through reality, our Creator is revealed
We cannot enter the wide gate, we must do the hard thing and strive for the narrow gate. “Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” This is not because God wants to see us suffer: when we suffer, God suffers with us.
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, given August 25, 2019.
Full homily: https://mattsiegman.com/2019/08/gods-discipline/
Thus says the Lord: “I will send fugitives to the nations […] and they shall proclaim my glory among the nations. They shall bring all your brothers and sisters from all the nations as an offering to the Lord.” The Lord is telling us through the prophet Isaiah about the New Creation at the end of time, where God will gather all of his children to himself. This hopeful passage tells us that even in the days before Jesus was born, he intended to save all of us. There is something a little odd about it though. He says that he will send fugitives. Why fugitives? What’s that about?
It is as if God’s messengers will not be welcome in the world. It is as if they will have to sneak past the masters of the world to proclaim his Good News to all humanity. If you think about it, the words of the prophet are exactly right. The evil one, Satan, is constantly trying to distract us from God. He is constantly trying to steal our soul from God. He shows us the wide and easy gate through which we might travel, knowing that we must instead strive for the narrow gate. This is not because the devil cares about us and wants us to have an easy life: the devil hates us. If we take his offer and follow the wide, easy gate now, we will pay for it for eternity.
Instead, we must do the hard thing. We must remember the teaching from Hebrews: “whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.” This is not because God wants to see us suffer. When I was growing up, I remember my parents saying that punishing us hurt them more than us. At the time I thought it was nonsense, but as I’ve grown older, I understand what they were saying. They were being forced to inflict some sort of suffering on this child whom they loved—me, in many cases—in order to help their child learn how to behave and be a normally functioning human being. If that was true for my parents, imagine how true it is for God! God loves us more than any human being is capable of loving. He doesn’t want to see us suffer. It actually hurts God to see us suffer. Let that sink in for a moment. When we suffer, God suffers with us. He wants nothing more than for us to be healed. In fact, He could cure all of our pains and sweep away all of our sufferings in an instant. But he doesn’t. Why?
Now that really is the question, isn’t it? Why does God allow suffering? Why does God allow terrible things to happen to me, to people I care about, or just to people ever? This is the question that has, tragically, led so many to leave our faith, because they don’t get an answer that satisfies them. For many, the only answer is that God must hate us and enjoy watching us suffer. As I just finished explaining, nothing could be further from the truth. God doesn’t want us to suffer, but if he didn’t let us endure these sufferings, we wouldn’t be able to learn. The Letter to the Hebrews teaches us that “all discipline seems a cause not for joy but for pain, yet later it brings the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who are trained by it.” Brothers and sisters, without enduring some suffering, we cannot grow strong in righteousness. Without that growth, we will not have the strength Jesus tells us that we will need to enter the narrow gate. We stay strong and courageous through our sufferings so that God can “perfect and sustain us” (Prayer after Communion) through these trials. Through these trials, we learn to fix our hearts “on that place where true gladness is found,” (Collect) Heaven.
These trials are where we learn to show courageous strength which allows us to endure trails and persecutions for the Lord. This is what the saints did: St. Monica prayed for over 2 decades before her son Augustine—who would become a doctor of the Church—finally converted; St. Maximilian Kolbe and Fr. Emil Kapaun stared at evil in the face and brought hope to those around them, which saved many from death; St. John Paul II suffered his whole life, first enduring the Nazi occupation of Poland, later from an assassination attempt—after which he had the courage to forgive the man who shot him, and finally through Parkinson’s disease; Saint Mother Teresa, who struggled through spiritual darkness for 40+ years. This is heroic courage. In our prayers let us offer our sufferings to the Lord who suffers right along with us, and let us ask him to give us courage to follow him on the narrow path to eternal life.
Note: Saint Pope John Paul II wrote one of the most profound and moving letters on suffering I have ever read, On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering. If you have questions or just need something to uplift your soul, I’d encourage you to read it.
