The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.

32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle A

November 10, 2002

Is the Church Prepared?

   We should live our lives each as though Christ were coming this afternoon.

   This year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, President Jimmy Carter, uttered these words. They echo the words of our Lord in his insistence that we be prepared for the day when the Lord returns. But what does this mean? In the book of Wisdom we are told that the wise know how to live—that is, they know what makes for the good life, leading a good life that is destined for human beings. To live each day as though the Lord were to come this afternoon means deciding what to spend our energy on. Since all of us have a life that we can never know when our personal day may come to meet the judgment that comes in death we are faced with what we want our lives to mean to God, others and one’s self.

   Many people spend a lot of that time trying to figure out when the Lord is coming and so they race to and fro to the latest fortuneteller, or get wrapped up in groups and cults that suggest that they know what Jesus himself did not know—when the Father would bring the Kingdom. But of course it is not important when the Kingdom will come in its fullness, what is important is that we are preparing for it by living the life that our Lord calls us to. That goes not only for individuals but also for nations and especially the Church. So the question then arises, what am I, and we to do?

   Well, to begin with, the gospel is to be lived in addressing the “signs of the times’ with the gospel message in a concrete imitation of Christ. This means the people of God are not only concerned with one’s own salvation but with that of others and the world! Hence, every major issue of the day in our concern. If it is not, or if we choose to escape into the world of self-absorbed navel gazing and debating societies then we have fallen into the trap of merely believing in Christ in the mind, not enfleshing him in the body in real personal, interpersonal and social concerns. Perhaps this was no better illustrated than in the Catholic Church’s complicity in the Holocaust. Many recent books authored by Catholics and others have dug up the documentation and written the history of the failure of the Catholic Church to speak up and to combat the most criminal regime ever in the modern world. This was an instance when the Church was not prepared for the return of the Lord. And there is no point in trying to defend the institutional Church during that horrendous period. For if there is to be salvation for the whole Church defensiveness must end and admission of guilt, fully and with humility must happen.

   Dr. Daniel Goldhagen has just recently written a book entitled, A Moral Reckoning. In this book he raises the problems of the Church’s complicity in the Holocaust, but he also recognizes how, when the Church speaks out it can be a force for powerful change when he states:

   As the most populous and centralized religion, Catholicism, under the aegis of the Roman Catholic Church and its various national churches, is around the world the prominent participant in, and exemplar of, sustained moral discussion directed at the broad interested public. Pope John Paul Ii has made considered public pronouncements on a large array of moral and political issues, ranging from personal conduct to our duties to one another, to the necessity of including moral considerations in our economic systems, to issues of war and peace. These and other interventions in the public sphere have been morally forceful because of the Catholic Church’s traditions of cultivated intellection and of intimate engagement with public life.

   And today the lessons of the past must inform our action in the present. We know that the Church faces many challenges and will continue to do so. The response that is required in a humble submission to the Wisdom of the Lord that finds expression in an imitation of Christ in our world addressing the signs of the times. The recent signs of institutional scandal, failure to speak out against evil, injustice against women especially in Africa calls upon God’s people to speak to these concerns as an important way to prepare for the return of the Lord as if it will take place this afternoon.

   We will learn from history? We will adopt an attitude of humility before the wisdom of God to help blaze our trail? Or, will we give into the spirit of fear and escape into more fanciful forms of navel-gazing in a pretended holiness that washes our hands of the world. The choice is ours; the choice is for all the Church. God grant us the humility and courage to be prepared for his return in this critical time.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created November 10, 2002