Homily for the Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time - June 21, 2015

Homily for Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

June 21, 2015

Awesome

 

            Awesome! That’s a word that, if you’re of a certain generation, gets tossed around a lot. That Frisbee game was awesome. Pizza is awesome. The St. Mary’s Family Fair is awesome. But perhaps we use that word so much that it’s lost some of its power!

            Awesome means that we are filled with awe in the presence of greatness. I’ve had some good pizzas in my time, but none filled me with awe in their presence. Awe is a reaction that we should have when we ponder truly great things – deep truths, heroic men and women…and the works of God.

            The disciples are filled with awe when they see this man, Jesus, command the winds and the storm, and they obey Him. And rightly they should have awe, because standing in the boat with them was the Creator of this vast and magnificent universe.

            Consider this: by recent scientific estimates, there are over 70 billion trillion stars in the entire universe. That’s seven with twenty-three zeros after it. It’s hard to even fathom such immensity – but we have a Creator who has not just created them, but knows every single molecule, every flame that engulfs these stars. Closer to home, the average adult human body contains about 37 trillion cells – each one created by God, Who promised that not a hair on our head falls to the ground without His notice.

             The grandeur of the mountains, the unexplored depths of the oceans, the beauty of human love, the delicate intricacy of a spider web – all of this comes from the Hand of our all-loving Creator. His works are magnificent – and we too should be filled with awe at them!

            As Catholics, we can certainly believe in evolution. In fact, Pope St. John Paul II called it “more than a theory,” and popes all the way back to Pope Pius XII in the 1940s encouraged studying evolution. The Big Bang theory was actually proposed by a Jesuit priest, Fr. Lamaitre, in 1927! But as Catholics we do not believe that evolution or the Big Bang happened by random chance. Everything came to be and unfolded and evolved according to the plan of God, the Divine Designer.

            Even atheists have to grudgingly admit that evolution could not have happened on its own. Stephen Hawking, one of the most brilliant astrophysicists in the world today (and a confessed atheist) said recently, “We don’t know how DNA molecules first appeared. The chances of a DNA molecule arising from random [chance] are very small.” He recognizes that science cannot explain how life (DNA) came to be. Creation proclaims the awesome majesty of the Creator!

            But creation is only one part of God’s greatness. Creation has fallen – we believe that we share a fundamental corruption called original sin, which makes us inclined to choose evil. We need to be saved from our weakness, our temptation, our separation from God! So God shows His greatness even more radically by sending His Son to die for our sins, to reconcile us to God.

            If it was a magnificent action to create us, it is even more remarkable that we are a new creation in Christ, as St. Paul declares in our second reading! Because of what God’s grace has done in us through baptism (which heals us from original sin) and the Eucharist (which unites us to Christ), we now live no longer for ourselves but for Him. My friends, grace is even more remarkable than creation, because creation made us mortal, weak human beings…grace makes us like God!
            Creation, redemption, being transformed by His grace…these things are truly awesome. I pray that we will always remain awestruck at what God has done.