Homily – 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C)

Rejoice, Jerusalem, be glad for her, all you who love her! Rejoice, rejoice for her, all you who mourned for her! Are the opening lines from Isaiah whose text starts the Liturgy of the Word this 14^th Sunday. Why are we called to rejoice? Why this exhortation? The text indicates two things; change is coming, and the experience of the past will be no more.

The final chapters of Isaiah were written in the context of returning to the homeland after being in exile. The Israelites were uprooted and replanted in a land foreign to their own. The whole purpose was to have their cultural and religious identity lost in the land that ruled them. After 70 years, very few of those exiled would see the day of their return. Even with the passing of one or two generation the resentment and resistance would have remained strong.

Does this sound familiar in our current landscape where people are displaced involuntarily? The struggles in history repeat itself in our time. Will those displaced ever return home? Maybe. Do they long for a return when all the fighting stops? Absolutely.

The passage from Isaiah continues to describe the people as a city and the city as a people that they will be nourished and nursed in years to come. Sitting in the centre of the passage (which normally indicates passage’s crux) is “For thus says the Lord: Now towards her I send flowing peace, like a river…”

Peace is the gift for all ages and generations, it was given to the prophets of old, then the disciples, first twelve then seventy-two and now to all who desire to work for peace. Jesus warned the disciples peace giving and peacemaking is difficult work, unappreciated by many, he urges us to continue, it will come a time when we too will rejoice because peace has the last word.

By Fr Hoang Dinh