Sunday, November 17, 2019

Care for your Soul

Nov 17, 2019, Thirty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time

In our first reading today Malachi is not talking about Thanksgiving in a couple of weeks when he says:
Lo, the day is coming, blazing like an oven and that day will set them on fire.
Our ovens will indeed be blazing but hopefully, the day isn’t coming when your turkeys will be set on fire!  

The second reading is what I want to post on my fridge for my older children to see as Paul writes:
we instructed you that if anyone was unwilling to work, neither should that one eat
In reality, Paul wasn’t trying to get his kids to rake the lawn or do the dishes in his letter to the Thessalonians, instead, he was talking about those among them who stopped working.  Some Thessalonians were so certain that the end times were imminent that they decided they should stop working to wait for Christ’s return. It makes me wonder if the blazing wrath that Malachi discusses will come to those who decide to do nothing until the Lord of Hosts returns.  To be that lazy is foolishness, for Christ himself told us we know not the hour of His return. If we sit around and do nothing we become like the wicked lazy servant from the parable of the talents who, out of fear of his master buried the money entrusted to him in the ground and gained nothing more with it.  The instruction from Paul to those Thessalonians is clear:
Such people we instruct and urge in the Lord Jesus Christ to work quietly and to eat their own food.

These words can seem to conflict when we hear the Gospel.  We have not been lazy when it comes to fixing up our church here at Holy Family Parish.  We have done a lot of work to make it look like something new. It looks fantastic and people are always talking about how nice it is now and then today we hear the words of Jesus in Luke:
"All that you see here--the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down."

Say what?  Should we have bothered with all that fuss?  After all, there will be a day that comes that this church will no longer be here.  Let’s all pray that it is hundreds of years from now but it will happen. Do Jesus’ words make this building irrelevant?

No, this building is important to all of us and how we worship, VERY important.  I think today I want to focus on how Jesus’ words are not all about the building where they worshiped, but instead, His words should get them to focus on the state of their faith in Jesus Christ and how their perseverance in times of trouble will secure their lives.  Today in time this also holds true. This church is important, I’m not trying to say it has no purpose. It is where we gather together, where we laugh together, where we cry together and most importantly where we hold our sacred Liturgy together. Those are very important roles, however, what is more significant, what is totally indestructible and will live forever, is our soul.  We have done well to take care of this building that houses our worship but do we do as well taking care of our souls?  

The Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 366 has to say this about the human soul:
The Church teaches that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God - it is not "produced" by the parents - and also that it is immortal: it does not perish when it separates from the body at death, and it will be reunited with the body at the final Resurrection

Some of us, myself excluded, go to the gym, work out, eat right, try to get at least 8 hours of sleep a night (ok, I’ve nailed the sleeping part of this), we try to take care of our bodies as we should. It’s important!  Just read the first letter to the Corinthians chapter 6:
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been purchased at a price. Therefore, glorify God in your body.  

So we should care for our bodies but our souls need care as well more than our bodies and more than this church building as those will pass away but our souls are eternal!

Now I could make a bad joke here that I change my oil and rotate the tires and wash and wax my Kia Soul, my car, often enough but I’ll spare you from that.  Instead here is a list of things Jesus said in the Gospels about things we can do to keep our soul healthy.

This is by no means an exhaustive list, there are other things we can do, and things we should avoid to grow closer to Christ and strengthen our souls.  The way we need to think as we are doing or saying something is “will this bring me closer to Christ or are we walking away from Him instead. We all need to be like Peter:
Jesus then said to the Twelve, “Do you also want to leave?” Simon Peter answered him, “Master, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and are convinced that you are the Holy One of God.”

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