Homily for the 28th Sunday of Ordinary Time: The Feast of Hope

28th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                  October 11, 2020
Fr. Albert                                                                                St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

And the award for the most commonly misused bible quote goes to “I can do all things in [Christ] who strengthens me.” Bumper stickers, business logos, sports mottos, and many others love to use this uplifting quote. And why not? Life can be tough, so people often need a reminder that there is hope, that we can survive.

The problem is that using this quote incorrectly will only make things worse. When you use this to motivate a sports team to play better… and they still lose, what does that say about scripture? About faith? When you use the quote to tell someone battling cancer that they’ll recover, and they still die, what of God’s strength? Without context, this single verse often gets used to make people think they will succeed in a worldly way if they just rely on Christ. All that does is set them up to lose their faith and still fail in worldly things.

But our second reading gives us the real context. The “all” in “all things” is broader than people realize. We instinctively think of “doing all things” as accomplishment, as success. But Paul, writing from prison and soon to be executed, lists his ability to “do” things like be hungry and in need. This “do all things” includes an awful lot of suffering.

You see, the point of this verse is not that Jesus will make us successful, but that we can remain “in Christ” no matter what we have to deal with. We can “do” things like succeed and be wealthy but remain in Christ. We can also “do” things like lose our whole livelihood and yet remain in Christ. We can live long lives or short lives, lives full of fun or lives full of suffering and yet remain in Christ the whole time.

The primary thing Christ strengthens us to do is to never lose faith. It’s important to note that, for St. Paul, both wealth and poverty can threaten faith. Wealth makes us think we are self-sufficient, causing us to stop praying, to lose our humble dependence. Poverty can cause us to doubt God’s providence, to think he’s abandoned us. But the reality is that God loves all of us and never ceases to do so.

Whether you came through the storm without a scratch or lost everything, God cares for you. The outcome of the weather, of your stocks, of this or that project is not evidence of God’s love or of his abandonment. When Paul says, “my God will fully supply whatever you need, in accord with his glorious riches in Christ Jesus,” he is talking about what you need to be saved, to get to heaven. Salvation is the thing we truly need, and the primary thing God guarantees to those who remain faithful. He often does provide for our other needs as a part of his generous abundance, but please do not fall for the trap of thinking that suffering in this life means God hates you. He does not.

And seeing through the ups and downs of life to the eternity of God’s love is the secret of contentment. As a seminarian, I met a man in a nursing home who was severely disabled, completely bedridden. He suffered greatly, but his joy was infectious. He’d light up when he saw me and never stopped talking about how good God is despite being confined to a bed in small room for the rest of his life. This man saw through the temporary problems of his life in this world to God’s love and was content with that. I cannot say that I am able to do the same.

Yet that is what we’re called to do. Like the king in this parable, God invites us to a banquet of eternal joy, but we have to accept it. The people invited turn away the invitation because they’re too focused on the farm, the business, the worldly affairs. Some are so attached to whatever they’re doing that they lash out in anger and even kill the servants who interrupt them to call them to this banquet.

We are right to tend to our earthly affairs with wisdom and hard work. In fact, we are supposed to do our best in every endeavor. But, when the king calls us to the feast, we ought to recognize that it is more important than whatever we’re doing at that moment. This applies both to the call to worship God and to the final call to leave this life behind. Working as we do at what lays before us, we must hear the call of God’s servants. Priests, missionaries, our own conscience, our guardian angels and the Holy Spirit all might invite us to the feast of prayer and sacrifice in the Mass, in daily personal prayer, reading scripture, studying the faith, and the kind of fasting that lets us focus our minds on the true food of eternal life. These invitations can be annoying and inconvenient. They might threaten what looks like success. But they are the secret to contentment, to remaining in Christ whether you succeed or fail, are healthy or sick, free or in chains, living or about to die.

There is another word for this kind of otherworldly awareness. It is called hope. Hope is not just wishful thinking. It is a supernatural virtue; it is the spiritual habit of being able to take God’s promises seriously. It is the grace-filled ability to be motivated by what you cannot yet see. If you are struggling with the ups and downs, with the anxiety of wondering if God really loves you, ask for more faith, but do not forget hope. And, of course, these two are not complete without love.

Faith, hope, and love. More than nice words, these three gifts are the secret to contentment, to being able to do all things in Christ who strengthens us. They are gifts, but also habits, which means they take work. Ask God to increase them and build them up through practice.

Strengthen your faith through prayer and the sacraments. Strengthen your hope by reading, re-reading, and studying what God promises us in Scripture and Tradition. Strengthen your hope by looking at the ways he has kept his promises to his people throughout history, especially in the lives of the saints. There are many books, movies, and songs to help with this. You have only to look for them. And finally, strengthen your love by doing good for others in any way you can, especially when it’s inconvenient and doesn’t benefit you personally.

Many are invited, but few are chosen. It’s not that God doesn’t choose us, but that we fail to choose salvation for ourselves. Do not refuse the invitation. Do not be too caught up in the things of this world to hear it. Listen with faith, endure with hope, act with love so that you can come to the banquet clothed with glory; so that you truly can do all things in Christ who strengthens you.