Be Open to God and to the Needy!

Fr. Pat’s Sermon Notes

Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time  

Be Open to God and to the Needy!      
 
 At the end of the Gospel today after Jesus healed a deaf person we are told: They were exceedingly astonished and they said, “He has done all things well…”  Does Jesus leave you astonished and amazed these days?   The truth is the most faithful and reliable disciples of Jesus across the centuries have been the ones who were in awe of him, knew they were loved by him and wanted to spend their lives sharing him and his ways with the world. 

Isaiah the prophet is no exception to this. He describes a God who can make the blind see, the mute speak, the deaf hear, and the crippled walk.  This God can turn parched land into springs of water and deserts into rivers.  The Apostle James describes a God who treats the poor and rich with equal care and favor. As such St. James exhorts us to "show no partiality" (James 2:1) because God shows none.  It's not that no one is special to God, but just the opposite.  ALL human life is precious to him.  This is the basis of all the Church's teaching on social justice and morality.  Mahatma Ghandi may have said it best: “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” In one of the most radical and shocking teachings in the Gospels, Jesus drives this point home by identifying himself precisely with this segment of society:  “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).      

If you and I have been spared from homelessness, extreme poverty, civil war, violent exploitation and abuse, a tornado or a plane crash - this is not a sign of God's special favor toward us, but rather God’s rallying cry to us!  It is his mandate from heaven to get busy relieving the suffering of others lest they believe that God is partial when it comes to who suffers adversity and who is spared! We must “Be Open!” to bearing witness to the God who hears the cries of all of those in need; and we must do so as if our OWN lives depended on it!  Because they do:  “Then they will answer and say, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or ill or in prison, and not minister to your needs?’ He will answer them, ‘Amen, I say to you, what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me.’ And these will go off to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matthew 25:44-46).