Homily for Monday of the 3rd Week of Easter Year A (2)
Homily for Monday of the 3rd Week of Easter Year A
Theme: HAPPY NEW WORKING WEEK MY DEAR FRIENDS
By: Rev. Fr. Jacob Aondover ATSU
Homily for Monday April 27 2020
READINGS: ACTS 6:8-15, PSALM 119, JOHN 6:22-29
It was John Chrysostom, the fourth century theologian who said that ‘Men are nailed to the things of this life’; things that add little or nothing to their substance, their being or essence – their souls. We are too earth bound and are living half lives as Napoleon once told his friend; for him, only those with vision, who saw beyond themselves, beyond the moment, beyond the peripheral but expanded their horizons to look far out actually lived. We often times spend our time, energy, and resources searching for frivolities, the very insignificant things of life. We have children who refuse going to school because they aren’t given money for food. Young people wouldn’t work effectively because of the calls of pleasure. We have grown ups and married people who don’t invest their resources properly, but rather, waste them on the accidentals of life. Today is a call to look out for the essential, the primordial, the basic, the substance or the all important.
Like the people who looked for Jesus so he could continue giving them food instead of life; we too search for God for the wrong reasons. We search for wealth and power wrongly and dubiously too (more so for the wrong reasons). I can hear Jesus saying: ‘You have seen God’s grace enabled a crowd to be fed, turn your thoughts therefore to him and not to bread’. I can hear him saying to us who hustle for God’s blessings only for the good of our bodies: ‘Stop thinking about your stomachs and start thinking of your souls’. Just now I remember the prophet Isaiah saying to us; “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy?” (Isa. 55:2). Jesus wants us to apply our energies, time, knowledge, etc. only to those ventures that are heaven oriented.
We often time embark on a mistaken search for Jesus like the crowds did. We look for him to satisfy our quests for wealth, food, good health etc, fair enough; Jesus desires however that we look for him more along the lines of spiritual yearnings. He can satisfy our hunger for the truth, our hunger for justice, our hunger for eternity, our hunger for love and our hunger for peace.
Stephen chose the right path, he yearned for God and burned with zeal for his work, in as much as it cost him his head, it prepared a place in eternity for him. He worked for God by believing in Christ beyond human imagining. We too are challenged to do God’s work like Stephen by believing in him whom God sent – Jesus the Christ and by advancing him in all we do. Amen…
FEED ONE POOR FOLK AROUND YOU