12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Doctrinal Homily Outline

YEAR B CATECHISM THEMES

“The following paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church resonate with the biblical readings for this Sunday. They were chosen either because they cite or allude to the specific readings, or because they treat topics found in the readings.”  —Homiletic Directory

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Catechism Scripture References

Second Reading

GOD’S LOVE EXCLUDES NO ONE

CCC 605 At the end of the parable of the lost sheep Jesus recalled that God’s love excludes no one: “So it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.”¹ He affirms that he came “to give his life as a ransom for many”; this last term is not restrictive, but contrasts the whole of humanity with the unique person of the redeemer who hands himself over to save us.² The Church, following the apostles, teaches that Christ died for all men without exception: “There is not, never has been, and never will be a single human being for whom Christ did not suffer.”³

CCC 616 It is love “to the end”⁴ that confers on Christ’s sacrifice its value as redemption and reparation, as atonement and satisfaction. He knew and loved us all when he offered his life.⁵ Now “the love of Christ controls us, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died.”⁶ No man, not even the holiest, was ever able to take on himself the sins of all men and offer himself as a sacrifice for all. The existence in Christ of the divine person of the Son, who at once surpasses and embraces all human persons, and constitutes himself as the Head of all mankind, makes possible his redemptive sacrifice for all.

1 Mt 18:14.
2 Mt 20:28; cf. Rom 5:18-19.
3 Council of Quiercy (853): DS 624; cf. 2 Cor 5:15; I Jn 2:2.
4 Jn 13:1.
5 Cf. Gal 2:20; Eph 5:2, 25.
6 2 Cor 5:14.

THE RISEN CHRIST LIVES IN THE HEARTS OF HIS FAITHFUL

CCC 655 Finally, Christ’s Resurrection – and the risen Christ himself is the principle and source of our future resurrection: “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. .. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.”⁷ The risen Christ lives in the hearts of his faithful while they await that fulfillment. In Christ, Christians “have tasted. .. the powers of the age to come”⁸ and their lives are swept up by Christ into the heart of divine life, so that they may “live no longer for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.”⁹

7 I Cor 15:20-22.
8 Heb 6:5.
9 2 Cor 5:15; cf. Col 3:1-3.

GOD WILLS THE SALVATION OF All

CCC 851 Missionary motivation. It is from God’s love for all men that the Church in every age receives both the obligation and the vigor of her missionary dynamism, “for the love of Christ urges us on.”¹⁰ Indeed, God “desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth”;¹¹ that is, God wills the salvation of everyone through the knowledge of the truth. Salvation is found in the truth. Those who obey the prompting of the Spirit of truth are already on the way of salvation. But the Church, to whom this truth has been entrusted, must go out to meet their desire, so as to bring them the truth. Because she believes in God’s universal plan of salvation, the Church must be missionary.

10 2 Cor 5:14; cf. AA 6; RMiss 11.
11 1 Tim 2:4.

BAPTISM

CCC 1214 This sacrament is called Baptism, after the central rite by which it is carried out: to baptize (Greek baptizein) means to “plunge” or “immerse”; the “plunge” into the water symbolizes the catechumen’s burial into Christ’s death, from which he rises up by resurrection with him, as “a new creature.”¹²

CCC 1265 Baptism not only purifies from all sins, but also makes the neophyte “a new creature,” an adopted son of God, who has become a “partaker of the divine nature,”¹³ member of Christ and co-heir with him,¹⁴ and a temple of the Holy Spirit.¹⁵

CCC 1269 Having become a member of the Church, the person baptized belongs no longer to himself, but to him who died and rose for us.¹⁶ From now on, he is called to be subject to others, to serve them in the communion of the Church, and to “obey and submit” to the Church’s leaders,¹⁷ holding them in respect and affection.¹⁸ Just as Baptism is the source of responsibilities and duties, the baptized person also enjoys rights within the Church: to receive the sacraments, to be nourished with the Word of God and to be sustained by the other spiritual helps of the Church.¹⁹

CCC 1999 The grace of Christ is the gratuitous gift that God makes to us of his own life, infused by the Holy Spirit into our soul to heal it of sin and to sanctify it. It is the sanctifying or deifying grace received in Baptism. It is in us the source of the work of sanctification:²⁰
Therefore if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself.²¹

