Homily
for the
21st
Sunday of Ordinary Time
Aug.
22, 2021
Collect
Christian
Brothers, Iona College, New Rochelle, N.Y.
We prayed in
the Collect: “O God, grant your people
to love what you command and to desire what you promise.”
The readings
gave us some specifics about what God commands.
In the 1st reading (Josh 24:1-2,15-18), Joshua led Israel in a renewal
of their covenant with the Lord, the covenant initiated thru Moses at Mt.
Sinai. They promise to serve the Lord
rather than any other god, to be faithful to him alone. He commands fidelity in their worship and in
observance of his particular commandments, most notably those we call the 10
Commandments.
Fidelity is also a topic in the 2d reading, from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians (5:21-32). If we can lay aside the 1st-century cultural overlay—the part about wives being subordinate—we hear a command of mutual love, commitment, and service. This is the basis for any healthy marriage and any healthy family relationship such as our community life. Such a marriage, Paul says, “is a great mystery,” for it’s an image of “Christ and the Church” (5:32). That’s why marriage is a sacrament, an outward sign of the grace Christ brings to human beings.[1] He and the Church are engaged in mutual love, commitment, and service. Our community life also is a mysterious living out of the relationship between Christ and his Church, even if it’s not sacramental.
The gospel reading follows
the key passage in John 6 (vv. 51-59) that we missed last week because of the
feast of the Assumption. In that passage
Christ gave us the command to eat his flesh and drink his blood. As we heard today, many of Jesus’ followers
found this teaching too hard to accept.
And they walked away (6:60,66).
For all these
commands—faithful worship of God alone; mutual love, commitment, and service in
our most basic relationships; and adherence to the Holy Eucharist—we pray that
God grant us a love for them and fidelity in practicing them. For, as Simon Peter says to Jesus in one of
his great professions of faith, “You have the words of eternal life” (6:68).
We prayed to
desire what God promises. He promises us
eternal life. “Amid the uncertainties of
this world,” as the Collect noted, it can be hard to focus on eternity, “on
that place where true gladness is found.”
A couple of
months ago, our political leaders were trumpeting that we’d turned the corner
on Covid-19. Not so certain now. Only a couple of weeks ago, the President was
assuring us of the stability of the Afghan government and its army. Well!
We’re not much more certain than the unfortunate people of Haiti that
we’ll be around in 2 weeks. Covid leaves
us all feeling extremely vulnerable, accidents and violence happen
unexpectedly, some of us are in delicate health. “Amid the uncertainties of this world,” how
do we look to what God has promised?
We might
attend to what the Israelites said of God to Joshua at Shechem: “He performed great miracles before our very
eyes” (Josh 24:17). Eyewitnesses have
testified to the works of Christ. Thru
his saints God has worked and continues to work miracles, whether we mean
unexplainable healings or phenomena like the sudden collapse of the Iron
Curtain in 1989. God testifies that he
remains among us, remains with us, in the Person of his Son: “Christ loved the Church and handed himself
over for her (Eph 5:25), and he continues to do so thru saints like Mother
Teresa and John Paul II and St. Gianna
Molla and modern martyrs like Abp. Oscar Romero and Bl. Stanley Rother and
Chaplain Fr. Vincent
Capodanno. All these and many others
“fixed their hearts on that place where true gladness is found” and always
desired what God has promised us.
We can do that
too: desire God’s promises and live with
our focus on them.
[1] The homily was originally to be
given also in a parish, but the Masses were canceled because of a power
failure.
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