Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Wait And Trust

Reverend Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, October 2, 2022

The distressing opening line of today’s first reading, “How long, O Lord? is not unique to prophet Habakkuk. Up and down the centuries, it is also the cry of the oppressed, suppressed, repressed and enslaved people. It is the agonizing question of many believers as they read and watch the mindless destruction of lives and property in Ukraine and the growing threat of nuclear attack by Russia. It is the question of many as they see our society increasingly embrace the culture of death. Prophet Habakkuk’s question, “How long, O Lord will I cry for help, but you do not listen?” is the excruciating lamentation of people in the face of prolonged personal tragedy like infirmity and sickness. It is the weeping question of millions of people who have experienced natural disasters like drought, earthquake, tsunami, hurricane,  famine, etc. People who experienced morally impermissible acts like terrorists atrocities, genocide, extreme poverty, needless and unjust war etc. have also posed the question, “How long, O Lord?” Social unrest among our people, the threat of autocracy at home and abroad, racial and tribal wars, political infighting, the growing division among people, riots and insurrection, the devastating attacks of the pornography industry on our children, the constant breaking news alerts on our phones about many negative events can trigger us to join the prophet in questioning God’s presence and control. If you have never asked that question before, it could either mean you are too young to notice or you are just oblivious and indifferent. And if you are too young to even notice what’s happening around you, all you have to do is just to live long enough. A time will come when those words or similar words will be on your lips.

Did God answer Habakkuk’s agonizing question, “How long, O Lord?” No! God simply tells him to wait and trust. God tells Habakkuk that everything God has said will definitely come to pass at a proper time. God’s time is the best, and when that time comes, the vision, the message, the prophecy that God himself has revealed will happen. But if the time of fulfillment is delayed, God says he (Habakkuk) should exercise patience and wait. For it will surely come. God tells Habakkuk that the task of the just ones as they wait is to live with integrity and to have faith: “The just one shall live by faith.” It is that faith that the Apostles, in the Gospel passage ((Luke 17:5-10), ask the Lord to increase. What does it mean to live by faith? To live by faith is to be convinced that without the true and living God, I will not be. It is to finally believe that I am because God is. It is to make God the center of my live and to allow my life be guided by what I believe. God is the one who rescues us from the grip of death, from the kingdom of death, from the covenant with death that is brought about by sin. The great St. Paul says of God the Father, He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). That’s why St. Paul can write to Timothy in today’s second reading that, “God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control.”

Sisters and brothers, as we live in this world and fight for what is right, virtuous and good in God’s sight, we should not look at the world’s dysfunction and wonder how we are ever going to overcome it. Rather, look at them through the lens of faith which says  that everything that is evil in the world has been conquered by Christ and in Christ. With faith in God, stand your ground and declare, “You no longer have any place here! Your kingdom has been defeated on the cross.” After that, endeavor to join hands with other people of faith to change this world by living a life of integrity, by expressing your unapologetic faith in God who is love and good. Like the three young men in the Book of Daniel 3:8-30, tell the Nebuchadnezzars of our time, “Your Majesty, we will not try to defend ourselves. If God whom we serve is able to save us from the blazing furnace and from your power, then he will. But even if he doesn’t, Your Majesty may be sure that we will not worship your god, and will not bow down to the gold statue that you have made.” 

Saints of God, authentic faith is an attitude of trust in the presence of God. Faith means surrendering your entire life over to God. It is openness to what God will reveal, what God will do, and what God will invite us to become. What do you think God will reveal and invite us to become? It is to be great! For the people of the world, greatness lies along the road to ego inflation. But as for Jesus, the path to greatness lies on the road to Calvary, to self-forgetting and sacrificial love. Imagine what happened to Jesus in Jerusalem. He was rejected, tortured, and killed. In the end, he is the greatest of all. If you like prophet Habakkuk is asking the most agonizing question, “How long, O Lord?,” if you have prayed and fasted and God hasn’t intervened yet, God is speaking to you through Habakkuk and he is saying to you, wait (that is, be patient) and trust (that is, have faith). The good news is that God’s plan for you, God’s vision for you, God’s purpose for you, God’s promises for you, that which God has reserved for you will be yours. If its realization is delayed, God says, “wait for it, it will surely come, it will not be late.” Do not let what you see, hear and perceive distract you. Remember, the just one shall live by faith. 

