Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Homily for 15 May 2018


15 May 2018

Jesus fulfilled his calling.  Saint Paul fulfilled his calling, as did the Apostles, our Blessed Mother, and countless others.  They’ve done their best to pass the faith along.  But then Saint Paul says, “I am not responsible for the blood of any of you.”  In other words, the responsibility for our own faith doesn’t lie with anybody else, except us.

What we each do with the faith is our own responsibility.  What we each do with the vocations and life callings we’ve been given is our own responsibility.  At the end of the day, nobody’s responsible for my life of faith other than “me.”

And I suppose that could be a scary thing; I mean, very few of us live out our calling to perfection.  But Jesus isn’t looking for perfection; he isn’t looking to condemn anyone.  He’s looking for faithfulness; he’s looking to support us in our life of faith.  Even in the ups and downs of our lives, Jesus is looking for a pattern of fidelity.  That’s what we’re each responsible for.  Nobody can be faithful to God’s calling for me other than…me.

And so, it’s actually an empowering thing: to realize that St. Paul, St. Mary, even Jesus himself is not responsible for “me.”  It’s as we heard this past weekend: Jesus has taken the training wheels off.  He’s still there to help us, but what we each do with our life (especially our life of faith) is up to…”me.” 

Jesus and his Church have given us the gift of faith.  But what we do with that is entirely up to “me.”  So what am “I” going to do with my faith?  How am “I” going to live it out a little more today?

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