1.Jer
3:4-6,8-10
|
2.Heb 12:1-4
|
3. Gospel:
Luke 12:49-53
|
"
I have come to set fire on Earth"
Here on earth we have
got an endless list of people who are famous and who got to be famous. St.
Thomas More cannot be excluded from the
list of famous people since history tells us a lot about him. He was a public
servant, a judge, a diplomat, a member of the King of England' private council
and king's favorite. Above all, he was a person whose fidelity to God and
commitment to justice and truth could not be compromised even under the threat
of death due to what happened in the next paragraph of our reflection.
It happened that in the
year 1527, King Henry VIII who was legally married to Catheline of Aragon
decided to Mary Ann Bolyn, thus he abandoned his first legal wife. In March 1534, he coerced the parliament to
pass a bill stating that what he did was right and all those who were asked to
do so must publicly declare that it was right. Thomas a godly man and a
prominent public figure was told to make the declaration. He insisted and
publicly disobeyed the King's manipulation. Finally he was executed.
In our today's gospel,
Jesus uses strong words that seem to be offending. He says, " I have come
to set the earth on fire...........Do you think that I have come to establish
peace on earth? No, but rather division." Today's readings are indeed a
call to war: not a war against other people but a war against sin and
corruption; not a war against people we perceive as evil, but a war against the
evil one, the devil.
What do we do with
fire? It can do many different kinds of
things. Fire can make something strong; that's why we put things like pots on
fire. Fire can make something soft; that's why we put piece of iron into the fire,
it turns red and then you can bend it. Fire can also heat or burn piece of wood
and turn it into ashes. Fire gives light........as in candle, kerosene lamp or
electric bulb. Fire can take away pain. If you have sprained ankle or swollen
hand, put it close to the fire. Heat helps the pain to go away. But do not play on fire it can
destroy you and your property.
Let's learn one thing
from our gospel today, that the message of Jesus is like fire because it
changes, it purifies and refines us. This message of Jesus makes us loyal to him.
Christianity is
loyalty. It is not a theory or an ideology, but it is a faith in the person of
Jesus Christ who is the Son of God. It is the imitation of His life, teachings
and sacrifice on the cross. Our faith cannot be compared to a situation when we
like a dress and sometimes not like it anymore we give it to somebody or throw
it away. Faith is the way of life; it is our own identification card that we constantly
profess in our lives.
Dear friends how loyal
are we in Christ? We are living in the age of secularism, and materialism. This
is the age characterized by an attitude of having things easily and
immediately. The market is flooded with instant commodities; instant coffee,
instant soup, everything is instant even instant baby you can have it without
the blessing of the sacrament of Matrimony. However, there is a danger with
regard to instant things. The danger is to think of instant salvation!. We can
be thrown into the devil's trap of bringing ourselves away from the difficult
commitment of faith and the sacrifices it entails.
Some biblical scholars
are telling us that Jesus is speaking here not about the purpose of his coming
but about the inevitable consequence of his coming. He came purposely to reveal
the true sons and daughters of God who listen to God's word, and the children of this world who oppose
God's design. This divides all humankind into two camps, the camp of the godly
and the camp of the ungodly. There is always a perpetual conflict, a state of
war, between these two groups as one group strives to raise the world up to God
and the other to pull it down to hell. These two groups do not live in two
different parts of the world, they live side by side in the same neighborhood,
they live together under the same roof, and in fact the forces of good and evil
often exist together in the same person.
Asking ourselves this
simple question that, what are some of these evil forces that we are asked to
war against? Well, why don't we start with the seven Deadly sins: Pride( superiority
complex), Covetousness( greed, seeking material prosperity at the expense of
one's soul), Lust ( sexual abuse of minors, pornography, treating women as
objects of pleasure), Anger ( bitterness, hate, bearing grudges), gluttony (
excessive eating and drinking), on top of these we can add the mother of all
evils, injustice. If we declare war against these then we are fighting a holy
war.
Are we are loyal to Jesus
who denounced all the evils in the society during His time, we too must denounce. But what happen? When
someone more especially church leaders, speaks of Injustice, graft and corruption in the government and even in
the church, poverty, unequal distribution of wealth and many others, we say
that priest should not mix politics with religion, that there should be a
separation between the church and State, that only spiritual aspect. If this is
what we want, then, when we enter the church and attend mass or pray, please
leave your body at the entrance of the church and only your soul should enter
and attend the Mass, practically this could not be. We do not ignore all these
things. But Jesus denouncing all these things in His life time, are we
following Him and doing the same as He did?
0 Response to "HOMILY FOR THE 20th SUNDAY OF THE YEAR C ORDINARY TIME"
Chapisha Maoni