Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Homily for 3 Nov 2016

3 Nov 2016
(School Mass)
If I were to ask you to find me a pencil or a pen, you’d probably look in your backpack or in your desk.  Maybe you have one in your pocket.  If I were to ask you to find me a pencil or a pen, you’d know right where to look.

Now, if I were to ask you look for Jesus, you’d probably look where?  In the Eucharist, yes.  In a statue or a painting, ok.  In the Bible, yes.  And those are all places we expect Jesus to be, and he is there. 

But Jesus is also in places we don’t expect him to be.  You know, when he walked the earth, he was always hanging around people that nobody else liked.  Scripture calls those people “sinners and tax collectors,” but also “widows, orphans, and the stranger.”  A lot of times we’ll find Jesus with those sorts of people.

That’s actually the reason why we can be sinners and still happy—because if we weren’t sinners, we wouldn’t need Jesus.  But we are sinners; we can always be more loving and more forgiving, more generous and more accepting of others.  We are sinners and, because of it, we know right where to look for Jesus—we only have to look right into our own hearts.

And so, if I were to ask you look for Jesus, remember to look for him wherever people are hurting or in pain; remember to look for him when you’re feeling bad or sorry.  Wherever there are sinners, you’ll find Jesus.  A lot of the time, we just have to look inside ourselves to find Jesus—and there he is, just waiting for us to let him be a friend to yet another sinner.      

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