Sheperd's Voice

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homily - Prophets and Witnessing

I lost my text from Sunday!  Sorry!

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Incarnate messages

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As we think about the vocation of a prophet from the Old Testament, we cannot help but realize the parallel to missionaries and preachers in our world today.  And especially for our parish, we have our parish missionaries who will be arriving in just under a month for their year of service to the Gospel.  As we heard in the readings, especially from Saint Paul, this life is not easy, but is rewarding: “My grace is sufficient for you.”

The way we treat our family is not the same way we treat our friends, nor strangers.  We drop our guards, drop formalities, etc.  The resentment of Jesus neighbors in Nazareth (“Where did this man get all of this?”) is something that we can all relate to.  With a good guess at what Jesus had to teach, especially about conversion and His own mission as the messiah, we can easily imagine the lack of receptivity from those who grew up with Jesus and had no idea that anything special was happening. 

God works in ordinary ways.

Gratia natura supponit.

God speaks to all of us, but we have to want to listen.

1.    Conscience

2.    Scripture

3.    Sacraments

4.    Prayer

5.    Our Shepherds (Pope, Bishop, etc.)

6.    The Body of Christ

7.    Promptings of the Holy Spirit

Spiritual mummification

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God did not make death. 

Two types of death.  Spiritual death is worse than physical death.

Sin creates this spiritual death, even when it is not serious sin it can be deadly.  For if we do not try to overcome little faults, then we will fall little by little, into greater ones.

Acedia – spiritual sloth.  “a sickness of the soul that is expressed in boredom, distaste for prayer, slackening or abandoning of penitential practices, neglecting the heart, and indifference towards the sacraments.” (Cardinal Sarah. God or Nothing p237)

No such thing as vacation from your vocation – and all of us have daily prayer and Sunday Mass as part of our vocation.  We may find days to relax during this summer, but it should never be at the cost of our relationship with God.

I experienced a parallel of this during my pilgrimage.  It was hard.  There was serious resistance.

the biggest threat of all gradually takes shape: “the gray pragmatism of the daily life of the Church, in which all appears to proceed normally, while in reality faith is wearing down and degenerating into small-mindedness”.[63] A tomb psychology thus develops and slowly transforms Christians into mummies in a museum. Disillusioned with reality, with the Church and with themselves, they experience a constant temptation to cling to a faint melancholy, lacking in hope, which seizes the heart like “the most precious of the devil’s potions”.[64] Called to radiate light and communicate life, in the end they are caught up in things that generate only darkness and inner weariness, and slowly consume all zeal for the apostolate. For all this, I repeat: Let us not allow ourselves to be robbed of the joy of evangelization!

Book: The Noonday Devil. (Formed.org)

Joy and Evangelization are the cures to this spiritual death.  Get to know Christ again, particularly by living your faith.

In the sacraments, Christ reaches us and heals us and brings us back to life. Confession.

Let us allow ourselves to be met by Christ once more, to be renewed by Him, and to joyfully respond to His Love by the way we love our neighbor.  Amen.

The Effects of Sin and the Divine work of Restoration / Salvation

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386 Sin is present in human history; any attempt to ignore it or to give this dark reality other names would be futile. To try to understand what sin is, one must first recognize the profound relation of man to God, for only in this relationship is the evil of sin unmasked in its true identity as humanity's rejection of God and opposition to him, even as it continues to weigh heavy on human life and history.

396 God created man in his image and established him in his friendship. A spiritual creature, man can live this friendship only in free submission to God. The prohibition against eating "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" spells this out: "for in the day that you eat of it, you shall die."²⁷⁶ The "tree of the knowledge of good and evil"²⁷⁷ symbolically evokes the insurmountable limits that man, being a creature, must freely recognize and respect with trust. Man is dependent on his Creator, and subject to the laws of creation and to the moral norms that govern the use of freedom.

When we sin, We prefer ourselves to God, choose ourselves over and against God.  We make ourselves to be “God.”

