmata—even the scars of carpal tunnel surgery don’t quite do that—but
interiorly; our likeness to Christ becomes one of meekness, compassion,
mercy. An interior likeness renders us sensitive
to what our sisters and brothers around us may be going thru. In a deeper sense than a politician’s, we
feel their pain. And our interior
likeness must be reflected in our exterior, so that by our words and actions
people may see that we have “put on Christ” (Gal 3:27), that God in Christ has
taught us well. Discipline, like disciple,
is rooted in the Latin word discere, “to learn.” And when the disciples learn and become like
their Teacher (Matt 10:25), we shall experience and shall share with others
“the peaceful fruit of righteousness,” i.e., of a right relationship with our
Father.
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