Navigating Life's Trials: A Homily from Father Dom from the 22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, good morning. Okay, I promise I won't say it. I won't say it, all right, I have to say it. These readings could probably be the most powerful pieces of Scripture in all the Bible. If you've been hearing my homilies, I've been saying that every time, maybe it's because I've been asking the Holy Spirit to pour over me and help reveal the Scriptures to be in an ever deeper way, because when I read Scripture now I just see so many things popping out at me anew Pieces of Scripture I may have read like a hundred times before and I read it anew. Ask the Holy Spirit to do that with you and for you. As you read Scripture, you have to remember that the Bible is our book, not one in its hours, and it's our own little secret ingredient to life. Wow, it was the Catholic Church who put together the Bible as we know it. For the first 400 years of the Church there was no compiled Bible. There were a lot of pieces of Scripture and writings of Jesus floating around, but it was all by word of mouth, through the traditions of the Church, the Apostles, the Apostolic Fathers. The Bible is our book, read it, know it, proclaim it. The reason why our readings are so powerful today is you can pick out so many things, three things that I think we need to consider today. From our first reading, number one to always speak the truth. Our second reading, from St Paul, is to offer yourselves as a living sacrifice, and then, in our Gospel today, jesus will show you how to do that. So look at our first reading today. What do we hear? What do we see? We see Jeremiah. Jeremiah is one of the great prophets. We talked about Elijah a couple of weekends ago. And Elijah, he was a prophet to the northern kingdom and, as you remember me saying before, ten of the tribes split and went north and created their own kingdom. And so we have Elijah preaching to them, trying to bring them back to God and write order, because they had what the northern kingdom had fallen into the worship of the false God. But all Then what happened? The Syria came in and absolutely destroyed the ten kingdoms. So 200 years later, 300 years later, we have Jeremiah. Now he's a prophet to the remaining two tribes in Judah. This is where we find our first reading today. In Jerusalem, elijah lived at a time when not the Assyrian Empire. They were conquered by the Babylonian Empire. Babylonian Empire was knocking on their front door, ready to take over and destroy the temple. So Jeremiah sees all this chaos around. So he says whenever I speak, I must cry out. Violence and outrage is my message, because that's what he sees all around him Judas and chaos. They're surrounded, they're about to be conquered. Why? Unfortunately, they too had succumbed to the false prophet of Baal. So Jeremiah is speaking the truth. He's speaking it boldly. So we are supposed to speak the truth boldly. Cuias veritas, what is truth? Pontius Pilate said that. So many other people have said that as well too. It's a great conversation. Ask the question to someone hey, what is truth? I guarantee you you'll see subjectivism and relativism in that conversation, meaning, why can make my own truth, and it's relative to me. So, if it is my truth, you can't tell me otherwise, and in fact, you need to abide by my truth too. Otherwise, if you don't, then I will call you a racist or I will call you a bigot. You have to be nice to me and you have to be tolerant. Language is very important, words are very important. We're not called to be tolerant and we're not called to be nice. We're called to be Jesus and Jesus is very radical. Radical comes from the Latin rude radix. It means to be rooted. We are called to be radical, not radicalists Like we would look at extremists, but radical. We are called to be rooted in Christ, and when we are rooted in Christ we bring a love, a love that is one of fire. And when we bring that love we have to bring the truth. They go hand in hand. If we're gonna follow Jesus, then we have to speak the truth. Is the truth necessarily an ideology, a proposition, a statement? Yes and no. Most primarily, truth is a person. Truth is Jesus. Jeremiah is calling out truth, but he's getting beat up pretty good, isn't he? He's tired. He says I'm gonna stop speaking the truth. He says I will mention him no more. Can imagine him trying that, maybe for a couple days, and then he writes this but then it becomes like fire burning in my heart and prisons in my bones. I grow weary holding it in. I cannot endure it. Do you feel that way? I would love to feel this way all the time. It comes and goes for me. I don't know about you speaking the truth. Sometimes it is like fire in my bones and I can feel the Holy Spirit speaking through me. Sometimes I don't even wanna touch it Because I know, if I go into that area of truth whether it be one of abortion or what the church teaches on that, or contraception, what the church teaches on that, or what the church teaches on marriage, or what the church teaches on gender or sexuality these are hot topics, but Jesus is calling us to enter into that arena and bring the truth. Well, what does that look like for you? You have to ask Jesus that question, because all of us here, in one way, shape or form, and all those truths that I talked about, are experiencing in your family or your extended family. I am. Whenever we have family get-togethers. Most of my family is, is Protestant right, so every time we get together, I know what's gonna happen. Am I tired? Yeah, I'm tired, like Jeremiah. We have to bring the truth. So, number one in our first reading speak the truth. Ask the Holy Spirit To work through you, to speak through you. Ask the Holy Spirit that that truth Remain as burning in your heart or imprisoned in your bones, so much so that you can endure it, that you want to go to the House tops, you want to go to the mountain peaks and you want to speak the truth, for it is truth that sets us free. It's not an ideology or proposition or a statement. It's not relative, it's not subjective. Is Jesus a universal, objective, binding truth on all human beings? Jesus is not a choice, jesus is a necessity. So we must speak the truth, like Jeremiah, our second reading from Saint Paul. When we do speak the truth, sometimes it feels like what? Like we're being sacrificed. Saint Paul knows this very well. He's one of my favorite saints. His whole entire life, when he converted To Christ, when he had that powerful encounter that changed him forever, the only thing he wanted to do was