THE LORD BE
WITH YOU
INTRODUCTION
The title of my homily for this 30th Thursday
in Ordinary Time is, “The Lord Be With You.”
I couldn’t come up with a title for this homily.
Possibles were:
·
“God” - just “God” - one word,
·
or “Together
With God”,
·
or “When
I die, I want a Copy of Paul’s Letter to the Romans in My Casket.”
For now, I settled on “The Lord Be With You” as in, “The
Lord be with you.”
AS YOU KNOW
As you know we’ve been listening to segments of Paul’s Letter to the Romans as our first
reading since October 14th. We’ll continue with it till November 8th. We have it as our first reading every other
year at this time.
As you also know it’s the most important of Paul’s Letters
- as well as the longest - as well as the most significant.
It’s also the most complicated.
That’s what Ray Brown - the Sulpician scripture scholar -
said in a commentary on Romans. He
stressed, “Don’t start with
Romans.” He adds, “It’s too complicated -
so in spite of it being the most significant letter of Paul, go with 1st Corinthians. [1]
N.T. Wright, says the same thing in his commentary about
Romans as well, stressing “that anyone who claims to understand Romans fully
is, almost by definition, mistaken.”
[2] He makes that comment saying
there has been so much written and said about Romans that nobody could know it
all.
Ray Brown also adds that it has been a part of the cause
for the split in Christian Churches. It’s
key in the Faith and Works controversy. Protestants
protested that Catholics think they have a bigger part in their salvation - because they can get
indulgences and do good works.
In other words Protestants put more stress on God’s side in being saved and Catholics put
more weight on our part of being saved.
I would assume it’s both!
What I’m saying is that Paul’s Letter to the Romans is significant especially on the issue of what
happens to us when we die. Is what
happens after death in our hands - and how key to determining a next life is our
behavior and in our control in this life - and possibly in life after death.
And Luther, Abelard, Calvin, Barth, and so many other key scripture writers
tackled the question of being saved from Romans,
being made right for all eternity - being justified by Christ.
And we all know that Augustine picked up Paul’s Letter to the Romans in the garden
at the moment of his conversion.
WHO DOES WHAT?
The title of my homily is, “The Lord Be With You.”
I chose that because Paul in today’s reading from Romans
begins, “Brothers and sisters: If God is for us, who can be against us?”
When it comes to eternal life, being saved, Romans - Paul in Romans - as we heard in today’s first reading, tells us Christ is our savior.
If we stick with Christ, who can separate us from the Love of God?
Christ will raise us up when we die. God will be with us
when we die.
Now this doesn’t mean we can be mean and God will still
save us. We want to be happy here and hereafter - so being nice - makes life
nice.
Sometimes we wear masks.
Sometimes we pull our tricks and we not being a treat.
Sometime we’re hollow and not hallowed.
I add those comments because today is Halloween.
SAN ALFONSO
St. Alphonsus - the founder of the Redemptorists - says
three key things in this area.
First, he was off on, centered in, on salvation. We were to be the Salvation Congregation -
but the name was taken, so we became the Redemptorists.
Second, he said that the whole secret of salvation,
holiness, spirituality is the practice of the love of Jesus Christ. He has a whole book on this entitled, “The
Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ.”
St. Alphonsus was a practical person. Remember the old saying, “Want to get into Carnegie
Hall? Practice. Practice. Practice.”
Want to experience the love of Jesus Christ? Practice. Practice. Practice.
The third thing San Alfonso said, “The 3 secrets of
salvation are: pray, pray, and pray.”
In other words to have the Lord to be with us, be with
the Lord.
CLOSING IMAGE
As I read today’s gospel I heard Jesus use the image of a hen gathering her
brood under her wings.
I thought of death like falling through the sky - and
we’ll be wondering when and where we will land?
I think of various movies when someone falls out of a
plane and they have no parachute and someone with a parachute sky dives towards
that person and grabs them - and then they open their parachute and that’s God
holding onto us - and landing us onto the other side of death.
Isn’t that what Paul is saying in today’s first reading?
FOOTNOTES
[1] Raymond Brown, An
Introduction to the New Testament, “Letter to the Romans”, Chapter 24, pp.
559 ff.
[2] N.T. Wright, “The Letter to the Romans, Introduction,
Commentary, and Reflections,” in Volume X of The New Interpreter’s Bible,
p. 395.
