Homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Sunday, 10 February 2013
Encounters can be the strangest of things.
Think back, if you will, to the first time you met your spouse, your best
friend, your next door neighbor. While the environments and situations in which
we meet people may vary, because we are created as communal creatures, we
thrive on the encounters we have with people.
But then there are those times in which we,
if you will, “re-encounter” someone. A situation presents itself, and we see
someone in a new and different light – for good or for bad. And it’s in these “re-encounters”
that we ask ourselves a variation of one of two questions:
1.
How
could I have been so blind to not have seen the blessing this person is to me?;
or
2.
How
could I not have noticed how my relationship with this person was causing me
some type of harm?
In response to either question, we have a
moment of growth, of awareness within the self. And this is a good thing.
Yet, for many of us – myself included, we almost
never apply the two previously posed questions to our spiritual life and our
relationship with God. We recognize that God is present, but we put in the
minimal time with Him to truly foster a wonderful and life-giving – and life-sustaining! – relationship.
(Our modern notion could be simply logging on to Facebook, Google+ or Twitter,
and never posting anything ourselves – more-or-less, just “creeping” on our
friends.)
The readings that Mother Church presents us
with today are blessedly awesome. They remind me of something that Father
Robert Barron points out to us in his Catholicism
series: No one simply “meets the Lord”. Rather, when one encounters God, there
is a transformation of life, and we are sent to proclaim the Good News to the
world.
Both Isaiah and Peter recognized this in our
readings today. They recognized that they were in the presence of the Holy
One; they became aware of their sinfulness and unworthiness; and after being
consoled by the Lord, they were sent on a mission. Isaiah and Peter; Abraham
and Andrew; Noah and James; David and John; Ruth and Mary Magdalene; Francis of
Assisi and Teresa of Avila; Paul of Tarsus and Edith Stein; Thomas Merton and
Dorothy Day; you and me – We are all part of that Communion of Saints: Women
and men who have, at one point in our lives, encountered the Lord, who, in
turn, has sent us out into the world to proclaim His Gospel by our very lives.
But it’s not enough to say, “I’ve encountered
Christ”, and be done with it. My brothers and sisters: we must continue to “re-encounter”
Christ daily in our lives. We have (hopefully) already encountered the Lord.
Now we – you and I – must become
aware of our sinfulness and our unworthiness to be in the presence of the God
of Hosts. It is only in this recognition, which formally we call the “Sacrament
of Reconciliation”, that the consolation of God will be with us. It is then
that, in the recognition of who we are and Whose presence we are in, we can go
out into the world and tell the Good News.
God loves us too much to simply be considered that
so-called “spiritual creeper” in our lives. He wants us to encounter Him every
day through the good times and the bad. He wants to help us to recognize and
acknowledge our sinfulness, not just so we can feel guilty, but, ultimately, to
be ready to witness to His eternal and providential love in our lives. We must be
willing in our lives to be like Isaiah and Peter, and to allow the Lord to
console us.
In the end we must be vigilant in our lives
to entering into the mission which the Lord entrusts to us. The Lord is always
asking for people to go out and spread the Good News. And after encountering
and re-encountering the Lord in our lives – most especially through the Word
and the Sacrament – there is only one response we can give: “Here I am! Send
me!” And we are sent, so that we can bring others – in their mind, heart, and
soul – to encounter for themselves the Living God.
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Enjoy the journey . . .
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