to take Christ to the Gentiles. Why? Because it's a political statement? No, because it's Jesus who sets us free, as Jesus who saves us, is Jesus who gives us peace and joy in the midst of chaos and storms. And so he wants to bring Jesus to the pagan people, to convert them. And he spent his whole entire life after his conversion doing this. And how many times Was he beat, how many times was he whipped, how many times was he stoned, how many times was he deserted? How many times did he sleep in the cold or starve from, from hunger and thirst or shipwrecked. Saint Paul knows what it's like to sacrifice, and so that's what he's saying to the Romans today. He says to all of us even today, offer your bodies as a living sacrifice. That's a powerful statement. So what is, what does that even mean? To offer our bodies as a sacrifice, you know? Are we supposed to literally do that? Well, jesus literally did that for us. And then, when we enter into that sacrifice with him Whether it's in the vocation of marriage that you're called to, which I know is very difficult at times you sacrifice yourself to your spouse, not one of competition, but one of complementarity. You sacrifice Yourself for your wife. You sacrifice yourself for your husband. The both of you sacrifice yourself for your children. What does it look like to sacrifice as a priest, being faithful, administering the sacraments to the people, standing up here, speaking the truth, when maybe there's a lot of people here or out in the world don't want to hear it? I Sacrifice my self as well, just as as you do. Then we do it together, as a community, or we can't do this alone. We do it together, and here at our Lady of consolation, I see it happening all the time. This is a beautiful, beautiful parish and all of you are sacrificing in a variety of ways and I thank you for that. I love you for that, and all the other churches in the areas are doing the same thing, yet we're still united through the body of Christ. To sacrifice Sacrifice comes from two Latin words. Sacrifice means to make holy Isn't that wonderful. It calls us to sacrifice, and when we do that, we can make things holy. When you sacrifice yourself to your spouse, the action is holy. When I offer the holy sacrifice of the mass, that's holy, and that's what happens here at the mass. Did you know that the mass is an uninterrupted prayer, from beginning when the priest walks in, to the end when the priest walks out. This is a prayer. The mass is holy. The mass is a sacrifice. That's why we call this an altar, not a table. A sacrifice happens on an altar and that's why I incense it multiple times throughout the mass. One because there's a relic in here, a first-class relic of two saints, roman soldiers in the second century, who were killed because they converted to Christianity. The relics are here in this altar. Did you know that when a new altar is placed or when a church is built. The bishop comes in here and he prays a certain mass and he anoints the altar with holy chrism. It's baptized, it has a white linen on it. So the altar is very important. So some of you may be thinking well, why does Father use incense? Why does Father incense the altar? Well, now you know. And it's a place of sacrifice. Plus, the church asks us to use incense because those are the prayers of the saints. So every time you see incense being used, you see the smoke rising up into heaven, so light, so beautiful, yet so powerful, and you can smell it as well too. Those are your prayers. Every time you see incense, offer your prayers up to God. You know, a couple of times when I brought the incense out, some people send me emails Father, why are you always using incense? And they had names for the thing, the silver thing that floats around. They called it the fog machine, they called it the smoky link. That was one of them. I just, I laugh, I laugh. Incense gives me a headache sometimes too, but the church asks for it because it's holy. Why? Because this is a sacrifice. What we're doing is holy. It's making, it's sanctifying us. So when we receive Jesus from this holy altar. Did you know that every single mass is Calvary? The mass is something humans put together and thought it was a good idea. The mass is given to us by Jesus Christ so we can enter into worship with Him. The mass is given to us by God. It's not a human creation. So we humans can't take the liturgy and take the mass and manipulate it to make us feel good or to entertain us or to make it shorter. It's given to us by God. So when you come to mass and the priest enters in, that's Jesus coming to Jerusalem and then when he enters the sanctuary, he's going up to Calvary and the sacrifice takes place. The church has always taught that every mass is a representation of the one-time sacrifice in a sacramental, unbloody way. So when you come to mass, you are coming to Calvary. Imagine being at Calvary 2,000 years ago. Imagine what that was like. What would your reverence be in that moment, how would you dress, how would you act, how would you participate? How would you enter into it? It'd be mind-blowing and terrifying Every mass that happens. So every time you come to mass, remind yourselves hey guys, we're getting ready to go to Calvary. Jesus said do this and remember it to me until I come again. That's the second coming. Has he come again? No, so what do we do with sacrifice in a sacramental, unbloody way? This is Calvary, the ultimate sacrifice. Prepare yourselves when you come to mass now, because you're coming to Calvary In our gospel today. What makes it very powerful and interesting is that first sentence Jesus says this. Jesus says at very first sentence. He says Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly. He doesn't say Jesus began to tell his disciples. Jesus shows us he showed them. He's a good teacher. He will show us how to speak the truth. He will show us how to sacrifice. He will show us not to conform ourselves to this world but be transformed by the renewal of our minds, as St Paul said. In our second reading, jesus says that again in our gospel Don't don't gain the whole world. Don't focus on gaining the whole world, because you will lose your soul. There's so many powerful things we can bring out from our readings today. I encourage you to go over them, let them pour over you, pray through them. Let Jesus show you how to speak the truth, because we can't do it without him. Let Jesus show you how to sacrifice, because he shows us how to sacrifice, and let Jesus conform you to his mind and to his heart, so that we too can inherit eternal heaven. Amen.