Words from Fr Billy HOMILY FOR FOURTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME (A) Dear friends. After the Sundays of Lent, Easter, Pentecost, Trinity, Corpus Christi and Saints Peter and Paul, we are back to ordinary time again. And as we return to green vestments, we listen to one of the most beautiful Gospels in the whole of the Bible where Jesus is at his compassionate best as he asks those who are particularly burdened and struggling to simply come to him. It is an invitation that is beautiful as it is simple and yet is so important. This is not the first time in the Gospels that Jesus invites us to ‘come’ to him. In fact it is often his first word to those he sees and loves: ‘Come follow me’; ‘come and see’; ‘let the children come to me’; ‘Zacchaeus, hurry, come down!’ In my homily this week, I will try and tease out just how we respond to the Lord’s invitation to ‘come’ to him and what happens when we do. The Lord’s invitation for us to ‘come to me’ is deeply personal. We all need people to turn to at difficult moments, times when we lose direction, need advice and the help of others. It is a deeply human need. In our world today there are many who have lost their way. There are many who labour and are overburdened who long for rest for their souls but who cannot find it. Perhaps we are among them right now. There are all kinds of worries, responsibilities disappointments, hurts, bitterness, guilt, illness, unemployment, addictions, a difficult or broken relationship and so on. There is also a lack of meaning for many people in life today and an increasing inability to cope with failure. Yet in the middle of this human brokenness comes a message of hope from one who was human himself. He asks us to come to him: not as we would like to be but just as we are. And as we are he accepts us in all our imperfection. He then asks us to share with him how we are: to tell him how is life going for us, what are the joys and what are the challenges. He wants to hear how we are for he really cares. This is why he has asked us to come to him in the first place. No detail is too small for him not to want to listen. No failure is too big for him to walk away. We might walk away from him but he never walks away from us. Then as we open up in trust and prayer, something begins to happen: we notice that there is an ease and a gentleness in the one who listens. The more we share the easier it gets. The gentleness of Jesus listens carefully, treads lightly, looks tenderly and touches with reverence. So too is he humble as he recognises the goodness in us that he himself has placed there. In our prayer with him, heart speaks to heart as we share our humanity with the one who knows it from the inside out. And when we have shared, listened and stayed in his presence, his gift to us is that of rest. It is often physical rest but especially spiritual rest and nourishment. How many souls are falling apart today because of spiritual hunger or exhaustion because they do not know where to find spiritual rest! We look in every place for peace and rest except where it is truly to be found in God alone. When we are dead, the Church will pray that God will grant us ‘eternal rest’ but this rest is not something we have to wait for until we die. It is a gift for this life too. To come to God is to find rest and to pray with him is to enjoy the rest without which our spirits wilt from exhaustion and fatigue. As the psalm says: ‘As a child that rests in its mothers arms so my soul rest in you’ (Ps. 131:2). So as we enjoy these summer days when many of us enjoy holidays and find rest from school and work, may we never neglect the spiritual rest that is so important. Take that time to pray and to come to him as he asks us. Come to pray, come to light a candle, come to visit the Blessed Sacrament, come to the Eucharist, come to confession. He is there waiting for us, not to judge but to listen, to accept, to forgive, to heal and to grant us rest for our souls. I conclude with an imaginary conversation between us and the Lord that expresses what our reaction can be and the excuses we make not to come to him as he asks. The Lord said to me, ‘Come to me’. But I said, ‘I’m not worthy’. ‘Come to me’ he repeated. And I said, ‘I’m afraid’. ‘Come to me’. ‘I’m too proud’. ‘Come to me’. ‘But I’ve no appointment’. ‘Come to me’. ‘But I can’t afford the time right now’. ‘Come to me’. With that I fell silent. Then he said ‘Come…sit down…take the load off your feet. Sit here in the shade of the tree. Spend some time with me, get to know me. Tell me how you are. Share. And when you do, know that I share your burden. I share your life. Rest in me for a while and let your soul renew itself and heal. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light’.
Posted on: Fri, 04 Jul 2014 10:52:02 +0000
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