CLICK VIEW TO WATCH THE HOMILY. Then click “Watch on YOUTUBE,” scroll down and click “more…” if you want to find a specific part of the Liturgy of the Word to watch. Malachi 3:19-20, 2 Thessalonians 3:7-12, Luke 21:5-19
Last week the Church commemorated the dedication of a temple, the Lateran Basilcia in Rome. This week Jesus talks about the destruction of a temple, the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Both of these events – construction and destruction – are framed as part of the plan of God. Birth and death, growth and decay, health and illness, success and failure, all need to be viewed through the lens of God at work in the world. But we have to be cautious when we talk about the plan of God. Just because it is part of the plan does not mean that it is part of God’s desire. The plan of God was that Adam and Eve live freely in the Garden of Eden. The desire of God would have been that they enjoy the blessings of paradise. But since the heart of the plan included that Adam and Eve have free will, God’s plan required that they experience the result of their choices. Jesus prophesies that his followers can expect that “they will seize you and persecute you and hand you over … they will put some of you to death.” This happens because of choices that people make toward hatred, toward prejudice, toward selfishness, toward ignorance. So, yes, the will of God is at work even in negative experiences but God isn’t stifled by human faults and failings. God can make a way out of no way so Jesus concludes: “By your perseverance you will secure your lives.”
God’s will. God’s plan. God’s desire. What does any of that mean? How do we make sense of it? Several years ago the father of a dear friend, Gary, died of lung cancer. His widow was distressed. “Why? Why? Why? Why did God take him from me? Why did this happen?” Gary answered, “Well, Dad has been smoking a pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes every day since he was sixteen.” “That’s not what I meant,” his mother answered. And you get that. She didn’t want a logical explanation but a divine intervention. You might easily think that the plan of a good God would prevent a widow’s heartbreak. What the Bible teaches is that no matter how things are going, God continues to work. When Jesus warns us about wars and insurrections he is letting us know that God’s plan for our welfare has to factor in big picture realities beyond our control. Jesus talks about “powerful earthquakes, families and plagues” so we will understand that no matter how terrible the events we are going through God has a plan B in mind. Think of Jesus in Gethsemane. He had to trust in the plan of God which did not preserve him from suffering and death but which required that he trust in that God’s love could deal with anything.
What does all this say about us as we strive to discover God’s will in our lives. The reality is that we don’t think much about the will of God when things are going well. We just sail along the calm sea with confidence. However, it is during a crisis, when a storm blows up, when we crash into the rocks that we start to wonder about the will of God. Like Gary’s mother we say “Why? Why? Why?” That is why Jesus warned us about coming wars and disasters and persecution – so that we could be aware that God’s plan includes the negative things in life but that does not prevent us from living in the plan of God which includes a life of love, compassion and forgiveness.
There’s a wonderful scene in the book, Lying Awake, by Mark Salzman. It is a story about a cloistered convent and one sister in particular, Sister John of the Cross, who wrestles with her relationship with God and with her fellow sisters. The book ends with a new candidate entering the convent to see if she belongs in religious life. Mother Superior approaches Sister John and askes her to be the novice mistress, guiding the new candidate. She tells Sister John that this candidate will need a special understanding of the difficulties we face trying to do God’s will. Sister John answers, “I don’t feel I know anything about God’s will, Mother.” The Mother Superior answers, “Yet you’re still here, trying to do his will anyway. That’s the kind of understanding I meant. The doing kind, not the knowing kind.”
If you are anything like me the knowing kind of God’s will is hard to come by. There don’t seem to be any good answers about why cancer attacks people that we love, about why bad things happen to good people, about why every time we seem to be making progress things go from bad to worse. So, like Mother Superior maybe we should turn our attention to the doing kind of God’s will, doing those things which will help this world look at least a little more like the place of love and compassion that God intends it to be. We as a parish are doing God’s will when we strive to help the immigrants feel the tender mercies of God. We know that Jesus said “whatsoever you do to the least, to welcome the stranger, that you do unto me.” As a family you practice the doing kind of God’s will when you forgive those wounds which inevitably happen when two people rub up against one another. Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven times so responding with forgiveness to the giving and taking of wounds is God’s will. And as individuals we practice the doing kind of God’s will when we stick to our prayers even when we don’t feel it. Jesus told us our Heavenly Father always hears us. We are doing the will of God when we pray even in the dry times. Hanging in there with God even when you don’t know what God’s will might be could, in fact, be the plan of God all along
