Homily for the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time

For decades, author Jonathan Kozol has been exploring the depths of poor inner-city neighborhoods and the children who live there in such award-winning books as Rachel and Her Children and Amazing Grace: The Lives of Children and the Conscience of a Nation. 

Mr. Kozol once observed that poor neighborhoods serve a critical purpose for the wealthy. He said that if there were no poor neighborhoods, the rich and the privileged would have to look into the eyes of the poor every day.

In the 1980s, thousands of families in New York became homeless. These people walked the streets and gathered outside the restaurants and theaters. The civic-minded people of the city were not happy. He said, "The last thing the theater owners wanted was to have a wealthy couple spend $200 to see Les Miserables, a musical about the poor, and then come out from the theater and see the real thing!"

 

Mr. Kozol said that sometimes he would walk by that theater and see people who, only moments earlier, had likely been weeping for the poor children in Paris, exiting out on the street, offended by people begging on the sidewalk.

In today's Gospel and throughout the Gospels, Jesus defends the dignity of all people in the eyes of God -- the poor, the powerless, the ignored, the forgotten. We are called to support that dignity, not just in the words of songs sung comfortably in the theater or church, but on the street corners of our own cities and neighborhoods. 

Jesus demands that we, His disciples, voice our faith not just in the prayers and rituals we speak but also in the ways we reach out and help the needy, in the ways we treat those who are different from us, and in the relationships we form with one another. 

The challenge of discipleship is to translate our many "good intentions" into the actual work of discipleship, to transform our emotional feelings for the unseen, distant poor and marginalized into genuine compassion and charity to the poor and marginalized in our midst.