SURPRISED AND CONFOUNDED

[1]After hearing this gospel proclaimed, we might ask: “What! Could you please repeat that in words we can understand?” The reading from Tobit may help us here. We learned in the readings from Tobit this week that God constantly amazes us and rarely acts as we expect God would —or should. God uses people and situations to fulfill the His divine will in ways that surprise and confound. Azariah the guide (“God helps”) is Raphael (“God heals”). Thus, a young man finds the perfect wife in a young woman who has lost all hope, while an old man, condemned to a life of darkness and dependency, regains his sight.

Today’s Gospel ends with this wonderful line: “The great crowd heard this with delight.” (Mk 12:37) Jesus’ opens the eyes of the crowd and our own, but we learn much more than the crowd understood. Jesus quotes Psalm 110 which our first Christian ancestors understood to be a reference to the divine nature of the Messiah. Jesus, our LORD and God-with-us, is, as we pray, for he is “seated at the right hand of the Father” and is the very same Lord God whose care saved Tobit, Sarah, and Tobiah. This is the same Lord we praise in the psalm response, who secures justice, feeds the hungry, sets captives free, and gives sight to the blind. Jesus does fulfill all the expectations placed on David’s descendant as “king of Israel”—but in ways incomprehensible to our ordinary ways of seeing.[2]

One of the key lessons for today is, we must have a correct image of Jesus. How do we see Jesus in our lives? We often hear it said, we are to be a sign that is counter-cultural for the world, outside the wall of the church. Yet, I also believe we must have a correct image of Jesus within the walls of the Church (with a capital “C”), our local diocesan church, and even our parish community. To discover the MORE we are called to see and live.

So, yes, Jesus, the Christ, is present in our midst, in the presiding priest, the Word proclaimed, the Eucharistic mystery, and, in each one of us, the people of God gathered. Yet, He is MORE! We, who are nourished by God’s Word, His Son’s Body and Blood, and who are inspired and animated to action by the Spirit, are called to be God’s help, to be God’s healing in the lives of those with great needs. Those who have lost hope, those who have been pushed to the side and excluded, to invite even the most hardened sinners back to God, all by acts of compassion and mercy that flow from this fountainhead. With our eyes wide open, we must stand against all forms of injustice, to be a people of prayerful service. We must love freely, without counting the cost, to the point that we leave people surprised and confounded in an experience of Christ’s divine work, here and now.

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[1] Scriptures, Tobit 11:5-17; Mark 12:35-37

[2] Weekday HomilyHelps. Homily Suggestion by Leota Roesch.