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02/11/2007 |
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FR. OLMAN’S HOMILY February 11, 2007 The first word of the
psalm today is (blessed), happy. We will
be happy with God’s strength and vitality if we follow the way God points out
to us. The prophet Jeremiah helps us to
understand what that way is. He writes:
“Blessed is the Lord”. He continues in
the imagery of the first psalm to say that a person who trusts in the Lord, and
whose hope is the Lord, is like a tree planted The first word of the psalm
today is (blessed), happy. We will be
happy with God’s beside running water. We know how necessary
water is for living things. After a
refreshing spring rain, vegetation turns green with life. But in a dry spell during the summer, growing
things become brown and barren. It is no
wonder that our sacrament of baptism uses the symbol of water since it is in
baptism that we first receive the life of God, the gift of his divine grace,
and begin to share in his happiness. But without a continuous
flow of God’s life-giving water, our lives can turn brown and barren. Without God’s grace we become very
unhappy. Our chief source of God’s
refreshing grace is the We believe we know what
happiness is, but it reality is elusive.
Sometimes we might think our condition is far from one which brings
about happiness, but God has a different way of looking at things. That is why Jesus gives us the
beatitudes. They are paradoxical, we
tend to think that the opposite of what they say is true, but Jesus insists:
“Blest (that is, happy) are you poor. Blest
are you who hunger. Blest are you who
are weeping. We are happy when we
follow the Lord. In the first reading,
Jeremiah is trying to persuade his countrymen to be faithful to God. So he appeals to and develops a well-known
saying that God is the fountain of living water. Without him they will be like trees in the
desert; with him no oppressor can touch them, for their life is guaranteed. We are happy because
Jesus raised and promised us his kingdom.
The mountain, in Luke, is
the place of special communication between Jesus and his Father, a favor
sometimes shared with the close disciples, as on the mountain of the
transfiguration. In the Gospel passage Jesus
is not saying: “if you want to be happy, be poor, be hungry, weep, be hated and
insulted”. He is not prescribing various
routines or practices as so many “happiness pills”. Sometimes a doctor will prescribe a pill to
be taken for a short time of blood pressure, regulation of heart beat,
reduction of pain. If the pill doesn’t
have the desired effect the physician will prescribe a different pill or take
the patient off the pills altogether. He
is not saying, “See if this works for you. Try it for a time and see what the
results are”. Rather, Jesus is stating
that those who direct their lives towards certain specific goals will, as a
consequence, experience genuine happiness.
For example, those who pursue justice for all, as a result will
experience a satisfaction, peace and happiness not directly sought. We can be happy when we
are poor if our poverty makes us turn to God and to trust in him. We can be happy when we are hungry if we
allow our hunger to make us yearn to have God fill the emptiness of our hearts
and not only our stomachs. We can be
happy when we are weeping, if our sorrow centers on our failure to do God’s
will in all things. God wants us to be
happy. Embracing God and following his
way of life is the only way to be blessed, to be truly happy. |
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