Father Kerry Prendiville
Homily from the Televised Mass, NewsCenter1
Thirteenth Sunday of Ordinary Time, July 2, 2023

I think we would say that to follow Christ is worth it, but it’s always difficult. In fact, Jesus seems to be putting his cards on the table with his Apostles, demanding that what they’re going to do will take a total commitment on their part — their time, their energy, their very lives. To be a friend of Jesus Christ means everything else has to be second place.

I think of this in terms of how we witness aging as we get older. When we’re young it seems like it takes forever for our birthday to come around. When we’re older and we’re involved and we’re giving of ourselves, those years seem to rollback much more quickly. Saint Paul understood this dynamic that Jesus is talking about saying this is why he says that the life of the redeemed soul, the new life of grace is won for us by Christ, his Passion and Resurrection, we must also share in Christ’s death, or his dying to self.  We have to die to self to put all selfish and self-centered desires away in order to rise with Jesus Christ in the life of the spirit.

In 2002, I went on a sabbatical to Rome and while I was there, I heard Cardinal Francois Xavier Nguyen Van Thuan speak at the seminary where I was residing. The day, he told us, the day he was named Coadjutor Archbishop of Saigon he was arrested, and he spent in Communist control, the next fourteen years, twelve of which were solitary confinement. They’re trying to break his spirit. To break his faith. He found himself saying the Eucharist with just a few drops of wine in his palm and a drop of water nourishing himself with the Blood of Christ.

In 2000, Pope John Paul II asked him to come to Rome to give spiritual exercises for the Lenten retreat, and then to put his exercises into a book. Van Thuan tells us that when he was arrested, he never imagined 24 years later, on the vigil of the Feast of Saint Joseph, that he would take up residence in Rome. Or that on that very day, the day he finished giving this retreat, a new church to Saint Joseph in Vietnam would be opened and that it would be dedicated on the very day he was released from prison.

The amazing things that happen in his life tells us indeed faithfulness can be hard. You must lose your life in order to save it. Give up your life in order to receive it back. These are the things that Jesus invites us to do and the paradox of our Christian faith. By dying to ourselves, we rise with Christ Jesus.

Jesus I believe is asking us then to leave behind a sinful habit. Maybe it’s dishonesty, greed, or neglect. He’s asking us maybe to make one change in our life so we can die to this habit or this sin, and the misery of it which spreads pain, and rather receive more and more Christ. When he gives us his very self in the Eucharist — his Body and Blood, soul, and divinity — he’s giving us nourishment for the journey that is necessary. He is giving us strength and his peace. His indwelling. His confidence and his courage. He feeds our souls. He will never let us go without but for what we’ve given up he’ll return to us a hundredfold. Let us pray then for ourselves and for our Church. What we do in sacrifice, may bear a thousandfold graces for the renewal of the Church and the presentation of the Gospel to all creatures.