Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week of Ordinary Time

July 1, 2008 · Filed Under Homilies, Ordinary Time · Comments 

Today's readings

You probably remember, maybe not fondly, the readings we had from the Books of Kings the last couple of weeks.  The names were hard to pronounce, and their deeds were hard to hear.  Each and every one of the kings was worse than the one who preceded him.  How often did we hear the ancient historian write “and he did evil in the sight of the LORD?”  What makes it doubly hard to hear, I think, is that Israel’s sordid history is in some ways our own.  How often do we too turn away from the Lord and his mercy and his plan for our lives?  Our deeds, hopefully, are not as murderous as those of the ancient kings, but they are still lacking, of course, in the sight of God.

And so the Lord has sent Amos to call those Israelites – and us, too – to conversion.  Amos is very hard to hear sometimes, because he calls a situation the way it is.  He doesn’t beat around the bush or soft-pedal his prophecy.  You know exactly what’s on his mind.  And poor Amos can’t do anything less.  He tells us in today’s first reading:

The lion roars—
who will not be afraid!
The Lord GOD speaks—
who will not prophesy!

For Amos, not to say what God is calling him to say is as fearful as facing the roaring lion.  And so, we are called to hear, and to reform our lives, and to follow the Lord once again.

As Amos expresses the Lord’s displeasure, it is the Psalmist who expresses the Lord’s mercy:

But I, because of your abundant mercy,
will enter your house…

We cannot make up for our sinfulness all on our own.  We need our Savior, the one who calms the storms, despite our lack of faith.  When we have messed up our lives so that we cannot see past the storm, we know that we can depend on our God who loves us back into relationship with him.  Even the violent winds and stormy seas of our own lives obey the one who gave his life for us.

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Friday of the Eleventh Week of Ordinary Time

June 20, 2008 · Filed Under Homilies, Ordinary Time · Comments 

Today's readings

I have to admit I was totally at a loss with the first reading.  It's hard to read the names, let alone get the meaning.  I think it can be done, but I opted out because I was moved by the Gospel.  And that's totally okay!

“Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”  What a beautiful – and challenging – word we have today from the Gospel.  We could use this as an occasion to talk about stewardship, and that might be legitimate.  But I think that Jesus is getting at something a bit different here.  The clue to what he’s getting at, I think, is the little saying that comes right after this.

“If your eye is sound, your whole body will be filled with light;
but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be in darkness.”

My mother always says that “the eye is the window to the soul.”  That’s kind of what this saying is about.  What is it that we are letting into our souls through the windows of our eyes?  There is an ancient church virtue of the “custody of the eye.”  What we let ourselves see has a direct result on what happens in our spiritual life.  If we find that our lives are off track, that we aren’t praying well, that our relationships are tense at best, well, maybe we’re seeing the wrong stuff.  Television, movies, the internet – all of these provide occasions of sin for all of us.

And Jesus is right, when we allow our eyes to be bad, our whole body – even our soul – can be in darkness.  If we really treasure our spiritual lives, then our eyes and our hearts will find that they are on things that are worthy of being seen and experienced.  So maybe this summer is an occasion for a little less TV, better chosen movies, and some serious time with a good book, or perhaps, the Good Book!  For where your treasure is, there your heart, and your eye, and your mind, and your soul, will be also.

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