Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Sep 7 - Homily for Today

+ The gospel passage today from St. Luke shows how Jesus, after a night in prayer calls his disciples to himself and from a larger crowd of them, chooses 12, whom he also named Apostles. These Twelve would be the ones that he would specially train to know who he truly was, and to carry on his mission when he would be removed from their midst. They would come to know him as Son of God, the great healer and reconciler of all of mankind with God.

What is amazing is that Jesus’ own life and healing and reconciling power – by his own plan – would be available to all who seek it – by means of connecting with his Mystical Body the Church that he would establish before he went to heaven. And it is on a day like this one, when we remember the events of September 11, 2001, that we might have a key to understand the way to deal with the entire tragic situation.

All of us, successors of the apostles, priests, and lay people alike are invited to take to heart the first reading today: which exhorts us not to let judgment on our brothers (even regarding those who commit the most heinous of crimes) to be blown out of proportion, but having been washed clean ourselves and sanctified, we let God be the final judge, the Spirit of our God; and then, the hard part, we are invited to become healers and reconcilers in the whole matter: which may even cause us to go contrary to our natural inclinations for retaliation and revenge.

Yes, we remember today as the day eleven years ago that nearly 3000 people lost their lives in three different locations in our country, as a part of a sinister plot, having even to do with faulty religious values – and while it is important to do all we can do prevent such things from happening again: the best way to bring closure and healing to survivors and to our nation as a whole is to allow the supernatural element of our Christian faith to aid us in forgiving the offense, forgiving the ignorance that was in play, forgiving the misuse of intelligence and technical know-how. This is not to forget, but it is to forgive: and this divine gesture and act of the will (empowered by grace and Christ himself) will go far in creating a true environment of peace and happiness and true brotherhood. For when the reaction to injury is a handshake of peace, it throws the aggressive party off; those who are for fighting are disarmed by those who raise their hands in gestures of peace!

May we bear fruit doing things God’s way, rather than our own, remembering that more violence is never the remedy for violence already done.


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