Reflection for Sunday – August 17, 2025

August 13, 2025Sue HowardSunday Readings Homilies

Readings: Jeremiah 38:4-6, 8-10; Hebrews 12: 1-4; Luke 12: 49-53
Preacher: Susan Howard

I am a convert. Brought into the Church April 2,1994. The first Catholic in my immediate family. However, I was bought up in a Christian household and a heavily Catholic neighborhood. I went to Church with the neighbor girls at a time when we had to pin tissues to our heads. It seems so silly now, but then it was what was required—it made us feel a bit more holy.

My parents took my conversion in stride. Their only concern being that I may have been coerced by my Catholic husband. They had seen how the ban on divorce had tragic results within the larger family. This was not the case. They came to respect my whole-hearted embrace of the work of the Church and subsequent career and calling to pastoral ministry.

However, as in many families, the questions kept coming: What about the poor treatment of divorced people, homosexuality, birth control and abortion? How can you belong to such a Church?

The struggle is real!

There is Division, Blindness, Deafness, and Cold Heartedness in the Church, in society, between nations, within nations.

These are the human failings that create barriers to true peace and harmony in a world that needs unity and healing.

I belong to this Church because we continue to try to grow in our understanding of a world in constant flux. We continue to preach and work for justice for the poor and marginalized. I will not allow the failures of the Church to distract me from living my faith and or from my deep conviction that God is in this mix, that Jesus showed us the right way to live. I continue to practice love and compassion with all the people I meet. We/I are a work in progress…clinging to the Cross.

And to do this work we listen each week to our ancestors in faith, the ones who spoke truth to power, the ones who suffered for their outspoken messages to those who were entrenched in a smaller, self-serving vision of the world.

Our first reading from the Book of Prophet Jeremiah, is such a message. It foreshadows the experience of torture and division that Christ endures:

“Put him to death,” say the privileged leaders and military machine…

“His truth is demoralizing,” he says our sins will destroy us…

He was removed from their sight, placed in a muddy pit, and their kingdom fell.

Ironically, but as many biblical writings attest, it was a foreigner, an outsider, who convinces the king to save the messenger. He listened, believed, but did not obey; his sons were killed, he was blinded and led away in chains.

The second reading from Hebrews delivers another challenge. “Keep your eyes fixed on Jesus, our leader and perfecter of faith.” This is not meant to be a catchy phrase or slogan. It is daily task, it requires mental, emotional and spiritual work. We are inundated with the fallout from faulty government policies, the devastating effects of poverty and ignorance, the disconnect between the “haves” and “have-nots.”

It helps to bring these challenges into prayer. Our first thoughts of the day—How can I be the hands and feet of Christ today? Jesus, help me to have the grace to face all the challenges you place before me today.

And lastly we face the fire.

What an odd passage. It almost seems as if Jesus wants us to be divisive. On the contrary. It is a message of encouragement. Yes, we may choose a different spiritual path from our family. Even within the Church we follow different paths in accordance with the gifts and talents that we are born with. This does not mean we disrespect someone else’s way of life. No, there is a fire of faith in every person born. Live out your own faith, let your fire burn. Be the best person you can be.

And so I pray…

God, in your great wisdom help our world leaders have the courage to face the truth of our faults and work to right the injustices that cause spiritual, financial and physical harm to their people.

Loving and Merciful One, bless our church leaders with hearts to listen to their people, believers of all kinds, and in the spirit of Synodality allow the truth to prevail.

Lord of Grace and Healing, open our eyes, so that our personal desires don’t blind us from the truth of our own failings, failings that create a division between us and God.

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Sue Howard

Born and raised in Rochester N.Y., Sue Howard received an Associates degree in art with a pottery major. She later earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Social Work at RIT. She worked with the elderly for over 26 years, first as a therapeutic recreation specialist at the Shire at Culverton and Monroe Community Hospital, then as Director of Recreation at Wesley Gardens and finally as Director of Volunteers and Spiritual Services, also at Wesley.

During that time she and her husband raised two children and she went to St. Bernard's School of Theology and Ministry and earned her Masters of Divinity degree in May of 2003. She worked at St. Andrew, Annunciation, Blessed Sacrament, St. Boniface and St. Mary's Churches.Retired in 2020