HOMILY FOR 30TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A
HOMILY FOR 30TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME – YEAR A
By: Fr Unachukwu Cyril CCE
There is always the risk of thinking that the weak, the poor and the defenceless in our midst are the places for us to exercise our power and superiority. On the contrary, the weak, the poor and the defenceless are the proper destination for our genuine expression of love and our authentic demonstration of the true face and colour of the human family. In the weak, the poor and the defenceless we identify the proper spot to manifest, in concrete terms, the depth of our relationship with God, the height of our faith in Him, the stability of our hope in His promises and the scope of our love for Him. May we always live, conscious of our common origin and destination; Amen.
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Listening attentively through the words of the First Reading (Ex 22:20-26), one could see how old is the reality of the manifestation of inhumanity and oppression perpetrated by humans towards fellow human beings. It could be seen as an historical unfolding of the brokenness of the human race/nature and of an age-long process of oppression of the poor and the weak by those who consider themselves to be strong and superior to others. The current evolvement of events is nothing fundamentally different from the scene presented to us in the First Reading recounting, partly, of the situation of God’s people Israel about 3,000 years ago. The most striking of these scenarios is the fact that these evils were found among those who profess faith in God; among those who claim to love God; among those who lay claim to being sons and daughters of God and ‘His Chosen People’ from among all the peoples of the world. In the face of these atrocities, God, speaking through Moses, condemned outright these evils and made it clear His compassion for the poor, the weak and the oppressed; “you must not be harsh with the widow, or with the orphan; if you are harsh with them… my anger will flare against you.” In the present time, the story has not fundamentally changed. This same reality of the activation of evil and of the perpetration of inhumanity towards fellow men and women are seen in virtually all countries and in all basic human units of the world. Against these odds, we see the new and true face of the human family in the person and mission of Christ Jesus our Lord.
Our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospel Reading (Mt 22:34-40) presents to us the antidote to these anomalies committed by men and women and the essential remedy for the disfiguration of the imageness of God in us which is the basic consequence of choosing or acting in such manner. The absence of law naturally implies the presence of disorder and confusion. This could explain why Moses took time to read out and explain the precepts of the Lord God of Israel to the people in order to bring them back to track, in right living and on to the path of enlightened reason. Farther and deeper than the explanation of Moses, our Lord Jesus Christ gave the very fulcrum upon which true humanity is based and on which the Christian Life is lived; “you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind… You must love your neighbour as yourself.” The simplest definition of inhumanity is the absence of love. And since God is love (I Jn 4:8), the man or woman who becomes inhumane or acts inhumanly is simply portraying the absence of God in his or her life. Such a person has not broken away from the chains and bondage of idolatry. Such a person has no outlook that is Christ-focused and Christ-oriented. On the contrary, in the words of Saint Paul in the Second Reading (I Thess 1:5-10), to be guarded and guided by the rule of love is to “break with idolatry, to become servants of God and to wait in faith for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”. Those who are guided and guarded by the law of love naturally contribute their own quota for the restoration of the true face of the human family.
Ever Compassionate Father, strengthen us by the benefits of Christ’s victory and through the power of the Holy Spirit to part ways with whatever disfigures the true face of the human family and from whatever estranges us from one another and with whatever suffocates the voice of love within us; Amen. Happy Sunday;
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