Email Guidelines Dara's Homilies 17th Sunday
| 
| 
Gen 18:20-32 . Col 2:12-14 . Luke 11:1-13
MEDITATION:
This Sunday is about Jesus teaching the 'Our Father'.
It asks for 'our daily bread' and forgiveness etc. and he praises the example of persistence and effort in the asking. The first reading emphasizes the importance of asking 'forgive us our trespasses'. The second praises the fact that Christ has freed us of the strict law of the Old Testament.
Our Father is very merciful, and He wants to give us all Eternal Life in paradise, but He would like us to ask for it from the heart. That asking requires humility and that humility delights God. It's like a doorway to Heaven. Also, it would help train us to be people that forgive others.
The example of the man asking for bread, is praising the effort put in to asking, and it's interesting that he's asking for it in order to give to someone else - a visitor. We ask for forgiveness as we forgive those who need our forgiveness.
The first reading is about God forgiving Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 18 ), and Abraham has to ask for it with persistence. The second reading is praising the fact that Jesus allowed himself be crucified, precisely in order to gain forgiveness for us, and his Resurrection is clarifying for us that He was successful. Forgiveness has been granted (Col 2 ). The mercy of God wins over the sin of man! But does it win over your heart?
It makes me think of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15). Thomas More used to describe that as a summary of the whole of the Gospel. Man can fail to live as a son, but God can't stop being a father! The fact that people can confess sins and be forgiven is one of the joys of being a priest. Jean Viannay (Curs de Ars in France 1785-1859) used to sit on a chair in the grounds of his church and spend nearly all his time hearing people's confessions (and, of course, forgiving them!), and the Church named him, patron of priests! I like the stories of the missionary Damian of Molokai who worked with lepars on that Island in the back of beyonds. When a boat of helpers passed the island, with a priest on board, Damian didn't ask them to disembark and risk staying among the lepars, but he asked for one thing: that the priest hear his confession! He ended up with leprosy himself, but I'd be fairly confident that he was well received in heaven!
Some go to confession with a list of sins as if it were a technical cleaning of a machine, but I think that it should be more like a trip home to have a joyfull reunion with our 'dad'! As it says in Jeremiah 18 , about the visit to the potter, God can make something beautiful out of what seems to have many faults. And God doesn't impose or make demands, like a cold employer. The Good Shepard in Luke 15 (just before the parable of the Prodigal Son), carries the lost sheep back over his shoulder. The woman that was a sinner in Luke 8 appreciated the Good News of mercy and she kisses the feet of Jesus in thanks, and that pleases him much more than all the 'teachers of the law' that were there. Will we please Jesus as we give thanks today ('eucharist')? Mary doesn't say "I'm glad that I've achieved glory as the mother of Christ", but she says "I'm glad that God chose me in spite of my littleness".
Dara.
|
|
