[Note to Readers: I know that I have been neglecting this blog for some time but I’ve not been neglecting it intentionally. It’s just that homilies are “organic things.”
Homilies do often depend on the particular audience to which they are preached. And often enough, I preach three times (and in three languages in English and Spanish at Annunciata and twice a month in Czech for a Slovakian community at St. Simon the Apostle in Marquette Park) on a given Sunday. Even when preaching multiple times in English, the assembly can be different, and things can (and surprisingly often do) in the 15-30 minutes before Mass that can effect the direction of a given homily. What one may have wanted to say may not be fit the circumstances in which one finds oneself. And so one does (hopefully) change direction.
That being said, as I reflected today on the the past Sundays, it did occur to me that it’s been a rather interesting summer in terms of the Sunday Readings (Ordinary Time / Summer though it may be) and so I decided to “try to catch” up a bit.
There will still be a gap from the feast of the Ascension to the beginning of July. But the last 5-6 weeks will be present here because I do believe that they have come to make for a fairly nice unit :-) ...]
To then, let us go back and begin here with the Homily for July 3, 2011 -
Readings - http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/070311.cfm
We find ourselves in the midst of Ordinary Time, and here in the United States along with ½ the world in the midst of summer, hence for many of us vacation season.
And it’s generally hot doing this time of year in the United States and in Europe (Rome, where the Church has been centered). So the readings during this time of year are “light.” They are not meant to overburden us (or overburden the preacher for that matter ;-). Instead, they are meant to be easy-going invitations to us to reflect on God’s presence in our lives and hopefully to find that God really is present to us.
So we hear today some nice, happy, summer readings.
In the 1st Reading we hear from the Prophet Zachariah a prophesy often evoking the image of Mary running to her aunt Elizabeth after the Annunciation or Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. But it could apply to us. “Rejoice heartily O daughter Zion because your king will come to you!” It’s a promise that God will come to us, and he’ll come to us in a way that we’d understand. (The imagery in fact is like that of a children’s story with kings, and ramparts and cities on a hill and all that).
In the Gospel Reading we hear Jesus thanking God (the Father) that it has been his will to reveal himself in the simplest terms to the child-like. Jesus goes on to tell us “Come to me, you who are burdened and I will give you rest, for my yoke is easy and my burden light.”
Together with the first reading, the Gospel Reading makes for a lovely introduction to the Readings that we’ll be hearing over the next several weeks – parables mostly about wheat, chaff, pearls and so forth – a reminder that what we need to know of God is actually very simple and designed for a mere child to grasp.
Here, I wish to note that this Gospel Reading is one of those that the Church offers for funerals, and that it is one of the most common one’s chosen for that purpose, and that it has become one of my favorties in the Gospels.
Why? This Reading reminds us that after all is said and done, what God asks of us is very little – his yoke really is easy and his burden light. For in the end, I remember people at funerals, God asks of us that during our lives we learn to love one another (which means that we learn to put up with one another) and that we learn to put our faith in God. THE REST DOESN’T MATTER.
I tell people over and over again, that God is not going to care if we became famous in this world, whether we became important, whether people quaked at our feet, whether we made “employee of the month” three times in a row (or five times in a row) or whether we "placed high" (or even won) a beauty contest. God’s just going to care about what I said above – whether we learned to love one aother (which means that we’ve learned to put up with one another) and that we put our faith in God.
And that’s good, because, my dozen or so years as a priest, I’ve buried something like 200 people. And NONE of them were famous. None of them were “important” (though I came close once at my previous parish when a Osceola County Commissioner died. I was who was able to do the last rites, but alas someone else did the funeral ... Doesn’t matter. It happily just _proves the rule_). Nobody that I’ve buried has been "important." HOWEVER, a good number of people that I’ve buried seemed to be authentically good people -- who put kids and family first, worked hard, stayed out of trouble, and yes, a fair number of them did actually go _regularly to Mass_.
And that’s nice because I think I can pretty much say this honestly that 100 years from now the vast majority of us here will have been completely forgotten by the world. Probably none of us will be “President” (and even if one did become President, what about the rest of us?) and probably none of us will be worth even a “wikipedia entry” a 100 years from now ;-). Our friends will be dead. On a family tree, we’ll be but a name.
Who will remember us, will not be our boss (he’ll be dead too). Instead, the only one who will remember us (we hope) is God. The rest utterly won’t matter.
But the Good News in this is that Jesus reminds us today that God, who created us to be happy, really, really doesn’t ask much of us at all., Instead he tells us that his yoke is easy and his burden light.
So then, as we approach this _month of ease_ ahead of us, _let us put aside things that don’t matter_, and give thanks for having a God who created us, loves us and will continue to love us regardless of how “important” (or more to the point, how _unimportant_) we may seem to the world, remembering that God just wants us to be happy both here ... and in our destiny which awaits us in heaven. Amen.
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