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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, January 9, 2015

Jan 11 Homily Prep -Bapt of the Lord

-Last Sunday's homily is available By email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at Sunday readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at LinC Letter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 4:00 Sat, 9:30am and 6:00pm Sunday

Bluetooth Discoverability to Network Connectivity

Our God, through the Incarnation, has become discoverable to the Bluetooth ( longing for love and happiness) of all human beings - all nations.  That was last week's Christmas message.  This fifth and final feast of this great season of Incarnation, the Baptism of the Lord, is aptly described as the introduction to the network of Salvation - connectivity in the cyber world, incorporation into Christ in the Christian gospel.

Rather than God being made visible to human hearts, we see now that human hearts make God visible. Every human heart is called to be incorporated through Baptism into the mission of God-made-flesh, Emmanuel!  This is the flip side of sacramental thinking.

In sacramental thinking grace and faith make "the invisible visible". So that our God can be touched, seen, held, heard.  The grace of Baptism and the mystical Body of Christ is that we are transformed from the "material appearance of our lives into the divine face of God".  Each individual, isolated, separated human life is incorporated as one into the divine presence of the whole Body of Christ.

Incorporation into Christ through baptism helps us to know our identity (as members united in the network) and our mission (as access points/doorways of salvation in the world).

These words were spoken by Card. Greh before conclave that elected Pope Frnacis. "Let us listen to Augustine: "The apostles saw Christ and believed in the Church that they did not see; we see the Church and must believe in Christ whom we do not see. Adhering firmly to what we see, we will come to see him whom we do not now see. "

In Christ Alone, as members of one Body, as agents and instruments of the Kingdom, as human faces of divine Communion - we are the Church.

Woohoo!  Are you in?

4 comments:

Called and Counted said...

I think this is a clever description of the effect of the sacrament of baptism - that it is the flip side of sacramental thinking. And I think the description of "the flip" - from making the invisible visible to being transformed into the divine face of God - is intriguing. The depiction of separated and isolated human lives being incorporated into the divine presence of the whole Body of Christ helps me to appreciate the accomplishment of our parish life. We certainly see that at St. Albert the Great. When we leave our individual homes and join together to feed the hungry or rake leaves for the homebound - or when we enter the doors of the church and join ourselves as a stream of living water flowing as one body to receive the holy sacrament of communion - we see the evidence of what the sacrament of baptism creates: one divine family. Count me in!

JoyFuralle said...

I'm in, but being only minimally into the cyber world, I didn't understand this in the first read. I'm tired, it's late, maybe that's part of the problem, had a hard time even with the second read. I understood better when I read C&C's comment above ...

The Matador said...

Great feedback. I'll consider it gracefully.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful Father.

Though connectivity in the cyber world (the Divine of God)"human hearts make God visible". This is so wonderfully, divinely said. Our cooperation in this union, can bring another heart, with itself, into a deeper communion with God; a deeper sense of Him.