Homily for Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time

Homily for Thursday of the 14th Week in Ordinary Time I
9 July 2009
Year for Priests
Augustine Zhao Rong and companions, martyrs

Why have you forsaken me? Ordinarily these are words of desperation. Why am I alone? Why is this happening to me? From the lips of Jesus though, they show the purity and strength of his faith. Even though he felt alone. Even though he did not understand why things needed to be this way, still he chose to go on, still he chose to finish, still he chose to love, still he chose to obey, still he chose to hope.

Joseph lived to see why the Lord allowed his brothers to abandon him. It was so that one day, he could save them. On the day he was sold by his brothers, however, he could not have understood God's plan for him. On that day, it was hard to feel where God was. It would have been easy to lose hope because of the lack of understanding. But not only did Joseph not lose faith, as we see at the end of the story, he did not lose love for his brothers who betrayed him, he did not let their evil extinguish his love for them, but he chose to forgive them!

Augustine Zhao Rong, priest and martyr, had the faith and hope to give his life as a witness to the love of God he had experienced in Christ Jesus. Within the mantle of the love of Christ, Fr. Rong cast out all fear from his heart, and left a legacy of faith to the Church and to the Chinese people. He, like Christ, allowed himself to feel abandoned by God, but in giving his life rather than having it taken from him, he was more than a victim and instead a victor with Christ for having found a way through martyrdom to love his enemies to the end. He may not have understood why his martyrdom was necessary. He may not have understood why this was happening to him and not to someone else. But he never stopped believing that God loved him, that God knew him, that God would be with him, even in the darkness.

The purity and strength of our faith will be shown in the ways that we will choose to persevere, trusting that God will not abandon us, even when it appears on the surface that he has. The legacy of faith that we will leave will be the story of how we chose to keep going in faith, to keep hoping that with God, we can do anything, even when we do not understand why, even when we cannot see the end. +m