Homily
for January 28, 2007
Liturgical Year C - Cycle I
4th Sunday in Ordinary Time
By Fr.Tom Franxman Topic:
God's will
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Reading 1
Jer 1:4-5, 17-19
The word of the LORD came to me, saying: Before I formed you in the
womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you, a prophet to the
nations I appointed you.
But do you gird your loins; stand up and tell them all that I command
you. Be not crushed on their account, as though I would leave you
crushed before them; for it is I this day who have made you a fortified
city, a pillar of iron, a wall of brass, against the whole land:
against Judah’s kings and princes, against its priests and people. They
will fight against you but not prevail over you, for I am with you to
deliver you, says the LORD.
Reading
II
1 Cor 12:31—13:13
Brothers and sisters:
Strive eagerly for the greatest spiritual gifts. But I shall show you a
still more excellent way.
If I speak in human and angelic tongues, but do not have love, I am a
resounding gong or a clashing cymbal. And if I have the gift of
prophecy, and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all
faith so as to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I
give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may
boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, it is not pompous, It
is not inflated, it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it
is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not
rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all
things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Love never fails.
If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues,
they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing. For we
know partially and we prophesy partially, but when the perfect comes,
the partial will pass away. When I was a child, I used to talk as a
child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put
aside childish things. At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror,
but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know
fully, as I am fully known. So faith, hope, love remain, these three;
but the greatest of these is love.
Gospel
Lk 4:21-30
Jesus began speaking in the synagogue, saying: “Today this Scripture
passage is fulfilled in your hearing.” And all spoke highly of him and
were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They also
asked, “Isn’t this the son of Joseph?” He said to them, “Surely you
will quote me this proverb, ‘Physician, cure yourself,’ and say, ‘Do
here in your native place the things that we heard were done in
Capernaum.’” And he said, “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted
in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in
Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a
half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to
none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in
the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the
time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only
Naaman the Syrian.” When the people in the synagogue heard this, they
were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him out of the town, and
led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had been built, to
hurl him down headlong. But Jesus passed through the midst of them and
went away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It was last October when I first heard from Father Carney that he would
be absent from Los Alamos during January and February and that if I
wished, I could come and take his place. He would be grateful. So, with
the exchange of letters, that particular arrangement was made. Sometime
during the Christmas vacation, I received another e-mail asking for a
short paragraph with a long description of my autobiographical details.
That too was sent and I believe published in the messenger of this
parish. I assume that you all know that I am Fr. Thomas Franxman. I am
a member of the California Province of the Society of Jesus, currently
stationed and working at Fordham University in the Bronx. Now, a long
way from home, they are having bad weather. If I had known that, I
suppose I would have even been more grateful to be here instead of
there. That’s how things have worked out and I shall be here until the
19th of next month.
One of the remarks that has been made consistently after the renovation
of our liturgy is that there are just too many readings on Sunday.
“It’s too big a banquet.” “How are we going to take everything that is
given to us and profit by it? Above all, pray about it during the
remainder of the liturgy?” Well, for one, I rather give thanks for that
especially if you are preaching several times on a given weekend. There
is plenty there and it is possible to pick and to choose, to unite and
divide, in a way that one couldn’t ordinarily do with lesser material.
I propose this morning, briefly, briefly because another thing that
came out of the Council is that we shouldn’t preach for very long. Now,
what do you think of that? Seven minutes, seven minutes was the time
laid down and believe me I do try to adhere to that because if you can
make a point, you can make it in seven minutes. If you cannot make a
point, nothing will be made even if you preach for two hours. Everyone
knows that.
The point that I would like to make this morning is that the seeming
inability of Jesus’ listeners to understand what he said or to accept
whom he was. The reading this morning in the Gospel, has actually
alerted us to the fact that there was at least one attempt on Jesus’
life prior to the Passion and the resurrection. One attempt, the one we
just read about happened in his own town by people who knew him and
they did it because they knew him. “What do you have to tell us?” They
say to him. “Well, I have to tell you a lot.” His reading in the
synagogue, the first part of our Sunday liturgy, is the old synagogue
liturgy. What he was doing is what I am doing right now--commenting on
the prayers and readings of the day. The point of the readings and an
important part of their faith is their common Father, their common God,
and how they should try to become familiar with His will. There is a
whole book, in the Old Testament, which illustrates what happens in a
short story, the Book of Jonah, and it illustrates exactly this point.
Even a prophet like Jonah, really did not understand the will of
God. He consistently resisted because what he was looking at,
namely the Yahweh of his own faith, was not the Yahweh that was, the
living Yahweh. Yahweh that can communicate His will, not the Yahweh
that writes in the Book and says, “Go home and study it.”
This is the point that Jesus was making: “Why can’t you read in the
history, the history that actually made you a chosen people, why can’t
you read the will of God in other matters as well?” What he was
actually saying was, “You read the Book of Kings, you know perfectly
well that Naaman the Syrian was not an Israelite. The widow in
Zarephath was not an Israelite and yet God favored them at a time when
He favored no Israelite. What about that?” Well, they didn’t know,
“What about that?” so, their reaction was to do exactly what happened
maybe a year, a year and a half later. They tried to kill him.
It is an interesting reaction though because that points in very, very
big letters and is the exact thing that we do so often initially. Time
and time again, we have been told that it is the will of God that we be
in his eyes, the people who practice that kind of agape, the charity,
the love as he calls out to God in the second reading. That’s, so to
speak, our rule of life and yet we do not do it. Time and time again,
we simply refuse to see Christ in other people. We refuse actually to
consider that maybe what is happening to us is God’s gentle movement
toward a different purpose. We enter, whether we like it or not, we’re
human beings, we enter every situation just as though we knew best,
that this is obviously what needs to be done and well, maybe God wants
something else but I don’t have time to listen to it now.
That is the whole scene. That is the whole message of the Gospel this
morning: that we, practicing our religion, think we know better than
the religion founded by the One to whom we pray.
Pray about this, this morning as we continue our common liturgy.