HOMILY FOR THE 13TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME, YEAR A
In today’s gospel, Jesus addresses two important aspects of being a Christian disciple. It involves the act of giving and the act of receiving. First, as Christian disciples, we must give the presence of Christ to others. Secondly, as Christian disciples, we must welcome and receive the presence of Christ given to us by others.
For the last 15 years of my sister’s life, she had at least two major surgeries a year. Ruthie and I were generally at the hospital during those surgeries. One very cold January day back in the 1980’s, Ruthie and I got to St. Joseph Hospital in St. Paul early in the morning as my sister was being prepped for another surgery. It ended up being a very long day of sitting and waiting in the surgery waiting room with my parents. My sister was in surgery for about 7 hours, and another hour and a half in post-op. Like many of her surgeries, it was very touch and go, but, somehow, miraculously, she survived once more. Once she got up to her hospital room, Ruthie and I wearily made it back to our Aerostar parked in the hospital parking lot.
As we drove home, right around the small town of Lydia, my power steering went out. With some difficulty, I steered the car home and as Ruth went into the house to be with our kids, I opened the hood expecting to pull out a broken power steering belt. Instead, I pulled out a tail and then heard a pitiful meow coming from the engine. A cat had crawled on top of the motor in the hospital parking lot to get warm and tragically on the way home got caught in the engines’ pulleys. My nerves were raw from the emotional toll of my sister’s surgery and now there was a poor, suffering, partially dismembered cat in my car’s engine.
I rushed into the house. My son, Andy asked me how Aunt Mary was doing, and I cried out, “Don’t ask me about your Aunt Mary, I’ve got a cat pulled apart in my car engine!” Not quite the answer Andy was anticipating. I called the police and pretty much shouted into the phone what had happened to the hapless dispatcher. She said to me, “Okay, first, you get a garbage bag and then you get a baseball bat. You then pull the cat out of your engine. Next you hit the cat on the head with the baseball bat. Then you throw the cat into the garbage bag.” I could not believe my ears, and, I angrily hung up on the dispatcher. I was desperate. I was beyond distraught. What was I to do? I called up my good friend, Fr. Denny Dempsey, who was the associate pastor at St Wenceslaus.
I said, “Denny, I’ve got a cat pulled apart in my car engine and I don’t know what to do!” Denny was a frequent and welcomed guest at our home, eating with us at least once a week, and, on those nights when he did not have Mass early in the morning, would watch movies on our VCR to the wee hours of the morning. Denny was a welcomed dinner guest at many of the homes of St. Wenceslaus parishioners, so much so, that I think he seldom ate at the rectory. As my friend, Jack McHugh, once observed, when Denny comes to supper, he gets his own loaf of bread. Anyway, Denny calmly listened to me and told me, “I will be right over. This sounds more interesting than the report I am doing for the Archbishop.” He concluded, “Oh, I need you to get a garbage bag, and a baseball bat.” “Okay,” I answered meekly, and went to get a baseball bat and a garbage bag.
Denny pulled up in front of my car, his headlights shining onto the front of my car. He got out of his car, and said to me, “Has your engine lost its purr? Do you no longer have a tiger in your tank?” Still very upset, I just said, “Oh, shut up!” He opened the hood of the car and reached in and pulled out the poor cat. The cat had died. He gently placed the cat in the garbage bag. Then he came inside the house, listened to my day, and helped to calm me down.
Denny Dempsey brought the real presence of Jesus to me that cold January night. It had nothing to do with him being a priest. It was more about Denny being a very concerned friend. He came to my aid when I needed him most desperately. He brought Christ’s calming, healing presence to a situation that was for me chaotically out of control.
Jesus tells his disciples in the gospel, “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” Today’s gospel is about God’s presence and hospitality to others, and welcoming and receiving God’s presence from others.
Our world today can be best described in the words of Norm Peterson, from the old TV comedy, “Cheers.” “It is a dog eat dog world, and I’m wearing Milkbone underwear.” Our world is as chaotically out of control as was my life that cold January night. These two aspects of being a Christian are vitally important in a world in which personal gain and personal revenge is lived out on the lowest level of human life to the very high levels of government; and, in a world in which humanity is more inclined to shoot one another rather than welcome one another.
In the gospel, Jesus is sending his Apostles out on a mission to bring his healing presence to others. We are the living Apostles whom Jesus sends out on mission to our world today. This mission, as the gospel states, transcends nations, ideologies, career, and, even family. We are to give Christ’s healing presence to others, and to welcome and receive Christ’s healing presence to others. When we give Christ’s healing presence to others, most often we will find that in their receiving us, they, in turn, will give Christ’s living presence to us. In giving Christ abundantly to others, we will, in return, receive Christ in abundance from them.
