I don't totally agree with yesterday's homily

[ThisOne]

Moreover if we focus on things we shoud do, the homily message will become condemnations : Do this and you will enter heaven. So… in other words, what if I fail to do it? Is this the good news? Noway. If I can do all the good things, then I will enter heaven. Is this the news? Even non christians know that. You don’t have to be a christian to know if you do good things you will go to heaven.

People who don’t believe in God have no belief in heaven, so they don’t think they’ll go to heaven if they do good things. But they just might go there anyway, because the Church teaches very plainly (I believe it’s in Lumen Gentium))that those who do not openly profess Christ through no fault of their own (never hearing the Gospel, for example) may still be saved by virtue of the kind of person they are and the kind of life they lived (e.g., the things they did and the attitudes they exhibited).

We are called to do what we can do in any circumstance. We are not called to do what we are unable to do. So there is no need to worry, for example, that you cannot personally do some things that need doing. You will not lose your salvation because you are not able to do some good things. The smallest good thing that you do is enough for God as long as you listen to your conscience in the light of Christ.

You cannot discard the importance of DOING by saying loving God is enough or is more important, which seems to be what you are saying. I apologize if I am misreading you. If we do not DO, we are kidding ourselves and we do not love God, we just love ourselves.

How does God feed the hungry? Through my sitting in my house and praying? No. And if we think that, we are not following Christ. It is people who feed the hungry and God acts through them.

Whenever I hear homilies on the Martha and Mary story, it is always about the balance needed between loving God and working for good. Maybe that’s really the point you are talking about – the balance that is needed? Maybe you feel too much emphasis is being placed on one where BOTH must be developed in us?

ThisOne

 

[francisca]

We have to have faith but faith has to be active. In other words faith is not mere belief as some Protestants try to claim. In order to show faith you must have works, …

I have no intention to bring this topic to what the protestants claim, let’s just stick to this homily.

 

[francisca]

First, I think the word “Iimitate” really shouldn’t be too much of a concern, if, the word is understood as trying to follow a pattern or way of life. Hopefully this is how your priest meant the term to be understood.

Yes, actually that was exactly how the priest meant the term to be understood. And this is what I am talking about.

To follow Christ as to “follow a pattern or way of life” is just too-- I will call the message-- “a weak gospel” or even “pelagian” if you like.

Christ is much more than “an example of a way of life”. And as you have check it out, the second reading was Hebrew 7:23-28, where Paul talked about Jesus being the priest of God is different compared to other priests of the law. And how Psalms 18:2 repeatedly read “the lord, my stregth”.

I say this because if you read the first reading and then the Gospel, I think the message is ones attitude is what is really important and must form the foundation of any action we might due.

The foundation is God’s actions not ours.

Christ Paschal Sacrifice, when you think about it, happened because He totally surrendered His Will to the Father’s.[/qutoe]

And what is God’s will? He send His son so that we may have life, and have it to the full. To generalise that all kinds of sacrifice is an example of living christ-like is not always a good way to teach the people. Since we know that God would not let any of us to go hungry should we ask His help, the woman did not need to die of hunger (And in verse 33 the scribe mentioned that God desire love more than sacrifice, surely ideally God would prefer that she lived to raise her child than to die of hunger for ther child). Her death is examplary (ideal) according to the gospel, only if she die proclaiming Jesus. But we do not know whether she died proclaiming Jesus, thus her noble action did not convey strong message of the gospel.

If we sit in the aeroplane, the steward/ess always insists that we put on our life jackets and oxigen masks before we help our children, because children do better if there are adults to help them. To let go your life for your child maybe noble, but not always exemplary. The subtle error was because the priest put the focus of the message on “what we should do (Christ as a way of life)” instead of “what Christ did and is still doing, so that we can do what He wills us to”. There are many other potential errors so long we focus on our own works instead of God, the people might get wrong messages from such homilies which focus on our own works.

He would not compromise this surrender knowing that it would lead to his death.

But if we generalize that all form of human sacrifice for God is good, we may end up with people who does not know that God want them to be happy and have prepared many good things for them to enjoy since the beginning of time. This sacrificial teaching of Christ is for us to live abundantly. Because God does not desire sacrifice but compassion from us. Thus the sacrifice Jesus paid “once and for all” (Hebrew 7:27) is God’s sacrifice for us. Our small sacrifices are good so long it is inline with the will of God for “our greater good” (which only possible in Jesus, thus our sacrifice must be in Jesus to be God pleasing, otherwise no).

