The Day of the Lord

Homily for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary time

Given at St. Patrick's in Wareham

By the Rev. Fr. Ronnie P. Floyd, STL

Have you ever taken your kids, or grandkids for ice cream
And being good, not gotten an ice cream yourself?

What happened when you asked your kids for a taste?
Well if your kids are anything like my nephews and nieces
it was like pulling teeth, to get some ice cream.

Despite the fact that most likely some ice cream will be wasted
And some will melt and drip to the ground,
Despite the fact that you paid for it.
Kids can be very attached to their ice cream,

But you know, it’s not just kids, all of us can be the same.
All of us have been given ice cream in the form of our life
Our talents, our treasures, our experiences, families, and friends.

And yet when God asks us to give just a little back
How often to we selfishly guard our ice cream, our life,
From the God who gave it to us in the first place.

And the thing about giving God back a little
of what He gave us in the first place is that
whatever we give to God He multiplies and blesses and gives back to us.

In today’s bulletin you will find an insert about the Day of the Lord
It’s the first in a series of inserts that will be in the bulletin
To help us prepare to pray Mass just a little bit differently,
And perhaps more profoundly, next December.

But before we rush to changes in words,
It is important to think about what the Mass and the Sabbath is!!!

The third commandment of God’s law teaches us to:
keep holy the Sabbath

As Catholics we know that going to the Holy Mass
is a key part of keeping Holy the Sabbath.
What Jesus teaches us to do when he makes that perfect prayer to God
The Father from the Cross is what the Sabbath is all about!

God asks us this, as Jesus taught us,
“not because man was made for the Sabbath
but because the Sabbath was made for man.”

Just like the boy in the gospel today offered Jesus fish and loaves
We are asked to give God, 1 day out of 7 and 1 hour out of 168.

How small and insignificant a gift
considering how much God gives us

BUT God does not ask us to keep Holy the Sabbath
because we were made to give God praise,
He asks us to keep it holy because by doing so,
By giving our simply gift to God
God desire to multiply it and give it back to us ten fold.

Like the boys gift of fish and bread,
which seemed so little in comparison to the hunger of the crowd

Our little sacrifice and gift of a day, and particularly this hour each week
Though, when we really think about, it seem so meagar
Is all that the Lord needs to satisfy not human hunger,
But even more important,
the human desire for right relationship with our creator and God.
Pope Benedict writes of the creation of the world,
That for five days God prepared the world,
Making a space, a home, for us.

And on the sixth day He created us,
He created humanity, the pinnacle of creation
So that on the seventh day we could enjoy the world God created
And through that enjoyment know the love of our God
And return that love in thanksgiving.

Thus Pope Benedict writes that man was made for the 7th day
Man was made to rest and enjoy God’s goodness
and thank Him for that Goodness.

When we lost that, because of disobedience
Because we imagined that we could figure out
what makes the human heart happy, without asking its creator,

we were cast out of paradise, into a world where we had to work
to seek a happy life, that God desired to give us as a gift.

God told us in the beginning that what will satisfy our heart
Is enjoying creation and giving Him thanks,

And yet we decided to look for happiness in all the wrong places
In our work, in our pastimes, in our hobbies, in drugs and alcohol and sex and wealth, and in so many other dead end pursuits.

The third commandment was made to remind man
where true happiness lies,
and what we have to look forward to, and hope for,
for all eternity in Heaven.
So how do we live the day of the Lord?
Like the crowds in the Gospel today
we start by placing ourselves in God’s presence,
which really means simply realizing that He is with us always!

We need to stop and smell the roses.

We start by stopping all the busyness
And pushing anything that could come between us and God
out of our life for just one day, including:
not just work but also chores,
cooking, cleaning, mowing the lawn, and shopping,
and this includes sports and activities that get in the way.

Doing this we are able to listen to Jesus teach us
about the goodness of life
and enter into conversation with God.

We enter into this conversation, this prayer, most intensly
when we come together with Christ in His Church
to offer our prayer of thanksgiving for all that we have received
together with the our whole Catholic family,
with Christ leading us in prayer from the Cross.

At Mass Jesus teaches us that life is so good that
We should love God enough to give Him everything
EVEN our sufferings and sorrows and our death.

Jesus takes our simply weak gifts and uniting them with our prayers
He turns ordinary bread and life, which is a symbol of our very small gift
Into His total self, body blood soul and divinity.

Jesus gives all of Himself to the Father
so that we might learn to do the same.

And He transforms our simple gifts
Into a food that will satisfy the multitudes His Body and Blood.

It’s important to remember however
that Jesus doesn’t just ask for one hour from us!

He wants the WHOLE SABBATH, the whole Sunday,
So that the gifts we receive and give at Mass,
can be celebrated and enjoyed with our whole family during this day.

Maybe for some, who have gotten into the habit of working on Sunday
Giving up a whole day seems too hard,
Its especially difficult for those whose jobs
require them to work on Sunday,

but I once hear a story of a man who with his wife
decided to take a huge risk and really live Sunday,
refusing to work or travel or shop or be a temptation for others to work
on the day of the Lord.

He was really afraid that he would loose his job because of it.
What happened was a every day miracle.
Athough he struggled with his choice to truly live the Sabbath,
So many opportunities opened up for him, and his business truly thrived.

When we trust the Lord with our fish and loaves,
It might seem like we will lose our lunch and go hungry
But God always repays us a hundred fold for all that He gives us.