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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17th 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....
Homily MP3 version - 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
“Lord, give your servant an understanding mind to discern between good and evil!”
God loves to listen to all of our prayers. However, it is not good for us to only pray for our own good. This is why the young King Solomon’s prayer was so pleasing to the Lord: “Give your servant an understanding mind to govern your people, able to discern between good and evil; for who can govern this, your great people?”
“Lord, give your servant an understanding mind to discern between good and evil!”
God does not need us to inform Him of our needs; for He already knows them, even before we do. Nor does our prayer have as its objective to convince God to give us his blessings; for He already desires to give us all good things. The purpose of our prayer is to bring our heart, our thought, our body, and our soul into sync with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, with his thought, his Body, and his Soul; which perfectly reflect the will and the love of God our Father. Our prayer, as we persevere in prayer, our patient waiting on the Lord and our hopeful anticipation of his reply; all of these make us exercise the holy desires which the Holy Spirit places in us. The passage of time increases the intensity of our holy desires. This gives us time to empty our hands in order to be ready to receive more, and our patient waiting allows the empty space within us to grow sufficiently large to have room to take in the gifts God wants to give us.
“Lord, how I love your law!”
Life, with its pleasures and pains, with all of its changes and the passage of time, and with our losses and grieving, our gains, our blessings, our thanksgiving, and our praises to the Lord, all of these enable us to grow in our love for God and for our neighbour. If we are to be ready for heaven in God’s eternity, we need while there is time to attach ourselves more and more to God and his holy will; while detaching ourselves from the concerns and goods of this world. Rare is the person that is a saint right from their infancy. Our life passes through stages, and at each stage, God is there to immerse us in his grace, and in the life and love of the Most Holy Trinity; in the unity of their will and in their communion of love.
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God!”
The parables which Jesus
tells invite us to examine the intentions of our heart. “The one who found a treasure in a field” and “the merchant who found a pearl of great
value”, both realized the value
of their discovery and decided “to sell
all that they had” in order to acquire that treasure or that pearl. Have we
discovered yet the great value of the kingdom of heaven? To live in the kingdom
of heaven actually means to live in a real and personal relationship with God
the Father, through Jesus his Son, in the power of love of the Holy Spirit.
Living in an intimate relationship of love with God doesn’t happen by itself,
but it requires our decision and our participation from day to day. Praying is
opening ourself up to God dwelling within us.
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God!”
The parable of the “net that was thrown into the sea and caught fish of every kind” warns us that at the end of our life, and “at the end of the age, the Angels will come out and separate the evil from the righteous and throw them into the furnace of fire”. Let’s not wait. It is up to us right now to separate ourselves from the evil in order to be ready for the Lord. It is not up to us to judge those who appear to us to be evil; on the contrary, we must pray for them. However, we must take care not to let ourselves be influenced or confused by their words, their attitudes, their gestures, their practices, or their behaviours.
“In the furnace of fire, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Have you understood?”
Today, there is great confusion over the gender ideology: am I a man or a woman? Does this depend on how I feel inside, or am I man or woman according to the design of God our Creator? In the 1960’s it was all about the so-called sexual revolution. The father of sexual permissiveness and experimentation was a certain Alfred Kinsey. His research included the sexual abuse of infants and the sexual practices of sexual criminals who were in prison. He was fraudulent in publishing his findings in 1948 and 1953 as the behaviours of ordinary citizens. His successor, John Money, invented gender theory. He experimented on two young twin boys who later committed suicide. I invite you to watch the YouTube video “What is a woman?”
“Lord, give your servant an understanding mind to discern between good and evil!”
We need to wake up and get informed. The one who doesn’t have both feet on the ground, and a spirit deeply rooted in God and his Word, can easily be confused by the voracious wolves who are now experimenting on our children in schools and universities. We must pray for the evil, but we must be vigilant to not let ourselves be confused by them. “Lord, give discernment to us and our children; form us and help us form our children. By your Word, make us into missionary disciples equipped with “what is new and what is old.”
“Lord, give your servant an understanding mind to discern between good and evil!”
“Mary Mother of God, St. Joseph, walk with us 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….
https://frgilleshomilies.blogspot.com https://homeliesabbegilles.blogspot.com
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.
© 2006-2023 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2023 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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