Fr. Chris - Third Sunday in Ordinary Time - Homily

​" The Call "
​According to Smithsonian Magazine reporter, Isis Davis-Marks, Egyptologist, Zahi Hawass, and his team have found the tomb of King Teti’s wife, Queen Naert, from approx. (1570-1069 B.C.). Articles discovered include games, wooden masks, bird-shaped artifacts, a bronze ax, paintings, hieroglyphic writings, and fragments of a 13’ long x 3’ wide papyrus of the Book of the Dead. Indeed, for centuries, people have been so attached to their material existence, they have sought to take it with them, … even though playwrights, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, clearly illustrated in their Pulitzer-prize winning play, “You Can’t Take It With You!”


In the Second Vatican Council document, Lumen Gentium, we are urged “to guide our affections [regarding material things] rightly,” (42). Otherwise, we will be distracted from the ‘Call of Christ’ by focusing too much on earthly possessions, obsessing over them with an attachment which blinds us from doing our duty to serve others, to help the poor, and nourish our spirituality. They reference today’s reading, St. Paul to Corinth: “Let those who buy as though they had no possessions, who deal with the world as though they had no [or not enough] dealings with it, [not to get bogged down in it], for the present form of the world is passing away,” (1 Cor 7.31). To hear and answer Christ’s Call, we must detach ourselves from any unreasonable, distracting, or obsessive attachments with the material world.


Some people may ask, “but when is ‘enough’, ‘enough’? How do I know if I have too much in my world?” … Well, we might consider two ways of looking at this:
1.) If we give a child the option of having either a bowl or a carton of ice cream, they might say even the carton is not enough, until they get sick from over-eating. Maintaining a healthy ‘balance’ between what we need and what we want, is key.
2.) If what we have becomes a ‘burden’, blocking us from what we want to do, then, also, we have too much, especially, if our freedom to answer Christ’s Call has been compromised. Do not ‘burden’ ourselves with too much of anything.


Truly, the most serious concern about attachment, is it can become such a burden that we forget why we are really here. We are so busy building our homes, working overtime, planning projects, or banking time for dream vacations, that we forget our ‘Call’. We are focused too much on our worldly selves, not our spiritual selves.


So, could we leave our homes and our jobs to walk with Christ in just an instant like Simon and Andrew, James and John did? (It is worth noting scripture studies seem to indicate Simon, Andrew, James and John, were not just poor labourers, but were sons and owners of a fleet of fishing boats. So, they gave up more than we realize.)


So, again, could we leave everything to answer Christ’s Call? Some people do, but this is not the main premise of Christ’s ‘Call’. He does not ask us so much to sacrifice what we have, as to reach out to him for the treasure he wants us to have.


Theologian, Francis Fernandez, points out that, “Christian detachment has nothing to do with a disdain for material goods, as long as they are acquired and used in accordance with God’s will,” (B3, 107). Investment in home and work is necessary to life. Only when worldly affairs interfere with our ‘Call’ do we get into trouble.


And detachment from ‘material things’ is not the whole picture. It is detachment from self-destructive habits, behaviour, or negative emotions which is also needed.


So, how can we ‘maintain balance’ in our lives, avoid the ‘burden of attachment’, and stay focused on our ‘Call’ as Christians? Well, Pope Francis has a suggestion.


He has called us to focus this week on reading scripture. In fact, scripture is in many ways the critical, ‘tangible’ evidence of God revealed through his Son’s existence on earth. In Centering Prayer and Inner Awakening, author, Cynthia Bourgeault, underlines this fact, reminding us, “Scripture is a living word – not just the history of an encounter with God which happened long ago, but one which continues to resonate and feed us in our own times,” (66).


So, a suggestion: let us each morning this week, pick up our bibles, close our eyes, let it fall open randomly, pass our finger over the page, then stop and see which brief scripture verse the Holy Spirit might have revealed to us. Read it two times, slowly, thoughtfully. Then, let the words, the voice of God, speak to us throughout the day, reminding us in our minds and hearts what our true ‘Call’ to holiness is.


– Rev Fr Christopher Tracey, Saint Joseph Parish, Saugeen Shores, Ontario