The Effects of Sin and the Divine work of Restoration / Salvation

1.     Separation from God

2.     Separation from Others

3.     Loss of True Freedom

From an ancient homily on Holy Saturday

‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God.

Trinity Sunday - Known and Loved

Just a couple weeks ago I had a high school senior, just about to graduate, ask me, "Why do I continue to seek the approval of certain people when I know they are going to treat me poorly?"  I ultimately said that the instinct was good, but that sin is real and people are going to hurt us, sometimes deeply.  But to focus on what is good there can lead us to today's celebration.

We all seek to be known by others, because we seek to be loved by others.  This basic instinct is hard-wired into our human nature because God made us in His image and likeness.  This was more mysterious to the Jews than it is to us, because we know through God's revelation that the Lord is Trinity, three in one, and therefore is a communion of persons. God is relationship, not of domination and tyranny, but of love, and he made us for that very same type of relationship.  Of course with others, but also with Him.  As we see in the story of Adam and Eve, God wishes to slowly draw us into our primary relationship with Him through the way we encounter our fellow men and women around us.

We are also hard-wired for mystery.  Whether it is mystery novels, trivia shows, puzzles games, or more deeply wondering at the natural world around us, we are all given a deep and unquenchable thirst for truth.  Ultimately, the thirst within us cannot be satisfied with this natural world and the knowledge we can gain from it.  What we over time discover is that, despite all the good this world offers, it never satisfies the way that relationships do, the way that love does.  Indeed love, seen most perfectly in marriage and true friendship, is the one thing that can fully satisfy our hearts.  Love for love's sake, nothing else, no kick-backs or fringe-benefits - that alone is what begins to truly quench that thirst within us.  And why?  Because God made us for Himself, and God is love.  So when we encounter true love in our lives, we touch God.  We love, and we feel a draw toward something eternal - that is our triune God.  We discover a truth about the world or about our lives, and we touch something that is beyond - that is the triune God.

So that deepest truth, that deepest mystery, that hidden God, actually is not hiding - throughout the Old Testament and especially in Jesus Christ, we see that God wants to be known by us, because He loves us and knows our true happiness is with Him alone.  Yet God isn't too forceful with that desire to be known and loved, for love must be earned and built up over time.  Not unlike us, he allows the relationship to slowly unfold - not disclosing too much at once, but rather waiting for us to share ourselves one bit at a time so that He can open Himself to us more and more.  In this beautiful dance of love, let us never be afraid to seek out this God we were made for.  Let us ever fear that He will leave us wanting or unsatisfied.  And above all, let us thank the loving Lord God who created us to discover Him, to be close to Him, and to love Him now and into eternity.

Pentecost - "Walking by the Spirit" daily

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My Vocation: Hearing and Following the Spirit (Source: Jacques Philippe, In the School of the Holy Spirit)

- How to Know the Inspiration is from God:

            Experience --> A "Spiritual Sense" of the Holy Spirit's "tone of voice": gentleness and power, purity and clarity.  John 10: "My sheep know my voice."

            1. External Criterion: God is Truth and Unity                         **Forespective**

                        - Consistency with Holy Scripture and Church Teaching

                        - Consistency with the Demands of our Vocation

            2. Internal Criterion: "A tree is known by its fruit"                  **Retrospective**

                        - Good fruit: peace, joy, charity, communion (true unity), humility, light, clarity, simplicity.

                        - Bad fruit: sadness, bitterness, doubt, pride, despair, apathy, worry, agitation, confusion.

            3. Some Good Complementary Signs: Constancy (Patience), Humility, Obedience.

- How to Foster Inspirations:

            1. Practice Praise and Thanksgiving

            2. Desire and Ask for Them

            3. Resolve to Refuse God Nothing

            4. Practice Filial and Trusting Obedience

            5. Practice Abandonment

            6. Practice Detachment

            7. Practice Silence and Peace

            8. Persevere Faithfully in Prayer

            9. Examine the Movements of Our Hearts

            10. Spiritual Direction (Confession)