I think mercy may well be one of the hardest virtues to cultivate; but then again, maybe I am just projecting my own issues! But in this day of entitlement, I think many people are quick to call others to task for just about anything that irritates them. How, then, would we have treated Saul if we were David, given that Saul was distracted, and David was there unnoticed, and had the means necessary to take his life? He even had good reason: Saul was trying to kill him. But instead he shows him mercy, and relies on God’s justice. We will be called upon to be merciful often. How often will we take that opportunity, knowing that God’s justice is greater than anything we can imagine?
Category: Homilies
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Thursday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings
Today we hear about the amazing power of spiritual friendship. If it were not for Jonathan, Saul would have murdered David not just in the story we heard today, but many times. The Lord’s rejection of Saul was driving him to madness, and, as many insecure people do, he was doing everything possible to sabotage the one who was making him look bad. But Jonathan’s intervention changed things, and David lived to become a great king.
But I’m not just extolling friendship alone here. Make no mistake; friendship is a good thing. But I said this reading was about the amazing power of spiritual friendship. Spiritual friendship has its basis in God’s grace, and is definitely a gift from God. A spiritual friendship is a kind of companionship in which the companions, in their affection for one another, lead each other to God. Jonathan and David did that in many ways, and the fruit of that was that Jonathan protected David’s vocation to be king. Spiritual friends always bring out the best in each other; they help each other become what God created them to be.
Today, pause and be grateful for those who have been spiritual friends to you. Think of those who have helped you become what God created you to be; those whose encouragement has brought you closer to God. May God bless those who have been a blessing to us.
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Wednesday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time
If David had advanced against the Philistine with the finest weapons and the most advanced armor possible, the story we have in our first reading would just be nice. But instead of relying on all kinds of technology to take down the giant, he relied on something more certain than technology and way bigger than the giant: he relied on the power of God’s grace. And that, my friends, makes for a darn good story! So what huge, giant thing are you facing these days? Have you been relying on yourself and on everything but God to slay it? If so, it’s not going to happen. But relying on God for the grace we need in every situation is the technology that has power to not just change our situation, but even to change us. And that’s a story worth telling!
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Monday of the Second Week of Ordinary Time: Christian Unity
In today’s Gospel, Jesus is challenging some age-old practices. He is not saying that fasting is a bad thing, but instead he is saying that something new is going on. He has come to usher in a new age, and fasting is inappropriate while he is there bringing it in!
Today is the beginning of the annual week of prayer for Christian Unity. This week we remember that Christ came to found one and only one Church and, sadly, we have messed that up through our own sin and pride. But this week we also celebrate that some of that is changing. Slowly, but surely. Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists are beginning to come to agreement on what “justification by faith” means. Orthodox and Catholics are beginning to talk about Eucharist and the role of the pope. Even Catholics and Evangelicals are coming to trust each other more, and have come together in many ways to promote the sanctity of life from conception to natural death.
We still have a long way to go, but these steps are signs of progress. We focus on what we all believe in: a loving, Trinitarian God, salvation in Christ, the gift of the Holy Spirit, our common Baptism and the promise of everlasting life in heaven. From these we can begin our prayer for unity, that, as Christ desired, we may all be one. The bridegroom is among us, even in our fractured state, and doing something new, something wonderful, something life-changing. There is new wine and new wineskins; for that we can all be grateful.
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Friday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
“We have never seen anything like this.”
That statement can be taken in a number of ways. It could be an expression of amazement: the people were seeing something new in Jesus and found it to be astonishingly wonderful. That’s almost too much to hope for from them, unfortunately, so what they probably meant was something much different. They probably meant, we have never seen anything like this, and since it’s not what we are used to, we distrust it and refuse to go there.
What’s sad about that is that we react that way too sometimes, don’t we. The old joke is that the last seven words of the Church will be, “we’ve never done it that way before.” If someone challenges us in new ways, we have a tendency to automatically assume it’s wrong. People tend often to distrust anything that puts them outside their comfort zones.
