26th Sunday Year B: Homily by Fr
Isaac Chima
Theme: ‘Stop being stumbling block to yourself and others’
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Readings: Num 11:25-29; James 5:1-6; Mk 9:38-43,45,47-48
Dear friends in Christ, the readings of today’s
liturgy caution us to guard against jealousy, intolerance and giving of scandal.
In a special way, Jesus invites us to excise from us anything that will lead us
or others to eternal damnation.
At the centre of the reflection of today is
Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to cut off from themselves anything that
will lead them or others to scandal. A little exposition of the etymology of
the word ‘scandal’ will help us to understand this passage. The word ‘scandal’
comes from the Greek word ‘scandalon’, which means ‘a trap or a snare
laid for an enemy’. In the New Testament Greek, it was used metaphorically to
mean ‘a stumbling block’. Thus, Jesus was calling his disciples to cut off from
themselves anything that will be a stumbling block to their attainment of the
promised kingdom of God and anything in them that will be a stumbling block to
the same goal in the life of others.
As we all know, human beings place great
importance on the integrity of their bodies and, as such, nobody would like to
lose any part of his body or organs. Everybody would like to carry his body
intact to the grave.
However, as we have seen, it does happen that a
part of the body or an organ in the body may become so bad or diseased that it
becomes a threat to the life of the person who possesses it. In such a case,
the recommendation of a doctor would be amputation of that body part or the
excision of that organ in order to save the life of the individual. It may be
the hand, leg, eye, ear, kidney, liver or the heart.
Since staying alive and healthy is a beautiful
thing, hardly has any patient preferred death to the loss of any precious part
of the body or an organ. This means that no matter how much we value our body parts
or organs, keeping them intact when they have become bad is not as important as
staying alive. People are always disposed to lose their diseased body parts or
organs in order to save them from death.
It is this same analogy that Jesus paints for
us in today’s gospel in reference to anything in us that is capable of
threatening our eternal life or the eternal life of others; He is referring to anything
in us that is capable of threatening the growth and welfare of the people
around us, both physically, economically and spiritually; anything in us that
is capable of being a threat to the establishment of the kingdom of God on
earth.
Physical life is important and sweet, but it
cannot be compared to the eternal spiritual life. No matter the extent one goes
to save his physical life, he will surely die one day. So, if human beings can
go to the extent of cutting off their hands and legs or plucking off their
organs in order to save their physical life, Christ expects us to do same or
even more at the moral and spiritual levels to save our life after here on
earth. He said: if your hand, foot or eye should cause you to sin (to fall, to
scandalize), cut it off. It is better for you to enter heaven without hand,
foot or eye than to have them intact and be thrown into hell fire.
Dear friends, our duty today is to look into
our lives and discover those things that are leading us to fall into sin. It
could be our friends, our desires, activities, occasions, it could be our
attitudes (jealousy, envy, gossip, anger, intolerance) or whatever. The clarion
call of Christ today is that anything whose presence in your life poses a
threat to your possession of eternal life should be cut off.
The readings of today also asked us not to be
stumbling blocks in the growth and welfare of others. The first reading and the
gospel identified envy or jealousy and intolerance as attitudes that place us against
the genuine growth of the gift of God in others. By being jealous or envious of
the gifts and good deeds of others, we make ourselves worthy and ready tools in
the hand of the devil to disrupt or impede the growth of the gifts of God in
others and, at the same time, an opposition to the building up of the kingdom
of God through others. By being intolerant to those who don’t belong to us, to the
weak and those who need our encouragement and fraternal correction to develop,
we become a stumbling block to their little beginning.
Dear friends, rather than being intolerant, we
are called to help in building others up. We should learn to give others a
chance to develop. However, we must understand that being tolerant doesn’t mean
condoning evil. It rather means fraternally correcting and accepting those who
don’t measure up and also being patient with their slow growth.
By oppressing our workers, by denying those who
depend on us their rights and just wages, as we read in St. James today, we
become a stumbling block to their economic growth and welfare, and to the
general welfare of those who depend on them. Sometimes, unjust treatments lead
workers to sin. For example, some of the workers end up in violent reactions
towards their managers or plotting and executing evil ways to get what belongs
to them. The difficult situation which unjustly treated workers are exposed to
can lead those who depend on them to evil lives as a way to make ends meet. The
ripple effects of unjust treatment of workers cannot be overestimated. So, St
James warns us today against oppression, suppression, and unjust treatment of
those who depend on us.
Lastly, Jesus tells us that we can also be a
stumbling block to children when we teach them bad things, when we show them
bad examples, and when we fail to teach them what they are supposed to know.
Failure in the good upbringing of a child will definitely expose that child to
a bitter future. In that case, that person has become a stumbling block to the
good future of that child. It is our duty to take good care of children in all
ramifications of life. Let us be careful with what we teach them either by our
actions or our omissions
Let us ask the Spirit of God in today's Holy Mass
to help us to cut off those things in us which are capable of being stumbling
blocks to us and to others in our quest to build up the kingdom of God on earth
and to inherit the eternal life in heaven.
Happy Sunday
Fr. Isaac Chinemerem Chima
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