Homily for the Thirty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time
10 November 2013
10 November 2013
Are
you alive or dead?
More directly, are you alive in your
faith and dead to the world, or are you alive to the world and dead to your
faith?
We have to choose one.
Paul’s words to the Thessalonians which
conclude today’s Second Reading do a wonderful job in focusing our meaning for
being here today: May the Lord direct your hearts to the love of God and to the
endurance of Christ.
Where, then, are you alive?
Where, then, are you dead?
My brothers and sisters, the days are
coming and are here when our loyalty to Christ and His Church will be
questioned. Now, I’m not just talking about out-right persecution of the
Church, although this is happening throughout the world, even within the
borders of the United States. These are those happenings that draw eerie
parallels to our First Reading from the Second Book of Maccabees: People ARE
dying for their faith in Jesus Christ. And these people, like the seven
brothers of the Old Testament, are alive in and for their faith.
However, we also need to be alive in our
faith in the small ways: The way we think about people; the way we talk TO
people and the way we talk ABOUT people; the way we treat people; the way that
we treat creation. All these ways truly show where our heart is.
So, are we people alive in our faith, or
are we dead to the spiritual reality that we have been baptized into?
Practicing our faith in Jesus Christ
means more than just coming to church on Sunday and saying some prayers
throughout the week. Practicing our faith means being alive in our faith.
Practicing our faith means encountering Christ 24 / 7 / 365. Practicing our
faith means helping others to encounter Christ in their own lives.
Being alive in our faith is also more
than just living our faith. Being alive in our faith is allowing the totality
of our lives to be fashioned after the life and example of Christ. Being alive
in our faith is allowing our thoughts, words and actions to be a witness to how
we have personally encountered Christ, and have allowed that relationship to be
that which guides everything in our lives.
But we shouldn’t lie to ourselves. There
are many people in this world who seem to be alive in their faith, but truly
are people who are alive to those things which THIS WORLD can provide them.
They have allowed themselves to become dead to the life God has infused in them
because pride and selfishness have crept in to their lives. The allure of the
false good has, for these people, trumped the true and ultimate good that only
God can provide for us.
And, to be honest, sometimes we are
those dead people. When we choose the allurements of this world over the riches
God desires to give to us, then we allow that spiritual death to occur. When
that happens, we need to be brought back to life.
The other evening, I watched the movie Warm Bodies with a couple of friends.
The story of this movie is of a zombie who is brought back to life through an
encounter with a young woman. To me, this movie reminded me of the call we have
in today’s Gospel of seeking to be alive. When “R”, the zombie, encounters
Julie, the girl who makes him “come alive” again, and as their relationship
progresses throughout the movie, we can come to understand how our live and our
faith can come alive when we let ourselves encounter Christ – in Word and in
Sacrament –, and we use that encounter to exhume that buried faith within us
and permit that faith to be resurrected.
After all, Jesus reminds us that our God
is the God of the living, not the dead. And so, if we truly want to spend
eternity with the Lord, if we wish to experience the glory of the Resurrection,
then we must die to the world and truly be alive in our faith! We must be
willing to make our encounter with Christ be something more than an occasional
Sunday Mass or a random prayer throughout the week. Each one of us – including
myself – must make the first and essential priority in our life in coming to
know Who Jesus Christ REALLY is! For if we don’t know Who Jesus is in this
life, how will we come to recognize Him when He comes to call us home?
As we begin to conclude this great Year
of Faith, we have to be mature enough to acknowledge where our relationship
with the Lord is in our lives, how alive we are in living out our faith, and
how well we are doing in passing that faith on to other people. If we are
people more on the “dead” side of the spectrum, what can we do to enliven our
faith? If we are people more on the “alive” side of the spectrum, what do we
need to do to keep that flame of faith burning?
Remember: How we live or fail to live
out our faith shows to us – and to others! – where our hearts truly lie.
Are you alive?
Are you dead?
Brothers and sisters: May the Lord
direct your hearts to the love of God and to the endurance of Christ.
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Enjoy the journey . . .
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