And Jesus was doing that all the time. The scribes, Pharisees, and religious leaders all distrusted him because he hit them right where they lived. He challenged them to new ways of thinking and praying and fasting and giving and even loving. He showed them a Messiah that was much different than anything they ever expected. And so they dismissed him: “We have never seen anything like this.”
But it cannot be so for us. Jesus still challenges us today, beaconing us out of our comfort zones, challenging us to live for God and for others, and to reach out and live the Gospel with wild abandon. Will we dismiss him and his message too? Or will we say with eager expectation: “We have never seen anything like this!” – with eyes wide open to see where he will lead us next?
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Thursday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
“If you wish, you can make me clean.” This ought to be the prayer of all of us, I think. Does God wish to make us clean? Of course. But do we acknowledge his ability to do so? Sometimes we are so saddened by our sins that we feel we are beyond redemption. Our brokenness stares us in the face time and time again and accuses us of being unworthy of the attention of God. But the fact remains: If God wishes, he certainly can make us clean. All we have to do is let him, to believe in his power to do it, and rejoice in his desire to do so.
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Wednesday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
Learning to discern the Lord’s voice is a big part of our development as people of God and disciples of the Lord. There are many competing voices out there, and so it takes great discernment to know which of those voices is God himself. The way that we learn this is, of course, through prayer. When we practice often enough, we will gradually find it easier to hear the Lord’s voice, and then tell him, “Here I am, Lord; I have come to do your will.”
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Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time
Today’s readings
Now that the Christmas season has come to its close, it’s time to get down to business. And Jesus does so quickly. John has been arrested, so there is no time like the present to keep the word out there. Just as John preached a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, so Jesus preaches a whole Gospel for the forgiveness of sins. The task for us to is to repent and to believe. As we begin the Ordinary Time of our Church year, we may find in necessary to do some more repenting ourselves so that our belief can be stronger in this coming year.
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The Baptism of the Lord
What wonderful words we have in today’s Gospel to close out the Christmas season: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased.”
We have come a long way since December the 25th. Jesus, the Son of God has become the son of Mary, and has sanctified the world by his most merciful coming. The Second Person of the Holy Trinity has taken on flesh and become one like us in all things but sin. He took that flesh as the lowliest of all: as a baby born to a poor young family in the tiniest, poorest region of a small nation.
But during his Epiphany, which we have been celebrating ever since last Sunday, we saw the importance of this Emmanuel, God with us. Magi came from the East to give him symbolic gifts: gold for a king, frankincense for the High Priest, and myrrh for his burial. Today, the Epiphany continues with the second traditional reading of the Epiphany: the Baptism of Jesus. Obviously, Jesus didn’t need to partake of the baptism of John, because it was a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. But Jesus’ taking part in that baptism manifests himself as One who has come to be with sinners, to take on their sinfulness, and to sanctify those waters of baptism so that they can wipe away our sins.
And here’s a wonderful thing: even though the Christmas season officially ends today, we continue to celebrate it in some ways, all the way up to Candlemas day, February the 2nd. We see that especially this year, because next week, we get the third traditional reading of the Epiphany, the Wedding Feast at Cana, in which Christ is manifested in his ministry, ready or not.
The secret to our celebration of the Epiphany is that we must be ready to accept the manifestation of Jesus in our own lives. We have to let him be our king and priest, accepting his death for our salvation. We have to celebrate our own baptism, which is only significant because Christ has gone through it first, long before us, sanctifying the waters. We have to let him minister to us as he did at the wedding feast, giving us the very best of food and drink, in great abundance, to nourish us into eternal life.
This is the One with whom the Father was well-pleased; he is the One with whom we are in awe. We are moved to silence before our Christ who came most mercifully to sanctify our way to heaven. That silence can only be appropriately broken by the exclamation of the Father: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well-pleased!”
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Wednesday after Epiphany
We still need more light, don’t we? Just like the disciples who don’t yet get who this Jesus is and what he’s about, sometimes we too struggle with that. Jesus was doing amazing things among the disciples and they didn’t yet understand. Jesus is doing amazing things among us and sometimes we don’t get it either. The Epiphany of the Lord, which we continue to celebrate today, continues to shed light on who Jesus is for us and for the world. Today, may we open our eyes to the brightness of his coming.
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