Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time - June 5, 2016

Homily for Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

June 5, 2016

Grace: The Life of the Soul

 

            I really don’t get the fascination with zombies these days. From the TV show “The Walking Dead” to “World War Z” to “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”, our culture has a lot of movies, books, and TV shows dedicated to the undead. Even the federal government’s Center for Disease Control got in on the action – they published a booklet back in 2011 called “Preparedness 101: How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse”. What is this fascination with these zombies?

            It think perhaps zombies are a fascination for us because it’s how a lot of people live their lives – walking around, going to work, eating dinner, typing on their iPhones…and not really alive at all. They’re just walking zombies – no meaning, no purpose, no point to it all – just going through the motions. Their hearts are beating and they’re breathing, but they’re not truly alive.

            What does it mean to be truly alive? St. Irenaeus once said, “The glory of God is man fully alive”. FULLY alive – more than just breathing and eating. Fully alive means being alive mentally (learning and growing in our knowledge), physically (living a healthy lifestyle), relationally (having friends and family who love us), AND spiritually (living a life in relationship with Christ). This is how we become fully alive – and God delights in His sons and daughters being fully alive!

            So let’s focus on being fully alive spiritually. Our Church teaches so beautifully that our souls become alive through sanctifying grace – in other words, when God literally dwells within our souls. His life becomes the life of our soul! We receive sanctifying grace at baptism, and we grow in it through the Sacraments and prayer. We can only lose sanctifying grace through mortal sin – but we are restored to sanctifying grace through Confession.

In Christ’s miracle today, He raises a dead man to life, but more importantly He raises the crowd to spiritual life through faith. He wanted to show the crowd that He has the ultimate power over life and death – that He is truly God, the Savior of the World. The people, then, were so amazed that they immediately believed in Him – He was more than just a great man and a prophet – He is the Lord!

This faith, then, causes us to follow Jesus Christ as His disciple, to seek union with Him through baptism and the Sacraments, and to live a life of holiness. Faith opens us up to the life-giving power of sanctifying grace.

            You see, having a heartbeat does not mean that you are truly alive. There are plenty of people who are breathing and walking around on this planet who are really dead inside, whose souls are in the darkness of mortal sin, who do not have a living faith in Jesus Christ, who think that they are unloved and that their life is meaningless. These people are truly the “walking dead” – they’re like zombies, walking around on the earth without knowing why or having any purpose greater than “just getting through the day”. It is THIS kind of living-death that Christ came to raise us from, not just physical death!

So how does this apply to you and I? Well, do you have faith? Faith is not just a “yes, I believe that God exists.” Faith means, “My life and everything in it belongs to Him.” Faith means, “Even in tough times, I believe that He is still God, that He still loves me, and that He will make all things work for good.” Faith means, “I turn from my sin to follow Him.” Do you believe in Him that much? If we have faith, we recognize that sanctifying grace, the life of the soul, is far more important than even physical life, and we will never want to lose sanctifying grace through mortal sin. As St. Paul said, “For me, life is Christ and death is gain!”

 Don’t be a zombie. Get to confession, draw grace from the Sacraments, believe in God more, love more – and come alive.