To watch Fr. Joe’s homily from the 15th Sunday in Ordinary Time: CLICK HERE!
Our Scripture Readings this weekend provide us with a reminder about how we are called to continue Jesus’s Mission and Ministry. Each weekend we are not only summoned by the Lord to gather to hear God’s Word in the Scriptures and to be nourished by the Eucharist, the Body and Blood of Jesus…
But we are also then sent out into the world as present day disciples to bring healing, comfort and encouragement to all we interact with in the hours and days to come.
Do take some time today, this week, to see the ever present opportunities around us to make the Good News of God’s Son, Jesus, real to others.
One author, in a column she wrote recently, spoke about some of the characters she met during the Pandemic while walking around her neighborhood.
- There was the postal worker, Archimedes, whom she never met but now they talk every day, even though Archimedes never remembers her name.
- Then there is Kenny, the superintendent of a nearby building. A lovely man with a beautiful spirit, who knows everything that is happening in the neighborhood and doesn’t hesitate to tell you how he feels about a given issue.
- Then there is Elijah, who lives in the building next door, but is in a world different than the author. Elijah is a survivor of abandonment, addiction, divorce, incarceration, and an arrhythmia that could kill him at any time.
- But the most unexpected rapport that the author developed during the Pandemic was with “this interesting young woman who lived in her house”. The author already knew her a bit, since she gave birth to her two decades ago. The moody, sullen teenager had moved away for college, but came back when the campus closed. “The child who had moved out was perpetually indignant about something, usually me” said the author, but the individual who moved back was a “reasonable and charming” young woman who “astonishingly, sometimes laughed at my jokes,” said the Author.
Summing it all up, the author of the article shared, “the weird thing about the people I met during the pandemic was that they’ve been there the whole time.”
Our lives are, if you will, a walking tour of sorts during which we encounter God in the people we meet along the way, and if we do it right, they encounter something of the love of God in us; they encounter healing, comfort and encouragement.
So my friends, let’s enjoy the “walking tour” of our lives as person, family and Parish. As we experience God’s grace and peace in the wisdom and insights of God’s sons and daughters that we meet along the way of life.