Gospel, Homily and Coffee

My niece and her husband are first time parents.  And like many first time parents, they post and send a lot of photos, though they are not as “exuberant” as some. So little William is around 8 weeks old, probably one of the cutest baby ever along with his 3 year old cousin but I may be slightly biased.  He is developing right along, hitting all his milestones. The big excitement will be when the walking starts. Over past 3 weeks and this week, we have been within the great teaching of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount.   The first part of this teaching was the beatitudes; those beautiful, tweetable, incredibly powerful statements that talk of a God the Father who is there for us; so that we will give our Trust to the Father. Then we heard about being the salt of the earth, the light of the world, another teaching about the heights of humanity we can achieve with God. Then the last week and this week we got into the law; and although it sounds a bit harsh ...

I just want to be clear here...it is great to "Think" on Jesus.  We have to!  However, the ego tends to creep in, and so we have to make sure that how "I" think of Jesus does not become the ONLY way of thinking of Jesus, and that "I" am right and "you" are wrong. This applies across the board...I have experienced people who have made Jesus so sweet, that he is rendered powerless to instill change.  I have experienced people who have made Jesus so strict, that is  loses all compassion. This applies to almost anything we humans do.  Salvation is to be free of the tyranny of our ego, so that we can be open to love; God's love and love of others.