Homily for the
12th Sunday of Ordinary
Time
June 21, 2026
Rom 5: 12-15
St. Francis Xavier,
Bronx
“Thru
one man sin entered the world, and thru sin, death (Rom 5: 12).
Adam & Eve expelled
from Paradise (Masaccio)
The
one man of whom St. Paul speaks is Adam, the one father of the human race
according to the creation stories of the book of Genesis.
We
don’t have to read those stories as literal history in order to understand
their theology, the truth they convey as divine revelation, just as we don’t
read the parable of the Good Samaritan as something that actually happened.
The
truth of the 1st chapters of Genesis is that God made the world good and full
of life. Human choices—like the
arrogance and disobedience displayed by the man and the woman in the Garden of
Eden—marked a turning away from God, from goodness, beauty, and harmony. Sin isn’t God’s doing, but ours. Death and disorder in the universe aren’t
from God but from rejecting God. “Thru a
human being sin entered the world, and thru sin, death.”
God
is able to deal with that. He has put
into operation Plan B, as it were, the recovery operation of his own Son: “the gracious gift of the one man Jesus
Christ overflows for the many” (5:15).
Jesus of Nazareth, crucified because he was faithful to God his Father,
rose from the grave. He conquered death,
and thru his risen life offers to all men and women a free and complete pardon
from sin and from the penalty of sin, viz., damnation and death.
The Last Supper (detail)
by Dagnan-Bouveret
St.
Paul teaches that this “gracious gift” of God “overflows for the many.” It overflows without limit, and it’s “for
many,” the phrase Jesus used at the Last Supper when he gave to his disciples
the cup of his blood of the new covenant, poured out for the redemption of
sinners. “For many,” not for a limited
few. Not only for those who followed
Jesus there and then; not for the apostles or our Blessed Mother only. Not for the Jewish people only. But for as many as would follow him and put
their faith in him, “from the rising of the sun to its setting,” as the 3d
Eucharistic Prayer says—without a limit of time or space. God’s grace is boundless when we turn away
from sin and turn toward him.
We
can join Jeremiah in praising the Lord for rescuing the lives of the poor, us
poor sinners; for rescuing us from the power of the wicked (20:13), i.e., from
Satan and his gang of fallen angels.
