Homily 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time - July 31, 2022

 Readings can be found here:

            If today you hear God’s voice, harden not your hearts.  How many of us have heard the voice of God?  What does God’s voice sound like?  Several weeks ago, Fr. Joe preached that our faith is actually very simple.  Love God with all your heart.  Love your neighbor as yourself.  Last week we heard the story of Martha and Mary.  Martha was burdened with much serving, but Mary did the simple thing.  She sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to Him.  This week our Psalm challenges us to listen to God’s voice as well.  Where do we hear God’s voice?  I asked how many of us had heard God’s voice.  The answer is simply: all of us.  We heard God’s voice in our readings today.  Did we recognize it?

            God’s voice speaks to us in the everyday activities we perform.  We can hear it in the conversations we have with others at home, at work, or at school.  God’s voice speaks to us through the things we see and hear in media.  Television stories, social media posts, the music we listen to.  God speaks to us through the gifts and talent we’re given.  God speaks to us through Scripture and through prayer.  However, it can be difficult to hear God’s voice at times.  God speaks to us in that gentle whisper that Elijah heard on the mountain.  Not in the great wind, or the earthquake, or the fire.  Not in the “loud” things in our lives.

            Our readings today give us examples of things preventing us from hearing God’s voice.  Our first reading speaks of all things being vanity.  We’ll never be happy if all we pursue is our own wants and desires.  We need to listen to God to guide us.  In our second reading Paul reminds us to seek what is above.  Too much focus on earthly things keeps us from hearing Jesus.  Jesus is in all of us and we should strive to be more like Him.  In the Gospel, Jesus tells a parable of a rich man with a bountiful harvest.

            My mother grew up in Italy in a family of farmers.  From the time she was a young girl, she worked in the fields.  When my parents bought their current home, one of the first things my mother did was plant a huge garden.  She grows all kinds of produce: lettuce, beans, peppers, and, of course, tomatoes.  In recent years my family planted a garden in our yard as well.  It’s much smaller but also includes tomatoes.  One thing I’ve noticed is that even if I do the same things every year to grow vegetables, the yield is never the same.  Even my Mom and I’s plants don’t grow the same.  Some years, she marvels at how well our plants are doing while hers aren’t as good.  This year, her tomato plants are amazing and ours just OK.  Last year, we planted carrots and got a huge number.  This year we planted carrots and nothing came up.

            We’ve done nothing different in the way we tend our gardens.  So why do we have a huge harvest one year and not the next?  Why does one garden do better than another?  Some of it has to do with how we tend the plants.  But there are also things out of our control: weather, animals, plant disease, soil content, etc.  In other words, whether we get a bountiful harvest is not totally up to us.  Regardless of the vegetable yield, however, we thank God for the harvest we have.

            Thinking the bountiful harvest resulted from his own efforts prevented the rich man in the parable from hearing God.  Notice how the rich man reacts to the blessings he received.  His first thought is for himself.  He takes full credit for the harvest.  He needs to build bigger barns to keep everything for himself.  He can hoard all he’s been given for his own enjoyment only.  The rich man never thanks God for his bountiful harvest.  He doesn’t think to share it with those that are needy.  God may have blessed him with such abundance specifically to help provide for others.  However, the "loudness” of his greed and selfishness prevented him from hearing God’s plan for him.

            God speaks to us in our everyday activities.  This voice is soft and gentle.  We need to listen carefully if we’re to hear it.  We must keep our eyes open for the blessings God gives us in these ordinary activities.  Once we see them, we should thank God for those blessings.  We then need to listen for what God is telling us through our blessings.  When we hear God’s voice today, will our hearts be hardened?  Or will we be open to listening?