A Deacon Ross Homily! 10-15

Paul, writing to the Romans, wants one thing to come through – the Good News of Jesus. “I am not ashamed of the Gospel,” Paul tells the Romans in chapter one. “It is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes.”

That is very good news. The gospel is to be understood not as a book, but as the very power of God, the power of Christ, the power of love.

Since everyone has this ability to love, salvation is for everyone who believes and who trust in God and are faithful to living out peace and justice in their lives.

The rightousness or justice of God is revealed from faith to faith. It was only 44 years ago this month that Nostrae Aetatae was written to address the fact “that all humankind is being drawn together, and the ties between different people are becoming stronger.” (NA)

Paul surely understood this idea and was eager to remind people that what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them.

There is something in each human person that is pointed towards God and God’s plan of love. Humans can, and often do, know God immediately in their hearts. They know God through created things, through nature, the created order, and of course other humans. There is no excuse for any one of us not to know the power and love of God in each every person.

We have no excuse for rejecting anyone because of race, color, condition of life, or religion. We have no excuse for injustice and no excuse to become idolatrous.

We must be careful not to change the divine order of things: God make us in God’s image and likeness, not the other way around.

We must also be aware that even if we speak about God or Christ or Love, we might be altering the one Gospel, the one that Paul was not ashamed to preach.

We can look to others, those on the outide of our relgious beliefs – the Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddists, etc. and point fingers. We can permit language, violence, and hatred towards them, even if we are not directly involved. Why? We can very easliy become vain in our reasoning and our senseless minds can be darkened.

We can also point to those inside our own system of belief – to other Christians, setting up ideas that we are totally against one other. That they have nothing to offer in the way of truth and the Gospel they price is nothing compared to ours.

We can even point to ourselves, those who claim to be Catholic. We can make distinctions between those of the left and those on the right, or between the rich and the poor, the brown and the white. We can justify in our own minds reasons to hate, to put down, to slander others while at the same time claiming to be proclaimers of the Gospel.

We are easily fooled by our own creations. We are easily fooled by the ideas we have – those ideas about how liturgy should be celebrated, who should be allowed to participate in various ministries, who deserves our love and protection, and who deserves to be discriminated against all in the name of Christ.

We should always hold on to our own ideas very lightly, so that God is free to shift them. If we hold to tightly, then we have failed to worship the Creator and have instead decided to worship the creature, our own idols carved by our senseless minds and hearts.

The Pharisee who invited Jesus over for dinner is just one example of someone who places his or her own idea of what God wants before the Gospel, the very power of God, the power of Christ, the power of love.

He thinks he is doing good because he follows the prescriptions and commandments of God and Moses, but Jesus tells him and others that they are filled with plunder and evil.

If only they would give alms, they would be free from their own selfishness and selfish desires because they would be demonstrating the real Gospel of Love.

You fools! Jesus says, you fools!

Is Jesus speaking to us?