A homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 28, 2025
Amos 6:1a, 4-7, 1 Timothy 6:11-16, Luke 16:19-31
George Booth was a cartoonist, mostly for The New Yorker magazine, and he was famous for his detailed line drawings of wacky people and their even-wackier pets. His trademark character was a skittish bull terrier, and he once drew a cartoon with 86 cats and 74 dogs, along with a bunch of people and a cloud of buzzing flies.
George Booth’s cartoons were hilarious.
But he could be profound.
A four-panel cartoon published in April 1977 went like this:
A schlubby person at the front of a crowd announces, “It is so!”
And everybody in the crowd mocks him, saying he’s crazy, saying that, no, whatever “it” is, it definitely is not the way the man says it is.
Then, over the horizon, a giant appears and thunders, “IT IS SO!”
And immediately, everybody in the crowd changes their tune. Oh, yeah, it is so. It is very so. It is sooooo verrrry so. It’s never been anything but so.
And so, we ask:
What do we believe, and why and how?
What does it take to make us believe something? To make us believe in something?
Or to flip around and change our beliefs? To change our minds like that? (fingers snap)
Do we need to be dazzled by a divine transfiguration, the way the Apostles were on that high mountain in Israel?
Do we need to be like Didymus, ol’ Doubting Thomas, and jab the risen Lord in his wounds?
Do we need to hear the voice of God, as Saul the persecutor did when he became Paul the Apostle?
Do we need to stand at the mouth of a cave alongside Elijah and wait through storms to finally hear God in a whisper?
The deceased rich man in today’s Gospel seemed pretty sure that his family back on Earth would need the kind of whack upside their heads that seeing poor Lazarus brought back to life would give them. The rich man didn’t think that subtlety was going to work.
Funny thing, though: It does.
So does repetition.
After this homily, we’ll profess our beliefs, we’ll profess our faith. We’ll state to each other and to the universe that we believe in persons and things unseen but felt and, somehow but deeply, known by us. We’ll say from our innermost hearts that we are shaped by the history of salvation, and that we promise to continue to spread the word about that greatest gift from God.
And as we again profess our faith, as we do every time two or three are gathered in Christ’s name, we reinforce these subtle beliefs within ourselves.
We live in a time when there are a lot of loud, scary giants popping up over the horizon, telling us what is so. So many of them are shouting at the same time, each trying to shout over the others, that we have trouble picking out the good from the downright ridiculous. Or dangerous.
In the middle of all this noise, from all these sources, on all these electronic or interpersonal platforms, we find ourselves shouting as well.
And then, as we shout, we find ourselves getting frustrated or even angry.
The temperature rises. Our tempers flare.
That’s not the way we can have civil debates or, better yet, respectful conversations.
And, Heaven knows, we need them now more than ever.
All that noise from all those people, all those different people, all those trusted and supposedly intelligent people, can make us question or even doubt what we believe.
In every aspect of our lives. On every topic we can think of. Even spiritual ones.
So we must cling to our beliefs in Divine Truth, because as believers who love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, as Christ commanded, we already have someone who came back from the dead to reinforce our beliefs. To show us the way to practice them. To remind us that charity puts out fires and that justice prevents them.
Amid the roar of modern life, the grace and love of God through Jesus Christ leads us to our quiet places to recharge, to restore and even rebuild our faith. From there, we can renew our task, together as the Body of Christ on Earth, to help bring God’s kingdom and bring all our sisters and brothers into it.
Through simple kindness. Through faith, hope and love.
Through belief in our Risen Lord.
