Homilies

Sixteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time: July 20, 2025

My Irish grandparents emigrated from Ireland after the devastation of the mid nineteenth century famine, poverty, and generally hopeless situation. They didn’t have an easy time adjusting to American life and both died before I was born, my grandfather in an accident as a stonemason working in a cemetery. One of the hurtful results of the famine, I learned from such immigrants, is that they lost a sense of who they were, a large ingredient of which included hospitality to those in need. To be unable to help their neighbors, though poor themselves, undermined the sense of who they were. To share always and everything was central to life.

Hospitality is still a part of life in much of the Asian and African continents. The individualism of western culture has impacted our sense of belonging. We are a nation of immigrants, each flow of immigrants adding their talents, their hard and long hours of labor to help build the country.  But so many Americans have become afraid of newcomers, especially of different national and ethnic groups. Politicians have pushed their ideologies through fear and resentments.

There is legitimate concern about the numbers of migrants coming to our shores. There is legitimate need for laws of migration and asylum. There has been a recurring desire for more legislation. But attempts so far have been blocked by one party not willing to have this happen when they are not in the majority. And to add to this lack is the way Religious advocates for migrants have been criticized and dismissed as religion getting involved in politics.

But the prophetic line of the Bible has been revived. Pope Francis, and now Leo, have spoken loudly on behalf of immigrants, not just in allowing them in but treating them as human beings with respect and human dignity, not separating families, not jailing them for no or some insignificant reason. Our American Bishops are finally speaking up about the injustice and lack of human dignity displayed to migrants. The Bishops, like so many Catholics and other Christians, have only seen abortion and other sexual issues as worthy of their teaching. But I believe sexual problems are part of the larger social fabric which has been ignored. All of them often show the lack of human respect for people.

Pope Leo has chosen as his papal name that of his predecessor, Pope Leo XIII, the one who faced the social problems touching workers after the industrial revolution. The latter’s encyclical, Rerum Novarum, revived the social justice tradition of the Bible and early Christianity. The new Leo already teaches that the church must face technology and AI and their impact on human beings. He is teaching as Jesus taught – against greed, oppression, neglect of children and old age and the poorest among us.  Bishop Buddie in Washington D.C. has done the same for the Episcopal Church as has also many Protestant, Orthodox, Jewish and Muslim teachers. Social Justice as central to Religion had been neglected, unknown, ignored by our individualistic culture which has often made Religion something purely between me and God. Racism, antisemitism, enriching oneself while others hunger and thirst, warfare and violence to enemies and scapegoats, indifference to the environment as well as to all humans and other creatures – these are all sins against our loving Creator. They are moral issues and not just political.

The Sermon on the Mount, as well as Matthew’s recording of the Last Judgement (Matt 5 and 28) are clear in their teaching that we are all responsible for each other, that all must respect the dignity of every other human being, must forgive those who violate my own ways. I love the verse in Psalm 85 which reads, “Mercy and faithfulness have met; justice and peace have embraced. Faithfulness shall spring from the earth and justice look down from heaven.” Another translation reads, “Justice and peace have kissed.” 

Today’s gospel follows Luke’s parable of the Good Samaritan. The parable teaches that everyone is our neighbor. Mary and Martha and their attitude to Jesus have often been compared to the contemplative and active lives. But I see them also as personifying what is the central importance of our lives – the life of the spirit in finding our place in God, or a life of busy materialism, always seeking more power, possessions. Of course, it is not “either/or.”  Both are important to be human but which of them shows how to choose the better part? Are you taking time this summer to life that is the better part?

 Fr. Timothy Joyce, STL, OSB