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WHAT'S YOUR INTEREST RATE? | ||
"[Love] does not seek its own interests." �1 Corinthians 13:5, RNAB | ||
St. Paul observed that he had no one like Timothy, for Timothy was genuinely interested in what concerned God's people (Phil 2:20). Other disciples were seeking their own interests instead of Jesus' interests (Phil 2:21). Timothy was a man possessed of great love, because love does not seek its own interests (1 Cor 13:5). That is what happens in a vocation. People with consecrated religious and lay single vocations spend their lives serving God and listening to Him. Such people strive to find out God's interests, serve Him, and carry out His wishes and interests. A married person shows their true love in a similar manner. A loving husband or wife is occupied with pleasing his or her spouse (1 Cor 7:33-34). They discover their spouse's interests and act for their welfare. Thus, the married person works toward finding God's interests by building a civilization of love. We are like banks in which God deposits His treasures. God expects to get a return � with interest (Mt 25:27). This has a double meaning: God wants to get an increased yield from our life. He also wants us to be interested in His interests and work to carry them out. Will this Scripture passage be fulfilled in you today? (see Lk 4:21) Will you seek the interests of God and His people? | ||
Prayer: Father, You are interested in knowing me fully (see Jer 1:5; 1 Cor 13:12). May I love You so deeply that I return the favor. | ||
Promise: "Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." 뾎k 4:21 | ||
Praise: Praise You, risen Jesus! Your ways are high above my ways (Is 55:9). |
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Homily from Father James Gilhooley 4 Ordinary Time |
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time - Cycle C 1 Corinthians 12,31-13:13 Some years ago a popular song told us, "What the world needs now is love, love, love." Perhaps the composer of this song was inspired by St Paul's letter to the Corinthians. At any rate, Paul of Tarsus would totally agree with the main lines of the song. Only one person in the history of the United States has had the good fortune or, if you prefer, the misfortune to be inaugurated four times as President. He was the remarkable Franklin Delano Roosevelt. As his biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin will attest, the man from Hyde Park, New York was not an especially religious person. Yet, he knew his St Paul. At each of his inaugurations, the Roosevelt family Bible was held by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. And each time it was open to today's superb second reading on love. The President was as much impressed by the thirteenth chapter of Paul's letter to the small Christian colony at Corinth in Greece as we are. This chapter has been correctly called a hymn of love. I suppose too we might name it a hymn to love. Many would argue that the thirteenth chapter of first Corinthians is not merely the finest prose in St Paul's letters but also in the entire New Testament. Authors of whatever stripe would consider their oeuvre complete if they could run off such a sublime message on their word processors. The Holy Spirit had full burners working when He inspired Paul of Tarsus on this passage. I recall as a boy listening to the late actor, James Mason, with his marvelous voice recite this chapter from memory. As young as I was, I felt goosepimples moving swiftly around my skin. I can well understand how Beethoven's audience must have felt that night he first conducted his Ninth Symphony. All of us at some time have asked in one form or another, "What is love?" There are of course many answers to the query. The one offered by mystics is the one I find most satisfying. They would say simply that love is a person. His name is Jesus. And, if you want to be an authentic lover, become that Jesus. To paraphrase Nobel Prize laureate Seamus Heaney, He is the "lure let down to tempt the soul to rise." One author further suggest a strategem for our instruction. Wherever Paul mentions the word "love," we should substitute the word "Jesus." Listen! Jesus is always patient and kind. He is never jealous. He is never boastful or conceited. He is never rude or selfish. He does not take offense and is not resentful. He takes no pleasure in other people's sins but delights in the truth. He is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, and to endure whatever comes. The glorious language does fit our Leader well, does it not? But suppose that wherever St Paul mentions love, we substitute our own names. Is there anyone here who thinks the language fits us? If anything, we should grow red in the face - all of us - and hopefully sigh our regrets. Yet, the exercise does tell us the direction we Christ followers should be heading. However, we might better be able to substitute our own names with more confidence if we were to begin to practice what someone has called the Golden Rules for Living. If you open it, close it. If you turn it on, turn it off. If you unlock it, lock it up. If you break it, admit it. If you can't fix it, call in someone who can. If you borrow it, return it. If you value it, take care of it. If you make a mess, clean it up. If you move it, put it back. If it belongs to someone else, get permission to use it. If you don't know how to operate it, leave it alone. If it's none of your business, don't ask questions. Aldous Huxley spent some time as professor of the Humanities at the celebrated Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a world-class intellectual. There he told a friend, "...it's rather embarrassing to have spent one's entire lifetime pondering the human condition and to come toward its close and find that I really don't have anything more profound to pass on by way of advice than, 'Try to be a little kinder.'" St Paul would say, "Amen to that!" |
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Homily from Father Joseph Pellegrino http://www.st.ignatius.net/pastor.html 4 Ordinary Time |
