CATHOLIC HOMILY FOR 14TH SUNDAY OF THE ORDINARY TIME

CATHOLIC HOMILY FOR 14TH SUNDAY OF THE ORDINARY TIME – YEAR B

HOMILY THEME: SHAKE IT OFF AND RISE!

BY: Fr. Ade

Amos 7:12-15; Ephesians 1:3-14; Mark 6:7-13

Dear Friends in Christ,
In today’s Gospel Jesus summons the twelve apostles and sends them out on a missionary tour. Like the prophet Amos in the first reading the chosen followers of Jesus have to carry the word of God as a challenge to others. In that mission the apostles have the authority and the power of Jesus and that’s all they are permitted to travel on: the authority and power of the Gospel of Christ.

The story of Amaziah highlighted in the first reading is a classical and sad tale of a religious leader who joined the tribe of sychophants. Once upon a time there were two men, one’s name was Amaziah and the other was Amos. Amaziah was a priest who served the King’s palace and Amos was a prophet who challenged the wrong policies and actions that came from the palace. The king hated Amos because he spoke truth to power. He loved Amaziah because he was more of a sychophant who never criticised but always supported the king. Amaziah supported the king because of the many gifts he received from him. Amos was a social critic and was able to challenge the king because he was not interested in becoming rich. In Amos 5:21-24 he says as an oracle of God “I hate and despise your feasts, I take no pleasure in your solemn festivals. I reject your oblations, and refuse to look at your sacrifices of fattened cattle. Let me have no more of the din of your chanting… But let justice flow like water and integrity like an unfailing stream. (5:21-24) Amos spoke truth to the king and remained faithful to God and honest to his vocation as a messenger of truth. Amaziah, on the other hand was an opportunist who took advantage of his position, and turned back against God and the poor and paid his allegiance only to the king, from whose table he fed. The priest Amaziah became angry in seeing Amos performing his duty as a priest. He bluntly told Amos to get away from the land and prophesy elsewhere. Amos emphatically responded that he did not call himself into the ministry of being a prophet, but it was the Lord who called him and gave him the responsibility of challenging the establishment. In other words, he was saying to Amaziah, if you reject me for the work that I do, it is not me that you reject, but you are rejecting the God who sent me to carry out his mission in this land.

In the same vein, Jesus charged his apostles to go to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and proclaim repentance to the people without fear or trepidation. They are not to rely on their own resources or wisdom but on the authority that has been given to them and the hospitality that will be offered them on account of the message they preach. With no bread and no money, they have to depend on the kindness of others: that vulnerability makes their message their only resource. If they have bread to eat, it means that people are not only hospitable to them but to the word they preach. If they are not accepted, they have no option but to move on and when a town rejects their message, the apostles are to shake the dust off their feet — a symbolic act performed by Jews returning to Palestine after journeying abroad. Prophet Amos and the apostles in carrying out their missions relied on the authority and the power given to them In taking to the road, they tested their message on foreign soil; they will see if their conviction can pass beyond the boundaries of national difference and personal indifference; they will discover if their vocation can survive the official stamp of disapproval. For it is not only the message that is being tested, it is the messenger. Jesus had a sour taste of rejection from his own people in the gospel of last Sunday so he knew the disciples would be stung with such repulsive attitudes in some of the territories they would visit and so he prescribes to them what to do when they face such. This prescription of our Lord is a symbolic action against such village and a healing action for the disciples teaching them how to leave and how to live.

What healing action can we gain from this prescription of Jesus today? Jesus is instructing us his present day disciples how to handle experiences of seeming failures and rejection. In four words Jesus says: “Shake off the dust.” No one’s life is an unbroken chain of victories. We all experience setbacks, defeats, losses, rejections and failures. Theodore Roosevelt rightly said: “The only one who never makes a mistake is the one who never does anything.” Success is not the absence of failure. It is having the determination to never quit because ‘quitters never win and winners never quit.’ Almost every person who has achieved anything worthwhile with his or her life has not only experienced failure, but experienced it many times. Thomas Edison experienced 14,000 ‘failures’ before he perfected the first light bulb. Abraham Lincoln experienced failure after failure ~ for twenty-eight years before he became President in 1860. In 1833 his business failed. In 1836 he had a nervous breakdown. He failed to be elected as speaker in 1838. He lost re-nomination to Congress in 1848, and was rejected for Land Officer in 1849. But he ‘hung in there’. In 1854 he was defeated for the Senate. Two years later he lost the nomination for Vice-President, and was again defeated in the Senate elections of 1858. But he was elected President in 1860, and went on to become America’s best-known leader ever. One of our past Presidents also experienced failure at the polls three different times before he clinched success at the fourth try. We all know the rest of the story. What you do with the experience of failure is what matters most.

Failure and Rejection are common phenomena in our times, one of the most important life-skills we can learn is how to respond to these. Mature people know how to turn every failure, rejection or setback into a learning experience and stepping stone for future success. One day a farmer’s donkey fell into a well. The animal cried miserably for hours as the farmer tried to figure out what to do. Finally he decided that the animal was old and the well needed to be covered up anyway, it just wasn’t worth it to retrieve the donkey anymore. He invited his neighbors to come over and help him. They all grabbed a shovel and began to shovel dirt into the well. At first, the donkey realized what was happening and cried horribly. Then, to everyone’s amazement, he quieted down. A few shovel loads later, the farmer finally looked down the well and was astonished at what he saw. With every shovel of dirt that hit his back, the donkey was doing something astonishing. He would shake it off and take a step up. As the farmer’s neighbors continued to shovel dirt on top of the animal, he would shake it off and take a step up. Pretty soon, everyone was amazed as the donkey stepped up over the edge of the well and trotted off!

You probably will find yourself in a mess most of the times in life ‘the trick to get out of the well’ is to shake it off and take a step up. Each of our troubles is a stepping-stone. We can get out of the deepest wells of rejection and failure just by not stopping, never giving up! Shake it off and move!
Forget the past and focus on the future — Your past is in the past! It’s water under the bridge. You can’t change it so you may as well stop worrying about it. In his poem, “Write it on Your Heart,” Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely, and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense. This day is too good and fair. It is too dear with hopes and aspirations to waste a moment on yesterday.”

Be encouraged! Remember the Gospel ended on a note of success for the disciples- they healed diseases, cast out demons and expanded the kingdom of God in the territories they visited. You too can achieve success, no matter what the story is today, tomorrow is a promise for a better time. Do not be discouraged, shake off the dust of rejection and failure and look towards a brighter future. The journey into that future starts with a decision taken today to succeed. May God lead you and be your companion into your glorious tomorrow. Amen

YOUR TOMORROW WILL BE GREATER THAN TODAY. AMEN

HAPPY SUNDAY!

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