13 July 2025

13 July 2025 - 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Transcript

Reading:  

Deuteronomy 30:19-20

Write:  

I call heaven and earth today to witness against you: I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then, that you and your descendants may live, by loving the LORD, your God, obeying his voice, and holding fast to him. For that will mean life for you, a long life for you to live on the land which the LORD swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give to them.

Reflect:   

Today’s reading from Deuteronomy has these verses immediately following it. Throughout this section, Moses is trying to convince the people of how valuable it is to take seriously the call to holiness that God issues to his people.

We hear the core of that call to holiness in today’s gospel where we are reminded of the two greatest commandments. But here in Deuteronomy, Moses is telling the people the entirety of the law. Notice the last sentence from the reading today: “it is something very near you, already in your mouth and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.”

Apply:   

The “scholar of the law” from the gospel knew the core of the law. He answered as soon as Jesus asked him what the law said. So the law was known to people in Jesus’ day, and it is the same today. But I want to stay with Moses and his comments, specifically: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. Choose life, then…”

Moses is warning the Israelites – and that warning is no less leveled at us – that there are consequences to following – or not – the call to holiness that God gives us. Some mistakenly try to dismiss all of this by saying that Jesus removed the law with his New Covenant. This is not correct. It is true that many of the requirements for what was expected as far as to our following the Mosaic law – specifically those dealing with the dietary laws and sacrifices – have been abrogated. But Jesus says in another place that he did not come to abolish the law, but to fulfill it. And if he came to fulfill the law, what does that mean for us? We are to be like him. We are required to look seriously at this call to holiness – and let me repeat: holiness means “other” – and separate ourselves from the ways of the world. “Blessing and curse” means something even today.

It would be a tragic mistake – possibly even an eternal mistake – for us to ignore the call that God gives and how we are called to live for Him.

There is on the heart of every human being a sense of what is right and wrong. I would suggest this is there even for those whose actions are so perverted because of sin that they cannot seem to act in this holiness.

“I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.”

Too many people in recent decadeshave given too light of a response to the call to holiness. There have been too many people who try to dismiss the call of God to live in a moral way. Look at the number of people – the number of Catholic politicians – who have sold their souls to immorality, especially the immorality of abortion. Can abortion be called anything other than killing? Or what about the man arrested here in Omaha this week from MS thirteen who is wanted in El Salvador for five murders?

What about other issues? What about care for the poor? What about immigration? What about “social justice” issues? I read an article Saturday written by a former liberation theologian from South America who wrote an open letter to the bishops of South America complaining that the impact of their recent work does not show a push for sharing the gospel. That is my summary of the article. But he complains that the focus on “social justice” issues of the day has taken such control over major parts of the church hierarchy that they are ignoring the call of the gospel. And this is from a former liberation theologian! That is what they pushed! He wrote this in his letter: “The Holy Father (Pope Leo) also reminds us that the Church’s proper mission is, in [the Pope’s] own words, ‘to go out to meet so many brothers and sisters, to announce to them the message of salvation in Christ Jesus.’” 

So let’s set all that (immigration, care for the poor, other issues that should rally our Christian sensibility) aside. I think it is more important right now to concentrate on the main issue that Moses brings up. I repeat again: “I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse.”

Archbishop Fulton Sheen once said: “A religion that doesn’t interfere with the secular order will soon discover that the secular order will not refrain from interfering with it.” But our interference with the secular order should be to remind them of the call to conversion in Christ.

As Deuteronomy says: the law of God – the holiness of God – “is something very near you, already in your mouths and in your hearts; you have only to carry it out.”

As St. Paul reminds us in our second reading today, Jesus is the head of the body, the church. Are we part of his body? Do we allow the head to rule? Do we seek his holiness in all we do?

“If” has been called the mightiest word in the language. Our first reading this weekend started with that word: “If only you would heed the voice of the LORD, your God, and keep his commandments and statutes that are written in this book of the law, when you return to the LORD, your God, with all your heart and all your soul.”

There is only one solution to the messes that people have made of their lives – that nations have made of their lives. One answer. Jesus is Lord. There are no other solutions.

Let me remind you of one other thing. It is a quote from Patrick Henry whose most famous quote was “give me liberty or give me death”. He also said, “this country was founded on the gospel of Jesus Christ!” Have we lost our way by failing to focus on Jesus and by allowing people to tell us to keep our faith to ourselves?

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