Homily for Thursday of the 31st Week in Ordinary Time

For daily readings, see http://www.usccb.org/nab/110608.shtml
Mary, conceived without sin, patronness of the Americas, pray for us!

As we continue to see and to experience, it is difficult to find a basis for reasonable discourse within our society. With such great emphasis on privacy, pragmatism and popularism, there was little reasonable discussion on the natural law and the right to life during the most recent election; unless, of course, one was going to Mass and listening to the teachings of the Church. There is such an ignorance of the natural law that predictably, there were few conversions based on rational debate, and thus even fewer conversions based on appeals to the human heart.

But we should not be discouraged. Jesus comes to us in the Eucharist today to love us at the point of our greatest need, and to strengthen us for the journey ahead. His love revealed and fully received in the Holy Eucharist prepares us to recommit ourselves to loving one another, especially our adversaries, just as He has loved us. Jesus came to be our Savior, to love us while we were still helpless, unable to love Him in return. We should approach the altar then with the joy of one who has been found after straying, and searched for after having been lost. Our recognition that we are the sheep and the lost coin in today's parable, gives us the joy and optimism we will need to continue the fight of seeking after those who have been co-opted by the culture of death. Our friendship with Christ and our exchange of love with Him, experienced most fully in this Holy Eucharist, will allow us to become the circumcision, as St. Paul instructs. Becoming the circumcision allows us to go beyond our desire for perfect laws, to the end that the law is meant to facilitate, friendship with Christ. While justice demands our fighting with all our minds to convince the culture of death that it destroys itself by ignoring the natural law and the right to life, we realize that the deepest desires of the human heart are not for perfect laws but for perfect love. We are the ones who have been found and have received this perfect love from Christ who redeems our hearts. As ministers of this love, then, we leave this Mass unafraid to love others, especially our enemies, just as Christ loves us. It is this love that perseveres even when our rational discourse seems to fail. +m