31st Sunday in Ordinary
Time, 2023
In our first
reading today the prophet Malachi warns the priests, saying “Listen, O priests,
you have turned aside from the way and have caused many to falter by your
instruction.”
In our own
day as well, we still see lots of priests leading people
astray by their instruction. And those
priests and bishops and Church leaders, if they do not repent, risk the fires
of Hell.
Saint Paul,
on the other hand, provides the Thessalonians a great summation of HIS
approach, and it needs to be the same approach for all of us in this Church
today.
St. Paul
says this: “We were determined not only to share the Gospel with you, but even
our very selves” That is beautiful!
First of all,
St. Paul says he shared the Gospel with the Thessalonians…and sharing the
Gospel can be pretty simple and straight forward…humanity sinned, God became a
human person in order to rescue us, and now, through baptism and life in the
Catholic Church, we had the gift of finding great joy in this life and in the
life to come by following Christ who said “I came that you might have life, and
have it more abundantly!” That is a
beautiful invitation.
But that
second part that saint Paul says is also critical…Saint Paul also tells the
Thessalonians “Not only did we share the Gospel with you, we shared OUR VERY
SELVES…” and that is really profound…he says he gave himself completely and wanted
to be their friend.
All of us
here this morning know one person that we can first of all demonstrate how much
we love them by sharing our very self with that person…someone who is not here
right now…I want you to think of that person, and make a resolution…I will be the
best friend I can be to that person…radical friendship makes sharing the good
news of the Gospel and the Catholic Church more fruitful…
Some of us
fall more deeply in love with the Catholic, or even convert, by reading the
Church Fathers and other saints, some of us are drawn to the Catholic because
of the beauty of the Mass, the music, the beauty of the Church buildings, the
incense…but all of us desire friendship as well and there are lots of people in
our world today who have no one to be a friend to them.
So please,
go out and be a friend to someone, share yourself with that person, and in that
process, you can that person and yourself becomes saints.
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