*** NOTICE ***
Yesterday’s homily text –
Wednesday, February 4 – has been updated
to include the specific verses from
Saint Mark’s Gospel that
Father Altier was referring to in
his homily.
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Thursday February 5, 2004 Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Fourth Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (1 Kings 2:1-4, 10-12) Gospel (St. Mark 6:7-13)
In the readings today, we see fidelity. The Lord
speaks to us through David about the fidelity that we need in order to do His
Will, telling Solomon his son: “If you are faithful to the Lord, your God, if
you are obedient to His commandments and statutes and ordinances, then the Lord
will be with you and everything will go well for you, and all the promises that
the Lord has made will be fulfilled.” Well, we know that Solomon began as a faithful
servant of the Lord; tragically, he did not end that way. He was the wisest man
in the world who allowed his wisdom, which was a pure gift from God, to become
his downfall because he became arrogant, thinking himself to be so amazing that
he did not need God anymore. He used his wisdom for natural ideas rather than
for supernatural things.
Then we see Our Lord sending His apostles out two by
two. He instructs them to take nothing with them. There was no sack, no food,
no money in their belts – they had nothing. They were to go out and they were
to trust completely in God. They had nothing except the promises of Our Lord.
They went out and they preached. They cast out demons and healed people, and it
was precisely because of their fidelity, their obedience to the Lord. They
could have looked at this and said, “Well, that’s just a foolish idea! Who
would go traveling without a second tunic? Who would go traveling with no
money? Who would go traveling with no food? It makes no sense. This is ludicrous!”
On the natural level, it is. But, you see, they did not operate with a natural
wisdom; they operated with supernatural wisdom. And supernatural wisdom says,
number one, be obedient; number two, be faithful.
In our society, we think that to be obedient means
to take away one’s dignity. “I want to do what I want to do and nobody else is
going to tell me anything – including God.” And so, we make up the rules as we
go. We pick and choose what we want to do and what we do not want to do because
we do not want to be obedient. We do not want to be faithful to anyone except
ourselves. We need to be very careful about this. There is the old saying that
we need, first, to be faithful to ourselves, but that implies that we have
already made a choice as to whom we are going to be faithful to. That is, if
you say that you are going to be a follower of Jesus Christ, then be faithful
to yourself and be a follower of Jesus Christ. Do not give the Lord lip service
and then do whatever you feel like doing because that is not fidelity to self
or to Christ.
If we are going to claim to be Catholic people then
we need to be Catholic people. There are all these people who want to claim
that they are Catholic, and then they have nothing to do with the Faith. They
show up on Sunday morning at church – if they feel like it, they have the
audacity to come to Holy Communion, and then they have nothing to do with the
Faith the rest of their lives. Look at the politicians who are pro-abortion and
refuse to allow the teachings of the Church to guide their conscience, yet they
have the gall to show up and receive Holy Communion. And it is not just the
politicians; there are many, many people in the same boat. They want to be
pro-abortion; they want to contracept; they do not want to believe in what the
Church teaches regarding various moral and doctrinal issues; and yet they are
going to beat the drum and tell the whole world that they are Catholic. Their
whole point is not to be faithful to Christ but to undermine Him, to be able to
say, “I have my own mind and I can choose for myself.” Well, choose today
whether you want to be Catholic or not. Do not tell the world you are Catholic
and then become a hypocrite and undermine it by the way that you live your
life.
Fidelity and obedience are the points that the Lord
is making for us today. If we are obedient and if we are faithful, God will
bless us abundantly and He will fulfill the promises He has made. If, on the
other hand, we want to do it our way, then we become our own little god; and
all that remains is that we can bless our own selves, which is quite a joke. We
can do it our way, and all might go the way we think it ought to go, but we
have no part of Christ and we have no part of eternal life. There is only one
God – and we are not it. Therefore, we have to make our choice. Who will you
serve and how will you serve him? It is a very simple choice, but one that does
not sit well with many people in our society because to make that choice
requires obedience and fidelity to the one you choose.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.