{"id":472,"date":"2009-07-04T12:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-04T12:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/homily-for-july-5-2009-14th-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html"},"modified":"2009-07-04T12:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-04T12:39:00","slug":"homily-for-july-5-2009-14th-sunday-in-ordinary-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/homily-for-july-5-2009-14th-sunday-in-ordinary-time.html","title":{"rendered":"Homily for July 5, 2009: 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>My mother grew up in a small town in South Jersey, named Pitman, not far from Philadelphia. It was the kind of place you passed through on your way to someplace else. It was pretty unremarkable \u2013 there was a Main Street, called Broadway, with a few stores, a bank, a movie theater and a bakery. It was settled by devout Methodists. My mother grew up attending camp meetings and carrying a small, well-thumbed bible to services on Sunday, the kind of bible that had Jesus\u2019s words printed in red ink.<\/p>\n

Like a lot of small towns, it had its own culture, and its own way of looking at the world. Everybody knew everybody \u2013 and everybody\u2019s business. I know it caused my mother pain. Her parents, my grandparents, ended up divorcing when she was a teenager. This was in the 1930s, at a time when divorce was still considered scandalous and rare. Years later, when she spoke of her hometown, my mother was not always kind.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a good place to be from<\/i>,\u201d she\u2019d say \u2013 implying that she couldn\u2019t imagine spending her whole life there.<\/p>\n

After hearing today\u2019s gospel, I can\u2019t help but wonder if Jesus ever felt that way about Nazareth.<\/p>\n

In Mark\u2019s telling of this event, Jesus returns to his hometown \u2013 another place where everybody knew everybody and everybody\u2019s business. He finds people who dismiss him as merely a carpenter, Mary\u2019s son, someone who couldn\u2019t possibly be capable of greatness. They can\u2019t understand how someone like that could have such power and wisdom. And we\u2019re told that Jesus was amazed at just one thing: their lack of faith.<\/p>\n

Faith. <\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been hearing that word a lot lately, haven\u2019t we? <\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, when Christ confronted the storm at sea, he asked his disciples, \u201cDo you not yet have faith?\u201d <\/p>\n

Last week, he marveled at the woman who touched his garment and told her, \u201cYour faith has saved you.\u201d Moments later, he said to the synagogue official whose daughter had died, \u201cJust have faith.\u201d<\/p>\n

But this week, it isn\u2019t the power of faith that makes the biggest impression.<\/p>\n

It is the absence of it.<\/p>\n

We live in an age when faith is often absent. Last week, there was an item in the New York Times, asking readers to define faith. They got thousands of responses, ranging from the secular to the sacred, from the disbelieving to the devout. A lot of them were discouraging and took a cynical view of any kind of belief. I was reminded of the words of the great lay leader Catherine Doherty: \u201cFaith walks simply, childlike, between the darkness of human life and the hope of what is to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

That kind of childlike wonder may have been something the people of Nazareth just couldn\u2019t accept.<\/p>\n

And faith, ultimately, requires acceptance. It is a gift \u2013 freely offered from a loving and generous God.<\/p>\n

But it is a gift many of us reject.<\/p>\n

According to polls, only about a quarter of Catholics attend mass every Sunday. Fewer Catholics are getting married in church. Fewer still are celebrating the sacrament of reconciliation. Many don\u2019t believe in the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. The mystery and beauty of the faith that binds us together — that defines our values and that ultimately saves our souls — are all becoming lost.<\/p>\n

Too many of us are living in our own Nazareth, blind to the great gift before us.<\/p>\n

Do we realize what we have been given?<\/p>\n

Do we understand it?<\/p>\n

Do we see the wonder before us?<\/p>\n

Do we believe it?<\/p>\n

Do we even want to?<\/p>\n

Because wanting<\/i> to \u2013 that is the very beginning of faith. <\/p>\n

And faith, once accepted and embraced, yields extraordinary dividends. It helps us to understand how God works in our lives. It lets us see the world through different eyes.<\/p>\n

Eyes that can see with tenderness and hope.<\/p>\n

Eyes that can see a carpenter as a king.<\/p>\n

Thinking about all this, and what Jesus encountered when he returned to his village, I went back to one of the greatest accounts of small town life, Thornton Wilder\u2019s \u201cOur Town.\u201d It never fails to break my heart.<\/p>\n

In the beginning, the stage manager who is narrating the story of life in Grover\u2019s Corners describes it this way: \u201cNice town,\u201d he says. \u201cNobody very remarkable ever come out of it, s\u2019far as we know.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what you find as the play unfolds is that everyone<\/i> is remarkable. Every blessed person in the town. But nobody living there realizes that. And in the final scene, in the graveyard, one of the dead says of the living, with sorrow and regret, \u201cThey don\u2019t understand.\u201d<\/p>\n

So many of us don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Whether it\u2019s Grover’s Corners, or Pitman, New Jersey, or Queens, or Nazareth.<\/p>\n

We tend to see with the hard eyes of the world, and not with the eyes of faith. We see only what is — not what can be.<\/p>\n

This weekend, we celebrate a great holiday that exists, really, because men and women 233 years ago saw what could be.<\/p>\n

They had faith. Faith in the future. Faith in their ideals. Faith in the God who created them.<\/p>\n

As we are reminded of their courage and sacrifice, let us also be reminded of their faith \u2013 and pray that we, too, might be moved to see the world differently.<\/p>\n

To see in Jesus not just a carpenter, but a king.<\/p>\n

To see in the host not just bread, but God.<\/p>\n

To see in one another God\u2019s continuing spark of creation.<\/p>\n

To see, above all, possibility<\/span>.<\/p>\n

To do that, I believe, is to see the world as God intended.<\/p>\n

It is to see \u2026 quite simply … with the eyes of faith<\/i>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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