Homily for the Twelfth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Mass for Vocation Awareness Program

June 25, 2023
Chapel of the Incarnation, University of Dallas
Irving, Texas

Jeremiah 20:10-13
Psalm 69:8-10, 14, 17, 33-35
Romans 5:12-15
Matthew 10:26-33

“Jeremiah said: ‘I hear the whisperings of many: ‘Terror on every side! Denounce! Let us denounce him!’ All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine.’” Unlike the prophet Isaiah elsewhere in Scripture, who says, “Here I am, send me,” Jeremiah was reluctant because he knew that the people to whom the Lord is sending him to speak do not want to hear the message that the Lord has for them, the message that they need to hear.  The message requires them to accept their need for a radical change of heart and to persevere through the destruction of a complacent and unjust way of life for the sake of deliverance from their enemies. Jeremiah knows that the message that the Lord has for His chosen people is vastly different from the message delivered by the official prophets of the royal court of his time who have been bought and sold to tell the Lord’s chosen people not what God desires for them but what the elite and powerful want them to hear.  Jeremiah will have to speak some hard truths to them, something they will not want to hear, and he will have to speak these truths well, with clarity, with integrity, and in fidelity to the Lord. Jeremiah’s anticipations expressed earlier in the story are now coming into actuality.

Authentic prophets clearly speak God’s desires for His people whom He loves. Jeremiah’s message and prophecy are imbued indelibly in his life and not just in his words. His prophetic vocation is not exclusively a matter of words but of every aspect of his life. Jeremiah has no wife or children. The elite and powerful reject him and attack his reputation by slandering him as an extremist, a lunatic, or a fanatic. Jeremiah’s vocation is particularly challenging, because it involves intentionally calling the people to return to God and to decide to love Him in return and in that way to be accountable through the looming exile.

In His unconditional love, God desires so much good for His People that He calls Jeremiah to proclaim by his life God’s message of unconditional love, justice, and fidelity: “To whomever I send you, you shall go; whatever I command you, you shall speak. Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you.”  In a certain way, the life and vocation of Jeremiah is an example of a priestly or religious vocation in our contemporary and frightening times in which our culture has replaced God with the idolatry of self. Fear is all around us and cannot but be a circumstance of our discernment.

It is precisely to this infliction of fear that Jesus allays in today’s Gospel by telling His disciples three times not to fear. Jesus says, “Fear no one.” He adds, “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. Finally, “Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid.”

Jesus is mercifully clear that belonging to Him requires fortitude amidst adversity to persevere in the loving commitment made to Him in response to the commitment of unconditional love that He has made to each of us through His obedience to the Father unto death. Jesus is also equally clear that each disciple is required to acknowledge humbly the very real fears and threats endured because of the hostility directed by the world of the flesh against the Gospel of Jesus Christ and those who embrace Him. Jesus Christ offers both direction and resilience that produce the disposition of confidence in the hearts of us who believe in Him.

It is the fruit of confidence that Jesus gives to us that marks the prophetic character of the Church and particularly of a priestly or religious vocation. Authentic prophets speak in the light what God’s desires are for us, His children, amidst this world of darkness. The anger of the prophets is prompted by the injustice of darkness that attempt to cloak God’s desires from the understanding of God’s children; this righteous indignation of the prophets brings light.

Yet, we must be careful because part of the contemporary darkness is the polarizing anger of the political activist. This anger brings only heat and is ignited only in the darkness and obscurity of the night — it brings heat but no light; it brings fire but no purification. Authentic prophets face rejection, as did Jeremiah, because of the light of their words and the accountability of love to God that they convey — the light of faith and right reason. Activists reject accountability; their words follow upon their deeds — they lack faith and right reason and in place of confidence they only bolster the arrogance of self will and chaos that wreaks havoc.

Pope Francis said, “Besides [sending us out] as ‘sheep in the midst of wolves,’ the Lord even in our times sends us out as sentinels in the midst of people who do not want to be awakened from their worldly lethargy which ignores the Gospel’s words of Truth, building for themselves their own ephemeral truths. And if we go to or live in these contexts, and we proclaim the Words of the Gospel, this is bothersome, and they will look at us unkindly.”

What prevents the prophet from declining into an agitator is the loving recognition of God’s love and sovereignty. God’s sovereignty means that it is He who decides. It is God who decides who is called to what. It is God who decides who gets what gifts for what purposes. The Eternal Word of God, the Son of God, cannot lie and cannot be in error. He brings all things to their proper ends, and He will always provide for His will. Christ never calls to an illusion or a charade, but to authentic and eternal fulfillment.

In today’s second reading, Saint Paul writes to the Romans, and to us by faith, “the gift is not like the transgression. For if by the transgression of the one many died, how much more did the grace of God and the gracious gift of the one-man Jesus Christ overflow for the many.”  The gift is not like transgression — the transgression is sin. It is selfish and frightening. The gift of a vocation is selfless and liberating with confidence because it rests not in our own determination and planning but in the Lord’s invitation to give our lives to Him in loving sacrifice and trust.

God answers our prayers, but He does not answer them in the way that we prefer or would prescribe Him to answer. We can spend too much time considering the “what” of a vocation as if we are shopping for a house, a car, or making a career decision. This approach to discernment soon detaches a vocation from God who is calling us. We do not know what the future holds, but we should become more intimate with God who holds the future. We are not pondering offers from a variety of equals like a decision at a buffet, so there is no calculation among goods when it comes to a vocation. As Saint Therese of Lisieux said, “When one loves, one does not calculate.”

The highest good we could possibly have is the joy that comes with acceptance of Christ’s invitation to give our entire life to God. A priestly or religious vocation is spending your entire life with and for God. Discernment must always begin and end with direct discourse between each of us and Jesus. When we speak with Jesus honestly, our fears fall into place. When we speak with Jesus honestly and directly, we become less afraid of to what the Lord is calling us, and more confident that it is He who is calling us and that He will never abandon us regardless of our decisions. If we do this, then we can sing with the triumphant voice of Jeremiah, “Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!”