Homily for Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time Cycle II (2)




Homily for Thursday of the 29th Week in Ordinary Time Cycle II

Theme: PRAY FOR UNITY AND PEACE

By: Rev. Fr. Jacob Aondover ATSU

 

Homily for Thursday October 22 2020

MEMORIAL OF SAINT JOHN PAUL II, POPE

READINGS: EPHESIANS 3:14-21, PSALM 33, LUKE 12:49-53

The prayer of Paul for the Church in Ephesians 3:14-21 captures strong and needful intentions of a growing Christian community. He prayed God’s Spirit to strengthen the Church dwelling in a chaotic and divided world and that Christ should keep our consciences (inner man) alive and sensitive (Eph. 3:16); that so, we may conform our wills to those of the saints and hence, understand fully the depth of the love Christ has for us.
Ours today is a Church and society not devoid of dissensions and divisions occasioned by the varied interests of the many stakeholders therein. It is a Church living in a chaotic and turbulent world. Moreover, ours is a Church that has found herself in a society without clear-cut distinctions between ‘religion, politics and culture’. Divided along these lines, we need to always pray more with Paul for peace and unity. Guided by the primary intention of this letter to the Ephesians, ‘bringing all people and things together in Christ; we too, now more than ever before, should prostrate in humble submission to God through Christ who can do more abundantly for us than we can possibly imagine (Eph. 3:20) begging him to grant our needs.

Dearly beloved in Christ, when our inner man, our conscience is enlightened by God’s Holy Spirit, we will be wary of the fire (judgment) that Christ’s coming would bring and so align ourselves to the way of Christ, the way of the Cross, the way of salvation; only then can we enjoy the breadth and length, height and depth of his love for us.

Also when we are in prayerful communion with God as a Church, as families or individuals, and having the power to understand Christ’s limitless love for us, his message would no longer be the cause of division among family members, friends, state, nation and so on. This is because we all must have allowed Christ to take precedence over our dearest loyalties in life: ego, wealth, affiliations of tribe, group, and state. And with all looking at each other with the eyes of Christ: hate, enmity, malice, animosity, strife, divisions, envy and jealousy would be substituted permanently by: love, friendship, grudge-free unions, peace, blessings and oneness. Then the dream of Paul in the letter to the Ephesians must have become a reality; for ‘all people and things would have been brought together under Christ’, what a world that would be!

May John Paul II, lover of peace and unity, ardent apostle of the holy rosary and forgiver of his aggressors intercede for us now and always. Amen.

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