Jealous for Salvation: Homily for the 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

20^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, A                                                                   August 20, 2023
Fr. Alexander Albert                                                              St. John the Evangelist, Jeanerette

To be Catholic is to live in tension… to be in the world but not of the world. The more we live our faith, the more we should love the people around us. At the same time, the more we live this out, the more we are opposed to the falsehoods and sins of those same people. While growing in our love of others, we simultaneously grow in ways that put us in conflict with them. That tension can be difficult to bear. People who’ve had a conversion experience can probably tell you about the loved ones who grew distant – either quickly or gradually – as they moved away from the sinful things they used to do with them or challenged ideas and values that they used to have in common.

Friends, family, and even spouses can be affected. Maybe it’s not open hostility, but a tension is there. The temptation is to release it by compromising the truth of the faith, lessening our zeal for God, or becoming tyrannical in our attempts to convert them. Don’t give in! Embrace the tension. St. Peter’s attempt to walk on water last week showed us the good that that tension can do. Also last week, St. Paul, expressed that tension with the claim that he could almost wish to lose Jesus for himself if that would mean the Jews – his people – would accept Jesus. We know that wouldn’t work and it’s not what he does.

So what does St. Paul do? Does he give up on the Jewish people? Turn his back on Jesus? Compromise the truth? No. As he tells the Roman Gentiles in today’s 2^nd reading, “I glory in my ministry in order to make my race jealous and thus save some of them.” In other words, he takes the tension between his Christian love of the Jewish people and their rejection of Christ and channels that tension to saving the Gentiles.

He does this for two reasons. First, he trusts God. God called him to be the Apostle to the Gentiles. If Paul really believes that Jesus Christ is necessary for salvation – and he does – then he needs to trust Jesus. He has to trust that, while he does what Jesus asks of him in going to the Gentiles, Jesus will provide for the Jewish people in another way.

The second reason is that Paul knows human nature. Jealousy is a powerful motivator. Kind of like parents giving food to an older child first to make the younger child say “I want some.” Paul is quite literally saying “I want to make so many Gentiles into Christians that Jews see it and go ‘I want to be Christian too.’” He knows that the Christian life brings joy. If his arguments can’t persuade the Jews, then maybe the experience of seeing that joy among the Gentiles will do the trick.

We can learn from this. We might not be dealing with a Jewish-Gentile divide, but we often are faced with the difference between strangers and loved ones. Ever tried giving driving advice to your spouse? How many of us have found it easier to pray and talk with a stranger about Jesus than with a sibling? Even Jesus struggled couldn’t evangelize his hometown and his own family. There are exceptions, but it’s generally very hard to directly evangelize and convert those who are closest to us. But we love them the most… they’re the ones we most want to share our faith. So what do we do? What St. Paul did.

The primary thing is to follow Jesus. We each have a unique vocation. The way to save souls is not to follow our plan, but to cooperate in his plan, trusting that he’ll take care of the ones beyond our reach. Many a priest and religious sister can tell you how their family started to convert after they said yes to Jesus… and most of us didn’t even evangelize them directly. We just followed Jesus, prayed for them, and saw loved ones come to conversion almost on their own. We don’t hide our faith or avoid conversation about it, we just don’t nag them.

The second thing is to channel that tension where it can be used. Maybe you can’t convert my wife or best friend directly, so channel that zeal into any other opportunity you have. If your brother won’t listen to you about the Church, someone else will. Seize those moments with coworkers, acquaintances, or chance encounters. They are someone’s sibling or child or spouse. This not only helps that soul, it helps you expand your practice of Christian love to those beyond merely natural associations. Then it sometimes happens that winning converts among strangers eventually inspires your own family and friends to say, “you know what, I want that too. Tell me about what you told them.”

This, by the way, is very similar to what Jesus is doing in the Gospel, just from a different angle. Jesus is not racist. He’s setting up a lesson. He’s using jealousy to increase her desire and her faith, just like giving a toy to one child makes the other want it too. Jesus really does mean that God called the Jews first – He did – but God called the Jews in order to make the Gentiles jealous. This exchange is a microcosm of the whole plan. Jesus doesn’t want to reject pagans, he wants them to do like this woman… to respond with humility and even greater desire so that, when they do finally receive faith, they’ll really embrace it.

St. Paul’s experience with the Jews is the reverse of that. God called the Jews to be a sign to the nations. Then God converted the nations – Gentiles – in order to humble and convict the Jews. The reality is that everyone, Jew and Gentile, has been disobedient and trapped in sin. So God turns sin on itself to inspire conversion in all of us.

Our part in that plan is to make the best use of our own faith. All of us need ongoing conversion, both for our own good and in order to inspire desire and conversion in others. If our faith is sincere, we should want those closest to us to embrace Jesus Christ ever more fully. And if we feel powerless to evangelize those we love the most, that’s good. It teaches us that aren’t saving people by natural love. We aren’t saving anyone, Jesus is and he’s doing it by divine love and graces.

Embrace the tension. Resist the temptation to release it by compromising your faith or pushing too hard on those you love. Channel it inward to convert yourself more and more. Channel it toward every opportunity to evangelize those who will listen so they may become your brothers and sisters in Christ. Above all, trust Jesus. His plan might feel cruel. His timing might seem slow. But just as this Canaanite woman and the disciples saw, Jesus does care. If we cling to faith, if we humbly persevere in the tension, if we throw ourselves upon his mercy not just for ourselves but for those we love, he will save us… and them too.