Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. September 16th, 2012 Extraordinary Form of the LIturgy

St Paul today is again calling us to great solicitude and care for our neighbor; especially those within the house hold of God, within the Christ… Paul is calling us to imitate his own solicitude..His many tribulations, even his imprisionment are for them, for their good and salvation; so much does he love them and care for them and so serve them.

St Paul is literally suffering so that they might enter into a deeper, (what a cheap word), into a communion, a unbreakable unending union of unfathomable love with the Father through the Son in the unity and charity of the Holy Spirit-to become one with God Himself.

For this cause St Paul says, I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Of whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named: The Greek here is not kneel but prostrate myself to the Father from whom not just things come but come from out of love and are called to return to in lofe.

For the sake of his brethren, Paul is begging That the Father would grant them, you and I, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened by his Spirit with might unto the inward man, that is that our very being would be renewed transformed into the very image of the Father in the Son. And so that Christ may dwell by faith in your hearts: that, being rooted and founded in charity, You may be able to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, To know also the charity of Christ,, the love of Christ, which surpasseth all knowledge: that you may be filled unto all the fulness of God. That is that you might become one with God, sharing in His Divinity, in His inner Divine Life.

Is St. Paul a dreamer; Is he an idealist?…No he is a realist, for this is not only possible for each one of us but it is the very reason for our being; “
Now to him who is able to do all things more abundantly than we desire or understand, according to the power that worketh in us: To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus, unto all generations, world without end. Amen.


In light of this great calling, How much we should then work and even suffering for the good of our neighbor, serving him, putting his needs before our own…how much should we so in our families and particularly for those within the household of faith, that is within our parish family of St. Patrick’s

Last week we spoke about how to do this. First: by putting our brothers physical and temporal needs before our own summed up in the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy: Feeding the Hungry; given drink to the thirsty; clothing the naked; harboring the harbor-less, that is the homeless; visiting the imprisoned; and burying the dead;

Second by how much more we should care for and so serve our neighbor by the even more important Spiritual Works of Mercy: so even suffering if necessary for the good and salvation of our neighbor of our parish family
•
• To instruct the ignorant;that is to feed them with the knowledge of the truth that comes from God about God and about man…this truth proclaimed infallibly by the Church and her Magisterium..
• To counsel the doubtful; that is to give the love of Christ in our own hearts to those who are dying of thirst for His Love and the love of His brethren.
• To admonish sinners; out of solicitude for their eternal salvation with the knowledge that but by the grace of God go I…
• To bear wrongs patiently;
• To forgive offences willingly; and immediately for I have been forgiven of so much greater offenses…
• To comfort the afflicted;
• To pray for the living and the dead.

What would it look like if all the members of this particular gathering of the Body of Christ, if we, all of us, made it our primary concern for the common good, for the good of each one of the members and families of this parish family; made it our primary concern for the salvation of her members and families…we certainly would NOT have to worry about stewardship, about getting enough volunteers or even worry about getting enough money.

Our readings today give us key to not just imagining this authentic Christian living within us, within our familes and parish families and communites, but they give us the key to more and more bring it to fruition…the key is humility;
Humility is so necessary for salvation that not only in today’s Gospel reading, but throughout the Gospels, Jesus takes every opportunity to stress its importance. Today he uses the attitudes of people at a banquet to remind us again that it is God who assigns the places of man’s dignity. Humility is so much more than debasing oneself before the Lord…It is coming before the Lord in truth, truth about who we are and who God is.

Humility leads us to the realization of the greatness of man’s, each man’s dignity, and the overwhelming fact that by grace we are actually made children of God….Humility reveals to us the truth that it is not our own efforts that save us and give us life; it is the grace of God…Period…We must never forget this truth lest any of us boast…no let us boast always in the Lord…and to thank him and glorify Him and to show Him our faithful love serve Him by serving our neighbor caring for his material good, but even more importantly his eternal good-salvation.

Humility reminds us of the fact that God is a Father that He as not only created us in love but continue to sustains us in love…He calls us, each one of us, each person, our neighbor, every man into an intimacy of love that while surpassing all of our understanding never-less is the very meaning of our existence.
This opposite of humility is of course pride. In the Gospel Jesus uses the Pharisee to show us how damaging pride is, not only to the soul, but to the whole body of Christ---to the parish family and our families-to the world. The Pharisee, in his own mind, had by his efforts saved his own life…His lack of humility blinded him to the truth that again it is God grace that saves us and we are all equally in need of the mercy of God…so that some of us to be brought into friendship with God and others of us be prevented from falling out of this friendship.

