Homily for Saturday, Week 14 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Saturday
14th Week of Ordinary Time

July 12, 2025
Gen 49: 29-32; 50: 15-26
Matt 10: 24-33
Provincial House, New Rochelle, N.Y.

Joseph in Egypt
(Jacopo da Pontormo)

“Even tho you meant harm to me, God meant it for good, to achieve his present end, the survival of many people” (Gen 50: 20).

The few passages in the lectionary this week hardly do justice to Joseph’s dramatic story.  We can be sure that he suffered greatly when he was betrayed by his brothers, when he was enslaved, when he was cast into prison on a false charge, when he was forgotten by a released fellow prisoner, when he wondered for years about his father’s well-being.  Only at the end of the story can he see how God has turned so much tragedy into salvation, how God has overcome evil intentions and evil deeds and used them to serve his own purpose.  In fact, that’s a theme in the great Easter proclamation:  “O truly necessary sin of Adam, destroyed completely by the death of Christ!  O happy fault that earned so great, so glorious a Redeemer!” (Exsultet).

Most of us would hesitate to call sin necessary or happy.  Yet we can see a necessity and glory in God’s redemptive work.  What wonders God can do—does do!—in spite of us.

We could read the entire Joseph saga as a prelude to the salvation that God will work for the descendants of Joseph and his brothers.  Their salvation by their going down to Egypt only begins the story that will lead, centuries later, to God’s great work of deliverance, leading Israel out of Egypt by signs and wonders and his confirmation of a permanent relationship with Israel.  What Joseph tells his brothers could be put into God’s mouth, as well:  “Have no fear.  I will provide for you and for your children” (50:21).  In lifting up Joseph for the sake of Jacob’s other sons, God’s just getting started.  The author of Genesis knows this:  “God will surely take care of you and lead you out of this land to the land that he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (50:24).  He’s pointing us toward Moses and Exodus, which we’ll begin reading on Monday.

The story of Jacob’s family is a story of Divine Providence.  God provided for Jacob in his wanderings and struggles.  He provided for Joseph in spite of his brothers’ malice and the mistreatment he suffered from the Egyptians.  He will provide for the children of Israel to get them back to the Promised Land.

Jesus assures us, too, of his Father’s providence.  He cares for even the sparrows (Matt 10:29,31).  How much more will the Father care for the followers of Jesus even when they’re maligned, harassed, and killed.  The martyrs trust in Divine Providence, without fear “of those who kill the body but can’t kill the soul” (10:28):  Christians who remain in Iraq and Syria in spite of ISIS threats; Christians who persevere amid jihadist violence in northern Nigeria; Pakistani Christians who risk being accused of “blasphemy” by neighbors with a grudge; Catholics in China who hold out against the official church.  It’s been said somewhere that the most dangerous job in the world is being a priest in Mexico.

We trust God’s providence to aid our school, our missions, our province, our work for justice and human development.

“It’s enuf for the disciple that he become like his teacher” (10:25).  Our teacher lives, and so will the disciple who faithfully acknowledges the Lord before others (10:32), the disciple who “proclaims on the housetops” (10:27) that Jesus is Lord, the disciple who lives his faith in word and deed, the disciple who lives by the charge given to deacons:  “Believe what you read, teach what you believe, practice what you teach.”  God will provide not an easy life; he will provide redemption.