May Jesus Christ be
praised and may his holy Mother pray for us.
I have been a priest
for four years and three days. And I
think if I were to give a summary of every homily that I have ever preached, it
would be this: God loves us, and we are transformed by our encounter with the
Living God. This love that we did not
earn, this love that we could not earn, is given to us because of the goodness
of God. God loves us and we cannot
change that. Our encounter with the
Living God in his Word and in his Sacraments transforms us so that we can share
his love and live to the praise of his glory.
Everything is related to God’s love and our transformation in God.
We have, in our
readings today, three expressions of the love of God and three transformations. In our reading from the Book of Kings we see
the love of God expressed in the concern of the prophet Elijah. The child of the widow of Zarephath was
seriously ill and was no longer breathing.
In fervent prayer and dramatic gesture the prophet begged the Lord to
heal the child. When his prayer was
answered, the prophet returned the child to his mother. The child was now breathing. The great transformation, however, was in the
mother. Through the tender compassion
and healing power of God, the widow of Zarephath had been transformed from
despair to faith.
The second expression
of love and the second transformation are the most famous in the Scriptures. We hear the account of Saul on the road to
Damascus at least three times in the Book of Acts and there are several
references to it in his letters.
Expressing an eternal love, and a call from the foundation of the world,
the Lord Jesus revealed himself to Saul.
Not only would his name be changed, but everything about the life of
Paul would be transformed by his encounter with the Risen Lord. The persecutor of Christ would now become the
greatest evangelist of Christ. Set apart
by the decree of the Most High God before his birth, and called in the fullness
of time to proclaim the Good News, Paul encountered the love of God and was
transformed. And because Paul was
transformed by the love of God, the message of Paul transformed the world.
In our reading from the
Gospel today we see the love of God incarnate in the Lord Jesus. Entering the city of Nain, the Lord Jesus
encountered a funeral procession. It was
the funeral of the only son of a widow, and the heart of Christ was moved with
compassion. There was a large crowd for
this funeral procession, unlike the small crowd that would serve as the funeral
procession for the only son of a widow, going from Calvary to a garden
tomb. The Lord Jesus instructed the
widow to stop weeping. He halted the procession. And Jesus called the son to life. At the loving and compassionate word of
Christ, death was overcome. The son, now
raised from the dead, was given back to his mother. Through the presence of Christ and the power
of his word, a man who was dead was transformed into a man who is alive.
From despair to faith,
from persecutor to evangelist and from death to life, the love of God and the
power of his word transforms. In this
celebration of the Holy Eucharist, we join our prayer to the prophet Elijah and
beg the Lord to restore and to strengthen the breath of the Holy Spirit within
us. We pray with Saint Paul that any
resistance to the message of the Gospel and the Kingdom of Christ in our souls
would be conquered by the revelation of his grace. And we ask the Lord Jesus, in his great love
and compassion, to free us from the tomb of our sins and raise us to life that
we may be transformed from glory to glory.
Amen.
Preached
at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church, Monroe, NC
