Jesus Draws A Crowd

 

 Jesus really knew how to draw a crowd. 

Wherever He went, people would come by the hundreds and thousands from the surrounding towns to hear Him speak. Everyone who came had a different reason for seeking Him out. Some had heard about Him from their neighbors and wanted to see Him for themselves. Many sick people would seek Him out, sometimes carried in the arms of their loved ones, in hopes that He would cure them. Many wanted to see what miracles He might perform. Others were hungry for the word of God and sought Jesus out because, as today’s gospel tells us, he spoke with authority. 

Whatever their reason, everyone who encountered Him had the same reaction- amazement. Jesus was unlike anyone they had ever met and He never failed to make a life-changing impression on everyone He came in contact with. 

 Though it has been two thousand years since He rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, Jesus continues to draw a crowd. Every Sunday, throughout the entire world, over a billion Christians are gathering to worship. Like us, they are listening to His word and are continuing to have their hearts moved by His teaching. Like us, they will have a personal encounter with the Risen Lord through Holy Communion. In parishes all over the globe, Jesus continues to reach out to the lonely, the broken hearted, the sick and the anguished with His life-changing message.

 Jesus drew crowds for one simple reason. The people whose lives He changed told other people about Him and they came to see for themselves. As this Sunday’s gospel tells us, “His fame spread everywhere throughout the whole region of Galilee.” Rather than keep His mighty deeds to themselves, they witnessed to others about what Jesus did for them. 

 The same is true today. If Jesus has changed your heart, if He has made a difference in your life, then tell someone about it. Do not keep it to yourself. Let others know how your burden has been lifted, how your eyes have been opened, and how your fears have been relieved. It could be that someone in your family or someone you work with is suffering in the same way you did. They cannot find the peace and joy that only comes in Jesus if we keep what He has done for us to ourselves

Jesus' Victory Over Evil

 

Imagine what the scene would have been like two thousand years ago when Jesus preached at the synagogue in Capernaum. Not only was His message compelling, unlike anything they would have heard before, but signs and wonders were attending His words. Right before their eyes demons were being cast out convulsing and shrieking as they left. We can imagine how shaken up and amazed they would have been. What if such a thing were to happen in the middle of my homily? It would either make you want to come back next week to see what else would happen or make you so afraid that you would never want to come back again. Either way you would never forget it. And we can be sure that those who heard Jesus and witnessed His power never forgot what they saw that day either. 

Why did such an event take place? Was Jesus just trying to impress the people and convince them of the truth of His message? To understand today’s passage we have to remember that we are still reading from the beginning of Saint Mark’s gospel. Jesus has been baptized by John and the Holy Spirit has descended upon Him like a dove. After being tempted in the desert, He appears in Galilee preaching the good news that the Kingdom of God is at hand. After gathering His first disciples, He now appears in the synagogue in Capernaum casting out demons who proclaim Him to be the Holy One of God. By this act, Jesus is demonstrating that now that the Kingdom of God has come among them the reign of Satan has come to an end. As Son of God He will undo all the evil that the devil has wrought in the world. By forgiving sinners who come to Him, He will show His power over sin. By healing the lame, the blind and the deaf, He will show His power over illness. By raising the dead, He will show His power over death. However His greatest triumph over the devil will come when He shows total obedience to the Father’s plan, embraces the cross and rises on the third day. With the appearance of Jesus on earth, Satan and his minions are through. 

This is an important truth which we need to always keep in mind. The state of today’s world can make it difficult for us to keep our hope alive. With so many people turning away from the path of life we can be tempted to think that we are losing the battle. No matter how bleak the world’s situation may appear we have to always remind ourselves that God has already won the victory in Christ. Though the world seems to have utterly rejected the gospel and though so many live without a thought for the poor and needy, we must remember that nothing happens unless our Heavenly Father permits it. He is working quietly in the hearts of all peoples - believers and unbelievers alike - to shine the light of His Truth. God sees the world in a much different way than we do. What seem like failures to us are successes to God. We know that by looking on the cross which seemed to be the ultimate triumph of sin and death but rather ushered in these centuries of grace in which we now stand. We must take heart then and never give up. The victory is won. We have only to be faithful to God’s word to have that victory play itself out in our lives.

