Homily for January 22

Homily for the Third Sunday in Ordinary Time
(Scriptures for today's Mass)

Audio for homily

At once, immediately, they left their nets and followed him…

It didn’t work that way with me!

When people ask me when I decided to become a priest

the most honest answer I can give is,

 “About six years after I was ordained.”

I was ordained in 1973.

I truly decided to become a priest around 1979.

Those six years were very interesting years!

(That's a story I may share at another time...)

I’ve heard married people say the same kind of thing,

that the real decision to be married

came some years after they stood at the altar.

While I truly believe that God calls each of us to many things,

the word "call" might sometimes be too strong 

to describe how God does that.

I heard no voice, I had no vision,

I experienced nothing mystical.

Not so much a call,

what I experienced was a nudge, a prompting,

an intuition, a suggestion that becoming a priest

might be what I was meant to do with my life.

Actually, it was more like a hunch,

a “holy hunch,” if you like,

but a hunch nonetheless.

So, I followed my hunch, 

hoping that God was behind it and,

to the best of my ability,

I believe that indeed, I’m doing with my life 

what God has asked of me.

But what God originally nudged me into

has turned out to be very different than what I expected.

I'm reminded of one of those self-help books

with the interesting title: This Isn’t The Life I Ordered!

Well, whose is?

Even though I believe that God and I are still on the same page,

I’ve found that my work is often frustrating, disappointing,

difficult, painful, lonely, confining, confusing, depressing,

suspect and unsupported.

But at the same time, I also find my work to be

exciting, challenging, fulfilling, uplifting, liberating, 

validating, appreciated, needed,

joyful, blessed and deeply rewarding.

And I have these two sets of experiences of my ministry

precisely because of where my work invites

and allows me entrance:

into your tender, fragile hearts

and into your joys and sorrows,

your dreams and disappointments,

your successes and failures, 

your experience of sin and grace – and mine, too.

If you think a priest’s work is mostly doing "holy things"

or saying "holy words" – or even "being holy" himself –

you've only got it partly right.

We live in a culture which serves up a lot of junk.

My work is to sort through, with you and for you,

all the junk in our lives

and to dig deep enough to discover the holy

in our hearts, our lives and in the world around us.

And when we find the holy within and among us,

we come together to celebrate and share it 

with others who are searching for it, too.

In sorting through all the junk

in pursuit of what's of real value,

we Christians use the gospel as our treasure map

and the Church’s wisdom as light for our path.

Like the ancients of Zebulun and Naphtali,

something deep within us longs

for anguish to take wing,

for the darkness to be dispelled,

and for the holy to be uncovered and revealed.

And like the Corinthians,

we screw things up a good deal of the time:

we make our own maps and cast the Lord's aside;

we forgo wisdom's light and stumble in the dark;

we prefer rivalry to unity and lose sight of our goal.

We need to heed Paul’s warning that unless Christ be our light

and his Cross the standard of our lives,

we will be lost, buried in the junk failing to find that holiness

our restless hearts are always seeking.

 So, I want to ask you today to ponder how God might be

nudging and prompting you to serve.

I ask you to explore any "holy hunch" you have

about how the Lord might be calling you to serve.

With the parish staff and Parish Council

I'm inviting all of us to make 2017 a Year of Service.

Over the past month, in the bulletin,

we've published a listing of service opportunities

and that same information is available

at the church doors today.

Jesus is always nudging and inviting us

to leave our nets behind, 

if only for an hour or two a week,

or maybe just once a month,

leaving the day-to-day behind to follow him

and share in his work.

The first disciples dropped everything at once

- to follow Christ.

For our sakes, Christ dropped everything he had,

laying down his life for us on the Cross,

that we might have life and have it to the full.

May the sacrament we share at his table today

nourish and strengthen us to follow

whatever "holy hunch" each of us might have

and to serve the Lord in serving one another,

near and far.

 

   
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