Homily for 14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
14th Sunday of Ordinary Time

July 7, 2024
2 Cor 12: 7-10
Villa Maria, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12: 9).

It may be hard for us to think that the saints were weak men and women, men and women who had faults, sometimes exercised poor judgment, struggled with temptation, even sinned.  For instance, many people were astounded to learn from her letters that Mother Teresa lived for years in darkness, without experiencing the warm closeness of Jesus.  It was a form of human weakness which, however, didn’t shake her faith that God did indeed love her and that she was doing his work when she cared for the most abandoned people of Calcutta and founded a congregation of sisters to do that ministry around the world—even on East 145th Street in the Bronx.

(source unknown)

St. Paul experienced God’s grace most dramatically when he was knocked off his feet and encountered the living Jesus on the road to Damascus; none of the 3 accounts of his conversion in the Acts of the Apostles mention a horse.  That grace turned him from a fiery persecutor of Christians into a bold preacher of the Gospel, the apostle to the Gentiles.

Yet not without weakness.  He writes to his friends in Corinth of “a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to beat me, to keep from being too elated” (12:7).  Many commentators have speculated on what that thorn was—some physical disease or weariness from his journeys (always on foot), some constant temptation, remorse over his anti-Christian past, grief that his ardent temperament alienated some people, an inner fear of the hatred and persecution he met in so many places.

We don’t have to know, only to know that it bothered him a lot but that the Lord assured him of grace, that altho the thorn couldn’t be removed, the power of Christ would overcome it.  Christ’s power is greater than anyone’s weakness.  Christ’s power is greater than all our sins.  So Paul could say he was “content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and constraints, for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:10).  Someone who knows he or she is too weak to deal with life, too weak to resist temptation, too afraid to stand faithfully with Christ, too much of a sinner—that someone can turn to Christ for the power to face life, temptation, and fear and ask forgiveness.

In the years leading up to my ordination (a long time ago), I was quite aware of my sins, failings, and weaknesses, and I hesitated to go forward.  The DRE of the parish where I taught catechism had given me a poster with an Alpine image and a psalm verse on it:  “And they [Israel] remembered that God was their strength” (78:35).  I referred to that constantly and eventually put it on my ordination memorial card.  Acknowledging my weakness, as St. Paul did, makes room for God to bring his grace into my life and, thru me, into the lives of others.

All of us have thorns in our flesh, temptations and challenges that discourage us.  If the saints did, should we be surprised?  Like the saints, we can turn to our Lord Jesus, who had not only one thorn but a crown of thorns; whose power overcame death and promises to overcome all our weaknesses and even our sins.  As we prayed in the collect, God’s Son was made low by taking on our human flesh and being made to suffer; thus he raised up our fallen world and rescues us from slavery to sin and offers us eternal gladness, everlasting life at his side (Collect).