God bless you!

Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Inaction Is Not A Virtue

Fr. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Bridget Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, September 25, 2022

There are two characters in today’s Gospel (Luke 16:19-31): one is a rich man and the other a poor man. The rich man was not named but the poor man has a name- Lazarus. The name “Lazarus” is derived from the Hebrew name “Eleazar” which means “God is my help.” Like so many rich people, this rich man dressed expensively and also ate lavishly each day. By every standard, he was comfortable. In a very poor region where many people would consider  themselves fortunate if only they ate a small piece of meat once a week, and where they labored and toiled for six days of the week, this rich man indulged himself in a lavish, flamboyant and extravagant living. Meanwhile, not far from him was a poor man, Lazarus, who sat and waited for crumbs that fell from his table. Lazarus was a beggar and it seems he was homeless too because the gospel says “And lying at his door was a poor man named Lazarus...” His body was covered with sores. He was so helpless and so weak that he could not even ward off street dogs that hovered around him and licked his sores. 

After an earthly life of untold suffering, Lazarus died and was taken away by angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and went to a place of torment- hell. From the place of torment, he looked up and saw Abraham and glorified Lazarus beside him. So, he pleaded, “Father Abraham, have pity on me. Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue.” Imagine the turn of events. But Abraham quickly reminded him that he was reaping what he sowed while on earth. When his first request was rejected, he made a second one: “Then I beg you, father, send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, so that he may warn them, lest they too come to this place of torment.” To his second request, Abraham called his attention to the fact that his brothers have priests and prophets whom they should listen to. But the rich man insisted that if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent. Again, Abraham rebuffed his request and said to him, “If they (your brothers) will not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead.” 

Now do not see this parable as blanket condemnation of riches or rich people. And do not consider the story as an endorsement of poverty by Jesus. It is a great theological error to do so. The kind of poverty that bedeviled and tormented Lazarus is evil. It gives God no glory. It gives no commendation to humanity. No human being should be allowed to experience such suffering. That kind of misfortune debases the dignity of the human person and makes mockery of the very idea of humanity and community. Such kind of poverty should be fought and be defeated. It violates the beautiful virtues of charity and compassion. As for the rich man, he was not damned for being wealthy. Jesus is not anti-riches or rich people. Wealth when acquired justly can be the blessings of God. The rich man did not end up in hell simply because he was rich. After all, he did not order Lazarus out of his sight or be thrown out of his house. His sin was that he never noticed Lazarus. Lazarus was invisible to him. As far as he was concerned, Lazarus was part of the landscape. As far as he was concerned, it was perfectly alright for Lazarus to live a life of hunger and deprivation while he wallowed in extravagant feasting. What took the rich man to hell wasn’t what he did but what he did not do. Right before him was a man of suffering, a fellow man ravaged by disease, a child of God, a fellow citizen, a human being like himself, yet he felt no sense of grief and pity in his heart for him. He saw a man in dire need of help, but did nothing. He had no feeling for him, and no love for him. God is nothing but love. And love is willing the good of the other and doing something about it. The rich man went to hell because there was no love in his heart for Lazarus. He did not go to heaven because he does not possess what God is, which is love. And what made the rich man’s indifference to Lazarus’ condition shocking is that he does have the resources needed to change the life of Lazarus. He does have it in abundance yet, he turned a blind eye. He was punished for refusing to notice the presence of Jesus who is uniquely present with the poor, the abandoned and those on the margins of the society. As for Lazarus, he was carried to the bosom of Abraham not just because he was poor. He went to heaven because like his name suggests, he totally depended upon God for his sustenance. In his poverty, he was not jealous of the rich man. In his poverty, he did not turn away from God. In his poverty, he was not upset with God or with anyone. Despite his poverty, he still had faith in God. He loved God and sought help from him. In the end, he got the relief and salvation he sought for.

