Homily for Monday of the 12th Week in Ordinary Time Cycle II
Theme: Sin exposes us to many troubles and makes God to abandon us.
By: Rev. Fr. Callistus Emenyonu, cmf
Homily for Monday June 22 2020
READINGS: 2 Kings 17: 5-8.13-15.18, Ps 60, Matthew 7: 1-5
Every human being has his dos and don’ts or the things that he abhors and things he cherishes. For God sin is an abomination to him because he is the all Holy God who has no darkness in him and who does not have any space in him to accommodate sin. He created humans in a state of grace and equipped them with his holy teaching to live a holy life. It is never his desire to see his image live in sin which is a life against his wish and desire and which goes contrary to his will. God has a large heart which accommodates us whenever we sin and he gives us opportunity to return back to him; he shows us the way back and makes us know the consequences of our evil deeds and wishes that human beings endowed with reason would learn their lessons and do away with sin which divides them with their loving God and Father. The history of the life of the people of Israel and God has been that of continuous fall and refusal to rise, it has been that of stubbornness and obstinacy full of disobedience of his holy will and blatant disregard to his warnings by the prophets.
Beloved, it is to be noted that time after time Israel leaves the worship of the true God of their covenant and go after a foreign god of idols. This is what God told them from the beginning that annoys him and that he does not want. In his compassion he tries to bring them back by raising leaders and prophets yet they go back to it. In the first reading today, Israel went back to the worship of Baal and the consequences were great on them. Assyria invaded their land and took many tribes of Israel in bondage leaving only Judah the small tribe. It is worthy of note that God warned the people of Israel through many prophets and seers saying: Turn from your evil ways and keep my commandments and my statutes in accordance with all the law which I commanded your fathers and which I sent to you by my servants and prophets, but they would not listen, but were stubborn as their fathers have been who did not believe in the Lord their God.
Beloved, the cause of our problem with God has always been disobedience and attachment to sin and the easy way of life that leads to doom and destruction. Humanity has always been bent on doing things contrary to the commands of the good God who made us and who controls everything including our lives. Each time we sin, we get ourselves exposed to the reign of evil and dominion of the devil. Sin wipes a nation from the face of the earth and is always a reproach to any nation. How many times has God warned us in our sinful ways to stop; how many times have we been warned by the preaching of the ministers and the teaching of the Church and we remain unmoved and adamant clinging to our sinful inclination? In this sinful life, we are always the losers and the sufferers. We do not learn a lesson from our sinful lives yet we remain unchanged and in the continuous state of suffering.
In many occasions, our sins extend to giving people erroneous judgments and condemning everything people do except ours. We sin also in being blind to our faults and try to canonize all that we do finding reasons to justify them but no charity to excuse others even in their good intentions. We are dangerously and destructively critical of others especially those in authority but see nothing wrong with what we do daily in our followership. The whole place is bad and the condition is bad because we believe others caused it. Unless we begin to see that we are part of the invisible hands that turn the stable water not to have rest, nothing will begin working well amongst us. Our hypocritical lives must stop so that the true life of grace will take over our lives for the peace and blessing of God to abound in our lives.
We pray that God will not reject us and break his covenant with us because of our sins, even if he has been angry with us may he come back to us and amend our lives for us for only him can repair what our sinful ways have damaged. May God never inflict hardship on us and make us drink the type of water that will daze us, may he never reject us but give us help against our foes especially our weak stubborn self that leads us to constant sin, Amen.
Rev. Fr. Callistus Emenyonu, cmf