Saint Anthony Church Homily

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Reverend Jerry Singleton’s Homily

Eleventh Sunday
June 13, 2010
Cycle C
Luke 7:36-8:3

One of the great lessons from this morning’s Gospel and the First Reading from Samuel is the importance of self awareness and self honesty. Without it we make very little change in our lives as we can see demonstrated in today’s Gospel. We see the contrast between two attitudes of mind and heart. The Sadducee saw no need for forgiveness, and according to the words of Christ then he probably did not experience very much love. He was full of smug self-sufficiency and of course the greatest sin of all is being conscious of no sin in our lives, because in reality we are all sinners with our faults and our failings. On the other hand the woman in today’s Gospel was very well aware of who she was. That she was a sinner and she was aware that she needed to change. She risked a great deal by coming forward before these people in the presence of Christ and her gamble paid off because Christ assured her of her forgiveness and praised her for her love and faith. Likewise in the First Reading of Samuel, the great King David, when he was accused by the Prophet of serious sin, David did not rationalize it, did not excuse it away, but readily admitted that he sinned and asked for forgiveness. He saw the need for change in his life; he made these changes and went on to do great good.

Many of us in our daily lives are somewhat like the Sadducee in the Gospel. We lack a sense of self awareness and self honesty in relationship to what we are really like. We really do not know our true selves. We find it easier to live in this self image that we have created of who we think we are and whom we think other people see us as. The reality is often there is a gap of how we see ourselves and how we really are. If those around us had the courage to tell us and we had the courage to listen, we would really understand the difference. Because of the false image we have of ourselves we are very reluctant to look at any changes because it takes us out of our comfort zone. It bursts our bubble and we get angry with those who do so.

This false image affects our spiritual life which is based on the three great relationships, namely, the relationship with God, with others and with ourselves. If we are building it on false assumptions, then the relationship is not what it should be. We can see this in today’s Gospel in that the Sadducee and the woman had the same experience in being in Christ’s presence yet we have two very contrasting responses, to that presence and relationship. The Sadducee because of his false image of himself did not respond to Christ’s initiative or to improve his relationship with Christ. It was a missed opportunity. On the other hand this woman who was a sinner responded to Christ’s presence in a very positive manner. It led to joy and changes in her life. She responded positively and took opportunity of the moment because she had a true picture of who she was. David likewise in the first reading (Samuel) responded to the presence of God in the person of the Prophet and changed what needed to be changed in his life because he truly understood that he was a sinner.

When we celebrate the Eucharist this morning the coming of Christ into our presence just as he did in today’s Gospel we need to ask Him for the courage and for the insight to see ourselves as we truly are. Because it is only then that we can change what needs to be changed in our lives. We are all sinners and we need to change. That is why way back in grade school we all learned about the examination of conscience on a regular, if not on a daily basis. We are encouraged to do so, as that is how we will truly know what is going on in our lives, and we pray that we will have the honesty and the courage to listen to what our conscience maybe telling us.

Feast of Corpus Christi
June 6, 2010
Cycle C

Today we celebrate the Feast of Corpus Christi and many of us from the older generation remember it as a holy day with a public procession to express our belief and honor of the presence of Christ among us. Today the feast is not referred to as Corpus Christi, but as the Body and Blood of Christ. In the years in between, we seem to have lost some of the fervor and even belief in the significance of the Eucharist. Polls tell us that 33% of Catholics attend mass weekly and 57% believe that Jesus Christ is really present under the appearance of bread and wine. That means that 43% believe that the presence of Christ is more symbolic than real.

Like all feasts in the church with great significance, they are often better understood in the context of our salvation history. We need to realize that the history of our salvation did not begin with the day of our baptism, or the day we were born. In fact when we look at the Feast of the Body and Blood of Christ we can go back to the Old Testament to the Feast of the Passover. We know that this was one of the important feasts for the Chosen People. It still is today for the Jewish people in which they have readings of scriptures recounting the great generosity that God had for them by freeing them from slavery in Egypt and leading them to the Promised Land, and in their readings they do so with the awareness that God is still with them. So the Passover was a celebration of praise and thanksgiving for their deliverance from slavery in Egypt and arriving safely in the Promised Land. Likewise in the Eucharist we celebrate our deliverance from the slavery of sin through the death of Christ. We celebrate our salvation, and likewise we, like the Chosen People, are on a journey to a promised land which we call Heaven. This belief is very central to how we see our lives here on Earth. Like the journey of the Chosen People, it can have moments of great pain and joy, anxiety, fear, frustration, and disappointment. We too, have many of those same experiences as the Chosen People did. Just as the Chosen People were sustained by the presence of God in their midst, so are we sustained by the presence of Christ in the Eucharist. In the Eucharist we are fed by the body and blood of Christ, just as the Chosen People were fed by manna from Heaven to sustain them on their journey in the desert. Christ tells us “I am the living bread that came down from Heaven, whoever eats this bread will live forever”.

