St. Thomas the Apostle Parish

Homily for Friday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

For us to be true to the teaching of Christ and to His values often means having to go against what society says and even putting aside parts of ourselves so that He may be first in our lives. In many ways, this may feel like a loss.

In our efforts to be faithful to the LORD, we will often have to say “no” when others are saying “yes.” Following Jesus is not easy; it often means taking the way of the Cross, that is, the more difficult way. Being Jesus’ followers is very demanding, especially in today’s world and culture.

However, Jesus promises that those who lose their lives for His sake and for the sake of the Gospel will save their lives; they will be more alive. So, what feels like a loss at the time will ultimately be a benefit.

Jesus understands the temptation to be ashamed of Him and His words. He gets that we may feel tempted to keep our faith in Him hidden so as to go with the flow. However, if we are prepared to live our faith publicly, even when pressured to do otherwise, then we will come to know the fullness of life that the LORD wants for all of us.+

Homily for Thursday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

Just like the ancient philosopher Socrates, Jesus enjoyed asking questions of His disciples and of the people He encountered as He journeyed from town to town. One of the most important questions He asked is found in today’s Gospel passage, “Who do you say that I am?” It is a question that is actually spoken to each one of us and each of us is asked to answer that question for ourselves. But it is not a question that is simply asking for information or an answer that can be found in a book or online. Instead, it is a question that is spoken to both our heads and our hearts.

Peter was correct in answering Jesus’ question by saying, “You are the Christ.” But Peter’s answer wasn’t the entire truth about who Jesus was and is. Jesus went on to identify Himself as the Christ; the Christ who would be the suffering Son of Man; the Christ who would be rejected and put to death.

This self-revelation of Jesus was unacceptable to Peter; he had still to learn to accept the whole truth about Jesus, to receive Jesus as He was and not as Peter wanted Him to be. Peter had a long way to go before he could answer Jesus’ question fully 

We are all on that same journey, gradually coming to understand and know and receive Jesus as He really is and not just as we want Him to be or imagine Him to be.+

Homily for Wednesday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

The miracle we hear about today is told only by St. Mark; it wasn’t repeated in the Gospels by St. Matthew and St. Luke, even though they relied heavily on St. Mark’s writings. This is also the only miracle that Jesus worked in stages. Jesus’ willingness to live on our human level offers much to encourage us. There’s a sense of thoughtfulness in the way He deals with the needs of the blind man.

He first takes him by the hand and leads him outside the village. Then, far away from the gawking crowd, He puts saliva on his eyes and, touching the blind man’s closed eyelids with his fingers, Jesus bonds with him. This poor man could not see the sadness in Jesus’ eyes at the sight of this disability, but he could feel the grip of His hand and touch of His fingers. Jesus is not just following common ritual practices in this miracle; He is adapting Himself to the very human condition of need.

The two stages of the miracle are interesting: after the first stage, everything the man could see was so vague that people appeared to be walking trees; then, after the second stage, he could see everything clearly. These two stages mirror the stages of our growth in faith: It doesn’t happen all at once.

We should be grateful to St. Mark for preserving the memory of Jesus’ understanding of and respect for the stages of our lives and our gradual growth to holiness. The steps to holiness follow the path of human existence, but we cannot walk the path alone; we must be like Jesus who took the blind man’s hand and led him outside the village. We take the hand of our neighbor in need, and to our surprise, we are not simply helping the hand that we grasp; we find that that needy hand is leading us to our salvation, just as the blind man led Jesus into an event that proclaims redemption to us today.+

Homily for Tuesday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

In our Gospel passage from St. Mark today, Jesus tries to teach His disciples the truth of His power in the name of His Father. He warns the disciples about the “leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod,” who, in the passage from yesterday’s Gospel, had asked Him for signs to prove He was speaking on behalf of the Father.

