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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, November 16, 2012

November 18 Homily Prep

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

Passing Away

I can't help but retell the story of a couple of weeks ago about my attending the wake of a deceased parishioner. I found a four-year-old great-grandchild of the deceased sitting alone next to a laptop computer staring at a video of his deceased great-grandmother...they called her "Mutti".

With my most compassionate intentional smile and showing concern I said to the little boy "is that your "Mutti"?" He answered "yes". I said, "I am sorry that she passed away." He looked up from the video and turned to me puzzled and said "oh, she didn't pass away, she died."

That little boy was 100% right. no sugar-coating his reality. She died. We use the expression "pass away" to say "die". Jesus uses it to communicate the very nature of things...those permanent and those transitional, if you know what I mean.

Jesus says that everything is "passing away" except, of course, his Word will never pass away. It seems that faith may be this clarity of vision: the ability to see, know and understand what is "passing away"(transitional) and what is enduring forever(real).

I am interested as to what in my life and in your life are we called to see clearly as "passing away"? If you are like me I often get my heart set on the transitional or on the unreal and I see it as reality, not passing away. I need, like that little four-year-old, to get real and see things as God sees them. The ones that are made to "pass away" and those that are intended to endure.

And, what could be the providential and graceful purpose of this "passing away"? What is the good of it except to "make way" for God's real life and reality now?