Note that this is the second in a series of three homilies focused on the Letter to the Ephesians.
16th SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (B)
1. A certain gentleman – Peter Maurin by name – a saintly sort of man, colleague and mentor of Dorothy Day in the apostolate called “The Catholic Worker Movement”, once made the following observation – “Some philosophers say: ‘Man is naturally good.’ Some titans of business say, and they should know: ‘Man is naturally bad; you can do nothing with human nature.’” If it is true, as businessmen say, that you can do nothing with human nature, then we need fewer priests and more policemen. But if God the Father sent his only begotten Son to redeem mankind, as St. Paul tells us in our second reading, then we need more priests and fewer policemen. Surely if we examine the world in and through newspaper headlines these days – wars, threats of nuclear confrontation, ecological and environmental issues, terrorism, gigantic economic disparities ready to erupt in all sorts of conflicts, then it seems quite obvious that we need fewer priests and more policemen. However, if our vision is more akin to the vision that St. Paul makes manifest in his remarkable Letter to the Ephesians, it would seem more than obvious that we need more priests and fewer policemen.
2. Last week, this week and next week our second readings are taken from Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians. We can say of Ephesians – it is Paul’s great letter on the Church, in fact on the unity of the Church for without that unity the Church is gigantically weakened. Unlike his other letters which focused on the concerns of a particular church, for example, at Philippi or Thessalonica or Corinth – Ephesians focuses on the then known worldwide Church whose head is the risen Christ and whose purpose is to be God’s instrument for making God’s plan of salvation known to the whole universe in time and in place. Paul’s vision is anchored in God’s saving love in Christ Jesus – made real and effective in the world by the power of the Holy Spirit. There are many ways, of course, of reflecting on the Church. The Church is institutional and necessarily so in light of the Incarnation. But the Church is much more than just institutional. Foolish persons are heard to say: “I am quite spiritual, but I don’t go for institutional religion.” All one can say to such foolishness is this – “No institution, ultimately no Church, no spirituality, no Good News. The Church can also be described as herald of the Good News to all the world or the great sacrament, that is, the outward sign of the invisible Christ who in his days of history became the sacrament of his invisible heavenly Father. In his Letter to the Ephesians, Paul stresses the Church as the body of Christ.
3. Paul opens his Letter – “Our God and Father of the Lord Jesus has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing. He has chosen us, before the world began, for holiness of life.” What are these blessings with which God has enriched us? – The call to holiness, the forgiveness of sins, the grace of our divine adoption, our sharing in God’s life through faith, hope and love, the pledge of eternal life through the sacraments, especially the Eucharist. In our Gospel today, Jesus goes about his ministry of healing by means of his many wonderful signs. Of course, the Lord Jesus knows they need much more than miracles and healings. These are what drew people to Jesus so he could tell them the Good News of all the wonderful gifts he brings to people from God the Father through the Holy Spirit, these wonderful blessings God has destined for all peoples – Jews and Gentiles alike. Notice what Ephesians says – “God sent his Son to preach peace to those who are far off and to those who are near.” By the expression – those who are near – Paul means the Jews, the first to hear the word of God; by the expression – those who are far off – Paul means the Gentiles, the non-Jews of his day, the Ephesians and many of us here in this church today. The great secret, the great mystery proclaimed in the Letter to the Ephesians is that Christ came to reconcile Jews and Gentiles, thus breaking down the dividing walls that have kept all peoples from unity with God and from unity with one another. The Good News is – God has made in Christ one new person, that is, the Christian community, a new corporate body, the very body of the risen Christ, thus destroying and displacing all divisions and barriers. It was given to Paul to make known the secret of God’s new plan in Christ; a plan never revealed before, that the Gentiles are co-heirs with the Jews, members of the same body, co-partners in the promises of Christ through the Gospel.
4. The unity of the Church is both a gift and a task: gift means that it is the Holy Spirit who makes the Church one, who is the principle of Communion in the Church; as task, Paul offers us this challenge – that we live in a manner worthy of the call we have all received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, called with one hope, with one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all , who is over all and through all and in all.
5. There are great riches in the Letter to the Ephesians. I began these few comments, you may recall, by mentioning some remarks from Peter Maurin – Do we need more priests or more policemen? If we follow the vision of St. Paul as seen in the Letter to the Ephesians, we obviously will need more priests, whether we mean the ordained priesthood or the priesthood of all the faithful through the Sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation. We need more and more people, caught up in the vision of the Letter to the Ephesians who will live the vision and inspire others to search for the vision. My summer suggestion is this: Why not read the Letter to the Ephesians? Summertime is a good time to read Agatha Christie and her mysteries. Why not read the Letter to the Ephesians. That will get us caught up in God’s mysteries.
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