Mar 18 Homily Prep

-Last Sunday's homily is available by email
-This Sunday's Scriptures can be found at www.usccb.org
-check out this week's LinC Letter on the back of the parish bulletin or at www.saint-albert.org/lincletter
-I will be celebrating mass this weekend at Visitation of Mary Parish in Akron in preparation for a Lenten Misiion I am Giving there this week.

Obedience (“Ob-audere”) to listen with your life

 We have come to the third and final reflection in our “Church@Home” Lenten journey 2018 and the focus of this week's Reflection is the Letter to the Hebrews and the notion of listening. Called as a community of believers to share faith and life in the church, the body of Christ, we can learn from Jesus our Lord.

The Letter to the Hebrews says that Jesus “learned obedience from what he suffered”.  You will recall that the first week’s reflection upon “Christ crucified“ invited us to consider the role of sacrifice, the voluntary laying down of our lives. The second week we were called to consider the sacrifice of loving one another in the church, the body of Christ, as the primary place/way that we could encounter the love of God.

Taking the risk or making the sacrifice of gathering in a small “Church@Home” group  is the experience of this sacrificial love in the body of Christ. And as we gather in these small groups we access the love of God when we share the faith - listen to one another - that we might hear a word from God.  This type of listening in love and sacrifice within the body of Christ is summed up in the word obedience. In order to listen and hear a word from God it demands that we sacrifice for the sake of others.

Church at home and the process of faith sharing in small groups of church members fulfills this call and this pattern that we have seen in the holy Scriptures. “Church@Home” faith sharing small groups are a concrete experience of communion, which is God’s very presence. It is not easy to join the encounter of “Church@Home” however it is a sacrifice and an entering in

to church by faith that opens us to hear a word from God.