INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this 22nd Tuesday
in Ordinary Time is, “The Mind of God.”
Today’s first reading ends with these two comments: "For 'who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him?' But we have the mind of Christ." [Cf. 1st Corinthians 2: 10-16.]
I would assume that is the dream - that
is the hope of all of us - all of us
looking for a deeper spiritual life - to have the mind of Christ - and then to go deeper - deeper into the hope that
Christ will bring us into the mind of God.
Now that’s prayer - union and communion
- holy communion - not the babbling of words - but getting out of the boat -
heading for Christ - sinking deeper and deeper into the ocean of God - Father,
Son and Holy Spirit. [Cf. Matthew 14: 22-33.]
TODAY’S GOSPEL
The first step then would be to follow
Christ - to hear Christ in the Gospels - to picture the people who approached
Christ and see who Christ is.
We wade into the gospel of Luke today - moving out of Matthew last Saturday.
Yesterday we missed the going into the synagogue in Nazareth to hear Jesus’
inaugural address in Luke - because yesterday was the feast of John the
Baptist.
Luke will teach us so much more each
year - the mercy of God especially in this year of mercy. Open up the flood gates….
I loved today’s gospel for starters -
that it’s the crazy guy - in the synagogue of Capernaum who first gets who
Jesus is - that he shrieks in a loud voice “Leave us alone! What do you want of
us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the
Holy One of God.”
Can we be crazy enough to say to Jesus:
“I know who you are: the Holy One of God.”
FIRST CORINTHINIANS
In today’s reading from 1st
Corinthians, Paul goes another way. He is going to let the Spirit bring us to
the Father - to let the Spirit bring us into God.
Come Holy Spirit!
We slipped into the 1st
Letter to the Corinthians last Thursday - and we’ll have this letter of Paul
till Saturday September 17th. This is one of the blessings of daily
Mass - we get a chance to hear and get into lots of the holy writings.
So hopefully we want to get into God: Father,
Son and Holy Spirit: the Trinity.
Augustine tells us he discovered from a
little kid on the beach - that you can’t fit and fill the ocean into a little
kid’s beach pail - any more than fitting the Trinity into our little minds. Yet
we go to the beach to fill our pails and wade into the ocean. We come into
church - we come into prayer - to fill our pale little self and wade into the
edge of God.
Jesus often tells us, See me, see the
father. Hear me, hear the father.
In his words for today, Paul is sort of going
a different way - here in today’s first reading.
The commentators on today’s first
reading tell us that we all have a spirit - pneuma
in Greek. Paul then tells us that we also have a soul - psuche in Greek. Psuche is the life principle in every living thing. We have that
gift of life. We see that life in dogs and cats, birds and fish. We know the
difference between a dead fly and a live one - a dead another and a live
another.
He tells us we have a choice to live by
the pneuma or just the psuche.
To live by the spirit is to move into
the Spirit of God who will bring us
CONCLUSION
This is long enough for a weekday Mass -
so if you have time read today’s readings again.
Let me conclude with Paul’s words for
today I hope I didn’t complicate his message up too much.
Brothers and sisters:
The Spirit scrutinizes everything,
even the depths of God.
Among men,
who knows what’s going on within us
except our spirit that is within?
Similarly,
no one knows what pertains to God
except the Spirit of God.
We have not received the spirit of the world
but the Spirit who is from God,
so that we may understand the things freely given us by God.
And we speak about them
not with words taught by human wisdom,
but with words taught by the Spirit,
describing spiritual realities in spiritual terms.
Now the natural man
[that is the
one who lives only with his psuche]
does not accept
what pertains to the Spirit of God,
for to him it is foolishness,
and he cannot understand it,
because it is judged spiritually.
The one who is spiritual, however,
can judge everything
but is not subject to judgment by anyone.
For "who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to counsel him"?"
But we have the mind of Christ.