St. Thomas the Apostle Parish

Homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Our Gospel passage today begins on a very positive note. The king forgave the debt, not because the debtor deserved it, but because the king was very generous; he took pity on the man and showed him compassion and mercy. 

Similarly, we come before the LORD, recognizing that He has forgiven our debts – that is, our sins - and, hopefully, we have hearts that are grateful for God's compassion and mercy. Every time we gather to celebrate the Mass, we are reminded of and experience the LORD's mercy in the Penitential Rite. The LORD'S Prayer invites us to imitate God's forgiveness and mercy when we ask God to forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. 

While the Gospel passage begins on such a positive note, it's sad that it ends on such a negative note. The debtor failed to allow his mercy experience to inspire him to imitate the same mercy to others. He was relieved to be free of his debt, but his heart lacked the same mercy and compassion shown to him. 

So, through the understandable anger of the master who had shown him mercy, the debtor found himself in prison until he could repay the debt. Of course, he could not repay the debt while in prison, and so, it seems that, through no fault but his own, he found himself imprisoned for the rest of his life. He chose his way and not the way of his master, and he paid dearly for it. 

When I was in college, I used to have a friend who, when he would pray the LORD'S Prayer during Mass, would add a single word that changed the meaning of it. Instead of saying, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," he said, "Forgive us our trespasses as we should forgive those who trespass against us." That changes things a lot. 

While I think my friend was well-meaning, his words sought permission for us to seek mercy even when we aren't willing to give mercy ourselves; it sought to let us off the hook for failing to let the mercy of God help us to be merciful to others. It was a single, simple word, but it changed the whole prayer, and it went against the spirit of the prayer and the desired spirit of today's Gospel passage. It reinforced the desire to have things our way and not God's way. 

So, let us seek to be genuinely humble in our acceptance of God's mercy and compassion, recognizing the call to do things in God's way and not in our way. Let us take the opportunity to receive the love, mercy, compassion, and forgiveness of God through the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Let us look upon others with eyes of love that reflect the love that we have received from God, and may that love move us to imitate that mercy and forgiveness we have received from God in our relationship with others.+

Homily for Saturday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

What is visible and tangible is not all that matters. The two houses in today’s parable may have looked the same, in fine weather. But it turns out that they were very different. One was built on sand and the other on solid rock. The most important part of a house is its foundation; yet, it is invisible. 

Jesus pushes us to have a sure foundation below the surface of our daily living. Just as the two houses had to withstand difficult conditions, we often have to deal with various difficulties relating to our health, relationships, and work. Our ability to cope with those issues will depend on how solidly we are grounded in faith and our emotional strength.

Jesus offers Himself as the foundation for our faith and our daily lives. Listening to Him and following in his way is how we build our spiritual lives on rock, capable of withstanding the storms of life. 

Our LORD desires to be the foundation of our lives. For this to happen, we must cooperate with His call and build our lives on Him.

Homily for Friday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

Our limited insight into what makes others tick makes it precarious for us to make judgments about others. It can be tempting to think that we see such things clearly while others are blind to the truth of these things. Jesus seems to indicate that we are all blind to some degree and that it is often a case of the blind leading the blind, rather than the enlightened leading the blind.

Changing the metaphor somewhat, Jesus gives us the comical image of someone trying to take a splinter out of someone else’s eye while being unaware of the wooden beam in their own eye. Taking the wooden beam out of our own eye means being more intent on tending to our own failings than to those of others. Often, we do not see clearly enough to understand what is really going on in another person, and, therefore, we need to be slow to judge and to condemn. God, who sees clearly into every heart, is compassionate and merciful to all, even the unworthy. We are asked to try to be merciful and compassionate like that. +

Homily for Thursday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time

A story is told of a woman who bumped into a stranger. "Excuse me," she apologized, "I wasn't watching where I was going." She was very polite and kind. That evening, while doing the dishes, her young son stood beside her. She turned and nearly knocked him down. "Move out of the way," she said harshly, with a frown on her face. His tender heart was pierced with pain as he got out of her way. Later, when she sat down to rest, she remembered her courtesy to a stranger in contrast to her harshness to her own little boy.

