• Home
  • Mary Immaculate
    • Novena of the Immaculate Conception
  • Oblates
  • Blog
fatherdaniel
dd text

6th Sunday of Easter - Homily

5/5/2018

0 Comments

 
Picture
            In 1981 a polish film director, Krzysztof Zanussi, produced a movie about John Paul II From a Far Country. At the beginning we meet Karol Wojtyla as a six-year-old boy who with his father attends the Passion play on Good Friday in a shrine in Poland. The boy appears to be captivated by Jesus carrying the cross and he follows like a shadow the person playing Jesus. After it is all finished his father realises that he cannot see his little boy. He starts a frantic search. He runs to the church hoping his pious son will be there. He keeps asking people for information. Eventually he goes to a pub where the ‘cast’ is having a ‘celebration’ after the Passion play. There he finds his son standing next to ‘Jesus’ and watching him closely. The man who played Jesus is drinking a beer. In fact he must have had a few beers already. Some beer was even split on the table where also lays the crown of thorns soaked with alcohol now. When the little Karol sees his father he asks: ‘Why is Jesus drinking beer?’
            What would be your answer? ‘Because he is not Jesus.’ Simple, isn’t it? But also tragic, isn’t it?
            You may know the book Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The main character, the little prince, at some stage meets a fox with which he wants to play. However the fox explains that first he needs to be tamed. ‘It is an act too often neglected’ said the fox ‘it means to establish ties.’
            My Dear Sisters and Brothers! In the Gospel Jesus says: ‘I call you friends because I have made known to you everything I have learnt from my Father.’ How close ties Jesus Christ has established with us! They are so close that we may grow used to them. They are so close that we may not be moved by them anymore.
            The movie From a Far Country captured that tragedy when the mystery of Jesus’ suffering and death presented in the Good Friday Passion play meant everything to the little boy and meant very little to the man who actually played Jesus. It is a wake-up call for us. We are so often and so close to the great mysteries of our Salvation that we may become immune to them. We may even loose a sense of how precious they are. We may become like that OP shop attendant who sold a thousand dollar bike of a visiting customer for 20 dollars.
            St John the Apostle in his letter wrote: ‘This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.’ It is neither about some abstract love nor some nice feeling. John wrote about God.
Some time ago in the CBD I was approached by two young men in white shirts and black ties who wanted to talk to me about God. When they found out that I was a Catholic they focused on one thing which they said the Catholics got totally wrong about God. Do you know what it was? The Trinity. They asked me to show them that the Bible speaks about the Trinity. What I showed them was the passage from the Letter of St John we have just heard: ‘God is love.’
A contemporary Catholic writer Petr Kreeft put it in this way: ‘If God is not a Trinity, God is not love. For love requires three things: a lover, a beloved and a relationship between them. If God were only one person, he could be a lover but not love itself.’
When we say God is the Trinity it is exactly what St John wrote: ‘God is love.’ We don’t simply say that God loves or that God has got love. We profess with trust that ‘God is love.’ We can profess it because we continue looking at the Crucified Lord.
St Augustin observing human relationship wrote: ‘When you see charity (the selfless love), you see the Trinity.’ How much more of the Trinity, we can see in the suffering Son of God. His tormented body, every single wound, tells us about the Love which we profess as the Trinity. Let us often recall the death of the Lord so that our vision may become sharper and sharper. Thus we will recognise that God originated charity in acts of selfless love of people around us and be drawn to act with selfless love too.

0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    June 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013

    Fr Daniel OMI

    An Oblate Priest

    Categories

    All
    Holy Land
    Homilies
    St Eugene De Mazenod

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.