Homily for 23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Homily for the
23d Sunday of Ordinary Time

Sept. 6, 2026
Collect
Rom 13: 8-10
Villa Maria, Bronx
St. Francis Xavier, Bronx
Our Lady of the Assumption, Bronx

John Paul II w Card Wyszynski in Poland, 1979.
Wikipedia, public domain

“O God, … may those who believe in Christ receive true freedom and an everlasting inheritance” (Collect).

When Pope John Paul II in 1979 made his 1st trip back to Poland after his election, tens of thousands of Polish factory workers, miners, farmers, housewives, and students gathered to celebrate Mass with him and to hear him preach.  To the great embarrassment of the Communist party bosses, they took up the chant, “We want God!” repeated over and over.

The Communists had promised that eliminating God from Polish life would free people to make great material progress and find happiness.  They’d promised to create a workers’ paradise.  Polish reality was something else.

Government propaganda couldn’t convince anyone to be satisfied with their lives.  Anyone could see thru the lies their leaders told them about religion, progress, and their Soviet friends.  One bitter joke circulating behind the Iron Curtain had a Communist commissar asking a worker how much 2 + 2 added up to.  The worker responded, “How much would you like it to be?”

Human beings want truth—not only in math but in culture, politics, and philosophy.  We want truth about who we are and what we’re created for.  So the Poles demanded God and the freedom to believe, to pray, to practice their faith and to be treated as images of God, not creatures of the state.  They demanded the freedom to “sing joyfully to the Lord, … to come into his presence with thanksgiving” (Ps 95:1-2).

The truth of who we are and what we’re created for involves our dependence on God, who created us in his image and made us for love—love for him and for our sisters and brothers.  “He is our God, and we are the people he shepherds, the flock he guides” (Ps 95:7).  He’s given us a moral code, true guidance toward happiness as human beings.  St. Paul cites part of that in our 2d reading:  “You shall not commit adultery; you shall not kill; you shall not steal; you shall not covet.  You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  Love does no evil to the neighbor” (Rom 13:9-10).

Human experience demonstrates that moral failures—selfishness, sexual misadventures, lies, greed, gossip, etc.—don’t lead us to happiness.  Rather, they enslave us and make us miserable.  Moral failures deny the truth of who we are and what God intends for us.  He made us in his image, created us to be his “beloved sons and daughters” (Collect) and confirmed that in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ.  Adhering to Christ—“we want God!”—keeps us in truth and promises us “an everlasting inheritance” (Collect), the inheritance he wants to bestow on his children, the sisters and brothers our Lord Jesus.