Feeling remorse, she went to his room, knelt by his bedside, and said, "I'm sorry for the way I spoke to you today." He threw his arms around her neck and whispered, "Oh, Mom, that's okay, I love you." Then he reached over to a bedside table for a bouquet of flowers. "Here," he said, "I picked these today because they're pretty, like you." Then she cried from mixed emotions of shame and happiness. She kissed him and hugged him very close.

Jesus wants us to love our enemies, but first, we must begin by truly loving our family and friends. Forgetfulness, pettiness, selfishness, bitterness, withdrawal, anger, frustration, apathy, laziness: all these wage constant war against really loving even those who are closest to us. Brother Giles, the companion and disciple of St. Francis of Assisi, once said, "It is a great grace to live at peace with those around you." Whoever manages to live in peace and love with others only does so by constant prayer and work. +

Homily for Wednesday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time (Fr. Jack)

It can certainly be said that the Beatitudes sound strange to our ears. One might ask: How can people be happy if they are poor, hungry or weeping? These proclamations go against how we typically view life. How often the teaching of Jesus compels us to reconsider how we usually view life. He proclaimed a God who favors the distressed and the downtrodden. Jesus calls them blessed because God is on their side and wants a more just and sharing world. Knowledge of our need can open up space for God to work in our lives, while in times of abundance we can easily be self-satisfied and reject God.

People often seek God with more motivation when their need is greater. We come before the Lord in our poverty, our hunger, our sadness because it is in such times that we recognize that we are not self-sufficient.

Scripture tells us that as Jesus hung from the Cross, one of the two thieves who were being executed along with Him said to Him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” To this doomed man Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”[1] It is when we are at our weakest that grace is at its strongest.

 

[1] Luke 23:42-43

Homily for the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Fr. Jack)

The Church's celebration of Mary's birth probably began at some point in the Sixth Century, possibly earlier. The Eastern Church begins its liturgical year every September and chose that month as the beginning of Mary's life on earth. With nine months as the traditionally understood time of pregnancy, September 8 determined the date for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception on December 8.

 

Scripture does not tell us anything about the birth of Mary. However, the somewhat fictional Protoevangelium of James, while being rather dubious, possibly fills in the gap. While this work has no historical value, it shows us some of Christian piety's early development. According to this account, Mary's parents, Anna and Joachim, prayed for a child and received the promise of a child who would be an active participant in God's salvation plan. Much like many biblical stories, this one stresses God's remarkable presence in Mary's life from its beginning.

 

Saint Augustine connected Mary's birth with the salvific mission of Jesus. He said, “She is the flower of the field from whom bloomed the precious lily of the valley. Through her birth, the nature inherited from our first parents is changed.” Indeed, her life and her cooperation with the plan of God opened the way for the one who would change our sinful nature forever, in this life and the next.+

Homily for Monday of the 23rd Week in Ordinary Time (Fr. Jack)

It is probably the case that Jesus had no intention to initiate the disagreement in the synagogue that we hear about in our Gospel passage from St. Luke today. However, He rightly sensed that the scribes and the Pharisees were trying to trap Him and to cast Him in a negative light before the people.

Those who were filled with such anger because Jesus had cured someone on the Sabbath Day were using a disabled man to make Jesus look like a lawbreaker, using the man’s disability to get at the “rebellious” preacher from Nazareth.

There is a human tendency to put limits on the love of God, as evidenced by the narrow-minded people who tried to limit Jesus’ outreach and exclude individuals or whole groups from His help.

