HOMILY/REFLECTION FOR 7TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)
HOMILY/REFLECTION FOR 7TH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (YEAR A)
HOMILY THEME: Love your enemies.
BY: Fr. Patrick
HOMILY: Gospel: Mt 5:38-48
My friends, in our Gospel, Jesus says God ‘…causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike.’ Anotherwards the Lord loves everybody equally and no matter what. This poses a challenge to us – why be good? Why forgive somebody who hurt us? Why go to church or say prayers? Some people go to church to win God’s favour, to get brownie points as such. They think ‘I’ve always been good, done the right thing and I’ve been faithful’. The implication here is ‘God owes me’. However this is not a mature understanding of our faith.
So then why go to church? Or say our prayers? Even why be good, kind, gentle, loving, forgiving, understanding or empathetic? Why be like Jesus in these virtues? Because our faith is a relationship between God and us and like any relationship we need to nourish it or it suffers. That faith, that relationship with God we express in our relationships with others like Jesus has shown us. It is only right we should express gratitude, bless, show our love for and spend time with God in prayer and imitate Jesus in his virtues. It is even necessary for us to do so, if we desire a good wholesome relationship with God and one another, to live life to the full, to be the best person we can be. We are called to be perfect just as our heavenly Father is perfect which Jesus encourages us in our Gospel. By doing so we’ll have peace in our hearts as we’d be at rights with God and one another.
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As well as nourishing our own relationship with God in church we also support one another’s faith by coming together as a worshiping community. For example if one person’s faith is weak or is struggling, that person is carried by the other members of the praying community. So I thank each one of you for coming here today. You support me in my faith and we each support one another in each other’s faith.
My friends, God ‘…causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike.’ This is the measure of God’s greatness and it’s also our measure.
Conclusion of Mass – the takeaway
God ‘…causes his sun to rise on bad men as well as good, and his rain to fall on honest and dishonest alike.’ This is the measure of God’s greatness and it can also be our measure.
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