If we think that God ask us to suffer ourselves, that is wrong teaching. And the example of the hungry mother can lead to such error of “law observance” for self-effort-righteousness.

 

[blessedstar]

Love God with all you mind, all your soul and all your strength.

How will you demonstrate that? By praying a great deal and seeking spiritual things? Of course prayer and seeking are good it deepens our faith, but faith is nothing unless we live it. Can you give Jesus a piece of sweet potato? No you cannot give it to Him in Person. Who will you give it to to love Jesus? Those made in His image and likeness, our brothers and sisters and that may well be your child or someone else’s child whom God loves and by this action love and glory is given to God because all good and holiness proceeds from Him alone.

There is nothing wrong with the sermon given, it calls for spirituality to be made manifest in the world. Spirituality is not some lofty far off thing, it is close to you, intimate to you, God dwells with us, all around us and within us, Emmanuel. The Kingdom of Heaven is not found way off some place, but it is right here and we choose here on earth to dwell in the Kingdom of God or to reject it. Jesus told us the story of the man finding it buried in a field, it is hidden if we do not recognise it and Jesus didn’t say the man was lifted up to some lofty place and found the Kingdom of God, the man dug right here and laboured here on the earth and found the Kingdom of Heaven and when he had found it he gave up everything else for it. Jesus did not whip up mankind and take them all to a spiritual place away from the earth and preach to them and die for them. He came to us here and became one of us and died for us here and was raised up here. God interacts with us here, His Providence is here. That is why to love God and to love each other caused Jesus to say ‘You are not far off from the Kingdom of Heaven’, what remains then is for the spirit to be disunited from the body and to be united to the Christ in the spiritual body/ mystical body and this is the Kingdom of Heaven entire. On the last day, the Kingdom of Heaven will come in full Majesty in Christ Jesus and everything physical and everything spiritual will be united perfectly for eternity.

This love of God must be made manifest in the world, made present daily ‘Thy Kingdom come’. Without faith in Jesus He would be nothing but a memory to humanity, if all lost faith Jesus has gone from our lives. But if we live in Him, He comes and lives in us and we do not hold onto this love because it cannot be contained, we have freely received and we freely give.

The mother gave the sweet potato to her child because she loved the child and she loved the child more than her own ‘self’. She saw her child’s need before her own, this is love. And when we truly love we will sacrifice and not count the cost of it nor keep account of wrongs. This sermon speaks of Jesus, of spirituality,this is not just emulating Jesus, this is living Jesus because Jesus is Love, not a cliche.

Always faith, prayer and action.

 

[deb1]

I have no intention to bring this topic to what the protestants claim, let’s just stick to this homily.

I thought that I was sticking to the point.

If a person has an active faith then it is proper that they do good works to show that faith.

 

[deb1]

Since we know that God would not let any of us to go hungry should we ask His help, the woman did not need to die of hunger (.

This is not true, francisca. People who are good Christians suffer often. There are good Christians who are murdered or have their children murdered. Yes, if their was a faminine in our land there is the possibility that despite our faith that we Christians to would starve to death.

 

[jman507]

Examples can sometimes be hard to come up with to compare to another. I was thinking yeah sometimes you have to save yourself to save another, on the other hand, a mother might need the food less, since she I’d assume have more fat stores for her to survive on, while the child might not and be a lot more vulnerable. But in a situation like that you might not know exactly what will happen, so it goes more to what the intention of the mother is. I wouldn’t get so caught up in the exact details, but try to get to the heart of the point.

 

[francisca]

Originally Posted by francisca View Post
Since we know that God would not let any of us to go hungry should we ask His help, the woman did not need to die of hunger (.

Christians in the world is still in suffering. It’s true. But how do the church teach us about it? That all suffering is good? The great the suffering the better? That to die of hunger is good as long as it is sacrificial? That ALL sacrifice is christ-like? What message does she supposedly convey to bring the good news to the poor and the needy? To tell the suffering people that “suffering is good” is just not right, because not all suffering is christ-like. Most of the time our suffering is caused by sin. In the case of the above mother, her hunger is caused by war, not for the sake of the glory of God. She died because of war.

