Homily for 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Aug. 17, 2025
Heb 12: 1-4
Jer 38: 4-6, 8-10
Villa Maria, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

“Let us … keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith” (Heb 12: 2).

The Letter to the Hebrews pictures Jesus as our leader in faith, using the analogy of a race (12:1), as St. Paul also does in 3 of his letters (1 Cor 9:24; Phil 2:16; 2 Tim 4:7) and in Acts (20:24).  Most of us probably would consider our earthly pilgrimage more like a trek, a slog, a slow plodding along rather than as a race.  But the point’s the same.

One translation (RSV) calls Jesus the “pioneer” of our faith.  A pioneer, you know, is someone who opens the path into uncharted territory, like Daniel Boone or Lewis and Clark.

Jesus “endured the cross, despising its shame” (12:2), humiliation, and excruciating pain.  The word excruciating originates in the Latin crux, “cross.”  Jesus did that “for the sake of the joy that lay before him” (12:2), which is the joy of the resurrection and eternal life.  In this he is, indeed, our pioneer; or, as St. Paul calls him, “the firstborn of many brothers and sisters” (Rom 8:29), the 1st human being to rise from the grave to new, everlasting life.

On Friday we celebrated the feast of the Virgin Mary’s assumption into heaven, her entrance body and soul into eternal life alongside her Son.  That’s God’s promise to all of us who follow Jesus Christ, our leader, our pioneer, in this race or this trek, this long pilgrimage toward our eternal home.  In the collect (the prayer of the Mass), we prayed to God that “we may attain your promises.”

We take hope and courage from Jesus’ leadership, the “perfecter of our faith,” i.e., the one who completes it by bringing us where God wants us to be.  We take hope and courage from his cross, that we “may not grow weary and lose heart” (12:3), and from Jeremiah’s experience of being thrown into the mud and left to die by the faithless leaders of God’s people.  God saw that Jeremiah got rescued from the muddy cistern—let’s note that he was rescued by a foreigner, a Cushite, an African.  And God also saw that the bloody, battered body of Jesus was raised whole, entire, and renewed from the grave.

God has “prepared for those who love” him (collect) the same eternal life.  Even tho we suffer as we follow Jesus’ path, we know—as we’ll pray after Communion—that when we are “conformed to his image on earth,” God is making us Jesus’ “coheirs in heaven.”  Therefore, sisters and brothers, we work to “persevere in running the race that lies before us” (12:1), or slogging along the road, but at whatever pace following Jesus our leader, our pioneer.