Homily - July 15, 2012

This Sunday's readings remind me of a story I heard Archbishop Pilarczyk tell about his childhood.  When he was a very young child of three or four, he walked into the garage one day and saw his father cleaning.  He asked his father if he could help clean the garage.  His father graciously accepted his son's help and showed him how to use the broom.  It was many years later that the Archbishop realized that in his cleaning efforts as a young child, he got in his father's way more than he actually helped him.  But it was good for the child to have a stake in the well being of the household.
When I was in about the eighth grade, my father was putting brakes on the car in the driveway.  I asked if I could help.  He gave me the task of putting the wheel back on the side he had just finished.  After several minutes, I told him I was finished.  The lug nuts were on but needed to be tightened with the tire iron.  When my father inspected my work, he pointed out that the lug nuts were on backward.  The tapered side of the lug nut is supposed to go to the inside, not the outside.  This helps to get the wheel perfectly centered on the axle so it will not wobble.
In our Sunday readings, we hear that God calls and sends us to others with the Good News of Salvation.  But wouldn't it be a whole lot better if He just did it Himself.  Definitely.  But God wants us to have a stake in our salvation.  The Prophet Amos was fine just being a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores, but God wanted to use him as an instrument of His message.
The men Jesus called to be His Apostles were common men with jobs.  Many of them were fishermen.  St. Paul was a tent maker.  Jesus calls the people who seem very ordinary to take his message to the world.  All of us are called by God and sent out.  Some become famous by doing it while the vast majority of us are unknown to the world.  Nonetheless, all are sent out.  The vast majority of us find our mission territory right in our own families, right in our own places of work, in our own group of friends, on our own bowling team.
We may be tempted to think that we need special gifts or a lot of money to be effective ambassadors of the Good News.  However, a major lesson we see in today's readings is the importance of total dependency on God.  Jesus' Apostles were not even to take money or a change of clothes on their missionary journey.  We are called to do it with whatever gifts we have been given, great or small.