Homily for Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time - July 19, 2020

Homily for July 19, 2020

Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Christ Loved the Church – We Should Too

 

            Last month, I saw on a Catholic website that a prominent Catholic couple, who used to speak at various Catholic events, decided to leave the Church. They said that they were fed up with the abuse scandals, and had encountered so many hypocrites in the Church that they were leaving to seek a better, healthier spiritual tradition.

            I didn’t know this couple personally, but it is always discouraging to hear that the Church has lost another family. Why bother staying Catholic, since they’re right – the Church IS full of scandalous leaders, hypocritical sinners, and unfriendly parishioners?

Later that evening, I opened my breviary for Evening Prayer on the Feast of the Sacred Heart, and the reading was from Ephesians 5, where Paul said simply, “Christ loved the Church.” This settled my troubled heart – if Christ could love the Church, so can I. If I love Christ, I will love what He loves – and He loves the Church enough to die to make her holy.

Today’s parable of the wheat and the weeds is a poignant reminder that in this world, the Church will be filled with both saints and sinners and everyone in between. If we are looking for a “perfect” Church with stellar leadership and parishioners who are unfailingly friendly, we won’t find it on this side of eternity. And that is good – because our Church, as Pope Francis likes to say, is a field hospital, which treats the wounded and the sick. Those who are broken, sinful, weak, hurting are welcome to come to the Church to encounter the healing, merciful love of Christ.

But this also leaves us with a Church that is messy, imperfect, flawed, sinful. To many people, this is a scandal – how can we encounter the all-holy God in a Church that seems so unholy at times? Here are a few perspectives:

First, the fact that the sins of the Church are so shocking means that people hold the Church to a high standard. We expect Hollywood to be full of scandals, but the world expects the Church to radiate Christ’s love. And…they’re right! We ought to be holy. The world recognizes our dignity - I pray that we do as well.

Second, we can’t forget that the field of the Church is not all weeds – there is plenty of wheat in there as well! There are so many people whose love for Christ is beautiful and holy…we cannot forget this, even if they don’t make the headlines. For example, two weeks ago we buried one of our oldest parishioners who died at the rich old age of 101. Every time I would visit her and bring her Communion, she would weep and say, “Thank you for bringing me Jesus. I love Him so much.” A living saint like this should inspire us – and there are millions like her in the Church, if we have eyes to see.

Third, we must consider that Satan hates the Church because this is the one true Church founded by Jesus Christ with the fullness of Truth and every possible avenue of grace. Thus, the Evil One hates the Catholic Church more than any other! Satan doesn’t waste his time on mediocre churches, but the Catholic Church has the spiritual power to transform the world – so it is logical that Satan works particularly hard to bring it down.

Fourth, the wheat and the weeds are not people because in each human heart there is some wheat and some weed! We all like to think, “Oh, I’m the wheat, because I go to church and basically live a good life.” Yes, but we have all contributed to the lack of holiness in the Church – maybe we’ve given a bad example of a Christian. As Protestant pastor Brennan Manning said, “The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips and then walk out the door and get on with their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.” But the good news is that Christ can root out the weeds in our own souls. The Church is “semper reformanda” – always reforming – and every Christian needs to be as well.

Finally, the solution to this problem is holiness – we must remove the weeds in the garden of our own soul, and pray and fast for the weeds to be rooted out in the Church. You may be familiar with the story of St. Francis’ call. After Francis began to seriously follow Christ, he didn’t know what to do. He was praying one day in a small stone chapel when the crucifix in the chapel opened its eyes and said to Francis, “Rebuild My Church, which as you can see is falling into ruins.” Francis took that literally and began to physically rebuild the chapel of San Damiano, begging stone from local villagers so he could restore it to its former beauty. After a while, though, Francis realized that Jesus wasn’t talking about the physical chapel, but rather of THE CHURCH – which had been falling into ruin through the corruption of its members.

But there are two parts of that story that most people don’t know. First: there were others who were unhappy about the corruption of the Church – a group of men, led by a charismatic preacher named Peter Waldo, fought corruption in the church…by separating from it. They wanted a pure, holy Church, and decided to form it themselves, apart from the Catholic Church. But that wasn’t the way to go – the Waldensian movement quickly died out (although there are actually a few still left today). Strangely, their founder, Peter Waldo, actually disappeared and no one knows where he’s buried, which leads people to ask…where’s Waldo?

So, Pope Innocent III wondered, when he met St. Francis, if this was going to be another Peter Waldo who wanted to reform the Church by leaving it. He was reluctant to approve of St. Francis’ mission until one night the Pope had a dream in which he saw St. Francis holding up a crumbling Basilica of St. John Lateran, which was the Pope’s official cathedral. When he awoke, the Pope quickly called in St. Francis and gave him his blessing – because he recognized that the holiness of this man would be a saving grace to the Church, which was indeed falling into ruin.

As we see our Church so in need of revival, so filled with weeds, we are faced with a choice. We can walk away – or we can do the weeding in our own souls and become the saints that strengthen and purify the Church.