A Homily for the 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2009-B
[La Petite Bergere, by Jean F. Millet]
I am sure that most of us know that Harry Potter is the boy who lived in the cupboard under the staircase at his aunt and uncle’s house – at least until the second book or movie. How many of you have heard of the girl who really lived in the cupboard under the staircase? That really was the bedroom of St. Germaine of Pribac. St. Germaine was born in the late 1500s into a middle class family in Pribac, France. When she was a small child a serious illness left her with a crippled hand. Her mother also died when she was still a little girl, and her father remarried. When her stepmother started to have her own children, she started to treat Germaine more as a servant, eventually forcing her to sleep in the cupboard underneath the stairs. At age nine, despite her crippled hand, Germaine was sent out into the fields to shepherd the family’s flock of sheep. Basically her family just wanted her out of their way.
Despite this poor treatment, Germaine found great consolation in her deep faith. She made herself a Rosary out of some string – kind of like this one – and she prayed the Rosary everyday as she watched the sheep. When she got older she would gather the younger children in the village and teach them the Catechism. And she never missed Mass. Even if she was out in the fields, as soon as she heard the church bells chime, indicating that Mass was going to start, she would stick her shepherd’s staff in the ground, tell her guardian angel to take care of the sheep, and then walk over to the church to attend the Holy Sacrifice. Her guardian angel did a good job; she never lost a sheep.
What’s even more important, she grew in holiness and happiness, becoming an inspiration and example even for her harsh stepmother. She was so gentle and wise, in fact, that God couldn’t wait to get her home to heaven, and she died in her sleep when she was only 22-years-old. She heard the voice of God’s love in those church bells, and she heeded what she heard.
HEARING and HEEDING. This are two important things from today’s Gospel. Jesus and His disciples are in Nazareth; the village where Jesus grew up. As He teaches in the synagogue, we are told that the people were “astonished” at what they heard. They wanted to know where Jesus had gotten all this wisdom. His words made a big impact on the villagers of Nazareth, yet they took offense at Him. Jesus was “amazed at their lack of faith.”
How do we make sense of these two reactions by the people of Nazareth? Their lack of faith consisted of their perceiving the truth of Christ’s words, but refusing to welcome that truth into their hearts. They did not want what they heard to change their lives.
Faith, then, which is the foundation of Christian life, involves two things. It involves hearing God’s word, and also heeding that word. God is always speaking to us, and we usually hear him – in our conscience, in the teachings of the Church, in the words of the Bible – but oftentimes we don’t heed what we hear, and that stunts our spiritual growth.
This was God’s constant complaint in the Old Testament, as we just listened to in today’s First Reading. God sent them prophets over and over again, to show them the way to a meaningful and abundant life, and they heard what the prophets had to say, but they didn’t heed it; they “resisted” it, they “revolted” against it.
Following Christ means both hearing and heeding the Word of God; it means keeping “our eyes fixed on the Lord… as the eyes of servants are on the hands of their masters.”
Our fallen human nature is like spiritual gravity; it’s always pulling us towards following the easy path of comfort and self-indulgence, to go with the flow of popular culture.
Today we can ask ourselves: What has God been saying to us that we have been resisting? It may have something to do with a relationship – someone we need to forgive, or ask forgiveness from, for example. It may be bringing some long-hidden sins to the fountain of God’s mercy in confession. It may be some part of Church teaching that the world around us disagrees with, and which we have not accepted or tried to understand more deeply. Or it may be an interior nudge from the Holy Spirit to go deeper in our prayer life, to take a step towards our true vocation, or to make a change of direction in some other way that has long been weighing on our hearts.
God’s wisdom, power, and goodness are infinite and unbreakable. When he asks us to change, in little ways or big ways, it’s always because he loves us and he is drawing us towards spiritual excellence. The residents of Nazareth resisted that draw, that change, and as a result, Jesus “was not able to perform any mighty deed there.” Today, as Jesus renews his commitment to us in this Mass, let’s promise to hear and also to heed him, every day, so that his mighty deeds will have free rein to work wonders in our lives.
[This homily is based on the Homily Pack for “Jul 5, 2009, Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (B),” from www.epriest.com.]
