Ordinary 32

The Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

2020 – Cycle A – Wisdom 6:12-16; Psalm 63; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18; Matthew 25:1-13

Our national election is over and if it has confirmed anything, it is what we have already known for a while. We are a divided people. We have come to a hopeless precipice of division because we are unwilling to respect and listen to each other. People, groups and movements are whitewashed with demonizing names that are purposefully meant to conceal the truth. There is a presumption that the intent of the actions, meanings and objectives of another person or group are suspect and unacceptable. Compromise is therefore no longer possible and is considered a failure and betrayal.

And is not the same attitude presently true within our Catholic Church? The demarcation is not a political party but where you stand in relationship to the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council. In this light for example, I expect you have heard about Pope Francis’ recent remark in favour of civil unions for homosexual people which was summarily dismissed without dialogue by his nemesis, Raymond Cardinal Burke as “simple private opinion”.

There is an air of self-righteousness among people. Extreme self-righteousness judges other people as deficient and suspect a priori. Its self-imposed blindness often leads to hate and violence rooted in fear. It results in gridlock, the demise of trust and the death of truth. If you have ever been caught in a bad New York City traffic jam, you understand. No one moves. Tempers rise. Judgment is made. Blame is imposed. Shouting ensues. Why? Because our small world has been infringed upon by a large impersonal universe.

The center of the universe is that infinitesimal point at which the “Big Bang” occurred and from which our universe is still expanding at an ever faster rate. But for many nations, peoples, political causes, ecclesial and theological minutiae and complexities, and yes, ourselves, we are that point.

In so many aspects of life, national, economic, political, international, and ecclesial down to within our neighborhoods and families we are divided. How did we get to this place?

This place where people cannot respectfully and civilly talk with each other. In fact, don’t want to listen to differing views and have a lively conversation with each other to gain insight and a common ground.  How else are we to move together to a more fruitful place for everyone involved?

I would propose two causes of how we arrive at this place of divisions.

The first is the attitude that many people and groups hold in regard to truth. That attitude being that we have a personal monopoly on truth. We treat truth as if it is a commodity as we do so many aspects of life today including God and spirituality. In this view, truth is something to be bought and sold; to be possessed and hoarded if not used as a cudgel with which to attack other people.

What is said today of wisdom is also valid of truth. For are not truth and wisdom two sides of a coin? Truth is therefore resplendent and unfading. It can only be perceived through love. Truth cannot be purchased. Truth reveals herself, is found by those who seek her, and graciously appears to those who wait for her. The search for truth demands patience and humility. Two values that are sorely wanting in our society and church and so we find ourselves are devoid of truth. Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?”. Jesus answered, “I am the way, the truth and the life” [John 14:6]. For Christians truth is a person, a relationship.

The second cause I propose for our divisions is that we have abandoned any sense of community; something larger than ourselves. Revelatory for us is that Jesus after coming up out of the waters of John’s baptism began his public ministry by gathering a community of followers. So foundational is community that Jesus taught he is present when community, when two or three of his followers are gathered together. So foundational is community that Jesus dies alone and abandoned as his final lesson showing us the results of a lack of community; isolation and abandonment. Is this not what we are being taught by the pandemic? We deeply need each other even when we strongly disagree with each other on issues. . We desire to gather; to be physically in each other’s presence. We use the term, “real presence” to convey that Jesus Christ, his Body and Blood, the fullness of his humanity and divinity are among us under the appearance of bread and wine in the Holy Eucharist. But does not “real presence” also refer to us? Consider the many layers of meaning that has for the followers of Jesus.

If the mindset of having a personal monopoly on truth and the abandoning of community have brought us to this precipice of division, how do we step back from it?

In the Opening Prayer for this Sunday we asked God to keep from us all adversity. Do we remember why the prayer stated that petition? So that we may pursue in freedom of heart the things that are of God.

Notice the prayer moves from us in our adversity to the things of God. We are praying to be free from the arrogance of being the center of things. We prayed to have the freedom to pursue God. It is the reversal of Francis Thompson’s poem, The Hound of Heaven or the shepherd in search of a lost sheep or the woman anxiously sweeping the house for a lost coin.

As much as God purses us, do we pursue God?

And what are we pursuing? What are the things of God?

In the light of our divisions I would ask, do we pursue understanding? No, not understanding but the willingness to intently listen with respect and understand to the extent we are able. For no person of light shaded skin will ever understand the life experience of a dark skinned person. And no heterosexual person will ever understand the experience of an LGBTQ person. And can we understand the experiences of a person who has been physically, sexually or emotionally abused or a woman who under immense and complex pressures decided to have an abortion? Can we ever understand the inner struggles and experience of a pedophile or their child victims?

To intently listen with respect and understand to the extent we are able.

This kind of listening requires compassion. A word that means “to suffer with”. Consider for example the many women that Jesus suffered with in the scriptures. The widow whose only son had died leaving her a non-person, the woman caught in the act of adultery about to face execution by stoning, the Samaritan woman at the well with her complex past. The situations of these women cried out for compassion and not judgement as do so many of us. Jesus’ words, quoting the prophet Hosea, confront us, “Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” [Matthew 9:13; Hosea 6:6]. To walk with someone in a compassionate manner means withholding judgement and blame while presuming the best of another person’s intentions.

Are these not the things of God? Does not God pursue us with compassion in Jesus Christ so as to understand each of us?

Did not God in Jesus and his cross take on our guilt, judgement, and blame as the means to pursue us?

There is a way to step back from the precipice of divisions. And despite our own scandalous divisions among the Christian Churches down to within our parish communities we have been given the means to to bridge divisions. Individuals and peoples will not always agree on all matters but how we approach those differences and each other with respect can lead to an understanding filled with hope.

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PLEASE NOTE: Homilies presented here are also being videotaped and put up on the Saint Mary, Oneonta website: http://www.SMCCOneonta.org.