Homily, 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year “C”
Mass for the 50th Anniversary of the Sacro Costato Sisters at St. Catherine of Siena Parish;
November 16, 2025
Introduction
We are now approaching the end of the Church’s liturgical year, and so, logically, the Church turns our attention to the end times. Next Sunday we celebrate the Solemnity of Christ, the King of the Universe, the last Sunday of the liturgical year. With the First Sunday of Advent we begin a new liturgical year, and the focus is on our Lord’s Second Coming at the end of time, when he will come to judge the living and the dead, bringing all of history to its consummation.
Thus, the end of one liturgical year blends into the beginning of another; and then we continue with the theme of the Lord’s coming throughout the season of Advent, with the second and third Sundays focusing on John the Baptist’s call to prepare the way of the Lord, and in the last Sunday of Advent turning attention more explicitly toward our Lord’s First Coming, in lowliness, in his birth in Bethlehem.
A Dose of Reality
The readings for this Sunday’s Mass certainly present us with some wild imagery, with distressing prophecies of the dire signs that will indicate that the end is near: wars and insurrections, nations against nations, earthquakes, famines, plagues, and “awesome sights and mighty signs … from the sky.” It is a powerful, if somewhat uncomfortable, reminder to us that we will, for sure, be held accountable for our lives in this world. It is a dose of reality, a necessary dose of reality I would say; but, we must see the entire picture.
First, the distressing part of it: Jesus assures his followers that they will be “handed over,” and in that, they will follow the pattern that he himself will set for them. That is, just as their Master will be handed over to Herod and Pilate, so his followers will be handed over to “kings and governors”; and just as he will be handed over by Judas (by one of his closest friends, within the band of his closest disciples), so will they “be handed over by parents, brothers, relatives, and friends.” Indeed, their fate seems to be the most extreme possible, just like their Master: “they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name ….” How dire. Why would anyone want to follow him?
Did you notice something ironic here? That is, ironic to earthbound worldly wisdom. It seems an inherent contradiction. Right after Jesus prophecies this seemingly dire end, he adds: “but not a hair on your head will be destroyed.” What?
Spiritual Vision
Again, this will never make sense if we have a vision that is limited to this world, to this world of physical sensation and temporalities. We must instead maintain an eternal gaze, looking beyond this world and beyond what presents itself to us in physical appearance. In the consumer version of Christianity that seems so common nowadays, one can be easily misled into thinking that having faith and trust in God means that everything will work out for the best according to our own plan and timeframe in this world. This is what some commentators refer to as “therapeutic deism,” that is, belief in God as a way of attaining psychological well-being, and nothing more. Today’s Gospel passage, as among many others, makes it clear that our Lord did not promise that everything would go well or be easy for his followers in this world. Indeed, quite the contrary. As one Scripture commentator put it: “The Christian has no right to expect that everything is going to get better and better, or that Christ’s cause will progress without hindrance. All he knows for sure is that God will eventually bring good out of evil, that the right will triumph in the end and that the Christians’ task in the present is to show patience and endurance: ‘by your perseverance you will secure your lives.’”
So there is something more going on here, and we need spiritual vision to understand it. We see another apparent contradiction in the prophecy from Malachi, if we do not have the spiritual vision to understand it. He first speaks of heat as a destructive force for those who don’t believe and do evil: “Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven, when all the proud and all evildoers will be stubble, and the day that is coming will set them on fire.” Pretty awful, I would say. But heat can also be healing, as he goes on to say, speaking for the God of Israel: “But for you who fear my name, there will arise the sun of justice with its healing rays.”
So heat can be destructive or healing; it depends. And is this not our practical experience? We who live in this part of our country are painfully familiar, for example, of the terrifying and destructive force of wildfires. But we also know, when we are suffering from aches and pains, how healing and comforting placing a heating pad on the painful spot can be. Such is the reality of the heat of passion: for those who don’t believe and are inclined to evil it burns itself as hate, which divides and destroys; but for those who love, it becomes healing and uniting.
Love Revealed
This brings us to contemplate what it is we are celebrating today. It is with joyful gratitude that we honor the Sacro Costato sisters for their fifty years of loving service here at St. Catherine of Siena parish. The “sacred side”: that is, the sacred, wounded side of our Lord, his Sacred Heart, pierced for us, for our own eternal healing, to unite us with him forever. From that glorious pierced side of our Lord there gushed forth blood and water, the sign of the life that he gives to us. This came from the depths of his being: his existence is a death, so that we may have life – eternal life through the saving waters of baptism, and nourishment in that life through the Most Holy Eucharist, his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.
It was just six months before his own death that Pope Francis issued his Encyclical Letter on devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Dilexit nos (“He has loved us”). He says there: “Earlier, John’s Gospel had spoken of this event, when on ‘the last day of the festival’ (Jn 7:37), Jesus cried out to the people celebrating the great procession: ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink… out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water’ (Jn 7:37-38). For this to be accomplished, however, it was necessary for Jesus’ ‘hour’ to come, for he ‘was not yet glorified’ (Jn 7:39). That fulfilment was to come on the cross, in the blood and water that flowed from the Lord’s side” (n. 97).
Furthermore, Pope Francis goes on to reflect on what this means for the end times: “The Book of Revelation takes up the prophecies of the pierced one and the fountain: ‘every eye will see him, even those who pierced him’ (Rev 1:7); ‘Let everyone who is thirsty come; let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift’ (Rev 22:17)” (n. 98).
In the World Today
What a grace for us to see this modeled by our beloved Sacro Costato sisters, who bear witness by word and example to their devotion to the Sacred Heart of our Lord, which necessarily draws them to devotion to our sorrowing Mother, sharing in her Son’s Passion and death there at foot of Cross, the ultimate manifestation of the solidarity of love. To live out this devotion, to put it into practice seriously with all of one’s life, and not give it just empty lip service, will involve serious consequences, consequences that involve great personal sacrifice. It is a sacrifice that imitates our Lord on the cross: a death, so that others may live. Pope Francis also offered a reflection on what this means, in very concrete terms for the times in which we live, in that Encyclical on the Sacred Heart:
In a world where everything is bought and sold, people’s sense of their worth appears increasingly to depend on what they can accumulate with the power of money. We are constantly being pushed to keep buying, consuming and distracting ourselves, held captive to a demeaning system that prevents us from looking beyond our immediate and petty needs. The love of Christ has no place in this perverse mechanism, yet only that love can set us free from a mad pursuit that no longer has room for a gratuitous love. Christ’s love can give a heart to our world and revive love wherever we think that the ability to love has been definitively lost [DN, 218].
Gratuitous love: this is the love of the consecrated religious, a love gushing forth from the depths of her being to give her entire being to love for her divine Spouse, lived out in uninhibited love for his people, the love which opens her to look beyond her own “immediate and petty needs,” giving us all example and inspiration to do the same, each of us in accordance with our own proper vocation in life.
Conclusion
With what great joy and profound gratitude we honor you today, our dear Sacro Costato sisters, for your witness and very presence that give a heart to our local church, reminding us that love is possible if we follow the path paved for us by our Lord and Savior. It is this which prepares us to meet him when he comes to judge the living and the dead at the end of time, and gives us confidence to face him on that day of judgment, knowing that he is a merciful judge who sees our longing to be in his Kingdom of love, peace and light that does not end. Following this path of love opens us to his grace, that makes us capable of the life of his Kingdom. Thank you, sisters, for showing us the way. Thank you, thank you, thank you! Amen.
