Thursday January 16, 2003 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier First Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (Hebrews 3:7-14) Gospel (St. Mark 1:40-45)
We hear in the
Gospel reading today that as Our Lord’s reputation spread because of this leper
who had been cleansed it became impossible for Our Lord to enter a town openly.
Therefore, He had to stay out in deserted places, but even then the people kept
coming to Him because they had heard of Him. Now the question has to do with us.
How much does Our Lord mean to us? Obviously, on one level, He means everything
to us; but on another level, sometimes what happens is that we become kind of lax
in our desire to be with Him. It is like anything, I suppose. If one is looking
forward to marrying somebody, they are filled with joy and anticipation and looking
forward to the day. After a few years of being married, well, going home to the
same person does not always seem like such an exciting thing to do. The same
thing happens spiritually. Even though we know that Jesus is God, that He is our
only hope, and all the other things we can say about Him, well, He is always
right there and so we do not pay a whole lot of attention to Him. Just like a
spouse, we tend to take Him for granted, which is kind of a backhanded
compliment in one sense, but at the same time it is rather an insult. And so we
need to make sure we are looking at our own actions.
Saint Paul reminds
us that we must take care that we do not have an evil and unfaithful heart so
as to forsake the living God. So we can ask ourselves, if we are coming to Mass
every morning and we are trying to develop a spiritual life, “Are we slipping
back from the Lord at all? Or are we, for instance, just simply saying, ‘Well,
I’m getting up every morning and going to Mass, isn’t that good enough?’ but
then we do not pay much attention to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament?” We are
not really developing the prayer life a whole lot beyond that. We are giving a
little but not everything. What can happen is that we go through the motions
while our heart slips backwards. Remember, in the spiritual life, if we are not
moving forward then we are going backward. And so you can ask yourself, as you
get up every morning very early to come here, “Am I growing in love with Jesus?
Is my zeal, my desire, growing stronger? Or am I just kind of going through the
motions because this is what I do every day?”
While that certainly
is good and at times in the spiritual life that is about all we can do, as the
Lord takes away any kind of consolation and the zeal dries up, then what we
need to do is simply force ourselves to get here, to get to prayer, to make
sure we are doing what we are supposed to, even if we do not really feel like
it. But there are going to be indicators within our lives that things are still
improving, that virtue is growing, that we are moving ahead. At the same time,
what can happen is that we get into a pattern and just do the same thing day
after day without thinking too much about it, and we start slipping backward. The
virtue is not growing but getting worse, the desire is growing slack, and zeal
has gone out. If that is the case, then rather than a heart that is filled with
love and zeal, we have a heart that is becoming that evil and faithless heart
that Saint Paul speaks of.
We need to be like
those people in the Gospel reading. We need to be willing to go out to find
Jesus. We need to do whatever is necessary for us to be able to be with Him.
Obviously, we have the duties of our state in life; we cannot be with Him all
the time. But we need to make sure He is the priority and when we know about Our
Lord that we are going to make sure we are seeking to do His Will, that we are
trying to unite ourselves with Him. Not only at a distance to be able to say, “I
want to be where He is,” – that is good, but for us that is not enough – we want
to be one with Jesus. We do not
just want to be where He is; we want to be united with Him. That is the desire our
hearts should have. It is certainly the desire of His Sacred Heart and it needs
to be the desire of our hearts as well.
Saint Paul says,
then, at the end of what we heard in the first reading today, that we have
become partners with Christ. It is not just standing outside looking at Him; it
is to be a partner with Him, to be united with Him in the same enterprise, and,
in this case, to be united in the same Person of Jesus Christ. That is what we
have to be about. That is why we need hearts that are filled with zeal and
love, not hearts that are growing slack. We want to keep pushing forward so
that not only do we know where we can find Him – always Present in the Blessed
Sacrament – but we want to unite our hearts with Him – Present in the Blessed
Sacrament – so that throughout the day we are one with Him, partners with Him
in the work of salvation, doing His Will in everything in our own lives.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.