4th Sunday of Ordinary Time: Hometown Prophets Today’s Gospel reading begins with the last verse from last Sunday’s Gospel. Jesus is in his home town synagogue, or what would be the equivalent of a synagogue in the first half of the first century. He reads from Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me....” and then concludes that “these words are fulfilled in your hearing.” The people are at first enthralled by Him. They did not expect this. When it was time for the reading of the scripture and reflection, one of the learned men, usually a scribe, would get up, proclaim the scripture, and then make his comments. But the carpenter’s son? The people had heard that Jesus had performed miracles in other towns and villages, but those could be stories. This acting like He was a learned man was too much for them. And worse still, He pointed the scripture to Himself. They rejected Him because He was too familiar to them. They knew His father, Joseph. They knew His family. They led him to the edge of a cliff intending to throw Him off. So many times great doctors have told me that they can be doctors for all except their brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. Family members seldom listen to them. Many priests, lawyers, and other professionals have the same complaint. It seems that people would rather listen to a stranger than someone they know well. It is really a very human way of acting. We all do this. Instead of seeing the person’s abilities, we see his or her background. A patient may see a skilled physician. A parent sees a child. The same thing can be said regarding the spiritual life. Many times people will not acknowledge the spirituality of someone they are very close to because they still see that person as he or she was before being committed to the Lord. Many of our young people will return from a spiritual experience like the retreat we had in December, or a Steubenville Conference, a leadership conference, etc, and be on fire for the Lord, but be rejected by their parents who still see a Teen who got into serious trouble three months before or who can be nasty on a bad day. And parents might ask, “How is it that this son or daughter I used to threaten to get to go to Church now wants to proclaim Christ?” Or a wife might say, “My husband would only come to Church on Christmas, and now he is reading scripture and talking about God? That doesn’t make sense.” But it does make sense. Jesus even told a parable about this. He called it the Pearl of Great Price. A merchant sold all he had to purchase a treasure. That is what people do when they encounter Jesus Christ. The encounter with Christ leads many to radical changes, including those closest to us. We are all guilty of refusing to acknowledge the growth in spirituality of others we think we know so well. We change for the better and hope that others will recognize this, but we don’t take the time to acknowledge the spirituality of these same people. That is because we are proud. All of us. It takes humility to acknowledge the presence of the Lord in another person. It is also takes courage to declare the truth to someone without considering if this would lead to their rejecting us. Jesus was not afraid to proclaim the truth. It meant rejection from his own neighbors, and almost led to his death off a cliff. But Jesus held onto the truth and through the power of the truth walked right through those who doubted him. We have to have the courage to confront our fear of rejection by our peers. Perhaps we might think, “If I were to say to the people that the type of party they’ve invited me to is wrong and incompatible with my following the Lord, they will laugh at me, or ostracize me, perhaps throw me off the cliff of their social network.” Well, maybe we need to pass through their midst and find other friends. Living the Truth of God is more important than being part of a crowd. And, by the way, there are members of that crowd who will be challenged with the choice of following us and who will follow the Truthful One. I am not good enough to lead others to Christ,” we might say. Yes we are. He makes us good enough. We have to have the humility to acknowledge the power of God in others, and the power of God in ourselves. And we have to recognize that, ultimately, evangelization is not about ourselves, it is about the Kingdom of God. So who was really up there on that cliff, about to be pushed off? Was it Jesus? It seemed that way. But it was the crowd that was rejecting Him that was pushing itself off the cliff. Like lemmings, people fall to their spiritual death, yelling out all the way down, “But everyone is doing it.” There are many times in our lives when we will have to have the courage to stand up and proclaim the truth. There are many times in our lives when we are going to have to hear the truth when it comes from a familiar person, a son, a daughter, a father, a mother, a husband, a wife. The truth leads to the Kingdom of God. The truth will set us free, free to be ourselves. We need to follow the True One away from the cliff. |
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Homily from Father Phil Bloom http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/ * available in Spanish - see Spanish homilies 4 Ordinary Time |
