4th Sunday of Lent. Good Samaritan Homily - March 22, 2015

Preached by Brother Marc
Holy Wisdom Chapel


Jer. 2:1-8; Hebr. 6:7-12; Lk. 10:25-37

--We cannot truly come to love God with our whole being all by ourselves. Love of God needs to be grounded in the world. The first commandment needs to be incarnate with other people, with those around us.
--Our neighbors need not inhibit us from coming closer to God, but rather, it is through everyone we meet and know, living in their own world, that we are brought nearer to God. Our responses to them turn us more and more into the likeness of God.
--To our great distress, our so-called neighbor is usually not of our own choosing.
--We are told to love others as ourselves, whether they are friendly or unfriendly, whatever the cost, and whether we like them or not.
--This kind of love is not emotional. It simply desires the other’s well-being. It is in tension with our own self-love and our own needs.
--Where does compassion come from? It may spring from good character and upbringing, great love or suffering, a grateful heart, or an awakened and enlightened spiritual and religious life. This kind of love is larger than all of us. Love of God is the grace of God, the life and presence of God, enveloping us and our neighbor in its warmth.
--In the gospel today Christ asked literally: “Which of these three seems to you to have become a neighbor to the person fallen victim to the robbers?
--The lawyer knew the commandment “Love your neighbor.” Looks like Jesus has turned things around a bit. Jesus was pointing out to the lawyer that actually being a neighbor in that love is more real, concrete, and down-to-earth than simply loving the neighbor in our own minds and having good will toward all.
--Am I a neighbor when I am nearby, in close proximity, or on the road, aware of the concrete challenge to deal with the immediate needs of a person who was attacked and wounded by bandits?
--Being a neighbor, it seems, is not seeing another person, or other persons, as separate from me and my life or as other than me and us.
--It’s not so much a question of who our neighbor is: it’s more a matter of who or what we are.
--The good Samaritan on the road had “agape” love while the two religious passers-by did not.
--Agape love is love in action.
--Agape says, “Now BE a neighbor, you know, and DO it.”
--And so in the gospel Jesus ends the conversation with, “Go and do likewise,” and it’s a great way to end the story.
--He tells us to do something but doesn’t tell us what. And that leaves it open for discussion. What are we supposed to do?
--When Jesus says, “Go and do likewise,” is coming to church and being charitable enough? Does He actually want us to go and do anything or respond in a radically different way?
--We can prepare for those unique moments of love’s demands by practicing how to please God rather than simply pleasing myself. We can begin by listening to our own better natures.
--The other two were on way to do what they thought the Law required: they wanted to please God in the temple, but they missed a golden opportunity for grace that was suddenly set up for them along their path.
--Only the Samaritan took advantage of that passing moment of grace. He was the one who succeeded in pleasing God.
--The Samaritan did not possess the true worship, but he was the one who fulfilled the Law and the prophets in spirit and in truth.
--Finally, how surprised we might be to realize every last one of us is half dying for need of both treating and being treated the way people who are truly alive treat one another.

2nd Sunday of Lent - March 8, 2015

As preached by Sister Cecelia
Holy Wisdom Church


Ez 18:21-23,30-32, Heb 3:7-16, Mk 5:24b-34

A pencil. That is what a young boy in India answered when he was asked what he would like most in the world. A pencil was a symbol of his desire to learn, to be taught. A pencil was a way for him to rise out of the dire poverty he was in. For Adam Braun, it was the stimulus to go further and to provide pencils for many –even thousands of children. He did not stop with the pencils but eventually in 2008 Braun founded an organization that builds schools, trains teachers and funds scholarships for children in Laos, Ghana and Guatemala.

This is just one example from this past Sunday’s Parade section of the paper entitled ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE! What all of these individuals have in common is the level of their faith. They want to do “something” to help. They are inspired to do something and they have faith that it can be done in spite of the seeming impossibilities at times.

The woman in this morning’s Gospel faced many hurdles in order to reach Jesus. Her faith in His ability to help her caused her to make the great effort it took. She knew the crowd would not be pleased with her being there. Jesus declared it was her faith that enable his healing. All the individuals in that article faced obstacles as well, but their faith in God and in others’ willingness to help has made a tremendous difference in so very many lives.

This Lent I’m sure many of us have asked ourselves what to do to know God better. Or to know what it is that God wants of us. Or to know what it means to have faith. Faith in what, you may think. It takes faith to believe that God wants anything of us and it takes faith and hope if we don’t already know, to believe that we will know eventually what God wants.

When we hear God is love, what does that mean to any of us? If we have had an experience of that love, the usual response is to enjoy and appreciate that experience but also we want to reciprocate in some way. How we show our love for God is the next question. Jesus has given us one answer. What you are doing to others you are doing to me. There have been so many who have responded to that call to love and each respond in their own way. We too can make a difference. We each can do something to bring about the reign of God on earth.

During his earthly life, Jesus showed us that it is his desire to heal, to teach and to help us come to truly know the Father, (the creator, the giver of life). Whether we are asking the Father for help for ourselves, for others or for the projects we have undertaken big or small, if we have faith, we can “move mountains”. We just have to be sure that the mountain we are attempting to move is the mountain God wants us to move.

There are many little ways that we can do something to reciprocate God’s love: Guarding against our tendency to anger when aggravated with another. Take the emphasis off the self by trying to be more understanding and compassionate with others. Be willing to listen without judging the other. Study what is the best way to carry out one’s responsibilities. Be aware that others are counting on you. By loving, we do learn how to pray always and thus become the instrument of God’s love.

God is in our midst!