Sunday 24 August 2025
21e Sunday During the Year – Year C
Homily of Father Loys of Saint-Chamas

Today's readings:
1e reading: Isaiah 66,18-21
Psalm: 116 (117), 1, 2
2e reading: Hebrews 12,5-7.11-13
Gospel: Luke 13,22:30-XNUMX

We will begin, in listening to this word of God that we have just heard, by being astonished and raising a small objection. “They will bring all your brothers from all nations, on horses and chariots, in litters, on mules and on camels, to my holy mountain, Jerusalem.”

I'm sorry: no one travels in litters anymore, and few people travel on mules and camels! So if it's going to be like this, there won't be many people...

Obviously, we understand that these words should not be taken strictly literally, as if they were to be fulfilled according to what we can imagine when we hear these words. 

And when we are told that they will bring all your brothers to my holy mountain Jerusalem, does this mean that we must go to this little country, and that, in this little town, men of all nations must gather together as on the head of a pin? Obviously, we understand that this word of the Lord to the prophet Isaiah, which the prophet Isaiah transmitted to us, is a living word which must be received in living hearts which will measure the force of what the Lord says. 

At the time of the prophet Isaiah, we are with a small Hebrew, Jewish people who are suffering among the nations. There is a struggle between peoples, with princes who want to increase their power, their hegemony, to organize the world, and the small people of Israel are not up to the task. And we hear the prophet say: I come to gather from all nations people who will come to my holy mountain who will come, who will seek to come. It is therefore the announcement of something which is beyond all evidence at the time when the prophet announces it.

Today, when we can be on the other side of the world in a matter of hours, it is easier for us to imagine the most distant nations, the distant islands that have not heard of my fameHaving spent 10 years in Japan, I can tell you that the situation is still this: very few Japanese have heard of the Lord God of Israel, and even fewer of Jesus, and even fewer consider him as the Son of God sent by the Father for us. So the prophecy of Isaiah remains a prophecy in suspense: we await its fulfillment. 

And in this sense, the Gospel when we ask Jesus the question: “Lord, are there only a few who are being saved?” the Gospel is within the people, those who surround Jesus - including among those who are there around, therefore in this small Hebrew people - wonder if it will only be certains who will be saved... Impossible to understand without changing logic... 

If we think of the confrontation of kingdoms and empires, if we think of the width of a door through which one must enter and the quantity and flow to enter it: impossible. Would the Lord have created the World so that few would live from its life? At the end of her life, Saint Therese wrote: "I cannot fear a God who made himself so small for me" (Letter 266). 

What is she looking at? Not the width of the door, but the movement of the Son of God, sent by the Father: he is descendedToday we ask ourselves the question of evangelization and of enabling, if possible, a large number of people to come. How did Jesus resolve this question? He is descended. Admit that it is not quite the thing we think of… It is descended. He became mute, a crying child, and grew in stature and wisdom and favor with God and man. He spoke to those who followed him, who did not really understand what he was saying, but who followed him. Until he humbled himself, not only to be a man, but so low that he allowed himself to be put to death unjustly, contrary to the justice that had just been proclaimed: "I find nothing in this man that leads to condemnation." (Lk 23,4:XNUMX)… And he is sent to the cross! Il its lowered »… “those who lift up their eyes to him will be saved.” This is what Thérèse understood: she contemplated what Jesus was doing at this lowest point which is the cross, she welcomed the blood which flowed down from it. 

In the letter to the Hebrews, the apostle reminds us that we need to progress. The word is addressed to us as to children who are growing up: "What you endure, says the apostle, is a lesson — here the word endure means “what you undergo”, not what you make, not what you learn, but what you undergo. 

Let us take a look for a moment at Thérèse of the Child Jesus. When she lost her mother, she sudden something. And she will say later: "The good Lord gave me a father and a mother more worthy of Heaven than of earth." (LT 261) He gave me a second Mom, and gave me the grace of to be able to choose it. 

Thanks to her first mother—her mother—Thérèse knew how much a mother's heart can desire the life of her child. With her second mother, she understood how one can choose to be educated by one's mother. When her father became so ill that he was forced to be locked up in the insane, she said: Ah! That day I didn't say I could suffer even more!!!… (MsA 73 r°). But she also heard what the Lord was doing: what she sudden is a lesson. She looks at her dad and see on his face, the face of Jesus disfigured. 

She understands that her dad lives with Jesus. 

The question arose: Are there only a few who are saved?Jesus answers: enter in movement to pass through the door. And when he speaks to us of those who do not enter, they are those who have occupied themselves with other things and have not sought to enter, have not been fascinated by the desire to be united with the one who gives Life: they have sought life elsewhere, they have sought life in their own hands, they have wanted to build something that gives life, they have wanted to accumulate in their granary something to rest after having exhausted themselves… they have not looked through the door, to the one who had come down. But the good news that we hear today is that it is not because one belongs to one people or another, that one can look through the door and advance to pass through it. It is simply because we heard what Saint Teresa of Avila would call “the whistle of the Good Shepherd” (Book of Mansions, IVth Dem., ch. 3, pp. 881-882.): “My sheep listen to my voice” (Jn 10,27:XNUMX), and the prophet tells us: there are sheep of the Lord in all nations and they will come to him, at the moment when the Lord calls them, at the rhythm in which they respond. 

Saint Therese of the Child Jesus will complete by saying: a soul embraced by love cannot go alone, it attracts to itself all those who are linked to it (Cf. MsC 36 r°). 

This is how the Lord thinks of evangelization: that those who hear the whistle of the Good Shepherd come forward, that they receive what they endure as a further step on the path that brings them closer to the one who came down. And in doing so, they become attractive, not by appearances, not by persuasion, not by conviction, not by organization, but by that attraction of the heart, by that fire that radiates, warms and allows each one to follow, not the apostle they look at, but the one who sends that apostle: the Father who sends his Son, who sends his apostles. 

So, brothers and sisters, today let us rejoice: From all nations the Lord calls and therefore he calls us.

Let us hear his voice to let ourselves be educated, attracted by what we endure, so that our desire is to pass through the door with the assurance that we will not enter alone, but that many will follow us. Amen

Father Loys of Saint Chamas, chaplain