How Do We Welcome Mary's Son?: Monday, September 21, 2015

J.M.J. Here is a homily for the Twenty-fifth Sunday (Year B).

How could Jesus have known what His disciples were arguing about on the way to Capernaum? When Christ asked His Disciples, they were silent.

But Jesus knew.

Jesus is God. He is the Second Person of the Most Blessed Trinity Who became man for us when He was born of the Virgin Mary.

Jesus knows what we are thinking. He knows our hopes and fears even if we don’t speak about them.

It is a good thing that Jesus knew what His disciples were arguing about because then He could put them straight.

The passage that we just heard from the Holy Gospel according to St. Mark is a treasure for us. In it, we are advised to become humble.

The virtue of humility allows us to know how we stand before God. We are weak; He is strong. He knows everything; we know very little. He can do everything; we have serious limitations.

Humility gives us the right perspective. With it, we comprehend. Without it, we are deluded.

Jesus told us that we must welcome a child. For married couples, that means always being receptive to conception. For priests, it means teaching and forming children in the way of Christ and His Church. For all of us, it means recognizing the gift of God present in children.

Our hearts broke when we learned about the sale of infant body parts by Planned Parenthood and the tragic murder of a tiny girl in Massachusetts whose name we now know: “Bella.” Bella is Italian for “beautiful.” This child—and all children—are beautiful even when they are hungry or cry or disobey or are disrespectful.

Our Lord was very clear: “Whoever receives one child such as this in My Name, receives Me; and whoever receives Me, receives not Me but the One Who sent Me.”

If we want to go to Jesus, then receive a child in His Name.

If we want to go to the Father, then receive Jesus in the Father’s Name.

There is a terrible war within us, as Saint James mentioned in our Second Reading. Where do the wars and where do the conflicts among you come from? Is it not from your passions that make war within your members? 

To win this war, we must turn to Jesus. We must pray daily, go to Confession often, attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation and ask Our Lady to help us. The war is too fierce for us alone. We need the strength of the Holy Spirit.

We hope that God will never say to us what Saint James said to his listeners: “You ask but do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”

Instead let us strive to hear: “`Come, O blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.”

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Due to the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia, this will be the last post until Wednesday, September 30th.