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Get into the ring! How this works...

This is easy! Each week on Thursday I post my homily idea...my main focus for preaching this coming Sunday. What I am hoping for is a reaction from people in the pews. Does my "focus" connect with your daily life, faith, and experience? Or not? Either affirm the direction I am going in (by giving me an example from your life) or challenge me, ask for clarification! Questions are the best! Reaction rather than reflection is what I'm looking for here. Don't be afraid, get in the ring. Ole!



Friday, August 17, 2012

Bread of Life - August 19 Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-YThis Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 5:30, 8:00am, and 11:00am.

Thriller and Sr. Helen Prejean!

Do you remember that first full-length TV music video entitled thriller? It was Michael Jackson's title song from his album in which a bunch of zombies, the living or walking dead, come to life and dance to Michael's music. I am recalling it because the bread of life discourse brings us to the question of, although we are walking (or even dancing) around, "are we really alive?" Our ancestors, Jesus says, "ate the bread from heaven but died nonetheless". We are offered and have eaten the living bread from heaven-but have we come to life?

Are we truly alive in Christ Jesus? This question of life in Christ, living, is the challenge of this fourth homily in a series on the bread of life. Is it not possible that we who have been baptized and have fed upon the living bread come down from heaven are nonetheless not alive? It is deceiving, because we seem to be alive as the Jews in the desert - we are surviving. To what extent is what we call our daily life surviving or truly living? How much of my daily existence is alive?

Is it not true that through sin death entered the world? Our ancestors were cast out of the garden, experiencing death, but they were still living in the world. They were challenged to work by the sweat of their brow and the labor of their childbirth. This death that entered the world was not human dying, meaning the cessation of respiration only, this death was separation from God and life lived for self. Dead men walking!

The life that Jesus offers us in himself is communion with the living father and a life that is given away(even when our hearts stop beating). We become "life livers" inasmuch as we are "life givers". So that is the litmus test - I am alive in as much as I am giving life to others. Living for self is a zombie experience, the walking dead.

Are you alive? Are you giving life? Have you eaten of the living bread? Are you a walking dead man? "It is no longer I who live, but Christ living within me!"