Homily for July
14, 2019
Fifteenth Sunday
of Ordinary Time
Jesus the Savior
Today’s
parable can be read on two levels. The first level, the obvious one, is that
the Lord is teaching us to love our neighbor, even if our neighbor is different
from us. But some of the Church fathers, like Origen, Augustine, and Irenaeus,
saw a deeper significance to this parable.
The man
going down from Jerusalem to Jericho is a symbol of humanity. Humanity was once
united to God, symbolized by Jerusalem, where the Jews would worship the Lord.
But humanity left this beautiful union with God through sin – choosing the
pleasures of Jericho over the joy of Jerusalem.
Jericho, in Scripture, is always seen as a worldly, sinful place – when
the Israelites were told to enter the Promised Land, the first thing God
commanded them to do was destroy Jericho, lest the lust and greed and pride of
that city corrupt them.
As
humanity journeyed away from God (Jerusalem) to the things of this world
(Jericho), they were beaten up by robbers. And this is always the way it is
with sin, isn’t it? Sin makes us miserable, leaves us in shame (naked) and
spiritually sick (half-dead). The priest and the Levite pass by – a symbol of
how the Law of Moses and all the sacrifices of the Old Testament could not heal
us.
Rather,
it took an outsider – Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh, to take pity on us. He
cleanses our wounds through Confession, lifts us up and brings us to a place of
safety (the Church). He even pays the price for our redemption, as the Samaritan
paid the innkeeper out of his own funds.
This is
the “Good News” of the Gospel! That we are forgiven, redeemed! What good would
our lives have been if we weren’t redeemed? If we aren’t redeemed, then life is
meaningless – just have as much fun as you can until you die. But we are redeemed, forgiven, healed,
reconciled, and this is cause for rejoicing!
As a
kid, probably all of us broke something at some point. I can remember breaking
one of my mom’s porcelain houses she collected, and of course my first (and
thankfully only) car crash. We all know that “crisis moment”: when that ball
sails through the window or we get out of the totaled sedan – and we often
think, “Oh no, I screwed up! Dad’s gonna kill me for this! How am I ever going
to pay for this?” But because of Jesus Christ, we can say, “Oh no, I screwed
up! But I’m gonna call my Heavenly Father, because He will fix it and has
already paid for it.” Your life, shattered by sin, broken by shame – He is able
to fix it. That life that you crashed, He has already paid the price for a new
one, on the Cross. This is why St. Paul declares in the second reading that
“through Him, all things are reconciled to God, making peace through the Blood
of His Cross.”
And this
message of hope is not just for huge sinners. If we haven’t fallen into serious
sin, this too is an act of God’s mercy! In a Russian prison camp in the 1940s,
one of the prisoners had been stealing bread. To put a stop to it – and to make
an example – the commandant lined up all of the prisoners and told them that
they would be shot at random until the thief confesses and turns himself in.
There was dead silence in the camp – no one wanted to move. So the soldiers
dragged a random man out of the lineup and shot him point-blank. Still, no one moved.
The soldiers were about to pull another random prisoner out of the crowd when
one of them stepped forward and pointed at his own chest. The guards were
amazed, because this man was considered by all to be the most virtuous,
sacrificial, even holy of the
prisoners. He was always praying, sharing with others, taking care of the sick
– was it really him who stole the bread? They ended up beating him so severely
that he had to recover in the infirmary before rejoining his work crew. When he
returned, the other prisoners said to him, “We know you did not steal the
bread! You would never do such a thing!” He replied, “No, I did not steal it.”
“Then why did you point to yourself when they were looking for the thief? You
lied in saying you had done it!” He responded, “No, I did not lie. I pointed to
my heart because I know that within my heart lies the capacity to do all evil.
If it were not for God’s protecting grace, I would steal, lie, cheat, and fall
into every kind of evil.”
So this
“good news” of Christ’s redemption is for everyone: for those who have had a
sinful past, for those who still struggle with their sins, and even for those
who have been preserved from sin by His grace. All of us stand in need of the redemption of Christ!
Sometimes
the media makes us think that Catholicism is all about just following certain
rules and prohibitions. Many in the media would reduce our Faith to nothing but
a few hot-button, controversial issues. But that would be missing the point –
the whole point of our Faith is about what Jesus Christ has done for us in
rescuing us from the Kingdom of Darkness by His death and resurrection. To see
the Faith as nothing but rules and prohibitions and hot-button issues makes
Catholicism into something depressing! As the American evangelist Billy Sunday
once said, “Most men have just enough religion to make them miserable.” In
other words, they are missing out on the heart of the Faith – which is what
Jesus has done for us and what He offers us! This should bring us abundant joy!
One
final corollary: once we acknowledge what Jesus has done for us, we must make
Him Lord of our lives. He is already the “firstborn of all creation, the image
of the invisible God” as St. Paul puts it. But now He must also become our Lord, Lord of every aspect of our
life. We follow Him, not to earn salvation, but in thanksgiving for the salvation He already earned for us. We don’t earn Heaven, we claim
Heaven!
My
friends, this story of the Good Samaritan is about more than just our love for
our neighbor. It’s also about God’s immense, sacrificial love for us. We can
only love because He first loved us and redeemed us by His death on the Cross.
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