A Homily for the 7th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)
Today’s Gospel reading is part of Jesus’ first major sermon, as recorded in St. Luke’s Gospel. It is commonly called by Scripture Scholars as the “Sermon on the Plain,” and it serves a similar purpose as the “Sermon on the Mount” that is described in St. Matthew’s Gospel. In St. Luke’s account, Jesus is standing in a grassy meadow in the foothills of the mountains of Galilee. He is surrounded by a “great crowd,” and in the section of the sermon that we read today, Jesus is painting a simple, yet powerful portrait of a true Christian, or child of God.
Of course the true Christian is nothing else but a follower of Christ – in fact a true Christian is another Christ. So as Jesus describes the characteristics of a child of God, Jesus, the Son of God, is indirectly giving us a portrait of Himself. Jesus is showing us what kind of Lord He really is – a lavish one.
There are NO LIMITS to Jesus’ love and generosity. No matter how ungrateful we are to Him, Jesus is still generous with us. If we disobey Him, oppose Him, insult Him, or even abandon Him, Jesus keeps on loving us. Quite simply, Jesus does not give up on us. This is the kind of God that we are called to serve; one who places no limits on His generosity, no limits on His love. God is always looking for more ways to shower us with his goodness. And it is this limitless love of God that changes hearts. It even changes the world.
Have you ever seen the movie, The Scarlet and the Black? It came out in 1983, and starred Christopher Plummer and Gregory Peck. It is based on the true story of Msgr. Hugh O’Flaherty, an Irish priest who worked in the Vatican when Rome was being occupied by the Nazis, and Colonel Herbert Kappal, the Commander of the occupying Nazis. Msgr. O’Flaherty organized a secret network to hide and protect the Jews who were being persecuted, and allied soldiers who had been shot down. The drama of the story is the ongoing battle of wits between Msgr. O’Flaherty and Colonel Kappel. The Irish Msgr. outsmarts the Nazis long enough to save thousands of lives.
The Nazis get penned in when the allied forces reach the outskirts of Rome, and Colonel Kappal arranges a secret meeting with Msgr. O’Flaherty. Msgr. O’Flaherty is flabbergasted when his unscrupulous enemy, Colonel Kappal, asks him to use his underground network to get his wife and children to safety in Switzerland. At first Msgr. O’Flaherty is angered by the gall of Colonel Kappal, and chastises the Colonel for his evil ways, and then walks away in anger. Colonel Kappal’s face is downfallen and filled with anxiety over what will happen to his family. He is captured by the allied forces, and it is only when he is being interrogated that he discovers that Msgr. O’Flaherty, after his anger had cooled off, had a change of heart and successfully saved the Colonel’s family. Msgr. O’Flaherty remembered that he was a Christian, and as a priest was truly an alter Christus – another Christ. Colonel Kappal spent the rest of the war as a prisoner, and Msgr. O’Flaherty visited him regularly. Eventually Colonel Kappal repented of his evil actions during the war, and was received into the Church. This is just one example of the power of God’s limitless love. God never gives up on us because He knows that He can save us, change us, and lead us closer to Him.
How often are we like Msgr. O’Flaherty, who at first allowed his anger to cause him to forget that he was a Christian? Pride, shame, fear are some of the other things that can cause us to forget that we are Christians, called to be Christ to all those around us. It is through us, the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ, that Jesus continues to live incarnate in the world so that all people can encounter His love in a deeply personal way. While it would be best if we never forgot to be Christian in our daily activities, we should all be like Msgr. O’Flaherty who did put aside his anger, and put on Christ.
The limitless love of God is the reason why we should also NEVER doubt God’s forgiveness. One of the Devil’s oldest tricks is to convince us that our sins are just too heinous to be forgiven. Discouragement is one of Satan’s favorite disguises. He loves to make us feel discouraged, because that takes away our hope.
Nothing can be further from the truth. God’s mercy is like a huge furnace of love, and even our biggest sins are just like drops of water. When we cast them into the furnace of God’s mercy the vanish. As the psalmist put it in today’s Responsorial Psalm, “The Lord is kind and merciful. As far as the east is from the west, so far has He put our transgressions from us.”
We should NEVER doubt God’s love and forgiveness. When Jesus was hanging from the cross, looking down on the very people who had unjustly condemned Him and crucified Him, He said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.” Colonel Kappal came to know the mercy of God. He, who had ordered the arrest and death of so many people, did not become discouraged. He humbly and honestly laid his sins before Jesus, Crucified and Risen, and allowed Jesus to redeem him.
If there is something buried in your heart, that you have hidden from God because you think that God will not be able to forgive you, NOW is the time to uncover it and lay it at the feet of Christ. Jesus already knows what it is, and He has been longing for you to turn it over to Him, so that He can free you from it. Do so now, in this Mass, and then make a definitive break with it by coming to the sacrament of Reconciliation. We hear Confessions every Saturday; from 3:15 p.m. until 4 p.m. at St. Anthony’s, and from 3:45 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at Our Lady of Sorrows.
If there is someone in your life whom you have not forgiven, then decide right now to forgive them. We are God’s children, therefore we have His grace flowing through our hearts. We need to access that grace to have the strength to forgive and start over.
When Jesus comes into our hearts again in Holy Communion, let us all thank Jesus for His limitless love, and let us promise to do our best to imitate God’s limitless love this week, so that as Christians we will be faithful reproductions of this beautiful portrait of Christ Jesus. By being channels of God’s limitless love, we will bring people to Jesus, we will change hearts – we will participate in Christ’s love which will change the world.
