Fr. Charlie’s Homily - July 3, 2022 - 14th Sunday in Ordinary Time 9:30 am

Today in Matthew, we are getting the importance of the kingdom being primary, the most important thing in our lives.  And so, we get rid of everything and we focus completely on the fact that we have new life, we have a new way of being in the world.  The kingdom’s already at hand, and the way it’s reflected is the way we aren’t caught up in the things of this world.  They were looking to what God has revealed to them, they don’t need all this stuff.  All they need is their faith in God.
     And I think there’s a good insight there for us today in the world in which we live.  We talk about prosperity religion/worship.  And the idea is that if you’re a very good Christian, God’s gonna reward you.  You have all the money you could ever want; things you could ever want; that this is where faith and our belief in God has become, I suppose the word is politicized. 
    We, instead of focusing on God, create God in our image.  And that’s the problem.  When you create the truth; when you create the God in our image, then you can decree what is right and what is good and it’s focused on the self, promotion of the self.  That’s just part of our nature as we inherited it, that we possess the self.  And that’s why Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, he’s struggling because what happened is, he went out and preached the gospel that all that is needed in life is faith alone, faith alone in Christ. 
    Well, he had these Judaizers, he calls them, who would follow and say to the people that had come to Christ, “well, you know, you really need to observe the Jewish customs first,” which included circumcision.  That you had to be circumcised before you could take on the role of being a follower of Christ.  And Paul was just so insistent…it’s faith alone in Christ that restores the balance, that restores the harmony, restores that relationship to Christ, so it’s nothing that we do.  And that’s the challenge, he said, “I have the marks of Christ.”  Talk about that surrender, he is crucified with the Lord. 
    And that’s our call.  If we do it from the human perspective of bringing God into our world, then the point is possession.  You’re a success.  You’re blessed with all kinds of things, the prosperity faith.  But it’s the other way around. 
    That it’s when we focus on what Jesus did in Paul’s proclaiming, it’s that in the fulfillment of our relationship with God it’s the sacrifice of the self.  It begins in Baptism, so that selfish self - we nail it to the cross; we die to self, we are buried in the waters of Baptism, we come out of those waters, the gift of the Spirit, God’s Spirit dwelling within us.  Now, there’s an option, we can either nurture that Spirit, or you can drown it out.  When you nurture it, the focus goes to the ‘other.’  The focus is on the ‘other.’  You think of what is best for all. 
    And the reason I say it’s so critical in this day and age, is, here we are celebrating Independence Day - those who gave their lives that we might have the freedoms we have today. 
But now, we’re thinking of freedom as what benefits me, as opposed to what is good for the society.   This is where democracy is.  To seek to build…where everybody builds and takes care of one another, and then you have that moral dimension of who true human spirits are that they’re even willing to give their lives.  To give their lives in defense of that freedom; that freedom that is ours in God, not in the freedom that I possess you and whatever I want to do, whenever I want to do it.
    And the challenge in our day and time is, that we are losing that sense…I just have the feeling if people really touched this gift that Jesus gives us…you talk about going out…that there’d be so many more people who would embrace a role of serving God in a vocation to the priesthood or to the religious life where they would dedicate their lives completely.  We have to nurture that kind of faith, we don’t have that kind of awareness anymore. 
    And we need to bring back this higher level.  We need to get out of politics and spending all our time attacking back and forth.  If life is going to win out, it’s going to bring about conversion of heart.  You can blame the law; you can blame the politics.  It’s until we’ve had that conversion of heart on the preciousness of life, it’s when we have that conversion of heart that seeks the good and welfare of every single person; that seeks to help everyone; that seeks to bring about justice and peace, that’s what it means to live in the kingdom. 
    And so, again, we have… this eucharist is there to be the force that nurtures that spirit given to us in baptism, so that as we come together, we are bound with one another in this relationship we have with Christ’s love.  And it’s a love that doesn’t focus on self.  It’s a love that does everything it can to benefit the other; to lay down our lives.  In the giving you shall receive.  Crazy words Jesus said, and yet it’s the key, it’s the key to life in the world today. 
    So we pray for that grace in our own lives, and we pray that, as we celebrate this Independence Day, that we have all who gave their lives that we might have this wonderful democracy, that we don’t allow power and money to destroy it, but we’ll do all that we can to preserve the dignity of every single person.