Ad Jesum per Mariam

St. Paul Prays for All to have the Spirit to Appreciate the Goodness of What God has Done For You!

St. Paul Prays for All to have the Spirit that Allows You to Appreciate the Glorious Goodness of What God has Done . . . For You! There is a beautiful wisdom that underlines the words Jesus gives us in today’s Gospel. Today’s Gospel tells us about acknowledging Him. Jesus also says that one is not to be worried or troubled if dragged before hostile people. Difficult? Yes! Hear more within the Homily! St. Paul Prays For Us! In the first reading Paul does not pray for people to say or do great things. He prays that people will grow in spirit to appreciate the lesser things. Christians, perhaps all humans, often focus on great things. We often put the greater things ahead of the lesser things. That is not what St. Paul prays for the early Church . . . and for us! He Prays for Us to Have the Spirit . . . St. Paul prays for all to have the spirit that allows you to appreciate the glorious goodness of what God has done . . . for you! He also prays for you to have an understanding and an appreciation of the Hope that God has for you! Hear more within the Homily! Listen to: St. Paul Prays for All to have the Spirit that Allows You to Appreciate the Glorious Goodness of What God has Done . . . For You! ----------------------------- Image: Saint Paul the Apostle: Italian Artist: Giovanni Francesco Barbieri: 1600s ----------------------------- Gospel Reading: Luke: 12: 8-12 First Reading: EPH 1: 15-23

