In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity, as reported in Jeremiah 31:31-34, every human being can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so please feel free to share with others these homilies and your own personal faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
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3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time
VOCATION: Jesus calls us - He calls you to follow Him, to be filled with the Holy Spirit, and become a missionary disciple....
Sunday Gospel & Homily MP3 - PDF version
What are the offerings that we bring to God? What is the meaning of "HOSANNAH!" We acclaim God for his greatness and praise Him, while at the same time calling upon Him to rescue us in our distress.... "HOSANNAH!" MP3 version
Good morning, sisters and brothers in the Lord. The Word of the Lord speaks to us this morning about his ways of dealing with the world. Through the Book of the Prophet Jonah, the Lord tells us of his love for all peoples. He would even send a Jewish prophet to foreigners who were living badly and were in need of conversion. God our Creator gives us the gift of life, and He has designed us to have fullness of life by living in peace and love with our neighbours.
When we choose not to live in peace and love with our neighbours, we become less human, living a life that is not holy, a perversion. But what happens then? God sent Jonah to warn the people of Nineveh that if they did not repent, they would be overthrown. This Word of God still applies today: there are many cities or lands that behave badly like Nineveh did centuries before Jesus. Russia invading Ukraine, and Hamas attacking and killing civilians in Israel are only two examples always in the news, but there are many, many others doing evil things.
“Lord, make me know your ways!”
Evil events and tragedies are usually caused by injustices. When Gorbachev was making renewal in the U.S.S.R. in the 1980’s, he talked with world leaders about the future. They all agreed on the unification of Germany, and the Berlin wall came down. They assured Gorbachev NATO would not move any closer to Russia, but until today, world leaders did the opposite. Led by the U.S.A., they got nations close to Russia to join NATO. Very few of us would approve of Russia’s war against Ukraine; it is brutal, tragic, and an evil thing. It was also wrong for the West to push the military alliance of NATO to the very borders of Russia.
Similar evil and injustices have happened between Israel and Palestine. For centuries, there was no Israel, and Jewish people no longer had a homeland. They lived as strangers in all the countries where they built their lives. Since the invasions by Muslim armies in the 7th century, what is now Israel was known as Palestine, and it was mostly an Arab land. There were Jews and Christians living there, but they were minorities, and some of them got along well together.
“The Lord is near to all who call on him!”
When the Nazis
exterminated some six million Jews and millions of others in the Holocaust, the
Shoah, no western nation would help surviving Jews or accept to take them in.
The newly formed United Nations helped establish the State of Israel in 1948.
That was a good thing and it needed to happen. We can understand how the Jewish
people want to protect their homeland, but these times are not like when their
ancestors came from Egypt and God drove out the seven nations in that land and
gave it to his Chosen People as their home. All these situations in the world
show us how difficult it is for us human beings to know the ways of the Lord.
What God did a long time ago is not necessarily what He is doing now.
Do you know that many Jews who survived the Holocaust lost their faith in God. They could not understand how God could allow their people to be exterminated like that. In many ways, we have the same problem with God and his ways. What our reading from Jonah did not say is that after the people repented, God relented from the disaster He had predicted. Jonah then was angry with God. It may have been because Jonah saw their bad behaviour and wanted them to be punished. Jonah didn’t much like God’s mercy and forgiveness to the people of Nineveh.
“Lord, make me know your ways!”
This morning, the Lord is scrutinizing us, our thoughts, our feelings, and our consciences. What are my attitudes toward God? Do I know his ways? Am I even willing to learn what are the ways of the Lord? Unless we learn the ways of the Lord, we can have no peace.
When Simon, Andrew, James, and John left their occupations and their lives to follow Jesus and begin a new life as his disciples; it was because they were at peace. They knew the ways of the Lord, and they recognized the ways of the Lord in Jesus, in his words, and in his actions.
“The Lord is near to all who call on him!”
The Lord’s ways are not our ways. The Lord’s ways are directed towards life that extends into eternity, but our ways are very limited to this mortal life alone. We tend to care only about this life on Earth, and we tend to put off thinking about what happens next. Though we believe in eternal life in Heaven with God, we are not eager to leave this life. Saint Paul’s words are wise. God wants us to live our life fully, but to avoid getting attached to this life; remembering to keep our eyes on our eternal destiny. What begins here is going to continue after we die. Just dying solves nothing. Who we are when we die is who we are when we get to the other side. We need to face our challenges, turn away from all that is wrong, and put loving care into action to everyone in our lives, even strangers, and even enemies. These are the ways of the Lord.
“Lord, make me know your ways!”
“Mary Mother of God, St. Joseph, help us walk in the steps of Jesus. O my Jesus, I trust in You! Thank You; You who are God, the Father, + the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
In silence now, the Holy
Spirit helps us to unite our offering of ourselves to that of Jesus….
In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity, as reported in Jeremiah 31:31-34, every human being can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so please feel free to share with others these homilies and your own personal faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
© 2006-2024 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2024 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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