By the way, this is my favorite song :

Say to those who are fearful hearted “Do not be afraid, the Lord your God is strong, and with His mighty arm, when you call on His Name, He will come and save. He will come and save you…”. Say to the weary ones “Your God will surely come, He will come and save you”

 

[deb1]

Christians in the world is still in suffering. It’s true. But how do the church teach us about it? That all suffering is good? The great the suffering the better? That to die of hunger is good as long as it is sacrificial? That ALL sacrifice is christ-like? What message does she supposedly convey to bring the good news to the poor and the needy? To tell the suffering people that “suffering is good” is just not right, because not all suffering is christ-like. Most of the time our suffering is caused by sin. In the case of the above mother, her hunger is caused by war, not for the sake of the glory of God. She died because of war.

"

Correct, the mother died because of war and she is an innocent victim of her particular government.

Sometimes we are all put in situations that are beyond our control and cause us to suffer. How we respond to these situations says something about our individual characters.

 

[ThisOne]

Christians in the world is still in suffering. It’s true. But how do the church teach us about it? That all suffering is good? The great the suffering the better? That to die of hunger is good as long as it is sacrificial? That ALL sacrifice is christ-like?

In a word, “yes.”

What message does she supposedly convey to bring the good news to the poor and the needy?

It is **we **who need the message!

To tell the suffering people that “suffering is good” is just not right, because not all suffering is christ-like. Most of the time our suffering is caused by sin. In the case of the above mother, her hunger is caused by war, not for the sake of the glory of God. She died because of war.

The Church tells you and me that we must do what that mother did, but do we?

By the way, this is my favorite song :

Say to those who are fearful hearted “Do not be afraid, the Lord your God is strong, and with His mighty arm, when you call on His Name, He will come and save. He will come and save you…”. Say to the weary ones “Your God will surely come, He will come and save you”

I think you may be thinking of a worldly “salvation,” which is not the main thrust of the concept of God’s saving us that the Church teaches. When Christ and His Church talk about “life,” neither are speaking strictly of earthly life but Life Eternal.

And no, of course I’m not saying that what happens here is not important, but the message that’s really important, in my view, is not the message to the poor and needy, but the message to we who claim Christ as the truth.

 

[francisca]

Examples can sometimes be hard to come up with to compare to another. I was thinking yeah sometimes you have to save yourself to save another, …I wouldn’t get so caught up in the exact details, but try to get to the heart of the point.

The point is :

To say that the mother sacrificial death is christ-like is to degrade “following Christ” as to become following human example, as if Jesus were one of those examples of Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha Gautama. Such homily degrade Christ to become a humanly moral example. This is the main point that I get from such homily.

By the way this Sunday homily was better. The priest spoke about “One can give generously, only if he has faith in God. We cannot give generously because we have our fears, and so on” The gospel reading was about the widow who gave little, but from all that she had. I think this kind of homily is a lot better than the previous one above.

 

[jman507]

The point is :

To say that the mother sacrificial death is christ-like is to degrade “following Christ” as to become following human example, as if Jesus were one of those examples of Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi, Buddha Gautama. Such homily degrade Christ to become a humanly moral example. This is the main point that I get from such homily.

By the way this Sunday homily was better. The priest spoke about “One can give generously, only if he has faith in God. We cannot give generously because we have our fears, and so on” The gospel reading was about the widow who gave little, but from all that she had. I think this kind of homily is a lot better than the previous one above.

I see what you are saying. This is not the only homily of the preist. Taking up your cross, and trying to imitate Christ, as poor as it may be, is one element of Christ and his sacrifice; it is one element of loving God with all your strength and soul. It might have been nice for him to try to make the point of loving God and loving neighbor more balanced, but a pastor very well could try to focus on one thing at a time, trying to balance it out throughout the year.

 

[francisca]

I see what you are saying. This is not the only homily of the preist. Taking up your cross, and trying to imitate Christ, as poor as it may be, is one element of Christ and his sacrifice; it is one element of loving God with all your strength and soul. It might have been nice for him to try to make the point of loving God and loving neighbor more balanced,

Well the last week and this week homilies were from two different priests.

About the recent homily, although the priest did mentioned that we can give generously only if we have faith, he did not really elaborate “what should we have faith in”.

He kept on saying that “we have to believe and so we can learn to give”. Thus still “no strong reason” about “why I should not be affraid/ worry” if I give from the little that I have. The stress is still on “we have to”, although this time the priest add the keyword “believe”. But I was/am happy that he did mentioned the keyword, because that is the word that Jesus kept repeating : believe. So yeah I think this Sunday homily is a lot better.

but a pastor very well could try to focus on one thing at a time, trying to balance it out throughout the year.

I have been a catholic since I was 10. I have heard thousands of homilies similar to each other. The one with “Jesus as a moral example” is just the one typical homily I often hear all year through.