responding to suffering – Tony Lusvardi, S.J.

Homily for the fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A).

“Brothers and sisters,” Saint Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.”

In other words, Saint Paul recognizes that the present time, the world in which we live, is characterized by suffering—pain and weakness, shame and fear, insults and injustices. Human life is not entirely suffering, but suffering is present. Christianity does not promise us a life without it.

But if Saint Paul does not promise to eliminate suffering, what is his message? His message is that suffering can help us obtain a greater glory. In fact, if we read the Gospel with Saint Paul’s words in mind, the meaning of Jesus’ message today becomes clearer.

Jesus uses the image of the seed, and a seed, as we know, must be buried in order to grow. Before taking on its new form, before becoming a plant and blossoming, a seed must lose its old form—it must, in a certain sense, die.

Homily for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C).

Here’s another homily from my year as a deacon, this one given at St. Bridget’s and St. Charles Parishes on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota, places from which I have many warm memories.

I have looked forward to this morning for a very long time. As many of you know, last weekend I was ordained a deacon in Boston. I learned to be a minister of the Gospel here on Rosebud and all of you were my teachers, so I wanted my first weekend as a deacon to be here with you. And God has answered that prayer. As you can imagine, Paul’s letter to Timothy speaks to me. Paul is writing to his friend and assistant Timothy and he’s marveling that God has trusted him to be a minister of the Gospel even though he himself was a sinner. And after all his years of experience, Paul expresses the Gospel message with a single powerful sentence: “Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners.”

Lakota crucifix, Sioux Spiritual Center, Howes, SD

So if there’s anyone here who’s not a sinner, I’m sorry, you’re in the wrong place. Go have brunch. I don’t have anything to offer you. The Catholic Church is like a big AA meeting for recovering sinners. We even begin each Mass by acknowledging that we are sinners: “I confess to Almighty God and to you my brothers and sisters, that I have sinned…” As in AA, we’re here because we know we can’t overcome sin on our own; we need a higher power.

Tag: responding to suffering

How do we choose to suffer? Homily for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time

What was the father thinking? Homily for the twenty-fourth Sunday of Ordinary Time