Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time, February 19, 2023
The Last Sunday of Ordinary Time before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Part 1: Follow the truth, wherever it leads, no matter the cost
Be holy, for I, the Lord, your God, am holy. Let no one deceive himself. If any one among you considers himself wise in this age, let him become a fool, so as to become wise. For the wisdom of his world is foolishness in the eyes of God.
All belong to you, and you to Christ, and Christ to God.
Our pastor is talking about his search for truth, which started in an Irish Catholic New England church. Altar boy never missed mass, loved to arrange the missals in the pews, wasn’t sure if he was more in fear of God’s holiness or Sr. Anne Marie, who taught him about it.
Bless the Lord, O my soul, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. He redeems your life from destruction and crowns you with kindness and compassion. The Lord is kind and merciful.
Then his family moved to Texas. In high school he was definitely more Irish than Catholic, although he still went to mass every Sunday. In college he heard Campus Crusade’s Four Spiritual Laws and went into spiritual crisis. Despair loomed. “It wasn’t rational to take my life, so I gave my life to Christ. I realized my first assignment was to crucify Christ and be forgiven. It was either that or deal with my sin on my own.”
The Lord is kind and merciful. Not according to our sins does he deal with us, nor does he require us according to our crimes. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he put our transgressions from us. The Lord is kind and merciful.
The Mass came alive for him. It was all there. Bill Bright’s Protestant solution fit perfectly into his Catholic understanding. He was the only Catholic at Campus Crusade for Christs’s (CRU) International School in San Bernardino.
When he wanted to volunteer and lead Bible studies at a local Catholic church, however, Sr. Margaret turned him down. “You’re not a Catholic,” she told him. “Here are three things you must believe to be a Catholic.” Our pastor didn’t tell us what those were (wait for next week), but he knew he did not believe them. She was right.
Do you not know that you are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For the temple of God, which you are, is holy.
“I blacked out. I wept 90 minutes with a dean at the International School. This was a family tragedy. 97 of them … and me. We were a close-knit family. We had reunions. We went to mass together. But although I was there, I no longer participated. I didn’t even kneel. Everyone kneeled, but I sat.”
I say to you, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
None of his teachers ever told him to leave the Catholic church. “Get in a Bible study,” they always said. He returned to Austin, armed with plans to plant a Protestant church for Catholics. He walked the neighborhood, door to door. It didn’t work out. Then he began to volunteer at Grace, our church now. His church then. And he’s been here ever since.
So … be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
(Leviticus 19, Psalm 103, 1 Corinthians 3, 1 John 2, Matthew 5)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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