The Peace Pulpit

Bishop Gumbleton delivered this homily July 18 at the National Pax Christi Conference in Chicago. He preached on the gospel text for the Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time, Luke 10:38-42, the story of Mary and Martha. "In today's gospel," he said, "we're being shown Mary as the one who chose the better part because she was living out the role of a disciple ... that and Mary was welcomed.”

I hope we recall last Sunday’s gospel because it was a very important turning point in the life of Jesus. Remember where Jesus had asked the disciples, “Who do people say I am?” and they said Elijah or one of the prophets, John the Baptist, and he said, “But who do you say I am?” Then Peter spoke up for all of them and said, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God,” and it was then that Jesus, as we heard in today’s gospel, set his face toward Jerusalem where he knew he would be handed over to his enemies, tortured, murdered, and then rise from the dead. As he set out then for Jerusalem, he told all of them who wanted to, “Follow me.” That’s the invitation that is given to us today -- follow Jesus, be one of his disciples.

[Editor's Note: Following is the homily Bishop Thomas Gumbleton preached on May 20, the feast day of St. Franz Jägerstätter, in Jägerstätter's hometown of St. Sankt Radegund, Austria. A transcript for the bishops Sunday homily was not available. We offer this a substitute.]

This evening, on the feast day of Blessed Franz Jägerstätter, I am very honored and feel blessed indeed, that you have asked me to celebrate this Eucharist, to be with you on this extraordinary occasion, to be with Franziska, Franz's faithful wife, loving, totally committed spouse, and with Franz's family and of course, with the parish family. It is truly an honor. And I also thank you for asking me to reflect with you and to listen carefully to the readings this evening and to do that in the context of the life of Franz Jägerstätter, to draw from these readings what he obviously drew from them that made him so committed to the way of Jesus, even to the point of death.

As we begin our reflection on the scriptures today, I think it’s important to make a couple of remarks about the feast that we are celebrating, the Feast of the Holy Trinity. This is really a very unusual feast in the church year, in the liturgical year. If you take the time to notice, you will realize that this feast is a feast where we celebrate a doctrine, a defined teaching of the church. It’s the only feast in the whole church calendar where this happens and I think you can readily notice this or recall this.

I’m sure that all of us have seen stained-glass windows perhaps, or holy cards in which we are given a picture of what St. Luke described in the first lesson today -- the disciples all crowding around and Jesus going up slowly and disappearing into the heavens. We remember that so vividly because St. Luke is such a good storyteller. He makes everything so vivid and so clear. We have most of our images about Jesus at the time of his birth from St. Luke’s gospel, and we remember all of those very easily also. We remember the times in Luke’s gospel where he describes Jesus in such human ways -- weeping, being with friends whom he loved, and so on.