Sometimes its the “bad guy” that turns out to be the good guy after all is said and done…So think twice before we “think” we are so good

Today at Holy Mass we hear in the Gospel of St Luke about how Jesus announces to his people that “He is the guy”…..And they miss it completely…..”The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord”…..As we all know, hindsight is 20/20 and with that said, its easy to wonder after reading this how Jesus’ contemporaries “missed it”…..But if we are honest we can say the same thing about society today…And even those you claim to “get it” - How much we miss due to the fact that we still live “behind the veil” which stands between heaven and earth…….In response to the crowd not accepting what was told to them by Jesus…….Jesus tells the crowd a story about two people who were outcasts - People who were not part of the chosen race of Israel, who at a time of trial God came to them……..”Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”….....This should be a reminder to all of us who claim to “get it”….God sees the human heart, He knows just how little we “get”…….Yet he loves us and is patient with us!……How we “identity” means very little to God…Its the condition of our heart and the purity of our soul that matters most….Many times when we read the lives of the saints we find that God forms men and women who were once living on the margins of society to become something new…..How does God find such people?…….The answer - God sees the heart…Something mankind disregards…The currency of heaven is very different from the currency of the world.

“For the Lord himself, with a word of command, with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first”

What a “motley crew” the first twelve apostles were…Yet these were the men hand picked by God…..To this day, God calls men and women…..And again like what we saw today in the Gospel, some of those people who are called surprise us……..When I was in college I knew a man by the name of John Foley…John was a good natured guy but not very overtly religious….He drank a lot and for the most part lived a secular life…I was told a story about him one day that shocked me….It shocked me because it was so Christ-like in nature that I could not even imagine such an action could have been done by John….Because I thought I “knew him”…..John and a bunch of his friends went up to Boston to see a baseball game…The Yankees were playing the Red Sox…For those reading this reflection who are American baseball fans, you know that this is a huge rivalry….Anyway back to our story…John and his buddies were headed into there stadium when they saw a fight break out…..A bunch of young guys were beating a man……John did not know the man being beaten but he did something that when I heard about it, shocked me to my core….John jumped into the middle of the fight and covered the man being beaten with his own body, shielding him from the attack…..Please keep this in mind…John did not know this man…..When I was told about what John did, it shock me….....Why?…....Because this was “John” - I never would have expected such an act of selfless bravery from him….But later on after all was said and done, the event made me think even more…..I consider myself “so religious”….Yet if I was honest, I don’t think I would have done the same thing John did that day at Fenway Park in Boston, to save a stranger from being beaten at the cost of receiving the blows upon his own body - In fact, I know I would not have done that….As I read the Gospel today, the story about what my friend John did reminded me of what Jesus told the “chosen people” in the temple…..Jesus reminded them, that God chose someone outside their ranks…..Someone they disregarded…Just as I disregarded John……This is how God works sometimes…Why?…Because he sees the human heart and we do not…This is why we must pray…And fast….And live a Sacramental life…In doing so our hearts will become pure and we will become childlike……. And in turn we will enter into eternal life.

“Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah”

Jesus today in the Gospel shocks the crowd….He tells us indirectly not to “overlook” strangers…….To give people a chance….And to think long and hard about who we “think” we are!…..The story Jesus tells the crowd today has an interesting twist in the end…The people who claim to be “holy” were not so holy - And the two outcasts - They were the ones that God came too - Interesting - Right? - Does that make you think?…..So it will be when we all stand before God at the end of time……God sees the human heart…..It does not matter what we say….Or even what we do as much as it matters about how much love we put into what we say and do - This is what matters! - Labels mean nothing if they are empty…..Somethings its the “bad guy” that turns out to be the good guy after all is said and done…So think twice before we “think” we are so good………….JMJ