Today’s Readings:
21st Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C
August 25, 2019
Isaiah 66:18-21; Psalm 117; Hebrews 12:5-7, 11-13; Luke 13:22-30
Note: This homily was given at the Vigil Mass of Christmas. I encourage you to read the readings of the Mass prior to reading for the homily, so that it makes more sense.
Merry Christmas! Thank you for being here to celebrate Christmas with us!
You may be wondering why I read you a huge list of names just now. If I were you, I’d be thinking: “it’s Christmas! What in the world do all these strange names have to do with that? When there is the short option that gets right to the good part, why did he read all these names?”
This is Jesus’s family tree. Jesus, the Son of God, didn’t just appear out of thin air. Jesus had a mother and a father. Jesus had grandparents, great-grandparents, and ancestors who would otherwise be forgotten in the dustbin of history if someone in the family hadn’t bothered to remember them. Jesus Christ had flesh and blood, just like you and me.
These names tell us more than that, though. The people in this list are far from perfect. If you can think of a sin, someone in this list has committed it. Every single one of God’s commandments was broken, often in combinations and with a frequency that would make you think they were getting combination multipliers. What’s worse is that the people in this list are often the kings and leaders of the Israelite people! Even David, the great king of Israel, was guilty of both adultery and murder! I won’t go through all the details, it is Christmas after all, but Jesus’s family tree is full of sinners. Yet, this is the family he chose. God, unlike the rest of us, got to choose which family he entered. He picked a family with a history: some of it good, much of it bad. God picked that broken family, and He entered it. He entered that family not just to save them, but to save the whole world. This long list of names reminds us of our history. God promised Abraham that he would save the world through the Jewish people, and so their history is the history of our salvation. When we learn our history, we see exactly what humanity is capable of doing. But we can hope, too, because we also see that God knows all of this, and he still came to save us.
This long list of names is not pointless at all. We read it because it gives us hope.
We have hope because God became one of us and showed us how to live life.
We have hope because Jesus Christ opened the gates of Heaven and saved us from sin.
We have hope because Jesus Christ gave us the gift of the Church, which provides us with the sacraments to save our souls and enter Heaven.
We have hope because no matter how difficult or challenging our lives are, we know that Jesus Christ, who was fully human, experienced it too: God knows how we feel.
We have hope because no matter how awful our leaders are: in the church, in politics, in whatever, we know that God is stronger than them, and he can still save us.
God saw us struggling to find him. He saw us struggling to follow him. God saw our need for a savior. For our sake, as Isaiah said, God could not stay silent. God would not rest until we were vindicated. God will not rest until our victory over sin shines like a burning torch. He loves us too much. Even though we turn away from God, he still loves us more than we can imagine. God did not create us and this universe and all that is in it so that we would fall into sin. God did not create us to die: God created us to live! God created us to live with him. God created us to live forever, in Heaven, with Him. God does not want to be with us for just one hour a week, or for a couple of special holidays in a year: He wants us to be with him now and forever! So, God formulated a plan to save us. This plan was so incredible, so unthinkable, that nobody could have expected it. Even with a thousand years of prophecies, the Jewish people didn’t expect it to happen like it did.
God’s plan to save us was this: he became a human being, one of us. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, and became man. Today, we celebrate his birth. Rejoice! Jesus Christ was born today!
Today’s Readings:
December 24, 2018
Christmas – Vigil Mass
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 89; Acts 13:16-17, 22-25; Matthew 1:1-25
The second reading ends with the line: Demonstrate your faith to me without works, and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works. But I think this is one sentence too early. The next line reads, “You believe that God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe that and tremble.” We must have faith to be saved, but what does it mean to have faith?
Having faith is so much more than the simple ability to say, “Jesus Christ is my personal Lord and Savior.” It’s so much more than saying, “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth.” The words are important, don’t get me wrong, but to truly mean those words we say: that is faith. To truly mean those words we say, not only must believe those words in our minds, but we must show that believe those words in our actions.
