Homily for Tuesday, Week 22 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
22d Week of Ordinary Time

Sept. 2, 2025
1 Thes 5: 1-6, 9-11
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

“You yourselves know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the nite” (1 Thes 5: 2).

We’re told that the first disciples expected “the day of the Lord” immediately; i.e., the day when Christ would return in glory and complete the redemption of his faithful.

Evidently that didn’t happen.  While we still acknowledge that “he will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead” (Creed), we hardly think about that.

At the same time, we know and do think now and then about our personal day of the Lord.  Most of us probably expect that will come after an illness and maybe a hospitalization, as for 3 of our brothers last month.  But this weekend’s deadly earthquake in Afghanistan reminds us it may not be so.  As does our remembrance of 9/11.  As does our recalling Jesus’ sudden return to our brother Gene Lorenzo a few years ago, or thinking about the risk anytime we get on the interstate.

This isn’t cause for fear.  “All of you are children of the light” (5:5).  Christ has enlightened us with grace.  “God didn’t destine us for wrath, but to gain salvation thru our Lord Jesus Christ” (5:9).  We strive daily to make the Lord our life’s refuge (cf. Ps 27:1), and we look forward to “the day of the Lord” so that we might “dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of [our] lives” (27:4).

We take courage, then, from the closeness of our Lord Jesus to us.  “Therefore, encourage one another and build one another up, as indeed you do” (1 Thes 5:11).