The Word Of Peace
Homiletic Reflections On Peacemaking

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.

33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Cycle B

On that Day, Tell them…

Some years ago I taught a course on Death and Dying. For the first assignment I had students write their own eulogies. After reading them I gave them back to the students, noting that I felt I was reading Butler’s Lives of the Saints. I asked them what they thought the purpose of this unusual assignment was. They really didn’t know. I told them, it was not about your dying but about your living, or more precisely how you wanted to remembered based on how you lived. Isn’t that why we are the only creatures that must contend with the knowledge of our own impending deaths, not the throw us into panic but to throw us into life!

In Feb. 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King, jr. preached his famous sermon, The Drum Major Instinct. Two months later he was assassinated. Here are some of the things he said:

If any of you are around when I have to meet my day, I don’t want a long funeral. And if you get somebody to deliver the eulogy, tell them not to talk to long…

I’d like somebody to mention that day that Martin Luther King, jr. tried to give his life serving others. I’d like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, jr. tried to love somebody…I won’t have any money to leave behind. I won’t have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind.

And that’s all I want to say… If I can help somebody as I pass along, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody he’s traveling wrong, then my living will not be in vain. If I can do my duty as a Christian ought, if I can bring salvation a world once wrought, if I can spread the message as the master taught, then my living will not be in vain.

We know not the hour, so live every minute! That is one way to put it. It is what the Lord is getting at. Looking for signs gets kind of thorny because we never know what the real signs are. Many have predicted through the ages when the Son of Man will come and they always have been wrong. So our best bet is to really live as though we had to face judgment today. That is the important theme that we here in God’s Word today—and really everyday. We are to be prepared so that when that day comes, or our day comes, we are ready.

This admonition by our Lord sets up a tension in our lives doesn’t it. This is not stress but tension. That is, it is the experience of the anticipation of the Lord’s return with the revelation of true meaning of life and our lives as people and nations and it compels us to ask ourselves are we really prepared and ore we really living? In Matthew 25 Jesus judges the nations, he uses the treatment of those in need and those who are most vulnerable to judge the nations and the lives of people. Those found wanting might have said their prayers, obeyed all the rules, but they did not love somebody. Those who loved, those who sought justice and peace were honored as worthy of the kingdom. And there it is—love, service, sacrifice, justice, the admission tickets to the great heavenly feast with the Lord.

This Sunday is Catholic Campaign for Human Development collection week for the US Catholic Bishops. This program and contributing to it is a way to be prepared, to love somebody . This campaign gives to people hurting now and helps to empower them to live as human beings ought to live. It is not simply a hand out but a hand stretched out and a hand up to a life befitting one created in the image of God. In Hebrews we are reminded that we are called to appropriate the loving sacrifice of our Lord into our flesh so we too can experience salvation, we too can be in communion with God, others and our world in the Spirit of Christ.

When the Son of Man comes what will he find on earth? Will there be justice? Will there be peace? What if it happens today to the world or to one of us? What will be the judgment? Well, for those who are just, that seek justice, they will shine like the stars! They will shine because they tried to give their lives in service. They will shone because they tried to love somebody.

And this loving somebody takes many forms. It can take the form of visiting the sick and dying, struggling with the poor for justice, challenging the right to hold the world hostage by nuclear terror, witnessing against the barbaric practice of the death penalty, defending the unborn’s right to be born and to flourish, offering a smile and kind word to one forlorned and in need of encouragement.

Yes, on that day; on our own "getting up morning", the Son of Man will come with the judgement. For those prepared, for those who have really lived, they will be honored and shine like the stars because they did justice—they tried to love somebody.

Deacon Robert M. Pallotti, D. Min.
Created November 19, 2000