Essentially, Jesus says to them, “Hey, did you not see what I just did back there; feeding that huge crowd with seven loaves of bread? That was a sign, people! How did you not get that? Open your eyes! The signs are happening right in front of you!”^[1]

As we listen to Jesus and His disbelief at His disciples’ lack of understanding, we might get the idea they just didn’t hear the great glory of God spoken about in today’s psalm response; that they missed the power of God alive in the Flood, mentioned in our first reading today from the Book of Genesis. The signs that Pharisees and Herod asked for were to test Jesus’ power; the signs Jesus actually gave sprang forth from love: He did what he did not to entertain or to prove anything except that He wanted to care for people in their need.

“The challenge for us, then, is to trust in God’s will even without a grand display of power to help our faith along. Jesus calls us to wake up to the acts of love God is already doing in our lives. When we focus on returning to God tomorrow, that trust will be important. We, like Noah, might not know exactly what awaits us when we follow God’s will.”^[2]

 

[1] Mattingly, Molly, Creighton University, Daily Reflection, 2015

[2] Ibid.

Homily for Monday of the 6th Week in Ordinary Time

More often than the other evangelists, St. Mark, in his Gospel, refers to the emotions of Jesus. And we need to remember that Jesus was both fully divine and fully human; He experienced the full range of human emotions, but without sin.

In today’s Gospel passage, Mark shows Jesus responding with a “sigh to the depths of His spirit” (also known as a groan) to the argument of the Pharisees and their request for a sign. Then He asks, “Why does this generation seek a sign?” 

While listening to this story play itself out, it’s almost impossible to get beyond a sense of the LORD’s frustration in that sigh from the depths of His spirit. We have all experienced that kind of a sigh, both within ourselves and from others. We know the emotion it conveys. But why was He sighing? What frustration was He experiencing as He dealt with the Pharisees? 

Well, throughout human history, people who are religious have often been tempted to search excitedly for signs from heaven, for visions that are extraordinary and unusual. But Jesus is always directing us towards the ordinary moments of our lives as moments to find the divine: the sower who goes out to sow seed in his field; the woman who looks for her lost coin; the care given by a Samaritan (one who was looked down upon) to a stranger on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho; the man who unexpectedly finds treasure in his field; and the list goes on.

If we see God only in the rare miraculous moments, then we miss His presence in the ordinary moments of our everyday lives, where He dwells at all times. It is in the ordinary that the mystery of God’s kingdom is to be found, because all of God’s creation of full of God’s glory.+

Homily for the 6th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Several years ago, on a Friday afternoon, the late actor Michael Landon was driving home on the freeway in Los Angeles. It was very hot, and the traffic was quite congested. Horns were honking, tempers were flaring, and drivers were exchanging assorted gestures with each other.

As Landon sat in his car watching all of this unfold, he began asking a lot of questions like: “Why do people hate one another so much? Why is so much energy wasted on rage? What would happen is we used that energy on kindness rather than anger?”

In the midst of this questioning, an idea popped into his head. He began to think about creating a television series dedicated to the idea that kindness, and not rage, will best address the problems of our world. That day on the road spawned the television series, “Highway to Heaven.”

The theme of each episode of the series was the same point Jesus made when He urged people to show kindness to one another even to the point of “turning the other cheek” when someone treated them unkindly.

Kindness blesses the person to whom we are kind, but it also blesses us. Michael Landon told a story about how, when he was 19 years old, he got paid $260 for his first acting job in a TV show called “John Nesbitt’s Passing Parade.” He said he felt so rich and famous that he decided to go to Beverly Hills (where he almost never went) to look at the store windows. 

As he passed by a toy store, he saw two boys with their noses pressed up against the glass looking at the toys inside. Landon walked up to them and asked them which of the toys they liked best. One boy pointed to a wagon, the other to a model airplane. He then took the boys inside where he bought the wagon and the model airplane for them. The boys were filled with great excitement and joy. What surprised Landon most, however, was the thrill that he got from his act of kindness. He said it was deeper and more satisfying than anything he had experienced before. And more lasting; it was an experience he would remember for the rest of his life. 

