Homily for the Thirty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Scriptures for today's Mass)
Audio for homily
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Early Friday evening, after learning of the events in Paris,
I wrote a prayer to post on my blog and on FaceBook,
a prayer based on the last line of the Our Father:
Deliver us from evil...
The prayer reads
like this:
Deliver us from evil, plotting and scheming
to pillage, kill and destroy...
Deliver us from evil that hates the other,
simply for being “other”...
Deliver us from evil slaying the innocent
who’ve done no wrong, no harm...
Deliver us from evil preying on freedom,
preferring the shackles of hate...
Deliver us from evil that minds no reason,
no logic, no wisdom, no sense...
Deliver us from evil striking with terror,
holding the blameless captive...Deliver us from evil that lurks in the hearts
of those who hate and despise us...Deliver us from evil blaspheming the name
of all that is good, pure and just...
Lead us not into temptationbut deliver us from evil, Lord:
deliver us into your mercy and grace,
into the peace of your just word,
into the law of your abiding love...
Amen.
There is no doubt
that evil stalked the city of Paris,
finally striking with
deadly precision.
And evil’s target
was much larger than Paris.
On Friday night, we
were all in evil’s cross hairs:
our hearts were
terror’s target.
The battle between
good and evil in society is an ancient one,
as ancient as Cain
and Abel, as ancient as humanity.
Today’s first scripture
speaks apocalyptically
of that final battle when all that is good will
triumph
and take unto itself
all whose names are found
written in the book
of life.
But when that day will come, what its
hour will be
– no one knows: only God.
Jesus urges us,
then, to watch and be ready
lest that day of
reckoning catch us unawares and unprepared.
Might the events in
Paris be a sign of the end times?
I doubt it.
But the slaughter of
innocent people in France
- or anywhere in the
world – is a clear sign for us
that the battle
between good and evil endures.
And a danger for us
is the temptation to think
that the battle is out there somewhere,
between opposing
political forces, somehow outside our selves.
But the scriptures address
both the community and the individual,
calling one and
calling all to the truth of God’s law of love.
While we will all have our
own reactions and responses
to what happened in
Paris
I trust we unite
in condemning the evil of taking innocent life
for the purpose of
striking fear in humanity’s soul.
But, what of the
battle with evil each of us might know
within our own hearts?
What of our own
skirmishes between right and wrong?
between honesty and
lies? between reality and fantasy?
between the pure and
the sullied? between the just and
the unfair?
between fidelity and
disloyalty? between grace and sin?
What of such battles
in our own lives,
in our own
circumstances,
day by day?
We stand this
weekend in the shadow of egregious evil
in whose darkness
we may be tempted to ignore our own sin,
our own
accommodation with evil in its many forms.
We might even be
tempted to respond to the events in Paris
with an angry
prejudice, with a vengeance, with a
heated hatred
- not unlike the
very evil we want to condemn.
So we may need to
pray:
Deliver us from evil, Lord:
from all evil, from our own evil…Deliver us from our plotting and scheming
to get what we want at the expense of others…
Deliver us from any narrow-mindedness
that excludes the other
for being what we don’t understand…Deliver us from gossip that wounds the heartsof those who’ve done no harm...Deliver us from ensuring our own freedomat the price of an other’s well-being…
Deliver us from thoughts that mind no reason,
no logic, no wisdom, no sense...Deliver us from our resentments and grudges
that hold others captive...Deliver us from contempt that lurks in our hearts
and feeds our bitterness, our spite…Deliver us from making choices denying the truth
of what’s good and pure and just…
And deliver us, Lord, from evil that taunts
and haunts our own pride and greedour selfish desires,
our willful and obstinate minds...Lead us not into temptationbut deliver us from evil, Lord:
deliver us into your mercy and grace,
into the peace of your just word,
into the law of your abiding love.Deliver us, Lord, to the table of your goodness,to the meal of your sacrifice,to your triumph over evil on the arms of the Cross.Deliver us to your Supper and nourish in us all we needto grow in your goodness and in your grace.
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