Today at Holy Mass we hear from the Gospel of St Luke…..We are told that Herod, who we know to be a villain is somehow interested in what Jesus has to say……”Who then is this about whom I hear such things?” And he kept trying to see him”…The question one might ask is why would a man who opposed Christ in every way still be interested in hearing what he had to say?…You would think Jesus because of who he was and what he stood for would literally make Herod sick to his stomach…But that was not the case…Herod was interested in Jesus, yet he did not live by the words or follow the example of Christ in his day to day living…..There is something about the Truth that captivates us…Even when we “disagree” with it….Could it be that the Truth is written on our hearts only to be discovered?
“I am the way and the truth and the life, says the Lord; no one comes to the Father except through me”
We live in a pluralistic society…All kinds of people who live very different kind of lives…That is reality however there is a common thread that unites us all…We were all created by God…We were all born to love God, serve God and be with God for all eternity…Its for us to “discover” this reality but until we do…Like Herod, who lived a life, which opposed God in every way, there was that “something” in his heart that caused him to be interested in hearing and seeing what Jesus was doing…..Why?…Because Herod too was a child of God and even though he choose to turn from the ways of God, what was “written on his heart” could not be unwritten….This is what is commonly called in literature as “the Hound of Heaven”….God in effect “hounds” us…Calling us back to him when we stray…There is something in our very being that “knows” and “hears” the voice of our Father in heaven…Even when we oppose him with every word and action of our life….How do we reconcile this “inner voice” with a firm commitment to “change”?...How can God “break through” our harden hearts and “change our mind”?…….Words and arguments will never accomplish this…..We have to come to realize that we are loved…The word “love” gets thrown around way too much…When we encounter real and true love….The type of love God offers….Our world changes…..We are one Sacramental Confession away from that “change”
“Fill us at daybreak with your kindness, that we may shout for joy and gladness all our days”
The “Herods” of the world come and go…We hear this in the first reading from Mass today from the Book of Ecclesiastes….”Nothing is new under the sun”……..However, while we still have breath in our body..Its for us to “hear” the voice of the “Hound of Heaven” and respond…While King Herod did not do that as the gospels tell us…Many do and respond in radical ways…..Because the Truth is written on each of our hearts…..The lives of the saints can demonstrate to us this reality if we read the accounts of their lives…… How many saints lived one way only to make a drastic change, due to an encounter they had with the living God……St Paul, St Francis, St Ignatius Loyola to name three…What caused the Truth to “break through”?…….In the case of St Paul, he was struck blind and “fell off his horse” only to hear the call of Christ to change…In the case of St Francis, he was tired of living a life of parties and riches all of which left him empty…In the case of St Ignatius Loyola..It took a cannon ball to shatter his leg and his dreams of being a great soldier and knight shattered with it only to discover the pursuit of God is the greatest "adventure" of all…What about you?…What will it take?…Make no mistake…God will not and does not give up on us…He is the “Hound of Heaven”…And like Herod in our gospel from Mass today…Even if we choose to turn from the will of God…To ignore his voice…..There is “something” in our hearts that keeps “pulling” at us…What will it take?…Only you can answer that…..We can not “unwrite” what has been written on every human heart
“What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun”
No comments:
Post a Comment