Homily for 9 Apr 2016

9 Apr 2016

I hear it too often among priests: they don’t have time to pray.  Either that or they do all their prayers first thing in the morning because they know they’re not going to have time during the day.  Of course, it’s a common thing to hear among all the faithful: we don’t have time to pray.  We’re either too busy with life, or we’re too busy doing the Lord’s work to spend any time with the Lord.

And we hear something of this situation in Scripture today when there were complaints that people “were being neglected in the daily distribution.”  Community life among Christ’s disciples was getting preoccupied with day-to-day business.  And the situation was getting darker, just like the fallen night sky around those disciples out in their boat, and “the sea was stirred up because a strong wind was blowing.”  The needs of our daily life—inside and outside the Church—can certainly be like a strong wind that preoccupies us.

But then there was Jesus—walking on the water, restoring peace again to his disciples in the boat.  And the Spirit of Jesus came out of the mouths of the Apostles, too.  There, in the middle of all the complaining, the Apostles said, “Whoa!  Hold on!  It’s not right for us to neglect the word of God to serve at table.”  And that did it: the restlessness and problems there in the community subsided.

And that’s what we can bring into the buzyness of our lives—an attentiveness to the voice of Jesus who says, “Whoa!  Slow down, my brothers and sisters!  Buzyness is not the remedy for buzyness—I am.  Don’t be afraid to set aside your buzyness and come to me in prayer."

The Lord keeps us focused in life: focused and fruitful.  God forbid that we should let Jesus fall by the wayside, and let the buzyness of life take center stage.