Homily for the 3rd Sunday after Trinity (12th Week of Ordinary Time)

The prophet Jeremiah’s call to repent and keep the Sabbath is met by nothing but mockery and contempt among the inhabitants of Jerusalem. The prophets are often ignored and persecuted. The Lord’s call in Matthew to have no fear in the face of such persecution is framed not as a description of what is normal but a command, because in fact it would be unnatural, in normal human terms, not to fear. Today’s climate of supposedly secular neo-pagan morality tests the boundaries of what it even means to be persecuted. Arguably the devil’s strategy in the modern West is intentional; he knows that the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the faith, so instead of more martyrdom, in the traditional violent sense, he gives us laughter, an intentional and apathetic ignorance, a quiet sidelining, an exclusion from the public square and at the same time a distorted prominence. What the prophets in ancient Israel would have denounced as injustice — the murder of the innocent in the womb, the systematic redefinition of human nature to exclude anything other than autonomous desire — is now loudly called “justice,” and the would-be prophets of the apostolic tradition, not to mention the intellectual inheritance of the West, are derided, in a dramatic twist of language, as subhuman bigots lacking moral values.

Jeremiah’s turn to hope, to God’s ultimate vindication, resonates precisely with our Lord’s own command to hope: all shall be revealed. The truth will win out in the end. This can be, at various points in history, more or less easy to believe, but it is no more or less true than it was two thousand years ago. The language of veiling and revelation here is resonant with nuptial imagery so prominent in the scriptures, both old and new. One reader here suggests that there are only two possibilities to be revealed: “… either the identity of the Bride veiled under the cover of humiliation and persecution in the present era; or the rotting face of the corpse of those who have not embraced Christ as Spouse and Lord – a disfigurement and a stench that are presently concealed under the veil of power and success…. After the Incarnation of the Word, there is no third possibility; each human being must become either bride or corpse.”^[1]

Nor is there, we ought to add, a third possibility given by Christ between acknowledging him or denying him. There is no reasonable, cautious middle way of acknowledging him on Sunday morning when one goes to Mass but forgetting him Monday through Saturday when one is at home, at work, or at play. There is no acknowledging him with our checkbook but not our hearts or vice versa; no claiming to be a disciple in the privacy of our hearts or our homes but then refusing to make the sign of the Cross in public because it might call attention or make people think we’re weird. Again: Bride, or corpse.

Perhaps the hardest aspect of this, in our current political landscape, is how poorly the Catholic faith and its political vision line up with the general options we are given. As Peter Kreeft astutely observes, “The Church is both more conservative and more progressive than those who embrace those political categories, for she wants to conserve things that are far more precious than the things today’s conservatives want to conserve, and she wants to progress to things that are far more progressive and far more precious than the goals of today’s progressives.”

This is all true, but I think the deeper fact of Christian discipleship that distinguishes it from either conservative or progressive identity politics is that the immediate aim is not to be successful. The martyrs did not proclaim Christ to the world because they thought it would be effective; it was not a strategy or a tactic. The question isn’t “Will it work?” but “Is it right?”

Or perhaps we could put it like this: the fundamental Christian position is that “will it work?” is only ever properly an eschatological question. In the final equation, rightness and effectiveness are the same when oriented to the true end. Hence the power of martyrdom which is in fact both true and effective. It is not that we do not care anything about results; it is that the only result that really matters in the end is salvation and communion with God. “Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

In this middle time between the Pentecost and the Second Coming, this stark perspective is an essential corrective against the temptation to go with the flow of history, forgetting our high calling as the Bride of Christ. It does not however tell us everything there is to say about how to live. Not every decision is a decision between right and wrong. Not every hard work is a work of martyrdom. When faced with an obvious discrepancy between what is right and what seems easy and painless, or between what is right and what will achieve what is otherwise a valid goal, we must still do what is right. But there are so, so many choices and micro-choices in this life that are precisely choices between goods which are real goods, goals which are not good vs. evil but this good vs. that good. This is the case both for individuals and for families, not to mention for organizations like parish churches, where, despite our high calling to save souls, we still have to make decisions about copy machines and heaters and things that are not clearly defined in the universal moral law. The need to acknowledge Christ does not mean, as another example, that we have some obvious obligation to correct every wrong person on the internet, or even every wrong person in our own extended networks. Acknowledging Christ does not mean winning or being right or having the last word. We could, after all, win a lot of arguments but still be, in the final day, a corpse. Acknowledging Christ before men means not letting the world define our conversation, not letting the world goad us into anger, or lull us into apathy, but keeping our eyes on the main thing, which is Christ.

Remember, you are worth more than many sparrows, and God our Father desires to see you persevere to eternal life, which is far more powerful and successful than anything available in this world.

^[1] Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gospel According to St. Matthew, 580.