Homily
for the
16th
Sunday of Ordinary Time
July
18, 2021
Eph
2: 13-18
Holy
Name of Jesus, Valhalla, N.Y.
Holy
Name of Jesus, New Rochelle, N.Y.
“In
Christ Jesus you who once were far off have become near by the blood of Christ”
(Eph 2: 13).
St. Paul
is the great apostle to the Gentiles, i.e., to the pagan nations of the world,
those who did not know, worship, or obey the one God revealed to the Jewish
people. The Gentiles are “far off,”
separated from God, from true worship, from salvation, by a “dividing wall of
enmity” (2:14).
By
preaching the Gospel to the Gentiles, Paul is announcing to them a great
reconciliation—the central message of this Letter to the Ephesians, the Greek
people of the city of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor.
In the Jewish temple in Jerusalem there was a physical dividing wall between the entrance courtyard open to anyone and an inner court that only Jews could enter. Gentiles faced a death penalty if they crossed that barrier.
Paul
preaches to the Gentiles that Christ’s blood has broken down such barriers,
spiritually speaking. The Gentiles who
come to Christ are on a par with Jewish believers like Paul and the other
apostles. There is no enmity between
them and God, for Christ has “created in himself one new person in place of two
… reconciling both with God in one body, thru the cross” (2:15-16). So there should no longer be enmity between
Jew and Gentile when both belong to Christ, when both commune with the
sacramental body and blood of Christ and become one body with him.
We who
have been God’s enemies thru our sins—original sin and our actual, personal
sins—have been reconciled to God thru Christ.
Baptism has made us God’s children, brothers and sisters of Jesus
Christ, members of God’s household (Eph 2:19).
The sacrament of Reconciliation—what a beautiful name for what we used
to call “Penance” and commonly call “confession”—continues this great
reconciliation between us sinners and God our Father. Christ’s grace touches us in sacramental
Reconciliation, whether we bring to that sacrament grievous, devastating,
mortal sins, or “merely” the ordinary sins of our daily lives: our irritation and anger, our envy, our
gossip, our selfish desires, reckless behavior, our passing judgment on others,
and so on.
However
“far off” we’ve been from God on account of our sins, and for whatever reason,
God calls us back to himself and welcomes us thru the blood of the cross. As “the heart of Jesus was moved with pity
for the crowds who were like sheep without a shepherd” (Mark 6:34), so is his
heart still moved with compassion and mercy for us whenever we come to him, as
those crowds of Galileans and Judeans did so long ago.
Paul’s
words about reconciliation between Jew and Gentile and both becoming “one new
person in Christ” also mean that we in the universal Catholic Church in the
21st century have to recognize that we’re all brothers and sisters in Christ,
God’s beloved children. There’s no place
for enmity between generations, between races or ethnic groups, between
so-called conservatives and so-called liberals, among those who are struggling
to overcome any kind of sinful inclination—which really means all of us; for
even the saints are, as they say, sinners who keep on trying to be faithful to
Christ.
What
there is no room for within the one body of Christ is judgment—passing judgment
on who’s worthy of Christ’s mercy. “He
came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were
near” (Eph 2:17). When we perceive that
someone is apparently guilty of sin—a sinful attitude, sinful behavior—we may have
a duty to remind that person of the truth of Christ’s teaching, and we
certainly have the duty to pray for that person’s conversion. And we certainly have a duty, always, to pray
for our own conversion; not one of us has yet been fully converted to Jesus. We all remain in need of his grace.
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