Beauty in the Pain

A Homily for the 11th Sunday of Ordinary Time 2026

I went to a concert recently. It was a big show. In a football stadium. So, it was an event I attended with tens of thousands of my closest friends! The opening act was a female country/bluegrass singer who I had never heard of before. But when she opened her mouth to sing it was like hearing Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris all wrapped up in one voice. I later learned that this singer had a pretty rough life growing up: a vagabond existence and a history of addiction from which she had gotten sober. At one point, in her performance, she hit a note with such force and clarity and she held it for what seemed an eternity… and somewhere in that eternity tens of thousands of people, without thinking about it, rose to their feet… moved, drawn to beauty rising out of brokenness.

In our gospel passage today from Matthew we hear: “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity…” “Pity” is a tricky word. Pity does not mean: “Oh you poor thing!” Nor is it descriptive of a posture Jesus takes, looking down on this sad, messy lot of people. I would argue “Pity” is the wrong word here.

What really moves Jesus’ heart? I would suggest what moved Jesus’ heart is the same thing that moved those tens of thousands of people to their feet in that stadium, it’s the recognition of Beauty out of Pain… Beauty born (as it can only be born) out of brokenness.

God’s fundamental posture toward the human beings he created is “Delight!” God takes delight in you. God takes delight in me. And we don’t get to argue the point. The question then is always: Are we willing to receive and accept that delight? God bore us up on eagle’s wings. God made us. His we are. The Lord is good. His faithfulness is to all generations.

Jesus’ heart is moved, not with pity, but with delight because Christ sees the potential beauty just waiting (always just waiting) to burst forth out of pain. The beauty that can only be born from the very jagged, fragments of our own lives. For me, tens of thousands of concert goers in a stadium proved that point. Not only is Christ’s heart moved by the beauty ascending out of brokenness, but we human beings have instilled in us the capacity to recognize that beauty in each other and in the world and be moved toward it without thinking.

But do we trust that divine indwelling in each of us? Will we let our hearts be moved toward the beauty born out of pain? And will we not just appreciate it, but rather let it draw us into action, as it draws out of us the beauty lying dormant, amid our own particular pain?

Over half my life as a Holy Cross priest, nearly 16 years, I’ve spent working in the formation of young men who are seeking their vocation. In the latter half of those 16 years, I’ve become increasingly aware of a fundamental response in me. A young man may be sitting across from me, in pain, struggling, questioning, suffering and I have to suppress an urge to smile. Not because I am possessed by some strange spirit of Schadenfreude. But rather because over the years I have learned to not just see the beauty in the pain, but the beauty that can only arise from the brokenness… the promise of beauty that God will fulfill if we stay on our own trajectory of healing and wholeness.

And it is not a special gift in me by any means. I would argue it is fundamental to the human person made in the image and likeness of the Creator to recognize the Beauty born of Brokenness… to let our hearts be moved as Jesus’ heart was moved. But not just to appreciate but to be inspired to act… to let Beauty overtake us; let the Beauty remake us; and become something Beautiful in a world often unable to navigate its pain.

This is why Jesus says: the harvest of Beauty is abundant (because the reality of brokenness is abundant) we just need the laborers to go to work. And then, notice what he does, he picks the most ill-equipped people to do just that in order to make a point… the Harvesters of Beauty don’t need special gifts or graces. They just need to be willing to access the beauty in their own brokenness and see it in their brothers and sisters and call it forth into the fullness of being… Then the Kingdom of God is truly at hand!

At the sound of one crystal clear note sung from a broken soul tens of thousands of men and women leaped to their feet and moved toward the beauty born out of pain. Will we let ourselves be so moved, and not just moved, but willing to respond, to act, in the way by which God has called each of us to tend the Harvest of Beauty in a crowd full of pain?