TEXT: Thirty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, November 10, 2024
November 10, 2024 Father De Celles Homily
32nd Sunday Ordinary Time
November 10, 2024
Homily by Fr. John De Celles
St. Raymond of Peñafort Catholic Church
Springfield, VA
In last week’s Gospel, we heard Jesus tell us,
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength…
[and] love your neighbor as yourself.”
Last week, I talked about what it means to “love” God and love your neighbor
in the most important and fundamental ways.
This week, I’d like to focus on what it means to love
“with all your soul, mind, and strength…”
Specifically, how it means
we have to love not only in the big, important ways in life,
but also in the small ways.
Small things matter.
Think of it.
Love God with your all.
In other words, love Him in everything you do, at all times, and everywhere.
And love your neighbor as yourself.
When and where don’t we love ourselves—in the big ways and the small?
When I’m driving in the car, I love myself so much
that I’m easily offended by other drivers.
When there’s one piece of pie left for dessert, and someone else takes it,
you may smile, but you love yourself so much you still resent it.
Sometimes we love others in the big ways,
but we love ourselves more in the small ways.
A man would give his life for his 16-year-old daughter,
but he won’t give up a Sunday football game
to sit down and talk to her about her problems in school.
Sometimes the small ways—or at least what seem to be the small ways
—are the most important.
In the Gospel we read about how,
when Jesus was in the temple watching people make their donations,
He saw “many rich people put in large sums.”
But then He saw “a poor widow…put in two small coins worth a few cents.”
And He said, “This poor widow put in more than all the other[s].”
How could He say that?
Obviously, He wasn’t an accountant.
But as He tells us, even though they gave such large amounts,
they gave “from their surplus wealth”—they still had a lot left,
so it wasn’t terribly hard to do.
But the widow, He says, gave “all she had.”
Today’s 1st reading makes the same point.
There we find another poor widow.
And along comes Elijah and he asks for her last piece of bread
—it was literally all she had.
She says, “When we have eaten it, we shall die.”
And yet, she gave it to God’s prophet.
Now, some might think this is great stuff for a homily on giving to the Church:
Give to God’s prophets;
put your last penny in the collection basket in the temple.
But that’s not at all Jesus’ point because Christ saw that the widow wasn’t merely giving money.
That money was all she had.
How could she eat? Where could she live?
So when she put in her last penny, small as it was in financial terms,
it was her way of saying, “Lord, I give you all of my life.”
Or, “I love you, Lord, my God with all of my heart, soul, mind and strength.”
As you all know, the two “great commandments” of love, loving God and neighbor,
are actually a summary of the Ten Commandments of Moses,
and so help us to understand that the Ten Commandments
teach us how to love God and our neighbor.
But Jesus makes it clear that we have to keep the commandments
not just in the large ways, but also in the small ones.
For example, Jesus says,
“You have heard…it …said…, ‘You shall not kill…’
But I say to you…whoever insults his brother
…shall be liable to the hell of fire.”
When it comes to loving your neighbor, the small things matter.
Now, some might point out that
the widow who gave her last piece of bread to Elijah was repaid by God
—Scripture says that neither “the jar of flour…nor the jug of oil” ran empty.
But Father, I give and give, and nothing comes from it.
I work hard in school to please my parents, and they still yell at me.
I give lots of money to the church, and the priests or bishops waste it.
I love God as best I can, and he doesn’t answer my prayers.
Remember, Scripture tells us the widow thought
that if she used up her flour and oil on Elijah,
it would leave her with nothing: “We shall die.”
She had no idea, and no expectation, that God would reward her.
When God did reward her, however, Scripture says she
“was able to eat for a year.”
She was still poor, and the flour lasted only for a year.
What God did was provide for her needs and not for her mere “wants.”
When we give our all to God and neighbor,
God will provide for our needs as well–our true needs.
So, when we give love to a son or wife or friend, and they give love back,
that’s God’s gift back to us.
And when they give no love back, it’s God who does give us love
and gives us the grace and the peace to deal with that rejection.
And when we pray to Him, and He doesn’t give us what we want,
we must open our eyes and hearts to see that somewhere else in our lives,
He’s giving us what we really need.
Beyond even that, as St. Paul says elsewhere,
“What do you have that you did not receive?”
We give to God only what He’s already given to us
—so how can we say we receive nothing?
We love and give to God because God loved and gave to us first.
We see this most clearly in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.
As St. Paul tells us in today’s 2nd reading,
Christ is our high priest who offers not “blood that is not His own,”
but blood that is His own.
On the cross, He gave His Father and us His whole self, His all—
all His heart, soul, mind, and strength.
No other sacrifice, no other love, can compare to that.
And yet, because of His perfect act of love and giving,
even the smallest, seemingly insignificant
acts of love and giving that we do, can also have meaning because by His cross and death, He has given us a share in His life.
In baptism we enter into His life, become part of His body,
and can share in everything He is and does.
At every Mass, we offer ourselves and all our acts of love, big and small,
as sacrifices, and Jesus takes them and unites them
to His great sacrifice of the Cross and offers it to His Father for us.
So, when we love with all are hearts and strength,
the small things in life can not only matter,
but take on divine proportions.
Of course, this requires that we actually
remember to love Him with everything we have.
One excellent way to do this is a very simple act of piety
my parents taught me as a child and
that their parents taught them as children:
First thing in the morning, as soon as you wake up,
offer the little prayer called “The Morning Offering.”
There are lots of different versions of this prayer,
but they point to the same thing: Offering Jesus
“all my prayers, works, joys and sufferings of this day.”
When you begin the day with this,
even the insignificant moments of the day can open up as opportunities
to give back to God the great love He has given us.
Now, as we prepare to enter into the Mystery of the Mass,
we meditate on how the bread and wine,
representing all our acts of love from this last week,
are transformed into Christ’s own body and blood,
so that our small sacrifices are united to His own perfect and great sacrifice to the Father.
And we remember, just as He gives His all to you, body, blood, soul, and divinity,
in Holy Communion,
you must also give your all to Him
by loving him now, at every moment, in every place,
“with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind,
and with all your strength…”
Because in Christ, even the small things matter.