Spiritual Combat (February 3, 2013) Bottom line: Like the boy, Jeremiah, God calls us to spiritual combat Our readings today speak about spiritual combat. Every person faces this battle - the war between good and evil. God tells Jeremiah, "They will fight against you but not prevail against you, for I am with you to deliver you." The ones fighting Jeremiah are short-sighted men, men who had forgotten God. In a deeper sense the ones fighting the prophet are demons, the evil spirits who control men's hearts. We are talking about spiritual combat. Sometimes the work of evil spirits is evident. For example, the people surrounding Israel practiced child sacrifice. Jeremiah and the other prophets opposed the ritual killing of small children - and they warned the Israelites against that horrific practice. We can clearly see the devil's work in the killing of a small child, but the overall situation was not complete evil on one side and complete good on the other. Those who opposed child sacrifice fell into their own sins. King David fought the Philistines - a people notorious for infant sacrifice - but David had his own sins. He committed adultery with Bathsheba and had her husband killed. He thought he had literally gotten away with murder, but God sent the prophet Nathan to call him to account. The prophets remind us that it is not enough to simply oppose a culture of sin. Believe me, the demons work harder on us than they do people already own. David made war against the Philistines, but he didn't take seriously the war going on in his own heart. Today we find ourselves in a situation similar to David. A culture surrounds us that has accepted terrible practices: the killing of tiny babies and pervasive sexual immorality. The evil spirits have waged a long campaign to normalize these practices. After forty years of no legal protection for unborn children and more recently, the normalization of sodomy, it sometimes seems like we are in a hopeless situation. But, you know, just like God called the youth, Jeremiah, so God is calling young men - and young women - today. He says these words: "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I dedicated you...They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you." We are in spiritual combat - a struggle aimed at our young people. We can see the evil spirits at work in our culture of abortion and sodomy - but also in our own hearts. The battlefield is confused. That was the case in Nazareth, as we see in today's Gospel. Jesus had spent 30 years in Nazareth, his home town. It wasn't a small city like Monroe, but a village. Jesus knew everyone and they knew him - or at least they thought they did. On one level the people were good - they spoke highly of Jesus and were amazed at his grace-filled words. But envy entered their hearts. They said, "Isn't this the son of Joseph?" They were wrong. Jesus has no human biological father. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit like we learned earlier in Luke's Gospel. And they were wrong not only about where Jesus came from, but where he was going. They tried to throw him off a cliff. Jesus, however, "passed through the midst of them" and continued his mission. What an example for us! When things go bad, when people criticize we want to throw in the towel. Jesus did not do that. He continued his mission. We are in a spiritual battle. It requires love. As St. Paul insists, love is not soft and sentimental. It is as strong as iron. Love, he says, is patient, it is not puffed up or rude. Love is not self-seeking or quick-tempered. It doesn't rejoice in wrong, but instead bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. In the spiritual battle between good and evil, love is what lasts. Faith, hope and love, says Paul, but the greatest is love. So this Sunday we see that like the boy, Jeremiah, God calls us to spiritual combat. And we hear these words, "They will fight against you, but not prevail over you, for I am with you to deliver you, says the Lord." Amen. |
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Homily from Father Andrew M. Greeley http://www.agreeley.com/homilies.html 4 Ordinary Time |
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Homily from Saint Vincent Archabbey, Latrobe,Pa http://www.saintvincentarchabbey.org/sunday_homily 4 Ordinary Time |
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Homily from Father Cusick http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/lowhome.html Meeting Christ in the Liturgy 4 Ordinary Time |
FOURTH Sunday Jeremiah 1. 4-5, 17-19; Psalm 71. 1-6, 15-17; 1 Corinthians 12:31--13:13; St. Luke 4. 21-30 In the town of Nazareth, where so many knew the Lord well, saw him grow, visited his home, a sin had taken root; familiarity had bred a prideful sense of entitlement. Those who knew the Lord well, "Is not this Joseph's son?" (Lk 4, 22) assumed that he would grant them the signs and miracles of which they had heard so much in other cities and towns. This pride left them receptive to the Lord and his teaching at a merely superficial level, and their pleasure and approval quickly turned to murderous hatred when he reproved them for their sin, "When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and put him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their city was built, that they might throw him down headlong." (Lk 4, 28-29) Their pride, a sin against love, had grown into a monstrous hatred. One can sin against God's love in various ways: hatred of God comes from pride. It is contrary to love of God, whose goodness it denies, and whom it presumes to curse as the one who forbids sins and afflicts punishments. (CCC 2094) In their hatred for Christ, the Nazarenes committed grave sin. In their overweening pride, hatred became a deliberate attack against Jesus, for they intended to kill him. Deliberate hatred is contrary to charity. Hatred of the neighbor is a sin when one deliberately wishes him evil. Hatred of the neighbor is a grave sin when one deliberately desires him grave harm. "But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father in heaven." (Mt 5: 44-45)(CCC 2303) The Lord majestically frees himself from their grasp, "But passing through the midst of them he went away." (Lk 4, 30) Christ is the peacemaker, and our model as bearers of peace. We must pray for peace and, through active charity, extend the gift of peace and forgiveness to all. Some, in pursuing Christian perfection, may even choose to renounce violent resistance and, instead "make use of those means of defense available to the weakest" (CCC 2306) when confronting their enemies. Christ embraced solidarity with the weakest, for he merely fled from his persecutors, rather than summoning his manly or divine strength in his own defense. Those who renounce violence and bloodshed and, in order to safeguard human rights, make use of those means of defense available to the weakest, bear witness to evangelical charity, provided they do so without harming the rights and obligations of other men and societies. They bear legitimate witness to the gravity of the physical and moral risks of recourse to violence, with all its destruction and death. (Cf. GS 78, 5.) (CCC 2306) Let's pray for each other until, together next week, we "meet Christ in the liturgy", Father Cusick (Publish with permission.) http://www.christusrex.org/www1/mcitl/ |
