Is the world going to hell?

Homily

15th Sunday in Ordinary Time B2

14 July 2024

St. Ann Catholic Church

AMDG

Is the world going to hell?  Of course it is.  It has been for a long time.  It will continue to go that way.

You think an assassination attempt on the President is the sure tale sign that we have lost our way?  I'm sorry to say we lost our way a long time ago,  History is repeating itself.  We are reaping what we have sown for a long time.  And there's more to come.  A lot more.  I wish I didn't believe that.  But it's real.  Now is not the time to pretend we are all safe, and to play nice. There are evils that need to be defeated. Many of them!  And we are the ones who have to do the work.  Nobody is immune from the evils that are upon us.

Violence and killing are cries for help from a people who are lost, scared, alone, unhealthy, despairing, and in terrible pain.  This is the reality we have all created because we have divorced truth and love, justice and peace.  Worse yet, we have divorced our covenant with God and each other. We reap what we sow.  We don't deserve better than what we have, and it does no good to complain about what others aren't doing.

Jesus trusts His disciples to go out and defeat many evils.  For their own good, he makes them the solution, and he tells them how to do it. He gives them no economic, political or legal solutions.  Go out and tell people to repent of the ways we have divorced God and each other, and to return to faithfulness.  Go, and take only the things that will keep you moving, and nothing that will slow you down or distract you.

Sorry if that's not a nice, safe homily from the new shepherd from Hoxie, Kansas.  It's the same message Amos, the farmer from Judah, had to deliver to the self-absorbed city folks in Bethel.  It's not fun to hear.  It's not fun to say.  But prophecy has to always sting if it's going to do any good.

Am I the reason the world is going to hell?  Of course I am!  Yes, always!  The most urgent thing needed in the world right now is my repentance, and my own commitment to defeating evil by giving life, and not taking it!  

St. Paul teaches of this destiny and dignity we all have in Christ.  We are to pass away to this world that is going to hell, and pass over through Christ, and His passion and paschal mystery, into a new creation, the kingdom of heaven.  Fulfilling this destiny is so simple!  I defeat evil by suffering and dying with Him, and God will use this sacrifice to transform reality into something new, something other than the hell we are living in!

Go!  The first apostles defeated many evils, and became salt and light, simply by realizing that the greatest evils in the world are not political, they are spiritual and moral.  These evils are overcome by faithfulness to God and each other.