We've just started our Preaching Praticum and have conferences all week on techniques and actual practice. Below is that 1st homily that I'll be giving in a few minutes to some of the other guys in my group including a faculty mentor.
This act of “heeding” pervades Luke’s Gospel written specifically for the Gentiles and is necessary to understand if we are to shed light on this this afternoon’s Gospel. For in the the verse preceding the Gospel I just read, Jesus responding to a woman says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” OR in short “Blessed are those that “heed” God--Those that LISTEN and DO--those that HEAR and ACT upon his Word as this pastor had been able to convey to the children at his school.
It is in this context that Jesus in his frustration with the Jews calls them an “evil generation” because they have become so caught up in seeing signs that they miss the point that God has manifested himself through the signs so that they will “heed” him and follow his commands. In fact throughout the Old Testament, God uses such signs & theophanies: He uses the burning bush to stir up Moses, He sends plagues upon the Egyptians, his sends earthquakes and thunder at Mt. Sinai, and guides the people with the burning cloud in their wandering through the desert. These signs are not to entertain or be a circus act, but are to manifest his omnipotence and power so as to instill a healthy fear into them to live by the covenant of their forefathers.
Hence Jesus is upset with the Jews because after hundreds of years they, the Chosen people still are demanding signs in order to heed God’s commands.
Whereas the Ninevites, through the prophet Jonah, matured from their spiritual infancy in that Jonah’s sign and manifestation of God was solely his “preaching” of repentance, not some supernatural disturbance or miracle.
It is exactly this which Jesus is shaming the Jews over, namely that the Ninevites, who were Gentiles, not the Chosen people of God, repented by Jonah’s preaching alone, yet they are refusing to “heed” the Word of God from the Son of God, the Messiah, the fulfillment of the Prophets who is wiser than Solomon and greater than Jonah.
Jesus hence is calling the Jews to change, to mature in their faith, to stop seeking and to start listening and doing, to start heeding his Good News.
In the 1st reading St. Paul addressing the Galatians tells them the Good News-- that Jesus has set us free from slavery to sin and he exhorts them to not fall back into enslavement and bondage.
It is this spiritual combat and conversion that Jesus wants from his Jewish brothers and sisters and precisely what he demands of us. As we all at some point faced as we were discerning to enter seminary or as we were on retreat this past week, we often go through times of desolation or times of no “signs” in which God tests us to help us grow in maturity and to help us prepare for the future as priests under constant fire and greater temptations. In these moments of “no signs” and desolation may we strive to “heed” the word of God, knowing that he is always with us, and be able to proclaim, “Blessed be the name of the Lord, forever!”
The readings are for October 13 from the Monday of the 28th Week in Ordinary Time. What's with the date? Well we were told to chose either the readings for our own birthday or our mother's. I chose yours mom. :) Here's to you!
The audience is to fellow seminarians, so bear with the fact that it might be more theological than you like....
One of the gifts of the priest I worked with this summer in Sydney was his ability to engage and teach the children at his parish school. He recounted over the course of my stay there, how he had successfully taught the 1st graders the meaning of the word “heed” in which we “listen to someone” and then “do what they have told us” and that this word, “heed” spread across the playground at the school in a matter of days as the 1st graders taught the older kids what it meant.
This act of “heeding” pervades Luke’s Gospel written specifically for the Gentiles and is necessary to understand if we are to shed light on this this afternoon’s Gospel. For in the the verse preceding the Gospel I just read, Jesus responding to a woman says, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.” OR in short “Blessed are those that “heed” God--Those that LISTEN and DO--those that HEAR and ACT upon his Word as this pastor had been able to convey to the children at his school.
It is in this context that Jesus in his frustration with the Jews calls them an “evil generation” because they have become so caught up in seeing signs that they miss the point that God has manifested himself through the signs so that they will “heed” him and follow his commands. In fact throughout the Old Testament, God uses such signs & theophanies: He uses the burning bush to stir up Moses, He sends plagues upon the Egyptians, his sends earthquakes and thunder at Mt. Sinai, and guides the people with the burning cloud in their wandering through the desert. These signs are not to entertain or be a circus act, but are to manifest his omnipotence and power so as to instill a healthy fear into them to live by the covenant of their forefathers.
Hence Jesus is upset with the Jews because after hundreds of years they, the Chosen people still are demanding signs in order to heed God’s commands.
Whereas the Ninevites, through the prophet Jonah, matured from their spiritual infancy in that Jonah’s sign and manifestation of God was solely his “preaching” of repentance, not some supernatural disturbance or miracle.
It is exactly this which Jesus is shaming the Jews over, namely that the Ninevites, who were Gentiles, not the Chosen people of God, repented by Jonah’s preaching alone, yet they are refusing to “heed” the Word of God from the Son of God, the Messiah, the fulfillment of the Prophets who is wiser than Solomon and greater than Jonah.
Jesus hence is calling the Jews to change, to mature in their faith, to stop seeking and to start listening and doing, to start heeding his Good News.
In the 1st reading St. Paul addressing the Galatians tells them the Good News-- that Jesus has set us free from slavery to sin and he exhorts them to not fall back into enslavement and bondage.
It is this spiritual combat and conversion that Jesus wants from his Jewish brothers and sisters and precisely what he demands of us. As we all at some point faced as we were discerning to enter seminary or as we were on retreat this past week, we often go through times of desolation or times of no “signs” in which God tests us to help us grow in maturity and to help us prepare for the future as priests under constant fire and greater temptations. In these moments of “no signs” and desolation may we strive to “heed” the word of God, knowing that he is always with us, and be able to proclaim, “Blessed be the name of the Lord, forever!”
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