Fr. Roger J. Landry

Conversations with Consequences Podcast

Homily for the Fourteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, C, Vigil

July 2, 2022

 

To listen to an audio recording of this short Sunday homily, please click below: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/catholicpreaching/7.2.22_Landry_ConCon_1.mp3

 

The following text guided the homily: 

* This is Fr. Roger Landry and it’s a joy for me to be with you as we enter into the consequential conversation the Risen Lord Jesus wants to have with each of us this Sunday, as he reveals to us the crowning of what it means to be his disciple: to follow him so closely that his priorities become our priorities, his message our message, his mission our mission, his zeal for the salvation of others our own.

* In the Gospel, Jesus appoints seventy-two of his disciples and sends them out in pairs to proclaim the Gospel he himself had been proclaiming to them. A short time earlier (cf. Lk 9:1-6), Jesus had sent out the twelve apostles, those who would become his first priests. But to share the Gospel was not meant to be the task of priests alone. So he appointed 72 — probably the twelve apostles and 60 of whom we would call today lay people — and sent them out to the neighboring towns and villages. “The harvest is abundant,” he said, “but the laborers are few.” Jesus not only instructed them to pray to God the Father to send more laborers but chose them as responses to that prayer and as laborers for his harvest of souls.  I’ve always thought that the 72 was more than a symbolic number, but probably implies that the Lord basically sent out everyonewho was a willing, consistent follower. He wanted all hands on deck.

* Just as the Lord Jesus in this scene sends out basically everyone he had, so he wants each of us to grasp that he intends to send us out as well. Our willingness to pass on the faith is a sign of whether we really have faith, whether we know, love and are living it. Those who have received God’s love, heard his voice and received his light cannot keep that gift to themselves. Like St. Paul, we say, “Woe to me if I do not proclaim the Gospel.” We bursting to share the treasure we’ve received to enrich others.

* How are we to carry out this apostolate of sharing the Gospel that Christ gives us? Jesus gives us two principles that are valid in every age.

* The first is that he sends the 72 out with a message. The message had two parts to it: “Peace” and “The kingdom of God is at hand!” The two are connected. The “peace” they were to announce was precisely the peace that Jesus had been preaching — peace with God through the forgiveness of sins. The way to experience that peace is to enter into God’s kingdom, to allow the Lord to be the king of one’s thoughts and actions. This was a revolutionary message. We have heard the words, “The kingdom of God is among you!” so many times that perhaps they no longer startle us. But we need to think back to the context. The seventy-two were sent to proclaim this kingdom at one of the times of greatest strength in the Roman empire, an empire that didn’t take well any challenges to its authority and was more brutal against supposed insurrectionists than a pack of wolves against injured animals. In the midst of Roman dominion, the seventy-two ordinary disciples of Christ were ambassadors of a different kingdom, a different type of allegiance — the kingdom of God. The two kingdoms did not necessarily conflict, as Jesus himself pointed to when he said, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and give to God the things that are God’s” (Mt 22:21). But he also said that when there was a conflict, we were to “seek first the kingdom of God and God’s righteousness” (Mt 6:33).