Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070515.cfm

          We all have difficulties and challenges that we must face during our lifetime.  The temptation for us is to look at these difficulties with a degree of annoyance, frustration, or even anger.  We use them as excuses to complain and to wallow in our self-pity about how hard we have it.  They can cause us to take our frustrations out on family and friends and those around us.  We might even blame God for causing these difficulties.  Sacred Scripture encourages us to look at these hardships in another light, however; to see them as opportunities to grow in holiness.  Sometimes God allows us to go through difficulties and even sufferings to help us get ready for something bigger that will happen later in our lives.  Maybe God just wants to get us ready for Heaven in some way.  Our Christian tradition often refers to this as redemptive suffering.  Granted, anyone who has suffered will tell you that it is hard to see any redemptive qualities when a person is in the midst of suffering.  But I hope that we can all realize that God can still work miracles even in the midst of our sufferings.

          Our second reading today gives us a passage from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians.  Paul explains that in order to keep him from becoming too prideful because of all the wondrous things that had happened to him, he was given what he calls “a thorn in the flesh…an angel of Satan”.  Now, scholars are still debating about what this “thorn in the flesh” was.  Some have argued that it was a literal physical pain.  Perhaps it was a chronic pain that would have made it hard to focus on what he needed to do.  Others say it was a spiritual affliction, pointing to the part about the angel of Satan beating him.  Satan would have loved to stop the Apostle’s mission to preach the Gospel to all the nations.  Some maintain that it was more of a psychological ailment, that Paul’s mind was causing the pain and/or the distractions that he was experiencing.  Still others say that it was combination of these three or that the thorn and the angel are all metaphorical and that some other outside source was causing these challenges to Paul.

          Paul says that he prayed to Jesus about this and asked Him three different times to take away this thorn.  Whatever the difficulty or suffering this thorn caused Paul, Jesus refuses to take it away.  He tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness”.  Jesus is reminding Paul that he is only human and that this human nature is prone to weakness.  But that’s okay, Jesus is explaining.  He is offering Paul grace which is able to work through Paul’s human weakness and help him to complete what he needs to do.  St. Paul’s sufferings helped him to do the hard work he did in his life and ultimately helped him to grow in holiness and to enter into Heaven.

          Many times in life we experience some sort of struggle or difficulty, but later on we see how that experience got us ready for something bigger later on.  Training for a sport or a race is a great example of this.  You can't just do a couple of sprints up and down your driveway and hope to be ready to do Grandma's Marathon.  Sometime the training can be even more excruciating than the actual event.

                   The last time the Olympic Games were held, I heard an interesting story about Gold Medalist Swimmer, Michael Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman.  Seeing that he had a terrific athlete on his hands, Bowman did everything he could to push Phelps to his limits.  He wanted to prepare Phelps for any struggles or challenges that he might have to face during a race in the pool.  Once when Phelps was at a national meet, he forgot his goggles before a race.  Bowman noticed what had happened, but instead of running the goggles out to Phelps, he decided to hold on to them and find out what he could do.  Phelps went ahead and swam without his goggles and won the race.  This later proved to be great training for him.  In the Games in Beijing, Phelps was swimming in a race when suddenly his goggles filled up with water.  Because he had experienced this before, however, he knew precisely what he needed to do to adjust to swimming blind.  Not only did he win the race, but he set a new world record.

          Just as a trainer or a coach will put an athlete through rigorous training to help him or her get ready for the big game or race, so also God will at times put us in situations that will challenge us in some way to help us grow in holiness and faith.  Maybe He gives us a small challenge to get us ready for a bigger challenge.  Perhaps He is challenging us to pray more and to understand what He does for us.

          The prophet Ezekiel talks today about how God called him to be a prophet.  God told him that he would be sent to the Israelites, that rebellious house.  He is warning the prophet that this mission, or assignment, will not be easy but a great challenge for the young man.  Like St. Paul a few centuries later, Ezekiel will have to learn to trust the God's grace is sufficient for him.  God is helping both the Apostle and the prophet to grow in holiness through these challenges.

          The Gospel continues on these same lines.  Jesus, as the Son of God, doesn't need any help in order to grow in holiness obviously, but the Father still sends Him into challenging situations.  Instead of helping Christ, however, these situations help us as we work at following the footsteps of Jesus.  Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings, yet we see in this Gospel that He can't convince people from His own hometown to listen to Him.  In fact we are told that He can't even perform any righteous deed there because of their lack of faith.

          We too are going to experience hardships, challenges, and difficulties, as I have been saying.  Like Jesus and Ezekiel, we may encounter people who don't want to listen to us.  The Church is experiencing this a lot lately with people not wanting to hear our stance on life, and human dignity, and marriage.  That might be our thorn in the flesh.  But know that despite these challenges, Christ is with us.  As He told Paul, His grace is sufficient.  Fear not, it will lead us to holiness.