Homily for 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 10, 2022
Deut 30: 10-14
Luke 10: 25-37
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“If only you would heed the voice of the Lord, your God, and keep his commandments … when you return to the Lord your God, with all your heart and all your soul” (Deut 30: 10).

The verse preceding that verse from our 1st reading this morning states, “The Lord, your God, will again take delight in your prosperity, even as he took delight in your fathers’ prosperity” (30:9) before speaking of the condition attached to that prosperity, the prosperity of God’s people. That condition is a return to wholehearted obedience to the commandments of the Lord.

(by Aime Morot)

In the gospel reading, a scribe, a scholar of the Jewish Law, asked Jesus what he had to do to inherit eternal life—not earthly prosperity but everlasting prosperity with God.  When Jesus questioned him, he summarized the Law as wholehearted love of God and love of his neighbor as much as he loved himself.  To which Jesus said simply, “Do that, and you’ll have eternal life” (Luke 10:25-28)

So, in both Deuteronomy and Luke’s Gospel, the condition of prosperity—in this life and for eternal life—is faithfulness to what God commands, and his fundamental command is love:  to love God himself completely, wholeheartedly, without reservation, and to love one’s neighbor.

The Hebrew people in Moses’ time were falling short of that.  Hence the challenge to “return to the Lord, your God, with all your heart and all your soul.”  The Son of God, Jesus, came to us with the same challenge:  “Repent, and believe in the Gospel” (Mark 1:15), i.e., turn away from your sins and return to the Lord your God, who loves you.

Is there anyone who doubts that our society, like the Hebrews in Moses’ time and the Jews in Jesus’ time, has a prosperity problem?  I don’t mean in an economic sense, altho we all recognize that, what with the price of groceries, gasoline, rent—among other problems.  I mean in a deeper sense, the deficit in recognition of “who is my neighbor?”, the question the scribe asked Jesus (10:29).  Jesus tells one of his most famous parables to answer that question, and Jesus’ answer tells us something about our need to “return to the Lord, our God” if we want the human race to prosper, if we want personally to enter eternal life.

The nation was shocked 2 weeks ago by the deaths of 53 migrants who were, in effect, baked in an abandoned trailer in San Antonio.  Who were neighbors to those Mexicans and Central Americans?  Certainly not the coyotes who transported them across the border for thousands of dollars each.  Certainly not our politicians, who can’t fix our immigration laws and procedures.  Certainly not a population that’s hostile to immigrants regardless of the violence, famine, and poverty that compels them to flee their homes.

The nation may be losing its sense of shock when young black men are shot down by police officers, by gang members, or in street crime.  If all men are created equal, as we proudly maintain in our Declaration of Independence, when are we going to regard everyone as a neighbor to love like ourselves, regardless of color—or sex or language or creed?

According to the mainstream media, polls inform us that most Americans want abortion as allowed by Roe v. Wade to be maintained.  Polls also inform us that most Americans don’t know that Roe v. Wade allowed abortion at any time during pregnancy right up to a complete birth without any restrictions whatever and without any interference from parents, husbands, or boy friends.  Unrestricted abortion funded by taxpayers remains the position of the President of the U.S., the governor of New York, the Democratic Party, Planned Parenthood, and of many other people; but of only a minority of Americans, according to polls that the mainstream media won’t tell you about, about how many people want a good many restrictions on abortion, e.g., parental consent, how many weeks of pregnancy, practice only by doctors, etc.

Further, if we follow the science—as the President, academics, and the mainstream media selectively urge us regarding climate change and Covid-19, for example—we know indisputably that a pregnant woman carries an unborn human being.  Abortionists try to disguise that fact by calling that human being a fetus, or even “the product of conception”—which is technically correct but deliberately obscures what the “product” is, what the “fetus” is.  It’s not a dog, a monkey, or a sheep but a separate, distinct human being—a person.  Killing that person, Pope Francis has said more than once, is like hiring a hitman to solve a problem.  He’s also called it murder.  A human being as a problem—that’s what the Nazis said of the Jews, the Serbs said of Moslems in Bosnia, the Hutus in Rwanda said of the Tutsis, jihadists say of Christians.

If abortion is the taking of an innocent human life, it’s no different from what happened recently in Buffalo, Uvalde, or Highland Park or what Russia is doing in Ukraine.  Is that how Jesus tells us to recognize our neighbor?

I may be preaching to the choir here.  I hope so.  Yet each of us needs to ask whether there’s anyone whom we don’t recognize and treat as a neighbor, anyone to whom we are not a good Samaritan.

God told the Hebrews:  “This command that I enjoin on you is not too mysterious and remote for you. . . .  It’s something very near to you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out” (Deut 30:11,14).  If we’ll hear the voice of the Lord our God, if we’ll return to him with all our heart and soul, then a path of well-being and prosperity will be open before us:  on our borders, in Ukraine and the Middle East, in our inner cities, in our schools and on our city streets.