The Pharisee could not see the need of the other…he could only see his own supposed goodness…And so, the Pharisee was NOT solicitous about the good and the salvation of his brother….He only cared that the other fulfilled the LAW like he himself did so perfectly, at least he thought. And so he would not reach out a hand for those brothers who had fallen in the pit of despair, unbelief and just lack of knowledge of the love of God the Father for them.

It’s so easy for us to fall into this trap of the Pharisees. You know many times this Gospel has been used to remind Catholics of not only the need for Catholics to attend every Sunday Mass but also its used to instruct the soul how to attend well, how to act within the household of God and the manner with which we should present ourselves before the Lord in His House…one thinks here of Paul, bowing, kneeling, prostrating before the Lord…

We think today of all those Catholics who don’t attend Holy Mass at all, or who attend without the proper disposition and attitude before so sublime and august a Sacred Mystery….It’s easy to take the attitude of the Pharisee toward them and condemn them for not following the Law…and so letting them stay in the pit and not reaching out our hand to pull them out.

The fact is that These poor wayward souls too lack humility, not necessarily because they refuse to see the truth, this certainly can be the case for some, but because many lack humility because they lack the truth about God and His unfathable love for them, they lack the truth about themselves and their great calling and dignity-they really don’t know themesleves in light of God’s great love. They are in the pit of ignorance and blindness.

We have to pray like St. Paul that through our efforts, and our own spiritual experience of God’s love, pray and suffer that they too would grow in the knowledge and love of Christ and experience that love that surpasses all knowledge and understanding.
So many have such a sentimentalized knowledge of the Love of God…We have to speak to them about the great accessibility of God that is open to them, but at the same time without ever forgetting the great and awesome Holiness of God and His great Glory. In other words, God welcomes the sinner, all sinners, but not if the sinner wishes to trade on God’s love in order to remain in his sin. God is holy and those who seek his friendship must cooperate with His grace in order to be come holy too—they must repent, confess and with the help of God’s grace and love sin no more.

We need to tell them, share with them that God is the Father of all and this fatherhood extends to all men, and so we must love and respect forgive and serve one another in light of this great truth.

We need to explain to them that God is the Father to whom all thanks must be given; better yet; all thankful adoration must be given…God’s fatherliness to us implies a debt on our part…it is wrong to think that God is only helping us in the difficult moments of our life…We receive so many gifts from God every day, everything is gift and so its easy to overlook this reality…We need to remind our neighbor and ourself that we owe everything to God, our salvation, all that we have, even our life and breath..

We need to show them that God is the pattern of all true fatherhood; G.K. Chesterton remembered his father only vaguely but his memories were precious. He tells us that in his childhood he possessed a toy theatre in which all the characters were cut-outs in cardboard. One of them was a man with a golden key. He never could remember what the man with the golden key stood for but in his own mind he always connected his father with him, a man with a golden key opening up all kinds of wonderful things.

We teach our children to call God father, and the only conception of fatherhood they can have is that which we give them. Human fatherhood should be mounded on the fatherhood of God. We need to teach all of those who don’t practice their faith or who don’t know their faith or of God’s love for them, we need to teach them to call God Father, they only conception of fatherhood they may have is that which we give them, You and I….

Let us now turn in thankful adoration to the Father from who all fatherhood gets its name and has it source and beg Him through His Son Jesus, to allow us to know and experience the charity of Christ which surpasses all knowledge and understand and so be filled with the fullness of the God so that we may share that fullness with all souls, especially with those within the household of faith.

Blessed Mother we pray for an increase of humility as we contemplate the first Joyful Mystery of your holy rosary, the Annunciation in which we see the humility of the divine by become man and the humility of the human by allowing the Word to become man. You then show us in the Second Mystery, the Visitation, that humility immediately opens up to the service and love of neighbor in order to bring the sanctify and saving presence of the Redeemer. May we imitate you profound humility by imitating your profound service as shown in our own love and service for our neighbor and own solicitude for their good and for their salvation. Amen.