NOTE: I have been posting reflections for ten years and have considered discontinuing the effort.
However, it may be advantageous for me and perhaps helpful to you if I keep up the work. You may notice that I will often be publishing reworked homilies like the following.
Wednesday of the
Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time
(Amos 5:14-15.21-24; Matthew 8:28-34)
In The Good Earth, Pearl
Buck’s classic portrayal of pre-revolutionary China, the protagonist has a
brief encounter with Christianity.
Having gone to the city to escape the famine that consumed the
countryside, Wang Lung is handed a picture of the crucified Christ. He is fascinated by the image but has no time
to inquire into who the crucified one is.
Struggling to eek out a living for his family, Want Lung is impelled to
continue working.
The people of Gadarene town on the outskirts of which Jesus
casts out demons in today’s gospel seem little different from that of the
Chinese peasant. Charged by Jesus to
leave two wild men, the demons possess a herd of pigs whom they send hurling
into the sea. The people might be expected
to welcome Jesus for saving two men from a fate worse than Alzheimer’s. But being practical, they weigh their loss of
property as greater than the benefit of having two men restored to their senses. Rather than thanking Jesus, they ask him to
leave before he causes them more trouble.
It is as easy for us to get so caught up with business –
even Church business – that we ignore what Jesus has to offer us. It requires patience to meditate on his words
in our world of a ten thousand distractions.
We can also be sure his message will demand some sacrifice on our
part. But there is an upside to opening
our minds and hearts to Jesus. He brings
us the same tranquility of spirit which the former wild men of the Gadarene
territory now possess.
