Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
God Provides Through Us
There is a profound liturgical action that takes place at the ordination of a deacon. After the bishop lays his hands on the candidate and says the prayer of ordination, and after the deacon is vested, the bishop hands the new deacon the Book of the Gospels and says, “Receive the Gospel of Christ, whose herald you now are. Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.” “Believe what you read, teach what you believe, and practice what you teach.”
Meaning - No one can proclaim the gospel unless he believes in the gospel and unless he lives these gospel beliefs. This is fundamental to all Christians – the message is for all of us – not just for the clergies.
“Believe what you read” – meaning - believe the Gospel – but of course – first of all – we need to spend time reading the Scriptures through which God communicates to us in a personal way. Second Vatican Council document put it this way: “In the Sacred Scriptures, the Father who is in heaven meets His children with great love and talks with them about His great love fulfilled in Christ. In reading the Scriptures, we therefore encounter Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life.
“Believe what you read” - “Teach what you believe” - Everyone is called by Christ to proclaim His Gospel. All of us are empowered for this mission. We have the gifts of the Eucharist to sustain us. We have the power of the Holy Spirit poured unto all of us at our baptism and confirmation. We have the guidance of our Mother Mary…
“Teach what you believe” “Practice what you teach.” – Walk the Talk.
A father was giving a sermon to his teenage son. The teenager replied: “What you are speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying.”
Let us hope and pray that our children or anyone will not say or even think of saying that to us.
There is a phrase that goes, “You cannot give what you do not have.” It applies to all Christians.
When we live our lives in relationship and in communion with God, who gives of Himself to us, we become conformed to God’s grace and so we become channels or instruments of God’s grace and we ourselves become grace and when we in turn give what we receive, we find it multiplied beyond what we can imagine.
We are all called to give ourselves in loving service of God and others as a continuation of Christ. The word Christ means Anointed and we were all Anointed at our baptism and confirmation – We are the Body of Christ.
In our Christian service, others must discover Christ in us because if we are not giving Christ to others – if we are filled with our ego and self-centeredness and our own agenda; if those whom we serve are not encountering Jesus in us, then our service is simply not true Christian service. It might be considered only as good charitable work, a philanthropy, it might be empathy; but it falls short of genuine Christian service if those whom we serve do not discover Christ – if they do not encounter Christ through us.
Like John the Baptist, we must decrease so that Jesus can increase in us, so that our brothers and sisters are not cheated out of encountering Christ whom they secretly long to discover in each of us.
We need to realize that the presence of the Lord is not ours to keep for ourselves and for our own benefit and salvation. He is given to us so that we can bring His Love to others.
A lot of people nowadays, young and not so young are hungry and thirsty, so to speak, and have even lost sense of what life is all about.
The readings today help us recognize the gifts we have been given and the responsibility we have to give them to others. From our first reading from the book of the Prophet Isaiah: “Come to the water, you who are thirsty. Come eat - you who are hungry. “
The second reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, tells us that no one and nothing can take the Source of Life from us. “What can separate us from the love of Christ? Anguish, or persecution, or nakedness, or famine or the sword or Covid19 pandemic? NO. Not even death. Nothing can take Christ from us – But - We can reject Him. We are free to choose.
Our responsibility to stay united to the Lord has a deeper dimension than our own personal needs. We need to be united to the Lord out of a responsibility to the spiritual lives of others – so we can bring Christ to them and them to Christ.
People think of Christianity only in terms of good works to be done or service to be rendered… but that is not all. Yes - we are called to pick up our cross daily and follow Christ – which is not easy – to say the least… because to follow Christ requires our whole being.
But - as Christians - we are called to follow the highest ethic – the highest standard - that the world has ever heard… and, trying to do that in our own strength is like trying to feed five thousand people with fives loaves and two fish. We cannot do that and so, the Gospel offers us help.
We need to realize and experience the need of others. We need to recognize our own limitations and emptiness, our inability to help. And so - We need to go to the Lord, and He gives us the ability to provide. This is the Good News, the Gospel…for nothing can prevent us from being united to the One who provides for us.
How beautifully positive the readings are for today. God will always provide.
We have only to go to Him, stay united to Him, and we will receive bread for His people… meaning, we will receive blessings – the grace we need – not only for ourselves but for His people.
So – my brothers and sisters in Christ - Let us give Jesus whatever we have and He will multiply them for the good of others.
In Luke 4:16-20: Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free…”
Then Jesus said: “Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.”
Meaning – And the Word became flesh.
That is a call for all of us as the Body of Christ.
St. Teresa of Avila said it so beautifully: “Christ has no body now on earth but yours; yours are the eyes with which He looks with compassion on this world; yours are the feet with which He walks to do good; yours are the hands with which He blesses the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
Like Jesus, the Bread of Life; like the Eucharist, our lives must be blessed, broken and shared and poured out in loving service of God and others.
Amen.
Aug. 2, 2020
Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle A
Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Wheat and Weeds
Homily on “Wheat and Weeds in Our Lives” based on the Gospel reading (Matthew 13: 24-43):
Like many of you, one of my favorite hobbies is gardening. In fact, I even have a worm compost bin and I use the worm castings to fertilize the plants and trees.
I try my best to have a really nice garden. But, I also accept the reality that my garden will never look as beautiful as what you can see in Gardens magazines and the ads.
