Carissima famiglia, praise be Jesus Christ. Now and forever.
He speaks to us. “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it has not been given… Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear”.
This Gospel is the most wonderful homily, because it is Jesus preaching, opening up His Word to us. That’s what I’m supposed to do, but because I take off my maniple, it’s my acknowledgment that I’m just Fr. Steve, yes, ordained to preach the Word, but my preaching of the Word always, like my living of the Word and living, falls short of the Lord.
And yet it is wonderful to be with Him “on the beach, to have got out of our house” (Mt. 13:1). Big thing to get out of the house nowadays. Much easier to stay at home. But we got out tonight, and we’ve come, and He teaches us. Yet that’s a kind of a hard Word we hear, isn’t it? “To you has been given to see and to understand”, but they won’t. That sounds rather non-politically correct and exclusive and judge-y, right? Jesus refers us to Isaiah, the prophet. But the prophet Isaiah doubles down on this in the passage we’ve heard Jesus quoting, “Ah, you people are hard of hearing.” If we read the whole passage, Isaiah is told by God to “make the heart of this people fat.” (Is.6:10), so it is as if Isaiah is saying, “The reason you can’t hear Me is because you’re fatheads. You eat too much. You’re too stuck in yourself.” He really lets them have it.
But by quoting Isaiah Jesus is teaching the disciples and us who He is. Jesus is a prophet. Jesus is the prophet. Jesus alone is the fulfillment of the prophets. (Of course, this contradicts too many people in the world who follow a false prophet), but Jesus is the fulfillment. And as a prophet, things are going to turn out for Him as it does for a prophet: People will not understand. Indeed, that’s the reality of the story of every prophet in the Old Testament. And if you think about it, every true prophet in history. A prophet in the Old Testament is vindicated because people don’t believe him and what he proclaims as being the future arrives nonetheless. It can be tempting to think of it as sort of a, “Oy, I told you so. You didn’t listen.” Well, that’s the way it is for those who are given prophetic insight.
To be a prophet isn’t to say, “I see the future.” That’s a seer. To be a prophet is to be someone who looks with the power of God into the reality of the present and sees the truth of what is going on and where that will lead. And always, no one will believe them. Bishop Mark often teases me and says, “You see rockets coming from far away.” I said, “Yes, because I’m fated to be Cassandra.” Do you know who Cassandra is? Cassandra was the daughter of King Priam of Troy, and she was cursed to know what the future was yet no one would ever believe her. (Don’t go and try and follow Cassandra in that new Odyssey movie that’s coming out. Looks pretty gross. So go and watch the old Italian one. That’s a good one). But this is what it means to be a prophet. To tell the truth …and no one understands …and then bad things happen. (That’s why you can tell that the false prophet of that other “religion” is not a true prophet, because as far as he’s concerned only good things happen: he wins all the wars. [Islam] won’t allow bad things to ever be the final story of a prophet [which is why it denies the crucifixion]
But Jesus is exactly a prophet in the Old Testament style. People will not believe Him. Indeed, they will crush Him and nail Him to the consequence of their lack of belief. They’ll take Him to the cross. (Now, I’m pointing over to where the Crucifix should be and there’s nothing there. Because yesterday during the wedding, it fell down. Broke everything up. I said to the poor couple, “Don’t worry, it’s not an omen.”) It seems Jesus the prophet nailed to the cross is a failure. The cross is, in the eyes of the world, not a good outcome. But for us, it’s the best outcome. Because the worst thing possible that could happen, us murdering God, is the best thing that could have happened to us. Because God has destroyed murdering completely and [destroyed death by] death.
We only know this if Jesus has given us the power to understand the Truth that’s behind the Cross, that God is victorious, that God reigns, and we are called to have ears to hear and eyes to see. Now, this is a second why Jesus teaches the disciples that people will not understand His Word is to remind you and I, “Hey, [listening to me] isn’t a drop-in and drop-out affair. ” A lot of people were probably on the shore because they thought, “Hey, everyone was going to the shore. It’s kind of boring being a Jew in Israel at this time. So, let’s go and listen to this Jesus guy.” They come, they listen to Him, and say “Interesting” …and go home. It’s not enough, sisters and brothers, for us to hear the Word of Jesus and just say, “Nice,” and then go on [with our lives]. No. We have to penetrate it. More to the point, we have to let it penetrate us. Because, brothers and sisters, there are going to be weeds, there is going to be rocky soil, there is going to be persecution. But if we allow Jesus to penetrate us with His Word, then we have guaranteed power. For the God that has vindicated the prophet Jesus by raising Him from the dead, will vindicate us with power the world doesn’t understand.
The Word will flourish in us… beyond our imagination right now. Think about this. For a Jewish farmer of Jesus’s time, it would have been remarkable to get tenfold return. One seed producing ten more seeds. That would have been a bumper crop. But Jesus promises to those who treasure the Word that something more magnificent will happen. That Word will burst up thirty-fold. Jesus Jewish disciples might have thought, “What do you mean thirty-fold? That’s too much. It’s impossible, unscientific. Forget it. Fifty?! a hundred-fold?!” is this possible?
And I look around [the cathedral tonight] and I say, “Amen.” It is so. From that little group of disciples, look at what has burst forth, what has been planted in the good soil of saints! You and I. It’s not a hundred-fold. It’s a billion-fold. And that’s the power of the Word working in me and working in you. So that’s why we take time to go to the beach, to get out of the busyness where we think that we have to claw and grab and work hard just to grab the little bit to stay alive. No. We “come away” and discover that what is really happening within us is that we have been given the prophetic voice, the prophetic insight.
So, we will go from here and not be those who live on the superficial level, who just get caught up in busyness and let the Word of God a little bit into our lives. [We will not be those] who get duped and led by all the powers that are around us. We will be those who use our brains and our eyes and our ears to look into the truth with God. And though knowing that we will be rejected, nonetheless we will fearlessly and courageously speak to what we see happening. What will be the result of this prophetic life? If we dwell in meditation on the Lord’s Word so that it isn’t our voice but His that speaks, what then is the bounty? Tonight we see this. We witness it now unfolding in this Mass. The bounty is Jesus. Jesus, who through Saint Paul, tells us: yes, there’s suffering in this living the power of the prophetic word, but this suffering is nothing compared to the outpouring of thirty, fifty, a hundred-fold glory to be revealed for us. The “whole creation has been growing in labor pains” until we, arriving in Jesus, proclaim in the power of the Spirit the Truth that creation is birthing life and freedom and justice.
Let us surrender again to Jesus’ Word. Let us come away from the busyness.
Let us be holy. Let us be saints.