Homily for 23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 8, 2024
Ps 146: 6-10
Notre Dame Sisters, Villa Maria, Bronx

“The Lord sets captives free” (Ps 146: 7).

In the collect we prayed for “true freedom and an everlasting inheritance.”  Isaiah promised that the God of Israel would come thru with salvation, salvation expressed in healing and in landscapes transformed by water (35:4-7).  Jesus heals a deaf man who has a speech impediment besides (Mark 7:31-35).  St. James points to the richness that comes from faith and inheriting God’s kingdom (2:5).

Salesian Missions' Clean Water Initiative provides villages in Africa
with new boreholes, hand pumps, and in some projects, water tanks.

Freedom from physical ailments is a wonderful blessing—as we who feel the effects of age know well.  Freedom from a harsh environment or from environmental degradation is a blessing.  Missionaries point to Christ and his blessings by working to heal bodies with medical care, to heal hearts broken by injustice and violence, to improve people’s lives by providing safe drinking water and by providing homes for orphans and schools for the young.  Thru missionaries, “The Lord raises up those who are bowed down” (Ps 146:5).

But the greatest freedom offered to us is that God saves us from our sins and their penalty.  Our faith in Christ leads us to this “true freedom” (Collect), to the “divine recompense” of the Savior (cf. Is 35:4).  Our “everlasting inheritance” (Collect) will be the new creation, the new Jerusalem, of which the book of Revelation speaks, where the blind shall see, the deaf hear, the mute speak, and the lame leap (cf. Is 35:5-6), as foreshadowed by Christ’s healing ministry.  Our inner selves, our hearts shall be made clean and new, as Ezekiel promised (11:19), fulfilling the new covenant that Jesus contracts with us as a gift of divine grace (cf. Jer 31:31; Luke 22:20).

Pope Leo the Great’s sermon on the beatitudes speaks of this wondrous transformation of our selves:  the bodies of the saints “will be transformed by a joyous resurrection and clothed in the glory of immortality.  No longer opposed in any way to their spirits, their bodies will remain in perfect harmony and unity with the will of the soul.  Then, indeed, the outer [person] will be the peaceful and unblemished possession of the inner [person].”  Our perishable nature will be clothed with immortality, St. Leo adds, citing St. Paul (LOH 4:216; cf. 1 Cor 15:53).

So, thru the grace of Jesus will the Lord set the captives free from our sinful, perishable nature and make us “heirs of the kingdom that he promised to those who love him” (Jas 2:5).