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

When The Son Of Man Returns, Will He Find Faith On Earth?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

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

St. Bridget Catholic Church, Minneapolis, MN

Sunday, October 16, 2022

One of the most frightening and disturbing lines in the entire New Testament is in our Gospel for this weekend. After narrating a parable to his disciples about the necessity “to pray always without becoming weary,” Jesus drops a bombshell question, “But when the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” Jesus came to set the earth on fire, that is the fire of the Holy Spirit. The fact that the Church has been in existence for more than two thousand years is a sign of the abiding presence of the fire of the Holy Spirit. But does it mean that the Church will always be around? “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” To answer the Lord’s question, let’s look at how faith is passed on. Faith is contagious. My siblings and I got it from our parents. My generation got it from the previous generation. But if we fail to pass on the faith, it can fade away in one generation. Couple disturbing facts show that we are always one generation away from the extinction of faith. If you think the Christian faith cannot fade away, look at some places in the world where the Christian faith was once very vibrant. But now, it has ceased to exist. Where did St. Paul mostly preach? In Asia Minor. Today, it comprises most of present-day Turkey. St. John Chrysostom and St. Maximus the Confessor also preached there. Add to it, some of the earliest Christian churches were formed there. In Turkey today, the Christian faith is practically non-existent. Where is the birthplace of the Christian faith? The Middle East. There were once vibrant churches there, great Christian figures, great saints, great theologians, but today only a handful of Christians are there. What about Egypt? Egypt was the home of Origen, one of the greatest Christian theologians of all time; it was the home of the Desert Fathers, and once had a very vibrant church in Alexandria. Today, Christians are a tiny minority in Egypt. What about North Africa? Great Christian figures like Cyprian of Carthage and Augustine of Hippo were North Africans. The region once had a vibrant Christian church in North Africa. Now, it is practically non-existent. Look at Western Europe today. It is even worse there. For centuries, it used to be the bedrock of the Christian faith, it was the place that produced many missionaries that went out to all the world, it was the continent that gave birth to pivotal figures like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Alphonsus Liguori, St. Catherine Sienna, etc. Today, the Christian faith is seriously threatened over there. Faith is fading over there. What you find mostly in Europe today are historic huge cathedrals with a few elderly people in them. Faith can disappear. 

Today, Jesus asks a troubling question, “When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on earth?” Do you want to know my answer? In some regions of the world, he will find lots of Christians but with little Christianity. In others, he will find lots of Christian arts, Christian architectures, huge and beautiful cathedrals, etc but with a few Christians fighting to survive. Basically, the prediction of the future is very dire. This beautiful faith of us, this thing that God has given to us, this everything that Jesus has offered us may fade away. Not because of God’s actions and activity, rather due to ours. The world is becoming aggressively resistant to the Christian faith. The secular culture is intensifying its war against the Christian Church and the proclamation of the Gospel. Our first reading for today taken from Exodus 17:8-13 says, “In those days, Amalek came and waged war against Israel. Moses, therefore, said to Joshua, ‘Pick out certain men, and tomorrow go out and engage Amalek in battle. I will be standing on top of the hill with the staff of God in my hand.” In that short passage, Israel stands for God and for the Church, and the Amalekites stand for all the cultural forces that are fighting against the Church. If you don’t know it, know it now. We are in a fight, in a war, in a spiritual warfare. We have always been in a fight from the beginning. After all, we worship a crucified God who was put to death by cultural and political forces. 

Sisters and brothers, the survival of the Church and the spread of the faith is primarily God’s work, however it is our work too. It is also our responsibility to ensure that the Christian faith is passed on from one generation to the next. Tell others about your faith. Share your faith with your family, especially your children. When your children ask faith based questions, don’t ignore them, and don’t tell them to ask the priest or their faith formators. Be the one to answer their questions. If you don’t know the answer, be the one to make enquiries. Understand your faith and then be able to explain it to your children. Read good Catholic books, ask your priests, read Catholic newspapers, go online, but be mindful of the sources. Your children trust you a lot. If they don’t get the answer from you, they might become disappointed and may even conclude you have no reason for believing in what you believe and in what you are trying to teach them. I believe that one of the reasons why many of our young people are disconnecting from faith is due to lack of understanding of the faith. No one understands the Christian message and abandons it. If a child does not understand the reason to believe, to practice, to experience and express the faith, when he or she gains independence from the parents, they will disconnect. As you share your faith with others, especially your family, one thing you should emphasize is practice, practice, practice. In religious tradition, two things are important— the passing on of beliefs and the passing on of practices. Practices are the things we do, like prayer, rituals, sacraments, processions, signs of the cross, dipping your hand in the holy water, kneeling, genuflecting, doing the corporal and spiritual works of mercy. If you believe strongly, practice strongly. If you believe boldly, practice boldly. Do not privatize the faith. We have a fight in our hands, Christians. The secular world is fighting with everything it has, but we can fight back with love, with beauty, with practice and thereby hand on the faith to the next generation.

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

What’s The Path To Spiritual Healing?

