Here is the homily for Sunday.
Ezekiel
Ezekiel was the third great prophet with Isaiah and Jeremiah, because this author’s book is big like theirs, divided into 48 chapters. Ezekiel is called by God to warn the Israelite people of their coming punishment and banishment to Babylon because of their infidelity to God and his law. Ezekiel starts out about 600 years before Jesus lived and before the Babylonian captivity. Ezekiel’s prophecies continue through the captivity and the return of the Jewish people to Israel.
Homily
The book of Ezekiel is about warning people to get it together. The Gospel story has a similar directive to warn or confront a friend of their need for correction. I want to say a word about that difficult directive. The formula given in Matthew is 1) By yourself, speak your hurt to your friend and try to work it out; 2) take one or two others and confront your friend; and 3) take it to the community for mediation. The smartest statement in Matthew may be admitting that these three steps might not achieve the desired end, and then you start over from scratch (or you drop it). The point I want to make is that human relationship is probably the most difficult thing we do as humans and that healing hurt is what we’re all about.
An example is a personal case I have talked about before, between my sisters and me.
1) Two of my sisters felt hurt and upset by each other’s actions in regards to our sister Carol’s care in a nursing home. Our older sister had been in charge of managing Carol’s care. The sister who lives in the town where Carol’s nursing home was visited Carol and checked up on her every day. The older sister and the local sister didn’t seem able to speak respectfully to or listen well with each other. Often they would cancel out one another’s directives about Carol’s care. So Step 1 didn’t really happen.
2) Their inability to connect work together as co-caregivers led to step 2 and my involvement. Our older sister asked me to be present at a meeting with the local sister and our youngest sister, and an ombudsman representing Carol. This was an awkward meeting. Since the home had complained about the local sister’s intrusive and disruptive behavior at the home, and threatened to ask us to remove Carol from the home, I and our youngest sister sided with our older sister in the matter. In theory this meeting had the potential of bringing us together for Carol’s sake. In reality the process pitted two sisters and a brother against Carol’s local sister and set limits on that sister’s behavior as regards the nursing home and its staff. No real listening to one another happened.
3) That takes us to Step 3: As Catholic Christians we no longer have a tradition of taking one’s hurts to the church community for mediation. That venue in this time is the court. Carol’s local sister took the matter to the court and she ultimately gained legal management over Carol’s care. This result was probably beneficial to Carol as the push and pull about her welfare and treatment ended, and Carol’s local sister continued to visit and care for her till Carol died 1½ years ago. The family breach, however, hardened, and my sisters remain estranged from one another.
Do I think I am alone in having family hurts that remain unresolved? No, I don’t. In 44 years as a counselor, I have known many relationships that are stuck in their hurt. Do I lose hope for them or for my own family relationships? No I don’t. Today’s second reading from Paul to the Romans, is a clue to our hope: everything is summed up by love, and there’s no accounting for how or when love will find expression. Period.
Finally, going back to Ezekiel, near the end of his book (in Chapter 37) Ezekiel talks about God’s promise, when times were the darkest, to raise up the people of Israel and help them get it together and walk back to their promised land. His point was that, even if we are dead and gone and our bones are dried up, even then God is with us raising us up. Ezekiel’s poetic words were turned into a spiritual I remember singing as a child: “Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones….I hear the Word of the Lord” … your toe bone connected to your foot bone, your foot bone connected to your ankle bone….
My question for you is: Who has been Ezekiel in your life, confronting you and giving you hope in stuck times?
And when have you been the Ezekiel in someone else’s life?