Homily for the 8th Sunday in Ordinary Time, March 2, 2025, Year C
There is no homily this week from Fr. Irvin. We present this homily from Father Werley
Fr. Paul Werley
The Pittsburgh Oratory & Catholic Newman Center
Without paying undue attention to anyone in particular, I just want to point out that there is a statistical possibility that at least one of us in this chapel may have a close friend, or at least an acquaintance, who is a Mount Everest expedition enthusiast. Such people might aspire to climb the world’s tallest mountain even though their knowledge about doing this Herculean undertaking is superficial and limited...
Contrast this with a Sherpa. A Sherpa is a native Tibetan and an expert climber, who acts as a guide for hikers as they ascend Mt. Everest. If we should find ourselves on our first expedition and we had to choose between following the Mt. Everest enthusiast, also there for the first time, and following a Sherpa, who knows the mountain by heart, who would we choose to follow? Knowing the choice was a matter of life or death, who would we follow?
Today, Jesus tells three short parables to his disciples – those who are following him, the only true Master, and some of whom who will one day be sent by him to proclaim eternal life and the gospel of Christ to a world blinded by and lost in sin. In none of these three parables, that is the blind leading the blind, the brother with a beam in his eye, or the tree being known by its fruit, does Jesus present himself as a teacher – although he is certainly a teacher – teaching his disciples particular doctrines or principles that will guide them to be better Christians.
But Jesus did not just give his disciples then, or his disciples today, a way that consists merely of information to memorize and then follow, hoping that somehow this will lead us to the goal of the Christian life. Rather, Jesus himself is the way as he tells us, in union with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. This heaven, this union with God the Trinity, is found not in the limited human mind, dazzling a gift as it may be, but rather in the human heart.
This is why Jesus’s focus, like that of the wise man in our first reading from Sirach, is on the words that we speak, revealing not only the bent of our mind, but also the condition of our heart. If the words are good fruit, that is, if it is the Holy Spirit speaking through a pure heart, then they will be life-giving and lead to the building up of the body of Christ. If the words are robbing truth, if they are sources of division, of malice, of self-aggrandizement, or self-focus, then they do not lead to the building up the body of Christ, and have their source not in the Holy Spirit, but in the darkness of a heart enslaved to sin.
Jesus’s disciples were to be more like Sherpas who live in Christ and Christ in them. Who know the one who is the way by heart because he is the one who finds their hearts a place that welcomes him rather than repels him. We are ever in need of the Lord to clear away the brambles in our hearts, our attachments to sin, our disordered desires for the passing things of this world that lead us to speak divisive and thorny words. We are in need of his cultivation of our hearts, with the crosses that come to us each day, and through repentance. so that he may find the desirable fruit of victory issuing from speech that builds up and unites in charity.
Let us ask Jesus who is the only true Master, who is himself the way, the truth, and the light to grant us the grace of humble repentance, so that receiving him in holy communion the word that not only proceeds from the depths of his heart, but is the very flesh of the sacred heart itself, might find a welcoming home in us – in the hearts of his disciples today.
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