12 2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15; Cf. Rom 6:34; Col 2:12.
13 2 Cor 5:17; 2 Pet 1:4; cf. Gal 4:5-7.
14 Cf. l Cor 6:15; 12:27; Rom 8:17.
15 Cf. l Cor 6:19.
16 Cf. 1 Cor 6:19; 2 Cor 5:15.
17 Heb 13:17.
18 Cf. Eph 5:21; 1 Cor 16:15-16; 1 Thess 5:12-13; Jn 13:12-15.
19 Cf. LG 37; CIC, cann. 208 223; CCEO, can. 675:2.
20 Cf. Jn 4:14; 7:38-39.
21 2 Cor 5:17-18.

SOURCE: The Catechism of the Catholic Church

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Theology Connections

CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY BLOG

THUS FAR, AND NO FARTHER

by David Cloutier

EXCERPT: To grow up in Chicago is to be related to a body of water simply known as “the Lake.” I have found that the words “the Lake” do not have their intended effects on people from the coasts. They mean something you can see across. But for Chicagoans, that’s exactly what “the Lake” is not. The Lake is where the city abruptly stops. Just the water, spreading out endlessly, as far as the eye can see.

We know the Lake is not in fact infinitely large – indeed, our knowledge of the globe probably makes it hard to enter the mindset of ancient listeners of the scriptural passages. For them, the sea really did seem to go on into an unknown infinity. And more importantly, it was an infinity that held enormous dangers for frail humans. Elsewhere in Job, God is said to have Leviathan as a plaything, and given the experience of the vastness of the sea, it is no wonder that legends about sea creatures came to be. If it wasn’t the creatures, it was the violence of the storms the sea kicked up. This we still know all too well.

The readings today indicate a simple thing: God is more powerful than even the sea. In the Gospel, then, we have manifest a kind of theophany. As we read in other biblical books, the disciples of Jesus were able to carry out many of the same deeds of power that Jesus did. We read about them healing those with sickness and driving out demons (not always successfully). But it’s interesting that we never hear a story of the disciples calming a storm at sea, and the one attempt by Peter to walk on water ends poorly. Thus, when we read the disturbed astonishment of his disciples in today’s Gospel, we can see in it some of the same mixture of admiration and terror that we get in the story of the Transfiguration.

Click on title to read more.

SOURCE: CATHOLIC MORAL THEOLOGY BLOG

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12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Catechism Lesson

2ND READING

CATECHISM LESSON

SACRAMENT OF BAPTISM

In order to live a natural life we have to be born to it. In order to live a super natural or divine life we must be born to it and that is the Sacrament of Baptism which is the subject of this lesson.

Baptism is the sacrament that incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church, and is therefore called the door of the Church. **

There is just a faint parallel to be drawn between the Church and the nation – in this sense.

• Most of us did not wait until we were 21, then study the constitution and the history of the United States and decide to become American citizens. We were born out of the womb of America. The country was first, we were born into it as citizens.
• But in the strict sense, the Church itself is first, Christ’s Mystical Body. Baptism incorporates us into it. We are born out of the womb of the Church. As we explained before, we do not become members of the Church in somewhat the same way as a brick is added to brick in a house.  We become incorporated into the Church very much as cells expand from central cells.

How Baptism  incorporates us into the Mystical Body of Christ:

But you may ask, “What difference does the pouring of a little water make?”

Well as regards to the water itself, it probably makes very little difference.  That is to say the water alone.

Take the water in the steam engine you might ask “What difference does a little water make?”  When you combine it with a mind and the spirit of an engineer, it can drive a steam engine from one end of the country to the other

• and so too when water is united with the Spirit of God it is capable of making us something that we are not, namely partakers of His Divine Nature.

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We should not be surprised at this after all we cannot live a human life unless we are born of the flesh and we cannot live a divine life unless we are born of God.  Now we are capable of that.  We are, as some philosophers have said “capax Dei ”  We are capable of God.

Nature is full of examples of such capacities.