If I have faith and believe that Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior, that should show in how I live my life. Jesus Christ cared about the poor and the lonely, and he helped them when they allowed him to do so. Jesus Christ taught those around him the truth, even when his life was threatened because of it. Jesus Christ showed compassion to the sick and the lame. Jesus overturned the tables of the money-changers, and He admonished those who were persistent in sinning. Jesus Christ looked at people, and He loved them. Jesus Christ lived the Gospel. If I believe that he is my God, then shouldn’t my life resemble his? If I believe that he is my God, do I have any right to decide that one of these aspects is more important than the others? Perhaps my natural abilities lead me to teaching others and showing God’s love to people, but that doesn’t mean I can ignore the sick or allow sin to go unchallenged. Jesus did all these things. We aren’t God, so we can’t do everything, but we should at least try!
But this is all if I have faith. This is all if I believe in Jesus Christ. It all depends on how I answer one question. It depends on how I answer the question Jesus asks the disciples today: Who do you say that I am? If Jesus was standing in front of you, and he asked you this question, how would you answer? Think about it. How would you answer the question? Say it to Jesus in your mind and be honest. Jesus doesn’t want to hear what your spouse or religion teacher says about him. He doesn’t want to hear the preconceived notions you have of him. Jesus wants to hear who you say that he is. Is he your friend? Is he the one who will always love you? Jesus can handle whatever you say to him. Let’s take a few seconds, right now, and answer Jesus.
…
Did you tell him? Were you honest to him?
No matter what you just told him, I think Jesus would say to each one of us, “my child, I love you. I love you so much more than you can imagine. I did not come into this world to condemn you, but so that you may have eternal life, and I have so much more I wish to teach you about myself. You have to take the initiative though.” Then Jesus says to as, as he did to his disciples in the Gospel, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.”
Pope Saint John Paul II said that, “These words denote the radicality of a choice that does not allow for hesitation or second thoughts. It is a demanding requirement that unsettled even the disciples and that, throughout the ages, has held back many men and women from following Christ. […] Even today these words are regarded as a stumbling block and folly (cf. 1 Cor 1: 22-25). Yet they must be faced, because the path outlined by God for his Son is the path to be undertaken by the disciple who has decided to follow Jesus. There are not two paths, but only one: the one trodden by the Master. The disciple cannot invent a different way.” 1
We must deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and follow Jesus, because only this path leads us on the road to eternal life. Only Jesus can offer us Heaven and eternal happiness. Following money, prestige, power, worldly pleasures, or anything that is not Jesus else will result in precisely the opposite: eternal misery and separation from God. Self-denial is hard. Any cross given us is hard. Following Jesus is hard. All those things that Jesus does in the Gospel, and then asks us to do: they’re hard. They are exhausting. They tax us. Flannery O’Connor wrote that “people don’t realize is how much religion costs. They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it if the cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.”
Following Jesus is hard. It is taxing. It depends that we do God’s will instead of our own. But we are not alone when we follow Jesus. God is on our side. He will never let us lose our way, as long as we follow his Son as well as we can. Pope Emeritus Benedict says that we have been “created for greatness—for God himself; [we were] created to be filled by God. But [our] heart[s] [are] too small for the greatness to which [they are] destined. [Our hearts] must be stretched.” 2 Because our hearts must be stretched, “the ways of the Lord are not easy, but we were not created for an easy life, but for great things, for goodness.” 3
Friends, let us do the hard things, let us do the great things. We have God on our side, the same God who calls us to be lights to the world. Let us follow Christ, so that he can lead us into eternal life. In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I have told you this so that you might have peace in me. In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.” (John 16:33)
Today’s Readings:
September 16, 2018
24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year B
Isaiah 50:4c-9a; Psalm 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9; James 2:14-18; Mark 8:27-35
Rejoice! Christ is born!
