25th Sunday Homily creates life, and it starts with us.
Powerful readings, all three, for this weekend.
And I bet most of us, upon reading them and hearing them, thought “Yup--this is the problem with the Church today! Those Cardinals and bishops and priests.” Or “Yup, that is the problem with the government these days! Those presidents and politicians!”With their egos and ambitions, their desire for control and power!
And I think we would be correct in that assessment.
And, that can be dangerous.
Where are we in this? It is easy to point fingers, but our faith is personal.
We love armchair quarterbacking, or monday morning quarterbacking as they can call it.
That attitude that “If I had been calling the plays, we would have won. I know better than the coach” We do this quite often, with many things: Sports, Politics, Church, Fashion, Movies...
This is not a male personality trait either. Women, men we all do this in varied ways.
We look at others, we judge and we indict. Yet, how about ourselves?
And what really changes?
Jesus came so that together, we can help create a world in which suffering is reduced because we live with justice, with mercy and compassion, with love.
This is the kingdom of Heaven. This is the Good News.
What our scripture reveals is that what thwarts the Kingdom is our own egocentric behavior.
This attitude of me, me, me. I am right. I want it my way. My needs, my rights take precedence over anyone else. My body, my guns, my money, my status
Our egos causes the wars and divisions among us.
It kills the unborn and the elderly, our migrants and innocents.
Our egos leads to abuses of power, it leads to corruption, it leads to scandal, terrible scandal.
Our egos lead to horrible suffering inflicted on so many, too many people.
One of the great awarenesses we need to have is that we control very little in this world. We only control ourselves, and even that is not huge.
I cannot control any Pope, President, Cardinal, Senator, Mayor, or parishioner...and I am fairly sure that none of us here can either.
So when we hear in our scripture the need for humility to counteract the power of the ego.
When we read of the need to change our approach towards power…
...Yes we can judge it to those who lead, at some distance,
But…We must also look within our own lives.
One of the most important phases of maturity is adolescence, those teen years.
Those years can be full of conflict, because this is when our teens begin to explore more of their identity, and they assert that ego.
This conflicts at times with the egos of parents and the needs of the family.
Cultures in the past used to make rituals for teens that would serve to build up humility, to diminish that ego. This actually is an important aspect these days of rules and regulations. It serves, not just with teens but all of us. We need to remember that none of are supreme leaders in this world, and just because we want something doesn’t mean we get it.
Humble people truly know this.
humble people are more open to love.
Humble people find more serenity and joy in life.
Are we grumpy, angry, complaining all the time? burned out? bitter?
Are we lonely and Isolated from others?
Do we look at others and see them taking out stuff, threatening our income, our way of life?
Is our life only funny at the expense of others, with our crass jokes, our sexist jokes, our racist jokes??
And we wonder why our world is a mess.
Jesus gives us the path to making this a better world
It is humility, it is love.
It is seeing beyond “my” own wants, needs and desires, and see others.
It is being aware that I can only control myself, and working on that.
It is being a person who wants to truly forgive.
It is being a person who acknowledges our own mistakes, and seeks forgiveness.
It is being committed to giving of ourselves for the good of others.
It is being committed to working with others, for the good of all.
It is being a Eucharistic people.
Changing our lives and world does not start nor rest in Rome or Washington DC
It starts much, much closer to home.
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