Homily for 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the

15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 12, 2020

Rom 8: 18-23

Holy Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.

Do dogs go to heaven?  You’d probably be amazed at what a Google search brings up in response to that question.

On December 11, 2014, the NYT reported that a young boy had asked Pope Francis that question at an audience 2 weeks earlier, after his pet had died, and that Francis had responded, “One day, we will see our animals again in the eternity of Christ.  Paradise is open to all of God’s creatures.”[1]  Such a dialog would have been in line with the Pope’s namesake St. Francis of Assisi.  Only, the reporters and editors got the story rather wrong:  Francis never said it; instead, it was St. Paul VI.[2]

St. Paul—not the Pope but the Apostle—isn’t addressing that specific question today when he speaks of the close link between the children of God and the rest of creation.  But he does seem to speak of the redemption of all of creation, along with human redemption:  “Creation awaits with eager expectation the revelation of the children of God” (Rom 8:19), and “Creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:21).

In ch. 8 of his Letter to the Romans, part of which we read last week, Paul addresses the tension between “the flesh,” i.e., worldly powers, passions, and tendencies, and “the spirit,” our human nature elevated by the grace of God.  In the verses between last week’s reading and today’s, Paul teaches that the Spirit of God makes us God’s adopted children; he teaches that we may address God as Abba, “Father,” “Papa,” or “Dad,” as Jesus does, for with Jesus we are “joint heirs” of the kingdom of heaven, “if only we suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him” (8:14-17)—that’s the last verse before today’s reading.

The Spirit of God is more powerful than our fleshly tendencies.  After his suffering and death, Jesus was raised bodily to immortal life, raised to heavenly glory.  That’s God’s plan for us, too, Paul proclaims:  “The sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” (8:18).

“The sufferings of this present time” are manifold, as Paul knew:  persecution, violence, illness, weariness, prejudices, misunderstandings, anguish, abandonment by friends.  We’re in the midst of great anguish and loss from the Covid-19 pandemic, besides the other forms of suffering.  Sometimes many of us must, like Hamlet, grow weary of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” and long for an end of “the heartache, and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to” (III, I, 66, 70-71).

Paul, however, points to our hope as followers of Jesus Christ.  Creation, including our created bodies, awaits the completion of God’s plan of redemption.  Creation now is “subject to futility” (8:20), including the futility of bodily death, because Adam’s sin took the entirety of creation into rebellion against its Creator.  But now, Paul says, we live “in hope that creation itself will be set free from slavery to corruption and share in the glorious freedom of the children of God” (8:21), the freedom of liberation from our sins, and if from our sins, then also from the penalties of sin—both bodily and spiritual death, eternal damnation.

Paul reminds his readers, including us, that God has already given us a down payment on our redemption:  his Holy Spirit.  We “have the first fruits of the Spirit” (8:23).  “First fruits” is a sacrificial term from Hebrew and other ancient religious practices.  When people offered to God the 1st portions of their harvests—and the first-born of their flocks and herds—they were offering to God the entire crop, flock, or herd, and all of it was sanctified.  Christ is the first fruits of the harvest of bodily resurrection (1 Cor 15:20), and we who follow Christ are thru him sanctified, made holy; and even now possess the Spirit of Christ as the first fruits of our own resurrection, even while in this earthly life “we also groan within ourselves” because of our various sufferings “as we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies” (8:23).  All of creation waits along with us, “groaning in labor pains,” Paul says (8:22), waiting for the birth of the “new heaven and new earth” that God promises to his children in the Book of Revelation, ch. 21 (21:1), where “he will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death of mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away” (21:4).  Christ “makes all things new” (21:5).

To sum up, I quote from a commentary:  “Suffering simply can’t compare with the glory or intimate share in God’s life which is the destiny of each believer. . . .  We believers are awaiting final and definitive redemption of our whole selves (our bodies) in confident hope with patient endurance.”[3]

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       [1] Francis “quoted” in NYT, 12/11/14.

       [2] David Gibson, Religion News Service, 12/12/14: https://religionnews.com/2014/12/12/sorry-fido-pope-francis-not-say-pets-going-heaven/.

       Another misquote found on the Net reports that St. John Paul II told a general audience (1/10/90): “Animals possess a soul, and people must love and feel solidarity with our smaller brethren.”  He added that animals are the “fruit of the creative action of the Holy Spirit and merit respect” and that they are “as near to God as humans are.” See http://dreamshore.net/rococo/pope.html.  But JPII didn’t actually say exactly that: debunked at https://fauxtations.wordpress.com/2018/08/08/st-john-paul-ii-and-animal-souls/; cf. the papal text at http://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/it/audiences/1990/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_19900110.html

       [3] The Collegeville Bible Commentary: New Testament (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 1089).