We know these passages in the Bible. The Christmas Gospels are some of the best known literature in the entire world. Whose heart does not flutter, just a little, when they hear, “Now this is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about…” or “In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the whole world should be enrolled…” We know what comes next: we hear about the birth of a baby, Jesus, who is wrapped in swaddling clothes. We know that “[t]he shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go, then, to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place…” We know that “this [baby] was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”
We’ve heard these stories so many times.
But do we really know them?
How has the Birth of Jesus Christ changed my life?
God came into this world as a baby to show us the way to the Himself. Jesus showed us how to live the most human life possible, by doing it himself. God showed us the dignity of human life by taking on human nature himself. Through the Incarnation, God provided humanity a path out of the darkness of sin and into the light of Heaven!
What does this look like in our lives? How have we let Jesus’s birth change us?
Has it helped us to love God with all our hearts, all our strength, and all our minds? Has it helped us to love our neighbor? Has it helped us to recognize that God loves us and sees us as precious jewels within his hands, jewels whom he calls “My Delight”?
This Christmas, let us ponder the gift that God gave us: the gift that excels far beyond any gift we can ever give. Let us ponder Jesus, the God-Man, the Wonder-Counselor, the God-Hero, the Father-Forever, the Prince of Peace. Let us prepare our souls so that they might, in silent stillness, receive him and allow him to transform us. Let us allow God to provide for us, and to transform our lives.
We do not know what wonders God has in store for us, if only we allow him to work within us!
Christ is born! Let us rejoice!
Today’s Readings:
December 25, 2017
Christmas
Four sets of readings are possible for Christmas. Scriptural quotes and references above come from Matthew 1, Luke 2, John 1, Isaiah 9 & 62.
Note: My apologies for the lateness of this post. Time simply got away from me. -Matt
Nearly everyone I know has at least a couple of Bible passages memorized. One of these is almost always 1 Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing.”
How can I pray without ceasing? That seems impossible.
That depends on how we understand prayer. If prayer is muttering some Our Fathers, Hail Marys, and going to Mass when we must, then of course unceasing prayer is impossible! If, however, prayer is how we stay in relationship with our God, where we lift up our hearts and minds to him, it’s a totally different story. We pray without ceasing when we are open to receiving God in his fullness. This openness comes only through one of the hardest things to learn: silence.
Through silence, we purify ourselves. By cutting ourselves off from the noise of the world, we slowly and painfully begin the work of introspection. We start to recognize those things to which we are attached, and in the silence, we are able to see if these things lead us toward or away from God. In this recognition of the good and the bad in our lives, we begin remove our attachments to those things around us which lead us away from God, all of them being things that eventually die. We silently remember our value, that God loves us. We remember our dignity, the importance of what we do, and we stop getting lost in a formalism where we just go through the motions.
Stillness is another word for silence. Where silence makes us think of quieting our minds and our words, stillness is a quieting of our bodies, of the motion around us. Praying very early or very late always gives me a sense of this stillness, and I think that Advent is the prime season for a stillness. Advent isn’t a time of empty silence, but of pregnant stillness.
It is in this silent and pregnant stillness that we become simple. Instead of demanding that things go “my way or the highway,” we stop quenching the Spirit and listen to what God tells us. Because it is God speaking to us, we can trust the message. We cast off the fear that prevents us from following God, from being simple, from being able to receive the Lord and his message for us. In the simplifying silence, we prepare ourselves by making straight the way of the Lord in our own lives.
When we are silent, when we are still, when we are simple, when we are prepared, only then may we join John the Baptist when he cries out from the desert. Only by entering the silent stillness ourselves, becoming simple ourselves, preparing the way of the Lord for ourselves, only when we have done all of this ourselves, only then may we cry out for others to do the same.
When we have done all of this, we will be ready to receive the gift God has prepared for us. God wishes to give us a gift far surpassing any diadem—that’s a crown with a lot of jewels, in case you were wondering what a diadem is—or jewels. He wishes to give us salvation and justice itself: Jesus Christ. To truly receive a gift, we must recognize the gift. We must be able to recognize the gift of Jesus Christ that has been given to us before we will be able to allow him to enter into our hearts and transform our lives.