Today’s readings invite us to take a look at our lives and to ask ourselves how much kindness is present in them. They invite us to look at our own lives and our love and to ask ourselves how they compare to the life and love Jesus describes in his Sermon on the Mount. They invite us to take a look at our own lives and to ask ourselves what would happen if we took the energy we now expend on anger and expend it on kindness. How would our lives and the lives of those around us change and become happier? What miracle might result if we took seriously Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount?

Kindness is a power greater all earthly powers. It’s not the resource of one nation or one person: It’s at the disposal of every person in every nation. And our supply of kindness is unlimited. The more we give of it, the more there is to give, much like the loaves and fish Jesus gave to the hungry multitude.

Let us pray:

LORD, help us to realize the power of kindness. Help us to use this power the way you intended us to use it when you created us. Help us use it to bring happiness to those around us. Help us use it to work miracles, healing people in our time, just as you healed them through kindness in your time. Through Christ our LORD. Amen+

Homily for Saturday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Every day of our lives we are given all sorts of opportunities and situations, and how we respond to them is determined, to a large degree, on our moral character.

The human tendency toward ambition and selfishness is something that all of us have to deal with both within our society and within ourselves. Every day, we have choices to make that show how we respond to God and His call to set aside our own desires to help those most in need. Today’s Gospel passage gives us a good example of a positive response to people in their time of need.

It is important to take note of how quickly and simply this story ends. As soon as the miracle takes place, and the people are fed, Jesus immediately hops into a boat and leaves, not waiting around to receive the accolades of the crowd that had been satisfied. Jesus’ actions were motivated by compassion, not by a desire for fame or praise. He did not perform miracles for show; restoring others to life and strength was His constant motivation, and He calls us to the same.+

Homily for the Memorial of Saints Cyril and Methodius

We can sometimes take our senses for granted, the fact that we can see, hear, smell, touch and speak. It is only when we lose one of our senses or someone close to us loses one of theirs that we begin to realize how valued those gifts are. Because they are such great gifts, we need to keep asking ourselves, “How am I using these gifts of hearing, sight, and speech?”

In our Gospel passage, a deaf man is brought before Jesus with an impediment in his speech. There can be a link between the two; the inability to hear can affect how people speak. Jesus first opened the man’s ears, and then he could speak clearly.

For us who have the gifts of both hearing and speech, it is still true to say that the quality of our speaking is in some way related to the quality of our hearing. The better we are at listening, the better we may be at speaking. We need to listen to each other if we are to speak well to each other. More deeply, we need to listen to the Word of the LORD if we are to speak the Word of the LORD. It is only in listening to Him that He can truly speak through us.+

Homily for Thursday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

Love and friendship make great demands on our generosity. Even Jesus seems reluctant to divert attention away from His own chosen people, Israel, to attend to the pagan woman.

There is no simple way to soften the harsh reply of Jesus, except perhaps that He would not repeat the missteps of Solomon who was led astray by foreign women.

The apparent rejection is reconciled by the woman’s humility, perseverance, and love for her child. Not for selfish pleasure or personal gain, but for the sake of her daughter, does the woman turn aside Jesus’ harsh words by replying, “LORD, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s scraps.” This answer overcomes Jesus’ first objections, and He heals the woman’s daughter – a wonderful example of gentle perseverance rewarded.+

Homily for Wednesday of the 5th Week in Ordinary Time

While the heart is a powerful traditional symbol for love, Jesus takes a look at what else can lie hidden in the human heart. It can be the place of evil intentions; it can be damaging and destructive of others. The heart is the person’s inner core and we know that our hearts can hold both light and darkness; our hearts can be reservoirs for good and for evil.

One of the great traditional images of our faith has been the Sacred Heart.  This image declares that, at God’s inner core, there is a totally selfless love, a love revealed fully in the life, death, and Resurrection of Jesus. This greatest love is immeasurably creative and life-giving.

Our own hearts should, in some sense, reflect the Sacred Heart, with an inner core connected to God’s inner core. This vision of our potential is echoed in a simple prayer that many of us will have learned at some point in our lives: “Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and kindle in them the fire of your love. Send forth your Spirit and they shall be created. And You shall renew the face of the earth.”+