Tuesday January 17, 2006 (Audio) Homily by Fr. Robert Altier Second Week in Ordinary Time
Reading (1 Samuel 16:1-13) Gospel (St. Mark 2:23-28)
In the first reading today, we hear about the anointing of David as the
king of Israel. It is one of those fascinating things, again, to see the way
God works. We hear about how Samuel sees Eliab and thinks to himself, “Surely,
the Lord’s anointed is here before me,” because he was tall and strong and
handsome and all the external appearances were there; but the Lord had rejected
him because it is not by appearance that the Lord judges, as He tells Samuel,
because the Lord sees into the heart. Man sees only the appearance, but God
sees the reality and the depth of the being. So as Jesse presents seven sons
before Samuel, the Lord rejects them all. But the one who had not even been
invited, the one who was considered too young, too inexperienced, in essence,
the one who was considered to be the least and who was now tending the sheep,
he was the one whom God chose.
Now for all of us, all we have to do is go home and look in the mirror,
and we are going to see pretty much the same basic pattern. We are going to see
that God chose the ones the world would not expect, in fact, more than likely,
the ones even people within our own families would not have expected. Yet these
are the ones God picks because God looks at what is on the inside. The other
half of the problem is that within our own lives we know what is on the inside,
and we know that what is in there is not always too impressive, that we have
committed many, many offenses against the Lord. And we wonder, “Why is it that
God would choose the likes of me if there are so many sins?” But God not only
sees the sinfulness that is there, He also sees the goodness that is there; He
sees what it is that He has placed within us.
Unfortunately, Satan also sees what God has placed within us, and
because the devil is able to recognize what God’s intent is with each one of
us, he attacks us. Interestingly, he attacks us oftentimes in the very area
that God is intending to work in order to use us. But regardless of that, what
we need to see is we are just like David, whom God had chosen, Remember the
problems David got himself into. He committed adultery; he committed murder; he
did all kinds of heinous things. Yet what did God say about him? Here is
David, a man after My own heart who will do My will. Now we look at his sinfulness, and we say,
“But how could God say this about this man?” It is because not only did God see
the unfortunate things David was capable of, but He saw that what David really
intended in his heart and what he wanted was to do the Will of God. And it was
only through his stupidity that he came to realize that only by relying on God
was he going to be able to do God’s Will.
Once again, we see the human problem: arrogance. David got caught up in
himself, as probably somewhere along the line all of us have done too. We think
ourselves to be somehow impressive. We forget about God and we look at
ourselves and we think ourselves better than what we are, or we think we can do
it by ourselves. We will tell the Lord when we need His help; otherwise, we are
just fine all by ourselves. So we take matters into our own hands and fall flat
on our face. The Lord sometimes allows even some pretty hideous sins to take
place in our lives in order to bring about the humility we need in order to do
His Will. It is not that He wants us to commit those sins, but He will use
those sins to bring about a greater good.
We see, then, for ourselves that what we have to do is keep our heart
focused on God, that we have to learn the lesson to seek the Lord’s Will, to go
to Him for the grace we need to do His Will. Otherwise, we will be like David
and commit some pretty stupid sins. At the same time, we also learn from David
the importance of repentance. We see the mercy of God, and so we know that His
call is irrevocable. We also know that if we are willing to do what God wants,
if we are intent on seeking His Will, that He will give us the grace we need to
be able to carry it out. He will not make it easy, necessarily. Again, look at
Samuel. God asks him to go to Bethlehem, and what is Samuel’s first response? But Saul
will hear of it and kill me! God asked Samuel to go – did Samuel really think
God was going to let him be killed? We see the human response; we see the fear.
We simply need to learn to trust God, to seek His Will, and not worry about
anything beyond that. He will handle it all. That is an important lesson we
need to learn.
So we see all of these lessons in this one little reading. God does not
choose the ones the world would choose. God does not choose the ones that
externally look to be the most impressive. God does not choose what, on the
natural level, we would think to be most important. God knows what is in our
hearts, and if God has chosen us, it is because He knows that we will do His
Will, or that we want to. What we have to do now is to make that act of the
will, to seek the Will of God, and to try with all our hearts to carry out His
Will. Otherwise, we will learn the lessons the hard way. It is much easier just
to say that we want to do His Will, to seek Him in prayer, and try to carry it
out.
* This text was
transcribed from the audio recording of a homily by Father Robert Altier with minimal editing.