Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time - August 11, 2019

Homily for August 11, 2019

Nineteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Waiting Upon the Lord

            I remember reading a strange story in the life of St. John Vianney. When John Vianney was a young boy, his parents took him to a local shrine to Our Lady. While he was at the shrine with a number of other pilgrims, there was a great commotion as a woman came through the crowd, crying and carrying her ten-year-old son in her arms. Her son was deformed, crippled, and with severe mental disabilities. He had never walked or spoken in his life. The woman, frustrated with years and years of praying for a miracle, went up to the altar and said aloud, “God, I have prayed for my son for years and You have done nothing! Here he is; You take him!” And with that, she literally threw her deformed son at the foot of the altar.

            All of the eyes of everyone in the shrine were fixed on the woman, who was crying hysterically and storming out of the church. But as she reached the door of the church, she stopped when she heard a little voice cry out, “Mommy?” She turned around and beheld, in amazement, her son standing at the altar, fully healed. This incident made a deep impact on St. John Vianney.

            This mother had prayed and prayed for ten years, and then when all hope seemed lost, God came through. It is this faith that Abraham showed in our second reading – he didn’t know how, he didn’t know when, but he was confident that God would give him back his son Isaac even as he prepared to offer him to God as a sacrifice.

            There is, in the Scriptures, the idea of “waiting on the Lord”. It means waiting in expectation and hope that God is going to move, that He will come through. A lot of times we say, “God, You are taking too long…I don’t really believe that you’re going to move…so I’m going to figure this out on my own.” But those who wait on the Lord say, “God, You’ve got this – and in Your own time, in Your own way, You will provide an answer.”

            Today’s Gospel speaks about waiting on the Lord. So many people give up their faith in God because it seems like God is silent, or taking too long to answer, or not giving them the answer they want. But it is those who wait – watchful, alert, in hope – who will experience His love in this life and His Kingdom in the next.

            I want to mention three practical areas where we must wait on the Lord.

            First, in our own sanctification. Many people struggle with a stubborn sin – whether a sin of impurity, or impatience, or a bad temper, or habitual lying, or taking the Lord’s name in vain, or whatever it is. And if we are seriously trying to overcome the sin, we can get discouraged when we have to confess it week after week, year after year. We might get frustrated and say, “God, when will You take away this sin?” Some of us might even give up the fight and say, “It’s too hard…it’s not worth it…I’ll just give in.”

            But to wait on the Lord is to trust that God IS working in you and that He WILL grant you the holiness for which you seek. A lot of times we think our job is to save our own souls – but we forget that Jesus is the Savior, not us! It’s up to God to make us holy and bring us to Heaven – our job is to trust Him, and to wait in faith that He will come through.

            A second area where we must wait on the Lord is in suffering. It is the human condition to wrestle with suffering – why do innocent babies die? Why do some people live with chronic pain? Why does a faithful spouse have her husband walk out on her? Facing these questions causes a lot of people to leave religion, to leave faith.

            But at the end of the day, we’ve just got to trust in faith that God can and will bring good out of all things, even our suffering. Our job is to wait for Him to move – whether He removes the suffering, or gives us the grace to endure it well.

            Finally, we must wait on the Lord in knowing His will. For people serious about following the Lord, they want to know what His will is. Should I marry this person? Am I called to become a priest or nun? Where does God want me to go to college; which job should I choose; how should I volunteer my time? A lot of times we go to God in prayer and say, “God, show me Your will!” And all we hear is crickets! But we must wait – alert, watching, hopeful – for Him to speak to us, according to His time.

            Now all this talk of waiting on the Lord sounds very passive. It’s not meant to be! We must cooperate with these things – if we struggle with stubborn sin, along with waiting for the Lord’s grace, we must also take steps to avoid temptation. If we are suffering, we should definitely take medicine…along with waiting for the Lord’s healing. If we want to know His will, we need to take steps to discover what it is. So I am not saying that we are just passive – but to wait on the Lord is to not get discouraged when it seems like God is silent or distant. He is the Savior; He is the Healer; He is the one who will redeem us. The whole core of Christianity is that God Himself has done a daring rescue of His people by Christ’s death!

Jesus talks about watching even to the “second and third watch” of the night – each of the four watches of the night were three hours, so the second and third watch was anywhere between 9pm to 3am – a long time to wait! But these guests wait as long as they need to because they know that the Bridegroom is coming. They don’t despair; they don’t say to themselves, “Oh, he’ll never come. Let’s give up and go home.”

Likewise, when we are suffering, when we are seeking to know God’s will, when we are trying to overcome sin, we must have that same confidence – God will come; He will rescue His people.