<\/p>\n
\u201cIf this day you only knew what makes for peace\u201d!\u00a0 That\u2019s what Jesus tells his contemporaries in our Gospel.\u00a0 First, he grieves over the pending doom of Jerusalem and its temple, symbols of the Israeli nation and Jewish Faith.\u00a0 He says they \u201cwill be encircled on all sides and smashed to the ground with their children\u201d.\u00a0 Why? Because \u201cyou did not recognize the time of your visitation\u201d.<\/p>\n
I wonder whether Jesus would tell us the same if he were in this Church today?\u00a0 We are at the end of the Church year and will begin Advent shortly.\u00a0 That\u2019s the time in the Church Year when we are promised our visitation by the Lord.\u00a0 During each Church year, we are first challenged to welcome Jesus as our savior during Advent and Christmas, by waiting for, and then rejoicing that God became man and showed us the way. \u00a0\u00a0Then, we are called upon to witness the sacrifice Jesus made for us on the Cross as a saving act for our salvation during Lent; only to celebrate the promise of salvation to all of us who follow Jesus during Easter.\u00a0 Yes, we are asked to accept our own crosses and to do as Jesus did- bearing our hardships with Faith and dignity because of that promise of salvation and the Kingdom of God.\u00a0 And then for a half a year, during the many weeks of Ordinary Time, we go through the Old Testament, the Gospel and the stories of the Apostles and learn from these parables and stories just what it means to put our Faith into practice.\u00a0 We have a year to recognize the time of our visitation and to learn what it means before the process repeats itself.<\/p>\n
But do we get it?\u00a0 Do we understand that the promise of salvation and the Kingdom of God depends on our commitment to our Faith?\u00a0 Yes, we have to show we believe by putting our faith into practice.\u00a0 And not only that, we have an obligation to work together as a people, as a church, to spread that Kingdom and to defend it.\u00a0 Our Faith is not a private thing that is between us and God.\u00a0 It needs to be a public thing.\u00a0 We need to be committed to our Faith and Jesus<\/p>\n
Now the story in our first reading is an interesting lesson about this this whole process.\u00a0 You see, the Greeks had conquered the Jews, and were imposing their culture and lifestyle on Israel.\u00a0 As long as everyone cooperated, everything would be OK.\u00a0 But cooperating meant publically recognizing the Greek Gods and placing emphasis on loyalty to the state and it\u2019s King. \u00a0\u00a0Most of the people decided to go along with the Greeks.\u00a0 After all, they could make a public display of support for the King, and then privately believe what they wanted.\u00a0 But the point is, that isn\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n
Mattathias was a holdout, a person who rallied his family and a remnant of the Jews to stick to their religion and the Covenant with the Lord.\u00a0 And while he is making his impassioned speech in defense of that position, someone has the gall to come up to the altar, and cave in to the state.\u00a0 This evokes a strong impassioned response by Mattathias.\u00a0 The message is simply this:\u00a0 We cannot compromise our Faith; we cannot coexist with the forces of evil.<\/p>\n
I can see many signs of the same thing happening in our society.\u00a0 We have politicians who say that privately they follow what the Church teaches; but they have a public duty to follow the wishes of our secular government.\u00a0 We have folks who come to Church to satisfy their Sunday obligation; but then walk out of the Church and put their faith on hold while they live their daily lives, behaving as society expects them to; being part of the in crowd.\u00a0 And we have people that believe that peace is the absence of confrontation, and so, whatever happens they remain passive and in the background because they don\u2019t want to make waves, don\u2019t want to cause trouble.\u00a0 But you see, none of that will not do in the eyes of the Lord because like the Jews of Jesus time, such people do not recognize the time of their visitation.<\/p>\n
This is the time of our visitation.\u00a0 The question is, do we recognize it, and are we making the most of it?\u00a0 Peace is what we all want.\u00a0 But the peace that God provides is a different kind of peace.\u00a0 Jesus might say to us_ \u201cIf only we knew what makes for that peace.\u201d\u00a0 But for us Christians, it is not hidden.\u00a0 Our faith and living the Gospel without compromise, that\u2019s what makes for real peace- the peace of God.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thursday of 33rd Week in Ordinary Time \u00a0\u00a0 Presentation of Mary 1 Mac 2: 15-29; Luke 19: 41-44 Deacon Larry Brockman \u201cIf this day you only knew what makes for peace\u201d!\u00a0 That\u2019s what Jesus tells his contemporaries in our Gospel.\u00a0 First, he grieves over the pending doom of Jerusalem and its temple, symbols of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5],"tags":[256,255],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447"}],"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=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":448,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}