Homily for Monday, 11 August 2014– Memorial of St. Clare

Monday of the 19th Week in Ordinary Time

Readings of the day: Ezekiel 1:2-5, 24-28c; Psalm 148:1-2, 11-12, 13-14; Matthew 17:22-27

This homily was given at St. Stanislaus Kostka Parish, Rochester, NY.

What does it mean for us to stand with the people who are least powerful among us; who are persecuted; who are poor?

Our Gospel reading today presents us with two seemingly disconnected sections: Jesus’ prediction of his own Passion and death, followed by a strange fish story. In neither of these stories does Jesus say to his disciples what they want to hear. But it is what they, and perhaps we, need to hear. If Jesus’ disciples were hoping to be among the powerful; the elites of the day, Jesus invites them, and us, instead to partake of his own Passion. Jesus invites us to self-denial; to die to what is not of God; to die to competition for power and prestige at others’ expense, a significant ill of our own society today, perhaps more even than of Jesus’ time. In response to Jesus’ invitation to partake of his Passion; to stand with the least powerful; to deny ourselves, Matthew says that his disciples “were overwhelmed with grief.”

What in our world today overwhelms us “with grief”? Perhaps it is the plight of persecuted Christians in Iraq. Perhaps it is the bloodshed in the Holy Land. Perhaps it is the migrant and refugee crisis occurring in our own country. Perhaps it is the ineffective if not muted response to evil; persecution; injustice both in this country and abroad by governments of the most powerful nations. Perhaps it is the ideological polarization of our own society. For me, it is the violence and poverty in our city that I do not need to go far from my own parish to see.

Grief can be a good reaction to injustice; to evil if it leads us at least to want to right these wrongs. However, as Pope Francis warned especially in his letter late last year on “The Joy of the Gospel,” there is the kind of grief that is concerned more with stock market failures than with the poor, hungry, and homeless in our streets. This is the kind of grief that is self-centered; power-centered that Jesus, too, invites us to deny ourselves. The more we live in power and prosperity, the more this kind of self-denial becomes our cross.

So how does our Gospel story today of the fish and the coin for the temple tax relate to self-denial; to our partaking in Christ’s Passion? It does so because, in this parable, we are “the subjects” or, even better understood, the daughters and sons of the King, Jesus Christ, and of his Kingdom. We are among the free; among the powerful. But Jesus invites us, as he invites Peter by asking him to pay the temple tax from the coin in the fish’s mouth, to stand with “the foreigners” who owe the temple tax; with the powerless; with the poor.

Are we willing to accept Jesus’ invitation? Jesus challenges us to take up our cross; Christ’s cross; to stand with and to empower the poor; the persecuted, even if we are among the free; the powerful. Jesus’ words may overwhelm some “with grief.” They may not be words that all want to hear, but I believe they are words we need to hear.