A Homily for the Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
Readings: Wisdom 9:13-18b Philemon 9-10, 12-17 Luke 14:25-33

Do you listen to the closing collects at Mass, the presider’s prayers that precede the blessing and dismissal? (We call them “collects” because they are meant to gather the prayers of the people.) They seem so lofty in comparison to the celebration just concluded, thanking God for calling us to share in heavenly mysteries and divine banquets and for our being fortified with heavenly food. 

By way of example, here is the collect for the Twenty-third Sunday. 

Grant that your faithful, O Lord,
whom you nourish and endow with life
through the food of your Word and heavenly Sacrament,
may so benefit from your beloved Son’s great gifts 
that we may merit an eternal share in his life.
who lives and reigns for ever and ever.

Perhaps you have attentively prayed along to our closing collects only to find yourself thinking: “Is it just me? But Mass seems much more ordinary than all that.”

You are not alone. I have thought the same. I certainly feel close to God during Mass, and I believe those words. But I do not walk away from the liturgy feeling that I have been in heaven or perceiving, except with a generous dollop of faith, that I have partaken of celestial mysteries. 

Some would suggest that surely the saints among us, those with greater faith, feel the depths of the mystery. But do they always? Even the saints speak of moving toward God through dryness and darkness. They do not say that this lifted when they came to liturgy. 

But surely these prayers are meant to do more than chide us for what our callowness has missed. They must be speaking of something quite real, even if rarely perceived. 

There is a depth to daily human life that most of us tend to miss. We are understandably preoccupied, rushing, tired and distracted. It is understandable that we do not savor, despite our best intentions, the time we spend with family and loved ones.

Our prayers at Eucharist are surely correct. They testify to more than most of us can take in. For we are a bit like teenagers who, for a time, resent time spent with family. It is dull. Not where we want to be, even if we cannot say where that is. Ironically, for many of us, that is in front of a screen, which never fails to deliver less than it promises.  

If God grants the grace, we later come to relish all the table time with family. We realize that, while the conversation might have been dull, we were nevertheless nestled into love, a love we would give anything to experience again. Something happened to us at table with the family. We became someone, received an identity.

Are adults at Mass not something like teenagers at the dinner table? Putting in our time, not able to see what it means to be gathered into the community, the family we call the church. Truth is, Mass is not meant to be any more, or less, delightful than time at the family table. We do not seek either table to be entertained. In both places, we are being gathered in, formed and loved—in short, given an identity.

And it is our identity, who we are in the eyes of those who love us, that is ultimately our strength, our provision for what will come. What seems to be wasted time with family will prove its worth when we face the challenges of later life. To know the quiet, steady love of family fits us for what will come. 

Who ever knew your counsel, except you had given wisdom
and sent your holy spirit from on high?
And thus were the paths of those on earth made straight (Wis 9:17-18).

So, our Mass prayers are perceptive when they speak of food for the journey and of strength for what is to come. As a pastor, when terrible trials and troubles enter your lives, I will be there either way. But I can see who has been nourished at this table and those who have not been. It makes a difference. Like our Lord, I want to say to those who so rarely come, “Watch and pray that you may not undergo the test” (Mt 26:41).

In our lives of faith, we are all a bit like truculent teenagers, but some of us know better than others to whom we belong, who loves us. And that is because, week after week, in the words of today’s collect, we have come together and been “nourished and endowed with life through the food of your Word and heavenly sacrament.”

The Rev. Terrance W. Klein is a priest of the Diocese of Dodge City and author of Vanity Faith.