Homily
for the
11th
Sunday of Ordinary Time
June
13, 2021
2
Cor 5: 6-10
Holy
Name of Jesus, New Rochelle, N.Y.
St.
Theresa, Bronx
“We know that
while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord” (2 Cor 5: 6).
We returned to
Ordinary Time, the “green season,” on May 24, but because of Trinity Sunday and
the solemnity of Corpus Christi on the following Sundays, today is the 1st
Sunday in which we actually return to one of the “ordered” Sundays, the
numbered Sundays, that give this liturgical season its name, Ordinary Time.
When we left
off Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday, we were reading from St. Paul’s 1st
Letter to the Corinthians. Now we’ll
have several weeks of reading from 2d Corinthians.
In today’s passage, 5 verses, Paul speaks of a certain tension in Christian life. On this earth, in our physical bodies, we’re not completely at home. Our true home, he says, is with Christ. To live in this world separated from Christ—“away from the Lord” is how he puts it, not meaning a separation from grace or from God’s love but a physical separation—requires that we be “courageous.” He uses that word twice (5:6,8). That’s because “we walk by faith, not be sight” (5:7). We don’t see our Lord Jesus, risen from the dead. We don’t feel his presence. We can’t probe the wounds in his hands and side as St. Thomas did. He’s present to us only by faith.
So we need
courage to follow him, to worship him, to obey his teachings—all in the midst
of a world that is unbelieving (as much of our society and our culture, is unbelieving
and even hostile, like the pagan world of 1st-century Corinth).
Paul is
certainly speaking for himself when he writes, “We would rather leave the body
and go home to the Lord” (5:8). Christ
died to redeem us from sin and from death.
As soon as we can leave those realities behind and join him in the life
of the resurrection, our destiny will be achieved; we’ll enjoy eternal
happiness. God created us for this; the
Son of God took on a body of flesh and blood for this—to unite himself to us
and bring us into eternal life in a transfigured body like his own risen body.
So, Paul
continues, as long as we’re here on earth, in this present body, subject to
temptation and to harassment by unbelievers—not to mention to physical pains
and sufferings and the loss of people we love—as long as that’s our present
condition, Paul affirms, “we aspire to please him, whether we are at home or
away” (5:9). That is, when we come to
our heavenly home, we’ll live always pleasing him; while we’re away from our
heavenly homeland, the destination of our pilgrimage here below, we strive to
please him by living virtuously:
honestly, devoutly, chastely, generously, patiently, forgiving,
respecting others.
Then Paul
sounds an almost ominous note: “For we
must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ” (5:10). We profess every Sunday, “He will come again
in glory to judge the living and the dead.”
He’ll take a place on his judicial bench (at least figuratively) and
weigh our lives: our words, our deeds,
our omissions, “my thoughts and my words, what I have done and what I have
failed to do,” as we sometimes confess at the beginning of Mass. Again, it takes courage to keep Christ before
our minds and our hearts, day in and day out and to try to cling to him when we’re
irritated or stressed or tired or tempted by the 7 capital sins (pride, lust,
anger, envy, gluttony, sloth, and greed).
Paul concludes
this little passage by assuring us that each of us will “receive recompense,
according to what he did in the body, whether good or evil” (5:10). We’ll get our just desserts, so to
speak. Actually, since we’re sinners, we
won’t get what we deserve; rather, by Christ’s grace, if we’ve striven
to stay close to him, we’ll get far more than we deserve: an eternal reward, an eternal home, with him.
Therefore,
brothers and sisters, be of good courage always. Continue to walk by faith.
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