Jesus summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two
So they went off and preached repentance.
In one of the tracks from Juana Molina’s album Son, titled Las Culpas, she sings —I want to see everybody’s faults on the table but my own—.
That resonates with you doesn’t it. It certainly hit home with me. We love it, rubbernecking at the accidents in someone’s life, gawking at the carnage in a relationship, dwelling on the faults of others as a sort of buffer against dealing with our own issues.
It all comes down to how you view Jesus doesn’t it. Do you view Jesus as what He said He is, the way —“ the way to eternal life, a path to be followed throughout life? Do you view Him as the truth and the life —“ a life that is unlike our everyday existence? Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. This is something we have to adopt. It is a choice we all must make.
As you sit in those pews, as I stand here, have we made a conscious choice to throw off the worldly life and adopt Jesus’ life as our own?
Tough choice isn’t it? It is a choice between comfort and hardship, a choice between what I want and what I have been asked to do. It is giving up your self will for complete freedom. The freedom found not in today’s world or tomorrow’s world, but in the Kingdom of God. It is the choice the apostles made when they took up their walking sticks and sandals and went out without purse or food.
Repentance is the key. Repentance is the road. We have to get on that road and work hard everyday to achieve the Kingdom.
It starts with prayer when you wake, and a firm resolve to change your life, to be renewed each day, and to look on the new day as God’s gift for your conversion and repentance. You have received what you need to begin as Paul tells us:
In Him you also, who have heard the word of truth,
the gospel of your salvation, and have believed in Him,
were sealed with the promised holy Spirit,
which is the first installment of our inheritance
toward redemption as God’s possession, to the praise of his glory.
As you pass that morning routine and go out into the world you must take on the mantle of Amos who told Amaziah:
“The LORD took me from following the flock, and said to me,
Go, prophesy to my people Israel.—
You are sent out as a disciple and prophet. You are to live your life in a state of conversion, repentance, and a resolve to follow the way, truth, and life. You are sent out like Amos and the apostles, to teach the Lord’s way. You are sent out to do this by your words, example, and by the change people will see in your heart.
In writing about spiritual rebirth Bishop Hodur said:
The reborn man also knows different joys and different sorrows.
The worldly man considers himself successful when he is able, in some degree, to satisfy his sensual drives and desires; when his ambitions are realized; when he acquires wealth; when he defeats his adversaries; when he enjoys good health; when his fellow men hold him in respect, even though this may have been gained by falsehood and hypocrisy. He grieves if he is deprived of one or more of these essentials of his existence.
How differently the truly religious, reborn man finds his happiness!
The basis of his happiness does not lie in the conditions and elements of his worldly life. It comes, rather, from within himself, from his soul, and especially. from his relationship with God, the first and final source of true and untroubled contentment.
At the end of your day consider those things. How did you treat the day, the people around you, and the world? Do a daily examination of conscience and resolve to begin the next day back on the road to God.
Prayer, resolve, action, and reflection.
It comes down to how you view Jesus: Jesus as the whip and battering ram, the foil with which you will enumerate the faults of others, or Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life by whom you will be changed, destroying your sins so that you may attain everlasting life.
Live by Jesus and you will be free. Live in Jesus and you will live forever.
[dels]homilies, sermons[/dels]
