Homily for Tuesday, Week 2 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
Week 2 of Ordinary Time

Jan. 17, 2023
Heb 6: 10-20
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph Residence, New Rochelle

“God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love you have demonstrated for his name” (Heb 6: 10).

As we approach the end of our earthly journey, we might sometimes look behind us and wonder what we’ve accomplished, what heritage we’ve left behind, was our life worth anything, did our vocation amount to anything?

The anchor of hope figures prominently in the SDB coat of arms.

The Letter to the Hebrews holds up to us the virtue of hope, even using the image of an anchor “sure and firm” (6:19).  He assures us that our hope—our hope that God will keep his promises—will be fulfilled.  Whatever we may see when we look back, however we may feel about our accomplishments or our shortcomings, God won’t overlook our work, whether it was big or small, whether people recognized it or not.  God knows it, and he knows the love we brought to it, “the love you have demonstrated for his name” even when that love was imperfect, maybe mixed with a lot of self-love.

We all know that the work of salvation, including our apostolic work, ultimately comes from God and depends on him.  It’s not our own doing except insofar as we’ve allowed him to work thru us—for our own salvation and for the salvation of others.  We remember what Mother Teresa said:  that she just wanted to be a pencil in God’s hand.

But beyond that, Hebrews assures us that we may hope—we may be confident—that God won’t overlook or discount whatever we’ve done, however modest it may have been, however flawed it might have been, whatever we’ve done or tried to do for him and for his people.  “This we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and firm, which reaches into the interior behind the veil,” i.e., into the sacred place where God dwells—“where Jesus has entered on our behalf as forerunner” (6:19-20), i.e., leading the way for us.

He has promised, and we have sure hope, like the Psalmist:  “I will give thanks to the Lord with all my heart in the company and assembly of the just” (111:1).