Homily for the
16th Sunday of Ordinary Time
July 20, 2025
Gen 18: 1-10
Luke 10: 38-42
The Fountains, Tuckahoe, N.Y.
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
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| Abraham welcomes 3 visitors (James Tissot) |
“The Lord appeared to Abraham … as he sat in the entrance of his tent” (Gen 18: 1).
The story from Genesis today is
about 2 matters, one primary and one secondary in this context. The primary matter is the Lord’s visit to
Abraham. Without saying it explicitly, the
Lord’s visit presents us with the Triune God.
The Lord (who is one) comes to Abraham in the appearance of 3 men. This one-and-3 presence runs thru the story.
Abraham welcomes these unexpected
visitors, practicing the most precious virtue of the people of the Middle East,
the virtue of hospitality. That virtue
comes up also, as you surely noticed, in today’s gospel.
The 2d matter in the Genesis story
is the imminent fulfillment, at long last, of God’s promise to Abraham that he
and Sarah shall have a son.
The matter of the 3 visitors will
lead us next week to yet another story, the reason behind the Lord’s unexpected
appearance. Come back next week—or pick
up your Bible—to see where the story’s going.
Today Abraham is simply doing what
he does every day, sitting in the shade of his tent during the day’s heat. He has servants to see to his herds and
flocks, and Sarah has servants to manage the domestic chores. In this “everyday” setting, God comes to them. God comes in the ordinary affairs of the day.
The Letter to the Hebrews advises us
that in times past, God’s people by their hospitality unknowingly entertained
angels (13:1). That’s a reference to
this story of Abraham. Entertaining
Angels is the title of a film biography of Dorothy Day—not because God came
to her as he did to Abraham but because she welcomed the down and out of this
world into her Catholic Worker homes.
She took to heart Christ’s words about caring for the hungry, thirsty, ragged,
and sick as one would care for Christ himself.
When Pope Francis addressed Congress
in September 2015, he told them, “Legislative activity is always best based on
care for the people. To this you have been invited, called and convened by
those who elected you.” He went on to
cite 4 great Americans who “offer us a way of seeing and interpreting reality”
and of being “inspired … in the here and now of each day, to draw upon our
deepest cultural reserves.” Those 4
great Americans were Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Dorothy Day, and
Thomas Merton.
Dorothy Day, like Abraham, was able
to see God present in her ordinary daily life and to offer his presence a kind
of hospitality—not without struggle on how to “lift the heart to God, … except
to say…, ‘Lord, I’ll have no time to think of Thee but do Thou think of me’”—as
she, a single mother, dealt with raising her daughter and all the concerns of New
York’s needy people, and prayed when she could “for Russia, for our own
country, for our fellowmen, our fellow workers, for the sick, the starving, the
dying, the dead.” “So I must try harder,”
she wrote, “to pause even for a fraction of a minute over and over again
throughout the day, to reach toward God…,” besides in her few quiet moments in
church or by her bed at day’s end.[1]
Such is a busy woman’s habit of
welcoming God into her heart, not in a long, concentrated period of prayer but
from one moment to another. Such is the
hospitality that Jesus proposes to his dear friend Martha, so busy scurrying
about her kitchen and the dinner table, so fretful (Luke 10:40-41) because her
sister Mary “has chosen the better part, sitting beside the Lord at his feet
listening to him speak” (40:39,42). Both
women were being hospitable to the Lord, like Abraham—0ne offering a meal and one
her company. We, likewise, can and must
welcome the Lord into our homes—that warm place we call the heart—with prayer,
listening to the Lord speak, and with going about our daily work and with
tending to the people in our lives. When
we work and attend to others with Jesus at least in the back of our minds, with
a general intention to love him and serve him, then we’re practicing the
ancient Christian spirituality of the presence of God. We’re prepared to “entertain angels” like
Abraham or Dorothy Day. We’re keeping
Jesus present, whether we’re active like Martha or quiet like Mary.
[1] From On Pilgrimage (Grand
Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), quoted in Magnificat, July 2025, pp. 279-280.
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