A homily for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time, October 30, 2022
Wis 11:22-12:2, 2 Thes 1:11-2:2, Lk 19:1-10
Back in the 1960s and early ’70s, Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner did a couple of albums featuring a character they called The 2,000-Year-Old Man, played by Brooks. They did comedic interviews and let the supposedly really old man reminisce about the good old, old, old days.
One bit they did was about religion, about whether they believed in a god before Abraham introduced them to I Am.
Yes, Brooks said, a guy named Phil.
He was big and tough and he could poke their eyes out and he could crush their skulls and everybody revered him and feared him.
And then one day in the middle of the village, a bolt of lightning struck him dead. And they all looked up to the sky and said, “There’s sumptin bigger than Phil!”
By the way: God has a terrific sense of humor. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be your deacon.
Now, speakin’ of your deacon, I think you should know a couple of things about me that will help make my bigger point today.
I am a so-called cradle Catholic, with eight years of Catholic schooling at St. Leo’s in Lincroft and another four at CBA. My family attended the 8 o’clock Mass every Sunday — Mom, my five brothers and me, and Dad on the aisle to block any escape attempts. I served as an altar boy all the way through high school and learned my Church Latin — et cum spiritu tuo — just in time to stop using it.
And one of the first things I did at college — or, to be more accurate, didn’t do — was I didn’t go to Mass anymore. And that lasted for years and years.
Oddly enough, I did minor in religion, because I felt something tugging at me, something bigger than me, certainly something bigger than Phil or this world or this solar system or … I had no idea what. But I was compelled to learn why humans since prehistoric times recognized that we’re not really the kings and queens of all we survey. That people instinctively knew there has to be a life beyond death. That we all still search for the ultimate reality.
Maybe we’re hit by lightning and come to life for the first time. Maybe we hear God’s quiet whisper the way Elijah did. Definitely, we are beckoned.
We all feel that tug, all of us who are here today and even all of our sisters and brothers who are not. We’re all hard-wired at birth to acknowledge that we were created, that everything was created, that there’s a plan, that there’s divine wisdom in that plan and that that plan is for the good of all humankind.
For the good of the universe.
We Catholic Christians have the blessed opportunity to gather as the Body of Christ and encounter our risen Lord spiritually and physically at the same time in the Eucharist. The Eucharist is a gift directly from our Savior, and even when we don’t completely realize it, the Eucharist is what draws us here.
Tugs at us.
Attracts us.
We hear the Word of God proclaimed and, through God’s grace, its message enlightens us, keeps us on the straight path through the narrow gate, helps us see Christ in everyone we meet and empowers us to share part of our lives with everyone.
We pray to our heavenly father for the strength to do what is right, and we seal that hope with a sign or peace.
We receive Communion as a community, because wherever two or more are gathered in Jesus’s name, he is there among us.
For decades, maybe even centuries, people like my family attended Mass out of obligation. It’s right there in the commandments of the church. Be there or be damned-ish. Many religious leaders have begun to acknowledge that the reason for all the empty seats in mosques and synagogues and churches of many faith traditions is that people today question authority. We’re not big on gotta-dos. “Because I said so” rings hollow.
We’re here because we want to be. We’re here because we want to encounter Christ in a way that music or dance or work or play cannot come close to matching.
I had, at best, a loose relationship with the Catholic Church — with any religious organization, really — for the better part of 10 years.
But I never lost my faith. I never lost my belief that the Son of God walked among us, taught us the Law of Love, died for humankind’s sins once and for all, and rose from the dead to shatter the chains of death.
I found my way back to the Mystical Body of Christ, through the love of God as expressed by family and friends. Many of us have, and many more still can.
Maybe we know who some of them are. Maybe, just maybe, we could invite them. There’s always room for them in our buildings and in our hearts.
We won’t know until we try.
