Homily for the 16th Sunday of Ordinary Time (A)
At the end of one of the great 20th century Catholic novels Brideshead Revisited there’s a dramatic deathbed scene. The novel is about a British Catholic aristocratic family. Early on in the story the patriarch of the family, Lord Marchmain, abandons his wife and goes off to live with an Italian mistress who is younger than his children. Needless to say, he becomes very hostile toward the Church and its teachings. At the end of the novel, sick and dying, he comes back to the family estate in England, and all of his children—and even his Italian mistress—beg him to see a priest and be reconciled before he dies. He refuses. They call the local priest to visit the house several times, and each time Lord Marchmain angrily chases him away.
The story is narrated by a friend of the family, Charles, who is an atheist. Charles, the narrator, gets angry at the family for continuing to call the priest even though Lord Marchmain has chased him away again and again. Finally, when Lord Marchmain really is dying, when he’s still conscious but no longer able to speak, the priest comes again and begins the last rites. And Charles, the narrator, is indignant. The dying man starts to move his hand, and Charles thinks, “Look, he’s trying to swat the priest away one last time.” And the shaking old hand moves up to his forehead, and then down to his stomach and then across his chest. The Sign of the Cross.
Now deathbed conversions are probably more common in literature than in real life, though they happen in real life too. But there’s a reason deathbed conversions, though small in number, are important in our Catholic worldview. This is because the fact that deathbed conversions are even possible tells us something important about God: that his mercy is infinite, that his mercy is patient, that his mercy is more powerful than a lifetime of sin, that his mercy directs us toward a life that only begins in this world.
The parables that Jesus tells today about the wheat and the weeds, about the mustard seed and the yeast, reflect this understanding of God. God’s power is capable of bringing forth a good harvest even from a field that seems choked with weeds, of bringing forth a flowering tree from a tiny mustard seed, of bringing forth nourishing bread from what looks like a handful of dust.
Continue reading “Judgments and Judgmentalism: homily for the sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time”
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 