XX Sunday in Ordinary Time

 

XX Sunday in Ordinary Time 8/14/22 – © All Rights Reserved by Rev. Fr. Arthur F. Rojas ©

  Today we have a guest blogger from Fr. Arthur F. Rojas, administrator of PRESENTATION OF THE B.V.M CHURCH, PORT EWEN AND SACRED HEART CHURCH, ESOPUS. For more information on this parish, check out their website at Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary & Sacred Heart Churches - Port Ewen - Esopus, NY (presentationsacredheart.org)

            As an undergraduate at the University of Virginia more than 30 years ago, one of my favorite courses was on the history of the Catholic Church of the United States.  Having read works by historians such as Jay P. Dolan and Fr. Gerald P. Fogarty, S.J. and considering other sources,

I discerned that as Catholics had moved to the suburbs out of a largely urban presence in the mid-to-late twentieth century, we Catholic Americans had started to assimilate too easily into a society whose foundations were neither Catholic then and are no longer recognizably Christian today.  There will be those who will point out exceptional figures who challenged prevailing attitudes such as Dorothy Day, Archbishop Joseph Rummel, who fought racial injustice in New Orleans to the point of excommunicating defiantly racist Catholic public figures, the author Flannery O’Connor, Nellie Gray and the largely Catholic founders of the pro-life movement in New York and much of the United States, the evangelist Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Auxiliary Bishop Austin Vaughn of New York, Msgr. Philip Reilly of Brooklyn, Fr, Augustus Tolton, Fr. John Hardon, Mother Angelica (E.W.T.N.), or to some people: César Chavez, the Berrigan brothers, or Sr. Helen Prejean, C.S.J.  However, survey after survey finds that we Catholic Americans have forfeited our “salt and light” (Mt 5:13-16) as we largely adopt prevailing postures on contemporary issues and even attitudes towards manners, beauty, and modesty, let alone death and the supernatural.  Moreover, widespread complacency and poor awareness of our own history and identity as Catholics in America lead many of us to regard fervor as fanatical, reverence as retrograde, and to mistrust true prophecy as rabble-rousing, especially in the age of cancel culture.  Sadly, we tend to value a false “niceness” or “tolerance”, papering over conflicts or ignoring our crying need for conversion as persons and as a society, over Christ’s call to conversion and those who would challenge us out of our comfort zone towards greater holiness in this life.  Then as now, we Catholic Americans are not comfortable with our Church being prophetic to ourselves, let alone the greater society!

 

            In light of the readings today in the Ordinary Form, Our Lord Himself (Luke 12:49-53) speaks trenchantly of His message compelling people to choose for Him or against Him, in other words “division”!  Jesus came to set the Earth on fire because it was His ardent love of His Father’s plan for our salvation and for you and me that led Him to endure the Passion and Crucifixion for our sins.  Although moderation is virtuous at certain times, Christ’s call to holiness is radical - some may call it “extreme” - in that it seeks to transform you and me from the roots of our being.  Indeed, “radical” is from “radix”, the Latin word for root.   The holy prophet Jeremiah is recalled in Jer 38:4-6, 8-10 as conveying what the people needed to hear from God, even if local princes loathed the message and sought to silence Jeremiah.  In Hebrews 12:1-4, we are told of the radical holiness of the saints, the “cloud of witnesses,” as examples for us to follow Jesus, “the leader and perfecter of faith.”  Echoing the Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, you and I were not created for comfort, but for greatness.  How prophetic these words are in a world that exalts comfort and convenience!  Through the prayers of Our Lady assumed into Heaven (whom is celebrated on Aug. 15), may we heed the call to conversion made by Christ through the prophets of our day.  May we Catholic Americans then become worthy messengers of God’s call to others around us.