Time

Homily for Friday of the 25th Week in Ordinary Time

For a certain generation, today’s first reading cannot help but be associated with the song “Turn, Turn, Turn” by the 1960s band – The Byrds. Their song came during a time of heightened anxiety in the United States, which was in the throes of the Vietnam war. Many young people turned to this song, enamored by its themes of peace and tolerance. Their hope was that a time of conflict would transform into a time of harmony.

Time is a concept that controls our lives. We cannot go back and recapture time that has already occurred, nor can we reach into the future to a time that has not yet come to pass. The only time we have is the present.

What we human beings sometimes fail to keep in mind is that time is a gift given to us by God. What we do with that gift of time connotes our respect for God, who is not bound by the limits of time. If we truly believe in the goodness of God, then we ought to use the time we have been given to give glory and praise and honor to God.

We remember several Saints on this day. First of all, we remember St. Padre Pio of Pietrelcina, Italy, a Capuchin friar who captured the imagination of the faithful in the twentieth century as a stigmatic. However, we also remember the parents of St. John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth on their feast day. Today is also the feast of Pope St. Linus, traditionally thought of as the second man to serve as Pope and mentioned in St. Paul’s second letter to St. Timothy.  Blessed Émilie Tavernier Gamelin and Blessed Bernardina Maria Jablonska are remembered as foundresses of religious communities of women. Blessed Francisco de Paula Victor was born a slave in Brazil but went on to become an ordained priest despite the fact that in his early life, he was ignored and scorned. The people of the parish to which he was assigned even refused to receive the Eucharist from him.

The list of Saints for September 23rd goes on. There are very few similarities in their lives – except this. They all used the time that God gave them to do God’s will and to pursue the universal vocation to holiness. Indeed, God has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into our hearts, without our ever discovering, from beginning to end, the work which God has done through us.