September 17, 2017
My homily for today:
It began with a story.
Once upon a time …
Long ago and far far away …
In the beginning …
There was a boy named Jesus.
We learned His story, what He said, what He did,
How everything we know about God we learned from Him.
Everything we know about love we learned from Him:
From the way He lived, and died.
Love raised Him from the dead and He lives in Love forever.
Jesus’ story is not once upon a time – it is about here and now –
He loves us not once upon a time, but now –
From the age of seven we were taught to be in communion with Him
To translate His story into our lives,
His love pulling us to love:
Relentless forgiveness, unfailing generosity, reckless mercy;
Friends, neighbors, strangers, even enemies, all included.
It is not an easy translation.
It is tough work.
We fail, we don’t even want to try; we want to do the exact opposite,
Which we do,
and are forgiven by Him 70 times seven times, for,
He knows, even when we do not, that we have more love to give.
He wants to give us another chance, more time, to love,
Love for all eternity, world without end.
Jesus cannot make us love – He can only woo.
Every Sunday we are wooed,
seduced by His story and Communion to sing with St. Paul:
“No one lives by himself, no one dies by himself,
We live and we die for Christ our Lord, to Him we belong.”
No one lives for themselves, we live for Love.
No one lives by themselves, His Spirit lives with us.
No one dies by themselves, Jesus is with us.
We belong to him, we belong in Love
Forever and ever.
And that is how our story ends,
Happily ever after, world without end, Amen.
Paulist Fr. Mark David Janus is president of Paulist Press.
This homily is based on the scripture readings for the 24th Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year A. It is adapted from a post on Fr. Mark-David’s Facebook page.
The image above is attributed to Bradi Barth.