15th Sunday Homily: Charged with Meaning!

There was this young girl who once wanted to achieve great things in the world. She wanted to travel. She wanted to be a missionary. She wanted to help as many people as possible. She had the driving force and the ego to accomplish this. Yet, to her frustration, she was kept away from this. Eventually she began to see her purpose was not through great and grand ways, but in the quiet little ways that she experienced life. In those gentle acts of patience and humility. Unfortunately she died at an early age due to tuberculosis, but Therese, Saint Therese, became the Little Flower.

Think of the people who made the most impact on you as a person. What did they really do? Our maternal grandfather was the most loving of persons. He and my grandmother never had a lot of money. They lived very simply. Yet, he handmade toys for us including homemade bamboo fishing poles. He gave us something so precious, his time and attention; an experience of simply being children. He sat with us and told us stories that he made up. He helped us fish. He worked hard; first as a coal miner which ended up hurting his lungs, that and the Prince Albert tobacco he smoked his life; factory worker and eventually school bus driver. He raised well our mother and her brother.

A lot of our literature, movies and such focus on purpose and people trying to find their purpose in life; and thus find themselves. The Star Wars franchise has this; think about Rey’s journey to discover her purpose and identity. I saw “Black Widow” on Friday; Natasha was another who worked to find her purpose. Other characters did not always have such happy endings; Ahab maybe, Dr. Frankenstein…

All of us have an inherent drive or even a desire to know our purpose and we equate that with being true to ourselves. This is our humanity.

A frustrating part of life, of adulthood; we work hard at our jobs, parents work hard at being parents, we work hard at trying to do good, and it can seem for nothing; we study, we practice, we give so much effort, and for what?  We can encounter apathy, hypocrisy, cynicism, and at times outright resistance and violence. Why bother?

I think there are people who have given up with life. So they just live it for themselves, they don’t give a care about the needs and wants of others and they live selfishly; and/or they withdraw from others, they enter into a dark place.

What do we believe as Christians, as Catholics?  There is purpose, there is meaning; to life, the universe and everything in it.  We have meaning.

Belief in God, however we can try to attempt to define God, calls us to believe in a guiding purpose, beyond us.  Belief in God keeps us looking beyond the immediate, even the mere visible; to see beyond, to believe in an invisible reality; to have hope.

We are here at Mass, in Church, because at least on some level, we believe in God and we want to know our purpose, we want to know ourselves.  God created all for purpose and God created us for purpose.

Jesus calls us to this purpose as he lived it. He sent out the Disciples to live for purpose; to do the work of God towards that purpose. Those specific commands were to keep those disciples focussed on God’s purpose, not their own. It would keep them humble.

That purpose, to show that there is meaning, and that all there is a better way of life; that God cares and heals, God provides life.

Easy, right?  Even Jesus had his bad days. The Gospels will express Jesus’ own frustration with his disciples, and with the people. We even heard last week Jesus’ amazement at the lack of faith in his own kinsmen.

If the Son of God can have bad days, so can we. Of course, there is the whole arrest, betrayal, cross and death day too, a reallly bad day. Yet, Jesus rose above it; literally and figuratively.

Jesus never let that discouragement stop him. He remembered in his heart, soul, body and mind his purpose, God’s purpose.  His followers took that up. That second reading probably derived from an early hymn from our early Christian ancestors. Paul took it up and gave us this beautiful theology, of God’s desire for us to participate in the universe, to help build heaven here on earth.

So we are all called! Not because we are baptized as Catholics, not because we call ourselves Christians, but because we are humans. We are the children of God. Our Catholicity is about us honoring that calling; about growing in it, and then living it intentionally, with purpose.

That calling comes in such a myriad of ways; mostly nothing spectacular. Amos was not a “professional” prophet, rather he was a farmer, and he felt the call to go to the Northern Kingdoms and preach God’s word. He did so, went back home, and we know very little afterwards.

Everything we can do can be charged with purpose. The Little Flower got this. It was not always the big things, but it is those little day in and day out activities. We can infuse it with prayer and open ourselves to the purpose.  Small actions can be healing. The simple smile we can give to someone.  That moment of patience as we wait for our children to tell us about their day. Washing dishes, folding laundry, answering emails, sitting in backyards and watching Black Widow with people.

People desire to find purpose, and this includes our younger folk. They learn from watching us. Their own desires mimic ours. If we as adults can find purpose in our lives and show that purpose, children learn from it. I wonder if our kids are cranky and moody, not just because they are teenagers, but also because they see that in us adults. They see us wandering through life, aimless, cynical...and that is what they learn.

One of the amazing aspects of our Catholic Faith is that the Real Presence of Christ comes to us in the form of simple bread and wine, in a setting that mimics a meal.  It calls us to the power that exists within the simple; within the elegant, within us.  Eucharist signifies the power of the ordinary in which God becomes present; the ordinary aspects of love, sharing, working for the good of others.  A good antidote to those days of frustration, of emptiness, when we question why does this even matter?  It will, if can, when we open ourselves to the mystery of God that is present; have faith and have hope.

It can change everything.