22nd Sunday Homily Cluttered up Hearts?

Clutter.

How many of us have cluttered homes, offices, desks, rooms?

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Cluttered Lives?

Personally, I do not like clutter.  It makes me feel closed in. It makes me feel chaotic, uneasy.  When I am cluttered, it usually means I am overwhelmed.

Think about some of the reality shows about the excess of clutter..the hoarders.  And we as Americans, we need storage sheds, storage places, storage, storage and more storage.  We tend to have too much stuff. We are cluttered.

Go look into the back sacristy!

All that clutter can make it difficult to move about and to actually find things.

Now, we cannot only have too much stuff that clutters our homes, churches and offices, but...we can clutter up our minds, our our hearts as well.

Cluttered with so many thoughts, so many emotions, so much pressure.

Which also means it is hard to get around too, in life.

It gets hard to live fully, as Jesus and God desires of us.

It can get difficult to find the meaning.

Think of marriage and family life.

When a woman and man get married there is a part of the ceremony that says:  “What God has joined, let no [one] split asunder.”

This means that nothing is to distract the couple from their bond; no other person, including children, nor friends, nor other family, nor any thing we clutter up our lives.

But, spouses can fill their lives with so many things, activities, distractions, especially children and their lives.  There is also work and many other obligations. Husbands and wives can get so wrapped up in this clutter, they forget that their relationship is to take priority.   So the marriage suffers.

I know of one couple who shared that when their kids got to a certain age, that after 8pm, give or take, the parents would go into their bedroom, shut the door and simply spend time with each other.  Rebuilding intimacy through talking and listening to each other. The children knew, unless there was an emergency, to NOT bother them.

People too I think clutter up our faith lives.  We add so much stuff to it, we worry about stuff that really at its heart, is not essential:  It’s not a matter of salvation. We can forget the core of our faith.

Once, a LONG time ago, prior to being a seminarian, I was invited to participate in a rosary group.  So I was went. They started the prayer, they finished a decade, and then there were alllllllllllll these additional prayers about the fires of hell, angels, devil, blah blah blah, that I had never heard of.  When it came time for me to lead a decade, I had no clue. The looks of horror on their faces! I never returned.

I have heard people complain about masses where the Priest was not in the “Correct” position; where lectors and lay persons did not bow enough, etc.  I know certain priests who will obsess about certain items. The altar physically gets cluttered with cloths, palls, patens….bleh! As we can all get cluttered up in our egos, our desire for "power" and "Authority" both lay and clergy.

So people will move about looking for the “orthodox” parish.  Priests will get tyrannical in their approach.

We can clutter up the faith.

Jesus too had to confront the clutter.  Here he is in the gospel being criticized because he and the disciples did not do the proper ablutions a according to the law.

Jesus critiques them in turn.  These religious leaders have forgotten the point of this all.  They have forgotten the Spirit of the law: that is is about God’s love; God’s love for us.

At the heart of our faith, and all that we do as Catholics, it is that we come to know, grow and experience more and more God’s love, and let it free us to be alive.

What is essential is to experience that God the Father sees our goodness, knows of our inherent Goodness, and wants that Goodness to come through.

God’s love is the core of our being.

There is nothing we can do to ever lose that love.

All that we do as Catholics is but a means to that experience.

All that we do focuses in on Jesus, because he is the way in which we come to know and experience, the breadth, height, the immensity of Divine Love.

The prayers, the movements, the spirituality all serve that purpose.

However, we must be careful that we don’t clutter up our lives by making them means, our ends.

We can’t clutter up our hearts thinking that we must do these things to earn God’s love, and if imperfect then we annoy God.

We don’t so get our lives cluttered in the anxiety of trying to prove ourselves to God, and to others.

We also must not clutter our lives with fears and anger; and there is so much of that these days.

I was reading a post on facebook from a Catholic, and it was just simply ugly, almost evil, the vile comments this person was making about others, all based on fear.  And this person has that habit of sending out those messages of Jesus’ love through messenger. It is hypocritical.

All that stuff, all that unresolved fear, anger, sadness can distract us, delude us from what is truly important. It clutters up our mind and hearts.

It keeps us from experiencing more and more God’s love.

God loves us so that we can have life in the full, in this world and in the next.

God’s love is expressed in marriages, friendships;  it is in the moments of compassion for others, generosity for others, mercy, forgiveness.

God’s love shown in the self-giving, the sacrifices we will make for the good of others; exemplified in our Eucharist.

I think if we are really unhappy in our lives, whether it is our relationship with other humans, or with God, maybe we need to look at ourselves.

Are we too concerned with the cleaning of the cups on the outside, and the real cleaning is within;

We have gotten too cluttered?