Homily for November 7, 2021 - Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

Homily for November 7, 2021

Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time

In the End, the Soul Alone Remains

 

            Imagine a kid building a sandcastle at a beach. It’s an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. But up walks a structural engineer, who says, “Hey kid, I noticed you’re building a sandcastle. Do you have permits for that? I notice it’s not ADA compliant. Are your footers secured to the bedrock? Is the electrical up to code?”

            The kid would probably respond, “Hey mister…it’s just a sandcastle!” We don’t need to make any special effort if we’re building something that’s going to be washed away in an hour. When we go camping, we don’t worry about landscaping around our tent, because we know our stay is not permanent. Temporary things don’t require the same amount of care that permanent things require.

            But when we consider it, there is only one truly permanent thing we own. Not our bodies, not our bank accounts, not our cars or houses or our position in the company or our sports trophies. The only thing we will own forever…is our soul.

            How often do we think about our soul? Probably much less than we ought! Our soul is immortal. It is made in the Image of God with an intellect and free will, and will continue to endure long after the mountains have been reduced to dust, long after every ocean has dried up. Unlike the animals, who live for a while and then die, our soul will live forever. CS Lewis puts it this way: “There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

            Your soul will either be an everlasting splendor, radiantly holy in Heaven with the glory of God, or an immortal horror, separated from God for eternity in the pits of Hell. There really is no other option. Thus, it is absolutely critical for us to care for our soul much more than we care for the very temporary things of this world.

            We see this dynamic in the Gospel. This story of the widow who gives her two last pennies to the Lord is sandwiched between two stories of people who marvel in transitory things. First we see the Pharisees, who “love honors and money.” Second, immediately following this story of the Widow, the very next verses in Mark’s Gospel read: “As Jesus was making his way out of the temple area one of his disciples said to him, “Look, teacher, what stones and what buildings!” Jesus said to him, “Do you see these great buildings? There will not be one stone left upon another that will not be thrown down.” His disciples were marveling at the beauty and majesty of the Temple in Jerusalem.

            But where is the Temple now? It was destroyed in 70 AD, and none of it remains. Where is the Pharisee’s honor, where is their money? Nowhere – their bodies are lying in graves somewhere, and no one knows their name. But the Widow – she was giving her whole self to the Lord, trusting Him for her every need, generously loving to the point of sacrifice. And that made her soul beautiful, radiant, holy…which she still enjoys in Heaven. Her heart wasn’t set on passing things, but on eternal things – and her reward, therefore, is eternal.

            So how do we care for our eternal, immortal soul? Consider how we care for our bodies. We feed our bodies – we feed our souls by coming to Mass every Sunday and worthily receiving the True Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist. We clean our bodies – we clean our souls by regularly receiving the Sacrament of Confession. We rest our bodies – we rest our souls by going on a retreat, and spending time in prayer. We exercise our bodies – we exercise our souls by doing good works. We discipline our bodies by dragging ourselves out of bed in the morning and by passing up the donuts at work – we discipline our souls by fasting and sacrifices done for love of Jesus.

             I think of the beautiful example of a little-known Catholic saint, St. Joseph Moscati, who realized the value of the soul. He was an Italian layman in the early-1900s who became a very accomplished doctor – he taught in medical schools, was one of the first ones to pioneer the use of insulin to treat diabetes, and published hundreds of scholarly articles in medical journals. But he was first of all a man of faith, who went to Mass daily and would pray before each patient entered the room.

            He would tell his patients that the “first medicine” was not pills or shots, but the Sacraments. After listening to their physical ailments, he would ask about the state of their soul, if they had been to Confession recently or whether they were practicing their Faith. Along with healing their bodies, he brought many of them back to the Faith, and they found the spiritual health that they had long lacked. He wrote to a younger doctor one time, “Remember that you must treat not only bodies, but also souls, with counsel that appeals to their minds and hearts rather than with cold prescriptions to be sent in to the pharmacist.” Here was a man who realized that, as important as the body was, the soul was our only possession that lasts forever!

            So I ask you – do you care for your soul as much as you should? What do we need to do to take care of it? Regular Confession, daily prayer, weekly Mass, practice of the virtues. At the end of our lives, everything else will be just as temporary as that sandcastle, washed away by the waves – our soul alone will remain.