Homily: Twentieth Tuesday of Ordinary Time

Twentieth Tuesday of Ordinary Time (Mt 19:23-30) “The One Thing”

What is most important regarding Christian morality? If we listen to debates about Christian morality in the media, we will hear a lot of conversation about sexual morality. But if we read the Gospels Jesus says very little about sexuality.

If we read the Gospel Jesus speaks a lot more about handling possessions. He talks about how we are to handle the things we own more than any other subject.

Someone once said that if we look at the deadly sins lust is a sin that we commit when we are young. After we grow older our sexual passion decreases. We tend to speak a lot about inappropriate thoughts and feelings but those are things that we cannot control and when we are old probably can’t act on.

Greed is not that way. From the time we are small and are fighting with our siblings over the toys we play with until the time we are old when we are always worried about how much money we have in our retirement account or how we need to lock up our house, so things won’t get stolen. We worry about having enough things in our life. The hunger for more never goes away.

Perhaps that is why economic issues are always contentious, even in church circles. Jesus calls on us to share what we have but if we look at some of the most contentious issues in our world they revolve around the sharing of resources.

We have limited resources in the world whether that is oil, water, land, food, air. Wars in the past, today and in future revolve over the competition for natural resources.

What does Jesus say. He would say that a Christian must be able to keep in mind the common good. We have the right to what we need and so does everyone else. But that it is hard not to fall back into the deadly sin of greed. But as Jesus says, that is the one thing more that is required.

Reflection Questions:

1.    What is one possession I could never do without? Why?

2.   Why was Jesus so concerned about greed? Should we be?

 Dear Parishioners,

             We are now in an election year. Sometimes people ask what politicians the church supports. The Catholic Church in the United States has the general rule of never supporting individual politicians. The Church is concerned about a wide range of moral issues. No political party in any country would agree with the church on every issue.

            When the church has aligned itself with a political party or a ruler throughout history, we have always lost credibility. There were political parties in Jesus’ day they were called the Pharisees, Sadducees and Herodians. Jesus challenged all these parties and all of them disliked him because he did not agree with them.

            The Body of Christ is to be the conscience of the world; challenging and advocating for those who suffer injustice. The church gains stature when we lift up the powerless.

            Mary, champion of the powerless, pray for us,

Fr. Mark