31st Sunday in Ordinary Time – C

Parish of Sant Jaume (Moja)

Sant Pere de Subirats (Santuari de la Mare de Déu de la Fontsanta)

(Bible readings) (other homilies) (print)

In today’s Gospel we see Jesus, the “friend of sinners”. This was a scandal for the “good religious people” of the time. But his argument is clear and irrefutable: “Those who are well do not need the doctor… I have not come to call the righteous but sinners, to conversion.”

Saint Alphonsus Marie of Liguory said: “God has sought to gain men (and women) for himself with the only bonds with which they let themselves be drawn: the bonds of love and friendship”.

“Raised on the Cross I will draw all men to myself.” Christ on the Cross draws us to himself with bonds of love, of an infinite love. He has died for us, for each one of us, out of pure love, infinite love and mercy. On the Cross he bore all our sins, so that we would die with him to sin and rise with him to a new life of holiness, of eternal happiness. He has loved us, each one of us, to the end. And this draws us to him; it has to draw us to him.

He has not come to condemn but to save.

God has loved the world so much that he has given to us his only Son.

And this love saves us, transforms us.

Saint Thomas Aquinas said: “We humans love that which is good and beautiful, but with God it’s different: God loves people and things and by loving them he makes them to be good and beautiful.”

Le me tell you at this point one of the most impressive stories I know about how the love of God can transform a person.

The story was told by an evangelical pastor at the University of Texas at Austin, invited by an evangelical group on campus to talk about God to the university students. The auditorium was packed. Maybe 300 or 400 young students were there. He told us the conversion story of his father. He didn’t say anything more. He thought that that was enough; that he didn’t need to say anything else about God to convey to us the true depth of God’s merciful heart. These were his words as I remember them:

“My father was the drunkard of the town, a small town in the South of the US. I was so ashamed about my father being the drunkard of the town that when I invited my friends from school to the farm, I would tie-up my father in the barn.

Because of the many times he would beat my younger sister, she one day committed suicide. My mother would tell me: ‘son, I only want to live until you go to the university, then I want to die’. I finally went away to the university and my mother died. Do not tell me that you cannot die of a broken heart. My mother died of a broken heart and it was my father who broke my mother’s heart to death.

I had developed a deep hate and resentment against my father. But on campus I came to know Christ and that changed everything. The hate and the resentment disappeared, and I was able to love and forgive my father.

One day I received the news that my father, completely drunk as usual, had been run over by a car and was in the hospital.

When I got there, after a day or two, I saw my father for the first time in my life not under the effect of alcohol. I went into the room and said to him: ‘father, I love you’. He said to me: ‘how can you love a father like me?’ I told him: ‘I have met Jesus Christ and as a result of that I am able to love you and to forgive you’. He then said to me: ‘If Jesus Christ is able to do this, I want to meet him PERSONALLY’. When he said these words, I saw the face of my father transform itself.

He never again drank alcohol. Only once he confessed to me that he had drawn a bottle to his mouth but had had the power of God to crush it against the wall.”

My brothers and sisters, if we are impressed by this conversion story imagine the impact it had on the people in that small village in the South of the USA. He told us that many were drawn to Christ through that conversion. The son went on to become an evangelical preacher. And one of the students who heard that story is now the priest who is talking to you. That preacher cannot imagine that his story is being preached by a priest in a very small village in a far away country.

I am trying to find out through the internet, who he was. I would love to contact him and invite him over to Spain so that you can meet him. Who knows maybe one day God will grant us this very special gift. I am devoted to the cause of Christian Unity, as a member of the board of directors of Catalonia’s Ecumenical Centre. For this reason I am always glad to give this witness from the evangelical world because I think that it can really help in the reconciliation of the divided churches. If we preach that God is love and we Christians are divided, our message is not believable.

We are now going to celebrate the Eucharist where we give thanks to God for his merciful love. The merciful love that saves us, that makes us to be better, more humble and more merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful.