The 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time
March 2, 2014

Click here to listen to this homily (mp3 file)  

     This is the fourth Sunday in a row that the gospel reading has come from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount or “Great Sermon,” as some scholars like to call it.  And had it not been for the feast of the Presentation back on February 2, this would be the fifth, not the fourth Sunday.  Not to take anything away from the feast of the Presentation, but since it had its own special readings instead of the usual Sunday readings, we missed the most important part of the Sermon on the Mount this year – the beginning of it, the part we know the best and love the most, the part we call the Beatitudes.

     The Beatitudes set the stage for – and make sense out of – everything else in that great sermon.  And even though frequent repetition may have caused them to lose their punch, the Beatitudes are definitely not background music or greeting card fluff.  No, they are really the heart and soul of Jesus’ teaching.  They are what make his teaching truly revolutionary.  The Beatitudes turn normal values and expectations inside-out and upside-down. They put the little ones of this world, the poor in spirit, not the powerful, on top of the heap, and they do the same for the other ‘losers’ in that line-up -- the meek, the mourners, the merciful, the peacemakers, the persecuted.

     So, even though we didn’t get to hear the Beatitudes this year, we need them to make sense of everything we’ve been hearing the past three Sundays -- including Jesus’ teaching on forgiveness, reconciliation, non-violence, and love of one’s enemy. And they also makes sense of today’s gospel about absolute trust in a loving, provident God, because it is only the “poor in spirit” who know they are powerless and who depend on God for everything who get beyond the worry and anxiety that cause the rest of us to fret and stew about the future with all our ‘what ifs?’ What if lose my job? What if I fail my exams? What if I get sick?  Or someone in my family gets sick?  What if my retirement funds run out?  And on and on it can go.

     As an antidote for this inner turmoil and anxiety, this worry and fretfulness that can easily consume us, Jesus offers trust.  Trust your Father in heaven, he says, who feeds the birds of the air and fills the fields with flowers, whose care for those things is great but whose care for you is far greater. Trust your Father in heaven who will not always shield you from trials or tragedies, but who will be with you in them and through them, no matter what.

     But this is a hard teaching, isn’t it?  It’s fine for me to stand up here and blithely speak of trust – I who, in fact, have been shielded from life’s more grim realities – from tragic, unexpected death, from a debilitating or terminal illness. I who have never had to live through a killer earthquake, hurricane, typhoon, or tsunami.  I who have more of this world’s goods than I need and more security than many. 

     But none of that negates Jesus’ teaching about trust, even though it may well send you in search of a more convincing and credible role model than the one speaking to you!  And it won’t be difficult to find one!  One may well be sitting next to you in the pew.  Or you yourself may be one. So many of you have had your faith sorely tested yet have managed to hold on because of your trust in a loving, provident God.

     Let me tell you about a role model of mine – a friend, now deceased, who will always speak powerfully to me about unwavering trust in God’s providence.  I doubt he ever thought of himself as a role model -- he would have dismissed the thought -– but he was one highly believable believer.

     My friend was a priest.  A French priest by the name of Michel Baron, a graduate of the famed French military academy, St. Cyr who, after a military career answered God’s call to the priesthood. I met him in the 1970’s when he came here to teach at our seminary out in Kenmore.  I had the privilege of serving on the seminary faculty with him for several years.  I credit Fr. Baron with giving the shortest homily on record (you would have liked him for sure!).  One day at Mass, after reading the familiar passage about the Rich Young Man whom Jesus told to sell everything, give to the poor, and follow him, Fr. Baron closed the gospel book, looked up at a chapel full of young seminarians, and said, “Gentlemen, Jesus said everything.  And he meant everything.”  And then he sat down, gave us a little time to think, and went on with the Mass.

     Of course, saying that was one thing.  Actually doing it, was quite another.  So let me finish the story.  A couple of years later, Fr. Baron left Seattle to teach in a seminary in the small West Africa country of Benin.  I offered to take him to the airport the day he left.  When we met in the agreed upon place, he was carrying a bag that wasn’t much larger than my brief case.  I told him I’d run upstairs to get the rest of his stuff and he said, ‘No, this is my stuff!’  And it was. All of his stuff.  And then I remembered that ever-so-short homily of his and it all made sense.

     Of course, the challenge is not just to remember but to replicate, and I’m a long way from that.  Maybe you are, too.  But we can be grateful for today’s gospel with its reminder about serving one master, not two; about trusting in a God who knows our needs better than we do. And we should be grateful that Lent starts this week. It’s the perfect time to work on things like trust, and simplicity of life, and ‘less is better.’ Forty days isn’t long, but it’s long enough to make a start…! 

     Father Michael G. Ryan