YOUR ENDURANCE WILL WIN YOU YOUR LIVES

HOMILY FOR THE 33^rd SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR C.

Rev. Fr. Ezekoka Peter Onyekachi

As we approach the end of the Church’s liturgical year, it will not have escaped your notice that the recent readings at Mass have sounded a sombre warning note. These readings help to prepare within us the right attitude – comprising  honesty, realism and practicality – regarding the best way to live in the face of daily difficulties and challenges, cataclysmic personal events, and impending large-scale disasters including war, famine and disease. The thread running throughout history is that the world is afflicted. There is never a time when somewhere in the world there are no people enduring religious or social sorrows, or suffering from economical or environmental affliction. The effect of suffering on people can be traumatic. As Christians, we do not get to live in a bubble, insulated from pains and trials. We live out our lives in the real world, which is a place of confusion and turmoil. It is no Garden of Eden. It is in the midst of chaos and disorder that Our Beloved Lord expects us to be His witnesses. This is the message of this Sunday’s readings. What an onerous task we are presented with!  How, then, shall we bear it?

There will be terrifying signs and events accompanying the advent of the renewed world; but never fear, endurance will win us eternal life with beatific vision. Today’s Gospel (Luke 21:5-19) not only offers us a snapshot of these terrifying happenings but also tells us how to live through them. Some disciples with Jesus in the Temple of Jerusalem (the heart of the Jewish religion and the place of sacrifice) were very taken with its stunningly beautiful physical adornment. In the Temple, the pillars of the porches and of the cloisters were columns of white marble, forty feet high, each crafted from a single block of stone. The disciples’ comments on the splendour of the Temple moved Jesus to speak out. Imagine, then, the impact that Jesus’ predictions of the destruction of the Temple would have had on His listeners. To the Jews, it was unthinkable that the glories of the Temple should ever be razed to the ground. But they were, just over three decades later.

And for us today, what impact does it have on us when we are faced with the potential destruction of something very precious to us; when it seems to us that our personal temples ‘adorned with fine stonework and votive offerings’ are about to crash down upon our heads? It is possible that our sacrosanct places, people and things - our careers, vocations, family and friends - in our personal lives might come to appear to us to be worthless. We may feel hopeless and practically devoid of God’s presence. “Where has God gone?” we think; “Is God merely a figment of our human imagination?” For reasons beyond mortal explanation, God may seem to hide, and prayer may be hard-going and dry. A lot of voices will be audible at such times, and these voices might well mislead us. The plain advice of Jesus is: take care not to be deceived. What then should our reaction be when the glories of life seem to fade and wither before our very eyes? Jesus tells us that such a time is our time of trial; we will not be abandoned. The trials will give us the opportunity to bear witness to God.

We live in such a dangerous time, don’t we? Times of trial come to every happy marriage, to every peaceful home, to every contented person living out the single life, to every priest and religious, however devoted to Our Lord they may be. Each individual trial we face may be associated with someone or something tempting us and trying to draw us away from our loyalty to God and our loved ones. Sometimes, in the face of disappointment or betrayal, we might be tempted to feel that the sky is falling in on us. We may feel as though our friends and families are subjecting us to public trial by their rumour-mongering and deliberate misunderstandings. But feelings can be misleading! This will be the moment for when the words of Jesus resonate in the mind: you will be betrayed even by parents and brothers, relations and friends and some of you will be put to death… However, Jesus goes on to speak very convincingly of His protection that puts these horrendous experiences of life in the shade: Not one hair of your head will be harmed. The 1^st Reading (Malachi 4:1-2a) offers us further consolation by speaking of the dawn of a new day which will be the day of the salvation of the just. On this day, righteousness will prevail (cf. 2 Pet 3:13).

Jesus counsels us further regarding how we are to react to personal trials: you are not to prepare your defence because I myself will give you an eloquence and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to resist or contradict…your endurance will win you your lives. This implies that sometimes our response should not be verbal but non-verbal - a silence filled with strength, loyalty and dignity. But silence doesn’t release us from the commitment to do the work we are called to do. Trials and expectations are not intended to make us shy away from what we ought to do; rather, they should help us grow in character and backbone, in wisdom and in understanding, with an eagerness to take a full part in society. This sentiment is expressed in the 2^nd Reading (2Thessalonians 3:7-12). For those who were idle as they waited for the appearing of the Messiah, St. Paul called on them to go on working and earning their daily bread. Surely that should also be our disposition? We must not allow ourselves to be so wearied by the drudgery, disappointments and cares of this life that we give up battling  on, working and loving and encouraging each other. The punchline of today’s Gospel reading is that our endurance will win us our lives in heaven. May the Lord continue to stir up in us the grace of endurance. Amen. God bless you.