June 21, 2020 - 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year A
Happy Father’s Day and first day of Summer!
In our first reading today the prophet Jeremiah is in dire straights. Very important people and even his former friends are conspiring against him and seeking to have him put to death for speaking the truth, not the truth that Jeremiah’s opinion tells him, no the absolute truth of God. This has brought the prophet near the point of despair but he still remains confident in God as the reading ends with:
Sing to the LORD, praise the LORD, for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the evildoers!
Jeremiah’s zeal and trust in God’s Justice are what give him his desire to see God’s vengeance and revenge play out when he says “Let me see the vengeance You take on them for to you I have entrusted my cause.” Are there times when we desire to take out our own vengeance on people? Do we lack the trust in God’s heavenly reward, and also heavenly punishment? We must never let the sins of others cause us to sin and that’s exactly what seeking our own vengeance does, it becomes a twofold sin, first off is not trusting in God to properly deal with the wrongdoings of others but also our act of vengeance can be sinful. It’s like my old shop teacher and drivers ed instructor Mr. Bradley used to say:
When driving down the road, if the car coming towards you has their high beams on, quickly turn your lights off and on instead because if you flash your high beams at them you now have two blind idiots driving towards each other!
When it comes to us being “blind idiots” we have Adam and Eve to thank for that as the second reading from Romans tells us.
Through one person sin entered the world, and through sin, death, and thus death came to all, inasmuch as all sinned.
Really it was the sin of both Adam and Eve, the original sinners that we are all labeled with due to their disobedience of God. Thus we needed two people to reverse their sin. In comes Mary and Jesus to undo what was done. Adam and Eve said yes to the serpent, also known as Satan, and Mary and Jesus said yes to God. Jesus is the new and improved Adam and Mary is the new and improved Eve. Adam and Eve brought sin into the world and Jesus and Mary brought down the grace of God for everyone to open paradise once again to us all. That paradise is no longer on Earth but instead is in Heaven where we can have that eternal life that Jesus won for us, that God so long ago promised for us.
Heaven isn’t guaranteed as some would like us to believe, no, just read today’s Gospel and you will know the truth of it all.
And do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather, be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
It is often said that Jesus tells us to not fear 365 times in the bible. That’s once for each day of the year unless, like 2020, the year of such fun, it’s also a leap year with 366 days, then randomly pick one day to not apply that saying!
Very rarely does Jesus tell us to fear so when He does we need to pay attention! Who do we need to fear? Who is the one when Jesus says:
Be afraid of the one who can destroy both soul and body in Gehenna.
That one is he who the Church Lady from Saturday Night Live would say, is “perhaps… Satan!”. Gehenna in biblical times was also the “Valley of Ben-Hinnom” most likely in Jerusalem so the people of Jesus’ time would be familiar with this place. Horrible things were done here I’m not going to go into details but you can read Jeremiah chapter 19 to find out. Anyway, Jesus is referring to eternal damnation and suffering when he refers to Gehenna so we must avoid that at all costs. We must, as 1 Peter states:
Be sober and vigilant. Your opponent the devil is prowling around like a roaring lion looking for [someone] to devour. Resist him, steadfast in faith, knowing that your fellow believers throughout the world undergo the same sufferings.
We should strive to do what today’s Gospel says to gain eternity in peace and love with God in paradise and it sounds so simple. Just acknowledge who Jesus is!
Everyone who acknowledges me before others I will acknowledge before my heavenly Father.
Our current state of the world makes this hard but let’s not shoot low and aim for Purgatory, no instead aim bigger, it's what God wants for us. Aim to become Saints in Heaven for as C.S. Lewis warned:
Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’; aim at earth and you will get neither.
Deacon Kevin, Was this your homily for Sunday?
ReplyDeleteYes it was.
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