-Last Sunday's homily is available by email request
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org/readings
-check out this weeks LinC letter at www.parishLinCLetter.blogspot.com
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at 8:00am on Sunday
Are we interested in the powerful and real God that Jesus offers us? Or, only in the miraculous and powerful works Jesus does for us?
I will confess, even as a very young child, to being very interested in and attacted to the TV evangelist Ernest Angely, or for that matter Benny Hine, and even Oral Roberts. What attracted me most were the miraculous healing services. I loved it. I'm not sure I believed any of it - but I loved watching these miracle services. I was certainly interested in their typical by-line "Gaaaawd has a miracooool for YOUUUUU!"
Ernest Angely was the best, though, as he withdrew his hand from the afflicted spot on each person's body he'd say "in the name of JEEEEEzus"...I loved it.
People flock in the thousands to such miraculous healers - as to Jesus in the gospel text today. What we have discovered however and we will hear explicitly from Jesus in next Sunday's gospel - Jesus did not come to miraculously heal the sick and raise the dead. Jesus came, rather, to reveal and extend the perpetually present and life-saving love of God. Jesus came to heal and cure the affliction called "death" so that earthly dying would no longer command us - but instead eternal life might begin in us today.
Wow. Jesuit Father John Foley writes
"Jesus moves toward the events that will show God’s solidarity with us in our suffering, our rejections, and in that famous event which each and every one of us will face sooner or later: dying. Beyond cures, which are wonderful yet partial, God gives us companionship within each instant of our life.
This Sunday at Mass, let us ask ourselves whether the intimate presence of God is part of what we desire in our own lives. Do we know that Christ is deeply involved with us? Do we let his love flow into us and through us to others, or must it fight its way around us?"
