Homily: 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, B

Deacon Tony Cecil Homily: 15th Sun. OT, B Epiphany Catholic Church, Louisville, KY

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about packing and luggage.

There are a few reasons: the end of summer is near...I'll be moving back to the seminary, and moving out of the rectory I've been living in. But most of all, it's because of next weekend.

Next weekend, I’ll be making my first international trip to visit my best friend in Rome. I’ve been texting and calling him quite a bit lately, asking about the endless details that keep coming to mind, and I’ve probably driven the poor thing crazy. Among what I asked, though, was what I should pack. A lot of people—people who clearly don’t know me that well or have never travelled with me—told me to pack lightly. I don’t think I’ve ever done that in all of the traveling that I’ve done in my short life. I’m not even sure if I know how to do it!

In this weekend’s Gospel, though, Jesus takes it a step further than packing lightly—He tells His apostles to pack NOTHING for their journey! Nothing—absolutely nothing! They could take a stick to help them walk, the tunic that they were wearing, and the sandals on their feet, and that was it.

This has been hard for me to fathom because over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been making trips to the bank to figure out my money situation while I’m gone, and Jesus tells his apostles not to bring any money at all.

I’ve been hearing advice to buy snacks for the long plane ride in the airport, and Jesus tells his apostles that they’ll be living off of whatever people give them.

I’ve been talking with my friend arranging where I’ll be staying, and Jesus doesn’t account for that, either.

It sounds absolutely crazy, and not a trip I’d be interested in.

But, there’s an important distinction, here.

I’m essentially going on a vacation to see my best friend. We’re doing a bunch of Catholic stuff, so maybe we can get away with calling it a pilgrimage—but a comfortable one.

But, Jesus wasn’t sending his apostles on vacation—he was sending them out on a mission.

You see, on a mission, there’s no room for a ton of baggage filled with the luxuries of home. There’s no room, and often times no place to spend, a lot of money. There’s no room for worries or doubts. All that there is room for is what consumes everything—your thoughts, your time, your energy—the mission itself. What the task to be accomplished is, what the goal in mind is.

And so that’s what the apostles did. They went out with a singular focus—to proclaim Jesus Christ—and they did it through their preaching, the forgiveness of sins, the driving out of demons, the curing of the sick—they made life better for people, and they let it be known that it was because of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and nothing else and no one else that they were able to do so.

Their mission began with Jesus showing them what they were capable of with his help. It prepared them for when Jesus would ascend to heaven, and the mission would be in their hands—and we know of the remarkable things they did. We know how these apostles who were ordinary people spread the Gospel all over the world, and how they did it in a way that would endure, even to today, in this Church, in Louisville, so far removed from the time and place these stories were first written down.

Stories—that’s what we like to think of, isn’t it? That this is a nice story. It’s so easy for us to sit here and hear the words of the Gospel and see it as not much more than a nice story time at the beginning of Mass. It’s so comfortable for us to take in these words and quickly remind ourselves of when and where they were written, and how these things, these hard truths, couldn’t possibly apply to us.

Well I hate to burst any bubbles, but if you think that, you’re wrong.

Listen again to what Saint Paul told the Ephesians, and now tells us:

In him, we were also chosen, destined in accord with the purpose of the One who accomplishes all things according to the intention of his will, so that we might exist for the praise of his glory, we, who first hoped in Christ. In him you also, who have heard the word of truth, the Gospel of your salvation, and have believed in him, were sealed with the promised holy Spirit… toward redemption as God’s possession, to the praise of his glory.

Brothers and sisters, the mission of Christ was not just for those that walked alongside him two thousand years ago.

The mission of Christ is not just for the Holy Father, or the bishops, or the priests, or the deacons, or the religious men and women, or the parish staffs.

The mission of Christ is for all of us—the mission of Christ is for YOU!

And what is that mission? Saint Paul tells us—to praise God and God’s glory. To recognize who we are, the dignity that we have, and how our lives are so immensely blessed because as Saint Paul says, we belong to God! This leads us to become who and what we are called to be—holy.

This sense of our mission of praising God and becoming holy is something the Saints have always had such a firm grasp on:

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux once said that “holiness consists simply in doing God’s will, and being just what God wants us to be.”

Blessed John Henry Newman said that, “God has created me to do some definite service. He has committed some work to me, which he has not committed to another. I have my mission. I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. I shall do good; I shall do God’s work.”

Just like the Apostles, just like the Saints, we, too, are called by God to a particular mission: to drive out the demons in our world and in ourselves, to conquer hate with love, to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to care for the sick, to do the work of figuring out what God has called me to do, and how God intends to use my gifts in a way that no other’s gifts will be used, and to do it all because of who we are and whose we are—people of faith who belong to God, and whose lives have been changed by the knowledge that we are loved profoundly.

When we accept and go out on this mission, like the apostles, there will be no need for us to take anything with us. Because here, in the Church, we will find everything that we need. We will find our God, who loves us enough to die the death of a criminal. We will find our God in the outstretched hand of the priest praying over us, the instrument of Christ forgiving our sins to make us strong, or in the anointing with oil to strengthen us through the trials of our infirmities. We will find a pool of sacred water in which we have all been claimed for Christ, those waters where we died with Christ and rose again with him as a new creation. We will find our God, who loves us enough to transform bread and wine into his very person, and to allow us, missionaries who are imperfect yet longing to love, to receive him into ourselves, and become his hands and feet and voice in a world that so desperately needs to encounter him.

Just like the Apostles, we will find that Jesus is enough--He is all that we need.

At the end of Mass, I’m going to tell you to GET OUT—except not in those words, because the Church doesn’t give us an option that blunt. I’m going to say, Go in peace, glorifying the Lord by your life. That isn’t me saying goodbye, or have a nice day, or see you next week—that’s me, and in reality, the Church, and even more so, Christ Himself, saying GET OUT. Get out of this place and use every waking minute of the next week to work on the mission—use the next week to glorify the God you’ve encountered by the way you live your life—use the next week to do something for someone else, not because you want the credit, but because of your love of Christ—use the next week to live your life with such a joy, joy that only comes from the Lord, that others will want what you have.

And then next weekend, come back to this place to encounter him again, to receive him again—and next weekend, you’ll be told to get out and get back to the mission again.

And then the weekend after that,

And the weekend after that,

And the weekend after that, for the rest of your life.

Do it with every bit of your strength—use every breath you have to glorify God and proclaim how good God is—until you breathe your last—and then, as we pass from this life to the next, having spent our lives on the mission, we will reach our goal and hear those words, “Well done, good and faithful servant…enter into the joy of your master,” and everything we have done will have been worth it.

May God grant us the strength to make it so.

To read the Scripture passages for the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time, year B, please click here, to be directed to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops Website.

#homily #mission #disciples