If you are able to help someone, if you are able to put a smile on someone’s face, if you are able to make an impact in someone’s life, an impact rooted in love and compassion, just do it. In the end, you will realize that you have stored so much treasure for yourself in heaven. The Lord has not called us to do nothing. Each of us has been called to do something- something good. Each of us has been called to be active Christians. Dormant and inactive Christians produce nothing. Dormant and inactive Christianity is worthless. Doing nothing is not a virtue. Do not be a Christian who does nothing. In the course of your life, God will severally put you in positions of doing something valuable for others— like wiping away tears from the eyes of another, lending a helping hand to a needy person, giving your time to a lonely person, visiting the sick and the shut-in, making a difference in the life someone, and making others see Jesus in you. Whenever that opportunity comes, don’t act like the rich man in today’s Gospel. Do something! Christianity is a religion of action- compassionate action towards others for the sake of Jesus and the health of the society. 

Homily For the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Lessons From The Unjust Steward

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily For the Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, September 18, 2022

What we see throughout the Gospel is that Jesus rarely preached in a systematic and doctrinal way. His preferred method of teaching is the parable. He uses disquieting and disturbing stories to shock us and wake us up from our spiritual dormancy, aridity and sleepiness. He uses parables to get us into a whole new way of thinking. One of the most puzzling and mystifying parables of Jesus is our today’s Gospel— the story of the unjust steward. The steward is responsible for caring for his master’s goods and money. But his master has caught him lining his pockets, squandering his property and money. So, the master said to him, “…you can no longer be my steward.” At this point, the unjust steward panicked. Why did he panic? First, the Palestine of Jesus’ time was a very poor country. Secondly, in that society, there were no unemployment benefits, no insurance and no welfare payments. When someone loses his job, especially an older man, he is in serious trouble of becoming homeless unless he has a wealthy family member to support him. So this man is facing a very dire situation. What’s he going to do? He made an assessment of himself, “I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.” If he lost his job, especially for malfeasance in a small town where everyone knows everyone’s business, his chances of getting another job is quite small. What he is left with is the possibility of doing the most menial kinds of labor of which he said he is too old and too weak to do. He is in a very dire and desperate condition. So he called in his master’s debtors one by one. To the first he said, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He replied, one hundred measures of olive oil. He said to him, ‘Here is the promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.’ To another the steward said, ‘And you, how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘one hundred kors of wheat.’ The steward said to him, ‘Here is the promissory note. Write one for eighty.’ 

What is he doing? He’s calling the people he has been dealing with for years and then cheats his master further in order to find favor with them so that when he finally loses his job, they will give him a softer landing. He is about to be fired from his job for stealing, but he is doubling down his immorality to get ahead. At this point, Jesus shocks us all. He says the master praised the unjust steward for being clever. Praise him? This parable is in the middle of Luke’s Gospel where Jesus has been telling us over and over again not to cling to the things of this world, to let go of our possession, to find our treasure in heaven, and live the radical life of the Gospel. And now in this story, he seems to be saying, I approve of this man who clings to wealth in an immoral way. What changed? Like all parables, this one is meant to shock us and teach us something about spiritual life. Jesus is not praising him for his immorality, rather for his cleverness. 

Now this parable is meant to teach us three great spiritual lessons. First, the unjust steward is in serious trouble and he knows it. The crisis in his life has woken him up. In Latin, the word crisis means “decision” or “judgment.” Throughout the Gospel, Jesus compels a choice. In Jesus, God has come. God is now here. You are either with him or against him. You have to choose. There is no room for complacency. In Jesus’ inaugural address in Mark’s Gospel, the first words out of his mouth is, “The time is now. Therefore repent and believe the good news.” And he repeats these very words in all his preaching. The time is now! Wake up from your current spiritual aloofness. Connect your life unto the power of God. End the complacency and the lack of care for your spiritual health. In this parable, Jesus is urging us to wake up to the crisis that we are in spiritually and the need to make a clear and unambiguous decision about our life. We don’t have to wait until we hit rock bottom to wake up. Wake up now and make a decision. 

