The Thirteenth
Sunday in Ordinary Time (A)
Dear brothers and sisters,
As we watch society drift further and
further into chaos, people of good will on both sides of the political aisle
frequently ask how we have come to this moment in our shared history. The answer
to such a question is both simple and obvious. Indeed, it is so obviously simple
that it is often overlooked and even dismissed. The answer, of course, is sin. Our
society has reached such moral lows because of sin, both personal and communal.
If we seek any remedy to what ails our society that does not take into account
the undeniable reality of human sin, such attempts at healing will necessarily
fail.
When Saint Paul spoke of sin, he used an
analogy from archery. To sin, he said, is hamartia, to miss the mark.
The mark at which we aim, the target whose center we hope to hit, is Christ
Jesus; he is the mark, the target, the aim of our lives. To miss this mark is
both unpleasant and yields unfortunate results, but we can always repent and aim again; to not even aim at the mark
is utterly disastrous, as is abundantly evident today.
A moment ago, the Apostle reminded us that
“we were indeed buried with [Christ]
through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of
life” (Romans 6:4). This, however, is not quite what Saint Paul wrote. Where we
have the word “live,” he used the word peripateo, which “literally means
‘walk,’ since walking is a Hebrew idiom for ‘conducting oneself’ in relation to
God.”[1] This means that while the
baptized have been joined to Christ by sharing in his Death and Resurrection,
each of the baptized remains free to conduct him or herself well or poorly in
relation to God. Today, we have to acknowledge with great sorrow that many of
the baptized are not walking in newness of life.
The Christian,
of course, is called by virtue of Baptism to lose his or her life in Christ,
and in so doing to find life Himself (cf. Matthew 10:39). Saint Augustine said,
“To be baptized into the death of Christ is nothing else but to die to sin,
just as he died in the flesh.”[2] This, we might say, is
what it means to aim at Christ.
Every
Christian who aims at the mark of Christ - and who hits the mark - can be said
to have died to sin. Ambrosiaster put it this way:
It is clear that those who have crucified the body, i.e., the
world with its vices and lusts, die to the world and die together with Christ,
and that they are also conformed to his eternal and saving life so that they
might deserve to be made like Christ in his glory.[3]
Too many Christians today do not strive to
hit the mark of Christ; they do not strive to grow in conformity with the Lord
Jesus and be made like him in his glory; they do not lose their lives in him.
Failing to hit the mark of Christ, failing
to love with his own love, has wide-ranging consequences which extend far
beyond myself.
We are a community
of those who line up on Black Friday to grab every last deal, even if we must
commit violence upon our neighbor in the process. We engage in a politics that
views our fellow member of the polis solely through the lens of
suspicion and condemnation, a vision that erases his or her humanity. We profess
faith in an economy of scarcity, of endless consumption that falsely promises
to make us whole.[4]
The less whole we feel, the more we fall
into various forms of the capital sins of pride, greed, lust, envy, gluttony,
anger, and sloth. The greater these sins, the more we miss the mark, the more
the divide between God and humanity grows. We see this especially today in the breakdown of the family, in the
failure to understand human sexuality, in growing forms of racism and bigotry, and
in a failure to see and protect the dignity of every human life. Each of these
sins, whether personal or communal, has had a grave effect on our society and
we must strive to overcome them, both personally and communally.
We recognize the symptoms easily enough,
but, as a society, we have not recognized the cause of these symptoms and have
denied the reality of the sickness of sin. We continually strive to make
ourselves whole through everything that cannot make us whole. The only way we
can become whole, personally and communally, is through union with the
Crucified and Risen Lord, through reconciliation with him who offers continual
worship to the Father. Only the Divine Physician can heal us and make us whole,
for
Wherever communion with God … is destroyed, the root and
source of our communion with one another is destroyed. And wherever we do not
live communion among ourselves, communion with the Triune God is not alive and
true either.”[5]
This is why
we must strive to participate ever more consciously and intentionally in the
Holy Mass, not as “strangers or silent spectators,” but as those “conscious of
what they are doing, with devotion and full collaboration.”[6]
The fundamental purpose of the Holy Mass
is to join in Christ’s eternal worship of the Father. This is why the Second
Vatican Council said, “Christ indeed always
associates the Church with Himself in this great work wherein God is perfectly
glorified and men are sanctified. The Church is His beloved Bride who calls to
her Lord, and through Him offers worship to the Eternal Father.”[7]
This is why we begin the Holy
Mass saying to the Father, “We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we
glorify you, we give you thanks for your great glory…” Because his glory is so
great we have nothing worthy which we can offer him; nothing this side of
heaven comes close to approximating the Father’s glory and honor. The only worthy
sacrifice we can rightly offer is that of his only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus
Christ. This is why in the Holy Mass the Death and Resurrection of his Son is
re-presented to the Father and we are, by his grace, allowed to share in it
through the Eucharist, which is all symbolized in some way in the offertory.
