Roc Homily – Thirty-Third Sunday Ordinary Time (B)

“We need to remember the people of Paris who died in the terrorist attack… We need to remember and pray for our enemies…”  – Fear, feelings of being powerless, and anger at these attacks in Paris surfaced in me.  You?

The Word today encourages us to trust…   Psalm 32:7 (NRSV) — 7 You are a hiding place for me; you preserve me from trouble; you surround me with glad cries of deliverance.”

The Word today encourages us to repent...   Isaiah 13:9–14 (NRSV) — 9 See, the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger, to make the earth a desolation, and to destroy its sinners from it. 10 For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will be dark at its rising, and the moon will not shed its light. 11 I will punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; I will put an end to the pride of the arrogant, and lay low the insolence of tyrants.

The Word today encourages us to hope…   Genesis 9:16 (NRSV) — 16 When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth.”   &   Exodus 13:21f (NRSV) — 21 The Lord went in front of them in a pillar of cloud by day, to lead them along the way, and in a pillar of fire by night, to give them light, so that they might travel by day and by night. 22 Neither the pillar of cloud by day nor the pillar of fire by night left its place in front of the people.

Such apocalyptic language “pulls back the veil” from our fearful pretense to the throne of God, our terror of vulnerability, and the anger that professes to protect us by inflating our egos to ward off danger.

The Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time 

Homily by Roc O’Connor, SJ, associate pastor of the Church of the Gesu  (November 14, 2015 @ 4:30 pm Mass, Saturday)

Mark 13:24-32   Jesus said to his disciples:  “In those days after that tribulation the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken…”