Recalibrating My Life To God's Kingdom

 

What is Jesus asking of us when He calls us to “repent”? He is calling us to experience a transformation of our mind and heart. This transformation is an interior change which results in a change in our attitude and behavior. 

Why must we repent? Because there is a new reality on the scene. Because the Kingdom of God is now at hand with the preaching of Jesus, everything will have to change accordingly. Just as a couple has to adjust their lifestyle and priorities to accommodate the birth of their child, so we have to change our lifestyle and priorities to welcome the Kingdom of God into our midst. 

This change of mind and heart does not happen overnight. It is the work of a lifetime. Everyday we learn more and strive to align our attitudes and behavior to the love and mercy we experience in Jesus. Very often, we fail and have to allow God to pick us up and get us back on track. Until we draw our last breath, we will need to work on bringing our lives in line with the reality of God’s Kingdom operative in our world. 

Knowing this, we need to examine our priorities. If I live only for this world and its pleasures then I am living like someone who has no faith. If I am not willing to sacrifice my comfort to seek after goodness and virtue, then I really do not believe in the life of the world to come. If my faith in Jesus does not lead to a real change in the way I live, then I really do not have faith. No matter how many times I go to church, no matter how much I give to charity and no matter how nice I am to the people around me, if I am living for myself rather than for God then it will make no difference.

 Jesus came to earth to inaugurate the Kingdom of God - a Kingdom of love, justice and peace. Just as a family needs to change to adjust to the reality of a new baby, so we have to change to accommodate the presence of God in our midst. We must become loving, just and peaceful. All of us have fallen short but, thankfully, God is merciful. Let today be the day that we turn to Him with all our hearts, that we express sorrow for our sins and make a firm commitment to living the values of God’s Kingdom.

(Photo by Jacob Bentzinger on Unsplash)

The Miracle of Repentance

 

Last Sunday's first reading is from the book of the prophet Jonah. God had called him to

preach repentance to the city of Nineveh. Nineveh was the oldest and greatest city in the Assyrian empire. They were a particularly wicked and brutal people. Yet God wanted to offer them the opportunity to repent and to change. Our Heavenly Father’s love and mercy are so great because He knows the misery and despair that sin causes. He knows how evil-doing breaks hearts and ruins lives. In His love he cannot help but take pity on those who fail to recognize and live in His presence. So He never fails to offer again and again his gift of forgiveness and healing. 

The same is true for us today. We have all fallen short of the ideals that Jesus preached. We have all failed to love. And yet we are called by God here to experience His mercy and forgiveness. No matter what we may have done in our past, God can help us overcome it and change us. We should never let guilt and shame over our past mistakes keep us from embracing the love of God today. We cannot change the past, but we can go forward into a future of hope by welcoming the mercy of God into our hearts and allowing it to change us. 

Though we can always count on God to forgive us, we should be careful never to abuse His love. How would we feel if the people we loved kept on hurting us because they thought we would always forgive them? Though God is always willing to forgive us, He is offended when we take His love and mercy for granted. That is why Saint Paul warns us in the second reading that our time is running out. Because of His mercy God gives us time to repent, but that time is not as long as we think. We will eventually stand before the judgment seat of God to give an account of our lives and how we have taken advantage of the opportunities to change that He has given us. If we have been putting it off, it will not go well with us. But if we accept the message with joy, we will witness miracles in our lives and stand before God with confidence. 

With God there is always hope. He never abandons anyone He has created and redeemed in Christ. There is no heart He cannot touch, no mind He cannot enlighten and no life He cannot change. All we have to do is invite Him in, give Him our lives and let Him take care of the rest. If we trust Him with our lives, not only will we change but He will use us to touch the hearts of others. It is His promise to us in Christ. It can really happen if we repent, believe in the good news and follow Christ who calls us to a new and more abundant life. 