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Homily from Father Alex McAllister SDS http://www.catholicwealdstone.org 4 Ordinary Time |
Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time It is difficult to accept any prophet—someone who comes along with a new way of thinking or a radical idea which undermines our established way of thinking. However, we do realise that often the greatest scientific breakthroughs have come because a particular researcher is prepared to “think outside of the box.” It is the same with religion. The Old Testament Prophets were usually ignored or vilified by the religious establishment because they had a new perspective on God’s love. We cannot be following every new and passing trend otherwise we would soon be lost. So the main difficulty is in discerning the true prophet from the false one. And so we can easily understand how religious authorities instinctively reject all prophets. Often trouble is caused not so much because a prophet has those ideas but because he can’t keep them to himself. The problem is generally because the prophet can’t keep quiet. As we heard last week, here in the synagogue of Nazareth Jesus speaks sublime words, quoting Isaiah and announcing that he is the Messiah. And all are amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips. But it is when he goes on to suggest that he has come just as much for the Gentiles as for the Jews that things become awkward. They accept him at first but then he seems to go too far. He crosses an invisible boundary. Their understanding of the role of Israel as the chosen people is that all others are excluded. But Jesus doesn’t see it that way. Yes, the Jews are a chosen people and they certainly were chosen by God to bring the Messiah into the world but they were not chosen to keep the Messiah to themselves. Once Jesus points out, what they have conveniently forgotten, that the great prophets Elijah and Elisha also had a mission to the Gentiles the crowd turns nasty. They can take his sublime words but they can’t take his quoting their own history back at them—especially when it proves them wrong. This incident in the synagogue of Nazareth is something of a pattern for many other incidents in the Gospels. Jesus speaks sublime words or performs healings or other miracles and everyone is astonished. But then he tells them a few home truths, which upsets a few cherished ideas—particularly this one that the Messiah is for all and not only for the Jews—then they turn against him. The religious people reject the Gospel again and again because Christ treats everyone the same. He has no privileged group; he has no favourites. The Gospel is for everyone. God loves us all irrespective of our race, creed or status. The People of Israel had regarded themselves as a special group for so many centuries that they cannot comprehend that God would love anyone else. They forgot all the times that they too had gone other ways; they failed to remember how they so frequently rejected authentic prophets sent by God. All they remember is that they are the chosen people. This is arrogance in the extreme. They have lost sight of the reason why they were chosen by God. He chose them in order to bring Christ our Saviour, the Messiah, into the world. He set them apart so that he could teach them about what kind of a God he is. He made them a holy people, a favoured nation, suitable soil in which his Son could be planted. Their favoured status was not for their own glory. Their favoured status was so that they could be of service to the rest of mankind. We Catholics are a little bit like the Jews. We have preserved the faith of the Apostles intact. We have kept our doctrines regarding faith and morals uncontaminated by the secular world over many centuries. We have not compromised our beliefs. Sometimes we have, of course, gone astray but the Holy Spirit has dragged us back to the right path and kept us true to the name of Christ. As a Church we have been greatly blessed and favoured by God. We know that the fullness of the Gospel is to be found in the teachings of our Church. We know that the deposit of faith has remained intact and that in believing what the Church believes one cannot go astray. Our Church is holy, it is blessed by the blood of the martyrs and the many saints that constantly appear in its midst. Our Church is authentic in its faith and is in true conformity with the faith of the apostles and the teaching of Christ. But the great favour shown to us is not because we ourselves have been found to be especially worthy. It is not for our own personal glory or reward. The work we have done and the faith we have shown brings us no special merit. No, we are merely the vessels which Christ uses to convey his Gospel to the world. Our witness to the faith, our perseverance, our long hours of prayer, our resistance of temptation, or grappling with hard moral choices—these are merely what anyone else would do who was privileged to receive the gift of faith as we have done. Yes, we are a chosen people. And we praise and thank God for this great gift. But this gift is not given solely for ourselves. It is given to us so that we can convey it to others. So that we can be messengers of love and hope for the world. It is on the effectiveness with which we carry out this task that we will be judged. Let our prayer be today one of thanks to God for choosing us to be prophets to the nations. Let us ask him for the help and strength we need to carry out this task to the best of our ability. Let us pray that we will be effective in communicating the love and understanding of God to those around us. Let us not look for our own glory but seek only the greater glory of God and that in due time all creatures in heaven and earth should bow the knee at the name of Jesus. Amen. |
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