HOMILY WEEK 03 02<\/p>\n
Law, Love and the Will of God<\/em><\/p>\n (Heb 10:1-10; Ps 40; Mk 3:31-35)<\/p>\n ***********************************<\/p>\n What happens when a lawyer falls into a pool of sharks? Nothing \u2013 professional ethics!<\/p>\n That is probably a bad lawyer joke, but it serves to set the context for the struggle humanity has with legalism versus love, as exemplified in the readings today encouraging us to move beyond law to love as the best way of doing the will of God.<\/p>\n The letter to the Hebrews speaks of the law being only a shadow of things to come. It is interesting \u2013 law can only inform, point out injustice, talk about God\u2019s will, encourage and judge. The law is written on stone and on paper.<\/p>\n Christ, on the other hand, transforms, forgives, heals, cares, offers unconditional love, and accomplishes the will of God. Love is written on the heart.<\/p>\n The psalm response today picks up this theme in exhorting us to stand before God each morning to say, \u201cHere I am, Lord \u2013 I come to do your will.\u201d For the psalmist, doing God\u2019s will is not a matter of offering sacrifices, but rather having an open ear to God\u2019s word and a willing heart to put it into action, combined with grateful praise and a willingness to share with others what God is doing in our lives.<\/p>\n Jesus in the gospel is very clear \u2013 it is not those who use his name, know about him, want to see him, but rather those who actually do the will of God who truly are his family.<\/p>\n What is this will of God we are to make a priority in our lives. I think God\u2019s will for us, as taught to us by Jesus, is to live the Beatitudes and keep his commandments.<\/p>\n The Beatitudes are eight ways of being in this world what will accomplish the will of God in our lives. To be poor in spirit, to be able to grieve and mourn our losses and have compassion on others, to be gentle with ourselves and others, to be fair in in our dealings with others and work for justice, to be a peace-maker and seek to bring about reconciliation, to be single-minded in serving God and pure of heart, to be able to forgive others from the heart, and to be able to accept some persecution and hardship without bitterness or resentment \u2013 to do all this is to accomplish the will of God and live within the kingdom of God.<\/p>\n I like to summarize the commandments as follows: we are to first of all love God back with our whole being in prayer and worship, love others genuinely from the heart through service and sharing, love ourselves by accepting ourselves as we are, love others as Jesus has loved us with sacrificial love, and above all, to love our enemies by forgiving them from the heart. To do all this is to certainly keep the commandments and do the will of God.<\/p>\n I recall a grade eleven student one time asking me why we Catholics worshipped Mary \u201cwhen Jesus pushed her away the time his family came to see him,\u201d obviously referring to the passage in today\u2019s gospel. I responded it was just the opposite \u2013 he wasn\u2019t pushing her away \u2013 he was using her as an example to teach the importance of doing God\u2019s will. Mary is his mother physically \u2013 we can be even closer to him personally than she is to him that way, if we do the will of God.<\/p>\n Those who are part of the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and working the steps, will be naturally led into living the gospel every time they work Step eleven, which reads, \u201cSought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, seeking only the knowledge of God\u2019s will for us and the power to carry it out.\u201d<\/p>\n The Eucharist is one of the best ways we have to live the readings today \u2013 to have an open ear as we listen to God\u2019s word, to have a willing heart as we receive the very body and blood of Jesus, and to offer God heartfelt praise and worship.<\/p>\n May our celebration also empower us to go out to share that good news with others, and to live the Beatitudes and keep the commandment to love as Jesus has loved us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HOMILY WEEK 03 02 Law, Love and the Will of God (Heb 10:1-10; Ps 40; Mk 3:31-35) *********************************** What happens when a lawyer falls into a pool of sharks? Nothing \u2013 professional ethics! That is probably a bad lawyer joke, but it serves to set the context for the struggle humanity has with legalism versus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homilies","category-ordinary-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1972,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971\/revisions\/1972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}