-There was no homily last Sunday cause I was on vacation😀
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at USCCB.org
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 8:00am and 6:00pm
Free to See(d)
I am most attracted to St. Paul's letter to the Romans in which he speaks of the gift of faith which is liberation from slavery and freedom of the children of God. This liberation or this freedom, this believing is what empowers and enables St. Paul to see "I consider all the sufferings of the present age to be as nothing."
What I like about that is that faith, believing in the love that God has for us does not cause us to deny the difficult and painful realities of life. Rather, faith is the freedom to see through those sufferings or better to see those sufferings as what they truly are, "nothing".
Faith like St. Paul's enables us to transform reality. Faith empowers the believer to change or morph the difficulties of the present age into an experience of transformation in the light of the age to come. Someone has said to me that, by faith every moment, person, situation, or incident in my daily life has become either "lover" or "teacher". What that says to me is that a believer, by faith, can "see" every feature of daily life as either the consoling presence of the love of God or a helpful or growthful opening of ones eyes to better see the love of God present.
This teaching connects St. Paul to the Gospel text for this weekend, inasmuch as the presence and love of God (which is the reality of life) grows only in the "healthy soil" of a life built on faith. Where there is no faith, the power and the love of God cannot enter into the human heart. Are we creating in our selves, our spouse, our children, our parish the culture of faith, an environment that is "susceptible" to God's Word, the love and presence of God can produce 100-fold?
2 comments:
I agree and like the comment on the attractiveness of St. Paul's writing. He speaks of suffering as not something to avoid, or something not normal in life - but rather admits that it is simply part of this life and can even feed our eager expectation of what is to come. His writing speaks to that frustrating need for fulfillment that we all have - and reminds us that one day fulfillment will be! Perhaps it is even a direct result of those sufferings, those "teachers" in our lives, that we can make some of the greatest progress in cultivating our "soil" - so that we can best respond to God's Word in our lives.
I like Fr.'s homily foundation so much. "I consider all the sufferings of the present age to be as nothing." Oh, so true! And the balancing to the passage… "compared with the glory to be revealed for us. "
Like Fr. says, the transformation. The Grace given to see the 'real'(ity) - life in Christ. The sufferings are the labor pains giving birth to that new life. The sufferings just simply don't compare, they really are nothing to what is revealed, this growth in life in Christ.
I say, don’t wait for it - seek! In heart of hearts, it IS in the seeking one will find.
GOD is everywhere. HIS purpose, not the one's. We don't have to understand, we have to trust.
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