The conversion we seek is to be a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

 

Jesus opens today’s Gospel account with a parable: “Can a blind person guide a blind person?  Will not both fall into a pit?  This leads us to ask what blindness Jesus is talking about?  I suggest for our prayer today we see the blind guides that Jesus refers to are people who don’t know their own need for mercy, who have not experienced mercy, and who therefore cannot act with mercy.

We see in our Eucharistic Liturgy how we humbly ask for the mercy of our forgiving God.  The Penitential Rite is part of the beginning of our Eucharistic celebration.  For us to enter into the mystery of God’s presence among us, we first acknowledge our need for the healing forgiveness of Good.  Then before receiving Communion, we humbly pray: “Lord, I am not worthy that you should come under my roof, but only say the Word and my soul shall be healed.”

The genuineness of our discipleship of the Lord Jesus is dependent upon our humility and our humble recognition that we need the mercy of a forgiving God, and we are to share this mercy with others.

The cross of Jesus is His great act of love for us.  In the cross, we encounter the mercy, the forgiveness, and the love of Jesus for us.

Please God, may we always be aware that we are sinners who stand in need of a forgiving, healing God.  As we approach Ash Wednesday, the ashes to be placed on our foreheads announce that the light of Christ that is burning within us is dimmed.  It has been darkened by sin symbolized by the ashes on our foreheads.

The invasion of Russia into Ukraine and the war that is now taking place shows the effect of sin on an international scale.  War is the result of hearts that are not filled with he merciful, forgiving love of our God.

With the ashes that we will receive on Ash Wednesday, we are confessing and announcing we stand in need of God’s forgiveness.  Further, we commit ourselves to the penitential season so that we will be reconciled with God and so prepare ourselves for the joy of Easter.  The blessed ashes that we receive are blessed ashes, holy ashes, and they hold the promise of cleansing protection and, most importantly, the promise of resurrection.

Our upcoming Lenten journey invites us to become more aware of our inner life, our spiritual life before God.  The Lenten season invites us to accept the disciplines of prayer, fasting, and self-denial.  The purpose of these spiritual disciplines is to lead us to conversion, to place God first in our lives.  In following these spiritual disciplines, we come to know the Gospel good news.  The Good News is precisely this:  it tells us about a God who gives first, loves first, who loves unconditionally, and who loves us whether we deserve it or not.

May the spiritual disciplines of lead us to an image of God who loves us unconditionally.  This is the conversion we seek.

What is our response to this God?  We gather in the  Eucharistic celebration to give thanks to the Lord our God.  Because of God’s extravagant love for us, we are grateful, and we seek to share that love with one another.

The conversion we seek is to be a Church of mercy.  Our world torn by the effects of war needs to experience the mercy of God in the world, and in our personal lives we need to encounter a God who loves us unconditionally and calls us to a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

For the 3^rd consecutive Sunday, the Gospel has been taken for Luke’s account of the Sermon on the Mount.  The last two Sundays we have been invited to reflect on what to do.  The Beatitudes call us to a way of life in which our values are turned upside down.  “Blessed are the Poor; Blessed are they who hunger; Blessed are they who mourn.” These people ae most in touch with the spiritual dimension of life.  They more clearly know their need for God’s grace.

Last Sunday the Gospel called us to love even our enemies.  That doesn’t come naturally for any one of us.  It’s not in our genes.  It is only with the grace of God and the example of Jesus Himself that we are empowered to love our enemies.

This Sunday’s Gospel tells us how we can live our discipleship of Christ Jesus in which we are called to love our enemies.  Where the Gospel last week dealt with action toward others, this Sunday’s Gospel calls to reflect and to reach deeper:  to the wellspring of eternal life that is found in the human heart.  Get the heart right, Jesus seems to be saying, and all else will follow.

 

The Gospel theme this week is:  Get the heart right and all else falls into place.  Religion, and above all judgment made in the name of religion, must process from conversion of heart.

To repeat myself, God gives first, loves first, loves us unconditionally, and loves us whether we deserve it or not.

May the spiritual disciplines of Lent lead us to an image of God who loves us unconditionally.  This is the conversion we seek.

What is our response to this God?  We gather in the Eucharistic celebration to give thanks to the Lord our God.  Because of God’s extravagant love for us, we are grateful, and we seek to share that love with one another.

Plain and simple, the conversion we seek must come from the inside.  We need to be aware of our inner life, our interior if we are to live out the Gospel demands in our outer life.  Jesus in the Gospel proclaimed that a tree cannot bear good fruit unless the core of the trunk is solid.  “A good tree does not bear rotten fruit, nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.  For every three is known by its own fruit.”  So too, a good person out of the store of the goodness in his heart produces good fruit, for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.

