Homily

Sunday, August 10, 2008, 18th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A
Assumption Grotto Parish, Detroit

The Solution to our Problems is in Christ Alone

This year, from June 29, 2008 until June 29, 2009, is the year of St. Paul. We commemorate 2000 since his birth, and we praise God for the gift of St. Paul to the Church. Therefore I wish to offer some reflections about the letter of St. Paul to the Romans today. It has to do with faith in Christ, and how one attains salvation.

When I was at World Youth Day, with many of the fine young people of this parish, and of other parishes as well, the Pope spoke to us about the Holy Spirit and His work in souls; among many magnificent points, he stressed that it is impossible for any human community of persons to form a perfect society without God. I think that today’s homily about faith and salvation will help us turn to God in faith when addressing the problems of our time.

In the Epistle to the Romans, St. Paul just finished explaining the universality of salvation when we come upon chapters nine through eleven. Now he moves to address the question of the people of Israel in these three chapters. It is important to discuss Israel in the context of salvation, because on the one hand they were the chosen people; on the other hand, St. Paul says, they had “not attained” righteousness, and by and large had turned away from the Messiah, who was the greatest fruit of the flesh of this glorious nation. Therefore he needs to answer many questions. Is Israel still the chosen people? If so, how to the pagans, such as the Romans, attain righteousness and eternal life? Did God abandon Israel, because of the crucifixion of his Eternal Son?

His reply starts by exalting the people of Israel. In the verses we read today, he reminds the world and all posterior history what exalted place Israel has and had in God’s plan of salvation. He lists the divine goods showered upon Israel: “the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Christ” (Rom 9:4-5).

Yet by the end of chapter nine, he expands the community of the saved to excel the number of those simply marked with circumcision in the flesh. He states that, “not all who are descended from Israel are Israel” (v. 6). Later he adds a verse from Hosea, where the Lord says, “I will call them ‘my people’ who are not my people;  and I will call her ‘my loved one’ who is not my loved one” (9:25; Hosea 2:23). He further adds, “The Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it” (v. 30-31). Yet he does not call Israel cursed or abandoned by God, for he states in chapter 11, “Did God reject his people? By no means!” (Rom 11:1).

We can glean one aspect or doctrine from these verses, that God has extended the invitation to grace beyond Israel, to the whole world. To the Greeks and to the Romans, to the Persians and to the Gauls, to the Visigoths and Ethiopians, to the Spaniards and the Chinese, to the Irish and to the Polish and to the Americans, and to every nation and people that should ever arise in the course of years until the Lord should come again. And so we need precise terminology: what are we to call all of those called to salvation, whose vocation is heaven? St. Paul himself supplies some terminology, a bit shocking perhaps to contemporary sensitivities, when he writes, “What Israel sought so earnestly it did not obtain, but the elect did” (Rom 11:7, emphasis added). There is Israel, and there are the elect. Some Israelites may or may not be among the elect; but the boundaries of descendance according to the flesh do not determine the saints in heaven above.

In fact, there is no such limitation or determination which can be found in this world. Nothing can create, establish, or reform the number of the elect, except integral faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. At World Youth Day last month, Pope Benedict said something to this effect. We all stood there with candles in our hand, a half-million young hearts, after the sun went down, when the Pope said, “Unity and reconciliation cannot be achieved through our efforts alone. God has made us for one another (cf. Gen 2:24) and only in God and his Church can we find the unity we seek.”(1) Unity is not caused by circumcision, or by anything in this world, but by faith in Christ.

Often we look to human means for our salvation, and for the solution of all of our problems, even the difficulties we have in struggling with sin or the hardships of prayer. We wish we had a better family, attributing our holiness to the descendance of the flesh; or we want a new method; or new book for spiritual reading; or more money; or a better car or house; or better health. We’re tempted to think that once all these temporal things are in order as we’d like them, then we can become good saints.

The fact is, only Jesus Christ can make us holy, and can solve all of our own personal problems, and all of the world’s problems. He alone is savior and Lord. By faith in him, a faith which is founded in love, which gives us hope, which is enlivened by the Holy Spirit, can we attain our salvation, not through any humanly devised method, project, pastoral plan, or human attempts to overcome our weaknesses.

Christ alone is Savior. Let us renew our supernatural faith, hope and charity for our Lord, and live our Catholic faith with renewed enthusiasm, to attain our salvation, to help procure the salvation of all those with whom we enter in contact, and to address the many social evils which afflict our time. For all this we entrust our humble efforts to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Amen.