• All seeds are of this nature. They are dead until favorable circumstances of soil quicken them into life.
• The egg of a bird has in it the capacity to become a bird like the parent but it remains a dead thing and will corrupt, if the parent forsakes it.
• There are many of the summer insects which are twice born. First of their insect parents then of the sun. If the frost comes in place of the sun they die.

The caterpillar has already a life of its own with which, no doubt, it is well content, but enclosed in its nature is a creeping thing it has a capacity of becoming something higher and different.  It may become a moth or a butterfly but in most the capacity is never developed.  They die before they reach that end.  Circumstances do not favor their development.

• These analogies show how common it is for capacities of life to lie dormant and how common a thing it is for a creature in one stage of its existence to have a capacity for passing into a higher stage. But note this:
• A capacity which can be developed only by some agency outside of it and adapted to it.
• It is in this condition man is born of human parents. He is born with a capacity for higher life than that which he lives as an animal in this world.  There is in him a capacity for becoming something different and higher.  That capacity lies dormant and dead until the Holy Spirit comes and quickens it.  The influence has to come from without. 

There must be the efficient touch of the Holy Spirit.

• The impartation of His Life. The capacity to be a child of God is man’s, but the development of this lies with God. We have to be quickened from without.  We cannot give physical birth to ourselves and we cannot give divine birth to ourselves. 

SOURCE: The Universal Way (Fulton Sheen’s Christian Philosophy Course)

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Catechetical Resources

RCL BENZIGER

THE POWER OF GOD

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In the beginning, God’s power created this world out of nothing. The two sources of revelation, sacred Scripture and Tradition, attest that the purpose of this creation is to show forth the glory of God. Saint Bonaventure (d. 1274) clarifies that God created all things “not to increase his glory, but to show it forth and to communicate it” (BonLibIISent) because God has no other reason for fashioning this world than because of God’s love and goodness (CCC 293).

Yet this good and loving God reigns justly throughout salvation history. Thus, the power of this just God also caused a flood to destroy evil and sin while sustaining a faithful remnant. The power of God sent plagues upon Egypt to deliver Israel out of bondage and also guided that chosen people as they wandered in the desert for forty years. The power of God finally established them in the promised land. When the people wandered from God, the Almighty intervened once again, for we believe this same divine power is fully manifested in Jesus Christ who came to save all people. Jesus is the light of the world, the Risen Lord, a light no darkness or death can extinguish.

But if God is the ultimate potency that creates and redeems us, why was not a perfect world brought forth by the Almighty? Why is there not such a perfect created world that no evil could exist in it?

Catholics maintain that there is no quick answer to this troubling and perplexing question. In fact, only the entirety of Christian faith can provide a response to this question (CCC 309). Our belief is summed up in an amazing litany consisting of many parts. We believe in the goodness of creation, the drama of sin, the patient love of God who is revealed to us by his covenants, the redemptive incarnation of the Son, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the gathering of the Church in God’s name, the life-giving capacity of the sacraments, and God’s call to beatitude to which we are invited, but from which, by a terrible mystery, we can also freely turn away. No one part of this Christian message contains the whole answer to the question of evil.

With infinite power God could have created a world so perfect that no evil exists. But our Catholic belief relies on the infinite wisdom and goodness of a divine plan that freely willed to create the world in a state of journeying toward ultimate perfection. In other words, the foundation of the created world is a process of becoming that involves the appearance and disappearance of certain beings, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, and both constructive and destructive forces of nature.

Believers acclaim the goodness and the power of God and at the same time decry the storms that toss us, threatening destruction, precisely because we hold that all creation is “on the journey.” Thus, along with physical good there is physical evil—as long as creation has not yet reached perfection (CCC 310). With this in mind, Saint Augustine (d. 430) proclaimed, “For almighty God…because he is supremely good, would never allow any evil whatsoever to exist in his works if he were not so all-powerful and good as to cause good to emerge from evil itself” (AugEnch).

SOURCE: RCL Benziger Classroom Activities, Year B

12th Sunday in Ordinary Time (B) Catechism Video Series

Fr. DANIEL J. MAHAN, STL

Fr. Daniel Mahan, S.T.L. gives a full, easy to follow tour of the Catechism of the Catholic Church in 111 segments, each about ten to twenty minutes long.

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