Homilies
If anyone needs a glass of water, it is us who must offer it. Jesus will be reaching that person through our hands. If anyone needs a visit, we must go. Then Christ will be using our legs. God is at work in us and in every single human person.
This teaching of Jesus is revolutionary. He taught that those who would like to be first, must be last and must be the servant of everyone else.
Today we acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, and we ask for the grace to live as his disciples.
After the Ascension of Jesus there is an image of the Christian community which stands as a beacon and icon for us modern-day disciples in the parish of Our Lady of Good Hope. “The disciples went up into the upper room, with the apostles, and they devoted themselves to prayer, together with Mary the mother of Jesus.”
We should be able to pray the prayer of St Augustine, “You called, shouted, broke through my deafness, you flared, blazed, banished my blindness.”
The religion brought by Jesus cannot be reduced to external rites, a moral code or a doctrine. No law, big or small, has meaning if it is not accompanied by love and if it is not consumed in love.
In celebrating the Eucharist, we renew the covenant between God and human beings, a covenant fully realized in the mutual self-giving that the Eucharist embodies, and we are nourished to answer the challenge: ‘Whom will you serve?
Mary assumed into Heaven is a sign of our hope to be raised from the dead. Where she has gone, we hope to follow. Our hope is summed up in the Resurrection of Jesus and the promise of our own resurrection.
Just as God nourished and provided for Elijah on his journey, He nourishes and provides for us as well.
Our deepest hunger has a bread that truly satisfies us, a bread that fulfils our hearts.
Imagine if we could always come to Mass with the consciousness that here we have a privileged encounter with God. That is what the celebration of the eucharist is.
In the busyness and stresses of our daily lives, we are invited to go to the Shepherd-King, a compassionate Good Shepherd, who will give us healing and rest.