(2 Cor 1:1-7; Ps 34; Mt 5:1-12)<\/p>\n
***************************************<\/p>\n
Do you know your \u201cWay of Being\u201d?<\/p>\n
The liturgy today invites us to live the Beatitudes always, in both pleasant and painful times.<\/p>\n
A core teaching of the Returning To Spirit Process is the importance of discovering and naming our \u201cWay of Being.\u201d One participant in the training at Morley, AB, was having a hard time identifying hers, so Mark Pizandawatc, our instructor, offered the suggestion \u201cDrama Queen\u201d causing her to almost hit the roof. The rest of the class, however, burst out laughing because he had nailed it \u2013 that was who she was \u2013 a drama queen.<\/p>\n
I myself was struggling to identify my Way of Being<\/em> (I was in training at that time before being named to the episcopacy) until my first celebration of the Eucharist as bishop in \u00cele-\u00e0-la Crosse when the pastor at that time, Fr. John Zunti, introduced me to the congregation with the words, \u201cWe Oblates call him Mr. Fix-It.\u201d I was shocked at first, but then quickly realized that he also had nailed it \u2013 that was truly my Way of Being<\/em> \u2013 the way I was doing so much of my ministry in the north \u2013 trying to fix people and even whole communities. It was no wonder as a young priest I had experienced so much frustration. My Way of Being <\/em>was not helpful at all.<\/p>\n A Way of Being <\/em>has a lot to do with our attitudes. An attitude to me now is my habitual way of thinking, feeling and acting in this world, and it can be either positive or negative, helping us in life, or hindering us as we live out each day. What is important is that we can finally discover our Way of Being<\/em>, often needing the help of others along the way, so that we can grow with it or make changes to it.<\/p>\n In Matthew, the last Beatitude is strongly emphasized by being mentioned twice \u2013 so much so that it almost becomes a ninth Beatitude. So suffering for the sake of the kingdom is a most sure entrance to the kingdom.<\/p>\n There is a catch, however. That suffering has to be redemptive. It is redemptive when it is connected to the suffering of Jesus. How to do that is a key question. The answer is when we are able to accept some inconvenience and suffering in our lives without bitterness or resentment, as Jesus did, then our suffering is connected to his and builds up the reign of God here on earth.<\/p>\n That is something our world does not understand, as in its lack of faith, it does not see any meaning or purpose in suffering or inconvenience at all. As an Ottawa psychologist put it in a Maclean\u2019s magazine article, \u201cWe used to think the enemy was death. Now we know that it is suffering.\u201d The end result of this kind of thinking is abortion on the one hand, because children are now seen as an inconvenience (in saying this, I do not want to judge anyone who may have terminated a pregnancy, as there are many reasons why one would do that \u2013 pressure, panic, force, etc.). And there is medical assistance in dying (actually physician assisted suicide) on the other hand (because the elderly might suffer). And in between, an epidemic of addiction, as people try to medicate their pain.<\/p>\n Our task as followers of Jesus, who freely accepted to suffer on the cross to show us the depth of the Father\u2019s love, is to allow our suffering to be an optimal blessing to all who know us, by the joyful and peaceful way that we can accept it, so that blood and water (eternal life) is flowing out of our side as we lay in our coffins.<\/p>\n St Paul, in his letter to the Corinthians, is so grounded in God\u2019s love for him and his faith in Jesus Christ as Risen Lord who gave his life for us, that he can teach them to accept both consolation and desolation in their lives, as he did in his. It all has profound and mystical meaning and purpose \u2013 God turns everything to the good for those who love him. As St. Francis put it in his last words to his friars, we have no reason to regret anything in our lives, painful or pleasant.<\/p>\n The Eucharist makes present the love of Christ shown us by his suffering on the Cross, and above all by the way he accepted that suffering without bitterness or resentment \u2013 only forgiveness for those who were crucifying him.<\/p>\n May our celebration, and our entering into this Paschal Mystery of Love, empower us to make the Beatitudes our Way of Being<\/em> and the way that we habitually think, feel and act in this world, building up the reign of God as we do so.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" HOMILY WEEK 10 01 \u2013 Year I The Beatitudes \u2013 Our Way of Being (2 Cor 1:1-7; Ps 34; Mt 5:1-12) *************************************** Do you know your \u201cWay of Being\u201d? The liturgy today invites us to live the Beatitudes always, in both pleasant and painful times. A core teaching of the Returning To Spirit Process is […]<\/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-7329","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\/7329","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=7329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7331,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7329\/revisions\/7331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/archbishopsylvainlavoie.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/06\/Beatitudes.jpg\")
We are so fortunate that Jesus gave us eight Ways of Being<\/em> \u2013 eight Beatitudes that are all positive and real blessings if we can only integrate them into our lives and ministry. Two of them are striking – being \u201cpoor in spirit\u201d and being \u201cpersecuted for righteousness\u2019 sake\u201d \u2013 because they are an opening to experiencing the kingdom of God right here and now in this life \u2013 \u201cfor theirs is<\/u> the kingdom of heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n