May our conversation come from the language of our heart – a heart that has experienced the merciful love of Jesus.  For us to be a Church of mercy, we need to know that our God calls us beyond our faults to be immersed in the mystery of His love for us.  May the conversion we experience at St. Joseph’s Church lead us to be a Church of mercy, a Church of welcome.

May God lead us to know His merciful love, and may we share this love with one and all.

In loving our enemies, we can imitate the example of God.

 

 

Seventh Sunday in OT   C   2022

 

Last Sunday’s Gospel of the Beatitudes and this Sunday’s Gospel give us a radical profile in Kingdom Living – living by the Gospel values of the Kingdom of God.  Listen to the words of the Gospel:  “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.”

These Gospel injunctions go way over the top of reasonable expectations.  Jesus is saying:  Do to others as you would have them do to you and continue to do so to them no matter what they do to you.

This teaching may thin the crowd of Jesus’ followers.  It is a suggestion that goes directly against common sense.  Love your enemies…Give to everyone who asks of you…Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

This shocking advice is not social naiveté.  It is theological courage of a high order.  Jesus has opted for the attitude of unconditional love rather than the attitude of reprisal and revenge.  Jesus calls us to move beyond the human logic of reciprocity to the divine logic of superabundance.  We are invited to be immersed in the grace of God.

We are the disciples of Jesus who are called to Kingdom living following the values of the Gospel.  There are times for us as disciples of Jesus that following the law is just not enough.  Rather, we are to live immersed in the mystery of God’s love.

Example for us comes from with the law that makes it legal to have an abortion right to the moment of giving birth.  Quite bluntly, tragic law does not alter the sacredness of life.  This teaching of the Church is clear and unmistakable.

This tragic legislation does not change what Jesus Himself has taught:  All life is sacred.   When life is threatened in any way, whether by abortion, racism, violence, drug addiction or poverty, Catholics are called to speak   up and stand with those who are being oppressed.

 

 

 

 

What are we to do?  We the parishioners of the Church of the Holy Spirit must try to change the law but perhaps more importantly change the culture in which we live.  We do that by living lives that demonstrates our genuine respect for life through prayer, through supporting the agencies that support pregnant women with alternatives to abortion, and making our pro-life convictions known to our legislators.

No matter what laws are passed, we are to live our lives with Kingdom living, with Gospel living, with affirming that all life is sacred.  We need to begin with ourselves and with our families and with our parish family and affirm the dignity of all life as a precious gift of God. The conversion we seek must begin with ourselves.

Coming back to our Gospel, Jesus says:  Forgive and you will be forgiven.  Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing will be poured into your lap.  For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.”

For the measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.  What does this mean?  Jesus is saying to us:  “Stop the crazy, endless slaughter of human life by stopping it in yourself.”

The conversion we seek must begin with ourselves.  As we seek to change the culture of death and abortion in society, we must root out within ourselves all that does not value the dignity of our own life, the dignity of the lives of those around us, and the dignity of all life.  May we value the precious, precious gift of pregnancy.  May we be supportive to the young families of our parish community.  May we value the life of each and every parishioner no matter how old or how young they are.

 And as we seek to have zero tolerance for the horrific sin and crime of sexual abuse, may we value the sacredness and dignity of our own sexuality and the precious gift of sexuality with all people.  With God’s grace, may we seek to rid ourselves of the temptation to pornography, the temptation to exploit the sexuality of anyone.

 

The gospel imperative is that we are to begin with ourselves and to be witnesses of the mystery of God’s love in the way we live our lives.  The voting booth is important and a beautiful exercise of our citizenship, but as the disciples of Jesus we are called to witness to a culture of love and life by the way we live our lives from day to day, from moment to moment.

What determines our response to a laws that support abortion?    What is our response to the Gospel demand that are to love our enemies, that we are to do good to those who hate us?  It is our inner relationship to our loving God that determines our response to whatever is happening.  In other words, circumstances do not control us.  We are to embody the love of God that is within us

We ask for the grace to be freed from compulsive judgmental  reaction in the face of conflict.  We are free to embody the loved and loving identity that is our core.  “Loving enemies, blessing those who curse you, praying for those who persecute you, lending to those who cannot repay” are general imperatives for proactive, graceful living.

Now Jesus is challenging us to take God as our frame of reference and our criterion for action.  He is asking us to look at life not from our narrow human perspective but rather from God’s own perspective.  God is kind and merciful to both the righteous and the wicked.  And so in loving our enemies we can imitate the example of God.

Our identity as the disciples of Jesus is to witness to the command of Jesus:  “By this all shall know that you are my disciples in your love for one another.”