“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the
earth. Worship the Lord with gladness!”
God gave himself a
people in the descendants of Abraham and his wife Sarah consisting of their
great grandchildren, the twelve sons of Jacob and grandsons of Isaac. All the
books of the Old Testament in our Bible come from the descendants of these 12
boys who became the twelve tribes of Israel. These tribes did not all survive
the turbulent events of the centuries, such that today, the world’s Jews don’t
quite add up to 16 million, which is less than half the population of Canada, and
we are a fairly small country.
Still, when we
consider the history of humanity, the disproportional importance of the Jewish
people cannot be explained in any other way than by the
presence and action of God in the midst of his Chosen People. God wanted to
prepare the coming of his favourite daughter, the Most Blessed Virgin Mary, the
woman God the Father chose from the beginning to one day give birth with a
human life to his only begotten divine Son, whom He wanted to name Jesus, that
is, Yeshoua in Hebrew, which literally means: “God saves”.
“Make a
joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness!”
This characteristic of God our Creator manifests itself throughout
Creation. Everywhere we look, we see an overabundance of living species: plants,
flowers, fruits, vegetables, animals, fish, insects, and even bacteria, most of
which are not only beneficial, but essential for life.
The remarkable
survival of the Jewish people and the fact that they are abundantly fruitful in
many domains: music, medicine, finance, the arts, pure sciences, technology,
and in their family and community culture, and this in spite of their small
numbers; this too can only be explained by the presence and action of God in
the midst of his Chosen People.
“Make a
joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness!”
The Lord conducts
himself towards his people as a good shepherd who loves his sheep and wants to
assure not only the survival but the eternal salvation of his people, of each
of his lambs. The Lord is our Good Shepherd. What are the trials through which
the Lord has helped you to survive as you went through the experience and
realization of your own poverty?
As it has been for the
Jewish people; so, has it been for us who became Christians by our Baptism as
infants or later by choice, over the last two millennia: we gave rise to the
university as an open institution, to the scientific revolution, to the
remarkable period of the renaissance, and to the evangelization of the entire
world.
“Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.
Worship the Lord with gladness!”
The
good news and the Christian faith have survived several pandemics, the Muslim
invasion of the second half of the first millennium, the divisions among
Christians of the second millennium, and the twentieth century which was the
deadliest century in human history.
Saint Paul reminds us, as
he did for the Romans, “While
we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.” God manifested his extravagance in the passion and death of
Jesus, son of Mary and Son of God, and by his resurrection. Jesus is God who
saves us by his reconciliation of us with our Father and Creator. It is
impossible for us to earn communion in the love of God, but this inheritance is
freely given to us by the Father in his Son Jesus.
“Let us confess that the Lord is God. It
is He who made us, and we are his!”
Jesus gave his twelve
Apostles a share in his authority to “proclaim the good news, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” by doing what seems to us humanly impossible: “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse
the lepers, cast out demons. Your received without payment; give without
payment.” That is exactly what they went out and did.
Our life on this Earth is brief. We can choose to
live as if God doesn’t exist or as if He is doing nothing, or we can choose to
believe in Him, to trust Him, to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts, and
to welcome into our lives his Presence and his saving action.
“Let us
confess that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are his!”
That is why it is so important for us to participate
well in the heavenly banquet of the Most Blessed Sacrament. We can prepare the
day before and on Sunday by remembering all that we have lived since our last
presence at the Sacred Liturgy. We can dispose ourselves to place on the altar
our whole life: our efforts during the week to live as daughters, sons of God;
all that we accept to endure out of love; our trials, our sorrows, our losses,
our worries, our prayers, our temptations, and even our sins; putting all our
trust in God.
“Let us
confess that the Lord is God. It is He who made us, and we are his!”
“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 lay down our offering together with that of Jesus….
https://frgilleshomilies.blogspot.com https://homeliesabbegilles.blogspot.com
