Surely Goodness And Kindness Will Follow Me

God made Adam and Eve perfect. At baptism we are restored to that perfection. We don’t look different, but we are perfect.

I know, we are imperfect. Yet our faults and weaknesses are signs not only of Original Sin but also of God’s overwhelming and transforming love. We really should rejoice in our weaknesses, as St. Paul did, because through them God forms us into saints.

Every moment of our life is a gift for which we should be grateful. Every moment can bring us closer to God, to the Love we crave, to a full heart. Thank God always for the limitless love and mercy which, at every moment, has the power to transform us into something beautiful and fit for Heaven.

written by Laura Weston, widow of Deacon Michael

IF YOU LIKE, READ ALONG WHILE YOU ARE LISTENING:

There are a number of things going on in these readings that I think are interesting from our perspective.  One is that we see in the letter of St. Paul to Titus, Titus was one of St. Paul's mentees (St. Paul was his mentor), as we would describe it, someone that he basically was cultivating and he was telling him how to be a bishop, effectively, but how to live your life.

And he talks about how, through Our Lord Jesus Christ, the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit that were poured on us by Jesus Christ, we become followers of Christ "that we might be justified by His grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life."

But the other aspect that comes actually before then, is that St. Paul is talking about what does it mean to be a follower of Christ.  There is a description of the way that you should be acting that is different from the way that the normal world looks.  "Be under the control of magistrates and authorities."  "Be obedient, open to good enterprise."  "Slander no one."  "Be peaceable, considerate."  Doing all these things that go along with being a follower of Christ.

It isn't simply a matter of, "Yep, I believe.”  Then I can do whatever I want.  It is a transformation process.  A transformation process that occurs during our lifetime, preparing us in this transformation process to spend all eternity with God in Heaven.

So we see that summarized by St. Paul in words much better, more articulate and wonderful than I can ever articulate, that we are to be followers of Christ and it is to make a difference in our following Christ.  What does that mean?  I was using the example earlier of how wonderful it is to see all of you every morning because we see in the lives that we are sharing here at the 6:30 Communion Service, we share each other's lives.  We worry about them.

The first example is Frank hadn't seen Joanie for a while, and couldn't give her a birthday card, and he was concerned to make sure she got it. 

Carol told Frank to go get the card.

We see these relationships that are going on constantly and that is a wonder because they are different from what they would be without the presence of Christ.

I go to the office.  Even those people who are followers of Christ there, those of you who have had contact with lawyers, we're surly.  We're bossy.  We tend to be obnoxious.  It isn't the world's most wonderful place to be.  It certainly isn't nearly as nice as it is to be here. 

But that's a part of the characteristic of being a follower of Christ.  First we are to have faith, then we are to transform ourselves.  Because we know, as it says in the Responsorial Psalm, "The Lord is my shepherd; there is nothing I shall want."

And there is in one of the psalms that I love, it is based on Psalm 23, that through the process of Christ we are preparing ourselves, effectively, for death.  We are becoming something different.

"Only goodness shall follow me all the days of my life.  I shall dwell the the house of the Lord for years to come."  This transformation process expressed in the psalms is what we are called to live.

We turn to the Gospel and we see something that is very important.  We see the lepers calling to Jesus in faith to have the leprosy cleared.  Leprosy then, less so now, now it is called Hansen's disease, was a horrible, horrible disease.  Parts of your body fall off.  Parts of your face would fall off.  It was basically a condemnation to death and it was contagious.  So you were, in fact, dangerous to other people.

What do you do in a circumstance like that?  You stay away from them.  These are people who would have been, at best, begging.  But most of the time they were probably just dying a slow death of starvation, of deprivation.  And so you have these lepers who are calling out to Jesus because they believe that He can save them.  And He does.

And you notice in contrast to many times in the gospel, Jesus does not go up and touch them.  There is a reason He's not touching them.  Because under the Jewish law, He becomes unclean at that point in time.

So what does He do?  He complies with the Jewish law.  They are healed by Him and He sends them to the priest because if you go, I think it is in Deuteronomy, there is an explicit procedure that a person with leprosy is to follow to prove that he, in fact, has been cleansed of the leprosy.  Now the reality is that the person probably didn't have leprosy and simply recovered from whatever they had.  But it was a very specific religious and physical process to demonstrate that they didn't have leprosy.

So what happens?  And this is a question that we have to ask ourselves. It is that we have all the wonder of our lives, we live in Farmers Branch, wherever, this area.  We come to a wonderful church.  We live a comfortable life.  We have things that are ongoing.  But, are we grateful?

Do we come to Christ, to God, and say, "Thank you for everything I have."  Do we stop and say, going, "Thank you, God."?  And that's something that we are supposed to do.  Not supposed to do, it is natural to do if we have faith.

If we believe that Jesus is responsible for who we are and what we are and how we are and is bringing us to the promise of eternal life, how can we, like the nine lepers, just turn our back, go on and do our things.  Presumably they go to the priest and they were cleansed and then what do they do?  Do they come back and say, "Thank you."?

No.  It takes a foreigner to do that.

And we need to be grateful.  We need to say, "Thank you, Lord, for everything that I have, and everything that I am.  And in fact, thank you for everything that I have experienced, even the bad. Because all of it is a gift from You in the transformative effect that You bring to the world, to bring me, to the promise of eternal life in Heaven.  And this is part of Your love that is so great for me that this whole process of my life is a cleansing, like the cleansing of the lepers.  And we need to be able to say to God, "Thank you because you have done so much for us and you promise so much more."

November 14, 2018 2