Homily for Tuesday, Week 14 of Ordinary Time

Homily for Tuesday
14th Week of Ordinary Time
Memorial of the Chinese Martyrs

July 9, 2024
Matt 9: 32-38
Christian Brothers, St. Joseph’s Residence, N.R.

Jesus today drives a demon out of a possessed man (Matt 9:32-33).  On this memorial of 120 Chinese martyrs, we may recall that the greater number of them were slain during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, when ultra-nationalist Chinese intended to drive all the "foreign devils" out of their country.  They made missionaries of all faiths a main target, more easily targeted than merchants and consular officials in large cities; cf. the 1963 epic 55 Days at Peking (starring Charlton Heston).  The Christian faithful, too, were targeted:  foreign and native, young and old, men and women, clergy and laity.  It was a kind of perversion, given that so many of the missionaries were, like Jesus, going around towns and villages, teaching and curing diseases (cf. 9:35) thru schools and clinics, as well as proclaiming the Gospel.

The harvest for God’s laborers was abundant in China and remains abundant today, everywhere (9:37)—a poor world wracked by interminable violence, hunger, poverty, and lack of schooling and real health care.  The world demonically calls killing “health care” and sexual perversion “human rights” and attacks churches, religious imagery, and pro-life centers.

We can only take up “the confession of the martyrs” and be “faithful to the mission entrusted to” us, witnessing “to the truth before the world” (Collect)—the truth that Jesus is Lord, and thru us extends his compassion toward all who are troubled and abandoned and in need of a shepherd’s care (Matt 9:36), in whatever way we can be present to his sheep, as Francis encourages us, and always commending the sheep to the Lord and to public concern.