Episode 943 (11:24)
In this episode: Dcn. Brett Edmonson preaching; The greatest temptation for religious people is idolatry; The Christian faith is all about Jesus, not a philosophy, moral code, or creed; Jesus is the Way, Truth, and the Life; We need Jesus
Image from Microsoft Designer
Related Web Sites:
My Website Podcast PageAll Previous Episodes
You're listening to episode 943 at the Father Bill's podcast. Welcome back. This week's episode is being offered by Deacon Brett Edmondson, our permanent Deacon, and it's the homily entitled "It's All About Jesus." Given on the 26th Sunday in ordinary time, 2024. Good morning, everybody. Good to see all of you. So let's see. If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. I don't know if your hair can cause you to sin, but some of us just like to be safe. So there it is. Okay. We'll be right along here. So if you recall, if you were here last week, Father Bill preached about how Jesus likes the ducks better than the beavers, right? No, that's not what he said. Actually what he preached about was what it means to be great in God's eyes, which is to have a servant's heart, right? And how we in our weakness and in our brokenness, sometimes we glom on to clan or crowd as a false sense of greatness, and along the way we happen to just hammer those who don't belong to our crowd, right? And indeed, we'd run into some of that in our first reading today, don't we? Where El Dad and Me Dad are kind of under Joshua's ire, because they haven't been at the mountain with Moses in the 70, right? And yet they've received God's spirit, and he started to prophesy, right? How dare they? Even in our gospel, Saint John is all upset, because someone not belonging to Jesus' inner circle has been casting out demons in his name. We must stop him, right? Friends, it's been said that the greatest temptation for religious people is idolatry. The greatest temptation for religious people is idolatry, and I'm not talking about idolatry in the sense of worshiping statues or graven images. I'm talking about idolatry in the sense of giving God's place in our hearts to something else. So it could be clan, right, a group, giving ultimate importance to being part of this church or this family or this social circle. It could be our reputation, it could be our politics, it could be a certain cause or a moral code or an agenda. Think about the animosity sometimes we run into even in the church, right, between progressive and conservative Catholics or between, I don't know, pro-life and social just Catholics. At the end of the day, those distinctions, it's not like they don't have any value, but they can all become false idols if we're not careful. The Christian faith makes a unique claim that at its heart, it's not so much a moral code or creed or a cult, how we worship, at its heart is a person, Jesus Christ. Those of you who follow Bishop Barron, you've heard him say probably on more than one occasion that alone among all the world's great religious founders, Jesus put himself, his very own person, at the heart of things. If you think back, Buddha didn't do that, right? Buddha, to his credit, said, "There's a way I've discovered and I want you to know it." And Muhammad, Muhammad didn't do that, Muhammad said, "There's a truth that's been revealed to me and I want to share that with you." And Confucius didn't do that, the great Chinese philosopher. Confucius said, "There's a path I've found and I want you to follow it." Well Jesus was far more radical. He didn't say, "I've discovered a way or received a truth or found a path of life." Jesus said, "I am the way and the truth and the life." So in other words, I am the key to your existence, your peace and your purpose, your healing and your hope, the secret desire at the heart of all your desires. Jesus is what it's all about friends and if we don't get that right, then everything else we have, our theology, our morality, our liturgy, they don't mean anything. Worse they risk becoming ways that we worship our own egos or our own agenda rather than worshiping God and that's idolatry and it's incredibly off-putting. Sometimes I worry that we've left our young people with the impression that faith is primarily about rules and requirements, fussiness and finger wagging. And then when their eyes open one day and they see the church's sins and failures, what do they conclude? Apocracy, hypocrisy and they walk away. And why wouldn't they? If all they can see is the church's broken human exterior but they're never introduced to the divine heart of the church, Jesus himself, why would they stay? Why would they? No mere human institution, no matter how grand or ancient, can satisfy that deeply felt hunger, that longing for the great and the good and the perfect. Only Jesus can do that. Archbishop Sample likes to say, Jesus changes everything. And you know I think that's more than just a pious slogan because if you give your heart to Jesus he will change everything radically, he'll change the way you see, he'll change what you care about, he'll change the depth of your courage, he'll change the breadth of your love, even the way you approach your daily life and the problems in your daily life. You know I got to remind you that again this week, so I'll share with you just briefly, this week I had a situation come up that was truthfully bugging the heck out of me. And I'll admit it was my pride that was hooked and my temptation, I'm sure some of you can relate, was to fight and to argue and to get angry and I don't know, maybe even passive aggressive if I needed to, all in the service of getting my way. Now that night I was praying and I was complaining to God pretty honestly and then the Holy Spirit being the Holy Spirit began prodding me to invite the Lord into this situation. Well that's exactly what I did not want to do and exactly what I didn't want to hear. That just dilled my pickle even more as a friend of mine would say. But finally I just gave up and I said, all right fine I'll do it. So I said to Jesus Lord you're going to have to change my heart because right now I can't change it and you know what I don't even want to change it. And then just for good measure I turned to the Blessed Mother and I said, Mary trade hearts with me because right now my own is contemplating murder. Well friends to make a long story, you know the Lord he actually did step in quite remarkably and he did change things starting with my own heart because that next morning I woke up and I woke up with a different perspective on things. And that made a huge difference. And in the end things worked out and they worked out even better than I could have worked about on my own. And maybe you would think that after 57 years I would have learned this lesson, right? Learned how to trust the Lord with this kind of stuff. But no as many times as Jesus has taught me that lesson each time a new situation comes along that hooks my pride or provokes my fear or threatens my desire to control, it's a lesson I have to learn all over again. Here's what I want to leave you with. Fundamentally friends, holiness is not churchiness. Holiness is not churchiness, it's not being theologically literate, it's not having our act together morally, it's certainly not about judging other people. Finally, holiness is about having the courage to let Jesus into the center of your life and then hanging on for the ride. That might not always look the way that we think holiness should look, but I can tell you it's powerful when you see it, it's powerful. In the end, it's all about Jesus. Thank you again for listening to this episode of the Father Bill's podcast and a big thank you to Dick and Brett for his homily. And if you have any questions or comments, just go to my website, fatherbuild.org, f-r-b-i-l-l-dot-org. This weekend is also priesthood Sunday, I think we were calling it, and so I'd invite you to, if you would, to pray for me and Father Anthony and all priests, as well as bishops, even deacons, yep, deacon Brett, though he's not a priest, he's also ordained, and so I'd like to extend it out there. We all, they're ordained as well as many other people do our work, but in this case, it's nice to be able to focus for a little bit on the priests that we have, and we need more. We need more holy men to be able to come forward, to give their lives in a heroic way, to proclaim the gospel, to help heal and help counsel people in their journey of faith. Again, if you have any questions, just go to my website. There's lots of things there, my podcast, other podcasts I should say, my Friday reflection, you might find this one in rather humorous, if you've not seen it, I got an Amazon package and it wasn't what I expected, and thus is life, and other things as well on the website. In the meantime, may God bless you, and have a great week, bye-bye. [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC PLAYING]