The second lesson. The unjust steward makes a very honest assessment of himself. He knows he’s about to be fired. He tells himself the truth: I am not strong enough to dig and I am  ashamed to beg. He is admitting his own physical weakness. When you are in a crisis, you are compelled to be honest about yourself. Most of us go through life living complacently, inventing lots of lies about ourselves. We say to ourselves, “I’m okay! I’m doing alright! But when the moment of crisis comes, there is no more room for dishonesty. Consider someone who has gone through most of his life eating poorly— eating big marks for dinner, French fries for breakfast, preferring highly processed food over organic one, drinking whatever he wants and whenever he wants, smoking and not exercising at all. Then comes the heart attack or stroke. It does not kill him per se. But the tragedy wakes him up and there is no more room for self-deception and lies. Right there he realizes that he has not been eating well and not exercising. He realizes that he needs to stop smoking. He says to himself, ‘I have to change.’ ‘I’m not alright.’ What Jesus admires in the unjust steward is his honest self-assessment. He is able to assess that things are not alright in his life. In a spiritual crisis, we should say, ‘Lord, I know all is not alright with me. I know my spiritual life is not where it should be. I am not praying the way I should. I know my relationships are not alright. I know I am not caring for the poor. I know I am not doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy.  I know I am not participating in the sacraments.’

The third lesson. The last quality that Jesus wants us to see is the fact that the unjust steward acted. Yes, he acted immorally, and Jesus is not telling to be immoral. But what he admires is his resolute action. He’s in crisis. He knows he is in crisis. He accesses himself honestly, and then decides to act. Imagine someone who is awakened to his spiritual crisis: he knows that his relationship with God is the most important thing. Secondly, he is aware of his weaknesses, and decides to act. If your prayer life is weak, start praying now and today. If you have been staying away from Mass and the sacraments, get back to them. If your relationship is weak, fix them. If you are not charitable, start being charitable now. That’s what Jesus wants us to see today. There is no time for wishy-washy in spiritual life. You are either with me or against me, so says the Lord. The time for judgment and decision is not tomorrow, not next week. It’s today. So act! 

Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

Lost And Found And Joy

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C

St. Bridget Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Modern day spirituality emphasizes an individual’s quest for God. Adherents of this kind of spirituality talk about their search for God. They will tell you they are on a quest to find God. As interesting as that sounds, it is not biblical. The Bible is about God’s quest for us. Our supposedly quest for God is a veiled reflection of God’s passionate and unrelenting quest for us. It is God who finds us and not the other way. If the project of finding God is entirely ours, we may never find God. So, as from today, let your prayer life and moral life be about setting yourself up to be found by the one true God, who is good. Our today’s Gospel gives us three classic parables of Jesus that highlights the stubborn fact that God is the one who searches for us. God is the Seeker. In the first story, Jesus says to the crowd, “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it?” The implied answer is nobody! No one will take such a risk of putting the ninety-nine sheep in danger just to go in search of one. It’s just bad math and bad economics. Ninety-nine is greater than one, isn’t it? Leaving the ninety-nine and going after one sheep is simply bad shepherding. But that’s our God, everybody. His ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8b). But why would God bother about one soul? It is what God is and does! God is nothing but love, and in supra-rational ways, God relentlessly searches for the lost. That’s why St. Catherine of Siena said that God is pazzo d’amore (crazy in love). 

In the second parable, Jesus tells the story of a woman who has ten coins and loses one. Then she turns her entire house upside down in search of the lost coin. The coin we are talking about is of small value. It’s like a nickel or a penny. Could you imagine someone turning her entire house upside down just to look for a nickel? If it is $20 or $50 or $100, I will understand the passion to find it. But to turn an entire house upside down because of a nickel is shocking. I don’t know of anyone who would do that. Yet, that’s what this woman does. More to it, she invites her neighbors for a celebration. If you invite your neighbors to celebrate with you for finding a nickel, they will think you have lost your mind. If they know your children, they are likely going to be telling them: I think you should check your mom. Something is not right with her. Again, the point here is how crazy in love God is. He searches even for the smallest or the least of us. 

