Homily for October 20, 2019, 29th Sunday in ordinary time.
In our first reading from Exodus, we see Moses, interceding for the Israelites, as the leader of the battle. He is standing on a hill with the staff of God raised up in his hand. So long as he kept the staff raised up Israel would do well. If his hands lowered Isreal would begin to lose. I had to figure out what Moses' staff was made of and I found that historians think Moses’ staff was most likely almond wood, a dense and very heavy wood. I’d imagine it would be hard to hold this out at arm’s length. To win the battle Moses needed help and that’s where his friends Aaron and Hur come in. Without their help, the battle would be lost.
Luke, in today’s gospel, recalls Jesus’ teaching of the parable of the persistent widow. Like Moses, she needed help too. She asked the judge for a just decision over… and over… and over.. and over again, kind of like the kid in the back seat asking "are we there yet?" "Are we there yet?" over and over until you get where you are going. Well, finally, the Judge who had no fear of God or respect for other people, decided to give her that just decision to get her off his back. How much more will a loving God do for us then?
In our second reading, Paul charges Timothy to be persistent in his work even if it is inconvenient. The language is quite serious:
I charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and by his appearing and his kingly power: proclaim the word; be persistent whether it is convenient or inconvenient...
Paul doesn’t just say pretty please to Timothy, no, he charges him in the presence of God and Christ Jesus as well. That’s a big deal, Paul isn’t fooling around here, he means it.
Timothy needed that helpful reminder from Saint Paul to be persistent, the widow needed persistence and the help of a fair judgment, Moses also needed persistence and help to win the battle. If it's not obvious yet, those are the two key points I want to focus on, persistence and knowing when we need help! They go hand in hand, we sometimes even need help just so we can remain persistent as Moses did!
Once and a while, when we are in need of assistance we can be blessed with finding an intercessor that matches our needs so incredibly well it doesn’t take an extreme amount of persistence at all. This was the case when it came to praying for my daughter Faith and her diagnosis of scoliosis. The initial prognosis was to get her fitted with a Boston Brace to stop the curvature from getting worse and then when she stops growing she would have surgery. I foolishly looked up what scoliosis surgery entails, don't do that! The photos of the surgery are not for the faint of heart. My wife Allison and I began to pray.
I won’t bore you with all the details of the long process but after two different braces, serious discomfort and tough painful days, a bit of anxiety and shedding some tears it struck me that we needed divine help as well. I looked up who the patron saint of back problems is. I immediately found St. Gemma Galgani and a novena to St. Gemma asking for her intercession. A novena is simply persistently praying special prayers (that's a tongue twister!) for nine consecutive days. Allison and I began to pray this prior to our next appointment. We also began to discover how perfect St. Gemma was for Faith’s cause. At a young age, St. Gemma had spinal tuberculosis that caused her to not only need an iron back brace but also caused her to become deaf as the disease progressed. This was clearly a good Saint to ask for intercession on Faith’s behalf!
We finished the novena a few days prior to the visit to Boston Children’s in Waltham. We went in for a brace shop analysis, physical therapy, and an x-ray. At the end of the appointment the doctor came in amazed at the result of the x-ray, her scoliosis not only stopped progressing but her curvature had been reduced! This wasn’t supposed to happen but it did! If her curvature remains this reduced when she finally stops growing she won’t even need surgery!
Of course, our persistence doesn’t always happen this quickly, there are other things we have been praying about for many years now and yet we continue to pray for a resolution. Allison and I have begun praying the St Jude novena for this other cause because he is the patron saint of lost causes. We still remain persistent in praying for help! Remember St. Monica prayed for St. Augustine 17 years before his conversion and look at what a remarkable saint he became after his conversion!
There are many people and things that help us to remain strong and persevere in our faith in addition to the saints. We should all be using scripture as our spiritual gymnasium as well, and visiting this gym often, really believing in what Saint Paul said in his letter to Timothy about the Word of God:
Remain faithful to what you have learned and believed, because you know from whom you learned it, and that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are capable of giving you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Why does God want us to hear and know these things? Because life isn’t always a stroll through a forest path on a crisp Fall day. Sometimes we will have to walk over mountains we encounter or trudge through the swamps of life and when we go through these tough times, we, like Moses, need our friends to help hold up our arms. We need to have learned to be persistent in the bad, to help us remain focused on Jesus through the bad as well as the good. Our goal is heaven and we can’t let anything take our focus away from that prize.
Like St. Catherine of Siena said:
Nothing great is ever achieved without much enduring.
Very good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Ma
I couldn't get the blog on my ipad but did get and was able to read it on my computer. I now have a folder entitled "Kevins' Blogs:".