Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
July 5, 2015

Listen to this homily (.mp3 file)
Read or download Pope Francis' encyclical, Laudato Si'
 
     Prophets are front and center in today’s scriptures.  Ezekiel and Jesus. Prophets with honor, prophets without honor for, as you know, prophets always get mixed reviews at best: they get praised and they get pummeled; sometimes they are lionized; more often, they get hung out to dry.  Jesus was right on the mark when he said, “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin, and in his own house.”

     For some, the word ‘prophet’ brings to mind clairvoyants, visionaries who can see into the future and interpret it.  But biblical prophets are different.  They may be visionaries but it’s the present they are caught up with, not the future.  Biblical prophets are God’s messengers – God’s spokespersons, mouthpieces. God speaks his word to them – burns it into their very being – and charges them to speak it to the people.  And since the word is seldom what people want to hear, the prophet’s task is invariably difficult and dangerous.

     Ezekiel, whose prophecy we read from in the first reading, was sent to Israelites who were in rebellion against God, people who, because of their infidelity and hardness of heart, would be taken into exile in Babylon.  Ezekiel’s message was one of judgment and doom as he railed against the idolatry and hypocrisy of the people and their leaders who had abandoned their first love, the God of the Covenant.

     Now fast-forward to the Gospel, to Jesus, whose prophetic words and powerful deeds won him favor and acclaim when he was away from the town where he grew up, but who ran into trouble as soon as he returned to Nazareth and got up to speak in the hometown synagogue on the Sabbath.  The reaction of the people was predictable: ‘We know this man; he grew up here, played with our kids. We know his family. His dad is the town carpenter, for heaven’s sake. Who does he think he is!’  It was that reaction that triggered Jesus’ words about a prophet getting no honor at home, and it was that reaction that limited what he was able to do for the people there because Jesus wasn’t one to work his healing wonders for people who had no faith.

     This talk of prophets and their problems seems quite timely to me.  Two weeks ago, a modern prophet by the name of Pope Francis stood before the world with a prophetic message, the encyclical on care for creation, Laudato Si’. It has gotten the same mixed reviews prophetic messages always get. You’ve heard them - heard the encyclical praised and ridiculed, analyzed and sanitized, dissected and scrutinized by the commentators, the politicians, the pundits – not to mention the scientists and the theologians. Refreshing, isn’t it, that the whole world is taking note of a Papal pronouncement?  Maybe not all positively, but taking note of it they certainly are!

     Let me do a little cheerleading.  We need to read and study the encyclical, and we plan to offer opportunities to do that as a parish. We also need to let the Pope’s teaching disturb us and prod our consciences. The encyclical is a wake-up call for the human family, a call to a radical conversion from viewing creation as something we humans can dominate and exploit for our own selfish ends to viewing it as a precious gift God has entrusted to the human family, a gift of which we are but stewards and servants. This conversion, among other things, will open our ears to “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor” (to use the Pope’s words) - the poor, whose suffering is immeasurably increased by blind confidence in the gospel of technology, by unscrupulous corporate greed, and by our own often wasteful and extravagant lifestyles.

     Now I know there are those who say that the Pope should stick to matters theological and spiritual and leave science to the experts. Nonsense! The Encyclical is deeply theological. It is a profound reflection on the Judeo-Christian view of creation and it deals with some of the most vexing moral questions facing the human family – life and death issues whose urgency is corroborated by a growing body of scientific evidence that makes even more convincing and timely the Pope’s prophetic teaching.

     There’s that word again, “Prophetic!”  Prophets invariably get mixed reviews because there will always be some who, because of their preconceived notions, simply refuse to hear, or whose vested interests make them resistant to change. All the prophets, including Jesus, experienced that. So Pope Francis is in good company!  And I suspect that he draws courage from the Saint of Assisi whose name he so boldly and prophetically took on the day of his election: St. Francis, whose great Canticle of Creation gave the Encyclical its name, St. Francis who, whenever he looked at the sun, the moon, the stars, and the animals great and small, would break into song, adding his voice to the glorious voices of all God’s creatures.

     In the end, that is what we are all called to do. But for our hymn of praise to be authentic, we must re-discover the glory and grandeur of God’s creation and we must commit ourselves both as nations and governments, individuals and communities, to begin undoing the damage we have done to that creation, embracing simpler, less selfish lifestyles that will preserve and not further degrade it. Like St. Francis and with Pope Francis, ours is to be a humble, caring communion with all of creation.

     And, my friends, it starts right here. It does. Because this and every Mass we celebrate is meant to be a foretaste of the New Creation, and a step toward building it!

     Father Michael G. Ryan