Duration:: 18m
Broadcast on:: 24 Oct 2024
Audio Format:: other

The Lord be with you, reading from the Holy Gospel according to Luke. Jesus said to his disciples, "I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man will acknowledge before the angels of God. But whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God. Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven. But the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. When they take you before Sonagogues and before rulers and authorities do not worry about how or what your defense will be or about what you are to say. For the Holy Spirit will teach you at that moment what you should say. The Gospel of the Lord. Praise to you. There is a beautifully simple wisdom underlining the sharp words that Jesus shares in our gospel today. This warning about denying him or acknowledging him and then this admonition that one is not to be worried and troubled when one is dragged before hostile authoritative presences. And hearing that one might react saying, "That's easier said than done." We worry about so many things. And yet the key to all of this is found in our first readings from St. Paul's letter to the Ephesians at the very beginning of the letter, St. Paul writes that he is praying for a very particular gift for that community. A spirit of wisdom and enlightenment, but a very particular kind of wisdom and a very particular kind of enlightenment. In a world that distracts us so easily, in a world that preoccupies us so readily and so constantly, in a world where our minds often drift and fixate themselves on the wrong things. St. Paul is praying that the church in Ephesus and by extension all believers receive a spirit of enlightenment that they know how to peer into the proper things, the correct things. And note he is not praying for a spirit that will allow them to do great things or to say great things. He is not praying for a spirit that will animate them to tremendous enthusiasm. He is praying for a spirit that will help them know and appreciate something. And all too often we make the mistake as we try to live our faith of putting the lesser things ahead of the greater. And so St. Paul says, "I pray that you have the spirit that allows you to appreciate the glorious goodness of what God has done for you." How easy it is to move off of that. How easy it is to lose sight of that. How easy it is to forget that. But he continues, that you understand and appreciate the hope that God has given you. And therefore that you understand your life has a direction to it, a movement to it, something that must be valued, appreciated, and looked forward to. Because it is all too often to live a life that merely drifts. It is all too easy to not really know what we're about or where we're going. And so St. Paul continues, "And I pray that you have the wisdom and the enlightenment to see how all of this comes to you in and through Jesus Christ." And to recognize that this Christ who has saved you is the one that God has raised above all other things. There is no angel that is his equal. There is no heavenly power that is not beneath him. There is no earthly reality that does not sit beneath his feet. He is that one in whom that hope is secure. He is that one through whom the glory of God touches your life. And when we put it that way, it sounds reminiscent of things we've heard all of our lives. And so we say, "Well, what's the secret about that?" And Paul would rightly turn and say, "The secret is that we don't appreciate it as deeply and as fully as we should." We're content with the words, we're content with the formulas, we're content to repeat things, but we spend very little time letting those realities penetrate us. We are aware of heaven, we know our lives are ordered toward it, but we have very little desire for it. We are aware that Christ has saved us, but we spend very little time appreciating the magnitude and the depth and the greatness of that salvation. Note how St. Paul, the beginning of his letter, before he is going to ask for anything else from this community is asking this for the community. This wisdom, this spirit, the Holy Spirit in fact, that allows us to peer into the hidden glory of God in a way that we can appreciate it, in a way that we can savor it, in a way that it can penetrate us. It is this movement of the spirit that Jesus is also referring to in the gospel. That peculiar advice, do not be troubled about what you're going to say when you're in the awkward situation. When you're dragged before kings and rulers and the synagogues, do not be troubled by that. It is going to happen, and yet don't worry about it. It seems so odd to hear that. You're going to be dragged before those who will persecute you, but don't worry about how you're going to defend yourself. But one of the reasons the Lord is saying that is because He doesn't want us to get ahead of ourselves. It does no good for me to prepare for a hypothetical persecution. It does no good for me to worry about something that hasn't happened yet. Rather, what the Lord would prefer is live according to the spirit I have given you now. Worry about doing those things you know you must do, and you'll be fine in that moment later. Learn to live according to the spirit now, and that spirit will be with you then. Know how beautifully simple that is? Our temptation is to think of the great dangers, imagine them, and our minds live there. And we find that we live there and we become frightened people, nervous people, worried people. The Lord says, "There is no need to worry about that. It will happen, but if you attend to what you need to attend to now, you'll be ready." If you don't, if you spend your time preoccupied, what will I say? What will I do? How will I act? You won't meet the moment. The moment will consume you. The moment will overwhelm you. This is one of the things that lurks behind that statement, "If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my father." Why would one deny the Lord? Typically because we're afraid. Typically because we're overwhelmed and over-mastered by life. Typically because something in front of us confronting us, challenging us, is so overwhelming and so threatening to save ourselves, we jettison what is most important. Why would we do that so easily and so lightly? Because we do. Because we don't appreciate its value in the first place. This is why St. Paul's Prayer is so very important. Understand that your life has a direction. There's an inheritance waiting for you, a hope that has been given to you, but understand that hope. Know it. Don't just pay it lip service. Let it be something you look forward to. Let it be something you aspire to. Let it be something you value. And you will not lightly set it aside. Know who it is that has saved you. Know his goodness to you. Know it. Don't just talk about it. Know it. And live out of that and according to that. And you'll find you can't even begin to set it aside. So when the Lord is speaking this way, he's acknowledging that life becomes difficult. He's acknowledging that life becomes threatening. He's acknowledging that ready temptation that meets every single one of us all too frequently to simply lay aside our belief, to lay aside our faith, to lay aside our goodness for the convenience or the safety of a moment. And he's reminding us if we're doing that then we don't really value it much at all. And so the Lord continues. You know, there are going to be all kinds of things set about me and set against me. And those things can and will be forgiven. But there is one thing that cannot be forgiven. And so here's that mysterious line that has haunted the Christian imagination across the centuries since Jesus first said it. Sin against the Holy Spirit, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that is the one thing that cannot be forgiven. And we wonder, well what exactly is that? What exactly is that? It's related to what the Lord is saying about renouncing me or affirming me before the world. In a very, very particular way. It is easy to renounce our faith when we haven't been living according to it. It is easy to renounce our faith, to lay aside our goodness when our lives are paying no attention to how the Spirit works within us. So the first point the Lord wants to make is that the Holy Spirit is an active presence in our lives that we must learn to move in harmony with. It is that one that allows us to appreciate and value the hope we have been given. It is that one then who in the light of that hope allows us to look forward and to move forward with a confident faith that is not arrogant. It is that Spirit that if we live according to it will be with us in the moment of difficulty. And all too often we find ourselves in moments of difficulty over mastered, feeling the Spirit isn't with us because we haven't been with the Spirit. So now the Lord is going to say, this is the key, but what is going to happen sooner or later for those who refuse to live according to the Spirit, they are going to lose that hope that has been given. This is the vital point of St. Paul's Prayer, I pray for a spirit of wisdom and enlightenment for you that you might appreciate the hope that has been marked out for you. Because when we lose that we become hopeless men and women. And a hopeless man, a hopeless woman has nothing to look forward to and no reason to live. The sin against the Holy Spirit is that hopelessness, that hopelessness which no longer looks to be forgiven, that hopelessness which can no longer look for good things from God. That hopelessness that says I am lost and there is no one who can save me, that hopelessness that can stand before salvation and refuse to accept it. That's the one thing that can't be forgiven by definition. The refusal to accept forgiveness, the refusal to even seek it is the one thing that can't be forgiven. And so note what the Lord says, life will come, you're going to fail, but you can keep moving and you can keep trying as long as you move according to that Spirit. As long as you move according to that hope, when you lose it, when you lose it, everything goes away. How powerful and important that is, how vital then that we appreciate this, how vital it is that we have a deep and insistent understanding of the reality of what God has done for us. And that is the first gift that the Spirit gives us, that great ability to appreciate and to savor and to value, what God has done and what God holds out for us. This is the hope that animated the men we celebrate today, the North American martyrs. Those men who, for the sake of the salvation of a people they did not know, crossed the Atlantic Ocean and came to the New World, not for conquest, not for wealth, not for riches, but to meet those who lived here, because they understood the hope that they had received in and through Jesus Christ was a hope that was also meant for those others. And it was out of that hope that they preached and toward that hope that they invited the members of the Huron tribes here in upstate New York and southern Canada, it was in that hope that when they were persecuted by the other tribes they persisted, despite the torture, despite the threats, despite the difficulty. And in doing so refused to ever renounce that hope, or the Lord whom they served, and they were given every invitation to do so. They were dragged before hostile warriors, they were shown implements of torture, they did not worry, because the Spirit indeed did give them what to say. And what they said was not eloquent in worldly terms, what they said had a greater power than mere earthly eloquence. They stood faithfully and they witnessed to the fact that there is a greater value, a greater value than these things, that there is a greater value even than clinging to my physical life, that there is someone and something so great I will not surrender it for any threat, even for the possibility to live one more day longer, I will not, because I value it that highly. And that final witness of these men, which planted the faith so firmly in North America, was that witness to even their persecutors, that this hope could be yours too. What a compelling witness that is, even as you take my life, the hope in which I stand can be yours too, can be yours too. This living according to the Spirit of the Lord is powerful and mighty indeed, but is powerful and mighty not because it accomplishes great works or says great things. It is powerful and mighty because it rests on a deep and abiding appreciation for the full goodness of Almighty God and what He has done for us. I pray that you will fully know the glory of that hope that God Himself has given you in Jesus His Son. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]