2015/07/05 - Homily - 14th ord. Sunday

Imprimer

Today’s readings echo the Christian virtues of obedience, servitude and  humility on the part of the Lord Jesus, the prophet Ezekiel and st Paul. All three, subjected to a greater authority, submitted themselves to the divine Will of the Lord.


During the First Reading taken from the Book of Ezekiel, we heard that the Spirit entered into Ezekiel,  put him on his feet and commissioned him to go to the people of Israel to preach to them. During his commission, Ezekiel was warned that there was a possibility from the people  to reject the message that he was delivering from God. But whether they heard or refused to hear, they had to know that there had been a prophet among them. 

The biblical history tells us that, humbly obeying, Ezekiel did serve the Lord God by going to the people preaching to them, and the Word of God was rejected by many.


Considering the days of Ezekiel reminds us of our own calling. As Catholics who have been baptized and confirmed, we have been sent forward to obey and serve in all humility. We have to preach the Word of God to our children our spouse, our husband, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our relatives, our friends, our co-workers all those with who  we come in contact. Whether they hear or not it is not important.

And God is good and generous, giving to us freely,  but does He expect us to give something to Him in return? Our gift to God is our Christian behavior, our words and our actions as true Catholics who make visible  the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

In fact, during our Christian life we have to improve the level of the meaning of the gift of God for us. Often is comes through humility. St Paul knows something about it. He had a thorn in the flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment him, to prevent him from being too elated. What it was, nobody knows. The source of his suffering could be a weakness of the body, suffering because of the rejection the Christ by his own people or the guilty conscience of having been the persecutor of the Christians before his astonishing  conversion??? Whatever it was, he was permanently led in the way of humility. He had to be a servant but a humble one.

Jesus himself was humiliated to death. But even during the time of teaching of the good news about the kingdom of God, Jesus was rejected by the people of his own country. By this way he shared the same destiny as all the prophets : not being heard and eventually   rejected.  He could only make a few miracles, st Marc noted in his Gospel. That means, the hope is always possible and God is always able to appear and to help us. But, perhaps unfortunately for us, He is so humble that he asks us to accept Him or not. Except when He decides to intervene directly without our permission, as it happened with st Paul.