Homily 30 June 2013
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Authors
Jizba, Richard
Issue Date
2013-06-30
Volume
Issue
Type
Homily
Sermon
Sermon
Language
en_US
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Abstract
1 Kings 19:16b,19-21; Psalm 16:1-2,5,7-8,9-10,11; Galatians 5:1, 13-18; Luke Lk 9:51-62|---------|I remember when I was little thinking about what it must be like to grow up and live on your own: |* you could eat what you wanted, when you wanted,|* you could go to bed when you wanted, |* you could watch any TV show you felt like watching. |Being an adult, in my childhood musings, meant being free … which meant that I would be free from the rules of my mom and dad. That, I thought would make me truly happy.|But that kind of happiness doesn’t last. |Obviously, I hadn’t thought it through very well.|Freedom is the power to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility.|My definition of freedom also didn’t include those words “… on one’s own responsibility.” Now because I was a child, there were even more fundamental questions that I hadn’t considered: what is the purpose for freedom and why is it important? |Is the purpose of freedom simply to make me happy? No. |The purpose of freedom is to give us the power to choose between good and evil. In freedom we can either grow and mature in truth, or, we can fall into sin. How I use my freedom is my responsibility.|If I use my freedom to choose the good, to search for truth, then I will come at last to God. Viewed this way, it seems that freedom is more about hope than it is about happiness, although the two are certainly related.|God wants us to find the truth because he wants to share his life with us. So he gives us his grace along the way to help us make the right choices, and he offers us counsel, forgiveness and love when we admit our failings.|---------|The Christians in Galatia were gentile converts to Christianity. After Paul had given them the Gospel, other people came and contradicted his teachings. They taught that the life of faith and the way of discipleship was not enough. Christians were still required to observe all the laws and rituals of the old Covenant, with circumcision being it’s greatest sign.|So Paul wrote them a letter. He was pretty mad. In the middle of the letter he writes: “O stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you…?”|You have to wonder, why would the Galatians, who were never Jewish, consider adopting Jewish observances?|Maybe they lost hope, and thought a very strict life would make them happier.|Paul, a former Pharisee, knew otherwise. In turning away from the truth, the Galatians were in danger of making themselves slaves to a lie. They were free to make a choice, and they were making a very poor one. |Let me explain …|---------|Christianity is a deceptive religion. It seems simple. We lack the Jewish dietary laws or the rigorous Islamic month of Ramadan. Sometimes following a simple, unambiguous set of guidelines seems the best guarantee of happiness.|But I think we Christians have one of the most challenging precepts of all: |You shall love your neighbor as yourself.|If you think that’s easy, then listen to how the bishops at the 2nd Vatican Council want us to put that into practice:|You should seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God, because you live in the world, … in the ordinary circum-stances of family and social life. |You are called there by God to work for the sanctification of the world from within -- as a leaven -- and in this way make Christ known to others, especially by the testimony of a life resplendent in faith, hope and charity.|Wow, that seems really hard. It’s very challenging and it’s not simple.|Paul had to correct the Galatians when they pursued a false choice for happiness. The Church has had to do that in every generation.|The Galatians thought more rules would make them happy. Now we think that no rules -- or rather, making up our own rules -- will lead to happiness.|---------|We live in secular culture today that presents us with easy paths to happiness: materialism, self-indulgence, contraception and sex apart from marriage, no-fault divorce, gay marriage, and abortion. Now even assisted suicide and euthanasia are being added to the list, which may mean that we have even given up on happiness, and simply want to be free of pain.|In the last fifty years or so, many people have abandoned their Christian faith and sought happiness in these worldly ways. |But have those ways brought us happiness: are we satisfied with our material possessions, are marriages and families strong? Do we have hope, or are we just trying to fill a hole that has opened up in our lives?|---------|Faith calls us to evangelize, to be the leaven that sanctifies the world. We can only do that by helping people see what is good and what is true, and that hope is what leads to real happiness. |These are challenging times to be Christian, but you can’t evangelize by withdrawing from the world or by being angry and resentful. |We live in culture that doesn’t respect life, or marriage, or the poor, or the immigrant. It is often self-centered, or materialistic, or self-indulgent – sometimes all at once.|Yet our culture is that way because people want to be happy and they think those things will lead them to happiness. |Maybe it’s because I am a deacon, but people will often blurt out to me some issue they have with the faith: about the teaching on divorce, |the practice of celibacy. I even had someone argue that Jesus wasn’t human because he didn’t sin.|When that happens, it makes me sad. Those people are often unhappy and restless. They are looking for something and they are trying to make the right choices.|---------|You shall love your neighbor as yourself. Loving people means you want what is good for them. You want to help them find the truth.|But to be a good evangelist you have to understand hope. And you have to be a good listener. Find out what people want, how they look at the world, and most of all ask them what would make them happy and what they think is true. That’s the starting place for evangelization.|What is good and true? |Jesus is the way, and the truth, and the life.|Our task is to help people make that discovery in freedom. We can show them the way of hope, but it is, ultimately, their choice.