My homily for 5th Sunday of Easter - God is here; look!

The search for God, it is so ancient.  It is a part of our humanity.
We long to be connected to the divine.  We long for meaning, for wisdom; we seek to make sense of our lives and our place in the world.
The brilliant part of this is that God, ironically, is easy to find.
God wants to be found!
God comes to us and says “Hello; Hola, Ahoj, Kamusta, Ciao, chào bạn”
The problem we remain deaf to those words, blind to his presence, because we imagine God to narrowly.
We either imagine God only sitting on a Throne full of might and power; or God sitting in judgement over all looking for the slightest mistake; or a God who simply does not care what we do, but loves us all the same.
Therefore we lose out on life.  We lose out on the mystery, the beauty, the power of being alive.
Christ confronts this with his disciples.  They are stuck in their own narrow vision of how God “should” be.  They have created God in their own image.
Jesus confronts us.
Notice his way with the disciples, he says to them “look at how I am living, what I am doing..this is who God is, this is where God is.”
Jesus, when he forgave the sinners, when he healed those who were sick; when he would not condemn people; when he called for people to repent; when he died on the cross, He revealed the fullness of God.  
He revealed the presence of God
IF we want to find God…
God is present in the gang neighborhoods of Los Angeles, with Fr., Greg Boyle, who has shown so many kindness, compassion and mercy, and helped them to escape lives of violence, hopelessness.
God is where Saint Mother Teresa of Calcutta ministered and her community continues to minister to the very poor and dying.
Go into any home where a wife and husband talk together and make plans, compromising their own desires for the good of the whole.  God is there.
Go to wherever two people angry at each other, and they forgive each other.  God is there.
Go into a nursing home or hospital where a person is dying, and the family stays with the person; giving of their time and resources to care for them and show them the respect they are due.  God is there.
Look as we take up collections and people give of their income in a truly sacrificial way, so that the mission of the church may go forward.  God is there.
Give attention to the Eucharist, as the bread and wine become the very body and blood of Christ, the God who gave of his very life for the salvation of the world.  God is here and is given to us.  So that we can continue the mission of the Church.
Searching for God is as easy as opening our eyes to reality of self-giving, self sacrifice that happens all the time; that which we do and that which is done for us.
Where are we seeing God?

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