Homily: Monday, 32nd Week in Ordinary Time

I have embedded a video of this homily for Monday of the 32nd Week in Ordinary Time. The full text of the homily follows the video.

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Readings: Wis 1:1-7; Ps 139; Lk 17:1-6

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Years ago, when I was just a lad, we lived in a rural area of Connecticut. Our immediate neighbors included a dairy farm – Parker’s Dairy – and a few other homes. One of those neighbors had a large and very old millstone in his backyard. I have no idea why he had it, but it was huge, probably four or five feet in diameter and must have weighed nearly a ton. 

Whenever I read today’s Gospel passage, that’s the stone I think of. I suspect Jesus was speaking about a somewhat smaller millstone, but maybe not. Anyway, my large stone certainly drives home the points He makes. The idea of being tossed into the sea with my head stuck in the center hole of that millstone paints a very vivid picture.

In today’s passage from Luke, we get a bit of a trifecta: Jesus makes three important points about our relationships with each other. 

Jesus first addresses our behavior toward children, indeed toward all who are the most innocent among us. And it’s a warning to all of us: woe to those who lead these little ones to sinfulness. The physical abuse we’ve heard so much about is horrendous, but there are other ways to bring evil to those easily led astray. 


Adults, and yes that includes parents and grandparents, do this through lying, through hypocritical behavior, through selfishness – all means by which we scandalize those whom God loves. Luke uses the Greek word, skandolan, which really means to cause one to stumble or fall. In a sense, then, we become a stumbling block to others, but to very special others, leading them to sin and away from God. 


I suppose it all boils down to an extreme form of vanity, a hardened heart in which one’s own desires blind a person to God’s presence in the other, especially in a child. In our reading from the Book of Wisdom God calls us to “Seek him in simplicity of heart.” [Wis 1:1]

Yes, we are called to be childlike, to turn to our God with simplicity, to be open to God’s love and the Holy Spirit’s movement within us.

Jesus continues by calling for forgiveness, but for a divine forgiveness, one that submerges our own hurts and looks to the other with love.

Back in my Navy days, a chaplain once told me: “The life of a Christian is really marked by a continual struggle to offer and to ask for forgiveness.” He merely echoed Jesus who describes a corrective forgiveness, all part of what the Church calls reconciliation. 

Where true repentance is, forgiveness must follow. Even if a brother or sister wrongs you seven times, but repents each time, you must forgive.

Hard to do, isn’t it? In truth, it’s impossible without God’s help; just as it’s impossible to turn away from sin without God’s help. Indeed, it’s not about judgment and condemnation, and we must always remember that. It’s all about reconciliation, helping others and helping ourselves turn to God, so we can experience His healing and His mercy. 

Today would be a good day to revisit chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel, and re-read those three parables of loss: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. We lose ourselves often enough, but we’re never lost to God, brothers and sisters. He knows exactly where we are. How did the psalmist put it in today’s psalm?

"Where can I go from your spirit? From your presence where can I flee? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I sink to the nether world, you are present there" [Ps 139:7-8].

He never ceases calling us, but we don’t have to find Him. We need only respond, and He will come to us wherever we are.

Luke concludes our brief Gospel reading by telling us that the apostles, becoming aware of their own weaknesses, beg Jesus, “Increase our faith” [Lk 17:5]. And like them, our faith today can be severely challenged unless we accept God’s promise that He will be with us until the very end of time. 

Given the attacks our faith suffers today, accepting that promise just might be the most important act of faith we ever make. We see a crumbling world, a world that seems to have lost its way and we want so much to be able to do something.

But God wants us to believe something, to deepen our faith through prayer, to change the world not by scandalizing it, but by the example of loving God and neighbor in all that we do.

It all comes back to love, doesn’t it? For that’s what love is, the simple manifestation of our faith.