33RD SUNDAY HOMILY IN ORDINARY TIME YEAR C
HOMILY THEME: HOW PREPARED ARE YOU?
BY: Fr Augustine Ikechukwu Okpara
HOMILY: The liturgical readings today call us to reflect on the moment when the world will come to pass away. The question is how prepared are we for that moment.
The first reading and the gospel reminds us of the perdition of the arrogance and evil doers are heading to and the sweet restoration to freedom and love of the virtuous.
In the second reading Paul cautions us against ideal waiting. So how do we prepare?
Let us just take the most important aspect of life: LOVE.
We ask ourselves three questions about love,
1. Are our thoughts loving enough? How rash is our judgment of other people, do we tend to set ourselves above others. Do we mentally assess people in an unfair and unkind manner?
2. How loving is our words? Do we use our speech to talk or gossip about other people’s failure instead of encouraging them to change? Do we curse with our speech instead of blessing? Do we kill with our tongue or are our speech an expression of love?
3. How loving is our actions? Another area though more profound is our actions, how loving are they? Helping others is the standard Christ gave us in Matthew 25 for entering the kingdom of God. An ancient homily says that “fasting is better than prayer but almsgivings surpasses them all because charity covers a multitude of sins”.
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In 1981 nine physically handicapped people successfully climbed Mount Rainier in Washington State. One of the climbers had artificial leg, another was epileptic, two others were deaf, five were blind. In spite of these, the nine people navigated the fourteen-thousand-foot mountain together up and down without accident.
When asked about the amazing feat one of the blind members of the party said “simply, we got a lot of help from one another”. This story makes us ask ourselves, how much are we helping one another in our mutual effort to climb the mountain that leads to God and heaven.
So beloved friends how prepared are we to meet Jesus; right now, in just these three areas of life. We still have opportunity to change for better and be ready for him.
Happy Sunday.
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