3^rd Sunday of the Year [C] 2010

In February of 1980, when I was a young priest doing graduate studies in Rome, I had the great privilege of meeting the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, as he came to our house of 100 American priests for Mass and dinner.

Later that year in June, I was also present in the Clementine chapel of the Vatican Palace where 200 Americans living in the city were invited to be present at a public meeting between the Pope and President Jimmy Carter, who was in the city for a meeting of European leaders. Diplomatic protocol is very strict… The president spoke briefly and eloquently. Finally the Pope spoke. Then both men exchanged gifts and briefly shook hands with the crowd… I could not help but wonder what was in the President’s mind. Surely he would love to have had the same effect on people as the man in white did (especially in an election year)!

Here were two great leaders—one the acknowledged leader of the Free World, commander-in-chief of the most powerful military arsenal in the world; the other, the spiritual leader of more than one billion Christians, who probably never owned a slingshot. No guns, no economic weapons, armed only with the comforting but challenging message of the Gospel, the small man dressed in a simple white cassock, was much more than a curiosity figure to those people, myself included, in that Renaissance chapel.

Why? Was it just the close contact with a great man, a genuine successor to Peter himself? I think not. Many people are taken in somewhat by the trappings of power and ceremony. But Pope John Paul was much more than that. It was the message, which was all-important. Unafraid to challenge communist or capitalist, fighting for the dignity of the individual, the worker, the family, his words were spoken with authority. His message was always calling us to be bearers of the Good News, to preach and live justice, peace and the true freedom of the Spirit—not idle words, but the heart of the human spirit, created in God’s image and likeness.

This must have been something like the scene in today’s gospel. Jesus was in the synagogue, a very familiar place, a place where he had heard the Word of God hundreds of times, a place where he had undoubtedly taught many times. The synagogue leader handed him the scroll of the Scripture. It happened to be Isaiah. And of all the things recorded from that great prophet, what did Jesus of Nazareth choose to proclaim? “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; therefore he has anointed me. He has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor; to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind and release to prisoners; to announce a year of favor from the Lord.” Of all things, that was what Jesus considered to be the heart of his mission—LIBERATION from all the things, which enslave us.

His words, like the Holy Father’s, are filled with hope for the poor, the helpless, the oppressed. But they are words and dreams, which cannot be accomplished by one pope or one president. They must be lived and carried out by everyone.

As Paul says in today’s second reading: We are one body. We have many gifts that together make one magnificent body. He was speaking to the people in Corinth, but just as much to us and Afghans and Italians and Haitians and Jews and Arabs. We all share the responsibility of making the dreams of our leaders come true…. Hope and freedom for victims of poverty and political and economic oppression, and of AIDS and cancer and blindness; for people who contemplate or have had abortions; for others who live in a vicious cycle of greed and pleasure; for people who think “different” is less. There is so much to be done.

Once there was an old man walking along the beach after a great storm. Fifty yards ahead he could see the figure of a young woman. She was picking up a starfish, which the storm had stranded on the beach, and she was throwing it back into the sea.

When the old man caught up with her, he asked her what she was doing. She told him that the starfish would die unless it was returned to the sea before the sun began to beat down on it. The old man said, “But this beach goes on for miles and miles, and there are thousands of stranded starfish. How can your small effort make any difference?”

She picked up the starfish lovingly in her hands and said, “It will make a big difference to this one,” and she returned it to the sea.

That is precisely the spirit, which must have been in Jesus in that hometown synagogue so many centuries ago. It is the spirit we are called to have today in this world. There is so much to be done. And it is not presidents who will change the world; not even popes. It is we, the Body of Christ, like that young woman on the beach, who change the world!