Homily from Mass Celebrating Faith and Service

This homily was shared by Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., during the Notre Dame Mass celebrating faith and service at St. Peter's Church on Capitol Hill, Washington, DC, on Wednesday, February 25. 

Once again, welcome everyone. It is great to be together here at Saint Peter’s Parish, in this beautiful church. I want to thank the pastor, Fr. Dan Carson, and everyone at Saint Peter’s for being so welcoming of us all.

I remember when I entered seminary, I was asked to take the Myers-Briggs personality inventory. Perhaps some of you have taken it. After answering a battery of questions, one is assigned a “personality” type.

You test out either an extrovert or an introvert, either sensing or intuitive, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving, and you’re assigned letters.

The idea behind Myers-Briggs is to deepen our understanding of how and why we relate to people in the way we do. The danger is that the tool is used to rationalize attitudes or behaviors that are not very constructive.

You can imagine someone excusing bad behavior by saying:

• “I’m an ENFP, get used to it.”
• “I’m an INFJ, love me or leave me.”
• “I’m an ESTJ, take me as I am or get lost.”

In short, this tool can be misused to excuse a lack of change. While we know there are certain characteristics about ourselves we cannot change, we know there are others that we can.

If we do not change in some ways, we do not grow. To be truly human means having agency and being capable of change.

During this Lenten season, we are called in a special way to recognize our capacity for change, or, perhaps better put, to recognize the power of God’s Love to change us.

We are called to let God change us in ways that we need to change. We are called to let God bring out the best in us, to re-order our hearts in ways that help us to focus on those things that matter the most—in short, to be the people of integrity, justice, courage, and compassion God has created us to be.

In the readings today we hear the word repent a few times. In essence, this word means change.

In the first reading from the Prophet Jonah, we hear how the Ninevites repented at the words of Jonah. They listened and changed their ways. Jonah was actually shocked and even disappointed that the Ninevites repented. He did not think they were capable of change, but change they did.

In the end, God calls Jonah himself to repent of his prejudice against the Ninevites—his lack of compassion for them and his lack of openness to the change for the good of which they were capable.

In the Gospel, Jesus laments the unwillingness of people to listen, to open their hearts to God’s message. He laments their hardness of heart and their unwillingness to change.

They are looking for a sign. They want him to perform miracles—a few tricks—as if Jesus were a magician.

Jesus is no magician. He is Love incarnate. Ultimately, he pours out his life in complete love on the cross to effect a change in our hearts.

This is the sign we need. It’s the sign of the cross.

It is this sign, the sign of God’s all-encompassing Love, that calls us here together today and every time we celebrate Mass.

We live in a society where we might be tempted to label ourselves and others in ways that underestimate our capacity for positive change.

It would be easy to become cynical and even fatalistic:

• “This is just who I am.”
• “This is just who we are.”
• “This is the way the world works and that’s just the way it is. There is nothing I or anyone else can do about it.”
• “Change for the better is an impossible ‘pipe dream.’”

As Christians and members of the Notre Dame family we are called to resist this intransigence and reject such cynicism.

The Notre Dame Forum theme this year is “Cultivating Hope.” In many ways, hope only makes sense if we believe that change for the better is possible in ourselves, in our communities, in our country, and in the wider world.

Notre Dame is founded on this Christian hope which is active and not passive. All our research, scholarship, teaching and learning are expressions of hope in action, cooperating with God’s grace to grow and effect change that makes the world more humane, just, and peaceful.

I know that many of you have devoted yourself to public service. For many, that public service is dedicated to making our government more accountable and responsive. For many, it’s about ensuring that we in this country are always asking ourselves, how can we do better? How can we work together to ensure this country is true to its founding principles and is always “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all”? How can we better tap the potential for good in and beyond this country? How can we better promote conditions where all can flourish? How can we better care for the vulnerable and those in need?

Saint Teresa of Calcutta once said, “I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I'm supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I'm praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”

As we continue this Lenten journey, let us open our hearts and let God change us in the ways we need to change, and let us continue to do our best to work with others to bring about changes that make our country and our world more humane, just, and peaceful.

In so doing, we will be the Notre Dame family the world needs. God bless you all!