Just as Passover was not an individual but a community celebration of praise and thanksgiving, so also is the Eucharist. At the last supper Christ washed the feet of the apostles to give them the message that they need to do likewise for their fellow man. So as we leave the confines of this Church we need to live out what the Eucharist stands for in our daily lives; that the final words of the mass is “go in peace, and serve the Lord and serve ”one another” will truly have meaning in our lives.

May 30, 2010
Trinity Sunday
Cycle C

As children we learned that the Trinity means that there are three persons in the one god. We realize that this is a mystery and that we believe through the eyes of faith. Mystery such as the Trinity we will never fully understand, but our appreciation of what it means grows as we live our faith. It is important to remember that we have been expressing our belief in the Trinity through our prayers since we were small children. In fact, one of the first prayers we learned was how to bless ourselves; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. We hopefully do it every day. We also need to realize that one of the earlier prayers that we also learned was Glory Be to the Father in which we also express our belief in the Trinity. But do we ever reflect, or are we conscious of what it means? It is very easy to do it by rote.

It is a mystery and we can make all kinds of efforts to explain it, but it is still a mystery. But, because it is a mystery does not mean we ignore it. What is important is that it has meaning in our life and that we have a sense of it in our own daily lives. As we mentioned, we prayed it in our daily life by the Sign of the Cross, the Glory Be to the Father, and as we end most of the prayers in the mass and in the blessings, we invoke the Blessed Trinity. In the Glory during the mass we praise God the Father, God the Son and in God the Holy Spirit. In the Profession of Faith we say as part of the mass each Sunday, we express our belief in God the Father, in God the Son and in God the Holy Spirit. We recite the attributes that they posess and that we believe in. So it is not that we don’t express our belief and pray the Trinity, but it is a reminder to us, as well, that we must have an awareness of what we are doing. The reality is that the Trinity does play a part in our everyday life if we only remind ourselves when we come to the part of God the Father being present to us in our daily lives, all we need do is look at scripture. In the Old Testament Moses gave this wonderful prayer where he invites God to accompany him and his people on the journey. Where the Apostles ask Christ to help them pray and teach them to pray, he said “Our Father” and then he gave us that very simple, but beautiful prayer to God our Father whom we should invite everyday like Moses did to accompany us on our journey in life. The Gospels and all the parables in the Gospels clearly tell us what a wonderful father we have in God. For example, the Prodigal Son parable shows where we have a merciful, kind and forgiving father. We know that God the Father loves us because he sent his only son to redeem us. What a wonderful, wonderful gesture of love. We see God the Creator in our presence, in the world around us. In the stars in the sky, in the moon, the ocean, the birds in the air, the fishes in the sea and all the life around us; all are a reflection of God’s glory and above all his presence among us.

We know that Christ is present with us as we celebrate the Eucharist each Sunday, where he re-presents the sacrifice of Calvary once more each Sunday on our altar. He invites us to offer ourselves up. He is present with us as we receive the Eucharist and we know that He is present in those around us because He has said, “once you do it to one these my fellow man, you do it to me”. The presence of Christ in the second person of the Trinity is very much part of our life and in the sacraments and mass, in our prayers, and in our religion where he comes alive to us.

We know that the Holy Spirit is among us in those moments where we have inspiration, those moments where we are inspired to do good and to reach out to others and to pray, we know it is the Holy Spirit guiding us and directing us in right choices. So therefore, the Holy Trinity, while it is a mystery and while we may think it is obscure, it is in fact far from being obscure, but very much a part of our daily lives in our prayers and in the presence of God the Father, and the creator Jesus Christ his Son and the Holy Spirit among us in our own daily lives. All we need do is make ourselves aware.