Homily: 551 words.
Estimated time: Three minutes.
In ancient times God promised Abraham that through his descendants all the nations of the earth would be blessed. Much later on, God promised that the Messiah would be a descendant of King David. John the Baptist is the forerunner to the Messiah, sent to prepare the way. But what does he find?
His complaint against the Pharisees was that they had lost the missionary zeal which the Hebrews were supposed to have. They were supposed to be a light to the Gentiles. Their example was meant to inspire the world to come to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
In critiquing the Pharisees, John the Baptist is complaining that this cultural elite had become insular, self-referential, and were holding the Gentiles in contempt. He warns them; "don’t think your status as children of Abraham guarantees that you are right with God." It is the fruits of repentance, humility, and love that God seeks… not something as trivial as lineage.
So that’s the first lesson for us, because we can fall prey to the same temptation. It isn’t just being a Catholic which makes one right with God. It’s the cultivation of an interior life which is conformed to the beatitudes. Blessed are those who are poor in spirit, who hunger and thirst for righteousness, who make peace, who suffer for Christ. They will be called children of God. Not just people who call themselves Catholic.
Now, when the Messiah did arrive on scene, God made good on John’s statement about God raising up children for Abraham from stones. HE DOES raise up more children to Abraham. Paul’s letter to the Romans is all about how the Gentiles, the non-Jews, had been grafted into that esteemed lineage by faith in Christ. Christ’s blood makes us all family.
Throughout Paul’s letter to the Romans, he’s trying to help that community of Jewish and Gentile converts come together – to achieve that unity which had been prophesied so long ago. We read the close of his letter. In that final section he encourages those two groups to honor Christ by living in harmony.
Today the Jew/Gentile ethnic squabbles can seem like a thing of the past. But in a way they aren’t. The Catholic bishops around the world call on all the faithful to reject racism in all its forms. As Paul says in so many of his letters, we are to be one body in Christ – a place where ethnic boundaries cease to matter because we are all sons and daughters of Abraham. The Church is the place where these things which divide people cease to be a cause of strife. Our harmony is a reflection of God’s glory.
The unity which Christ asks of us is symbolized AND brought about by our participation in the Eucharist. As the Catechism says: “The Eucharist is the efficacious sign and sublime cause of that communion in the divine life and that unity of the People of God by which the Church is kept in being. It is the culmination both of God's action sanctifying the world in Christ.” So as we approach the altar today to receive Christ in the Eucharist, let’s keep on our hearts the desire to be true disciples of the Lord, and that we may all be one in Him.
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