(image from Moody Publishing USA)

Change of Heart Required

 

Following Jesus and believing in him changes us. When we realize that God created each of us in his image and likeness, then we begin to treat all people with love and respect. When we realize the depth of God's love for each person, we can no longer turn our backs on people when they need us. When we realize how much we have been forgiven by a merciful God, we begin to forgive those who hurt us no matter how great the offense. Friendship with Jesus transforms us from selfish, narrow-minded individuals into people who love truly from our hearts after the example of our Savior. 

There is one thing that our friendship with Jesus cannot do, however. It cannot keep us from being sinners. No matter how close we grow to Jesus we will always be tempted to turn our backs on him in one way or another. No matter how long we may have followed him, we will always fall back into sin. But Jesus our friend is forgiving. He will always take us back no matter how we have offended him if we show him that we are sorry and are committed to changing. Though we can and do abandon him, he will never abandon us. Jesus is the most faithful of friends.

 

Jesus is always there for us to turn to in our time of need. When the bad choices we have made in our lives start catching up to us, Jesus is there to listen and to guide us back on the right path. If any of us wishes to know what life is like with Jesus as a friend, it is as simple as asking him to come into our hearts and our lives. Going to the sacrament of confession and laying out before God all the ways we have chosen the wrong path is an important place to start. Then regret can give way to peace, fear can give way to joy, and hostility can give way to love. And we can say with so many others before us - What a friend we have in Jesus!

Your Body Is Holy

 

Our bodies are good and holy. Because of that our sexuality is also something good and holy. It is given to us as a gift. It drives us to reach out beyond ourselves to others. It makes it possible for us to be in relationship with others and to love them. Our sexuality teaches us that we cannot find our ultimate fulfillment in ourselves but in union with others. 

God does not want us to deny our sexuality. He does not want us to make believe it's not there or ignore it. Rather, He wants us to use the power of our sexuality to pour ourselves out enthusiastically in love and service of others. Because it is such a powerful force in our lives, He wants us to use it responsibly. 

How do we do that? By exercising the virtue of chastity. Chastity is the power to direct our sexual desires toward love and service of others. It does not seek to REPRESS our sexual desires but to EXPRESS them in healthy and loving ways. For instance, chaste people can appreciate the physical beauty of men and women. They experience the same intense sexual desires for other people that unchaste people do. However, chaste people do not dwell on the physical but seek to go deeper, to see the inner beauty of the person. Because of that, they have healthy marriages based on unconditional love and mutual respect. Their marriages are also more passionate because, long after their physical beauty has faded, they have an intimacy based on trust not on lust. And chaste people have more lasting, fulfilling friendships  because they are able to love people as they are without wanting or expecting anything from them. 

We need to learn chastity if we want healthy friendships and passionate marriages. The truth is that the unchaste person is not capable of love. If we treat people as objects for our own pleasure or only value people who are attractive, then we cannot love unconditionally. All our relationships will end in failure because no one will be able to meet our unrealistic expectations. Only when we learn to love people as they are - whether they are physically appealing to us or not - can we have healthy, intimate relationships. Only by being able to give love can we find love.

Speak, Lord

 

Are you feeling restless? Do you feel that your life is not as fulfilling as you expect it to be? Do you wonder whether there is more that you should be doing but do not know where to look? It could be that God is stirring your heart, calling you to something greater. Finding out what it may be is as simple as slowing ourselves down to listen to what is going on within us. Like Samuel, all we need to do is find a quiet place and pray, “Speak, for your servant is listening.” 

It can be tempting when we sense a void within us to want to fill it with noise. We think that watching a movie or listening to music will drown out the discontent echoing in our souls. Other times we may be tempted to fill our schedule with activities so that we will be too busy to slow down and attend to the cry of our heart. We can also try to fill what is lacking in our lives with toys, clothes or technology. However, none of these distractions ultimately satisfies the longing of our soul. There is no way of silencing the call within us except to slow down and listen to it.

