Weekly HOMILY for October 29, 2006: Unlikely Teachers

30th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Cycle B
Our Lady of Grace
October 29, 2006

Unlikely Teachers
By (Rev. Msgr.) Nicholas P. Amato


Miss Toner

Many of us have known both the joy and the privilege of having been taught by a capable and devoted teacher.

We have known one of those special people whose talent for teaching has stirred in us a sense of discovery and left us hungering for more.

Fine teachers have the ability to turn on lights in darkened heads and open up new worlds that invite deeper exploration, admiration, and respect.

For me it was Miss Toner, my 1st Grade teacher at PS 106 in Brooklyn, New York. I never knew her first name; teachers in elementary school didn’t have first names.

Rumor had it that I was a little overactive as a child. Who me? But Miss Toner would allow me to get up and walk to the back of the room when I felt the need to and as long as I was attentive, I could move quietly around back there.

What a relief it was to do so and while back there I could look at the aquarium, terrarium, hamsters, turtles, and snakes in their respective enclosures.

Without my knowing it she laid the foundation for my self-acceptance of my heightened sense of activity and my ability to multi-task.

Good teachers are, more often than not, also good people whose character, ethics and lifestyle also teach and challenge their students to respond in kind so as to grow into adults worthy of their mentoring.

Goethe, the great German poet and humanist, once said that, “A teacher who arouses feelings in us for one good action…accomplishes more than the teacher who fills our heads with interminable lists of natural objects.”

God bless Miss Toner, wherever she is. God bless the teachers who made us who we are today.


Jeremiah and Bartimaeus

Today, the Scripture selections, particularly the first reading and Gospel, present us with teachers, albeit unlikely ones, who also are intended to arouse in us feelings that will prompt us toward good actions.

These teachers are “unlikely” in that they are what the prophet Jeremiah calls the “remnant of Israel.”

“Remnant” refers to those few survivors who remain after a catastrophe. The most poignant imagery for the remnant appears in Amos where the “remnant of Israel” is compared to the remnant of a sheep, just a pair of legs or the tip of an ear, after an attack by a lion.

This graphic description was applied to the precious few who survived the calamities of war and exile because of their unquestioning reliance on God.

They are the poor, the voiceless, the disenfranchised; they are the blind, the lame, the mothers with child.

But what do these unlikely teachers have to teach us?


Lessons of Faith, Hope and Helplessness

FAITH: Foremost among the lessons imparted by God’s special remnant is the faith that inspired them to hold fast to God while all else seemed to elude their grasp.

Faithful in all things and in all seasons, they did not allow fear to cripple them or thwart their efforts.

Even when it seemed utter foolishness to rely on an unseen God in the face of obvious, formidable adversaries, God’s remnant believed.

HOPE: Along with faithfulness, the remnant of God’s poor ones teaches hope. Hope is based on the character of God whose promises are never broken but always kept, whose word never lies fallow, but is always fulfilled.

Hope dares to follow as God leads the remnant homeward; hope dares to cry out with Bartimaeus, “Jesus, have pity on me!”

Hope harbors no doubt even when its questions are unanswered and its needs unmet; hope follows Jesus up the road without benefit of map or any other directions save that of his presence.

HELPLESSNESS: While our unlikely educators, “the remnant,” appear to be weak, they are actually teaching us that true strength lies in knowing oneself to be utterly helpless and absolutely dependent upon God.

Like the blind Bartimaeus, they teach us the courage to cry out from our needs and our desires when popular mores would dictate that we be quiet and unobtrusive.

They teach us to throw caution and decorum to the wind when Jesus calls; they bid us jump at the chance to come to him, to know him and to experience his power.

They teach us the wisdom of following God’s will and God’s ways, even when these seem impractical, unpopular, and outdated.

They teach us not to sacrifice morals or principles or values on the altar of a popular culture that attribute its choices and behaviors to the signs of changing times and excuses its sins with: “This is the 21st Century, after all!”


Conclusion

Amidst these great though unlikely teachers, might not our rising out of our own helplessness give rise to a new level of faith and hope?