Ordinary 25

The Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time 2017 – Cycle A Isaiah, 55:6-9; Psalm 145; Philippians 1:20-24, 27; Matthew 20:1-16

“If I speak out they will kill me.  If I remain silent, what kind of pastor would I be?”

These are the words and thoughts of Stanley Francis Rother, a priest of the Diocese of Oklahoma City and missionary as he was discerning whether to return to work among the poor Mayan people in Guatemala.  They are reminiscent of the words of the prophets we have heard the past three Sundays.

Jeremiah painfully lamenting,  “Whenever I speak, I must cry out, violence and outrage is my message…I say to myself, I will not mention God, I will speak in God’s name no more.  But then it becomes like fire burning in my heart, imprisoned in my bones.  I grow weary holding it in, I cannot endure it.” 

God in speaking to the priest Ezekiel gives a hard warning to the prophet, “If I tell the wicked…”you shall surely die”,and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from their way, the wicked will die for their guilt, but I will hold you responsible for their death.”

The prophet Isaiah recalls in faith, “The Lord God opens my ear that I may hear; and I have not rebelled, have not turned back. The Lord God is my help, therefore I am not disgraced…”

To follow Jesus is not easy.  It is a burden.

Have you ever felt, like Jeremiah, that you wanted nothing more to do with God but also felt you had no choice but to carry a heaviness weighing on your heart, the heaviness of the presence of God?

Do we understand that we are responsible for each other’s actions?  …and will be held accountable if we remain silent when we should have spoken up?  …spoken up to correct, …spoken up in warning.  This includes individuals, groups, corporations and governments.  The prophets spoke to individual sinners, to the whole House of Israel, to the Kings of Israel, pharaohs of Egypt and emperors of Rome!  Blessed Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador charged the government and military death squads of his nation to stop killing their sisters and brothers.  Our own Catholic bishops have spoken up for migrants, refugees and the world’s displaced.  Pope Francis challenged the American Congress and people by causing us to face ourselves in the values of Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton.  People of faith and those of no faith; yet all concerned for the common good are speaking up about the underlying issue of racism, our nation’s original sin, the environment and immigration.

“If I remain silent, what kind of pastor would I be?”

If we remain silent, what kind of Christian would we be?

I have to wonder that if we have not had similar experiences as Stanley Rother, Ezekiel, Teresa of Kolkata, Jeremiah, Abraham, the martyred missionaries: Dorothy Kazel, Ita Ford, Maura Clarke, and Jean Donovan, Isaiah, Teresa of Avila, Oscar Romero,…if we have not experienced the spiritual anguish, the heaviness, the questioning, the fear, are we in relationship with God?

Our God is a demanding God.  Ask Abraham as he raised his knife to sacrifice his son.  Ask Saint Monica, who prayed for thirty years for her immoral and self–indulgent son, Augustine.  Ask Saint Teresa of Kolkata who felt nothing of God’s presence for most of her life.  Ask Syrian and Iraqi Christians, being persecuted, martyred and forced from the homes.  Ask Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane and crying out from the cross.  Our God is a demanding God.  Our God demanded from Stanley Rother, priest, missionary, martyr.

Men and women like Stanley Rother are not naïve.  They eventually understand they will be murdered.  They experience fear.  They allow their faith and trust in God and commitment to their people to overcome their fear.  They neither want nor desire martyrdom.

Fr. Rother, was an unassuming and mild mannered person.  While he served in Guatemala, a civil war raged and the Catholic Church was caught in the middle due to its insistence on educating the people. Catechists began to disappear, people slept in the church for protection and death lists began to circulate in the towns.  Eventually Rother’s name appeared on the lists.  For what reason?  Stanley ministered to his parishioners and ate with them,

visited the sick and put his farming skills to use by helping them in the fields, bringing in different crops, and building an irrigation system.  He defend his people and giving them a voice where they had none.  Within a few months of his return to Guatemala, three men entered the rectory in the middle of the night on 28 July 1981, fought with Father Rother and then executed him. No one was ever held responsible.

“If I speak out they will kill me.  If I remain silent, what kind of pastor would I be?”

Dorothy Kazel, pray for us.

Ita Ford, pray for us.

Maura Clarke, pray for us.

Jean Donovan, pray for us.

Blessed Oscar Romero, pray for us.

Blessed Stanley Rother, pray for us.