Homily for the 19th Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
In today’s second reading from the letter to the Romans, St. Paul expresses a heartfelt anguish that I am certain many of us here share. I would wager that there’s not a person in this church who does not have a son or daughter, a brother or sister, perhaps a parent, someone dear to us who has left the Catholic faith. In Romans, Paul speaks of his people, his Jewish brothers and sisters, the majority of whom have not followed Christ, with painful passion, his heart full of “great sorrow and constant anguish.” He goes so far as to say, “I could wish that I myself were accursed and separated from Christ for the sake of my brothers.” So even though it’s not a cheerful topic, the problem of loved ones who have left the faith is one we can’t avoid, one most of us know firsthand. I do too.
First, a caution. Some time ago, I agreed to give a friend a ride to the dentist. He was having major work done and was going to be given some powerful anesthesia and wasn’t allowed to drive. I didn’t know where the office was, but I thought, “No problem, he’ll give me directions.” The problem was he had to take one of the pills the dentist prescribed before the appointment, so when I got there to pick him up he was already floating in blissful never-never land. We got into the car and I asked him where to go, and he said, “I don’t care. You can take me wherever you want. You can take me to a bar.” Eventually, we got to the dentist. But the point is he didn’t feel any pain because he’d taken a happy pill. Now I will be honest: I’m not going to give you a happy pill. There are theological happy pills out there and plenty of priests and theologians who will give them to you. The problem is, they aren’t true. If they were true, Paul wouldn’t feel anguish and sorrow.
Jesus himself addresses the problem of families divided over faith in him, and his words are, frankly, hard. “I have come to set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother” (Matt. 10:35, cf. Lk 12:53) and then again, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Matt 10:37). If, in order to dull the pain we feel when a loved one turns away from the Church, we make Christ out to be anything less than God, anything less than the world’s only savior, anything less than the way, the truth, and the life without whom no one comes to the Father, then we are taking a happy pill.
The reason is that even though we sometimes talk about heaven as if it were a place, heaven is not a 24-hour amusement park. Salvation means knowing Jesus. Knowing God as he truly is, as he has revealed himself to be. So if, faced with the diagnosis of sin and death which we all share, I were to prescribe to you anything less than the fullness of life in Christ in his Church and in his sacraments, I should be sued for spiritual malpractice. You don’t prescribe Tylenol for a cancer diagnosis.
So there’s the root canal without the happy pill—the difficult, unavoidable reality that distance from Jesus and his Church means distance from salvation. If, in order to escape from reality, we in any way water down the uniqueness and necessity of Jesus Christ, we are pushing salvation farther away from all of us and not really helping anyone.
What then is the good news?
Well, just as the cross is the reason happy pills don’t work, so too the cross is the good news. What can we do when those we love reject Christ and his Church? In some ways, the answer is very simple: we must continue to love them. When they are hungry, we should feed them. When they are sick, we should care for them. When they are lonely, we should listen to them.
In some cases, it might be possible to talk to them about questions or doubts, but in other cases it might not be. Not all of us are called to be teachers, and in many cases the reasons people give for rejecting the Catholic faith are things they’ve heard others say and are repeating when their real reasons lie hidden deep within. Often—let’s be honest—mom or dad, brother or sister, is the last person they’re willing to listen to, and being goaded into an argument will only play into the various anti-Catholic stereotypes incessantly drilled into us by the dominant culture.
What might be more effective in the long term, in a quietly effective way like that of the tiny whispering sound with which the Lord speaks to Elijah in the first reading, is our testimony. Testimony is different than teaching. Testimony simply declares what God has done for us, in our lives. Not all of us are called to be teachers, but all disciples are called to give testimony. It is the difference between saying, “You should start going to church again,” and “My faith gives me life.” And if we have to endure another boring screed about how the Church is backwards and intolerant and judgmental and out-of-date and anti-science and doesn’t use the latest correct vocabulary to talk about transgenderism, that Catholics worship Mary or believe in works righteousness or the pope is the anti-Christ, then perhaps the best refutation is simply, “My faith gives me life.” Jesus, after all, did not argue with Pilate.
Such testimony is important because it shows that our desire for the conversion of our wayward loved ones comes out of love, that our hope for them is that they would share the treasure of faith that gives us life, joy, and meaning. Our desire for others to come to the faith, or to return, is good and holy, and so is the pain that we feel when they don’t. When we feel this way, we are already sharing in the love that God has for the world, for all of us. Who are we, after all, but the wayward children of the Father, a Father who has given us freedom and does not force our love or our faith but nonetheless desires that love and that faith for us with a limitless passion?
I know it does not make it any easier, but parents who witness the suffering of a child, perhaps more than anyone else on earth, experience the depth of what it means to love with a love like God’s. So we should pray with all sincerity, with real passion, even with tears, for our loved ones. Peter’s prayer on the stormy sea is simply one of the best examples of prayer in all of Scripture: “Lord, save me!” It’s a prayer of utter honesty, desperate honesty; it’s a prayer made when Peter realizes there is absolutely nothing he can do, at a moment when all seems lost. “Lord, save me!” And what seemed a lost cause, what seemed sorrow and anxiety to Peter, to the Lord was nothing at all: “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?” Yet even Peter’s little faith, even his desperate prayer, was enough for the Lord. And don’t forget how today’s Gospel passage ends, with a profession of faith: “Truly, you are the Son of God.”
We should not be surprised—though we of little faith always are—that at the end of suffering should come redemption. God uses suffering to bring about the redemption of those he loves; and if we share that suffering, the suffering of loving those who for the moment have lost their way, just as God loves them, just as God loves us, then perhaps we too are contributing to their redemption.
“Truly, this man is the Son of God,” this profession of faith comes again in the Gospel—I’m sure you remember—after the crucifixion. And you might remember, from that moment, a certain thief, the wayward son of an unnamed mother, an unnamed father, a criminal, who had not actually lived a good life, for whom it was too late, for whom time had run out. And perhaps you will remember his desperate prayer—“Jesus, remember me”—after it seemed the judgment had been passed, after it seemed the sentence had been executed, and perhaps you will remember our Lord’s words to him: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
Readings: 1 Kings 19:9a-11-13a; Rom 9:1-5; Mt 14:22-33
St. Isaac Jogues Catholic Church
Rapid City, South Dakota
2017
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 