What better relationship with God could we have then to allow him to enter into our hearts? This is how we pray without ceasing.
On these final days of Advent, let us enter the silence. Let us recognize the pregnant stillness around us, and join it. Let us become simple in the face of God. Let us prepare ourselves and make straight the way of the Lord. Jesus comes at Christmas! May we be able to recognize him and thus, to receive the ultimate Christmas gift: Our God become man—Jesus, the Christ.
Today’s Readings:
December 17, 2017
Third Sunday of Advent, Year B
Isaiah 61:1-2a, 10-11; Luke 1:46-48, 49-50, 53-54; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-8, 19-28
St. Peter tells us that we are “waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God… the heavens will be dissolved in flames and the elements melted by fire.”
He has just one question for us: “[W]hat sort of persons ought you to be?”
The stakes seem pretty high, so hopefully we get the answer right!
The answer is simple: if we conduct ourselves in holiness and devotion, St. Peter tells us, we will “await new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
Holiness… and devotion…
Well the answer may be simple, but it’s sure not easy!
Growing in holiness requires us to do uncomfortable things. We have to repent of our sins, but we first must acknowledge that we’ve sinned. How often have I turned away from God with my actions? How often have I done something I know to be wrong, simply because I wanted to? Have I educated myself so that I know right from wrong?
The Psalm today teaches us that in Heaven, “[k]indness and truth shall meet; justice and peace shall kiss.” If kindness and truth meet in Heaven, then they cannot oppose each other: to know and understand the truth is a kindness. Part of the truth is knowledge of right and wrong. It is knowing that not only is murder wrong, but so is abortion. It is knowing that prejudice against other races and nationalities wrong. It is knowing that all sex outside of marriage, and that even in marriage, unchaste activity is wrong. It is knowing that contraception violates the dignity of a spouse by holding back a part of the gift of self, given in the marital act. It is knowing that what we look at, what we watch—it matters! When we watch, look at, or even read about sinful behavior, it changes us! It is knowing that all people have value: the young and the old.
It is knowing that when we don’t understand or agree with one of these teachings, we must try to understand why the Church teaches us these things.
This knowledge is a kindness, because it helps us to live better lives. When we live better lives, it becomes easier to communicate to God in our prayer. It becomes easier to form the relationship with God that we so desperately need.
Knowing right from wrong is half the battle. Doing right and avoiding wrong, that’s even harder; however, it is possible. This is where prayer is so helpful, because God will help you if you ask him to help you. “A voice cries out: In the desert prepare the way of the LORD! Make straight in the wasteland a highway for our God!” When we pray, we ask the Lord to enter into our hearts and make the path straight. In prayer, we beg the Lord to help us prepare for Heaven by straightening out our lives, by taking us out of the desert wasteland and allowing us to enter paradise with him. By this prayer to help us rectify our lives, we grow in devotion to God.
Kindness by knowing the truth.
Experiencing justice through the peace of heart that we receive from God in prayer.
Holiness and devotion.
So simple, but so hard.
Today’s Readings:
December 10, 2017
Second Sunday of Advent, Year B
Isaiah 40:1-5, 9-11; Psalm 85:9-10-11-12, 13-14; 2 Peter 3:8-14; Mark 1:1-8
Welcome to the new liturgical year! We begin with Advent. Advent… What is Advent all about? Didn’t Christ already come? Why do we have to ready for something that already happened?
Christ did come to us 2,000 years ago. He comes to us every day through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, and we experience him being truly, entirely, and substantially present to us in the Eucharist.1 Christ will come again, but not as a baby: he will come in glory!
We don’t know when this second coming will happen, so we must be ready for it. If Christ is already present, though, why do we need to spend the season of Advent preparing?
