Nineteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time--Liturgical Cycle C

First Reading: Wisdom 18:6-9
Responsorial Psalm Ps 33:1, 12, 18-19, 20-22
Second Reading: Hebrews 11:1-2, 8-19 or 11:1-2, 8-12
Gospel: Luke 12:32-48 or 12:35-40
Lectionary Readings

Homily
After Jesus and his little band of followers had spent an overnight at the home of Mary and Martha and were back on the road again, in answer to one of the crowd, who asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, Jesus gave us the Lord’s Prayer: “Abba, Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come…”

In his gospel, Luke (and our liturgy, Sunday after Sunday) now presents various comments of Jesus on the elements of this prayer: in essence, what will bring this Kingdom about so that the Father (Abba) is hallowed.

First, we must get an idea of what Jesus is (and what we are) talking about when we say “Kingdom.”

What is “the Kingdom?”

I like to think that it is all those things, those values, we Christians hold so dear. That “way of life” which Jesus teaches by his life and death. It is a place where fair play and honesty prevail, where justice is tempered with mercy, where an honest day’s work receives an honest day’s pay, where our lifestyle is free of anxiety and stress, where there are people whom we fiercely love and who fiercely love us. Such a Kingdom can only exist in our dreams, our aspirations, goals to which we aspire and in that sense we can achieve a taste of it here, but the fullness of that Kingdom is to come. It is like Catherine of Sienna once said: “It’s heaven all the way to heaven.”

“Do not fear, little flock, the Father is pleased to give you the Kingdom,” reminds us Jesus wants us to savor the mystery that the Kingdom is here and yet to come. The disciple (the Christian) is called to be the Kingdom so that the kingdom will come.

Like Abraham of old, we are to set forth to a place we know not, so that the place we are going is where we are. Paul writes today, “Faith is confident assurance concerning what we hope for.” In other words, a taste of what we hope for is already possible. “Heaven is heaven all the way to heaven.”

It sounds confusing! Yet, is it not true that if we live as Jesus teaches, full of the values we dearly long for, then already the kingdom has come in our lives as we await the fullness of that kingdom in the presence of our God.

People often tell me that even after their loved ones have died for many years, someone whom they fiercely loved and who fiercely loved them, there is often that powerful and undeniable sense of their presence. It is so strong and real that it delights and thrills us.

That is the way it is when we earnestly live the values of the Kingdom. By our dedication to this lifestyle of Jesus, God’s presence is real and the Kingdom is come.

As disciples of the Lord, we are called to live the Kingdom of God’s values in our world so that indeed His Kingdom is in the midst of our lives and is present to all those with whom we live and move and have our being.

With today’s psalmist we pray:

May your Kingdom, O Lord, be upon us
who have put our hope in you.

--Fr. Pat

Excerpt from "A Catholic's Companion: Liturgical Cycle C" (c)2000 C. Patrick Creed

Published by Watchmaker Press. Maggie Hettinger, editor