Homily – June 2, 2009 – Ninth Week in Ordinary Time - Tuesday

We are now into the Ordinary Season of the year again – the "green-vestment-time" – which lasts until the end of November. We "count-down" now away from Pentecost Sunday to the Feast of Christ the King. "Ordinary" in the way we use it here means "counting" – and so we resume our "counting weeks" of "Ordinary Time" with this the ninth week.*

These Sundays and weekdays are used primarily as teaching Sundays and weekdays. Having just celebrated the major feasts of the Church year with Christmas, Easter and Pentecost – we now go into depth – learning more and more about "what it all means" – the mystery of redemption - for us as individuals, as a group as Catholics and for the world at large.

Today then we pick up with the message of the symbolic blindness that Jesus came to remove. Tobit, in an unusual sort of way, gets cataracts, which causes his blindness, from bird droppings, as he slept one night outdoors next to the courtyard wall. Perhaps the bird droppings represents all of the little things – the little deliberate misunderstandings and prejudices – that finally end up altering one's ability to see reality as it really is at all. What is right and true can no longer be perceived correctly (it is all a blur) – and the result is words and deeds done in a sort of vincible or avoidable ignorance.

The "alleluia" verse before the gospel tells us the remedy for these spiritual cataracts: May the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ enlighten the eyes of our hearts, that we may know what is the hope that belongs to his call! And that hope is, Jesus his Son – who came to scatter the darkness of the world, to restore sight to the spiritually blind and to proclaim liberty to those who are captive in a variety of spiritual, intellectual and moral ways.

The gospel passage today also is about spiritual vision where we see the Pharisees trying to trip Jesus up by having him clarify our civic and religious duties: give to Caesar what is Caesar's; give to God what is God's, was Jesus simple yet profound response to them. And, giving to God always comes first! Then you will be assured to have enough to give to both! The Pharisees were spiritually blind guides. They were no match for Jesus spiritual luminosity!

For us today this means: the spiritual light of Jesus – that is renewed as we celebrate this Mass and receive Holy Communion – can remove the spiritual cataracts from our eyes as well, because we are already baptized into his life, so that we can see things aright; we can give to the world the taxes and whatever else the state requires of us, but always after we have given to God what he deserves first: our love, our worship, our praise, our thanks and our promise to help him take care of people who are in need!

The heart of the just one is firm, trusting in the Lord.