Ash Wednesday
Faith is a beginning; not the end. You really cannot start down the road of salvation without faith. Faith puts us on the road, but it is not the goal of our journey to Heaven. The disciples believed in Jesus, but they did not immediately enter Heaven. They had lives to live and choices to make along the way.
In the course of our lives, we tend to believe that we can and should do everything ourselves, and only call on Jesus in emergencies, like the apostles in the boat, when they were enduring a frightful storm.
Storms come. But even when the waters of our life are calm, it all is still in Jesus’ hands. Reach out for him in good times and in bad. He is our best friend. He likes to be with us. Make Him happy; call to Him always.
written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael
F YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:
Yesterday Fr. Michael gave an interesting homily. An unusual one to hear. If you heard it he first said that his dog is getting old and his dog is dying. But if you listen carefully, right at the beginning he said, "Sometimes I talk about my cattle." He doesn't talk about his cows dying because he sends them off to the slaughterhouse to die. He was talking about his dog. So there is a very important distinction we need to make here.
Good morning!
But in the fact that Fr. Michael was talking about death, it is very unusual. Most Catholic priests don't like to talk about death at all.
And we are coming up on the season of Advent, which is a penitential season. And we are coming up on Christ the King. That image of the crucifix is the image of Christ becoming the king. It is in death that Christ became king. It is in death that we can seek the fulfillment of becoming transformed to spend all eternity in Heaven with Christ.
It [death] is a reality of our existence. It is a reality of our existence, quite frankly in the recent United States, I don't know about Europe but I assume it is the same, with which we feel very uncomfortable. And the Church this week will be bringing to the fore through the Revelation a prospect of first bringing to us the recognition of ends of time. That's what Revelation is all about. And bringing to mind what is necessary for us in ourselves to prepare ourselves to meet Our Lord Jesus Christ. That's what it is. The reality is, we are going to die.
So we look first at Revelation and John is going to be writing to the seven churches. We are only going to have I think two of them, maybe three. But in this one, he is writing to Ephesus. Now Ephesus is a very important church. It is a center of learning. It is a center of Christianity. And it is John's home. He is on Patmos (where died in exile) at the time he is writing Revelation, but he was at Ephesus. The understanding is that he was probably at Ephesus living with the Blessed Mother. So Ephesus is essential. And he says some good things about Ephesus.
And we can go through and we can find virtually anybody, pick them at random, you could find good things about people.
"Well, he loves his dog." Or, as Jesus says, even the pagans love their children. They don't give them scorpions or snakes. Even... and you can find good things... he's a good golfer. You can find good things to say... except for CPAs, I saw that smile. You can find good things.
But what John says at this point, is , "Hey guys, you were doing really well, but, you're not excited about it any more. It's just kinda becoming a Thing. Where is the enthusiasm that comes from knowing that you are participating in your life with the potential of salvation through Our Lord Jesus Christ. This is a wonderful thing that should be motivating every aspect of your life. It's not doing it! Examine yourselves. Look to where you are. Look to what you should be doing.”
Look at your lives. Be very contented. Like I said, I've got the most beautiful wife in the world who likes to move walls. If I looked only at the beautiful wife, that's great. But I always have to say, "Well wait a minute. Sometimes I tell Laura, 'I really don't think we want to rebuild this house, your husband wants to move.'" She says, "But I really want this wall gone." Okay, I still love her. Sometimes it requires a little more work.
But that's the reality of our existence with anything, is that we have wonderful aspects and we have the reality that if we allow the reality to pull us away from Christ, we need to be aware of it. This is part of the season of self-examination and looking at ourselves for the purpose of bringing ourselves to Christ.
In the gospel reading we have probably one of the most key aspects that we have where people fail. St. Thomas Aquinas talks about it. The very threshold of things that we have to have to be able to be a practicing Christian is faith.
Do we have faith? Do we ultimately have faith. And let's look at in the context. A blind man comes and says, "Give me sight." And Jesus says, "Your faith is saving you."
Well, lets look at our own situation. How many times do we face a situation, we look at it and we go, "Huh." And God comes along and He says, "Here's how you handle it." And I go, "No, don't worry about it. I know how to do it. I can solve the problem.” “I don't need you to pray for me." "I don't need you God, because I know how to do this."
In our examination of our relationship with Christ with regard to faith, isn't that a lack of faith? That we have this tendency within ourselves to go, "Oh, I don't need anybody to help me. God forbid! I can take care of it all myself. Oh, ooo." Isn't that a lack of faith? Isn't that saying, "God, it's great. I like you on Sundays. I like to hear the music. The music is really good, especially around Christmas time. I really like that. And it's fun when they start doing all the incense and stuff like that. There are limits. We don't want to let our faith walk out the door of the church because it might change the way we act. We might able able to perceive the world differently.”
Are we not demonstrating a lack of faith? Isn't that one of the things that we are called to look at first in our examination of ourselves in relationship to Christ? It is, do we have faith? And the easiest way to look at it is: now many times do we think, and this is something than men do more than women, it's just reality, "Don't worry. I can take care of it. I've just chopped my foot off. It is extremely painful. But it's all right. I can handle it." Isn't that very, in its essence, a demonstration of lack of faith? Isn't that kind of tendency one of the things that we need to examine in ourselves when we come into this season of repentance and probably the very first thing we need to examine in ourselves is, "Do I really have faith?" I do have the ability to simply say, well when your wife usually tells you, "Don't worry. God will provide." And you go, "Don't worry, I can take care of it!"
Now, God will provide. Now He may provide by means that you never even considered. But you've got to have faith to understand. Just like the blind man. He came up. "Let me see." And he saw. And his faith saved him.
So in this season, when get into the season of repentance, perhaps the first place that we should start in our examination of our relationship with God is to look at how we think and we act and whether, in fact, we do place our full faith in Our Lord Jesus Christ and his Father.
November 19, 2018 2