Homily: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Come to me, and I will give you rest

Since the Monday after Pentecost we’ve been observing the liturgical season of Ordinary Time.  However, this is the first Sunday since Pentecost that the priest has worn the liturgical color green.

We call it ordinary time, but not because this liturgical season is boring or unremarkable. The english word orindary comes from the latin word ordo meaning ordered, orderly, regimented, steady, and consistent.  So during  ordinary time, we focus on the what it means to be a steady consistent disciple of Jesus Christ: consistency in our daily prayer, regimented in our generosity and kindness, steady in our daily imitation of Jesus, and continuous in letting the Lord change us, and form us.

The liturgical color of Ordinary Time is not the penitential purple of Lent and Advent, or the Resurrection White of Easter, or the blood red of Good Friday, but green, the color of springtime and summer when plants and crops are growing.  So, the green of ordinary time reminds us that God, like a good gardener, wants to bring about new growth in our souls that they bear good fruit.  During this season, therefore we focus on what it means to grow in the works of charity, growing in prayer, and growing  in the virtues.

Traditionally, the color green is the color of hope.  Whenever the theological virtue hope was depicted in paintings with her sisters faith and charity, hope could easily be identified because she would be the lady in the green garments.  We wear green during Ordinary Time because we hope that what we do in the ordinary course of our lives will lead to heaven.

Yet, spiritual growth is not automatic.  If you don’t want to grow in faith, hope, and love, you won’t.  If you don’t want to grow in your prayer life, you won’t.  If you don’t want to become more virtuous or more charitable; you won’t.  If you don’t want to become a more faithful and enthusiastic disciple of Jesus Christ, you won’t.

Purely biological life, like trees and tomatoes don’t get a choice whether they will grow or not.  But humans are not merely physical beings, we are flesh and blood and spirit.  “You are not in the flesh,” St. Paul in our second reading, “on the contrary, you are in the spirit”.  And what is of the spirit gets a choice.  Will you cooperate with God or not; will you choose God, or not.  And that choice has a consequence, says St. Paul.  “For if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.”

Our readings this week give us an important key to growing in holiness.  The first reading for this Sunday should sound familiar; we hear it every year on Palm Sunday.  The prophet Zechariah writing about 300 years before the birth of Christ, foretells that the Messiah will ride into Jerusalem, not on a royal chariot, but on a donkey.  And we know that Jesus did just that, on Palm Sunday, he rode into Jerusalem on a donkey.  What an act of humility for the God of the Universe, the Lord of Lord and King of Kings to ride on a beast of burden.  This points to the Gospel this weekend, where the Lord says, “learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart.” 

Humility is an important Christian virtue by which we imitate Jesus who came not to do his own will, but the will of His Father.  One of my least favorite songs is from my most favorite singers, Frank Sinatra is “I did it my way.”  “ I've lived a life that's full, I traveled each and ev'ry highway, And more, much more than this, I did it my way.”  As catchy as the tune is, Old blue eyes offers a recipe here for disaster, yet a philosophy adopted, sadly, by so many. A full life, a fulfilled life, is not found in indulging every impulse and feeding every desire or rebelling against God’s laws and doing things are own way.  Fullness of life, comes rather, from imitating the Lord in all things. 

The world tells us that we cannot be happy unless we obey the yearnings of our flesh; our faith teaches us the joy that comes in practicing self-discipline and resisting temptation.  The world teaches how to get other people to serve us; the Lord teaches how to find joy in serving others. 

Our secular culture offers a million and one alternatives to Jesus.  But Jesus says, come to ME.  Don’t turn to overindulging in food, in drink, don’t go to sexual perversion, or take out your frustrations and anger against your family or neighbor, don’t turn to those million and one empty promises; rather come to ME, Jesus says.  Come to me, learn from me. 

Instead of fleeing the cross, taking drugs or drink to numb the pain of the cross, Jesus teaches us how follow him in embracing the cross. He teaches us to make that conscious choice to seek holiness and eternal life rather than fleeting moments of gratification.  The yoke, the cross, is unavoidable.  But the Lord teaches us that how to find peace and grace and even joy amidst the crosses. 

The saints are those who learn how to rejoice because of crosses, for they knew that through the cross, they became like Jesus Christ. 

Before St. Peter was bishop of Rome, he was the first bishop of a place called Antioch, which became one of the great Christian centers of the ancient world.  Antioch’s second bishop was a man named Ignatius of Antioch. 

During the persecution of the emperor Trajan, Bishop Ignatius was arrested and sentenced to death in Rome.  As he marched on foot from Antioch which is in modern day Turkey to Rome, he would write letters to the different Christian communities, much like St. Paul.  In fact, those letters would often be read at the celebration of the Eucharist on Sundays, along with the Scriptures, so venerated were his words. 

As he marched to his martyrdom in Rome to be fed to the wild beasts in the coliseum, he pleaded to his fellow Christians not to rescue him.  He wrote, “I write to the Churches, and impress on them all, that I shall willingly die for God… Allow me to become food for the wild beasts…I am the wheat of God, and let me be ground by the teeth of the wild beasts, that I may be found the pure bread of Christ… It is better for me to die on behalf of Jesus Christ, than to reign over all the ends of the earth. For what shall a man be profited, if he gain the whole world, but lose his own soul? Him I seek, who died for us: Him I desire, who rose again for our sake...nearness to the sword is nearness to God; to be among the wild beasts is to be in the arms of God; only let it be in the name of Jesus Christ. I endure all things that I may suffer together with him”

Ignatius, an ordinary man, who made an extraordinary choice: to seek not wealth or power or pleasure, but to humbly conform himself to Christ.  Ignatius has given immense hope and courage to all those who faced persecution and martyrdom over these many centuries, and we pray that same hope fill our hearts and animate our souls, as we seek to conform ourselves to Christ for the glory of God and salvation of souls.