The deacons preached this weekend. Below is my homily for the Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A - 1/29/2023), preached at the 12:00 Mass: 🙏❤️🕊
Good afternoon. Last Sunday, I had the blessed opportunity to be there for our 8-year-old goddaughter when she read at Mass for the first time. She did a fantastic job! She was calm and cool under pressure, even after the first reader forgot and did not turn the page in the Lectionary book to the second reading for her. It was a definite proud moment for me as her godfather! During the time that we spent with her and her family, I witnessed the joys and challenges of raising a young girl who, like most children her age, is starting to test her boundaries. For our part, my wife and I never pass up an opportunity to encourage our goddaughter to listen to what her parents tell her and to obey her parents out of love and respect for them, because they know what is best for her and will always do right by her and her brother. I jokingly said to her mom that God gave parents the gift of their children so parents could “work off” some of their time in Purgatory.
After our visit, I read an article that someone had shared, titled: “St. Francis de Sales’ 6 words to hold onto when life is really hard.” As soon as I read the 6 words of this great saint, I had to share the article with my goddaughter’s mom. According to Saint Francis de Sales, the 6 words that we should hold on to when life gets really hard are: “This is the path to heaven.” As I reflected on these 6 words and how they might apply to me, I realized that the joys and sorrows, successes and failures, and all the complexities of life that we experience on a daily basis serve one purpose: to prepare for us a path to heaven. Thanks be to God, we do not have to travel this path alone because our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is right there by our side and ready and willing to help us on the path that leads to salvation. We only need to turn to Christ in prayer, invite him into our lives, and allow him to walk with us.
When I reflect on what this path to heaven might look like, I imagine that it is paved with the wood from the Cross of Christ. The path is well-traveled by thousands of holy men and women who have gone before us, many of whom shed their blood for Jesus along the way, leaving behind a model of holiness and saintliness for the rest of us to follow. I imagine that the path is protected on both sides by walls made from the stone tablets of the Ten Commandments, which serve as a reminder to us to stay on the straight and narrow path of God’s laws that leads to eternal life in heaven. Yet, these walls are not so high as to prevent us from climbing over them should we choose to get off the path that leads to heaven, whatever the reasons may be. This is because, as much as it saddens God when we choose to leave Him for something far less than what He offers us, God weeps for us but He leaves us to our freewill to choose our own path even if it is not the one He desires for us. Also along this path to heaven, I imagine that there are guideposts along the way to help us find the source of true happiness in our lives. The guideposts are the Beatitudes; the source of our true happiness is Jesus Christ.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI beautifully wrote that “. . .the Beatitudes present a sort of veiled interior biography of Jesus, a kind of portrait of his figure. . . the Beatitudes display the mystery of Christ himself, and they call us into communion with him. . .” (Jesus of Nazareth, 74). And here is how the Beatitudes are relevant to us, Pope Emeritus Benedict VXI wrote: “. . .the Beatitudes are also a ROAD MAP for the Church, which recognizes in them the MODEL of what she herself should be. They are the DIRECTIONS for discipleship, directions that concern every individual, even though. . . they do so differently for each person” (id). In other words, with the Beatitudes, Jesus teaches us about himself and gives us a roadmap to follow him.
Let us look at this road map. Jesus “grew up like. . . a shoot from the parched earth; He had no majestic bearing to catch our eye” (Isaiah 53:2). Yet, in his poverty, Christ never lacked because he was completely dependent on and devoted to his Father in heaven. May we be poor in spirit as to be dependent on God completely. Jesus lamented to his Father during his agony in the garden, praying: “if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39). However, even in his mourning, he offered himself for us “[like] a lamb led to slaughter or a sheep silent before shearers, he did not open his mouth” (Isaiah 53:7). In our own suffering and pain, may we offer it up for the intentions of others and the world. Jesus is “meek and humble of heart” and tells us to “[take] my yoke upon you and learn from me. . . and you will find rest for yourselves. . . For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Matthew 11:29). May we treat others with respect and compassion and help lighten their burden however we can.
Jesus hunger and thirst for righteousness because “[for] our sake he made him to be sin who did not know sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21). May we always seek to do what is right in the eyes of God even when faced with hard decisions in difficult situations. Jesus is merciful for “it was our pain that he bore, our sufferings he endured. . . He bore the punishment that makes us whole, by his wounds we were healed” (53:4-5). May we show others mercy as God is merciful to us. Jesus is the Prince of Peace, a peacemaker who “bore the sins of many, and interceded for the transgressors” (53:12). May we establish, maintain, and inspire fellowship and peaceful dialogue among all peoples, and fight against injustice, racism, and hate in our society. Jesus remained faithful to his Father in heaven even as he was persecuted and “pierced for our sins, crushed for our iniquity” (53:5). May we strengthen each other in the face of persecution and remain faithful to God and His will.
Moreover, when we read the account of the Sermon of the Plain, from the Gospel of Luke, which states that Jesus raised “his eyes toward his disciples”, we realize that even in the midst of the crowds that follow and surrounds them because of Jesus, a deep intimacy exists between Jesus and his disciples, and it is to his disciples that Christ bears his soul and Spirit in his teaching on Beatitudes. Our Lord Jesus Christ desires this deep intimacy with each of us, not just right here and right now in this sacred space, but also out there in the midst of the busyness of our lives, our families, and our workplace. Wherever we may be, whatever we may be doing, whoever we may be with, Jesus is always inviting us not only to come and follow him but to become like him. He gives us a roadmap in the Beatitudes and when we commit ourselves to following his roadmap, we become evermore fully the person God created us to be.
Now, everyone here is probably aware that Fr. Charlie is leading us in a homily series on the theme of “Simplify”; as in how can we simplify our lives by decreasing in ourselves things that are not of God to make room in our hearts for our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to increase in our lives. Our Lord Jesus Christ simplified the Ten Commandments when he gave us the Great Commandment: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength’. . . . [and] ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (Mark 12:30-31). What about the Beatitudes? How do we simplify Jesus’s teachings, his roadmap on how to live life God’s way and be full and satisfied with the contentment that comes from knowing “nothing. . . except Jesus Christ, and him crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2)? For an answer to this question, we look to one of the prophets of the Old Testament - Jeremiah, who wrote: “BLESSED are those who TRUST in the LORD; the LORD will be their TRUST” (17:7). For it is right and just that it is in God we trust because He leads us on the path to heaven and gives us the Beatitudes for our guideposts.
Finally, I shared with you all earlier that we encourage our goddaughter to listen and obey her parents out of love and respect for them, because they know best and will always do what is right for her and her brother. This applies to all of us in our relationship with God. Therefore, I encourage all of us to do the same, to listen and obey our Father in heaven out of love and respect for Him, because He knows what is best for us and will always do what is right for us. If we find this difficult, let us ask these hard questions of ourselves and search for honest answers in our hearts? Why did we stop trusting in God? Why did we start questioning His love for us? Why did we shun His desire to be in a relationship with each one of us? Then, let us find the courage to invite the Holy Spirit into those areas of woundedness to heal us so that we can become a people “humble and lowly, who shall take refuge in the name of the Lord”, because at the heart of the Beatitudes is our childlike dependency on our Father who lovingly guides us on the path to heaven. 🙏❤️🕊
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