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

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

St. Alphonsus Catholic Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center

Sunday, October 9, 2022

The story of Naaman is our first reading today. On the surface, it is a simple narrative; but in the depth, it is spiritually packed. Naaman is a successful commander of the Syrian army at a time when Syria was a major political power. He was famous, influential, feared, and admired. In the worldly sense, he is the kind of person most of us would like to be or would like our children to be. We want to be famous and powerful. We want our enemies to fear us and our friends to admire us. Although Naaman is a powerful and important figure in the Syrian army, he also has leprosy that worries, torments and humiliates him. Leprosy is a kind of skin disordering and disfiguring disease. He is a significant public figure with a nagging and embarrassing condition. How and where will his help come from? A young Israelite slave girl captured by Naaman’s army enters the stage and recommends a prophet in Israel that might cure Naaman. In Naaman’s entourage, no one is lower in social scale than this Israelite slave girl. In the normal course of things, she would serve Naaman quietly and not be heard. But now she has become a source of wisdom and if Naaman wants to be cured of his leprosy, he has to humbly accept her recommendation. Despite the fact that her counsel is a welcome one to someone like Naaman, it is still a difficult step for Naaman to take because it requires him going to a foreign religion to be healed. It is like someone asking you to travel to India or China to see a Buddhist monk that might heal you. I can imagine you protesting against the move. That’s exactly how it is for Naaman. Eventually, Naaman takes her advice, and with permission from his own king, he goes to see the king of Israel. When Naaman tells the king of Israel that he is in his land to see prophet Elisha, the king does not believe him. He thinks Naaman, from an enemy country, is attempting to spy his own land. So, he tears his own clothes and turns him down. 

It is a humiliating thing for Naaman. His coming to this foreign country was at the “behest” of a slave girl, and now a less influential king compared to his own king is blocking his way and denying him the opportunity to see the healing prophet. After hearing of the situation, prophet Elisha persuaded the king to allow Naaman to see him. Naaman was finally allowed to see the prophet. But before he got to the prophet’s house, Elisha himself sent a messenger to Naaman instructing him to go and wash seven times in the River Jordan. In the world that Naaman lived and moved, this is quite humiliating. He is a great General of the great Syrian army. He is a leading figure in his country. Before he came, he went to see his king. In Israel, he also met the king of Israel. After the initial humiliating refusal, he is on his way to see a provincial prophet that he has never heard of before. Rather than to see him personally, the prophet sends a messenger. And to add salt to injury, the prophet asks him to go and wash in a Jordan river. Deeply upset, Naaman says, “I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand there to call on the name of the Lord his God, and would move his hand over the place, and thus cure the leprous spot.” Further expressing his anger, Naaman says, “Are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be cleansed? With this, he turned about in anger and left.” After all these setbacks and humiliation, Naaman agreed to do the bidding of the prophet. He dips himself into the river seven times, and right away, “His flesh became again the flesh of a little child, and he was clean of his leprosy.” 

What is the spiritual lesson from this story? Firstly, everyone of us, no matter how accomplished and important we are, has some form of leprosy. That is to say a disease, a mental illness, a persistent moral fault, an addiction that torments us, humiliates us, and frightens us. As hard as we may want to dismiss it, everyone has something that worries, bedevils, shames, and frightens us. St. Paul refers to it as “a thorn in the flesh” (2 Cor. 12:7), which he begs the Lord three times to remove. But the Lord tells him, “my grace is sufficient for you.” Do we want to get rid of this thorn? Yes! But we should be careful because that thorn might be the very thing that God is using to bring us to him. The very thing we would like to immediately get rid of in our life might be the very thing that God is using to bring us close to him. God can use your very weakness to get to you. As the saying goes, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.” Secondly, if you want to be healed, you must walk the path of humility. Naaman was healed because he quelled and cooled his pride and then submitted his will to God. Is this easy? Not at all! But the only way to spiritual healing is through humility and not ego inflation. 

Centuries later, the Gospel says that as Jesus entered a village, he was met by ten lepers. Standing at a distance as required by the Jewish law, they raised their voices in supplication, “Jesus, Master! Have pity on us!” Again, in those words we hear a great mark of humility. They know that no great act is going to save them. No great accomplishment can heal them. There is nothing they could possibly do that can better their conditions. What they need to do is to humbly submit to Jesus the Master of the universe. So, they called upon his name in faith and trust. We all have leprosy. What the ten lepers did is the necessary first step we must take. We must admit our powerlessness and weakness and say what we say at every Mass: Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy; Lord have mercy. After the lepers were healed, only one Samaritan returned to give thanks. Like Naaman, the Samaritan (both of them are non-Israelites) have further grace and humility to give thanks. He fell at the feet of Jesus and thanked him. So should we when healing comes. But it will only come through humility. To the Samaritan Jesus says, “Stand up and go; your faith has saved you.” Faith is not stupidity or naiveté. It is an attitude of trust in the will and purpose of God. How should we deal with the thorn in the flesh? Turn to the Lord in faith and humility and say: Lord, save me! And when healing comes, have the further humility to kneel down and give thanks.