When I left the Sunday service yesterday, I felt a bit peeved. The homily did not lift my soul. In fact, I found the homily terribly negative, all about the things we shouldn't do, all about the evils we should avoid.
I sat in the pew and thought of the temptation of Jesus in the desert, and wondered what Jesus would preach about this event. And it came to me, Jesus would turn it around. He would tell us that with every "no" we must say, there must also be a corresponding "yes" to something else. To think of life's choices only in terms of things we must say "no" to is to make our life negative, to make ourselves only half alive!
A good example of what I'm saying comes from the gospel of Matthew. Jesus is asked to choose which commandments of Moses is the greatest. Instead, he replies: You shall love the Lord Your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind...You shall love your neighbor as yourself. The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments. (22:36-40)
Just as the people of Jesus time got caught up in the "no" of life, so too can we. Think of Lent. Do we not make it a time of mostly things to say "no" to? What if we turned it around like Jesus did, and instead made it a time to make a list of "yes" choices? We can visit someone who is sick, call someone who is lonely, give time to a good cause. We can forgive an offense, forget an injury, say a kind word. Such actions would be "yes" actions. And an abundance of many "yes" actions would bring so much sunshine into our lives!
I really do like the way you think. It is not that we don't need to be reminded of contrition, repentance, and such heart searching things, it's just that we face so much negativism in the world about us the Church needs to be a place where we are bolstered and renewed to face that world. I like that for every no there is a yes. I do believe if we encouraged more and showed eachother the blessed results of doing the yes the no's we might do would seem so unattractive they would fall by the wayside through neglect. Your point is good too that when we are dispensed the no's we have the ability to flip those around to positive activity. I think this is a pretty good philosophy for life as well as homilies.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your words. I found them encouraging. And we do all of us need that! If we only realized how much we help one another in this way, we perhaps would put more effort into it. Today, you were my blessing.
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