Homily

This past week we hosted Fr. Robert Morin for a week-long retreat. It was an opportunity to live out what the Scriptures tell us today. Too many times we Catholics just come to Mass and do our “duty.” God wants our faith to be written on our hearts. God wants our faith to be a way of life not just an obligation we have to fulfill once a week. That is a terrible form of love for God if we were just “doing our time” as people do in jail. That is why Fr. Morin came to our parish. I hope it was rewarding and challenging. I hope that it renewed your faith and gave you more insight into God’s love.

In the reading from Jeremiah, we heard how God would make a new covenant, one that would remake us into God’s people through reconciliation. Such a vision encompasses who we are quite well. As a Church, we are essentially God’s people. And as a Church we are a group who are here to imitate his love and to love one another. We do this by growing in relationships with Christ and each other.

I wonder if we sometimes look at Church or our religion as a game show. On the TV show, “Survivor,” contestants work to get to know one another for the sake of exploiting the weaknesses of each other and become the lone survivor. Is Church merely a way of using other, possibly even God, in order to “get to heaven?” Or is it about a relationship with the one true God who made us and loves us beyond our understanding? I believe the latter is true. As Christians, the Church is our way to get to know each other, but not to exploit, but to love and come closer to God. Church is a way for us to be encouraged to go out and live our faith in the world.

It is hard to be a Christian in the world, don’t you think? There are so many things that are against us. Yet, God wants us to live in the world in order to transform it. God wants us to live out our faith in the things of our every day lives. My question to all of us is this: Is there any evidence that God dwells in you? If you were sent to court, would there be enough evidence to convict you for being a Christian? We just take if for granted too often.

If you’ve been following the news, you would know about Abdul Rahman, a Christian convert from Islam. He was in the process of being sentenced to death for changing religion. Imagine! If that were you, would you keep faithful in the face of death or deny Christ and live? As it turned out, our Pope was one of many who appealed to the Afghan government for his release. Clearly for Abdul, his faith was written on his heart!

When our faith is written on our heart, we may sometimes find ourselves doing counter cultural things. Right now there is a government bill being sent through that is attempting to respond to the issue of illegal immigrants. The crux of the issue is that it classifies these people as “criminal” as well as anyone who offers assistance in any way to them. That would mean St. Vincent de Paul would be complicit in a criminal action every time they gave out food to an illegal immigrant. Any time I offer pastoral care to one of these people, I, too, would be committing a criminal act. God’s law written in our hearts must reject this. For more information, you can go to our web site and click the “immigrants” link.

As Catholic Christians we are to follow Christ whose love has been written on our hearts. That will mean we will have to walk towards and through our crosses. That means we will have to die to ourselves so that we may truly serve our Lord. Renew the covenant that God gave us through Jesus. Open your hearts to him that you may produce much fruit in your life. If you want to see Jesus as we hear the Greeks did in the Gospel, then you will need to serve him in love. You will need to write God’s law in your hearts.