<\/p>\n
My what a mess we make of things when we try to bypass the will of God and take things into our own hands by acting on conventional wisdom.\u00a0 Today\u2019s first reading is a perfect example.<\/p>\n
Sarai makes a big mess of things.\u00a0 God had promised Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the stars in the sky.\u00a0 But rather than trust in God to give her a son, Sarai takes matters into her own hands and arranges for Abraham to have a son through Hagar her servant girl.\u00a0 This leads to jealousy, pride, envy, abuse, and much more, especially when one considers the historical implications of it all, namely the almost constant conflict between Ishmael\u2019s descendants and the descendants of Isaac.\u00a0 What a mess.<\/p>\n
By contrast, we have Jesus\u2019 words in the Gospel. \u201cNot everyone who says to me \u201cLord, Lord\u201d will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my father in heaven.\u201d\u00a0 And when Jesus says we are to do the will of his Father, that means we have to listen to his words and act on them.\u00a0 Yes, we have to act on them, rather than just say \u201cLord, Lord\u201d.\u00a0 Then he talks about houses built on rock and sand.\u00a0 How can we put all that into practice?\u00a0 Doing the will of the Father means understanding and doing God\u2019s will for us.\u00a0 And that means understanding God\u2019s will in general.<\/p>\n
Our home is the United States of America.\u00a0 Is it built on sand or rock? Well, let\u2019s see.\u00a0 As of yesterday, marriage is defined as the union of any two people who want to get \u201cmarried\u201d, thanks to the Supreme Court.\u00a0 And only 60 % of our children live in homes with a mom and a dad.\u00a0 But marriage and family are the basic institutions of society.<\/p>\n
There are 4,000 abortions a day in the United States of America.\u00a0 Contraception and in-vitro fertilization are accepted as good things.\u00a0 And we are on the verge of or have legalized euthanasia in several states.\u00a0 Yet, the right to life is our most important right.<\/p>\n
We can\u2019t say school prayer in our public schools.\u00a0 Our government and public meetings begin, at best, with a moment of silence.\u00a0 And as of August 1 of this year, our Catholic Institutions may all have to close or else willfully violate God\u2019s law.\u00a0 So,
\nour religious liberty is in jeopardy.<\/p>\n
If you ask Catholics what the Church teaches on many topics, they either don\u2019t know; don\u2019t care; or don\u2019t agree with it.\u00a0 In other words, we don\u2019t understand the will of God for us.<\/p>\n
My dear brothers and sisters, let\u2019s face it, our house, the USA, is built on sand.<\/p>\n
And so, it is time for us to do what Jesus says we need to do- establish our house on rock.\u00a0 25 % of the US population identify themselves as Catholic.\u00a0 If we all believed and acted on it, not just said \u201cLord, Lord\u201d then this country could only be built on rock.\u00a0 Unfortunately, we are not all united; and we are not all engaged.<\/p>\n
Hopefully, all of you are responding to the Bishop\u2019s call for a Fortnight of Prayer between June 25 and July 4th<\/sup>.\u00a0 But we need to do more than that.\u00a0 We all need to become involved in restoring God\u2019s will.\u00a0 Because we, just like Sarai, have made a mess of things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Thursday of the Twelfth Week in Ordinary Time Gen 16: 1-12, 15- 16; Mt 7: 21-29 Dc. Larry Brockman My what a mess we make of things when we try to bypass the will of God and take things into our own hands by acting on conventional wisdom.\u00a0 Today\u2019s first reading is a perfect […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[213,135,212],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=340"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":341,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340\/revisions\/341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}