Homily for 23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
23d Sunday of Ordinary Time
Sept. 9, 1990
Ezek 33: 7-9
Matt 18: 15-20
Holy Cross, Fairfield, Conn.

“You, son of man, I have appointed watchman for the house of Israel” (Ezek 33: 7).

One of the books I read this summer was Drums along the Mohawk.  It’s a story in which watchmen and scouts play a critical role.  Time after time a frontier community is saved from the Indians because men are watching.  On several occasions, however, disaster falls because those responsible let down their guard.

The Lord God compares the prophet Ezekiel to a watchman, charged with warning the people about approaching danger, to warn even individuals that they’re wandering toward moral peril.

Those who designed our lectionary chose the Ezekiel passage as a parallel for the gospel.  The gospel, too, speaks of warning individuals that they’re straying from the straight and narrow.  But in the gospel it’s not only prophets who are presented as watchmen; it’s the Church.

Who has the role of watchman today?  In a special way it’s the appointed leaders of the Church.  Two weeks ago we heard Christ commission Peter as the rock foundation of the Church, and we heard Christ give him the keys of the kingdom of heaven and the power to bind and loose.  As we hear today, he also gives this binding and loosing power to the whole Church—a power, obviously, that can be exercised only by those who speak for the Church.  So the role of watchman for the safety of our souls belongs today to the successors of Peter and the apostles, viz., the Pope and the bishops.  By God’s word, and under God’s word, these are the guardians, our shepherds, in faith and morals, in all that concerns our salvation.  Both Ezekiel and Jesus warn us of serious consequences if we ignore the watchman’s warnings:  “If you warn the wicked man to turn from his way, and he does not turn from his way, he shall die in iniquity” (Ezek 33:9); “If he refuses to listen even to the Church, let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector,” i.e. an outcast, and this doom will be ratified in heaven (Matt 18:17-18).

It’s not just the Pope and bishops who are watchmen, however.  Who has the Church always recognized as the 1st and most important teachers?  Parents!  E.g., in the rite of Baptism, parents and godparents are told:

You have come here to present this child for baptism.  By water and the Holy Spirit he is to receive the gift of new life from God, who is love.  On your part, you must make it your constant care to bring him up in the practice of the faith.  See that the divine life which God gives him is kept safe from the poison of sin, to grow always in his heart. (#56)

What happens to a sentry who’s caught sleeping on duty?  Today he probably will spend time in the stockade or the brig.  In former times he would have been executed, for his negligence had put an entire army or city at risk of being surprised by an enemy.

The Night Watch

By Rembrandt - www.rijksmuseum.nl. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/

Parents and other relatives are responsible before God, like Ezekiel, for the younger members of the family; to teach them, guide them, give them good example, encourage them, warn them, discipline them.  The Lord’s warning to the negligent watchman is not pleasant:  “If … you do not speak to warn the wicked to turn away from his way, the wicked man shall die in his iniquity, but his blood I will require at your hand” (Ezek 33:8).

Bishops, priests, and parents have to take words such as these quite seriously.  We’re not talking here about losing scalps to the Indians but about the salvation of our immortal selves.

At the same time we also have to recognize individual responsibility.  Parents aren’t responsible for their children forever.  Children grow up and become capable of making their own moral and doctrinal decisions.  Parental influence and training becomes one of many factors in their world and in their hearts.  At that point, parents can only offer sound advice and good example.

The Church, too, recognizes individual responsibility.  The 2d Vatican Council, e.g., teaches:

In accordance with their dignity, all men, because they are persons, i.e., endowed with reason and free will and therefore bearing personal responsibility, are both impelled by their nature and bound by a moral obligation to seek the truth, especially religious truth.  They are also bound to adhere to the truth once they come to know it and direct their whole lives in accordance with the demands of truth….  It is through his conscience that man sees and recognizes the demands of the divine law.  He is bound to follow this conscience faithfully in all his activity so that he may come to God, who is his last end. (DH 2).

So, in accordance with today’s Scriptures, the Church has the obligation to speak out as a watchman and warn us when we stray from the true path of salvation.  As we also heard, her warning may be so strong as to mean that the one who strays has left the community of faith and is in serious danger of being lost eternally.  But the Church can’t force anyone to be converted, i.e., to turn from sin to repentance.  God leaves each of us so free that we can even reject his grace and his love.

Of this we can be sure:  God is the rock of our salvation (Ps 95:1), and Christ has promised to be in the midst of his Church until the end of time.  Whenever, wherever, 2 or 3 have gathered sincerely to pray to the Father in Christ’s name, he will be with them.