Homily for Tuesday
Week 17 of Ordinary Time
July 30, 2024
Jer 14: 17-22
Matt 13: 36-43
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence,
N.R.
Those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours find familiar today’s reading from Jeremiah.[1] If there’s a prophet of doom in the Old Testament, it surely is Jeremiah. Yesterday with a parable he lamented the rot in Judah and Jerusalem (13:1-11), and today he mourns the destruction of his city, his country, and his people—all because of their wickedness (14:20).
We may feel
similarly about Western civilization.
Benedict XVI often lamented that the West was forgetting its Christian
roots, and rootless, was descending into relativism, materialism, a culture of
death (St. John Paul II’s term), exploitation of the environment, and war. In our country, one major candidate campaigns
for unrestricted abortion and the other wants to deport 12 million people and
abandon an entire nation to a brutal dictator.
But we’re neither
alone nor helpless, as Jesus’ parable notes.
Yes, the Evil One’s weeds are in our midst, but so is God’s good
wheat. We pray, like the psalmist
(79:8), for God’s compassionate care. We
pray that he overlook our own failures, protect his wheat, help us grow and
stay healthy. We wish to be his wheat, and
we wish to cultivate God’s field with care (that’s a mixed metaphor, I’m
sure). We maintain our hope—the theme of
the coming jubilee year—in Christ’s power still to transform us (to continue to
convert us to his Gospel) and, thru us, to renew society. “Then we, your people and the sheep of your
pasture, will give thanks to you forever” (Ps 79:13).
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