Homily – Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

January 25, 2009 Cycle B

Sr. Mary Ann who worked for a Home Health Agency one time was out making her rounds. Sister was visiting homebound patients when she ran out of gas. As luck would have it a gas station was just a block away.

Sister walked to the station to borrow a gas can and buy some gas. The attendant told her that the only gas can he owned had been loaned out, but she could wait until it was returned. Since Sister was her way to see a patient, she decided not to wait and walked back to her car. She looked for something in her car that she could fill with gas and spotted the bedpan that she was taking to the patient. Always resourceful, Sr. Mary Ann carried the bedpan to the station, filled it with gas, and carried the full bedpan back to her car.

As she was pouring the gas from the bedpan into her tank two men watched from across the street. One turned to the other and said, “If that thing starts, I’m turning Catholic.”

Well, there’s someone who received the call, and today we do follow through with the theme that we’ve heard all month about the call of Christ to be His follower. Jesus does not call us to be admirers, or supporters, or cheerleaders, or scholars of His gospel. He does, however, call us to take up the Cross as He did and to imitate a spirit of humility and compassion. Christ does call us in this New Year to continue to abandon our “nets of self-centeredness” in fear and despair and walk with Him to become “fishers” of the life and the love of God.

Time and again as we study the scriptures in this month of January, we hear the invitations of God extended. The challenge of discipleship is to discern and to respond to that call within our own lives and in the context of our own experiences. We know such discernment demands patience, and attention that we may not be used to. Surely one of the obvious characteristics of growth and resolutions in this New Year is for the gift of patience and the practice of that patience in our relationships with one another.

Christ tells us to leave all that we have known, whether it’s your security, your family. This is significant because family solidarity was very important in the culture in which Jesus called His disciples – and follow Him. We are to keep our focus on the loving Lord!

We come today to recognize there are countless opportunities every day to be about following Christ. Let me share some examples with you:

When baby boomers care for their aging parents, they adhere to the Lord’s invitation to “Come follow Me.”
When we revere and respect the elderly for their life experiences and the advice they can give us, we adhere to the Lord’s invitation to “Come follow Me.”
When we judge less and accept one another for who we are, warts and all, we adhere to the Lord’s invitation to “Come follow Me.”
When we abhor sexism, homophobia, and racism, in all their forms, we adhere to the Lord’s invitation to “Come follow Me.”
When we show compassion to the least and the marginal among us, we adhere to the Lord’s invitation to “Come follow Me.”
When we forgive one another, and truly forget life’s hurts and bruises, we adhere to the Lord’s invitation to “Come follow Me.”

Following the Lord with our whole selves and surrendering to His invitation might be summed up in the words of John Wesley, “Do all the good you can/by all the means you can/in all the ways you can/in all the places you can/at all the times you can/to all the people you can/as long as ever you can.”

So it is that we are told and challenged again today to follow Christ, but not without any nourishment along the way. We heard time and again from the testimony of Catholic Christians over the years, that they couldn’t go on in their daily challenges and trials without the gift of Eucharist to nourish them. And so we come one more time to receive the Bread and the Cup of the Eucharist and so we are with Christ in Christ.

Amen. Amen. Msgr. Tom, Pastor Christ the King