Ordinary Time 26 - Outrageous

 

Homily for Ordinary Time 26

September 28, 2025

Outrageous

 

            So much that passes for news is actually just outrage, usually over the smallest stuff – what this politician said on Twitter, what scandal that celebrity has fallen into. Our principal at Cardinal Kung jokingly calls it “pearl-clutching” – “Gasp, I can’t believe that person did that!”

            But anger and outrage can actually be quite virtuous and positive, if we’re angry about the right things. In Catholic theology, our emotions are actually called “passions” and St. Thomas Aquinas lists eleven basic passions, such as desire, fear, and anger. But he says that passions are morally neutral in themselves – whether or not they are justified depends upon the object of our passion. If we are afraid of our shadow, we’d say that fear is not good. But if we’re afraid of the bear in our backyard, that fear is quite justified!

            So, likewise, anger and outrage should occur when we see a real injustice in front of us (not an imagined injustice like getting cut off in traffic). In the first reading, God is complaining that the Israelite leaders are complacent and apathetic when a real threat was attacking their people: due to Israel’s sinfulness, God was allowing the nation of Assyria to march upon Israel and take them into captivity, which did occur about twenty years after the prophet Amos penned those words. But the leaders were unconcerned about this brewing threat to their people, because they were living comfortable lives with plenty of food, and couldn’t be bothered with the sufferings of the “little people”. Likewise in the Gospels, this rich man should have been outraged at the sufferings of this poor man Lazarus, but was complacent and ignored this problem.

            As long as we live in this fallen world, evil and injustice will be with us – and we should never grow complacent with it! We should be angry that over a million unborn children are killed each year in abortion. We should be angry that there is an epidemic of drug addiction in our culture. We should be angry that man-made famines and wars are causing untold suffering in many places in our world.

            But that justified outrage must then lead us to action. As Edmund Burke famously said, “The only thing necessary for evil to triumph in the world is that good men do nothing.” This is where our media-outrage-machine stops short – they proffer outrage but then don’t move on to action. God does not merely want us to wring our hands and say, “Oh, what a shame,” and then move on to Candy Crush. But what can we do?

            First, we can pray. Prayer has the power to move mountains. Back in the 400s, the barbarian Attila the Hun was rampaging his way across the crumbling Roman Empire. The last man standing in his way was a little old weak Pope, Leo the Great. Knowing that he was the last chance to save the city of Rome, Leo went out by himself to meet the mighty conqueror – his only weapon was prayer, as he and the entire city were praying to be saved. Leo met Attila on the road just outside the city, and no one knows what conversation passed in between the two – but in the end, Attila turned away and left the city untouched. Leo was victorious, not with weapons and armies, but with prayer.

            Some politicians will have us believe that prayer is ineffective in the face of tragedy. But prayer is incredibly effective – it can change hearts, move mountains, heal the sick, and bring Christ into a time of pain. But it is true that prayer isn’t meant to be a substitute for action. There is a beautiful quote attributed to Mother Teresa: “I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I'm supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I'm praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”

            So prayer then must move us to do what we can. Not all of us are called to end world hunger in Malawi or solve the injustices of the world, but all of us can and should do our part. We may be grieved about abortion – but how many of us have ever gone to pray in front of Planned Parenthood in Bridgeport, which our parish is doing next Sunday? We may tsk-tsk when we pass by a drug addict beneath a bridge, but would we ever take five minutes to meet him and hear his story? We may wring our hands about how young people aren’t going to church, but have we volunteered to teach religious education?

            A dear friend of mine, a priest in Baltimore, got one of the worst assignments as pastor of the Basilica of the Assumption in one of the worst neighborhoods in town. Homeless people would sleep in the back pews of his church, and gunshots would ring out at all hours of the night. He knew that his city needed Jesus Christ – but how to bring Him to them? Around the same time he was assigned there, he met a young man named Colin who felt God calling him to serve the poor, but he didn’t know how. Together, with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, Fr. James and Colin were led to start a twofold ministry called “Source of All Hope”. They found passionate young Catholics who would give up a year of their life to do two things: adore our Eucharistic Lord in the Basilica (Adoration is now 24/7 in one of the roughest ‘hoods in the city) and then take Jesus to the streets by loving and serving the homeless. Now, dozens of young adults give up a summer or a year of their lives to serve as missionaries, dedicated to loving Jesus in the Eucharist and loving Jesus in the poor. Has it ended poverty and homelessness? No. But has it changed lives, one at a time? Absolutely. Fr. James could have wrung his hands and said, “Oh, what a shame this city has come to.” Instead, he was motivated by love to do something about it.

            The world and the media get outraged about a lot. Most of it is silly, but some of it actually matters. As a Christian, we ought to be outraged by the real injustices and offenses against human dignity that are so prevalent in our world. But what if our outrage leads us to actually do something about it? That would be outrageous!