Most likely, the call we are hearing is to serve others. It may be as dramatic as leaving our job to work with the needy or to dedicate ourselves to religious life. Or it may be as simple as volunteering at a soup kitchen or hospital. Whatever it may be, we will never find out unless we are willing to listen to the stirring of God in our soul. 

One thing is certain. We can never find happiness and fulfillment in this world if all we do is live for ourselves. All it can bring us is endless dissatisfaction and anxiety. When we live only for ourselves, nothing is ever enough. We blame others for not meeting our needs and become collapsed in on ourselves. Only when we decide to live for others do we find our real identity and purpose.

Listening To Discover God's Way

 

Listening is an important part of any relationship. But it is crucial to our relationship with God. If we are to know where God is calling us, we must listen. God may be speaking to us by placing a desire to serve him in our hearts. He may be speaking to us through a passage from Scripture that we keep opening our Bible to or that we hear being quoted frequently. He may be speaking to us through a friend. One thing is sure - God is trying to get our attention. We have to open our ears, and more importantly our hearts, if we are going to get the message.

 

Today's gospel tells the story of the calling of Jesus' first disciples. They were among those who answered the call of John the Baptist to be baptized for the forgiveness of their sins in preparation for the coming of the Messiah. John points Jesus out to them, and they decide to follow him. But something interesting happens. Before they could speak a word to him, Jesus turns around and asks them, "What are you looking for?" Jesus makes it clear to them that it is not they who are choosing him, but he who is choosing them. Throughout the gospels, no one follows Jesus on their own initiative. It is always Jesus who picks out and calls those who will be his disciples.

 

Just so, none of us can make our own path in life. None of us can live our lives "our way." God has a plan for each of us. We can either say "yes" to God, or "no". But our lives belong to God, and our peace is only in doing his will.

 

We all know how true this is by looking at our own lives. We have all tried forcing things to work out, and they just didn't. We may have wanted to be doctors or rock stars when we grew up, and it just didn't fit. Or there may have been that one woman or one man we wanted to spend our life with, and the relationship just wouldn't work. For some reason, the pieces didn't seem to fit no matter how hard we tried. We had to finally stop trying to force things to happen and let events take their course. We then started to experience peace as things began to work themselves out on their own. We could then look back and thank God that the course of our life worked out his way and not our way.

 

It is not always easy to know what God's will for us is. If it wasn't easy for young Samuel in the temple nor for the followers of Jesus, then we cannot expect it to be any easier for us. Like the decision to get married, it takes time for the right course of action to become clear to us. It takes much patience and a heart willing to listen for God's voice. But there is also great relief in knowing that an almighty and all-loving God is in control, and that he has a plan for us.

 

The Catholic spiritual writer, Thomas Merton, put together the following prayer for people like us who want to serve God but are not always sure how:

 

My Lord God, 

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me. 

I cannot know for certain where it will end. 

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think that I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so. 

But I believe that the desire to please you 

does in fact please you. 

And I hope that I have that desire

in all that I am doing.

Amen. 

 

Jesus Descends Into The Murky Waters

 

In graduate school, I had the opportunity to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The thought of walking in the footsteps of Jesus excited me. Along with walking the Stations of the Cross, and standing on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, I looked forward to renewing my baptismal vows at the Jordan River. I imagined myself wading into the water as Jesus had, professing my faith, and recommitting myself to following Him. 

However, when we arrived at  Qasr el-Yahud, the place where tradition tells us John baptized Jesus, I was surprised by what I saw. It was not at all the beautiful place I had imagined. The water was brown and mucky. Where I expected to see white sand, there were rocks and reeds. There was no way I was getting in that water. So, as other pilgrims waded in, I stood on dry land renewing my baptismal vows from a safe, comfortable distance. 

