Mystical Word: 14th Sunday Ordinary Time Year C
Readings for the 14th Sunday Ordinary Time
Isaiah 66:10-14c | Galatians 6:14-18 | Luke 10:1-12, 17-20
We know God so that God may be known.
Talking about religion today is hard. Mention the name Jesus in a crowd and notice their reactions: it can range from evangelical fervor to secular revulsion. We need witnesses. Jesus knows this. As he sends out his followers, he tells them to cure the sick while proclaiming the kingdom of God. Essentially, Jesus tells the disciples to be witnesses by their healing presence. He wants them to embody the kingdom of God, which is done by living a relationship with God. There is a Carmelite saying about this: “know God so that God may be known.”
Pope Paul VI once wrote, “Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than to teachers, and if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” We need flesh and blood followers of Jesus who live what they profess. One such person is Pere Jacques Brunel, OCD. He was a French Discalced Carmelite priest who lived from 1900-1945. He was the son of devout working-class parents who gave him a love for social justice. He served as a principal at a Catholic boarding school in France. For sheltering Jewish children during the war, the Nazis sent him to the concentration camp at Mauthausen. It is said that the inmates at the camp, whether atheist or believers, both admired and trusted Pere Jacques. Nevertheless, Pere Jacques was killed at the camp. But, because he saved Jewish children from the Nazis and due to his obvious holy life, Pere Jacques is in the process of being proclaimed an official saint.
Pere Jacques spoke of his life in Carmel as a life of “silent intimacy with God.” He wrote how a Carmelite community “is a community of human beings who reveal God to other human beings. There should be a Carmel in every city, and then there would be no need of works. One would see God through these human beings who live for him and him alone.” For him, the Carmelite “desires to find God and to reveal God to the whole world.” It’s all about presence, being present to God within through faith and interior silence, and presence to others. Out of this silent intimacy with God, Pere Jacques resisted the Nazis. He helped the Jewish people being persecuted; he poured love into the world at a great moment of need.
Like Pere Jacques, the main way we announce the kingdom is by our healing presence. The only way people really become followers of Christ is if they meet one. To be a healing presence in daily life, we need to start looking at how we live. We need to be open to God’s healing presence so we can pass it on. We know God so that God may be known. Therefore, we have to first know God in prayer. According to the Pew Forum, the majority of American Catholics are not certain they can have a relationship with God. They do not believe a personal relationship with God is possible - only 48 % of American Catholic adults were certain it was possible. Then, the statistics show only 60% of Catholics believe in a personal God with only 40% of 20-something Catholics believing in a personal God. To change this dynamic, we have to accept our relationship with God in prayer and live it. Simply put, we must pray and pray deeply.
Like Pere Jacques, we must resist the cruelty of those, inside and outside of the government, supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza and who are inflicting ICE upon multiple immigrant communities across the country. These are evil acts. Gazans are being killed when they attempt to get food from aid workers. ICE is kidnapping innocent people. The attorney general of Florida suggests building a migrant detention center in the Everglades (that sounds like a concentration camp). Pere Jacques, any of the saints, would be horrified by any Christian who supports this for it goes against the very heart of the Gospel: love.
We can become a healing and resisting presence through prayer. Then, after prayer, we offer the divine mercy we have received. It may take the form of simply being with some people in support and love. Confronting those who support the genocide or ICE with truth and love is one Gospel way of resistance to tyranny. We can pray for the people of Gaza and immigrant neighbors being taken. We can pray for the people in ICE and in the current administration so that their hearts may turn towards justice. This, perhaps, is how we proclaim the kingdom today. For, God always takes the side of the poor, the marginalized, the murdered, the kidnapped, the imprisoned, and the oppressed.
It all starts, though, with a relationship with God, just like with Pere Jacques. Jesus drives this point home when the disciples return with great success. Jesus affirms them: "I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky.” Still, Jesus tells them to rejoice because their names are written in heaven: relationship with God is primary and absolute not our transitory successes. When this relationship takes center stage in our lives, we will be witnesses. We will bring the healing of Christ and the kingdom of God into the world.