Homily for Thursday, Week 31 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday
31st Week of Ordinary Time

Nov. 7, 2024
Psalm 105: 2-7
Luke 15: 1-10
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Jesrapo, high school pep assembly
 licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported

I suppose that most of you attended pep rallies during your years as students or teachers.  There probably was a lot of enthusiastic noise and activity.  We’ve at least heard about or seen images of enthusiastic fans of Sinatra, the Beatles, Woodstock, political campaign events, or JPII at a youth rally.  Can’t say that I ever participated in those sorts of events; concelebrating Masses with JPII was quite different from his youth rallies.  When I was a student of theology in Columbus, I went to a Jerry Ford appearance in 1976 on the statehouse grounds.  Our SDB residence was about 4 blocks from the capitol.  You can be sure that a Ford campaign event was nothing like a Trump appearance, not even with Woody Hayes introducing the candidate.  (Even in 1976 we had to pass thru metal detectors to enter the capitol grounds for the event.  This was a year after Squeaky Fromme had tried to shoot the President.  I have no idea how I was able to recall her name.)

The responsorial psalm today suggests a pep rally:  “Let hearts rejoice who search for the Lord” (105:3).  The psalmist recalls “the wondrous deeds that the Lord has wrought, his portents, and the judgments he has uttered” (v. 5)—remembering Israel’s delivery from Egypt.  Later generations of Jews might also recall delivery from exile in Babylon.

We recall and celebrate Christ’s delivering us from our sins.  It’s not so much that we’ve searched for God and found him as that he’s searched for and found us, as Jesus teaches in today’s 2 parables (Luke 15:1-10).  St. Paul rejoiced that he’d finally come to “know the supreme good of Christ Jesus my Lord” (Phil 3:8).  Like him, we rejoice and sing the praise of the God because he found us, wandering sheep, lost drachmas.  (A drachma was equivalent to a denarius—not chump change.)  We “look to the Lord in his strength” (105:4).

Even more, God rejoices to have found us and rescued us—from the wilderness of our sins, from some dark, dusty corner of our souls.  He forgives us.  We seek, then, “to serve him constantly” (105:4) as we “recall the judgments he has uttered” (v. 5), especially the judgment that our sins are forgiven and he calls us his friends (John 15:13-15).  He invites us to “sing his praise, proclaim all his wondrous deeds” (105:2), and express our gratitude in an eternal pep rally.

The Gate to Heaven
(Andrea di Bonaiuto)