That is the reality of life as well. Jesus tells us also that we can expect weeds along with our good plants throughout our lives. He tells his disciples that in this world the good will exist along with the evil and it is going to be that way to the end of time. That's life and we have to expect to deal with that reality.
It is a fact of our society and a fact in our own personal lives. All of us experience good and bad in ourselves. We strive to be good, to do good and to live a life pleasing to God the best we can, but we all fail at times and we sin. We all have weeds in the garden of our life. So, what do we do about it?
Let us start with the bigger picture - Where our society is concerned, Jesus gives us the answer. We have to be the yeast of our society. It is our task as followers of Christ to be active in our society to eventually leaven the whole batch. I know its easy to say, "What can one person do?" But that is exactly it. Change has to start with one person, with one act, with one idea.
Let me tell you a true story – just recently
Overseas Filipina Worker in Dubai - Feby Dela Peña offers 200 free meals a day to Dubai’s hungry jobless migrants- hit hard by the Corona virus shutdown.
Febi, who is also unemployed herself, said: “We’re poor, to be honest, but it’s not a reason for me not to help. She relies on her husband’s modest income from a sales job.
She was able to buy about $130 worth of groceries, including 30 frozen chickens and sacks of rice, to startwith…and she began to cook.
Like most migrant workers in Dubai, the family lives in a shared flat. When her 11 housemates found out about her plan –– those who could - chipped in - as well. That is how Feby, age 34, launched the project she calls Ayuda – which means help.
She said: “Life is so hard and people don’t have anyone to depend on,”
“It’s a big thing if you can help even 10 people not to sleep hungry,”
And when word of her efforts spread on social media, people began dropping off cartons of eggs and bags of rice. In fact, an influential Emirati blogger gave her 10,000 dirhams = about $2,700 US dollars.
Meaning - Feby’s single act grew and grew. More and more people became involved in the work… like the mustard seed which starts very small and grows large.
It all happened because one woman had an idea and felt a need to help her fellow human beings who are in need.
People, even believers ask: With all the troubles in the world, it seems God is not doing anything? You see- God is doing something.
The question to you and me is this: What am I doing – what are you doing? We have so many problems facing us today that may seem so overwhelming. Where do we start? What problem is most important? What can we do?
We can all follow the example of Feby and start doing something, no matter how small… and we can start with our families.
There is this belief in our society that you can fix anything by throwing money at it. That's not the answer here. It takes personal involvement to be yeast. That is what it takes. We have to become personally involved in our world to make this world a better place. To be true followers of Jesus, we have to pick up our own cross.
Not everyone is not called to be a Mother Theresa or be like Feby.
We do not have to look far. Let us start with our own families, our own circle of friends.. There are so many people in need not only of material things, but also emotionally, psychologically, spiritually.
Here at St. Catherine’s, we have such indescribably amazing volunteers and ministers who help Fr. Glenn adapt to the ever new and changing challenges to continue to shepherd the faithful in these troubling times and to lead our faith community in worship.
Let us pray that God will make our hearts more and more attentive to the needs of others. As we heard in the Gospel, “Those who have hears, ought to hear.”
Pope Francis said: “Do not be afraid to devote your life to God and to others; it pays! For life is a gift we receive only when we give ourselves away, and our deepest joy comes from saying yes to love, without ifs and buts.”
Now - How about when it comes to our personal life? We all have good plants and weeds in our personal life. Most of us like to think of ourselves as essentially good people. And there is truth in that image of ourselves, but we all know there is another side to every one of us.
At times, for seemingly no reason, we are in a bad mood or ill temper, irritable, and at times we get angry so easily… at times we can become so selfish and downright mean… and so, we recognize the duplicity of our nature. Within the individual human heart there is a capacity for both good and evil. In every one of us, there is a strange mixture between the wheat and the weeds, so to speak.
Every person is a sinner; that - we cannot deny. But - every person is a potential saint; this we need to believe.
Jesus understood the dark side of human nature better than anyone else. He knew what it could do. It nailed him to the cross. But he kept believing that people were redeemable, and believed it - so deeply - that he bet his life on it.
As Father Robert Barron said: “God’s purpose is not to destroy the enemy but to change him…. Not to destroy the enemy culture but to convert it. Why does God not just eliminate his enemies? … just get rid of them - because God loves His enemies… and so the Church’s purpose, and so our purpose is not so much to destroy our enemies but to convert them…”
So, when we are tempted to lose faith in people including ourselves, all we need to do is look to Christ. Jesus keeps believing in the human race. He keeps believing in our world. But most of all, Jesus keeps us believing in ourselves.
Our job as followers of Christ is to try – to aim - for that perfect holy life, Our job is to recognize the fact that there will always be weeds of sin cropping up in our life. And so - we need to cultivate, nurture - to mulch – so to speak - with the Sacraments; we need to fertilize with prayer and we need to weed with the Sacrament of Penance.
Our personal life will never be perfect, just as our society will never be perfect… But - that does not mean that we stop trying to make it so. We all need to plant that mustard seed of Faith and nourish it so that it can grow and grow towards perfection.
As we go forth from this Eucharistic celebration today, let us all resolve to take on the task of doing something about a problem in our society – starting with our own families - no matter how small - and to do something in our own personal life to draw us all closer to Jesus.
Amen… which means - So be it.
July 19, 2020
