I haven't posted any of Deacon Joe's homilies in a long time. This touched me in the face of this election year.
“Fumbling His Confidence and Wondering Why the World Has
passed Him by…Hoping that he’s bent for more than arguments and failed attempts
to fly…We were meant to live for so much more…”
Perhaps you know the words from the rock group Switchfoot’s song ‘Meant
to Live’. This song is very appropriate
to our Gospel today.
Jesus asks us today to live for so much more.
In our Gospel we hear about denying ourselves, taking up
our cross, and losing our lives for the sake of the Gospel. This sounds difficult, painful, not very
appealing on the surface. But what is it
that Jesus is really asking us? We need
to look beyond to see the deeper meaning.
In our first reading from Isaiah we hear of the
suffering servant. Like our Gospel, this
isn’t very appealing. Who wants to be beaten and spit on? Yet, despite this mistreatment, we see that
the subject of this passage perseveres.
It begs the question, why? What
does this person see or know that helps him through the abuse?
Perhaps a clue lies in our Responsorial Psalm. Psalm 116 was written as a song of
Thanksgiving. This Thanksgiving is to
God for rescuing our Psalmist from a very mortal danger. But we also hear of despair. How awful it would be to sense an eminent
death and feel alone, where perhaps we look back and now feel we’ve spent our
lives frivolously and are dying in vain.
However, our Psalmist gives us the hope that God will save us and WE
shall walk before the Lord in the land of the living. The Psalmist sees the same thing we heard
about in Isaiah, but again, what is it?
Let’s take a moment and think of the person or persons
we love most. Would you want any harm to
come to them? What would you do if the
threat of harm came to them? If you
answered, “I would give anything, including my life, to keep my loved ones from
harm”, THIS is the love of God. That is
what Isaiah sees, that is what our Psalmist sees, the true love of God. They are willing to endure anything, give up
anything to be united with God in that ultimate love.
The ultimate love of God is what Jesus is talking to us
about in the Gospel today. We CAN deny
ourselves, we CAN take up our cross, we CAN lose ourselves for the sake of the
Gospel BECAUSE of the love God has for us.
The sacrifice becomes natural, because if we love God the most, we will give
anything and lose ourselves for that love.
Our reading from St. James may seem a little disjointed.
The subject matter of the passage is
faith and good works, however, our faith, which is a direct result of our love
for God, will show itself through us in our works. Remember, we cannot earn heaven. Our lives should reflect the love of God
inside of us and manifest itself naturally by our internal desire to bring the
Kingdom of God here to earth.
There are two places in this world where God has blessed
me with the sense of His Kingdom. One is
obviously the Church, not only here at St. Frances Cabrini but wherever I meet
a follower of Christ. You can sense a
connection through the deep love of God that Christian believers share. The second is the Beaver County Jail. I’ve already lost count of how many times
inmates tell me their stories and those stories strike me as identical to Old
Testament stories. The details may be
different, but I hear the story of Moses (had it all, then lost it all), the
story of Joseph (abandoned by family), the story of Job (nothing seemed to go
right), and the story of Jonah (I ran from God). We may think that the stories of the Old
Testament were long, long ago, but they’re happening all around us today. The inmates I meet exhausted themselves in a
search for happiness, not realizing it was the love of God they were
seeking. And when they hit bottom and
looked up, Jesus was standing there waiting for them. It’s at that bottom point that they’re ready
for the love God has to give them. I
think that’s a piece of the puzzle we miss.
God has an ocean of love he wants to give us, but unfortunately, we, and
I mean WE, only carry around a coffee cup.
An example of denying self, taking up the cross, and
losing life for the sake of the Kingdom is found in our catechists. Today is Catechetical Sunday, and we owe a
great deal of gratitude to our CCD and Religious Education Teachers. It’s not easy passing on the faith, let me
give you some examples:
One of our CCD teachers was describing the story of Lot and
when Lot’s wife looked back at Sodom she turned into a pillar of salt. One of the little girl students replied.
"My mommy looked back once while she was driving, and she turned into a
telephone pole."
Another of our CCD teachers was teaching the stories of
the Old Testament to her class and said to her children, "We have been
learning about how powerful the kings and queens were in Biblical times. But
there is a higher power. Who can tell me what it is?" One little boy
shouted, "I know teacher,… Aces."
In all seriousness, to our CCD and Religious education
teachers, THANK YOU!
In contrast, we look at our world and see that world
rejects God’s love. If you need evidence,
just look at the current events. Violence
around the world, and more division in our county than I think we’re ever seen
before. Instead of self denial we see
the world selfishly pushing its own agendas and attempting to conquer the
opposing side by force. We need to
remember, especially over the next six weeks, that the teaching of Jesus is not
either/or, it is BOTH/AND. As Christians
we have to look at our brothers and sisters in love and try to understand their
point of view and perhaps guide them, not coerce them, to the truth of God. There are truths that cannot be compromised,
but that does not give us license to respond to challenges in an uncaring
way. Pope Benedict, in his address to
the National Ecclesial Convention, and this was in 2006, said “We know well that
the choice of…following Christ is never easy.
Instead it is always opposed and controversial. The Church remains…a sign of contradiction in
the footstep of her Master…but we do not lose heart…on the contrary we must
always be ready to give a response to whoever asks us the reason for our
hope…We must answer with gentleness and reverence…with that gentle power the
comes from union with Christ.” The next
six weeks will test our patience and our faith and while we must not be silent,
we must respond in love. Unlike the
world, which is always trying to sell us on something, the Church’s motivation
is love. We need to tell the world that
first and foremost we are Christians, followers of the Son of the one true
God. We are not followers of a political
party, or of a person, those things cannot save us and will not get us to
heaven. We need the Church to help us
navigate safely through the dangerous waters of this world. If we had to cross an ocean, wouldn’t it be
better to be on a large ship rather than swim by yourself? The Church is that ship that will get us to
the other side. As Christians we have to
sift through all the things the world throws at us and find the Truth of God
and the Love of God in all that we do.
God calls us to rise above and see beyond. We can see beyond in the Eucharist. What appears to be a small wafer of bread, we
know is the gift of the Body of our Lord Jesus Christ. We receive the Eucharist and through the
Eucharist we see beyond, we HAVE FAITH, we rise above. Jesus lives inside of us and brings the love
we need which leads to deny ourselves, take up our cross, and lose our lives
for Him, because…We were meant to live for so much more.
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