However, the power of Jesus cannot be bound by narrow and rigid traditions. So many superficial reasons can be given for not doing the right thing: it’s the wrong day of the week to come looking for help; fear of siding with the unemployed, the disabled, or the unborn; feeling unable to correct a powerful, influential person, for obvious wrongdoing. And people even see reasons why God should not act generously. But God does act generously, and He did so in the person of Jesus, and today, He does so in you and in me as His instruments in our world.

May the call to act mercifully and generously in the name of God be answered in our words, actions, and attitudes toward all people, regardless of the time, the day, or the cultural or political climate. +

Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time (Fr. Matt)

All of St. Paul’s New Testament letters have a similar structure. After the greeting, he usually explains some aspect of what Christians, including us, believe. These explanations are loaded with Christian doctrine, things that Jesus revealed to us about God, the world and ourselves. These teachings have stayed solid throughout the 20 centuries of the Church, making clear the Holy Spirit’s presence in the Church. The Creed we pray every Sunday is a summary of what Jesus taught directly to the Apostles and what St. Paul teaches to the first Christian communities. St. Peter and St. Paul, as well as all the other martyrs, believed so strongly in these teachings that they gave up their lives instead of denying them.

 

St. Paul always takes one more step when ending his letters. He makes the connection between what we believe and how we should live. People who believe one way and live another is one of Jesus’ greatest challenges, he often spoke critically of the hypocrisy of the leaders of his time. St. Paul doesn’t want any Christian to fall into the miserable trap of becoming a hypocrite. Therefore, after teaching Christian doctrine, St. Paul instructs us in how we should live that doctrine in real life.

 

Today’s 2^nd Reading gives us one of the most beautiful examples of these instructions. In the first part of the Letter to the Romans, Paul explained the goodness of God and his plan of salvation. Now, in the second part, he explains how we who have received that salvation should respond to God’s goodness. We no longer have to worry about the thousands of confusing commandments and laws that come from the Old Testament. All of those, St. Paul tells us, are summed up in one simple phrase: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” This is the heart of Christianity and the path to fulfillment, because it is Christ’s path. We pray for God’s grace to show our love for him each day, through our love for our neighbor.+

Homily for Saturday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time (Fr. Matt)

The Gospel today speaks about the conflict concerning the observance of the Sabbath – Saturday. The observance of the Sabbath was a central law and one of the Ten Commandments. This was a very ancient Law, the value of which was stressed after the Exile. During the Exile, the people had to work seven days a week from morning until evening, without being able to meet and meditate on the Word of God, to pray together and to share faith. In this case, he cause of the conflict was that on a Saturday the disciples were walking across the cornfields and they were picking ears of corn, because they were hungry. The Pharisees invoke the bible to say it was a transgression of the law of the Sabbath: Why do you do what is not permitted on the Sabbath?”

 

Jesus ends with the following statement: The Son of Man is master of the Sabbath! Jesus is the Son of Man, who comes from God. Because of this, He calls Himself Master of the Sabbath, making clear to the Pharisees that though an ancient law, His new law and covenant was yet to come and would rise above the old law.+

Homily for Friday of the 22nd Week in Ordinary Time

Jesus made brilliant use of imagery to describe what is important in life. He compared His ministry to new wine; then He said that this new wine required new wineskins. In other words, the traditional way of doing things would no longer be enough. Yet, Jesus also had great respect for His tradition, for His own Jewish tradition, and the Scriptures of His people, all of which nourished and inspired Him.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus declared that He came not to abolish the Law and the prophets but to complete them. He did not pretend to be starting from scratch. There was much in Jewish tradition that He valued, but He wanted to bring that tradition to a greater richness and fullness; He came to renew Israel’s tradition, not to toss it aside. His attitude suggests that we don’t simply discard our religious tradition, but neither should we idolize it into a set of static rules and practices.

The Church is always in need of reform and renewal; the new wine of the Holy Spirit will always require new wineskins. The work of renewal will always involve honoring what is best in our tradition by allowing its rich potential to be fully realized. +