We forget. It’s that simple. We forget that Christ is going to come again. We forget how important the Incarnation is. Nobody expected the Incarnation! In the first reading, the Jews are pleading for God to save them. They beg Him to “rend the heavens and come down.” So he did. God became a human being. He became a little child, the son of a carpenter and a virgin. Nobody expected it to happen that way. Few accepted it. Who was able to recognize Jesus as God?
The only people capable of recognizing Jesus are the childlike—those who have the simplicity to trust in God’s plan, even when they don’t understand. Fr. Luigi Giussani2 writes that even after the Resurrection, the apostles still expected Jesus to establish an earthly kingdom. He corrects them, and because of their childlike simplicity, because of their trust in him, the apostles “let it drop; they don’t hold to the demand that He answer their questions just as they may have imagined, but they remain attached to Him more deeply than they were attached to their opinions, with a greater simplicity. Because being attached to one’s own opinion requires the loss of simplicity, the introduction of a presumption and the predominance of one’s own imagination over [God’s plan].”3
How do we grow in this childlike simplicity? How do we learn to abandon our certainties about how the future will play out, to accept what God has planned? In a word, how do we learn detachment? Three practices, in particular, assist with learning detachment: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. These three practices help purify us of the evil things that slowly creep into our hearts without us realizing. Practicing prayer, fasting, and almsgiving is hard, but that shouldn’t stop us. Paul tells us that God has bestowed, and continues to bestow, Jesus Christ on us, enriching us in every way. He will keep [us] firm to the end. By spending Advent in preparation for Christmas, we prepare ourselves for Jesus’s glorious return.
Advent is the time of year where the famously ambiguous “already, but not yet” is most visible. Jesus is already present to us, but he has not yet come again. This is summed up in a fantastic word which almost never hear outside of Advent: Maranatha. It is one of the last words in the Bible, and was used in the ancient liturgies. We aren’t sure exactly how to translate it, because the Aramaic words can be broken up two ways. It could mean “Come, O Lord!”, or it could mean “Our Lord has come!”
Isn’t this ambiguity perfect? Our Lord has come, but he will come again. What glorious news!
Let us prepare for the Word to become flesh at Christmas, and in doing so prepare for Him to come again. Jesus tells us to Be watchful! Be alert! … so that when Jesus comes, he may not find [us] sleeping at the gates.
Maranâ thâ! Come, O Lord! Let us be ready to greet you, so that when you come we might exclaim Maran ‘athâ! Our Lord has come!
Today’s Readings:
December 3, 2017
First Sunday of Advent, Year B
Isaiah 63:16b-17, 19b; 64:2-7; Psalm 80:2-3, 15-16, 18-19; 1 Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:33-37
What if Jesus had said, “Why are you testing me? Hand me one of the children.” He held a child in his arms and said, “Whose image do you see inscribed upon this little one?”
When my friends have a baby, it’s common to hear “she looks just like her mom!” or “he has his father’s eyes!” The baby is, in a very true way, an image of his or her parents. They look like one another! What’s more, parents bestow a name upon their child. This name is emblazoned on the child throughout his or her life. This name is how we tell one person from another, and it was given to them by their parents.
But there is another who has given us a name, even if we do not know him. [God] called you by your name, giving you a title, though you knew [him] not.1 He has not only called each one of us by name, but he has given each of us a title—a title unique to us. Each of us is unique, each of us is special. None of us are the same. We are each called to reflect God’s glory in a different way, in a way that no one else can. Not only did God call us by name, and not only did he give us each a title, but the very first chapter of the first book of the Bible tells us that God created humankind in his image.2 Each one of us is a unique reflection of the image of God.
I reply to Jesus, “Yours! I see your image in this little one!” Jesus says, “Then repay to Washington and Hamilton and Lincoln what belongs to them, and repay to God what belongs to God.”
God’s image is inscribed on me, how am I to repay God what belongs to him? When we pay our taxes to the government, we give a part of our money back to the government that issued it. How do we give a part of ourselves to God? We can’t, but that doesn’t stop us from trying, does it?