The third parable is the famous story of the Prodigal Son. In the story, the younger son severely insults his father by precisely saying to him: I have desperately been waiting for you to die and since that has not happened yet, I can no longer wait for your demise. Just give me my own inheritance now. In Jesus’ time, such a move is the worst insult a son can heap upon his father. To add salt to injury, he squanders his inheritance on a life of dissipation. Every father has the right to right off this kind of son. Yet, the father waits and waits and waits until the boy returns home. Then going against all the social conventions of the time, the father runs to him and receives him with open arms. What the father has done is crazy. That’s bad fatherhood. In that era, no father would behave that way. At least, he should be imposing punishment upon the reckless son or at least receive him back grudgingly. Indeed, God is pazzo d’amore! God is crazy in love with us. He is relentlessly after us. We are hunted by the image of God who is distant and difficult to please, who is waiting for us to perform morally at a very high level before he can give us any time and attention. But that’s not just the Bible. God is the shepherd, the mother, the father who is crazy in love with us. Even the most obnoxious of us, the prodigal son, is crazily loved by God. 

What’s the spiritual lesson of the three parables? The lost coin, the lost sheep and the prodigal son represent three clear ways of being lost. The woman, the shepherd and the father represent three kinds of finding the lost and three manners of divine intervention and activity. First the coin. The coin is an inanimate object. It is not able to know or feel or sense anything. When it is lost, it doesn’t even know it is lost. It can’t do anything to get to where it truly belongs. Some people, including the ones we know, are in this kind of situation. Who are they? They are people who are spiritually dead, who are so far from God, who are so alienated from their real purpose but don’t even know they are lost. An unexamined life does not know when it has gone off kilter. Such people may be successful in the world, but spiritually speaking, they are far from God and don’t even know they are lost. For St. Augustine, such persons drift into the region of the unlikeness. We are made in the likeness of God, but our sin could be so bad that we wander into the colony of the unlikeness. I have heard people say, ‘I am fine; I am doing well; I don’t need God for anything.’ These people are so lost that they don’t even know that they are lost. People in this situation are like the lost coin. Is there any hope for such people? Today’s Gospel says YES! Because God is like the woman looking for the coin. He is diligently searching for those who don’t even know they are lost. Let’s look at the lost sheep. Obviously, a sheep is more than a coin. It has mobility, sense, appetite, and mind at a very low level etc. When I was growing up in Nigeria, my friends and I once traced a bleating and crying sheep into a ditch. It was his persistent cry that led us to where he was. The sheep knew he was in trouble, his loud and persistent bleating is for someone to come and save him. Some people are like the lost sheep. Spiritually, they are compromised and unable to help themselves. However, they are aware of their dysfunction and messiness. They know they are in a totally bad place. They are like people who admit they have hit bottom and then enroll in an AA program. Like the sheep, they bleat and cry for help. Spiritually and religiously they know they are lost. One day I was sitting in the rectory chapel praying. Upon a reflection of my life, I prayed: “I don’t know what I am doing, Lord. I am so lost. Please, locate me, find me, and bring me home to yourself where I truly belong. Amen.” The words of that prayer is like the bleating of the lost sheep. To such sheep, God finds them too and carries them home. 

Now the prodigal son. He is not like the coin, just dumbly lost. Nor is he like the sheep able only to bleat and cry for help. His situation is more complicated. How come! He has gone into a conscious rebellion against his father. He didn’t fall into a pit and didn’t know why. He consciously and rationally strayed and rebelled. Furthermore, his reasoning skills did not abandon him even when he suffered spiritual and moral collapse. He examined his situation, and made the rational and wise decision to return home. Are there people like this? Yes! You may be one of them. In the past, you may have consciously rebelled against God. Maybe something happened to you. You lost a spouse or someone nearest and dearest to you. May be you prayed and your prayer was not answered the way you wanted it. Maybe the good health you once had has gone south. Maybe the condition of your children saddens you. Maybe you didn’t get the dream job. Maybe you didn’t save enough money and in your retirement you are barely getting by. And in that state of anger, you consciously rebelled against God and stopped praying to him. After a few years, you realized how so lost you have been and you sought your way back. Notice how the father respects the son’s freedom. When the son decided to leave, he let him go. In the same manner, when we exercise our freedom, God respects it too. And when the son exercises the common sense to return home, the father runs to meet him. Finally, what does the woman who finds her coin, the shepherd who finds his sheep, and the father who finds his son have in common? Joy! They are all overjoyed when they found what was lost. God operates in several ways depending on the situation of his children. When we are lost, God finds us. When we allow him to find us, he carries us and welcomes us home. That’s the amazingly great news for this weekend, everybody.