17th Sunday Homily - Our faith, dig into it!

We have been reading and hearing parables in our Gospels for the past several weeks.
These are great teaching tools of Jesus for us.
I think our tendency, and a good one, is to interpret the parable itself:  what is the teaching about the kingdom of God.
For example this week’s short but intense parables there are four take aways (not my own, but I am using a source)
First, the Value of the Kingdom is not apparent to the untrained eye.
Second, the Kingdom requires searching out.
Third, acquiring the Kingdom requires certain audacity
Fourth, present sacrifices express hope in a future joy.
These are great take aways, but there is one question that remains, and I think this is maybe the more important question.  
Why?
Why does Jesus teach in parables, and why does Jesus teach these particular parables?
Jesus says in John’s Gospel the he came so that we may have lIfe, and have life completely.
Jesus’ salvation is the freedom to choose to love and to be loved.
Jesus salvation is the freedom to experience the reality of God’s love, in the here and now, and for all of eternity.
This is the Good News.  This is the Kingdom of God.
Life, Salvation, God’s love, these are all the same, said different ways.
They are all gifts from and of God.
They are also, as the church says, mysteries.  
Life, Salvation, God’s love are superficial.  They have deep deep meaning.
Jesus wants us to go deep into these mysteries.  Because by entering into the mysteries we find the joy, we find the freedom and experience the freedom.
So by teaching us through and in parables, and specifically these 4 short little lessons, Jesus is training us.
Jesus wants us to go deep, to search out and explore, wrestle with the meanings.    This is the why.
Jesus trains us to think about and enter into the mystery of faith.
It’s like seeing a dark chocolate cake.  
We can see it on display.  And we can imagine it’s deliciousness.   
But if we only look, we can’t really enjoy the reality of that cake.
When we bite into it, and we get the interplay of bitter chocolate against the sweetness of the sugar, the texture of the crunchy, softness, and creaminess; the whole experience changes!  Then throw in a good red wine…!!!!
It’s the same with faith, with God, with Jesus.
Jesus, God, our Catholic faith, are so elegant, so powerful, so deep.  We need to  bite into it, and eat it, and take our time.  This is what Jesus invites us to do.
I think our biggest problem in our church is NOT secularity, nor anything external.  
It’s internal.  It is that we have settled for looking at our faith and we have not eaten it.  We have settled for being superficial.
We think externally doing the faith is sufficient.
Baptism is just an event in which water is poured over a child, and we believe God’s grace comes into the child; and therefore the child will get into heaven.  
Communion becomes the body and blood of Christ that we get and then we go out.
Yet, there is so much more.
People are hungry for depth, for meaning.  Young people truly search out for relevance, wisdom and meaning, to make sense of the world and their lives.
They are not finding it in our parishes that much, and so they leave.
Older Catholics come to me and they feel like their faith is dead.  I probe them a bit, and mostly people have done nothing with their faith.  They don’t ask questions of it, and of themselves.  They have remained on the superficial level.
They don’t seek out God’s love in a deeper way, nor seek to understand Jesus and the whole paschal mystery.
And sad to say, we priests don’t always do it either, nor do we always promote it.
Yet, for those who do, they find richness.  They find a wealth of wisdom, of strength, a wealth of beauty.
It brings them to a deeper level of life, so that when the challenges of life occur, they are not overwhelmed by the chaos.  They rise above it.
They find in midst of hurt and anger; the capacity to forgive.
In the midst of sadness, the capacity to hope.
When life is scary; they find love.
Salvation!
When we are willing to dig in and eat of the mystery.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

19th Sunday. With just a little faith...

Image
Parents, you are amazing. Each day you wake up and walk into the chaos of life with those special little somethings. Each day you walk into life and make choices, with little preparation, with those kids that are inherently bipolar: angels in one moment, in another, even Satan would be scared of them. Again, there is little prep; there is no easy app for parenting. I will repeat again, I do not mind noisy kids in mass; noisy adults I do, you all know better, but kids…please bring them and have them here. Parents thank you for bringing them and for having the courage and faith to be parents. Recently a friend asked me about depression. He asked me to describe what it is like. I could only give my experience: it is like a fog. It is being so overwhelmed by everything and feeling everything, and lacking the ability to take a step forward, to make a choice. There is no movement, only stagnation. It takes a lot of energy to be able to make a choice, to take a step. Earlier this week I w
Read more

22nd Sunday Following the Messiah

Image
My first car was a 1977 chevy nova, v-6, two doors; under the hood there was so much space. I got it the summer before my sophomore year in college, so I was 18-19. I wanted to change the oil so my dad told me how to do it. He said when I change the filter, hand tighten first, then give a small turn with the wrench, do not overtighten it. Me, being a college man, and knowing everything, gave it a good strong turn and thought well done. Several months later, it was time to change the filter again. I could not get it off. I tried and tried. My dad noticed and came to help. He told me that I had cranked it hard the last time didn’t I. Yup, with a degree of shame. He worked to get that thing off. My Uncle who lived nearby saw the commotion, He came and helped. It took them a long time, and what they did was eventually pound through the tire jack, and twisted it off that way. I learned my lesson; I felt a lot of shame on that one. Being able to hold in tension or conflicting ideals signifie
Read more

2nd Advent - Finding our way in God's Love

Image
Many years ago a friend living in Texas came up to visit me in Fernley. This friend had been born and raised in the city. Anyway, I had asked him what he would like to do and he wanted to go geocaching. Okay, I thought it is March in Northern Nevada, fun! But we went, found a cache located near Lahontan Reservoir, and so we drove out there. I parked the car near the cache and the gps device told us the cache was about 500 feet away. I looked around and had a sense of where it would be, on this hillside. My friend became worried: worried that we would get lost. I said not a problem. What if we lose sight of the car? I looked around, it was Nevada sage, no tree for miles; and again we were only going 500 feet up a hill. I said we will be fine, we will never lose sight of the car and we won’t get lost. We didn’t. I have been lost in the wilderness once. It was scary. I was in Northern New Mexico, in a thick forest and it was an overcast day. I was by myself, and nobody knew where I was, a
Read more