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SPIRITUALITY
February 5, 2019 | The Valley Catholic
Sunday Homilies
By Father Brendan McGuire
Pastor of Holy Spirit Parish, San Jose, and Vicar General for
Special Projects, Diocese of San Jose. Email him at [email protected].
Jesus Wants into Our Boat
Sunday, February 10, 2019
I recently read an article about pro-sports scouting; in particular, it focused
on both baseball and basketball. I was fascinated by it how scouting has become
so sophisticated. They have statistics on everything. Even their mistakes. Every
single aspect of each sport is analyzed by computer algorithms; it is no longer
just done by eye and on the back of a note card. It is done by statistics; the scouts
come and verify that the statistics are indeed true. They pick the top athletes and
they select exactly what they are looking for. Then they take whomever matches.
In some ways, it kind of takes the fun out of scouting because there is very little
left to the human intuition.
That is not the way Jesus picks. Lucky for us! Right? He does not select the quali-
fied; he qualifies the selected. This is so important for us because we are all called to
accept his call to action.
When we hear the today’s first reading from Isaiah and today’s Gospel, we
tend to dismiss it as not applying to us because Isaiah is the Prophet and Peter is
the first Pope. We don’t get that type of call. That is only for those who are going
to be priests or religious of the Church. But that is not quite the way Luke meant
this and we have to break open this Gospel a little bit to really understand it. Luke
says God is calling every single one of us.
Luke’s call is different from the call of Peter in other Gospels. Jesus is talking
to the crowds and Peter is literally at the feet of Jesus in the boat, listening to him.
We can almost hear how Peter is awestruck. Then Jesus turns around and says to
Peter, “Pull out, put out to deep water and throw out your nets. Do what you have
always done, which is to fish.” And Peter does. And the catch is bountiful. What
he has always done has now become abundant. Then Jesus says, “now come, you
are going to catch people.”
That call is for every single one of us, not just for priests or prophets. Jesus
says, “I will make whatever it is you do abundant.” Go back to what you have
always done but do it for me. If you are in business, go back to business. He is
not necessarily telling us to leave everything and go. He says, Go, do what you
have always done.” Then he says, “Come and follow me. Come and be a disciple
of mine and call other people.” Every one of us is called to be an evangelist. Not
just the priest. Not just the prophet. We are called to come and to follow Jesus.
But it all starts by allowing Jesus to come into our boat, allowing Jesus to speak
directly to us in our hearts.
Every Dig is A Gem
Sunday, February 17, 2019
Matthew and Luke offer different versions of the Great Sermon. While Matthew’s
version takes place on the Mount, Luke’s version takes place on the plain. Matthew’s
version has eight beatitudes that provide hope in the future for a current condition
now. We are most familiar with this version. Luke has four blessings contrasted
with four woes: Blessed are poor and woe are the rich; blessed are the hungry and woe are
the full; blessed are those who weep and woe to those who laugh; blessed are the hated and
woe to those of whom people speak well.
Jesus says God blesses those who are in poverty, hunger, sadness, or who are
hated because of his name. But it is not the conditions themselves that are blessed
rather those in these conditions who are changed. When we are poor, hunger, sad
or hated because of God our state of mind changes; we become more open to God.
We are not guaranteed to turn to God, but we become more open to God’s will.
It is easier to understand when we look at the opposite. What happens when we
are rich, full, or happy and people speak well of us all the time? Often, we have no
need or time for God because we are full of ourselves. It is not then the condition of
poverty, hunger, sorrow and hate that transforms us but the person of Jesus Christ.
He became one of us to show us the way to eternal life.
Emmet Fox, a great philosopher and scripture scholar from the 1960s compares
the study of scripture to digging for diamonds in South Africa. When they seek
diamonds, they spend weeks and months digging through the different layers of the
earth surface. When they reach the yellow clay they start to discover gems and will
spend days and weeks recovering just a few stones. Some miners are tempted to quit
after such finds but if they keep digging, they will reach the blue clay where with
every day’s dig they will uncover gems that previously took weeks or months to find.
We can find treasures deep within scripture if only we are ready to dig a little
deeper. We must be prepared to get below the surface of the text into the deeper
meaning that relates to our current lives. We must be willing to dig deeper into our
own lives and allow Christ to show us the way through scripture.
The challenge of the Gospel is how the present condition can determine our
future condition in eternity. The challenge for us today is no matter what our con-
dition in life we find ourselves we have the choice to open our hearts to the Lord.
Our challenge is to not stop at the yellow clay of the surface of our hearts but to
continue digging deeper into the blue clay where with each dig and every dig we
will receive gems of God’s grace.
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