Homily of Twenty-Ninth Sunday in
Ordinary Time Year C
Sunday, October 20, 2019 is World
Mission Sunday. Pope Pius XI instituted World Mission Sunday in 1926 to be an
annual day of prayers and expression of support for the Catholic Church
missionary vision and character. In his message for World Mission Sunday 2019,
Pope Francis re-emphasizes that while the Church is on mission in the world,
the missionary mandate of the Church touches each of us personally. The pope
states, “I am a mission, always; you are a mission, always; every baptized man
and woman is a mission… Each of us is a mission to the world, for each of us is
the fruit of God’s love.” He continues, “Today’s rampant secularism, when it
becomes an aggressive cultural rejection of God’s active fatherhood in our
history… the Church needs men and women who, by virtue of their baptism,
respond generously to the call to leave behind home, family, country, language
and local Church, and to be sent forth to the nations, to a world not yet
transformed by the sacraments of Jesus Christ and his holy Church… No one
ought to remain closed in self-absorption, in the self-referentiality of his or
her own ethnic and religious affiliation.” Some go to the missions by going;
some go to the missions by praying; and some go to the missions by giving.
Through these expressions, we all possess the missionary vision and character
of the Church.
The Chosen People of God’s
mission when they left Egypt was to reach the Promised Land. It was a mission
with many challenges and difficulties on the way. The first difficulty was the
crossing of the Red Sea. Moses, a great man of prayer, cried to God in prayer.
God commanded him, “You will raise your staff and stretch your hand over the
sea and divide it to let the Israelites go dryfoot through the sea.” Moses did
as he was commanded, “The waters divided and the Israelites went on dry ground
through the middle of the sea, with the waters forming a wall to their right
and left” (Exodus 14:15-23).
After crossing the Red Sea the
Israelites continued their journey to the Promised Land. They were to pass
through a place called Amalek. The Amalekites were hostile to the Israelites
and waged war against them. While the Israelites fought the physical battle
with the Amalekites, Moses, a great man of prayer, went to the top of the hill
with the staff of God in his hand accompanied by Aaron and Hur to fight the
spiritual battle. The first reading states, “As long as Moses kept his hands
raised up, Israel had the better of the fight, but when he let his hands rest,
Amalek had the better of the fight. Moses’ hands, however, grew tired; so they
took a rock and put it under him and he sat on it. Meanwhile Aaron and Hur
supported his hands, one on one side and one on the other, so that his hands
remained steady until sunset” when Joshua and the Israelites defeated the
Amalekites. The events narrated above speaks of the power of prayer, and the
importance of persistent and enduring prayer. It speaks also of the importance
of spiritual warfare to accompany physical engagements.
Like the Israelites, we will come
across ‘Red Seas’ and ‘Amalekites’ on our missions. But like Moses, we are to
go to God in prayer with the staff of God. The staff of God is the Eucharistic
Celebration, Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, the Bible, the Rosary, the
prayer books, and so on. Someone says, “Work hard, but pray harder.” St.
Augustine puts it this way, “Pray as though everything depended on God. Work as
though everything depended on you.” Pray as though everything depended on God
(spiritual warfare). Work as though everything depended on you (physical
warfare).
Jesus gave a parable in the
Gospel to teach us the importance of persistent and enduring prayer. The widow
never gave up appealing to the dishonest judge until she received justice.
Jesus assures us, “Will not God then secure the rights of his chosen ones who
call out to him day and night? Will he be slow to answer them? I tell you, he
will see to it that justice is done for them speedily.”
Jesus gave a similar parable in
Luke 11:5-8, “Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and
says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived
at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in
reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my
children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I
tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their
friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his
persistence.”
Sometimes we are discouraged
after enduring and persistent prayers and God does not grant our prayers the
way we have asked. The readings of today encourage us never to give up but to
pray until something happens. However, as people of faith when we see God’s
hand in an ‘unanswered prayer’, that becomes prayer answered. “In his will is
our peace,” says Dante Alighier in The Divine Comedy.
Fr. Martin Eke, MSP
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