This humble and simple gesture is actually very significant:
in the bread and wine that we bring to the altar, all creation is taken up by
Christ the Redeemer to be transformed and presented to the Father. In this way
we also bring to the altar all the pain and suffering of the world, in the
certainty that everything has value in God's eyes. The authentic meaning of
this gesture can be clearly expressed without the need for undue emphasis or
complexity. It enables us to appreciate how God invites man to participate in
bringing to fulfilment his handiwork, and in so doing, gives human labour its
authentic meaning, since, through the celebration of the Eucharist, it is
united to the redemptive sacrifice of Christ.[8]
We praise, bless, adore, glorify,
and thank the Father for allowing us to offer the totality of our lives to him
through Christ his Son in the Holy Spirit; this is why, at the end of the
Eucharistic Prayer, the priest offers praise to the Father, saying, “Through
him, with him, and in him, O God, almighty Father, in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
all glory and honor is yours forever and ever.” “While the priest announces the
doxology, he lifts the chalice and paten – not to show them to the people, but
to present the sacrifice to the Father. This gesture says with the body what
the words themselves proclaim: that through, with, and in Christ our voices – and
ourselves – are lifted up to the Father.”[9]
At this great moment when the
priest is united to the worship Christ Jesus offers the Father, you, too, are
united to his worship. Your “Amen not only confirms [your] engagement in this
final act of praise, but also [your] engagement in the whole of this prayer.”[10]
Jesus
is not
standing before His Father as a lone petitioner, as He had been during His earthly
pilgrimage when He spent quiet nights on the mountain praying alone; now His
redeemed are around Him. They have learnt how they can, with Him, praise the
Father who is in heaven. In truth they are in Him, taken up into the living
union of His Body and therefore drawn into the fervent glow of His prayer, so
that are really in a position to worship the Father “in spirit and in truth”
(John 4:24).[11]
If we have truly offered
ourselves to the Father, if we have conformed our hearts to the love of Christ
and died to sin, then “our actual participation in the Sacrifice of the Word
[made Flesh] resounds, not only in the nave and sanctuary of our churches, but
also in the temples of our hearts.”[12]
Let us, then, strive to worship
the Father by offering ourselves with his Son so that we, like the bread and
wine, may be transformed so that we might hit the mark by living lives that
give glory to the Father in all things. By walking in this newness of life, by conducting
ourselves well in relation to God, may his love transform us and, through us,
our society. Amen.
[1] Scott W. Hahn, Catholic
Commentary on Sacred Scripture: Romans (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker
Academic, 2017), 96.
[2] Saint Augustine of Hippo, Against
Julian, 1.7.33.
[3] Ambrosiaster, Commentary on
Paul’s Epistles.
[4] Timothy P. O’Malley, Liturgy
and the New Evangelization: Practicing the Art of Self-Giving Love
(Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2014), 79-80.
[5] Pope Benedict XVI, General Audience
Address, 29 March 2006.
[6] Sacrosanctum Concilium, 48.
[7] Ibid., 7.
[8] Pope Benedict XVI, Sacramentum caritatis,
47.
[9] Christopher Carstens and Douglas
Martis, Mystical Body, Mystical Voice: Encountering Christ in the Words of
the Mass (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2011), 204.
[10] Edward Foley, “The Structure of
the Mass, Its Elements and Parts,” in A Commentary on the General
Instruction of the Roman Missal, Edward Foley, Nathan D. Mitchell, Joanne M.
Pierce, eds. (Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2007), 180.
[11] Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of
the Roman Rite: Its Origin and Development, Vol II, Francis A. Brunner,
trans. (Notre Dame, Indiana: Ave Maria Press, 2012), 265-266.
[12] Christopher Carstens and Douglas
Martis, Mystical Body, Mystical Voice, 204.
