January 27, 2008<\/p>\n
3rd<\/sup> Sunday in Ordinary Time<\/p>\n Is 8: 23 – 9:3; 1 Cor 1: 10-13, 17; Mt 4: 12-23<\/p>\n Dc. Larry Brockman<\/p>\n Are there competing factions in today’s society like those Paul speaks of in Corinth?\u00c2\u00a0 You bet there are.\u00c2\u00a0 Factions are a sad fact of life- they are everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Paul describes a situation we can all relate to today\u00c2\u00a0 We see that in Paul’s time people aligned themselves with one movement or another, people felt their group had the answer,\u00c2\u00a0 and everyone else needed to be converted.\u00c2\u00a0 There was a tendency for these groups to be closed, exclusive, and even hostile to those who didn’t agree with them.\u00c2\u00a0 It happened in Corinth over different preachers.\u00c2\u00a0 It happens in our community between different groups in the Parish; between different faiths, between one school and another.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not just here in our immediate community either, because there is a growing tendency towards polarization in society as a whole today.\u00c2\u00a0 The current presidential primaries are a perfect example.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n This kind of polarization is fed by people who want to be justified.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of them even assume that God is only on their side.\u00c2\u00a0 They feel justified by the acceptance and support from their own group.\u00c2\u00a0 That even seems to legitimize the hostility towards the others.\u00c2\u00a0 But God has other ideas.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the most wonderful things about people is our diversity.\u00c2\u00a0 God has not given any of us perfection.\u00c2\u00a0 Everybody has strengths; and everybody has weaknesses.\u00c2\u00a0 It is only together that we can accomplish God’s plan by each person fulfilling God’s destiny for them, and by working together to achieve harmony between factions.\u00c2\u00a0 The catalyst for achieving harmony is Christ, whose goal was predicted by Isaiah.\u00c2\u00a0 For as Isaiah says of the Lord- “You have brought them abundant joy and great rejoicing”.\u00c2\u00a0 Isaiah is foretelling that God would send his Son Jesus to be one of us; to save us, and that was the source of great joy.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n In the Gospel we see a Jesus who does not act alone.\u00c2\u00a0 Indeed, He recruits disciples at the beginning of his public ministry.\u00c2\u00a0 But Jesus ministry was intended to heal.\u00c2\u00a0 He used his own words and actions to unify and heal and to proclaim the coming of the Kingdom.\u00c2\u00a0 We are called upon to do the same- to unify and heal, and to build the Kingdom of God.\u00c2\u00a0 We are called upon to abandon polarization and factions.\u00c2\u00a0 But how?\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n First, we need to recognize that the “truth” is like a three dimensional object.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t have just one side to it; there are multiple sides. Likewise, there are multiple perspectives to the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 That doesn’t mean that truth is relative.\u00c2\u00a0 Rather, it means that no one person is capable of seeing all of the truth from just their perspective.\u00c2\u00a0 Living in an affluent upper middle class community colors our perspective on managing resources, for example.\u00c2\u00a0 The perspective is quite different in a poor inner city neighborhood.\u00c2\u00a0 God’s intent for his people needs to be discerned from these multiple perspectives.\u00c2\u00a0 Second, to discern the truth we need to be a prayerful people.\u00c2\u00a0 We are simply not able to break down our natural barriers to change by ourselves.\u00c2\u00a0 The status quo is often too comfortable.\u00c2\u00a0 We need God’s help to move us out of our complacency, to motivate us to grow.\u00c2\u00a0 Third, we need to show the proper respect for all of God’s people.\u00c2\u00a0 One of the primary ways we show respect is to listen.\u00c2\u00a0 As I have already said, nobody has it all.\u00c2\u00a0 Nobody has everything completely right.\u00c2\u00a0 There are multiple perspectives on the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 So, we must always be open to growing, and building toward the truth.\u00c2\u00a0 That means we need to listen to “other sides” of the issues- those other perspectives on the three dimensional image.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Fourth, the message is what is important, not the messengers.\u00c2\u00a0 People are often carried away by eloquence rather than essence.\u00c2\u00a0 Adolph Hitler was, in a sense, eloquent.\u00c2\u00a0 He was very effective at leading people by his style of speaking.\u00c2\u00a0 But it is not the style, not the ability to appeal to the emotions which is important.\u00c2\u00a0 It is the message itself.\u00c2\u00a0 And for us Catholics, the message should be consistent with the values and morality that the Church teaches.\u00c2\u00a0 No matter how eloquent or popular a person or group is, it is the message they broadcast that is important.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n Lastly, everything we do should build unity.\u00c2\u00a0 Divisive attitudes where individuals and groups destructively criticize each other is counterproductive.\u00c2\u00a0 You are not responsible for other Catholic communities and other Catholics, but you are responsible for you.\u00c2\u00a0 You can decide to be true to Christ and his Church here and now. \u00c2\u00a0Today Jesus will come among us again and feed our souls with his own strength and wisdom in Holy Communion. \u00c2\u00a0Let that be the beginning of a new chapter in our lives and the life of our Church, a chapter in which we recognize that the truth has many perspectives, not just our own; one in which we will listen to those other perspectives; one in which we pray for the gift of discernment to concentrate on the real message of Christ, the message of our faith in the catechism.\u00c2\u00a0 So that together we build unity, and not divisions.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" January 27, 2008 3rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Is 8: 23 – 9:3; 1 Cor 1: 10-13, 17; Mt 4: 12-23 Dc. Larry Brockman Are there competing factions in today’s society like those Paul speaks of in Corinth?\u00c2\u00a0 You bet there are.\u00c2\u00a0 Factions are a sad fact of life- they are everywhere.\u00c2\u00a0 Paul describes a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8"}],"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=8"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.deaconlarry.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}