Later that night, while riding back to the hotel, a thought struck me. When Jesus came to earth, there was nothing glamorous about it. Our sinful humanity was no more appealing to the Son of God than the brown water of the Jordan River was to me. Yet, out of love for us, Jesus took on our human nature with its weakness and suffering. He was willing to touch lepers, be seen with sinners, and suffer an agonizing death. If my baptismal vows were to mean anything, then I would have to be willing to move from the safe, comfortable dry land into the muddy waters. 

In the many years that have followed, I’ve thought about my experience at the Jordan River. I think about it when I’m tempted not to make eye contact with a homeless person. I think about it when I want to drive past a beggar at an intersection. I think about it when my parish asks for volunteers but I tell myself I don’t have time to spare. Often I still prefer to stay at a safe distance on dry land than to get wet and dirty.

Though sinless, Jesus submitted himself to the baptism of John the Baptist. He entered the waters of the Jordan River to purify them so that we could be baptized not just with water but with the Holy Spirit. Jesus humbled himself throughout His life on earth to bring us all the gifts of God’s love. The first gift is baptism which opens us up to faith, to the Holy Spirit, and to all the other sacraments which follow.

Our baptism is a commitment we make to share Jesus’ concern for the lost and the broken. As Isaiah tells us in today’s first reading, Jesus came “to open the eyes of the blind, to bring prisoners out of confinement, and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.” If Jesus is willing to stoop down and live a life of service for the poor, we must be willing to do the same or we cannot call ourselves His followers.

We are all searching for God. If He has seemed distant and hard to find, it could be that we are looking in the wrong places. Perhaps we are looking on the mountain tops when we should be looking in the ghettos. Perhaps we are reading books when we should be feeding bellies. Until we are ready to get ourselves dirty, to risk our safety, and to give without counting the cost, God will remain elusive to us. However, if we can follow Jesus into the wet and murky places of our world, it could just be that we will be surprised by His marvelous light shining out from where we least expect it.

The Baptism of the Lord

 

At our baptism, each of us received the same Holy Spirit which lived and worked through Jesus. The same Holy Spirit who empowered him to teach with authority and to perform miracles lives in our hearts through baptism and through faith. We have within us the same Holy Spirit who compelled the apostles to give testimony to the Messiah with their words and the martyrs to bear witness through their blood. We have exactly the same tool that Jesus and every saint throughout the ages has had to live the Christian life with power and confidence. Not only has the torch been passed on, but the power to hold that torch up high and carry it proudly has been given us through the Holy Spirit.  

 

Having the Holy Spirit at work in our lives is like having a billionaire give us a credit card. With it, we can buy things we could otherwise never be able to afford. Just so, with the Holy Spirit we have the strength of God within us which enables us to perform acts of generosity and courage we could never have dreamed of doing on our own. Because of our baptism, we have been made daughters and sons of God and now have access to that great power at work in us who believe. 

When someone wins a million dollars, the first thing people ask is, "What do you plan to do with your money?" As we reflect on the gift of the Holy Spirit we have received, we should ask ourselves the same question, "What do we plan to do with the power of God at work in us?"

(image by Mike Moyers)

The Light Shines Forth In the Darkness

 

Today is a great feast day for all Christians that sometimes gets overlooked because of all the ceremonies surrounding Christmas. The word “epiphany” means “revelation” or “shining forth”. The Feast of the Epiphany of the Lord, then, is the great feast when Jesus Christ is revealed not just as the Jewish Messiah but as the Light of the World who has come to save all people. So on this day, we are not just remembering the Magi who came from the East to find the King of the Jews. We are also celebrating the beautiful truth that there is no one who Jesus did not come to die for and to save, no matter what race, nationality, or religion they might have started out in. 

The Magi, then, represent all human beings who yearn for God and who seek Him with all their hearts.  They are meant to represent all the nations and peoples of the world coming forward to worship the newborn King of the Jews who is also the Savior of the World. They represent the plan of God to bring about peace by uniting women and men of every language and race through faith in Jesus Christ. The Magi are the first outside of Israel to be drawn to Christ and to bow down in homage to Him who came to save all peoples.