A homily for the Twenty-First Sunday in Ordinary Time, August 27, 2023
Is 22:19-23, Rom 11:33-36, Mt 16:13-20
Back in 1977, a silly little film called “Rocky” defied all odds and won the Best Picture Oscar as well as a bunch of other awards.
The movie told the tale of a ne’er-do-well second- or third-tier boxer who was given a shot at the world championship as a publicity stunt for the current champ. Rocky Balboa was a simple guy, not credited with a lot of smarts other than street smarts, and he had zero chance of winning.
Except he almost did win, defying all odds, because he worked hard and believed in himself. And maybe he almost won because he wasn’t savvy enough to understand that he was just supposed to be a punching bag, a laughingstock.
As we all know, “Rocky” became a nine-movie franchise, and in each sequel the southpaw slugger was wiser, more mature, a bit more perfect, and nevertheless a lot more flawed as a person.
A lot like many of us.
A lot like the original rock, Cephas, Simon Peter.
And a lot like Peter’s … um … sequels, his apostolic successors, the 265 popes who followed the rock on whom Christ built his church.
Now, it’s a key part of who we are as human beings that we gain wisdom and maturity as we grow and experience life.
The original “Rocky” story made a big deal out of the fact that Mr. Balboa had lived in Philly all his life, that he rarely ventured outside his own neighborhood, let alone the City of Brotherly Love. Part of the wisdom he gained in the sequels came from his travels and his exposure to a variety of people.
About 2,000 years earlier, a simple, hard-working fisherman from the shores of the Sea of Galilee was not credited with a lot of smarts other than street smarts. He grew wiser, more mature and more worldly as he traveled with Jesus and the Apostles throughout the Holy Land and, after Jesus returned to Heaven, to places like Rome.
Rome, where all roads led to.
The pagans and Gentiles and Greeks and displaced Israelites who traveled the roads throughout the Roman Empire of the first century learned from Peter about Jesus, our Messiah, and in return, their cultures and habits and cosmopolitan knowledge certainly rubbed off on him as well.
All of the Holy Fathers who were anointed in turn were better educated and more worldly, and from them, all Christians have developed our greater understanding of God and God’s diverse children worldwide.
These days, we have many rock-solid role models in our lives, and our relationships with them are guaranteed to help us mature and become more worldly.
Even as we have legitimate concerns about how much information, and especially misinformation and disinformation, we’re subjected to daily, we must admit that we also have the opportunity to use our media and communications tools to learn about the lives of our God-given sisters and brothers in far-off lands. In societies vastly different from ours. In poverty. Maybe in despair.
Or maybe with material wealth beyond our imagination.
All in all, every day we indeed should be gaining a greater view of the world God created, a look at life outside our neighborhoods and our comfort zones.
In doing so, we should be trying to glimpse – and glimpse is all any human being can do – we should be trying to glimpse into the mind of God, or at least a sliver of it.
It’s a big deal. It’s not easy to do.
St. Paul sounds almost despairing as he writes to the Romans:
How inscrutable are his judgments and how unsearchable his ways!
Yes, the totality of the mind of God is waaaay beyond what we puny humans can comprehend. The harder we try, the closer we come to having our brains explode.
And yet, Jesus and the prophets before him have given us a broad-brush overview of that ultimate mind, an overview that we can handle.
Here goes:
God cares for everyone and everything in Creation, here on Earth and throughout the known and unknown universes. God has a plan for everyone and everything in Creation, here on Earth and throughout the known and unknown universes. Everyone and everything, together. A plan for the good of the whole.
A plan to bring about what’s good for the whole big totality of the whole. And simultaneously, what’s good for each individual part of the whole big whole.
Lottery? World Series? World Cup? Even the local spelling bee?
God’s plan has them covered.
Science, math, philosophy, every other -osophy or -ology? Natural law? Even human law?
All started in the mind of God.
Our innate curiosity and our ability to get our acts together, bit by bit, as we journey toward Heaven?
They’re gifts from the mind of God.
Every step we take away from selfishness and toward the love of all of God’s Creation taps us into the mind of God ever so slightly more. Every act we do to uplift everyone and everything everywhere defies the odds that we will wallow in human sinfulness.
Jesus gave us Peter, our role model, our simple, strong rock.
Peter and his successors guide us to God, the Rock of Ages.
And to that Rock we can cling.
