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Homily for the Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time
Scriptures for today's Mass
• In your heart of hearts,
have you ever had the thought that
maybe, just maybe,
God asks too much of us?
that God is actually sort of
unreasonable in what he expects of us?
• The scriptures we just heard
might prompt us to have just those
thoughts.
These scriptures are chock full of
“hard sayings,”
words that are as difficult to hear as they are to fulfill.
• You heard them:
In Leviticus, the Lord told us:
- Don’t carry in your heart any hatred
towards your neighbor
which means, don’t carry in your heart any
ill will,
old grudges or resentments towards your
neighbor…
- Take care to love your neighbor,
to care for your neighbor, as tenderly
and generously
as you care for yourself…
- And who is my neighbor? EVERYONE!
And the scriptures admit of no
exceptions to this rule,
so that means my neighbor goes by the
name of:
Trump, Weld, Bloomberg, Biden, Warren,
Buttigieg,
Sanders, Klobuchar and Patrick…
Indeed, it does seem that some times God
asks too much of us!
• And more hard sayings in the gospel, where
Jesus told us:
- If someone asks you to do a favor,
do twice as much as you were asked to
do…
- Love.
Your. Enemies.
- Pray for those who persecute you, which means pray for
those:
who annoy you
who anger you
who cheat you
who gossip about you
who forget you
who disappoint you
who betray you
who steal from you
who lie to you
who abandon you
who deny you
who disagree with you
who hurt you
and who take advantage of you …
I know the names and faces I remember
and think of
when I hear that list.
What names and faces come to your mind
and heart?
Jesus calls us to pray for those who,
in all these ways, persecute us.
• And the hardest hard saying of them
all?
“Be
holy! Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”
I’m pretty sure everyone here probably
wants to be a good person
- and to be known as a good person.
But how many of us want to be
holy?
How many of us would feel comfortable
being identified, known, as a holy
person?
• We’re usually more comfortable with
holiness
as a quality we admire in others
(Jesus,
Mother Teresa, or our grandmother
who goes to Mass every day and prays
the Rosary)
- but I’m not sure holiness is
something we feature
or strive for or want for ourselves.
• And insofar as we think of holiness
as something too pious,
spiritually over the top,
even odd or quirky
to that degree, holiness might even be
something we don’t want.
• But here’s the Lord calling us to be
as holy - as holy as God is holy -
which is almighty holy!
Of course, in the scriptures,
holiness isn’t something odd or quirky, quaint or pious,
It’s certainly not something weak or
submissive.
The holiness in these texts is
challenging, demanding and strong.
It’s a holiness that calls us to make
no room in our hearts for hatred.
• Now, most of us probably don’t think of ourselves
as holding hatred in our hearts.
But many of us do maintain - in our
otherwise good hearts -
we do keep a little corner
reserved for our less-than-holy
thoughts and feelings about
this one or that one, that group or
this;
about this political party or that
church authority;
about a particular person in my past
(or my present);
about my ex, my competitor, my
boss or an employee
about a coworker, classmate or neighbor...
about a coworker, classmate or neighbor...
• We keep a corner, a closet, a kitchen-draw
in our hearts
where we collect and hold our grudges
and resentments.
But a good heart - and certainly a holy
heart -
makes no room for such feelings -
no more than a farmer would keep a
corner of his field
for growing weeds.
•Weeds drain the goodness from the soil
and eventually spread,
laying waste to the field and its crop.
Unloving, unholy thoughts and feelings
sap the goodness from our hearts and
often multiply,
choking off the harvest of our better
words and deeds.
• A good heart, a holy heart, makes no
room for weeds
but rather is vigilant
lest ill-will and hard feelings take root
and yield a bitter, sour harvest of
hate.
• A good heart, a holy heart, doesn’t
seek retaliation or retribution
but rather always seeks what’s good,
what’s best, for one’s neighbor
• A good heart, a holy heart
doesn’t oppose evil with evil
- no matter how satisfying and tempting
that may be -
but rather stands tall in the face of
what’s wrong,
willing to bear and suffer the consequences
of fidelity to the truth
even when doing so takes its toll on my
ease and comfort.
• While a good heart gives to
someone in need,
a holy heart gives until the giving
makes a difference
in the life of the giver
as well as in the life of the one who
receives.
In other words:
just being good isn’t good enough for
Christians,
For followers of Jesus.
Jesus calls us to aspire to a goodness
deeper
than that of the average Joe or Joan...
As Jesus says: even pagans love those
who love them.
Holy people
(and every single one of us is called
to strive for holiness)
holy people have a greater, deeper,
stronger love to offer.
They love even those, they love especially those
who do
not or can not or will not love them in return.
Good and holy people love even their
enemies
and they pray for those who persecute
them,
who make their lives miserable.
• In the gospel here Jesus calls us to
love -
as God loves:
not sparingly, not grudgingly - but
fully, deeply, robustly.
Jesus calls us to love as God loves:
not with strings attached or looking
for something in return,
but freely, selflessly and generously.
Jesus calls us to love as God loves:
not with hidden pockets of anger and
resentment
but with peace, mercy and forgiveness.
• God loves each of us from a
heart of holiness,
and calls each of us to strive to love
one another
(even
and especially our enemies)
with the same generosity of heart.
And just so we don’t forget… Who are
those “enemies?”
Who are those who “persecute us?”
They are those who
who annoy us
anger us
cheat us
gossip about us
forget us
disappoint us
betray us
steal from us
lie to us
abandon us
deny us
disagree with us
hurt us
and take advantage of us…
• This week we begin the season of
Lent,
40 days set apart for us to examine our
hearts
in light of the hard sayings we found
in today’s scriptures.
Lent is a time to turn our hearts
around,
to weed out what doesn’t belong in our
hearts
and to cultivate what does.
• It was someone with more than just a
good heart
who gave his life for us on the Cross:
the heart of Jesus
whose life, whose body and blood,
we share at this altar
in the bread and cup of communion.
• May the sacrament we share at this
table
nourish in each of us a desire to be
holy,
- to be holy even as our Father in
heaven is holy.
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