There are days when I want to try to put God in his silo. In college, I would go to Mass and then think, “God, you’ve got your hour for the week. Now it’s time to go have some fun.” Even now, I catch myself saying, “God, I said my prayers for the day. I’ve been to Mass. Now it’s time for me to get some real work done. Come back tomorrow.” As if we could limit our response to God to a certain day or time! One of the names given to Jesus is Emmanuel: God is with us. God is always with us! When we recognize his image in ourselves and in others, we are reminded that God is always with us.
When we recognize God, and all the gifts that he has given us, can we honestly sit back and do nothing? God has given us our lives, our families, our friends, our talents, everything. How do we send God a thank you note for all he has given us? We dedicate ourselves to him. We give of our resources to support his work on this earth. We spend time with him in prayer. We live virtuous lives. We always strive to remember that God is with us!
Today’s Readings:
Twenty-Ninth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
Isaiah 45:1, 4-6; Psalm 96; 1 Thessalonians 1:1-5b; Matthew 22:15-21
The king says, “My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?” The man doesn’t make an excuse. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t even claim he shouldn’t have to wear such ridiculous garb after being brought in from the street. He doesn’t do anything. He is reduced to silence. Like the king in the parable, our Heavenly King—God—demands a response from us every day of our lives. We can respond in one of three ways: we can follow God; we can turn away from God; or, we can simply not respond to God.
The wedding garment in the parable doesn’t necessarily refer to something special the man had to put on to attend the party. It is entirely possible that it means, simply, that the guests were expected to wear clean clothes to the party. The man came into the wedding party in dirty clothes. He didn’t bother to put on clean clothes. This discourtesy was an insult to the king. The king may have invited people in from the street, but he still had standards! Thus, the king asked the man, “why he did you come in dirty clothes?”
Imagine if someone had shown up in torn up jeans and a t-shirt to a wedding you are attending. If someone had shown up to my sister’s wedding like that, I would have had some questions for that person too! “Did you intend to come dressed like that? Are you in the right place? Do you need some help?”
The man didn’t respond to the king, and so he was cast out.
The results of following God and turning away from God are clear, but not responding to God is just as bad as turning away from him. We are all wounded by sin, and we all approach God unworthily. Using the language of the parable, none of us have a clean wedding garment. God knows this, yet he still invites us to his wedding feast. God knows we need help. We must not be speechless! Instead, we must ask our merciful Lord for help! “I’m trying, please help me!” “Lord, I don’t even know where to begin!” “Lord, I thought I was doing the right thing, but everything just went so wrong!” “I’m sorry, God. Help. Please.”
Through our daily work to accept God’s invitation to the Wedding Feast of the Lamb—to Heaven—, we slowly wash clean our soul. Eventually, we will come closer and closer to having a clean wedding garment—a clean soul. By responding to God, even in our weakness, we allow God to scrub, slowly, the stains of sin out of our soul. Our king is so generous that he will give us all the mercy and all the grace that we will need to cleanse our lives. What fantastic news!
What is this daily work we must do in order to enter into the wedding feast of Heaven? We must cut out those things in our lives that take us away from God. We must cut out those things in our lives that prevent us from responding to God.
We cannot say yes to God when we regularly engage in mortal sin. We cannot hear God when our lives are filled with constant noise and distraction. We cannot hear God when we assault our bodies with substances that intoxicate us and divorce us from our ability to think.
We must live lives of purity, chastity, and goodness.
We must live lives of stillness, making time to listen for God in the silence.
We must live lives of sobriety and good choices.
We must live lives so that when we die we can say:
“Behold our God, to whom we looked to save us!
This is the LORD for whom we looked;
let us rejoice and be glad that he has saved us!
Today’s Readings:
Twenty-Eighth Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year A
Isaiah 25:6-10a; Psalm 23; Philippians 4:12-14, 19-20; Matthew 22:1-14