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Sts. Joseph & Paul Catholic Church |
Homily Archives | |
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20 Sunday in Ordinary
Time – B
No. 11
I have been pastor at Sts. Joseph and Paul for 9 weeks now, and several times parishioners have asked me, “How do you like it here?” To which I respond, “I like it a lot!” You have a beautiful church, and, even more, I have found you to be a beautiful people. I have been spending a lot of time with our parish staff over these past weeks, and I have found them to be an energetic group with lots of ideas. Each one brings personality and unique sayings to the parish office. I am thinking specifically here of our Office Administrator, Rick, who likes to say, “People are strange. They do foolish things.” These words are not too far from those of St. Paul, who says, “Watch carefully how you live, not as foolish persons but as wise….” Yet, we, as people, do foolish things all the time. We lock ourselves out of our houses and don’t leave a spare key hidden somewhere – foolish. We don’t look at our gas gauges, and we run out of gas – foolish. We don’t pay the credit card bill on time, even though we have the money, and we are charged interest – foolish. We don’t pay our utility bills until we get a call from the power company, who says it is going to disconnect us – foolish. We remember that we need to change our windshield wiper blades when we are in the middle of a rainstorm – foolish. We don’t wear helmets when we ride motorcycles – foolish. Our foolish ways get more serious, even life-threatening, when we don’t care for our health. We stay up late at night and don’t get enough sleep, and we go to school or work tired – foolish. We know we’re diabetic, and still we don’t eat right or get enough exercise – foolish. We take medication for health problems, but we don’t take it the way the doctor prescribed, and we can’t figure out why we’re not getting well – foolish. We overeat, drink too much, and smoke heavily – foolish. Even in our religious practices, we do foolish things, which threaten our lives with God. When we go on vacation, we think God’s on vacation, so we don’t go to church on Sunday – foolish. We try to justify politically issues that threaten life: war, abortion, the death penalty, and euthanasia – foolish. We live with prejudiced words and categorize people by how they dress, what they drive, the color of their skin, how they walk and talk – foolish. We take the smorgasbord approach; we pick and choose what feels good to us about our faith and ignore the teachings that make us uncomfortable– so we have premarital sex; we curse, cheat, steal and lie - foolish.
Almost 2000 years after St. Paul, the days are still evil. We live in a world in which terror, war, child abuse, hunger and disease continue. As Christians we must be wise with our faith and take up the words of Paul; we must let go of our foolish ways. Jesus gave us the commandment to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul and mind. He then commanded us to love our neighbor as much as we love ourselves. Only with God can we change the world. We must ask God to come into our every moment, and we must do it together. One church, one person, one family, one government will never be able to change the world; we must do what Jesus told us and change it together with love. Now that’s wise.
sdrose@bellsouth.net
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An old
Irish Catholic once said that, “The Catholic faith is a beautiful faith to
die by, but it is a very difficult faith to live by.” I have found that
you get back from life what you give it. Foolish people are silly,
unwise, and absurd. They don’t take the time to think about doing what‘s
right; instead, they think about what’s easy or what makes them feel good.
To be fair, some may do foolish things because they are too busy, and they
forget what they should do. Others though, do foolish things because they
are lazy, and they take unnecessary risks that put their lives and the
lives of others in danger. St. Paul says, “watch your foolish ways, be
wise, and make the most of every opportunity because the days are evil.”