Homily for 2d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
2d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Jan. 19, 2020

Collect
Christians Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
Ursulines, Willow Dr., New Rochelle

“Almighty ever-living God, … mercifully … bestow your peace on our times” (Collect).

Our country has been at war in Afghanistan since 2001, in Iraq since 2002.  A short time ago, we seemed about to go to war with Iran.  Some might say that Iran has already been at war with us for 40 years.  But presently people have been praying for peace.

As we look around the globe, we see numerous places that need peace, in some of which America has been involved; but many of these numerous places hardly register in Western media.  Ongoing civil war in the eastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo, for instance, has taken millions of lives.  Insurgencies go on and on in the Philippines, Colombia, Burma, and Yemen, to list just a few places.  We’re all aware of drug wars in Mexico, gang violence in certain countries in Central America, and the murderous battles over land, logging, and mining in the Amazon region.  Muslim terrorists are in action from the western Sahara to Afghanistan in the east.  India sees repeated violence between Hindus and other religious groups.  Russia makes war on Ukraine and harasses other parts of its former empire.  In our own cities, people, especially young people, are gunned down in horrific numbers day after day, month after month.

Part of an exhibit at the Murambi memorial

to the Rwandan genocide

Why all this violence?  Altho it’s not in today’s readings, St. James tells us in the 4th chapter of his letter:  “Where do the wars and … conflicts among you come from?  Is it not from your passions that make war within your members?  You covet but do not possess.  You kill and envy but you cannot obtain; you fight and wage war” (4:1-2).

James also proposes the remedy:  “Submit yourselves to God.  Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (4:7-8).

So in our prayer today we beg the Lord to bestow peace upon us.  In fact, we make a similar prayer at every Mass as we prepare for holy Communion:  “Deliver us, Lord, we pray from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress….”

In this prayer, as in the Letter of St. James, we make the connection between peace and the ways of the Lord, the help of the Lord.  Peace in our hearts is related to our being free from sin, being at peace with God, living in his grace.  Peace in society is the fruit of the same relationship—whether we mean peace in our homes and families, peace in our streets, peace in our public discourse and policy-making, peace between nations, races, tribes, ethnic groups, social classes, or religions.  “Peace in our times” follows only from our being at peace with our Father in heaven, from doing his will and not our own.

A commentator on the sacred liturgy noted in an address last summer “that everyone worships something.”  All persons are made for worship.  We want to worship something or someone, and need to do so.  He continues, “But we can and do worship the wrong things,” e.g., power, money, sex, fame, pleasure, beauty, eternal youth, “and worshipping the wrong things can be deadly.”[1]  Worshipping the wrong things is idolatry; we become selfish, egotistical, and competitive.  Politics becomes a zero-sum competition rather than public service.  We harbor grudges because our pride’s been hurt.  Men and women use each other without respect for their God-given dignity and eternal value.  War, violence, and abuse and arise “from your passions that make war within your members,” St. James says.

In our hearts we find no lasting satisfaction in that, nothing that lasts, nothing truly worthy of worship.  The same commentator then reminds us of St. Augustine’s most famous teaching, his conclusion after his years of ambition, pursuing a career and sexual pleasure; he addresses our Creator:  “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Blessing of the Wheat in Artois

(Jules Breton)

In the Lord do we find the peace he wishes to bestow upon us.  Peace begins within us, with our commitment to him.  Thence it spreads outward as we try to share God’s goodness with our families, our religious community, and others.  We pray for divine peace in international relations, in Washington, in societies broken by greed and ambition, in the souls of people everywhere.  For this were we created; like life itself, it’s a gift from our Creator.  “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.”

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       [1] “Address of Dr. Timothy O’Malley on University-Level Liturgical Formation,” Bishops’ Committee on Divine Worship Newsletter, October 2019, p. 36, citing in part a speech by David Foster Wallace.