Sixteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/071915.cfm


We all are attracted to something, though it doesn't take long to notice that what we are attracted to varies greatly from person to person. As human persons, what we truly want is to be happy; we want to be filled with joy. It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that what we are often attracted to are the things that we perceive will bring us happiness.

Very often we think we will find happiness if we own that one thing. We listen to those infomercials on TV that promise us immense satisfaction if we call now and buy their product. Have you ever noticed that when they start out these advertisements, they always show some goof ball who clearly has no idea what he or she is doing? A voice comes on and asks, “Are you tired of having to struggle with your old garden hose?” (or whatever it is they're selling). The person is usually making a mess or causing themselves pain and frustration of epic proportions. In this case maybe the old garden hose is tangled and water is getting everywhere except where you need it. Then the voice comes back as says, “Then you need to try the new 'Water-matic Three-thousand'”, or some other snazzy sounding name. Whereas the old product shows the users being frustrated and grimacing as they struggle with their chores, the new product shows a new set of people who are smiling and are clearly enjoying using the new Water-matic Three-thousand, or whatever it is. The voice continues to describe why their product is so much better than anything you may have used before. The price is even kept at rock bottom low, plus the obligatory “$9.95 shipping and handling”. And what infomercial would be complete without hearing the words, “But wait, there's more! Call know and receive a handy book light with every order”.

The makers of those products and infomercials want us to believe that buying certain things will bring us the happiness that we want. They want us to be attracted to those things. Even our society tries to tell us that the more we have the more we will be happy. The truth is, certain things may bring us happiness for awhile, but there is no guarantee that it will last forever. No one ever said that life was fair, and we all know from experience that it isn't always happy either. There is something more important than material things that we should be attracted to.

We can also be attracted to people of course. TV shows and movies often give the impression that if we find the right friend or the right boyfriend or girlfriend, or the right spouse we will find all the happiness that we hope for in life. It is true that close family members and friends can bring us many wonderful hours of laughter, happiness and companionship throughout life. They offer support and consolation in difficult times as well. However, anyone who has been married could probably regale us with stories of times when marriage wasn't exactly the fairytale that some make it out to be. We believe that God blesses spouses in a special way on their wedding day, but even with those blessings there are still fights and anger and frustration. Attraction to another human being, whether in or out of marriage does not bring perfect joy.

The answer, as you probably all expected, is with God. Sacred Scripture shows us that our perfect joy can only be found in our relationship with God. It is He who we are attracted to. All other attractions that we find on earth, like material things and people, are only attractive to us because we think they will fulfill our desire to be happy. They only fulfill it for a limited amount of time, however. God can fulfill it for eternity.

In Mark's Gospel today, we hear a continuation from last week's Gospel is which the Twelve Apostles are sent out two by two to preach repentance and drive out demons. Now they have returned and are amazed at what they were able to accomplish. Jesus knows what they need and invites them to go to deserted place to rest. He knows that after preaching and casting out demons they needed some time alone with God. It's not unlike how we are invited back to this place of prayer each week after spending time being a witness to Christ to all we meet. As they go to this little mini retreat, many others come as well and arrive before them. Why do all these people want to come to a deserted place? Why did the Twelve want to go off with Jesus in the boat? Why do we wish to spend our free time on a perfectly good weekend in church? Because we are attracted to God. We are drawn towards Him and want to be with Him. Even some of the people who come to Jesus in the Gospel today may have been complete strangers to Christ. He responds by having pity on them and begins to teach them.

St. Paul talks in His Letter to the Ephesians about how those who were once far off have now “become near because of the blood of Christ”. In other words, Christ has brought us together through His blood. It is through His blood that we are redeemed and so we desire to be with Christ, the Son of God. We are attracted to God.

It is all good and well for me to say that we should all keep our focus and attention on God. Deep down I think we all know this already. The difficulty is in the distractions. I'm talking about all those material things and the relationships that I was talking about before that we think will make us happy. All those who try to get us to pay more attention to those things (to focus on buying more stuff and to worry about relationships) are not unlike the shepherds that the Prophet Jeremiah warns us about in the first reading. These false shepherds try to lure people away from God for their own profit, just as many today try to lure us into buying products and relationship help all for their profit as well. But as Jeremiah says, one will come who will help us and give us what we truly need, like a good shepherd. Christ will lead us to the Father. There we will find our true joy.

Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070515.cfm

          We all have difficulties and challenges that we must face during our lifetime.  The temptation for us is to look at these difficulties with a degree of annoyance, frustration, or even anger.  We use them as excuses to complain and to wallow in our self-pity about how hard we have it.  They can cause us to take our frustrations out on family and friends and those around us.  We might even blame God for causing these difficulties.  Sacred Scripture encourages us to look at these hardships in another light, however; to see them as opportunities to grow in holiness.  Sometimes God allows us to go through difficulties and even sufferings to help us get ready for something bigger that will happen later in our lives.  Maybe God just wants to get us ready for Heaven in some way.  Our Christian tradition often refers to this as redemptive suffering.  Granted, anyone who has suffered will tell you that it is hard to see any redemptive qualities when a person is in the midst of suffering.  But I hope that we can all realize that God can still work miracles even in the midst of our sufferings.

          Our second reading today gives us a passage from St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians.  Paul explains that in order to keep him from becoming too prideful because of all the wondrous things that had happened to him, he was given what he calls “a thorn in the flesh…an angel of Satan”.  Now, scholars are still debating about what this “thorn in the flesh” was.  Some have argued that it was a literal physical pain.  Perhaps it was a chronic pain that would have made it hard to focus on what he needed to do.  Others say it was a spiritual affliction, pointing to the part about the angel of Satan beating him.  Satan would have loved to stop the Apostle’s mission to preach the Gospel to all the nations.  Some maintain that it was more of a psychological ailment, that Paul’s mind was causing the pain and/or the distractions that he was experiencing.  Still others say that it was combination of these three or that the thorn and the angel are all metaphorical and that some other outside source was causing these challenges to Paul.

          Paul says that he prayed to Jesus about this and asked Him three different times to take away this thorn.  Whatever the difficulty or suffering this thorn caused Paul, Jesus refuses to take it away.  He tells Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness”.  Jesus is reminding Paul that he is only human and that this human nature is prone to weakness.  But that’s okay, Jesus is explaining.  He is offering Paul grace which is able to work through Paul’s human weakness and help him to complete what he needs to do.  St. Paul’s sufferings helped him to do the hard work he did in his life and ultimately helped him to grow in holiness and to enter into Heaven.

          Many times in life we experience some sort of struggle or difficulty, but later on we see how that experience got us ready for something bigger later on.  Training for a sport or a race is a great example of this.  You can't just do a couple of sprints up and down your driveway and hope to be ready to do Grandma's Marathon.  Sometime the training can be even more excruciating than the actual event.

                   The last time the Olympic Games were held, I heard an interesting story about Gold Medalist Swimmer, Michael Phelps and his coach, Bob Bowman.  Seeing that he had a terrific athlete on his hands, Bowman did everything he could to push Phelps to his limits.  He wanted to prepare Phelps for any struggles or challenges that he might have to face during a race in the pool.  Once when Phelps was at a national meet, he forgot his goggles before a race.  Bowman noticed what had happened, but instead of running the goggles out to Phelps, he decided to hold on to them and find out what he could do.  Phelps went ahead and swam without his goggles and won the race.  This later proved to be great training for him.  In the Games in Beijing, Phelps was swimming in a race when suddenly his goggles filled up with water.  Because he had experienced this before, however, he knew precisely what he needed to do to adjust to swimming blind.  Not only did he win the race, but he set a new world record.

          Just as a trainer or a coach will put an athlete through rigorous training to help him or her get ready for the big game or race, so also God will at times put us in situations that will challenge us in some way to help us grow in holiness and faith.  Maybe He gives us a small challenge to get us ready for a bigger challenge.  Perhaps He is challenging us to pray more and to understand what He does for us.

          The prophet Ezekiel talks today about how God called him to be a prophet.  God told him that he would be sent to the Israelites, that rebellious house.  He is warning the prophet that this mission, or assignment, will not be easy but a great challenge for the young man.  Like St. Paul a few centuries later, Ezekiel will have to learn to trust the God's grace is sufficient for him.  God is helping both the Apostle and the prophet to grow in holiness through these challenges.

          The Gospel continues on these same lines.  Jesus, as the Son of God, doesn't need any help in order to grow in holiness obviously, but the Father still sends Him into challenging situations.  Instead of helping Christ, however, these situations help us as we work at following the footsteps of Jesus.  Jesus Christ is Lord of lords and King of kings, yet we see in this Gospel that He can't convince people from His own hometown to listen to Him.  In fact we are told that He can't even perform any righteous deed there because of their lack of faith.

          We too are going to experience hardships, challenges, and difficulties, as I have been saying.  Like Jesus and Ezekiel, we may encounter people who don't want to listen to us.  The Church is experiencing this a lot lately with people not wanting to hear our stance on life, and human dignity, and marriage.  That might be our thorn in the flesh.  But know that despite these challenges, Christ is with us.  As He told Paul, His grace is sufficient.  Fear not, it will lead us to holiness.